001This time we will uh call to order the April Elizabeth and Board of Education meeting. At this time, I'll turn it over to Mr. Van Hus for a moment of silence and pledge to the flag. Please stand for a moment of silence. Thank you. Attention. Salute. Pledge. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. This time it's time to approve the consent agenda and regular agenda. Can I get a motion to approve? Okay, I'll take I'll get Phil with the motion and Miss Sha with the second. Uh any questions about anything on either? Okay. The items to approve consent and regular agenda. All those in favor say I. I. And any opposed? And there
002are none. Now it's time for citizens to speak. We didn't have anyone uh request to speak before the board. So we will move on to recognitions. And I think we have four or five of those. Um, just so you know, at the end of the recognition time, we will give you an opportunity if you need to leave before the regular part of the meeting. We'll go ahead and announce that, but we'd love for you to stay at least through the recognition portion. And you're welcome to stay through the whole thing. Okay. All right, Mr. Van Hus. Thank you very much. At this time, if Jennica Norman will come forward and she will help us recognize the Skills USA students from TA Dagger. Uh, in March, we traveled to Nashville um to the TACAT in Smyrna
003and did the um Skills USA competition for middle school. So, I want to recognize my students who placed in that. They're not all here tonight, but we have a representative for representatives for them. Um, in first place, we have Greta Garner, Judah Norman, and Harper Shelton in the team engineering challenge. Um, in second place we have Kora Bailey for Extinius speaking. Uh, in second place for promotional board we have Safa Newell, Maya Elhilloo, and Patricia Lingerfeld. For third place of exemp Extania speaking is Faber Misau. And for third place um, for chapter display, we have Heather Meyer, Zack Ward, and Valerie Hoser. They did a great job. And this is a great competition for them to not only exhibit um creativity, engineering, um organizational skills, but also soft skills of speaking to adults, um shaking
004hands, looking someone in the eye, writing a resume, um and things that they will definitely use in their future. [Applause] If you all squeeze together right here and we'll take a picture. Thank you. Thank you. [Applause] Next, we will recognize EHS Allstate band members as well as coral members and Wintergard. So, I'll let you guys fight over who's going to go first. So, it's like chorus wins. That's right. Rock, paper, scissors. We went on that. Uh, good afternoon. It's nice to for y'all to have us here this evening. I'm Ben Davenport. I'm the core director at Elizabeth and High School and each year we have the opportunity to go through the regional process of auditions for our students and that is through all East through East Tennessee vocal association and if they if they place
005high enough in their scores uh they get to move on to the state level which ranges all the way from Memphis to Bristol Tennessee and this year the coral department had one student that is part that participate at the all state level and that is Mr. for Wor Garing. And just a note to add, and I think I already shared this with Work, but Work had the highest score, excuse me, the second highest score in the state of Tennessee for his audition this year. So that's great. Yeah. So congratulations. Yeah. Congratulations. Yeah. Slide in here. That important. It's not awesome. Good deal. So, similarly to choir, we have our regional perform our regional auditions in November and the way they do it is the top third of that section automatically qualifies for all states. So
006that audition uh happened in November and we had we actually had five. Ror of them. Ror was one. Ror qualified for all state band as well. He chose he got to choose his own all-state adventure throughout his years in high school because he qualified multiple times in multiple ways. So we're really proud of him. And uh and then of course I had another senior, Miss Baylor Hoplin. And then I had two juniors, Owen Yang, Maddie Stanberry, and one freshman, Maya Ernest. [Applause] Yeah, I guess I could have mentioned that they they spent the la last week at the Gaylord Opryand Hotel and they put on a concert this past Sunday and had a had a great time. They represented us really well. And uh before and I'll introduce so Phil will talk about the Winter
007Guard, but I just want to say that I'm im immensely proud of uh of Phil and Dakota and his staff and Grace Lewis who uh were extremely beneficial to to this program, but instrumental in reason why we decided to start a Winterguard program. And I just want to say this because it's crazy, but the things that he's about to tell you about the success of this Wintergard program are is truly remarkable for a program that's only been around for two years. So I'm extremely proud of them and and grateful to Phil and our staff at the Betsy Band to to be able to do this for our students. So here's Phil. Thank you. Thank you. I'll try to I'll try to be as brief as I can with this, but first of all, I want
008to say thank you to the school board, Mr. Van Hus for this uh this opportunity to sort of brag on our kids and acknowledge their achievements. Uh if you're if you're new to Wintergard and you're thinking what in the world is Wintergard, uh what Winterguard is is if you're familiar with what you see on Friday nights with the uh with the Betsy Band, the the color guard, all the flags, the dancers, the rifles, all the props, and the costumeuming and everything that goes into what you see visually with the Betsy Band performance. With Wintergard, what we do is we take those elements and we bring them indoors and we in a competitive arena where, you know, they're dancing and they're spinning and and putting on a whole production that way. It's extremely competitive and it
009actually got started, the Wintergard activity got started in 1977, but it wasn't until last year that Elizabeth decided to bring out a Wintergard program. and we're a little late to the party, but we wanted to make sure that the timing was right and that we had the right students, we had the right support staff, and last year was a good year to bring it out. So, we get into year two, uh, we go to our first local competitions and and, you know, we're we're winning those competitions and and it's quite obvious we need to start kind of branching out a little more. So, we start to go to a WGI, which stands for Wintergard International, um, association. They have regionals all across the country. So, we go we'll go to the closest one in Knoxville.
010In Knoxville, there's um in our class alone, there's about 28 schools from nine different states competing and they take the top 15 for finals. They advance the finals the next day. So, our goal, our ultimate goal is just to make finals, be one of the top 15. Uh our kids had an amazing performance, worked so hard, and to our surprise, ended up finishing third at that regional in our second year, which is unheard of. And people were kind of talking to me going, "Wow, this is crazy. this, you know, can't believe that this happened. And you should go to there's a big big big one down in Atlanta. It's the Southeast Power Regional, which draws about in our class alone about 48 high schools from about 12 different states. Um, so we we thought we'd
011throw our hat in the ring and go down to Atlanta and just give it a shot and kind of see how we do on a national stage. Uh, and and I'll be honest with you, there were people in Knoxville that actually told me, "Now, Phil, when you take your kids down to Atlanta, this is a different ballgame down there. This don't don't expect too much. This is this is stiff competition. These are the best groups in the country. This is your second year. Just give it time." I go, "Okay, okay." And we go down and they said, "We're going to take the top 18 for finals." Okay. And to our surprise again, we finished third at that regional uh with a score of 89 out of 100, which is an extremely high score. I think
012one of the great things about that is the people's reaction in Atlanta where they're getting out their phones and googling Elizabeth in Tennessee and and wanting to know more about our school system in our town. And and it was clear that that we were the Cinderella team there and people had never heard of us before. The announcer couldn't pronounce Elizabeth properly. So, we knew that we were we knew that we were out of our neck of the woods. Um, and so and and then the big surprise was on the way home from Atlanta when the the national rankings come out and we find out that Elizabeth and High School is ranked third in the country out of about 600 high schools that compete from California to New York. Uh, and so being being on a
013in a conversation on a national level like that and bringing attention to our town and our school and our community is amazing. Um, we couldn't have this conversation like Mr. Valentine said, "If it wasn't for our amazing staff, it wasn't for Dakota Gibson, uh, Grace Lewis, who's an English teacher at Elizabeth and High School, it does an outstanding job." Um, and and and I and I'll say one more thing. We wouldn't be having this conversation if it wasn't for our administration, if it wasn't for the support that we have at the high school. And and I'm even going to say um if it wasn't for Mr. John Wright, uh, Coach Crystal Van Hus at Westside for giving us a consistent place to practice. We never had to cancel a practice because we couldn't find a
014gym. And um if you know anything about coaching during basketball season, it's very hard to find available gym space. We were able to find it every time. They accommodated us. They were wonderful. And um I think that played a huge role in the kids success. So I want to bring the kids up right now. We'll do a a photo with them. Um if um I get a little nervous, so if I said all their names, I'd leave somebody out and I'd be embarrassed. So um but this senior class is amazing. We have um we're graduating a lot and we're rebuilding, but we're ready to ready to get it going again next year. So, um just want to say thank you to all these students who've put in well over 200 rehearsal hours plus just here
015in Elizabeth alone. So, um this season. So, thank you very much. [Applause] Squeeze. Everyone on the platform [Applause] Thank you. Uh, next we have EHS students who attended the scope conference and so Mr. Hinsley is going to share that group with us. Uh, good evening. Uh first of all I want to say thank you to the school board which feels like everyone says thank you to the school board as they approach but uh very much thank you because you uh gave us the money to do it. So it came from the schoolboard account. So thank you to the school board for allowing us uh again to take students to the uh student congress on policies and education at uh at Nashville Belmont University. Uh we've been taking students since 2017 whenever we first added the
016uh student liaison position at the school board. Uh and it's always been such an exciting event. A couple years ago we moved to taking four students which has been um really exciting for them. And you might not expect teenagers to get really excited about schoolboard policym but whenever they're there they get so into it. Um and it's always really exciting to see. So, um, only one of the four who told me that they would definitely be here made it tonight, but I also understand that it's currently a 4-day weekend for students that they're in. So, that kind of makes sense. So, I'll read off the names of everyone and then uh the Lauren Watson that showed up will come up to the front. So, we also had Cooper Chenalt, Helen Hackett, and Sarah McCoy attended.
017And then Lauren Watson, if you don't mind to come up. [Applause] Amen. And at this time, um, if you would like to stay, you're more than welcome. But if you need to head on, you're welcome to leave. We'll give just about a minute here and let people exit if you need to go. But there's a lot of fun coming if you want to stay. Y'all are going to miss it. [Music] She's working. That's a guess. I think so. Okay, we'll move on. Um, it's now time for the director's update. Mr. Vanus. Thank you, sir. Uh just a couple of updates. Uh we are in a long weekend obviously and we're right in the middle of testing. So when you look at the principles, you can see it on their face. It's a it's a it's
018a it's an interesting and um challenging time certainly, but we're excited about the opportunity our students have to show what they've learned and and demonstrate all the work that our blood, sweat, and tears our staff have poured into him over the year. Uh, also as far as capital projects go, uh, we had a wonderful tour of schools with the board as well as city council. It was just a great visit to go around and look at all the different um, projects that have been completed around the schools. So, we certainly thank you all for attending and city council as well. Mr. Simmerly was there. So, it was just a great day. Weather was beautiful, much better than the original date that we had. there was a snowstorm, but uh but yeah, so it was it
019was it was fantastic evening. So again, we just want to say thank you to the board and city council as well for all their support. We there's no way we would be able to recognize the students that we did today if it wasn't for the support that that you all give us. So thank you very much. Um the Day Rider Center for Athletic Performance, if you've been by the high school, you know, there's now noticeable progress, you know, once it gets out of the ground and you know, a lot of the metal uh support structure is completed. Uh they'll start in the next three weeks. You should see roof sheeting going on, walls as well. So within the next three to four weeks, that should all be completed. At that point in time once it's
020uh you know dried in, then they'll be able to go inside and start finish work on the inside. Just a reminder about our budget workshop at the conclusion of this meeting. Um again, just it's always great to be able to recognize students and tonight was was certainly no exception. We'll have several uh next week or next month, next month's meeting. The Skills USA for high school students just took place this week. So, we'll have a large group to recognize uh next month as well. Um also, I will be uh attending the Ames Conference this week. That's the association of um what is the independent and municipal schools. Uh so I'll be down there for three days. it's basically city school system school systems across the state. So I'm looking forward to that and that and
021that opportunity to to learn from from some peers. So that's all my report. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Van Hus. And board member reports. I'll just second what you said about the you feel like you know what's going on in school system when you live here and you come to meetings and you attend some events but until you get there and see the whole thing it really was it kind of makes you really proud of what's going on in our system as far as facilities and just participation in things and just how you know we feel like we're moving forward. So again thank Mr. Van Hus and the central office staff for um all that they do and their vision and us being allowed to kind of chip in. But it was really neat
022to see um what's happening in our schools. Anything else? Just Rachel and Chelsea, thank you for all you did that day. I know that was a lot of work and it was very much appreciated. It really was. Yeah, we cut all kinds of ribbons. Yeah, we did. And one thing that was extremely impressive is how clean our schools are. I owe that to the administrators and the principles, but I mean, you know, been around for a while and Elizabeth in high school looks better now than it did 50 years ago when Eddie and I moved into it. It's just amazing how clean and crisp and everything how everything they took really good care of our facilities. I appreciate you guys. Really does. And and just as a reminder, I think most people I think have
023their seven extra hours in. We have just another month or two to get that in to finish for the year. And I also want to mention you we um we are a little short up here number-wise. So I know Mr. Quinton had a prior engagement and Dr. Lewis is probably hurting someone right now. He had he was running late with patients. So he was going to try to get here but he today had been a day in the dentist office. So again we appreciate there was Yeah. So yeah, keep a 2-year-old. That's right. So uh and now Mr. Simly, anything? You're good. We thought we we like that. You're very good. Yes. Speechless. So and obviously a busy time. Our student liaison probably is it a tennis match if I were guessing um right now
024because he he generally does not miss. So we'll move on to the regular agenda. First item on the regular agenda. approve first reading of board policy 5302 sick leave. Can I get a motion to approve? Motion to approve and a second. Second. All right. So, um, we needed we felt the need to update the the sick leave policy and specifically outline who family members of employees who would qualify them to use sick leave if they needed to miss. So basically if you look on page one lines 8 through 14 outline that as far as it go as far as sick leave for professional personnel and then if you turn the page it's basically the exact same family members identified there for support personnel. Um so we just did that. There's a couple other pieces of
025language that we cleaned up in this policy as well, but again, we just wanted to provide the flexibility for families to be able to use these days in accordance with policy because we know what a strain that can be on families when they need to take care of someone. So, any comments or questions there? Okay, the items to approve first reading of board policy 5302 sick leave. All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? And there are none. Motion carries. Second item, approve first reading of board policy 5303, personal and professional leave. Can we get a motion to approve? Motion to approve. And a second. Second. Thank you. So, this is along the same lines and it focuses on bereavement leave which uh the the policy allows for a maximum of three working days
026per occurrence for an employee. And so, we felt like it was important for that family list to match what we just approved in the sick leave uh sick leave policy as well. So, that's the big change there. There was one minor change on the last page. We just felt like that there was a reference to compensation for bus drivers for unused personal days and it just it was below the bereavement leave and so we just felt like it was out of place. So we just moved that up uh to line 18 on page two. There was also on page one a reference to leave changes we made uh based uh during the the pandemic and that's no longer pertinent. So we removed that language as well. So just to clean up on that. Any other
027comments or questions? Okay. Item is to approve first reading of board policy 5.303 personal and professional leave. All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? And motion carries. Next item. Approve Elizabeth and City Schools tuition rates for the 2526 school year. Can I get a motion to approve? Motion to approve. Motion and a second. Second. All right. So, if you look at the attachment there, there's at the top it has what the current rates are and down below are the proposed rates. The only change that we're proposing to you to consider is for students that live outside Carter County. If you look at the current, it's basically $1600 per student across the board at any grade level. And what we're proposing is basically take the Carter County rate and double that rate. So, for
028instance, K through five is $800 for county. So we would double that to 1,600 what it is now, but it would technically be a reduction in the junior high and the high school where it's $400 for a county resident, it would be 800 and then at the high school it's 300. So we would double that to 600. So we think that that will will better align and allow allow us to attract students maybe from outside the county. So very, you know, when you think about students when they come here, based on the funding formula from TISA, you know, that's where the bulk of the funding comes from for those students. So, you know, every student that walks through the door generates almost $7,300. So, the tuition rate is really a drop in the bucket to
029that if we're able to attract continue to attract students from outside the city limits. Any questions for me on that? Now, is it still essentially 20 students still equals a pretty much a full-time teacher? Is that still close? That's probably close. Okay. And that's what we always used to talk about. If you think of a BS0, by the time you add u benefits and those type things, it's probably 80 to 85,000. So, that's pretty close. Pretty close for the teacher. And I should have asked you this before. You may not know, but the about how many out of county do we do we have? Do you know currently? I've seen it, but I can't remember. I I don't know. What I'll do is we'll run a report on that and I'll provide that for you.
030It's just a matter of getting in Skyward and and we can separate that out by in county and out of county and separate it by employees who uh city city employees who attend tuition free. I'll get that together. Yeah. just see if there's like an immediate would there be an immediate reduction but then you know for people that are currently out but I know did did they send today that in Tissa it's a little over $200 per student in the base is coming yes next year so it's around $7,100 yeah right at 7300 and that's to allow for the teacher component of the the teacher raise the salary the governor's proposal to reach for BS0 by the end of next by the end of 26 by the start of the 26 27 school year. So
031there's one more year that they'll provide some funding, but as we'll talk about in the when we get to our budget workshop, that amount that they're sending us is not enough to keep up and it's we're now into year four or five of this increase that we're continuing to pull more and more from our TISA funding. So all the money that was extra in Tissa when they first generated this funding formula is gone. there's there's no extra in there anymore and it's very difficult to keep up with that. So, we'll talk more about that. Okay. Any other comments or questions? Items to approve Elizabeth City Schools tuition rates for the 2025-2026 school year. All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? And there are none. Motion carries. Last item. Approve the purchase of the
032Probata software license and startup cost through January 2026 from the start sold for Elizabeth and High School for $27,300 using XQ grant funds. Can I get a motion to approve? Motion to approve. A second. Second. Okay. So, uh I've asked Dr. if he'll come up and give you a brief synopsis of what this program and how it will benefit the students at the high school. But again, if you notice there, it will be paid for out of XQ grant funds. Uh the most recent grant that we received from them. So, Dr. Mitt, if you'll share, please. Sure. Yeah. Miss Wagner, our community partnership coordinator, and Mr. Hensley, who's also our grant manager, happen to be here tonight. So, um they're they've been heavily involved in the process of selecting this tool and what it really
033is. I asked Miss Wagner before I came up because it's we're we're about 60 students right now enrolled in workbased learning who would be upper classman for next year which is an increase in what we've seen in the past. Uh some of those workbased learning experiences would also be classified as um internships or practicums uh in the CTE world. They're capstone courses as part of a program of study which also are beneficial to funding as well. And so the reason we we selected this tool is because it's a really good um online tool and platform start soul a company that uses in Ohio. Ohio has a really large base of workbased learning as part of the the entire Ohio Department of Ed. Um, and a a person that we've worked with before and our grant
034brought to our attention because it's something that they use. And it's a really good tool that's going to allow the student to be able to document their experiences as they enter going into community- based learning experiences and work-based learning placements. Um, and track their hours, track their time, um, document their experiences. But the really cool thing about it is that's above and beyond the current learning platforms that we have right now is it allows the community partners to also engage with it to give us feedback about their experience and how well they're doing um the skills that they are earning. So we can identify badges and skills certain competencies that we want to see them accomplish. Um and then they can also provide feedback as far as that's concerned as well. And so part of
035the grant um is to being able to provide data back to XQ about the process and about the milestones that we're supposed to hit. And the great thing about this tool as well is it'll automatically generate all that data for us and be able to reproduce that uh to hopefully increase which is one of our goals is increase the amount of community engaged learning. And so with this tool, we'll be able to both track it, monitor it, and then evaluate the data to see whether or not we're making progress in the first year. And I think you'll notice in the proposal there's a yearly cost, but it's significantly less than what this initial investment is to to get the program in place. Yeah. Part of that is a little bit of in two sessions of
036inerson training that they would come down and provide for us. There's some online training that we can supplement for that and then startup costs with the platform and then to keep that is significantly lower if the grant continues and it's something that we do. Um it'll be significantly lower from one year to the next. This first purchase was something we just ask your approval on. Okay. Any questions for Dr. Mitten? Thank you. All right. So the item is to approve the purchase of the probata software license and startup cost through January 2026 from start soul for Elizabeth and high school for $27,300 using XQ grant funds. All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? And there are none. Motion carries. And again, we do have a quick um budget workshop after this. At this
037time though, our next meeting will be Thursday, May 15th. Hard to believe school will basically be over at that point. It's hard to believe we're there at 5:30 p.m. Can I get a motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn. I'll take that. Thank you all for being here. You're welcome to stay for the budget workshop. Thank you gals for being here.