001good afternoon and welcome to the jackson county public school regular um business meeting for january 25th um at this time we're we will be going into closed session pursuant to gs 143 318 11 for the following purposes under sub-section a1 to prevent the disclosure of privileged or confidential personnel information pursuant to gs-15115c 319 321 and a3 to discuss matters protected by attorney-client privilege i make a motion that we go into closed session a seconds and i have to do i have to do a roll call allie heavy vote hi elizabeth cooper hi margaret mcrae i don't think we're they're not mine okay and abigail so we're good all right don't worry um okay good evening and thank you for coming to the jackson county public school regular meeting for january 25th i want to thank
002everybody at first all of the schools have board appreciation month and all the schools have given us little things and um we really appreciate it it's very nice of everyone and thanks to all the principals that are here for doing that and for their schools at this time we will do the pledge of allegiance led by smoky mountain elementary school ready um at this time do i have a motion to approve the agenda i make a notion that we approve tonight's agenda ali how do you vote aye elizabeth cooper aye margaret mcrae hi wes jameson hi and abigail clayton thank you and at this time it is dr ayers that will give us some information about some great things that people have done in our system so in my continued efforts to um share the
003good news and the great things that are happening and we have some recognitions to share tonight some students and some staff so we are going to start with staff and so i'm going to share just a little bit and then i'm going to ask them all to come up because we have a certificate for each of you for your accomplishments and then we'll we'll get a photo so um we have 10 teachers in our district who just earned national board certification or renewed their national board certification i want to tell you a little bit about what that that process encompasses it is not an easy process i can attest to that firsthand so national board certification is the most respected professional certification available in education and provides numerous benefits to teachers students and schools it
004was designed to develop retain and recognize accomplished teachers and that's a key word there and accomplish teachers and to generate ongoing improvements in schools nationwide so a little bit about what they have to do there are five propositions and then there are four components it is rigorous it is challenging it is like writing for a master's class again it is not fun anybody out there attests to that is not necessarily fun it encompasses um these teachers who are still teaching and carrying their full teaching load and planning and such who are doing that work while they're also writing long narratives about what happens in their classrooms it requires them to video classrooms and video students and write about reflect about what they see happening and then the process for improvement in addition to the work
005the physical work that you do over the year there is a cost to do that and that's fairly new i didn't have to pay many moons ago when i did it but the cost of that is almost two thousand dollars so these folks pay out of their pocket almost two thousand dollars is a first time candidate and the renewal cost of a little more than 500 because there's a registration fee so there is physical work that goes into this emotional work that goes into this lots of rigor in writing but then there's a financial burden that um these folks carry with that however if you pass then you get a 12 pay increase and so that is why many teachers including myself a long time ago sought to do this but what it taught me
006along the way that was that it was much more than the money because i really learned to hone my reflective practices so we have 10 jackson county folks who have renewed or received their certification for the very first time so of those 10 i believe six are here with us so i will call their name and i want them to come up and get a certificate and please stay and hang out here for just a minute um and then we're gonna do a photo and i will call the names of the folks who also aren't here because they need to be recognized too so i'm gonna put my mask back on since lots of folks are gonna be with me so the first person is debbie clower so debbie is debbie here i thought that
007it was gonna be with us and april mays come on up april y'all so you can be amongst colleagues the next person is pamela schuler congratulations the next person is crystal melanie jacobs [Applause] congratulations the next person is heather bullock [Music] and carla mcallister congratulations my hands weren't full i would shake your hands and then we have catherine moses congratulations so i'm gonna let them stand here while i shout out the other names just so you'll know and we can recognize um jessie stewart jessica stewart and jessica was a first timer so she is a new national board candidate so congratulations jessica i hope you're watching patricia fisher patricia was a renewal so congratulations to her amanda green amanda is also a renewal and then tracy holden and tracy's from blue ridge and so she
008is also a renewal so congratulations i've been in your shoes i'm glad i'm not doing that anymore to be honest but you know 12 pack increase is definitely worth the pace so let's give them a big [Applause] one more time [Applause] when you renew your national boards they used to renew every 10 years and i think that's changed now so some of these folks are renewing for the very last time in their career i see one out the door shaking yes yes yes so congratulations to all of them thank you so now let's talk a little bit about some phenomenal students so we have a month so i can't see with all my classes we have a group of students with us tonight and they participated in the esteem pitch competition so let me tell
009you a little bit about what that is last month entre ed and the appalachian regional commission partnered to bring the esteemed pitch competition to middle and high school students across appalachia the pitch competition provided students the opportunity to ignite their entrepreneurial mindset and engage in meaningful entrepreneurship experiences within their community the esteemed pitch competition was created as an initiative of andre ed's fostering self-esteem and appalachia's emerging workforce project and it was funded by the appalachian regional commission the project helps middle and high school students and programs in seven state in the seven state region that all that includes north carolina tennessee kentucky virginia and several other states 65 teams of student businesses participated in round one of the competition which included a digital submission and an elevator pitch so if you don't know what an
010elevator pitch is you have a certain amount of time you gotta talk fast you gotta sell your product as an internal r after an internal review of those 65 14 teams moved on and our smoky mountain team moved on of those 14 teams round two of the competition occurred in a virtual zoom meeting the 14 teams of finalists represented kentucky north carolina tennessee and virginia and over five thousand dollars in cash and prizes and classroom stipends were awarded to these students and educators during the pitch many innovative ideas from students were presented in the format of a five-minute pitch presentation followed by a three-minute q a with esteemed judges from across the region entrepreneurship education encourages young people to identify problems in their community and solve them in ways that create sustainable jobs so in
011just a moment i'm going to show you about a minute and a half of their pitch so that you can see what they did but these students are among you so i'm going to bring them up first so you can see them live and then we're going to watch about 90 90 seconds to two minutes of their pitch so they placed third out of 65 across 14 states they placed third so [Applause] madison blankenship come on up emeline bumgardner [Applause] make sure i hand you your certificate first so you can be in the photo madison can you open up and emma miller come on up here and andre billy so if mr buchanan can get a picture first before he warps their little clip mr miller is uh is there i don't know if you
012consider yourself the team coach or advisor or what's your title uh you you call it no i'll assume it so jack of all trades he is um the person advising and helping these students so this is a really big deal that our kids from smoky mountain elementary all seventh grade students competed and placed third out of 65 teams so i'm gonna give a shout out [Applause] excellent so i will let y'all see it and mr graham has it heat up so you can see just a couple minutes of their pitch and how well that is so congratulations first of all thank you for having us today to listen to our pitch now i'm going to introduce you to our team i'm madison and i'm the ceo of nine lives next is emma she's the chief
013of engineering we also have emily she has the connections to get our business wrong finally we have andre he's our business person he takes care of the expenses and deals with the money you may remember us from last year but we're back and even better this year so now i'm going to introduce our typical customer our typical customer would be active young to middle age and would like a folio style phone case last year otterbox noticed our pitch in ideas so we set up a meeting with the chief of engineer we talked with him and he gave us some tips about how to model the phone and now with the help of waiting spring and starter thing technology your phone like a cat always land on its feet not its face now to address the
014problem bonds are correct all the time but how research shows that 79 of cracks are from drop from an additional 48 are from where the phone falls out of a pocket so how do we help this problem i'm going to let emma tell you a little bit about how the phone case worked as madison said we are targeting young active people and with an active lifestyle they tend to need extra protection for our stuff our phone case is a folio style fold-over screen club with wallace-style credit card storage thus being perfect for active people who like to keep their lives compact one of the main elements of our phone case are the springs enclosed in the fold of the folio focus these become tense with molded away from the screen and in the case of
015the slipping out of your hands stop shut another safety precaution we developed is a small bar weight in the spine of the phone case this weighs the phone down so if dropped it is more likely to land on its back thus protecting the screen from cracking we differentiate ourselves from our competitors who would be major corporations like otterbox and spigen with our use of absorption and other unique elements that go into constructing our products sorbet is a shock absorbent material we use while other companies are known to use foam rubber and plastic with that i'm going to hand it over to emilyn and she's going to tell you that competition of manufacturing hi as emma said being in the phone case business we have some pretty stiff competition having to compete with worldwide phone case
016companies like otterbox tastify rink and spigen but we use a few unique materials like springs sorbothane and waiting technology which gives us a leg up from our other competitors when getting started i talked with my uncle who was the former vice president and owner of costa del mar sunglasses he has patented quite a few products and he helped us on going forward with our own we also looked into having other company other phone case companies manufacture our products in bulk utilizing other companies factories like otterbox which is how we plan to create our phone case and make it marketable we plan to advertise online through companies like youtube spotify instagram and others we also want to focus on outdoor and active lifestyle sites this would target our customer audience and direct them to our website
017where they can purchase our products we plan to sell online and distribute through the mail now i'm going to pass on to andre to tell you about revenue and our costs now i'm going to explain our revenue and prices we use a strong material called silver thing which is the shock and bounce resistant substance which cost us about six dollars and fifty cents for a full strip of subroutine which makes us about four phone cases other costs would include silicone springs weights manufacture manufacturing advertisement labor warehousing and a waterproof bendable plastic sheet coming out to a total cost of 1663. we would sell our phone cases for a product we would sell our phone cases for forty to fifty dollars per unit we estimate approximately twenty five dollars per phone case including warehousing and advertising
018nine lines would sell these phone cases and ship them in boxes ordered and custom designed off website called eco includes in the internet in the interest of being as flint friendly as we could possibly be i'll pass it on to madison for the closure thank you for choosing us to be a part of this amazing opportunity you guys will be the first one to accredit it when we are in a worldwide business tuesday live so your phone lands on its feet not its face [Applause] so i think that's pretty ingenious that our seventh grade students live mr miller caught up and created and took the initiative to go and do that so i am proud of you all students we are happy to recognize all of you and see that the work that you do
019outside of the classroom um is something that is going to lead to further projects that you're going to do you might be the next millionaires walking around jackson county who knows so we're proud of you we're going to move on with our meeting but i don't think that you all probably want to stay so you are welcome to transition at this time thank [Applause] thank you so much um i make a motion that we approve the open session minutes for a regular meeting of december the 14th 2021. a second ally how do you vote hi elizabeth cooper hi margaret mcrae hi wes jameson at this time um dr aries will give us the super attendance report good evening madam chair and board members happy new year and happy second semester we've had a good though
020eventful start to the second half of the school year as much as we all loved the snow last week it creates an enormous amount of work and preparation for our transportation team i want to offer josh francis and his team who are on the roads at 4 00 am or earlier to ensure we make it to school a word of gratitude for ensuring that our students get to school safely also i'm very thankful for the dedication of our bus drivers who get up early get on those buses early in the morning in the cold and continue to get our students to school safely each day we are really proud of you and you are deserving of lots and lots of praise so i would not drive a bus i would go ahead and give that
021caveat so you probably wouldn't want me to but who knows for those folks um covet has definitely impacted our return to school over the christmas break our positivity rate as of this afternoon and 0.6 percent and active cases are at 27 as of this afternoon our highest positivity rate however was about 10 days ago with a 1.8 positivity rate still not the highest that we've seen in the entire school year but pretty high because of omicron we seem to have peaked and and i am hopeful that the case and quarantine numbers will continue to fall over the coming weeks i also want to share excuse me incredible news about our district preschool programs thanks to a generous grant from the blue ridge education foundation we will be opening a second preschool classroom at blue ridge
022school for the 22-23 school year our intent is to include three-year-olds in this class most exciting that this grant along with the dogwood grant that we announced last month will double our preschool opportunities for the upcoming year we've currently received about three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in grant funds for our preschool programs that means we'll be moving from three to six plus six preschool classrooms across the district all of our elementary schools will now have a preschool program and registration will begin soon increasing early education and preschool programs is just one of the five goals that i've had for moving and growing jackson county public schools these new opportunities will be a tremendous benefit to our schools but also to our community and other good news our chief financial officer christy walker has been
023awarded a one thousand dollar scholarship for continuing education she's also looking at me right now like although chrissy already holds a bachelor's degree she on her own initiative decided to seek accreditation as a certified public accountant we're very proud of you christy congratulations january as ali said earlier january is board of education appreciation month in north carolina and i should share sincere thanks to each of our board members a quote from the north carolina school board association says school board members play a vital role in our communities and schools they spend countless hours of their time and talents toward the advancement of public ed they are extraordinary people who tackle the enormous job of governing school districts and their actions and decisions affect the present and future lives of all of our children board members
024contribute hundreds of hours each year leading their districts many of those you do not see whether it be crafting policies hiring top-notch administrators listening to staff and student concerns or recognizing outstanding programs board members always keep their eyes on the goal of student achievement many school board members are facing unprecedented challenges in trying to navigate controver controversial topics in education from kobe 19 to critical race theory yet they continue to work with all stakeholders to ensure a bright future for every child the time spent in these board meetings represents just a fraction of hours that that school board members spend leading so from my heart and from our team's heart we are very thankful for abigail and ali and elizabeth and wes and margaret who are joining us remotely for their time and efforts to
025always put students first in jcps one other thing ali did allude to they have lots of gifts and prizes they were gifted by all the schools in the district and the central office was a few things to just share their joy and pride for jackson county public schools and then lastly a piece of information i think is important for you to hear um the election year is now this is election year for board seats and the election window that was originally open in the fall and then closed by the state will reopen on february the 24th and it ends on march the 4th so the final piece of my report is our student athletes and coaches are wrapping up winter seasons and have enjoyed the opportunity to resume normal play even amid kobe concerns and
026we're looking ahead to spring sports which start just around the corner in february and thank you thank you to our families thank you to our community thank you for our staff for all that they do to make everything run smoothly in jackson county respectfully thank you very much mr buchanan madam chair dr heirs and members of the board i just wanted to share a quick update on the progress of the egress courtyard project of course this is the project to bring in the last four schools so that all of our schools are single entry point schools so construction is fully underway at smoke mountain elementary and on the campus of blue ridge um fairview and smoky mountain high school will start properly um end of this week next week just some updates on some of
027the things that parents have been asking about because it'll have pretty good impact onto the school as it's being constructed the entryway at smokey mountain elementary will be finished up by the summer blue ridge will be completed by the fall smokey mountain high school the lobby all the work that will be done there will take place over the summer with a completion in the fall and with fairview the the new entryway into fairview will also the majority of that work will take place over the summer with a fall completion date um the quality of the work is excellent our contractor the inspectors all been pleased with the quality of work that's been done and so i'll be happy to answer any questions that you guys have about the progress of the project all right thank
028you all very much thank you very much good evening madam chair dr ayers members of the board the first piece of information i have for you is the unaudited financial statements which are in your packet these statements are for january and they do include comparison data from last year it continues to reflect that we will be within our budget by the june 30th 2020 year end um second piece of information that i have that i've neglected to give decor to put on the board was our audit for the bank of america purchasing card we've completed our second quarter audit and i'm pleased to report again no findings i never get tired of saying that any areas of concern as always we're addressed with the appropriate individual with additional training or some correction of our procedures
029and we are at this time currently in the process of conducting our second quarter internal school audits and i will have those findings or lack thereof at the february board meeting thank you thank you very much thank you congratulations oh thank you i think you're next again no no no no no no anymore okay sorry all right uh instructions for public comments during board meetings each month the first part of at least one regularly scheduled board meeting will be set aside for citizens to address the board through public comment each speaker will receive three minutes to present comments however the public comment section will not uh exceed 30 minutes total except by majority vote of the board a sign up sheet will be available 30 minutes before the meeting begins for any individual or group
030to indicate their desire to address the board during the public comment period the board chair will recognize speakers in order in which they signed in substitute substitute speakers will not be permitted and speakers may not donate any portion of their time to another speaker if a speaker is unable to present all of his or her information within the specified time limit the speaker may provide the board with the additional information in written form if an unusually large number of people request to speak a majority of the board may decide to reduce the time for each individual or to require the designation of a spokesperson for each group or person supporting or opposing the same positions at any time the board may establish additional procedures to ensure that public comment sessions proceed in an efficient and
031orderly manner public comments are designed for the board to listen the board will not engage in dialogue or answer questions complaints about individual employees or students are prohibited tonight we have one speaker mr dr john edwards dr edwards please go to the podium i would like to share this with your board members dr edwards you have three minutes at the 30 second mark the yellow light will come on i'll begin now all right thank you for the opportunity to come and talk with you all like i've said before i'll say again i will keep on coming back with this one thing in mind we are denying our children the right to know and if you don't know then how can we make a choice if we don't know god and who he is and what
032his character is like how can we make a decision or even pledge allegiance one nation under god without knowing who this god is like or what he's like so what i'm seeing is when i talk with students that there's little and high school students and people that have come from other states to our college here uh one thing i'm finding that they have a complete misconception of what god meant in america uh when the foundation when the founding fathers wrote their uh constitution and we need to brush up on that and say why did they choose to use those words and what do those words really mean what's the significance of it because it affects our domestic tranquility our everyday lives how we do business how we uh relate to each other in the community
033and if we lose that we lose a tremendous amount and that leads to the kind of an archaic thing in our country this day where people have weird concepts about god that are foreign to what the constitution founders had about god not that they didn't know these other concepts because they were very well informed people but that they were not permitted to our young people are not permitted to know that and when they're told that they're sometimes given a biased idea that is really not in line with true history so it's important that we know the history of man's relationship to god and as a nation our relationship to this god that we say one nation under garden on our currency we got written in god we trust so all of all of this it
034makes more sense and it's worth more time for the child to at least know that thank you thank you and i was delighted to hear some of what our students have accomplished thank you thank you and i'm sorry you guys this is kind of a new agenda for me so sometimes i forget where i am i've been doing the other one way too long so the last item i have for the board tonight is a request for an approval of the budget amendment number one to be made to our budget resolution for fiscal year ending june 30 2022 for the following funds our state public school fund our federal grants fund our other specific revenue fund and our capital outlay fund this amendment also includes one transfer in the other specific revenue fund all the
035details of this amendment including the transfer are in your board packet and if you have any questions at this time i would be happy to answer those if there are no questions then i request your approval for amendment number one to our 2022 budget thank you christie do i hear a motion i recommend amendment number one a second ally how do you vote hi um elizabeth cooper aye margaret mcrae hi wes jameson hi abigail clayton thank you thank you this time dr um so each month we are required as you know at this point to review our mask mandate i will say that we are one of the few if not one of two districts in the state of north carolina that have been consistent in masking since the beginning of school so as always
036we're going to have a conversation and look at numbers and what you're going to see on the screen is numbers so um if you'll go to the next slide um we currently have and i know that's small we current but i said this in my board report we currently have 27 active cases in our district and that includes both staff students this is a an enormous change since 10 days ago when we were looking at our staff numbers in the 20s and our student numbers in the 60s so we are grateful as i said that hopefully our peak has happened and we are on the downhill slot so graham if you'll go to the next one um this is our quarantine numbers of the four o'clock this afternoon um you will see each of the
037schools uh delineated for how many folks that they have in quarantine remember quarantine is not required if a student is exposed and they are properly wearing a mask our numbers did peak and i would be um totally remiss if i didn't tell you that a lot of our uh quarantine numbers are a result of being home over the holidays and gathering and families and such um that number down at the bottom that you see is a total of 170 as of this afternoon that are quarantining that's 170 students and staff last friday that number was 191 the friday before or the wednesday before that it was 176 and that was our first full week back from christmas break so we i feel like we've seen our peaks i certainly can't um foretell what that truly
038is the case but it seems like it according to our numbers um the next screen that's just a reminder of what the north carolina strong schools toolkit says that areas that are in higher substantial it is recommended that they are requiring mass and if you're in the yellow or blue they recommend that you have some options there the next slide will show you where we were as of this morning that is the state of north carolina and the darkest red one is us here in jackson county and our entire state is in the red which is high transmission the next slide i send again most of this information to the board every friday for them to review um jackson county health department puts out this weekly snapshot each friday and you see from last friday
039the 21st that the positivity rate is 30.4 i believe before christmas we were seeing single-digit positivity rates um but i will call your attention to the number in the center on the right that it is down 5.2 excuse me 5.29 is the change so it seems to be decreasing from the previous week that i've shared this information with the board and the next screen i've been sharing this this comes from the north carolina school board association this is the state showing the school districts across the state and they're masking requirement or non-requirement and so we are in the um in the blue there with the required mask and it's really ironic if you have seen these over time they're all on online it's not anything private information but there was a time when that map
040showed very little blue um and and now we're going back again so um we have to continue to make a decision every month whether we're going to continue with the mask requirement i had graham if you'll go to the next slide i had asked at the december 14th meeting for us to really consider going optional based on data in january and we had hoped that we would see sustainable data and that proves that we haven't seen sustainable data over the last three weeks since we've been back so again we'll always consider optional um and hopefully in the next four weeks we'll have different data to share with you all so at this point i'll leave it up to the board for discussion whether or not we will continue to make the math mandate only to
041optional entertain your conversations i'd like to hear from everybody but um i would we've done such a good job with the mask that i just don't think that at this high positivity rate that we should take the mass off at this time and um that's just my personal opinion i think we were all hoping that this january meeting might be the one that's um provided us with numbers so we felt comfortable with going to masks optional but based off of the data i don't think we are there yet i hope that february is a better month but i do not feel comfortable removing the mask at this point margaret and wes do you have anything to say yeah forehead with okay i just seen you know one of our neighboring counties have had to go
042to uh virtual for a couple of their schools that you know they're they're not mandating mass i think we we've noticed that we have not had to do that and as long as we continue to not have to do that then i'm definitely supporting masks at this point so yes i agree and i'd like to say that wearing masks has served us well this year we are keeping the children in school and this is truly where teaching and learning take place and that is the job of this school system to see that these children learn and i'm all for wearing masks as long as it is serving the purpose that we're looking for yes i think as long as we're much more interested in staying in school than closing school so yes and even first
043of all yes do i hear a motion i make a notion that we approve to keep the mass mandate as is for a second ally how do you vote aye elizabeth cooper aye margaret mcrae aye wes jameson aye abigail clayton thank you okay thanks to all of you um mr buchanan yes you will find in your packet um a proposal for work being done substantial work being done to repair and borderline replace the mechanics of the elevator at scotch creek elementary school i know we all still think of scotch creek as the as the newest school but it is over 20 years old now um and so the the elevator has um stopped to stop functioning we've gotten one proposal which is what you find and that's the company that we regularly the last few
044years have regularly worked with and who does the servicing for our elevators um and we got a quote to repair and get back to functioning and that's the 51 769.45 we also are in the process of getting quotes from another company and uh elizabeth shared with us another company we're going to reach out to also to get quote so we don't feel that we would need to spend any more than this amount because we we have this quote but i am asking for your permission for us to spend up to 51 769.45 for the repair and authorize the superintendent to sign a contract with whichever company comes in with the the best price for the best service as recommended by mr watson and myself thank you very much for hearing motion i make a notion
045that we have proved the um expenditure of that um i hope this other company comes in lower me too elevators are expensive they are and and this elevator is crucial um for the function of scotts creek school this is a crucial service allie how do you vote hi elizabeth cooper i'm margaret mcrae hi wes jameson all right abigail clayton thank you jeremiah yes ma'am good evening i'm seeking approval to purchase some upgrades for our server environment our current storage infrastructure has been in place for about four years and the warranty will expire in a few months so if approved we will move the current system that we have the smoky mountain high school and that will be used as a backup uh solution um and then the new the new unit will become a primary
046uh primary unit for our school district um we're looking to convert from uh spinning disks to flash storage which will be about three to four times this faster than what we're currently using and then just a reminder all jackson county school services that we run reside on this server environment so that would be our cafeteria our finance our student information things of that nature i've received multiple quotes and pursued three quotes for comparison um from cdw dell and from winslow technologies the winslow technologies quote was the cheapest it's also the most compatible with our current server infrastructure um in the part of this purchase i will be adding a third server uh to our cluster and some fiber channel switches to increase the redundancy so that we can lose any uh unit or component of
047the system and stay up and running um it's becoming really important that um as moore support relies on technology that it stays up and be as redundant as possible do you have any questions for me no thank you jeremiah okay if not i asked for your permission uh if your approval to purchase a new sand and servers from winslow technologies i make a nation that we approve the purchase of the storage upgrade that works ali hadiva hi elizabeth cooper hi margaret mcrae aye wes jameson aye abigail clayton thank you and the next uh i'm also next on your agenda um i'm here to talk about our internet filter and our um internet safety for our students jackson county schools utilizes several tools to keep our students safe and to monitor their computer their computer usage
048both at home and at school the issue that we're running into is that these tools overlap functionality and they do not integrate with each other so i'm looking at looked at multiple products and i've settled on a product called securely which seems to be very popular throughout the state this would replace our internet filter which keeps our students off of uh bad websites and things of that nature it also will replace our 24 7 monitoring of student communication and student searching um which would help us you know alert us if there's a searching for self-harm or cyber bullying or something along those lines for the principals we get an alert um and then they could act upon that and then it also would replace our classroom management piece so our teachers have the ability to
049use the classroom management to kind of decide when students are able to use the devices if they only want them to use certain pages for research they can actually control that while they're in their classroom one of the big problems with our current product or most products is that teachers have to be sitting in front of a computer to monitor those machines and what i want to see is our teachers being able to move around the classroom and teach like they normally would so this product basically allows you to start a class and end the class and at that point when the class is over they will get a report from the product that will say this is what your kids did during your class period on their device which would then allow the teacher
050the next day when they have that student if they were off task to be able to uh to address those issues without having to be sitting behind a desk in front of those students so this will also give us the ability to [Music] better report on internet usage for our devices as they go home currently all of our devices at the house are filtered but i do not have a good way of just notifying the differences between one student's usage and another student's usage while they're at home this product will allow me to have that reporting while the devices are off campus which in today's world is becoming a lot more important there also is another feature that parents have been asking for which is the ability to for them to control the usage of
051the jackson county schools device while that device is at their house so if we were to go with this product we would have training sessions for parents we would be able to they would be able to turn off the internet or to block certain websites while the kids are in their house um this is really good for our families who are multiple jobs and it may not be home to help monitor that student uh in the evenings so um the cost for this is about thirty thousand dollars a year it's thirty thousand eight hundred and sixty dollars um my suggestion is to buy a one-year contract and if the uh if this product works like i think it will be then maybe next year i'll come to you and we can get a longer term
052to get to have some more savings do you have any questions for me all right here imagine i make a notion that we um purchase the survey internet filter for one year second ally how do you vote aye elizabeth cooper aye margaret mcrae hi wes jameson hi thank you thank you thank you good evening madam chair board members and superintendent heirs i come to you this evening to ask for your annual approval to our jackson county public schools indian education policies and procedure there are no changes from the previous year and we would like to carry over the policies and procedures as they are are there any questions for me and do i have your approval i make a notion that we approve the indian education policies and procedures high seconds ali how do you
053vote hi elizabeth cooper hi margaret mcrae hi wes jameson hi abigail clayton thank you thank you thank you very much you're welcome field trips the next um items are field trips and i request your approval for these because they are each out of state excuse me out of state or overnight field trip so the first one is for fairview elementary school to travel to dollywood in may and that is fifth grade then fairview elementary to travel to dollywood the sixth grade students in late april and then the final one is an overnight field trip that is within the state and that is for coalie valley school um eighth grade students and they'll be going to a couple different locations the north carolina zoo so they're focusing on some outdoor um venues and event spaces and
054get a little bit of north carolina history so i seek your approval for those because two are out of state and one is an overnight field trip i make a motion that we approve all three field trips allie hadiva hi elizabeth cooper i'm margaret mcrae hi wes jameson hi abigail clayton and the final piece is a personnel recommendation so i think that we can we haven't made any amendments so i ask for your approval for the items on personnel as they are listed below i'll make the information that we approve employee recommendations one through thirty employee resignations one through 136 staff non-staff and returning church recommendations one through three seconds ali hadivo aye elizabeth cooper aye margaret mcrae aye wes jameson at this time i would like to thank everybody for coming and our next
055regularly scheduled business meeting of the board of education will be february 22nd at 5 45 in the board of education central office appreciate everybody coming thank you again to the schools for their um lovely gifts make a mention that we are doing tonight's meeting this second ally how do you vote hi elizabeth cooper hi margaret great hi that's jameson thank you [Music] you