CMS Board Of Education Board Meeting - May 11, 2021 (6pm)

001[Music] meeting of the charlotte mecklenburg board of education to order and i will entertain a motion to adopt the agenda second okay i've got a motion from carol sawyer a second from margaret marshall all those in favor of the motion please raise your hands any opposed and i saw your hand raised miss cheek so madame clerk the agenda is adopted by a unanimous vote of nine to zero and i'm now going to call on at large board member jennifer de la hara to introduce this evening's pledge leader good evening i am very happy to introduce everyone to lucy george she is an 8th grader at randolph middle school where she has enjoyed being part of the debate club and the gay straight alliance when she is not in school lucy likes reading and singing go

002ahead lucy and recite the pledge do we need to unmute here we're getting your volume fixed here into the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all go ahead lucy if you'd like to read your statement thank you um for having me thank you to my social studies teacher mr oreskovic for this opportunity um social studies has always been one of my favorite subjects and it has taught me to see or it has taught me about the importance of looking at situations from a different point of view um and being open-minded i think it is important for everyone to be more open-minded in order for us to act with kindness and understanding for one another thank you again thank you okay um so we're now going to

003move on to requests from the public and i shall read the rules each speaker will be called in to speak one at a time unless you are part of a group each speaker will have a maximum of two minutes to address the board groups will have seven each speaker may speak on any topic of their choice except for individual student matters or specific personnel matters personal attacks will not be allowed profanity or other inappropriate language will not be allowed and the board reserves the right to mute any speaker who violates these rules and with that i will call in the first three speakers and as a reminder we are meeting in person but the city still has the government center closed to the public and so our speakers are joining us via zoom um so

004the first speaker is lasagna collins followed by david olson and then sherry abell collins isn't with us madam chair ms collins is not here okay so then our first speaker would be david olson followed by sherry able and then lisa o'brien go ahead mr olson we hear you all right is there any way to see the participant list on this call um what do you mean by that is there any way to see how many participants are in this call well yeah you're live streamed um on facebook live um and there are a number of speakers waiting to speak after you and then there's a group of us in the room here all right sounds great um firstly thank you for having me this is my first school board meeting i don't have a child

005of age for cms yet but i do appreciate the opportunity to speak i live in colonial village near dillworth campus sedgefield campus and i like to walk through the neighborhood and so what prompted me to request to speak is walking through the neighborhood by the school and particularly by the playground where i see nearly every day children who are separated wearing masks on the playground and i just wanted to address a couple of statements on your website that you have a set of commitments and one of them is give all students access to a well-rounded rigorous curriculum that is evidence-based and data informed and i would say that that practice directly contradicts that commitment having children wear masks on a playground is neither evidence-based or data informed and the science is very clear on that

006number two you have a commitment to make all students be successful in higher learning or the workforce but there's no mention of entrepreneurship or any other type of achievement and so to me higher learning of the workforce makes me think that you are creating drones rather than human beings number three says that you'll create a safe and orderly learning environment and again wearing masks there's science to the debate on whether that is ultimately safe or healthy for children number four it does say you're embracing diversity and this is the least of my concerns but the school board is nine out of ten women just wanted to throw that out there so my background i have an engineering degree from stanford university i played football there graduated early and played professional football and i just wanted

007to say that i was homeschooled through sixth grade before going to public school and for any mom out there that is listening you too can homeschool your child your your school system and your state is giving over to nefarious powers that you have no control over at this time thank you very much mr olsen your time is up okay next up we have sherry able followed by lisa o'brien and then our first group i'm sorry i got a little distracted okay all right um may i start now yes go right ahead are you sherry able okay um good evening madam chair and board members my name is dr sherry abel my doctor degree is in education i feel as a teacher it is so important that we teach our children how to think not what

008to think we need to teach them how to develop intellectual curiosity and critical thinking teaching does not involve indoctrination or group thing this said most concerning to many of the parents of this state is the critical race theory their children are coming home upset with many questions as to why they are victims and or hated and further i cannot help but believe that it must be very frightening to an impressionable child of color to hear that they are victims of systemic racism and that a child who has a different color of skin white is not to be trusted not to mention the confusion and hurt of the white child who has been told they are part of a white supremacy group whose purpose is to oppress people of color when just yesterday they were playing

009with the child of color with no ill thoughts at all towards that playmate remember what dr king said i look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character critical race theory is attempting to teach children of color that people of white skin are evil and to be feared while a white child is taught they are to be ashamed of who they are the journal is simply being taught hatred vision how to be racist instead of why not teach the child how our children how much they have in common and to respect support and love each other as board members please speak up and protect these children regardless of color they all are quickly becoming victims of the very adults who they

010look up to and trust thank you thank you very much next we have lisa o'brien and then we've got a group that's bill kessler trinity jeffries henry romero dariana gonzalez aguilar and chris reed so lisa o'brien you are up next and you're up ms o'brien start or we hear you you're up miss o'brien i i can't hear anything to um know whether it's my time it is your it's your time we hear you okay i'll go ahead and start good evening we are giving them a half a billion dollars to educate the children of mecklenburg county and we expect outcomes that statement was issued by the county manager when she proposed withholding 11 percent of the cms budget until the district outlines a plan to close our enormous achievement gaps as a taxpayer and cms

011parent i also expect outcomes and i'm pleased that someone is holding the school board accountable for the massive failures this year ms dashu recently stated that quote we have a real passion for helping students succeed we have some huge disparities and those kids show up to school with those disparities end quote where was that passion and concern during the 11 and a half months the kids were denied in-person learning explain why it took a senate bill and 14 months of hybrid learning to finally resume a five-day week left up to this board's plan our kids would have returned to full remote learning yesterday for the final three weeks of the year why did we have to fight for our athletes to compete and for theater parents to see their kids perform why are sporting events

012still at 30 percent capacity and other cms events at zero percent when the governor recommends fifty percent so miss dash you it's rather ironic when you speak about dismantling the barriers that keep kids from succeeding school boards and superintendents who prioritize teachers unions and politics over students have been the biggest barrier this year and our kids lost a year of their childhood as a result so ms dashu you're absolutely right our kids do deserve better they deserve a solid education and they deserve normalcy put your passion into action and be a school board that acts in the best interest of children thank you for your time thank you very much next we have a group of bill kessler trinity jeffries henry romero dariana gonzalez aguilar and chris reed all right are you ready for me

013to start yes go right ahead great thank you well good evening madam chairwoman and superintendent winston and cms school board members thank you so much for having us my name is bill kessler i'm a doctoral student at the university of north carolina charlotte it's my honor to introduce these cms seniors we've worked together for months to get to know trinity henry and dariana through this pandemic throughout this pandemic we've seen their college acceptances met their moms met their sisters and even their goats these seniors even want to meet with us over spring break now they are here to share their voices about their experiences during the pandemic and their willingness to collaborate for future solutions they are concerned about equity mental health and opportunities to register for magnet programs and college preparatory classes how can

014we together make next year in the years to come even better trinity is our first speaker good evening madam chair superintendent winston and members of the cms board my name is trinity jeffries i am an ivy senior and will be attending unc chapel hill next fall and my future goal is to work in the health care field as an anesthesiologist today i want to speak to you about the parents and students who have experienced challenges with learning during covid there are many families like my own who express feeling helpless and have limited knowledge on how to support their children with their transition to distance learning i learned this past year that resources and support for families on how to navigate their learning are vital for improving the educational success of students some families need additional

015help with how to utilize educational apps particularly for elementary students navigating campus and how to troubleshoot when their technical problems with virtual learning there were many cases where i came downstairs to my confused little sister and parents trying to help her join her class after the unexpected impact that covet had on everyone i would encourage the board to use this as an opportunity to be proactive going into next year i believe parents need more resources for communication and access to virtual workshops to learn how to help their child get through both virtual and in-person learning and if they include translations for those who speak a different language other than english this will be even better if parents have trouble with technology they can maybe go to the school in socially distance in a larger area

016additionally the mental health of the students and staff is so important social emotional learning sessions for students are so important to handle stress and problem solve life's challenges teachers and administrators have helped but we need more since for some trauma and stress doesn't easily go away it would be great if students could have access to social emotional support even after covid since many may still have some difficulty readjusting the pandemic has left a drastic impact mentally on thousands of students as a high school student i can say that my stress level has skyrocketed this past year receiving even more resources as we move into a new academic school year to support students and teachers mentally would encourage us all to keep pushing through and working hard thank you for having us good evening madam chair

017superintendent winston and members of the cms board my name is henry romero and i'm a 12th grade ib senior in cms just last december i advocated for equitable access to middle and high school magnet programs for esl and minority students i wanted to follow up on our advocacy for our community and emphasize how our stories can be commonplace for students of color throughout the district with the appropriate resources and support i'm a future first generation college student and my parents are immigrants whose academic careers consisted of a combined total of five school years i attended ib magnet high school and i earned a full ride scholarship to emory university where i will be majoring in human health next fall the trajectory of my academic career would have been drastically different if it hadn't been for

018one-on-one guidance from my teacher on applying to the magnet lottery in eighth grade a solution i mentioned back in december was advisory periods where students can be guided through applying for the lottery like i was i propose these periods could be in the class schedules of 5th and 8th grade students weeks in advance of the first round lottery window opening i also believe students like trinity dariana and i should work closely with the cms equity committee to create a curriculum for these advisory periods that ensures every student feels heard and informed i believe there is no better time than right now to begin considering these suggestions we can start to mitigate the setbacks from the covet 19 pandemic early on i would love the opportunity to have an extended conversation with you about my experiences

019so that you can more thoroughly understand my passion behind advocating for these causes perhaps even you might encourage the cms equity committee to meet with the student advocacy groups like ours thank you for your time and undivided attention thank you good evening madam chair superintendent winston and members of the board my name is dariana gonzalez and like trinity and henry i'm also an ib senior in cms today like henry i stand before you again to represent cms families who are struggling with the cms lottery application the cms lottery application has the potential to open a myriad of opportunities for students from allowing them to enroll in intellectually stimulating courses to increasing their probability of being accepted into and being prepared for the colleges of their choice i for one was able to gain access to

020rigorous ib diploma courses at my high school that facilitated my acceptance to harvard university as a first generation and immigrant student but taking advantage of these opportunities proved truly challenging for myself and for a large portion of cms students as families unfamiliarity with technology english or the programs available within the district as well as restricted access to in-person resources as a result of the pandemic that made the opportunities offered by the cms lottery difficult to access with the 2021-2022 school year quickly approaching we're committed to working alongside you to improve future students access to the cms lottery we would like to help you host parent-teacher organizations online and integrate lessons on applying to the same as slaughtering into them we can also help you develop video tutorials and multilingual application instructions under the family section

021of the cms website and finally we could help you design and distribute flyers containing step-by-step instructions on how to apply to the cms lottery in multiple languages to families at the start of each school year while the pandemic only exacerbated the challenges of access to the cms lottery application the upcoming school year offers us the opportunity to be proactive in ensuring greater equity in the lottery system process we hope that you will search within the cms student body to find others like us who are committed to working with you to make a better future for cms students thank you superintendent winston and ladies and gentlemen of the board i'd like to thank you for taking the time to listen to these young scholars these students presented to you this evening because they have a desire

022to be involved in the decision-making process in some way they exercise their voices and their support of equity and educational access within cms this presentation you have heard tonight was an opportunity for them to begin to form collaborations between the board and equity committees and other cms scholars the unc charlotte members of our collaboration are proud of the individual accomplishments of these students and we are excited about the possibility of them working with you in the future this experience for us has been an enjoyable one we hope that you will consider taking the time to talk with these brilliant students get to know them and learn from them just as we have done thank you again thank you for your time thank you very much and can you tell me what school or schools you

023attend oh we've got them muted now just curious say that again fella trinity jeffries attends north mecklenburg high school as an ib student okay all right thank you we'll we'll find that out later confirm all of that okay next we have the second group which is natasha liscombe jalen jones josiah jones and chloe stauffer madam chair we don't have any of them in the waiting room so this group isn't here okay so then our final speaker of the night would be glenn stevens yes ma'am all right mr stevens you're up you're up mr stevens go right ahead are we ready yep we're ready trust but verify this russian proverb was made famous during the presidency of ronald reagan when negotiating nuclear disarmament treaties with the then soviet union it can pertain to many other relationships

024as well much has been made of the considerations surrounding educated work agreements and classroom educator lesson accountability but at the beginning of the school year i stated emphatically that parents and community leaders applaud the vast majority of cms faculty and staff i even stated this as i personally was being attacked by a small but local minority of educators on social media but applauding the value and efforts of the cms staff doesn't preclude the need to hold staff accountable through a vast means of accountability so imagine the community's surprise as cms has sought to have accountability measures already in place or those proposed lessoned removed or defeated in the general assembly and board of county commissioners let's take a look at a few first a waiver of integrated tests and end of course testing we have

025no problem with not holding students accountable for these assessments after all it is not their fault that cms chose not to open schools in accordance with state guidelines until it was far too late in the year however one cannot fix that which is broken until one actually knows the extent of the damage second reducing the requirements for a licensed educator to maintain or earn a four-year work agreement what will happen is that those who are entered the profession and not performed as requested for a four-year work agreement will continue to receive the support supported them by a one-year contract current educators with the four-year work agreement who need them will be similarly given the supports of a one-year agreement until such time as those supports are no longer needed third recently the majority of the

026board of education voted to extend the superintendent's contract give him a raise and provide a severance all of this despite numbers which indicate that cms's enrollment fell tms was kept closed longer than guidance from raleigh suggested and cms parents are performing thank you mr stevens okay i believe unless the other group has come through no okay um madam clerk did we receive any public comments by email madam chair we did not receive any public comment via email okay well thank you very much and so we will then we are i think we're done with requests from the public and we shall move on to the consent items um is there a motion that the board approved the consent agenda items second a motion from carol sawyer second from lenora's ship before we move to a

027vote does any board member wish to pull any part of this item for individual consideration hearing none all those in favor of the motion please let it be known by a show of hands any opposed and i could not see miss cheek on the screen miss cheek could you give us an eye if you're in favor of the motion do we still have a board member rhonda cheek on zoom i'm sorry i wasn't able to unmute myself but now i can yes i was i and i had my hand up okay wonderful thank you so that the consent agenda passes by unanimous vote mr superintendent were there any items that you wanted to highlight this evening yes good evening and thank you madam chair and board members i wanted to take a moment to highlight

028a project that the board just approved as part of its consent agenda and that is item 3 t and that is a new 45 classroom elementary school that will be built next to the existing mint hill middle school this is an approximately 24.5 million dollar project work will begin this month and the school the new school is expected to open in august of 2022 it will provide relief for three schools bain lebanon road and piney grove elementary schools also excited to announce that 100 percent of this project is mwsbe meaning it will be worked on by minority women small business enterprise companies and so thank you for this opportunity madam chair all right thank you so much um so now we're going to move on to our two action items tonight the first action item

029is election of the board appointees to the community equity committee this is in accordance with policy ada which states that in odd numbered years the board appoints up to 20 members to its community equity committee as nominated by each member of the board as well as by the student advisor i'm going to turn to board vice chair thelma byers bailey to make a motion to accept these appointments madam chair i move to appoint the 20 individuals nominated by each member of the board and the student advisor to the charlotte mecklenburg board of education community equity committee as presented in the attached document entitled may 11 2021 nominees each board member and the student advisor has before them the names of the 20 nominated individuals the term of these appointees will be from july 1 2021

030to june 30 2023 thank you do we have a second okay we've got a motion on the floor for ms byer bailey a second from ms de la hara do we have any discussion anybody wish to discuss yes ma'am yes ms fowler is there a way that i could just speak on my nominees i'm sure you could speak on them if you'd like we don't have to but you can if you would like to okay so i just wanted to point out the two nominees that i made um i'm nominating cushy buyet is she is a 14 year old freshman at olympic high school she's a part of ap and honors classes mrs byatt has been nationally recognized for her podcast and she is a tedx speaker she loves helping her peers and embraces them

031them herself and has been oriented towards breaking the stigma and being the change in her free time because she enjoys playing varsity tennis and writing articles for companies all around the world so you can search up her name and you can see all the amazing things that kushibai has done also i'm nominating gerald sanchez who is a 17 year old junior at malik creek high school he is also part of the mallet creek academy of engineering mr sanchez is top extracurriculars include deca fccla the n-e-h-s the american red cross and he has always had a passion for education equity and he has been provided opportunities for to pursue this passion with the new gen peacemakers peace builders and he's worked with the cte coordinators at his school to discover research in order to figure out

032how to better serve underrepresented minorities low income and first generation populations in cms so those were the two nominees that i have i just wanted to speak on how great they were thank you thank you they're going to be great additions to the committee um does anybody else wish to share anything or anything else you want to discuss before we call the vote and i'll just thank everybody for you know signing up to some of some folks are re-upping who are already veterans of the committee so thanks to those and some folks have moved on and are being replaced by others committees doing great work so glad to see it move into its next generation [Music] so i'm going to go ahead and call for the vote then all those in favor of ms byers

033bailey's motion please let it be known by a show of hands aye all right any opposed and that passes unanimously next we are going to move on to the other part of the community equity committee we have four vacancies that we need to consider filling these individuals elected tonight will complete a term that expires on june thirtieth twenty twenty two and here is the process for selecting the board elected members of the community equity committee so it is a different process than what we just went through i'll go ahead and read it um but it's a little bit long but it will make sense once we do it every board member will receive a ballot with their name on it you will have five minutes to select up to four names you will select a

034name by highlighting it on your ballot during this five minute period you may consult with other board members around the diocese under no circumstances may ballots be taken out of room 267 at the end of the five-minute period mr charles jeter will collect the ballots he and ms nicole kelly and ms yvette blakeney will then tabulate the votes after the votes are tabulated mr jeter will take the results to me the chair and i will announce the names of those persons who have been elected to the committee if fewer than four individuals are announced i will ask if there is a motion to begin another round of voting if such a motion is made properly seconded and approved the board will repeat steps one through four except that board members may only select the number

035of names equal to or less than the number of seats remaining for example if we selected two individuals during the first round of voting then we would only be able to select up to two individuals during the next round of voting and with that i'm going to turn the floor over to charles jeter i think i i need a ballot too y'all should not have any ballots as of right now i would ask y'all to hold off for just a second before you start filling those out um i will offer madden chairs that miss rhonda keith is using our general counsel ms mays as her proxy vote and with that mountain chair your five-minute clock starts now okay and all that sort of stuff okay [Applause] i know that we're still um expect to have

036a staff equity committee there are some staff names on this list so the rule there is no rule about it that was a decision y'all made god okay how funny all the students oh um oh wait i give it to you right in the chat what did you say yeah i thought you were i thought you were lobbying oh if you're done you did ask one of them okay i have a question for carol because there's somebody that i'm wondering she said don't walk away with your ballot she said don't walk with the ballot no you just can't leave the room oh okay okay really did that because of her name [Music] perfect thank you mr jeter clarified question you did not vote for that person for that question that question is correct thank you

037thank you highlighting up to four names with asterisks he's okay yes ma'am so um yes mr jeter okay all right colleagues so we have um from this first round of voting we have two individuals who have surpassed five votes each so that would be deborah blackwood and latoya owens so congratulations to ms blackwood and ms owens thank you so much we have two other individuals who came very close they have four votes each that's stephanie klitsch and alyssa sharp and then katrina barnett has three votes cindy sydney kramer has three votes brent morris has three votes jacqueline parker has two votes denise penino has two votes and suzanne phillips and leroy ray each have one vote so um is there a motion for another round of voting so moved okay we've got a motion from

038mr strain for a second round of voting with us second from miss ship and i i guess are you going to give us more ballots fresh ballots remember the board there's only two vacancies so you may only circle two names during this voting period and by the way you cannot select go into what i hear correctly you cannot elect miss blackwood or miss owen because they've already been selected so they are excluded from the ballot even though you will still see their names and margaret's being lobbied oh i don't remember that was sorry all right foreign yes [Music] yes okay is oh so okay all right so here's an update we um no one has reached five votes in the second round i'll give you i'll give you a vote count here and then if

039you want to go to a third round we can that's up to the board two individuals received four votes that would be brent morris and alyssa sharp two individuals received three votes that would be katrina barnett and stephanie klitsch sydney kramer received two votes jacqueline parker received one vote so anybody do we have a motion for a third round or do you want to close voting second do we have agreement on that okay okay so we round of have okay so motion from ms de la hara second from this ship we're moving on to a third round of voting so we need a third round of ballots and as a reminder we need five votes for an individual to get on the committee and you can vote for up to two individuals pardoned oh i'm

040sorry all in favor of the motion let it be nobody's showing you guys vote okay any opposed i'm sorry and that motion passes we're moving on to the third round of voting you didn't get ron does vote andre has my votes once again members of the board you have the ability to select two individuals you have five minutes but you are not required to use all of them i know that one catfish she was the first person because we have brent and melissa i'm just suggesting we get to it uh yes um hmm are we done charles he's i think he's oh did you get ours if you're all ready please let me know we're all done okay i'm sorry i thought they were somewhere right here thank you is different colors um oh i

041scratched one up so um french okay so okay everybody we have two more committee members brent morris and alyssa sharp have both hit the five vote threshold so they will join dr debra blackwood and dr latoya owens on the equity committee and i wanted to apologize to dr owens and dr blackwood for i didn't have your resumes in front of me when i said said your name before and i left off the doctor i know you worked hard to get those earned those degrees so i wanted to acknowledge them so thank you all very much and we will follow up with letting you know when the next equity committee meeting is and get you oriented um thank you ever so much for your service and we are done with that so now we're going to

042move on to our reports and information items for the night we'll begin with the report on budget amendments for march 2021 i'll turn to the superintendent for this report as presented madam chair thank you next we have report on financial statements for march 2021 as presented and then the report on capital project ordinances for march 2021 as presented all right and then we have the school composition report and i will turn to the superintendent for this thank you madam chair this one is not as presented at this time i want to welcome our associate superintendent for magnets student assignment and advanced programs ms akeisha craven howe who will present a report on school composition this report tracks the annual changes in the socioeconomic composition of schools and provides information on the impact of the school

043choice system on the socioeconomic composition of schools data included in this report guides recommendations on increasing socioeconomic diversity in our schools miss craven howe the floor is yours thank you superintendent winston good evening board members it's a pleasure to share with you this evening a report on school composition in the district um just a quick reminder this report is one of six that are outlined in board policy ada and as superintendent winston shared the school composition report tracks the annual changes in socioeconomic status composition of schools and i will go through that just as a reminder for some board members as well as the viewing public how we developed scs in the district during the last student assignment review which started in 2016 the board worked together to identify factors which when taken together influenced

044their learning environment it's important that when we talk about these factors we talk that we talk about them as in aggregate and how they affect the learning environment and not as applied to individual students we pull data from the u.s census as well as the american community survey and you can see there are the factors that we included in that assessment we looked at english language ability family composition family income home ownership and the highest educational attainment of any parent in the home we averaged each of those factors across the 548 census block groups in mecklenburg county which contained at least one cms student we used the block groups because these were the smallest geographic area for which we had this data and then we ranked each of those block groups according to their weighted

045average of those factors it's important to remember that when we were developing our approach to measuring scs in the district the decision was made at that time not to set hard cutoffs for each of these metrics such that above or below a certain point would be low ses or high scs what that means is that we ranked these 548 block groups relative to each other we took the top third and said these would be communities that are associated with high scs vectors the middle third medium scs factors and then the lower third low scs factors and you can see that distribution here on the map where the yellow represents low scs the light green medium scs and then the darker green high scs as we look at scs diversity in cms you can see that

046the distribution of students and where they reside in communities is close to that one-third designation in each of the three scs block groups before i go on i think it's helpful particularly given the year that we've had in navigating the public health conditions i think it's helpful to share a little bit of context around enrollment this year in the district certainly we enrolled over 7 000 students fewer than what was projected i think it's important to know that our projections are based on enrollment trends by school and by grade level and so our enrollment this year was lower by about 7 000 students than what we projected so these were students who were not in attendance in cms who we thought would enroll and did not these are not current cms students the majority of

047that decline was due to a decrease in new student enrollment and i'll share a little bit more about some patterns there you can see here for the last three years 1920 and 21 the enrollment sorry this is what one too fast there we go new student enrollment in the district and what you can see as you compare across low medium and high ses communities the most significant decrease in new student enrollment came from students who live in communities with lower ses factors by contrast when we look at the number of students who withdrew from cms over time including this year the most significant increase in student withdrawals came from students who live in communities with higher scs factors so let's now get into ses distribution across our schools when we do so it's important to

048look at how students are assigned to schools first so there are two student assignment approaches in the district the first is home schools every student in the district is assigned a home school based on their address and policy jca which governs student assignment requires that all homeschool attendance areas be contiguous the second student assignment approach is magnet assignment students elect to attend magnet schools by participating in the school choice lottery and then our magnet programs are either full magnet such that all seats in that school are assigned via the lottery or there are magnets with the home school attendance area which you'll oftentimes hear referred to as a partial magnet in that case some seats are assigned based on home school others are assigned based on the school choice lottery in addition to home school

049assignment and the school choice lottery or magnet assignments we also annually in the district respond to over 6 000 requests for reassignment and transfer when we look at our home schools just over 80 percent of our student population are in a seat that we would designate as a home school seat i think that's important to know because as we think about levers to increase socioeconomic diversity in our schools the vast majority of our students are in home school assigned seats of cms has 178 schools 106 of these are home schools without a magnet component and then when we add in those schools that have both the home school seats and magnet school seats there are 151 schools the bars that you see here are represent scs diversity by learning community now in some ways this

050is arbitrary because we determine which schools comprise each of the learning communities but it's also significant in some ways because our learning communities are geographically based so you begin to get a sense for how students are distributed across scs communities by learning community the next set of slides will take kind of a double click into each of these learning communities and look at the schools within that learning community the first learning community is the central one learning community and just to orient you to the slide a little bit that first bar is that the cms overall district distribution of ses the second bar is the central one learning community distribution of scs and then each of the bars that follow are individual schools within the central one learning community it's less important that we look

051at the specific schools here but more important that you see the pattern of the colors and the distribution of the colors and what we see in the central one learning community is that all of the schools with the exception of the school at the bottom which is oakdale elementary are majority made up of students who live in communities associated with lower socioeconomic factors as we move to the central 2 learning community you can see again the distribution of scs and the schools in that learning community and i do want to point out a couple of schools here the first schools that i will point out are cotswald elementary and billingsville elementary a number of you on the board will remember and have been were a part of the last student assignment review and one of

052the decisions that the board made at that time was to pair billingsville elementary and cotswald elementary and extend the ib program which was at cotswold to billingsville today both schools are ib schools billingsville serves students in k2 and then that group of students goes on to the cotswold campus and which serves students in grades three through five you can see there the distribution of scs and while certainly there's a smaller percentage of students in medium scs communities this is a much more even distribution of ses than either of these two schools had prior to the pairing i also want to point out alexander graham middle and sedgefield middle school again as a part of the last student assignment review the board really based on feedback from the community and being responsive to that feedback took

053a look at the elementary school feeders to these two middle schools and made some changes so that you did not have one school which was primarily high poverty and then the the other school which was primarily low poverty and you can see there that the changes to those elementary feeder patterns are beginning to have an effect on the scs distribution within those two schools finally here i'll point out a few full magnet programs in the central 2 learning community myers park traditional collinswood and piedmont these are full magnet schools where all of the seats are offered in the school choice lottery a third of the seats are prioritized for each of the scs groups and you can see at these these three full magnets in particular that that is having the desired effect on the

054overall scs distribution in the school this is the distribution for the northeast learning community the northwest learning community and the southeast learning community here i'll pause and point out a couple of schools again randolph middle school which is a full magnet school and then lansdowne elementary which is a partial magnet school with an international baccalaureate program you can see it lands down in particular we're relatively close to that one-third distribution in each of the scs groups and based on assignment changes that the board approved just last year i expect that to even out even more over the next couple of years and then finally we have the southwest learning community and here in this learning community we have the most significant range you can see at the top at starmount academy we have a school

055that is almost all comprised of an attendance area with communities with lower scs factors and then at the bottom polo ridge elementary whose attendance area is comprised of almost all communities with higher ses factors so let's shift now from home schools to magnet programs again a reminder that we have two types of magnet programs full magnets where all seats are assigned via the lottery and one-third of the seats at each grade level are assigned to each of the three scs groups there are 27 full magnet schools in cms we also have partial magnet schools students with a homeschool assignment in these schools are seated first the remaining seats are filled in the school choice lottery and the lottery prioritizes the two scs groups which most complement the home school attendance area so if the vast

056majority of students in the home school attendance area for example are high scs then the lottery will prioritize students who live in communities with low and medium scs factors i think it's important when we talk about partial magnets to know that the distribution of home school seats and magnet seats varies greatly across our partial magnet schools we have as few as seven percent of seats designated for magnet at ransom ib and as many as 66 percent and 73 percent of seats designated for magnet at university park creative arts and first ward creative arts and so that distribution of magnet and homeschool seat variants has an effect on how much the lottery can influence scs distribution in the school that's very important to note of the district schools there are 45 partial magnet schools in cms

057so the list of schools you see here are our county-wide schools these tend to be full magnet programs that students no matter where they live in the county can take advantage of that top bar again is the overall cms distribution of scs and then you can see the distribution at each of the schools i'll point out here our early colleges cato middle college high school charlotte mecklenburg virtual high school and northwest school of the arts which do a good job approaching that one-third designation in each of the three categories and for these other schools we have opportunities to increase scs distribution or ses diversity given the provisions in the school choice lottery this next slide shows our schools both full and partial in the blue transportation zone here i want to point out a couple

058of schools the first is huntingtown farms at first glance this looks like a school where um in the magnet program we are achieving that the scs distribution what i would point out though is that huntingtown farms is a partial magnet school its homeschool attendance area is primarily made up of communities with lower scs factors so what we would expect to see for their scs distribution of magnet seats is a distribution that is closer to 50 medium and 50 high because remember in a partial magnet school the school choice lottery prioritizes students from communities that complement the diversity of the homeschool area there we go similarly for kennedy middle school again at first glance it looks like the magnet diversity that we would like but kennedy is also a partial magnet school whose home school attendance

059area is primarily medium scs communities so we would expect a distribution that's more 50 percent low and 50 percent high i don't know if the battery is getting low on this sorry i'm clicking and the slides aren't moving just a moment you may have to use this one okay use that sure no problem thank you okay this slide shows the distribution in the green transportation zone and then the violet transportation zone so as we think about kind of some of the takeaways across these slides i think as evidenced by the heat map that map that had the shading of yellow and light green and dark green one of the things that we can see is that the county is largely segregated by socioeconomic status while the overall distribution of scs in the district is relatively

060close to that one-third of students in each group that the board desired by the way that we calculated scs and ranked the block groups it's it's important that we are keeping our eye on that because we can't have scs diverse schools if we don't have a socio-economically diverse district and could you say that again i just missed the last word it's important that we are keeping our eye on the overall scs diversity of our student population in the district because our ability to have socioeconomically diverse schools is dependent upon having an overall district population which is also socioeconomically diverse we often talk about choice as our most significant lever for improving socioeconomic diversity in schools but as was shared this evening just over 80 percent of our students are actually in home school seats and

061so we should reflect and think about that as we think about what our greatest lever is for increasing socioeconomic diversity on average in our home schools the ses distribution varies greatly and few of our home schools mirror the district's overall ses distribution i think the school in the district that comes closest is south mecklenburg high school south mecklenburg high school i want to acknowledge that among our magnet programs both our full magnet programs as well as our partial magnet programs that there are opportunities for us to take greater advantage of the priorities that the board put into the lottery during the last student assignment review as i think about recommendations going forward you know certainly given some of the enrollment declines of this year but even given that on average we serve about 72 percent

062of school-age students in the district that one of the things that we should focus on as a district is recapturing but over overall increasing the share of mecklenburg county students that we serve again ensuring that we are serving a diverse student body overall in cms so that our schools are also diverse as i referenced before improving the rate at which magnet seats are allocated align to scs priority so that looks like implementing even some of the recommendations that our student speakers from earlier this evening shared with us i thought they had some really great ideas and i look forward to following up with them to get additional details on how we can implement it i think it also looks like targeted marketing for some specific magnet programs that just right now are not attracting diverse

063populations and that is the case and then increasing resources and support to those same magnet programs that are having difficulty attracting attracting interest but also attracting interest across diverse communities i think it is also critical that we begin preparing now for the 2022 student assignment review so by policy the board takes on a comprehensive student assignment review every six years the last student assignment review began in 2016. i think one of the most prevalent pieces of feedback we got from the last student assignment review was that we simply did not spend enough time and because of that we were not able to engage the community fully and so i would recommend that we begin preparing now to launch that student assignment review as early in the calendar year 2022 as possible that preparation looks like

064updating the sc ses block group designations you only have to drive around our county to see that housing patterns have changed significantly so we can expect that ses heat map to look quite different when we have the most recent u.s census data to update that we also need to continue digging into how external factors some of which are out of our control but certainly which influence how we draw and assign attendance boundaries and assign students to school that includes changes in housing patterns the city's 2040 plan looking at our own long-range planning work we also need to review the district's portfolio for untapped opportunities to increase scs diversity i believe we should also assess innovative approaches to student assignment that does not mean that necessarily we will change policy but just to know what other

065districts are doing and having success with so that we can understand how that may or may not inform our work going forward and then finally considering messaging which helps the community understand why as a board and as a staff scs diversity is important to us when i think back and reflect on some of the conversations that we had when we initially in the last student assignment review decided to include scs diversity as a priority a lot of what we talked about was the conditions that it creates in learning environments not that scs diversity in and of itself is an end goal but rather it is one of a number of strategies to influence the learning environment that permits our core strategies things like great teaching increasing time spent on quality instruction increasing access to advanced

066coursework it creates the conditions for those strategies to take hold i do want to share again with the board as well as the viewing public that cms is a part of the inaugural cohort of the bridges collaborative which is a part of the century foundation and some of you may remember that we had a staff member from the century foundation support us during the last student assignment review this is a collaborative of school districts charter schools charter management organizations and housing organizations across the country all of whom in some way have diversity as part of their goals i believe they reached out to us and invited us to apply based on the scs diversity goal and board policy jca as well as the school composition goals outlined in board policy um ada jca ada um

067one of the early outcomes of our participation in this cat in this collaborative is a closer working relationship with in libyan which is formerly the charlotte housing authority they currently serve just over 6 000 cms students and we are working closely with them to make sure that as those students are making decisions with their families about their new housing that they are aware of the school options that are available to them and they know how to navigate enrollment the school choice lottery and request for reassignment and transfer i welcome your questions thank you for that board members do you have any questions dr jones i'm just you're mike you're mike i'm curious about the um nationwide school choice the innovative approaches um could you give a little nutshell summary of some schools that school districts

068yes ma'am there are a number of school districts that are involved in the collaborative there are several right here in north carolina including winston-salem forsyth and wake county we've also been connected to individuals from the new york department of education i have a conversation with someone who reached out to me from the school district of philadelphia as a part of this collaborative i'm wanting to learn more about the innovative work that the board has already done as part of the 2016 student assignment review a lot of the conversation is about messaging how do we have these difficult conversations in our community um there are also conversations about assignment approaches um that not that don't lend themselves to busing but that do allow for increased socioeconomic diversity i think it's very interesting that typically in these

069types of collaboratives it's mostly school districts but you also have housing authorities and to me that acknowledges um the significant role that housing patterns play in our ability to create socio-economic diversity in our schools which is something we don't have control of that's that's exactly right however when we um are collaborating with housing authorities collaborating with our municipal planning partners um it's certainly an area in which we have influence but i absolutely agree it is not an area over which we have any control ms sawyer thank you carol sawyer do we have i'm looking at the a proportion of of students that are enrolled in in our middle colleges and those are disproportionately high ses and have we done any work to see what the barriers are or what the is it a transportation problem

070what is what is keeping some students out of those schools yeah i think we need to do more to understand what those barriers are but i think a lot of it is awareness we've done a lot to work with cpcc and have multiple paths for entry such that it's not you know one score on one standardized assessment that is the path to entry so there is broader access i think we need to do more to increase awareness okay thank you miss ship um you mentioned that 80 of students are in their home schools not in magnets yes ma'am and i think you hit on this son but why do you think this is so and what are we doing because i feel like it might be communication a lot of it as to why families

071don't choose choice or look at the lottery because the communication and the process can be difficult i think it's less that families aren't opting for choice it's more availability so when we look at the distribution of seats in the district the vast majority of them are home school seats there are 151 schools in the district with homeschool seats 106 of those are fully home schools when we look at full magnet programs there are 27 full magnet programs when we look at partial magnet programs there are 45 and the number of magnet seats in each of those is not equal again that range goes from a low of seven percent of magnet seats all the way up to 73 percent of magnet seats and so there are certainly magnet programs that do not fill part of

072that is awareness part of that is perception of quality of the school offering but i believe that distribution of 80 of students in home school seats is primarily driven by the fact that the vast majority of the seats in cms are home school seats and as we've looked at the pairing of schools are we looking at others in terms of parent and what does the data look like is that have we really done a deep dive into that i know we talked about it some and is this something else we want to continue to look at since it's shown some real promise absolutely i mean it's it's it's critical that we look at in these schools at the same student outcomes that we expect in all of our schools um because again um the scs

073diversity in and of itself it's not the end goal in some of these schools we've seen early indicators of improvements i can remember in the first two years of the dilworth elementary in sedgefield elementary pairing we saw an increase in the number of students of color who were identified as td that had not been previously identified at sedgefield middle school just in the year of planning and some of the efforts and intentional focus that went into the year of planning before those middle school feeders switched out we saw that school improve a letter grade so there are lots of early indicators that the work of the board in the 2016 student assignment review is having great effect good um that's it for now thank you absolutely um let's see miss sawyer you went once right

074okay and i'll come back to you so i see ms bars bailey and then ms marshall [Music] we have a couple of several i guess specialized magnet schools that are pretty much considered full magnets um and which ones are the most popular of the schools that i mean that fill up quickly and have long waiting lists certainly among our most popular programs are our montessori schools year over year that is a set of schools that have a wait list our stem high school philip o'berry is a school that you know typically has a wait list and then i would say oftentimes demand is less driven by the actual magnet theme itself but a particular school so for example if we look across our middle school ib programs there's a relatively wide variance in the amount

075of demand the length of the wait list at each of those schools and i think that trend continues across a number of our themes and so one of the things that we have been most focused on in the magnet office is not expanding our portfolio but increasing parity within our portfolio such that regardless of your transportation zone if you are in an ib middle school your experience is the same and i can acknowledge that that is simply not the case right now and so we have more work to do uh with respect you mentioned montessori as one of our high demand full magnets yes ma'am um what if any access do neighborhood children have to that program yes for all of our full magnet programs and montessori is a full magnet program in every case

076the board policy has a proximity priority so what that means is that there's a certain percentage of seats set aside for students who live within a one-third mile radius of the school for programs like montessori which are incredibly popular oftentimes more students that live within that radius are applying then there are seats in the set-aside and so that group of students don't get to take advantage of that priority but instead go into the broader lottery and will be evaluated by the lottery against all students who apply that that most of our montessori's go k5 pre-k five pre-k six and then jt williams which is our secondary montessori serves students grades 7 through 12. how has that one traveled because that was a fairing because that was a brand new entity for cms the last go-around

077when we did student assignment yes it was in high demand by our montessori parents and they have they have come through we have seen an increase in the sixth grade uh montessori program because what was happening was a lot of families were exiting montessori at the end of fifth grade to join a comprehensive middle school rather than have their students transition to middle school at seventh grade so what we've seen by opening that secondary program is a decrease in attrition so we're keeping more of our sixth graders and we're seeing a high number of those students continue on to jt williams montessori and then the high school is thriving yes ma'am great thank you okay ms marshall then miss delahara thank you for first kind of a comment to follow on some things you've just

078said i know that in our uh bond um uh program and as some schools are coming on we know that we're going to have a few more opportunities for magnets i know for instance the the um the k-8 magnet in the north for language immersion this so that's an opportunity there and and and a magnet high school in the south so that's going to be another opportunity to look at but i do um i've kind of always had a concern frankly that too much magnet choice can really um impact home schools and where so many of our students are focused there we really do need to make sure that we we don't that they were aware of what's happening we can have some unintended consequences here even though we have some really great um uh

079ideas and and and meaning behind all that so i i appreciate the fact that you've said that you really want to work on the magnet programs that we currently have and strengthen them give parity across the district because they should be and then i think therefore people will come we will have more opportunity to those and and do well with what we have there so i appreciate that although i do think we're going you know to enjoy a few more things opening up as they should as our county is growing yes so thank you that's just mainly a comment there i want to go back to sort of something you really said in the very beginning about this year which is certainly an anomaly and i want to acknowledge that for anybody listening and following

080along and and lots of recent conversation in our county that i know that enrollment in every district of north carolina has declined whether they were an early adopter of hybrid whether they were a little more cautious about going this is something we're all dealing with i've done some research with some surrounding counties everyone is is having the same conversation i do think it is interesting where our lower enrollment has occurred in terms of children not enrolling that that is somewhat of a surprise to me um do you have an idea on the grade bands i think we do i think we kind of again across the state no it's sort of kindergarten first grade where the biggest whole possibly is can you speak to that yes um so we certainly saw um you know decline

081in enrollment in kindergarten and first grade um and i think part that is partially driven by seven seven years old being the age at which students must be enrolled in north carolina so you could hold a student um at home in kindergarten or first grade and so i think we should expect perhaps some outsized kindergarten and first grade cohorts i would think next year we also saw a decline in the sixth grade and my guess is that maybe students who would typically transition from charter schools or private schools and enroll in cms for middle school simply did not we are also working with our municipal planning partners to understand any pandemic driven shifts in people moving into or out of mecklenburg county because presumably some of this decline in enrollment where families who you know

082relocated outside of mecklenburg county for some reason or who had plans to relocate to mecklenburg county and put those plans on hold so we continue to you know look at different sources of data to understand this decline in enrollment including you know reaching out to families to understand what drives their choices when they enroll their children in school have you gotten any any i know this is early on but do you have any information that you could share at this point about folks moving out i've wondered about this too particularly in that low ses enrollment figure is there anything that's concrete yet at this time we do not have anything concrete to share okay okay um our ninth grade did we see a drop in enrollment there or was that pretty steady um i would

083i would want to go back and check but my recollection is that that was not um a significant decrease okay for us um are you seeing enrollment next year in that k-1 space have has that been presenting in different ways than you thought not yet right now the patterns are pretty consistent but we also know that kindergarten enrollment every year happens late families often wait for kindergarten beginners days which have just recently taken place some families enrolled throughout the summer so i'm working closely with our communications department on an enrollment campaign to encourage families you know not to wait until august or you know right before school starts to enroll in the district but that we can better plan to serve students the earlier we know um that they are coming absolutely that's just just

084imperative yes i mean this is when schools are um you know receiving their position a lot men this is when they're hiring and recruiting teachers so we just want to make sure that we are able to adequately plan for all of the students um that we have the pleasure of serving okay thank you miss de la hora miss marshall answered my question covered it so thank you okay so um any okay mr strain and then i'll come down okay mr strain thank you madam chair thank you for the report um one of the things that as you know we've been talking a fair bit about is the the relationships between the various decisions that we make and policies we put in place and student outcomes and i wonder the extent to which we have data

085that reflects the sort of mapping of student outcomes by ses on to the ses composition of the schools so that we can see at least a correlation between the two in terms of how students of various ses categories are performing in various schools of different compositions we do i'm sorry i think those are i mean there's there's there's several different metrics of course that can be used for the student outcomes obviously proficiency and growth proficiency the eoc cog scores ap test scores etc um and of course growth absolutely um today we do not do that correlation um when we disaggregate data we of course are looking at race we also look at low and high poverty schools but remember that our scs factor includes multiple factors so it does not include race at all it

086does certainly include income but it also includes english language ability and certainly we do disaggregate data based on our students who receive english language learner services but across those five factors combined into ses we do not today disaggregate data based on that but i appreciate your question and your push there and certainly as we look at our emphasis on scs diversity that's an important analysis to do as well thank you appreciate it any other questions um all right well thank you so much ms craven howell thank you it's my pleasure good update now let me get back to my script here [Applause] okay so um next we have this is something a little bit different but our the community equity committee has a subcommittee on school composition and they have a report to pro that

087they would like to present to the board and so um i believe we have john murkisson on zoom getting ready to join us we're here all right there you are and i think um nicole is going to have someone share my slides when you see the page up just let me know and i'll i'll get going all right we'll let you know when it's so the your slide show is going mr marcus said great thank you elise for having me here to speak tonight i could quickly start you know by acknowledging my my fellow subcommittee members for all their efforts over the past year and also like to thank skeeta lloyd and akisha craven howell for all their time and efforts facilitating our work and then lastly i'd like to acknowledge our chair dr chance

088lewis who's the one who should be here speaking tonight but he had a conflict his daughter was awarded a scholarship for college and there was an event so a good excuse to miss and congratulations to the lewis family and i'll try to uh i'll try to do him crowds filling in in his shoes so before we move to our recommendations we in our report wanted to provide just a page with some context so i'm on the page that says context for recommendations as we all know student assignment and school composition is one of the most important decisions the board makes you know which kids are going to get to go to what school it's certainly one that gets a lot of community attention and it creates a tremendous amount of community angst as you all

089well know we also know that our district is growing really fast and our communities are highly segregated and that makes creating ses diverse schools you know even more difficult so we were really focused on you know how do we keep ses diversity at the forefront given all these factors and we found through our work that we think there are real opportunities to improve outcomes in scs diversity in both the near term and the longer term and we structured our recommendations along along those time frames one important piece of the puzzle or puzzle is board messaging and not waiting until a reassignment process is underway to communicate the benefits of diversity in schools as well as making sure those actual benefits are clearly communicated that keisha talked about this a little bit as well you know

090often the public gets ahead of the board and cms and messaging around assignment changes and puts any proposed change on the defensive before it's even been discussed um you know broadly it leaks into a article and then it's you know playing catch-up it says we looked at this to consider how the board and the district can be proactive to help everyone really fully understand the context and full implications of any boundary or assignment changes you know another part of this we looked at closely was recommendations in the context of helping the public better understand you know indicators of school quality if you're not deeply immersed in cms or live in the field of education there's a real lack of information regarding indicators of school quality and ultimately people default to you know the sort of

091overall letter grade of a school and then finally is context for recommendations akisha went through the ses you know metrics and how that's done but you know the board in 2016 set that as a methodology designating the county's block roots in the low middle and high in 2019 2020 85 schools exceeded 33 low of students in low ses and another 53 schools unexceeded 33 percent of students residing in high ses communities so we have a very kind of imbalanced uh district today um next thought slide please so um moving on if we could go to the next the next are we on the next page i'm looking at it on my facebook live and i don't see it so we'll make sure we're on um perfect so we structure our recommendations thinking through kind of

092time frame to implement in context around implementation near term and then medium to longer term courses of action so on this page i'm going to focus on near-term recommendations we center those around practice recommendations that can be implemented now our first recommendation is to create conditions which make school assignment changes more palatable and easier for people to understand the first piece of this is for cms to develop a means to communicate school strengths beyond the state report card you're currently the primary indicator for the public tends to be the overall letter grade the school receives which we know is heavily weighted towards proficiency you know this this report card drives perception of schools neighborhoods impacts where people choose to live and and impact real estate values you know we think there needs to be a

093strategic communication plan around indicators of school quality and school performance as well as more communication around what makes up the totality of the school letter grade related to this you'll see in our longer term recommendations around communication school quality you'll see we also recommend you know seeing us improve efforts to ensure all schools are of high quality in order to further lower barriers to acceptance you can communicate indicators but we need those indicators to be strong in addition we recommend cms to prioritize and institutionalize the practice of family engagement and transition planning including both sending and receiving families to make sure implementation of assignment changes is done in ways that best serve students and result in smooth and better assignment implementation kind of what happens after the vote is passed cms has done this with

094some success in the past i know my wife was part of the transition team for central middle school but it's not a consistent part of the reassignment process generally speaking we we find and believe that more public confidence in the execution aspect of a boundary change or reassignment as well as more consistent execution across reassignments you know utilizing lessons from past assignments as part of this will be very helpful in lowering community resistance to future assignments as well as ensuring students and families receive the best educational experience when going through a transition they kind of put it simply execution matters and i think sometimes um in experience the the board focuses on the goals and the strategy and the the plan and then the implementation post vote maybe doesn't get the focus that it deserves

095finally in advance of the 2020 comprehensive review we recommend the board consider review the findings and consider implementing the recommendations of the student assignment review task force which was formed after the last student assignment period and as full disclosure i was a member of that task force um it was focused on fairness in the reassignment process better communication around proposed reassignments and other lessons learned during the assignment you know these recommendations should be revisited in order to improve community outreach processes and ensure all impacted communities have equal opportunities for engagement so our second near-term recommendation is to prioritize ses diversity and school boundary decisions school board policy gaca as was mentioned in the prior presentation articulates four goals and gives you equal weight to each prioritizing ses diversity and your weightings would facilitate decisions to

096enable the district bring more students of diverse backgrounds together i would add here that one of the ways we looked at our work and viewed our recommendations was through the kind of lens of current policy versus current system current policy meaning without any changes so the status quo has the district maximize the opportunity to create ses diverse schools you know our work shows the honest answer is no so in the longer term recommendations we're going to lay out changes to policies and goals that would further facilitate the creation of diverse schools but we also know that under just under current policies and practices cms does have the ability to create more diverse schools just by making sure it's truly a priority um along those lines you know the board should use this equity lens every

097single time there's an assignment decision before you you're really making sure that the ses diversity is part of the discussion around who gets to go to that school and then finally as part of this recommendation we recognize the board does face upcoming boundary decisions i believe in june this is an opportunity for cms and the board to prioritize the creation of diverse schools and and we would ask that you use it the last near-term recommendation is to continue to leverage choice um the lottery waiting system that you should discuss this as well you know provides a tool that has led to some very diverse and balanced and frankly very high performing schools which stand out in the heavily scs segregated system that we have today choice programs represent an opportunity to create diverse schools and

098cms to evaluate those opportunities and potential needs for additional magnets as part of this recommendation we also saw the positive of magnets we also had discussions about the limits to the number of magnets before you face issues of program dilution as well as potential unintended consequences and adverse impacts to home schools and so we recommend that you you do look at choice and look at leveraging choice as a tool but with consideration of the holistic impacts of those choices and acknowledgement that you know 80 percent of students do attend home schools um next next slide please you're there you're on the next right thank you so on our longer term recommendations these are things we thought the board should consider in preparation for and during the 20.22 assignment review as well as you know beyond

099that the first one is around messaging engagement and acceptance um you know we recognize again the importance of impact communities accepting changes and and being willing to um further the efforts that the board proposes and passes we saw this play out broadly across the last assignment and we know that changes to student assignment will always create pressure and anxiety it's pretty universal thing when a parent is happy with their school any change creates stress that doesn't mean that as cms has no role in creating a better foundation in which to pursue school composition changes or those anxiety levels can't be lowered so as part of this recommendation we focus on the following areas first authentically engage families and solutions both prior to making recommendations to the board and then working with impacted community and parent

100leaders in messaging and engagement in order to maximize acceptance of changes once they are passed we've seen this done the success and select examples but again doing it consistently is the key you know two uh to ensure schools across cms are consistently high quality that such disparities in quality really perceived are not a significant barrier to acceptance you know ultimately we know the perception is there that all schools are not created equal and this heavily impacts the ability of cns in the board to effectively implement more ses diverse schools you know we as the subcommittee have some very good and honest discussions with staff on this point and in case akisha referenced this during her q a tonight you know we know we can't say all programs are equal quality today so while we believe

101there are standalone benefits to scs diverse schools for all students you know the ultimate goal of cms is to provide each student a high quality education like keisha also says this in her comments but you know ses diversity isn't the ultimate end goal ensuring schools are of high quality absolutely has to remain the top priority and that pursuit of high quality schools will also further open avenues for acceptance of assignment changes the next one is you know seeing us in the board should replicate strategies that work well in prior assignments for example these repaired schools and also look to improve practices which did not around you know engagement and communication um there's a saying to do more of that which is working and do less of that which is not and around future assignment and

102it seems to be well served to keep that in mind um finally um and again i think keisha mentioned this as well it'd be very valuable for cms on the board to find ways to codify and then intentionally communicate both cms's goals around diversity and the expected the benefits of increasing diversity and measure outcomes against those goals and communicate it consistently to the public make sure that message around the reasons and rationales and benefits of diversity doesn't pop up once every six years around an assignment and then fades the background for the remaining period our next long-term recommendation is a comprehensive review of assignment models we recommend that the board direct the superintendent team to study assignment models across the country particularly in districts of similar size and kind of geographic configuration i want to

103say clearly that as a subcommittee we felt it was well outside our individual and collective expertise to fully evaluate alternative systems and make a recommendation to the board around the specific one but we all agreed cms should be well versed in alternatives and as a board you should understand how those could potentially work in cms you know this also includes considerations such as homeschool choice and then in addition um you know i think one of the things we discussed and recommend is cms should consider how changing demographics and population shifts will contribute to or limit diversity in the future assignment decisions you know the topic here is really around there's a lot of focus on what the numbers say today but as we look at you know neighborhoods the 2040 plan other things that we

104know are there working to take those into better account around planning i know there's i believe some state limits around what all can be done there but to the extent it's within guidelines to try to you know look ahead look out the front windshield a little bit as well and planning around assignment and student boundaries uh next slide please you're you're there you're on the next slide great so just the last page the last last long-term recommendation around policy jca as you all know the policy is drafted has you know limitations of your policy limitations which the board must follow or goals that serve as limitations which the board can choose not to follow but certainly guide behavior we ask the board to consider addressing these limitations in the context of furthering ses diversity examples

105of these policy limitations would be you know continuous boundary requirements for bowls things such as intact feeder patterns and keeping neighborhoods together many of these limit the ability to create ses diverse schools and should be examined in that light in particular exploring a range of opportunities around more flexibility and contiguous boundaries would allow for more alternatives and can be done without causing significant increases in distance or travel time for kids to go to schools i want to emphasize that point our work in the subcommittee around contiguous boundaries was really focused on the fact that there are situations where you can you can hop a corner perhaps and actually send kids to schools that are closer or equally as close or just slightly farther away and have a big impact on diversity not being able to

106cross a boundary a single boundary is very big limiter in trying to design you know design boundaries that are that are maximizing the diversity um given the geographic constraints and our segregated housing patterns um it's not not meant to be a call for you know throwing caution to the wind and going with um cross-district bussing that's a that's a different topic for a different day that i think the appetite for being limited we felt the uptight before we limited but there are modest things that can be done that can really open up alternatives and then finally um additional considerations for you all as board members with your spheres of influence around other key stakeholders you know the housing authority planning departments really really engaging and working with them to make sure their decisions and your

107decisions are aligned as best possible so that as we see you know planning and neighborhoods and housing activities those are taken into account as best as possible around around assignment decisions in closing i think thanks for the time and we we as a committee hope these recommendations provide a better pathway for the board to consider around improving ses diversity in schools well thank you mr murkisson and your and your colleagues for i can it's clear you've poured a lot of work into this really appreciate it um do we have any questions for the community members ms sawyer i just again want to thank the committee for their work and and i think one of the recommendations that you talked about we're already engaging in with our participation with the bridges collaborative which will really allow

108us to learn about what practices are being employed to increase ses diversity across the country so i'm i'm excited that that that opportunity is something that you know i think we we can fulfill and we have we are actively pursuing so thank you for all your hard work miss ship um i just want to thank you uh and your host uh committee for the work that you all have done i'm glad to see it come full circle because that's what this equity committee is all about so and i thank you for that and bringing it all the way full circle two recommendations and things that we will consider as well as a board thank you so much and i know it was a lot of work from your group anybody else all right thank you

109again i know we will stay engaged stay in touch um okay so i am now going to turn to the superintendent for his report for the evening thank you madam chair um i have a couple of things that i would like to share this evening first off last week cms received some disappointing news with the county manager's budget recommendation to the mecklenburg county board of commissioners first that our full request has not been recommended for adoption meaning we may not be able to do some of what we proposed in our budget request at a time when our students need our support more than ever second that county leadership is recommending to hold back 56 million in local funding until on as yet disclosed date and that is problematic on a couple of fronts primarily it

110means that there is the very real potential for students and staff to be adversely affected this recommendation also means that our planning must move forward in the immediate term within a known funding gap of approximately 81 million compared to our request and as i said last week we will continue to advocate for our students and our staff members in this year that has seen so many challenges we made our request with their best interest at heart and that request represents what we know our students need as the covet pandemic continues to impact our lives in so many ways we hope that in the end those who are doing the work to educate the students of mecklenburg county will be better enabled to do so rather than hindered we cannot and we will not allow the

111struggle for adequate funding to distract us from finishing this school year strong and with that said i want to move to some of the great work that is being done in our school district this week our students return to school buildings five days per week as testing required by state and federal authority begin i encourage all students and staff to continue to follow safety protocols as we complete the last three weeks of this school year on the transportation front and i'll share briefly an update from our transportation department you know we want to assure our families our students and staff that our transportation leaders communicate daily with our fuel suppliers and we continue to receive fuel for our buses even as the pipeline issue has caused a tightened supply regionally as it relates to school

112nutrition a very bright spot in this challenging school year is our school nutrition staff since the beginning of the pandemic our staff has provided more than 1.4 million mail bundles to families via the cms eats at home program and as we shift to in-person learning for most of our students over the past months our school nutrition staff has adapted to a hybrid model serving our students in schools and continuing to provide meal bundles for those students at home and this week our school nutrition leaders shared a plan for summer the for the summer months and as of tonight and this number will likely grow cms school nutrition expects to serve more than 33 500 customers daily during the summer months this includes students participating in camp cms as well as several community partners with sites

113still being accepted through may 21st the meal program consisting of packaged lunches prepared fresh daily will be served at at least 50 sites throughout mecklenburg county now i just want to transition to graduation plans for graduation are well underway and we look forward to these in-person ceremonies we're pleased that our team's work with graduation venues has enabled us to increase the number of guests each of our graduating seniors may invite two four to up to four friends and families unable to attend and those graduating students who prefer to attend virtually will have the opportunity to participate via a professional live stream of all ceremonies and i would like to spend a moment on camp cms those sites for camp cms were announced over the past several weeks and we're looking forward to welcoming more than

11430 000 of our students to participate in this summer learning and enrichment program during these six weeks we will continue the work of finishing instruction for the school year and providing a foundation from which our students will grow and develop as we begin the 2021-2022 school year [Applause] lastly speaking of 2021 2022 i will reiterate that our plan is to return to in-person instruction five days a week for the next school year we recently shared a survey with full remote academy families asking about learning environment preferences for next year the results of that survey will guide our decision making as far as making a recommendation for a virtual option keeping in mind that any virtual option beyond our virtual high school that existed prior to covit must comply with state legislation and must be approved

115by the state we will communicate more about next school year in the coming weeks as we continue the work of closing out this school year as strong as possible thank you madam chair all right thank you at this time i will recognize thank you mr superintendent at this time i will recognize any board member who wishes to make a report i see dr jones thank you madam chair uh i would not have been able to attend tonight um without miss uh margaret over here chastising me um she said that called me and said i better wear orange right and that is to congratulate vance high school i i hope that you approve that's alright you're right okay i'm so proud of advanced high school soon to be julius chambers high school thanks the last fence

116yeah um okay miss ship yes i just think oh i think it's very important that i say thank you this was a week of teacher appreciation staff appreciation before that administrator's appreciation and i just want to say how much i thank our teachers our staffs you know all of the difference that they make in the lives of every student that comes to charlotte mecklenburg schools and it was great to be at the celebration of the teacher and the teacher assistant of the year recently just this past wednesday last wednesday i also had an opportunity to zoom into an fra lesson through wind and springs with miss miller's class to see math in action and that was great and also to bring greetings to the family engagement staff today at their monthly meeting to hear from

117family advocates counselors and social workers talking about the great work they're doing to continue to keep our children and families engaged tucker siegel was highlighted for their work the great jobs they're doing the home visits they're celebrating students of the month they're making sure kids and families help you know uniforms at schools they're having you know uh snacks and materials and so i just want to say thank you because our staff is constantly at work on behalf of all of our children in charlotte mecklenburg schools and i think it's important that we recognize the great work always that they do in such a season as we're in there thank you mr bailey thank you um i guess i get accused a lot of always uh bragging about what's going on in our cte programs at

118olympic and i'm gonna get you can fuss at me again but they have it they just accumulate and achieve a lot um the team of olympic students in their i.t career academy won a national competition for creating an ad that promotes earth day awareness the finance academy of finance grad graduate won the national alumni of the agile award and a 14 year old olympic naf career academy freshman was selected to deliver a ted talk in the new jersey in new jersey about leadership all five naf career academies at olympic received an audit score of being naf distinguished academies that's not easy to do the olympic is the only the third high school in america in over 40 years to have ever achieved this rare distinction and i cannot go let it go without bringing that

119to the attention of our public thank you wow okay miss marshall i want to just sort of piggyback a little bit on what miss ship said as we're kind of wrapping wrapping this up because i i just hear from parents all the time who are astounded and amazed and so appreciative of what teachers have done for their students this year in all situations and and i also think that we've had a lot of community members who've really put a lot of work in in supporting families as well and this is you know as we're coming out of the pandemic we all know that this week and next week we we're going to face some challenges and and we have lots of families who are food insecure who are housing insecure certainly affects performance of students

120but i was talking to a day today to a friend who is part of a community organization that staffed westerly hills for a huge food pantry that will continue on in the summer i saw our thing on television the other night of one of our teacher of the year candidates at windsor park who has staffed this enormous school i mean enormous store of food uniforms tech help it's just it's just really amazing what our folks have done so the conversations uh sometimes on a very large level don't really match what's happening down the ground and i think we can't ever say enough of what those those efforts are i was a heart math tutor this year as i've been for a number of years and just community work across the district has been it's been

121really amazing reed's tutors those sorts of things we we can't wait to get back to all the supports that our community is ready to give because they're chomping at the bit and i'm so thankful but i really want to thank staff for all they have done continue to do for our students and everybody's kind of hanging on by their fingernails this week so let's let's just keep keep it together keep it in the middle of the road and um appreciate everybody okay anybody else miss de la hora i'll go because different approach but i appreciate that ms marshall mentioned housing instability and food deserts because certainly those exist widely in our community and while i also went to the teacher celebration and been involved in a lot of teacher of the year teacher assistant year

122celebratory things going on i also got really inspired this week by our retreat that we did and sort of thinking about smart goals and um and and wrote several i'm just going to read two because i don't want to take up the whole night but you know and listening to our board of county commissioners talk you know talk about you know truly caring about educational outcomes it occurred to me that um i could practice my smart goal writing and i came up with a few of them for um to consider areas where they can specifically focus on outcomes under their control that will directly affect student learning give it a try and see what you all think i call on the board of county commissioners to reduce or to provide housing for 1894 students thereby

123reducing our number of mckinney-vento students in mecklenburg county which is currently 2894 to 1000 by june of 2022. your immediate focus on solving housing instability is desperately needed so students can thrive in a stable environment producing better outcomes here's another example black students are two times as likely to be hospitalized for asthma and four times as likely to die from it as white students white children are due to poor air quality in urban areas i'd like to see the board of county commissioners set a goal of reducing both of those numbers by half by june of 2022 let's let our children grow up to be adults and let's also keep them out of the hospital so that they have more time in school which of course directly affects student outcomes i've got a whole host

124more but you know i'll just leave it at that i think we've got serious work that takes serious people and good faith partners to align our community goals together if we really want to achieve differences in student outcomes thank you all right and with that i will take uh entertain a motion to adjourn so move second all in favor of the motion let it be known by a show of hands that passes unanimously and we are adjourned thank you everybody you