Board of Education Meeting - August 15, 2022

001date is august 12th and our guests are welcome today i would like to ask that william cardosi an army veteran from the 80s lead us in the pledge thank you of the united states of america and the jewish revolution for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all motion to approve the agenda second second moving second oh there's a discussion on the motion always in favor of the motion signature saying aye aye thursday okay tonight we have citizen storm uh before we begin i want to make sure that uh you understand i'm going to give you three minutes in the past you've had two and it's almost like you have to speak like an auctioneer you'd like to hear what you have to say so three minutes any derogatory

002comments profanity inappropriate comments and or referencing an employee or student by name will result in either a muted phone or remove from from your opportunity to speak and in the past we have a little thing i teach photography i have a clock here and um when i show you the face o'clock i mean you have 30 seconds to wrap it up all right so you're gonna have three minutes and i'm going to click it and i'll make sure that all my colleagues are here you get three minutes and uh i don't want to do that can you right i'm not going to stop your dead center in three minutes wrap it up when you see the face of the clock please i start thinking about wrapping up the comments and uh i think that's it

003i appreciate you all doing it i'm glad we're here in a society that allows people to freely express their opinions as well as for us to listen and i have to emphasize the board is not allowed to get into a conversation there he says his form uh by advice of the council and also the law alonzo perry the moment of silence let me get you you live okay my words first one thank you guys for extending that time for three minutes i think that's good we'll be able to actually get involved my name is alonzo perry ii i'm a graduate of musselman high school a former infantryman in the united states army a political science pre-law major at shepherd university a concerned citizen and most importantly a follower of our lord and savior as a

004candidate for the house of delegates i spent much of my time fighting for local control over the unfettered power of the state board because of this ability we have today to appeal to humble members of our community we are blessed to speak on this topic here at home and now there's some distant elite in a far away capital in this appeal i'm not here to debate theology or even to express any ill-hearted dissatisfaction with the board members who refuse to vote in favor of a motion to include a 60-second period of meditation i'm simply here to ask for compliance to alleviate your concerns any school district in america may constitutionally set aside time for meditation 34 states have already done so the stipulations are so long as the teacher does not leave the students in

005prayer and the students themselves do not engage in audible prayer one example is virginia's mental silence law which requires children to begin the school day with a minute to meditate pray or engage in silent activity in july 2001 a panel of four u.s circuit courts of appeals upheld the constitutionality of the law noticing that it introduced at most a minor and non-intrusive accommodation of religion moment of silence statutes are protected by the u.s constitution and so is article 3 section 15a of the west virginia state constitution that requires school boards to dedicate a period of for silent contemplation the statutes use of the words prayer enlisting and unlimited range of medical activities are authorized during a minute of silence and cannot be itself a ground for a finding a statue unconstitutional to require a ban

006the use of religiously related terms would manifest a hostility to religion that is plainly inconsistent with the religious liberties secured by the constitution the altar case that the members have cited was overturned by the president in brown versus gilmore judge request stated that a straightforward moment of silence statue is unlikely to advance or inhibit religion passing the limit test the board's argument of liability is a poor excuse i find it insulting that we cannot trust our teachers to implement a policy without violating constitutional rights if we can't trust them with silence how can we trust them with our children 77 percent of west virginians supported the constitutional amendment that this school board and others in the state have refused to honor we are not in a post constitutional order you swore an oath to defend

007the constitution and not just the provisions we don't agree with i would i wonder what would change if every house of worship in berkeley county were notified of this vote west virginians voted overwhelmingly for this amendment in our constitution and the least we can do is honor to to honor it failure to reverse this motion will be responded to with legal action it is not good to be partial to the wicked or to deprive the righteous of justice you know in your hearts you want to support this motion i heard you guys last session help us do the right thing mr perry if you'd like to leave a copy of your comments with our secretary that's more than welcome yes okay uh michelle barnhart mr stevens mr murphy from the board of education thank you

008for allowing me to speak today my name is michelle barnhart and i am a special ed teacher here at both lake county schools and a parent and a community member 395. i'd like for you guys to remember that number senate bill 704 states that a teacher shall comply with the parent or guardian for request to inspect classroom materials and books if a book is required reading the classroom teacher will include the book on their syllabus 395 is the number of individual books i have in my classroom library available for students to read 395 is the number of individual books that is not required reading in my classroom 395 is the number of individual books i was told i need to log and actually in my classroom syllabus by the end of the week for the

009school board 395 is the number of individual books i will be boxing up and no longer making available in my classroom 395 is the number of individual books i do not have time to log this week due to trainings and other things i need to log due to senate bill 702 395 is the number of books my reluctant readers will not have access to this school year 395 is only the number of books that will not be set out in one classroom how many more books will not be set out by other teachers there are other teachers that are saying the same thing thank you for your time thank you rob nurse please thank you superintendent stevens president murphy members of the board i appreciate the time to be able to speak again i wanted

010to speak on the subject of books by first mentioning addictive substances tobacco alcohol and pornography at least the first two that i mentioned are not paid for by taxpayer dollars and provided to children in schools i don't think the third should be either the uh controversial book that was brought up earlier this year newest i definitely contains explicit sexual material it's over the top it's graphic it's downright disgusting now when somebody writes a book a very talented narrator will write a book and there they do it in such a way that it conjures up images it expands the imagination it helps people to see different perspectives and go beyond their their horizon i can't imagine any parent who likes the idea of their child expanding their imagination into graphic details rape scenes or really graphic

011details of any kind of sexual scene on the level of fifty shades of grey now there have been some excuses some people have offered the the opportunity for parents to opt out that's an alternative i would accept that if it weren't for the fact that um if there was a way that you could guarantee the students weren't passing the books amongst each other um but i don't accept that because as a taxpayer my money still funds other students reading this graphic material it's unacceptable in my opinion as a concerned citizen i recognize that pornography is indeed very addictive the children already are going through the either most of them who are reading that specific book that i mentioned are higher in grade they're already going through hormones that are confusing to them and that sometimes

012control their emotions and their actions i don't deem it wise to put it in their hands at taxpayer expense i know there are many family members who agree with me and there are many who disagree but the point i really want to drive home is you can wrap something evil in a beautiful package no matter how awesome the rest of the book is and it's still hard and it's still bad for the kids it's damaging next speaker is face up thank you so much for this opportunity to address you tonight you're going to be considering action possibly on a list of supplemental books that our educators and lisc members have presented to you i urge you to trust our educators um i'm not sure why that list had to be presented to you i'm assuming

013it's part of a process that was agreed upon a review process but i think that it should be improved without further delays our educators need to retain the responsibility to select books and other instructional materials that they use in their teaching they have the training and knowledge needed to do so they know their students their abilities and their needs in 43 years of teaching i was never questioned by any parent about any instructional resource i used it's a shame that that time has passed we're losing teachers we're going to lose more of them if we continue to put such demands on them on behalf of the naacp education committee which i'm the chairperson i'm advocating for a transparent policy to deal with requests for reconsideration of instructional materials in the future you are a policy

014making group you don't have the time to be familiar with every instructional resource used in our schools but you can adopt a sensible policy that respects a parent's right to ask for reconsideration while requiring that they follow a civil process to do so with decision making by committees not an individual charged with reaching a decision about their request i have emailed you a sample request for reconsideration of instructional materials policy i hope that it may be helpful in adopting a policy it was written using the guidelines provided by the american library association to protect first amendment rights the national council of teachers of english right to read policy and recently passed senate bill 704 a committee of educators and parents would likely have suggestions to approve this suggested policy and you may want to form

015a committee to review it before it's presented to the public for comments and your approval i urge you to take action on this very much needed policy and to make it available on the website my second request tonight is to clarify for teachers that senate rule 704 does not require teachers to post a list of every single book they have in their classroom reading experts classroom reading experts advocate that classroom libraries have a thousand books in them please ask administrators not to place this burden on their teachers we're already asking too much of them if you read the policy and i don't have time to go through the things that i was hoping to focus on you know it says that teachers are required upon request by a parent to view instructional materials but they

016don't have to create a list and they're also required by request to post their syllabus but we already do that and the required books be posted on the syllabus that's all overreach thank you hi my name is a mom of two berkeley county school children and a former kindergarten educator of five years i'm here to speak about the inappropriate books that are in the school systems libraries and being taught in some of the english classes this was first brought to my attention when my friend told me that she knew someone who pulled their child from spring mills high due to the english curriculum choosing inappropriate books for her high schooler to read i was shocked to later read a facebook post about the bluest eye that included a partial text from the book i was

017shocked at the graphic nature of the book detailing the rape of a 10 year old child by the father i think a lot of those parents just assumed that we could trust that the educators would choose appropriate books for our families since last fall i've been in contact with other parents who share my concern over the content being presented in some of the classrooms i've also written letters to all the sitting school board members 2022 school year as it was heavy on my heart with no response from them i might add my purpose for being here is not just for my own children's future because i'll always do my best to put them in an environment that is safe for that but for the protection of the many students whose parents are unaware or unconcerned

018with the books used in the school educators number one priority is the safety of the children followed by the education of the children shame on these teachers we're putting pornography into the hands of the children some people say teens aren't children but i beg to differ that their brains are being imprinted with these graphic pornographic scenes i know adults who have lost years of their lives relationships and lived in shame over pornography addiction this is not a book ban this is a screening of content that is going into the hands of our children children are being attacked by unrelenting perversion in all forms in their entertainment world and their daily world can't we just have a place at school where parents can trust that the kids are being given rich exciting educational experiences that are

019also wholesome finally some educators have argued that these types of stories are important for abused children to feel like they aren't alone while i do understand that we need to reach abused children i feel that it's not the best best method to traumatize or bring a solid stand on no pornography in our school libraries or in classroom classrooms i do believe that school board members and educators will have to answer one day for whether or not they protected the children of berkeley county against every threat that they were made aware of to the utmost of their ability i believe that your biggest responsibility and potentially your greatest honor is this moment and i also want to add that there are wonderful educational books available to teach the topic of rape or you know i i

020can think of to kill a mockingbird for example you know that they were covering abuse within a household they were covering racist but there was not a description of the violent rape of a child in that book and so we can you know we can trust that educators will you know lead a conversation about um a book that they are presenting in their classroom if it's a book like that i would feel a lot better about that than a descriptive pornographic book detailing the a catholic rape thank you salary good evening um thank you for allowing me to speak this evening i don't have anything prepared um the first thing i want to say is thank you um i've been watching this board for years and the changes i have seen are miraculous like i

021appreciate every single one of you i understand that there's a lot that has to be done um this is the first year that we're going back where kovitz not changing everything um i understand that there's a lot of issues going on with the minute of silence and books and i'm not saying that these things aren't important but we need to remember the big picture in the big picture is in the last several years the discipline of our children has been a lot harder because of everything they've been through it caused trauma to all of us all at the same time in different ways and we need to focus on the things that are important and some things can be a little bit more important than others well i believe a minute of silence would be

022very beneficial i also understand how difficult it would be to get a class full of children regardless of how young or how old they are to actually set for that moment and then would we have to discipline them because they chose not to because that's how our schools are now we have a hard time teaching we have a hard time having kids learn and actually absorb the information so we really need to focus on what's important and how we go forward from there thank you um miss walter thank you to the last speaker good evening my name is jana wolter i am president of the berkeley county education association and a chemistry teacher at spring mills high school here in berkeley county i wanted to take a moment to speak and formally welcome the new

023board members that we have and the new nrl superintendent on behalf of berkeley county education association as president of bcea i look forward to continuing our positive relationship through communication and working together to benefit both staff and students today around the county educators reported to their work location in preparation for students they're attending trainings setting up classrooms revamping safety drills and procedures struggling with wevus 2.0 answering countless questions as the phones ring cleaning the buses stocking the refrigerators and making floors shine and so so much more everyone is excited and hopeful for a great near new year and we look forward to working together to give the students limitless opportunities and multiple pathways to succeed thank you so much for your time and let's make this a fantastic year i'm gonna compliment our speakers tonight

024um mr perry yeah he has some facts there that we should probably be available if you would care to share and we would be glad to have them thank you for coming in tonight and all of you as well unlike the past i hope all of you stay for the meeting and uh i don't want to say this is a good time to quit because i'd like for you to say this um the next item on our agenda is the consent agenda i need a motion for an approval of the conservative i don't know second seven okay great merchandise for ms long stranded on mr martin we have upon us uh suddenly extra curricular requests one chapter in the uh list no past volunteers there are student transfers use of school property two we have

025the budget transfers the payment of bills and invoices financial report and the treasury report or is there any discussion on any reasons there is a typo um when it comes to the emotions and seconding the motion you know it's a matter of grammatical thing but it's number five consent agenda motion by jackie long seconded by jackie law just need to correct that make sure it's all buttoned up tight all right stand stanford recognized that issue any other items on the consent all in favor of the consent agenda signify the saying aye right for his name i just appeared to have it i just do have to play the motion pass action items i'm going to turn this over to the superintendent i'll be monitoring energy oh i'm sorry i don't all right i say i

026am sick scared okay uh the first is a report good evening president murphy's superintendent stevens and members of the board tonight i'm here to highlight our summer school program for the summer of 2022 and just for the record soul stands for student opportunities for learning and engagement okay so uh before you um i have a week program for rook accounting students in grades pre-k through eight it was held at the seven locations that we have listed on the slides the program ran four days a week monday through thursday from 8 am to 2 pm the structure was an academic focus of english language arts and math and that was in the morning and then the afternoon we had social and emotional learning and breakfast lunch and transportation were included for all the students we served

0271000 students and we used 48 general education buses five special needs buses three vans 131 professional employees were employed 64 service personnel and we had 65 student workers that also assisted us with that during that time we had 545 breakfasts served daily and 581 luncheons served daily the curriculum that we used in pre-k through five for english language arts is called the scholastic literature camp it is a literacy program that combines innovative lessons with reading phonics and engages interactive summer camp approach for math we use the math for love curriculum it is somewhat play-based using manipulatives it is rigorous curriculum that helps students find a deeper engagement and apply their math in their everyday life and we try to make it as joyful and successful to them as possible in middle school the programmatic levels

028the teams of berkeley county teachers they developed the curriculum and it was project-based and hands-on learning we had co-teaching teams and they were organized by content we had english language arts and social studies co-teaching and work together and we had math and science teachers co-teaching and working together a lot of the curriculum was hands-on with science experiments as well as social issues that came up during the day the social emotional learning part of our afternoons were a treat to all students they learned lessons from berkeley county teachers from community members and from volunteers within our community pictured are some of our activities from left to right we had a farmers market and members from child nutrition work with local farmers to create that market for students something that many of them do not get to

029experience they also talked to the students about nutrition and allowed students to shop for fruits and vegetables and they had a little economics lesson a little math lesson and finding that as well we had the west virginia mountaineer from wbu mary roush who stopped by our schools to talk with the students about the role and history of the mountaineer and a little bit about the history of our state we had the american frontier cultural museum working with our kids who played games from our past and how the games are changed to our future and yet still are fun games for our students to engage in we also had a number of science technology and engineering activities stem activities and then we also provided field day activities for the students at the end of our sole

030program this is some of the summer sold data that we have that we provided we gave a pre-test and a post-test to all of our students as you can see the majority of our students either maintained or gained while they were with us during that time in english language arts and also mathematics another part of our summer school was credit recovery is a 7-week program that we have for students in grades 6-12 and those are for students who did not complete their coursework during the school year and or needed um to gain credit so they could be promoted for the upcoming school year it was also a four day week monday to thursday from 8 a.m to 2. students um in grades 9 through 12 could also take driver's ed and physical education if they

031wish that was open to any student that wished to take them during the summer in lieu of taking them during the school year so that was another opportunity for them and as well transportation breakfast and lunch was provided for all of our credit recovery students a little bit of credit recovery data in the middle school we had 82 students complete credit recovery in high school the first semester 205 credits were recovered in our second semester 160 credits were recovered so that was also very successful during that time something else that we highlighted this year is the ap bootcamp and this is a prep class for those students who take the act and the sa team it is offered to students who will be taking ap courses this coming school year and for students who were

032interested in possibly taking an ap course in their future our ap teachers actually taught these classes they offered half days one week camp for students and the table that you see there shows the courses that were offered and the number of students that attended in addition to ap bootcamp act and sat prep courses were also offered to our students transportation was product provided to those students as well our efsy program is our extended school year program this is a four-week program for our special education students in grades pre-k to 12. they had to be recommended to attend based on their iep and their needs and the critical skills that the students may lose over the summer it was held five days a week monday through friday they went from 8 15 to 11 45 and

033pre-k students went from 8 30 to 12. transportation and meals were provided to those students as well so i have with me ann lasky he was a coordinator for the program mrs dan robin lopez also helped coordinate it and uh betty ann um powers here from federal programs because her money is what is used to provide these services so i'm going to let her talk about our financial responsibilities and where we moved ahead forward yes do you want us to wait to ask a question at the end or class or something you can ask whenever you like um the high school students that are associated with recovery sources did that enable any of them to graduate yes yes um the we were taking classes such as driver's ed for the high school students were many

034of them also taking classes over the summer to so that they wouldn't have to take them during the school year yes that's what those classes were offered for okay yeah so students if they wanted to take driver's ed or physical education they weren't necessarily in credit recovery they could take those classes so that they would not have to take them this school year okay and one other question because when i was looking at the numbers um notice that the seventh grade numbers were a lot lower than the other student it's strange because the others were pretty high the seventh grade it was low and then it went back up again before i believe eighth and ninth do you have any reason why that may be i'll let ann answer i'll show you how the second

035grade i really feel is because we didn't have as many students in the seventh grade program so tana has the chief teacher um we only had 17 students to take a pre and post test in seventh grade um that's one of the reasons and sometimes um seventh graders in um summer school we worked really hard to motivate them but um in the lower grade she had like over a hundred kids in those programs we only had 17 kids so um i think that a large part their numbers being and we only had them for four weeks so yeah what's the percentage on kids that went from being um not proficient to being proficient in those areas for ela and math [Music] it was more of a summersol was more of a um keeping them fresh

036working on some skills they were missing so these were the students that we gave up pre-tests from we used the i excel in the middle school that they finished and then we assessed them again after four weeks so um it was more about growth yeah than proficiency and in maintaining and so in terms of where they came in and then trying to make growth over the four-week period so there wasn't necessarily a goal of getting super efficiency was just getting growth yes yes your skills up yeah yeah without closing the gap okay other questions i have accomplished um the chart you just i'm sorry um the students that participated were not students who were there simply from remediation there was a volunteer you had to hold down into correct students all students in the county

037yes sir that's correct um so if a third grade student took the pre-test it was one of the third grade level yes yes and when they finished it was school third and we're not third graders in age but first graders right and we had a specific curriculum so we taught that correct we tested them before they started that curriculum that we taught them out or you know tested them after when it was completed on that level yes so i i saw where you had 211 i was looking at this at home we had two and eleven high school students but 205 received their credits that means six for whatever reason didn't we cover the cost correct so we're not passing out credits here but you have to they have to earn them yes sir okay

038we had six that did not complete that program absolutely okay thank you all right um i think you have somebody once talked about friends yes thank you so financial responsibilities for our summer programming that we had this summer we were fortunate to be able to use our sr3 funding which is still part of the american recovery plan and part of our code funding that we have had in the installments um since we began with coven back in 2020 so uh fortunately for the second year in a row this was of no cost to any families in order to send their kids to any of our programs so looking um up there at the side you can see that we as i said we used our sr3 to cover all the financial responsibilities for our summer

039programming the majority of that was spent with payroll materials for students materials for teachers to use with students and also transportation costs um you know in the past typically transportation has been provided for credit recovery but not for elementary program type summer programs so this has been a nice benefit for families for two years to be able to have that opportunity our total spent today just for this summer and that is as you can see a little over a million and a half dollars just to run a summer program that we have so it is a costly endeavor that comes out of that has been able to come out of this grant that we have now fortunately part of our esser was to have a set aside to be used simply for summer learning so

040this more than meets the set aside that berkeley county had to put aside to help educate students during the summer months so we have met that however we still have some encumbrances and some payroll that will come out in probably later in the month of august or even into september as we start getting invoices and things for everything that were used that is rough estimate of about twenty thousand dollars that's still going to come out in another payroll for just those scraggling last pay paid periods that have come through and if you look there's just a little simple chart there payroll uh related expenditures are one million four hundred ninety six thousand one hundred twenty two dollars versus non-payroll expenses of their a little you know shy of 37 000 and those are things like

041i said uh materials and things that teachers have been able to use to help support children during the um the three different summer programs that we've had so this must have that is today yes ma'am that is to date the questions some members of the book i'm sorry no i was just looking over my notes to make sure that i said everything but i think every um and as it's been said in other slides this is really great because we were able to provide transportation for every child and meals so children were able to have a breakfast and a lunch while they were in summer programming so i think that is a huge benefit to families and to children who get to attend summer program and get to have those opportunities questions what were the

042total number of students again that participated in the program i know you said it was one thousand eighteen christian chapter four and that was just elementary 1018 k-5 students and then we had psy with credit republicans yeah we had 82 middle school 211 high school and 169 uh high school students second semester for credit recovery you know and their kids in 50 so it's a little over a thousand percent more than a thousand hundred thousand so that's six months okay so basically the non-payroll related expenditures like eighteen dollars well and we had a this was a very similar to the program that we ran last year so last year his expenditures were a little higher because that was the year when we bought all the materials so we were fortunate in order to not have

043to buy all new um educational materials we just supplemented with you know some new books or or uh hands-on like materials that are disposable but the bulk of the curriculum was purchased with last year's grant money that we received and that was a separate grant it was the state offered a competitive grant for four districts to apply for and it was really just called summer sole grant we expended all of that in one summer to run a summer program last year so this summer program was just berkeley county's portion of the rfs surf grant no additional satisfaction does that grant does it have 23.44 we will um everything has to be spent by late fall or from pretty much the end of september of 2024 so we will have that for this coming school year

044as well yeah we can still use it for expenditures the 1.5 billion this is the second year of seoul right it's the second year of summer learn yes we called it seoul last year the state coined the term sold because they offered a grant that they called the sole grant to offer summer learning this year we did not have that funding left over to use any of that so we did use our our our srf money for berkeley county schools but we just continued to call the program sold and the beginning of terms during the recovery the secondary students program uh in the class they had to pay because somebody yes sir that is absolutely correct in the past families that wanted their children to participate either in credit recovery or to gain additional credits

045that was a tuition cost to families um whereas the last two years we have been fortunate enough to use these types of federal grants in order to pay that cost for families going forward we you know we'll have to look how we can adjust that and then in the past of course if we had elementary programming there was never a cost of families for that because that was more like what we have have been providing just not with the benefit of transportation and in the past when we've opened summer programs and we had the summer lunch programs for students of various sites we allowed anyone a school age to come in and eat did we offer that this year too yes they were still open sites for feeding yes so there were still open sites

046for feedings for community members to bring school-age children in to eat that were not part of summer learning and then our students also got fed during that time did that occur much since you know that would be a better question for tracy and her department as to how many walk-ins did we have that walked in i don't really know the answer to that um i know in the past when we had title one summer school it was not usually a large percentage of families that did walk in with children feet but um in the past we have had some even some daycare sites that were out doing community things would bring in school-aged children that were berkeley county school students that participate in that and then we tried to centralize our elementary programs at that

047schools where um tracy had summer but even kind of boosted everything gross just one last follow-up what mr martin has earlier though we have two more summers of this 2011. so i'm going to answer you if we had that was in our original budget that is that is that was in our original plan a budget is a plan so we are hoping that we will be able to con sustain this to that capacity but we you know we have a five percent raise that was passed um that we also have anyone who's been paid from this grant we'll have that will have to come out there we've had the transportation costs have gone up fuel has gone up so that is our plan but whether or not we are going to be able to say

048that i would not feel comfortable saying a hard yes or a hard note right now perhaps we can sustain it and cut some things or sustain it to a a different capacity maybe not quite the grandiose capacity that we have had but some sort of capacity you know maybe transportation has has just been a huge cause there are you know there are always ways that we could look at um you know maybe not charging parents for tuition but there won't be as much transportation so i'm sure all of those things will come up through um senior staff discussions as we move through the year and look at the look of the amount of money funding that we do have still left available because at this point that is the funding source that we have left

049is the third installment one-year enrollment numbers a lot of times when this is a voluntary program on the part of their children and their parents but you've never provided transportation that on the front end you have a you have a bubble of participation but then you have attrition whatever reason people drop back on the voluntary approach are the numbers we see here the front end numbers are the back end numbers they are um they have they could stay they were the numbers we had honestly they were the numbers we had again um we we found last year at seoul when we had a longer last year we did so we did more of a seven week program and it kind of um cut off like the last two weeks it's one of the reasons why

050i decided we sold five weeks this year and it did keep the attendance pretty um pretty steady so um a large majority of the kids did complete the program um unlike last year so that's one of the reasons why we showed it this year i think the teachers worked very very hard and and this crew worked really hard to provide engaging fun life you know i use the word fun along with education but fun like activities for the afternoon that really kind of kept kids engaged and have been wanting to come who doesn't want to see them out here right but we also had a stronger commitment for a full day where last year we allowed them to come for just the a.m or just the theater and this year we required the commitment if

051they were coming to come all day so i think that that also helped that's a very good report to be any other questions of sam but thank you all for thank you and for our children thank you [Music] good evening uh board members and superintendent stevens um tonight i'd like to just bring out a subject that we've been looking into we're the uguru program uh was something that we had saw at a conference started looking into or possible tools for our staff we're always looking for something that's most beneficial for both our students and our staff to keep them safe and as you know some of our more challenging in our schools or have some behaviors that become troublesome so um what we're wanting to do is bring up the subaru team and i would

052actually like to turn this over to um kim sanders who can speak to you a little bit about the transformation that happened in higher schools and actually speak a little bit with that that i can't sell a lot of hurricane speak hi how are you all it's nice to be here with you this evening i'm kim sanders i'm one of the chief operating officers at grafton integrated health network in winchester virginia as well as the president and one of the inventors of the carer so i've been at grafton for 33 years i started when i was 19 years old working in a residential environment with some extremely challenging students i've been able to work my way up to one of the chief operating officers but during that time we had quite a few hardships at

053grafton so as the kids were getting tougher and tougher that we were serving through the 90s i can promise you that the truth would be that we just thought we had to get tougher and tougher so we started overusing the use of restraint and seclusion so to give you that picture of what happened to our organization in 2003 serving 220 children and adults we did over 6 600 restraints we did over 1500 exclusions and basically our organization got to the point that to be quite honest we were near going out of business and so what happened to us is when you do lots of restraints and seclusions your staff get injured horribly so in 2003 we lost our workers comp insurance at that point we were about a 40 million dollar organization without insurance so

054that would be like too many speeding tickets you lose your car insurance well it wasn't as easy for us to get other insurance so what happened is the virginia government basically stepped in and put us in a higher risk pool while we made some changes now during that time of course people did not want to pick us up and we met with several brokers looking for insurance and we were informed that our mod rating which tells you how how much of a risk it is to be injured at your place of employment that ours was higher than the new york city fire department the other thing that happened to us high staff turnover our staff turnover was about 54 and when you're churning staff at that rate you really can't do amazing things for kids

055the other thing that happened is we started almost an internal war as people were getting frustrated and irritated we had you know clinicians who didn't think too highly of teachers and teachers who didn't think highly of residential staff and again things were just sort of falling apart what happened for us is we got a new ceo that came and joined our organization in and really pushed us to do something different so he watched a little bit and then he issued a mandate to the three of us who were at that time executive directors that we just needed to come up with a plan to do something i'll be honest when he issued that plan to us i had no clue i was thinking if i knew what to do i would have done it years

056ago so i did research i followed speakers around the country probably close to being a stalker but i followed people around just trying to get information and what i found is that there really wasn't anything different than what we had already been trained so through the 80s and the 90s the way we were trained is yes beautiful de-escalation skills but when your words didn't work you restrained children or you took them to seclusion so i reported back to that ceo and he basically in his like super chill way said that i guess you better come up with something like if we need it other people need it and so what we did is a group of us who had been there for a very long time we locked ourselves in a coffee shop for about

057three days and we just started talking and one of the things we started talking about those of us who have been direct care ourselves were not mean people i spent five years working direct care with adolescent girls restraining and secluding them but it was because it was the only thing i knew so we needed to come up with something like literally brand new so what we did is we looked at why do people restrain children and for us it came down to two reasons fear and frustration truly if you have a child who intentional or just because they don't know a different way to express themselves comes at you to bite you in the face or to kick you or it's you get scared and especially if you've been injured you get scared so we

058needed to tackle staff's fear the next thing was registration and a lot of times people think we mean frustration with kids but we didn't we met frustration around bureaucracies or lack of resources lack of staffing um and then what really dawned on us was how about just frustration with life although your teachers and your aides are professionals there's still people and they still come to work with the things that are sort of looming over them in life and so that made us started thinking about who's taking care of our staff and we really need to take care of our staff and make sure that they feel safe in order for them to do amazing things for kids and so that's what flipped our culture so what we did is we put an action plan in

059place that was infused with trauma-informed practices for everyone not just for kids but for our staff as well a philosophy of what we call comfort versus control which is about when someone truly is at their worst what do they need to sort of get out of that with everyone feeling safe and no one injured the other thing we did is we invented a technique of very passive defensive blocking and i do have a piece of the equipment here with us tonight but you know 33 years ago if a child was coming at me in anger or trying to communicate what i had was this and i would hold them because my own amygdala was sort of scared and on fire and so i just wanted to stop where what we invented is using these soft

060blue shields while backing up in order to keep myself safe what we didn't intend was when i can keep myself safe the things that come out of my mouth and the way i act toward that that child is kind compassionate and loving because i'm not fearful for my safety and so what's happened at grafton is that region where we started this we've been restrained free and grafted this is the place that you know school systems send kids when they can't manage we have been restrained free for almost eight years another region in richmond has been restrained free for three years and then even our psychiatric residential treatment center has gone from about 200 restraints a month to one to three so what happened is it's worked different and we ended seclusion all together about 10

061years ago what happened is people we wrote a couple research articles about our work and people started calling us the first calls from australia i have no clue why we spent about four years going back and forth to australia but as of today ukru is being used in nearly 400 facilities across north america and so we have a division of that non-profit of grafton which i leave and which we go out and we train school districts so that of that almost 400 probably about 55 to 60 percent are school districts so fairfax county virginia loudoun county virginia washington county maryland howard county maryland frederick county maryland jefferson county west virginia they're all using this and many of them have been using this now for years and so the goal is to reduce your use of

062your strength but also keep your staff feeling safe so then they're able to do amazing things with the children that you're serving so i'm happy to answer any questions that you might have questions motherboard so grafton started using those ten years ago it was actually around 2004 when we first started what do you pay a year first referral for a referral at granting and it depends if it's just day or day and residential but the residential referral grafton can be upwards of two hundred thousand dollars and we would much rather you keep them here in their home school questions let's say uh i read through uh the presentation i think that mr jimmy's gonna do it's really amazing thank you i appreciate it trust me even for me that sometimes it doesn't feel real being

063you know with that whole journey and things that i did 33 years ago how long does the training change or maybe you're going to go in no actually um i am we're going to what we're going to do is uh introduce the same kind of presentation uh this week to our aud we want to start that as a pilot in the account so we're going to go into those classrooms what we're going to do is have a training trainer model uh they're going to come in they're going to train several people out of my office they're going to go into each classroom and go through the and train each teacher and staff that's in that classroom so we'll be going into those classrooms uh showing them and looking at there's different paths that they have

064and it's almost prescriptive the pads that they have so no one will have a pad unless they have been trained in this and we will be learning some of the techniques that they are offering for us like i said it's more about tools in our toolbox for our staffs and looking at what uh possibly we can do for them so i actually think the staff service and professional will be looking forward to that's sort of uh like i said we were looking for something and then when we came across the guru um it kind of fit what we were wanting to do and along with some of our other programs that we're trying to run this year we're looking to try to bring the most ability to our staff and to uh children's needs to

065be served and we're so close so we'll be there right along with you through everybody um i used to be in a classroom with behavioral children and um i actually sustained a concussion from having to restrain a student who was tearing up whole classroom and um had a had gotten a hold of a mug and um slammed up against the bookshelf and was using it as if it was going to be a weapon so um how do you what is hap coming from the perspective of being traumatized in that environment how do you how how does that work when you have someone who is sitting in front of you that's an adult working in that classroom and giving them this information it's almost to my ears it's this is too good to be true i

066mean i'm just because i'm thinking about all the other all of the different scenarios that that happen so so i guess my question is how does that how do you help the the staff hear it understand it absolutely well number one when we do the presentations for the staff we're going to go into much greater detail even about the grafton story right so that alone sometimes um and we make it fun and light-hearted and real and so that alone sometimes gives people hope because they think like if grafton you can do it in the situation they were in anyone can do it but the bottom line is even at grafton when we first started looking at this it was for our staff right it was for our staff and so then once we get into

067the training and people actually start seeing even part of the lecture part of it i mean we're constantly talking about the safety of the staff which then will equate to the safety of the kid but we it took it was a hard lesson for us to learn that we had to pay attention up to our staff first and and sometimes that's counterintuitive because we're we're educators you know but the bottom line is if your staff don't feel safe and they can't work through some of the things that they've you know gone through and be able to sort of come out on the other side and they can't do prefects for kids so we do spend a lot of that's good we do have spent a lot of time again trauma-informed practices and approaches that are

068in our training they're for both okay this is um i think the only other question i have is how long does it take for and this might and i don't know specifically with each different school district you've worked with how long does it take to get from a lot of restraints a lot of seclusions to a very small number of restraints and seclusions and actually seeing ieps and and things like that that they're actually behavioral plans that are actually having success and having us reach and and setting new goals how long does that take in general so this group of people that we've already trained across the country as we're looking at people's data in general within six to nine months you could expect to see a 40 to 60 percent decrease okay and those

069types of restrictive practices now on top of that we work with with folks to to understand how to move away from even thinking of those restrictive practices to being behavior detectives and getting on the front end and being proactive now some people will say just the notion of even doing the presentations that we're going to do to sort of get people jazzed up about this is like a hawthorne effect so sometimes it's just that you'll start to see it yeah decrease okay but fairly quickly the numbers will go down because we're giving an alternative and really the way we look at this is whatever system you're already using that may be using a restraint technique right we would say hold on to that and often people will be like why why wouldn't we just do

070because we don't want to scare staff right we don't want to take twice away especially we don't we want to add and then what we do is we say regardless of whatever you're using handling care cpi whatever is being used then you have two forms of de-escalation when your words don't work because we're realists and we understand sometimes words don't work block after that usually you care of blocking and if at any time you don't feel confident or competent no you have that standing restraint or something of the other system and it's almost like that knowledge of just thinking that's in my back pocket is is so important to make the staffers feel comfortable i'm not going to get in trouble if i do this and actually we see that they're more motivated to work

071through okay and so then you see those go down or you give them giving them more tools in their tool bags so that's that's good yeah um i guess the only other question i have is what gauge because in the end i mean the whole reason why i stayed in the classroom even after the concussion was because i was there for the student and i was hoping to to give them something better give them a tool that they could use in life that they didn't feel like they had to you know use a coffee mug as a dependent absolutely or an aggressive weapon so i guess the question would be how what is the success of the students you know getting i hear i hear that we're giving good tools for teachers that translates to

072students what are the success rates for students than at that point do you see kids getting out of that out of the behavioral programs in general what we see is the frequency of whatever those target behaviors are start going down and then the thing that happens that again i wish we could say we planned all this out but some of the stuff we were just sort of building the track as we were going right um but what happens is that those relationships start forming okay and then a teacher can actually be a teacher like if you were to go to grafton and ask some of our teachers who've been there through this whole journey you would say what is the biggest difference now with your job and they'll say i'm able to be a teacher

073okay i'm able to teach because then i can not only teach you know the reading writing those kind but i can also teach coping skills um but before i was too busy restraining or dealing with trying to stay safe absolutely yeah okay that's mr um let's have a couple questions so currently how often are we in berkeley county using um restraints or anything like that does it happen it does happen um we do have to we have a i do monitor that in our office we have a forum called jgg form which is filled out anytime if there is a restraint um i'm thinking last year we had around 25 restraints in the school system i think you're before being a coping year i think it was around 10. i think prior to that it's

074like 45 and so that tells you what kind of where but we do uh try to monitor that and look into those situations and with our cameras in our classrooms now it's even more important for us to go back and review what actually happened in its classrooms okay and another question though so um with your trainings and things what are some of the challenges or even some maybe even someone said have you faced any resistance to your programming the resistance is just something that we expect because we were resistant ourselves right if you would have come to me 30 years ago even when i was doing that five years of residential and said like we're gonna you know not restrain anymore i would have said like that's not gonna happen and we're all gonna get

075hurt worse and yeah i would have been one of the biggest people again against it that's the thought that went through my mind you wouldn't talk yeah absolutely so it's we ex we're not bothered by skepticism and again we tell stories of skepticism ourselves we expect it i mean anytime you do anything for a number of years change is hard and so part of what we're and how we approach this is just to help people sort of lift that mindset and consider something that's going to be better for them as well further questions just um i know this is probably a do this question but does this program deal with runners yes ma'am oh yes ma'am so yes we're going to do something we're going to teach some preventative things but then also we'll teach

076some techniques absolutely one of the things i'd like to mention too that was brought up in the first visit of this that there is tactics they can use on for bus drivers as well and so they survive those buses so we just actually get some tools as well absolutely well you know i could see um as the behaviors and how those skills that the instructional progress and more student learning will take place in the classroom absolutely dealing with constant outbursts it can be disruptive for many absolutely i would also just quickly add um i know you're looking at finances of your summer program and one of the things that we did not intend to happen we really weren't thinking of this that ceo in the beginning didn't say like kim go find me a big

077bag of money but honestly what happened is since 2004 with the reduction of workers premiums the reduction of money that you pay when your your teachers or aids are out and you have to replace them plus pay them home while they're hurt the staff turnover money that we've been able to recapture since 2004 we have recaptured an estimated like over 27 million dollars for granted because litigation or issues where children are hurt like those types of expenses go go down we actually had a expert from samsa which is a government agency write a paper about about that sort of the business case for doing the right thing how does the interactions with outside agencies how has that been impacted for instance we've had students well when i worked in the school system again different than

078berkeley county we worked with social services we worked with the sheriff's department we worked with because of the need for that with certain students so how does that well how does that get impacted one of the things that will happen is we will work with your your team to develop the implementation plan and a piece of that is sort of strategic communication to start to be proactive so anyone that is seen as a stakeholder or someone that you're working closely with number one we want to make sure we communicate that they understand this process that's going to happen but then really what happens is all that the need for some of those things starts to join and then how does that then address the whole root cause so root causes for students could be they

079watched mom overdose the night before absolutely um they got you know hurt because some kids bullied them and then they got physically assaulted the night before so i guess the question would be how does that then translate how do we address the root cause of those issues well number one it's you're right because that's why we have to be that behavior detective so we like after we make it out of that incident with no one hurt then we still want to examine what even happened that caused that escalation and so we want to sort of dig in we do some backward chaining um and we look at why that happened and then that may be that gives you the better tools absolutely and then that may be where you want to engage those people to

080help in preventative ways okay our staff does a lot of that now so absolutely i think this will help though because if you're able to de-escalate and establish that relationship you're actually going to probably get more more honest answers to things further questions i have a few um first off you're talking about staff and the student but i'm familiar with some of these situations and other students are living in fear as well in these classrooms and they're also victimized absolutely it you're is about trauma and i was reading your material trauma trauma victims are more likely than suicide 15 times um alcoholic multiplier boards i know that even on tonight's personnel list we have people in our autism autistic classes who are resigning who came to us last year full of injuries and everything so

081my question to mr dilley is have we followed the workers comp claims um days absent within this category because apparently you've been attempting there's a problem that while you're doing this if you have any numbers i don't have any numbers but i'm sure though i can give them with hr and find out what that might be berkeley county leads the state in the number of autistic children last year i believe 300 and so not forget um it's a services the parents appreciate receiving in their community i know back in the when i was in the legislature visiting institutions we parked a lot of children with severe problems dehumanizing institutions which i think i'm glad to see is having them located in our school systems and in our families and then a more stable climate there

082but why why are we not this is geared toward autistic classes but what about the bd classes this will also be all right i'm sorry i got my hearing aids okay we're piloting in those two areas we're all here okay i'm sorry positive spot uh could you tell me what restraint actually involves without demonstrating if you need a guinea pig i'll step forward right now well there's we teach cpi uh which is a and maybe michelle kind of talked through about that um i'm michelle's house director especially but um we do teach cpi and restraint of course is the last resort there are several different restraints there are holes so you're restricting the student from moving hitting um we have a basketball which is like your arms cross the chest we also have a two-person

083hold where there's one on each side holding there's also a seated hole so the the idea is of restraint is to restrict movement of the child at that point um and restraints research-wise do not calm children or anyone down so it is um a technique that we are using to keep people safe at this point but that is why we um looked into uh because we know that there is a better way to do this but as kim said she encouraged and we are doing we're keeping both one of the big things when we were presenting this is an option we had had administrators say what are we going to do when a student is doing this this and this they were so afraid that we weren't going to have the restraint option if you

084will so we're not taking that away initially but it basically it is restricting the movement of child so they can't get hit um i i can remember talking to some of the employees head buddies yes absolutely you grab a hold of them around the chest absolutely and they're biting is a big one too there are techniques in cpi on how to avoid getting bitten or um butted by the head so that's all part of the cpi however the blocking pads in my opinion um will be a better option and i was part i was part of the grafton restraints i worked there 30 some years ago as well and different strengths frequently that's that's what we did and then i went back as an administrator and it was just when they started initiating nervous strengths

085and i was one of those um staff were like oh i don't know how this is going to work however it does it takes buy-in that it it does and that's part of what our role is and our our job is to make sure that people feel confident and using it and one of the things david did say is that um we are doing train the trainer and eight of the ten trainers are from our office because we we recognize that we cannot be holding staff out of classrooms so eight of the ten will be from the office of special ed further questions for members of the board i i'm just looking at pad there and a bail in the back there that led us in our pledge i was wondering if you thought of

086the old stick that we haven't done good campaign i mean they knocked their daylights out again but they had passed okay uh we thank you for this uh we'll be hearing more another question one more i would assume that as you are introducing this and implementing it you would be using this pad a lot more in the beginning versus towards the end of absolutely okay so how do you cause i can't carry that pad i don't think mr wright or anybody else would want to carry that pad for the rest of their life yeah they don't want you to carry it actually what we train on is that you would have those in the environment um you know a lot of times people will say oh you're going to put in the environment and kids

087are going to mess with it we're actually going to do an orientation with every student before that gets in their classroom okay so then they know about it and we're actually encouraging them to sort of know and and yeah that's what say i'm sorry but uh this pad for example might not go in every classroom we may need just smaller pets in some classrooms so this is just one example that they have for pets like i said it's almost prescriptive the way that uh these put in those classrooms and if there's ability to maybe attend one of the trainings i would love to watch that in action and see [Music] somebody was a wrestling champion or something and he shows people hopes um i'm hoping this is not detrimental to the health of the kids

088thanks for watching we don't teach any homes oh okay i just saw that we don't teach any holds we are a restraint free system so we do not teach anything like that but there's still knowledge about round body mechanics and those kind of things that are important to know that was wonderful no sir we don't teach any homes no holds born i appreciate it thank you presentation thank you mr miller um i now turn the meeting over to the superintendent i want to talk to you about action items number one we have an item for the 2022 november bond call and you have been given a packet of information thank you you jim what we have uh and we have a copy of the of the ballot uh the election ballot on the on the

089screen and this is for consideration um interaction of an order by the board of education authorizing and directing an election to be held november the 8th 2022 and i have with me uh this evening tom piercy who is one of our bond council uh from bold rice is roger with us out there no i i think he may be although i can't see him on the scene right now is he joined okay and roger hunter who's also a member of bond council uh and we have additionally uh joe massey who is with i think i heard roger by the way yes i think i tried earlier but he's there joe nasa who is our uh who's with piper sandler and has been working as our financial advisor while we're preparing all this so i've asked

090tom to kind of give you an overview as to what's taking place and and before we take action on this this evening so that we can get this to the county clerk tomorrow absolutely well thank you superintendent board members um i'm going to turn it over to joe in just a few minutes to go with financial peace but first just want to take a few minutes to describe what's in this order i know you all have in front of you we've been working with the superintendent and board staff joe and his team to repair this and essentially it's the first step in issuing bonds and that is in order to put parameters on those bonds and similar questions voters vertical counter and so you'll see within this order uh i know it's 20 pages long

091i will i'm going to do the word but there is actually a sample ballot that will go to the clerk and the question will go to the voters so ultimately they will decide whether or not bonds can be issued but this is the first step tonight so i want to turn your attention to page two um what you'll see on section six this what we call a not for the sequence amount that's the maximum principal amount of bonds that was issued and put input and board and staff um we decided not to exceed the amount of 124 million dollars not 940 000 so um also on section 8 you'll see there's a not exceeded interest rate so that number is 5.75 grand or per year and that's a number that was included based on suggestions

092from joe nasa and his team based on current market rates and you know looking forward to what we think will be a reasonable cap on the interest rate the hope is of course the time of issuance that that rate is much lower we can't put it in the future in interest rates and then finally the term response how long will it be outstanding and we have a cap there of 15 and three-quarters years with the understanding that it'll most likely get 15-year bond so um going to the next page this is the project so as bond attorneys we do not come up with this project list ourselves instead we take the input from the board and staff and then try and reflect here and stamp here on these pages and you'll see there's a lot

093of very exciting projects new elementary schools new pre-k centers and really substantial improvements throughout the entire district addressing security safe school entrances fire alarms infants intercoms major loop repairs fencing improvements multiple schools hvac improvements and multiple schools fundamental electrical improvements uh renovations to athletic distilleries renovations fine arts improvements and so on and so forth these are really all the projects that based on the school systems needs that that we think that the board has strived for us to include here to address this um you know this part of the state is very fortunate to have a growing student base something that i know the southern part of the state wishes to add that problem but with that increase in enrollment comes an increase in means so the project lists here that really just a reflection

094of what uh the information that we've received from the board a few things that i wanted to note though a bit of page eight it really breaks down the estimated costs and the sources okay so we can scroll down so you'll see the estimated total cost of the projects is um 149 million nine hundred and forty thousand dollars so and the bottom line of course is not to receive 124 million nine hundred and forty thousand dollars so the difference there is the projects funded by bond proceeds but also there's estimated project costs that are going to be funded through other sources including sba funds federal state grants local sources lease purchase obligations we note that that number is an estimate it could be higher or lower depending on the actual cost of construction but the

095hope is to get sba funding to satisfy that piece i would note though that the issuance of the bonds while subject to the vote of the citizens of berkeley county is not dependent or an intention upon sba funding but there is a component of either sba or local funds that will be needed to issue the bonds another thing i want to note at the bottom of page eight you'll see that there is school closure language now this is because new elementary schools are being built but um with those new elementary schools being built they'll be necessary to close some others and rearrange students and so the details of that are vitamin supporter but also in the ballot so the voters will have a chance to assess that issue as well um finally with built-ins and

096flexibility to address if there's an increase in project class or the project's becoming less anticipated what you can do with those funds and uh essentially the projects the funds can be allocated with different projects depending on the need but what can happen is a certain project can not be so when the voters put on this they know that they'll get everything that's included here it's just that that ultimate cost may vary a little bit due to inflation expression costs et cetera so um with that i know joe has a uh a presentation about finances a levy that's going to support these questions i guess i'll pause there and ask interesting questions questions so we're just going to go over um a few of the parameters that are in this resolution just so the board has

097full understanding um right in front of you here you'll see the property for pension property tax levies uh these are our uh up to the maximum amounts that taxpayers potentially could pay at the at the maximum parameters that that we haven't disordered so the first item that we needed utilized in order to generate that property tax levy back in uh recital number six is the how much you will borrow so in this case uh you know it's 124 million nine hundred thousand so we use that maximum amount you can borrow less but you can't borrow more the second parameter it's actually recital number eight is the interest rate like thomas talked about so we have to pick unfortunately looking at crystal ball uh if the voters pass this in november uh likely the earliest bonds

098would be sold would be in march of next year um and you hear a lot of uh news about interest rates in the today and increasing dramatically from last year but the good news is that well when we ran kind of looked at the credit of the school we did a kind of blended rate uh the the rates uh today are still in like the street estimate like maybe 3.6 so that 5.75 is just a little bit of padding in the event that interest rates really increase between now and march because if the rates are higher than 575 you can't issue your bond so um the interest rate where we decide to go with is the world runner basis point 575 on the bond could be higher but the higher you go then you know

099the levy rates will come out higher in the computational lower would be lower but then their risk the the third item really the final item is um how long what is the maturity of the box how long do you need the value like that and here we only have 15 and three quarters years maximum so you could issue the volume but shorter term payback or that you couldn't issue it longer than 15 big quarters a year so if you take 15 three-quarters years take 5.75 percent interest rate you take 124 million 940 000 and then you apply the most recent certified 0.2 assessed values for each property class you come up with those particular amendments so uh if if we went into the market today the you know the voters would be paying something lower

100than that but based on the assessed values there's the maximum that further might pay on the property class now we did some examples i don't know if they're in the focus or not but i can certainly just run through the one um if you'd like but in it it should be on your pocket but if it's not uh we have actually computed for girls information what the impact was going to be on each property class the majority of voters are going to be class two residentially owned um and we looked at it back there and you need an example for a uh for instance uh a two hundred thousand dollar brainstorm i'm kind of estimating that maybe that might be the need for across the account um and if you were to take 60 of

101the asset value and apply those levy rates a typical um homeowner would expect to pay about 12.87 per month that is the maximum based on these parameters in actuality based on today's rate it may be something closer to ten dollars or ten dollars and forty percent so depending on how you wanna look at that uh you can see here it's um fractions of a dollar per day for a homestead uh for a suitable uh i'll get this one so i'm sorry that is a homestead it's 14.50 for uh class two residential owners but if you follow 500 homes that exemption like in the elderly it's um works out to be 12.8 cents per month uh we have market rates driving those down to maybe 12 48 and 10.27 respectively so that's uh essentially the parameters

102itself kind of uh allow us to come up with those leggy rates for the voters we've given you examples for each class including business so that you'll be able to articulate your staff will be able to take that within the fact [Music] 1999 actually uh worked on your 2002 2010 public collection um down at 48 public school volunteers in the state we took a look at like the last eight school bonds that successfully passed and so the impact on voter is false kind of right in the middle it's actually better than some it means it's clearly the highest amount and the i think it's 80 million 250 that is sold for uh for capital county so at this particular level at 124 million you're still your impact on the voters still like right there so

103and that has to do with the fact that you know really healthy assessed valuations that continue to grow so i don't know if there's any questions questions for the board so we know also in this election there's going to be the vote on um giving the legislature the ability to give it a property taxes will that have any effect on the rates of the bodybuilding problems yes yes so yeah so let me just answer on the bonsai sure on the bond side because it's a general obligation of the county there's not going to be any impact on the bonds because it just means the amount that would be levy for would need to be a report from those other property classes however yeah so exactly as shown indicated the invisible bond commission can set the

104levy rates in order to cover debt service on these bonds so while we understand that out of an invent and then possible legislative action they had a big impact on school boards would not actually have an impact on response in particular um so that's an important addition for access levine's amendment budget and things that we can share with you but but here in a sense all the taxes are still going to be paid in the levy board just now and you know instead of you know that there's no personal property that don't instead just get shifted on some of the um real property particularly with the class three and four business owners that may have benefited from they're actually going to see their taxes off for school bonds actually the 11 could go down so

105there would be no impact on your bonds the amount superintendent mr president this is roger hunter i would add one other thing and that is that if that amendment passes in november that you're talking about the legislature will have to implement that repeal and there's always been talk that they would in some form or fashion try to tackle the problem of making school boards and other levying bodies whole after and as part of that repeal now whether that happens in either case whether the voters approve it remains to be seen and then whether the legislature would actually do that and how they would make levying bodies whole remains to be seen as well but but that's another factor just to to put into the conversation on that question they may make living bodies questions further

106questions by members of the board the with the rapid growth of buildings and houses here the numbers you're looking at there are from the amount of structures in place and i think you said 22. but as we build more the uh the distribution of a burden will be spread amongst a greater number of people and these numbers that you're starting out with will actually be reduced depending on the number of people moving into the area yes these are based on certified values of all the property july 1 2018 increases from this year which are certified until march of next year and these future increases as a result of personal of any property um particularly on the business uh you know which are taxed at a double level double the landing radio with a little residential

107owner the impact would be exactly to actually reduce the tax rate over time and i think we've seen that with the existing series 2010 10 bond over the years you should see a nice steady decline in the levy rate to voters and i would also note again that we're just full disclosure in the bond election order providing them with a maximum levy rate and to the extent interest rates come in where they are should come in today they should expect their actual levy rate in our first year to be lower significantly lower depending on the actually over the course of 15 years since i've sat here i've watched this refinance that yeah at a lower rate and saved for uh amazing amount of money but we can't guarantee that that's right it's based on what

108the interest rate could be when bonds so they're presumably the same opportunity here down the line if they injured five points yeah interest rates are historical still even though they might be 150 basis points higher than one year ago people believe those rates would sub one percent so let's say that ten or twenty year right here just incredibly by the historical standards we're very uh low interest rate environment i think brakes have even fallen 50 basis points just in the last three months after the little spike it's come down but we still don't know where the raids are gonna settle in but we believe today 65 is where it is today that may be difficult to refund just to pick up on what thank you all for your presentation i was well yes um did

109you have something else to add no i was just going to echo what uh what joe nasser said i started my practice in 1979 and in the early 80s i was doing tax exempt bonds for 12 and 12 and a half percent interest per year so uh joe's right about the historically low rates that we're still enjoying and that you will be able to enjoy if the voters approve this thank the three of you i'm sure you'd like to get the one the road here so we appreciate it we appreciate this is an action item that will have a motion put the bond on the propeller for the voters on november 8th that's the one okay move my mr right second if i missed long discussion on the motion amendments to the motion all in

110favor of the motion signifier saying aye first name i just appear to have it i still have declared motion to die thank you okay thank you superintendent did you want to take a copy of the signed order of dr charles um i think that would be a good idea i don't want to interrupt a good idea one person okay thanks everyone before we move on to the next item i'd like to appreciate the staff uh joe and others uh the committees that worked on this uh cefp in the first phase of this bond the superintendent's trips to charleston the work that they provided and we do have a big challenge in the community to sell in this bond and i want to say that this board has worked many hours without being part of the

111regular board meetings but work sessions and everything else we work together all five of us presenting good questions challenging questions to staff and this board actually trimmed 25 million dollars out of the proposal brought to us by staff but now we as a community have to deliberate and take us forward to share the community we're going to be building more classrooms we're also adding to the safety sadly in these times the safety of our schools and the actual age i think our schools are 50 went on average 54 years in average in age so there's a lot of wear and tear on our buildings that we also have to include in this bond but a lot of people have worked hard on this and i know there's going to be a good group working forward

112on it i hope our community is receptive to the needs that this bond will provide virtually with that said we'll move on to item 7.2 unless any other board members have accomplished you want to answer them okay 7.2 mr stevenson um i would like to present miss burkhardt for discussion and possible action on the high school supplemental reading list uh we've we presented this last as a last war meeting she's here to answer your questions so that we'll make reaction on that um if i could i would like to make a clarification um at the last meeting we talked about the ap censorship and i wanted to make sure that the board understood that that was for topics that were to be taught in ap classes not literature books or novels used within the classes

113any questions about that i actually um called someone from the college board because it's somewhat vague and it is specifically relating to the topics and if the topics are not covered based on ap then there's a possibility that that student may not get that credit for that class but it has nothing to do with the novels or those used to teach themes and the literature classes so i just wanted to make that clear one one question i have you have a question is we're talking about a list of books but we're really talking about our process and policy process here do we have in place now yes sir we had that policy in place actually um i have given it to all the board members it's not a policy it's a procedure it is a

114procedure the board does not have a policy so to speak but we have an adopted procedure that we use to review books and we have shared that with everyone and there is a process to repeal those books if someone is not satisfied with those books ultimately the decision is the boards if we get to a point where someone wants a reconsideration of a book we go through a process it's a committee the committee makes that recommendation yes we like to keep this book or no we would not um and then the superintendent would make that recommendation and ultimately the board would decide um we also have a process in place for the recommended reading list it's a little bit different we have that same group well it's different we had the teachers meet and um

115with that we also had an assistant superintendent on that committee um a number of i think two principals and three teachers from each high school who reviewed the books that they liked to teach for english language arts they put that recommended reading list together which you do have we did highlight those books that were of mature reading level with that um we did also provide you with additional information um that tells you the name of the book and um what that mature level means you should have that in your packet this evening the additional step with that recommended reading list is the lsics from each school needs and on that lsic they are the parent there are service personnel there are teachers uh possibly a business partner is on that lsic and they also approved

116or disapproved of the list that was recommended anyone wanted to join in here before i have a i have a call um first question would be how does a parent get onto the lsic because i've had a number of parents who have asked me they've expressed that they have desired to be on it they have reached out to the principal of the school and they have either been told there's no room or they've been told that um there's a process that they need to do and yet there's no process that's been given to that that particular parent and i i'll be honest that this it it sounds weird when you when i have a have several parents telling me i have no idea how to get on it and when i've asked i get stonewalled

117i will say that's shocking because as a principal i was usually begging for parents to be on the lsic but normally the process involves the faculty senate and um the principal or someone from the faculty senate would ask do you have any parents that might be interested or being want to be on the lsic we reach out at the schools and ask for that if someone is interested then we bring it up the faculty center brings it up and they vote on them okay it's a very simple process i'm very surprised to hear that i'm not saying it doesn't happen yeah um three different people three different schools so i would really recommend that they contact his principals and or if there's a problem they could send an email to the principal and cc me

118as well so we can make sure that that process is being followed perfect let me jump in here i i questioned whether i mean i'm a teacher background everything but i question whether a faculty senate should be improving through the parents on on an lsic i i think it should be a parent organization or let announce to the parents that this school is going to have an election you put your name on the list you you do it and then they have a process where parents can do it then select the uh uh represent the parents represent i don't think she i mean if if i were running for office and in the school system for some laws and i asked administrators who are good but i'm just saying that parents should be selecting parents

119it shouldn't be dominated by the faculty students and that's the question that she just raised and i think that's the impression that's given now whether that's actually what is supposed to happen or what does happen i don't know all i know is that this is how it feels to people yes we actually have a parent that's on hello you know i'm pretty sure that's not when i've read up on how else out these words that's there is um collection for being a part of like a voting member but any parent can go and be a part of the lsic you may not have voting rights on certain things but you can go and participate that's cheap so that's like being a part of the naacp where you're not the chairperson but you can still be

120there do we have the meetings posted for parents and like even on our website because i know that that was something that i employed to the particular county about how to get access to to some sort of like lsic dative meetings for for parents and i never got to have them posted okay i've all right and they'll be different for every school we're supposed to have at least one a quarter is there a link from the main berkeley county school site to the school side to the schools or to the lsics to the schools okay we'll take each of this school type okay is there the ability to to have some sort of link or something on our berkeley county schools that whether that's a new page for lsics something because it gets it's very

121confusing for parents and for the community members and i've had that's that's been something that that has been brought up several times that our website is very confusing to operate i have a suggestion for that i think you could always do just a blur that says if you want information about lsrc's please contact blah blah you know your specific school would have something clearly like maybe even something a drop down i mean we could put a volatile variant page if that's what you won't want but that's an easy fix not a problem i just want to make sure that people are aware and there's no issue we can always say hey it's always here and i'll let holly talk about how some of the high schools did their lsi seeds a little bit different um

122we always had uh sign ups at orientation and then i think there's only three three parents are supposed to be on an lsi so let's say if we had five or ten um then we would do a ballot um blast it out to our parents and then they would come in and vote for the three people that were on beyond it we always did an orientation as a sign up so it's not like it's something that brooklyn county's come up with though no sentence but the teacher yeah yes okay uh other questions i have another question that one kind of snowball um question on um page nine of the supplement that had been given to us it has that the adventures of huckleberry finn by mark twain is labeled as mature content when i'm going

123to the paper that you've given to me this evening i see that educational value positive messaging positive role models are are all rated along with violence language and drinking and drugs and smoking however if i'm flipping the page back one i see a book called the absolutely true diary of a part-time idiot that book has three out of five for sex romance and nudity huckleberry finn has none if i look at language it has four out of five huckleberry finn only has three if i look at drinking drugs and smoking for both they're three out of five violence and scariness four out of five and the adventures of huckleberry finn are three out of five this book significantly meets if huckleberry finn is a representative standard for mature content why isn't the adventure of why

124why is the absolutely true diary of a part-time indian not included as a mature content book well i think they are you wouldn't have had that in your packet it may not it's not labeled it's not labeled as mature content on on the left on the list there's no asteroid the thing with the dots like if you go under the common sense media and there's there's five dots and they get two if you click on that which we couldn't give you all that just it would be like a thousand pages it will say like they don't they say these two words or they say these um instead of like including alluding to something as opposed to actually being graphic have you read portions of the absolute true diary of a part-time indian i've written portions

125of it yes so you're familiar with the masturbations you're familiar with the fact that he thinks he could be part of a masturbation club that's mature content that's that goes in with sexuality i i hear you're rating i understand that i i get that but the ratings that we've given to the books is where i'm calling into question because in this book there's not just that there's a there's a it talks about this gentleman hugging a teacher and getting an erection there's death violence people being killed murdered that's in this great consideration and i and and i understand all i'm saying is how how do i know it's mature in content because this list doesn't even have it flagged as that how many other books are there that are not flagged i don't know that

126and that is that is a huge concern on my part it's not if i'm looking at the adventures of huckleberry finn are there parts of it that that can be mature yes but does it rise to the absolutely true diary of a part-time indian no and yet that one was left off as not being or containing mature content so in in my looking at this i i call into question a lot of a lot of stuff like now i i want to go through every single book well that's why the books are there available for the parents to go through if they want to read a book and determine whether or not their their students should have it that's that's the whole point to having the list out for them to look at aren't we

127violating the law are we violating the law we have this labeled as for 11th and 12th grade students we have 11th and 12th grade students who are under age those underage students are going to be reading obscene material is labeled as violating the law if we distribute this so i i can't i don't define the age of a child i don't define that the law does the law we are not we are not judges we are to follow the law we're not legislators we can't create the law so if in our law it says that we are not to distribute obscene material two miners and 18 years and kids that are 17 years old and under are considered minors why would we be doing this if our desire if our job is to satisfy a

128topic and we're choosing the book to satisfy that topic there are there are other books that we can use to satisfy that topic that does not have and does not contain obscene material and then alleviates everybody the school system the librarians the teachers the school board staff it it alleviates all of us from litigation or potential litigation because then we could get sued because i'm a pr if i were to vote on this and i were to say yes and a child is traumatized by one of the books that's on here doesn't necessarily realize that maybe the parents involved maybe they're not but then they're traumatized i believe that we are then liable for providing and paying for their counseling i believe we're liable we presented it we introduced it we're liable i guess i

129have a question who determines what's obscene i mean the question that's a very good question the reason is because you know just reading the bible there's a lot of scenes that talk about some varying and it's it's gravity so and i'm not saying that we should ban the bible bible doesn't talk about masturbating does not use the word masturbation it talks about spilling your seed i'll just say i understand that but that's different that is different in nature you have each that's a that's a whole different topic what i'm saying is no i'm just basically saying somebody let me know i'm saying what i'm saying is that my interpretation of what it would have seen and what the legal definition of all of these things are can be completely different i have a solution for

130that so that's not in real things no i have a solution for that i do have a solution it's called the miller test they actually use that to determine what is what is obscene or not and i think maybe that's what we need to do is provide that as as a possibility and one of the pieces to them to the miller test is to actually solicit the community at large in berkeley county now berkeley county schools berkeley county the citizens to determine if they believe this rises to the definition of obscene let's find somebody on the side of the table have a chance and then we'll get back to this yes we feel very important uh i took the time to read this not read everything [Music] you know i think that we have to

131give administrators and teachers um the knowledge where they um that we respect their and and that we expect them to do what's right for our kids so okay um i'm sorry let's see who spoke so um foreign know you sent us a list do you know how many total parents were involved i see there's a few on these different lsics and along with principals and teachers you know because there's lsrc for the fourth high school four hours yes two and how long did they have to review the list of that we presented the list to them and then they had their lsic meeting and that would be up to them but how long how long did from the time that you presented it to them and to the time that you received your final that

132was over a month i believe yes ma'am okay and how many schools fall schools four high schools four high schools for high school yeah okay um anyone else well um i just wanna know that i mean once again i do think i trust the teachers and to give their professional judgment about this book and i do think that maybe we if we put this out to parents early to approve these lists three-fourths the parents won't read these books or even take the time to um go through the list that's my concern with anything like that i see what louis was talking about but would it actually um prove what you know you're thinking that we should do i mean again um ultimately it is the decision on board we have just presented the procedures and

133process that the county has in place and um this is where we are now i would i would move that we have um the books that are obscene in nature or marked with mature content and i would even include the absolutely true diary of a part-time indian um [Music] be reevaluated and to find alternatives that do not have questionable content in them to this extent and then re-examine those the other ones i mean you know we haven't provided this we don't have a motion before yet so let's get back to the beginning here um any more questions upstairs okay so uh i guess another question um because we had this long list this is this is just possible possible books that could be used that correct was anything okay and we have a process in

134place for um if a parent or even student student or someone doesn't feel comfortable with being in a certain public or something like that that they can have an alternative and we also have a process for challenging and maybe removing certain bugs correct yes do we have a policy in place that says if its parent says no to a book but a child wants to read it the teacher will actually follow what the parent says i'm not aware of any such policy or procedure okay further that i'm aware of personally i am not now further questions that's there no we we just always fault if the parent said no over here okay all right the parent knows the uh let's first put this uh item number 7.2 discussion possible action on the supplemental reading list

135before it says a form of religion who reached uh list before us for good seven mr mark sec okay now remember this this uh i move that we take the books that are that have the asterisk reevaluate and any with obscene content we find out alternatives for those books including the absolutely true diary of a part-time indian which currently has no asterisk but rises to obscene okay this power moves the uh makes a motion amendment to the motion doing the second amendment so that we have to pay for no position okay are recognized with power to uh just discuss our amendment i think it rises to the legality of the whole thing damon is right that we don't necessarily have a specific definition for obscene however we do have our common sense and we were

136voted by the voters to be on this board to use our common sense and to use our our the intellect in which we were entrusted with to to to make decisions so if i'm looking at this and i see that there's obscene material and obscene material is not supposed something that we should be dispensing to minors and we have minors in our county that exist in 11th and 12th grade and younger i mean that we i we need to re rethink this because we are then held liable for potential lawsuit for potential um trauma to children we've already suspended one book due to this very fact i don't think we need to do more damage than what's already been done further discussion on even this law uh the alternative book list those are those are

137books that have been approved by this committee also correct and they were on the list that you all received before the last word further discussion on the motion divorce i i'm going to speak against emotion respectfully i i have not read the books with an asterisk i have not and then i i'm thinking back when i was in high school i'm a ghostbuster i read books i shouldn't have been reading now compared to what i'm hearing here they were not as detailed but i i got interested in reading books without pictures in it which were thick because there are books i wasn't supposed to read and um compared i guess to what i deserved and brother came harold robbins the carpetbaggers um i mean there were some parts in there that i probably re-read three

138four five times sooner i i was interested and i'm going to admit that's why i first started reading books without you know the hardy boys or something like that and uh i don't know it's sitting in this seat and going out in school and seeing the changes that are going on high school particularly i'm confused sometimes but i i'm not going to first open parents are involved i'm not going to make it a community issue i think it's the school the parents and the child i think that's that's the three-legged story that we have the main direction so first of all i can remember being in 12th grade reading uh i don't know if it has an astronaut capturing the rhyme i mean that was a really hot heavy book back in the band porch

139sadly i was never exposed to one of the best books in literature to kill a mockingbird that was banned that was what was there in its day it was a it was an unacceptable book and lost the sentence now uh i was watching a program on public television a couple years ago it was ranked number one book in the country in literature not just a country i mean it's a country but the literature it was my wife and i want to go to alabama and visit where harper lee lived someday so but it was it was a banned book earlier tonight one of our speakers everyone who spoke tonight is very sincere i respect them all and i appreciated the willingness to express a variety of things but one of the persons tonight offered a

140solution that we haven't talked about we're talking about voting on a process we should be initiating a policy here because the parents need to be able to see how they can challenge the books in school the parents want their children going off to college and the colleges are telling you our high school you better be preparing these students by exposing them to these books aspects and all we have an obligation to prepare the skills i was sitting here thinking as i listened and i see field right there and this gentleman here was a veteran our first speaker mr alberto barry as a senior in high school with the journal with a guy from saint joseph high school jeff has i don't know if he was reading books he should have been reading but and he

141graduated in june of 66 he died in july of 67. he died on the day that the most most marines died i think of most soldiers in a place up in the dmz right above content walked into an ambush and he died i wondered was a foot that came out of that award called fields of fire i ran for president he was secretary of the navy i can't remember he got a bunch of bronze stars and maybe stars we have to think in 11th and 12th grade what we're preparing kids for a year and a year after jeff wasn't prepared to die what if he had read fields of fire in his senior year talking about sex drinking but most importantly one of the best war stories i've ever read and it was fire i

142told the 11th grader at spring middle here i told 11th graders he went to go to the marines i said whatever you do read this book fields of fire i told him and then afterward i seriously oh my goodness what if his parents see this book and he's reading his book he's only 11th grader i'm sure he'd have all kinds of pastors but it really showed you the smell and taste of war that's what that book did that uh blue eye book i taught fifth grade 10 11 year old girls and when i first heard about that that scene and i read it did any of my little girls experience this would they have recognized what had happened to them if they read this that's what hit me and i know girls who were getting

143pregnant in junior high we used to have a program in this county to help girls who were pregnant we quitted for some reason 16 year old 15 year old girls what did they used to do when our age get pregnant they quit the school would not let them go there because they were a bad example they were an asterisk so i i don't know how to how to pick i think we need a policy i think our staff needs to have a policy i think but whoever talked earlier tonight needs to share their promise i think we need a policy for our parents to be able to go and look and see what the process is here and protection but you couldn't protect jericho from what happened to him and you went to you you

144went to church you couldn't protect us those of us that first year in the high school that these books that they're reading are supposed to help them in college i'm just wondering what helped us we got catching right in hell it's fascinating reading it because it was a dirty book but it didn't help okay we got to help kids be ready for life beyond high school and we have to it's in their reading these kids can get a advice here i see him out here punch up certain things boom they're all to read anything at any group and i know we want to protect our children i wish i could say we have five days of public school and every parent should take their carol child sunday school i wish i had that ability because

145i know our counselors are trying to do that in the school system but i i i respect and i understand and i believe my colleagues believes in what she's saying but i think we have to trust our standard we have to trust the parents to have a voice and understand the review how far do you let your child go how far do you let the school system go we have to make sure that parents understand there's a safe car if you think we're getting too close to you say no i don't want us to say well let's prove all the books in the community or have a list of banned books or something and i know miss power is not suggesting that we burn books please don't fall for it i respect what she said

146but i think that we have to as somebody over here this long maybe mr martin at the last meeting said let's trust her staff and let's protect our parents like to say no if they think the staff is going to vote i just think that we need to pass this process but we need to develop policy so that it's right there in writing parents can get right into the thing and i think it's too hard to access the policies there we need to let our people teach and i like i said jeff haddison didn't have a chance to read fields when he experienced whatever nightmare he experienced that day and he's called the marketplace of continent july 2nd he was a weak shot of his birthday on july 9th he was a father who had

147never seen his son he was in the first battalion ninth marines they were called the walking dead it wasn't a nickname they wanted to earn but it was the lightning they died massimo they died most marines that died one day walked into that ambush and we have no idea what our high school graduates are going to walk into a year after they've walked of age we have to let our teachers teach we have to let our parents have a say what is taught and what there's been a lot but i think that we have to let our step back and brother teachers and understand this power i recognize you close to me i think the biggest question that i have in my mind is you know we have books that give us wonderful pictures in

148our minds give us different experiences that we might not have access to for the life of me cannot understand why we would approve or be okay with giving a child the perspective of a pedophile because in the bluest eye it's not the perspective of the child it's the perspective of a pedophile and i think it's sad that we are approving or saying yes to perspectives that are vile and that in the wording of even just that one excerpt was to justify the rape of a child how can any of us look at ourselves in the mirror or even stand in front of our lord at the end of this all and say that we did our best to protect our kids we can't have our cake and eat it too we can't be in the

149world and of the world and call ourselves believers our county is made up of a lot of christians a lot of believers i cannot approve i will not approve of any book that is obscene in nature to be given to a child in a school system using public money that is so graphic in detail in some of the books that gives the perspective of a pedophile where have we gone where have we come as a society that we're even discussing this where have we come how do we get here that in a book we're looking at this from the perspective of a pedophile and we're trying to justify it god save us the question before us is to remove all of the books from the asterisks that you mentioned absolutely true diary of a part-time

150india okay motion before us and uh it's now time for the vote all those in favor of the motion significance saying all right all those opposed say name all right now we're back before the um with the main motion are there are further amendments to this list further amendments i propose that we remove all obscene materials from this list should not have been further considered and to find alternatives i think i well the other one was to reconsider um the possibility of keeping it i'm just saying let's all remove it okay so this is our second second emergency all the obscene sexual sexually graphic material books you may go ahead and address your motion have a second just by the way well she gets to speak first she she made a second amendment and saying

151she gets to speak same as before how can we possibly think that it's okay to give our children sexually explicit material okay as well [Music] i just wanted to say that lewis eye is not on this list yes it is it's suspended but it's not the only sexually graphic book well my point was that you said who was that was on assistant it was on there suspended and suspended okay further discussion on the motion by mr powell okay not clear i already reminded him i just wanted a clarification because i mean it's so broad so like i don't the motion is so broad it's like what is like the other one was for the ones that are aspects but she's saying everything that's cool that's sexually graphic that's a graphic well which particular ones would

152that be because some of these are marked with the asterisk maybe for language and i asked for that for it to be actually labeled as whether it was sexual or or whether it was violence or whether it was lang which i didn't ask for that and i don't i don't know that that has gotten to that length some of them are here but some of them that's one of their particular ones or if it was just you know or you know that's what i was trying to do well one didn't have an asterisk yes yeah right right now so yeah it had sexually graphic material in it very graphic to the point where you says you should be belong to a masturbation club so so there's an indication that books that are sexually explicit or

153sexually obscene yes i don't see so i think we need to comply with the law the law says that we're not allowed to do that okay any other debate on the uh amendment offered by mr trump in the questions apparently what would i say another let's say um i guess it's supporting reporting i'll start very much um as far as um the implication of being obscene was any of this looked at and turned from any legal aspect in terms of um because you know i looked up he's watching was there any discussion regarding those things during um the selection of solutions that's what the student learning statement is that we handed out that will go on the syllabus okay you know so if a parent wants to um it's like you had said in the

154last meeting you know the definition between obscenity and i can't remember exactly what you said yes and yes um these books are for educational purposes not for pornography um but the learning statement didn't come from our attorney and so that will be on every syllabus mrs penn you're close the law is very clear and if we continue to approve of books being utilized in the classroom or even in our libraries and within our schools that provide that sexually obscene material we are going to be held liable someone along the way whether that's a parent we're violating the law okay all those in favor of the motion by miss power singapore saying aye aye now we're back to the main motion of uh the approving the supplemental high school reading list further discussion on the main

155measure i did have a can we uh have an after place on the oneness power uh mentioned because it does not have one so we can have that um absolutely true diary of a part-time india and um second to the motion okay discussion the motion mr wright do you wish to say something no i just i i hope based on what this is power stated um maybe it should be on there i see um by looking over the paperwork there's different levels for different things so um rather than worrying about getting onto all the details of the specifics of this person's effort i don't see any requirements adding that to the list to get the parents and the community even more uh we need to look at him further discussion on the motion of the

156amendment offered by mr wreck that's rightly which concludes okay all those in favor of the motion by mr wright to add an asterisk to the title absolutely true diary of a part-time indian thank you all is in favor of the motion signal prophet saying aye aye rosney i spirited heaven our student have declared amendment offered now we're back to the main motion of the supplemental reenglish i would just like to add that i think that a policy writing needs to be developed so the community the parents as well as the staff and see it and we had one submission by one of our older speakers and i i was very senior staff to come up with the approach to you okay all those in favor of approving the supplemental reading list signifier saying hi hi

157coach nay nay i spirit of heaven eyes do haven't declared a motion passed four to one okay mr dr schoolwood thank you man good evening members of the board superintendent stevens the seating before you have personnel actions dated monday august the 15th 2022 are as follows we have 12 new coaching appointments seven of these are paid five are unpaid we have two coaching contract renewals we have two resignations of coaches we have 20 new appointments there for your consideration the professional personnel we are rescinding to appointments these individuals are not joining us we have three uh changed assignments of professional personnel one correction of a change of assignments with the title uh being mislabeled there correcting that one policy 5000 within a school building a change of assignment there are 10 resignations of professional personnel

158we have two new retirements of professional personnel and two transfers of professional personnel moving on to the service we have 16 new service employees to appoint one service individual actually shows a permanent substitute teaching position so that was rescinding the service appointment a revised appointment for an individual with the correct contract term based upon the posting four changes of assignments one mutual agreement with the program change we have eight resignations of service personnel three new retirements of service personnel and then we have 15 transfers we do have some corrections on the list of transfers lines 101 and 102. these individuals are chosen not to transverse so we're removing lines 101 and 102. so we have 15 not 17 transfers for your considerations we have one correction of a service personnel with the title one person

159is staying put as well on the server side so we're sending that transfer we have 19 new upgrades on pages 10 through 12. many of these individuals have either completed a year within special ed or their eight years as a secretary and moving up uh so this is the time of year to do some of those annual reclassifications of upgrades and titles continuing on page 12 we have six new substitute service personnels they're individuals we have two renewals of contract of substitute personnel and 39 new substitute teacher appointments we have one removal of the substitute teacher list four contracts that have been renewed they've meant to satisfy their certification to be renewed as well as three resignations and substitute teachers for a total of 180 percent recommendations for the superintendent's recommendations that is dated august

16015 2022. motion on accepting the list of personnel that this heavier agreement it does um i have here a motion to improve the personnel action second move in second discussion any questions i did have a question um i don't have to go out because i have a family run on the list but um i did see if there's a few um assistant principals that moved to maybe the central office or to another school um where are we looking in terms of filling those now empty voices uh with the recommendations this evening we will only have one assistant principal left vacant uh and that will be based upon that approval this evening will close then see where we go from there we have about anything until we get your approval on the transfer and um currently

161um i know there were a lot of still service personnel that were still a lot of them to talk about probably how low are we or how many more do we need for service and professionals we need about 88 more service personnel as of this evening and we have 30 professionals with 20 other big 58 of we were talking about how we could work with principals to try to figure out what they could legally do with getting aids to cover in areas that try to meet anxiety disappointing a lot that's the scratch this week how many did you say of the professional of our teachers 20 20 okay and some of those we're working with principals received one seventh and one eight where existing staff can pick up for additional money that they can be

162done with inability to uh there are some options on the professionals that are never going to look at do we have a pool of substitutes so that if a teacher or something you know calls out sick that we have you know the ability to pull an actual it's we have a restricted substance out there that they can only work as a day-to-day sun and their limited number of days in the same classroom uh we have some retirees that only work certain days of the week in certain schools so they're not taking a full-time job so there are some but it is a very limited sub and then service side is even more than most of the individuals start with their foot in the door with seniority they get a position and then we've worked through

163that certain number that we're hiring off the street um first day there's 27 so far and they've been as long and tell you in her time she's probably not got that many in her entire career off the street so it started and i know mr dilly and uh miss central work today about recognizing the age their first time in classroom to prepare trainings for them to make sure they're getting what they need before students show up on monday as well would you say that we are better off now than what where we were at the end of the month yes okay so are we going to start off the year with the deficit and the low morale because it was the lack of service and everything we will try everything possible it's i mean one

164of the aspects of our teacher orientation was dealing with uh the employee and their own mental health as well as the partner so utilizing some of those resources and making sure our staff was aware of that to be able to take a moment and step back yeah when they need to it's very important to us as well to care for those employees so yeah we know what they went through last year and we're looking for ways and i think this evening's presentation and special ed is a creative way to help with some of those at the same time approaching it from seven languages you you have a person in hr this is a new budget assistant or a vacancy researcher this is the vacancy we've been retitled from the talent management coordinator to hr coordinator

165with the responsibilities being within the challenge and recruiting uh areas but then also a few other items that we've built and they could pick up here i always have trouble getting talent and sound like for getting somebody in there but it's the current lego well you know i have great concern on those classes no that's scary how many classes are we talking about i mean i mean it's 88 so i can't tell you if it's there could be four in one class it could be one in one class with three people still there so until you go down and look and see where exactly the whole thing is [Music] further questions of staff discussion on the list of personnel oh there's a figure oh okay um board announcements anything going on that you don't even

166know about uh i would like to yes mr ray uh uh what else okay so um first of all i wanted to uh thank the staff um for the orientation uh that we were able to attend um sitting with some of the new teachers and staff i heard a lot of excellent feedback this one young lady from jackson county was very excited to be working in berkeley county so that was uh really great to hear uh said that the staff did a wonderful job of making her feel welcome um also um i'll be participating in a dunk tank on sunday for um at the southside farmers market it's a fundraiser for emanuel's house where they offer assistance for low income and homeless individuals so uh anyone angry with me tonight can feel free to dump

167me sunday to raise some money for charity so i'm so glad you mentioned that okay further announcements by members uh i'd like to ask um if you would consider once a month on a regular day a work session there's a lot of things we need to as a board discussed i don't want to see you all taking personal leaving from your jobs um so be thinking about a date i'll call you up and maybe we can get a one day a month for work sessions to do it um and the um and i'd also like to be conscious of the staff that we may involve and i know mr stevens doesn't trust us he will see but uh i i think that we uh i think we have things that we need to discuss in

168depth that uh we just aren't here this quarter of the tent i think we've had a very sincere debate um and good presentations and we've taken the uh due diligences aboard but i do think we need to get a work session scheduled and if you always be thinking about but maybe we can just look at every month to see if we needed more obsession for the next one instead of saying that we're going to schedule this session tomorrow i just want to make sure there's a day that's compatible with everyone and the staff as well so that we could if we need to cancel it we can do it but i'd rather see it established that makes sense we can cancel it we don't need it exactly okay and uh with that mr stevens thank

169you mr murphy i appreciate it um i want to start this evening um by just saying thank you to the board of education for all the work that you that you put in the time the effort the crossing t's and dotting eyes and with the math it's carrying carrying the one and barn from the hero and all that uh appreciate that the work that was put in and getting our bond award completed tonight that's that's a huge step for us and literally a month ago i wasn't certain that we were going to be able to i was not sure certainly we're going to be able to get here there's so much it was very overwhelming and uh i just want to say thank you to to you guys for for working through that and thank

170you to joe and the rest of the staff that helped me get all that stuff done we we have created you know i look forward to to sharing all of the facts and everything that we've discussed with our community and seeking support uh where where we can um you know i think by doing this we've created an added classroom space across the county we're going to improve our our school buildings um and you know we did focus on safety as well so there'll be a lot of safety items on there so um i don't have a plunger um you take a look you have a clicker i don't brave okay uh i i did want to say thanks for giving back to our community to take a look at these these pictures we had two

171full shifts of berkeley county school staff volunteers that worked at the berkeley county youth fair uh concession for four hours one night we had 25 didn't uh all in all uh everybody will be there so uh i just want to say thank you to all of them that participated i think there's a lot to the dedication to the community thanks um and i also want to draw attention to our new employee orientations there was a lot a lot of planning that that takes place um prior to these um i want to make sure that all well we wanted to make sure that all of our new staff felt welcomed and i think that as i walked around and talked to everybody i you know i was i was energized by talking with them when i

172was there so i you know i hope that they felt the same way i want to say special thank you to amanda stevens who helped put this whole thing together um but also to our hr department of communications department and all the rest of the volunteers that helped um but i especially want to say thank you to the the sponsors that provided all the food snacks you know if you feed them they will come you know that whole thing um fan enter homes of berkeley county and berkeley county development authority provided food and snacks for that event and that leads us to the 51st year that our chamber has celebrated with our new employees 51st chamber breakfast for new employees that is uh fantastic support i want to say thank you to the spring mills

173high school staff that helped make that happen and as you can see those bags all sitting down there on the ground that kind of becomes a talking item everybody likes those goodie bags there's all kind of good stuff in those next we have uh that first picture is of jenny steen she's a counselor at orchard view she uh comes to us from another county she's very excited to be here and she we asked everybody to to complete fill in a blank i will if she put uplifting uh i will be uplifting on her uh on her paper and just by being around her for five minutes i did feel like left it so i think she's going to be a wonderful addition um you know we had all of our employees back in the building

174and our buildings today uh both service and professional are getting geared up and back in the in the group for the year i'm going to be distributing to our board members an entry plan and the entry plan is for me for the first six months of um of a superintendency and i will be focusing on the five different items the first uh three are going to focus on relationships i really feel like you know in in the wake of what has happened in in the world and in our community the last couple of years we really need to hone in on back to the basics in our classrooms and back to strong relationships um everywhere else so my first objective is going to be to develop and strengthen a team-oriented bond with with this team

175right here with our board members as a group and individually and i'll tell you that i'm i've been impressed with the work that you've done and um the communication that we have had i don't think that that has happened quite as frequently in the past and i want to continue to build on that secondly i would like to work on encouraging and exploring relationships with senior staff directors school administrators so that we all have a better understanding of our strategic plan goals and thirdly doing the same thing by fostering and developing open relationships with all the rest of stakeholders and that's the students the parents our business partners service organizations and such around the county the last two objectives um you know i feel obligated to conduct an academic review i think that that is

176only prudent for every organization that builds itself on education and instruction to review our academic progress taking a look at the well-being of our students will be our fourth objective there the fifth objective will be to uh keep in mind where we are we heard a little bit earlier tonight about the um of the coveted monks surf all the different esser monies and and how those are going to be used and the costs are changing we've projected these programs that are going to take place for the next year a year and a half two summers um but costs are going to cause us to reevaluate some things there i know that transportation costs as we mentioned before and some other costs so um for my final and fifth objective i want to review and study

177all the things that we have planned and make sure that we have an effective and efficient use of all of our resources including the the uh code of monies so you each get a copy of of my entry plan uh it should not be anything that you haven't heard before these are things that i talk about all the time so i hope that i hope that when you see that you'll you'll agree and i'll be relying on you to help me achieve those things here we're talking about being back to school as our families prepare for the first days of school there are there are back to school checklists that are out there um and these are gonna be shared through some social media post in touch messages and we want to support our families

178as they return their students back to school with us having said that i wanna i encourage all of our families out there to spend some time focusing on not just back to the basics in academics which is what we're talking about uh for the school year that is that is our push with our uh faculty and staff all of our employees but we're gonna also talk about getting back to the basics by focusing on some safety issues i really want to spend some time making sure that we we do safety trainings i want our students to focus on those and i would like for the parents to have communications with their students so that they pay attention they participate in these drills they come home they talk to their parents about what's taking place it

179shouldn't be a secret um i know that there are some some questions in the community from parents who wonder what safety measures are taking place at school and so if they're not told they just don't know but i would like for our students to have that conversation with the parents and parents if you're listening please take advantage of the first couple of weeks of school talking about safety with your students take that opportunity to come up with emergency plans and it may be as simple as if they don't have a ride somewhere but it may be something a little bit more more than that um and that means be aware may be asked to be jumping through some additional groups when you're signing students out at schools we're going to be focusing a lot more

180on on making sure that we're consistent with the safety issues school orientations are coming up 17th we have intermediate and high schools 5-7 on the 18th we have primary and middle schools from five to seven um i believe that this is the beginnings of building relationships with our parents and uh and our staff at schools be involved in your students education be present with them be engaged with teachers and principals um orientations are a great first step to get to know some people then discuss things and know the surroundings that your students are going to be in each year these times and dates are are reviewed we look at those um they're discussed they have been changed over the last couple of years we've changed from um four different nights to three three groups in

181one night one group another night did some in the afternoons we we review those types of things and i want to tell parents if you have a conflict where you have a student at one level for instance maybe an intermediate student and a high school student contact the schools the schools want you to participate they want you to be there they want you to be involved so they're they're not going to estrange you to keep you from being a part of her just because you've got an orientation another building um you know if you if you contact other schools we make sure that principals are understand and teachers understand that there may be conflicts maybe not even on a different level you may have two students in the same building um we want to make

182sure that everybody has an opportunity to get their questions answered and finally i want to let you know our next meeting is actually going to be on a tuesday it is the tuesday after labor day september the 6th uh that is all i have for tonight go ahead or suggest something i know there's been great concern um especially today the rest of the day on this with the uh lists on the classrooms and the libraries and how these individuals are going to get in the documentation and the classroom library books law many of them are just so different from the tokens and not have them and i don't want that so if there's any way that the board can i know the works that we have to do when people love their schools to come

183up with volunteers even if we would have to pay uh retirees to come in and help these individuals um i would like to see that happen i know they don't have time now they've really had time in their room and you have to do that has just been overwhelming miss long i i appreciate that and i assure you that i have uh talked to some teachers i've talked to some administrators i've talked to some members of senior staff and we are evaluating that to see what can be done what has to be done uh and what should be done so i i believe that there may be some alternatives there um and i'll leave that at that now there's some there's some alternatives that we can look at i'll be calling the board members to

184try to get a work session because we need to be prepared to do this uh superintendent's uh evaluation tool goals and um we don't want to wait till we do that so i'll be contacting you and look before the fifth uh we will meet and go over the guidelines so that we can work the best ships down in that important time uh there was a good interesting article today uh getting an education by steve adams allen adams in the journal today and uh gives you some insight into the dynamics going on in charleston to get a chance uh motion to adjourn second thank you special emotions saying aye aye your first name is