001you're ready at this time i'll call the june 8 2021 regular meeting of the alexander county board of education to order and as typical i would like for us to please open with a moment of silence thank you i'd like to recognize mr matt cooksey for our pledge of allegiance please stand attention salute pledge 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 thank you mr cook board members you've had the opportunity to review the agenda do i have a motion to approve so move second okay i have a motion in a second any discussion everyone in favor of proving the agenda please say aye aye anyone opposed please say no motion carries
002thank you uh i'd like to recognize dr jennifer heffner superintendent for our honors and recognitions thank you chairman shrum and board members this is always a highlight as far as our monthly meeting and tonight it's extra special because we have a lot of folks in the audience they have been here celebrating their retirements and so that's super sweet for them i'm going to start though with the student recognition and i would ask that board member loudermilk if you would help me please for the second year that i can remember we have had a regional winner for the spelling bee and i would ask that brianna jemison come forward at this time please as she's walking up i want to tell you a little bit about her brianna advanced to the regional spelling bee competition at
003the carolina panthers stadium on sunday march 21st the competition went 20 rounds with brianna jemison winning the regional event by correctly spelling the word interrelate brianna will compete with 209 spellers from across the united states in the national spelling bee beginning june 12th spellers will compete virtually in the first three rounds of competition the preliminaries quarterfinals and semi-finals the top 10 to 12 spellers will compete in person at the finals on july 8th at espn wide world of sports complex at walt disney world resort brianna we want to say congratulations to you but also best wishes as you compete at the national level and girl bring it home for alexander county way to go [Applause] uh sure can use it good job and if they do things the way that they have done that in
004years past uh with the finals that that will actually be televised so when you're competing in the finals we will be cheering for you all the way from alexander county all right next i would ask the chair of the board of commissioners larry yoder to come up he has a presentation to the board of education thank you oh no i used to have this many people to talk in front of okay so i'm lost for work but the reason i'm here tonight i would like to take this opportunity to let the folks know that we had a 24-hour race here in alexander county and on behalf of mr rick french our county manager and those folks who were involved in the 24 hour race it was something to behold something to really see that was
005amazing to me there were folks out there that started running they were from canada and all different parts of the united states we had four people from alexandria county running it was amazing to watch these folks i had never seen people compete like that in competition because they were there to qualify for the national championship and they ran some of the four strides i'm like i cannot believe you folks are running like that only way i'll ever run by that if there's a prayer after me and i'm gone but mr french organized this thing he worked with our superintendent to make sure that we had the field at the high school the track and it worked out real well people were separated there was no problem with worrying about coping because people were not all
006over themselves and up close and talking and it worked out real well so on behalf of mr french our county manager and alexander county board of commissioners i'd like to say thank you to the school board i'd like to thank the superintendent because she worked really well with mr french to make this happen and it was a great event for alexander campbell and just so you'll know it's coming back again we'll have a larger event the next time and we just want to say thank you and mr france put a lot of his personal money in it and did a lot of things to bring this to this county and we appreciate what he's done for this county as far as the running is concerned and at this time uh madam superintendent this is alexander
007kennedy 24-hour run may 1st and 2nd of 2021 in appreciation to alexander county schools for the use of the achs track for our meeting thank you for your continued support to our county alexander trump's high school track club we really appreciate it and it was something that was beneficial to our county and to our citizens and it really made our uh county o'clock county commission our county manager proud that he was able to win this year because if it hadn't been here it probably would not have been held because some of the places wouldn't allow us to happen in different states so i just want to say thank you on behalf of all of us thank you very much thank you ladies thank you this evening we're able to honor those who have served the
008students and families in alexander county schools with their time and talents in their career as administrators support staff and teachers as part of a school system you learn that every employee contributes to the education of our students it is an honor to recognize these individuals who have been part of our school system family unfortunately due to covet restrictions last june we were unable to coordinate a reception for our 2019-2020 retirees it was not for lack of trying we searched venues and options for a drive-in ceremony and we looked at options for a drive-by reception we even looked at outdoor facilities we looked at later dates and better community metrics but nothing worked out last spring so this evening at the reception we hope our experienced retirees were able to celebrate alongside our new retirees and
009share their year of retirement wisdom i also heard some sharing things that these folks will have to look forward to so it was a lot of good conversation we will recognize 29 individuals for their service to alexander county schools ending in the school year 2019 2020 as we call your name please come up on stage it's going to be to my right so this is where you will come on stage to get your plaque we're going to take an individual photo of each person that we recognize tonight and i would ask that after you have been up on the stage that you go to the back of the auditorium and sit on these back rows because we're going to do a group picture as well we were going to do it outside but guess where
010we're going to do it now we'll be doing it on the steps outside of the cafeteria because i do not think that the weather's cooperating i'm going to call the school name and if you will just come up line up and come up to the area behind me then we'll recognize each group by school we're going to start with alexander central high school followed by the student success center bethlehem elementary east alexander middle school ellendale elementary midnight elementary stony point elementary sugarloaf elementary taylorsville elementary west alexander middle wittenberg elementary and then the transportation department and again this first group will be the 2019-2020 retirees so if you will come on up line up in that order and we'll get started student success center i don't think she i don't think she's here okay so then
011bethlehem jennifer east ellendale head night stony point sugarloaf taylorsville west wittenberg and transportation mr odom would you come up and help with the first awards and remember we'll do an individual picture up here and then if you'll wait in the back we'll do a group picture out on the steps okay for alexander central high school the first recognition goes to daryl adkins business teacher 1996 through 2020. listen to that rumble coach it's saying good for you another person from alexander central scotty miller cte business teacher 2016-2020 and i did not see him at the reception student success center annette wiley picard teacher 2018 to 2020 and i did not see her either all right mr bowman will you rotate out and help me with my next ones all of these are from bethlehem elementary school
012we'll start with jane bollock nutrition assistant from 1994 to 1996 and then again from 1999 to 2020. [Applause] jennifer connor nutrition assistant 1998 to 2002 and then again from 2004-2020 deborah crowder permanent substitute 2001 to 2009 and then 2009-2020 debbie jolly teacher assistant 1999 to 2009 and then 2009-2019 from east alexander middle school sharon howell nutrition assistant 2001-2002 and then 2002-2019 sammy penick's custodian 2000 to 2019. and janice tester permanent substitute 1989 to 1992 2003 to 2004 and 2007 to thousand twenty [Applause] thank you raymie robinson will you come help with the next group the next group is from ellendale elementary school cary harrington teacher 2002-2015 and then again from 2019-2020 sheila pennell nutrition assistant 1993-2020 [Applause] amy sype music teacher 1992-2020 just a little side note uh miss sipe and i graduated from high
013school together and i'm not sure she was really old enough to retire she was okay okay all right bridget ryan will you help with the next group please from stony point elementary school oh i messed up good night okay from head night head night sorry i skipped to school my fault and susan's here from head night elementary school susan gwaltney teacher assistant 1989-2020 [Applause] okay and then go susan lackey nutrition assistant 2010-2020 [Applause] now we'll go to stony point sharon alexander teacher 2000 to 2020. marilyn angle teacher 2004-2020 okay it was a good day's work when i hired marilyn angle that was just a little side note maryland angela leo custodian 1988 to 1989 and then 1999 to 2019. and then cindy rector ec teacher assistant 1997 to 1998 and 2001 to 2020 now we'll
014transition to sugarloaf karen loudermilk teacher assistant 2000 to 2016 and then from 2019 to 2020. tracy sigmund teacher assistant [Applause] 1996-2019 tammy watts teacher 1990 to 2001 and then 2002-2020 [Applause] she's not old enough to retire either because she is also a member of the class of 1986. let's see board member cooksey would you come up and help me with the next recognitions from taylorsville elementary school william miller better known better known excuse me as bill miller pe teacher 1988-2019 susan watts teacher assistant 1995-2020 [Applause] from west alexander middle school arne cogswell social studies teacher 2004-2019 kathy rector ec teacher assistant 1999 to 2020 and we did have two retirements from the transportation department and they are not here this evening conrad millsaps from transportation 1994 to 2003 and then from 2004 to 2020 [Applause]
015and d watts transportation assistant [Applause] 1999-2019 susan winkler okay all right all right that is the 2019 2020 retirees another round of applause [Applause] moving along we're going to recognize 27 retirees for their service to alexander county schools ending the year 2020 to 2021 and we if you would please line up the same way that the last group has done starting with the high school and will recognize by by the different sites board member loudermilk would you help me get started ac student success center bethlehem and then east okay starting with alexander central high school johnny gales science teacher 2016-2020 [Applause] susan gant cte director 1991-2021 kim howell teacher 1997 to 2001 and 2014 to 2021. [Applause] dennis jones ec teacher 1989 to 1992 and 2003-2020 [Applause] gary stafford band director 1979-2003 and then 2012-2020
016and he was an awesome band teacher he was actually my high school band teacher student success center dr lisa harrington coordinator 1994 to 2009 and 2014-2020 [Applause] ann herman teacher 1999-2020 james mays teacher 2017-2021 [Applause] mr bowman from bethlehem elementary school teresa parsons before an after-school care site coordinator 1994 to 1996 and then from 1996 to 2021 [Applause] jennifer patterson teacher 1992-2021 so debbie tigg teacher assistant 1993-1996 and 1996-2020 east alexander middle school caroline beber secretary 1999-2021 linda chapman educational interpreter 2009-2021 [Applause] karen millsaps custodian 1991-2020 [Applause] teresa riddle teacher 1998-2021 [Applause] ellendale elementary school jennifer mull teacher 1979-2014 and 2017-2021 [Applause] mrs ryan will you help me again hiddenite elementary school deborah beckham teacher assistant 1996 to 2000 and then 2000-2021 dolores fox teacher 2017-2021 [Applause] tammy marlow teacher 2006-2021 stony point elementary school
017chris hefner teacher 1993-2021 tracy van's story teacher 1989-2021 [Applause] sugarloaf elementary school carrie cash principal 1989-2021 [Applause] regina shook nutrition assistant [Applause] 1993-2021 mr odom will you come back up taylorsville elementary school melanie brown receptionist [Applause] 2007-2021 west alexander middle school trina coffee nutrition assistant 2001-2003 and then 2018 2 maintenance department larry bumgarner plumber 1986-1990 and 2001-2020 how about you get over there and the central office tracy russell power school coordinator and hr assistant 1992. to 1993 and 1994 to 2020 [Applause] and if you would give one more round of applause to the recent retirees from 2020 2021 [Applause] thank you all so much [Applause] thank you dr hefner and at this time we've come to the public comment portion as required by north carolina general statute 115c-51 and we have had a few to
018sign up for public comments so i'll read the requirements for public comment please just one time and i do ask that you please abide by these each person signed up to speak will have three minutes to make his or her remarks each person signed up to speak will only be entitled to the time allotted to them and time may not be relinquished to another speaker only one spokesperson will be allowed to speak for a group of individuals wishing to address the board on the same issue speakers will be acknowledged by the board chairman in the order in which their names appear on the sign up sheet speakers will address the board from the front of the room and begin their remarks by stating their names comments that are deemed obscene profane or personal attacks on
019a board member or school employee will be calls for the ending of a particular speaker's time as determined by the board chairperson persistence in in such remarks by an individual also shall terminate that person's privilege to address the board the public comment to the board period is not intended to require the board to answer answer impromptu questions speakers will address all comments to the board as a whole and not one individual member of the board discussion between speakers and members of the audience will not be allowed speakers will refrain from discussion of any of the following items items which are considered closed session matters and including but not limited to the attorney-client privilege anticipated or pending litigation property acquisition or liquidations or complaints about specific employees and students in open session this is in accordance
020with general statute 115 c-321 and the open meetings law which protects students and employees records speakers will be courteous in their language and in presentation thank you and first we have mitch king with alexander county citizens for faith and family values and his topic is he's speaking against the introduction of critical race theory in alexander county schools and one thing while mr king comes to comes forward i would i asked dr curry to bring us the latest update as a report for the curriculum for um for our social studies standards and the curriculum development process so if you would since you you know have a strong interest in this if you would please stay after the public comments also to hear the updated report thank you okay my name is mitch king and i am
021representing the alexander county citizens for faith and van family values our aim is twofold to inform and then to request action first we want to inform school board members of the dangers of critical race theory crt is a worldview that is racist subversive and divisive it is racist in that it identifies students based on skin color it is divisive in that it assigns students into conflicting categories of oppressed and the oppressor regardless of individual actions if this way of indoctrination is introduced to our students the results will be even greater division than already exist secondly we are urging this board to take action to ban crt from being introduced into alexander county schools we are presenting the board with a petition that outlines the reasons why we consider this to be harmful to our students
022at present the petition has 750 signatures of concerned citizens we're therefore petitioning the board to add this as an agenda item to a future meeting where action can be taken i want to say we know it's mandated by the state but i want to point out that sanctuary cities do exist in the u.s these are cities that have determined to act in defiance of the federal government mainly in areas that deal with immigration my point here is not to get into the right or wrong of that my point is to say that a small entity a local entity can act in opposition to a larger or more powerful entity we are therefore asking this board to become a sanctuary school district for the well-being of our students i also want to point out that introducing
023crt into the curriculum would be against in my opinion existing board policy policy code 1710-4020-7230 with the title discrimination and harassment prohibited by federal law states in part the board prohibits discrimination on the basis of race sex color national origin religion disability and some other things now i baby may be missing something but a world view that separates individuals based on skin color and then identifies those individuals as oppressors regardless of their individual actions seems to go against the non-discrimination policy that is already in place given these reasons and you'll see more in the petition the afc ffv coalition respectfully requests that this board act banned crt from becoming part of the curriculum in alexander county thank you mr king next we have rusty mckee uh and he is also now i'm are you not
024with the same group in other words i didn't think so going by your comments but this is also opposition to the implement implementation of the critical race syrian school curriculum thank you my name is rusty mckee and i live near teak town boulevard just east of highway 127 with my wife sharon and first i appreciate you serving on the alexander county board of education and i recognize that it's a heavy responsibility you're managing competing needs with scarce resources and last time i checked your compensation is largely knowing that you're making a difference for good i want to speak briefly to warn against incorporating critical race theory into our public school curriculum critical race theory divides us with no plan of reconciliation it pits one people group against another with no hope of remedy in our
025time in the united states light-skinned persons are labeled oppressors enemies of dark-skinned persons who are labeled oppressed by critical race theory furthermore this marxist inspired ideology declares that the oppressor group will always be oppressors and that the oppressed group will always be oppressed and that persists regardless of character service social status our financial status the offense is permanent in its divisiveness there is no plan for reconciliation offered you can grovel but you cannot escape the label imposed upon you thus we become divided without remedy traditionally we americans claim that god has given us certain unalienable rights which we presently enjoy a marxist government assumes control of such rights i believe that critical race theory is an evil strategy to divide weaken and subvert our constitutional republic for the purpose of replacing it with a centralized
026top-down government that abolishes our constitutional representative government i urge each of you to resist the imposition of critical race theory wherever it raises its ugly head but as gatekeepers of our children's education hold back this harmful teaching that can twist children's minds to hate one another thank you for hearing my comments thank you mr key [Applause] next we have anna gray and she's speaking of personal experiences hi my name is anna gray the resolution presented the notion that if we teach our children under the premises of critical race theory then we will and i quote only inflame and worsen the division that already exists although this is not a laughing matter i find the statement comical to a certain extent see the statement acknowledges that there is a racial divide while advocating for our education
027system to bury it there is no way to mend the existing division without education and acknowledgement white privilege is real racism is real oppression is real these evils exist in this world that we live in and exist in our american society topics like these need to be addressed in our schools i went to head start hennai elementary school east alexander middle school and i am currently attending alexander central high school as a rising junior in my experience i find that when my teacher addresses racism i'm much more comfortable in their classroom i feel as if i am seen and heard i feel as if i am respected by just the simple act of acknowledging that my reality is different because i am a minority if you are worried about the effect that it will have
028on our children to teach the history of of america through a prospective perspective of the oppressed a perspective that is valid and real then maybe your worry should be less about the curriculum and more about your own morality we're not trying to blame individual white people for oppression because it is much bigger than that it runs deeper and longer than one could imagine you are only at fault if you refuse to actively fight against it you are only at fault if you refuse to teach your children love respect and equity you're only at fault when you look us in our eyes and tell us that our perspective history struggles pain and lives does not matter as much as your comfort if you worry about the uncomfortable conversations that will have to be had imagine how
029we feel as minorities imagine the talks that we have to have with our children i have little sisters and i have to educate them every opportunity i get because of stuff they face in school racism name calling we have to have uncomfortable conversations with our kids to ensure that the mistakes of our past are not repeated education is important especially when it has to deal with topics such as these where lives and futures are concerned thank you thank you [Applause] next we have hunter jamison and he wants to speak of white perspective and experiences throughout high school involving crt education and the lens through which systematic oppression is taught in schools my name is hunter jamison and i am a rising senior at alexander county high school i am part of the ap capstone program
030and have gone through many of the social studies programs that ac had or the ac has and i have been a part of the classes which seem to be the inevitable subject of criticism from those opposing the new social studies curriculum first and foremost i would like to acknowledge that as a non-minority student i am not the best candidate to be commenting on critical race theory however being a white student involved with discussion involved with these discussions throughout my schooling career i feel as though i can attest for the need for critical race theory teachings and critical race theory like programs to be implemented at our schools as i don't have a lot of time i'm not going to develop any structured argument rather i would like to share a few things that i have
031noticed both throughout my schooling career and in preparation for this comment there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about what critical race theory actually is the notion is that it's teaching students differently than they have been taught in the past however it's more of a lens in which history is taught through we're not changing what is actually being taught to students we're rather acknowledging a different perspective of what is being taught in preparing for this short address i was amazed at how unprepared i was the amount of questions and research that i had to do to make me feel confident discussing this topic in front of all of you which is so foreign to many people especially in our area astounded me i think this demonstrates not only the lack of education about systematic
032racism that i ever see i have received but also the lack of education about racial racial issues that has been given to me and my peers at alexander central high school while i realized that the topic of critical race theory in schools could be perceived as an avenue for liberal officials to educate children in ways that would make them more likely to agree with the left on social justice matters this is not the case this view is based solely on the fact that critical race theory and critical race theory teachings often offend those who disagree with them they create feelings which are uncomfortable however these feelings of uncomfort are needed the temporary moments of discomfort which i felt as a white student have or i've had to face have not been a consequence of student
033liberalization they have not made me feel bad about the color of my skin and they have not made me hate america or disagree with my christian values in any way however they have made me more socially aware and more able to comment on racial issues without being ignorant as to the as to the challenges that minorities suffer through critical race theory is not going to change the way that we teach history in our schools rather it is going to acknowledge the fact that the way that we have been teaching history previously has not included the views of many important minority citizens thank you thank you mr johnson okay that's all i have signed up um i don't think then he came in any later so that ends our public comment portion board members any comments
034[Applause] okay all right moving along let's see here uh board members you've had the opportunity to review the consent agenda do i have a motion to approve move to approve and a second second okay second motion in a second any discussion um all those in favor of approving the consent agenda please say aye aye any opposed please say no motion carries all right now i'd like to recognize dr betsy curry the associate superintendent of curriculum and instruction for an overview of the north carolina social studies standards and curriculum development process good evening chairman trump dr hefner members of the board and the community thank you all for joining us i only wish now that i had done this presentation maybe a month or so ago um i can see how this has just stirred the
035passions of folks on on both sides of the critical race theory debate and i wanted to acknowledge that i agree with hunter in my research all i found quite often was extreme right perspectives or extreme left perspectives and i think that there is some middle ground and i would like to talk to you about how we actually develop curriculum in alexander county schools because that is a locally controlled initiative so if we can go ahead and go to the next slide please so tonight i'm going to talk to you about the difference between standards and curriculum and how they are developed and i also wanted to let you know that i have exerted some parts of policy and documents from dpi but i have fully linked those policies so that anybody that wanted to could
036see the full documents there so this is policy code 3100 and you can see in the blue font it is linked the board further recognizes that while educators must be responsible for developing the curriculum parents other governmental agencies businesses and members of the public have valuable insights into the type of curriculum needed the committee may also seek input from parents the community and experts in order to make fully informed decisions the superintendent shall direct the committee to review periodically the curriculum content used in courses addressing the founding principles of our nation next slide please so and i think the important distinction that the general public does not understand and oftentimes um even people in education don't understand is that there's there's a set of standards that are developed or given to us to teach but
037how we teach those standards and what we use to teach those standards is the curriculum and so when we develop our curriculum we have say in what those materials are so with these standards as a foundation the local school leaders make decisions about the comprehensive curriculum that they choose to deliver to students so that they can reach the content standards for every grade and subject and it's local educators who determine which curriculum materials they will use to deliver instruction to reach the standards next slide please for example there are a couple of quotes here that i felt were really telling and would be helpful in developing an understanding as well as well-developed as they may be standards are not the curriculum it is the job of the teachers and the curricular teams to use the
038standards as the basis for designing the specific pathway for teaching and learning and here are a couple analogies if you've ever used google maps you know that google gives you a different route to get to your destination the destination is the standard and the route is the curriculum every field in the national football league gets the same length and width no matter the location of the game the field is exactly the same so are the rules of the game but the playbook for each team is significantly different the field and the rules are the standards while the vastly different playbooks make up the curriculum so i mentioned that to be specific in that when they talk about the analogy of the field what we're really talking about is different communities have the opportunity to develop
039a curriculum that is best suited to their community and that's the playbook for how to get here and i've met with various people in the school district to start looking at our standards and to start talking about how we might develop curriculum being sensitive to the needs of all community stakeholders this is the process that we use for developing curriculum typically we will unpack the standards and what that means is we will look at the standards and we will look at what it is that children should know and be able to do as a result of those standards and then we develop pacing guides and we plan by backwards design that means what outcomes do we want to attain and how will we get there we develop learning focused lesson plans and there's a vetting
040process for that so our learning focused lesson plans link criteria and i'll show you that in just a little bit and link the materials and resources that we have in the case of the social studies standards instructional coaches and department leads have been asked to review the standards and highlight any areas that could prove to be controversial in my meeting with the high school folks where we really focused most of our work those folks were really intuitive about what might be found to be controversial and what was not and they understand that their role they're not perfect i'm not perfect i don't think any of us in here are but they understand their role is to provide resources and primary source documents so who develops the curriculum the teachers who are direct directly involved in
041teaching of the content instructional coaches and other learning focused trainers who are equipped to vet lessons and materials and administrators at the school and district level review and occasionally are involved in the actual development of the lessons the reason i say this is again because our our teachers that i've met with are members of this community and they represent all factions of this community and so they've been having some pretty strong conversations about what materials and resources to use and looking at the changes in the standards i'm not sure how many of you are aware but the changes have undergone numerous revisions where right now i think it's in stage number five so some of the controversial language in there has been taken out and there are links through this where you can go in
042and you can actually see but i want to tell you what you can expect to see from our social studies curriculum so would you go ahead in the booth back there and click on current access you can see that each one of these folders has all of the curriculum and the resources that we will be using for the up and coming year the problem with the social studies standards is because they have been so controversial that a lot of the documents that we would need to do the planning are not readily available like the crosswalks and the things like that but we have gone ahead if you'll click on acs high school and we have already the acs curriculum it doesn't look like that's a live link so the pacing guides are in there for
043each of our social studies courses where you can see an overview of how long people will teach certain content areas and that's an individual choice so a standard may be presented in the left hand column and it may take 10 days to cover that standard let's go back to lesson plans if you don't mind and let's go to acs elementary let's look at we'll just start with kindergarten as a as an example uh okay let's look on the click on the ela pacing guide on the bottom left hand corner right there yeah for anybody who wants to these documents are available and you can see that in quarter one week four this is the lesson that will be used with kindergarten students there's a live link next to week four and it pulls up the
044actual lesson plan if you'll click on that document and there are live links to all of the resources that are used so anybody who wants to when these lessons are available can go in and preview the social studies curriculum and can see what it looks like what resources are being used this helps teachers but this also gives parents a good understanding of they're so inclined or community members to see what is actually being taught in the classroom on a given day these lessons are used in all of our kindergarten classrooms during week four now they might be off a day or two depending on what might be going on at the school but it's a very transparent process so the high school curriculum right now all we have in there are pacing guides because they
045have not finalized documents for the state of north carolina which i'll talk about a little bit more in a timeline when folks can expect to see that if you go back to the presentation please okay so if you can if you can just stop right here oops okay so when you're talking about the curriculum and the materials right now the pacing guides could be available but we're waiting on documents from the state of north carolina we recognize that we have to start teaching something in august and so just as soon as those documents are there the team the social studies teams know that they have to have the first nine weeks of lesson plans in these documents for public preview by the last teacher workday so that means when these documents become live they will
046be developing curriculum the interesting thing is when we looked at the crosswalk document which compares the previous curriculum to the new proposed standards there is very very little difference and i've put a resource up there so you can actually look at how the wording has changed and it really has not been much different okay next slide please teaching and politics i think this is an important slide because i think there's a there's a fear that teachers will try to indoctrinate children and i think that fear goes on on both sides we recognize that as individuals we bring our own biases and beliefs to the table whether or not they be more conservative or more liberal but the conversation with the teachers has been and there are teachers really very personally on both sides of this
047argument but the conversation has been there's no room for us to show our bias in the classroom and so we use primary source documents to teach the curriculum and a primary source document is a first-hand document like the constitution or actual letters from folks who live during the time period they're studying and just talking about their perspectives but it is an actual primary source document which we have a lot of access to so thank goodness for the internet in in this case so when we're talking about teaching and policy or politics there are two policies that really address this policy 5210 distribution and display of non-school materials this provision does not prohibit a teacher from using political literature or campaign material for instructional purposes however any teacher using this materials for instructional purposes shall not
048use his or her position to promote a particular candidate party or in this case a position on a specific issue the teacher shall attempt to use the variety of materials that represent a balanced and diverse viewpoint of the political spectrum and final there policy code 7720 this policy should not be construed as prohibiting the impartial study and discussion of political and other controversial issues in the classroom setting next slide please so attached to this slide here which you have access to are the current um documents that we have as far as our curriculum the standards that are given to us the curriculum that we're working on and the pacing that we've developed for example on number one if you look at founding principles of the united states of america those are the actual standards and
049if you go down to the pacing if you'll click on a underneath that hopefully we have access to this no we do not i will make sure that's live and public access but you can see the pacing and the materials that they are using and i think it's because whoever might be have uploaded this does not have access to the same resources that i do oh there we go okay so this is a document or a copy of a pacing guide you can see the number of days what the learning goals were and what are the key documents and primary sources so that's a patriots letter to his loyalist father letter to henry knox so any person can go on and review the materials that we use in the curriculum so when we're talking about
050primary source documents i just want to reiterate what those are in the study of history as an academic discipline a primary source is an artifact document diary manuscript autobiography recording or any other source of information that was created at the time period under study it serves as an original source of information about the topic okay next slide please on that last slide you don't have to go back but that is a list of the social studies department and the social studies leads and the social studies teachers that are going to actually be teaching the content here okay next slide so we have another policy that really protects parents to to assure that their point of view is heard and if they object certain content policy code 3210 parental inspection and objection to instructional materials and
051you'll see i highlighted the key text there thus to further involve parents in the education of their children the board also provides opportunities for parents to review instructional materials and a process for parents to use when they object to instructional materials we take this one step further when we understand that something might be a little controversial or a parent may have an issue with us teaching it such as the growing up classes in elementary school we send home notifications and give parents an opportunity to opt out or to view the materials before we do so understanding that this is a kind of a hot topic i think we would also be very diligent to make sure that those links are live that everybody who wants to see them can have access and we can do
052that through pdfing them so that if anybody really in fact has an objection to what is being taught they have an opportunity to provide that objection to the principal and to withdraw their student from that particular assignment and have an opportunity for another assignment next slide please this is just more details about parent objections i wanted to make sure that it was on there for you but if you look at that closely that's policy it's also part of policy hold on a second 3210 and it just talks about the procedure for objecting i'm not going to read that all to you because it is a lot next slide please you can see here that on on june 3rd this was an announcement from the ncasa and you can read here per state board policy standard
053course study 012 the process for review revision and implementation of the north carolina standard course of study the department of public instruction must review the standards for each content area due to ongoing concerns from certain board members regarding the language included in the k-12 social studies glossary board members discussed postponing voting on the glossary and related documents it was recommended but it was recommended that the state board of education approved the social studies glossary crosswalk and strand maps and unpacking documents to move forward with the professional development and implementation process so the voting was postponed until no later than june 18th so when these documents are approved then that's when our work really begins we do have draft level documents this right here is a live link for anybody who really wants to know what
054the standards are asking us to do if you will click on that link a crosswalk document shows you the standards from before and what the standards were before or the standards from before and the current standards and how they are alike and different so you can go down through here and i think you'll find that some of the conversations that have been out there it's not real accurate in what's changing because a lot has changed even since the first standards came out next slide please so most of our teachers reside in this community and have children or family members who attend our schools the teachers are the professionals who are the best qualified to develop curriculum and instruction and their top-notch on the occasion that there is an issue one hopes it can be resolved
055with communication between the teacher and the parent if not the principal should be involved i believe that our teachers will show that they can navigate some of these difficult conversations in difficult situations with a high degree of excellence i have found the history department at ac to be willing to listen with an open mind and to be reflective of their practice when speaking with teachers they've asked parents to call them if they have concerns oftentimes parents are afraid to call the teacher because they think there will be retribution and when i said that to teachers they said but they don't give us a chance sometimes and sometimes a child might take what we say one sentence of what we say and it's out of context of the entire conversation and so i have spoken with
056them about the need to be very very diligent and not letting their own biases show no matter which side they lean towards and i really believe that they are capable of that and so it comes down to a matter of trust in our teachers and do we trust them to do what we have asked them to do and i do i really truly do they were attentive they've done the homework they've done as much as they're able to do at this point if you look at this slide right here what we heard tonight was almost a perfect example of what's going on in our community in our international community you have folks that are strongly against critical race theory and then you have folks that are promoting critical race theory it's not our job to
057be against critical race theory or for critical race theory as educators it is our job to develop a curriculum that uses primary source documents to teach american history it's not about politics it's about accuracy the politics and the values we believe come from the home and i firmly believe that if you raise your child with values as a parent whatever those values might be whether they be against crt or promoting crt we're providing the students with the foundation and the knowledge and the primary source documents and we want that to be your job as parents and the teachers want that to be your job as parents i also just wanted to add one thing that i'm over curriculum and instruction in alexander county and not that this is anything other than just maybe perhaps letting
058you know that i have a long experience in developing curriculum and worked for the department of public construction even through the onset of the common core state standards which you know were very controversial not once has anybody called me about whether or not we are teaching critical race theory and i find that a little bit disappointing because a lot of the blow-ups in the community that i'm seeing perhaps could have been avoided had we had real conversation and sat down over a cup of coffee to talk about meeting in the middle somewhere and developing curriculum to my knowledge nobody at central office has had a phone call nobody at the high school has had a phone call although there have been some interactions on social media so i ask if you're really about understanding what
059we're doing and if we really want to work together then let's let's agree to disagree on some issues and let's talk together about what it is this community wants of whom our teachers are part of this community it doesn't need to be a controversy thank you and i'll entertain any questions from the board of education i'd just like to say that well first of all thank you it's very thorough and i'd also like to say that in my tenure as a school board member and um it's been a while i've not had one issue with the teacher teaching something that felt was not appropriate that when the true story came out that was um was correct i can't think i can't think of one time in 11 years that um that we've had to address
060that and and my point is that our our teachers know what they're doing and they know our community and uh i trust them and the and the it's in place if there is an issue for us to be able to be aware of it and to be able to handle it and we make mistakes i make mistakes our teachers make mistakes you all make mistakes but when we make a mistake we need to acknowledge that a mistake has been made and and that's the conversation that i have with teachers quite frequently because i also get to be in charge of parent complaints so sometimes it's okay to say i'm messed up and i am really sorry let's try to rebuild this relationship and so that's the conversation that we have and i mess up on
061a regular basis so i'm asking for forgiveness quite often but please let's sit down and talk and not destroy this community over strong rhetoric on one side of the other because we're better than this i've worked in alexander county off and on now for 15 years hope to spend the last five years of my career here if i don't get booed off the stage after this but we are better than this we've had difficult conversations for years and we're just better than this dr curry um did i hear you correctly say that the state has already made did you say their fifth revision to this yes that's my understanding bridget now i don't want to be quoted on that but even talking with some other board members i think we're in the fifth revision right
062now okay and so it's been toned down a lot since those original controversial i i want to say it's been toned down but i want to say it's been toned down while keeping the integrity of the intent there and that is that we do not ignore history but we're not out to make anybody feel badly either we want to grow and we want to learn together but we also don't want to ignore what really happened i'd like to add i appreciate you making that information open to the public and i will say as a former educator when the learning focus stuff started there's some very detailed information there so if people want to see what's going to be taught in them classroom you're putting work in there to make it available to them just as
063soon as we can make sure anybody who wants access can get it without having to request it but we'll work on that but i want i want to stress that you know you said you've met with the history department uh that's a lot of work on these teachers uh you know having your plans out there for nine weeks prior to that nine weeks that's that's a lot of work and uh i would have hated the thought of having to put mine out there nine weeks early but i commend our teachers for being willing to do that and i'm glad to see that we're having some openness to the community that they can see what's going on in there and that there's a process if if somebody has a issue or a complaint against it there's
064a process there that it can be handled and thank you thank you remy i also wanted to reiterate that when i spoke to the faculty and staff at ac and i know that some of these issues are found in the middle school and even as young as elementary school but of course the most controversial issues are at the high school but when i asked them about it they said we invite people into our classrooms pre-coveted so postcovid every single one of them said that they would invite you into their classrooms so if you see where a particular lesson is going on and you want to see the way that it's being taught they have nothing to hide they they were so receptive to being completely transparent and remy's right to write an entire nine weeks
065of lesson plans to the detail that we write them with all the resources live link before school even starts for the first nine weeks they're working really really hard to do this well and to be transparent and and my money's on them i think they'll do a great job with it because there's a balanced team there's there's people with different perspectives on that team that are balancing each other out dr curry i've uh i had two pages of uh information that i wrote down questions that i was going to ask you some of which were my own made up questions some that were introduced to me from people in the public that are concerned i think this helped me i've done a lot of homework myself on this and i'm still a little bit confused
066i look at the names on the on the presentation of the teachers and i have nothing but respect for for those as i do the speakers that spoke because i do see this is a hot topic and a touchy situation here but i do see personally this is my personal opinion i do see some problems with this i mean but how do we get past this and i think you've opened the door to uh discussion might be one good good way to do that but this was this was well thought of and i appreciate you presenting this to us tonight thank you and the invitations out there i actually have a coffee pot in my office for those of you that know me know i love my coffee so come we'll we'll get some different
067viewpoints at the table we can have a respectful conversation or represent this community well something else i would like to say is we are we make our own curriculum we talked about that several months ago when this first was voted in so alexander county will have curriculum but it won't be like ireland county or charlotte or the things that we hear on the news and i think that sometimes what what people hear we hear what's going on in charlotte or some big city but that's not necessarily what's happening here right we develop our own curriculum and i would put it up against anybody else's curriculum as far as the thoroughness and the resources and the transparency that we created and yes it is very different than what the curriculum might look like in a different
068community because we recognize that we serve a different community and the values of this community whether it be against crt or promoting crt not our job any other questions i don't have a question but but i have a few uh comments um they stated this june 18th for this state board of education to to reconsider is that correct on the slide yes so those are 12 members appointments ex-officio officers and even the state superintendent does not have a vote it the 12 members have a vote the way that this came out it was a 7 to 5 vote regarding this but i think what's important for folks in my opinion to know is that there's a general statute article 8 general education courses of study 115c 81.5 is the standard course of study now it
069is the state board of education by law powers given to them by the north carolina general assembly it says the state board of education shall adopt a plan of education in a standard course of study as provided in general statute 115 c 12 9 c for the public schools of the state and i encourage you to read on through it because it talks about arts mathematics media science social studies the standard course of study shall provide all the following a core curriculum for all students that takes into account the special needs of children so they they being the north carolina general assembly empowering the state board of education they set the standard course of study now the north carolina house voted on a bill 234 that limits the teaching of crt that's u.s news and
070world report that was from the associated press on may the 12th 2021 it's now gone to the senate in north carolina but they've not acted on it it's in committee but i say that is i think there may be a misconception that we have a an ability as local board members as a board of education as an elected body to ban certain courses of study we don't have that legal authority in latin terms and in the legal world that's ultra various meaning that you you it's an act which requires legal authority or power but is then completed outside of or without the requisite authority if the state of north carolina north carolina department of public instruction in the state board of education if they tell us all 115 school systems that we are going to
071meet a standard course of study as they outlined because that's the way it's always been since the machinery act since reconstruction i don't want to be like strom thurman and filibuster for 24 hours in 18 minutes but the teaching of history is very important very important but we certainly don't want to overstep our bounds as elected members of our respective districts and i would be cautionary um i offer that as a as a word of advice but if we don't remember history and we try to erase it or eliminate it we're bound to repeat it now that is my statement as an elected member of school board district 2 in taylorsville as a parent of three children i encourage all parents to take the time to instill in upon your children the importance of history
072there's a lot to be learned and i'm thankful we live in america because there's a lot of countries that adopt marxism and there may be a reason that we have a immigration problem is because people want to come to america when you look at other countries that have adopted marxist theories where there's centralized government you don't own property et cetera we've seen what that leads to if if we're not mindful and you can look at germany you can look at china you can look at vietnam um you can just go through the the countries but for us or for for me to say that our history this country has made mistakes just like we all make mistakes but but the key in my opinion is that we learn from our mistakes and we move forward
073and a lot of the attendance and the commandments and that we hold important here is to love thy neighbor as yourself well you certainly can't be you certainly if you don't if you don't love a person because of the color of their skin then that's that problem's on you because we all have a divine creator and you know i want my kids to know that in 1860 that there was 4 million roughly 4 million slaves in the united states i want them to know that but i also want them to know about reconstruction and i want them to know about the civil rights movement when lyndon johnson signed it into law i also want my children to know about strom thurman and robert c byrd those are folks that pivoted pivoted and in their later
074years they're the senator byrd was the longest serving senator in the united states 51 years strom thurman was the second longest servant senator but it would it would serve us all well in my personal opinion that if we uh don't erase history because history happened and there is a reason why people flock to america and not to these other places that have adopted marxist ideals but we need to know our role as local elected officials and i don't want the community to think that if the state tells us we can do it that's the only way we can do it that's called authorized by general statute and we as one of 115 school boards and 200 plus charter schools we do not have the legal authority to impose a standard course of study from the
075state level or reject a standard course of study from the state of north carolina state school board thank you mr odom something you said at the beginning and then at the end triggered a thought for me also that although we can't have any say in the standards there are 115 different districts and 200 different charter schools that develop curriculum suited to their communities that's why it won't look the same here as it does in charlotte mecklenburg schools and so i think that's the important thing that the materials that we use the things that we teach are things that we choose to it's like taking that different route charlotte mecklenburg might take this route we have the right to develop our route and that's what we're trying to do the best job we can knowing that
076not everybody will be happy with everything but we're really trying to reach that that utopia where everybody can be happy so we'll get 97 of you i know 97 are gonna come over and we'll be fine okay anyone else thank you dr curry okay at this time um uh if you would like it it's a good time for you to be able to uh to sneak out if you'd like you're more than welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting but just giving you the opportunity i'll make sure oh chris i'd like for you to go to the lobby please go to the lobby please mr chair would be in order to take a few minutes just sure that'd be good we're going to take just a couple of minute break now moving along
077we'll recognize gordon palmer for an update on the student success center and alexander central high school good evening chairman trump dr hefner members of the board thank you for allowing me to come and present on behalf of the student success center and alexander central high school this year we made some changes to the student success center one major change that we had was in leadership where jeff mayo is now the coordinator of the student success center and we sat down when he took over and really evaluated our program and some of the changes that we had this year our major focus has been on instruction and student expectations also creating a good environment for our students and new programs like the drop-in program let's go to the next slide one of our major success stories
078this year is that we've had 100 of our seniors graduate this year from the student success center wow how we've achieved this success is that we have developed a new grading protocol to make sure that there's increased rigor we also have a social emotional program that we've implemented we also have increased behavior expectations out of our students and the way that we do this is to increase our and recognize positive reinforcement so when students are doing a great job we make sure that we reinforce all their positive actions that they've been exhibiting at the ssc and how we contin want to continue to achieve this success is to continue to build a school culture of success mr mayo has taken it upon himself to make some changes just in the environment he had worked with
079our ag department and our carpentry department to build some picnic tables and chairs for outdoor space when the weather is nice and created a lot of promotional things for students in regards to when they do something a job well done they are reinforced with a positive outcomes we all are also looking at a new program we currently use edgenuity we are evaluating other programs like edmentum but either way that we go and whichever way that we decide we're going to continue to evaluate the effectiveness and use data and student outcomes as our base for decisions at ssc so so far it's worked very well we've had 100 graduation rate we've had a lot of students getting a lot of work done and he's also changed the the culture there with the staff so we're very
080happy about ssc i want to say this mr palmer first of all i thought that graduation friday evening was exceptional but i enjoyed seeing mr mayo give his students the diploma and i could just tell in a short amount of time he has developed a relationship with those children absolutely he's build strong rapport with his students uh and they come back there every day to see him you can tell he's doing a great job there thank you as we go on to alexander central high school uh well ssc is a program within alexander central high school this year is kind of deemed a sprint and a marathon it's a sprint in the sense of whenever there's a new piece of legislation a safety protocol change from the high school athletic association or an executive order
081we had to sprint to make sure that we could fulfill those duties but then also a marathon making sure that we could get through the year safely and also get to the end of graduation and get all the outcomes that we typically expect in a normal year so the start of the year the first thing that we had to do was just get students back they had left halfway through the spring semester the previous year it was a large undertaking and we had the entire school help out so we had teachers counselors support staff admin all come together to develop a plan for students to return some of the big changes this year were just based on covid was lunch drop-off dismissal tracking students unengaged students where they weren't checking in remotely on their days
082where they were home and then just finding as many ways as we could to communicate with our students this year we made over 000 student contacts from october to the end of the year some of the highlights that we have beta club placed placed in the state in 13 different areas those are listed in the presentation they're also going to compete this summer at nationals in florida and we had a finalist for the state president for the beta chapter so all of these things going on and continuing to have success even through a hybrid year i think you know my hats off to donna reed and miss wimberley as the advisors of beta to make sure that we really didn't miss a beat this year another addition that we had to the high school is
083we have a college advisor we partnered with app state and we have alex rangel who is a college advisor for our students when i was putting this presentation together in april as of april 24th he had met with 170 seniors and 53 families he assisted 78 students with fafsa and he assisted 94 students to submit at least one college application and he helped our seniors secure over one and a half million dollars in a hybrid year where it was very difficult to meet with students face to face and parents he did a job well done so we are very happy that we've created this partnership with appstate and their gear up program where they have a grant it's no cost to us we're extremely happy to have him at alexander central high school next was
084our staff survey so we poll our staff this is not a year for the state climate survey so the district developed our own survey and our three highest areas are listed here for certified staff and classified staff i'm happy to see that our district vision and mission of students first is in our top three for both certified and classified staff that we are carrying out the mission of the district so we're very happy about that and even our lowest scores were still 4.25 out of 5 and 3.96 out of 5. so even in our lowest areas staff is still very happy and feeling like we're doing a good job some of our cte highlights we've got our fire academy which we started a couple of years ago this is mandated by the state fire marshal's
085office so this year we could not have fire academy one and two based on the fire marshal at the state level but this year upcoming we are 100 percent going to have fire one and two we have students signed up for that justin deal has done a tremendous job preparing us for that program working with students getting them really excited about it as you can see we've just put up the the logo for the fire academy at our fire station at sugarloaf and we're really excited about that program and what it's going to bring to our community in addition to that and i got i got a small gift for you guys we have a grant that we were able to to get a laser engraver so we can do some really cool things now
086and this is cross-curricular so we have a laser engraver that we can engrave on wood and metal we have students in our drafting class that they use cad and inventor in order to create a design they take it out to the shop they use the machine we also have a mobile mill where we can fall trees in the back of our school we can mill them and then we can bring it to the laser engraver to create a pro a finished product so i've got some key chains for you guys that i'll pass out at the end of this and we've got a picture of one right there of what it looks like athletics athletics continued this year even in a hybrid year and and different things going on and we started out the year
087where it was practice and kind of unofficial practice we started in the summer where the association led us and then we really started to to rev up and and get going in november with official practices but someone that we really always have to mention is stacy davis she cares so much about her kids she takes care of them she doesn't just take care of our student athletes but also our coaches their families so she was recognized by at the state level uh with the lowe's campus captain award for this year so her and three other two other individuals and it says this award recognizes three individuals who have helped build back sports on your campus during covet 19. the recipient is one who also makes difference and a difference in the lives of others and
088exemplifies sound citizenship she was not just our athletic trainer she was also part of our wellness team for track and covet so hats off to stacy davis she's done a tremendous job some other highlights we have for athletics we've got we had two teams compete at the state level and took second place uh softball and cheerleading both competed at states and took second we've had two coaches named northwestern conference coach of the year that was john presnell and joe cornwell we had another undefeated season in jv football that's now five years in a row with culver holland broke the school record and 100 yard backstroke and we completed seven different seasons this year in athletics and we are still competing in baseball women's tennis and wrestling with state championships being june 26th we also went
089to a cashless system something that nathan our athletic director and i have wanted to do for a while and we've been researching for a while and we were able to do that under these circumstances where we can go to a cashless system for tickets we had two scholar athletes that we voted in and they were caroline deal and hunter jack and when you're a senior scholar athlete then you compete in at least two sports while maintaining a gpa of 4.5 or higher so great job to those seniors mention several of our community partners we couldn't do nearly as much as we do here at the high school without them they provide so many opportunities for us they provide funds and meals and resources for us just the soccer scoreboard alone was roughly 25 to 30
090thousand dollars and we were able to fund that through sponsors and community partners where we've got a brand new scoreboard on the soccer field and these are our partners with huntington house being leading the charge in that funding we also have community partners who help us pull all of this off so whether it's for the parade for graduation where we have to have several agencies working together or whether it's working with habitat for us to create opportunities for students to work we've also had a ton of donations from our fire departments to our fire academy and we've worked with our fire departments during disasters natural disasters in our community this year being the floods so we worked with them to help our families but also we gave them a place to shower and they helped
091us with resources as well so it's really a great partnership every single one of these that are listed here we work with nearly on a weekly basis in some capacity some of the changes we had to make for athletics and covid and these are all listed here you can see this but this is i'm sure you guys are well aware of all the different changes we had to make and whether there was an executive order that came out and then the association made changes and then we put these safety protocols into place even coaches had to coach differently to be more efficient they had to put students into pods they had to sanitize a lot of equipment so hats off to our athletic department our virtual academy we had built and and maintained our virtual
092academy all year these are just some of the steps that we took in order to build a successful virtual academy here's some more steps in terms of our virtual academy and then why do we do all this the next slide graduation right we do this for the students we do this for uh to see their smiling faces we've got coleman chapman lisa d garnett all the abernathy quads uh they're just when we have our students here and they're working diligently to get to graduation uh we opened up our you know they were here two days a week and we opened up wednesdays as soon as we could so they could get at least three days a week all year long and they made it to graduation they did a great job we've got a few
093more pictures in here where you can kind of this is also our inaugural class of our ap academy so we were able to order them special robes with uh gold stripes on their sleeves they also have all of them are honor graduates so they have that stole and if they were a capstone candidate they also had a medallion that they wore and right here in the middle you've got drake desaker who was able to be an honor graduate he had two associate degrees he has an associate in science and associate in engineering he's going to university of tennessee to be in there he got accepted into their engineering program with some of their scholarships as well so we had a great graduation i was very happy that the weather was able to hold out and
094we were able to celebrate and also to have a parade where we were able to celebrate uh the students were really happy about that they kind of emailed me a few times and wouldn't let me forget it and said hey mr palmer we really want this parade so we called the right people and got it taken care of so we've had a great year it's been different this year but we're very excited about the outcome and how well the year has progressed thank you thank you very much you're welcome it's all right thank you sir i was jealous of rain beginning that's cool it's like favoritism that's all right thank you thanks for your hard work this year yeah thank you thank you you're welcome thank you again thank you now i'll uh recognize miss
095kathy cottle for a the school nutrition program update thank you chairman schrum and board members dr hefner i have a very short presentation five slides to sum up what has been a very stressful and exhausting but rewarding year we started we had one day off when coveted hit and the next day we served meals to children we went from serving regular meals to our children to the right side i think was our easter handout of meals and it was pouring down rain part of that time i worked for hours with wet feet the whole time uh two meals that we can seal with the meal sealing machines we purchased and down at the bottom you will see some of those meals we have developed that meet the requirement but also take advantage of the commodities
096we've been able to obtain the next slide some of the obstacles we've had to deal with is for one thing increased pricing huge increases no longer are bids something that we can rely on because they can use the disaster to raise prices when they can even get workers to deliver food to us again thank goodness we had commodities an example one of the prices of things that went up we had 17 dollars a case for gloves jumped to 72.75 in a month so that's the kind of things we dealt with and of course the shortages of food and supplies and because students were at home and our employees a reason a lot of our employees work for us is that they can be on the same schedule as their children but when employees were home
097they they i mean when their children were home we had to adjust schedules so we've been able to to maintain and keep our our budget in check this year i wanted to show you an example from mid-march 2020 through the end of may we served over 880 000 meals now look at a regular school year 1819 of course that's the last one we had as a regular school year where there were 670 98 000 uh meals that we served and of course now all of our meals are free and all of our meals because of uh us department of agriculture and the waivers that have been put in place we will feed all our children free next year all year it first started through the end of june then they extended it to september and
098then they extended through the year so we have been able to serve these meals because we're doing weekend meals as well as regular school meals if you go to the next slide you will see that our commodity allotment this year for 2021 was 180 dollars based on the meals we did the year the lunches we do the year before that's how they base our commodity allotment uh we designated 65 000 over a third of that to our produce uh with the department of uh agriculture and their vendor is foster cavernous so we used our commodity allotment but they had access to lots of bonus commodities before i came to alexander county i could not find a year in the past that bonus commodities were utilized this year they have been wonderful we have gotten over
099four hundred thousand dollars in free food and um that is something that has kept us going we've received several grants they've not been huge but one was from gen youth to help we use those funds to help build a new cooler freezer theirs was so antiquated it was so small but that has really made a difference there we received a farm to school grant from north carolina and part of that money was used to purchase 641 bushels of alexander county grown apples we also received the dairy alliance grant we got those two the year before but this year it was only 2 000 that was the maximum and with that we were able to buy 35 new soft coolers soft bag coolers which have been really used a lot we've we've worn them out carrying
100food on buses we have run two buses almost constantly to the community we run one east and one west and those run out of alexander central high school and we have put on our website that parents can call if they don't have a means to pick up meals for their children they can call them we will add them to a route and we've had a lot of parents do that because they have small children at home they they can't leave them to go pick up the meal and they might have too many to get in their vehicle one time to go pick up those meals in the middle of the day but i wanted you to look because we have commodities where normally a big chunk of our budget goes to buying groceries now most
101of our uh budget is used to buy supplies and of course our salaries where normally our salaries might account for about 50 percent of our budget uh this year we've had some months where it was over 80 percent of our money went to pay salaries and benefits to our employees so we have really tried to utilize our money take advantage of what's out there i'll tell you a funny story numerous times this year the chief operating officer for the department of agriculture in north carolina has called me or emailed me to say we have these commodities available would you like to have them because he knows if i can use them i will changing the menus has required a lot of time sometimes to change one individual menu item takes about two days to get
102in our system we have to enter every ingredient tie it to our inventory and then we have to put all the nutritional information so parents can access that with the menu we have today just this morning i put up the menu for the meals we will be giving out on the fourth of july we'll have two pickups july 1st and july 7th they will total 11 days counting the weekend meals so parents may pick up seven meals if they have four children that's 28 breakfast and 28 lunches we've also purchased some things like meal packs that come to us that are well below what our reimbursement is so we can afford to get those i call because i couldn't find any bid materials out there and the state of north carolina told me whatever we
103need to do to get it to get our meals out there so we're trying to get in advance of this rush i see happening starting next week where we have about 500 kids who are going to be in the summer jumpstart program we will be providing meals my staff my two girls in the office will be delivering breakfast and lunch to the elementary to the elementary schools we have everybody each the high school is going to be delivering to three elementary schools we are starting to also include on the bus route we'll start stopping at the alexander county library the stony point library mill has called me and asked me if we could possibly make it so we're adding that at 11 o'clock she's publicizing it and renee need has told me she will try
104to get on the news on the radio and tv more information out there so tonight at our reception i recruited one of our retired members to come back to work for us so if you have any friends or neighbors or enemies that you would like to come to work for child nutrition i expect to increase our meal participation greatly so if you have any questions i'll be glad to answer them but i hadn't done an update in a while because we were waiting to get final information i kept telling dr hefner as soon as i know what's going to be next year i'll let them know but we're pretty set thank you for what y'all done during this it amazed me uh you know i know how to rush school lunches used to be prior
105to coving and it's amazed me with kids eating in the classroom y'all having to seal all the meals and stuff uh and you know uh school cafeteria staff needs to be commended and the food is wonderful uh i don't know who at this county office asked me how i'd lost uh weight in the last few months first of all it was i didn't have time to do a lot but secondly i said i eat school breakfast and school lunch every day because we have to keep we have to keep our calories at a certain level kathy i commend your leadership during all this um i just don't think that this program would have been as successful without your initiative and your knowledge and the things that you have done with those commodities it is impressive
106and and leadership matters when i first came to alexandria county schools when i talked about scratch cooking i might have been on my way out of alexander county schools but now my managers i am so proud of them because now they are saying i had an idea i saw something online how about if we try this recipe i said you make it i will put in the system so they are doing a wonderful job i'm so proud of my staff kathy i actually have a question and i'll reference it up after you answer why i'm asking it but are we doing this because of the pandemic or are we going to be in the summer feeding world for the foreseeable future out of curiosity i don't i don't know there is a big push in
107congress we have been pushing in the school nutrition association to try to get free meals for students all students so you don't have to fill out applications there's no although the the children are protected their status is protected whether they're paying or free or reduced and we by law we have to protect that information but we've been saying if they're in school that's you know we provide transportation we provide learning materials we provide community uh computers why not provide meals and that way we don't have to worry about it so there's a big push to get meals right now free for all students as part of their school day that would be wonderful i was referencing more the summer piece that you're feeding during the summer we have we are doing the summer piece we're
108actually operating we're having to do three applications with the state this year one we're doing the summer food service program that varies a little bit from the normal lunch and breakfast program but we are going to shift to the summer seamless summer option which for one reason there's a little bit higher reimbursement uh another reason is um this is just part of the waiver you know we have some leniency with making sure we just we first started doing last year and the year before or the year before when we started summer food service it was a complete meal you had to take everything but we have moved to offer versus serve with the biggest thing when parents come to pick up say for four children 28 meals for a week imagine trying to store two
109half pints for every one of those 56 half pints of milk in the refrigerator so we are buying half gallons for those bulk meals so that they on our web page we're putting a sign up sheet when they get a loan a vacation meal and they can let us know in advance how many half gallons or cartons they want to to pick up that way we're we're prepared we have enough and we're not wasting it because we're trying to watch every penny well i'm very proud and i wasn't trying to ask a question that was getting negative when i years ago when i started the backpack program and i used to go speak at churches all the time the one question that always came up and i also should do a shout out to karen
110grider because we used to tag team and she would talk about the book she'd written about going hungry and then i would talk about the program and the question always arise what do you do during the summer and i always said that was sort of like the holy grail that we were chasing to try and answer and i always thought somebody out there might have the answer and we we tried different programs and they always failed and it was such a hard thing to solve and i'm just so excited that i think that we we're big enough to solve it and so i'm so proud that we're now solving it and so there is sometimes silver linings in things like pandemics because we were forced to try to rethink how we do some stuff and
111i just hope it doesn't go away and i'm very there's more of an awareness parents now know what the kids are getting when i go visit my grandchildren which took me almost a year and a half because of the pandemic when i got to see them that i would say what did you have for lunch today uh i don't remember you know and that's what a lot of parents get they don't know that we are making roasted chicken and mashed potatoes and green beans and a biscuit and milk you know that's a good substantial meal um but parents are seeing what the kids are getting in the past for summer feeding we didn't have the non-congregate waiver so if they got a meal at the y or at the matheson park they had to eat
112it on site that was part of the summer feeding rules well this year they can pick it up and take it home because of the waivers associated with covid and um i don't think that will last after covid but i think if we are able to just feed all our children and as sheriff happy has said if there's a child hungry in alexander county it's not for cathy cottle's lack of trying to get them fed because we are trying everything we can to get the children fit because we all know that you can teach as much as you can teach but if children are hungry they're not going to learn so we will continue to do everything we can i don't know how many years before i came summer feeding had been part of the
113program i think there have been a loss of money but we're i fought to continue the summer feeding program and like i say from march of 2020 till may of 21 we miss one day feeding our children just to regroup and figure how we were going to do it thank you very much thank you thank you board members do we have any uh committee reports to report on mr chairman um i've got uh an award award of honor committee uh most of you are aware already but uh we met and we unanimously selected uh aaron spry as our award of honor we did we were able with dr hefner's help and the families helped compile a small number of people at central office to throw him a surprise party if you will it's definitely not
114something that he deserves much more and we are planning on doing the proper ceremony sometime in august i wanted to report that and mr robinson if you have anything he was on that committee also to add you were there it was it was an honor to to see his name come across there he's a very worthy recipient and i can't wait to see him recognized in august thank you mr trump i met with the boosters club last week they are very excited um hopeful fall comes and sports are back full blast with with all the spectators so they're gearing up for for a busy fall they're starting a banner sale program for any businesses or people that want new banners they're redoing them um so that's the thing they're sort of pushing right now but
115uh a shout out to the boosters uh jeremy fortner leading that group they've come a long way and i'm very impressed with how they uh handle their self and the character that they have it says a lot thank you very much anyone else yes um i'd like to share about head start we don't normally talk about but the policy council is a group of parents that sort of advise and in some ways run manage a head start in some ways i've learned a lot but i've been because of our transition the parents wanted to have a voice in that transition and so i have been meeting a lot with them and i just really wanted to say i think we don't realize they've been quite impressive to sit and talk with and they're very excited
116to be involved and to be heard and i'm just grateful for them and i think we're all looking forward to the the changes coming forward now and so i'm very excited that we've gotten there okay anyone else okay moving along recognize dr jennifer heffner for superintendent's report yes it's short this month thank you chairman trump principal summative evaluation started this week and will be finished up by about june 23rd summer work hours also begins this week for 11 and 12 month employees as in years past all work sites will be open monday through thursday and closed on fridays sugarloaf cafeteria update you can read that this update is in your agenda it's detailed as far as things happening i think the thing that you'll be most interested in is that the project completion date is
117targeted for july 1st so that's a good thing i also have some sad news andy palmer's mother passed away on friday afternoon she resides in ohio mr palmer is back today and tomorrow but we'll be traveling back to ohio for a service on friday and i just ask that you keep the palmer family in your thoughts and prayers and then the july board meeting date has been changed to tuesday july 20th beginning at six and i would just ask that you mark your calendars with this date change that is one week later than it would normally be held and that is just because of i'm planning to be out of the office the week that we would normally have the meeting do you have any questions thank you thank you dr anthony moving along recognize
118miss sharon mahaffey chief financial officer for second reading of board of education policy revisions okay we have four policies that are up for second reading tonight i requested input on these policies i received none so i'm requesting approval on second reading move to approve second okay we have a motion of the second do we have any discussion everyone in favor of the second reading policy revisions please say aye aye anyone opposed please say no motion carries thank you and um we have six policies that are up for first reading and i've already uh started getting uh input on those and we'll be bringing them back next month thank you ms mahathi i'd like to recognize jessica anderson director of accountability for revisions to the 2021-2022 aec academic calendar thank you and good evening i have
119before you a brief revision to the aec calendar the calendar that we approved prior did not have cvcc's spring and fall break they added those after we got calendar approval so i'm here with slight adjustments to those dates so we mirror like we normally do cvcc's schedule okay board members you've heard the recommendation do we have a motion to approve move to approve a second second any discussion everyone in favor of uh accepting the calendar revisions please say aye aye anyone opposed please say no motion curious thank you very much thank you and now i'll recognize my susan gant director of cte and secondary education for the local application updates she didn't stay retired very long did she yeah i hadn't even had the first day yet that didn't happen till the end of the
120month anyway thank you for allowing me to come and speak tonight on career and technical education so i have a brief presentation some information i want to share you can go to the second slide please thank you just an update for the middle schools we have the four teachers there both of those operate in a business track one mainly keyboarding computer skills and coding and the other one with career awareness it's the same at both middle schools so there's two teachers at each place this year we were not able to fully use the paxton patterson labs that i have talked to you about previously that we purchased for the middle schools those 10 modules of career exploration where they get to experience different career based items so this year we purchased two whole class modules
121to use instead now those are still career awareness trying to guide them in the direction of what they want to do but we needed to use a whole class modules this year that could be done more on the computer and spaced out and not use all the hands-on activities that we normally use with our paxton patterson labs so that was just a slight change and we of course we have those modules now so they can be incorporated at any time at the middle school so we we will keep those however at the end of the year we were able to have camp med and so that is a program where students from east and west were able if they're interested in health careers to participate brent doula as our middle school career development coordinator organized
122that they met at west most of the time and they had food brought in but they were also able to tour the dental hygiene program at cvcc the nursing program at lenoir-run they've had various speakers to come in so they had three days worth of activities to introduce them to careers this is for eighth grade students for two careers in the health sciences so hopefully then they will sign up for health science classes at the high school for next year the last bullet there naviance that is a program that we have purchased this year it is a career awareness platform so that is computer-based but we start with the students in sixth grade where they when they complete they can complete career inventories career awareness activities and it stores them so it keeps a file
123for them they can do various activities all three years of middle school it will carry over to high school there's also a place for a graduation plan so the counselors at the high school will be able to use it with students too to make sure that they've reached their graduation requirements and all classes that they have to offer so that's a big step for us that's something we've wanted for a couple of years so we've been doing some research to figure out what we think is best for our students in alexander county so we were able to purchase that and put that into place this year so we're happy that we have the naviance as far as the middle school goes again with our career development coordinator that is a grant position that we've had
124for four years now the grant doesn't cover the full salary so that has to be supplemented out of our state funds but we've been very pleased with the progress that he's made this year 82 percent of our 9th grade students were enrolled in at least one cte class so making them more aware at the middle school level has benefited our high school program um so we had out of 334 freshmen 276 were enrolled in at least one class but most were enrolled in multiple classes because we had freshmen in 507 different cte classes so so again we're complete we've been pleased with the results of having mr doula to go to east and west to talk to seven sixth seventh and eighth grade students now moving on to the high school and i presented to
125you in february i believe with some courses that we offer and we talked about those so i don't have a summary of the courses again because they haven't changed since what we discussed in february so but i do want to summarize that we do offer courses in six different program areas we have 66 different courses that are available to students 80 percent of our high school students are involved enrolled in cte courses so again we're put we're pleased with their participation some other areas that we have though i have listed here that you can see internships um this year because of covid limitations we were only able to place interns so that is down a little for us and hopefully that will be back up once things are open but because of the kovid restrictions
126that's just all we were able to place this year but we were pleased that we could place at least 11. so that was good this year we didn't have any students that were interested in participating in the apprenticeship catawba program we had a couple to express interest but as they went through the process they eventually pulled out so we have zero apprenticeship catawba participants we do have one participating in the furniture academy one in the manufacturing academy two in the construction careers academy that will be going on this summer we have had 304 students to complete industry credentials this school year okay some changes to the courses that we have and i again i explained this in february some new classes that we offered this school year computer science one and let me back up
127because a lot of these courses that we offered were because of our comprehensive needs assessment that we completed the year before and i'll talk about that a little bit more in a minute because that's part of the plan but we wanted to offer courses of course that students are interested in so we survey them and we ask what they're interested in starting in sixth grade what do you want so some classes that we were able to offer this year computer science one comptia i.t fundamentals financial planning one was offered we actually didn't have any students to enroll in that so that's why it's in red because we offered it but it didn't make this year sales one counseling and mental health one and then firefighter technology one and two as mr palmer said in his
128presentation we offered those classes we had enrollment but then we were not able to actually have the classes because the office of the state fire marshal regulations that we can't do that in a hybrid manner they have to have so many hours of hands-on instruction and we could not do that with the way our schedule was this year so we had to back up with our fire tech one and two so some classes that we're adding for next school year based on these computer science two financial planning two we actually i did not offer we are offering financial planning one again since it didn't make last year sales two counseling and mental health two uh firefighter one and two will be offered probably or not we did not offer firefighter three because we wouldn't have
129any students in three because we weren't able to do one and two this year we're also going to add a pharmacy tech program i have a teacher that's currently completing certification because they have to be a certified pharmacy tech in order to teach it so i have one of our health science teachers that's currently going through the program to be certified so that we can offer pharmacy tech as an option in health science next year all right to the fire academy and again mr palmer covered some of this um and i do have a picture the seal is up the picture that's on this screen is uh includes the letters the letters aren't quite there yet though but this is what they should look like once they get there um so we are thrilled with
130our um with the fire department with all the support we've received from the community to get the fire academy up and running we are still planning an open house so be on the lookout for that when we're able to have we wanted to have it by the end of school this year but that just didn't work out so we'll probably wait until fall so that the students can be involved we don't really want to do it in the summer when the students are not there so i will not be here but i'm hoping that the new cte director will invite me to the open house whenever they get that scheduled in the fall two programs that i want to mention next that i'm that we're very excited about these are in partnership with the community
131college um heavy equipment operator is actually with cvcc and um western piedmont so this is a program where the they'll use simulators and that equipment will be based here one semester and it will be based at western piedmont once semester so students will be able to use the simulators to earn their credential for heavy equipment operators and that was a grant program the other one is also grant industrial systems tech and this is also with cvcc this equipment will be housed here at the alexander center of cvcc it will stay here all the time this is not one that will move so students again can earn their industry credential and can be basically maintenance techs at a lot of our manufacturing operations in the county so we are excited that we were part of those
132two programs and that they will be the grants have been approved so they're currently buying equipment and getting those set up so that we can start enrolling students now last year um as you know as i've said for the past several years though our local plan um and it's in this notebook if you want to to read the whole thing um but we have a new process that started last year when we transitioned from perkins 4 to perkins 5 it is a two-year process so two years ago in the fall we did all of our local needs assessment where we surveyed local businesses we surveyed students parents teachers um anybody that was interested the advisory council that we have for cte we surveyed everybody to say what are we doing right what do we need
133to do to improve so in the fall it will be time to do those surveys again it is a two-year process so the plan is based on the results of the surveys from year before last so certain things that we look for of course is our performance data the needs assessment that we get and then our local application narratives budgeting and then of course approval and that's why i'm here tonight is hopefully to gain approval for our plan the next couple of slides i'm not going to read to you you can see those and i just put those in for your information so that you can see what is being asked of cte what we look for so it's not just especially in our data what are you doing in your classes but how do
134your classes also help promote proficiency in math how do your cte classes help provoke proficiency in science so we are tied to all of those and so we're also judged on those so we use those scores as part of our data and then when we're doing the needs assessment there are six areas that they that we will look at and be evaluated on and we ask for input on the evaluation of our performance labor market the size scope and quality of our program our career pathways recruitment retention and retraining of our teachers and then equal access to high quality cte programs so those are the areas that we focus on in the surveys and in the input that we gather from the community and then the third part is just the local narratives where we
135write how we're using that information what we're doing to improve how do we evaluate ourselves and all those so all that again is in the full plan which is in the notebook if anyone wants to take that and look at it the fourth part is our budgeting and i do want to mention mr palmer when he was talking about the keychains that a grant was written for our new engraver machine and that that is true but it also required some matching funds that cte covered so part of that came out of our state funds prco14 in our budgets um we have the three different codes um 013 our months of employment for next year we did receive a few additional months of employment so that's good if we don't need them to hire a teacher
136or to be able to pay for a teacher then we can cash those in so that would be a little bit of extra money there which is good because in our state funding prc14 we had a decrease we also had a decrease in r017 which is our federal funding and part of that is i know miss caudle wants to feed all the children for free but right now a lot of our funding is based on free and reduced lunch applications and on the percentages so they're in the process they're trying to work out how do we how do we based on funding if we don't have money and so this i mean if we don't have those indicators so this year i think our amounts are down because the number of applications were down because
137everybody was eating and didn't have to turn those in so again that's something that has could potentially hurt us but they are aware of that and are working on how else can we do cte funding to uh negate that so hopefully there'll be a difference in the future for that um we do receive the the only local funding that we receive is for the fire academy instructor um so that was through the county commissioners and again that position is not fully funded so i do have to supplement the income or the salary for that individual through our state funding so and then the last part of our process is approval which we hope that we get tonight so i'm happy to entertain any questions about the plan or about anything about our cte program the
138month of months of employment increasing that's that's a positive thing because that means that the enrollment in cte is going up right yes and that's that's how i thought that was interpreted i just want to make sure that 80 percent of our high school students taking courses in that middle school job that mr doulas is doing is paying off because you've decreased for several years we did we actually had a little bit of increase of last year and then we'll have an increase again for next year so it's paying off it is okay anyone else i make a motion oh sorry go ahead that's fine i'll make a motion we approve the local plan that's presented okay we have a motion do we have a second second okay any discussion okay we have a motion
139the second to accept the local plan for our cte program uh all those in favor please say aye aye anyone opposed please say no motion carries thank you thank you thank you for everything okay and once again we'll recognize miss kathy cottle for the scout uh school child nutrition bids and rollovers for the 21-22 school year thank you as you know you have to approve our bids for the year we only had to go out for bid for one of our bids we had extended you can have a four-year extension maximum on your beds and our dairy milk bid ran out so back in may 27th we had a bid opening and our vendor has been pet for those years but this year they lost the bed marva made or mayola came in on about
140one and a half cent per carton lower if if we use milk at the rate we used last year that would account for about 665 dollars per month saving so we're requesting that marvin made the award of the bid someone from marvin made and from pep both were at the bid openings so they're aware we're just waiting on approval for that u.s foods is our current vendor for our groceries and supplies and we would like a rollover with them correction enterprises which is already a state contract we don't have to get a bid for our chemicals so we want to maintain the chemicals from correction enterprises and we had a bid for smart mouth pizza we a couple of years ago which has been used in high school middle schools and they have agreed we
141had to tell them that the only way we could do it this year was to use our commodity mozzarella cheese and they said whatever we need to do to get the pizzas in the mouth of the children so we would like an extension on those and then approval for pet for mayola for this coming year for members you've heard the recommendation for the rollover and the new bid acquisition do i have a motion move to approve all caveats listed okay any discussion all those in favor please say aye all those opposed please say no motion carries thank you thank you if i can have just a second i wanted to address what uh susan gent uh said about the free and reduced lunch applications we've already got ours for this coming school year being um
142printed for the next school year we are going to do everything we can mass media whatever we can parents were able if they are in a school that receives the school pro school meals program they can get pebt dollars for their children and so a lot of families who were not applying because they got free meals anyway this past school year didn't realize they had not even though they got a letter saying their benefits were expiring they don't a lot of parents don't imagine this but they don't read their letters they get from alexander county schools so they thought well they were okay because the kids were getting free meals so we will do everything we can to try to keep those numbers up to get parents to fill out the applications of course it's
143available online and we will walk them through the process of applying online so hopefully we will keep those numbers up this year thank you thank you thank you and i recognize sharon mahaffey for our building capital fund request the public school building capital fund has two parts one is funded by corporate tax and the other is the most familiar the lottery funding when the lottery funding came about the corporate tax was eliminated by the legislature they allowed school systems to keep the money they had in that account and so i we have been looking for several years if you've been on the budget committee for a project that that would work for us to expend these funds if you use it for the purchase of technology there is not a required match which there is
144if you use it for construction we have 262 823 dollars remaining in the account kim bishop came to me last year and asked about the replacement of our active boards active boards have become a very important teaching tool so it seemed like to me that this would be a good use of those funds so we'll come tonight asking for permission to request these funds okay move to approve second any discussion will this cover most will this cover all the uh needed active boards i know a lot of them are aging it will purchase 103. okay any other discussion we'll have a motion in a second those in favor please say aye aye all those opposed please say no motion carries thank you very much thank you you've made 103 teachers very happy dr hefner were
145they prioritized by the need i guess i would say they'll do it by the age of the board but to tell you that for sure i don't know but that would be my guess not just one correct military correct they'll look at ages of the board because if you remember the very first active boards that we had it was competitive to get them and teachers had to write an application and so i'm certain that that's the way they'll do it thank you okay good good great okay at this time uh to go into closed session pursuant to north carolina general statute 143-318-1186 do i have a motion a second second any discussion those in favor please say aye any opposed please say no motion carries