001you extra in your bag [Music] okay are you ready yes good good evening everyone and welcome to the jackson county public school um school board meeting of august 24th at the central office at this time i would like for everyone to stand and do the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the united states of america and see the republic for righteousness one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you do i have um a motion to approve the agenda i make a motion that we approve tonight's agenda thank you ali laird large how do you vote aye elizabeth cooper aye margaret mccray aye ms jamison having your place hi thank you um at this time it's um it's for it's open session for public comment um there if there has
002been people that have signed up um cora will go get them they get three minutes um time to speak and um and they cannot complain about individual employees or students poor could you go get them for me or i guess she did didn't yeah yeah okay oh so you should have in your packet house bill 324 so i wanted to address that today so let's kind of step through it right quick so uh this was passed by the nc house actually a couple months ago so the the first tenant i'll go through this quickly it says one race or sex is not inherently sphere to another race or sex an individual solely by virtue of his or her race for sex is not inherently racist or oppressive whether consciously or unconsciously an individual should not
003be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her sexual race an individual's work character is not necessarily termed by his or her race an individual so by virtue of his her race or sex does not bear responsible for actions committed in the past or by other members of the same-sex race so number six any individual solely to virtue of his or her race or sex should not feel discomfort guilt anguish or any other form of psychological distress and the last one the belief that the united states was created by members of a particular race or sex to apprais to oppress a race or sex is also prohibited so why am i talking about this why would the nc house have to come up and pass a bill this is
004this really is outlawing racism and sexism and if you see the title here it's in our schools this is in our public school system k through 12. you guys don't have the second page which i'm going to be reading from briefly so the lieutenant governor of north carolina has created a fax task force and it's really for students and teachers and parents to uh report basically what is on the very first page so it's like well what's going on in our public schools here so the reason i bring this up they call it indoctrination every one of these tenants on the first page is critical race theory so i know you've discussed it in the past and you had a statement last month but there's two pieces of critical race theory one which addressed is
005teaching accurate history in our school system you discuss that but this piece has never been addressed by the board so my request from the board and i'll work with any of the board members you know to write a resolution stating what is in this bill should be banned in our classes in our schools but it's just not teaching it's using it in hiring practices it's also doing training you know as far as critical race theory so that's the first ask is for the board to vote on banning critical race theory as it is defined in house bill 324 mr blaine you'll need to finish up quickly get your three minutes okay two more quick ask this the second ask is to distribute the task force information from the lieutenant governor to all the schools and
006the last ask is for transparency so as you can see your thick packets the people that are watching the people in the audience they sh they should have the information as long as it's not confidential there's some assets because i had to request stuff that was in your packets in june on social and emotional learning so we are not seeing the information that you've got so so i'm asking that to be put out on your website in advance and also put on youtube video thank you thank you sir thank you very much um is that the last person john edwards who would like to speak again about the judeo-christian bible being taught in our schools we'll get this okay thank you no i think it's ready no no dude i'll get it you fixed me
007and everything's okay yes you got it to set up clock and everything yeah okay whatever it is and dr edward you have three minutes um to address the board thank you very much for coming thank you for the privilege of being able to come and address the board there's been something that i'm extremely distressed about that's happening in our country because our children are not getting the kind of history they need to know about the founding of our country and about things that pertain to our constitution when we say all people were created equal all men were created equal and were endowed by the creator with inalienable rights we are not teaching them that yes you were in fact created and in the name of science we have stopped things from the bible which is
008unacceptable because biblically there's a lot of truth and science that has scientists to say hey we should have known this because this is in the bible already i think that much of a national distress that has occurred because of disease and acts of god you know a fire an earthquake a flood and our insurance people say that's an act of god but we aren't allowed to know about this god that we're referring to on our currency we have in god we trust our children need to know who this god is and that fact is in the bible and to deny our teachers and our students the right to use it freely i think is something that needs to be addressed and correct i have found that every area of life is touched by the ten
009commandments a relationship between man and god i've also found that if we don't have a proper relation with god we cannot have a proper relationship with our fellow human beings so when we deny them the right to know this we're depriving them beyond taking out of their life something that is too precious and valuable our founding fathers were willing to die and willing to live in order to be able to hand to their children this knowledge and our laws and our schools at one time even here in north carolina you had to be a bible believing christian older new testament in order to hold public office that's history and why we have separated ourselves from that is unacceptable we need to put it back you know in our children's minds that there is a god
010who does love us okay there's a god who loves us and he made a great effort to make that known to us and that effort is written in his word the bible thank you very much dr edwards and i'll keep coming back and i'll keep saying the same thing again and again because it's got to be good thank you [Laughter] thank you very much do i have a motion to um approve the open session minutes of the regular meeting of july 27th i make a nation that we approve the regular meeting minutes for july 25th dr ayers um you have your superintendent's report yes ma'am good evening madam chair vice chair and board of education members the start of school in jcps has been successful and very eventful in our first week we had both
011an early dismissal and a delayed start due to floods and poor weather conditions that impacted our schedule fortunately we were able to successfully feed all students prior to a 12 o'clock dismissal and both meals at school with a delayed start as well as transport every kid home safely a big shout out to josh francis and laura cave of transportation and school nutrition directors along with their outstanding teams thank you too to todd diller jackson county emergency management director for taking my many many many calls and collaborating during those really busy days school is looking the most normal it has in well over a year with a five-day week return and instruction taking place soon after the first day i can see that we're already making tremendous progress our staff and students are establishing schedules practicing
012good routines and working to create solid academic habits that will be beneficial throughout their career i would be remiss if i didn't thank our families our parents and our community for supporting students in so many ways in addition to having a normal schedule i'm excited about the academic progress and instruction that's occurring my goals for the district to achieve academic growth through a focus on early literacy are taking shape as we receive the new reading materials for kindergarten through eighth grade all the resources have yet to arrive but teachers are already diving into the materials professional development has occurred and will continue during the year full implementation is our goal for the fall semester once all of our materials are received in high school sports the blue ridge bobcats will have their third volleyball match
013this evening they've dropped the first two matches but they are improving daily the blue ridge men's soccer team will have their very first match tomorrow against summit the smoky mountain high school jb football team opened the season with a loss at asheville last week while the mustang varsity volleyball and men's varsity soccer teams are off to a 2-0 start and the varsity football team won big over cherokee friday night the men's and women's cross country team took first and second place in their meet at swain on saturday i also want to share how incredibly proud i am of the staff here in jcps we have been diligently planning organizing and anxiously preparing for students to safely return our open houses the first in person in two years were well attended and family seemed excited to
014return during our first day central office staff supported schools and car rider lines and other areas as needed i believe we were as eager to see students as the students were to see their teachers lastly please know that we are closely monitoring our covered numbers among both staff and students our board of education made an early wise decision at the july 27 meeting to require mass for all staff students and visitors while indoors while we recognize that this isn't what everyone desires it is key to allowing our students to remain in school currently our quarantine numbers are fairly minimal and i attribute this to the strong schools north carolina toolkit we are following that says students who are exposed while wearing a proper fitting mask are not required to quarantine for current information on covet
015and our numbers please check the jcps cover dashboard as new cases arise and that is the updated daily thank you board for choosing to keep our students safe and in school respectfully dr thank you very much at this time laura dills you have something to bring before the board thank you good evening madam chair members of the board dr ayers in your information packet you will have a copy of our agreement with mountain projects who serves as jackson county's head start entity if you review that agreement you will see that it provides that our exceptional children's pre-k staff will collaborate to assist with the child find effort provide screenings when necessary to community pre-k age students complete student evaluations for students who are suspected to have disabilities and coordinate services and monitoring for students if
016they are identified with a disability additionally the agreement provides that we will partner with mountain projects for our pre-k programs that we host here in jcps and the programs that they offer under head start for co-agency professional development to discuss common curricular programs and goals for better alignment for our incoming kindergarten students and to engage in transition to kindergarten activities with families whose children attend the head start program so we actually completed that this year in may virtually i was able to get on with parents from the head start program located at needler on the campus of western and they were so excited for their kids to be coming to kindergarten and they had great questions pets mountain projects provided a translator to help with questions from families as needed and it was a great
017virtual meeting um even though sometimes those can be difficult those families you know we're very engaged so we really appreciate that partnership and just having more students coming into our kindergarten classrooms ready um you know and having that experience so but this agreement does provide all of those collaborative efforts so do you have any questions about the agreement or our partnership with mountain projects now it's been a great partnership thank you very much thank you jake buchanan i think you have some things for us today tonight i do madam chair dr members of the board the first item for that i have for the board this evening is to inform you that we have declared a surplus a 1990 chevy uh activity bus so this activity bus is 31 years old and has uh served
018its purpose for the district and so we will put it for sale on gun fields any question or any tankers it is available on govdeals.com jackson county public schools if no other questions about that i would like to move on to the next item under your information and that's to discuss a little bit about the protocols um first of all i'd like to say uh you know we were one of the first we were the first school district in western north carolina to require masks i know that all of the districts surrounding us and most of the districts of the west have followed suit and have now done the same all of these things that i'm going to talk to you tonight is because the board has set a very clear expectation for dr ayers
019and myself and that's to keep kids in school five days a week that we serve our children the best when they're in our presence in our schools and that we we did a very good job during remote learning but we know we can always do a better job when our children are in front of us so all of the protocols um that i want to talk about are to do that and evidence of that is that we currently have eight staff members that are under quarantine for a positive case of covid and 38 students uh have tested positive the other thing i'd like to say as i talk about some of these is all of these guiding documents that i'm going to share are the gentleman earlier mentioned about being transparent for the public well
020all of our coded documents are on our website so i would encourage everyone parents should regularly be going to the jackson county public schools website jcpsnc.org to be able to to get all sorts of information but specifically about code and at that covid site on our website we have daily updated information about how many positive cases we have staff and students in our schools which is information that we know that parents want to have also our guiding documents that schools are using in conjunction with the health department to make determinations about whether whether or not a student must be quarantined i specifically point out the north carolina toolkit that dr ayers referenced earlier and that document particularly pages 6 through 18 and that document in its entirety is on our jcps website in the code
021section but specifically pages 16 through 18 layout numerous scenarios of a student or a staff member testing positive or being exposed in different scenarios and what should happen next we have also developed because we understand that that's not necessarily the easiest document to interpret so we have had our nurses working in conjunction with the health department who have also given a final authority and a stamp of approval on two documents one is basically a summary document that puts it in language that's a little bit friendlier to understand and then also a flow chart that explains if this then this but again all of these were developed this is not dr ayres and i sitting around to come up with plans these are all plans that are based on a north carolina toolkit these are plans
022that were developed by our nurses in conjunction with the nurse and the health director at the jackson county health department with their final stamp of approvals in all of the quarantines or a joint venture between jackson county public schools and the health department to look at the relevant information to look at the contact tracing information and to make the best determination on one how to keep kids in school but also to make sure the kids are quarantined and staffed or quarantined to protect the other students in that school the thing that i cannot stress enough is how important masks are to keeping children in school or whatever interpretation you want to make with a mask the rhea is the reality is is a mask is like captain america's shield nothing is getting through it if
023you are a student if a student is properly wearing their mask there is no scenario where they will have to quarantine other than showing symptoms if you show symptoms then it doesn't matter if you've been vaccinated or if you have a mask on or how many feet you are from anybody but if you're minding your own business you have your mask on as a student you cannot be quarantined if you have your mask on so that is why and the wisdom the wisdom board and other districts to follow suit to say to keep kids in school they need to be wearing the masks when a student is not able to wear a mask and there are legitimate times when a child should not be wearing a mask like when they're trying to eat their lunch
024the three feet rule comes in into play for students as long as students are separated by three feet they also cannot be considered a close contact if someone is tested positive in their classroom in their small group or anything like that so the mast is the best line of defense and then distance this all should sound very familiar because it comes back to our three w's wear your mask weight three to six feet and wash your hands these are all things that we talked about a year and a half ago they're still applicable to keeping kids in school for adults the vaccine is the best way to keep them at work the vaccine is the best way to keep them at work the alternative that is socially distance six feet one of the questions that
025we've gotten is a frequently asked question that's in the toolkit is that if i have tested positive as a student or a staff member i've tested positive and then i come back to school and i come back to work and i am in close contact with somebody who is tested positive do i have to quarantine again after being testing positive myself and you don't for 90 days after testing positive you're basically you cannot be in close contact again now if you're still showing the symptoms you shouldn't be back at school but if the symptoms are over you're over covered and you come back you have 90 days and you wouldn't be quarantined again this is spelled out in the toolkit this is not a jackson county public schools says north carolina department of health and
026human services rules one of the things that i will point out is that we also are very excited to be playing sports again um we uh as dr ayers reviewed very successful on our high school teams our school-based teams are going to be back at it this year too but we also need to be careful and conscientious of our students health when they return from from covet and they're going to go play and so the high school athletic association has developed a set of rules on return to play after coven and also our local hospital harris regional who is our provider for all of our athletic teams families can choose to use other folks but for our athletic programs they're served by by harris regional hospital they have developed a return to play for and
027i'm not going to go into great detail about it but just in in layman's terms if i've had coven and i'm oh and i've been knocked down i've been out then i shouldn't the first i should come back i should not be running suicides i don't want to be running suicides anytime but i definitely should not be running them after i've come back from coda this protocol ensures that our children are safe once they have gotten over coded now we do understand that some kids and parents will want to get back to play and that's great you should be competitive i was i was taught to want to get knocked down to get right back up and go at it but we've got to make sure our kiddos are safe and so we are requiring
028these hairs protocols for all of our student athletes middle school through high school regardless if they saw a harris provider or if they their provider is down on the reservation or their provider is over in haywood county all student athletes in jackson county public schools will have to go through the harris protocols before being able to return back to play i know a lot of folks are have asked a lot of questions about our cleaning routines we are still spraying bio essence that's the product that is uh super safe smells like listerine um and we're still spraying that we're spraying it with the foggers we're doing the buses once a day and spraying it all over the schools we've also purchased large amounts of hand sanitizer we've still got a 55 gallon drum of what
029seems to be pure moonshine that we're putting in some of the hand dispensers um but we are still encouraging that third w of the three w's and frequently hand washing is best practices and teachers are encouraging them we are super excited so districts have the opportunity to sign up for free code testing through the state of north carolina we did that we have signed up for free coveted testing we're working with our vendor now the nurses are coordinating basically every school will have access to two days worth of testing after school every single week and that will be available for students and staff and in some situation even family members of students whatever a test would do to benefit to keep a kid in school we want to make sure that that mask i'm sorry
030that that test is available and then the last thing that i'd like to to share with the board or really the public is what are what's going to happen for students um that are having difficulty with wearing their mask well just like with any behavior that we want to modify we're going to start by having conversations with students we're going to remind the student we're going to talk about why the masks are important and there's no reason more important other than it keeps you from getting sent home from being quarantined as a close contact because mask is like captain america's shield so but sometimes that doesn't work just like with any other behavior so we do have to have some consequences and so after this has become ceased to become a classroom situation where a
031teacher is trying to instruct that student on what the proper behavior would be the first instance after that the administrator will convey a warning call the parent and ask the parent to either come to the school and have the student to wear their mask or take the student phone for the rest of the day we will also give to that family some educational material on why masks are important um and why we've uh while we want them and need them to wear their mask on the second instance that this will happen it will be the same conversation except it'll be an in-person conversation or possibly a virtual conference and then again we're going to talk about and try to educate the child on why this is important understanding why is extremely important and then on
032the third instance then at that point the student has failed to comply with established safety procedures and we have consequences in our code of conduct and have had these for for many many years for any other safety procedure that's not followed and the first incidents or the third instance would result in a day of out-of-school suspension a fourth would be three days of out-of-school suspension and then a fifth would be five days of out-of-school suspension we really don't expect that to happen very much we have great kids you guys have heard me say that before we have wonderful children um we are very blessed to have the kids that we have in our community um they are very conscientious about protecting one another and wanting to create a safe and healthy environment for their peers
033and their friends so we do not anticipate having large problems with this we've not had large problems with this thus far but we do want to make sure that the consequences are established uh a thousand kids heard me say over the years um choices and consequences choices and consequences so any questions about any of that information from the from the yes absolutely that harris information on the both the high school athletic association forum and the harris regional hospital forum available on the the website for families to take a look also on that same website we encourage family members if you have questions if something's not clear if you've heard about something happened to your niece and your nephew was handled one way at this school and yours was this way we understand we all we've
034all grown up here and understand how we got for elementary schools um and cousins at all of them on the website is the contact information for the coveted liaison at every single one of our elementary schools that's the person that you would call to report if your child or somebody in your family um or if you have any questions about something um related to code that you that you contact but we do have the wealth information on that website i can't stress enough um to point people in that direction to be able to get the information that's a great question any other questions thank you jake and i'm glad that we have that available for everybody now that's good absolutely thank you all very much laura gills um we have um the consolidation of federal
035program applications thank you again um in your packet and your board packet you will also have a copy of our application for our consolidated federal programs grant we also refer to those programs as our title programs and they are authorized they have been reauthorized under the every student succeeds act so we continue to be eligible to apply for title 1 title 2 title 3 title 3 significant increase and title 4 funds beginning last year in december and carrying on to this year we are no longer we no longer qualify for rural low-income schools grant and that is because jackson county has moved in the tier set forth by the north carolina department of commerce we are no longer a tier one county we are in tier two county so we are not eligible for that
036funding anymore but we will monitor if it becomes available again if that tier status changes so all together across title one through title four funds uh for this school year we are eligible to apply for one million six hundred twenty five thousand seventeen dollars um most of our grants this year actually had a slight increase we were very concerned that they could be decreased as our federal government allotted out funds to schools and multiple other funds including esther's that you all have heard about throughout this year but we were really pleased that our numbers stay the same or have a slight increase and i'd like to remind you all and our families at home that almost all of those grants uh the funding formulas are based on the number of students in our district who
037qualify for free or reduced meals so i know this year it's really great that all students qualify for no-cost meals that's a wonderful benefit to our families but we still desperately need those families to complete the free and reduceable application um laura cape has presented before that also gives them the benefit um you know for some additional ebt or other benefits that you can speak specifically about but as a school system that benefits their child that we receive it into federal money which directly impacts your child so even though your child is uh you know having no cost meals even if your child has lunch most days like my child does you can still go on and complete the form because that benefits them in many ways so sorry i wanted to put that plug
038in there while we were talking about this um so all of those funds from uh title one through title 4 have very specific allowable uses within each grant but they all have to go towards one of our district goals for our consolidated federal programs and those are to increase academic achievement for students in both reading and math to maintain a high level of staff proficiency by providing support and training to staff for high quality instruction to increase our parent and family engagement with families to interact with their school and jcps at large to promote english language development and proficiency for students who are identified as english language learners and to increase or maintain our cohort graduation rate for our jcps seniors so jackson county typically has a pretty high graduation rate but our efforts are
039either to increase that or maintain it if it's at a high level so you don't have any questions about the application the use of funds or the goals for those funds okay if not i would like to ask for your approval for the jcps consolidated federal funds application do i hear a motion i make a notion that we approve the consolidated federal program application say allie laird have you vote hi elizabeth cooper hi margaret mcrae all right wes jameson hi everyone clayton thank you very much thank you ms stilts um at this time jason watson good evening madam chair members of the board dr ayers should have in your packet four different proposals for uh roof maintenance and construction maintenance so these are the folks that do all of our roof maintenance on our school
040buildings and as well as bus garage here two of them are for the annual maintenance blue ridge colorway valley and then one is for repair here one section of the board or before the building and putting some cedar on the roof do i hear a motion i make a motion to approve the annual reef inspection and maintenance service okay thank you dr ayers i think you have some things to bring before us i do the next item on the agenda is a change of location for our september 28 fourth meeting so at our june board meeting we presented a schedule for where our board meetings would be held we had hoped in june that our coded numbers across the county would remain low and that we would be able to return to a practice that
041was in place for some time where we would hold board of education meetings at various schools across the district and we approved that june the 22nd however with our numbers rising we want to be as safe as possible and certainly don't want to contaminate any schools so our september 28th meeting i um would ask for your approval that instead of having that at the predetermined jackson community school we go ahead and bring that meeting back here in the same format that we're practicing right now so because this had already been approved by you all um i asked for your approval to move that with also the caveat that at each meeting we'll look toward the next meeting to see if we need to make that change so i ask for your approval to move the
042september 28 board meeting back here to the central office do i hear a motion i make a notion that we change the location of the september 28th school board meeting back here to the central office [Music] great so i have the next item on here the final item before we get to personnel so the final item is a proposal for painting our central office parking lot um we worked really hard at doing a little refresh here at the central office but also thinking about safety and what it looks like here so before you or in your packet you have an estimate for parker paving to completely rehaul the parking lot here it means um it needs not just a patching but it needs a complete redo and so the estimate is around 124 000 with
043some change in there um we would like to use the funds that are indirect costs that we have initially proposed would be used for purchasing of the bus cameras however we have been able to purchase the bus cameras for all of our buses that was presented last month i'm using esser funds because it is a matter of maintaining co coded safety protocols and so we will be able to purchase those cameras that were around 116 um out of esser's funds which then frees up the money that we would like to use um to pave the parking lot here get a little refresh but also to draw parking spaces and directional arrows and signs telling people where to park so that is 124 000 and some change um and that will be through parker taving so
044i ask that you all approve for us to do this and it would occur if you approve in mid to late october any questions about that thank you do i hear a motion for that i make a motion that we approve the um paving of the central office parking lot saying hello hi elizabeth cooper i'm margaret mcgrath hi wes jameson hi abigail hi thank you can you ask one question yes ma'am can we see about additional lighting for the parking lot closet actually that's part of our plan i want to get the parking lot caved and then get the additional lighting which will add to the things that we need okay we definitely need the lighting yeah absolutely should mention that they're going to phase it so that it won't close yes so uh in
045talking with parker paving they are going to make sure that they don't have to shut our parking lot down completely and so they will do it in stages so you may have to come in one side of the parking lot while they do the the usual exit side and then they'll switch so that we'll still have access to our parking lot um if need be we can also contact right next door the health department and ask them if we can have permission to park there if need be so the project will probably take about a week plus not exactly sure how long because there's a lot of pre-work before laying new asphalt they're going to have to pull up everything that's here and start start new again so we have a couple options for parking
046that the building will still be accessible thank you very much that's a great that will be a great addition um so that nobody gets flat tires in some of the potholes um and now we go to the personnel agenda dr ayres [Music] the personnel action items are listed um we have we need to make sure we have several employee recommendations and so we're looking for approval for employee recommendations 1 through 42. don't have emotion forgive me and then i have employee resignations which are 1 through 14 and employee separations and only one of those i make a notion that we approve employee recommendations 1342 employee resignations 1 through 14 and employee separations 1. elizabeth cooper hi margaret mcgrath aye wes jameson all right thank you very much um if at this at this time i
047would like to um tell everyone that the next regularly scheduled business meeting will be at the board of education um and i don't have the date exactly let me say it's not on september 28th 28th um and um do i hear a motion um to adjourn i make a motion that we adjourn tonight's meeting hi eliza cooper hi margaret mcgregor thank you everyone for joining us safe travels home