BOE Regular recurrent meeting

001i love you [Music] motorcyle thank you please stand for pleasure [Music] one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you you have in front of you the minutes from the meeting on may the 10th in the work session on may 18th can i get a motion [Music] discussion the same uh i have two announcements and the first is a reminder that this friday may 28th is the last day of school for our students and it is an early dismissal day dismissing at 12 30 and i would just like to publicly say thank you to our students and staff for their diligence and navigating through this very challenging school year i'd also like to say a reminder that the bartley henson senior high school graduation is scheduled for saturday june 10th at

002the bar manchester senior high school football stadium and to say congratulations to all of our graduates any public comments we have um we have our last three principles ready to present virtually this evening and um as a reminder these are the remaining three pretzels that will give an overview of what's occurring at their schools and so you can have a good insight into what's happening and we just in no particular order we have uh ms o'brien going first followed by ms bullock and then and because of attending virtually if you have questions at the end of each presentation i'll go up near the speaker and then be able to make sure that they hear your questions for them to respond so with that being said i'd like to ask mr ryan and she can start

003us off good afternoon or good evening board members um can you all hear me and see me um kimray's getting that set up you do have a copy of their presentation that [Music] can you all hear me yeah yeah okay all right good evening board members i hope you all are doing well this evening my name is jennifer o'brien principal of oakwood elementary um for those of you that don't know me a little background i graduated from unc wilmington with an elementary education degree i have a master's master's degree from nccu in library science i also have a master's degree in school administration from nccu my teaching career began um in elementary school and i taught elementary for about eight years mostly in the third grade i then moved into the media specialist role in

004an elementary school for four years i then entered administration at bartley yancey high school as an assistant principal i was there for three years and then i moved to oakwood elementary as principal and i'm finishing up my fifth year at oakwood elementary this year um i believe you all have a copy of the powerpoint presentation that i've prepared on the front there's just a picture of last year's staff that was our faculty picture of course we didn't get to take one this year on the following page my media specialist did a bitmoji faculty picture for this year since we weren't able to gather as a staff to the right there is my um my list of faculty i do have 16 classroom teachers three enhancement teachers four ec self-contained teachers one ec resource teacher a

005school counselor 12 teacher assistants one instructional coach one school nurse two custodians two office staff five cafeteria staff eight bus drivers and three bus aides on staff at oakwood on the next page is oakwood's student enrollment for this year right now we have 311 total students we had 208 students choose to come back in person and 103 students chose to stay virtual and we were happy to have so many of our students return in person and they have been thrilled to be back at school and they've enjoyed being back on campus with us on the next page we have our mission and motto i would like to say that our mission is the one that's been in place since i started at oakwood and my school improvement team had a plan to write a new

006mission statement at the beginning of this past school year but due to covid and the restrictions of being together and meeting together we decided that this probably wasn't the best year to craft a new mission statement so we kept the one that we have which is oakwood elementary school's mission is to nurture an environment that respects individual differences promotes high achievement and encourages each member of the entire school community to be active lifelong learners um our school improvement team would just like to update it and make it a little bit more reflective of how we are at the moment so we do plan on crafting a new mission statement at the beginning of the next school year a motto that we adopted every child every day oakwood lives up to that every day i take

007pride in all of our teachers and staff all the decisions that we make and the things we do at oakwood revolve around what's best for our students um so we we live by every child every day and we we try to follow through with that every single day on the next page oakwood is a pbis school and we implemented pbs pbis i believe it was there when i started at oakwood and then we went through some district training with pbis and so we revamped it and our school improvement team and our pbis team came up with our matrix matrix that you see there on the page and we have five expectations at oakwood um that is the our core and basis of pbis those expectations are be safe be respectful be responsible be engaged and

008be a leader and we say that on the announcements every morning and we link all of our behaviors and all of our expectations to those five core expectations that we have and on the matrix you can see that we identify different areas in the building and times in the building where students are to display these expectations and what they look like so we describe how it looks in our hallways how it looks in our bathrooms our cafeteria our playground our buses and while our students are waiting for car riders to be picked up and you can ask any of our students kindergarten through fifth grade to name one of our expectations and they should be able to now this year may be a little bit different just because we've been virtual for so long but

009our students know the expectations um and they follow the expectations um in 2018 we were proud as oakwood to obtain the status of a green ribbon school through the nc positive behavior intervention and support initiative and this was achieved through there were different criteria that we had to meet and different projects and things that we had to complete and apply for this green ribbon status and we were able to achieve that in 2018. there are different levels of the pbis status and we were hoping to go to the next level this year um but due to covet we're not going to be able to do that but we're going to strive to do that next year and due to the success of our pbis program we have we have very low discipline and behavior problems

010um at oakwood our suspension rate is low um of course we don't have a suspension rate this year because our students haven't been there that long um but the pbis program has really helped with our behaviors in conjunction with our school counselor and i'll speak to this a little bit later our school counselor spends a great deal of time working with students on their social and emotional well-being being and in combination with our pbis program our behaviors at oakwood have decreased significantly over the years on our next slide i've just listed some of our accomplishments that we are very proud of at oakwood i started with the green ribbon school status for pbis that i just spoke about um in 2019 oakwood was named as the piedmont triad education consortium or the p-tech signature school

011for this for the year in 2019 um oakwood achieved the nc academic growth award for exceeding academic growth expectations for students during the 2018-19 school year um in the year 2018 oakwood celebrated its 50th year in education which we felt that was a great honor to be a school for 50 years so we celebrated that our media specialist amanda haney has been awarded the piedmont electric membership corporation bright ideas grant for three years in a row 2018 19 and 2020 for a total of approximately six thousand dollars um and she used those grants to purchase um spheros for our students supplied our maker split maker space area for our students um and this year she spent that money on ebooks and audio books because our students weren't able to physically check out books um and

012we knew that going into the school year so she wrote the grant this year for that purpose um so that our students are able to access books online through their chromebook um just just as like they can if they were to be at the library picking out the books physically so she was able to purchase a lot of books that our students have been able to access virtually on the next page i've listed our focus areas over the past several years and our professional development for our professional development this year we worked on the hegerty phonemic awareness and fundus and panel literacy and our google classroom skills all teachers completed the friday institute teaching remotely class that was offered at the beginning of the school year each tuesday during the school year we have tech

013tuesdays with the media specialist ms haney and she meets with teachers and presents some type of different technology to our teachers during that time we have weekly plc's with our instructional coach and weekly data dives with our instructional coach that takes place once a week during the school year and during the data dives um we look at students eye station scores their eog scores their kea and k2 math assessment scores and then teacher created assessments and during those data dives that data is taken apart and broken down and looked at and analyzed by the teachers to see what students are being proficient in and what students need some more help with and then from that they develop re-teaching plans um to re-teach the material for the students who need it and i just spoke about

014our social and emotional needs our school counselor did a pd for the entire faculty two years ago called zones of regulation and this teaches students various ways to handle their emotions in appropriate ways um and our teachers have really valued this pd because it's helped them to recognize when a student may maybe getting ready to escalate or when a student is feeling down and may need some pick-me-ups um and it's just that pbis and the social and emotional well-being of our students has really helped our students um a couple years ago as a staff we did a book study um the book was poor students rich teaching teaching mindsets for change by eric jensen um and this book was an eye-opener for our staff to to help our staff know better ways to teach our

015students um last year at the beginning of the year we did a book study with staff that was broken into small groups and the staff were able to choose which book they wanted to read and then a teacher leader led each group through the book study and we had lots of positive feedback from that because teachers were able to choose a book they were interested in and then it wasn't just me leading it it was also one of their colleagues leading the group um we were going to do one this year but with kobe we didn't so we do have one um planned for the upcoming school year and i've already started to look at books to choose and i've listed some of them there teach like a pirate teaching with the brain and mind

016and brain-based learning um those are some of the books that that we may choose from um our focus areas over the past several years have been corrective reading level literacy intervention guided reading groups the eureka math program guided math groups i station stem activities with our media specialists so our media specialists created a maker space for our students um since all of our students have chromebooks and devices now um we did have two computer labs at oakwood but we were able to dismantle one of them and turn it into a makerspace and our makerspace is a hands-on area for students we pretty much have we have legos we have building supplies we have all kinds of craft supplies um we have a lego wall in there where students can build things on the wall and

017each month our media specialists had a topic where students could sign up to go into the makerspace with their teacher and create a project of course we weren't able to use it this year and our students were very upset about that but we're hoping to be able to begin to begin again next year but the makerspace is just an area for students to go in and experiment and and really problem solve the projects that they're given they're really not given directions um they're given the ends product um and they have to decide what materials they're going to use and how they're going to build it and what they're going to do um so our media specialist has worked very hard on our makerspace we also have morning interventions um every morning our first through fifth

018graders are in some kind of intervention group um it may be a corrective reading group it may be a level literacy intervention group it may be a social and emotional group with our counselor it just depends on what that student needs at the time each week we do weekly informal walkthroughs with immediate feedback to teachers um so we have a district-wide walk-through form um that's in the form of a google form um so i go into a classroom and spend 10 or 15 minutes and it's just an informal walkthrough i type in what i see on the form and any feedback feedback i have to teachers and i send that to them immediately and they get it in the form of an email at the end of each month um i break that data down

019and present it to the faculty and we talk about the patterns that we see and the strengths that we see the areas of improvement that we see during the walk through so that's been very helpful we also supply weekly lesson plan feedback to our teachers so teachers turn their lesson plans in each week um and we have a feedback form that we use um to give teachers feedback for their lesson plans um things that we see that they're doing great things that we we may ask for a little bit more information on so that's been helpful as well and then also our school counselor works with our students on social and emotional issues that they may have on the next slide these are our events and activities and as i was getting these together and

020looking back through the years it's kind of overwhelming to see everything that we've done but at the same time it's it's sad because we weren't able to do a lot of this this year um we we have done a lot at oakwood and we continue to do a lot and we hope we'll be able to to do these things again um we've had we had to split our grandparents day lunch into two days um because we have such a big turnout for our grandparents day lunch which is awesome our thanksgiving lunch is the same we've had to split it into two days because we have such a big turnout and we get parents and grandparents telling us all the time how much they enjoy coming to that for the past two years we um i

021wrote a grant for the duke energy science night and we were able to get that and have that with our students and parents um we have our fall festivals we have a student talent show our 50th year celebration we do have a student ambassador program at oakwood that has really taken off it's a program for our fourth and fifth graders they can apply to be a student ambassador and the student ambassadors have different roles of leadership and different service trolls throughout the school throughout the school year and brandy bowes one of the 4-h coordinators came in once a month and did leadership classes with our student ambassadors um and our students love being a part of that um each year and part of the student ambassador's job is to put the flag up at the

022beginning of each day and take it down and so we asked mr fred smith to come each year and he trains our student ambassadors on proper flag etiquette um and a couple of years ago he brought a group of veterans with him to oakwood when we had our new flagpole put up and we did a flagpole dedication ceremony um that our student ambassadors led and we had veterans there um and we honored them as well and they were part of the flag dedication poll ceremony so that was very nice um we do citizens of the month each month um tied to a monthly character trait um our character trait for march has for may has been courage um we make a big deal out of our character traits at oakwood um our guidance counselor started

023a reading buddy program with byhs students a couple years ago and that was a great program she got together with the football coach there and the counselors at by and they identified students at by who would be great mentors and role models for our students at oakwood and they would come over once every two weeks and sit and read with our students and they did little projects together and i think the by students got as much out of it as our students did and we've had a couple students ask this year when can our reading buddies come back so we're hoping to be able to start doing that again next year we do anti-bullying week read across america week at the end of every year we've done a student and staff kickball game um with

024our third fourth and fifth graders and and that's been great fun um some of our staff don't take losing very well so we've we've had to have some lessons with some of our staff on being gracious when they lose but that's always a fun time that we have we've had transition nights where towards the end of the school year parents come in and they go to the next grade level with their child it's our rising third grader would go to a third grade teacher's classroom um and the third grade teacher goes over with the parent and student the expectations for third grade um to get the child ready for the next school year of course we have field day career day one of the highlights of our year at oakwood is the visits to the

025casual house usually our kindergarten and fifth grade students go to the casual house each year our kindergarteners go to sing christmas carols and they usually take some kind of craft that they've made and our fifth grade students take crafts and they help these citizens there make the crafts and our fifth graders love doing that and i think the casual house residents enjoy that as well we have multiplication madness our junior beta club battle of the books club our book fair magnificent mondays our spelling bee pennies for paul's has been a huge project at oakwood the past several years our junior beta club has to do a service learning project and they chose to assist the animal shelter here in caswell county and so we have a penny drive each year for the animal shelter at

026castle county and i want to say last year we raised around 800 that we were able to give to the animal shelter so our students really get involved with that we're also very proud of our christmas assistance program that we have for our oakwood families my school counselor heads that up and we identify families at oakwood who may need some special assistance during the holiday season um and the school counselor is wonderful with reaching out to the community she has formed some great partnerships with people in the community local businesses and churches and also staff members and we adopt families and we were afraid this year that we may not be able to help all of our families because one of our big partners that we have are some of the clubs at bartlett yancey

027high school they they always adopted five or six of our families and would just go all out and buy gifts and food so we were afraid we weren't going to be able to meet our goal this year but we did and we were able to help 66 of our families at oakwood not just with christmas presents um with food and groceries and enough to to last a while and the need was great this year for everyone and our staff gets involved in that too and we do we adopt quite a few families ourselves um so we're very proud of that program that we have at oakwood um we also partner with union church union church and yet seville and then the one in danville they also partner with us and this year at the beginning

028of the year they brought truckloads of supplies for our students to include pencils and erasers they gave each student a plastic pencil box they gave each student water bottles and water cups we just we have a room full of supplies that union church donated to us and pre-covered we had union church members that would come in and eat lunch with our students on different days of the week they would just come in and some of our students who needed some extra attention would have a special person that would come and eat eat lunch with them and we're hoping to be able to start doing that again our lunch buddy program is what i just spoke about um our enrichment club eog pep rallies are making a difference award for our staff we do that each

029month each month one staff member chooses someone on the staff who has gone above and beyond and made a difference and they passed the award along to another staff member and we put these on our facebook page um each month and oakwood has a very active facebook page um we try to put everything on facebook that we can um and our parents appreciate that because a lot of our parents are on facebook and that's how they get a lot of their information so we have found that parents who may not um answer the alert now calls or may not have a phone um you know may not have access to email may not look at the website a lot of times they'll look at facebook so i try to make sure we have all everything

030on facebook so they can see it and then our fire safety program we have smokey the bear come come and visit us every year i know that's a lot um and on the last page i just put some pictures in there of of memories that we've made over the years um just all kinds of activities and things that we've done at oakwood with our students um and we are hoping that this year coming up we'll be able to do some of these things again um and have all of our students back and be able to have our our activities that we do each year um and that's that's all i have thank you brian uh do you have any questions ms blackwell yes i have a question about student achievement if you can tell me

031a little bit about what's been going on with the student achievement compared to when they were not in covert uh and the follow-up with that as well as do you know what potential students will how many potential students will need to be going to the summer program but a little bit about student achievement yes ma'am so pre-covered we were very proud of how our students were performing on the end of grade test as i stated in 2018-19 we exceeded growth for oakwood and to my knowledge that was the first year that oakwood had ever exceeded growth we exceeded growth in every subject area or met growth in every subject area um and i hate that we're not i'm testing we did test this year but it's not going to count like it has in the

032past um but we were on the trajectory to exceed growth again this year um and and i i really hate that we've kind of come to a standstill with that because to me it's more about the growth than the proficiency and our students show tremendous growth every year and i know that we would have seen that again this year oak wood went from a school report card grade of letter d to a letter c and that was a huge improvement for us and we were hoping to be able to move up to a letter grade b this year or the next year so we were definitely on an upward path and i i feel like when we get back to normal we will continue on that path because our our students show amazing growth during

033the school year we were very proud of exceeding growth for summer school we are looking at the numbers now and i have some preliminary numbers right now in kindergarten it looks like we may have about 14 students come to summer school first grade about 18 second grade about 15 third grade about 20 4th grade about 11 5th grade about 10 and then we are having our adaptive curriculum students are able to come to summer school this year and we have 14 out of 20 of those students coming for summer school and we're very excited about that because that's not something that we've been able to do before and those numbers may change because parents are still letting us know what's going on but we've had a good um a good turnout for summer school any

034other questions mr brian i'm upfront to relay questions if you cannot hear them okay thank you for what you do mr bryant um i wanted to ask on your morning interventions how often you mentioned a lot of different groups how often and what criteria do you have for moving students in and out of these groups okay so the and thank you i appreciate your your your comments ms hudson um our intervention groups meet every day um they start at 8 15 and they last approximately 35 to 40 minutes um and the students performance data is looked at to see which group they'll fit into so level literacy intervention is for pretty much our k through third students and those are levels so a student can come in at a level a and then progress and

035move to a level b to a level c so it just depends on how the student progresses as to what group they'll be in um the corrective reading program is for our fourth and fifth graders and it has levels as well um so once a student meets a certain level and passes that level they'll go on to the next level um so we look at student data and what the students needs are to determine which group they're going to be in and we do have students who place out of the corrective reading program and once they place out we move them to another group um just depending on what their needs are so it's a weekly you look at that weekly yes ma'am well we look at data weekly but the the levels in level

036literacy intervention and corrective reading like corrective reading one level would take you about 18 weeks to move through um but the person who is leading that group will assess the students informally as we go through and if they feel like that student has mastered that level and can move on um then that's the decision we'll meet and talk about thank you you're welcome and how did the eod force compare to this year compared to the 2019 um we don't i don't have the eog scores yet yes ma'am thank you i'm afraid to see them any other questions mr we appreciate your presentation thank you mr owen um i hope to see you all in person one day soon i would thank you i would also like to thank her um miss o'brien does an outstanding

037job making sure that data analysis with the focus point at oakwood and that their plc's are driven by data analysis so i just like to say thank you because i do believe that was a direct correlation to their exceeding growth so thank you thank you i appreciate it we um our students deserve the best um and and we try to give them the best every day because they they they deserve that every child in castle county deserves the best so we we try to make sure that our students are getting the best that we can give them every day thank you all thank you [Music] and next we have miss garlic who will be presenting from stoney creek good evening good evening i'm glad to see all of you and also welcome to the new

038board members again i'm terry gullick i am principal of stoney creek elementary our teachers at stoney creek this has been a very productive and challenging school year for them this year they have been working extremely hard to make sure that they are meeting the needs of all students uh each day whether it's face-to-face virtual and or flash drive they have really been planning together and collaboratively coming up with plans to make sure that each one of those groups those students have been successful so with that in mind i think you all have um my powerpoint there in front of you and it starts off with a picture of stony stone creek a very quaint small school of course here in caswell county that is the front page if you turn to the next page you

039will see our enrollment numbers at stoney creek currently we have 151 students enrolled you can see by grade level kindergarten we have 23 first grade 20 second grade 18 third grade 19 11 and 4th grade and 14th in 5th grade with a total of 105 face-to-face students we have 34 virtual students and 12 flash drive students on the next page you have our student demographics of stony creek so we have 75 male 79 males i'm sorry 72 females ill we have five black or african americans we have 25 hispanic 28 white 89 two or more races we have nine so we have a great array of demographics at stoney creek and we all learn from each other which is so wonderful there our next page you have a breakdown of the stoney creek staff some

040very small staff as i mentioned before small school i have two kindergarten teachers one first grade one second two third one fourth grade one fifth one ec teacher one school counselor one pe teacher one art teacher one music one media one data manager have three cafeteria personnel three assistants and also two custodians so to see what our wonderful staff looks like if you turn to the next page you will see the first template of our school staff so i'll just give you a moment to look at that and if you turn to the next page will be the final pictures of our stoney creek staff small staff very home field very nice people to work with each and every day so on the next page you will have our mission and our vision statement our

041mission and vision was in place uh when i entered into stoney creek and as the mission states stoney creek's school mission is to be a safe and nurturing learning community that does whatever it takes to create productive and responsible citizens and we try to do that each and every day when our students come into school the vision our vision for stony creek elementary is to provide a safe instruction environment in order to promote excellence and creativity we will provide instructional leadership with a positive climate of high expectations that encourages responsible behaviors and citizenship so all students will meet and or exceed established standards and i think the most important line of this is a climate of high expectations we have higher expectations for our students i have high expectations for our staff as well so

042without high expectations we can't grow our students or our staff members our next page is our academic focus and these are things that i have focused on this year uh since this has been a different year this also has been a learning year for us as well goal 1 stoney creek elementary will promote and retain highly effective teachers by allowing them to differentiate instruction by adjusting and modifying what skills and concepts students learn what materials they use and or how their learning is assessed based on data from our station and kea uh we look at mtss it's so important because students now that's a huge learning gap with our students and skill gaps so we have to know how to differentiate instruction in order to meet the needs of all different learners that we have

043in our building so we provide professional development based on that so that teachers know how to differentiate instruction goal two we will continue to build a culture of strong parent community engagement that will promote relationships that expand opportunities for students and parents opportunities that will support parents and the community continued partnerships with area churches and the start of a parent virtual academy with live workshops that will promote wellness nutrition and education i'll talk about that a little bit later goal three we will continue to address the social and emotional needs of students by helping them manage emotions set goals show empathy for others establish positive relationships and make responsible decisions and that has been so important since students have come back in the building on march the first so i and so we have this

044picture at the bottom my teachers are popping they're probably because they're working hard each and every day the next page is the professional development and yes we have been working on and still working on um differentiation of instruction and what we're looking at with differentiation is what is differentiated instruction what is it the three pillars of differentiation the five key elements of differentiation and what can teachers differentiate we are have done the first two of these and this is ongoing for our teachers and they have asked a lot of questions about how to address the needs of each and every child in that classroom and you have to differentiate based on data you have to look at data different data to make sure that you are planning instruction and your lesson plans are based on

045the data of each and every child that's in your classroom uh we have had professional development on pontus and pannell the k2 literacy wolfpack works has been outstanding in working with my beginning teachers they've done an outstanding job in addressing needs especially this year when it came to instruction with online learning how to provide instruction for students online and making sure that you're meeting their needs making sure that you're able to assess students online and also provide those needs when looking at the assessments the last piece is the aig training that my teachers received uh my belief in aig training if you train teachers on aig then you're going to teach everybody not just those aig students you're going to push to teach everybody that you have in your classroom uh which will help them

046be better students so the aig training we've had and we're going to continue with that the next page is the data analysis we look at data in plc meetings which are held weekly with that weekly meeting we use our station data and with the ice station data we we utilize the executive summer report which gives me an overview for the principal and what the school looks like where kids are performing what areas they are deficient in as far as skills excuse me and i also look at the monthly summer report for myself and i also discuss it with teachers in the weekly plc meetings the priority report tells the teachers what students are at risk in reading and or math but again with our station it gives our teachers a well planned out lesson for

047those students based on those deficient areas and if you look at this each week it's almost looks like progress monitoring where you're looking at these areas each weekend you're going to push for those skills to improve for students by them taking the assessment each week along with that we're looking at the assessment data in the weekly plc meetings we also look at the standards in pocs which is also weekly and those standards also comes from the standard report from our station we look at those standards that come from eogs and if i go back and look at proud coven we use that data as well the data that we have now uh even though our students just took the end of great test those scores of course are just scores we're going to have to

048take the data from that to plan for the upcoming school year for students it's so important when our students took um our station while being at home before they came back into the school our scores were tremendously all in the green all in the green so when students came back march 1st there wasn't any green anymore when students were um were at home you had grandmama auntie cousin brother and sister helping with uh assignments and also online assessment so we did not get a true picture of how our students performed once they came into the building we had a great opportunity to see exactly how they performed and also what changes and or interventions that needed to be made for students um we took the mtss model and looking at students who are at risk

049in reading we discuss that every two weeks with mtss data and we document those students and what strategies and interventions uh have been made for those particular students because the the goal is to move those students continuously moving them and that's why we have to look at that data and as i said here at the bottom student data is discussed and analyzed weekly in poc meetings in order to drive instructional planning that's the only way you can drive instructional planning is by looking at the data and decisions are made on student learning at that point students we have when they started we started this last year students track their own data we have data trackers that we use for our students in reading and math and students are able to track their performance how well

050they're doing students can tell you where their weak areas are and what they need to do to make those weak areas better based on the skills so we're continuing with that um this year and for the upcoming school year as well so all these these data pieces that we have the i station eog kea and then looking at mtss um is the main bible is what i say for teachers to use as far as planning is concerned when you talk about student improvement in student data okay uh the next page our academic focus and i have been in discussion with my teachers uh my curriculum coach and we said our academic focus uh has been kindergarten first grade literacy because kindergarten kindergarteners come in and they do not have background knowledge when it comes to

051phonemic awareness or phonics or fluency um they don't have that so they're behind so if those students don't get those main things in kindergarten when they go to first grade they're still behind so if we don't work on the phonics and the phonemic awareness and the fluency we won't have skilled readers and those kids kids will be passed on to second grade and they will be weak readers so this is an academic focus for us that we are constantly been concentrating on since last year and continued this week this year as well another focus that i did not put on here that is so extremely important that i see as a weakness is writing students don't write well they just do not write well so that's another focus for us that we would like to

052concentrate on in making our students better writers um they say if if they speak well they can write so we have to work on that language piece and the literacy piece in order to build on the writing piece as well so the writing is also a focus for us as well the next page talks about our student activities at stony creek students are part of the science olympiads the junior beta club which i would like to say we received our banner for school of distinction uh or uh this school year we're very proud of that the students are proud of that uh we're posting it on our web page so we're extremely extremely extremely excited about that and the students have worked hard uh they're part of battle of the books uh we have enrichment

053club for them uh which is after school weekly after school we have the art club as well and also our music club our art club uh miss macedo has done an outstanding job working at stony creek and i share her with mr evans itself we have students um to win art contests uh which were delivered to the school today and each child received a nice little check to give to their parents to spend so she does an outstanding job at stony creek uh with art with our students and we're proud to have her as part as our team the next page are is our student support parent support um i'm gonna talk about the the picture that's up at the top for us the one that says virtual stars students working online initially was very

054difficult so we wanted to make sure that we awarded those students who worked hard they turned in work each week they were present every morning at eight o'clock for the eight o'clock morning meeting so those teachers recommended students one from each grade level each month to be a virtual star so if they were a virtual star they had their picture taken they were placed on our web page as this young lady is at the top saying hey i did my work i was online each and every day i did my best and so we celebrate those students by making them virtual stars um without the covet era we did have um month student of the month as well which would continue to do for the upcoming school year and the same premise behind student of

055the month is for students who have worked hard from kindergarten to um to fifth grade and sometimes it's just that a kid has done well and you want to say wow this student has really worked hard and you want to make sure that you highlight those students so we continue to do that we also have the following steps that have been taken to address students at risk we have teacher contact laws my teachers have to contact parents every week and they have to dialogue and put every detailed discussion they have with parents they have to log that weekly i look at that weekly uh as i do with their lesson plan so the teacher contact laws with parents this is so extremely important because a lot of times you can talk to parents has the

056teacher contact you no but i can pull that log up and say yes ma'am you were contacted on this date this day and this day so it's there's a well way for teachers to protect themselves when talking to parents uh we have my school counselor does an excellent job with at-risk students uh if it's attendance they're not showing up we send letters out to parents as well to notify them that we are concerned that their child is not present in class and or online i think our toughest this year has been with our flash drive students um and getting work and participation from them so my school counselor has worked extremely hard with that we worked with our school social worker when we had one uh who worked diligently and also contacting parents and visiting

057homes uh mr terrell has done an outstanding job he gets a gold star uh he has been in the schools and i have talked with him continuously about different concerns with students and if he's even worked with us to send an soo sro officer out to homes to make home visits uh we have intervention time that's designated every day to work with struggling students and that's based on data every evening uh has been offered to parents also assists with student tutoring and my curriculum coach has been the one to do that after hour tutoring after hours tutoring uh with students we have the lli intervention groups um that my teacher assistants work with students every day in their lli groups we have daily structured uh restructuring we're gonna i'm sorry daily schedule restructure to offer

058more live teacher instruction that we did so live interaction started from eight o'clock in the morning to the end of the day so face-to-face online students they all met at the same time for instruction we have small group daily instruction in reading and math as i mentioned before our student virtual stars our parent academy virtual academy we are excited about we started that virtual academy in the fall we had workshops for parents twice a month reading math uh google classroom finance nutrition um you name it we had we had our last workshop last week where it talked about reading literacy for summer um and what parents could do for the summer reading program for their children uh the parents like this i wish we had more involvement with it but we had outside community members

059who did the actual workshops each week which is outstanding and i'm glad that the caswell county uh community members gave stony creek this outstanding type of support to our school for our parents so this has done extremely well for our parents like i say i wish we had more parents involved with the ones we did we did have we are so lucky to have them be a part of it our panther pals uh again led by my school counselor panther pals is where our students write letters to each other from one grade level to another this helps with the social and emotional means for our students i'm able to talk to each other so a kindergartner could send a letter to a fourth grade classroom or fifth grade could send one to second grade but

060it gives an opportunity to talk to each other and communicate and share and ask different questions and so it's delivered to the classes like someone coming from the um us mail and they get delivered and the students look forward each week to receiving those pamphlet pale letters so this is our uh student and and or parent support next page continuous improvement accomplishments that we are proud of uh we're proud to be doing vertical alignment uh meetings each week uh per each grade level with my curriculum coach and teachers so we know what's being taught in kindergarten but when they get to first grade this is what they should know uh we do that all the way up to fifth grade so teachers know what should be taught prior to kids coming in so we're glad

061to continue to do that this uh this year again the weekly plc meetings we hold those and uh there are no if answer but about holding those meetings uh the differentiation training we're proud of pbis we're extremely proud of pbis we're also a green ribbon school with pbis there are procedures and protocols that our students follow each and every day with pbis and they enjoy each week getting their names called being able to come last year couldn't do it this year to say the student creed our students have done an outstanding job again like miss o'brien i don't have any discipline issues um at stony creek the kids are very sweet so no issues there but pbis has been a very very very strong program uh the parent online academy as i mentioned before new

062this year the hope garden which coincides with the yellow tulip project which stoney creek is the only school in the state of north carolina that participated in the yellow tulip project this also has to do with social emotional aspects for not only children but for adults as well we planted tulips um in our garden beautiful tulips that came up students had the opportunity to write about their hopes and their wishes uh by planting the tulips and also our hope garden as well where we had spinach and collard greens and garlic that has been a part of the curriculum for our teachers and a conversation a collaborative collaborative piece for students and teachers as well we're very proud of that this will continue as well um our lunch panther pals our lunch buddies uh which ms

063d our school counselor also shares as i mentioned before where students come and meet with her during lunch and they have opportunity just to share and talk don't have to talk about school work whatever's on their mind and the kids enjoy doing that with her and then we have and praise our teachers by having a teacher and also support staff of the month so with that and the teachers getting praised each month and also our support staff they also receive a ten dollar uh certificate from pizza my heart so that has been uh very appreciative to them as well as long as with the certificate and their picture taken i also like to say with our community outreach uh kurdish chapel church and jones crossroads has been very supportive of our school each and every

064year they have provided resources uh and also lunches to our staff each year curry's chaplain has really gone above and beyond this year um from the start of school to make sure that our teachers are comfortable happy and fed well and they've done we're very appreciative to that and they've done an outstanding job uh next my next page continuous improvement just one statement that i believe in all students in stony creek will find academic success will make this possible through differentiated instruction collaborative work inclusive practices continuous analysis of multiple sources of data that i talked about earlier we will design instruction to meet the needs of each student we recognize and value the importance of long-range planning uh and becoming a fully inclusive school environment that's the only way you can have a successful school

065and also push students so a picture there you see is some of our writings from our little people down in kindergarten in first grade it talks about hope and and the hope garden and what how hope grows for them so we're very proud of that and then um my last page is we love our panthers and we're going to do what it takes to make sure that they're successful each and every day when they enter the doors of our school so thank you so very much for allowing me to share this information with you this evening thank [Music] miss darling thank you miss god you spoke about um having these students back in person and how you were able to ask their errors of strengths and weaknesses but tell me again about the other students

066who are virtually flash drive you know how are you determining where they are as far as what they use i could not make out the last of what you're saying it was very muffled i can relate that okay regarding the students i hope i can paraphrase that regarding the students with academic year especially those who are virtual how are you determining what the students need that are flash drives are virtual moving forward and looking at my virtual and flash drive students let me start with the flash drive the flash drive students the teachers have really struggled in communicating with the majority of the parents they are turning in work but the bot the the issue is we don't know if the student has completed the work or not um our teachers have tried to communicate

067with just the student service on the phone because remember these kids don't have internet access so the teachers are trying to question them um and ask questions pertaining to the work to determine whether where their needs are now what has been uh advantageous for us is when we had these kids to come in this week especially our three five kids and uh the teachers had an opportunity to kind of see them and question them um and they came in to take testing but we're looking at the work that that's turned in from the flash drive students if work was turned in for the remote students it's been different and these are the kids who are online the majority of our students who have been online um that are online now are doing pretty good we

068we have a handful where the parents feel like okay i'm going to use this as my time to go shopping so i'm going to put you back on at this time take it back off so we're able to look at the work that those students complete because they have to upload work teachers are able to do assignments with those particular students online and also do assessments so they're able to gauge and see what they know the toughest is the flash drive the toughest with flash drive is that we're going to have to continue uh to look at them when they come in for the fall hopefully since there will not be and hopefully no flash drive students uh at all would be better to engage in there what they know when they come into the

069school for the upcoming school year other questions ms blackwell could you tell me about the number of students approximately that you will have coming to the summer school um program and um will that include the majority of your flash drive people uh are they coming i have uh flash drive students that are in the numbers here so this includes everyone so i can tell you who's been invited invited to summer school for kindergarten we have 20 uh first grade 13 second grade 12 third grade nine fourth grade we have um three and we don't have any right now for fifth grade now i can tell you who's accepted thus far uh for kindergarten as nine have accepted so this is this data will change seven have uh have accepted in first grade five for second

070three for third and fourth grade uh two and again fifth grade we don't have any right now so those those are our numbers now this data will change as i stated any other questions mrs blacker your um academic achievement for the 2020-2021 school year compared to the previous year what would you say once you've taken a look at you know of course you are analyzing it weekly how are things been comparing how that's looking for this year but has been different it has been different uh for the prior school year when the last time we took the end of grade test um and which was my first year at stoney creek um our students um met growth they also met proficiency as well they were a d school but they came up to a 50

071so we're five points from being a c school so how would that differ from this year um in taking the test the scores this year won't help us at all which we know that we we knew that going in it's just being proactive as i said early and taking that data when we finally get all the scores in and looking at those deficient areas those skill gap areas and planning throughout the summer how we're going to address the needs of those students when they come back into the school so that's for third through fifth grade but that also includes the kindergarten through um second grade students as well and planning so it's taking the data that we get from end of grade testing to make our future planning thank you mm-hmm any other questions now

072thank you miss you're welcome thank you um can i also say one thing i i would like to uh recognize ms bullock though for her strength and professional development as you've heard from uh differentiation this strong topic of professional development of stony creek and that's certainly something that you're going to focus on as we return back to school and also their focus on community engagement the whole child because that social emotional has been so uh important especially now during coven and that is something that i can certainly want to commend ms golic on as she focuses on that whole child especially like through the yellow tulip project and working with the community so thank you you're welcome thank you and thank you guys for allowing me to share my information this evening thank you and

073uh next uh and last but certainly not least is mr evans principal at south elementary uh good evening board um again it is it is quite an honor to um talk with you today and give uh share information that i have regarding um things at south elementary i'll just give you a little bit of background a lot of you in the room already know who i am know a lot about me um but i started off my teaching career in caswell county many years ago this is i'm finishing up my 31st year in education um and uh i've been here as an administrator back in castle county for seven years on three years at by and finishing up my fourth year here at south um so that's a little bit about me um and i'll

074talk with you a little bit more as we go through the presentation if you look to start your presentation what you have in your hand the first thing is i'm south elementary school where we want our eagles to soar we want them to go to soar to new heights you see a picture of the sign out front and our logo the second slide that we're going to look at are is our student population if you'll notice right now we have a total enrollment currently of 247. um that's 167 in person and 80 virtual and we currently have um no students that were on flash drive um full time and the reason for that is we did we really stressed pushing out the hot spots to kids and to our families in the community and um

075the i.t department with the system was gracious enough and to provide hot spots and we were able to get those out in the community any flash drive student that we had throughout the year i would call the parent and i would say look take this home and try it if it doesn't work you can always bring it back so we did have several flash drive students while we were completely virtual but when we went when we brought the kids back in march we were able to um to convince the our parents to bring those kids back into the building especially those that were flash drives and we were very successful in doing that if you look at our student demographics you will notice that um you know um our percentage of population this is there

076on paper um we're 58 caucasians 31 um african-american percent hispanic and five percent multi-racial uh we we do have more girls than boys at our school so 52 to 47 percent if you'll turn over you'll see my instructional staff and support staff um you know we do um the picture there uh we were very um our our pto um had that put out for our teachers during teacher p appreciation week and they were surprised with it when they came to school during teacher appreciation week and it really gave them a boost and we would greatly appreciate the support of them but if you'll notice on 15 classroom teachers and our enhancement teachers and then our of course our counselor our ec um you know instructional coach school nurse which we are very grateful this year

077not to have to share a school nurse you just would not believe the difference it has made for our school um and for the schools you know elementary schools in general not to have to share school nurses um especially in covid um and we do have a speech teacher that we share with would be why on the next slide you'll look at is a picture it basically is leading into our mission and vision this is a picture of the school um if i'm not mistaken i may have taken that picture last spring after school one day but this is pretty current and if you drove by today it would look very similar to that but our mission and vision statement on the on the next page is one that we've had for quite a few

078years here and the school um vision is every child achieves great lifelong experiences at south elementary and our school mission is safe environment with opportunities to achieve and become responsible independent learners who are nurturing global citizens and we and that's what we strive for we want every child to be successful where our teachers and staff work really hard to um provide for the needs of our children we have um we have a wonderful staff of nurturing and caring teachers who um through their actions show that they um that they care about our students um and and i'll talk a little bit about more some some more specific things um a little bit later on but one of the core things that we do and this is this is part of our pbis piece as well

079but i wanted to put it here was our our eagle pledge because it it kind of connects our um behavior system with um our our mission and vision statement and it's our eagle pledge and this is something that we've uh that we developed over the last few years and if you'll look at the components of the eagle pledge it says today i will show eagle pride i will practice self-control i will have an outstanding attitude i will accept others i will be responsible and respectful and together we will soar into a new day and the sore principle is something that we want our students to um embrace uh because it that's who we're trying to develop people who uh stu as as young children moving into early early adolescence they need to learn how to

080manage and have self-control um they need to all of these aspects in here are things that that are lifelong developing skills and we try to push those onto our children we mention it daily we recite the pledge daily and we have um and we have um programs and lessons through my school counselor who is amazing that embodies some of these principles as characteristics if we'll turn over into the to the next slide here are some points of information that i did want to share with you as we went into march of last year we were encouraged about student progress and looked forward to continued growth as the year progressed uh in previous you know um our school was on a trajectory that we saw we were going to see some academic growth some going to

081take some big strides our mid-year data last year indicated that we had growth over the previous year at mid-year in on reading and math we were excited about that and we were disappointed as a staff on how the year ended with covid because we um you know we were looking forward to our students um taking the eogs at the end of the year because we felt like the with the trajectory that we were on last year that um that we were going to see um another piece of significant growth uh but that unfortunately that didn't happen and we are where we are now um enter in 2020 21 there are some things excuse me that we were challenged with um one of the some of the things that we looked at going into the school

082year you know we knew that having been out of school since march 13th there were a lot of missed opportunities um you we hear a lot of times learning gaps um and and personally i cannot equate um the um what students missed as being actually a gap unless you're comparing it with students who went through a normal year and then that's not a fair comparison so i use the term miss opportunities because our students last year from march through the end of school missed a lot of opportunities because of of coving you know we were in the midst of adjusting to remote virtual teaching on the fly in the spring of last year we were having to learn it as we were having to basically build the airplane as we fly it um you know

083we immersed ourselves into remote teaching and learning or we were immersed into that without warning and with very little preparation um so that was some of the things that we had and we had to talk about what types of support do teachers need to appropriately lead in remote learning what types of support would we need to provide parents so these were all questions that we had going into the fall that we had to look at itself and and think about what we were going to do to best meet the needs of our students that kind of leads us into our academic focuses here at south um and these are things that we do in a regular year that we tried that we're trying to and we we implemented this year as best we could into

084a a virtual or hybrid model depending on what phase of the year we're talking about you know we did focus whole group instruction and then we would transition into small groups um you know we had small group learning for differentiation based on student needs we used data analysis during peak plc meetings to determine student need based on the the data that we had available for better or for worse um you know one of the things that we had to depend on um probably more this past year than we have in previous years are teacher and anecdotal notes as opposed to raw data because of the sum of the data points in ice station that we had um you know that was that was inflated like um like ms gullick and ms o'brien and some of

085the other principals have mentioned so we had to look at that um foundations ice station we relied heavily on ice station um we also um invite had tutoring in which we use corrective reading and lli interventions for the appropriate children um continuing with the eureka math program um one of the things that we were very fortunate with uh in in that we had in the district with the eureka math program is it gave us a stable platform of consistent language throughout the math curriculum and that was something that we were able to take and transition over into virtual learning because you could adapt many of the lessons to technology and so what we did was you know we would provide students with um with markers and and we told them how to create their own

086dry erase boards and provided them with materials to do that um a lot of times um things were donated from our community partnerships with the local churches in our area which were very have a lot of really good support from them also from our pto they were able to donate us some things that we needed we had our tutors and this year we were able to um to coax back into the building to retire teachers to act as tutors when we came back face to face and um they're still working um like the other schools um district-wide we do the weekly informal walk-throughs with feedback uh we monitor lesson plans through the and this year mainly through the google classroom um and one of the things that was really addressed this year and it was

087a unique situation was we were faced with a lot of new challenges with social and emotional um situations with children children were in a totally different atmosphere in terms of um academic and environment they were not socializing with their friends in the way that they had before so those social and emotional needs that that we all get through face-to-face interaction a lot of times they were not getting and it became more um and different things um seem to pop up at times when you have um a lot of virtual environments so um the the interaction was different the needs were different the fact that we um in a lot of instances were able to see more into the homes of parents and and see a little and learn more about our children's needs we continually

088strive to work and discuss these needs and look for ways to meet um needs if you look at the next page here um the next slide i have several pictures here that are just kind of a mini collage here and these kind of represent the things that um that we want to see back in our school in the future we want to see the smiling faces of our children we want to have activities like having smokey bear come and do fire prevention for our kids we want to have our annual grandparents day luncheon and thanksgiving meals you know we want our kids to be able to interact on the on the carpet and and in the floor and and those types of things that where children can develop their social and emotional skills and collaborate

089with each other on on a face-to-face basis these are all things how that's going to look in the future we don't know right now but it is our hope someday to get back to a version of this where we can we can work with our kids to meet the needs of our teachers uh one of the things that we focused on was that we learned that different teachers had different needs so there was not one cookie cutter thing that we did over all to me for all teachers uh per se is this is our number one a1 professional development uh thing that we're going to do but what we did was when we met in plc's with our teachers we talked about the things that they were um being successful with in the classroom uh

090instructional strategies we had some teachers that were on you know that were stronger in technology areas and others and they took off and flew with it and found some really good tools to use and help our students learn and grow and what these teachers did when they would find these tools is they would bring them back into the classroom back to the school and share them uh you know we had some mini sessions where teachers presented to other teachers those types of things um that teacher led on pd that dealt with instructional strategies or resources teachers who were good with technology helped the teachers out that needed help with technology it was a family atmosphere we had to work together that collaboration piece was so important to our school um you know we did have

091our friday institute teaching remotely pd that was very helpful but at the same time it did expose some things that teachers had questions about and we had to work with them on those um our fontes and pinell reading kits our phonemic awareness under hegerty again eureka math that pd is online it's consistent it's there when a teacher had a need we could refer them as needed to on the eureka math um in collaboration with the i.t department and um you know hillary dodson dr dodson we did on you know we had instructional technology on presentations and and pd to help teachers there too um some things that we've done in the past with stem activities um you know one um that's something that you know because we couldn't really put the hands on this year

092with a lot of things that that we would have done in the past you know that's something we're looking to do in the next year and our and we would like to continue our book studies um next year some of the things um that i will say too is that you know if you look at the next slide um you know there are a lot of things going that have really gone well for us at south this year um some of the things that we've done we've given rewards for um i state completion of eye station assessments at mid-year we really needed wanted that eye station data um and so our pto was generous enough to donate each grade level 10 gift cards and we would all the students that completed we put them in

093a drawing to draw out the gift cards and that that really motivated and encouraged students to complete the eye station assessment our read across america was a huge um success under the circumstances because it correlated with the first week back that we were back in the building uh we had guest readers um for some reason the kids liked the fact that they they saw the video of me reading to my dog so they they enjoyed that um and the dog did behave himself so that was a good thing too um our pto provided a stem activity where they made oobleck to go with the dr seuss book uh regarding the oobleck and that was on that was making slime and all students got to do this um students who were um at home on virtual

094their parents could come by and pick up the kits they did it as a classroom activity the kits were picked up ahead of time and it was it was a good thing again we we were fortunate enough to um to get the duke energy science program fully funded through duke energy this year this is the um second time out of three years that we've had it fully funded by duke energy last year it was not fully funded but we had a science night and did a lot of the same experiments on using our own resources for that so we continued to that ms gullick mentioned mrs macedo the art teacher that um she and i share um she won a bright ideas grant for supplies um for the art programs and that those supplies are

095going to be used for hands-on activities at both schools and it was about four thousand dollar award that she got in the bright ideas grant so that's not just going to benefit students at staff but it's also going to benefit students at stoney creek and um you know i encourage teachers to try to um apply for grants and to get things funded when they can because you know we don't want to turn away opportunities for free money ms capparicci the music teacher that i share with with stoney creek has done a phenomenal job and one of the things of note that she has done is that on her own personal time she provided guitar lessons to students at south uh virtually they could check out um some of the guitars that that we had here

096at school um and that was available to virtual students too we worked it out um where they checked out a guitar and um she provided lessons for them at various times during the day more so when we were virtual and there were slots that she could work to to meet with them so that and so and then there are a lot of activities that we haven't done in this year because of cova that we'd like to get back to and you can see a lot of these things here below i'm not going to take the time to read through all of them but you know things like um battle of the books which our our students did really well and i've got another slide that mentions that we finished second in the district this year

097um but things like pbis reward rallies um last year we had a in the last two years we've had was it last year's two years ago we had um a huge rally where we had donated prizes and students would put their eagle butts that they had earned into the um in into the hat so to speak and we would draw for prizes and the last time we did that in um 1819 um we were able to have enough prizes for every kid left with a prize and so that was those are some things that we've done our students were also involved in the reading buddy program and one of the things that i didn't have on there that um that our guidance counselor has done in the past in collaboration with the teachers is a

098student of the week and we so these are things that we're also trying to have back in there if you'll notice too one of the things too with our communication we do have an active facebook page a very active facebook page we try to post everything that we've got going on on the facebook page to make our parents aware and feel free to check out our web page too our school web page because we post a lot of information on that if you'll notice here these are some pictures on the next slide that says hands-on learning is fun these are some things that can some of the activities through the duke science night program that we did as a program during the day and these are activities where you know students made um you know

099paper airplane type activities they did um um if you'll notice there's a little girl in the upper left hand corner is doing an activity with some seeds germination um and you know um these are all activities that were hands-on activities part of what we did for duke science night our pbis you know our school-wide um incentive program um you know we we do that um we um one of the things that we were looking at too with our pbis program is continuing our individual and classroom rewards and we didn't really get to do it as much this year as we would in the past uh we used um a lot of our teachers used class dojo instead of eagle bucks since we really couldn't um pass out paper objects um in the beginning um we

100decided to let our teachers let our students earn dojo points and the dojo points would be equivalent to the eagle bucks um as needed and appropriate we do have our school base our counselor um our and we collaborate with behavior specialists as needed we look for interventions for students who sometimes have difficulty in extreme cases but we haven't had to do a lot of that this year because our our students have done well and they've been respectful and they've done the things that they need to to be success the next slide kind of gives you a synopsis of some of the things that we did um in the middle here we had um dr carter came by today and brought us um for our art students and we're so proud of the accomplishment of our

101of our art students in in presenting and displaying their work in the student art show um our tutoring program our tutoring program one of the things that we looked at uh when our students were virtually learning was that we did set up small groups and one-on-one sessions with teachers and enhancement teachers and and staff and these small groups are set up based on data that we looked at in needs and we provided specific and targeted support for students using research based strategies on guided reading activities eye station prescriptive programs like razz kids i excel and other programs these were regularly scheduled on the teachers would meet with their groups at certain times during the week and the students would um would you know would come online with the teacher when we were virtual since we

102came back uh we have had like i mentioned earlier we had tutors that came into the building and to provide support using lli and um corrective reading um the the the part of this that we have that is different for this year is the fact that we had to make our groups smaller because we couldn't mix classes and so smaller groups which in effect you know really help them get more one-on-one attention or one-on-three attention or however the groups ended up being set up in for a grade level so these are some things there these kids at home continue to get support through eye station and support from the teachers because that's prescriptive as well and the last page i wanted to show you this is something the picture on the left is something that

103i have hanging outside my door and it's a statement by george kuros and it says change will come our way we can go through change or we can grow through change we grow when we seek out solutions rather than letting obstacles hinder us and that's the mindset that we try to instill at south you know we change is going to happen and we have to be willing to grow with change and we have to be flexible and adapt to the needs of our students and that's one of the things that we have looked at our staff collectively works to um solve problems um it's not just one person making you know solving problems you know i coach them along and i work with them but i have to say i have an amazing staff that

104works hard and um you know they um they work real hard they're open to change they're open to trying new things and you know one of the things that they we have all had to learn throughout this is sometimes you know we have to let go of the things that we can't control and concentrate on the things that we can control and work harder to do that and i have to say our teachers have never stopped trying to teach our students and you know that is the thing that i'm looking at with with us itself is that our teachers and our staff are the core here to reach the kids they're hard-working folks and they're they're working they are dedicated uh they use research-based strategies and that and at the end of the day um

105we can feel you know we can feel good about the work they're doing because they always put the best interests of students at mind um that's pretty much what i have for you at this time um certainly if you have any questions i will be glad to answer them for you thank you mr evans uh are there any questions miss blackson do you have a weekly plc meetings yes ma'am we met our plc's meet weekly uh this year our plc has met we um we meet weekly with myself and the instructional coach at the same time so that we're all on the same bay on the same page in terms of data when we're talking about students and instructional strategies we want to you know we want to make sure that everybody's talking the same

106language and and that um we that it's very clear what we're doing within the plc's and we have weekly agendas and and those things in this it is on a weekly basis yes ma'am any other questions miss blackman uh could you tell me about the number of students uh possibly will be going to summer school um ms blackwell i don't have that data right in front of me right now i know it's going to be a lot probably a larger number than we've had in the past but i don't i don't have that number right now um you know i i should have a better a more clear idea about that um within the next few days i apologize for that ms blackwell any other questions regarding dr carter um i i just also want

107to thank mr um evans for the work he's doing his leadership there because it has been a difficult year for leadership as well and you can certainly see that they've continued and mr evans continued that focus on data analysis but also a strong focus on the whole child and again that social emotional piece so i just appreciate the leadership at south elementary so thank you um if i could say one thing real quick i do want to thank um thank you i want to thank um mr terrell and dr carter for the support they give our kids when we have students to have social emotional needs and a lot of the things a lot of the there are a lot of things that go on behind the scenes there to to meet the needs of

108the kids and it and and we do appreciate all the support because you know our our kids need support at times and it's nice to know that we've got resources and partnerships and collaborations that are coordinated through mr terrell to um to help us with those children so thank you so much collaborate among themselves you need everybody on youtube okay good uh one thing before we get into the new business june 14th meet our june 14th meeting we have two members that are going to be attending spring conference so if you know that you cannot be here or find something comes up and you're not going to be able to show let us know as soon as possible so that we can maintain one or either cancel the meeting the other thing is that if

109you will please wait until you're recognized to speak so that people can understand they'll know who's talking and they and because when it gets back and forth sometimes it gets confusing with two people talking at the same time uh dr the um consent agenda i recommend approval of the consent agenda as presented to the board you've heard the superintendent's recommendation to their emotion don't move is there any discussion or comments just about i have some questions and comments about item e and item g and i ask that you pull them out because i'm going i like to vote on themselves those two okay the comment first i'll make about e i maybe i look at numbers too close but the way i look at this with this approval here and the approval we made a

110couple of meetings ago we will have spent 68 000 for hands-on tools now maybe i don't know what hand on tools are i like to see them 68 000 for four mechanics is a lot of two i would definitely like to see them dr carter someday absolutely in fact that's a lot of money and i know it's transportation money and i assume if you don't spend it you lose it correct but i just can't observe 68 dollars if i may if i may just remind you that they've had no tools at all because each maintenance worker or transportation maintenance worker has over the years provided their own tools to work on buses so they in fact when you go into the transportation shop uh last year you would see their the tall bins with tools

111in them that didn't belong to the transportation department that belonged to one worker and there was another belong to that worker so i can see easily it would cost that for um for the entire shop if not more but uh speaking with mr hudson the um uh transportation workers have now been told once we receive these to carry their tools home so that everything in that shop belongs to caswell county schools okay because the two points i'm making off stop i can't see how they've been operating without these two i mean they had their own tools i understand that correct but snap on and fasten all are the highest tools you can buy it's like craftsman if you lose if you break a grasping tool you can get it the next day lifetime guarantee i

112don't know about snap-on and fast and all but i do know their height so that's all i got to say about that but i want to pull that one out all right on g on the uh security uh two questions one was the company that did the initial key locks and etc is that the company that's got the lowest bid tonight i would need to verify that with mr youseshi but that is our guidelines okay no no no i'm saying is that the company we bought the initial items from that's what oh i would need the concern i have about this right here if you look at the first two quotes the difference between quote one and quote two is about 485 dollars if you look at the last quote it's 75 000 i don't

113understand that that's a lot of money and you don't miss i don't see how that happens um but that's what i gotta say about those two and uh like i said i'd like to vote on those okay do i have a motion to approve the consent agenda for a b c d f h and i some of them first battles made to motion is there a second miss hudson is second to motion all in favor raise your hand motion carries you now i'm saying do i have a motion to approve e and g under the consent agenda motion's been made is there a second second let's go in seconds any discussion all in favor indicate by reading well i'm sorry ms hudson when i was in the past those tools you're definitely correct that that

114is the truth it was their tools they didn't they didn't have any purchased at that time i don't think so i know that's correct in that time any other discussion comments miss blackwell so these tools that we're purchasing now that they want to purchase now as you state it will eliminate they will all belong to castle county and is replacing the tools that they were bringing to work correct any other questions or comments all in favor indicate by raising your hand opposed motion carries four to one okay so let's say everything for the consumer center that carter if i'd like to share with you a pilot program request from mr hudson in transportation that um the transportation department for castle county has been chosen by the department of public instruction to participate in a pilot

115program along with harnett county in which ion air purifiers will be added to five of the county's school buses um the limitations uh to adequately social distance and the ventilation in an enclosed space has created the need for this pilot so the pilot program will test technology that neutralizes harmful pathogens in the air and surfaces while in transit so over the course of the year vpi will in addition to this company vendor will assess if it is um helping the air quality in the school buses and if so they'll take that information and assess the next step throughout the state i'm recommending and it is paid from transportation funds so i'm recommending approval of um this amount 15 000 for this pilot program you've heard the superintendent's recommendation you'll have a motion i make the

116motion that we accept the superintendent's record recommendation for the eye on air purifiers mrs darling has made the motion miss black will seconds of motion any discussion or comments mr battle got a problem with that will do but a simple reason if you're a pilot why you gotta pay even though it's transportation phones if you don't use it you lose it and i'm assuming we got all this money because we didn't run the buses transportation phones but it seems like to me that if dpi is going to select you suppose we didn't have the phones would they have selected us we would have turned it down i'm voting on this one dude well i have the same thing written down if you're a pilot i don't understand why they aren't i mean it's great it's

117a great program but i don't understand i'd rather buy more tools you know they should supply us with the funds that's what i thought as well any other questions or comments all in favor indicate by raising your hand all opposed motion fails [Music] next item on under new business is resolution we have a couple of revolutions okay [Applause] we have a couple of resolutions the first one resolution in the moral and appreciation of the life of anime pulliam whereas anime pulliam was born on december 33rd 1928 and resided in leesburg north carolina at the time of her death on may 1 2021 and whereas anna pulliam was a faithful and loving wife mother sister and friend and her family's welfare was a major and constant concern and whereas adam william was an active member of

118adam's chapel missionary baptist church where she served in many ministries in the church including the missionaries senior choir pastor's a btu and sunday school she was also a charter member of the allen number 529 order of eastern star holding several positions including mate were the matron and whereas out of puerium was employed um 25 plus years with casper county schools serving as a bus driver and executive secretary to the principal upon her retirement she became a certified nursing assistant and continued sharing her life of service and commitment to her community she will be remembered for her commitment to education and being known for her benevolence and servant's heart to children and now therefore be resolved that the casper county board of education wishes to honor the memory of adam puyum and expresses his sympathy to

119her family by causing a copy of this resolution to be spread upon the official members of the board of education and accomplish forward to the family this is the 24th day of april 2021. resolution and memorial and appreciating appreciation of the life of amy base cook whereas amy base cook was born on october 21st 1967 and resided in yanceville north carolina 27379 at the time of her death on may 5 2021 and whereas amy cook was a faithful and loving wife mother grandmother sister and friend and her family's welfare was a major in constant concern and whereas amy cook was a member of state line baptist church and where amy cook was employed as a teacher's aide for caswell county schools and will be remembered for her commitment to education and then known for her

120benevolence and servant's heart to children and now therefore be resolved that the castle county board of education wishes to honor the memory of amy cook and expresses its sympathy to her family by causing the cup of this resolution to be spread upon the official menace of the board of education and they come before it to the family this is the 24th day of may 2021 resolution and memorial in appreciation the life of sheila diane lambert where sheila diane lambert was born on march 4 1947 and resided at 2558 stony creek school road resort north carolina 2-7-3-2-0 at the time of her death on may 15 2021 and where sheila lampard was a faithful and loving wife mother grandmother sister and friend and her family's welfare was a major and constant concern and where sheila lambert

121attended pleasantview assembly of god in riesel north carolina and where sheila lambert was employed as a cafeteria manager for stoney creek elementary school prior to her retirement she was employed with casserole county schools for 30 years she was a pleasure to work with and many students were greeted with a friendly hello or a needy smile as they passed through the lunch line she will be remembered for her commitment to education and being known for her benevolence and servant's heart to children and now therefore be it resolved that the castle canada board of education wishes to honor the memory of sheila leonard and expresses her sympathy to her family by causing a cop of this resolution to be spread upon the official minutes of the board of education and a conflict forwarded to the family this

122is the 24th day of may 2021. do i have a motion that these resolutions be spread upon the official minutes of the board of education mr battle has made the motion is there a second mrs hudson's second summation any discussion all in favor indicate by raising your hand apologies the same question dr carter yes the um the next four items are uh updates to policies and the first is uh policy 205 and you have the uh changes and highlighted in yellow and i recommend this policy for first read you're going to do them individually all together i mean reason i asked how we discussed them in the work session um we can do them all together i mean unless you've got some questions we can do them all together that'll speed up things i recommend

123approval of policy 205 206 605 and 607 for first read we'll move on motion has been made is there a second a second mr garland's seconds emotion is there any discussion or comments do not all in favor indicate by raising your hand both the same since we've approved item i in the consent agenda how soon will we send our policies uh we will call them tomorrow i i shared with them that it's going to the board this season i'll call them tomorrow very good thank you superintendent updates have a couple of things um the first is you have a summary in front of you it has the orange middle section to it the highlight this is uh from mr trail part of receiving the yes for funds from the federal government is that within 30

124days of receiving the funds that we put just a brief overview on the website of the plans for with the return of school and it's just to you know let the public know what the plans are as far as moving back into a regular school setting on a regular basis like normal and then to ask for any feedback so this is just a copy of what's going to go on the district website and again if things are continuing like they are now our plan is to to move back into a regular school uh pre-k through 12th grade starting five days a week regular school uh in august and we did put on there uh that we do have some remote learning days um approved in the calendar and of course if legislation has any changes

125to that we would have to adhere to that but the remote learning dates are also subject to change as we discussed with the calendar based on you know possibly inclement weather weather or other um issues but this will be posted on the website and just ask for any feedback but that is um moving forward for next year and then adheres to the federal guidelines and then the last thing that i have it's just an overview for you to have um just for your uh information just the summer learning programs for um that will start on june 7th and you can just see there um the sessions the two sessions the first one june the 7th through the 29th from the second session july 12th through august the 3rd and you can see the focus on

126each of those sessions and then at the bottom you can see some of the enrichment activities that will be during those sessions in addition to the focus on core academics you'll have drones coding robotics visual arts music production and technology cte credentialing and credit recovery there's just a lot going on with our summer program so i'm very excited and i would like to say uh thank you to our curriculum directors and our principals for really hitting hard um teachers and staff for the summer programs they have called i think every retiree uh that they know and and asking them to come back and help i need a motion to the casual county board of public education go into closed session for the purpose of considering a personnel action that involves an officer or employee of

127this board nc general statutes 143 318-1186 and for the purpose of discussing information that is privileged confidential and or not a public record nc general statute 318 1181 and to confer with attorneys so i have a motion i moved ms garland's made the motion as a second mr battle is made second in the discussion all in favor indicate by raising your hand we'll take a 10 min