001full of research you foreign you hmm you uh [Music] the pledge of allegiance foreign we are blue ridge school and blue ridge early college please join us in the pledge of allegiance do i have a motion to approve the agenda and they can mention that we agree tonight together all in favor margaret how do you vote i thank you um do i have a motion to approve the open session meetings of the regular meeting of october 26th i make a motion to approve the open session minutes of the regular meeting on october 26th second all in favor margaret how do you vote hi thank you at this time um dr ayers will give the superintendent's report i'm gonna pull this down just a hair you think they're good to hear me i think so yes
002good evening madam chair and board of ed members i'm excited to share the highlights of the last few weeks in jcps since it's only been three weeks since our last meeting we've been busy and focused on student success from all aspects including social emotional and academics last week our jcps staff saluted our employees who are veterans there are 15 employee veterans across the district that have served in a variety of military roles and locations two of them are sitting with us this evening we honored them with a special luncheon and billboard displays around silva look for those veterans names along with then and now photos though all of our veterans did not wish to be publicly recognized we do acknowledge their sacrifice our instructional focus across the district is noteworthy in my weekly school visits
003and classroom stops i see students engaged rigorous lessons being taught and a variety of learning opportunities for our students to thrive it really looks normal right now another positive note to brag about is our low coveted positivity rate currently we are at less than 0.1 percent in the district less than almost too small to measure there are only two active cases in jcps as of this afternoon and i want to pause and say i need to add one to that there are three active cases as of this afternoon our safety precautions are obviously making a difference in keeping students in school since children ages 5 to 11 are now eligible for the coveted vaccine some schools along with local church churches and the recreation center are sites for the optional family vaccination clinics again these
004clinics are after school hours and completely optional as of today more than 100 pediatric doses have been administered please know that at no time have i had any planning or initiative discussions to mandate coveted vaccines for students on that note in july you all as the board gave me the authority to make decisions about mask requirements during indoor athletic and extracurricular events currently all spectators who attend jcps indoor athletic and extracurricular events are required to wear a mask our cova data is showing success so i am beginning to relax these restrictions effective tomorrow november 17th the mask requirement for indoor athletics and extracurricular events will be lifted i strongly encourage athletes performers and spectators to wear a mask while indoors on our campuses but it is no longer a mandate as of tomorrow on the
005athletic front we have wrapped up all of our fall sports and are beginning our winter sports seasons i'm proud of all of our students and teams across the district well done and i'm anxious to attend basketball games wrestling matches and other winter events lastly i want to share a statement crafted by us as a board and myself to address critical race theory critical race theory continues to be a topic that solicits a range of emotions and questions from stakeholders in our community jcps has shared the statement below over the last several months however as the board and i discuss we want to share additional information the original statement in regards to crt jackson county public schools will teach the standards as required by the north carolina department of public instruction we will teach history in
006an unbiased and factual manner most importantly we will follow the north carolina curriculum standards for social studies and history to ensure jcps students receive appropriate standard aligned instruction and added to that our values here are clearly stated and they are shared on our website here for jcps we value safe and inclusive environments we value respectful and nurturing relationships we value high expectations we value continuous growth and improvement we value partnerships with families and communities these values and our drive to provide unbiased instruction to students means that we are teaching students to be kind respectful and inclusive of all people regardless of race ethnicity or gender we are not teaching students to demoralize judge or degrade each other based on historical incidents so that is the statement that the board and i crafted together and we
007want to make sure that you are hearing that we are teaching all students in an unbiased manner so i want to end with i do echo the same sentiments that ali shared earlier before we started the closed session we are very very lucky here in jackson county to have the genuine support that we have it is unmatched in other districts i assure you that that is the truth so we want to thank you as a community thank you for what you do for us and we want to continue to have you come and support us and be involved in the school system here locally so we want to thrive and we're grateful for your support i'm grateful for your support respectfully thank you very much and you do um all of us appreciate jackson county
008being behind us at this time um now we will have terri wallinger um give us the osha emergency temporary standards good evening chair board members dr ayers um i want to share an update with these the osha emergency temporary standards as most of you are aware this will require this is a requirement that all employers with 100 or more employees would have to mandate covet 19 vaccines or weekly testing for employees public school districts with over 100 employees are also covered by this um you might also be aware that there are many lawsuits that are out there that are happening right now and so what has currently happened is there's a stay that's in place that's causing any further action and while the court reviews the motion and they determine if a permanent injunction is
009in order um the state superintendent um catherine truitt most recently sent out a memo advising districts to have a general plan in place which we do but to to wait until we have um that there's no requirement to comply until pending litigation is resolved so um in the meantime uh mr holt uh has who's been tracking the cova cases and doing that has been working with me and is working with dr ayers to come up with a tracking system if this were to come into place and to be able to do some of those put some most pieces in place for the weekly testing that would have to be done if we're required to do so at that time we would come up with a more specific plan and submit that to you as well
010other questions for me thank you very much and you are next on our event i am um so the equity plan update you should have forms in your folder that are included in there um part of that is incomplete and i'll go over that in just a minute but that's because we don't have that data for that the growth data that was on the the required reporting is not available from the state yet um generally speaking our faculty are teaching either within their their areas of expertise or they have a degree or the experience needed to do so and have a provisional license to teach in those areas um the state is behind those things right now because there are so many challenges in hiring this year so they are getting a lot of requests
011for additional licensure or in different areas and so that's taking a bit of time to get back in but we're hoping that we'll hear something soon and be able to get all those licensure issues resolved um in reviewing the beginning teacher numbers to look at possible inequities you'll notice that there are some higher percentage rates in in groups that are representing smaller numbers for example like blue ridge early college has one beginning teacher in their middle school group which looks like out of three teachers that's 33 percent of their population that's a beginning teacher they only had three teachers um the same thing at scotts creek has has a middle school team and in that case they have 50 percent of their teachers are either in their first second or third year of teaching um
012but their numbers are not large either um the data from last year is not included in this report but it is on record already so the state has that information but what it showed was that there were there were only two places where they had the consistent consistently high marks you know 25 and that was with blue ridge early college and jackson county early college um jackson county college only had four teachers so one is a bt that looks at 25 and that person is still a bt this year um the same with blue ridge early college they have the same two teachers that are beginning teachers and so in all of the other cases it's really consistent across the state people have more bts this year it's been a real challenge to get teachers
013in who have experience on the equity plan narrative you can see that we're pursuing every avenue we can to attract teachers who are already highly qualified and we are doing that by reaching out we're doing more extensive advertising we're using social media billboards radio newspapers and going beyond jackson county to include other counties and and and go into job fairs where we're exposing at least getting out and getting exposure for our community so we're doing those things and while we have that increase we also have a program in place for those bts with uh mr speck hart the director of professional development and teacher growth and during that program all of our bt ones twos and threes have specific goals for their the years that they're in and and brent uh mr spekkar he monitors
014that he meets with every bt every year throughout the year to be able to go over that professional development that's you know specific to them so he is doing that and this is now i believe his third year um working out that specific program um and so that that has been very helpful and we've been able to see that growth in our teachers the teacher effectiveness is what i mentioned earlier although numbers are on your report those are still the same numbers from our 2018-19 school year because we don't have any new information from the state yet there should be some growth data coming out but we are not that's not yet available so when it does become available we'll include that information in the researcher the notes that we have the data to be
015able to add that to the plan for growth with our teachers so um that's just a part of a bigger report that laura dills is is working on and will will submit but if you have questions for me about any of this i would be happy to answer those thank you very much thank you um unaudited financial summary so good evening madam chair dr ayers members of the board um as you're aware we continue to operate off our continuation budget that we passed in june 2021 and it will remain in effect until we pass our budget resolution for the 2022 school year so in your packets there is an audited financial statement for november which also includes the comparison data from last year and this reflects we are still in compliance with that continuation budget
016do you have any questions for me please thank you very much i believe there is a proposed budget on the floor of the state right now so we're just awaiting that that was shared yesterday so hopefully some good will come from that don't in a little bit to get that update i'm just excited [Music] um at this time we will take open session public comments um uh clarence miss fields did anyone sign up we do not have anyone signed up but i do have one written comment that was sent in so i will start with the instructions for public comments 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 minutes to present
017comments however the public comment session will not exceed 30 minutes total except by majority vote of the board a sign up sheet will be available 30 minutes before the meeting or group to 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 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 additionally we do uh accept written comments that must be in our position by 4 pm the day prior i have received one of those such comments tonight if an unusually
018large 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 orderly 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 at 308 this afternoon i received a comment from mr keith blaine sorry i will not be able to attend but would like to have the comment read below hi all crt is more than curricula you teach but the pedagogy or lens through which it is taught implementing social emotional
019learning sel opens up the teacher's ability to impart their cultural views on students contrary to their parents belief system and moral convictions i do not support implementing scl in the jackson county public schools i believe it is the parents responsibility to help their children or child with social and emotional development and not the public school system keith lane end of connor thank you madam chair thank you very much i appreciate you reading that but this time mr walker we are back that should tell us all this good night dr eyre's enthusiasm is catching so my last update to the board was in september and doctor ayers and i have continued to follow the progression of the state budget negotiations since that time um it has been nearly four years i don't know if you guys
020are aware of this and as i was looking into this and following it i did discover four years since we have had a comprehensive state budget and this is the fourth month of our fiscal current fiscal year without a budget so i just kind of found that a little shocking as we lived through it that that timeline hadn't really sunk into me um doctor ayers and i have purposely delayed bringing a budget resolution to the board in the hopes of having a state budget in place since many of its components do impact our local budget and as dr ayres was saying i think that we might get our wish and see this come to fruition that um the latest update i have is that the house and senate leaders have released their budget packet they
021have been negotiating on since august and votes will occur in both chambers over the next several days before it is sent to governor roy cooper for his approval i did read this afternoon that he has indicated he will sign this budget he is not completely satisfied with it but he has indicated that he will give his approval so regardless of this final outcome uh dr airs and i have agreed that we will bring a budget resolution to this board in december so if something were to go wrong you'll still get your budget resolution in december of this year and that concludes my update but mr walk is next and i don't know that mr mike white needs any introduction but i did promise him one so i've had the pleasure of working with him since
022i stepped into this office and he has provided jackson county public schools excellent service in my opinion and so i'm not going to steal his thunder i'm going to let him come and tell you all about our external audit for last year thank you can we pause do we have to have a motion all right good evening madam chair members of the board and dr ayers i'm pleased to be here this evening reporting on the financial statements the audit report for the year ending june 30th 21. and i think each of you have a bound copy in front of you each year this report it gets longer and longer i think now it's 78 pages so i'm not going to go through every page in detail but um what i'm just going to tell you
023is the auto reports it's a very good report and we'll hit on some of the highlights here um this year you know all we really do is all the school districts we've been seeing a lot higher increase in occurrences of financial statement findings compliance issues internal control type issues so i think the district should be very proud that we're no such issues identified during this year's audit so that is something to be be proud of as a district i always really do is blame it on the the uptick in our our instances of reportable conditions would be just due to the virus and the different pressures that that people are facing and there's a lot of additional requirements on the spending of the cares money that we have to test and um and people and
024a lot more requirements to look at from our standpoint but first and foremost there's four opinion letters within this statement one is on the overall financial statements one is on the overall internal control and compliance and then there's one on the internal controlling appliance for federal monies the district receives and one on internal control compliance for state monies that the district receives on all four of those reports it was an unmodified or a clean audit report that's the highest level level of assurance we can give on a set of statements and whenever we say unmodified what that really means is nothing came to our attention that would cause us to modify that or we would say everything's in accordance with the accounting standards except for this there are no modifications on that then i always
025just like take a brief moment just to tell you we talk about internal control and compliance we say that a lot and sometimes people don't really um understand what we're talking about there when we look at that and that's the bulk of our testing we're looking at your internal policies and procedures that you have in place and making sure that you follow those policies and procedures and the intent of that is to make sure that there's good controls policies and procedures in place to limit any misappropriation of assets so just in layman's terms you have good controls in place to make sure that that money's not walking out the door that's really what we're looking at on that and then on the compliance side that's more just black and white there's certain federal and state
026laws that you have to follow and we look at transactions to see are you following those transactions or not and that's the compliance side so but um no items to report to the board whatsoever on on that the one thing that i always want to mention to you i may get you to open up your financial statements if you have those in front of you i always like to look at the um the fund balance for the district and i'm going to turn over to page 16 if you have a second to look at that and i said it's a very good report and from my perspective if you look at the general fund the um the leftmost column of numbers on it you'll see that you added 190 000 of fund balance this year
027and then if you go over four columns you'll see the other special revenue the fund aid column we added fund balance there as well from my perspective and it's going to be a um you never an account can never tell you that you have too much money we're going to be conservative with the finances by our nature but how we're looking at things with the the cares money the coronavirus money coming in and you're spending that money the bulk gun is ultra restrictive on how you have to spend that but you're implementing new procedures um programs things like that in place addressing the learning laws and again we hear this on all the districts we're looking at throughout the state what we warned the districts that going forward is when that money cuts out in
02823 24 to try your best to build that fund balance up a little bit so it's just not a hard cliff when that money ends and you have to take action at that point so in my perspective i think you've done that this year and that's what we would really like to see the um i think in other years i've mentioned to y'all the increase in the benefit cost that y'all are having and it's you know every single district the state tells you what you've got to contribute for from retirement and whatnot what i'm thinking is happening most likely is those additional costs that went up 10 from like 18 to 21 or something like that this year and it's going to go up again next year those costs are somewhat being hidden i think
029to the districts because you have all the money with the carriage money so that's say it keeps going up one or two percent every year and you three years four years down the road and you stop getting that funding that's just additional overhead that you're gonna have and so that's why we you know just another reason to try to build that up if you can so does that make sense to everyone and then the other number that i always try to look at with the districts is your child nutrition program to see how you do it from a cash flow standpoint and if you just look over on page 23 near the bottom of that you'll see i'll tell you what the number is you don't really have to look there but you added 77
030000 of cash to the child nutrition program and again that's what we would recommend and that's that's really what we're seeing from the bulk of the district because you're getting that full reimbursement rate this year on your child nutrition program and that full reimbursement rate is a little bit higher than if somebody pays and then gets the the additional federal supplement on that so again that's just exactly what we would like to see so does anyone have any questions on what we went over here um in general i just want to thank everyone at jackson county schools um the cooperation that we received from doing the audit looking at school records within the district here everyone's on anything gives us full access to the information and again to have a what would you say a
031clean report with no reportable items is something to be proud of this year thank you very much thank y'all if you need anything down the road you know feel free you know give me a call and hopefully i'll have a good thanksgiving all right thank you we do need emotion we do need a motion to accept this financial statement i'll make a message till we approve the 2020-2021 funding all in favor margaret how do you vote hi thank you dr ayres it seems redundant to say this each time but i want to say it again on july 27th um the jackson county public schools board of ed voted to require a mask indoors during school hours north carolina legislation requires school districts to revisit the mass command date procedure monthly as i mentioned earlier in
032my superintendent's report i'm relaxing the mask mandate for indoor athletic and extracurricular activities after school effective tomorrow but it is time now for us to review our mask mandate for in school during school hours so each friday i provide all board members an update that includes the jcps positivity rate information from our local health department jackson county department of health and human services they provide a snapshot and then other information regarding statistics and case numbers so every friday these board members though you all as the general public don't know that they receive an update with that information i've also sent them articles regarding um regarding coded protocols and things like that so we all are very well versed and very much research based when we make decisions i want you to know that so at
033this time i want to offer the board um an opportunity to discuss yet again our mask mandate but i wanted to share some numbers with you so i don't typically share some visual things with you but i have included a few slides just to give you some additional information so next slide please so this is our cumulative student code covered data for the entire school year so what you see on the top row on the left that number 356 is the total number of student cases of covet we have had since i think our date was august the 10th that's when we began monitoring which was technically the week prior to school starting so that number next to it to the right because i'm sure you can't read it because i certainly can't from this
034far that number one is the number of student cases as of right now in jackson county public schools we have one student case of kobe right now so the far right and i can't read from here but those delineate the school and um board members will drop this in your folder so you will have it as well and that just shows which schools have the most or have had the most number of cases cumulatively since we began school the bottom row is the cumulative staff covered data so what you see on the left and jake you might have to read it no i have it right here i was going to say i can't read that form and i can't read mine we delineate between um staff we delineate between employees and then those um
035non-staff volunteer intern subs those types positions so that's what you see those numbers spread out there right now in the district we had until a little while ago we had only one staff case but we have two staff cases so total right now in our district we have three cases of code i think a lot of that much has to be said about the protocols we already have in place so graham would you click to the next side please these are our quarantine numbers i typically gather these on wednesday mornings because i report them to the silva herald so that they can publish them in the newspaper but for your benefit i wanted to make sure that we shared them tonight at the board so we have a total of 15 students and staff in
036quarantine at this time those numbers include our positives which are three um that you see there so um they are delineated by school typically over the last several weeks and maybe even month fairview has been the school that had the largest number and they have dropped drastically which the much much to be applauded for that and again remember that quarantining is only required um let me rephrase that students have to quarantine if they're not properly masked when they're exposed to students so if i mean use abigail if abigail was a positive student and she was masked and i was also masked but exposed her i would not have to quarantine as long as we're properly masked so i attribute that to make our numbers look really low in quarantine okay anybody got a question about
037that before i go to the next slide okay all right so this is a lot of words and i'm not going to spend that much time reading them i'm going to summarize them this is straight a quote from the strong schools north carolina public health toolkit and that is the guidance that we as public schools are following um and that we should be following so this guidance is created in collaboration with the north carolina department of health and human services so every county as well as the state as a whole is given a designation of high substantial moderate or low and so high and substantial the toolkit says that we should require face coverings when we are in the high or substantial category if you are moderate or low then um they they say that
038you can give that or you should offer that option of optional masking and there's some other wording about uh vaccination status in there too but the key for me and for the board i think has been all along as we've discussed is where we where we fall in that high substantial moderate or low so graham if you will click to the next slide so that is a map of north carolina um when you hover over it it shows you your state so uh your county forgive me shows your county we are right there on the far left you see where those yellow ones are that's not us we are to the right of that and so we are still considered a high um high risk area because of our positivity rate in jackson county not
039just jackson county public schools so and that was as of i think i popped that one in there about three o'clock this afternoon jake and i check it almost every day and um are closely monitoring that so the board will probably recall about a month ago the entire state state's read so we are moving as a state in the right direction and i feel good about that and i feel good about making progress incrementally so we can do the right thing for kids next slide and this is something that i don't know that everybody always looks at our board looks at it because i send it to you every friday afternoon this is straight from our jackson county health department and it shows what the positivity rate is in jackson county they update it every
040friday afternoon so what you're looking at is last friday november 12th update and we're at we're at a positivity rate of 5.1 now that's drastically changed um it's not where the counties that are moving to to orange and then yellow in the blue it's not where they are yet but it is progress so i wanted to make sure that the general public knows the data that you all as a board are looking at every week when you're making these decisions and forced to have this conversation again every month so with that said um i really leave it up to the board to have discussion about what we what we will proceed with or what we should do or what changes we might make concerning the masked mandate and i'm going to say it again during
041school hours so we're talking about during school hours and i think that um you know we are still red um so i think that and the mass are keeping us very low i do think that as as we progress we're giving the opportunity to these younger children to get vaccinated and then hopefully be able to um [Music] loosen up on the mass ordinance so that's how i feel how does everybody else feel here right now so i agree i mean i think the the reasons that our numbers have improved drastically are because of community spread going down but also the masking i don't feel comfortable yet removing the masks or making them optional um until students that choose to have the opportunity to be vaccinated and until we move out of that that red category
042yeah i agree i think we're still a couple months away from that i think we're moving that way but i don't think we've gotten there yet and i think it's too early to pull the mask do i have a motion to ask margaret i would like to say i would like to say that an i am all for mass continuing at this time because it seems to be doing what we need for it to do in our school system thank you margaret do i hear emotion i make a motion that we keep the mass mandate uh in place for the classrooms at this time a second all in favor margaret how do you vote i thank you very much for at this time um dr ayers the board of education meeting location for december so
043originally we had planned to have our board of ed meetings at schools and our principals principals were hoping to welcome you all in and showcase their school because of our coveted status over the last several months we have been pulling those meetings back um here to the boardroom i think we have sufficient space to do so um and sufficient safety protocols um the next meeting i made an error last month so we had fairview and blue ridge mixed up so the next meeting should be at fairview but i would like to ask the board for action to recall that meeting to happen here in december um at the central office and if i could also offer since half of the year we have already spent here and not visiting schools i would really um ask
044for action that we recall all of our board meetings to here at the central office for the remainder of this year and then we'll try again next year to have them at schools and that would make sure that we're being equitable and having the opportunity for all of our schools to showcase so i asked for a motion to recall all of the board meetings for the remainder of this year to here at the central office and then that if we if we agree on that that doesn't have to be an action item each month i hear a motion i make a motion that we recall the location of our board meetings um through the end of this year to be he'll held here at the board of education and hopefully next year we'll be able
045to visit the schools all in favor margaret how do you vote hi thank you okay at this time i'm mr cassandra and i don't care dr members of the board you guys had the opportunity to look in your in your in your folders at the policy updates um the final reading for one and two is when we had the first reading for last month the rest of the updates these all come from all except for one i'm going to talk about the one they all come from the updates from the high school for them the north carolina school board association and they've been reviewed by the appropriate director and make sure that they are consistent with current programming and in procedures um the one that i will point out that is different to that is
046is policy 5020 which is item number five 50 20 is visitors to school on board policy and that's the one that we had changed at the beginning of covid to limit visitors into our schools dr ayres and i would recommend to the board that we remove this section the first section that we had added before having pertaining to the to the pandemic and return to our traditional visitor policy to allow parents and other visitors to come into the schools under the same rules and regulations and guidelines that were in place prior to the pandemic the one thing that i would ask is that the board consider enacting that policy november the 29th which is the monday after the thanksgiving holiday so i'd be happy to answer any questions that the board has about the two
047for final reading or any of the updates thank you let me make um ask a question make this clear they will be held to the same mass mandates and things as students and staff correct that's right for visitors that come to our school but it's school operating hours don't hear a motion to accept these i make a notion that we accept the motion one and two on the final readings and then updates one through ten and emphasize on uh number five which is policy 50 20 that we will start um letting visitors back in the school with certain restrictions in place to begin november the 29th a second all in favor margaret how do you vote hi thank you thank you very much dr harris the next item is a field trip it is an
048out-of-state field trip and so um cory and i have been back and forth to clarify some things on this so you might remember that this is a field trip fairview elementary school for fourth grade students to go to ripley's aquarius um in gatlinburg and it is an overnight field trip and that's why we are presenting it to you um an action night item and approval so um this field trip was approved originally a couple months ago for april the 7th but what we have determined is that they are adding a second group because they have a large group and instead of taking them all at one time they're splitting the group so you already approved the april the 7th field trip a couple months ago so we're asking for approval of the very same field
049trip uh for fourth grade students to spend the night with the sharks on april the 28th i make a notion that we approve um fairview elementary school grade four uh field trip overnight to sleep with the sharks please appear in the gallery all in favor margaret how do you vote right thank you and dr us again some of us are a little jealous i'd like to go with the sharks um the next action item i have for you is about um athletic participation with jackson county early college students so i've typed up some information i want you to hear in the fall of 2008 jackson county early college opened its doors on the campus of southwestern community college we have had hundreds of students pass through those doors graduate and also graduate at the same
050time with an associate's degree from scc it is a valuable opportunity and it is a valuable partnership for our students families and our community initially students who attended jcec were permitted to participate in athletics at smoky mountain high school sometime around 2017 so i haven't been able to nail down that date as of yet sometime around 2017 um that practice was changed and any student who attended jcec was not permitted to participate in athletics what happened around that time was there was conversation with the north carolina high school athletic association about our our enrollment numbers that may put us in a different class so um regardless of what has happened in the past we are currently solving solidly in the 3a class so what i wish for and i've been talking at length with principal
051at jackson county early college is for those students to be permitted to participate in athletics beginning for with the 2022-2023 school year so that will be next fall this proposed change is what i believe is the best for students overall health and well-being and it's really simply the right thing to do and the fair thing to do um our jcec students already participate in coral band and other activities on the campus of smoky mountain high school so i am seeking action to once again allow jcec students to participate in athletics along with the smokey mountain high school students beginning in the 22-23 school year do i hear a motion i make information that we approve the jackson county early college athletics to participate with smoky mountain high school with the school year beginning 2022-2023 all
052in favor margaret how do you all right thank you and now dr eric that's something very exciting so i i can hardly contain myself i had to type myself notes so i would stay on track um so as you know our efforts to hire and retain positions across the district have been difficult over the last 18 months and that's a really kind way to put it it's been very very difficult for not just us as a school system surrounding school systems but also our local communities and businesses not only have we struggled to fill key roles such as bus drivers custodians and school nutrition staff we struggle to fill instructional positions so i've been working over the last four and a half weeks to determine a way to offer jcps employees a retention incentive i
053worked closely with miss walker in finance and and came to her weeks ago with a with a a wild idea that is hopefully coming to fruition um from there i felt like i was secretly telling people things and saying this is vegas don't tell it because i wanted to make sure that we were following the right protocol and taking the right steps to make sure that this could happen so next i went and met with laura deals who was director of our federal programs and she is the one who manages our essers funds that we were given um for learning loss and recovery so what we have done over the last um several weeks is craft a plan and bring it next to um to jake buchanan and terry and all of us have met
054together and we collectively agree that it's the right thing to do to offer a a retention incentive to the employees of jackson county public schools so what we have done is created and submitted a budget amendment that has yet to be approved by the state so i want to be clear that all of our work and all the initiative that we have tried to do to um retain our staff still has to have the stamp of approval of the state of north carolina and as of yet we don't have that but i want to give you a little uh a little data how about that um i think that the retention incentive is really necessary to ensure continuity of operations across all of our programs so we're not just talking about the instructional aspects but
055bus drivers custodians school nutrition our teacher assistants our teachers who are working directly with our students our assistant principals our principals coaches every single role that a person plays in jackson county public schools is very very important to the success of our students so here's some data since april of 2021 we have experienced 89 employee resignations or retirements since april of 2021 that's six months ago seven months ago um that are leading to job postings this is over 15 percent of the jcps positions that to have turned over in six months child nutrition has experienced 18 resignations across those six months bus driver has six positions that are obviously impacting some schools more than others but we're currently running multiple routes at some of our schools simply because we haven't been able to hire bus
056drivers assistant principals and teachers and custodians and everybody people who are driving a bus are driving a bus because they know we're in desperate need in fact um some of our central office employees have been driving a bus too custodial positions have experienced seven openings and that has impacted over half of the schools in our district classroom teacher vacancies across elementary middle and high school experienced 28 openings leading to a lot of turnover in schools which have impacted the level of experience that we have in our in our buildings as terry shared our bts um that number comes with turnover and often we are hiring beginning teachers which we love them and we want to have them but that also impacts our our teacher turnover rate our exceptional children's teacher positions experienced eight openings and
057many teachers who were hired for these positions had to receive emergency licenses due to limited high quality applicants and what that means is we hire somebody that that might not specifically be their um certification area but we need them to go get that certification because we need them in the classroom with our teachers as teachers forgive me teacher assistants and part-time instructional support positions and part-time social emotional support positions have also experienced 22 openings which greatly impacts the district's ability to provide instructional and social emotional support even more concerning is that of the 89 job postings 30 postings have yet to be filled right now this is 33 of the job openings which are not filled and are causing hardships across all departments that impact student success you know i i'm going to pause for
058my narrative here and say when there are 30 open positions what's happening is other people are picking up the slack there are other people who are driving a bus who that is not their primary role there are other people who are cleaning cleaning the bathrooms there are other people who are doing jobs that are not within their normal area but we know that we are all about ensuring the success of kids so we're all pitching in and we're all doing what we need to do to make make our kids successful so currently we have um three child nutrition positions open five bus driving positions five custodial positions three k-12 teacher positions um three exceptional children's positions um teacher position teacher assistant and instructional and seo support kind of all those all support wrapped into one
059we have 10 vacancies right now and all of these employees are the hardest ones to feel in some of these roles so that is why over the last several um several weeks i've been working to figure out a way to give our folks a bonus a retention bonus so in an effort to combat that um employee resignations and retirements through the remainder of this school year i am looking for um action to offer for every jackson county public school employee a 2 000 retention incentive that is for every employee of jackson county public schools regardless of full-time or part-time status or contract status every single employee in jackson county public schools would receive this incentive upon the approval of the state so i keep harping on that because i want our people to know we
060are fighting this battle for you we are working really hard to show that we see you we recognize the hardships you are facing and we really want to say here i see you i appreciate you and offer this retention bonus so um the paperwork has been submitted to the state um i propose that that retention bonus be paid in january not at the end of the year but in january of 2022 and we will work on an exact date um once we get final state approval for that um and that will be for any employee who is who is um employed by us as of today's date so resignations who have already been submitted would not will not be considered for that so any jcps employee employed as of today would receive this two thousand
061dollar retention incentive um and that is in the hopes that those folks have an intent and express an interest and intent to continue and work the remainder of the 21-22 school year so again um we see you to our people we see what you're doing and this board i hope recognizes all the hard work that they are doing um so one of the the pieces of the approval from the state has to be that the board approves that for jackson county public schools employees so i respectfully request action that a 2 000 retention incentive be paid in january 2022 for all jcps employees as long as it is approved by the state board this is a really exciting thing i think that our people have worked really hard and they've worked overtime if they're part-time
062they've worked full-time if they're full-time they've worked time and a half and this is so exciting that we might be able to do this upon the approval of the state um do we do i hear a motion i make a notion that we approve the retention incentive uh contingent upon the state's approval second all in favor margaret how do you vote hi thank you very much dr aaron for all your work time the personnel i think i did them last time is that okay with you okay all right recommendations resignations and coaching resignations so i'm asking for action to approve the employee recommendations 1 through 32 employee resignation 1 and staff non-staff and returning coach recommendations 1 through 19. i make a mention that we approve the employee recommendations 1 through 32 employee resignations 1
063staff non-staff and returning coach recommendations 1-19 second all in favor margaret how do you vote hi at this time um i will entertain a motion to adjourn our next regular scheduled business meeting of the board of education is december 14th at 5 30 at the jackson county um jackson county at jackson county central office it's at 12 30 or 5 at 5 30 it says well yeah my apologies okay okay 5 45. okay i'll make a notion that we go out of clue set or open session adjourn for the night all in favor thank you margaret hi you're out of here [Music] you