001i like to call this meeting to order our september business meeting like to welcome all those who are here in person as well as those that are watching or listening i do want to make a notation this meeting will be a little different in that we have one member who is zooming due to quarantining so we will be taking our votes by roll call and we'll be doing roll call individually i also want to mention that two of our board members are not here this evening because of a conflict when we had to move the date because of labor day and just so everybody present understands that these dates are decided in january so i encourage everybody on the board to please check your calendars back you know and make sure if there's a conflict
002that you let me know ahead of time and we can change things but i think we're going to be good going forward through december so at this time i'm going to take roll call first amy cole present anna barrett smith here benji forrest will note that he is um absent and i will not be calling for votes with his name going forward caroline doherty can you hear i'm present james tripp president tracy everett lentz here worth forbes and worth is also absent so i will not when we do votes be calling those two names okay at this time i will ask amy cole to do the pledge of allegiance and a moment of silence okay please stand and say the pledge of allegiance pledge allegiance of america and to the republic for which it stands
003one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice please join me in a moment of silence heavenly father please look over our children and our families and help to keep us safe and healthy continue to be with us and help to guide us to make the best decisions we can with the information we have and help us to always lead with integrity in your name we pray amen thank you okay on our routine business are there any adjust adjustments to the agenda hearing none of the move that we approve the agenda is written okay anna barrett has a motion to approve the agenda i have a second second tracy second any discussion and i will do um vote by name amy cole yes anna barrett smith yes caroline doverdy yes don rhodes yes james tripp
004yes tracy everett lentz yes passage unanimous thank you and up next is our spotlight on teaching and learning good evening board good evening everyone online we do have some exciting um spotlights on teaching and learning tonight we have lots of teams in the house we have lots of artists we have a couple of principals etcetera so we're going to continue on with our spotlight on teaching and learning but first i'm going to going to introduce gretchen wilson and she's going to say a little bit about our north carolina farm to school calendar contest winners you do have a packet in front of you with those calendars as well we'll talk about that good evening i wanted to give you um some background on what's going on here so the history um north carolina public schools
005wanted to source out fresh fruits and vegetables grown in the state nc farmers were given a variety of produce that could meet the needs of schools and many were looking for new markets it was through these two needs that the nc farm to school program was found founded in 1997. the nc department of agriculture and consumer services and food distribution was already delivering usda foods to schools across the state the north carolina department of agriculture and consumer services marketing division was working with farmers to develop new markets for their crops working together with the u.s department of defense produce merchandising office they developed a system for schools across the state to receive fresh local produce then as now local was defined as fruits and vegetables grown packaged and processed if applicable in the state of
006north carolina so from that we they came up with the marketing division for us to have the calendar contest so that was a way to bring it about all the way so the students can understand where it's all coming from and show that north carolina what we're producing in the state so today we come to you with some of our winners we have been very fortunate for multiple years to bring back many uh students to have in our calendars and you see in front of you school nutrition did provide you a calendar in your packet and if you look at each calendar on each page each month it's got the definition of what's going on that month it gives you information that you can share and learn by there is a full page that has
007all the pictures but we do have march we won march and we won the cover the pictures as you came in over there ones that we blew up and we have those printed down our hall we have those framed in our hallway at our offices and those are the winners for this year and um so we have our we have one of our winners here with us today correct do you want to go over that one or you want me to all right um so we do have our uh winner for the uh let me see yes the cover um aiden can you come forward and his family and the principal may come with them too um aiden skinner is coming from from sandy bundy and he uh put in the uh artwork this you
008can see over here the nc ag um the understanding that i was informed of the reason why he was chosen is because he had a multiple types of north carolina agriculture showing on one style of pictures so we're just so happy that we can bring that back last year of course they had a virtual uh celebration and he was told i don't even think you knew until then did you until that because i remember that day it was a zoom one it was really cool and um so they announced them then so we found out about our third grade our other one that got the picture of the rooster that's over there that was from chicag and then that's miss sophia and then aiden right here that got the cover so they were awarded um
009and throughout the whole state people came online that did the pictures and he got to see it then but congratulations on your artwork it is gorgeous and again we got them posted down our hallway you see what we got to get them all blown up and i hope you will continue to do those it is a k5 contest so he can do that throughout and we send multiple schools um to be uh judged each year so we appreciate that and i think you have where did oh you're over there okay let me find his so mr aiden we want to provide you this as a certificate and i know you've already gotten some beautiful stuff because there we go some more numbers out there congratulations get the pictures james getting there [Laughter] there you go
010[Music] and we'll make sure miss sophia has hers too from chicago [Music] yeah okay we're now on to our sports teams we know that our sports had a challenging year last year um but we did have some state champions um we are going to recognize d.h conley they are not here tonight they're actually playing tonight and so they are not able to be here but we do want to congratulate d.h conley for state champion volleyball head coach jennifer gilligan assistant coaches jana bullard ross whitfield and those ladies that make up the state championship team for d.h conley but next is farmville you can see our tall participants coming in the room now so we do want to recognize farmville central high school state champion basketball team and want to recognize them as well and the
011coach is larry williford would you like to say something about this team first i'd like to introduce the players i got with me derek cox alex moy josh short jaden pitt nick taylor a great year obviously anytime you win a state championship um it's great representing farmville central and pitt county um you know when you go undefeated and you win a state championship it doesn't get no better than that and uh got a good group coming back and you know hopefully good things will happen this year uh like we've done in the past i'm sure he didn't know this was coming but we've uh got a state championship ring for our superintendent dr linker i'd like to present it to him [Applause] i think i said this in previous years we're very lucky to have
012a superintendent that is out there and shows up at athletic events and you know i've been fortunate to be a an employee at pitt county schools for 22 years and i've seen times where that was not the case so uh i think the students and parents of pitt county need to be appreciative that he does show up to extracurricular activities uh makes for long days but the other night he was at our football game until the third quarter you know with mosquitoes and sweat you know all kind of stuff thank you very much for supporting us yes sir and a great group of guys had several go on the cot every one of our guys that graduated this past year went on to college either athletic scholarship or going to be a student and uh
013several of these guys here will probably follow that same path of being a you know you know a chance to get an athletic scholarship [Applause] don's got some certificates to give out all of them yes um there we go do you want to read the names and then if there is someone here larry reading names he's in college don tavis short he's in college yes bro he's in college jaden pitt congratulations josh short he's not that short nick taylor alex boyd leonte boy his brother's at college wow derek cox he's down there had to work tonight demon turnage amar's quantum stuart he uh transferred to las vegas to spend his senior year with his father who hadn't seen him several years wow t.j perkins one of our football players at farmville central no outlaw or
014graduate school chris rosemond by jv call ups brandon knight jv call up football practice larry wilford coach coach reed coach phillips coach foskey coach pereira is actually battling covered right now tony joyner terence dixon komori outlaw and jacquez and i kept our numbers down because i didn't want to when i read the email it said that limited space i wasn't going to bring you want to bring 20 people sure this year as well mr johnson yes thank you very much congratulations [Applause] jennifer not only not only do we have outstanding superintendent because athletic events mr johnson does a great job attending all events at his school very much appreciate it be nice if somebody could stray from mosquitoes what i'm saying out there hey monday night you saw what was on the right shoulder sleeve
015of the shirt didn't you yes i did so we have um a state track track champion alexis hastings alexis is actually um at school but her mom and the coaches here uh today so if you guys could come on uh and if you'd like to say anything about uh that would be fine and then we're going to give her mom yes good evening everyone my name is kendrick parker the women's track coach at south central high school first of all i want to thank you all for honoring alexis on today um we're here with her mom dawn hastings as many of you know alexis right now she's at college at uconn playing softball um but looking back at the season i'm thankful that we get through the season healthy with all the coping everything's going
016on we didn't have any hiccups and everything so we were really blessed to have a healthy and successful season but speaking of alexis she was just one of a kind she put in the work when nobody else wanted to on the weekends rain if you had snow she wanted to do it it didn't matter she really put the work in and right now she's enjoying the fruits of her labor so once again i want to thank you all for recognizing her and god bless you all well done thank y'all thank you very much congratulations okay i understand we have some swimmers who are at practice so we're going to skip the swimmers for right now and invite the jade rose high school state baseball champions to come in here so again we have the jh
017rose high school state baseball champions coming in and coaches and principal and so is head coach ron vincent here would you like to say a couple of words you know thanks you guys for giving us a chance to work out during the virus situation it had helped the team for us to have something but by allowing that happen you saved a lot of lives we were able to see these guys every day we made sure they were doing their work well tried to make sure they were doing the work it reminded them of and if we hadn't been able to get with them if we hadn't been able to get with them there's no telling how many more students in all these schools would have fallen through the cracks but by allowing pitt county students
018to to get together and work out and you know we're talking about an hour and a half a day uh it was it was a big deal to our people thank you for what you do thank ron butler and what he does and you hear so many people have heard me say it before we got great kids man you know kids get a bad rap these guys are good guys and most of them are and and so thanks for all you do for us all the programs and you see what happens look at three state champions three team state champions from pitt county it's kind of hard to do really hard to do thank you thank you [Applause] okay introduce all these guys [Laughter] uh anderson harrison aj riley michael allen jenkins mitch jones [Applause]
019if you guys would um come in front of the podium and i'll kind of stand together there with your board member all your coaches your principal we could squeeze in people in the back that would be great smile okay [Applause] congratulations one second to see if our swimmers are here well while you're waiting i will say with all of the sports teams in pitt county at various schools it was not only tremendous but it was just it was so good to give students something to do positive in addition to you know if they were online or or not just supporting and i know a lot of students traveled for for all of these teams including the the conley team and i'm just glad they're coming in for us to recognize them great i think we
020do have swimmers we do so we're going to welcome we're going to welcome some state champion swimming swimmers here we have emma hastings and madeline smith and we have any coaches okay great to say about you all but um again just to reiterate probably what i said last year as well these are amazing girls both high academic achievers just solid role models for all of our younger kids they qualified to compete in the olympic trials this summer and we're super proud of her for getting that experience and both are committed to top programs d1 programs and is committed to nc state so we're really proud of what they've done in the pool um but you'll hear me say a million comes over i'm more proud of what they do outside of the pool and madeline
021smith maybe i'll give coaches to mr collins super proud of you guys and appreciate the effort [Applause] so thank you to all of our athletes and next we do have public expression from one person and while um mr elantra's coming forward i just want to remind the public that during public expression that we allow individuals to speak for three minutes and if you're representing a group it's five minutes and you need to uh reserve time prior to this meeting and at this time i'll let you introduce yourself and the group that you're representing okay we'll have five minutes up here on the clock all right good evening my name is mario blanchard i'm the new president of the pitt county association of educators first i'd like to thank each of you for serving our county
022and representing the youth of pitt county at the end of the day our main goal is to serve children and to give them the tools to be our future leaders it brings me to what i would like uh pcae to focus on this year and that is the conditions of our buildings i was stunned when i heard the state of epps at our previous board meeting i'm glad that those concerns are being met so that got me thinking about our other buildings are they in this battle shape or are we getting close to that are the buildings fine so i would like pcae to work with you all to make sure that our children and my fellow colleagues are in safe and functional buildings pcae will do all we can to have great learning environments
023as a proud of lum a proud alum of north carolina a t state university i'm a bit embarrassed to admit that i cannot remember off the top of my head the names of my fellow alums who helped to kick off the sit-in movement which is a part of our nation's history and our state's history as well joseph mcneill franklin mccain ezell blair jr now jabril kazan and david richman made the decision to sit down in the woolworth on february 1st 1960 and refuse to leave until they were served like anybody anyone else why am i bringing this up i graduated from high school in 1993 and what i remember about black or african american history started with rosa parks and stopped with dr martin luther king jr if we discussed or taught more about events
024that many brave americans have lived through is that teaching critical race theory what i told you about the sitting movement is a fact if a student asked me for my opinion in class although i teach math but they do ask me things all the time and if i state it as an as my opinion is that also teaching critical race there and according to the encyclopedia britannica critical race theory is an intellectual movement and loosely organized framework of legal analysis based on the premise that race is not a natural biologically distinct feature of physically distinct subgroups of human beings but a socially constructed category that is used to oppress and exploit people of color to me that sounds an awful lot like slavery and the dream curl error two things that actually happen in this
025country i would like to know what the objections are to teaching facts and do i need to worry about my job if a student asks me how do i feel about protesting police protect brutality does a history teacher have to worry about teaching students about nat turner john brown or the tuskegee experiment perhaps if we confronted and naturally taught our history we can come out on the other side and learn how to love each other unconditionally the way god intended thank you for your time thank you moving on i have consent items for approval and i will list those on the consent approval are the board minutes from august 2nd the board work session from august 16th a special called meeting held on august 16th personnel record or personnel report from september 7th resolution to
026support my future north carolina attainment goal that was presented at the special call meeting on august 16th and a student transfer hearing board panel that was um that has taken place since our last meeting at this time do i have a motion for approval i knew that we approve the um these items okay second second by tracy it was moved by anna barrett any discussion hearing none will go to a vote amy cole yes anna barrett smith yes caroline doherty yes don rhodes yes james tripp yes tracy everett lentz yes passes unanimously thank you on to new business i'll do this okay since deborah's not here you have a in keeping with our with our ester funds of sharing individual purchases and getting board approval this was on the the esser plan and actually some
027audio equipment was actually approved last month this is actually going um to another eight schools uh cameras and audio equipment um so i'm asking for the board approval here and just just so you know that how this came about was over the summer i had these individuals zoom with our principals our instructional coordinators our school improvement team chairs our assistant principals those individuals went back and met with their their entire school improvement team or their staff and to decide to make sure their school was on board with moving forward with this process so every one of the schools which is eight will is moving forward with this but these are schools that are wanting this and have asked for this audio and video enhancement for their classrooms i'm asking for the board to approve this
028purchase and this we'll probably have to come back one more time six or eight months from now we budgeted 1.9 million for this top emotion i moved that we approved this purchase second by don is there any discussion or questions hearing none i'll roll call for a vote amy cole yes anna barrett smith yes caroline dougherty yes don rhodes yes james thrip yes tracy everett lance yes passes unanimously thank you and now we have our coven 19 update i'm going to ask karen to help with this we have some just some general information here for you the first is our or the isolation dashboard you can kind of see this is the running the i think what is it live what do you call that lifetime live data you can see right now we're running
029at a um keep going keep going uh right at 2 000 uh quarantines in a little less than 300 active cases obviously this information fluctuates because this is going back over the last uh you know at least 10 days or so maybe even longer in some cases so that information is on our website jennifer our pio insurance releases that information every friday but if you're keep track of it as well as anyone can just click on our website and see that information in lifetime do you have anything you want to add there or questions on that i will just share that that we are working hard and i say we but the nurses the our school principals and our cover contacts to have that information as accurate as possible but due to the rate of
030students being entered in we are not always able to get back to clearing them they're doing the best that they can we're going to talk a little bit about additional support for them but just know that you know as much as we would like to get the the numbers out as soon as somebody comes out that is just not always possible so it's as accurate as we can get it at this time i will share that the pit county um weekly debt um dashboard from the health department just in looking at that today you will see um carol if you'll just scroll down there to the keep scrolling weekly cases keep keep going um you can look at the trend by age keep going a little bit farther by age that that you see that
031it is going up um we are almost at the rates that we were following the holidays um and then the the thing that we're seeing this year that is different is the the number of cases in students um when i looked at this today there's over 3 100 individuals ages 5 through 17 in the county for last week um and so again that would include all students living in our county whether they attend public schools or not so when you know then the numbers are concerning but we are seeing that rate go up um 13 of the of last week's numbers were students or children age 5 through 17. so just to keep that in mind you know we are having quarantines mostly due to lunch um and the bus because that you know at
032times during the lunch when you don't have a mask on and then the bus sometimes we we cannot be assured our drivers are monitoring that to the extent that they can but we do want their eyes looking at the road ahead and so again we just we're not expecting to see the numbers in the students that we are seeing and then i would just continue to ask that our community just work with us you know in our schools the guidelines are such that you know myself and members of my household in the last you know since we've started school have had to sit out due to symptoms of sore throat headache things that typically we would all just take some medicine and send our kids to school and we can't do that and so you
033know we do understand the weight that that puts on families but because students are coming back with stuffy noses and then testing positive we just have to do that so i will just we are trying to have the information out there but symptoms do require alternative diagnosis from your doctor or a negative test a pcr test or an antigen test done by your doctor with that alternative diagnosis if you have symptoms it's very specific of when you can have that antigen test home tests are good for us to help get information in our households if they're positive we can accept that but if it's negative due to the unreliability of those tests we cannot take that um and so some of the things that we are doing um dr linker and you know we're looking
034at additional staffing support for schools to help deal with covid as well as potentially some testing that is coming out of the state we have a call with mako medical who is a state vendor on thursday just to look at what options that they could give us one of the things that our families are experiencing are as our whole community is the long lines with viodent being really the place other than your physician to get it and so that would give an option for families that would like to have testing potentially in the future and we will learn more about that and share that as we get it doctor like i don't know what you were going to say can you clarify because we've gotten several questions from parents grandparents what not that where does
035our quarantined guidance come from um so the quarantine guidance comes from that strong schools toolkit and consultation with our local health director you will see in there that there are some variants like 14 days you don't have to stay out 14 days it's now 10 days you know if you have symptoms so there's there's just some differences so um previously the the vita health manager dr mosley williams and i um along with dr silvernell and members of his team would do conference calls as updates come out and then we get information so there are slight variances based on direct decisions that we get from him probably the the one that is causing the most questions is the household quarantine so when if you're not vaccin any unvaccinated members of the house if there's covid in
036the house we'll have to stay out and it's a long time it's you know minimum 16 days 10 days for the coveted positive person to recover and then an additional at least six days and then you can test or additional 10 days for that individual and again i'm an educator explaining medical information but i will just share you know an analogy that for me is if you think back to pre-covet when you your kids would get a cold or the flu or a stomach bug and the first kid gets it and then they get healthy and the next thing you know your next kid's sick so because of that that timeline any time within the 10 days of recovery if they live in your house even if you have a large enough house that you
037can kind of isolate somebody and they're staying in their room we cannot police that and so you could potentially become coveted positive within that 10 days of recovery and then that last 10th day then take it may take as long as six days after exposure for kova to show up so again it's reasonable to expect that these guidelines have well certainly we know that they have you know changed or been tweaked and it's reasonable to expect that what may be the case this week may not be the case next week right so just just wanting to make sure that parents and caregivers understand that we didn't sit in a room and come up with these quarantine guidelines we were following again the toolkit and consultation with the health department correct correct and we are working
038closely i've had calls from pediatric offices in the last week trying to make sure that we get clarity to them that they have the toolkit that they have the information they have shared with us that you know right now they're only seeing sick patients and so immunization deadlines are coming up i mean you know they're they're working as hard as they can as well um and we we are having good communication anyone that asks i can send them that information i just want to pick it up with all the covert procedures we have in place do you think we can continue to safely have school as we've been having well some parents are wondering why don't we go back to where we used to in the beginning right well again you know it seems like
039large numbers but when we look at the percentage of students um and i don't have that in front of me but you know it still is relatively a low percent of students it feels like a lot it is a lot of work you know that number but it's about eight about eight eight percent um you know of students that are sitting out you know in quarantine um but that means that we have the other you know 92 percent in school learning face-to-face and at this point we continue to feel that that is the best for our students thank you just to make sure i'm clear because i'm kind of confused myself now so the guideline for the household so i have two sons so if one of them tests positive then they're both out for
04016 days or the one that was sick and go back into i'm confused so so okay if you have two unvaccinated students um the one that is initially positive can in 10 days on the 11th day return to school okay if they feel well enough right you know they don't have a fever symptoms are improving the other child because they're not vaccinated and they live in the household will have to be out those 10 days and an additional at least six if you choose to have the child tested or an additional 10 day so 20 days and they had 16 or 20 in the end and again it seems so backwards but sick one goes back and the one that's not sick has to stay out even longer because that child then is recovered and
041this child may potentially be exposed so in those cases let's say you had two children and one was vaccinated and the other was not and the the one who was sick is not if the other child brings proof of vaccination then they don't have to sit out that whole time as long as they do not experience symptoms a vaccinated child would be able to stay in school just like our vaccinated staff would be able to and they they would bring their card yes they would have to show their card so that the nurse could have that on file and that's fully vaccinated fully vaccinated yes not the first shot of two um and then you have to have that two week period afterwards so yes fully vaccinated that was kind of where i wanted to
042clarify madam chair yes lunch obviously i know the masks are off the eating is there anything we can do to to lessen those numbers from lunch are we looking at anything so um i will say there's a principal here that just shared with me today that they they went back to their school and because of the size of their school they were able to look in classrooms and try to get students further away that's possible in a school with less population school with you know a bigger population may not be able to do that i know our administrators have been looking at you know combination of eating in the classroom and some eating in the cafeteria we are looking at that it was brought up today for us just to to re-look at the toolkit
043and see any areas that we could strengthen to continue to lessen quarantines i follow up with buses obviously i guess when you're doing the contract chasing you asking the students i guess that do you have them did you wear a mask on a bus and i guess they're being honest and saying they did not am i correct when i again depending on the age of the kids that we try to get that information we are you know um the first couple of weeks we will also admit that you know as as buses get more kids on every day we might not have up-to-date seating charts so seating charts we've asked for seating charts and things that can help reduce numbers of bus quarantines but yes depending on the age of kids we're asking the kids
044we're asking the driver and again in consultation with the health department if we are not certain you know i mean for instance one one um situation we had the kid was a kindergarten student that was crying on the bus so then they might have been you know masked and taken off their mouths while they were crying you know so that was potentially more detrimental than what when kids are doing it the follow-up that i do ask our principals to on their weekly calls and notes home that they emphasize the mask on the buses and try to get that students to understand the necessity of it yes yes and all we can do is try we're just trying to get that information out one of the ap suggested late last week that we you know as
045we did some of the other little graphics that we do a graphic for the bus that they can share they're reiterating that on buses but we as parents have to ask our kids to to wear the bus even when there's not an adult eye on you the whole time and that goes back to that sunday night afternoon call night call right okay caroline has a question go ahead caroline hey um thank you karen for all this information and a huge thank you to all the nurses um i know it's so difficult to not be able to clear out the um the staff and students who've completed quarantine in isolation because it inflates our numbers artificially but i understand the paperwork behind it it's definitely challenging in my opinion mako can't get here soon enough um
046because i think you know our our school community who is having trouble accessing testing um needs another option um if their pediatrician's office can't do it and i myself as you all can see i'm in quarantine right now because of a um positive member of our of my household um you know i've waited four and a half hours in a line and that's with that with nobody in the car with me i don't have you know children at home anymore so i really feel um the pain of folks are who are having to wait so long to get tested um i will say if you can possibly go before they open usually that helps a lot um but i know that's not always possible either my questions are about um keeping our kids safer i
047know there are a few schools who have covered walkways and they take classes of students out and sit on the walkways to eat their lunch um and i i'm presuming that that makes a big difference what is the status of the picnic tables i mean i know we ordered hundreds of them what's the status of the picnic tables as long as the weather's good even though it's hot it's better than being inside um in terms of getting those set up and eating outside so i'm really um really curious about that and are we opening the windows on the buses actually the bus windows still open i don't know if buses still have windows that can open um my understanding is the more fresh air coming in and out the better right those are my questions
048i can tell you the picnic tables have been bitten bitted have been bit out um we were waiting for that we you know it was using the esser funds it's a more than a more than a multiple step process it's plus we have to bid it get the prices out now matt's in here you can tell us but that that has happened we still we don't even have the final prices yet or who's going to get the bid yet what do you know when that's coming back okay with the from our suppliers that we know of that we've contacted that we'll be sending in bids we're months out on picnic tables i don't know if it's two months three months or six months but we're months away from getting picnic tables here once they do
049arrive they have to be put together and distributed out to sites so you know as great as it is to have this money everybody in the country wants picnic tables as well um and there's no staff and there's no materials to go get a lot of this stuff so we're struggling just like everybody else in this dilemma that we're in you know caused by covid the bus to answer your question about buses yes the windows do open um and it is definitely recommended that the bus the the windows remain open during the routes um especially when when the weather's cooperative it's really hard last week was hard for for anybody to want to open a window when the heat index is 105 and you know but at the same time this week it's pretty decent
050out so having those windows open on those buses and the ones that i've seen at the school sites as well as driving down the road have had windows open and that's something that we've said that definitely needs to happen to the greatest extent possible i know carolyn i have seen lots of schools where kids are outside underneath awnings or in the canopies and breezeways outside if they do have picnic tables they've been outside eating lunches where they can spread out the best they can may i follow up god since we don't have tables i mean can they just bring a big picnic cloth and sit on the ground if they want to yes ma'am in fact i talked to dr briny today and that was one of the things that that he said they were
051doing at wintergreen and i know that other schools are doing the same thing as well as hey just because we don't have a table we're not going to limit what we can do hey bring your blanket bring bring a big blanket a picnic blanket and go out there and that's a lot of things that that they're doing you know it's uh our schools just like they have been uh for years it's let's go make this happen um don't let the fact that the picnic table is not there you know slow us down from getting outside and eating so we can be a little bit safer it's hey let's get the blankets and towels in here and let's still get outside so yes ma'am well that's good to hear any other questions or comments tracy i
052just had a follow-up for karen i was concerned also about the staffing support do we still have the contact tracers or what does it look like right now for the the nursing and any other support staff to be able to keep up with all of this paperwork and the quarantining well i will just again share several principles i've talked to today said that you know reported being at school till six o'clock on friday night you know holiday weekend making calls it's every night it's 85 percent of their day they're doing it our nurses are going home and doing that even though in the past i've told them you don't have to do it they're doing it just to to keep track they're making calls our cova contacts which they vary from tas to clerical support
053to our counselors or teachers they're doing they're pitching in and doing that as well so we have great teams and they're all working together but they're doing it on top of their other responsibilities the nurses have other responsibilities especially at the beginning of the year so do our ministry i mean our administrators are we we've got to get back to the academic function you know so they're all just doing it's a lot on on all of our staff and that's why we are going to utilize some of the additional funds to hire additional people to be just solely doing that so we're going to contract with them and hopefully that short term and that this goes down and we can you know utilize them in other ways do we foresee that taking a while for
054us to get more people on board or what's that no our principals jumped on that we had a meeting and they were people some of our principals had people that evening and they're working on contracts and shared that some of them hired them before we even got the paperwork done but we that's where we i think it's of the additional support staff we told them they could all go get somebody to do whatever they need there's just some some needed covet people i think megan over here hired someone to help with her on her school on the weekends you know paying them to do that kind of work other other teachers other principals said i need this so it's really whatever the principal or that school needed they went out and are trying to get
055but there's not you know we're in the process of hiring five additional nurses through the help of biden if we can you know get them on board that'll certainly help would we'd hire as many nurse extenders we could get our hands on if there's out there we would hire them to help out with our nurses we know that the at the school level with you saw a number of quarantines yeah you know that's that's also a phone call to every single one of them you know it's not just like a robocall it's a phone call yeah so so we just every time we hire more staff it seems like we you know are needing even more and again shout out to all of all of the people in the schools that are doing this day
056in and day out um you know they're they're tired and frustrated but they they don't let that show um and so we just i appreciate so much the work that they're doing absolutely that's a daunting task i think i don't know how to turn it off carolyn did you have another question i do um this is about uh the dashboard um i haven't seen any um clusters reported yet from pitt county schools so at this point we don't have any evidence of transmission that would qualify as a cluster correct correct so what we're basically seeing all these quarantines and all these cases are basically spillover from the community into our schools not being transmitted at school as far as current data yes i don't want to say that won't change right but at this point
057that's correct okay that's what i want to understand thank you anybody else we good thank you karen all right closing comments uh just quickly just karen actually summarized a lot of what i wanted to say actually that the last since our last board meeting has really been an all hands on deck so to speak um everybody at the senior leadership their department matt's team has seen what he's done the last couple weeks to make sure our buildings were opened for um a parent night um actually having contractors come in between parent night and first day of school so getting things done dr laster's team organizing all of our chromebooks getting all that ready to go dr rohn getting people through the through the hr department so they can get hired and get into the school
058deborah from getting them paid uh karen as you heard her work with our nurses in our schools every day uh jennifer keeping everything put out there it's taken all of them um are just the staff at the schools uh the bus garage have this is amazing the amount of work in the what they've done we said that last year when all this is going on i think if you saw the chart we saw earlier we were looking at about the beginning of june or the end of june beginning of july when all this was was about to where we we thought we're coming back to normal school year and it turned out to be to be honest i think harder than last school year actually a lot harder than last school year just because of
059the sheer number of of quarantines um so kudos to our staff our teachers our nurses our principals you got uh four or three principals sitting out here assistant principal there um uh this the the their commitment to our kids and our staff is is just you know amazing i appreciate them okay amy i'm going to kind of piggyback off what dr liker said just how much we appreciate all of our staff our faculty administration everyone that's doing what they can to keep these kids in school it's really easy for people outside to make comments or not understand what's going on and what it takes to keep our schools running so i appreciate everything that that everyone's doing to keep our kids in school as a parent myself so thank you for everything and congratulations to
060all of our sports teams today and all of our individual athletes it's great to see a little bit of normalcy with all of the teams and it's just really good to see that so i appreciate them come in here and i think that's about it lost words right now but thank you for everyone james as dr lincoln amy has said thank you to all the principals teachers staff custodians bus drivers cafeteria workers monitors and all for helping our schools opening and operating successfully during this time of this ongoing pandemic and i want to say to the parents please work with your child's school to help keep them and other students and staff safe this is a time that we all need to work together for the betterment of all people as many have said in
061the past together we stand divided we all fall and we need to be together on this and continue to move forward together keeping all of our staff students and everybody safe it's a commitment that we all have to make and some decisions that are made some like some don't but for the betterment of all of our parents and students it's best that we'd be all on the same page working together and congratulations to all the champions and winners that were presented on tonight continue to represent your school in pitt county in the best possible way thank you i want to remind our parents to and staff to be sure if you have some symptoms stay home please i don't come to school uh until you are symptom-free because that just increasing our quarantine numbers once
062again to our parents please emphasize your child the importance of wearing the mask uh it's with our quarantine procedures if the mask is on they get to stay in school for the most part so let's emphasize that i'd also like to once again the state champions congratulations the average person does not know how hard it is for a team to win a state championship and an individual what they go through to do that and as everyone said congratu uh congratulations to all the staff students etc the hard work they've done to to keep our schools running to this point and i look forward to continuing to run and also i'd like to uh just remind just say a prayer keep prayers for new hanover county and winston-salem foresight for the tragic events that happened last
063week in their schools so please keep them in your prayers thank you um i you know it can't thank you cannot be said enough to you principals um aps administrator just everybody that's that's helping keep the schools running um i just want you to know that we see you we we know it we don't know it firsthand but we're watching and we're trying to understand what you're going through and we appreciate the feedback that you give to dr linker and the thing that has impressed me the most is what dr linker tells us about your attitudes um this is an incredibly difficult time and and i talked to a principal the other day who was going to be driving a bus one day you know you're rolling up your sleeves and you're getting done what
064needs to get done um and we appreciate that but we even more appreciate the fact that you're doing it with the best possible attitude and just kind of making things happen and i think it's just gonna unfortunately be that way for a while where we everybody has to just roll up their sleeves and do what needs to be done but just please know that you have our our gratitude and and support and appreciation um i wanted to compliment jennifer i don't know if i'm late to the game but i heard your sweet voice on the radio the other day um for um a pitt county schools spot and i was super super excited you did a really great job and we appreciate the way you represent us um and then obviously congrats to our sports
065teams congrats to the coaches who put in the long hours thank you to the principals who make facilities available and juggle all that you know athletics are important it gets kids excited about being in school it gives them incentive to do well in school and it just gives a healthy outlet all the way around so we appreciate all that's being done and the level to which it's being caroline yeah um i wanted to say uh thanks to all the parents the students and the staff of um cm eps and a.g cox who are both undergoing quite large either upgrades or repairs um these definitely are inconvenient and they cause us to sometimes do things differently and longer and not how we want to do them and i know that it gets frustrating when it drags
066on for a very long time and i want to say thank you for understanding and if you have questions or concerns about the impact please please talk to the principal of the school they the principals are up to date on what's going on and sometimes what's going on we just found out about an hour ago or the day before so um these are old buildings and there's a reason a lot of people like to build new buildings um because when you pull back a wall or a floor you find stuff and that's just our reality in um in public schools these days i also um wanted to just shout out volleyball basketball baseball track swimming pit county schools state champions and all of those sports that is an incredible achievement obviously for the kids and
067for the families but for the coaches who inspired teamwork despite a great deal of odds with that teamwork and clear communication and following rules they were able to overcome their opponents and you know i'd like to ask everyone you know we are all united in pitt county schools against one common enemy and it is the coveted virus and we need to do everything each of us can do to defeat it just like a team we've got dr linker and dr sylvanelle and karen leading the charge let's listen to him thank you tracy okay i'll be very brief i feel like we've touched on most of the stuff already um just congratulations again to our athletes it is really nice to to have our students face to face and to be able to recognize them and
068i want to just reiterate the appreciation for all of our staff that are helping to run our schools i know this is very daunting and can be overwhelming to us to do it but i do feel like we are more successful than we were last year our kids are five days a week normal school hours every single week i've seen the improvement in my own children with their mental health and just general well-being being in school every day so i know all of our children are benefiting from it so kudos to everyone because i know it is overwhelming um i know there's probably been a lot of challenges for children coming in too that parents have been very wary to bring their children to school for services or other sorts of things needs that they
069have and so i know that a lot of the support staff is probably seeing that as well an increased need in that area so thanks again for for all of your support first i'd like to extend sincere condolences to the family of latrice green who passed away on august 10th and that was after august meeting so this is the first opportunity to be able to extend that condolences her mother she was a rising third grader at ayden elementary and her mother actually was an employee latoya green of ours and so just keep that family and your thoughts and prayers i know it's been a while but losing a child is is something no one ever wants to have to to do and i just would appreciate everybody keeping that family in your prayers second of
070course the the sports teams i cannot say you know i'm a sports fan my kids all love sports and my daughter is just like probably more rabid than the boys are when it comes to following sports teams and i just really think that these teams that and and students athletes that were recognized tonight play such an important role in the health and well-being of the other students in pitt county as well as you know parents i like and so i just extend congratulations to them and all the adults that were involved in in helping them whether get you know getting them to practice getting them to games principals having to open buildings close buildings what have you it really is important and it makes a difference and i just want to say congratulations to them
071to the staff i don't think you can say thank you enough it's incredible what you're being asked to do i wouldn't want to be in your shoes and i'm a nurse that works in the hospital so for what that's worth i mean it's i know you work really really hard and and i so appreciate everything that that you do to make us continue to kind of go down that pathway and keeping our kids in school because i do believe um i had a call not too long ago that said why are the kids in school you know with the kova being so high it's proven that our children need to be in school for them to learn as well as mental you know for them mentally and the one thing that i remind people is
072that this time last year when kids left the schools and went home and went out to the mall they wore a mask we should expect higher quarantines because they're not wearing masks when they leave the school and i'm not saying that they necessarily have to i'm just saying you need to look at the big picture and understand that that's a consequence of that freedom and so as long as we can keep them safe in the building i think you know we need to keep on keeping on so just remember that and when you look at those numbers that we shouldn't really be surprised and if you think about should the schools close i'm not saying we're going to but if you did where would students be they would be out and about without a mask
073probably and so that probably really wouldn't help the cause of why we're having the issue so i just want us to keep pushing forward doing the best that we can and i say thank you very much for all that you do and now i'll entertain a motion to adjourn a move that we adjourn hannah second second tracy second any discussion and we're gonna do one last roll call for vote amy cole yes anna barrett yes caroline jonery yes okay uh don rhodes yes james tripp yes evertlands yes okay meeting is adjourned thank you