BOE Regular recurrent meeting

001gotta get it right [Music] mmm i'd like to call this meeting of the caswell county board of education daughters thank you [Music] one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all we have the first item is the approval of the march 26 minutes do i have a motion motion is there a second second battle seconds of motion is there any discussion dr carter [Music] you'll have a motion to approve the agenda with the changes dr carter mentioned it's likely to make a motion is there a second second in the discussion all in favor indicate by raising your hand close the same promotion carries on that announcements dr carter i would um to congratulate um hudson director transportation for a grant he received he applied for sophomore camera allotments from dpi and they were

002it was through a grant system so every district was not allotted the money and he uh was able to receive twelve thousand dollars which is four stock arm cameras for our buses so again i'd like to thank him for and then the second item is to um share that our april issue of council county schools is out now and we would uh we invite everyone to either view it online we do have it at uh i think food line and it goes home with students as well for email so please um hopefully you can take a look at it a lot of information lost in our monthly newsletter and that's all i have at this current time okay public comments honey okay reports an update dr carter yes um we have with us today bill

003powell who is our project manager for the bartley nc senior high school construction and he is here to give an update to the board so with that i'll turn it over to mr powell [Music] can you hear me is everything good okay thank you pleasure to be here there we go okay so you've all seen this picture this is going to be given up two major topics we're going to hit two sections the first first one is huge it's cool because it talks a lot about where we are what's going on and how we move um so you've seen the top part of this slide before before about the budgeted amount and then the contract award you saw the contingency co number one previously 5800 the next two have occurred and there are numerous changes

004in there all those details are in something called change order two and three they're not really change orders for contingency but those two are in there a lot of mechanical plumbing electrical some adjustments because not everything's perfect in this world so architects aren't perfect engineers aren't perfect i'm not perfect so sometimes things happen but if you look here you see that in the total 119 151 000 are 11 of the total contingency amount the project is 57 complete so you can see we're sitting in pretty good shape for contingencies we're well under what could be for death so i'm hoping we continue that trend now we get to come a little bit to that 23 days on number three and 23 weather days added that's important that's really a lot of discussion it creates a

005lot of items of cover school students everyone so as we look at the i don't know if you can see the bottom but the august 2nd contractual this is construction with 23 days becomes august 25th that's approximately the day the students will return previously and you're gonna have a little schedule and it's gonna show that we need three four weeks after the contractor finishes to get the furniture in to get the place timing up to get the technology running you get instructional supplies in get the teachers in get everybody set up so we have a smooth move so i'll show you that move but that goes to the construction completion august 25th we work with the contractor and they're interested in holding the end date the final project completion date which is august 2nd 2022

006so that's huge that means no construction from the student's return in the fall of 2022 if the contractor wasn't willing to work with us that would have pushed on in and that's not the best for the students in the community so next one dude so adverse weather how do we come to what is adverse weather so if we look and the contractor did an excellent job in the first seven months adverse has affected the progress and the general conditions contract already has a clause of adverse weather and the contractor compared actual weather data over a five-year average on the project site so this is not weather data from raleigh or richmond and at the upper part except station yes bill and that's the location and that is noah national ocean atmospheric administration so the first

007column in here says this is the five year average of weather days the second column says what it actually was and this is not a supposition this is you know what it's not the contractor now they verified it through job logs and we verified it but if you look and you can see september it's six the five year average this year was 12 so we doubled it if you go to the bottom of february it was seven the action was 14 so we doubled it so those are real times we've had quite a bit of rain and weather issues i think i'll know february just really kicked the job aside pretty hard so the contractor came down took math and said 23 days that's a pretty simple mathematical calculation so that's where we're coming from

008as an actual weather date next slide so what's that mean that this is very complicated and i wouldn't we're studying too much i've got one of these to hand to you so you can think about it but this is exactly what's up here but in the upper left we're going to talk about two focuses task two this is a group of tasks this is in the contract plans and specs so i'm relating to you what the contract says and what we've talked about doing in the contract so the gray is the contract so as we come across the 23 days that becomes a this section will move it out 23 days and that takes up all the move-in time where the students uh the staff they set up the classrooms the technology runs you get

009the furniture in it's still a monument job you know that's a dozen the 17 tractor trails while you're talking about it thank you a little fuzzy on the big screen [Applause] but the important piece is it's in the plans and specs so when you see this and you have a color copy when you see the green this green of the movement should have been in this section before that but we put the 23 days [Music] they will not be in the two-story building on the day they return to school so that's huge now mr stokes has done a tremendous job the staff i compliment them they've come up in generous ways this would not have been possible if we didn't have the eight classroom uh temporary building wouldn't have been possible and it also involves

010let's see mr stoke you've got some classes you talk a little bit about how you're mixing the classes together you've got college like campus sometimes yes good morning morning evolving as a high school we have to really be creative and how we use our spaces we can't continue to use spaces as we always have each space is designed for students so we use them differently so in the um classroom building the temporary phase [Music] how how one general fashion is used for multiple subjects uh that's what philosophy we take here in high school with them because that's why they explain it um look at this plan and with the with us having to be honest we can still um meet our student education needs we can classroom specs that's needed however it's going is and

011ensure that they are not supporting us so the important piece is to understand that whenever you move sometimes [Music] and so this way allows us to continue so i'm sorry this allows us to continue to keep high quality instruction um meet the timelines as said for about a contractor with the least disruption to these school operations and my faculty is important with this plan i haven't so with that we're going to have a little pain for a couple of months one month in particular very difficult that's the first month coming back and the students they will have their standard schedule and then as the students start to move into the building out here and this is september 26th then they can start moving into the building and in order not to overload some departments because

012they're going to move in they're going to pick up their textbooks and their laptops and computers and they're going to pick their phones up and then the next day they can start doing what they're doing that gives technology and maintenance and the principal you know that day to try and get everybody on track that's huge if you did that with 24 classrooms it may become an overwhelming task so we're going to start in get some moved in move some more move some more move some more and that gives us but i want to bring on the point that for 23 days which when you say we're using it for the four out of four blocks are we able to do the sanitizing that we're supposed to when we're all the clean protocols that are remaining

013in place um every time we switch classes the teachers are responsible for the classroom so none of those protocols have changed in regards to keeping our building clean and safe all right just want to make sure okay now i'm going to step to the second part because we got to this line up here now i want to talk to the lines below we're still going to get we talked before about the phasing of the order from the east to the vocation that's still going to happen within the original time frame by the august 2015. now the next piece is this and the way the contractor can hold the end date all the way out here he holds this date which is what this plan is then when pulled up this this pushes out and kind

014of pulls this back it says vacate 200 300 and it's actually a little better plan it says demolish it in the summer which is fast that says in eight weeks we have to be tidied up in the 200 and 300 hall ready for the contractor to perform the abatement and the demolition that's an awesome amount of it's going to take a lot of hands-on day but that then allows 2-300 to go which allows the dining room addition to come back and start a little early and it also allows the uh renovation of the whole dining because once the new dining is moved into we've got to move over from the old landing to the new dining so there's another move time and the old dining comes back and we start to renovate in there and

015by pulling it back a couple of months and bringing it back it does cause a little pain but it allows consensus in all of 2022 there's no contractor on the site maybe a little punch list but no contract that gives the students a better plan students are not disrupted teachers are set up they're all settled in you've got a brand new building top to bottom all your new spaces are done you're ready to go so thanks for coming everything that's the bottom left the total project completion to remain is august 2nd so this is a very important plan okay i'm going to go to the next slide phasing you've seen this before i don't know if you have any questions so this becomes 23 days later this gets advanced up a little bit to get

016early in the dining this will be done when the two story's done we talked about how the students flow because they won't be in this building but they still have to get to the far building so they'll come through they won't go in the building or they can come out here go across the front of the building on the site and go into the gym and near the building and that leaves the students in front the contractor is going to be back here because now he's demolished and he's building this and he's coming in from the rear so we've maintained the separation of student and contractors which is big the parking will be complete this summer you'll see some pictures for exciting pictures i'm excited so let's go to the next one so this just

017brings home that you saw this with the monies contractors to schedule the students move september 26th august 2nd no change of 2022 the early move avoids construction in the fall right next one now let's talk about moves there's an awful lot that has gone on we have started what we call move meetings a very intense period and every one of these just different subjects but they all involve a lot of people maintain that school staff teachers principals outside contractors school contractors engineers custodials we start at the top the schools are coordinating with partly the district is coordinating with the high school they've set up committees and work groups and night involves and we've also met furniture vendors they're on board we have to coordinate them make sure they know when the contractor finishes are we

018starting on the left hand upper corner right and the right hand below are we building and completing from the top down or the we have to go through all those steps a senior senior staff group meets every two weeks so we've already established in every two week meeting and that's with the district senior staff in particular the principal also because we have kevin amen and the furniture contractors everything for two weeks huge district instructional groups as needed i think there's some discussion going on about you know when you're moving into new school making sure all your individual programs are good so that'll be already working technology the high school staff custodial and maintenance will start taking over the systems have to start getting them in there so they know how to respond to the work

019orders you got some bricks how do you do it then we're going to talk about the principle because now the principle we talk about the district and the building and the contractor but there is easily two three four times the amount of work the school has to do because they're working with the instructional leads think about simple things like science you've got chemicals how do you move chemicals that's a special process who can move that's a special group what refrigerators do you need where do they need to go what are your supplies then you go to math and then you go to special education all of those teachers from one thing i don't know if you're going to have it in the presentation but there's in the budget there's the long island floor transition and

020talking with um multiple moves that he has been part of school districts have used that mine item to utilize a transition coordinator for you know not very much money at all but it's first commitment we've been making sure the chemicals over there this person is responsible for but that's their whole focus because otherwise to be chaotic with students on campus so that's not one of the things that we were looking at hopefully we'll be able to look down the very is having someone that could assist with that transition because we all understand that you guys have a school to run and so this is over and above i'm going to run a school i'm going to have this little district maintenance has a full plate without moving in a building says principal so do you

021guys so that's the thought behind a move coordinator it's somebody that will help prevent the draw down on how to run a school and how to run an educational program we're trying to maintain a level for the kids so they're they're moving on okay uh going to the next item discussion about surplus furniture and other items disposed of so if you move out of the building you have some surplus so school maintenance and others may come technology may come to you and say we have these old items that are no longer useful to the district so they'll probably come to you with i need to surplus this so they can be disposed of uh somebody's going through the calling i call them keepers and losers now the three-legged desks gotta go but that's cool right

022now is looking through there so we gotta make sure to get that covered because one thing is important is we don't need to move it and then throw it away later cost money bottom line okay then the bottom line is storage containers because if we move out of the 200 and 300 early the building all the rooms and the buildings are going to be pretty full of staffing students so we need a place to hold the things for the same you know four weeks we start moving into the new building so we'll take some of the instructional supplies how the teachers gonna work that they're gonna set up four to five weeks so i've asked teachers old guys and teachers to plan for their first workout little instructional materials that they take at home with

023them at the end of the school year um so it's just a i know there's more time to need but i want to play on the side of caution and so and so our so that we can move them adequately because they're gonna be using them in instructions first day of school and so by the end of the school year in june 6 we are to have them knowing where their places are so their materials are already there so we have a a road map of how this is going to look for the birth so a lot has to happen today so i want to leave this thought on this piece and then i'm going to show you the exciting stuff but i wanted to uh let's start the next slide all i did in

024this was some of the four bullet points from above any comments on the board there's a lot of work to do when you think about the first of june yes sir at the end of the year this year this year you're going to have to empty paul's 2 and 3. is that going to be is there enough time enough time for them to do it well in order to make this work we have i do not want our instruction for our students to suffer um at the end of the school year is always a time of packing and cleaning and organizing and we have done it earlier with 100 so we have a little bit of experience but we will need all hands on that and you know resources that can be aligned to us

025to make it happen because on top of all that i also have graduation happening um june yeah so just understand closing the school year packing up making the building graduation and plan for next school year is a monumental tax which i'm proud to be my um a proud graduate of body hands to do so because this is a historical moment for us and but we will have to have all hands on that so we all already began the program planning every school level for what we can do as far as inventory um to keep presenting the goal as far as instructional materials um it's going to be a tough move and i'm not going to say let me see some days i'm not surprised um but it's definitely one that we're committed to getting done

026for the sake of our time additional storage and any additional things i don't miss um or weather resistance so i started looking at these pods and they've seen the commercials on television i contacted a supplier of the pods several suppliers actors in greensboro uh region and we did get some prices uh the prices looked very good to me there's a delivery fee there's a pickup fee and there's a muffler i spoke with the owner and the owner said this told me that depending on the quantity that we have to rent and work with us giving us a discount on all of his feet and he's all weather type and clothing because furniture not really that worried about but things like the science instructional material the glass beakers things like that uh they could be very

027weather temperamental so we want to go with good stuff those pots that load the ground will be faster to get stuck in that's what that's a direction that's a great question and that goes a little bit into keep what you need to keep call out everything that is not necessary in today's educational complex it's time to kind of call it to the side because it takes up space cost money just just a house and then if it's anything like my wife and she loves it when i go she owns a record in the school district she was in she had like 86 boxes moved she didn't use 40 of them the first year so she called them out after they got moved so now's the time to call it's painful but it's time i get

028reminded of that a lot and this would be one of the first pieces of that transition coordinator too is to have the labeling and identifying the boxes and where they're at and coding them so that they know this in this club if everything starts to get tight you know the school system may solicit for some move-ins once the building's occupied that it's some parents or somebody wants to give a helping hand you know we should definitely use that if some board members or other staff or other friends want to help say i need to help and maybe you get a volunteer list together so that on the days you need a little help you know this is a monumental task i have one in school and they moved really quick and they had a massive

029amount of parental support it was like pants and they picked up picked up a desk or a book or something and they carried it in and they went down the side i'm standing on the roof watching this they're going one way like ants carrying the load and coming back empty and then this that circle went on for hours and the school got home a lot of volunteers and community tremendous help great questions from all that one might want to consider mr stokes is contacting some of the local service clubs they may be really willing to help out of the project [Music] and things like that keep that in mind a lot of opportunity but that's one of the reasons for trying to get somebody that can focus you know he's got a school to run

030and he's got a great graduation plan and so we need all the help we can get some okay so now i'm gonna work with and talk about some exciting [Music] commissioners so i want to give you a little quick update there's only a few little slides here but this is the fun part i love just gets me going next part i love is walking in the building with kids in the classroom and seeing teachers teach so we're going to get there next so here's where we were in march 1. you can see the open steel the block work going in container sitting masonry wall is kind of finished in the back starting masonry in the bottom and the crane is sitting in the media center next and here it is so you see the media

031center still in the building the face you see the curtain wall is going to come around you see the roof deck on and tomorrow they should be delivering roofing materials there should be several semis in here and they're going to start with crane they're going to start loading the building roof and start roofing this is an exciting time because with that in there we can next slide we're going to do more inside the building and as you can see since the second floor is on they got concrete decks in the area in the previous it had a metal back is all concrete deck the front office you can see ductwork plumbing electrical mechanical sprinkler all that's going in so the roof of them allows the finishes the things that can't get wet the drywall the

032ceilings all the wire everything else it needs a roof the roof triggers it and if you can see the building poised to put a roof on it next slide we talked about the outside and i showed it january 14th slide in february all this material had to be installed in the building so that's huge that's a lot of material so since january next slide here we are in march and you can see these stacks are no longer deep the building's coming out but you still see articles in here here the metal deck is these and these next slide and here we are now all that material is now out it's clean that's dirt and it's been installed in the building that's what's happening pretty quick so that's how exciting this candidate can be okay thanks

033exciting stuff questions thank you thank you [Music] thank you for having me it's a pleasure you need to thank all of the staff that are really working hard thank you [Music] the is resolution immemorial and appreciation of the life of sarah mclean term whereas sarah mclean turner was born on april 12 1942 and resided at 168 moorefield road yanceville north carolina 27379 at the time of her death on march 16 and where sarah turner was a faithful and loving wife mother and friend and her family's welfare was a major and constant concern and where sarah turner was an active member of yanceville missionary baptist church in yanseville and served as an usher worked on the kitchen committee and sang in the senior choir and whereas sarah turner was a special lady she was employed as

034a custodian with cancer county schools and 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 county board of education wishes to honor the memory of sarah turner and expresses his sympathy to her family by causing a copy of this resolution to be spread upon the official menace of the board of education and incompetent forwarded to the family this is the 12th day of april 2021. thank you do i have a motion second raise your hand [Music] [Applause] we have shared previously some information uh on the budget request for the commissioners and uh the board has provided feedback to both this channel now regarding information to be added to the budget funding request so miss chandler is

035i think about to come in and um i just want to thank her for the work that she has obviously put into this it's been very thorough it's she has outstanding reports from the auditors and uh just has done an outstanding job putting this together so with that i'd just like to turn it over to this channel to go over the proposed budget request good morning good morning um in front of you have the request um i'm not gonna go over it page by page i did want to point out a couple of items for the most part pages 2 through 14 or what was presented to you at the workstation i added the graph it's pretty much the same graphs that were presumed along with the verbiage that we have presented in the past

036commissioners i did want to point out one item on page three it was mentioned in the work session to add the per people appropriation of surrounding districts so i presented that in a graph format um casual county schools person county schools rockingham county schools and around and i also did the state average on that graph as well the other item that was um added on page it was noted to um include the where what districts the teachers that resigned went to so we did that um in a table and we are we also put the average supplement that that district receives as well the capital outlay request on page 10 i did put these in needs order based on the feedback from mr hatchet so his feedback was for school repairs weatherization um hvac electrical

037old jam school grounds and then the new activity bus the amount did it change i just put them in the needs order on page 14. um it was this was presented to you at the work session but i also tried to go in um based on the feedback and include the items that each purpose code relates to so i put more detail in there for each purpose code and then pages 15 through the end we added a lot of additional information for transparency reasons the page 15 just kind of shows a financial overview of the different fund types that we have so general operating we have the state fund and the general fund grant funds we have federal grant funds and other special revenue funds business type funds is the school food service and the

038child care and then the capital outlay fund and then on the next page i go into detail of what each of those funds does um and what we account for in each of them there's a section called supplemental it starts on page 12 and all this is the supplemental information to help the public understand better on page 17 i talk about the state funding and power a lot of the state funding in three different categories physician dollar and categorical i also talked about the flexibility that the state gave to the school districts and fiscal year 1920. um because when the schools shut down in march i think the impression is that we had a lot of money left over however if you recall that the state did offer this state emergency leave for all of

039its all of school districts employees so that the benefits could the salaries and benefits could continue for the employees so the existing funding that we had for instance transportation money we used that to fund this lead that the state offered and that the employees were able to take during that time i also went into again the budget flexibility that the governor allowed for textbooks we were able to utilize our textbook funding to purchase a thousand additional chromebooks whose license were set to expire in september of 2020. the transportation allotment was also green to flexibility and we were able to utilize that funding to assist the child nutrition department in serving the meals for the students of castle county and then that first initial flexibility ended in june of june 30th 2020 but kovic continued on

040through the summer and into the fall so the governor did allow additional flexibility um for the 2020-2021 school year for the transportation allotment to be used for school nutrition school and community based child care sanitizing schools and businesses facilitate in-person instruction to provide personal protective equipment and also remote instruction um and then we'll go i'm gonna go on to 19. i went into a little detail about transportation funding and how it's allotted based on a budget rating and how we spend our transportation funding and um a little a little graph about which categories our transportation expenditures fall into so for the most part ranging from 61 to 71 percent of our allotment is spent on salaries and benefits and the rest is used for supplies as well as workshop expenses and medical exams for cdo

041licenses and drug tests and that um sums up kind of the state funding that we get if you go on to page 20 i tried to do a little um flow chart kind of of the cares act funding that kind of where it started at the federal level the federal government level and the different acts that it came from and it goes on to the different pots esther gear and federal and state aid and then on down to little more pots of money that is actually flown down to the school level so so one two and three year one and two crf and frs um and you know you know we have received our sr1 money we have a planning allotment for sr2 money and we have not yet um received the planned allotment for

042so3 money yet in year one and two um we have received and we did receive the crf money which is the state corona virus release money and then the frs has not been allocated yet okay page 21. um this is the table it's the same table that we've presented several times um the commissioners received this table you've received this table it just breaks down all of the different coronavirus relief money that we received since the last time it was presented we had pr 165 through 170 as planning allotments that has since been received so i reflect i did update this chart to reflect that those prc's were received on page 23 it shows the sr2 and so3 the sr2 the planning allotment is three million thirty three million thirty one thousand three hundred and thirty

043seven dollars and that um i put a note out to the side it will be used for a variety of purposes including the summer learning program cleaning and sanitizing supplies pepe and chromebooks and if you um i know dr carter has brought up the household 82 for the summer learning program it passed i think right before we went or while we were on spring break i don't know all the details but we will be required to do a summer learning program for all k-12 students so this funding will be where we fund that program from house bill 82 was signed by the governor on friday the 9th and this week there's a lot of webinars page 24 i go into a little detail about child nutrition funding um so nutrition money the child nutrition fund

044is a business type fund so it's it is similar to a business so your profits um your revenues are your profit and your expenditure expenditures you have a net loss and a net profit whereas your governmental funds you don't necessarily see a net profit there so when when covet hit and the schools went remote in march of 2020 the child nutrition department opened up sites around the county to have meals served to us to our children um however the meals that were being um picked up at the sites did not still did not meet the same meals that are being served on a daily basis at the schools when schools are in session um and so the way that child nutrition funding works is you get a reimbursement from the usda based on the number

045of meals you serve so if you don't serve a meal you don't get that reimbursement rate so i tried to describe in detail of how the chinese nutrition funding works as well as um you know how many meals we were serving at the community sites and and i don't want to downplay anything the chinese nutrition department didn't do because i think they were all the time trying to get meals out pushed out to the students it just when school went back in session in the fall it was harder for parents to come pick up meals at the schools and also something else that played into that was when we started in august the transportation flexibility wasn't there hospital 1105 didn't pass until the first of september so we just operated our feeding sites at our

046schools all but bartley yancey and i think it was just difficult for parents just to come pick up the meals so once the transportation flexibility passed ms nams did work to get sites opened throughout the county i think it was um 12 additional sites from pickup and we utilized our bus drivers and our buses to transport those meals to different sites for pickup we also did a meal kit ordering system where um parents could call in to a number provided by child nutrition and order their meals for the week and come pick them up so they weren't coming every day picking up meals they were just coming once a week to pick up a week's worth of meals for the children um in the last paragraph i'll just read it despite the tremendous effort our

047child nutrition department the number of meals being served still does not compare to the number of meals prior to covid revenue through february 2021 reflects a 596 000 decrease from the prior year while expenses only show a decrease of 496 thousand as of february 2021 the child nutrition fund shows a net loss of approximately 155 000 compared to a 55 000 net loss as of february 2020. um the next page which is the last page goes into our locally funded utilities um i think there's been a lot of talk about utility savings are we saving any money in utilities um so i tried to show a graph of our utility expenditures over the last four years our total expenditures versus the breakdown of father's spent um and then as you can see in prior to

0482019-2020 the utilities were turning upward um due to several factors including increasing field costs as well as rate increases um across the board and then in 2019-20 you see a dip of about 80 000 from the prior year some of that can be related to the pandemic but also you have to think bartley antsy construction um in there as well and then i also put um through february of 2021 because our march deals haven't been received yet we were about 61 000 um below what we had as of february last year all right so i will be happy to answer any questions that you have or discussion thank you i appreciate all this work it's very good information and my question would be what exactly will we give the commission will we give them this

049entire passage if that's if i accept it that's the problem of god it's good information for me but mainly uh there's a couple of things that one i would like to see uh one i think it would be good for the commissioners to know say the past five or six years the amount of requests and the amount we received uh current expense as well as you don't you got this money so let's put this money over here uh that needs to be uh stressed and you know these things will come out the other thing is about i'm sure they're going to want to know about our fun balance you know the trend of that how much we have what plans we uh it's like we're not required to have a fund balance but it's good

050to have one because you never know what's gonna happen but these are the kind of things i think we need to incorporate when we send it to them or sit down and discuss it with [Music] in the past uh they said well use your fund balance if you continue to use your phone balance you're not going to have one uh that's the point i'm making in previous years and that needs to be emphasized in terms of what we how we used it and why and i think if you have if the boards need jointly to do this that could be done there and um or when we present it to them i'm not sure yes dr carter my suggestion is to certainly add that uh five or six years but to also keep this information

051uh as it is because it's very transparent and it's some of the things that we've been hearing some of the things mrs have been asking for and i have spoken with mr owen and uh i've also spoken with mr miller in the hopes of possibly having a joint meeting to present the budget so to me all this information and then adding what mr battles just mentioned would only provide another all the transparency we can possibly provide because um as you know mr chandler has done her department does an amazing job excellent reviews from the auditors i mean just um it's all transparent so i think my suggestion is to put it out there how many activity buses do we need do we know how many we have we have uh you might conduct hope for

052your head how many we have we could use two but we're only asking for one so this that's the cost of one i think the number was four big and too short i could be wrong though and then there's a couple that no one drives because that's right um can you can we not take like the old buses that we get new buses for and turn them into activity bosses one's paid out of state school bus funds and the others local funds we can't cross over when we first got it the activity bus was at the top it wasn't anything right and i think i don't think they have numbers on the side but you know they need to know you know this is what we need the most would you want me to like

053know i think what would the board like to look on page 10 and verify that the order well let me see you know maybe the old year maybe that may be number one to me um school repairs to me all of them are important but and maybe you can leave it just like this and talk to it that way but i know what's going to happen you're going to see the dollar amount when and didn't you say that mr hatchet put these in order of priority what he saw as someone who's out there so i think in my opinion you know we've got to go about what he says too like you say they're all important but i did want to say this to dr carter um talked about this number one fabulous job number

054two i agree with everything mr battle said about meeting talk about the planning but i want the entire packet you know to be shared because of the words that are used transparency because we're doing everything above board and asking only for what we need truly so i agree with the entire packet going mr i think you've done an excellent job in breaking this down and making it understandable to everyone and uh i think it will help answer some of the questions the commissioner's commission had but i do we are going to try to set up a meeting with the commissioners i'm going to say this now i decided to set up a meeting a joint meeting with the commissioners to discuss the budget uh to talk to them about it [Music] so we will add

055that one section about the five six year capital outlay for an expense and priority order uh in the paragraph and then send the board members been updated requested in the past and received in the past that i would like to recommend this um request budget request with the changes we mentioned for dr carter has recommended the approval of the funding request with the changes indicated do i have a promotion mrs hudson has made the motion is there a second what's going on in the second promotion is there any discussion this is black this is budget that we're getting ready to um exam is uh 300 well the total amount is 773 including capital outlay if you just include the local operating request it's about it's 468 000 increase from last year from last year any

056other questions or discussion if not all in failure indicate by raising your hand opposed the same thank you canada [Music] yes i have the directors here um to provide updates i asked this seller to rename because i think it's easy to see what they do in their department presentation but i've asked them to give a quick overview of their department uh their employees and what they're responsible for and perhaps good morning again i think all you know who i am i'm amy chandler chief finance officer um i will be with the school system 30 years in august i am a certified public accountant in both virginia and north carolina i oversee the finance department here which is responsible under north carolina general statutes for keeping the accounts of the school system and the performance with

057national accounting and state and federal regulations the finance department is also responsible for issuing all checks depositing and investing on monies coordinating the annual audit preparing and filing all financial statements purchasing goods and services in accordance with applicable laws and processing payroll for all employees of the school system the finance department consists of four people i have three staff members plus myself we maintain sections of finance of accounting accounts payable budget payroll and purchasing i am mainly responsible for overseeing the finance department ensuring all policies and procedures are followed and in place i also work very closely with all department heads and schools in regards to budget and applicable expenditures i draft and present the annual budget to the board of education as well as present financial reports to the board of education on a

058quarterly basis also my department is brenda scales she's the payroll specialist she works closely with the human resources department and the school bookkeepers to ensure employees are paid correctly and timely according to the payroll calendar on a monthly basis she is also responsible for preparing payroll records and related payments and withholdings as well as answering questions regarding payroll-related items i also have brooke underwood who is the budget specialist who works closely with all departments and school bookkeepers to ensure proper spending of the funds available as well as adequate budget to make purchases she also assists ensuring purchasing regulations are adhered to also in the department is hernandez smith graves who is the accounts cable specialist she works closely with all departments and school bookkeepers to ensure invoices are paid in a timely manner she is

059also responsible for ensuring the p-card expenditures are coded reconciled and approved in a timely manner since being a school book keeper herself she has really stepped in to work with the bookkeepers training them as and be available to assist with questions as they arise um i wanted to touch base too as you may be aware of the finance department received the prestigious award for excellence and financial management from the north carolina department of public instruction in september of 2020 in which castle county schools is one of only 19 out of 115 school districts achieving this award with a score of 11 or above the finance department as mentioned above is also responsible for coordinating the annual audit the audit for 2019 2020 reported no audit fridays the auditors conducted their interim compliance audit march 22nd

060through the 24th of 2021 and reported no issues during their compliance work this is a broad overview of the finance studies however oftentimes there is much more that flows through finance on a daily basis ibuponius has a team that works well together as well as with others within the district we strive for excellence in all that we do and i think it shows in the award we received as well as our annual audits thank you any questions any questions for ms chandler thank you thank thank you chairman thank you we're very fortunate to have our department name next we have mr perez and i have to say until um three and a half years ago he did not have a physical services department and he has really shaped the department into a district support system

061for students and staff and so i'm very excited of all the things that he'll receive good morning board chairman dr dr carter just want to go over my areas of responsibilities this morning um first and foremost as you know we're going through this year since last march that uh i was designated and has been i have been operating as the point person for coving management that means the planning implementation and monitoring of everything that we do at our sites including all our schools and all our buildings develop protocols based on cdc and north carolina department of health and human services guideline also ncbgi coordinating plans whether they were plan a plan b or plan c communicate all the changes with our leadership and school level staff regarding the changes and updated protocols which seem like

062they're happening on a weekly basis and kind of just keep abreast of the changing documents that do come out from the various resources that we have i do also review the student code of conduct and make that submission to the school board for approval each year also communicate with parents k-12 in regard to questions appeals and grievances and also the hearing board process and also any assignment that goes to the alternative program those students request or request from principals do come through my office i am the mckinney-vento homeless leads liaison for the district i do participate in state training with the state coordinator i do training for school level staff maintain required records in powerschool and coordinate services with other lease meaning when we do have to transfer to another lea and we coordinate what's

063the best interest instructionally for those students why they are in transition and their families uh a supervised school social worker the school nurses and i do uh supervised testing accountability program along with ms jones and also miss apple to make sure that we are following required protocols as far as testing also this year that means transportation and also any sanitizing situations that we do have have because we were bringing kids in from home during this process before we came back to school those requirements to test our children did not change i deal with daily operations working with directors principals and parents on a variety of topics that do come up and again meet with records on a regular basis do coordinate with finance and instruction as far as federal grants uh this chandler had mentioned

064about we do oversee the safety and security plans of our schools and recently uh i've been dealing with attendance and cultural attendance violations at the school level that kind of gives you an overview of what uh student services does so basically it's anything that parents or principals or superintendent or directors have that uh directly impacts our students i'll be glad to answer any questions yes ma'am could you tell me a little bit about the homeless program and how many students that have made this favor yes ma'am so that's a federal initiative kenny bento there is a homeless director for the state right now we have approximately 19 there is an application process or an identification process and that's brought to our attention at the school level there is a form that's filled out it does

065come to my office for approval before we put uh resources in place uh we usually work directly with family please providing them with resources it might be something that you know during covent that they lost housing due to couldn't pay rent it could be that a family has suffered a fire and lost their home that way so we provide food we provide resources we've had grants that provided rent assistance and also utility assistance so we just provide any kind of resources we can once they're identified supported the grant with the local um uh it's not casual medical anymore so speaking for us mr battle yeah for one thing one thing i think i didn't know money they put thermometers on their buses so when the kids get home save that stuff from going into school

066and i thought that was unique uh i don't know how many buses they have involved but i just want to share that with you everybody had a different technique yeah again we did a station for because we didn't want uh the buses just pulled over for that extra step while they're on the road and things are changing about temperatures checking those types of things for kids but one thing i i will say is that mr hudson has done an excellent job working with his bus drivers and training their bus drivers especially going through that at a station before they board the buses but again we're very fortunate to be in p-tech and we have monthly meetings with various school systems that share best practices and i don't mind talking to people and saying god that's

067a really really good idea like you just mentioned that we see if we can implement that here in capitol county so a lot of people are doing a lot of unique things based on what they're doing with their mindset yes have there been any changes or new changes to the student code of conduct uh we do that usually prior uh to the beginning of next year and what we'll do is we'll sit down with principals and we'll sit down with other stakeholders and we'll say what worked with the a legal service that says you need to update this within your code of contact because this is current either state or federal law and we asked principals about what situations did they encounter that we might need to tweak our code of conduct because it didn't

068really fit into something or it might be something that's occurring more frequently a good example of that is several years ago this board approved that we started addressing vaping because vaping wasn't in the code of conduct but that was a new thing that kind of replaced smoking so we wanted to address that based on what was happening at our school yeah i think something with the code it may be sure something right so we did that with a face mask when we did that one in the code of conduct and i'm sure as we go through the code of conduct we will actually embed that in there but yes ma'am and then we'll come to you for review any other questions next we have mr hatchet from our maintenance if he's not pulled somewhere which

069says a lot mr show off come on in uh well i think you you will be next okay and uh obviously mr showalter and we're fortunate with his experience as well um of everything that goes on with professional children's services a lot a lot is occurring well good morning everybody nice to see familiar faces um i've been been here in casual since 1993 back to the century uh and i had the one folks very coming in as a permanent sub which is today's when i was in the building every day and i got to spend a lot of time in special education uh helping support when i was not substituting in a classroom but i got a full full gamut and an understanding of how schools operated or a middle school at that time i

070was at the old middle school um and as i grew in my education got into administration somewhere along the way superintendent came pulled up the front parking lot at oakwood and said i want you to be the ep director you know how that works they put you in a car and there you go you got a new role um so i've been the ec director since 2005 um and had a lot of experience and time in the field here exceptional children which is my primary role it's got a statewide mission that says exceptional children's division is to ensure students with disabilities develop intellectually physically emotionally vocationally through the provision of an appropriate individualized education program in the least restrictive environment and my role as a director is to ensure that our students get that opportunity

071that they get their their needs met with an individualized plan that i provide the supports for the staffing and the administrators for policies and procedures help them understand what those guidelines are sometimes we kind of get situations where we want to move in on something but my role is to kind of step in and say we gotta rethink because we gotta look at the individual child because sometimes we kind of say all and it's in special education it's about the individual child um i also in part of this role is i don't supervise all these teachers specifically i do a lot of training for them but i do uh oversee the funding courses in special education to kind of look at the numbers look at how things bounce out because staffing has to go where

072the numbers are it's not going to be guaranteed that you're going to have so many teachers every year it's how many kids we have with ieps do we need to have staffing for so i oversee programs and funding sources such as brc32 which is the state ec funding source prc 29 which is the behavioral support funding schwartz old william for those of you that have been around support funding those are our state funding sources specifically i also received the funding sources from the federal government brc60 which is the ibea funding prc 49 which is the preschool special needs program funding um and they most of those funding forces fund staffing there's some funding sources to set aside for professional development set aside for materials and and equipment that maybe need to be purchased we do

073have a allowance that we can carry over funds here here so that we can be secure if there is a high need situation that comes across that we have to take care of um try to have some time set aside as we are able to carry over some um i also do some special grants uh collection um if we have unique needs that come across unique kids that come across that might require one to one or a high needs kid that comes into the district weren't ready for them there are some special grants that i do complete such as state reserve fundings and address risk pool funding and i also try to keep up with kids that are in foster care that have ieps because i can also receive some funding sources to help support

074them because they weren't initially in our adm when we when they enrolled during a year and we they usually come with some high needs and trauma issues that we have to help support as well there are some professional development funds that we get um prc 82 which is a support fund that helps with our reading and math programs for special needs um it's kind of blended in and we really merge it and look at how it can work with the kid the staffing and the general population because we want to help them have the tools that they need to work with children with ieps in the classroom we also get some funding sources for autism related services preschool professional development i mean funding i work with a great staff down here in the lower wing

075i have a school psychologist full-time right now we're very fortunate to have one on board full-time his name's joe bunch and he's got years of experience he's been on a lot of the national or statewide developments for school psychologists and planning there so he's a good leader for us in that field i also have under him we have a school intern a school psychologist intern this year her name's morgan brooks and she's doing a wonderful job i wish we would have been able to get her out into the schools a lot more because i think she she was learned and gotten a lot more grit but she's done an excellent job down there as she's coming out of upstate uh doing her internship we also have a preschool coordinator she was new this year it

076was a tough year to come in as a preschool coordinator under under circumstances but she has done a great job helping us keep that program afloat and trying to figure out how do we meet the needs of children that are at home and uh lauren appella is our behavior support she's been with us for about five six years and has done a very good job helping the schools and the staffing develop behavior plans when they have kids that are at risk and with behaviors and most importantly the most support person down there and i think they would all agree with me as tiny pleasant she's at my admin assistant she does not only is she i think some of the basic support roles there she's our data manager she helps monitor our programs our ieps

077completions which are now electronics so she can kind of track those and then let me know if there's people that are getting close to coming out of compliance that she's on top of that with the data managing yeah aspect um we do uh use a an online program for ieps now that develop the ips um it's something that i can see immediately when they're working on it i can help the staffing work on those ips right there versus the old days on the uh wrote those ieps and experienced that you know these pieces of paper it's hard to kind of track how that all went keep up with all that now it's right there for me i can just pull it up on my computer and i can walk through teacher through and kind of

078identify and give them direct support on their ieps right there and my last major role um that i see as an exceptional children's director is my support and advocacy for the children and support for parents you know giving them guidance on what an iep is giving them guidance on strategies for home giving them some contacts for the agencies that can give them home supports and and that's really important because it really is about the child um and their needs also some of the supplement the second additional roles that i have is is um the father floor coordinator this is where kids that don't meet the needs of an iep don't have a need for individualized instruction plan but have a disability and need school accommodations i help the schools kind of coordinate big plans and

079it is a federally required plan it's an unfunded program that they put on us something that we have to kind of work with in regular ed staffing how do you develop a father floor plan what does it mean it doesn't mean that you have a diagnosed disability it means that they have to have a disability that substantially impacts their daily life skill so it has some guidelines there and we tried to meet on that and give them the support for father four the staffing that supports that usually as a counselor at the school is a contact person for the five or four teams um i also kind of oversee the preschool programs that since special needs preschool was already in the special ed exceptional children's side of it the nc pre-k has kind of filtered

080down to my role where i oversee what goes on there i work very closely with the preschool coordinator making sure that we're following licensure requirements because our nc pre-k program doesn't follow dpi guidance there are specific preschool licensure requirements that we have to follow there which makes it more of a challenging for the three classrooms that we have because their roles in preschool are very different in some ways than what we have expectations in the epi the public schools arena also um another role that i helped coordinate i collaborate with the the curriculum directors espos and mrs jones on mtss terminology multitask systems of sport that you may have heard it is um a system that the state department has kind of come in and they use this term in mtss and i want to

081make sure they clearly understand it is a an initiative that really is supposed to help leadership in the framework of our leadership and how we look at our schools as a whole taking all the pieces and all the data and it's just supposed to be a tool that helps them look at that the data pieces um the spores their their graduation rates and putting all those things together to kind of kind of say okay what are our needs and we try to help with that system it gets a little blinded with with special ed because special ed also uses that if they're in that framework kids that are at risk would get some intervention and then as they grow and need more and more interventions if they are not making meeting growth then they have

082to get a referral for special education but it's really on the front end about the core leadership um lastly the things that i also kind of have in my role is i do a lot of community meetings um i head up the local special olympics for the district which we do have going on we're doing a program right now with the plastics rooms called power up which just had kind of doing some fitness with the kids on a daily basis also do things like the system of care which is dealing with at-risk kids that might need to have a relocation from homes i work on the child protective teams child fatality teams and a multi-disciplinary team which is a trauma support agency team so that's a wrap up of what i do it seems like

083a lot it is a lot on days and some days i can actually breathe but not very often so mr show walker did with the unique circumstances of code 19 and everything how did your teachers handle your iep meetings and and meetings with teachers and that kind of thing if you could just sort of give us an idea we quickly learned how to do remote uh meetings um we the state department did a waiver of the in-person meetings parents were already allowed to be able to participate in alternative ways so once that came to the case we did remote meetings all right meetings and everything have been done remotely we tried to send out a copy of everything in advance to the parents um that does hinder us and slow us down a little bit

084because we have to get a copy after a meeting we always provide a copy to the parents of that paperwork so we have to get a copy and then we mail that out to the parents as far as like signature requirements signature requirements are only needed for a referral permission to do any evaluation and on an initial eligibility which is permission to serve other signatures requirements we if they're done in a remote we can document done and remote teams agree and we can just list the participants how many uh students are you all currently serving through apparently we have i think it's on for 372 or the last count that we have it's approximately about 16 17 percent of our student population um what we only get funded at 12.75 percent of the adm so

085when i say it's 16 we are serving more pits than we actually get state funding for now don't say that we get funded per child which we do but the per child rate is different than other districts that might have less than 12 um and it does have an impact but the challenge there is is you can't deny services i mean that's the thing if they need eligibility and they require an individualized plan it's our requirement and our expectations to provide that service we try to meet that serving of funding sports as best we can and sometimes we do have to use some local funding sometimes to cover that miss stanley uh mr show watcher do you have a working relationship with a partnership for children our partnership oh yes matt yes ma'am i've worked

086with miss hutch quite often in fact i was responding to an email just where i came in here all right good that's garland i think um ms blackwell already addressed the number of students that we serve and i know this has been a challenging year for school system and so we just want to make sure that our special needs our dc students their needs are being met too so what challenges have you come across we have had some challenges and i'll be very honest we we have the dreaded when everybody hears timelines in special education we've missed timelines i mean we were closed from march until all so we weren't able to even do evaluations that were open in books so timelines were missed um but we have slowly tried to pull that in once

087we got ourselves situated our evaluators we worked out a very good system where if we could get the parents to come into a site here for a long period of time we did our evaluations in the lower wing they would dress up in the ppe equipment they had gloves they'd have gowns they had masks they had a face shield if needed we would have a plexiglas shield there to evaluate the children and that's how we were able to cope with it our challenge in some cases are still the parents that are on remote are not wanting to bring their children in for the evaluations which isn't something we can't control so what we'll document to the state department is do the covet these are our factors but why do we have some delays any other

088questions coming from this blackboard yes the 504 how many uh students are being served through the 504 program uh ms michael i don't have that actual count on my top of my head um the numbers are are down down a little bit this year we haven't had as much exposure with the students but it's somewhere between 30 in that range because most students usually qualify for an individualized plan um that are also having a disability another question what was the parents participation we have found parents participate pretty much as they typically have i mean we have several parents that don't participate um in meetings at all unfortunately um we have parents that can't meet meet when we're all meeting and give us permission to meet because they can only meet in hours that are beyond

089reasonable um because i always tell the staff reasonable somewhere between seven and six o'clock at night even though that sounds stretching it but we try to comply with the parents but for the most part our parents have been participating online matter of fact a lot of them have found it better because they don't have to take time off from work they they're meeting at work during their lunch portal um i was just going to share it it's obvious that mr show walker is very knowledgeable of the laws and guidelines for special ed and that's something that we are very thankful for and one of the things that you're gonna hear and and he certainly has already said it is that common thread is looking for grants for funding for our district and that has helped

090us tremendously keep things running uh the way we would like for it to be but uh i'm very thankful for um the collegial it's been an honest pleasure to be in casper county doing the job that i do i serve on a lot of the state you kind of be in the in the job for a long time you get to sign roles at state level for being part of their their their advisory boards and i hear the stories and i i'm grateful that we're in casual we have a wonderful place wonderful kids here in the castle several places any other questions or comments mr sherlock to thank you and we appreciate your service um but she can move into the board at a later time mr hatchet it's very common that if we have

091a storm or anything coming through that mr hatchet will be either on the road or on the phone or at the school already checking on the uh utility or what needs to be done for everyone but i truly am grateful for thank you very much.com and um that takes care of my 15 minutes good morning everyone my name is jerry hatchett i'm the maintenance director of california schools uh i graduated from boston high school in 1986. my wife for 33 years graduated in 1984. our two children jesse and joshua graduated from baltimore high school and we have high hopes our three grandchildren uh william hatchet brett hatchet and harper jane hatchet will also be graduating oh fantastic [Music] and with my grandchildren we have a vested interest in the future that means something every day

092in 1999 i came to work for calvin county schools maintenance department and in 2001 i was promoted to the maintenance director in 2006 i was named maintenance director of the year for the state of north carolina through the north carolina public school maintenance association which is made up of peers across the state of north carolina in 2001 when i was promoted to maintenance director had one goal and my goal was still my goal today long-term goals and short-term goals find this find a way to make this place a better place than what it is that [Music] is fortunate to leave and that crew sherry mcgowan justin snow david brown russell thompson and i have a position that's open right now that i hope to be coming soon so that sums up jerry hatch if y'all

093got any questions i'll try my best to answer them questions what's the battle i know it's money but you had a baby because of money gentlemen i think you had said it was like that's correct with the job now does it behoove us as a boy to work on that you think you're gonna find somebody with the current salary grade feel that y'all no i do i do not have expectations of getting someone that i think has the qualifications right uh now get someone and teaching them is what i'm shooting for right now someone that's already got a background and electrical and heating and air making 25 to 30 bucks an hour in the private sector and you know you know the differences in the state retirement plan now with the health they're insurance looking

094to come out of that and exist because you know the private sector's benefits exceeds the state's name so how can you compete you have to compete with money so yes i i definitely urge you to look at it maybe not just my department and have an agency i'm sure it's over the same problem well the reason i ask that we need to take a serious look at that because i don't really anything better and people need to make a a living wage they need to have the benefits as well too and just to say they keep looking at the mechanism today that means it puts the additional load on what you already got and uh hopefully it's doing this your department is small as it is and when you're short one person that makes it

095doubly hard for the other workers and it's important to maintain what we've got so i mean that's an important thing stanley just piggybacking off what mr rattle you know that you know that it would be neat if they could come and work for us but son's in in that trick yeah it's a shame that they couldn't work for this school you know yeah uh and you know surrounding counties pay better than we do but they're in the same position of trying to get these kill laborers in even though they're paying more than us they're in the same position because they're not paying nothing right so we're not the only ones i didn't even think about that any other questions yes i just want to remind the board um this room we're in and the remodeling

096of this and it is phenomenal and our large room that we've never had before a large professional development room that for covet any day would see professional development for our staff in that room uh has been exceptional i mean staff has really appreciated an opportunity to come somewhere for professional development and that was made possible for from the maintenance department it was our honor to do it it's very gratifying when you like i say leave at the end of the day and you turn them up but used to do something that's going to be there to outlast you it's very gratifying thank you we appreciate what you do thank you i'm now i feel like i'm at home um [Music] we enjoy spending other people's money all right uh board chairman vice chairman of board

097members dr carter thank you of course i'm chuck hudson first of all i want to address the elephant in the room i have severe dermatitis severe um um but anyway it's not contagious it's just unsightly so just overlook my hands and it layers up at the most inopportune times so please forgive me for that uh transportation for those of you who have uh worked with me with ms black from ms hudson this battle i taught your son the first year i was here my background is in business i came from the corporate world i didn't become a teacher until i was 41. so what i have done with transportation with dr carter's guidance i have tried to run it like we would run a business uh we made quite a few changes in the summer

098or last fall technically excuse me last spring technically we were able to be uh support for food services having helping them deliver meals that continued up until we came back to school the recruiting process for drivers has been difficult the reason being once we get a driver in a driver has to go through the class pass the test wait two weeks do the old road testing and then go to the dmv dmv shut down in person and it was hard to get an appointment we had two drivers who went through the class passed the test in the old road and could not get appointment within their 90 deaths so they have to go through the test to go through the class again if they want to drive for us and that was again that was

099all directors throughout the state have complained about that dmv decided at the first of the year that they would open back up and they would be quite so strict in recruiting i don't know if you've noticed i added the paper we have read ahead of paper the last four weeks it will we also have ordered six signs for buses that the the difference between the signs of the buses and the sounds of the yard the school the size of your school will be semi-permanent and they will stay there because the school says you need to keep yourself [Music] um we also have our classes on a website and on web pages of most of the schools next in two weeks i hope to have three new drivers for your approval uh we're getting all of

100their stuff together right now we have the applications in the background checks done they have completed the class and we're just getting everything we need to get together i am hoping to have eight of the team moments but my realistic goal is eight of the ten my goal for january the first was about when we go back to school and this is anticipating going back regular schedule in august i won't have 25 new drivers that is that will cover me with stuff you know the biggest thing we have is finding subs that would cover me for something i would like to have three or four subs assigned to each school so we are working on that um do you guys want me to finish and take questions and you want me to take questions that

101i cover just finishing it okay it's fantastic one thing that has been a challenge for transportation every time we do routes we have to do a complete database now we have had to do 13 databases since the first of december because with every testing you have to do a database with the elementary schools with the ec students with the second day so that's a challenge it usually takes what uh dpi recommends is three weeks from the time you get the names to the testing date we've been a little bit of crutch with some of that and uh suzanne has been one of the suzanne foster kim's coordinator has been wonderful she has uh a lot of cop time right now but she has been working some days 16 hours a day to get these routes

102done and again she has just i ca i can't compliment her enough another challenges we've had at the elementary school we are playing a but at the secondary we're plan b in plan b you can have only have 24 students uh on a bus it's not counting you have to have one student per seat and not counting civics so that does tie our hands a little bit and uh with our drivers quite a few of our drivers found part-time jobs and when we came back in march they were looking at what person had done what rocking hadn't done what some of the counties other counties around us had done where they had gone back to school and had to shut down for two weeks or so and these guys have failed part-time jobs they just

103said look i can't sacrifice my hours and then we go back and check back shut down so we will be back in august so we'll have those drivers come back um a couple of things that we have done at the shop during this pandemic mr shelton you mentioned the plexiglas shields that some of his teachers are using my mechanics built that's for me in fact we have a few more left that they built uh mr trump rail from maddie perplex class my guys put it together um we have organized when i took over the shop files and papers we have to keep files some three years some five something they were everywhere and you basically had to if you called me and said i need a report from 2014 it could take me two days

104to pack now we can have those organized uh where most of the files that i need to put my hands on quickly or in the old director's office right off of the uh small what i call the small shop and the others are upstairs where all of them were so we've organized all of that paperwork we have organized the upstairs to where you we know where the parts are now uh my mechanics can just walk up there they know exactly what would be in the parts it's supposed to be for the break room and the foyer in our shop they have painted they've replaced broken windows they have replaced the front door they have put down flooring put down the crown molding around the bottom at the top it looks fantastic i'm inviting you guys

105to you don't even have to call us just stop by and just take a look at it it looks wonderful it really looks wonderful and one of the things we worked with that was uh i had told mr hatch and his crew it supplied us with some of the supplies and i told him i said i don't want your your guys doing it i'm going to take care of it now that was too funny number one it gave them something to do so that i did not have to um let them you know lay them off during the pandemic it provided them something to do with their hours and it looks nice um coordinator i've already covered with suzanne and the challenges she's had she has been a trooper she has been great she's worked

106through that to the point that we were one of the first school systems that went back with the some five days some for some two she has school systems now calling say how do you do this and for someone who has been at the job a little over a year that's amazing so um with their inventory and a b sip and i suppose i should know what beasts that stands for but the eyes but inventory other than that i don't know but uh john burdine one of the uh guys in the shop has stepped up and he's keeping up with that computer system he has done that since uh miss paschal resigned in august that she found another job and resigned and he is doing a wonderful job with that keeping it up and not

107neglecting his other duties one thing that i have changed with their shop so dr carter you might have to just cut me off in 15 minutes that's one thing i have changed with a shop if you go to a dealership to take your car to a dealership and you want the oil changed or you want your brakes repaired they have they want a lot of time like 45 minutes for an oil change two hours for break repairs stuff like that that is what we're doing with this shop to make it run more efficient so that we don't have downtime we don't have wasted time they know that when they the buses we've been doing the 30-day inspections even when the buses weren't running and that said it may sound silly but if you leave a

108bus with a battery that size setting steel for long enough the battery dies so i had if you saw someone back in october november driving a bus down the road that's why that would keep the butt the batteries charged but uh we have got that down almost to a science now that it takes you have this allotted amount of time to do your prevented maintenance this a lot of time do you 30 days there's a lot of time to go to the schools and check your buses um cleaning and sanitation each one of my drivers has a spray bottle and uh i should have oh it's kind of like that except it's larger and a rag that they can wipe down the buses i also have someone in each school in all six schools that

109has electrostatic spray that goes through the buses after each run when all the buses return in the morning they go through when they return to the afternoons it's free it's freedom day we are beginning to leave the windows open and doors open on buses weather really had cooperated with us up but to this point but we're getting to a point that we can do that as i think dr carter mentioned we have uh we were given a grant to buy four new camera style on cameras um we are getting proposals for that guy i have two that i've set in this morning and um hopefully we can get those soon but what dpi set out at application in january and then you can apply for entertainment i got phone of course some counties some localities

110got enough what you have to do in order to get the grant you have to stay a need and you have to document how you would work with local law enforcement to um enforce the laws and luckily we have a great relationship with our local law enforcement not just the deputies but state troopers in which we could do that we have uh the state is allotting us three replacement buses this year because we got four last year will be three this year um through the cares act ms jones and i will be working on a grant which hopefully will have um all of our buses would have to stop on camera the advantage to the stock all of our buses have cameras now on the inside the stop on camera goes under the stop arm

111and records the license plate of a driver who runs a stop so that's the uh great thing with that but through the cares act we are currently working on a grant in which it could possibly hopefully put stock alarms on all of our buses and it will also nail if a principal calls me and says i need to see the video for bus 21 last thursday afternoon i drive over i pull the video um video chip give it to the principals they call me when uh they are finished and i put it back in the reason we did that step is because uh we found that sometimes people get people get busy i mean it's it's not it's not it's just human people get busy they forget to put the ship in there on the

112afternoon we have something happening on the bus and the principal is oh my goodness the chip was laying on my desk so it's just easier if i go over and do it or my mechanics overdo it we know what's in there and it just goes the administration out so with the care fact we are trying to uh grant the wants to pull up video from one of her buses she doesn't need to pull the chip she goes into the program punches in that plus number punches in the time and date that she needs to see it and it will play on her review so uh on a personal note one thing the pandemic did afford me was time so i have started working on my national certification ford uh transportation director i'm almost finished with

113the classroom part then it just takes uh going to some in-person classes and person conferences and complete that so it's usually a three year process i'm a little bit ahead of my time questions uh i think that five buses parked in the high school in the regular lot bus number two is parked in the east wing line yes okay let's do with our spare bus okay and we have not moved it back now okay to the right of a lot follow up on the routes that are currently going down any of those drivers having to do a double wrap you know when we first started another round now what is uh i don't know that to be exact so don't put that in stone but uh the board did give our drivers 50 raise an

114hour last year and so i believe starting off no experience whatsoever is 1251. it's it's definitely in that within 10 cents how many um bus drivers do you have just doing dual rolls like work in the cafeteria and do the transportation and i also like to say that you did a good use of using your resources for getting them to be able to continue to work too thank you currently we have six people who are duly employed any other questions any other questions thank you mr hudson we appreciate all you do thank you thank you uh we need to go into a closed session at this point uh can i have a motion you got a reader i moved it uh you'd like to need somebody to make a motion to casual county board of

115public education go into closed session for the purpose of considering a personnel action that involves an officer or employee of the board nc general statutes 143-318-1186 and for the purpose of discussing information that is privileged confidential or not a public record nc general statute 143-318-1181 and to confer with attorney do i have a motion i'll is there a second the stanley seconds is