001Good evening everyone. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. Fantastic. There we go. Good evening and welcome to the Red Clay Consolidated School District regular board meeting for July 9th, 2025. We will begin with the Pledge of Allegiance. Please stand. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. You may now be seated. Mrs. Stevens, can you please commence roll call? I know. What? Here. Thank you, Mrs. Stevens. We now move on to school board reorganization process. We will begin with the oath the oath of office. Good evening. Of the annual process for the uh July meeting to kick off the new official school year. We have two uh new board member elects who
002will take their official oath of office. So at this time we can have Mr. Devon Henson please come up to the podium. Mr. Hson, congratulations on your election. Sir, if you don't mind, please raise your right hand and read the following oath of office for the board of education, state of Delaware, Newcastle County. On the 9th day of July, 2025, Devin Henson, being duly qualified according to the law, state the following, sir. I do solemnly I do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States of America, the Constitution of the State of Delaware, and the laws of Delaware governing public education, and that I will faithfully discharge the duty of the office of school board member according to the best of my ability. And I do further solemnly swear
003that I have not directly or indirectly paid or offered or promised to pay, contributed or offered to or promise to contribute any money or other valuable thing as consideration or reward for the giving or withholding a vote at the election at which I was elected to set office. So help me God. Congratulations, Mr. Henson. Feel free to join us up on this. Would you like a picture with yourself? Okay, Mr. Knight, if you don't mind. Congratulations again, Miss Tortois. Congratulations. And before us we have Miss Beth Tortois, oath of office for board of education member, state of Delaware, Newcastle County, Red Lake Consolidated School District. On this 9th day of July, 2025, Beth Toris, being duly qualified according to law, please state the default. Raise your right hand to state default. I do solemnly swear
004that I will support the Constitution of the United States of America, the Constitution of the State of Delaware, and the laws of Delaware governing public education, and that I will faithfully discharge the duty of the office of schoolboard member according to the best of my ability. And I do further solemnly swear that I have not directly or indirectly paid, offered, or promised to pay, contributed, or offered to, or promised to contribute any money or other valuable thing as consideration or reward for the giving or withholding of vote at the election at which I was elected to set office. So help me God. Congratulations and welcome to the Reclay Board of Education. You may join us up on the days. Thank you. Let's get busy. Sure, man. No, I'm just Oh, man. Here we go. Seat
005belt. Do you have president? Do you have pencil or pen? Yes, I do. Thanks. I have plenty. Congratulations to our newest uh board members uh Mr. Henson and uh Miss Tortois. Congratulations and we certainly look forward to having you both with us here tonight. Congratulations everyone. This is Kia. Are you able to hear me? And so as stated previously stated, as a part of the official annual meeting, uh we will have the reorganization of the board of education according to title Delaware code title 14. Uh at each annual meeting, the school board shall elect one of its members as president and another of its members as vice president who in the absence or disability of the president shall act in itsstead. At this time, the floor will entertain nominations for president of the Red Clay
006Consolidated School District Board of Education. Is there a nominee? I'd like to nominate Susander. I'd like to nominate uh Vic Leonard to be our new president. A motion has been made that Mr. Leonard serve as president of the Red Clay School District Consolidated School District Board of Education. Are there any other nominations? Hearing none, Miss Stevens, would you please call the vote? Miss English. Yes. Mr. Henson, yes. Mr. Leonard, yes. Mr. Matthews, yes. Dr. Nesmith, no. Dr. Nesmith, please unmute yourself. I am unmuted. Can you hear me? Yeah. I am not muted. Can you hear me now? Hello. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Okay. I said no. Thank you. Stevens, she said no. Right. Yeah. Miss Sander, yes. Miss Tortois, yes. Six yes, one no. Motion carries. Motion carries. Congratulations, Mr. Leonard
007will serve as the Red Clay Consolated School District President for the upcoming 2025 2026 school year. Thank you. At this time, the floor will entertain nominations for vice president of the Red Clay Consolidated School District Board of Education. Is there a nomination? Like to nominate uh Sue Sander. A nomination has been made that Miss Susan Sanders serve as vice president of the Red Clay Consolidated School District Board of Education. Are there any other nominations? Hearing none. Miss Stevens, would you please call the vote? Miss English? Yes. Mr. Henson? Yes. Mr. Leonard? Yes. Mr. Matthews? Yes. Dr. Nesmith? Yes. Miss Sander? Yes. Miss Toris? Yes. Unanimous. Motion carries. Congratulations, Miss Sanders. now serve as vice president for the 2025 2026 school year. A motion is needed to appoint the superintendent as the executive secretary of the
008board. Is there a motion? So moved. Jose Matthews English. Motion has been properly moved by Mr. Matthews, second by Miss English. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Any abstension? I now turn the meeting over to President Leonard. Thank you, Dr. Green. I just like to uh thank my fellow board members for having faith in me to guide it in efforts coming in new year. We got a lot of things going on and I'm very excited about uh what's happening this year. Special thank you to Mr. Jose Matthews for doing an exceptional job as president for the past year and providing us with leadership to move district forward to good for the good for all and thank you Mr. Matthews. Thank you for your service and I am so grateful to be part of the assembly
009of talent we have on this board. I just want to say that and I'm very excited about the great things we can accomplish working together as a team uh in conjunction with district personnel, educators, staff, RCA, community groups, and especially the students and families that we serve. And uh I don't know if you know it or not, but we uh this board has uh two educators, a community activist, two community organizers, a student advocate, and a school administrator. So I think that is a team for success in my my eyes. So thank you all again for putting me putting your trust in me. And now uh let's get busy. Okay. And bear with me. Uh this is a a first. See here. Okay. So first the agenda approval. Is there a motion to approve the
010agenda for tonight's board meeting July 9th 2025 as submitted? Matthews second English. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Matthews, and thank you, Miss English. It has been properly moved and seconded to approve the agenda as submitted. Are there any discuss? Is there any discussion? Okay. All in favor? I. All opposed? Motion carries for the agenda. All right. So, uh, next up is public comment. Mr. Leonard, I'm sorry. Did we skip committees? You still have to do the committee as a part of the reorganization. So, okay. Sorry, I didn't have it on here. Yeah. So, you have the reorganization of school board committees assignments for 2025 2026. Okay. So, first committee is board policy review committee. Uh, who would be interested in that? I think I'd like to be on that committee. I'm interested also. Okay. And Mr.
011Henson, what does that make um, Mr. Leonard and then two alternates? Is that how it works? So, for the committee, you have two board members that would serve on board policy and one alternate. So, I guess there are three individuals who are interested. Is there someone who would defer and or you would just I guess choose to have two and then one alternate in the event that someone wasn't present? Okay. I could be an alternate. Okay. So given that uh are there any other interested members? So, go ahead, Dr. N. Smith. I just want to have a point of order. Uh, as the chair is supposed to open it up to everybody else first. Yeah, we can't talk when she's talking because that way we'll get the verberation in the echo. But Dr. Nesmith, if
012you could repeat what you said and we will pause, but just pause for maybe 10 seconds before you speak. Can you hear me? Okay. I just want to have a point of order if the chair is supposed to be open up to everyone else first. That's it. So, uh the name of the committee, hello. Can you hear me? Yes. is the uh policy review committee and we have uh a lot of interest in it. Mr. Ne interest so no Dr. N Smith just wanted to clarify a point of order that it should be opened up to the floor before the chair nominee. So in this instance it was Miss Sanders and Mr. Henson who elected. So they would be the two representatives. Okay, that's on there as you go through. And then the next one
013would be the community financial review committee which those two members would go to the floor and then if no one was interested as the chair you would be able to Okay. So, uh, two members for the board policy review committee are Mr. Hansen and Miss Sanders. Is that correct? Okay. Thank you. Next committee is the CFRC. CFRC. CFRC. Uh, do we have nominations? Anyone interested in CFRC? No interest. Dr. N Smith has her hand raised. Okay. So, doc, I will serve again. Also, serve. Thank you. So, Dr. N Smith and Miss Tartis. Thank you. So that's the uh CFRC and then uh Dr. Nesmith and Miss Tartis. Thank you very much. DSBA is the next one. Okay. DSBA uh Delaware School Board Association. Do we have any interests who would like to be on that
014committee? And Mr. Leonard for point of clarification too, just for the board. Um CFRC is divided into the board of directors. So one board member would serve as the member on the board of directors and then one member would serve on the legislative committee with an alternate. So in essence, three board members would be serving in effect for Delaware School Boards Association. So one member for the actual board of directors to represent the board and then one on the legislative committee with an alternate. Okay. So Mr. Matthews, anyone else? No, sir. Now, Mr. Henson. And And so again, it it's one board member. Now, are you looking at the legislative aspect of it, Mr. Henson? Okay. So, Mr. Henson is the legislative committee member, and then we need an alternate for legislative in the event
015that Mr. Henson is unable to attend. I will be the alternate. So, Miss Stevens, that's Mr. Matthews as the board member, Mr. Henson representing legislative committee, and Mr. Leonard as the alternate. Actually, is there alternate for board of directors? I do apologize because there should be an alternate. So, just to clarify, Mr. Henson, do you want to serve on legislative committee or do you want to serve on board of directors? Legislative comm. Okay. So, there needs to be an alternate established for the board of directors. Clarification. This would involve going to Delaware for all the meetings. Am I correct? Do over. I'm sorry. Yes. Over. Okay. I don't believe the meeting dates have yet been announced. Board members, can can I remind you to please speak directly into the microphone? So, no other interest in
016that. That would be um what are the duties first of all? Can we explain that? Yeah. So there's a commitment to um go down to do uh for the DSBA board of director meetings. Um I think that's that typically has always been um the biggest challenge um given our our distance from from Dover. Um but the way I can also operate maybe this is a proposal to the board. If there is no alternate this time if I can't make it I I will always give you guys a heads up to see if anybody from the group would like to attend in my absence. Can you clarify if they're monthly meetings or if they're they're they're monthly. They do take off in the summer. So they're they're they're monthly while they're in session, but there are
017breaks as well. I want to say that majority of the the committee meetings are monthly meetings. Yeah. Yeah. Um typically starts in August. Yeah. um which is a Saturday kind of kickoff event type meeting and then it runs till June typically in September, November, January, March, May and then a June meeting. So there are alternates for the board of directors and then the legislative meetings are always typically on the off months. Correct. And again to Mr. Matthews point, if he's representing the board and no alternatives established at this time, then I'll always open it up for anyone who'd like to go. So we have Mr. Matthews as the board of directors representative with currently no alternate. Mr. Henson serving as a legislative committee board member with Mr. Leonard serving as the alternate. Okay. Wilmington Learning
018Collaborative is next. Mr. All right. Thank you for bearing with me as I adjust to this position. Um Miss English, this is Miss English. I would like to continue to serve on the Wilmington Learning Collaborative since I am still the vice chair. What's that again? The Wilmington Learning Collaborative. That was next, right? Yes. I would like to continue to serve on that committee since I'm still currently the vice chair for the council. Okay. Dr. Green is facilities. Facilities is next. Oh, yeah. It says facilities, but he jumped to WLC, so I wasn't sure. No worries. Back to what? We can get back to facilities right after we're done with WLC. Okay. WLC. So, you're still interested in that? Yes, I am. Anyone else interested in WLC? And just to be mindful, it has to be
019a city board representative. So, in that case, Miss English people on there. No, it's only one. And then there's the Dr. Green as well. Okay. On the council as a superintendent. Thank you very much. Okay. facilities committee. Uh, any interest in a facilities committee? I'd like to serve on facilities today. Thank you, Mr. Matthews. Anyone else? I would Oh, sorry. I'd like to serve on facilities as well. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Tortois. I think we can have three on facilities. You have three? Yes. No, because I I would love to continue my role on the facilities. Speaking to the mic. Oh, I'm sorry. I would love to continue my role um in the facilities committee as well. Thank you, Miss Saunders. So, we have three for the facilities committee. Uh, that was Mr. Matthews, Miss
020Tortois, and Miss Saunders. Thank you. And that last one foundation. Okay. And is this the last one? Yep, that's the last. RCF, Red Clay Educational Foundation. Any interest in that from anyone? Maybe explain. Uh, yeah. Can you explain it? Can someone explain it? The the Red Clay Education Foundation is a 501c3 arm that helps support various initiatives um in the district. They help with, you know, fundraising. So, our recent golf outing, um you know, the foundation supports the arts, they support McKenna Vento students, but it is a 501c3 um nonprofit arm, and they require through their bylaws that one Red Clay board member serves on the education foundation. I I'll serve I'll serve them. Excellent. Okay, Mr. Hansen. Okay. Anyone else? It's just one. That's one board member. That's it. Okay. Thank you very much.
021Volunteered. Yep. Send me back to public comment. Not this. We just did that. Okay. Okay. Now we have public comment and um the Red Clay School Board appreciates any member of the community who would like to make a public comment. According to board policy 2006, the Red Clay School Board allocates 30 minutes to public commentary. Each person may have up to three minutes to address the board and this time may not be transferred to or from another speaker. The board generally does not respond directly to a speaker. The board meetings is not an appropriate forum to raise complaints or concerns about individual employees. Upon request, the superintendent shall provide the speaker with the procedure for submitting such complaints or concerns. The order of speakers is listed on the screen. As you see your name, please
022make your way to to a seat near the podium or your virtual unmute when called to to respect the time of anyone present tonight. When you speak, please state your name and organization if you are speaking on its behalf and the topic of your comment. There's a timer on the screen that will turn on when you have one minute left. It will turn yellow with 30 seconds left and flash in red when your three minutes are over. I will thank you for your comments and call on the next speaker. Let's begin with Morgan Dukes. Morgan Dukes. Hi. Um, so my name is Morgan Dukes and I am speaking about the proposal put forth by the secondary attendance zone and programming committee. I'm not only a McCain staff member but also a McCain High School alumni.
023VOTE high schools used to be shared time facilities. Students were bust from their high school to a votech facility for vocational education. When enrollment decreased, state and local officials, including the superintendent, were interviewed and several issues were noted, including a communication and integration between schools, funding, transportation, and extracurricular activities. All things that were also brought up by community members as potential problems at the committee's public meeting in June. In the end, VOTE schools became full-time. The McCain student body is the largest student body of all Red Clay high schools. And that's not even including the Meadowwood students that are also serviced within the walls of McCain. Redistributing these students and our staff will cause large disruptions to not only McCain students and families, but the larger Red Clay community and could lead to a loss
024of skilled teachers at a time when they're difficult to find. If Red Clay were to move forward with the proposed innovation center, we would only have 139 available seats left at the high school level. If we gain any additional students as a result of redistricting, we would be severely limited in space. And based on McCain's capacity, only 57% of Red Clay's current non-charter high school students would be able to attend the innovation center. This does not seem equitable. McCain currently serves large populations of marginalized groups, including special education students, MLL students, and low-income students. With some of these groups overlapping, I don't see them represented within this proposal. Redistributing these students to other high schools would disrupt the specialized support services and programming that these students receive and could lead to detrimental outcomes. Additionally, these
025students are being asked to step into an entirely new environment with new adults, students, and expectations, which presents a new set of challenges for them to overcome and could be seen as obstacles for them to even join a CTE pathway at the innovation center. Not only that, but the special ed services, supports, and policies that are in place and normalized within one high school may not be recognized or supported by an innovation center, thus risking legal repercussions. Instead, career pathway options should be spread across the high schools with each school offering some common pathways while other pathways are only offered at certain high schools. Currently, there are several career pathways that students are not being offered in Red Clay that they would be interested in. By creating new pathway options across the high school, students
026could then choice to the school with the pathway that they want. Yes, this is costly, but creating an innovation center with new pathways and paying for transportation would be costly, too. Based on the operations impact shared by Mr. Ammon at one of the committee meetings, this proposal would have one of the greatest impacts to our operations across multiple levels. Therefore, I implore the board to vote against the committee's proposal and make it a great day to be a Highlander. Thank you, Miss Dukes. Now we have Miss Bow Gold. Good evening everyone. I am Val Gold. As many of you already know, I am a member of the attendance zone committee. I am also a former red clay teacher and will be about to uh rejoin the district as music teacher at Baltz. I want to
027share a few thoughts on the proposals that you'll be voting on tonight courtesy of the attendance zone committee. Our charge as a as committee members was to work toward equitable outcomes for all of our students. All of our students, not just some. However, it became evident very early on that some of the district administration had other ideas in mind and that idea was an innovation center. As a result, we spent very little time on addressing attendance zone concerns such as the attendance zone issues at Warner and um some of the other schools in our district that are affected by poorly designed attendance zone feeder patterns. This district through its former board and administration, not likely anyone in this room, have created this situation of underenrollment at AI and increasingly neglected traditional high schools here in
028the district through its support of charters and magnet schools which have created or I should say recreated a form of school segregation where traditional high schools like McCain, Dickinson, and AI have become all But afterthoughts, I urge this board to reject the innovation center proposal. Instead of creating yet another wheel in a district already full of wheels that have run over the idea of equity, our time and resources should be spent creating a level playing field on which all of our students and staff will find pride, success, and joy in their education. The disrespect of those who need our our support the most has gone on way too long. It is time for this board to start making things right again. Please vote no on the innovation center. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Gold. Uh
029now is uh George Denimman on Zoom. Mr. Denimman, please unmute. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Uh thank you for this time to speak and thank you for your service. Uh I only want to have a few questions that hopefully will be addressed later in your presentation about the uh reassessment and the tax rate. one, it would be helpful to know when uh the taxpayers will know in an official way what their tax liability will be uh by virtue of when it might be loaded on a website or tax bills will be sent out and the earliest opportunity to get that information would be extremely helpful. Also, I think it would be helpful to understand how all the different pieces of the pie fit together. Uh
030your presentation addresses the red clay school district tax rate that you're voting to set today, but there's also the crossing guard, Newcastle County tax, vote tax that all get added together to uh to make the bill that the taxpayers responsible for. Uh thank you for your time and is my hope you'll address those questions during the presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Thank you, Mr. Denim. Now we have Miss Jenny Howard. Miss Howard, are you here? Good evening and welcome to our new board members. My name is Jen Howard. Can you hear me? Hello. Can you hear me? Good evening. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Thanks. Uh my name is Jenny Howard. I'm a mother of four and a former Red Clay teacher. I'm here tonight to talk about the proposal to
031restructure Red Clay's high schools. The plan responds to declining enrollment without addressing why enrollment declined in the first place. It's because our system has not served all students equitably, especially those from our most marginalized communities. Red Clay's own data shows that access to college level courses, extracurriculars, and enrichment is not equally distributed. Schools like Conrad and CAB offer twice as many AP and dual enrollment courses as traditional high schools like McCain, Dickinson, and and AI. These gaps are not due to student interest or ability. They're the result of policies that privilege some students and exclude others. These aren't just program differences. They are lifealtering disparities. A student who earns a year's worth of college credit in high school can save their family 10 to $25,000. That's not just savings. It's generational opportunity. And when those
032options are concentrated in selective schools, we are protecting pathways for privilege. Meanwhile, students in underresourced schools get less fewer reg they get fewer rigorous courses, fewer clubs, fewer sports, fewer staff, and fewer chances to shine. That's not accidental. It's the predictable outcome of a system that siphons students and resources into exclusive programs. This proposal doesn't reverse that. It codifies it. By consolidating schools without fixing the inequities that caused the decline, we risk cementing a two-tiered system. One for students with access and advocacy and another for students told to make do. And let's be honest, those students are overwhelmingly from communities already underserved. So, I asked the board, how will this plan dismantle rather than reinforce inequities that harm our most vulnerable students? Will every high school, not just magnets, be guaranteed full and equal access
033to AP, dual enrollment, the arts, CTE, and extracurriculars? And will the district commit to an annual equity audit to make sure we're not tracking students by race, income, or neighborhood? Because equity isn't just about who gets in the door. It's about what they find when they get there. If we don't confront the structures that created these disparities, we're not solving anything. We're just institutionalizing inequity. Thank you. Miss Howard. Thank you, Miss Howard. Now we go to approval of the minutes uh from the June 18th, 2025 executive session. Is there a motion to approve the minutes from the executive session held on June 18th, 2025? Jose Matthews. Thank you, Mr. Matthews. A second. Second, Miss English. Thank you very much. It had been properly moved and seconded to approve the minutes from the executive session held
034on June 18th, 2025. Any discussion? All in favor? I. All opposed. The motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Is there a motion to approve the minutes from the regular session held on June 18th, 2025? So moved, Jose Matthews. Thank you, Mr. Matthews. Is there a second? Second, Susan Sander. Uh, thank you, Miss Mander. It has been properly moved and seconded to approve the minutes from the regular session held on June 18th, 2025. Any discussion? All in favor? I. All opposed. The minutes are approved. Thank you very much. All right, we now move to the superintendent report. At this time, we will hear from our superintendent, Dr. Green, who will provide the superintendent's report. Dr. Green. Thank you, President Leonard. Uh, members of the board. And again, congratulations to Mr. Henderson, Mr. Henson, excuse me, and Mr.
035Tartis for for joining the board. Um, I'll be brief again. And I think, you know, from our June 18th meeting to now, a lot has been going on as we, you know, we're dealing with summer school, but uh that that's where the primary focus is. Uh we do want to encourage all of our families to continue to take advantage of our summer meal programming. So, if you miss the meals at schools, um the select locations throughout the district, uh the Reclay Lunchbox, which is a food truck, um is out and about in our communities um in the parks on Monday through Thursday. This will run from June 23rd through August the 7th. At 11:00 a.m. it's at Palford Park, 11:30 Del Castle Park, and then 12:30 p.m. at Brandy Wine Springs Park. Again, it's kind
036of out in the suburban part of our district when a lot of our schools I was actually here today. Um, in terms of giving opportunities within our physical facilities for families for anyone that's 18 years or younger in the community, uh, it is a community eligibility provision meal, summer meal program can eat for free. So, that's free lunch to students in in the community 18 years or younger. Uh, feel free again to continue to go on the website. We'll make sure we continue to push that information out for students and and community members to be able to have access. I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone for all who continue working hard throughout the summer. As I indicated, um, spring break was late this year, so there was almost an abrupt halt to
037the school year. I think we we all pushed to get to spring break and then we had spring break and then graduations and commencements were upon us and then the school year ended, but then summer school started right back up. And so I know a lot of our staff members as I traverse the district um, continue to work hard. you know, our our facilities crew. Uh thank you for your commitment to our summer programs, nutrition services, custodial maintenance, teaching staff, administrative support teams, front office staff. Again, transportation is greatly appreciated. Thank you for all your hard work. And we have quite a few students participating in various summer programs throughout the district. And again, those efforts are greatly appreciated. Again, some of the summer highlights and programs. Our EYP program uh we have partnerships with
038fame uh stimulate which is being housed at HB Dupant which we have a large number of students who are participating in that program. As I stated, I was here today. We have well over 250 plus students who are at the CAB summer programming. We have Freedom Schools. Um Baltz Elementary are supporting a whole host of of programs. So again, thank you to all of our staff students too who are actively engaged and our families who are still participating in drop offs and pickups. Our students are making the most of summer growing, exploring, and having fun. As a part of our summer program, Red Clay summer science fairs will be hosted at Baltz on July 23rd uh from 9 uh a.m. to 9 from 9 to 9:50 a.m. for Baltz Elementary Richardson Park families and then
039from 10 to 10:50 for Mo and Richie Elementary families. Come check out the summer science fair on Wednesday, July 23rd at Baltz. A big shout out and thank you to the Red Clay Education Foundation and all of the Red Clay Education Foundation supporters that participated in the recent Red Clay golf tournament uh for a glimpse of the day's highlights. Check out the district Flickr account for photos and thank you once again to all of those sponsors, participants, um and the New York Country Club for hosting. Again, it was a event well attended. Um and again, the the the cause, the funds that are being raised support a whole host of things. um the arts in in red clay, the health and wellness annual health and wellness fair, our McKenna Vento students, families who are uh
040who are unhoused, who are experiencing um homelessness, and a whole host of other things that the Red Clay supports. And and Mr. Leonard wants me to provide a plug u for the upcoming Alexis I Dupant um just mentoring golf tournament which will be at Newark Country Club uh as well on July 21st and there's a chance to win $2,000 cash prize. It's $170 per player or 680 for a forsome. All proceeds go to support local charitable organizations. And please go to www.birdies.com/ bird uh ees.comigijm. Again, we'll say www.birdies. That's bird.comigijm. And again, this will also be hosted at North Country Club. Check-in is at 11:00 a.m. Shotgun start is at 12:15. As I shared last month, and I know a lot of our staff members are in the the throws of uh the transition to
041Infinite Campus. I know I'm participating in the trainings. Our eShool um and uh home access platform um is transitioning. So, this is just a reminder to parents to check your emails early in August for login access information for Infinite Campus. Infinite Campus will replace the home access center. Um, so again, thank you to our technology department, our buildings staff, everyone who's going through this transition. Um, it it is labor intensive. Um, and we want it to be smooth as possible for our staff members, students, and families. Um, come the upcoming school year. As I previously mentioned, again, we're still continuing um, summer feeding. Uh, June 23rd through July 24th, sunny days, full plates, free meals for students. Uh, don't forget again the Red Clay summer meals children 18 and under can enjoy. Please go to
042redcllaycafe.com for more information. Wilmington City School's quarterly retreat will be held on Saturday, July 19th at Lewis Dual Language Immersion Elementary School. Uh this is a Wilmington Learning Collaborative um sponsored event. And so, you know, come out community council quarterly retreat. So, these are for the quarterly councils for our Wilmington Learning Collaborative Schools um in partnership with Children and Families First. Uh what is a quarterly retreat? Again, it's an opportunity for the families at William C. Lewis, Warner Elementary, Josephie Johnson or Shortage Academy to have the opportunity to gather along with the other Wilmington Learning Collaborative Schools that are participating in both Brandy Wine and Christina School District to discuss issues that are important to everyone who cares about Wilmington City Schools. Adults can share ideas, talk about community resources, and enjoy the enjoy company
043and companionship with others who are working to make our schools better while our kids have u morning fun. Again, we will hold our July community council meetings, meet community partners, as well as connect with other community council members um from the other schools. Again, it's the Wilmington City School Quarterly Retreat, which will be held Saturday. And July is recognition month. Uh it's National Support for Public Education Day. Uh hopefully everyone had a wonderful July 4th. Um National Parents Day is July 27th and actually National Delaware Day uh will be this Sunday, July 13, 2025. So celebrating July recognition days at Red Clay. And again, thank you to all and hopefully you had a wonderful July 4th. Wilmington Learning Collaborative next council meeting. Although we did have an emergency meeting yesterday, the official uh August meeting
044will be August 6th from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at DSU Riverfront building at 1 South Orange Street. And the virtual link will be provided 7 days ahead of that meeting. And last, before I close, if you know someone who is interested in having a remarkable career and joining our Red Clay Consolidated School District team, please have them reach out. Apply now. Contact us at hrrecllay.k12.de. at de us. Apply now and be a part of the remarkable red clay. This concludes my superintendent report for the month of July. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Green. We now have presentations and first up is Dr. Ted Ammon for the fiscal year 2026 tax rate and preliminary budget. Good evening everyone. Good evening. It's great to see some new faces up there. Looking forward to working with all
045of you. This evening I'm going to talk about our um first I'm going to start out with our tax rates and then move on to the preliminary budget. Um typically our tax rates are a pretty straightforward procedure because we have a rate that um is set by by law, set by referendum and doesn't change with the exception of the match tax and the tuition tax that the board sets each year. This year is a little bit different because of reassessment as I'm sure all of you have been aware over the last couple of years. There was a lawsuit that um was brought against the state of Delaware for not having timely reassessments. The last reassessment had been done in the early 80s. And so that meant that properties that had perhaps changed in market value
046over the years had not it was not being reflected in assessed value. So, there was a lawsuit. The outcome of that lawsuit was that all three counties would undertake a reassessment and would then do that every 5 years going forward, which for any of you that are um from out of state, that's not uncommon for properties to be reassessed on a a fairly regular basis. Delaware um was unique and going forward will be um on a more regular basis. So, I think this reassessment concept will be much more familiar to all of us, you know, as we as we're into a routine of it. I do not have a clicker here. So Tony, if you could uh click as we move on, I will also um answer the the public comment questions that were part
047of the the earlier part throughout the presentation. As I mentioned, typically we do probably what our math department would say is more of a multiplication um exercise. We have our assessed value. The county provides that to us each year in March. And then we have the rate already presupposed. We have a collection rate, which is what factors in for uncollected taxes. And then we figure out from that uh fairly simple straightforward math calculation what our revenues are going to be. Our collection rate over the last couple of years has been 98 to 99%. Um this year it is a little bit different of a process because we have an assessed value. We did not have a rate. We had a revenue number that we had in the case of Red Clay. We had shared publicly
048during our referendum campaign. We had said that we had forecast out what our revenues would be this year. So we had that that ending revenue number and then we had to back into our rate using our our math department would say great you're using algebra this is a perfect example of real world real world algebra like we're teaching our students. So if we can move on to the the next slide. Um one of the things there's there's always risk in predicting um yearly revenue forecast. This year there's additional risk because of reassessment. the the biggest risk, and this is something we've been talking about at the CFRC um quite a bit over the last couple of months, is that there are people who have an opportunity to appeal if they believe that their assessed value
049was not accurate. And that process could, from what I'm hearing from the county, could take as much as a year or even longer because there are so many um appeals. In the case of Red Clay, there was about 1,300 uh property owners either residential or commercial or or utility, any of the different classifications that have submitted an appeal. Um certainly in Brandy Wine, Colonial, Aquin, and Christina, there would there would be appeals in those districts also. And those those appeals are are risky in that we we know what the county told us our assessed value would be based on those appeals not happening, but we know that some of those appeals will be successful. Wow, it is really raining out there. Um, we know that some of those um appeals will be successful and some
050will not. So, we have to um all over Newcastle County, in fact, all throughout the state, we have to come up with a way of estimating for that because we don't want to get to a point throughout the year where we counted on a certain amount of revenue coming in, finding out those appeals were granted, and then falling short of our expectations and what we've committed to from um our expenditures. So, we we all of us in Newcastle County spent quite a bit of time working through the um the assessment information that we were given. And there's really two batches of these appeals. And I I split them out because they're they're very different in some some um nuanced ways. The first group of appeals, it was about,00 properties, and their average parcel value was
051$618,000. And that's using the new the current assessment um numbers. And the total assessed value of those was $688 million. the amount at risk, which means when we say at risk, it's the amount that if these people go to an appeal, they've already said they're going to an appeal. They are asking for some amount of money to be removed from that that value and that would mean that their tax obligations would be less. The amount at risk of the total value is $182 million or about 26%. And and that's going to be important in this second batch I talk about. So, what all of us in Newcastle County have done for this assumption, because this is all about assumptions, is we've made the assumption that all of those people are going to get the amount
052that they're asking for. Now, the reality is some people may not get that amount. Some people may get it. But the other piece of this is that state law allows people to file an appeal in future years. So if someone didn't appeal this year because they weren't familiar with the process and then they hear about this process and decide they want to appeal next year, they can certainly appeal next year. So while we're assuming that all of them are appealed, we're assuming all of the ones that we know about are appealed and granted, we don't know what will be appealed in future years. So to some extent, we're counting on that being a wash. The second group of properties is is the more concerning one and the one that we've we've talked about quite a
053bit and that is a much smaller number of properties. It's only 263 properties, but you can see the average parcel value is $1.4 million. So these are certainly um larger parcels, either very large residential parcels or commercial properties um and things like that. The total assessed value there is $371 million. But what's challenging about this group is these people um these owners of businesses or residences did not provide an amount that they're asking for. So we do not know whether they think the assessed value was 10% too much, 50% too much, double. We have no idea. And the reason they don't provide that information is these are um property owners who are coming to their appeal with an appraiser or an attorney or some other real estate professional. So, they did not need to provide
054on their appeal what amount they're looking for. So, what we've made an assumption of, and again, this is an assumption that that we've all had to come to, is we've made an assumption that if that first group of people were looking to remove 26% of their assessed value, we're assuming that second group is going to make that same request. We have no idea. It may be more more or it may be less. The concerning part is the value of those individual parcels. And you'll see there the the one parcel, the most valuable of the parcels in the appeal is valued at $91 million. And they don't believe it's worth $91 million. We have no way of knowing how that appeal will come out. Um that's not our area of expertise, but I've heard that they
055believe their value is probably half of that in their mind. We don't know and we don't know what the appeal board will come up with, but we have seen very similar, if not that same property in the past appeal. And it is not uncommon to see 50% of that value. I shouldn't say uncommon. It is possible for that to be a 50% cut. That one parcel there, that $91 million parcel, if that um assessed value were to be cut in half, just that one parcel would result in about $250,000 a year um in perpetuity in loss revenue for for the district. So that's why we have spent a lot of time thinking through these appeals and trying to figure out the best way. We don't want to overcompensate for it and have it be something
056where we raise additional revenue that we don't need, but we also don't want to fall short. So the the assumptions, just to be very clear, the assumptions we've made is that all of those appeals are successful and they they have the appeal that they've asked for. And the second group, we've assumed that they're going to ultimately ask for a 26% reduction. I know for a fact at least one is asking for more than half, but we don't know how that's going to play out. But though we had to come up with an assumption that's the assumption that that we've modeled here. So Tony, if you can go on to the next next slide. It's ominous to have thunder clapping as you're talking about these things. Um so again, as we've we've said our our tax
057rates this year. Um we've heard a lot about revenue neutral. A lot of people talked about uh reassessment in and of itself can be very revenue neutral in that we look at what we brought in last year and bring in the same amount this year. Our assessed value last year in red clay was 5.4 4 billion budget. The new assessed value for red clay came to $24.6 billion, which is not surprising when you think about the fact that properties had not been reassessed since the early8s. So any of you, any of us that have lived in Delaware for a while, we certainly know that houses and and commercial properties are not selling for what they sold back in the 80s. And so that's what reassessment does. It brings these properties up to a a current
058value. The piece that that certainly people misunderstood and were concerned about is if your rate last year stays the same, but your value goes up very significantly in some cases, does that mean you're going to be paying four or five times as much in your taxes? And that is not the case because we do a calculation to to reset that. So, you know, the bottom line is the property values go up, our rates go down. The the the question and what everyone's talking about, everyone wants to know about. We've had quite a few calls and we've told them that we really can't share all the details till after you all vote tonight is what will that new rate be? So, this shows you the math of how we did that. We took the assessed value,
059the current assessed value in red clay. We made an allowance for those appeals that we've we've made an assumption for. And then we assumed the 97% collection rate. Typically in red clay, we have used a 98 or 99% collection rate. Uh, Newcastle County does a very good job of collecting property taxes. This year, we talked um quite a bit at the CFRC and they formally recommended that this year it would be um prudent for us to consider a 97% um collections rate because these people that are appealing their properties do not have to pay their tax burden while it's under appeal. Certainly, the county is recommending people make the payments because if they lose the appeal, they not only have to pay the tax, but they would have penalties that acrew. However, they they do
060not need to pay it. They could pay a portion of their taxes. So, there is a lot of um unknowns there. One of the reasons that we talked at the CFRC about doing that as a percentage change in collections is that we can track that. And if we find that we collected more than 97%, it would be my job to make sure that we show you our budget expenses do not go up. We would make sure that we keep that as a reserve and a year from now we can come to you and show you was 97% too high? Was it too low? Was it just about right? And then as a board, you can discuss, do we lower a rate in the future or do we hold it in reserve or do we spend
061it? My recommendation would be that we don't spend it because that wasn't the point of that 97%. The point of that 97% was to um alleviate some of the risk related to appeals and so forth. And so that ends up with a rate for our current expenses of 0.4596 per $100 of assessed value. And that is is one portion of our tax rate. We'll talk about the other portions in a minute. And one of the things that people ask about is if that goes up for me, is that all because you're changing the rate? Part of that is a referendum. Um, as as was mentioned earlier, we held a referendum in February of 24 and we split that increase over three years because we believed that there was no point in us collecting all that
062all those funds up front and we would we would um roll that in over three years. So, we were scheduled to have a 10-cent increase this year outside of reassessment. There is not a 10-cent increase as a result of the reassessment because we had to bring that rate down to to take account for the the higher higher assessed value. Tony, if you want to move on to the next slide. So, one of the people things people ask me is does that mean that their taxes are going to go up or down? And I can't explain that question because I can explain what our tax rate is and I can explain the assumptions that we're making and whether we're looking to bring in any additional revenue which I I did show up there is an additional
0631% we are looking to bring in. But what I don't know is how individual houses have changed in their assessed value. Some houses uh um increased more than the average and some increased less than the average. So if we move on to the next slide, I'll show you um I found it fascinating. Some people may not find it fascinating. I found it very fascinating. The the first column is the total assessed value of red clay that I mentioned earlier. We went from $5.4 billion to $24.6 billion. The next three columns are three actual parcels from from um the file that Newcastle County provides us and it shows the original value of those three. Um I'm going to assume they're residences. It could have been a small business. We don't know. But it was three three
064parcels. They were they were valued at 50,200 42,700 or 42,300. So they were relatively similarly priced properties back in 1981 8 in the early 80s when it was assessed. And then if we move forward to where they are now, the first one parcel X was um appraised the new appraised value is $236,500 and it increased about 471%. So, it's it's similar to the overall district increase, but the next two are the ones that that really show why I can't tell people whether their taxes are going to go up or down because I don't know, and it's individualized based on each parcel and and we've certainly helped people um when they call our office, we walk them through that process. But if you look at these two, parcel Y and parcel Z, both of them were
065assessed at $42,000, 427, 423. So essentially essentially the same properties back in the early 80s. During this reassessment, one of them was reassessed for $134,000, saw a 300 and some odd% increase. The other one was increased was assessed at $261,000. So that property assessed $618,000. So that's someone if they had invested in that property back in the early 80s, they've certainly done very well. They have a property that market value is now quite a bit more. And doc, Dr. 618% not thousands. But I I'm sorry. No, the the note so that people don't misconstrue what you said. It was 618% not 18,000. Yes. The new value was $261,000 which is a 618% increase. Um thank you for that correction. But but these two examples show you that previously last year those two parcels had almost
066the same tax bill. This year, parcel Y would likely see a lower tax bill than last year because their property increased at a lower percentage than the average for the district. The other property that went up 618% was over that average. So, that house will see an increase or that small business, whatever that parcel is, they will see a tax increase totally outside of whatever you all vote on tonight because the assessed value. So they're they're going to be paying a larger share of the taxes. Um the other way to look at it is that house was was not paying the same share that they would have been paying based on their relative value prior to reassessment. So those two parcels um hopefully that's helpful to to show um outside of what we set the
067tax rate to be. Each individual parcel in the district all over the state really needs to do that math and figure out um what the difference is. And we will have a calculator on our website to answer the the question from the public commenter. Uh tomorrow we will get something up on the website so that people can uh put in their assessed value which is available on the on the county website and it will show them what their their um tax bill will be for red clay. Tony, if you can move on to the next slide. And again, I I got ahead of myself. There is a QR code that takes us will take you to the website. And if you're looking at this on a computer, the the link there will take you to
068that news article about reassessment. Currently, it gives background information, but tomorrow we will be updating it with um a calculator so that people can do the the math of calculating their assessed value times the rate that you're voting on tonight to figure out what their their tax bill will be. So So all that that I've talked about is current expense. All those assessments and everything I talked about was having to do with the current expense tax or the operating tax. That was a tax that was set by referendum. The other thing that happens this time of year is there's three other tax pieces that you all vote for. The first one is a debt service tax. The debt service tax is what pays back bonds that a school district borrows for either new construction or
069renovations. So, as part of our last um referendum, we had a current expense increase. And we also had a um a major capital improvement project that included the selling of bonds that the state sells for us and then we pay them back over the course of 20 years. So the rate that you're setting tonight, you're required by law to set a rate that collects enough money to make all of the payments to our bonds for this upcoming year as well as enough to pay the first four months of next year to make sure that we have those monies to make the payments before our tax receipts come in. And so that rate comes to um 0.04. 0435 cents per $100 of assessed value. So 4.3 cents per $100 of assessed value. So that would be
070the the second piece of the tax bill that people see. And then the next slide talks our tuition tax. Our tuition tax is also set um by the board. We do not um when we talk about adding that 1% to current expense um based on uncertainties in the budget and so forth. The tuition tax, we did not do that. The tuition tax um each year is set based on the budgets for our programs. Our tuition tax covers our prek program, our needs-based funding for special education, our private placements, our Meadowwood program, the first state school at the hospital, as well as the ML program. And so that rate that we're presenting to you, that um 14.4 cents,45 cents per $100 of assessed value does not include any additional revenue just to to bring into our
071our balances. That's based on the cost to run those programs for next year. And that is a tax that um is not set by referendum. It's set by each school board in the state every July just like you're doing tonight. And then the last piece of the the last component of the the tax bill is our match tax. And the match tax is a piece of um a couple different pieces of legislation where the state provides funding and then says in order to get this funding, the local school board needs to match part of it or in some cases they say we'll provide you some funding. you may match part of it or they may say you can match this funding even though we are no longer providing you um those funds. There's a couple
072of different um categories of that and they are spelled out in the um tax rate calculations that that I've provided to each of you, but um our rate for the match tax that we're proposing you uh to you tonight is $2.43 per $100 of assessed value. And that results to about $1 million more than last year. And that is a result of the increased costs of the programs that are part of the match tax. The most significant one would be the opportunity funds. The state provides us um the opportunity funds that we've talked about in previous years and then we have an obligation if we want to match those funds for our local side of those costs. Um that comes out of that match tax. So that's what's um driving most of that increase of
073that that million dollars that we are recommending. So I've talked through all those pieces. People like to see it all in one place. There it is in one place. Those are the the four components. And when you add each of them together, um the vote that we are asking you to vote on tonight is 6719 cents per $100 of assessed value. And it is very difficult to compare from last year because last year it was based on a different total assessed value. So it I I show it there, but I I don't know that that's super helpful to people. What's most helpful is for people to look up their individual parcel on the Newcastle County website and then tomorrow they can either do the math themselves by multiplying that out or we'll have a calculator
074online tomorrow where they can actually um see that that number. And I people often ask about the average home. It's really hard to say because there is no exact average home in terms of property values, but there is a mathematical average to a residential property in the new reassessments and it was $45,000. And so for that home, that tax that tax bill will be about $2,721. And people often ask us to break that down by month um because frequently people are paying their school taxes through their mortgage payment, which is an escrow. So they would see one 12th of that each month in their their mortgage payment would be to go towards uh the school taxes. And again, this is our our six-year history that that we show. Um each year we we take out
075the oldest and add the newest. and it shows the various components. Again, it's somewhat misleading this year because the the final rate is lower. So, I backed it out and did what I'm calling a roll back rate to show what it would have been based on last year's assessed value. And I think that the piece that's important to show is that if you look at our average increase over the last six years, our average increase per year is 4.56%. Which is um you know, again over all years. Some years when we have a referendum, you see a larger increase and then it tapers down. So that that slide is a summary. Um state code requires that you um vote on the tax warrant tonight. The county has sent us a number of reminders that if
076we don't uh vote on that tonight, they will use last year's rate and I assure you we do not want to use last year's rate because last year's rate was quite a bit higher due to due to reassessment. So that would not not be a viable option this year. um our assessed value that we're we're counting, you know, doing our rates based on is at $ 24.6 billion. We made an assumption of our delinquency rate to be 3%. Um so that we can track that throughout the year. I would expect that you'll ask me in January when I come with the final budget. How are we doing with those receipts? Was 3% too much, too little, or just about right? And and I'll be able to share that with you. It also incorporates the revenue
077that was coming as a result of the referendum. So, when people see an increase in their tax bill, some of it is a result of the referendum that had already been voted um by voters. And this is something I've tried to go through it very quickly tonight because I know you have a lot on your agenda, but it is something that we have talked about um pretty much every month at our CFRC for um an hour or as some of you have wanted me more than an hour some months um as this reassessment has unfolded throughout the last couple of months. And again, the CFRC did review and recommend these tax rates based on on our discussions. So, I believe I answered most of the questions that our public commenter asked. The one I did
078not answer is he had asked about the Newcastle County crossing guard tax and the Newcastle County votech tax because those are also on the tax bills that people receive. We don't have anything to do with setting either of those taxes. the um Newcastle County sets the crossing guard tax to cover the cost of crossing guards that they provide for us. And Newcastle County Votech um sets their own tax rate and I believe they did that late last week was when their board met. So I don't know what they voted on, but I would imagine it's on their website so people could look there if they were interested. Certainly our our our vote based on your vote tonight, our rates will be on our website tomorrow morning and we get it to the county and they
079generate tax bills coming up in the next couple weeks that that will be going out. Okay. Uh any questions from the board? Losing last year's tax rate if we don't vote for it tonight. What does that look like? Um it would be catastrophic to homeowners because um if you if you go back and look at our our it's really not a practical option. um in that if we go back to Tony, if you could go back a couple of slides to that chart that shows the um the last three years. Well, that one the rate we're we're presenting to you tonight that we're asking you to vote on is 6719 per $100 of assessed value. So in essence, someone would take their assessed value, they would divide it by 100, and they would multiply it
080by that number, and that that's their tax bill. If we don't provide them updated rates, they use what they have on file, which in our case would be $265.8 because that was based on last year's assessed value. Everyone's property has gone up. We saw the average was about 471%. So that means they would be paying $2.65.8 8 cents per $100 of the new assessed value, which is four to five to six depending on the property times what it was. So, it's really not a practical option. That's just the county has to state code says the board has to vote and provide that tax warrant by um I believe it's 8:00 Thursday, the second Thursday in July. Oh, so you're saying they will use they will use last Okay, I thought you said lose. I'm sorry.
081They will they will use I'm sorry. They will use last year's in a typical year. That would be a reasonable reasonable thing to do, right? If they don't have anything new, use what they have on file. Okay? That that that's just not even practical uh this year because it would it would be four to five times your tax bill from from each person from last year. Okay. Mr. Matthews, I first and foremost, thank you so much for all of your work on this. I know that um the work that goes into this is extensive and so the work that you and your team have done is incredible. And I also want to commend CFRC um which is an extension of the arm of the board for all of the due diligence um to keeping our
082commitment to low taxes and red clay um when we have compared um our tax rate to the tax rate of local districts and I'll just for the the general public's um just to have some perspective here um just this past week Christina or yesterday I should say as as late as as last night they passed 10% Colonial 7% APO 10% which I think is quite frankly egregious. Um I received calls from community members in APO who uh believe that I was the president of I don't know I guess the United States of America um you know stating that it was it was incredibly um difficult for them to swallow um just how much their taxes have gone up. And so, um, you know, that is definitely a point of pride or fiscal responsibility in this
083district. And the fact that we have not, uh, gone out to referendum as much as our neighboring districts have, um, and really some of the other districts across the state have had one referendum in a decade, it's incredible. That is remarkable. So, um, big kudos there. Um, I just wanted to make note, slide four disturbs me. Um, it disturbs me because as we look at some of the wealthiest entities within our school district, um, you know, I just want people to really, uh, understand this highlight here. The average parcel, um, with the identified amount that they are appealing is is over $600,000. Um, so these are amongst our wealthiest, um, constituent groups, these are amongst the wealthiest property owners in our district. And then when you go to property owners, you know, again, who have
084the legal resources, people who have attorneys, people who have accountants who are able to do this work, you aren't talking about senior citizens, not talking about families with young children. You're talking about people who have the means to be able to go through an expensive process. And we have families in this district who can't afford a $500 medical expense. So, we have a parcel, and I want this parcel to be identified. One parcel that's worth over $91 million, and they're appealing. Who Who is this person? I believe it's uh Wilmington Country Club. It is Wilmington Country Club information. It is Wilmington Country Club. So that's going to be detrimental. So then when we look at when people don't pay their fair share, we then have to absorb the cost as the general public when we
085have some of our wealthiest people within our district who do not want to pay their fair share. And despite that, we're still continuing our commitment to the community of keeping our taxes low and making sure that we still have a strong public school system for all. something that has benefited Red Clay in our community greatly. Um, so I just want to make that a point. We also have six parcels that are worth over $10 million. These are not parcels of people who have, you know, dilapidating parcels, you know, that are in Ellir, communities that I live in. We're in Newport, working-class families, bluecollar working-class families. These are families who have um and entities who have the means and the ability to be able to challenge the process so it works for them. So I I
086just I am really pleased with all the work that you've done, Ted, but I I I I can't move forward without pointing out the facts here on the reality of the situation. The reality that we have people in our community who will not pay their fair share. Wegman's was one of them, right? to Wegman's was makes you kind of want to think again before you shop at Wegman's as to whether or not they want to, you know, support public education. I certainly will be thinking twice before I support their business. So, one of the things I just want to add to that is that the appeal process that anyone's able to go through, including that that first group, um certainly they want to lower their assessed value, but the the assumption of an appeal process
087is that when they um assess thousands and thousands of properties, a lot of it is done by computer. As we all know, computers, it's a process that's more accessible to the rich. It's possible that some of these are incorrect and those people are looking to correct it. Um, so so we'll we'll keep certainly keep an eye on these and how how it how it transpires over the next year or so. Any other questions? Question. Sure. Hey, um I have a question about has do you have a sense of if the state's going to be able to start giving us the the percentage of owners that have been successful in receiving their asked assessed value of their their reassessment. That's not something the state would be able to provide their handled at each county level, but
088Newcastle County um I will say we've worked very closely with the assessment office for really more than a year now on this whole process. It was a lot of hurry up and wait because we didn't get it till the very end of it, but um they certainly have committed to keeping us very much in the loop in terms of all the appeals. We haven't worked through what that process is going to be. Um but they have have um committed to sharing that. We we do get appeals anyway. Um typically we see them I would say there's a handful most years. Um this is unusual and it's a result of reassessment. So um that's why they aren't sure even how long that process will take. as I understand it, they've hired um individual, you know, um
089blind people, you know, blind assessors to help um work through this process. But we we will keep you uh informed. It's something the CFRC is interested in looking at because again, they were very clear that by making that that 97% versus 98% assumption, it does bring in additional revenue if everyone pays their taxes. And the the intent was not for that to be a um you know, a chance to spend additional funds. it was to cover cover that risk and and we'll certainly be transparent about you know what that amount is and it will be up to you all to decide next year. That's a next year problem, not a not this. Well, yeah, because that's what I was thinking because I think it then lays implications for next year because then your formula that
090you're using now we have this other quantifier number of these many are being still reassessed and this percent we would anticipate would be we're still starting to guess a lot. Right. And and the big concern is other people can appeal next year, right? And you you all do not have an opportunity or we don't have an opportunity to present to you that you make any sort of allowance next year because it's only when reassessment happens. So the next chance would be in five years. So there is certainly risk um sleepless nights and all the rest of it associated with it and we'll we'll share how it goes. Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you Dr. for that thorough report. Thank you. So, I have a second presentation here that's the preliminary budget. Um, I do
091want to to remind everybody this the preliminary budget is not for a vote tonight. We um listed as an information item this month and it would be an action item in in May. So, I have planned here a very high level um overview, but if you'd like to move that to to next month, um by all means tell say the word and I'll I will sit down. But if if not, I will go through a few of these slides. Do it quickly and then you want to do it quickly. Can we do that? Let's let's get it done. Move away. Um really to look at next year, we need to look at this year and how we closed out. And I think we have a a very positive story to to tell about all the
092people working behind me, you know, sitting behind me that really do pay attention to the budget. So Tony, if you could um click forward there. Um to look at where we closed out, we we budgeted $38 million and we received 315 million. So we received 102% of what we expected. Certainly you you want to receive more revenue than you expect and you want to spend less than you expect. That would be the the the posit you know the the plan. Uh our total expenditures were 100.5% that were a little bit higher than what we budgeted. We're within a half percent which I would consider pretty close and and some of those extra expenditure exp excuse me extra expenditures were driven by higher revenues. as an example, gas prices are every month um the state of
093Delaware does a calculation for the price of gas and if that price goes up, they send us more revenue than than we were expecting. If it goes down, they take money back. So if we receive more money for fuel for our our fleet ofund and some odd buses, then we're receiving more revenue and we're actually spending more of it to purchase the fuel for those buses. So sometimes those those are linked. and our our ending balance, which is really the key in a in a school district in Delaware, is what that local balance is. And we are growing our balance, not shrinking our balance, which is um where where we need to be. We expected to end the year with $5.5 million. We ended the year with $6.8 million. So, it was a little bit
094more than we expected. And just for the record, I do want to note that we do have an additional $5 million um reserve that that our board has talked about in the past that we don't show as as our normal ending balance because it's not a balance that we would budget for without coming to the board. So that that's the close out. We ended out, you know, spending just about exactly what we expected. We were over in some areas, under in other areas, but overall we we ended up where we thought we'd be. Tony, if you could. Um, so then we move into next year and significant things to share from the state side. There was not a whole lot to talk about. Um, they are incorporating the public educational um, PEC, public educational funding.
095I don't know if I have the acronym right, but public education compensation committee. That's why the F and the C. Okay. So, public education compensation committee. They had made a recommendation um a couple of years ago about raising the starting teacher salary in Delaware. Um and they the general assembly did implement that recommendation or the last step of that recommendation this year which was um a 7% increase to teacher salaries. And so that certainly is a significant number. It's about $10.2 million from the state that we'll be seeing that we didn't see last year to go towards those teacher salaries. um it was 2% for um other state employee groups, but it was 7% for for teachers. And that's certainly and and you know, certainly it's welld deserved and and well-earned, but there is an
096impact to that cost because there are certainly teachers that we have that are funded locally through our tuition program, through our match tax, um or through federal programs, which I'll talk about in a minute. Um so so certainly that 7% increase on the state is great for our teachers and we we support it but there is an impact that we're watching very carefully because we we have to cover that with our local funds for for some teachers. There's also an opportunity fund increase of.9%. Um what's what's impactful about that is not necessarily that it's.9% but if you marry that with the 7% most of our opportunity funds are for people therefore teachers and par profofessionals in our schools. And so if the opportunity funds are only going up by 0.9% but the salaries that the
097state are providing on the state scale for teachers is going up 7% you can see that disconnect there. And so that's something that we're um working on to make sure that we can maintain as many of those services um in our schools that we have. The state also provided uh one-time enhanced minor capital improvement funding $1.2 2 million to help with the very significant backlog of um maintenance issues in all public, you know, public schools in Delaware. And that is something I just wanted to point out. We are not choosing to match that, being cognizant of the the tax impact for, you know, due to reassessment and so forth. We are uh thankful that the state is giving us that $1.2 million, but it's not something that we're required to match in order to get
098those funds. So, we we are not proposing that you match that. And then the other thing that the state budget maintains is the give back that some of you have been around for many years have heard heard us talk about that, but that's about $2.7 million that they provide to us. And then we have the flexibility to decide which pot of funds we want to use to give that back. And that that is still there. We keep hoping that it will disappear, but it is still there. Moving on to the next slide. Um current expense budget highlights. And again, I'm going very quickly here, but we are incorporating the February 24 referendum funds that we um had counted on. And we expect again next year to be increasing our balance. So that's that cycle of
099funding in Delaware. You build up your balance, then you live off that balance, and when that balance gets too low, it's time to go back to referendum. We are still in that that upward swing. We are um growing that balance. We've also limited our budget growth. I don't know that there's a person in the district that does not have a really great idea to do something to help kids, but we um we are very careful to to limit that growth to what we have committed to doing in the referendum and what we are working through through our strategic plan. So, we have limited our budget growth. The the most significant growth is that 7% for our our teachers that we have committed to through our collective bargaining agreements. And again, it's our budget is balanced.
100We are not deficit spending. And again, that's a a summary, just a bunch of revenue numbers. That's the totals that that we have. Our starting balance is increasing. And again, we'll go to the the next slide. And and our expenses that shows that we are not spending everything that we're bringing in by design. We are building that balance, our estimated balance. At the end of next year, a year from now, I will hopefully be telling you that we closed FY26 with $8.1 million, which is what we're we're predicting. Now, this is probably the most dramatic piece of the slide. It's usually the one that people don't pay any attention to because it's such a a small number in this in the overall uh district budget. But this year, um I guess it was last week,
101we were Darl and I were on a call um with the Department of Ed that typically by now but usually by July 1st, we receive um our allocations from the US Department of Ed for all the various um federal funds. There's a number of different pots, title one, title two, title three. We won't go through each of them, but typically by end of June, early July at the very latest, we have those numbers. And you can see there in FY25, those are the numbers that we had last year. We had about $13.7 million worth of funds coming from the federal government to the district that we apply for through what's called the consolidated grant application. You've probably heard us talk about that before. Mike Simmons uh coordinates that effort on behalf of a bunch of
102a bunch of people. Um what we heard last week was that the department of ed US department of ed sent a notification to all states not just all states in the country that they are doing a um a review of the title 2 title three title four and adult ed funds so at this point they have not been they've been allocated by congress they've been signed for by the president but the US department of ed is doing a um a review before they release those funds so we do not know whether that means tomorrow we get an email that the funds have been released or we don't know if when June uh September 30th comes around, which is the end of the federal uh fiscal year, if they have still not been provided by June
10330th, that means they are not coming. So certainly the the difference is about $2 million. Um that is not an insignificant number. It's certainly a number that we're we're looking at. We're looking we're prepared to manage that number. We do have funds. We spend our federal funds behind. We're still using last year's funds. We we aren't using next year's funds yet. So, we certainly have no concerns about the next couple of months while we work through this, but it is something that um it would be very difficult to maintain that level of funding. You I told you our balance is in that $7 million range. If we were to increase our expenses at 2 million a year, just, you know, super quick math, 2 million a year, we have a $7 million balance. Within three
104years, we would be um we would be out of that balance. So that $2 million is not something that we can commit to continuing, but we are committed to uh keeping an eye on on what's happening and we will certainly be updating. Our CFRC has asked me, they asked if they needed to have an emergency meeting in August. They usually get August off. Um there's no need to have an emergency meeting at this point because there's nothing to talk about. We we just at this point are preparing for the worst, which is that we would see $2.1 million um less, which again, you talk about revenue neutral and reassessment. we are not revenue neutral even with that 1% we've built into that rate. Um we we're still looking to see this this decrease in funding.
105So that is the total um district budget there. Total of $414 million. The vast majority of that being the the state and local operating funds which is what I've spent the most time talking about. Um certainly this is not for vote tonight. It's for vote in August. So if you have any questions certainly tonight I'll answer them. If you have questions that you think of between now and August, by all means, give me a call or an email or ask it in August and I will um be more than happy to answer them. Next steps again, upon approval tonight, that tax warrant, my assistant is texting me, let me know, have they voted? Have they voted? No, they haven't voted yet, but he I he will get that tonight and get that to the county.
106You will be voting on the the budget that I have shared as a preliminary budget tonight in August. Most of our tax revenues come in in September and October. So those are going to be critical months to see how many of those estimates are, you know, where we where we are with those estimates. And then September 30th is another big date in Delaware. That's when we count all of our students. And that's what drives most of our our state funding. So October comes and they either give us more or take back some money based on those counts. And then obviously we're going to be monitoring reassessment and the appeals and collections. And then in February, you get to hear from me again when we share our final budget that will get us through the the
107rest of the year. And again, if you'd like to talk more about these things, the the CFRC does meet every month except for August. And we have, I think, fascinating conversations. Um, some people have told me they're not so fascinating, but I guess if you're interested, we'd love to have you uh stop by for them. Yeah. Uh, Dr. the two million that we may not get from the federal government that's been approved by Congress. What would the impact be in the district if you from a from a financial perspective? It's $2.1 million. Some of that money is money that we don't actually spend. It gets passed through to private and parochial schools. So So there's a small portion of it we would not we just wouldn't have it and we wouldn't send it over to
108the schools that have our students in them. the vast majority of that money is really for um coming out of title two which the purpose of title two is to improve teaching and learning and to provide professional development and best practices. So you know much and I I don't want any of our curriculum folks in the audience to get nervous hearing this but that is what funds a lot of our teaching and learning people and we obviously are committed to them. we have they have contracts and and they will be here this year but we will be having to monitor this throughout the year and and certainly if that money doesn't come through we will have to discuss you know which of these things we we can't do it all right so that's where we
109will be bringing to you a budget in February into next year that that has to make some decisions about where what of those programs we continue um there is some travel the federal government often uh encourages or requires people to go to conferences I can assure you that if they're not providing the funds I will not be approving the the travel so some of that, you know, is not necessarily uh I mean there's certainly value in that travel that won't be happening, but that that 2.1 is not a direct loss of of 2.1, but it is significant. Any other questions, Mr. Matthews? So, how did we get notification and who did we receive notification from that we were going to be receiving these cuts? um the the new secretary of education and I would say
110she's been very very good at communication sent an email last I I guess I would say last week and scheduled an emergency conference call um day before 4th of July I think there were some people on their way to the Thursday January 3rd at 11:00 a.m. we had the conference call Dr. the green knows he was on vacation calling in from from Puerto Rico. It's very few vacation days that he takes. So, um they they and she she's worked with federal funding in the past and worked with these exact funds and it's really unprecedented that we would not have that notification at this point. Wow. But, you know, she also stressed that we don't know yet. It's not a no. It's you you haven't received the allocation. So, we're we're waiting to see. And that
111impacts all districts and all eleas districts, charters who anyone that receives federal funds. And as um Dr. Ammon indicated, part of what we're required to do through title one program is to have equitable services. So any student that resides in red clay that would qualify for title one supports and or services that attends a p a private school, we have to do meaningful consultation with those schools to offer those supports and services to those students. So, this is it impacts the broader community. Um, and again, it it was appropriated by Congress. It was signed, but now there's just the withholding um of those funds. So, we'll do our due diligence to to to manage and navigate this. Any other questions from the board about preliminary budget? Dr. Thank you, Dr. Hammond. All right. Next presentation
112is from Mr. Mark Puit on the attendance zone and programming committee. Mr. Puit, [Music] thank you. Good evening, President Leonard. Board members, Dr. Green, uh congratulations to our two newest board members this evening. Um it's actually not just me. uh six of us including myself from the committee will be presenting uh the work we've done over the past seven months um on the secondary attendance zone enrollment and programming committee. Um next slide, next slide. Okay. the uh the work actually initiated at the November 2024 schoolboard meeting when there was a recommendation for vote uh through a presentation that the uh that the board approved the secondary attended zone uh enrollment and programming committee. Uh it was amended and uh the amendment was that we provide a recommendation and an update at the at this July
113meeting. Next slide. So the committee uh was we started work immediately. Uh as many of you remember we put out uh requests for anyone who would be interested in serving on the committee to our uh community. Uh 118 folks uh put their names in. We selected names out of a folder, one from each nominating district in your area. So we have seven public members that served on the committee including three also three board members, three rca members, uh three district ad uh administrators and three school administrators. Um I can tell you this uh they came with different points of view um opinions and expertise but I I as someone who facilitated the committee I can't tell you how much I appreciate all of them for their willingness to meet our our norms. We were respectful
114at all times. They were collaborative of all times. And had that not been the case, it would have been a very difficult uh you know, it would have been very difficult to sort of heard 19 people and shepherd them along. So I I really appreciate their willingness to serve on the committee. Um you're going to see some slides tonight. Um we're going to go through a lot of slides. It is just a small fraction of the work of this committee. The committee has a website. Um you can go to the website. It has everything that we've done, every piece of research that we put up. I would particularly note rolling slides which outline all seven meetings that we had as well as every video recording in its entirety from every uh every every uh meeting.
115The uh charge from the school board in November was to evaluate the enrollment, programming, and attendance zones of Red Clay Secondary Schools and make recommendations to the board at the July 2025 meeting. Uh in doing so, our committee was to consider strong and balanced enrollments across schools, the impact of attendance zone changes and alignment of those boundaries to existing K8 attendance zones when possible. There had been changes to kindergarten through 8th grade attendance zones in 2015. Uh and and part of our charge was to align the high schools with that. um equitable access to quality education for all students and come back with the advantages and challenges of each of our recommended options and ideas through data analysis, community feedback and research. The committee met seven times. There were six initially scheduled. Uh the committee
116felt that in order to meet uh you know meet our timeline, we added a May 1st meeting. You see sort of some general topics of the work we did. Um we spent the first two months on the committee looking at data both historical data in the district and current data in the district as well as lots of infographics that that that shared that information right and after looking at that the committee came up with some key findings to sort of guide our work. The first was that high school attendance zones were last updated in 2002, resulting in no straight line feeders and a fragmented city of Wilmington. So, as I said, the colors of these schools, HB, the the four middle schools, Stanton, Skyline, HB, uh, and AI Middle School, they're in they're in color.
117The green boundaries are the current boundaries last updated in 2002. I would point out two particular points here that that that I think uh show the some of the problems with this. One is McCain High School is sort of central and has all four middle schools feed into it. So there there is no sense of community K to 12 uh once you get to high school. Okay? There's no sense of a counselor working with one at one high school working at one middle school to bring those students in. The second is that the boundaries of the high schools in the city of Wilmington still exist from a desegregation order in 1981. Very fragmented when compared to K through8 uh attendance zones. Next slide. The second finding was that high school enrollment has remained constant for
118the most part. It's fluctuated by a few hundred uh over the years, but during the last 20 years when enrollments remain constant, we've actually added two schools. And we went from five schools to seven schools. This has resulted in 1,000 extra seats, more than 1,000 extra seats in our seven high schools. Okay? Which has also uh currently you see AI high school with less than 600 students in it. But we've also seen that at John Dickinson High School in 2019 and McCain High School down into the mid700s a few years prior to that. Next slide. Another key finding was that AI High has less students in its attendance zone when compared to John Dickinson and McCain High School. Okay, we we did a lot of work pulled this comes from 2022 2023 data. Uh, but
119we pulled out everyone where they live, including our own schools, our own charter schools, Newcastle County, Votech, other charters, and private schools. And you see that potentially a lot less students are available to go to AI uh than there were than the other two schools. Next slide. Very similar to the high school situation. middle school enrollment that's actually declined a bit over the past 20 years, but again, we've added two more schools during that time period, right? And so again, you see a larger number of seats, then you have students to fill those seats and you see vacuums and low enrollment, for example, at a school like Skyline with uh you know a projected 420 students for next year with a capacity of 750. Next slide. Um the next one is that the Warner community
120has no distinct feeder pattern. Okay, there are two elementary schools. Every one of our elementary schools feeds into one middle school except Brandy Wine Springs and Warner. And that's fine. Uh that I'm sure that had to be done in 2015 and there had to be some decisions made. However, that that group of fifth graders that move 150 kids that moves on to sixth grade, they go to two middle schools and then three different high schools. That really resonated with the committee. Next slide. Right. After the key findings, you know, we showed the impact of underenrolled schools at the high school level. Okay. What you have is college access courses, dual enrollment courses, advanced placement courses, and international baloriac courses at each of our five high schools. Okay? Another simple example is when when you don't
121have enough enrollment, it's going to be hard to fill out. You see this a lot in the uh in the news, right? Like when when we fold up a football team, everybody knows that there's not enough schools. there's not enough students in the school to to to fill uh 26 intercolastic sports plus junior varsity sports for those programs. Next, an additional piece of data which actually was released from the University of Delaware's uh applied demography and survey research center um is that they released a 30-year uh projection of Newcastle actually the entire state but Newcastle County enrollment in public schools over the next 30 years. Um all five districts are will decline according to their projections with red clay uh projected to decline by 3,000 students over that time period assuming of which about 1,000
122would be high school students. Um the committee then began then began I will let Mr. Puit continue to go on because he was doing a great job. Yes. So um for the committee, thank you all for having me here tonight. For those of you that may not know who I am, my name is Dr. Tanda Bond. I am the senior director of teaching and learning and I'm part of the uh committee that's been working on this for the last six, seven months. So, one thing that we looked at when we talked about ideas coming out of this committee is really making sure that we had a platform for equitable voice on our committee. So, if you take a look here going back to Mr. Puit's goals that he expressed at the beginning of the uh
123presentation, we stuck to these four goals throughout our conversation over our six months of meetings. And then we talked about our rules. So, we really had a space where people could bring ideas. There was no criticizing. We encouraged. We built on each other's ideas and weren't afraid. So, no idea was too big, no idea was too small. Next slide, please. So, these were some of the committee's ideas that we initially came up with and I'm going to walk you through these and then I'm going to turn it over to um Mr. Jay Bastinelli who is the principal of HB DuPont U middle school to talk a little bit about some of these things and also Mr. Shan Snder to talk a little bit about some of the next steps. So we looked at repurposing one
124high school as a technical high school innovation center that would result in two attendance zone high schools. Our second was make this innovation center available to middle school students. So these were just brainstorming ideas. Move John Dickinson Middle School uh program to Skyline to allow for increased high school enrollment in the two attendance zone schools. Create virtual program opportunities for secondary schools. And this didn't mean like an online school. We kind of kept it open. We had a lot of conversations around what virtual programming may look like. Move Charter School of Wilmington to an existing high school and reduce down to two attendance zone high schools. Expand Dickinson as a 612 IB magnet program and reduce down to two attendance zone high schools, which would be McCain and AI. And then the last pieces of
125our committee brainstorm. We're reducing down from eight to seven middle school programs because many of these things needed to go together. Move AI middle to AI high to create one 6 through 12 A to Z program. We had some conversation around capping Conrad and CAB as smaller enrollments. And then of course like Mr. Puit shared before we looked at the information about Warner and how the students kind of go to different places. and we talked about the possibility of creating a K8 attendance zone school at Warner and creating a K12 attendance zone school at Warner. So, we talked about both. And then the last thing that we tossed around was the idea of allowing choice busing for all students to all school. So, with that, I'm going to turn it over to one of my
126other committee members to take us through our next steps. Good evening. I'm Sean Snder. I'm the director of technology here in the school district. Um, we invited Dr. Ammon and Dr. Heck in to do some analysis and to offer us both some research and some statistical evaluations and analysis of our current facilities. So, let's take a look at a slide here where Dr. Ammon uh did a brief analysis of each one of the ideas to uh discuss uh five different domains. HR impact, transportation, tech, nutrition, facilities, and cost. Uh he created a rating scale that was uh fairly broad but high, low or medium. Now, this is not a scientific study necessarily. it was an overview of what the uh analysis would yield. A high negative impact doesn't mean it's a bad idea or that
127we shouldn't consider it. Just that we would need to be more thorough in our analysis, be prepared to mitigate any negative high impact. So, as you can see, there's the analysis right there. Uh for example, the innovation center, a high HR impact because it would require significant staff moves, a high transportation impact because it would require busing during the day. It has a low tech and nutrition aspect um cost to us because it would be moving materials around but generally providing the same services from a facility standpoint. It would be uh sort of a medium lift for us. We would have some retrofitting to do it all three of our high schools to accommodate these changes but it wouldn't be massive and the cost would probably be um you know medium mid-range in that. Uh
128whereas compared to you know the program over to Skyline if that were to be part of this uh a fairly low impact from all three of those. Obviously, if you're a teacher being moved, you feel the HR impact would be higher because it's affecting you personally, but overall, uh, the analysis was that those were all moves that could be done with minimal impact to the overall school district. Next slide, please. Uh, operations impact from various ideas. Once again, same same idea. These are three other ideas that were discussed that range from a medium high or low impact. Um, let me go back to the last slide right there. Choice busing was one that was one that we talked about um a lot uh to kind of clarify what the the challenges there are. The challenge
129of that really is the cost is very high. It's the only very high you're going to see on the entire uh spreadsheet. Let's go to the next. Uh the research was provided by Dr. Corey Hawk who did some analysis to answer questions that came up through the process. Uh one of the questions was are proficiency levels uh uh impacted by the size of a school? So uh Dr. Dr. Peacock uh did some analysis of schools within Delaware. Um she did some research to try and determine if there was any definitive research about a magic number for the size of a school. That study doesn't really exist. Um but we did notice throughout the state that proficiency levels seemed to improve as school size increases to a maximum of 1500 students within our own state. Absences
130were lower in schools of up to 1400 students. Larger schools had higher rates of absenteeism and dropout. uh increased school size over 1500 students seemed to correlate with lower reported feelings of engagement uh corrected uh connectedness and participation by students. Uh she also did some research on economic outcome. Research on grade level configuration was inconclusive. If anybody wants to get a doctorate, please do a study on that because it doesn't seem to exist at this point. And then grade level configuration is typically based on student enrollment, building space, cost, and community influence. These tend to be the factors that lead to a decision about moving schools around, closing a school, opening a school. Um, generally, uh, money tends to drive that decision. We have more options, thankfully. Next slide. So, from an analysis of ideas,
131each idea was considered against and I'm going to hand this over to my collemes who also served on the committee. All right. Thank you everyone. Uh, my name again is Antonio Gomes. I'm one of the members of the community that had the privilege and pleasure honestly to serve at this committee to really do an analysis. Honestly, I I know there's been a lot of talk uh from everyone. I can say I mean the fact that we were able to even come up this far in such a short period of time is astronomical to me. I know there's a lot to ask for. So, we talked a little bit about uh the data, right? We looked at the data, what the problem is. We had folks bringing in additional information for us to understand uh what
132are the challenges what what are the opportunities that are out there and we brainstormed there and honestly the the we we were a lot of people in that room with a lot of different ideas uh but we needed to narrow this down ultimately that's what what we came up with the next what are the things that we need to consider with all these great ideas that people have very different ideas how we consolidate that to something that's a little bit more manageable for us to come up ultimately with a resolution or a proposal for you guys. So we decided to look at all the ideas and kind of categorize them. Look at the relevance of the problem, the feasibility and the impact. What does does this idea make sense to the core issues? We we
133had a specific goal and objective for this committee. Did it meet it? Uh what is the feasibility of implementing the the solution? So we talked about just analysis that we did. What's the cost? Where what what does it take to make it happen? And then of course uh what what is the impact to the community? Ultimately the ultimate goal. Uh if you can go to the next slide please. So we took all this information and the task was for us to all come together and decide hey let's narrow this down to four. What are the four things of four ideas that we came out there that we thought would be suitable for us to proceed and look into a little bit further. And that's what we're looking at here. Here are the results of uh
134basically every uh all of us coming up and deciding which ideas meant mo the most. Uh as you can see, innovation center was the one uh piece uh that stood out. Um but there's a couple things that we also decided during the conversation that that could intermingle as well. So we didn't want to leave anything behind and we provided opportunity for folks to make their cases uh to really disclose hey why should we consider uh this idea or remove it alto together and we had the opportunity to discuss that which uh I think at the towards the end we all came to a consensus and took a vote of whether or not to exclude it which again is where we kind of went to the next step. Uh, who's I'll let Maddie talk about the
135solution. Go ahead. Okay. All right. There we go. Uh, so one of the steps once the Oh, okay. Sorry. Uh, my name is Mattie Wright Meer. I am a school counselor at AI High School. I previously worked at Dickinson High School and for a couple years at AI Middle as a school counselor. Um so what I'm going to talk about is the audit that was presented to the committee. This is it. You can see it up here. And what was done is um district looked at the CTE classes and asked sort of what stage are they in as far as what our goal is with the standard in teaching. So I'm just going to give an example. If you look at plant science and animal science, it met the standard. When you look at strategic
136goals and state standards for CTE, they're doing really well. um if it's in red, they're still at the beginning stages. Some of the ones that are up there are brand new. So, it's not that they're poor programs, it's that they're only a year or two old and they're still getting off the ground. And then yellow would be in the middle. So, that's just to look at it. Um you can see a quick glance, McCain is further along than the other two high schools in a lot of their programs. Next slide. This, uh I'm not going to take a lot of time on it. uh they put together some examples of schools that already have innovation centers within their district, but I think anyone that's interested should definitely check those out as standards and whatever the
137board decides to do, I'd really encourage you to look at other models as well. Next, so kind of combining the two ideas, one question would be what is actually being offered at this innovation center if it were to go forward? And this were these were just some of the suggestions that came up based on programs that are already well underway. And then some areas where we don't have CTE. I think um there was a mention of that in a public comment that there's areas that could be expanded too and they would look at that at the innovation center. Okay. So a big question that a lot of people have, I had it for sure, is what does it look like if we do this? So, this sounds like a big idea. It's great, but what
138are we actually doing daytoday? And this is one idea that could potentially happen by the grade level. So, your ninth graders at Dickinson and AI and what they would do is take a CTE exploration course. So, they do a couple weeks looking at each potential program that they could do. Uh, one thing that you I would say definitely needs to happen if you're going to do that is get them to take a field trip over the innovation center and actually see these classes in session and what it would look like, what they get to do during the day. So that would be in nth grade. They wouldn't commit to a program. Most ninth graders do pick a class and then they follow it through the next three years. Right now, this would give them a
139time to explore it. In 10th grade, they would do their first year, but it would be one and a half credits. and in 11th grade they would do their second year which would also be one and a half credits. So you're going to see a three-year program condensed down into two. But because they're spending more time in the class, they're still covering the same content. And then an idea with 12th graders would be some of them might move on to dual enrollment. I'm just going to give an example. If it was an allied health student, they might then go into something like anatomy and physiology at Deltech. So they're getting a credit, but they're still staying in there, you know, in the program that they want. Um or or you might have a student that
140would go out and actually do some work in the community in the program that they're studying. That's just an example. Okay. So, what would a student's day look like? I'm going to try and do a good job explaining this. I apologize in advance if I do not. So, one way that I think about it, because for me it makes a lot of sense, is if you moved kids by grade level. So we said the nth grade students, they're doing a CTE exploratory course. They have well probably they'd have seven classes on their schedule. One of them would be that CTE in the in their home building. The next year you have your 10th grade students. They're going to take in the morning. So they'll come to school, then they'll get on a shuttle bus. This
141would be at Dickinson Nai to go over to McCain and they would spend from 7:55 to 10:05 in that CTE course. So that's why it's one and a half credits because it's more minutes than would otherwise happen. They come back and they go to lunch. Then your afternoon students, they're at lunch while the other students are traveling back. So let's say it's 11th graders now. They're going to spend their afternoon at the innovation center. So they come in in the morning, they're doing, you know, English and math. They go to lunch and then they're going to get on the shuttle bus and they'll go over to the innovation center to do their CTE which would be their level two. So you have a a large group of students traveling together. I'm just giving an example
142of how it could be. It could be half 10th and half 11th in the morning. It helps me think about it from a grade level standard. And then um you know the morning students then they're doing their English and math. So, it's just a way to think about the schedule on a detailed level um to help kind of conceptualize one option. There are others, but I think this is a clean way to think about it. That's it for me. Okay. So, after brainstorming a uh relevance and impact analysis, asking for some more information, what might a uh what might an innovation center look like? Right. and uh a counselor like Maddie do some work to give an idea. Uh we then started to make some decisions. First of all, we looked at we pulled out
143some some ones of the virtual 612 programming. By unanimous consent, the committee agreed to go ahead and move forward with that as a recommendation uh that the district could further consider. We we would not require anyone to take online courses, right? that would meet the needs of a family who was interested in that because because that idea had no bearing on the other ideas, right? It had no impact uh on our current problem that we face. Um the next uh discussion involved the idea of reducing enrollment at CSS and CAB Callaway. Uh 19 members, not one of them chose a tally mark for that. So by unanimous consent, we removed that from further consideration. AI middle school to AI high school having a 612 attendance zone school did receive two tallies. Uh some discussion about
144that. Um and I actually brought this up. This actually sort of memorializes the problem, right? This this when you when you take 500 middle school kids and 600 high school kids, you put them in a building. Now you've filled the now you've filled the building up and you you've you've ensured that AI's high school population will never grow because there won't be any space to do that. So by unanimous consent uh that we removed it from further consideration. And Mr. Pro I think the the other thing just to note with that is that's the current issue right now at the John Dickensson school. It is right and so we can't grow the high school portion because we've colllocated middle schools. But then to look at the the the other issue around capping Conrad and CAB,
145inherently through the choice process, they're limited in their ability because you got to be able to have specific cohorts to show that you have adequate programming in both of those schools. It's a really good example, uh, Dr. Green, of when Dickinson was at less than was 600 students in its school. Hey, let's put a middle school there to try to get some of the high those middle schoolers to stay for the high school. Well, it worked and now the building is at capacity, but we still have a a top priority to let attendance zone students go to Dickinson. We have to let those students in even by limiting um IB choice students in the program. So, you know, we that it's a good example of what would happen if you did something similar to uh
146at AI at AI with AI high and AI middle. um a lot of discussion about relocating and a lot of public comment about relocating the charter school of Wilmington. It received four tallies out of 19. After discussion, I made a motion to remove the idea due to not enough support by the committee. Uh further discussion ensued. Uh motion was seconded because this was not unanimous uh that there we did use a uh a Robert's rules process for many of these was mot uh was seconded. The motion passed 112 well 11 yes to abstain and the idea was removed from further consideration. Choice busing for all students received five talents out of a possible 19. Um after a lot of discussion uh I did make a motion to remove the idea due to not enough support
147by the committee and discussion ensued. Um this is an interesting one. I don't think anyone doesn't want to take every student from their front door to where they want to go to school, right? Like, so you're not really voting no. Uh to because you you don't you don't think that's a good idea by kids, right? But practically, you know, and is it possible in a school budget? Is it possible with the number of buses you need, with the number of drivers you need, with the current driver shortage, which is corrected to a certain extent, but you know, it's just not it it probably is not a practical idea. And the local expense because a lot of those routes get approved by the state, right? Financially, financially, obviously. Yep. Yep. Uh and doc and Dr. Ramman
148talked about that. That was an 11 11 to2 to remove it from further consideration. Okay. Now, we were down to just a few of our brainstorming ideas that had been discussed, talked about, kind of put leaves on a tree, so to speak. But they they could not all be done. In fact, you you could not have an innovation center at McCain and reduce down to two high schools and turn John Dickinson into a magnet program and reduce down. You had to make a choice there. Uh, lot of discussion amongst these two. Ultimately, Miss Todd Dixon made a motion uh to move forward with the idea uh in the recommendation um to uh move forward with the innovation center. Uh Dr. Muffley seconded the motion and the motion passed 11 yes. Two people abstain from voting.
149Um and uh the Dick I'm sorry, the first part of it was removing Dickinson from further consideration. Okay. And then the second part of that was to move forward with uh with uh the innovation center. U the next one was these two were sort of coupled. One of the ideas was big. We have too many middle schools. It's causing a vacuum at some of our current middle schools for programming and opportunity and access. Um uh one of was a consolidation of middle school programs from 8 to 7. We and another one existed moving the John Dickinson middle school program to Skyline. both of those sort of fit together. Um, and after a lot of discussion, I made a motion to move forward with both ideas in the recommendation. This would allow for the increased high
150school enrollment needed at Dickinson High School uh in order, you know, if you're going to move forward with one, the middle school has to move, the IB program has to move to another uh space. Uh, the motion was seconded by Mr. Leonard and all 12 members um on the committee uh in attendance uh voted unanimously to move forward. A lot of discussion about K8 program at Warner. Um originally we're talking about K12, removed that very early quite simply. Um it it it's not a facility for a high school, right? It doesn't have the athletic space, the outdoor space, the lab space, those kinds of things. But um you know a lot of discussion about K8 at Warner. Uh we did feel like the idea contradicted with the co with the goal of the committee which
151was to bolster enrollment at all of our schools. Um however because of concern around the city of Wilmington middle school attendance zones by unanimous consent. The committee agreed to include a future re-evaluation of middle school attendance zones particularly as they relate to the Warner Elementary School community. uh would be included in our final recommendation. That brought us to what we sent out to the community at the beginning of June or right after the Memorial Day weekend. We came up with three core principles that we put forward. Uh creating straight line feeder patterns that align high school attendance zones with existing middle school attendance zones. that we have balanced enrollment. Distribute students equitably across attendance zone high schools uh and that we have program equity. Ensure that all students regardless of high school have access to
152highquality academic and extracurricular programs. So that part of the recommendation was you know that we were put forward what we called our core principles as we move forward. Right. Two specific program changes. one, establish the Thomas McCain Innovation Campus. Uh the committee recommends or recommended on May 21st that the Thomas McCain High School be reimagined as the Thomas McCain Innovation Campus through expanded partnerships with local colleges, universities, and the business community. Uh this flagship hub uh will produce courses in uh CTE uh industry standard credentiing courses and early college credit opportunities. As part of the change, a number of comprehensive high school attendance zones would be reduced from three to two. AI and Dickinson. These two comprehensive high schools would split the Red Clay high school attendance zones equally, allowing for increased enrollment and a
153more robust academic and extracurricular offerings. These two attendance zones better align with middle school attendance zones. We would then be able to use uh middle school attendance zones where a middle school goes to a specific high school instead of being split to three high schools. um allowing for straight line feeder patterns and it would include a short shuttle bus transportation uh would be provided from AI and Dickinson to the innovation campus. They would be there for one quarter of their program. We run on an AB schedule. So students uh would s would uh register for courses or do uh course selection for one quarter of their program um at at the innovation center. Program change number two was to relocate the John Dickinson Middleear's program to allow for increased high school enrollment at the John
154Dickinson School. The committee recommend reck recommended relocating the my middle school program from Dickinson to Skyline Middle School, allowing for a more balanced enrollment across middle schools. And finally, additional recommendations for future consideration of the district. Middle school attendance zones. reeval re-evaluate the middle school attendance zones especially as they pertain to the Warner elementary school community to improve feeder pattern continuity and equity uh particularly in that community and uh virtual high school programming explore the development of virtual high school coursework to expand flexibility and learning opportunities for red clay students. So that was where we were on on May 21st. That was the recommendation that we put out to the community to collect their feedback in a survey. Next slide. So once we got to the point where we had all of our recommendations that
155we were preparing for the board, the committee came up with the idea to make sure that we had stakeholder engagement. So we embarked on two major pieces of stakeholder engagement. After our seven public meetings with public comment at all of our meetings, we had a June 10th community meeting that had Q&A. So, we were there for several hours um just open form and we also conducted student focus groups and I'm going to talk us a little bit through the student focus groups that we conducted to get student engagement and student feedback and then after that you're going to hear a little bit from Mr. Jay Bastinelli about our community survey that was conducted by handover research. So when we did our student focus groups, I'm going to give a a kudos to my team on
156teaching and learning. We had Mr. Brian Maddox, the supervisor of science, as well as Mrs. Karen Ammon, our supervisor instruct of instructional technology who conducted um student focus groups on a really tight turnaround time working with our middle school and our high school principles. And really the big gist of it was looking at getting student input and student feedback around these three bullets. What CTE pathways do students wish were offered at their current school? What career affairs interest them the most? And what were their perspectives on the district's proposed CTE in innovation hub? Now, at the bottom of some of these slides, you'll see some anecdotal notes. And these are truly from the mouth of the babes. And if you're there to hear Miss Zammon um speak to the committee about, you know, the enlightened
157work that she did with the students, there was a lot of really good uh community uh conversation with the students. they went kind of off task a little bit when they were talking about their needs, their wants, their dreams um with the CTE uh pathway idea with the innovation center. Next slide. So this is our focus group demographic data. So you all have this information in front of you so you know who the participants were and our focus groups and this was the methodology. So we conducted it through Zoom. Each of them were one hour of course our moderators Mrs. Karen Ammon Mr. Brian Maddox and their focus areas were around CTE awareness, student interest, feedback on the proposed innovation center, equity, partnerships, and learning supports. And again, another anecdotal piece there uh for you
158to read from one of our AI high school students. So, these are some of our key findings and over the next couple of slides, you'll see some of the information that fell under these big buckets. So we focused on innovation center course and pathway interest professional college partner professional and college partnerships as well as learning environments and you'll see some of the themes that came out of the conversations with the students and again a student quote. So when we talked about course and pathway interests these were some of the themes that came out from our middle schoolers and our high schoolers. So the middle schoolers talked about how many of them only have four current pathways that match their student interests. Our high school students felt more access across schools would be valuable particularly for
159specific pathways like autotech, physical therapy, nursing, plant science, and animal science which Mrs. Wrightmire shared in one of the previous slides about where we offer those at which of our schools. The kids talked about their willingness to travel. They opened up about shuttle transportation, some of their concerns about missing school-based opportunities, and they also talked about exploration matters. So, the middle schoolers really thought it would be pretty great to have a CTE exploratory experience where they could also have some access to that innovation center and preview pathways before they decide on one. Second big bucket was professional and college partnerships from our middle schoolers. They shared work experience and valued skill building like things like time management. Our high school students more vocal, they emphasized mentorship, networking, job readiness. They talked about entre entrepreneurship courses
160and mentor supported student businesses. They saw those as as valuable. They wanted help with help with job searches and internships identified as a gap and an opportunity for our innovation center. And all of our students supported classroom visits from professionals, multiple speakers per field. That that's what they recommended and what they wanted. And then the last big bucket was learning environment. Of course, our students wanted and preferred a hands-on active learning over traditional instruction. High school students reported positive experiences in current CTE courses and work-based learning experiences. And then they had a lot of conversation highlighting the need for CTE programs to be more accessible with a focus on truly practical real world experiences that align to their learning styles. And they talked a lot about multilingual learners. And really again from the mouth of
161bays their concern and their value for bilingual support and they also recommended expanding it more into CTE classes. So these are some of the recommendations that came from our student uh student focus groups. So they talked about outreach. They wanted to see a CTE fair for middle school students. Exploration offering CTE trial periods or exploratory courses for middle school students. Instructional design. They like shorter, engaging, hands-on project formats. Mentorship was a highlight. Expanding that access to career mentors, of course, MLL supports. This came up a lot. They wanted uh to ensure that we would have bilingual pushin teachers and C, excuse me, CTE classrooms. And they wanted highinterest pathways. That was a pathway conversation that were not currently offered at all of our high schools. the pathways. They wanted highinterest programs that are currently only
162offered at individual schools like automotive, nursing, and career prep. They want to help with job searches, applications, as well as interviews. And now I'm going to turn it over to Mr. J. Bastinelli to talk more about the community survey that was conducted. Pause at this point and say we are about 80% of the way through. It's a lot of information. It was a lot of work. Would does any would anyone like to ask questions now or would we like to finish up and then ask questions? Question finish. I would like I know it's a lot of information but it's important information. Okay. All right. Good good evening. My name is Jay Bassinelli. Uh so the first slide that I would like to share is we had 1,128 participants uh complete the survey. So, you know,
163from the outside, you would think there's approximately 16,000 students in red clay. That's not a real high number. But if you look deeper, the last survey we sent similar to this uh was in regards to our strategic plan uh that Dr. Bond and her team worked very hard on. Only 500 people took that survey. So, more twice as many took this. So, I think that says a lot about the passion uh people have for this committee and this potential plan. So, if you look closely at the survey participant background information, uh you will see who exactly filled this out, uh the majority were staff members followed by parent guardians. And if you break it down even uh deeper in terms of the school, you're going to see the majority were instructional staff or teachers. Also
164looking a little deeper in terms of the survey participant background information. Uh just like we have at most our back to school nights in late September, elementary school always has the highest participation and that goes the same with this survey. The majority uh were elementary school parents or family members. In terms of feeder school attendance, it was most attendant uh feeder schools and then a strong percentage not attending their feeder school. Some are unsure and you can also see the background information. Uh the most was uh special education parents. In terms of participation uh background information uh the majority were white and the majority were female. And then also looking deeper in terms of what did they feel most strongly about? What do they think was most important? uh 46% said ensuring all red clay
165students have access to quality college and career ready education. And then once again, even breaking out breaking it down deeper, you could look exactly how the community members felt, how the parents felt, and how the staff members felt. And once again, the highest percentage was having access to quality college and career programming. All right, so I'll turn it back over to Mr. Puit. After some general questions in the survey, it did ask a specific question about the two specific changes uh the innovation center and the move moving of the John Dickinson NYP program. Um you see that uh there were 51% somewhat supported or strongly supported the idea and uh 34% strongly opposed or somewhat opposed the idea. We then looked at that broken down disagregated. Okay. And we looked by staff first. The district
166office 60% supported 23% opposed. Um elementary 60. Um secondary schools a little closer 43% uh to 40 actually 40 excuse me 45% to 43%. But it is important to note and to be expected that the two schools, the staffs at the two schools that were most directly impacted, their jobs will change, right? McCain High School and and Dickinson, at least some of Dickinson's teachers, uh, they actually flipped and and and drove that number down. And I think that's to be expected. Those types of changes can be very difficult for our employees. U you know, and so that that makes sense. U move to parent totals. Very similar. uh 50% supported, 31% opposed. However, again, the most participants, and the most uh and and a flipped result uh between at the McCain parents and the current
167McCain and current Dickinson parents, uh AI Middle School uh was in there, but only four parents took that survey and and and but three did oppose it. Uh that was the community member results. Right. We then looked at uh we then looked at uh please say how much you oppose or support adjusting middle school feeder patterns to allow students at Warner uh to attend a feeder pattern closer to their home. 70% somewhat support or strongly support and only 7% opposed. So that was overwhelming support. Look at that disagregated it was similar. So, and just again for for those in the earlier point that was made when we talk about middle school for Warner specifically, they're split. So, their their cohort of fifth graders either attend HB Deont, which is the furthest part distance away, or
168they attend Skyline Middle, which is the second fur, which is the second furthest. Then we asked them about virtual programming. 47% supported, 37% opposed. Um, look at that disagregated. It is important to note that the educators uh supported that far more than parents, but also important to note that we're not requiring anyone to to be involved in a virtual program. That would be by choice and didn't really impact uh the overall purpose of this committee. And the other danger in that is if you say virtual program that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people too. So some assume virtual school. Um so again I think to unpack that a little. why the committee left that on and not made that a you know didn't take that recommendation off. That's something
169that we can continue to look at especially postco in terms of learning options for students and that would be the work moving forward you know if it were uh to be approved by the by the uh board part of the survey we collected comments from each one of the survey participants generated I think over 400 comments um and questions digging through that data we leveraged some technology so uh we created an executive summary using some AI tools, chat, GPT, and a few other ones to uh kind of take that massive amount of text and turn it into some more understandable data that we could put on some slides. This represents some of the uh the main themes of those comments. Uh number one, there was general support for proximity based schooling that came up over
170and over and over again. People would like the school to be near their house. The uh concerns about equity and diversity. Um that seemed to be a driving force. Actually was the charge of the committee. So, I'm glad that people were asking questions about that. uh specific concerns related to McCain High School. Um that really I think crystallized uh some of the need to explain whatever decision we make thoroughly to the communities that it impacts regardless of what decision is ever made. There will be work to do to explain um whether it's this out of the box idea or whatever idea the board decides to move forward with. Next slide. Impact on feeder patterns and program continuity. That was something that came up specifically from staff calls for stakeholder engagement. Uh several staff members emphasized
171the importance of ongoing communication with stakeholders, finding as many ways as possible to make sure that we have um created opportunity for everybody's voice to be heard. And then finally, the the last category was just kind of miscellaneous concerns and suggested and those centered around transportation, staff assignments, building usage, many of the topics that we've covered throughout this presentation. Um overall, the staff respondents demonstrated a thoughtful and engaged perspective on attendance zone revisions. um and they recognize benefits and challenges and surfaced those through the comments. Next slide. Um I also did an analysis of these comments uh using um an AI formula that I developed along with a couple other people that uh looked at keywords and phrases in each one of the uh comments in the survey and described a negative, neutral, or positive
172attribution to those statements. Because when you're looking at this, it's easy to start to think, well, these are all negative comments or these are all positive comments. Really, the vast majority of the comments were questions that didn't have a negative or positive connotation. They just really didn't have all the information they wish they had. That made a lot of sense since we're in the process and not at the end of the process. So, that seemed right that we were proposing some things. An innovation center is not a thing that Delaware has done before. So, I would expect the majority of the people to have questions about what that looks like and how that works. And that's a uh basically a tag was put on each one of them and then we counted them up and
173it explained based upon the response uh where that fell. Next slide. All right. So the most common themes of these were student needs and program availability, student attendance and community impact, quality of education at the innovation center, theater patterns and school choice, middleear program and IB alignment. And these are the most common words that appeared in uh comments associated with those topics. Next slide. So we looked at data. We spent the entire June meeting looking at data the uh focus group student the student focus group data and the survey data that went out to the community. We analyzed that information. We left time at the end to get into small groups. And the bottom line the the the overriding question was did the data compel us to edit the recommendation. Okay. Got into small groups
174looked at those three questions came out. Each of the three groups gave a an update. Next slide. And I think there was overall sentiments from each of the groups that the overall survey participation was lower than the uh committee had hoped. Right. wallet for red clay. It's a it's a it's good survey results. It was more than double our uh you know the strategic plan survey but still only 1100 surveys for a rather large community and and also that some survey respondents did not understand the recommendation like a lot of the questions in the comments a lot of you know had to do with like what like what my kid is where are they going are they going to be there are they going to be here and so further explanation of that. Um, so
175then we allowed for Yep. Then we allowed for Then there were two motions to amend. Okay. The first motion was to provide the current recommendation to the board, but also recommend that the board not take action until October 2025 to allow for one better community understanding of the recommendation and two more engagement from the community and stakeholders. Uh, there were 14 people. We did operate on a quorum. So we needed 10 votes to move anything forward to the recommendation. There were six eight yes votes and six no votes. The motion did not pass. Uh then there was a second motion to amend uh which was to engage in a campaign with stakeholders to educate and gather feedback on the current recommendation and then re-engage the committee and make a recommendation to the board in the
176fall. Uh there were four yes votes, 10 no votes. That motion did not pass. Questions? I have a question. Um, and I didn't want to forget it. So, um, so, okay. So, I have a comment about the last slide about the two motions that did not pass, but I don't want to forget my first comment that I had. Um and and that was regarding the feedback and the survey results that 1100 number um that that you stated that you provided um from handover did in that number does that include any of our city schools or families or we do have that information disagregated by each school for a family. I don't I don't have that I can't pull that now. I can certainly get that for you. Okay. Um yeah, I mean I just would
177like to see be able to see that um just because I know that like Warner obviously is one of the city schools and there are a number of schools in in this plan that are going to be affected by this. And so I would just like to as the person with the city seat, I would like to um see what their feedback is on that as a as a city mom of a of a student that is in the Red Clay School District. And I agree that if we move forward, the recommendation says to look again at at the middle schools, particularly as it relates to one, I think you have to get feedback from that specific community because certainly it won't be enough. It's 12, 1100 surveys divided by right even if it's even
178it's evenly distributed, it's 28 programs, right? So, um, and then I guess my next comment would just be to say that I would be interested in with my fellow board members here to kind of further discuss motion number one regarding the opportunity to distribute the survey and additional time um, just to see if we could get feedback. And I don't know if there's an opportunity to do that. if I would have make a motion for that. Um, I'm open to discussing that further after everyone else asks their questions. I can weigh in on that. Um, I'm of the of the opinion that, you know, moving forward with this doesn't mean that we're now going to stop engaging with the community. We're always going to engage with the community. It's an ongoing process. Um, so the
179work here certainly isn't finished whatsoever. Really, um, you know, tonight's recommendation allows us to get started in that work. Um and then it really is incumbent on the board to make sure that as the governing body that we um you know make sure that you know we're receiving our monthly um updates but then in addition to that you know setting the direction to the district to you know to what we want to see. Um and that's certainly discussion that we can have at our upcoming workshop. Um but I there's definitely going to be a lot of communication that's going to need to be happening and a lot of engagement that's going to be happening. Um and it's, you know, our job to make sure that it does happen moving forward. Um but tonight's recommendation allows
180us to be able to know initiate the process. Okay. But unless we, you know, provide the go-ahhead to the district to be able to initiate that work, then we're really just putting ourselves at a standstill, right? So as a rebuttal, um Mr. Puit, if we do in fact approve this and move this forward, what is the next step? I think the next Go ahead. I I think the next step would to be come up with a a planning document. Okay. That you know what needs to be done between tomorrow or whenever the if whenever it was passed. Okay. And uh backmap from a timeline which really needs to be done. The board had talked about having this new program operational in August September of 27. to do that, the work really needs to be done
181by October of 26 of 26, right? Because we needed to to get the information out as to new programs to allow families to participate in school choice at these at these new programs. So, this is really that you know that that's really our deadline. So, and and what would that look like you whether it's engaging with uh rcea regarding uh you know teacher movement if you're moving English teachers and CTE teachers and that would all be part of a part of that process and I and I I think from November and the board setting forth and I just want to acknowledge the committee um and the committee members because the board gave us a charge to establish a committee and really look at again those three broad areas in terms of enrollment balance look at
182programming and being mindful of equity. And as we've heard through many public commenters um and and different things, we we're here for a reason because too often in our district, we looked at situations in isolation and never looked at the district comprehensively just in terms of how we look at the rec consolidated school district. And we've created options. We've created opportunities and forced ourselves into a corner where if we don't control the destiny and the vision of the district, something or someone else likely will. And so I I I'll just and I and I just want and this isn't the buy all endall in terms of the recommendation that the committee put forward, but I just want to acknowledge the work of the committee because when we look at balance or just taking the John
183Dickson school situation as an example, we colllocated a middle school program where now we currently actually have an underenrolled middle school and rather than look at it comprehensively across the district as a report we can look at it in isolation from one individual school perspective understanding that there is a domino effect that ultimately impacts a lot of our schools whether that's through magnet whether that's through choice so again I just think we're we're eventually going to have to address it through feeder pattern processes and in and alignment um because again our middle schools and secondary schools are splintered and that that really doesn't provide an opportunity to to have community across the district. Well, I don't want to and not to cut you off, Mr. H. I just have one last comment. So, I I
184don't want I'd be remiss if I didn't say that I appreciate all the work that the committee has done because I do appreciate it. And I know that the previous board, we voted to set this plan in motion. And I'm not saying that we don't continue on with the plan. What I am saying is that in my my role as an individual board member, my my first priority is my role as a parent. And so not just of my son in the district, but all of the children in the district. So I just want to make sure that in the timeline that we are still working to attempt to accomplish that we make the decisions properly and if we need to make adjustments that we can keep that in mind that we should make the
185adjustments and not make hasty decisions just because of the previous timeline that we put in place. When families select homes, they select their homes based on the schools and everything else that is provided in these communities. And so I just want to be be sure that we are making a proper decision. So that's my final comment. I like just I'm sorry. Oh, go ahead. I just want to say part of the charge is also to form another committee if we go ahead with this uh advisory committee. That was part of the charge. Correct. That was amended out of it. So there were the initial one had two committees running. one ran through November and then the other one well we would certainly need to align feeder patterns but with this recommendation new new new new
186attendance zones would be relative the idea would be to have an entire middle school and you'd have to just make sure that that there was equal enrollment as much as we could according to our our attendance zone middle schools so that work you're not parsing out neighborhoods or arguing you're not doing the kinds of things that often you do when you look at it you're just simply slotting in four middle schools into two high schools if this were adopted. So it's straight line feeders from our middle to our high schools which we currently don't have as he indicated. If you're going from Warner, you're going to two different and then those students are being splintered across three different high schools. So the eighth grade class at AI Middle actually still have three attendance zone high
187schools. Mr. Hson. Um, I I guess Jose's response to her question basically superimposes a requirement that we pass it to be allowed to get more information from the community because her question was Germaine was specific that she wanted to get more information like go get to the community and get more information feedback from the community and you're saying well this allows us to do that. Not necessarily. So, so let's just say that we don't if we say we want to postpone it, give ourselves 45 to 60 days to be able to get to the community, find out what they're what what they're saying because the only person I've heard that that are objective voices that weren't on the committee that were parents of kids that are in the schools do not agree with this. So,
188I'll let hold up hold. So, so, so my point is I don't know why that's being taken off the table, an opportunity to get to the community and get more information from them and what they feel about this plan. So, let me reiterate what I stated. What I'm stating is that passing this doesn't inhibit our ability to continue to work with the community. In fact, I think that this would help us continue to work with the community in forming what we want to see out of these plans. But passing this vote tonight does not inhibit us from continuing, which I know that we will continue to do as we have always done, making sure that we're engaging with all of our stakeholders. And it's incumbent to us as representatives of the community. Absolutely. To be
189able to do that work as well and bring that information from the conversations that we're having with parents and stakeholders and people that we represent to this table. So, a lot of that responsibility falls not just on the district and their outreach, but to us and our respective office. Well, I want to be clear. They're they're the folks that doesn't inhibit, right? Right. So, I I guess so. What does us passing it tonight do? It allows us to give the district a charge that we have appropriate amount of planning because there's a lot of work that's going to be happening over the next year. And in order for this to to be successful, we have to make sure that we're giving our operations side of it. So, right now it's caught up in governance. That's
190our barrier right now. But operations can't do their work and planning unless we give them the directive to do so. So the charge of the board that directive in the mission, let's just say we pass it and then the community says no, we don't like it. Then we then we can amend it. I mean there's there's nothing here that isn't amendable. There isn't. And and I can tell you Devon from other initiatives that this board has done, we're constantly evolving plans, but we can't get to that operational piece and that planning piece until we've released it from governance and have given the charge. But we can continue to make amendments and as the community vocalizes, you know, the the things that they want to see within the programming or the things that they want, you
191know, and I I can tell you I even have additional ideas on my own. I mean, you know, for for for one, I can give an example. I would love for the innovation center to expand their program. I think a lot of the list of program that we have for now is great but I think you know there are different bigger broader ideas but it's this is this starts with planting the seed and we can't expand services like I would love to see plumbing. I would love to see electrical you know programming. I would like to see HVAC, but unfortunately we're not at that point yet. And I think we definitely could expand and grow something really unique and really powerful. But until we release it from our governance perspective, operations will not be able
192to do their job and making sure that they can continue their work to plan for what is going to be an incredibly busy year. And to his Mr. Henson, it has to come before the board. Anywhere they're made, it does have to come before the board. So there there will be like um Mr. Matthews stated that there will be opportunities for us to flush this out at the workshop and us to continue to communicate communicate with um Dr. Green or Mr. Puit and his staff. And so we are voting to set this in motion or not, but there's also an opportunity for us to continue to flush the details out. And so th that's that was the point of me posing my questions, not to disrupt, but just to ensure that all voices are being
193heard. And I I want to make sure anyone hear me on the plan aren't binding yet. I mean, we have not approved a plan yet, but we haven't also allowed and given authority to Dr. Green and and the district to be able to move forward with the planning process. So, nothing here to that level of detail is going to bind us. There are things that are going to So, what does it say? Can I read what it what it Because I don't have a computer. No, no, no, you're fine. Well, while we're waiting, Dr. Nith has a question online. Thank you. Thank you, President Leonard. Uh, sorry. I'm sorry I can't be there. Um, so a couple things I just want to say kind of uh to piggyback on what uh Miss English has said.
194Um, I've been on the committee. I attended six of the seven meetings and I really appreciated all of the hard work. You can't hear me. Can you hear me now? Hello. Are you able to hear me? Yes. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. I'll try. Okay. Hopefully you don't hear that. Back back back back. So I was on the committee and I appreciated all the hard work but to uh Miss English's point uh I have said that we need to include on the if not the committee uh guests in the meeting of constituents and we did not do that and it has been repeated over and over and over again. So to the point that oh we can get more input later, we could have gotten the endpoint during. And so to that point, I do
195not believe that we did our due diligence to fully engage the the community that would be the most affected. And secondly, when Miss English said about when people buy their homes, that's a big big deal. And so yes, we want equity. Yes, we want access, but to what extent will we compromise the trust of the community to get there? And so I believe that we should we should not make haste because we might waste an opportunity to make it really good. That is the end of my comment. Any other comments? I call the question. There's no there's no motion on the board or on the floor. Oh, This was a presentation. We're not even under action items. I mean, I guess but there is no motion. Dr. Nith, you have another question. I'm sorry. delay.
196I was saying that there is no motion. This was a presentation. Dr. N Smith, I acknowledge the error. Thank you for pointing that out. Thank you, Mr. Puit. Okay. Uh now we go to action items. Uh the first one uh is to a motion to approve the recommendation to for the fiscal year tax rate. Oh, I'm sorry. No, I got it. So for action items, um I'll bring the motions before the board and for action item A is the FY26 tax rate and tax warrant as presented uh by Dr. Ammon. So, it is the recommendation that the Red Clay Board of Education approve the tax rate and tax warrant for FY26 as presented. So, moved to Jose Matthews. Second. Susan Sander. Okay. Any discussion? Miss Stevens, please call the vote. Miss English, yes. Mr. Henson,
197no. Mr. Matthews. Yes, Dr. N. Smith. I'm sorry, I could not hear with the motion. It's the approval for the tax rate, not the budget. Again, the board will approve the preliminary budget in August. This is the tax rate which is required and due to the county this week by law. Again, going back to Dr. Ammon's point, if they set the tax rate for a failed vote, this will have dramatic impacts on our community. So again, this is just to approve the tax rate and tax warrant as presented. Thank you. Yes, Miss Sander. Yes, Miss Tortois. Yes, Mr. Leonard. Yes. Six yes, one no. Motion passes. Action item B. It is a recommendation that the Red Clay Board of Education approve the board retreat and workshops workshop schedule, excuse me, for FY26. It was an
198information item last month, so hopefully you had a time to preview it. So move English. Second, Jose Matthews. Okay. Is there uh I just had one question. Uh the May dates were um May 5th for the planning meeting and then May 6th for the uh board meeting. I just want to um ensure that those dates are correct. Okay. What month was that? May 2026. So it's uh can we make a an amendment to that? Yep. But we need to find out if they're accurate, right? That could be easily amended. So, you want to make a recommendation to amend the schedule? Yes. I'd like to amend the uh planning meeting for the week before the Tuesday the before. Second, Jose Matthews. Thank you. Okay, it's been properly moved and second. Is there any discussion? That was
199an amendment. That was amendment. I all opposed. Motion carries. We got to go back to Okay. So, the original motion which was uh it is a recommendation that the board of education approved the retreat and workshop schedule for FY26 with the amendments for May 2026. Okay. Is it properly moved and seconded? Is there any discussion? Uh, Miss Stevens, please call the vote. Miss English, yes. Mr. Henson, what was that motion? It was It's just to approve their calendar for next year. Oh, yes. Yes. Mr. Matthews, yes. Dr. Nman, yes. Miss Sander, yes. Miss Toris, yes. Mr. Leonard, yes. Unanimous. Motion carries. Action item C. It is the recommendation that the Ricklay Board of Education approve salary scales for FY26 as submitted. So moved. Jose Matthews. Second. Susan Sander. It is properly moved and seconded. Is
200there any discussion? Miss Stevens, please call the vote. Miss English. Yes. This is the Mr. Hansen. Yes. Mr. Matthews. Yes. Dr. N. Smith. Yes. Miss Sander, Miss Tortoise, yes. Mr. Leonard, yes. Unanimous. Motion carries. Action item D. It is the recommendation that the Red Clay Board of Education approve a donation in the amount of $2,000 worth of water bottles from Brewmate Incorporated to HP Depart Middle School for students who rode the coach bus on May 23rd, 2025. And I just, you know, for the general public, um, I I want to acknowledge that HB Dupant was on their way home from a end of the year, uh, trip from Gulpy Gulch and the coach bus that they were um, driving on actually caught fire. Um and through the process, attentiveness of the staff, of the students,
201um involved, everyone was safe, but there was property damage um and Route One actually was shut down um as a result. But I want to give a shout out to Miss King in particular, u one of our educators over at HB Deupant who literally um you know, she's a superhero. I know I saw her earlier. She was over at the YMCA. um with the Wahoos swimming program, but you know, her her diligence and the other chaperoons and the staff um definitely put students first and to our students. Um you know, we do drills for a reason and they demonstrated that in action and inverted what could have been a casualty. And so we want to thank Brewmate for their generosity and really acknowledging and and helping replace some of the the damaged goods that was
202abroad of that that unfortunate situation. So that's the recommendation for you to approve the $2,000 worth of water bottles from Brewmate to HBO Middle School for students who rode the coach bus on May 23rd. So moved. Jose Matthews second. English. It has been properly moved and seconded. Any discussion? Thank you. Yes. Thank you very much. Miss Stevens, please call the vote. Miss English. Yes. Mr. Henson, yes. Mr. Matthews, yes. Dr. Smith. Yes. Miss Sander, yes. Miss Tortois, yes. Mr. Leonard, yes. Unanimous. Motion carries. All right. Action item E. And thank you for your patience. Um because this is the recommendation that the Red Clay Board of Education approve Dr. Alex uh Ellison as the assistant principal at the Meadowwood program effective July 29th, 2025. The salary is commiserate with the approved administrative salary schedule. So
203moved. Jose Matthews second. Susan Sander. It's been properly moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Congrat. Congratulations. Miss Stevens, please call the vote. Miss English, yes. Mr. Henson, yes. Mr. Matthews, yes. Dr. Nmith, yes. Miss Sander, yes. Miss Toris, yes. And Mr. Leonard, yes. Unanimous. Motion carries. Welcome aboard, Dr. Ellison, and and to Principal Maddox and the Melewood team. You know, thank you for your diligence through this process. Um, and we're looking forward to to welcoming you into the Red Clay family and doing great work that's continuing within our Meetwood program. And so action item F, it's the recommendation that the Red Clay Board of Education approve the recommendation secondary attendance zone enrollment and programming committee as submitted. So moved Jose Matthews second Susan Sander. It has been properly moved and seconded. Is there any
204discussion? I have a question to say that is it Dr. N Smith? Yes. Uh okay. Dr. Nith. Yes. So the the recommendation there it was two recommendations that weren't passed by the committee. So what is the recommendation? So I think based on the committee there was the unanimous vote back in May um that the committee decided the June meeting my understanding from the committee was they voted not to make any amendments to those motions. So it's the original recommendation that came before the committee and the last meeting again my understanding based on the committee was that they voted to not make any amendments to those original unanimously voted recommendations and was that on May 1st because I don't know that we had enough people there to be able to make that recommendation properly. I don't
205know if that's correct or not. And I believe that was the May 21st meeting if I'm not mistaken, Dr. N. Okay. Thank you. We had voted item by item to come up with a recommendation on May 21st. That is the recommendation that went out to the community. It was also the recommendation that was used with the uh focus group of students. We then took that information, looked at that information at the June meeting. We then an opportunity to amend the recommendation. We did not get an amendment, you know, we did not get 10 votes to amend the recommendation. And so that's where we stood at the end of the process. Any other comments? Is she still I'm good. Thank you. Did that clarify what she was? That's what I'm trying to figure out. Yes. Yes.
206Yes. Shall we go for a vote? Okay. Um, Miss Stevens, please call a vote. Miss English, yes. Mr. Henson, no. Mr. Matthews. Yes. Dr. Nith, no. Miss Sander, yes. Miss Toris, yes. Mr. Leonard, yes. Five. Yes. Two. No. Motion passes. Okay. Bear with me here. Okay. Now we have uh action consent. Um does anything need to be removed from con uh consent items before we move? Then is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. English. Do we have a second? Second. Susan Sander. It's been properly moved and seconded to approve the uh consent agenda. Any questions? M. Stevens, please call the vote. Miss English, yes. Mr. Henson, yes. Mr. Matthews, yes. Dr. N. Yes. Miss Sander, yes. Miss Toris, yes. Mr. Leonard, yes. Unanimous. Motion carries. Okay. Uh, number nine is the
207school board committee reports. The first committee is community finance review committee from 624. Do we have a report? There's nothing loaded in board docs. And I would just say given Dr. Ammon's thorough report on both the tax rate tax warrant as well as the information around the preliminary budget, all was approved from CFRC. So there's no official report in there. Okay. Thank you. and a WLC special meeting. Um yes. Uh so as Dr. Green stated earlier in his report um so my report for WLC is very very brief. We had a special meeting yesterday where we discussed a recommendation um from the Christina School District um to approve um their recommendation for the principal that they selected yes at last night's meeting um for Pritchette Academy. Um and if I am not and if I
208am not mistaken um they also announced uh a permanent principal for buyer um this morning as well. And that pretty much concludes my report. The only thing is is that I realized that I put a September date for the next meeting on my report but it's actually August 6th um which is on Dr. Green's um report in Bordox. And that concludes my report. Okay. Thank you very much. Sure. All right. Next is information items. You can see them there. They're also uh you see them online in board docs, good faith applications, choice terminations, bids, bond anticipation note, and preliminary budget and so forth. Uh it and before we adjourn, if I may, uh President Leonard, I just wanted to welcome um the new president of CSW, Daniel Bartnick. Um, if you could please stand. Congratulations
209on your new appointment. We really are so pleased. So, welcome to the Red Clay community and thank you for being here tonight. Really means a lot. The fact that you're here and present tonight. So, thank you. Thank you, President Bman. See you in the morning. All right. Well, that was a lot of information tonight. My brain hurts from all the information and all the numbers and so uh I' I'd like to have a motion to adjourn this meeting. So moved Jose Matthews second English. All in favor? I. All opposed. Thank you and good night. Have a good night.