001good evening to everyone we thank you all for coming out to our meeting on tonight i say good evening to dr lincoln to this board at this time i'll call the meeting to order we're going to ask annabelle smith to do our pledge and moment of silence please stand and join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all um as we go into our moment of silence i would just ask that we remember our teachers and staff and students who are preparing to go back to school and be with those who are feeling anxious about the start of school for whatever reason and just ask you
002to join me in a moment of silence thank you thank you at this time we have a covered update we are glad to invite dr john civernell via zoom with us on tonight pitt county health director give us a brief comments on his recommendation good evening show you where we are um i'm a little bit under the weather myself tonight not sure what's going on here but i'm a little bit of force and a little bit basically for that um numbers tonight with the original strain and code we knew that her case we encountered there were probably two and a half actual infections out there in that burden of disease with belgium um we know that for every one case there's probably four or five some people say it may be as high as receptive
003infection for every infection for every case that we have and the level of chronic is unknown but it's not that homogeneous much greater was um [Music] november we don't see your screen yet um he's sharing himself his video let me stop sharing okay here how's that you do the whole presentation now yes thank you okay sorry for that all right so as i said i want to point out that you know cases represent a portion of the burden of actual disease or actual infection but they don't represent every case that occurs in our community with the illegal state of coda we thought that we had pressure data to support this for one case for every case that we counted there were two half infections out there with delta um believed there's a lot of work
004going on to try to figure that out some people suggest i've got a colleague defensive maybe it's higher actual cases occasionally counted and the roman cross at this point is unknown but it's thought to be greater than delta and i think it will be greater than delta in the final analysis this next graph is our pitt county data this is our epidemic curve on a week-to-week basis from the start of the academic through the week of december to the week before christmas and you see this is the end of the first week back at the beginning about june and then delta arrived and we very quickly passed through the delta epidemic of the summer in the fall and then after the thanksgiving holiday we had a surge in cases but that surge was relatively relatively
005flat our cases went up but they stayed relatively flat for the first few weeks after thanksgiving i'm going to show you the next this is where omicron starts to enter the story if you look at the the week of this would be the week of december 11th there's a very narrow band at the bottom that is the first week that omicron showed up in this regional sequencing that's run by the brody school of medicine this is the second week and this is the third week i don't get this report until tuesday so i'm sorry i'm showing you last week's report but this comes out every tuesday so i can only show you last week's report by the end of last week the state felt that over 50 percent of cases were omicron um i've heard
006some people saying today that they think maybe it's over 90 percent at this point but this is very quickly this is courtesy of bill cleve he's our regional hospital epidemiologist december 11th the first week that omicron was here represented 0.7 percent of samples collected the second week it was 3.9 of samples collected in the most recent week the week of december 20th was 23.64 of samples collected so we'll see where it comes out in this week's um surveillance report but i expect that it'll be over 50 maybe over 50 percent by by a good margin this is the the daily sort of data scorecard that i run monday through friday the state doesn't update data on the weekends and they don't update it on the holidays so this is where we were on december 29th
007and i want you here's our cases over the preceding 14 days that was an average of 49.4 about 50 cases per day and our percent positivity was 9.6 percent our case fatality rate has been at at 0.5 um if you adjust it and i won't necessarily talk about the adjusted but if you adjust it at that conservative two and a half times it falls to 0.2 and our percent positivity was 9.6 so look at the cases over 14 days the percent positivity and our cases per thousand 3.7 so this was the 29th on the 30th we had gone up from that number go back 692 we had gone up to 1335 cases over the preceding 14 days or up to about 95 cases per day our cases per thousand were up to 7.2 and our
008percent positivity had risen to 14.7 percent after the the new year's weekend so as of today we've risen to active cases over the past 14 days that's about 155 cases per day 11.8 cases per thousand in the county and our percent positivity is at 20 i think that's the highest that's ever been uh for pitt county um as a whole there was one um that i calculated very early in the epidemic when the numbers were small where i had about 25 but since the state has taken over the data dashboards for everybody i think this is the highest number we've seen in the course of the epidemic so i'm going to stop this share of this for a minute and then i want to go to the state website and walk you through some things
009on the state website can you see that should say coven 19 north carolina dashboard yes yes yes yes you see that yes okay so here's the summary page and you see the state this was the the high day for the state 19 000 cases today was down but i think that it was down today because of lack of testing over the holiday weekend i suspect that will be back up tomorrow or wednesday same thing with completed tests you can see completed tests were down through the holiday weekend hospitalizations across the state have gone up fairly rapidly in the past couple of weeks uh 2722 across all hospitals in the state and if you go to the bottom map this is where this shows it has rates so that's a rate per 100 000 or if
010we go to cases i'm sorry this is when it sits a little bit it's it defaults back to its base here's that 2174 number and we're still at 146 deaths so as a rate um per 10 000 they're saying 120 per 10 000 so within rounding errors of of the calculations i use a little different number for our population here's our testing and testing is tends to be a leading indicator for covet activity both going up and going down hours have been fairly flat so if we go to pitt county you can see that we have been fairly flat uh there for a couple of weeks and then very abruptly after the holidays start their climb and our 14-day rolling average in percent positivity is now at 20 which i think is an all-time high
011since the state has been presenting the data in this format take you quickly to our cases give that a second to load and i'll show you the state curve first this is the state curve this is the delta wave coming down through the holidays and here you can see the abrupt take off again down today but i think that's an artifact of of little testing being done over the holiday weekend i suspect that i'll be back up um this is by date of report which sometimes is misleading this is by date of collection so again by data collection you can see that these spikes surpassed the height of the pandemic wave in and the delta wave of last summer and fall if we go to our county data our curve looks pretty similar to the
012state so here's the pick county epidemic curve this was the ecu spike of summer 2020 this is the january spike of the the spring wave of 2021 our nadir around that june 19th the low point in the june teens and then here's our our delta wave we came down and we were up and fairly level until omicron took off and we've just gone through the roof with omicron cases here so it's a very brisk activity with omicron cases since since the holidays i'll show you the the demographic view for this this is the state so let me get to get to pick county and show you the county view demographically first so the first curve shows cases by race and ethnicity and that you see on a week-to-week basis you can look at that and
013you can see the totals for the pandemic in the right column um same thing for or this is race this is ethnicity for for our hispanic or latino citizens residents here's our age breakdown you can see the bulk of our cases are in the 25 to 49 year old age group the 18 to 24 year old age group and then the the older workers the 50 to 64 year old or more mature workers in that age group um our school age about four percent of our cases have been in the 15 to 17 year old age group six percent have been in the 10 to 14 year age group percent in the five to nine year old age group and then only about two percent in our preschool age group that two to four year
014old age group um so relatively small numbers below the school age although we see some activity certainly in the in the daycare centers we also interestingly in in pitt county have quite a gender gap uh with about 12 more cases in women than in men i think a lot of this has to do with with more women in education health care in pitt county and the likelihood that women are more likely to get tested than men are probably explains that gender gap let me show you the vaccinations tab here and this is all publicly available through ncdhhs so you can go look at this yourself if you if you choose to these are states summary vaccination totals this is the pit county summary data so right now in the county we have eight thousand eight
015hundred forty three individuals with one dose ninety two thousand um three hundred forty four who have received um who are fully vaccinated fully vaccinating meaning having completed the primary series of one or two doses one dose of jnj or two doses of pfizer or moderna this does not can't count booster doses yet as a percentage of our population 55 percent of our population is received at least one dose and 51 percent of the population is fully vaccinated if we go to the demographics i can show you the age breakdown i know that was one of the questions you had and by age we're actually not too bad this is the state data this is by race um this is by ethnicity we've actually with hispanic folks both in the county and at the state level
016we've got them vaccinated at higher rates than non-hispanic folks so that's kind of a win this is the state age breakdown you can see how rapidly the the five to 11 year old group has climbed with across the state about 21 percent of kids being vaccinated and then increasing percentages with increasing age if we go to the county view and this is for one dose you can show it either way i'm showing you the one dose view um so here's pitt county here's our our demographic breakdown by race here's our demographic breakdown by ethnicity hispanics again are six percent ahead of non-hispanics in in pitt county in terms of getting vaccinated and then here's our age breakdown and we've already since became available towards the um the end of november beginning of november we've vaccinated
01716 of our children 5 to 11 have one dose 42 percent of our our children 12 to 17 have at least one dose 35 percent of our children 18 to 24 they fall off a little bit they probably could be encouraged to get some vaccination there are vaccinating you can see increasing percentages with increasing age so i think that's good news from the standpoint of vaccine distribution and it's slow and steady but there is uptake in the in the younger age groups across providers in the county and a vaccination we've got a seven point gender gap with with women being seven points more vaccinated than males are in the county so i'm going to stop there for a second does anybody have questions about the data that i can answer at this point thank you
018what's the difference um i can show you that if you want to see that carolyn thank you thank you so if we go to people fully back fully vaccinated for fit pit county i can't talk tonight folks it changes the way this looks a little bit um when we go to our ages um for five to eleven we're about nine percent fully vaccinated as a cumulative total so you lose a couple of percent and that's huge excuse me um carol that's usually because of the timing with the three week gap between the first and the second dose so first doses are always a little higher than the fully vaccinated but there's that five to eleven twelve to seventeen um and so uh the the teal is the total percent of total population vaccinated so six
019percent of that age group for 12 to 17 they represent eight percent of our county population um so that's a drawback 12 with one dose of 12 17 to 6 percent yep for 12 to 17. in the two weeks and then for five to eleven seven drops [Music] you're welcome any other data questions folks i know that's a lot to pack into 10 or 15 minutes here i'm going to stop that and go back to my other slides finish up here and full screen where we were and then my recommendations to you again understanding that that no covet 19 intervention is is perfect we know that vaccination isn't perfect masking isn't perfect natural immunity is imperfect contact racing has its limitations as well isolation and quarantine has there has its limitations in terms of stopping
020spread but where are we with this with this omicron wave washing over us i really think that you need to reinstitute mandatory masking in all pick county schools through at least the end of january um i think we'll probably be on the back side of omicron by the end of january beginning of february we expect this to be a short but intense wave of covet 19 and and we need to get to the back side of this with mask on mass contact in schools it still allows us to exempt the non-infected party from quarantine if there is if you don't mandate mass then we have a party who's exposed and is unmasked that individual is subject to quarantine so if we have that guarantee of mask on mass that helps us keep the quarantine numbers
021down and then i think once we're past the omicron search certainly can go back to a mass optional situation and give give parents the choice of whether or not they want their children masked while they're in school and i think i'll stop there and take your questions um what is the breakdown of the but this is town meeting and it is for them um would you you how would you categorize the you know obviously you've seen the data but i have limited limitations when it comes to breaking down the recommendation you're making tonight versus previous regulations in terms of the the climate climate what's going on sort of the impact your last meeting was the same night of the border county commissioners and i was speaking to the board of county commissioners dr lanker and
022i talked about that and i'm not trying to throw him in under the bus in any way shape or form my recommendation when he asked if i could support going to mask optional i said yes i said ethan i think you need to wait until probably after martin luther king weekend because regardless at that point omicron was not here yet that we knew of the peak of flu and other respiratory viral diseases is early january in that time frame when the kids come back to school and we expected to have a lot of folks in quarantine so so it there was a caveat in there i'm not sure if that was communicated again not in any way shape or form throw anything under the bus but i think right now we have a surge coming
023at us that is going to require the quarantining of many children when we go back to school if we are if we have unmasked students mixed with math students and then we have to look at that ramification of when that child when that student is quarantined somebody has to stay home with that student and that takes mom or dad out of work and many of our folks work in the health care system here and our health care system is already strapped with folks uh healthcare workers who are sick themselves so um i think in order to help protect the healthcare system to help protect the community to ask you to to go mandatory mass until we get to the backside of omicron is a very reasonable thing okay yeah that was communicated very well i
024think thanks for watching [Music] definitely definitely you know what goals believe me the the goal posts keep moving on my end as well um you know last december we were told if we got vaccine and we got people vaccinated that all of this would be behind us and the vaccines were less effective than we thought or less proficient as we were thought um so the goal posts have moved and i apologize for that many effect infections of public health concern or medical concern we've had decades or centuries of experience with covert we've had about two years of experience with so there's a lot that we don't know about kovajet and a lot that we're still learning about kovid omar crown itself does seem to be less harmful in general to people but there are certainly
025around around the world some omicron deaths reported age remains the single biggest risk factor for a severe outcome from covid but the behavior of this virus in the individual is unpredictable so there are people who you would think looking at their age and risk factors would be at very high risk for a bad outcome who have a very mild case and then there are other folks who are young with very few risk factors who have a severe case um so on an individual basis the behavior of the virus is unpredictable so it's not a it's not an infection that anybody wants to go out yet um it's not like the 50s and 60s when people had chickenpox parties for their kids to get it get the chicken pox and get it over with we just
026don't know on an individual basis who's going to have a severe case who won't we have an idea of what their risk level is but that risk level is a population number it applies to the population not necessarily to the individual another question yeah dr silvernell can you hear me this is more yep i've been here i've been hearing today on on the news uh off and on that the cloth masks do not work with this barrier and i know when i go divide it now i believe the case is uh when i go visit someone from a church or whatever i can't use my cloth bass they give me one is that have you heard those that same information there are some reports and it and it depends on the cloth mask what they're
027saying is that it should be a three layered mask some of the cloths matte cloth masks are some of them are not novident has gone to that in in the hospital i think they were supposed to do that in their outpatient facilities i was actually in divide an outpatient facility this afternoon and they did not give me a hospital mass to wear um so that may not be being applied consistently across the system again not not being critical of it and just real world experience there there are some reports that that some homemade mass or cloth mass may not be effective in this but the idea of the mask is to catch the individual secretions and my power is flickering a little bit here so if i if i drop out i will call back
028in if they're the mask is to catch your secretions and keep your secretions away from others and most mass will do that they don't provide a lot of protection to the wearer from others but they protect others from the wearer okay any other question dr stephen i have a question james tripp for those that made him [Music] home test kits and they test positive they um social distance they quarantine do they have to have a test from your office or the hospital because i don't know if they get reported to your office if they do the home test kits trip the home tests are exempted from public health reporting so we will accept a home test if it's positive so if a parent were to call one of the school nurses and say hey little
029johnny is positive on his home on my home covet test we would presume that little johnny had covid and keep him home under the current isolation and quarantine guidance okay and that it would be the current isolation guidance since he has the infection so we we would accept the home test as evidence of infection but not as as evidence of not being infected since there's no third party verified report so those we do not test people to clear them after infection to return to work it's a time-based clearance to return to work or school so those that do test positive with the home test kits that do not report it to your office their their number's not counted correct their number would not be counted in our case count that's correct thank you any further
030question for dr stephen thank you you had one more oh okay i didn't know just one one i'm i'm honestly not trying to belabor but obviously a lot hangs on this and um so i want to make sure that i'm understanding that that i'm hearing that you are giving us your strongest recommendation on this is this also the advice that when asked you're giving to the the county commissioners as well as um to the staff in your office and that i i assume that that this is your strongest recommendation that anybody who asks is going to get i spoke with our new county manager this morning and requested her to send out a reminder to all county employees about the county mass policy pitt county employees are required to be masked when they cannot be
031socially distanced and they are in a county facility or a county vehicle for that matter in our in the health department we're a healthcare facility so we've never been removed from the mass mandate um all of our client-facing folks are master behind barriers or both usually and in our clinics we're always mass and the patients are masked unless they refuse or can't be masked for that intervention so so we do have that policy in effect at the health department and across the pit county offices as well any further questions all right thank you dr stevena hope you feel better attention at this time we'll entertain a motion pertaining to our mass we don't do that now we're gonna do that again okay all right god bless you all right thank you get ready all right
032are there any adjustments to the agenda tonight i move that we approve the agenda as written seconded the move and second that we approved the agenda all in favor consent items public expressions i'm sorry again those of you that are speaking on tonight for individuals you have three minutes if you're representing a group that's five minutes and we're going to ask as i did on the last meeting that you'll be respectful to the board and to those that are present and to those that are listening we are here to hear what you have to say and it can be said in a professional way and we just ask that you refrain from any profanity and that we do this in a orderly fashion first we have diane ruffino and you're representing what group the coalition
033for public education can you hear me yeah okay thank you hello members of the board my name is dianne ruffino and i live here in greenville i'm here to represent the group coalition for public education a group i recently founded we would like to ask you all to please please please vote to adopt the revisions to policy 7720 we hope you have been listening to pitt county parents and concerned citizens who have been opposed to and have voiced their opinions against critical race theory other race-based policies and progressive gender studies there should never be a place in our public school system for the teaching and emphasis on race and on skin color racism racism is a plague its harmful effects spread easily it is an offensive policy that is divisive and serves no useful purpose
034as derek wilburn who happens to be african-american said let racism die the death it deserves why can't we do that why can't we all agree to do that your policy revisions are certainly a small step in the right direction two men joined my tea party recently mr dexter liu and mr winston liu no relation why did they join well both are originally from communist china winston was imprisoned and tortured but eventually escaped canada and then to the united states dexter's family escaped to taiwan which is nationalist china recognizing marxist policies and political elements here in the united states they want to get involved to expose them for what they are and to help fight against them sue george who ran for the u.s house in 2016 from the four fourth congressional district knows firsthand about
035indoctrination she also grew up in communist china she said critical race theory is a sneaky way to cave in america's society american society because it will create a division that will be exploited by political ambition in order to defeat a nation you first have to divide it a united nation is difficult to defeat a nation is united when its citizens are united by a common love and pride in their country but the goal of those intending to fan the flames of racism even now in the 21st century is to divide them starting as early as in their public school years and to make them distrust and even hate their neighbors to be ashamed of their heritage and to have disrespect for their country this cannot be a function of the public school system also we
036as a group do not support a full masking policy master completely ineffective at stopping something as microscopic as a coronavirus from reaching a child's nose or mouth and the overwhelming number of children cannot who are not affected with covid so the overwhelming number of children are not affected with covid and so they pose no threat whatsoever again we the coalition for public education asked most sincerely for you to please vote in favor of those revisions to policy 7720 thank you thank you next chris tomlin my name is chris tomlin um i've been here many times before i feel like bernie sanders once again coming to ask you for permission for something but uh i believe there's no surprise that what's going to happen tonight it absolutely throws nobody for a loop that has been here
037before we know this was the game plan all along um for somebody to tell me on this board in september that that massacre will go to go away in december only to turn back around and reinstate them in january is the absolute yoyo that you are putting these children through everything that you are doing to these kids has nothing health-wise in mind last time i was here people come up here and they they stated their profession so that they could validate themselves why i'm a welder nobody cares right okay we're good on that but what i am is i'm a father i'm a mentor to many children i am a coach to many young children i care about children's well-being people who get paid for the health of children most of the time their opinions
038matter nothing to me because they're looking for another paycheck especially when it comes to the coveted stuff because all that is is kick back after kickback after kickback just like many of the stuff that's going on in the school system is kickback after kickback after kickback because we get vaccinated and we get to mask them up and we get points for it and it makes no sense and we're continuously putting our children through a yo-yo we're continuously making them go through what the women in afghanistan are now going through now that the taliban is taking back over you're isolating them from their individuality and completely destroying them as individuals you are taking kindergarteners all the way to to to your 12th graders who who aren't even wearing their masks correctly and nothing is said but
039you're you're taking them and absolutely destroying every opportunity for them to be individuals you're destroying the opportunity for parents to be there and be a part of things that are special to them and and nobody cares absolutely nobody cares so i've come to you on many times to to continuously fight this issue and i'm gonna keep showing up my kids aren't affected by this but i'm gonna keep showing up because the ones that i help mentor the ones that i care about the ones that are in my neighborhood and the ones that i've never spoke to before deserve so much better than what the school system has given to them you're putting poison in their literature you're pulling an agenda that has nothing but ridicule in it that is destroying their thought processes that is
040destroying their childhood and it's all for an agenda that makes no sense you didn't go through that when you were in school and our children shouldn't be going through that now and it's time to step down and quit going for this power grab quit quit setting any seats if you don't care for nothing but something that looks pretty on your resume and start worrying about the lives of our young people thank you get it joe good evening my name is kenneth jones and before i start i want to give honor to god who's the head of my life and um uh i'd like to start with the scriptures for my uh able to uh not every one is matthew seven twenty one through twenty three not every one that says unto me lord lord shall
041enter to the kingdom of heaven but he that doeth the will of my father which is in heaven many will say to me in that day lord lord have me not prophesy in thy name and in thy name have cast out devils and in her name done many wonderful things and then will i profess unto them i never knew you depart from me ye that work iniquity now what that gives me is the fact that a lot of us are professors of the word of god but a lot of us don't live it and i say that because it's a lot of compromise and when we compromise the word of god what we're saying in in in education that transgendering in other words uh comes up to a point where god didn't made a mistake
042because there's a only male and female and another one another thing we're supposed to teach our children about education not indoctrination crit is another one teaching them how to hate one another when they should learn more about the curriculum to make them better citizens of america trades something that they could use when they go out of school a second language something that they could use because most of the people that's coming into america are bilingual and i asked one employer if you had a person that was a bilingual and one that didn't have had the same qualification but weren't bilingual which one would you hire and he said quickly said the bilingual one why because it's necessary to have two languages in america i realized that a lot of people coming to america always had
043to learn english not anymore it's changed our education system to change too not only that we should start teaching and then the reason why we can't not compete with other countries because of our education system is so poor i wish that we would have some input on education more than indoctrination thank you thank you lee williamson and if you state what group you're representing yeah education advocates um my name is lee williamson i'm just a concerned parent uh let me first start off by saying i'm against any kind of mandates um particularly when it involves children mandate uh is in my opinion 100 abuse of power it undermines the parental rights that undermines parental authority it leads down the path to a totalitarian authority uh it the mandates are often abused and not even in
044the public interest and they also assume that the general public is not smart enough to understand the dangers and the issues that they need to make their own where they can make their own decisions then i won't say i think there's been plenty of studies out there to show that maths just don't work says i took this from an article in river city's readers dr dennis g rancourt there's hundreds of these out there so you can you can look up any of them you want they virtually say the same thing there have been extensive randomized controlled trial studies rcts and meta-analysis reviews of these studies which all show that mass and respirators do not work to prevent respiratory influenza like illnesses or respiratory illnesses believed to be transmitted by droplets and aerosol particles such as
045this covid issue furthermore the relevant known physics and biology which she reviews are such that mass and respirators should not work uh it has to do with particle size basically it says given what we know about viral respiratory diseases the main transmission path is long resonance time aerosol particles they're less than 2.5 micrometers one micrometer is one millionth of a meter kind of gives you an idea about how big this thing is or how small and they're too fine to be blocked and going further into it gets more technical but this thing called an mid minimum infective dose which is the minimum amount that you have to absorb into your body for you to actually develop the disease these are even smaller than the particle size we're talking about so uh and i'll just read
046you a couple of these cases that like i said there's hundreds of them out there if you want to go look but anyway this is the lj radonovich n95 respirators versus medical mass for preventing influenza among healthcare i know it's a flu but it's still a virus and we're talking about tiny particle size among 2862 randomized participants 2371 completed the study and accounted for 51 and 5180 healthcare worker seasons okay among outpatient health care n95 respirators versus medical mass as worn by participants in this trial resulted in no significant difference in the incidence of confirmed influenza here's another one why long uh effectiveness of n95 respirators a total of six rcts those those studies we're talking about involve a little over 9000 participants there are no statistically significant differences in preventing laboratory confirmed influenza it's
047the same thing i don't have time to go through at all because i got too much to go through the thing i want to ask is what nobody's asking unknown aspects of mask wearing nobody talks about the bad of the side effects of wearing a mask particularly kids okay number one what are the health and psychological consequences on children wearing masks all day i can tell you what mine have do use in loaded masks when we say loaded we mean they've been breathed in and they've collected material or whatever the used and loaded masks become sources of enhanced transmission for the wearer and others of course they do do mass become collectors and retainers of pathogens that the mask wearer would otherwise avoid when breathing without a mask of course they do okay what are
048the dangers of bacterial growth on a used and loaded mask nobody knows okay what are the long-term health effects on health care workers and children and teachers and board members everybody such as headaches arising from impeded breathing okay i got to i'm timing out um okay so do the math shed fibers of substances that are harmful when inhaled i particularly think they do anyway so in conclusion there's many many many people out here that say that mass don't work the board has not pulled anybody in here to counter the con the the speeches that are given by doctors who say the board that the mass do we need to hear the other side and by the way one more point i'd like to make thank you 42.7 of the students drop in their in their
049grade level learning in last year you can be seated there were 57 before the covet came out they passed 57 42 while it was during code um again we ask that you uh reference the time that you've been given to speak and stick to that time and that we stay in order i believe next is garrett taylor good evening my name is gary taylor i'm a father um of two children here in pitt county schools and i want to start off by thanking you whether i agree with your opinions on the board or not um to me the pot shot's taking a given to the board who's just here trying to do the right thing for the children this county is uh ridiculous and i support you the fact that you have individuals getting death
050threats and whatnot because somebody does not agree with your opinion is absolutely ridiculous that's one let you know whether i agree with you or not they don't pay you enough for the end to endure what you've been having to endure one way or another on side of these issues so i thank you for your service uh to the county and to our children now that being said i want to speak on starting with the math i want to thank the professionals i trust the doctors before i trust anybody else who has not stepped foot into medical school i want to thank those who are doing going to work every day trying to keep our kids safe i have um uh had no intentions of actually speaking tonight until i got here but once i started
051seeing and hearing the tenor in the audience it's ridiculous we have an obligation to our children and whether you agree or not our children have we have to do everything and i don't know what kind of parents some of you are that's on you i'm going to take every effort to take make sure my kids are safe and if putting a mask on for a couple of hours can it help them even in the least i thank you all for making such a decision we have to do everything in our power to keep our kids safe and it's ridiculous to sit here and think that those folks who are making decisions out here trying to profit or to attack our children by trying to ask them to keep safe that's all i'm going to say
052about it i want to transition the rest of my time to the crt issue first of all most of the folks who are talking about cr2 have very little clues crt is nothing new it's been taught in in academia for years i was a sociology major psychiatri also took several psychology classes crt for most part only affects those people on a collegiate level the fact that we're sitting here wasting time on an elementary k-8 level talking about crt just proves that most folks are uninformed and they're using this as an agenda to hide information and knowledge this country at race will always play a part in what has happened with america because this is a was there was a lot of history and we as a people should never be trying to hide history i
053it's funny that i look at some of the same folks some of the same faces who were all in uproar when we talked about taking down racist statues claiming we were hiding uh history but we were not hiding those statues or hiding the messages what we were saying is we weren't going to celebrate that history the way we were in the past we weren't going to falsely celebrate uh oppression that's it we need to teach history we didn't teach what folks have gone through and some of the same voices um that were part of this history are now trying to hide it the fact of the matter is we have america has come a long way but how do we explain to our students how far we've come we're trying to hide the past this
054crt does not affect most folks and we're proving it by the information that we're sharing i thank you guys for your time and i thank you for what you're doing thank you morgan taylor [Music] good evening everyone my name is morgan taylor i'm a 12 year old student in the 8th grade at cmups middle school i also have the pleasure of serving serving as miss preteen international 2021. with this current title i also have the opportunity to speak on my platform which is diversity through literature i'm very disappointed that while i travel all over the world reminding communities of the importance of children seeing themselves in literature that my hometown has adults working to restrict the access of diverse books every child deserves and needs to see themselves reflected in the pages they read children
055with same-sex parents children with single parents or without parents students who struggle academically black children children who practice all religions all deserve to see themselves in books in fact it's not a want it's a need research shows that young young people who see themselves are more academically successful and they also have an increase in self-esteem when you deny children reflections of who they are you demean their very existence i've also always been an avid reader but not seeing characters that look like me really started to take a toll on my self-esteem which is why i wrote my book with my dad as a published author it's frightening to think that content can be restricted because someone disagrees with the content restricting youth literature is a slippery slope some of the most profound reads like the
056grapes of wrath by john steinbeck the lord of flies by william golding of mice and men by john steinbeck all contain profanity are we planning to restrict those white authors as well or just the black and brown authors mentioned in the initial request i'm asking school board members to remain to the mission of educating every child in pitt county and be intentional in supporting diverse books thank you for listening thank you [Applause] elizabeth warner is she in the other room what's the name again elizabeth widener wagner wagner wide north good evening i'm elizabeth walter i'm speaking on my own um i would like to just say that dr silver nails stats show overwhelmingly that the children are not affected by covid it also reveals the recovery rate of over 95.5 percent prior to the state
057taking over the stats while he's spoken he did say something that was inaccurate um as far as the masks are concerned the particles from covid are far small far smaller than any mask including the ones you can buy in a box at cvs as i tried to say the last time i'm a quilter i'm a textile instructor at pitt and i know my fabrics and if you look at a cotton fabric which i made about almost 300 of them last year masks if you looked on the side you could look and see that they're they're woven it's cotton woven fabric and they've got little holes it's it's a weave there's there's holes um it's not like uh rayon or taffeta or silk it's cotton and it's woven there's holes i have a small diagram i
058wish i had brought it but it shows here the different particles of different um diseases and kovid is way down here way down here um chris earlier said what the what it was but it's very very small and cotton woven fabric is very different it's got holes and there's no way in heck that a covered jet will not get through there okay so that's that's science it's science um last month i did speak after the meeting with your um pediatrician who came and you know thanked you for having the mask everything and i asked her i said so whatever happened to the the 99.99 survival rate un un you know affected rate the children have and she backed away from me i said why are you backing away and she says well i just i
059i just she ran away from me she couldn't answer my question masks do not work for these children does not work for anyone thank you thank you is it taylor keith or keith taylor hey lucky all right i'm taylor keith i live in ayden um earlier this evening i was a part of a special hearing on the books that i'd requested to be removed from classroom reading the young lady that spoke earlier that was awesome and i really support her ability and her right to read what she wants to read i don't respect the right of someone to force that on my child and yes i think explicit profane books like all american boys is wrong regardless of the race of the author but back to what i'd written the books had been through a
060district review committee the books were assigned reading despite what the spokesperson of that committee said earlier which was a total mistruth they were assigned readings in my child's class regardless of what she said they were assigned on the reading list the board engaged in some discussion and tabled it to the special call meeting i and the hundreds of parents that have openly voiced their opinion through our facebook group and through these meetings hope you will put our children's education above honestly that that any committee that would vote that way is 100 one-sided and partisan so i hope that at the next meeting you continue to take our concerns seriously based on what you heard earlier i think it's clear to me and hopefully to all y'all that a more equitable representation of the people of
061pitt county on such committees is warranted if a committee like can be that unanimous in a book that says the f word 30 times in two chapters that says gd that talks about rape and a pedophile can 100 support something you have an issue with how your committees are put together and i hope that y'all will do something to address that demanding baseline morals is not censorship i brought this and i wasn't going to pick it up this is a sticker that says let's go brandon if my child wore this to school he would be told to take it off and rightfully so because we all know what this sticker is saying that is that censorship do you all have does someone have the right to tell my kid they can't do it it's not
062censorship it's wrong these a kid should not do that in school just like a kid should not read that book in school you should not be forced to read that book it is not censorship it's just morality i support people's right to say let's go brandon i support people's right to say they shouldn't i support people's right to say they're for against a president or a governor or anything else but not in school you can't wear that sticker in school it would be wrong bring basic morality back to the schools stop the f-bombs and the rate books in class in class implement some accountability for those choosing what is acceptable in our school when y'all vote on the amendment revisions of policy 7720 i hope you'll say yes to those i hope you'll understand that
063not everything that takes something away is censorship sometimes it's just wrong to have something in front of you sometimes it's wrong to have something in your school thank you [Music] april p and that'll be the last one i believe hey guys my name is april peden i was here last month a couple weeks after our meeting or the board meeting farmville had a christmas parade and um two of the board members were in their vehicles waving with no mass bone did the did covet not matter in the parade in a vehicle that's just a question you don't have to answer that we all know the answer to that does cova not matter or get spread in a basketball game because at basketball games there was clearly lots of people not wearing masks there before we
064got out for mass optional and last board meeting a board member kept talking about high schoolers and how they take on if they have to test in a different environment because they have so much anxiety but what about the anxiety of the elementary school like my daughter who has adhd and anxiety doesn't like wearing her mask she has to wear glasses but she don't because of her her disabilities she can't do that and you saw dr silvernails thing up there in elementary aged kids is only four percent but yet y'all are muzzling our kids with these masks that don't work so i come to you tonight again to basically say let's make this optional those who think this mass works or if the vaccine works okay great wear your mask get your vaccine but the
065ones who don't want to send their kids because they do have disabilities or they do have problems wearing the mask if your child's wearing the mask why does it matter if mine's not why if it if if it works then why does it matter i thank you for your time and i hope i don't have to come back next meeting thank you all for coming on tonight and expressing your concerns at this time we move to our consent items for approval promotion the move that we approved the items on the consent agenda caroline yeah second bye [Music] i got it uh item that policy 7720 to the school board that speaks to crt is that correct correct sir that is the thing you're probably speaking to crt and what is that policy saying about crt
066that is the board statement on crt that you are not going to have it in your schools that we're not having it in our school i just wanted to bring that to the attention everybody any further discussion all in favor approving the agenda the thin items all right thank you we'll move to new business dr silvano presented his information his presentation was your protocol all right at this time do we have a motion concerning our math caroline yes i moved that we um instituted a math um required policy starting tomorrow based on dr silverdale's strong recommendation that we do so to protect our our students and staff can you stick to motion again that we reinstate mask required on pitt county schools buildings beginning tomorrow all right there second a second discussion a few things
067to say through this time i've been called different names have pictures shown ball games parades and only one time i can say that something was wrong that was my child who had her picture posted on facebook after she attended a basketball game which i point blank told her when she left to be sure she wore her mask even though the rest of the students in the student group were not and many fans my child was punished contrary to what some people believed i even punished myself because she had not been a board member's child she wouldn't have been singled out so when i punished her when she couldn't attend two ball games i did not attend two ball games what got her the worst when she couldn't go to bojangle's parking lot at the ball
068game that really hurt her feelings regardless of that my child is expected to follow rules but i understand peer pressure is going to keep child some people from following the rules we go mass optional it's gonna be a lot of kids not gonna wear to mass that's proven with that being said when we go back if that's what this committee votes on when we have basketball games it is my expectations that everybody in the gym wear a mask or they'll be asked to leave including my child or anybody else's child also with that being said we already know that john paul catholic school they went virtual today which at any point in time people said you hadn't given us a notice last year well i'm putting people on notice now that at any point in
069time we could have a school or more than one school closed because we can't safely operate that that at this point would be dr linker's decision if we do not have enough staff to safely operate a school i.e bus drivers teachers etc because of kova protocol just be aware you may not get any notice but less than 12 hours and that's regardless how we vote mass because of the quarantines any other discussion it's worth first of all oh i couldn't see you but no where all right i'm sorry i'll reach out next time i would like and this has nothing to do with your child but i would like to ask dr linker in regards regarding inside sports all those fans and all those all the students they're supposed to wear their mask is that
070correct yes yes so the next question would be i think it's important that you express to the principal that because i think here's where the inconsistencies come about and parents see well you know during the day the elementary schools all the kids wearing their mask and maybe and you and i both know us being principal sometimes in the upper grades it's a little harder to enforce it but yet if it's the decision of the board it needs to be enforced where some are not or some are not wearing it and some are and i just think it's important that those principles are hell responsible if they if the uh decision of the board is not being carried out that includes all those insights sports and other meetings but personally i still believe we need to
071leave our mask optional because again like i mentioned to dr silvernail a few minutes ago i heard over and over and over today and you're going to be here and i'm sure on the news tonight and tomorrow that cloth mass this mask right here this cloth bath i just as well not have it on based on what um infectious disease doctors are saying because this doesn't work so therefore we are or i think um providing something or doing something to our children that i just think should be left up to a parent i don't think that it really helps in in regards to um this particular variant and another thing we got the omkrom a variant but there's going to be another variant eventually that's going to come up again and so there's going to
072be another spike so what are we going to be doing we're going to be right back putting masks on kids again to where we are never going to get back to a normal society and to me i think we're doing a disservice and we're harming our kids more so especially when you look at dr silverdale's data in regards to what that show we're doing much more harm to our kids by mandating that they wear a mask then leave it in having it as an option there are many parents out there that want their kids to wear math that should be their option there are a lot of parents out there that do not want their kids to wear a mask because they are seeing the effects that it's having on that job they should have
073that option of not wearing the mask they should be the ones that make the decision so i i just had to voice my opinion right you already knew it uh chairman tripp all right we have uh benjamin then with you first i i'm i'm happy to all right then we go okay thank you mr chairman um first of all something miss uh dr silverdale said was masking is not perfect the masking is not perfect we can see that several different ways but you're gonna have a spike if you have masking you're gonna have a spike if you don't have masking i mean it's just it hasn't it's not a perfect science and anybody in the medical field says that and as a matter of fact uh every time i hear somebody say it it's it's
074more for quarantine purposes than it is for safety purposes let me share something with you about safety purposes foreign crawford she's a legal correspondent on cbs she's no conservative on face the nation they asked what was the most under-reported story of 2021. this is what she said my kids hear me rant about this every day it's the crushing impact that our colgate policies have had on our young kids and children by far the least serious risk for serious illness but i mean even teenagers you know a healthy teenager has a one in a million chance of getting and dying from coat which is way lower than you know dying in a car wreck on a road trip but they've suffered and sacrificed the most especially kids and underrepresented at-risk communities and now we have the
075surgeon general saying there's mental health crisis among our kids the risk of suicide girls suicide attempts among girls now is up this year black kids nearly twice as likely as white kids to die by suicide it's hurt their dreams their future learning their loss risk of abuse their mental health and now with our knowledge our vaccines if our policies don't reflect a more measured and reasonable approach for our children they will be paying for our generation's decisions the rest of their lives and that to me is the greatest unreported story of the past year thank you anna um so i i just want to to say something and you know i don't expect you to you can take it for what it what it is believe it don't believe it i understand why it might
076seem like we left here in december knowing that we were going to come back and do this i can't convince you otherwise but i'm going to tell you that's absolutely not the case it's absolutely not the case and there are probably a dozen people that i have spoken to in the last two days who have called me and begged me to reinstate a mass mandate and two days ago i'm telling them y'all i can't do it i can't do it because we have to you know we're trying to get to the vaccinations we're trying to get to this that and the other and you know barring a very very very strong recommendation i can't get there i had people begging me and i was disappointing people left and right on that and that's fine i've
077disappointed people left and right the other the other direction as well the thing about making these decisions and i can only speak for myself i know other people have similar methodologies is i try not to make a decision until i try to leave myself open to new information and over the last several days i've heard from at least eight healthcare providers saying we need to do this it's imperfect it doesn't it you know nobody is saying it works perfectly nobody is saying that it's the end-all be-all i am very aware of the negative effects of the mask i have kids in school i understand it i do get it but when i'm having these people reaching out to me healthcare providers who are board certified practicing medicine in our county because every county has different
078demographics they're practicing in our county i have said to numerous people who are opposed to masks bring bring a board certified physician in this county who is a who doesn't think it's a good idea and we will listen to them we are not keeping people out of here who feel differently they're just not coming forward and i know there are a lot of theories on why that is or why that isn't i can't control that i have said to numerous people find those physicians and bring them and we will listen nothing i have not gotten one thing from a board-certified physician in this county saying this is a terrible idea the the negative outweighs the positive so you know i this is this is a decision that was not put on us because we're the
079most qualified people to make it it was a decision put on us as part of a political play i i'm not sure why they thought that we were the best people to make this decision but here we are and we'll do what we have to do but i'm not arrogant enough to think that i can make that decision without the input of people who are treating the people in our county so wrongly or rightly you know history will prove that my decisions are wrong or right and i'll live with that i really will but i absolutely did not go out of here in december expecting to be back here i thought there might be a spike but it wouldn't be a big deal the overwhelming number of healthcare providers who have come to us not
080who we have sought out that's right that's where i am i left one thing out i didn't want to say it would be a whole lot easier for me to vote mass options i won't have to worry about my picture being posted on facebook my daughter just think about that it would be a whole lot easier if i voted mass optional instead of open mask and that goes for probably everybody on this board that will vote for mass tonight we got nothing to gain any other discussion all in favor of reinstating the mass mandate raise your right hand one two three stick all opposed the motion carried in favor of reinstating the mass 62. thank you approval of test to study state study dr lincoln yes we um as i shared with you last month
081we're working with the abc uh collaborative out of duke and one of the processes is to have the test for state program if you will keep your noise down please thank you the tesla state program um and just one of their requirements is that the board of education knows that we're involved in that and the board of education approves involve getting involved in that in the test to stay program cdc has also come out and supported that as well so just this one exactly asking the board if they would support that program you know getting started hopefully another week or so all right motion i'll move to us for the approval of the test to stay study second talking about don all right all in favor should have been owned by the raiders oh what's
082good where'd they end the discussion all right i had a quick question yes ma'am and i try to picture things in my mind like how it's gonna follow through because i work in the school system do we do we have a clear vision of how we'll be how will it be able to filter out appropriately when the kids arrive at school who needs to go directly to be tested because i think it's every two day thing if they they opt in to do it so they don't have the quality we're actually going to start with once we get working with our staff this week we're going to start opening up for diagnostic of our our staff and students and then work that into the test to stay program but basically when if you're out of
083school and you get you get exposed and you have to quarantine for five days you remember the new cdc guidelines it's down to five days one instead of having to go home for five days you actually would have the option to stay in in school and test every other day so you may have to test twice but again we have we keep the running list of our of our exposures and our quarantines we would have those kids and go get them in the morning and let them test to stay in school and so everybody has to wear a mask um so that would actually makes life a whole lot easier as far as that program right and so they would be able to ride the bus like normally because you want to be massed anyway
084enter the building as normal and then is it like a first thing in the morning the testing begins they call them down or do they report we haven't quite got that bar with with duke but i got that far okay but yes okay any further discussion all in favor of said motion letting me know i'm about to raise my right hand [Music] any opposed motion care the approval of training for esther it's a bonus dr linker and deborah bag alexander she's so good all right good evening good evening one of the items that's included in the state budget is that teachers and instructional support staff are eligible for a bonus if they include inclu completed training between march of 2020 and january 1st of 2022 for any training that addressed mitigation of covid learning loss
085as a result of covid or virtual instruction needed because of covet but each district their board must approve those trainings individually so this is a list of the trainings that we're requesting approval for for our staff any questions go ahead thank you chair yeah um i think january 1st 2022 has already passed help me understand why we're doing this now and are these trainings that have already been completed so these are trainings that were already offered and covered procedures i mean that could be at a staff meeting where they said this is how we need to handle that within our classrooms and different things like the cafeteria and we did share this with the principals prior to you as soon as we found out what the requirements were we shared it with them in early
086december so there was opportunities there for everyone to basically meet the requirements okay so these have already occurred yes right yes ma'am and that will be paid at the end of january attendance has already been taken all that yes we've sent out rosters to all the principals but we're just required to approve which correct trainings is that it mm-hmm okay now i got it thank you i have one quick question i know we talked about this briefly dr linker were we fairly successful in identifying all instructional staff including teachers that would this would be applicable too yes the majority of anyone that was not eligible would have been based on their uh employment date and that was in the legislation so either they were not hired at that point or they're no longer employed but
087basically it was in the upper 90 percentile okay all right great wonderful and just to follow up the state funded at 80 percent of our teachers and instructional support they will look at the funding again in march and if there's anything left over they could potentially fund this but they've suggested that we use s or funds to cover any difference further questions all right motion to approve i'd like to make a motion that we approve um the following trainings to suffice for the supplemental pay three second millennia second all in favor they have been known by the raising of the right hand motion care thank you thank you thank you this time we're going into our closing comments welcome back all of our our teachers and our staff and at the school level i hope
088they had a great holiday vacation got some got some time away and some time to really relax and i know they're getting ready for a second semester now and you know i know our high schools change classes so those teachers are working really hard these next two days to make sure they're ready for basically like a whole new school year certainly just glad to have everybody back and ready to go thank you annabelle i'd like to thank everybody for being here tonight i really um appreciate people's well thought out presentations and and taking the time to formulate your thoughts and share them with us it really it does matter um the hard work starts um i guess wednesday for our teachers and staff i guess they started back today but um but i just want
089everybody involved in the running of the system to to know how humbled i am by the amount of incredible effort you put in and i'm just praying that we can can get this semester going and hopefully not be talking about this code stuff much much longer but getting through it and just wishing everybody a great semester thank you work for yeah i'll just i want to say i appreciate everyone coming out and it's important that we hear from you whether you believe that it's helping or not um you can't give up on even though you know you things might not go your way the ones who truly end up succeeding are the ones who truly get their views out there you may not always win but yet in a way you're winning for your kids
090that they have advocates and that's on both sides and that's in all things it was nice to hear from that young lady tonight and i agree with what she says also and i just agree that it is her decision to be able to read what she and her parents agree for her to read but i i don't believe that a school system can mandate certain things that are morally inappropriate it does not help our society one bit in regards to lifting our society up rather than low enough and i appreciate working with the board we all have got different views and you know after the meeting we all are supposed to still love one another and uh care about one another and and move forward and try to make the best decisions we can for
091our students and i'll say one last thing when i when i do vote i always pray about what i'm voting for i make the vote if i win or lose as far as i'm concerned i've done my part after that i'll go along you know i support whatever the decision can be is made and i do ask dr linker to you know enforce whatever the majority all right thank you carolina i really appreciate um everyone coming out tonight so echo this is democracy that's what it looks like hearing from every single viewpoint everyone is welcome and everyone is heard and respected your opinions it's very clear that everyone here spoke from their heart and spoke from experience and i would say that also goes for dr silvernell and miss hill um miss hill right i
092um very much appreciate having professionals in their fields who spent their careers studying and learning and gaining experience working with other professionals here and at the state level to hone their opinions and their processes and i feel like we i feel like i greatly benefit from the expertise of both ms hill and dr silver now it really helped inform my opinions tonight i thought um dr silverner's presentation was full of um very important information that shows i mean i feel like we're in the fifth groundhog day movie again it's just incredible that we're back up on this fight and um i feel like what it's important to follow his advice he is the public health authority and that is his responsibility um i also am very proud of our committee our district and aiden middle
093school committee and i appreciate that incredibly professional uh presentation that you made ms hill about both both of those processes um it's a comprehensive review that was really helpful to me for understanding all the different factors that go into the process of determining what techs are best for our students to learn the standards that north carolina expects them to learn so i want to say thank you to both of you for that thank you melinda um just basically repeat thanking everybody for coming tonight um i just think it's really important that we listen to one another and have open minds about what's being said there again i'm kind of with anna barrett in terms of i was very hopeful i i knew we would have a bump in december and in january i thought it
094would be a bump like last year i didn't realize it was going to be you know a mountain i i feel very strongly about following the recommendations of the county health director and i feel going against him this is me personally one against him would be wrong so i'm hopeful that he will keep coming back it was nice to have him zoom i'd like to have him zoom every time if we could so we could have that dialogue and um you know the goal for me is for kids to get vaccinated to be safe and for us to eventually get to where we thought we were going to be tomorrow again thank you everybody out here that's speaking because it does show being advocates for your children or for the children of pitt county and
095being an advocate is is showing both sides and um even though what i might say to be an advocate for my child it it still shows um that i'm you know emulating to her how to be an advocate for maybe her it may not be what what i want so i just think that it's good that everybody's respectful you're saying you know speaking from your heart and and i and i applaud you for doing that and i guess last thing is can we have heat next time it's so cold in here i was like jacket off here a little bit i've already taken carols but anyway just curious if you can look into that that's all thanks thank you thank you mr chairman first of all i hope everybody has had a a happy new
096year so far and we look forward to a 2022 filled with joy and hope and happiness and expectancy of great things um [Music] i want to thank you i want to say thank you everybody else has to the group here this evening and for those of you who continue to come out and advocate for our students i've said this before but i want to make it clear you make us a better board you make us a better board because the community is very very involved now and you you you're tied in to what we're doing as a board of education and because of your sincerity of being persistent we've done some good things for big county schools getting that crt policy 7720 was a good thing for pitt county schools we're going to be looking
097at these books with uh i guess with our work next workshop that's a good thing because of the advocacy that you have brought back i know we continue to look at mass and we continue to have varied opinions about mass but there's absolutely nothing nobody can say that the parents haven't had their say as to how they feel one way or the other we respect that and so i want to continue to encourage you to be here to be present to be vocal and be persistent persistence wins the day thank you very much thank you tracy i just want to say thank you again for all the public expression it was really good to hear from everyone again tonight it was very calm and respectful it helps me focus and try to really listen to
098the message that you're trying to express so i really do appreciate that i'm very hopeful about the test to stay program i want to see kids in school i want to see them in their everyday healthy and well and not having to quarantine and misinstruction so i'm very hopeful about implementation of that and of course my sincere hope is that next month we come here and we're in so much of a better position about where we sit with this pandemic that maybe we can make some different decisions that's my sincere hope i you know it's disappointing for me to i was quick to make a second you know the second the motion but it's very disappointing to me personally that you know we we've had this surge that we couldn't even have predicted and to
099feel like we're now back in that position of having to consider it um i really want to be hopeful that we'll sit here next month in a much better position and have a much better discussion about where we are with all this so thank you thank you amy it's always fun going last um i just i'm not going to repeat what everyone said just besides just thank you for everyone coming out and i hope everyone had a good holiday and i wish all the teachers administrators school personnel staff a good start to the year and hopefully we can get through this semester and put this in our past that's it for me thank you don yeah i'd like to thank everybody for coming out i'd also like to thank those that emailed me today call
100me today texted me today we get a lot of emails just probably probably this weekend i spent more time as a board member than i ever have before reading emails looking at this book information researching the book information looking at reviews whatever just today alone i received 16 emails two phone calls and two texts so as a board we typically as an individual board member remind people we don't answer emails i may say thank you and if you send me an email it looks like it just came to me i'm going to send you one back saying if you did not uh forward this email to other board members please let me know and i'll do so for you so what i ask you to do if you do send an email to the board
101just go ahead and send it to all nine board members because mr tripp is being the chair he represents us and he typically is the one that answers the email so typically individual board members don't ask emails unless it's directly uh directed to them so once again thank you for your support thank you again uh thank all of you for coming on tonight those of you that have expressed your concerns and feelings tonight we thank you for coming and we do invite you to continue to come i really appreciate how we have uh stayed in order and conducted ourselves in a way that we should conduct ourselves i appreciate us being mindful of others and other feelings and how we talk to one another i thank for the board i thank dr linker and this
102board for giving me an opportunity to serve as chair i may make some errors but take them with love nobody's perfect i serve on a lot of boys and serve in a lot of positions and have to carry out a lot of meetings and i'd like for all meetings to be respected and as you've done on tonight we don't want uh anyone feel like that they've been bullied when they've come to this meeting and so we just like for it to be a peaceful meeting you can get a lot more done when we do it in a decent way than you can in a combative way i really appreciate the concerns of everybody throughout pitt county for your several emails i probably had like 20 emails to and for and against mass and i really
103appreciate all the emails that i received and i tried to answer all of them in a in a manner that was beneficial to all of us again as we go through this season that we're in with this virus we just ask that all of us be careful and be protective of ourselves just in the last few days we've had over 30 uh family members connected to our church that has contracted the virus since the uh christmas prey and so this viru the virus is in the community we don't need to stick our head in the sand and act like it's not affecting people people are still dying people are still getting sick the hospital is filling up so we don't need to act like this thing is not happening i was fortunate enough to take
104my grandson out to the basketball tournament the holiday classes at north pitt many many of them did not have on mass but my grandson and i made sure we had our mass on and i'd like to thank the principal there mr harris and how things were done there it was carried out beautifully and i don't think we had any incidents that really amounted to anything and that was one of the concerns i had especially with the light in that north pit but i appreciate the work that was done to make sure the lighting in the parking lot was sufficient serving in law enforcement for 30 years dealing with a lot of people dealing with a lot of issues serving and retired as chief deputy we've had to deal with a lot of a lot of
105issues and serving on this board and what we're dealing with now is not something that we take lightly it is something that we take very seriously because all the children the staff are important to us and so we don't just sit here and make decisions without thinking about how it's going to affect everybody you cannot please everybody and we know we can't please everybody but we try to do the right thing and this is what we're trying to do and want to do going forward this year i hope that this virus will soon dissipate and be gone but if not we got to do what we got to do to survive we got we got to do what we got to do to survive and if that means my having to continue to wear masks
106i do that my wife has a health condition so i have to be careful who i go around who i'm with who i talked with in close quarter contact with because i don't want to take anything to her and we should all feel that we want to protect everyone around us and again thank you tonight for coming out i hope to see you at our next meeting motion to adjourn okay second second all in favor all right meet us stan adjourn