BOE Regular recurrent meeting

001right now look at this yes [Music] i'd like to call this meeting of the castle county board of education to order welcome our guests tonight here those here and those on zoom dr carter please pause for a moment of silence thank you please stand for the pledge of allegiance and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all board members i need to get a motion to approve the board of education minutes for the special call meeting on november the 5th and for our regular meeting on november the 8th mr chairman i'd like to make more that we approve the minutes from november 5th and for november the 8th motion has been made is there a second there's regularly seconds of motion is there any discussion

002all in favor indicate by raising your hand plays the same ocean carries unanimously dr carter i recommend approval of the agenda as presented where the superintendent's recommendation to approve the agenda do i have a motion i'll make a motion the stanley makes a motion is there a second since hudson seconds a motion is there any discussion or any comment not all in favor indicate by raising your hand opposed the same motion carries unanimously dr carter announcements yes if i may ask ms chavez and mr bryant to join me please as you know each year the national uh north carolina school board association posts a student art award and it's um it's a yearly event and each year the award winners are displayed their arts displayed at their annual conference in greensboro and we were so

003fortunate this year that we had four increase from council county those four students came from oakwood elementary and each received an award we had a third place award winner and we had three honorable mentions and so we have two of those students with us this evening and so i would like to present them with a certificate a little token of our appreciation and i'm certain that you have their art that you can display as well as we presented to them uh i guess to carry home unless they've been in the school it's up to you yeah i want to clarify this is that the copy i i have the original uh home i hope the school i'm sorry um because they didn't accept this year they're original because of the situation without colorful but they

004will have the original back tomorrow and i would just like to thank ms chavez for the work that she puts into this as well so that our students are uh showcased at these uh conventions and state meetings and they can see what counts and students we have in castle county so thank you thank you one of our students that received an honorable mention is elena nuka she is in third grade at oakwood elementary if you don't come up elaine is that here okay okay parker parker here yeah [Music] you can show that to the board as well you can turn that around and show our board members oh beautiful and barbara we have a bag and we have some books that you might enjoy and we have a certificate if i can just shake your

005hand and thank you for everything you have done and there's your certificate and if you don't mind if you're going to stand over there we're going to take your pictures okay thank you we have another student lily jean is not here tonight and she received honorable mention and then we have hunting elena marie elina marie racuto and you received do you know which one you received third place which that's wonderful [Applause] and here's your certificate and we have this bag since you placed third place and thank you so much if you will go right over there we're going to take both of your pictures along with your pictures [Laughter] [Music] very good [Music] two ready [Music] [Applause] congratulations you did a great job great job thank you thank you parents thank you thank you thank

006you mr villas thank you thank you um no public comments okay dr carter unfinished business yes um as part of our esra funds uh one of the line items that we have written in the esther fund budget was for a needs assessment facility needs assessment for our hvac systems and as you know we conducted or had that that assessment completed by brady uh over the past several months and so we have uh mr terrell and mr hatchet here that i think have some things to share and then we have a representative from brady here that is going to give you an overview of the needs assessment that they conducted and then i would uh i have also in your packet a chart of some proposals for funds that come from esser based upon the needs

007assessment review so if i may i'll turn it over to mr terrell mr chair school board member dr board in july of 2021. so rfq outlined two phases stage one was the needs assessment and phase two after the needs assessment was completed to develop a repair exemplation plan the plan would include developing scope of indoor air quality measures and these [Music] for future capital projects included in the district apac in their plan including the cost of heac repair replacement and upgrades at each of our six schools trading services conducted a ventilation and equipment assessment for all six schools who have the county with a focus on determining the conditions of mechanical equipment with the goal of providing increased ventilation identifying deficiencies that may affect air quality and prioritizing future capital improvement projects moving forward the

008district will rush the district's hcac air quality needs including improving ventilation improving air quality and providing a healthier learning environment based on the assessment with the assessment results the district will be able to develop a 10-year plan for hcac capital improvement projects getting to a balanced approach to air quality and ventilation based on american society heating refrigerating and air conditioning engineers address service and maintenance needs for each pool to increase air flow reduce energy consumption and ultimately improve air quality and upgrade air handler filters based on the ventilation and equipment and assessment report summary immediate recommendations include upgraded air handler filters from fiberglass to mirror 13. coil sterilization including unit and full cleaning that is cooled to increase airflow reduce energy consumption and ultimately improve air quality to a higher standard these two items are

009covered under the omnium public procurement cooperative contracting process which brady participates in hpac products installation services and related products products and services uh omnia allows agencies including k12 school districts to piggyback off a cooperative contract that has already been dead following uniform guidance for purchasing dr carter will address that with effort the cost figures from the filter upgrades and coil sterilization are in your package the second phase of our rfq uh for rating would include the graphing of engineer specifications and these specifications will lead to a dollar amount for each future capital project that's approved included in the hvac plan that will be developed the cost will include repair replacement and upgrades at each school the cost of this service is also included in the packet tonight we have kevin lynn from brady and mr

010jerry hatchet from our maintenance department our director to answer any questions that you might have at this time mr stanley okay um stoney creek were you just at the bottom here page three where it's recommending to you know the building controls that occlude all of them except stoney creek and by to be fully modernized to permit shield water and hot run controls why so to answer that question specifically snobby creek has types of air air conditioning units that don't really lend themselves well to modern centralized controls they're what we call bar units they go on the outside of the building it's like what you put on a trailer um but the type of controls we're talking about for that particular building are the kind you might imagine in um okay i figured australian creek would

011show but one more i've got um and by i guess the reason that it wasn't recommended be why that's already done the new building it's partially done wise is used with some integration between different pieces but it doesn't need a whole sale replacing them in the same way as those other schools so there's needs in every school for this type of modernized hvac but by is it's many generations okay and there's my last question right here do you have this paper okay page one down at the bottom where it says in that table byhs the current ventilation everything poor that was our old building that was tested all of the correctly new and it wasn't complete by the time okay all right it's battle questions how much does the murder 13 filter costs uh it

012is let me go a little further explain the breakdown of the 245 000 that's what i need to know that is largely due to the labor involved in doing this very in-depth uh cleaning of the units is actually a pretty minor cost of that oh so it's not just the filters it's the labor that's correct okay filters so there's two parts [Music] the primary maintenance activity is there are what we call coils that's transfer heat heating that really getting in is and cleaning it up or so that you don't have to continue to do it and then what we've recommended and what we did with during public schools was clean and what we call sanitize the unit more deeply so that it reduces the number of times you need to go into it and with

013some of the photos you get a sense of how this work starts to build up over time okay next question on page three of three on the back down the bottom where it says controls and recommendations i need clarity of where it starts the second sentence where it starts oakwood north and south where all the equipment building controls doing their construction of most recent equipment modernization in 1989 and 1990 however all of these controls have been disabled or abandoned explain that to me yes sir so these controls were put in a time when building controls were not at their finest imagine imagine your computers at the time of the late 80s early 90s so the technology that was installed at the time was what today would definitely not qualify as modern countries okay so over

014time as the building maintenance staff has dealt with many many comfort issues out at those schools and made the decision to prioritize no longer okay that's what confuses me because north south and dillard were built after 1990. uh dillard i know the dealer controls are a little bit newer um i'm sorry if i have the year but all of the years of these equipment okay because dealers i mean not the north and south opened in 1992. so the controls could not have been disabled is that correct the uh the years we are using are based on the engineering drawings so it's perhaps we're off by a year controls were disabled sometimes okay you see the reason for that question and that's that's that's misleading to me to read that for this to be a comprehensive

015report and say by 1989 and 90 the controls were disabled and the schools weren't even built that's that's troubling to me um the blueprints that i provided were great for all of our students that we have the blueprint [Music] okay but you see how it's confusing to read that yeah but he was going by the document okay hey one more question um if we go back to the replacing the filters how often is that done after everything the initial work is done how often do you go back and replace the filter okay right now three months yes the more expensive um maybe two months maybe a month and a half okay the more you clean the less a lot less as you bring in more fresh air as well that will more more air will

016be passing through that filter okay thank you um on my current ventilation you have everything is poor it is safe for our kids to be in school right can we explain that a little bit more in detail so our parents can hear that just because it says poor we are okay in a yes strategy to risk production you have masking you have policies in place to keep students who are ill out of the classroom enhance cleaning protocols you have vaccinations and ventilation is one of those measures that help reduce risk within the school system there's no perfect strategy and and as i mentioned earlier the primary drive up until covid was a focus on comfort and operations of equipment and so as we enter into the covid era and we and the science that's out

017there becomes a little bit more widely spread a little more better understood that increased ventilation rates is good for students and it's a good risk reduction measure we start to realize that these are important things to put in place so yes it is still a safe place to go to school absolutely this is just another way to help reduce risk mrs blackwell would you be able to provide us with a breakdown of the labor cost and the materials because this is just like one big lump sum there so what is the labor cost and what is the cost of the material any other questions i have one more should this be occurring every two years what what what's the maintenance part of it can you tell us a little bit about once we go and

018do this what would be the maintenance how to maintain what you did absolutely okay filter changes as mr hatcher mentioned it's a regular activity we should be doing this as the district is doing today um or perhaps a little bit faster or perhaps a little bit slower the cool cleaning and unit standardization is something that you might recommend annually biannually and that's something that as you start to look at the equipment skips deeper into that after the equipment has been cleaned it's something that you might build into a multi-year plan it's not something i would necessarily encourage you i would encourage you to do the whole unit sanitization every single follow-up question that when you're talking about core cleaning is should that be a trained certified person or would our maintenance department be able to

019do the core claim perhaps and i think that might be a question mr hatcher might be able to answer as well but um generally speaking for the level of depth and cleaning we're going through for the unit standardization that's something a training professional is good at i've got some great photos from the durham project of a man inside these units is in the summertime we always have a filter change during the summertime and we go in with our equipment limited manpower vacuum specifically like we do with jobs they have dedicated people that's all these guys do they've got equipment that we don't have um that's where you go from routine maintenance coal cleaning to coal sterilization i think it's something we probably need to look at after 12 months or so do the conditioning check

020the condition of the poles uh that may be something we want to look at doing every two years there again you know we start treating outside air we got pollen we're in the country [Music] so if you don't mind me acting so we have been in the past just going in and vacuuming out and changing filters is that what our standard maintenance had been yeah with all this being said what kind of increase in budget uh will this be well just in earth everything is a pretty big increase and when i say that um state contract price on the fiberglass filters but every unit in our school every three months around us about 15 to 16 hundred dollars for that same amount of murder 13 filters i gotta put 13 and part of that is

021due to every single school district and business in the entire country suddenly creating a high demand from our team filters so there is uh some increase in price today i cannot promise you that price will go down um supply chain being what it is but um the price for the filters is significantly higher today than it is in that price that you have we calculated that out for not only this year but two more years i think that we calculated that we would put that money represented in that 245 to five they may go up i don't let it seem going down just like having said the supplies there the demands well the demand is like the supply is not good um but the demand is there so you're saying that this price here that

022you gave us we're pretty much covered for the next two to three years is that what you said mr trump is for now the extra 100 is four through 2024. and i can go for that in just a second okay extra i'm not understanding going to go through this in just a second aren't you any other question for these gentlemen who's hudson mr terrell you did mention in your opening that you all are going to get together and work on a 10-year plan yes yes that's what that was one of the reasons if you remember when we did when we were looking at escrow funds we're looking uh at that the board supported doing the needs assessment and kind of give us a roadmap to what we needed to do and that's what we did

023in phase one was a the needs assessment then phase two would be the documents of the kind of guide our process and also the priorities that we need to do and one of the things that they recommended was the cool conditioning and the air filters and working with brady it looks like that we could do that if approved that we could do that in december so that's how quick the turnaround timing too and they would do it when kids are not in school whether it was a holiday to get that done the engineering staff would probably not be until late january or february depending on the workload that they already have i would like to address miss beggarly asked a great question we've been navigating this covet and we think our mitigating strategies and the

024board support as far as masking we think that's huge as far as creating a safe environment for our kids number two the social distancing that we've done the enhanced cleaning also the protocols that we follow as far as if we identify someone that has symptoms the isolation room and if you look back that since we've been back in school with kids we haven't had to shut down school we haven't had to shut down an entire classroom so we do think that those types of things are working this is just another level on top of that that we think that the filters and the sterilization that will just be one step further but our kids have been in an environment that's very safe and conducive to learn since they've come back in march of 2020 everything

025is transitioning from switching over to um any other questions for these gentlemen uh miss begley uh did we not include our central office in any of this are we good all of our buildings [Applause] other questions dr carter so just to recap everything in our esser funds we allocated 950 000 for uh hvac and needs assessment and repair whatever the needs and outcome might be as you know 50 000 went to this needs assessment that was phase one and the uh the summary of findings is part of that phase one now that we have that summary of findings and that's on page i think page one of the important you have down at the bottom we knew from that summary of findings that that would allow us to do some things in phase two and

026those things in phase two would be what was just discussed the 245 for replacing filters and the unit and coil sanitation that can be done immediately and that's those filtration and coil conditions those two columns that can already be taken care of now and that's part of that 245 000 but we also knew no in order to do the uh the first two columns the current ventilation and increased ventilation needs we would need an engineer to do that so part of phase two is going to be a recommendation to move forward with an engineer to develop a report a second needs assessment for the ventilation system for repairs and costs and such when we receive that if you approve that as mr terrell said then that will allow us to look at phase three which

027would be a short or long range depending on the need planned to come before you so three phases the needs assessment phase one have that completed that's already done the next phase is what we're here tonight with asking for 270 000 approval from esser funds that will take care of the filtration and coil condition but i also would like to earmark a hundred thousand dollars of that 950 esser funds for filters that will carry us through 2024 because esser funds can be used through the year 2024. so if we go ahead and earmark those ester funds for filters we will not need to worry about that in the budget through 2024. so i'm asking for tonight that you allow us to that you approve uh 270 000 from s for funds for the items on

028that chart and allow us to earmark a hundred thousand dollars for filters through and that leaves us 530 approximately 530 in esser funds remaining to that have been allocated for hvac and you can use that for other means or you can save it for the uh the short long range plans even though it must be spent before 2020 through 2024 so that is my recommendation coming for you tonight the um approval of 270 thousand dollars as listed on that chart and then the earmark 104 filter replacements through 2024. you've heard the superintendent's recommendation is there a motion the stanley has made the motion is there a second second because that's in seconds of motion is there any discussion or comments battle i understand the recommendation and uh approve of that but at the last meeting

029we talked about the balance of the funds and fms we talked about possible bonus money but that's not on the agenda here so i want to know you know where we're going to go with that i think dr carter is going to address that a little later in the meeting and superintendent as an option very good ms blackwell so with the 270 000 um i would like to understand again what the breakdown of how it's you know what's the labor and what's the materials because will that and i know he said he'll get it too uh cam with that so is that covering two years which would take us into 20 uh 24 and but then you say that the hundred thousand dollars has to be spent so is in this 270 thousand dollars does

030that cover in any of filters my understanding this cost includes six months carries us through six months of filters the hundred thousand is for filters beyond the six months through 2024 when we must use this for funds okay that's all i had okay any other questions or comments you've heard the recommendation of the superintendent the motion's been made and seconded all in favor indicate by raising your hand opposed the same motion carriage unanimously i got this sheriff that car we get the breakdown i'll pass that or mr trail one will pass it to the board and how soon will it be able to start dr carter december december okay yeah [Music] when yes um i'd like to recommend removal of the policies 2000 through 2450 from the table for second reading i've heard the superintendent's

031recommendation i have a motion this battle makes a motion in a second mrs garland's seconds of motion in the discussion or comments all in favor of bringing these from the table raise your hand propose the same oh she carries unanimously dr carter before you make a recommendation uh uh last time it was brought up about emergency meetings on policy i think it was for the 2300 yes um and i thought about this to clarify leaving the first sentence and then after that saying that any board member or the superintendent may request an emergency meeting board members will be polled to determine if the meeting is necessary and cannot be delayed until the 48 hours notice for a special meeting as described below in section section d and that would would that clarify who can call

032these meetings we're going to have to poll to see if we have enough members present for the emergency meeting and in polling we can also say this is something that can wait or something that we need to do that we do need this emergency meeting i think uh mr battle you had a question about this is that does that cover yeah let me make sure you understand where we're going explain to me what's in red what's in red carter can you explain that um the red is um you have two things here one is the school board what the school board recommends and one is what the castle county policy is currently um that's that's the difference of the two which one is it the red is uh the red is the capital county i

033think uh it's red the red's the school board i'm sorry i had to look at it red is the school board okay right yeah you can see like on page two uh you can see it's specially called meeting generally and it has a line through it well i understand that yeah and is that answering your question so you were reading from emergency meeting on page the first sentence would state remain the same an emergency meeting may be called in order to address generally unexpected circumstances that require immediate consideration by the board any board member or the superintendent may request an emergency meeting board members will be polled to determine if the meeting is necessary and cannot be delayed until 48 hours notice for a special meeting as described below in section d because we have

034to poll the members to make sure we're going to have even for an emergency meeting we've got to have a quorum present right so when polling we're going to determine yes i can be there and yes i think we need to have this meeting okay but you said any board member or the superintendent may request did you say that they request an emergency meeting yes that way the board will make the decision when we told poll to see if they can if you can you can answer two questions can you be there or do you think it needs to be necessary i mean if it's an emergency and we don't have to 48 hours okay so and we also talked about in policy 30 i mean uh 22 10 public participation we can approve that

035as it is and then our procedure doesn't need to be approved we can discuss that at the january meeting if you want to at the work session then and and specify how we want it but that wouldn't change this policy because that the way we handle that is a procedure be a procedural change in january right right now yes right now we're discussing policy 2300 about emergency meeting mike 2300 and and i was saying that 2310 is can be approved as it's read as it stated here however the way we handle it is our procedure and that is something that has been said we want to discuss at the january meeting work session okay the january work session discuss our procedure for following this policy so i just have so for clarification yes because in

036policy 2310 i see uh under public comments it has 30 or 15 minutes and so that's not um is that what you mean uh about how long public comments can last i think they should be able to we have the full 30 minutes that's my take but are you talking about that procedure will be discussed at the work session yes and if necessary if that's going to change the policy then we would have to make a bring a policy up now but i mean the procedure we use that if as long as we're in this within this board policy it would be our procedure how we are handling that how we are going to handle that but if we make changes to that then we would have to do an amendment to the policy correct

037dr carter so we would have to go through that with that policy again if we're going to change well we really don't have to adopt with 3 10 now that's how it's going you can wait to the work session you follow up there we can we can we can pull it and then what i've looked at the policy in the past it says adopt it then amend it and then you have several things that come up but if you've got everything in there the first time when you talk then you don't be going back and forth we can pull 23 10. i mean that's a suggestion you have concerns about it well i was just saying you know either we're gonna have to do it now or if we're gonna change it then we'd have

038to amend it true true so whichever way you the board wants to do it will you find me if you want to pull 2310 now and wait until january well it would be february because our meeting work session will be after our regular meeting so if we have if we have any comments that we wanted to make on 2310 do we make it now like i was looking at where it says public comments to exceed no more than 30 and then it's about 15 minutes so we wanted to discuss the 30 minutes that it stayed at public comments for 30 minutes do we discuss that now that's when we were going to use it to discuss that in the work session okay so we're going to go over that and discuss it hash it out

039right and our procedures handle it okay all right okay so we just pulled policy uh 32 i mean 2310 dr carter okay dr carter do you have a recommendation i'm sorry mr battle 2010. 2010. yeah we got in that package you've got another one just case 2010. became an alpaca now you said the red is what the school board association recommended that right yes okay um what we currently have which is in the regular type black type i mean that's that's what we've been going by but i think some things in in red could be incorporated give an example when you leave uh the first section in red all decision making that paragraph there to me that should be in our policy okay but the second paragraph i don't think should be in our policy

040because the tone of the language bothers me but i think that first paragraph should should be where it is is everybody with me on that i was just reading the second one the second paragraph in red no no no oh the first paragraph in red which is good to me but i think the second paragraph i have some strong concerns about that the tone of the language what okay explain to you in the second program all right in the second paragraph it says no member of the board shall individually give orders or directives uh to me that's kind of putting us on a different level to give orders i don't think we're doing that and the language kind of bothers me right there and the other part about me the last sentence says requests for

041materials or suggestions by individual board members shall be challenged through the civil terms of david's need you know there's a difference between procedures and policies right and i don't want us to get bogged down in that you see if you don't have a problem don't create one for yourself that's what i'm saying okay so this hudson well i i would not be happy if in the second sentence a member of the board went to one of the principals and gave orders or directives or gave directives to the superintendent telling the superintendent what to do right i don't like i mean so i agree with that sentence no member of the board shall individually give orders of directives to the superintendent or mr stokes i think you can say that a better way though you want

042to nice it up yeah all right exactly it's the truth i mean do you suggest we pull this i mean we can sit here and play on words all night but y'all know what i'm talking about okay the school board association has a different take on what policies should be but each individual board has their own take on what policies should be too so we need to pull 2010 and discuss i'm just bringing it up for discussion well i think if you want to change the wording that's fine but i think you know as a new board member or i think as a parent that because we get contacted a lot by parents and they expect us to turn the magic switch or whatever but we're not we don't have any power as an individual

043that's true and and um you acted as a board as an official capacity absolutely well i think the words could be dressed up a little bit better how would you how would you dress it up mr battle well let me say it like this what would you do all right let's say for example if you had this right here and i went and told ms o'brien oh i want you to do x y and z i told him all right what are you going to do to me as a board member right what are you going to do that's my question you see but if the board collectively does something to the superintendent that's a different thing all right that's what i'm saying that's what i'm driving at i understand that but i think written

044like that that let's miss a brunt off the chain the hook too because i understand if you gave her an order to do something you know she's if one of us told mr brown to do something she's going to feel compelled to do it and this sort of lets her off but that's not our role to just go ahead but that's not our role to tell principals or superintendents what to do i know that i said that we all know that nicely can we take this to a work session can this 2010 go to the work session as well yes he did okay that way we can come back let me give you a look let's get a little read material go go and read jones county school board what that role is they spell

045it out real good jones county jones jones county and it's not the school board association policies it's their policy you're talking about uh board from superintendent oh yeah i mean not just that some other things too okay so you got 115 districts that do different things yeah you know that's what i'm saying it's just like some systems they have committees we don't have committers some board members have 11 11 board members they have nine and they have different committees that bring things up so one does not fit everybody that's what i'm saying okay so we are going to pull 2310 and 2010. to be discussed at our work session in january and they'll give us time to think about wording right what's the battle if i think about your wording there and uh dr carter

046we need to uh look at the rescinded policies that we have on the table to make sure that no parts of 2010 2310 or any of the four that are rescinded because that's one of the concerns is a lot of the policies we currently have are multiple policies from the school board association so if there's any piece of 2310 or 2010 in any of those four policies we need to make sure we can't we send them tonight so we wait and rescind them it'll be better in december so give us time to check them and see okay [Music] and then the other option is where you started is to approve them all and then amend them as a work session that's the safe way and that way it's all cleaner that's the thing that would

047be the safest thing to do i agree i agree so we'll include them all and then if we need to after our work session we'll amend uh the policies that we anywhere else all right very good dr carter i recommend board approval of policies 2000 through for adoption the superintendent has made a recommendation to approve policies 2000 through policy 2450. do i have a motion is beggarly makes a motion is there a second a second those darn seconds of motion is any discussion or comments all in favor indicate by raising your hand close the same motion carries unanimously dr carter i recommend rescinding the policies 105 200 205 and 766. superintendent has made a recommendation to rescind policy 105 policy 200 policy 205 and policy 766. we'll have a motion ms hudson makes a motion

048is there a second the stanley seconds of motion is there any discussion or comments all in favor indicate by raising your hand proposed the same motion carries unanimously new business dr carter yes this evening we have our last two schools that are presenting their school improvement plans this evening and as you may recall um the process for approving school improvement plans are uh that you hear the school improvement plans and you review their safety components in closed session you've done that for all the schools and so tonight after you hear uh the two school improvement plans from oakwood and bartlett nc senior high school this evening then i will be asking that you both uh recommended that you approve all the school dream plans for all six schools this evening that way we can go

049ahead and send them to the state board and then we can post them on the websites as well [Music] so the first school i have up is uh mr bryant oakwood elementary um improvement plan um starting with the testing data on the second page um as you all know the state board of education did not account for proficiency and growth for the past year so we don't have those numbers but oakwood was on an upward trajectory for the past three years prior to payment i feel strongly that we would have continued that upward growth um and hopefully with the return of all of our students this year um we will return to exceeding growth and large amounts of our students reaching proficiency members listed and on the following page begins our goals our first goals

050for this school year revolves around teachers assessing students in the classroom and then the bullet fair let you know what we are focusing on our teachers of course planned lessons based on the farmer's face goals and the standards for the curriculum our teachers use ice stations to progress monitors their students grows and proficiency each month they then use that data to form students into small groups and tutoring purposes and also students who are reaching mastery level to be involved in enhancement activities we also use formative assessments constantly in the classroom to gauge student understanding and adjust instruction teachers do that every day we also use amplify nibbles which is our reading assessment excuse me to diagnose where students needs are in reading and currently right now we are using exit tickets with progress monitor with

051reading we use data dives to plan our instruction our teachers plan for re-teaching and reassessing students as needed with eyestation our students are progressed monitored every month and then like i said before they're given individual individualized lessons going on to our second goal a1.05 goal revolves around teachers individualizing instructional planning in response to individual student performance our first bullet there we know that there was a tremendous learning loss from the time was being shut down in march 2020 until students returned this year so we have found um that we have large gaps in students proficiency and phenomenal awareness basic letter recognition number recognition um so carol does our elementary curriculum director purchased hegerty bridging the gap which teachers are using primarily in grades k three k three to help students with phonemic awareness letter recognition

052just those basic literacy foundations that students need to begin to be able to read and in the first we've been 11 12 weeks now we are seeing a lot of progress with that program um our students should experience a lot of learning loss but we have seen huge gains um just in the short time we've been in school with students being back in the building every day consists consistently we've seen a lot of growth so far we continue to use the mtss process and that is where teachers bring students to our mtss committee who are not meeting proficiency in an area the mtss committee comes up with research-based interventions for those students the teacher takes those interventions back to the classroom and does those interventions but fidelity for six to eight weeks they bring the

053student back to nc mtss and we analyze the data to see if the students are showing growth with those interventions if they are that's great teacher keeps going um if the student is not showing growth with those interventions um we dig deep and come up with different research-based intervention interventions to try with that student so we continue mtss we also our teachers are using um the equip pre-assessments which is part of the eureka math program these pre-assessments in the eureka program allow teachers to see what student inspire knowledge is before they begin a new module or a new unit and then they're able to adapt and base their instruction on students prior knowledge and that's something new that we're using this year and i've gotten very positive feedback from teachers about these pre-assessments because they're

054able to gauge where students are especially with the number of students who didn't return to the building in march um you know they're all over the place we really have no idea where they are so the equip pre-assessment has been a big help to our teachers the things that we continue to do our teachers continue to write peps personalized educational plans for students who are not meeting proficiency in order to address their needs we progress monitor we use the mtss process and teachers use environmental modifications so we have all of our students are different and we have some students who prefer to sit on a bouncy ball we have some students who prefer to sit on a mat on the floor we have some students who prefer to sit at the front of the room

055some at the back so teachers individualize instruction for students that way as far as how does the student learn best how is the student um the most comfortable we have students who you'll send in the classroom for a 45 minute math lesson and some students never sit down because they do better standing up and they might be bouncing around or um but they're listening and paying attention so our teachers are great with individual loving how students learn on the next stage um is our last goal for this school year this is a big one for us as i think it is across the nation um we have seen a rise in behaviors with students it has been tough for some of our students to acclimate themselves back to the school environment we have students who

056are struggling with managing their social their social states we have students who had difficulty during coven and during the quarantine um and it's just hard for them to come back to school and be expected to be in a building for seven and a half hours and and not do what they can but they want to all day so it's been a little bit difficult so um we are focusing this year on social and emotional support for our students the first bullet there all of our teachers and instructional personnel are completing the six hours of training for the mental health and suicide prevention that is an online program that we're all doing um our teachers are integrating instruction materials with social emotional lessons that's something that i spoke about a little bit with the seating arrangements

057we have a wonderful school counselor anna isaacs she meets with our students once a week for a 45-minute lesson um and all of her lessons are based on social and emotional well-being and helping students to become aware of their feelings and how they can manage those those feelings and emotions so that is a big um a big push for us this year our teachers are also learning creating learning environments using utilizing the castle evidence-based social emotional practices for the classroom our teachers are utilizing social and emotional strategies to help our students with their instructional practices and our school counselor a few years ago she did a professional development for our teachers on the signs of regulation and we've gotten several new staff members since then um so she just led another pd with our staff

058members on zones of regulation so we all use that common language um so students are taught colors and those colors associate with how they're feeling um so if you're in a blue state you're very hyper you're very up if you're in a yellow state you're sad depressed not feeling well so when we talk to students about how they're feeling they can tell us what color what zone they're in what color they are and then that helps us be able to figure out what we need to do for them um and it's amazing because i'll have students come in my office and before we even start talking they'll say i'm read i'm just some reading like okay well we'll work on that um so that just helps our students because they need to be aware of

059their own emotions and how they're feeling and one way we do that we started our pdis program um this is my sixth year at oakwood and i think we started it my second year for five years now our pdis program worked very well for us um and like i said it was tricky to get back into the routine of school um but our students have done very well um and we're using our same pdis expectations um that we've always used and our students do very well with that on the next page additional information about oakwood not a lot has changed just because of our limitations for what we can do in the time of coding but we are continuing our student ambassador program um which are is some of our fourth and fifth grade students

060who want to take on leadership roles something new we started with that this year we have a publication team um so during the week they record the announcements for friday we have a green screen and a camera we have a microphone so a little production studio um the students do the announcements for friday they record it and then we broadcast that on friday morning so some of our student ambassadors are doing that we've had to be creative with some of the things our student ambassadors do they used to go into classrooms as a tutor but now since we don't really want to across classrooms um they go into the library each morning with their chromebook um and they record themselves holding up flashcards or reading a story to a student and then it's sent to

061their teacher um and they watch the reading or the video on their chromebook they watch the video sight words and that's how they're helping the students um and it's amazing you wouldn't think students would want to sit there and watch them like another student reads one but when you've got a fifth grader holding up flashcards and sight words and the kindergartners they just think that's wonderful so it's working for us um we continue with our citizen of the month program to recognize students who consistently exhibit the monthly citizenship skills we've been doing that for several years ms haney is continuing our battle of the books club she did that last year virtually we had to get creative with that but we're doing it in person this year um the science olympiad is a little bit

062different this year since they can't meet in person so we're doing it virtually um we are gathering information now for tutoring we hope to bring in a tutor beginning in december to start pulling groups for reading and math parent nights we're hoping to be able to have curriculum and transition nights in the spring if we can't have them in person we'll do them virtually um we do our weekly plc's this is religious um we do not miss plcs at oakwood everybody knows that you don't plan anything on wednesday or thursday during teachers planning time um because wednesdays are held for data dives and thursdays are held for planning and that is done with the instructional coach michelle robinson um and i sit in as many as i can i can't sit in all of them

063um but that is where teachers analyze student data and the instructional coach to make sure that teachers are planning appropriately um we did have one person amanda haney our media specialist she was awarded a bright ideas grant and this is her fourth year i believe winning this grant which is unheard of but she noticed that we had a lack of biographies in our library that reflect our student population and our students love biographies so she's using that grant money to purchase books for the media center that more media center that will reflect our student population so students can read books about people who look like them um the instructional coach miss robinson and myself um we go through teachers weekly frameworks each week which is their lesson plans um we usually divide it up i'll

064do k2 one week three five and then we'll switch and we have a google form that we submit the feedback on we go through their frameworks and we send them the feedback on the instructional plans and we also complete informal walkthroughs um our goal is to do 30 a month um and we leave the teacher's feedback in their google form that we send them and then i also do all the formal observations the materials you use to assess our students to find out where they are do you think they're doing a good job of assessing where our student is all of our students i do um and dibbles um that's those are our main two points of assessment and i do um they're very accurate um and during the time of shutdown it was it

065was really tough to get an accurate read because we didn't know which students at home were maybe having help from someone but now that we're back in school those assessments do give us a great deal of information and then those assessments also there are components where teachers can go in and based on those students needs um those teachers can get intervention research-based interventions um that tell you right there what the student needs and so that's what we use for a lot of our interventions for students good good any other questions miss hudson uh i don't know mr bryant if this is for you or miss bose but one of the things that we've all talked about is that gap that we may be seeing from kids staying at home but i also know that i've

066heard many parents and we've talked their kids that during that time of david there was a lot of enhancement at home a lot of pushing at home so we may be having these kids that are accelerated are we are we looking at our aig kids and if there's a gap there in the positive end of the spectrum are we pushing them to yes and i would say um marcy piotrowski um has done an amazing job of coming in to the schools um and working with each grade level um she's done that i don't know the exact numbers but at least three or four times this year um and and she she does enhance enrichment activities with the entire class it's not just our identified aig students um but yes we we are trying to differentiate

067for our aig students and also our students who are being um nurtured for aig services um but miss piotrowski she's been a great addition she has done a great job of coming in and doing lessons for our grade levels and working with the drums that was a big hit in the summer um i was nervous about it at first you know bringing us into summer school because they're they're complex and they're fragile and you know i just i didn't know how it was going to go um and i went in several times at the gym while she was doing it and those kids were so involved um they followed directions they they so to answer your question yes and she's mentioning miss pietrowski going into the classroom so i don't know dr carter was going

068to share this tonight or not but we have um miss c has gone in and got done over 120 some lessons we've just started fourth grade alone um in showing teachers how to to do more critical thinking activities and recognize which kids are thinking that way we did that because we wanted to prepare those students for the cardiac since we were unable to give it last year so we've been able to give that test to all the third and fourth graders this year already in addition to that she has worked with the um the media specialist at each school miss amy is up to a point almost to being ready to start to do the drones with the fourth and fifth graders herself i know this afternoon she was at 73 we she's also going

069in and demonstrating some other differentiation strategies and retools and resources that we have given the teachers where during reading they can use some of these resources which will really elevate the higher end of the spectrum so it's been wonderful to have a full-time aid coordinator and she has been very well used and we've spent a lot of time looking at even the student data and mr bright was mentioning eyestation lets us know if students are above grade level as well it pushes out activities that are on that child's level in reading and math so we actually have a kind of a plethora of resources that are kind of coming automatically or are starting to be well woven in and everybody might not recognize it as soon as you walk in just because they have all

070become layers of services that are happening regularly thank you thank you thank you ms blackwell i had a question um with the now that you've done the eye station and the other assessments for this uh first nine weeks how do you think your students have done with all the different things that you all have done have you looked at that yet yes um we break down our eye station data each month um and we look at where our students are at each grade level um the proficiency levels have not been where we would like for them to be um they've been low but we know that because our students miss so much instructional time but the amount of growth has been each okay so we have kindergarten students who came in knowing no letters and

071no numbers and now they're able to read 25 sight words so right now we're trying to focus more on the growth aspect because we could pretty much say almost all of our students are behind um so we're looking at how much they are growing um and it's been wonderful um and i tell my teachers you know not to look at the proficiency percent right now um because they they are working so hard um and they are just giving it everything they can and when you when you see a proficiency rate and it's low it can be defeating to a teacher but we have to realize where they started so we focus on the growth and teachers focusing on the growth keeps them motivated and lets them know that yes these things that you're doing are

072working um it may be slow it's going to take some time um but the growth has been huge um i don't know what our test board will look like at the end of this full year um we're hopeful um but we can't make up the entire learning loss that took place in one school year it's going to be tough to do but i feel like our students are going to shed a lot of growth i i think just a comment i know for the most of us we were concerned about the gaps in reading and math and students you know missing so much instruction for last year so it's just good to hear about the growth that is that is taking place so thank you for that idea that's that's what's keeping us going because

073if we if we just look at the proficiency um you know it's tough right now um but again our students have shown tremendous amounts of growth um and our behaviors continue to improve um as the school year goes on and i have to keep reminding teachers that we had some students who you know were out for 18 months um and to think about being a six or seven year old out of school for 18 months you know to us 18 months isn't that long but to a child that can be a lifetime um and then we we're asking them to come back to in a building for seven and a half hours a day and follow all the rules and procedures and um the bathroom breaks and i mean wear the mask and you know

074that's a lot for a child um so our teachers have had to show a lot of patience and a lot of grace um with our students um and just reminders that you know these these are little people and and it takes them a little bit longer to get reactivated to to school life um so i think we'll continue to see gains and growth is is there anything else that we as a board can provide for you in the way of materials resources no ma'am i don't think so um i i would like to say thank you for the 10 supplements um that was huge for our teachers and staff that was a huge uh morale booster um and i appreciate that from our school board the sad ones having friday um after veterans day and

075every night work day um that was a huge fixture um so we we appreciate that um and i think it's a tough time for everybody um and we're just doing our best every day to give our students all that we can every day and tomorrow is a new day and we'll do it over again and um we're all in this together and dr carter is very supportive um ms button is very supportive of our teachers and me and and what we needed so man i can't think of anything but i appreciate you asking any other questions or comments dr carter i just wanted to um publicly thank mr bryant for her leadership back in you know oakwood was a a d school they were four points away from being in f school and she has

076along with the leadership and supporting the teachers and all the hard work of the teachers they moved into in 2019 to a c school 13 points away from a b school but exceeded growth in math and that's that's a lot of movement in a very positive way and i just want to thank you publicly for your leadership was so disappointing because we were on that upward trajectory and um i know that we were going to keep moving upward um but just like everybody we're all set back down and we're just doing what we can to make up for that loss and make sure our students are getting what they need every day okay there are no other questions thank you so much okay and next of course we have our last school but certainly not

077our lease uh mr stux from bartley henson bartlett yancey senior high school to get the high school improvement plan presentation as well so um good evening we're we're gonna focus on three major goals instead of focus on so many things and so such a wise thing because the comprehensive high school has a lot of moving parts so you can't do everything well you have to do a few things exceptionally so um on the third slide you would see our current student who was a member who were excited for our two representatives um one in their first year over half of this team is now first year on our school improvement team where they brought a lot of excitement um we used to call our team mtss team um i have now re-named it as school-based

078leadership team and mtss the subcommittee of my student improvement things so that we can divide and conquer to solve some of the operational things of quality and we take a look at analyzing the last door zone prior to coach i'm falling [Music] the amount of loss was getting greater um we did not have data for 19 23 years and our performance rate as you can see also um it didn't match necessarily the growth there are so many different factors in the high school um accountability model so so many times the high school is put in the same bucket or borough as elementary middle and there are very different indicators such as graduation rates dropout rates um cte working those things also go into this so i am very proud of the work that's been done

079involving high school and hopefully um there's a very difficult thing to do in the high school because such some of the content is very specific to learn science and specific science and science there's various different there are different subjects and science math um so these these testing assessments give us a time to do a quick check to see how we're doing and no this does not say how it doesn't talk about everything happening but it is something that gives us some indication of what we want so molly's high school will restructure the nps's pro calls procedures development whenever i spoke guidance and with someone about ntss the high school i got different so i said it's time for us to restructure this because if you have five people who've been trained on the same thing

080everybody takes them to erase and start and good back from the end second we continue to monitor monthly interventions through our plt meetings our plt stands for professional learning team i have put in places like interdisciplinary teams of teachers working together versus teachers of the same subject because there's been a lot of great success in our cte and great success in some of our exceptional classrooms and they can bring those strategies to some of the other areas because we have student engagement so they keep the same kids and other subject matters and you can dream from there for the productivity um based in the school leadership team you know why assets will provide professional development um using them that's practically a teacher like a champion but he's like a champion there's a there's a great

081book like that's 62 strategies that put kids on college track and someone said well why am i going to try this though i want everyone to have options in high school no it will not go to touch whom we're not designing a college but how we can create an environmental culture that allows them to make a choice if they're saying it's a choice for them and then we perform assessment announces yellow and green and this is just not in our big four eoc this has been everything so there's no one subject that feels or has to approach that it is more important than ever i don't want kids to think that they're being in the class specifically for an elc school i want kids to master what they're doing so they walk away with skills

082that's going to enhance what they do as for the citizens so our second on friday was a couple of months happening and provide timely clear constructive feedback to teachers and so my advocacy now because our third goal is all and most of my experience has been entitled one time around schools and what i found when you're in title one turnaround school you are pressured to increase proficiency and growth you have to focus on foreign structure um yes you have to have very strong interventions and other things in place but we must analyze the quality of the poor construction that happens far from the time sometimes we may feel students at the level of on grade level structure and i just put it simply you cannot fit across the finish line is another way the kids

083must know what grade level construction is prior to on the end of that they should feel that river of great level instruction at the end of the semester they should understand that and experience that day so to do that we have a broad institution a mastery learning cycle so we have a cycle of events that we do during the doing the teaching process reteaching and opportunity so that we not focus on proficiency but we focus on master do they know the content not can they regurgitate it now can they mimic it but have they able to demonstrate that for a second use various platforms to provide access to the questions for students at various levels so we are glad to have ingenuity we are glad to still use um canvas and our other lms platforms

084we also grant are getting better virtually they don't have some of the barriers and vice versa and didn't do very well so we've got to be sure that we have the right toolkit to allow them to be as successful and um final answer teaching to participate in the peer department fosters for a psycho career by administrator i think a good teacher you can see other kids in the building you can tell someone something but i like to go into a classroom and i said let me teach the class where um uh and was able to graduate um and so our graduation our job our rate did not increase and of course score the math three and math two and valencia high school getting increased yes they did increase you don't get that very often that's

085something but they did increase and our cte works towards the number of students who earned civil gold and platinum remained at 48 percent due to the pandemic compared to the previous cohort for very proud my student services team are two new councils and feel they can talk to their counselor and it's just not about scholarship it's about real world problems because they are a real grieving person they can connect with and they can but also i knew social workers because we're now monitoring our attendance and those other risk factors so that we can wrap around those things before we catch them so we can diagnose the problem before it gets too far out of the way and that helps a lot at red students uh career academy that is as you know students apply for

086the 22 credits students some of them are are identified upon injured high school what we have found in the team since that's when kids have not set foot in school for 18 months 20 months and so kids want to graduate with the great that they're supposed to graduate from you know i haven't met a student yet that would get you with my class and walk with my fellow classmates so we have a look to see what's the best option and what that pass and i'm just so proud of my counseling department sat down and that's our plan of what you need to do with both the current the student and then once they get that from they bring it to their grade level administrator that they will sign up on do they make it to

087me there are several people moving that student not just one person command a message it's a team and a student feels they have that support so that's been that's absolutely wonderful we are happy that we are not the educators handbook for monitoring decreasing this interaction um this is something that happens to listen and yes this one has been very prevalent in schools um i would step forward if you ever had a kid to go to college when they went to college and they said they stayed there after fall break and they had to come back home to the hospital now i'm speaking on my own experience when i came back home it was very difficult for me to follow the house rules of my parents because i was used to people but this is the

088same thing we deal with 720 students at the high school they have been coming free and now we brought them back home and it has not come without us having to read it revisit [Music] so that we can monitor where our behaviors are happening what time of the day that's happening and what are our biggest infractions so we again now have data to take to the school based leadership team so they can now share and talk about here's the problem for an example our last newsletter we should take about home business this is such a big problem one of the teachers said what does that handle saying because we try to create that environment and say that because sometimes one teacher of influence can say something that sounds true or it may be believable may

089not that should be true that maybe that teacher's particular experience that's not talking about what's all happening in high school so we can tell you thursday at one o'clock seemed to be our most difficult time because that's the majority of our referrals that brought the answer as a black striker now full moons as we go through the associate degree program we are proud to say we have 12 students on track to graduate issue with their associates we have 11 students in the class of 2023 we have nine students in the class of 2024 and we have 14 students in the class of 2025 that's currently in the associate's pathway to graduate with that folks we're excited about that opportunity and looking forward to that as well as active clubs organizations um one of the biggest

090things my students asked about in acts 4 was seeing they can be part [Music] we need to have offerings and things that our schools every student can be a part of something for me or student government bank that i'm glad to announce that we have launched a new chess club um for the first time we have a drama club coming online we initiated a step team that's come online and we are looking at some partnerships with the chamber of commerce for um stephen covey's seven health to happiness and things that so we're excited we still have advanced truth is now back on the line um after having had some coping so we're excited about those things to the council is as thriving spanish um as you know we've had a very successful season in volleyball

091this year as well as football um we are experiencing a lot of success with the new cultural and structural changes within the construction ways we are glad as you know that the education cdpi grant will be used with additional portfolio technology and the business finance and information technology and we also launched capital online for the initial communications we will continue to engage in progress money forward i now want myself to use questions [Music] before the questions come uh thank you for the um the presentation and i see that you're proudly wearing the school covers and i know what you're going through been there and done that question though on the last page you said about the intercourse scores in math 3 and english 2 increase you talking about 20 um okay [Music] that's what i

092want to be clear okay very good mrs blackwell thank you can you explain that mastery learning um yes so many times [Music] instead of getting graded to a test the teacher can now sit down and say you missed them a week because of this they know that i could see your error pattern only through me teaching and looking for mastery you'll find that the issue i found with secondary is i'm an elementary people so that first grade teacher that i and every kid i am is still there so you have to give that feedback and you have to be intentional with it because if you don't you lose kids and when a student feels the dollars are there 9 10 11 12. they for themselves because they want to do great and so with master

093learning we don't just talk about what we pass that we want to master so that's what that looks like we got reteaching days remediation days and then we got enhancement so in our pacing it says it takes a five days we may try to give us that one day i just saw way too much remedial stuff being different and you never got to the court instructions of therefore so we need to struggle to immediately doesn't have that so what we try to do is give a focus on creating an environment what kind of one expert two take risks understand that i don't have to be compared to my cop to my my classmates thank you very much ms hudson are all your pacing guides have they been aligned in each subject to what you're talking

094about and by mastering we're very glad to have engaged was a big undertaking when i first came on and what really helped us is while we were converting what they gave us some time to really fine tune it in my teachers were trying for the next year we kind of have a lot of that ground we're already laid so the main department has done phenomenal with embracing engagement here's why i feel that they have some increase with um proficiencies thank you dr carter as you can probably i sound like a broken record but i am so excited about the leadership that is at lansing senior high school uh focus on academics the pride that's that's in the school and we are just moving in the right trajectory and i just uh want to thank you

095for the leadership that i already see and i can't wait to see what the future holds as well [Music] they're appreciative of uh the support of this book for the supplement and i've tried my best to can't encourage you know i've tried a lot of hard work and so they they don't like that i'm i'm a that i've heard workaholic i'm looking for um before my kid came that i was there and so i worked all day for long so hours but staff by taking things home and um i won't be there for them i'm not going to the limelight of um believe it or not right on the back that i'm not going to be behind thank you mr stokes could you share just a little bit about the castle online we can broaden

096the types of classes that we share for example success one-on-one with a class that helps students and non-creative assessments that it happens um um enough classes to um enough students interested to be part of that class you know if you have a class of three kids as not to schedule that would do absolutely nothing because it will boost the number of computers so in order for access definitely has not allowed us [Music] allows our students to participate in classes and courses that um we have kids taking on industrial psychology so those are classes we teach face-to-face our classes are often necessary at pcc through a particular problem and as i'm not contemporaries and it's working quite well now it has been a tough one to launch a lot of parents thought that it was an

097online school so we had to help clear that message and we're looking forward to doing it even better yes yes thank you any other questions from mrs stokes [Music] is miss jones behaving well one of the best welcomes to a district that in any case i've been in my 20 years that's what y'all have done but i'm a job embracing this color because i asked a lot of questions and i have a lot of comments and i'm a little bit stubborn at times because i don't do well with no and so i try my best to uh ask questions so miss jones every every every department hatchet i think if i called him in more times his public um they'd probably foreign [Laughter] i'd like to recommend approval of the school improvement plans for south

098elementary oakwood elementary north elementary stoney creek elementary school in el dilla middle school and bartlett yancey senior high school recommend those for approval you've heard the superintendent's recommendation do i have a motion mrs garland who made the motion is there a second there's vaguely seconds of motion is there any discussion or comments all in favor indicate by raising your hand close the same motion carries unanimously dr carter um under uh superintendent updates i have um just didn't excuse me did that include the safety yes let me do that that includes the safety plan that's part of their site that's that's what i was checking make sure okay yes as you all know the governor signed state law 2021 18 180 into law this past week that is the first state budget we have had since

0992018 which has been long overdue uh it's brought a lot of good things to the school districts and of course like every other district we you know we hope for more but this is a huge huge step in the right direction and so what i'd like to share is just some of the highlights now we cannot answer every question right now because we haven't heard the details of how it's going to be implemented when it has to be rolled out when when uh certain things have to be paid out we know time frames but not enough details and that's coming over the next few weeks but i would like to share some things that we do know about the state budget that uh that is law now um every teacher should uh will get an

100average now say average of five percent pay increase over the next two uh two years at least one point three percent this year and one point three percent the next school year and depends on where you are on the step increase you will get an additional amount and all that together would equal five percent um do we know uh the pay increase for this year will be retroactive to july first for all of these pay increases so that's a very good thing uh principals it provides a 2.5 increase at all levels of the principal salary schedule and they will receive a one-time bonus this school year of 1800 and again uh we know that that's when we paid out sometime the first of the year but we don't have enough you know information yet from

101the state department from that non-certified personnel that and it reads state funded employees so that's what we've got to be very careful of because you know we have um certified non-certified employees that are somewhere state funded some are locally funded so it reads state funded employees and that's where information will come to the board for you to make decisions on on you know the route to take we'll get a an increase of either 2.5 or 13 an hour minimum wage this year with the intent of increasing that next year to 15 for the next school year central office across the board 2.5 increase and then the following year another 2.5 increase instructional support personnel uh like school psychologists uh speech pathologists they will get 350 more a month and so um and then a counselor

102school counselors will get a hundred dollars more a month for their their role there is a section in there for retirees school retirees get a five percent cost of living over two years two percent this year three percent the next year uh so that's a good thing as well might not might not equate to the cost of living but it is at least an increase uh all full-time education employees regardless if you're certified or not certified you'll receive a um you'll receive a thousand dollar bonus if you make 75 or above 75 000 or above if you make less than that you'll receive 1500 bonus this school year and again first of the year but we don't know the time frame for that there's also an additional amount for teachers that provides a one uh

103300 uh bonus in lieu of performance-based uh bonuses and there's also it's called a coveted bonus or a thousand dollars for teachers associated with covid19 training we don't have the details on that yet but that's laid out there so basically a teacher between the um the 15 to make under 75 000 you would get 1500 for that you'd get 300 for the evos bonus and then you'd get a uh 1 000 esther bonus with the state so or from the federal government through the state so a teacher can make a bonus of 2 800 this year that's a good thing those bonuses are one time uh in some of the cases so i just want everyone to understand it doesn't see it doesn't mention that it's a ongoing it's a one-time shot one of the

104things i'm very excited about too is that they have a supplemental assistance program for low wealth counties based upon your tax there's a formula for that based upon your uh your county's uh tax base and it can go up from 490 up to four thousand i mean four thousand two hundred fifty dollars and as you know you know because we're a low wealth county and not a lot of tax base we're one of i think five counties in the state of north carolina that don't offer a teacher supplement to our teachers but because of this we can start providing ninety 3591 dollars supplement for our teachers so excited so so excited and you know there's a chart that shows what every district pays their their teachers and then and it has an additional chart of

105how the state has added to that to make them now we'll never reach you know chapel hill wake and guilford but it does make us more competitive with some of our other districts and so i'm so so excited also there's a uh component for low wealth districts small schools low wealth which we are that they will match up to a thousand thousand dollars um if they will match a thousand dollars one to one based upon any signing bonuses that you offer and you know we do have signing bonuses we have a two thousand uh dollar sign bonus signing bonus for our science and math and ec visit teaching positions and one thousand dollars for all other teaching positions so we don't know the details yet but it sounds like they'll be able to match some

106of those recruiting tools that you know are already uh in place and that would help us as well some of the other things uh they did hold fast on adm hold harmless for the next year uh in the following year so we're very happy on that one as well they did increase the funding cap for students with disabilities you know every district is paid at a certain level regardless of how what percentage of your students are identified they did increase that from 12.5 to 13 funding cap so there will be a an increase for all the districts uh again that we are very happy with uh they they're continued with some safety programs school safety programs that we we um can't wait to get that information you know that's where our sros have come from

107that's where some of our wands our walk-through metal detectors have come from so we're excited to see you know what we can apply for once those guidelines come out as well there's money for school business system modernization plan in there that we knew was coming down the down the pike one of the things i can't wait to see how it impacts caswell county is that there's one billion in federal funding for the state's broadband expansion initiatives and i so hope that a big part of that comes to caswell county because that's one of our holdbacks that we knew during the um during the pandemic was you know even though we have broadband in some areas you know we have students in all reaches of the county and you know which is not the case that

108they can access the same uh internet access as someone who might live in town and there's so much more to this but i just wanted to share with you that there's some great things coming down the pike from the budget and uh i'm i'm happy what this brings to education again it's you know like everybody i can say it's not enough that this certainly is a step in the right direction for us um and i know mr ballen had mentioned earlier about um esther funds and you know was there some money from the hvac and possibly can use that for the staff so i wanted to share what's coming down the pike now i i wanted to stress again this will not be paid out until after the first of the year um but i

109i do know there was some conversation about if there was any uh leftover are not left over but hvac money that wasn't used for you know what we're talking about tonight you know could that be used for anything so with that i'd like to turn it over to mr battle if that's all right mr owen my proposal not knowing the exact dollar amount so i went back and did some figuring and my original proposal was we have 301 full-time employees 61 the original thing i came up with was two thousand dollars for four times a thousand for the um part time so after we got our packet and we had the information given to us for the essa funds what that would cost and that total is 530 000 so i backed it up with

110the 301 full time at a cost of 1500 so that would come to four hundred and fifty one thousand five hundred dollars the sixty one part-time proposal was for seven hundred and fifty dollars that would come to forty five thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars total and i even looked at the amount that we had left over not to deplete the whole thing if there was a possibility we could go back to our fund balance because that's what we've been doing in the past for the christmas bonus so that's the proposal that i have because i'm aware of what the state's going to do but that's going to come after christmas this was proposed for christmas bonus money because we're in the time frame we won't meet again uh in time for payroll so that

111was my proposal 1500 for four-time 750 for part-time dr carter can answer funds be used for christmas bonus or has to be it would be considered you can't call them christmas bonus it would be called a staff retention bonus because that's that's how it would be referred to oh i'm sorry this 61 you figure is that clear enough like substitute teachers or anything is that just part-time employees of hired employees of castle county schools right because we got some substitute teachers are pretty much working but they're not including that we never encountered [Music] how would you feel if if some of that could be used for retention like we did this past year when in october those that were with us in june we've got you know a certain amount rather than giving them all

112of that right now but having that as as you know kind of a bonus coming back well my thing with this it would be that you had to be here by october 1. that's how we started be on board uh if you're gonna give a bonus give a bonus not half now and half later uh and the reason i say that is this suppose we did not have the s of funds we would not be having this discussion if we didn't have the answer phones we could not have done a lot of things that we have done we wouldn't have been able to approve the contract for brady uh unless we went into fund balance and i know it has been done in other school systems uh we are small but one school system took

11310 million dollars gave their bonuses you call it whatever you want to retention or whatever but that's that's the proposal that i offered to you for a board to discuss and make a decision but um okay any other comments or about that proposal is there any i mean we don't have a crystal ball that's the only thing that scares me about when the architect or the engineer excuse me comes in to look at the ventilation system repairs or whatever but i understand mr battles i would love to do a christmas bonus and this is probably the only way i guess we have something major that comes in with the engineer we would have to go into fund balance then it's going to be a 10-year capital yeah outlet part project that's going on most likely

114it would be part of our capital improvement uh conversation with commissioners every year and mr battle you did the figuring and what we've got left it would work that way correct so is this we are voting is this uh has she made the recommendation or he's given he's just giving us the information for discussion yes well i agree that uh if we have the money uh and it's here now's the time to go ahead and use it for as they call it staff retention instead of putting it on the back end go ahead and say thank you that's regularly funny i agree i know they need the money but we've got some subs who are long time subs that seem like they kind of get left out i mean i know y'all haven't done anything

115for them in the past but without those subs we wouldn't have a person in that i just wish it was some way you could do a long time sub something because you've got some that are here every day they might you know i don't know but the esser funds could not be used for that because it would be a retention so you couldn't i understand what you're saying too many but i doubt the funds would be allowed to do that that's michael so with the uh subs and because i uh agree with that uh do we is there a possibility that subs can become uh part of the full-time part-time that you know so that they you know and we don't ever know what the future may be but is there something that can be

116changed where a sub that has been a serve for x number of years because i know when i was teaching we had subs that had they come into the classroom and stay there for a while so is there something that we could do we may not be able to do it now but would that be something that we need to start to take a look at people who have been serving for x number of years to to see whether that uh can be something permanent or is that coming that has to come from the state that's a question i would say it could be something that you can work into your fund balance okay okay it's just like um we increased to pay for bus drivers some of them probably if you look at an

117hourly rate may make more than a substitute mix and like you're saying you have people who are loyal to you uh they come at the last minute uh when i was at the high school i had a lady that probably worked every day but she was not a full-time employee you know she just got the regular substitute pay and i think more or less it would behoove us that i think if we could come up with a plan you know using fund balance to compensate the subs for more than they're getting uh because more or less you get what you pay for and they have been loyal to us uh i think they need to be compensated in some kind of way it's just like we're doing the bus drivers now that's not going to

118solve all our hills but i think it'd be a good way that we could talk about that probably at the january work session would be the best time to do that because some school systems have already done that they have up there self-paced and there's no magic formula but yeah i think it's somebody to take a look at so we can discuss that at the january work session along with the other things uh miss carl i did i did i know we like to do as much as we possibly can for our staff and teachers and uh since we're gonna call this retention bonus i would like to see it given out in two two payments instead of the one what's the rationale for that just asking well what if what if we give the

119bonus and then the staff leave us um i thought i heard through one discussion before that if a person leaves or something is that money you sort of try to get that money back or something is that some i knew i heard that as part of a discussion that's that's that's the signing bonus i think but yeah that that's the signing bonus right that's the signing diamond that's the sign of bonus okay so any other bonus is um it's a retention of staying with us you've been with us right along and that's why you've earned it basically by staying in casual county right just another point the bonus that we've given in the past to the we gave it to him at one time never took it back course it was not as much money

120christmas as we were talking about right now different ways to look at it any other questions comments is that something does this 301 include everyone central office it doesn't directors directors 301 full any other questions or comments dr carter yeah as we go around yeah yeah before that okay [Music] a dollar uh retention bonus for full-time employees all council county employees uh and then for a part-time employee 750 to be paid out in their december paycheck i've heard the superintendent's recommendation is there a motion free yes or funds i'm sorry i didn't have that some of them made the motion i think he deserves that version okay this is their second ms black will second promotion any discussion or any comments all in favor indicate by raising your hand suppose the same motion carries unanimously

121i need a motion that the casual county board of public education going into closed session for the purpose of considering a personnel action that involves an officer or employee of this board nc general statute 143 318-1186 and for the purpose of discussing information that is privileged confidential or not a public record nc general statute 143-318-1181 and to confer with attorney do i have the motion so moved ms hudson has made the motion is there a second mrs begley seconds of motion