001All right, if I can get you to take your seats. We are running late on an agenda that is already scheduled um through minuteby minute, but we will take care of all of our important business. even if that means that we have to delay the start of our regular meeting. So, welcome everyone. Today is Tuesday, November 18th, and we are beginning our work session of the Wake County Board of Education. Um, today we do have a quorum present. Um, and we also have a member who is unable to participate in person who is joining us remotely, Mr. Hershey. And so, uh, Vice Chair Swanson is going to assist and help me monitor that. So, Mr. Hershey, uh, will have an opportunity to listen, ask questions, and participate as well. Um, and with that, um, I'd
002like to entertain a motion relevant to our agenda. Chair, I move that we Oh, was that your gotcha? Chair, I move that we move up the district 8 update and vacancy to the first item uh on the work session agenda. >> Okay. Thank you, Vice Chair Swanson. Um what I I wanted to move this up on our agenda because it is time sensitive. >> Oh, I'm already speaking to it. Is there a second? >> Second from Dr. Ring. um for debate. I just want to say this is timesensitive, so I wanted to make sure that we all got this addressed and didn't leave our meeting today with any questions. All right. All in favor of the motion, >> please. >> Roll call vote due to Mr. Hershey. >> Due to Mr. Hershey's presence. All right.
003Um yeah, typically in work session, I'm not used to formal votes. So, we'll start with Mr. Hershey. All right, we'll start at the other side of the table. Miss Rice >> I. >> Vice Chair Swanson >> I. >> The chair votes I. Miss Edmonds >> I. >> Dr. Ing >> I. >> Miss Gordon >> I. >> And we'll ask again if Mr. Hershey is on and available. >> He can't hear. >> All right. Well, we still have a vote of >> state chair. um he said that he cannot hear anything on his end. >> Okay. So, we'll work through that on the technical side, but we do have a vote of six members in favor of amending the agenda. So, the the agenda for the work session has been amended and we will bring up
004the topic of the district 8 vacancy first. All right. So, um, a couple of things here I want to share. With the deadline for applications passing, we have 17 total applicants for the one board seat. Uh, there were four applicants who supplied additional information as a substitute for their utility bill. But our staff did go and those are the types of document. They provided documents which you previously considered and said, you know, could be substitutes and therefore they were all 17 uh that we have were verified as living within and being residents of district 8. We did have two individuals who applied who do not live in district 8. So um we have a couple of decisions before us. Um first of all 17 candidates is a lot of people. Now with the disc previous
005discussion we had had limiting interviews to 30 minutes with a 10-minute break. Um I'm going to pass this out for each of you. Um Dr. Taylor, if I can get you to pass those down and give this one to Miss Rise. We might have an extra one for Rod, too. >> Are these all the same? >> Uh, should be. >> Thank you. >> All right. And I'll describe this for Mr. Hershey's benefit. Um, this is a breakdown that using a 30inut interview schedule with 10-minute breaks. Our first interview would begin on Tuesday, November 25th at 8:30 a.m. Our final interview would conclude at 8:00 p.m. and then we would go into deliberation to select among those 17. So that is if we keep the schedule that you all previously adopted. So one thing we can
006do is with the 30 minutes one thing we need to look at is a qu is a question about the questions we are asking those questions were previously shared with you. Do we want to consider reducing the number of questions because it is unlikely that the candidates will be able to answer all of those questions within the 30 minutes or do we want to rotate through the questions such that if we end on question number eight the next candidate we begin with question number nine or do you want everyone to have the same questions? I want to throw that out as an open question for discussion. Vice Chair Swanson. Sure, chair. I think given the number um I'm fine with the schedule that's presented. Um one thing I think that I would be open to
007is if we were to send the questions to the candidates the morning of evening at some point to give them an opportunity to um I guess prepare or whatnot. One thing that I would also like to throw out is um an elimination process. Have we done in the past if I guess if a candidate doesn't receive one vote that they're eliminated? And I think based off that we could easily go from 17 to about eight within a round or so. Um, but I'm also prepared for a late night because we had a a a schedule that would have accommodated this. But since it did not, I'm fine with us going to as long as it takes because that's a part of our duties and um that is the work. So those are my pieces. >>
008Okay. Thank you, Vice Chair Swanson. Um, I do want to go back to the question about the questions additionally too in terms of any opinions on how we handle those questions. We'll also have some questions about the streaming of the meeting um that our chief information officer wanted to bring to our attention when she's present. But we'll continue on. Mr. Rice, how do you feel about the schedule, the questions, or anything else at this point with the 17 the the elimination uh rule that Vice Chair Swanson had suggested or anything else related to the process. >> Um I uh agree with Vice Chair Swanson, so I don't need to reiterate. He said exactly what I was going to say. Um so skip um keep the schedule for this day for as long as it is.
009I would suggest that we choose to narrow the questions are down. I think they were 10, eight. I would suggest that we narrow the questions down to about four. Um, and I do suggest um that we ask each panel the same questions and not do the rotation only because my business brain goes to HR methods and when you're doing an interview, you need to ask every candidate the same questions um to be fair and I think our attorney may can help us with that if that's a thing. But I think we need to keep questions the same and maybe limiting to three, four, but I would even say just three questions is is enough and we choose between the three questions that we desire. Thank you, chair. >> All right. Thank you. I'll come around
010to Miss Gordon. >> Um I am fine with the schedule. It will be a long day. Um but I am fine with the schedule. However, the questions I am I'm a little bit concerned with the you know in reading the questions they present a wide range of various topics that a board member will have to um engage with. So I just worry that if we limit them and not do a rotation, how will we get a full picture of of the um the basis of the questions that we're asking? >> All right. Thank you, Dr. >> Um I'm I'm fine with the schedule on Tuesday. Um, and you know that's a short day compared to my my day uh working in the hospital and charting at night. So um I'm fine with it. Um in
011terms of um the questions um I I actually was helping uh Mr. uh uh Swanson with um you know revising some of those questions I and and I thought maybe question seven um I think it's some some of the questions may be um hard for an applicant to really answer well h without having actually been in it. Mhm. >> Uh and question seven is one of those things I thought maybe you know it's hard for for anybody to understand the you know the the interaction between um um serving constituents versus representing the system as a whole. You know I but that's just you know my my my take on it. Um so but um I think it's important that we ask the same same questions to everybody. >> Okay. Thank you and Miss Edmonds and
012then we'll ask see if Mr. Hershey's available. Dora. >> Um, I agree with everyone getting the same questions and I also with respect for precedent as in the past these meetings have been streamed and so any applicant can watch, you know, unless they're number one, they can watch the process and listen to answers and just sort of have that benefit. So, I really support letting them have the questions ahead of time so that no one applicant has an advantage over anyone else. I was wondering if and I'm fine with the schedule. I was wondering if um we could make the breaks five minutes between and and if we don't want to do that in a formal way, can we agree that the expectation is if you know needs to be excused as far as our
013board members and the next applicant is here that we can just roll into the next person. I do understand that the applicants will understand like this schedule, but I feel like most of them would be early if they want to make a good impression. So, they does that make sense? >> It it does. It could save us an extra hour, hour 15 >> um in there. Yeah. Okay. Here I have Mr. Hershey's remarks. >> All right. Thank you. >> Mr. Mr. Hershey stated that he was fine with the proposal, but he does not think that we should narrow it down to four questions. >> Okay. Well, and and the number of questions, if you think that you've got 30 minutes, there'll be some time to actually ask the questions, you know, depending on how detailed,
014you know, maybe 30 seconds each. If you've got what, eight, that's four minutes down. And then how long would a typical introduction last? And so then how much how much time do you have left to answer each each question? So what what are your thoughts? >> I'm wondering given the fact that the questions will be sitting there. Do we have to read the questions? Because that takes some time. So I I believe the candidates could read them the questions for themselves and we just go that way if we're, you know, trying to condense the time and stay in that 30 minute um gap. But I I also want to uh speak to question seven which was referenced. But I I think given the growth that we're experiencing and getting ready to come up with the
015strategic uh with the the student assignment plan, I do think it's important for those constituents to understand that that district is growing rapidly and how do you balance all of that with keeping the whole district as a whole. And so um I would argue that that's a question that we should keep given the nuances that that board member is going to face in that particular district. >> So with all those thoughts, allow me to share this. We've been through this process at least three times since I've been on the board. One of the most valuable things to me has been an opening question where we do let the candidates say who they are um and introduce themselves. And so that's not actually one of our questions on here unless you sort of roll it into
016why are you interested in serving on the board, you know, and and candidates may use that time for that purpose. I think if you I I hear what you all say about wanting to ask everyone the same question that is consistent with our practice. I will say I've never liked that because I think candidates are unique and some bring unique circumstances and it would have been interesting for example to ask questions about like professional experience as a classroom teacher or you know um a family experience that someone might have or an advocacy role. But I hear you and so for fairness I think it's okay then we go with the same questions. I do think that we could reduce the number from 8 to six but I don't have any preference how many that how
017many we actually do. I do think not asking the question might be a little awkward but I think it is something we could consider to save time. So um and then I guess the um other thing other thing related to questioning is that um well I see Miss Luton is here. Um, when we talked about streaming, we have typically streamed the meetings, but to the point Miss Edmond raised, if you're going first, you haven't seen any of, you know, anybody else's answers what they've done. And we've had candidates complain about having to go first and asking to go later. And Miss Luton, I know that you had raised some questions about maybe how we wanted to stream it. Would you be able to speak to us at this time? >> Yes. So um options that
018you have first remembering that um traditionally historically we have always streamed board meetings um but we only have started streaming committee meetings and these auxiliary meetings only after COVID and that was because we were um limited to having audience here in the boardroom. Um, so we, you know, historically we haven't really opened up a lot of these options, but here's what we, here's what we technically can do. We can do like we've done in the past, which is stream all of it. Stream the interviews and stream the deliberation afterwards. Um, we can also record, let's say we record the interviews, but not stream the interviews, save them for transparency, um, and then post them after deliberation. and then stream the deliberation portion of it. That's an option. Um the option three would be to do
019what we would have done before COVID, right? And um and not stream or record um sharing that because that is an option that we have. >> Uh Vice Chair Swanson. >> So thank you Chief Luton for laying that out. I my only concern is the time that it's literally 12 hours that someone from your team will be >> you know we make it work. We'll I wouldn't We'll figure it out. >> I just wanted to throw that out. I apprec I appreciate that. >> Be mindful that this is more than what your team has signed up to do. >> Yeah, we'll do shifts. There's more than one person who can man the control room. >> All right. Any other thoughts or questions for Miss Luton, Miss Edmonds? So going back, my earliest memory of observing
020this was when Tom Bittton was um appointed and his strained. >> You have a better memory than me? >> I think Kathy Hartinstein did too. I don't remember yours. >> They all did since then. >> Um I don't remember Zora Felton. >> Yeah, she was before. I don't remember. >> Okay. But I know Tom Benton has streamed and sub so that would have been before co and I'm not I don't mean that to be argumentative. >> My other question is it didn't occur to me that it was an option not see I hate that we stream it. >> I think that is a horrible >> way to do this for any applicant. It's very intimidating to know that you're on a live stream for public. If it's a public meeting that's fine. Come here. Sit
021in the audience. if you want to participate, what what have you. But it didn't occur to me that we didn't have the option that we had the option that we don't have to. So, I would be in favor of not streaming it, record it, whatever. We I'm open to that. But if we have the option legally not to live stream, I absolutely support that because I think it's more comfortable for the applicants. >> Thank you. Further questions for Miss Luton. Mr. Rice, did you have one? >> Um, not I don't know if it's it's not necessarily a question, but it's in in reference to um so so chair I I would uh slightly disagree um as a candidate who has actually gone through this process. Um I think um from my understanding this is a
022public meeting um >> Mhm. >> because it you got to have a quorum and it's called and the whole nine and so therefore I think that it's fair for uh the public to be able to know whom may or may not be their candidates and for something for them to go back and watch and see and hold people to some level of accountability. Um yes it is a strenuous process um having gone through it myself um but it's also necessary >> and so I just want to share that bit of information it's necessary it's okay it's a part of this particular life that the person and we are choosing to do um when doing this and so to close out public um while you all know I am very heavy about um staff well-being is
023important to me. If Miss Luton says that she can manage her team to provide shifts so that their well-being is intact, um then I am definitely open for that particular piece from my perspective. >> Okay. Thank you. So, I mean, well, let me just Is there any other thoughts? Did Mr. Mr. Hershey have any thoughts on it or >> Yes, I'm trying to make sure he can unmute, but he did say that he wanted to raise a different question. Um, if someone has a unique classroom experience, they should be able to give that experience in their opening statements last introduction. >> Okay, that sounds good. Um, >> yeah. So, so let's ask this. Um it sounded like there was and Miss Ras, I know you stepped out, there was um other support for keeping all
024of the questions, but there was an acknowledgement that we likely wouldn't get through all of them. So then my question to you all, especially to Vice Chair Swanson and Dr. Ring as you worked on these questions, are these questions prioritized in any order or is this just sort of how they were developed? So they are giving the you know looking back at the question that we raised we um wanted to make sure that we could get to the gist of why people are applying. So they are rewarded they are a little bit more direct versus the questions that we raised in the past were very looking at Miss Rice and Miss Gorn. I feel like they were a little bit more fluff. Um so this is a way for us to get and maybe that's
025not the right word. I'm struggling with my words today. um maybe this is a little bit more intentional for us to get to those pieces. So I think we went from eight or 10 to seven to eight, but um I think folks who have been paying attention, who have went through the process to actually apply should be able to knock these questions out and I mean use their lived experience, work experience, and personal experience to prove to the board why they are the best candidate to fill a seat. >> Okay. Thank you. So to the the point that Miss Miss Luton had raised um I just want to take the temperature. I mean I think there's valid points on both sides, right? Like I I think that it's important to remember that these meetings will
026be recorded even if they're not livereamed. And there's not going to be an opportunity for necessarily the public to contact us and give us their opinion, you know, live because we're going to be in one continuous meeting and we should be paying attention to the candidates, right? And not like reading emails or, you know, taking telephone calls. So, so you know whether they see those interviews the minute they happen or they just see them you know after the deliberation which would be streamed and it's posted. I mean I think there will be transparency and the public will see them but you know to the other point there is a precedent we've always done it one way is there enough justification to really switch it and you know I do think that for the people that
027go later when they can stream all the answers we have had people that for whatever reason you know they'll have people designated watching all the interviews they might be watching them themselves And maybe that influences the process somehow. I don't know. We have three of us that were chosen in this manner. I don't know if it ever influenced any of our selection any way. Anyhow, I'm fine with it either way. So just kind of show of hands, how many people would be in favor of not live streaming the whole thing and then just does do or do people just prefer streaming it from the first interview all the way through the end of deliberation? How many in favor of the live stream? >> No preference. Okay. Anyone feel strongly passionately either way? I already stated.
028>> I Yeah, >> I'm with her. >> Okay. So, it sounds like we'll keep it the same. Did I interpret that right or are we changing it? We just need a direction for staff, >> please. >> I think I hear you say we're going to record it. >> No, I'm asking are we going to record it in post or live stream? It's one or the other. I just don't know which. Yeah, >> I I strongly preferred live stream for people who may want to to engage um I know I did um and engage um and others that were associated with being connected watch >> um and engaged, but um you know, I'm always going to be a team player >> even though Yeah. >> Okay. >> But I'm always going to be a team player.
029>> Um so I'm okay. >> Okay. Vice Chair Swanson. I mean, if I have to give a decision, so staff know. >> Yeah, they got to know. >> I'm fine with being consistent. I think let's just be consistent. >> Okay. Are we okay with that? Okay. All right. Miss Luton, you have your marching orders. Thank you so much. All right. So then if I if we have if I've read the room correctly, we will proceed with a schedule to have the 17 interviews on one day, Tuesday, November 25th with a schedule again that I've passed out for you all. There was a proposal to reduce the number of break the time of the breaks from 10 minutes to 5 minutes. And I think, you know, by math that could probably save us between like an
030hour, hour and 15 minutes or so. How many people are in favor of that? Good. Okay. So, we will do that. Miss Allen, if you've heard that feedback, we will try to reduce the breaks by five minutes. Vice Chair Swanson, >> what happens if a interview goes over? Something happens? >> They will not go over. Okay. I will be chairing the meeting and when time expires time will expire and that also I guess should be stressed to applicants to please be prompt because their time starts when their time starts chair >> unless anyone thinks that's unfair an unfair unreasonable expectation. >> Um Dr. So um for the applicants are we asking ask asking asking them to show up at like a certain peri like time before their slotted time just so in case we are
031>> you know if we are shortening them uh and sometimes the breaks may yeah may not be that that long can they start earlier than um than their designated time would >> if it's only five minutes I don't know that they could necessarily start earlier, but I think if it's clear that the interview starts promptly at whatever time it is, most candidates who are serious about the role would show up in advance. Um, whether we want to tell them, you know, give them a time of the end of the previous interview, so 9:00 versus 9:05, we could do that. Um, again, just knowing that we would still have our breaks, you know, 5 minute break planned there, but maybe just give them a time that's 5 minutes early. I'm open to that if you all
032want. >> Yeah, if if I were in that position, I would be here early and and be waiting for it and and not just show up at right on my designated time because, you know, I just need to get my mind to be, you know, >> Yeah. >> prepared, you know. >> Okay. Okay. So then do we want to leave it then at the uh at the scheduled time but with the fiveminute breaks? >> Yeah. >> Let them u know that you know be be uh plan to be here early. >> Okay. >> All right. Um then the next one we'll provide the questions to the candidates 24 hours in advance. And um it didn't sound like there were any other changes then to the questions or the question order. We'll just proceed. Everyone will
033get the same questions. And if we don't get through them all, we don't get through them all. All right. Does everyone feel comfortable with that plan? All right, Miss Allen, you've heard the uh the discussion. That seems like the will of the board. And so now, if we return to our regular agenda, we'll move into our final update on the school enrollment plan. All right. Thank you everybody for all your participation in the district 8 discussion. Mr. Corrosa, Miss Poleium, thank you. Thank you for your patience. >> Thank you. All right. Before we get started, I just want to say thank you to the board, Superintendent Taylor and Chief Strickland for the trust that you've placed in us to lead this process. Um, I'd like to thank uh Susan and her team uh for their
034prof um for all the work that they've done. I'd like to shout out to um Rob Sywick and the Office of Geospatial Analytics and the support that they've provided. But Susan, to you, uh, thank you for your professionalism, your willingness to find creative solutions, your leadership, and your ability to provide exemplary customer service to all. Um, you are a tremendous asset to this district, and I thank you, and I'm grateful that I get to work alongside you every day. So, thank you. >> Thank you. And not cool. All right. Thank you, Mr. Garza. Uh, Chair Higgery, Vice Chair Swanson, Superintendent Taylor, members of the board, again, thank you so much for this opportunity to present to you the final draft of the 2026 27 school enrollment plan. I will have formal remarks for you during
035our board meeting where I too will share my gratitude for several team members. So, let's dive in. Uh, first things first, I have a controller and we should be good. We were supposed to be good. There we go. Um, so today we're going to be presenting to you, as I said, the final draft of the 2026 2027 school enrollment plan. So, just a reminder for everyone, this would take effect for the next school year. Uh, beginning in July of 26, we'll have five brief goals for you to quickly go over the assignment planning process. Just to remind everybody about how we got here, we'll talk about the feedback we've received since we last saw you on October 21st through both a thought exchange, an information session, and your public hearing. We'll review the final recommendations
036in total just to make sure you know exactly what it is we're asking you to approve later tonight and of course review any remaining elements of the timeline and give you an opportunity to provide any final thoughts or direction before we go into um the board meeting later this evening. Just a brief reminder, we are aligned to the strategic plan in both the areas of family and community engagement and operational effectiveness. And of course, our websites that have been sort of the center point for all of our communities and family members are the 2026 enrollment proposal site. All of the info we're sharing with you today will be is posted there and available for community members, as well as our assignment planning site that persists year round for family members and community members who'd like
037to know more about how we approach this process. You have a review packet in your materials labeled 6G that outlines all of the material we've been sharing with you since the beginning of this year's process. So, we won't go over it in great detail, but we will remind you that we are actively and close to the end of step 4. You'll see that November 2025 date there for step 4. Shortly following tonight's events, we will be bringing to you recommendations related to capping as a follow-on step. and then in the spring we'll come to you with any other utilization concerns or issues that we would like for you to consider. The enrollment forecast kicks off our process. We take that information and spatially distribute it so that we can better understand how that might impact
038us throughout the district. We also look at our projected crowding. Again, these are reflective of what we thought was going to happen as of March earlier this year. And of course, we would look over our capital improvement plan and the timing and sequencing of new capacity coming online either through new construction or major renovations. And then we jump into the enrollment plan itself. We've already concluded steps one and two and are actively in part three. But just as a quick review, this process started in earnest in March of this year. Candidly, for Hilltop Needmore in particular, it started in March of 2023. So, we've been engaging the community for quite some time in preparation for the opening of that school. You'll see a footnote here and on all of the sort of future slides coming
039up about public engagement, we have provided for you in your attachments and a paper copy on your desk of 6B the final version two of the public engagement summary report that captures all of the um information we've gathered from the community throughout this process. As a quick update, since we last saw you, we've had additional views of the videos that were of the recordings of our information sessions from May. So, we're up to a total of 250 views for those two sessions. So, they're continuing to be viewed even though we've moved into a later stage of the process. So, we just find that that these are helpful resources for families and they're continuing to use them. Um, just as a recap, between the re before we released the first draft in September, we had one
040website that we were managing. We held seven in-person information sessions between 2023 and 2025. We held four virtual sessions specifically in 2025. There were additional virtual sessions in prior years specifically related to Hilltop Needmore. We held four rounds of focus groups during that time period and we held nine different thought exchanges across that time period. So it's just a quick by the number snapshot to let you know about how our engagement efforts are progressing throughout the process. the planning implications. You've seen this a couple of times now, so I won't belabor the point, but obviously stability, calendar continuity, cohort continuity, capacity management, and balancing all of that amongst all of our policy goals have been the driving forces for this year's planning process. Uh we also then brought to you some conversations in May about
041the goals that you would like for us to include in the plan. So we knew for sure we needed to develop an attendance area for Hilltop Needmore and any associated feeder pattern alignments as well as cascading or domino impacts in the region because of the movement particularly at the elementary level. We also were looking at renovation projects. You'll note that we do not have any specific recommendations included in this year's plan related to Swift Creek re-entering its permanent construction. We want to give it a year. We want to monitor it. That's been effective for us. We did that at Fway Arena Middle. We did that at Valkam Elementary just to give the schools some time to recapture their base before coming to you with any attendance or boundary recommendation changes changes in those. Uh then
042we also are continuing in our current environment to address our overcrowded schools particularly cap schools wherever possible especially if they're in high growth areas and to continue to look at our transportation routes to find ways through the assignment process to make those more efficient. And then this year unique, we did because it's a multi-year plan always, we had some carryover items specifically related to approvals in the 2526 plan. We then brought to you the first draft of the plan in September. And between September 2nd of 2025 and October 21st of 2025, we updated our website presence by having a second website available for families. We also held three very specific information sessions related to the draft that was released. We had an in-person openhouse to help families better understand what resources are available at the
043district level to help them as they transition to new school assignments and of course had one thought exchange open. You can see the participation to your right. I do want to call your attention to the 16,37 views of the website. That actually was just from the point where we migrated to the new site to October 14th. So I have a much bigger number to share with you later. We've had well over 50,000 views of that particular site since it launched early in September. We'll make the technical corrections as needed in in our supporting documents. through all of that feedback. You we went through this in great detail in October, but we just wanted to share what we heard loud and clear is that minimizing disruption for families and making sure that the process is as
044fair and and open and transparent as possible is are hallmarks of what's important to all families regard regardless of where they sit on the sort of sides of the the conversations. So, we took that with us into the development of the sort of the October 21st presentation. Um, and after the release of the one revision, we're candid about it. There was only one revision from the initial draft that was presented on October 21st. We added in a traditional calendar option for one of the areas impacted by an assignment change from a traditional to a year-round school by base. Um, we did host some additional sessions and so this is information you haven't seen before. Um, we did continue to update that website. So that 16,000 number is actually now 51,073 views of our proposal site.
045So we do know that that site becomes very relevant to families once a plan is released and we will continue to use that as a method of sharing information with families. Our general assignment planning website has had additional views in that time period. So we're over 7,000 views just during this planning cycle. The information session that we hosted was probably one of our most well attended. It was a virtual information session. We had 240 participants log in. Um, and since as of the time of print, we had 43 views of that recording. So, we did see a lot of participation and we're hearing feedback that those virtual sessions are really accommodating family schedules or accommodating two family schedules. We did open up a slightly different version of our thought exchange online forum and that is
046the survey platform. And so this was in response to feedback we received over the last couple of years about families wanting to be able to provide more information versus an individual thought and provide more context and perspective. So this survey allows them to go through a series of questions and we'll go through those very very briefly to kind of give us a lot more depth and insight into what is um what is sort of driving the reason for their concern, their question or their request maybe to not be included in the enrollment plan. 67 participants actually completed the survey all the way through meaning they answered every single question but 146 at least gave us some information related to the first question and then we did have our public hearing you had only seven speakers
047I mean they were very meaningful speakers but that is a very small number for us if you look historically at our public hearings in the past I'm not going to go over this slide but I just wanted to get you to see by the numbers that thought exchange that we h hel held or opened we did ask some additional questions to help us with our planning in future years about what is helpful, what's meaningful, where are you engaging. So, this gives us some better insight into the things we should continue to do, and maybe where we could let the foot off the gas on something if it's not really meaningful from a parent perspective. So, we did ask a few questions to help us with planning in the future as well. Uh, the questions then
048are set up as two core questions each with a series of follow-up questions. So the main question that was asked of participants once they got through the sort of survey perspectives was related to hey what are your thoughts you know tell us what's going on what do you what do you think we need to know you can see the the visual diagram there that kind of gives an emphasis on the words that were included a much more detailed analysis is obviously in the engagement summary report you'll see words like community elementary traditional option you know we can see words that are are constant in our conversations with families when they're thinking about how assignment plans might impact their families The next two slides represent the follow-up questions to that core question. So, how do you
049see think these revisions will impact your family? That's a followup to that first question. Again, we see family and impact and kids. You know, those are really meaningful terms that just keep reiterating. Those are by no means an analysis of the comments, but just key words that do pop up a lot. And another follow-up question about how they would affect the broader community. We did challenge community members to not only think about how they impacted themselves, but how they impacted the system as a whole. Um, and again, we see community and families coming up again and again, not inconsistent with what we've heard in previous rounds of engagement. The second core question, as you can see here, was just, hey, last chance, is there anything else you need us to think about as a planning
050team? And, um, here you actually see individual communities maybe popping up where you see a frequency of a particular term like Sutherland. I know most or several of the members of that community were present at your public hearing as well as some other uh public comment periods. So, just honoring that that participation and that voice. So, not too different from what we heard leading up to the development of the plan in terms of what families wanted us to consider, but just reiterating things like proximity and commute, very family centric concerns. uh school stability, having stability of school assignment, and you'll see that we have tried to address that wherever we can throughout this year's plan. The community impact, being thoughtful that changing a community or a subdivision or a neighborhood or even an individual family's
051assignment might change the way their community interacts with itself and just being mindful of that as a school district. Calendar and scheduling. We do hear a lot about calendar and scheduling simply because we have different types of calendars in our district. I think other districts that have a single calendar might not have this crop up as much. It's just a very unique perspective for our Wake County residents because of the differences between traditional multitrack year round even some of our early colleges and modified calendars. And then of course resource allocation. This actually is sort of an emerging topic this year thinking about how we distribute our resources across our schools to ensure that every school has what students need and there aren't have and have not schools if you will. So, this is a new
052emerging concern that we've seen cropping up and bubbling up in this year's assignment process that maybe we didn't see highlighted as much in prior school years. Again, a common ground opportunity for us. So, in this particular thought exchange, we found that there's quite a few that were talking about that concept of proximity and community. And we you could see that even just with the keywords that were coming up. But when we analyzed it a little bit more deeply, nearby schools facilitating things like pickup and drop off or even for working parents to be able to more conveniently get to and from their child's school and also just building those relationships with students that you go to school with and being able to maybe walk or or you know carpool together, that sort of thing. Um
053the other side of that was we had people just really thinking about how the calendar changes are impacting their family. And so the planning team really wrestled with that and heard that particularly if you have a long-standing family tradition or you you've built your family schedule around a particular calendar and having the assignment change change your calendar too is sort of a double disruption. So regardless of where they were on either side of the and those don't seem like they're comparable but they were there were sort of like these two sides of the issue here. Um the importance of stability again was highlighted across both groups and of course trying to keep school communities together if at all possible. The seven speakers that participated in the public hearing uh represented areas that are currently assigned
054to White Oak Elementary and Mills Park Middle. All seven speakers represented that area. Some mentioned their specific neighborhoods, others did not. You'll see a full breakdown of that in the engagement summary report. Um but they all in one way, shape or another asked to be considered for removal from the enrollment plan. We had heard these comments brought forward to us um throughout the planning cycle this year beginning as early as September 2nd. I believe you even received a petition at one point in time from at least one of the communities and I think some of you have had individual um contact with community members. So, we just wanted to reiterate why staff is continuing to keep particularly the Southerntherland neighborhood, but also all the other neighborhoods that are impacted by this change um included. So,
055you'll see the overcrowding concerns. We can't state it clearly enough. White Oak Elementary and Mills Park Middle are some of our most crowded schools in the district and have long-standing caps. Mills Park Middle has the longest standing cap in the district. And this opportunity to provide relief to those schools and to distribute the resources more equitably across schools in the region is just really critical to maintaining high academic quality in the region. The benefits for specifically aligning with Turner Creek Elementary and Salem Middle are that they do have available seats not just now but into the future. So this is a stable assignment as much as we can in a high growth area, but this is well beyond a three-year assignment, right? This is an assignment that can persist many years into the future. Um,
056it also allows again for that better distribution of resources across schools in the region. The transition support, we are committed as a district and our staff is at the ready to provide support to these families as they're going through the transition. And we did look at distance because that was brought up a couple of times and we shared this with you. With all the neighborhoods that are impacted, it's anywhere from zero to about one and a half, maybe two miles dis further for the elementary students and similarly zero to two-ish miles a little bit further for the Mills Park Middle. we highlighted in bold at the bottom which may get to I see the we have a question coming is that that's part of the reason for the stability transfer rules being updated the way
057that they have been over the last couple of years is this this provision would allow all of those existing students to maintain their assignments at White Oak Elementary or Mills Park Middle as long as their student you know is currently attending the school as long as they can provide transportation and if they have any younger siblings that would be joining them while they're still at the school they'd be able to bring them in. And so as a family, they can maintain that continuity with that school if that's really important to them or they'd have the choice to take the new assignment, which of course would come with a calendar change and a transportation provided. So the the choice is theirs to make. >> And if I can just we have many changes in the plan
058that have been proposed, but really this area is where we've heard the most feedback. Um and so as you've gotten this feedback, I appreciate the breakdown. I just want to ask you where you have competing priorities between say calendar stability or calendar continuity, you want to avoid calendar misalignment versus proximity. Did the feedback come back and weigh one of those as a higher priority than another? >> Early in the planning process when we approached this community about a year and a half ago and said, "Hey, we we've got to do something." It was very clear that changing the calendar of White Oak Elementary or Mills Park Middle was not favored and that reassignment was preferred. The reality of what reassignment looks like though then feels a little bit more personal for those families. But in
059response to that feedback, we recommended these changes knowing that we had available capacity in the region so we wouldn't have to do that disruption at that at that side. As far as the calendar piece, creating calendar continuity, K8 seems to be a constant and consistent concern across the entire district wherever we sit. We know that we can't honor that everywhere because we have multitrack year-round elementaryaries feeding into traditional middles just because we don't need that capacity at the middle school level, but in this region, we can honor that on both sides. So, this community would have three options really. One would be to keep their current assignments and provide their own transportation which maintains their calendar and their school assignment. They could take this new assignment which then gives them the KA year- round column
060continuity moving forward. And we added in, if you'll recall, traditional calendar options for both levels. So, if they do have a calendar continuity issue either through the stability rules or because they need transportation, they have that option as well. So, they've got three ways that they can kind of navigate through this in the near term. >> Okay. And I'd like to just add I I think Susan and her team have done a tremendous job in always trying to keep in mind that we're trying to impact the least number of families as possible. So there's always going to be a difficult decision. There will always be people who are impacted, but we try to limit that number as much as possible. >> Okay. I I was just curious where because there are other schools in the
061area at the middle school level, for example, where there is additional capacity and that need students, but they are further away than Salem. And I just didn't know if keeping that calendar alignment might have been a higher priority than proximity or if it was finding the closest pro approximate option that had capacity. And as we would consider options like that, we also have to remember that busing would be provided to these students and that's a resource that you know we continue to have a strain on. And so, you know, as we look at that, you know, that that's something we can continue to look at. But >> it's it's really hard to provide opportunities for students to go a lot further just to keep that calendar. It puts a lot of strain on our other
062resources. >> And sort of to address that point specifically in years past and even in this year, we constantly will hear, "Why am I driving past two and three schools to get to my school assignment?" So, we do try to find the closest school with available capacity. So, you're driving by the least number of schools. And in this case, they would actually be driving directly to the schools because of the orientation of them in proximity to their neighborhoods. So proximity from famil family's perspective, I'll be honest, is probably one of their top priorities. And then adding in calendar continuity or or feeder pattern alignment. So this gets as close to that as we possibly can. And again, those stability provisions really allow those families that are already attending the school that really generous. Thank you
063so much for having continued to approve those. I know those have not been common place for us until the last couple of years. >> Okay, that answers my question. Thank you. >> You're welcome. So, I won't hit this website too many times more, but um again, all of the information we're sharing with you tonight control room, it's not working. Did they move the computer? >> Okay, there we go. Oh, all right. All right. So, the website will have all that information and then we will be able to uh update all of that once you make a final decision later tonight. So, I do want to take just a moment. You've seen all of these recommendations before, but some of them you haven't really talked about publicly since September 2nd. So, I just want to take
064a moment to walk through everything we're asking you to approve tonight. So, uh the presentation of your final draft is that very last step on this slide. And we just want to pause for a moment and and let you know that the recommendations that are included reflect the desire for community alignment. Basically, feeder pattern continuity that's been expressed to us year overyear. Stability of assignment long term. If we have to make a change today, the recommendation we're making will be a good long-standing assignment. K8 calendar continuity. Wherever possible, you'll see several recommendations that adhere to that and honor that request from the community. and the relatively new feature that we've been doing for our new schools, which is a mixture of not only existing families, but new undeveloped residential areas. So that our new schools
065operationally will fill a little bit more slowly, but the assignments will be much more long-standing and families won't be disrupted two or three years after the school opens and have to be reassigned yet again. In addition, all of that is of course balanced against all of the information you have in policy 4100, 4150, excuse me, related to operational efficiency, student achievement, proximity, and stability. Here you see a quick just visual um and list of the schools that are impacted at the elementary level with base assignment changes. You can see that the vast majority are related to the opening of Hilltop Needmore Elementary. The middle schools are alignment or feeder pattern or cohort pattern alignment for this year's plan or the carryover items from last year's plan. And then the high school are all specifically related
066to feeder pattern alignment again from either last year's plan or this year's plan. And as you can see, those maps were very tiny in the sense that not a bunch of the district is impacted. We we again worked really hard to have the smallest impact possible. As a reminder, the stability rules that are recommended for the 2627 school year continue with our recent practice of having more generous stability rules. So that's that eases the transition not only for families but for schools and staffing and master scheduling as well. At the elementary level, we have two sets of rules. We have a very specific set of rules for Hilltop Needmore and this is only for families proposed to be assigned to Hilltop Needmore. So the related recommendations, the cascading recommendations have the other set of rules.
067This is only for those students currently attending West Lake Elementary, Valentine Elementary, or Banks Road Elementary that are being proposed to attend the new Hilltop. If they are a current third or fourth grader, said differently, a rising fourth or fifth grader, they would have an automatic eligibility to stay at their current school if they so choose, with no transportation provided. That's the compromise. They also can bring in any younger siblings with them and they can stay through the fifth grade as well. We often get a question, what happens next year if I have a kindergartenner next year? Then our normal sibling rules apply. They just apply during the normal transfer period and we would align those students at the same school site. So all of the families can stay together through the fifth grade. We
068do note that these need to be submitted during the designated stability transfer window with um everything going as as we planned. It would open Tuesday of next week on the 25th. All other changes in this year's assignment plan at the elementary level would be subjected to these more generous stability rules, meaning any student at any grade would be eligible to stay at their current school as long as they can provide their own transportation. And the same provision is made for those rising kindergarten students to join their older siblings as well. At the middle school level, since all of the moves are related to existing schools, all rising seventh and eighth or current sixth and seventh, whichever way you you see that conversation, would be eligible to stay as long as they can provide their own
069transportation. And if they have a rising sixth grade sibling this year or next year, they'd be allowed to bring them with them to that school through the 8th grade. And at the high school level, since all of these are existing high schools and they all have a full complement of 9th through 12th grades, all students would be eligible to remain at their current high school if they can provide their own transportation. Um, or they would be able to go to the new school, whichever works for their family. And again, those rising nth grade siblings can join their older siblings at that same school through the 12th grade. And I I can't I know it's become common for us over the last two or three years, but these are very new for us as a district
070from a historical perspective. And so we again want to express our gratitude to the board for going with us on this stability journey um and leaving some of our schools more overcrowded than we prefer for a little bit longer to provide the stability for our families and really to help with the staffing at the schools as well. the specific recommendations this year related to the opening of the new school. There's just the one, Hilltop Needmore Elementary. We were fortunate enough to host our open house there since it is actually open and serving as the swing space for Fugquway Wave Arena Elementary. So, that was a nice treat for our families that are going to be attending the school to be able to walk through the halls a little bit while they were um participating in
071our open house. It is located here. And again, this is a unique recommendation. You know, I like to come to you with things that are different. We do want you to approve it to operate as a multi-track year-round school so that we know that that's its designation. We just want the latitude to operate only on track 4 since we are doing that blend of new and existing families. So it'll fill a little bit more slowly in this region. So it gives us time to see how that growth you know come kicks in and then when needed we'll come to you with a recommendation to go to multittrack. So that means that Valentine Elementary, Banks Road Elementary, and Westlake Elementary will all see a change in their enrollment. Then we also have some related impacts because
072of the the movement in this area. We're going to be able to take advantage of some open space. And so Middle Creek Elementary, Oak Grove Elementary, and Vance Elementary will also be impacted. Here you see the graphic that depicts specifically how we would build the Hilltop Needmore Elementary base attendance area. Area 1 is currently attending West Lake Elementary. Area two is Ballentine Elementary and area three is Banks Road Elementary. So the map on the right in yellow would be the final attendance area for Hilltop Needmore. In addition, we would have the cascading effects where area one is labeled. The area one that is labeled is a portion of the current Middle Creek Elementary base attendance area that would go to Oak Grove Elementary. And the area labeled two would also come from Middle Creek Elementary
073but be assigned to Westlake Elementary. And the next set of moves at the elementary level in this region would be the area labeled as one would come from Vance Elementary and be assigned to Banks Road Elementary. As a result, what you see here is the projected impacts. I do caution everyone. This is if everybody takes the new assignment on day one. So, we know with our generous stability rules, some of our crowded schools will remain a little crowded for a little bit longer. And we know that Hilltop will be maybe a little under that 69% enrollment in its first year while it's waiting for all those stability rules to kind of age out. You see there the difference in the capacity for Hilltop Needmore. In its first couple of years of operation, we'll state its
074capacity is 716, but when we're ready to go multitrack, it will expand to a full capacity of 924. and that gives us all the flexibility we need in that region to get through the next several years. This specific recommendation is obviously being made because we're opening a new elementary school as well as to adhere to some of our operational efficiency goals at the middle school level in the same region. We just have that feeder pattern alignment, if you will. And this also gives us a prime opportunity for K8 calendar alignment in addition to cohort alignment. So the area labeled one is at Dillard Drive Elementary. The area labeled two is currently at Herbert Akens Road Elementary. This would allow all of Hilltop Needmore to be assigned to West Lake Middle, which also operates on track
0754. So that creates immediate calendar alignment for those families as well as taking advantage of available capacity in the region. The Dillard Drive is just a technical correction to align with the Westlake middle the Westlake Elementary recommendation from the earlier slide. So these sets of recommendations are specifically made for K8 calendar alignment, cohort continuity, as well as operational efficiency. As you can see, we're better utilizing the facilities in this region and creating some space at Herbert Akens Road Middle, which is in a growth area at the high school level in this same region. Again, for count, not for calendar alignment, but for cohort continuity purposes and to take advantage of some available seats in the region. The area labeled one would be recommended to come from Willow Spring High School and become part of Middle
076Creek High School's base attendance area. And this is specifically being made for cohort continuity. So all of the Hilltop Needmore Elementary students would progress to Westlake Middle and onto Middle Creek High, which is a logical cohort in that area. And then of course operational efficiency allows us to provide some relief to the rapidly growing Willow Spring High base attendance area and take advantage of some available capacity at Middle Creek High. Additional recommendations included in this year's plan are related to follow-up items from last year's plan. So if you'll recall, um this area highlighted on the left was approved to be assigned from Olive Chapel Elementary and Salem Elementary into Balkam in its newly renovated facility. As a result, we we not inadvertently, but we were aware we were creating a calendar and cohort misalignment for
077these students. And so we asked for some time to really review what the best suggestion would be. So this is phase two of that set of recommendations. So in response to community feedback, they did prefer that they go to the traditional versus going traditional multittracky realm traditional high school. So the recommendation is to take that same area and align it all to Apex Middle um which will allow them to have traditional calendar K8 calendar continuity in addition to taking advantage of some available capacity in the region. It's mostly being done for K8 calendar continuity as well as cohort continuity and just ever so slightly for um some operational efficiency as Lufkin is continuing to grow. Apex High School then would take on the additional students from that same region out of Apex Friendship High School
078and this creates again cohort continuity for these families as well as as operational efficient operational efficiency. So here you see the potential impact on both schools. Again that bottom chart will not become reality right away as those students who are eligible for stability transfers you know age forward. The additional recommendations we have in this year's plan are specifically related to growth. One, we've already talked about a little bit. There's an area um in our western part of our county that's not only high growth, but highly crowded and capped. And we really need to provide some long-term solutions and relief in this area. So, we've identified area one currently assigned to White Oak Elementary and area two currently assigned to Salem Elementary. The reason we don't really highlight the Salem Elementary piece is this is currently
079an undeveloped portion of land. So as it develops, it will start to fill in at Turner Creek Elementary. Here you see that this allows for operational efficiency. And again, we recognize there's the calendar shift. So we have added back in a traditional calendar option for the families in this area. But you can see the the relief that's needed at White Oak Elementary and how this provides for that. But again, we don't think all students will move in the first year. So, we think it'll take a little time for that to um fill in all of Turner Creek space spaces. Salem Middle um would then take on the same area for Mills Park that it doesn't already have. So, it's just that area labeled one. They would come out of Mills Park Middle and become part
080of the Salem Middle School base. And so, this again is for cohort continuity, K8 calendar alignment, and for operational efficiency. This doesn't provide all the relief that we need for Mills Park Middle, but we know that Parkside Middle is coming. And so we think that that'll take care of the long-term needs in the region once it comes online. And again, we don't expect all of these shifts to happen in year one, but over time they will um take better advantage of the capacity at Salem Middle. The other area of our county that's experiencing rapid growth is the eastern part of our county. So here you can see we've highlighted specifically an area related to Zebulun Elementary. We're recommending that a portion of the Zebulun Elementary base become part of Carver Elementary's base attendance area. So
081that area labeled one is currently at Zebulun Magnet Elementary and they would become part of the Carver Elementary base attendance area. It does look like we're going backwards here. Um but we will talk to you in future meetings about how we're going to add some capacities with trailers in this region while we're waiting for Little U Marshburn Road Elementary and hopefully Little Creek Elementary to be funded so that we can address the growth that's happening in this region. So this is intentional and with purpose. We have the ability to add some trailers on both Wake Lawn's campus and Carver's campus which will help with some of the growth in this region over time. But again, that'll be a separate conversation later, but I wanted you to know that we're thinking long term here at the
082middle school level. The other thing to keep in mind at the for this particular recommendation is we do recognize that Marshburn Road has already been approved and and is getting ready to start its design phases. We know that Little Creek Elementary has been named, but it hasn't been funded yet. So, we know that's somewhere in our future CIPs. So, we were thoughtful not to take an area that might be impacted by the opening of either of those schools a second time. So, this is a long-term assignment to Carver. At the middle school level, we would want to again do cohort alignment. There are no Zebulun Elementary students, excuse me, Carver Elementary students that attend Zebulun Middle. So for cohort alignment only, we would recommend this area that's labeled one come from Zebulun Magnet Middle and
083become part of Wendell Magnet Middle's base attendance area. As you can see, it's not specifically for operational efficiency concerns. It's really for cohort alignment for these students. They're all already assigned to East Wakeake High School, so there's no high school recommendation needed at this time. And that's it for the base assignment changes. The last few changes that we need to walk through are your calendar application changes. This page represents those that are being specifically made because of proposed base assignment changes. So largely technical in nature. However, you will see that we have included Balkam as a traditional calendar option for the families that would be assigned from White Oak Elementary to Turner Creek Elementary. That reflects the revision that we shared with you at the October boardwork October 21st boardwork session. Um and again a
084lot of these are being made for operational efficiency in addition to the technical adjustments. And by operational efficiency, it's really about reducing the uh impact on our transportation routes. The elementary calendar application changes continued slide, slide 80 represents those that are specifically being made to improve efficiency. So these are not directly related to any of the base assignment changes. You'll see that Abbottz Creek currently sees two separate year-round calendar options at the elementary level, which means buses are being routed into two separate directions for this area. We recommend that we reduce that to a single choice and that will help with transportation efficiency. And then at the Hodge Road uh Hodge Magnet Elementary level, there are very less than five students that are currently taking advantage of these options, which means that our transportation routes
085are very inefficient for these handful of students. They will all have the ability for stability transfers if they can provide their own transportation or they can return to their base school, whichever works best for their family. at the middle school level. These are all specifically related to the proposed base assignment changes. So mostly technical in nature um and again for helping us a little bit with operational efficiency as it pertains to transportation routes. And so those are the recommendations that we have for you. That's what we're asking you to approve. The stability rules, the base assignment changes, and the calendar application changes. Just as a quick review, you've spent a lot of time on this. I know staff has, but you as a board have spent quite a bit of time on this. You've had
086multiple conversations with us in work session. You've participated in virtual information sessions with us. You might have even come to some of our open houses. So, you've put a lot of time into this and we're we're in the the short rows, if you will. But for families, I think it's really important for you to understand where we are with families because this is really sort of rubber meets the road. We need to really help our families. So today, later today, when you do make a final decision about the plan at the board meeting, we will send a general message out to the entire community letting them know that it's been approved and where to look for those official approved changes. Then we will specifically send a message to those families that are actually personally impacted
087by the assignment changes. That'll probably go out tomorrow morning because we always want to just cross our tees and dot our eyes and make sure we've captured every single student. Um, and then we'll also give them a little heads up on what's going to happen with the stability transfer process. The stability transfer window is scheduled to run from November 25th to December 12th. That's actually more business days because of the Thanksgiving holiday. We're sort of acting as if those aren't business days, but we want to get it open as fast as we possibly can so families can get their requests in and feel good while they're having their break that they don't have to worry about this anymore. Uh, but we will keep it open through December 12th. During that time, we will barrage those
088families with messages reminding them of the process and that they're eligible to participate. If a family participates early, they will stop getting the messages from us. But if they don't participate right away, we'll continue to remind them just to make sure that they're keenly aware that they have this opportunity and that this is the time to request it to support our families. We also will send that same information to their current school principles so that they can use their weekly messages and the way that they contact families because sometimes they'll they'll hear from a principal before they'll hear from us on occasion. So, we'll make sure that they get that same information as well. So, they're getting the communication from both sides to say, "Hey, now's the time. Now's the time. Now's the time." And
089if I can take a moment of license or please just ask for the stability transfer now. If you're not sure if you can do carpool, if you're not sure if this is what's going to work for your family, if you're not sure that all the members of your community are going to stay at the current school, but it's what you want, ask for it now. Particularly for those students that are currently at a cap school, because this is the only time we can guarantee it. If for some reason by the time we get to March, our general hardship transfer window, the family has decided, you know what, I think it's better for us to just go to our newly assigned school, we can approve that without question in March. But to give you your stability
090transfer in that later time period may not be possible based on grade configurations and crowding and capacity issues. So please, please, please, if you're on the fence, apply now. Um then the other thing is that we will be doing our annual notification process for all students in the district somewhere around December 5th. Those our our online portals will go live in Infinite Campus with the information about their next school assignment and anybody who doesn't have an online portal will get a paper copy sent home with their student so that they can know what their official assignment is. And then the last thing is well well what if what if I don't really like my assignment. Right? So we've talked a little bit about the stability transfers. We've already had a couple of our open houses
091related to the early college process and the magnet um application process. That window is still open. Families can continue to submit those applications now until um starting November 25th. Again, we'll reopen that stability transfer window. So, that's option number one. I want to keep my current assignment and I'm eligible. Let me just put in my stability transfer. That does not preclude them from participating in other processes. So, if they would like to do that first and then still apply for a magnet, they are more than welcome to do so. Um, November 5th to the 12th, we'll be distributing the initial assignment notifications. December 12th for our high school students, the ones that are going into either sixth grade looking at our leadershipmies or 9th grade at some of our early colleges, that application window is
092open through December 12th. We do have to close that one a little bit earlier than the magnet window because of the evaluation process for for those applications. So, just a key reminder for our rising 6th and 9th graders looking at either our leadershipmies or our early colleges, they want to get those applications in by December 12th. The magnet and year-round application period will remain open through January 22nd, so families have plenty of time to think about asking for one of those choices. And then, uh, we'll get those results posted for all of those applications on February 19th. We'll take a break and let magnet schools welcome all those families to their campuses. and then we'll open up our transfer window on March 2nd. So there's four application periods. The stability transfer period for our high
093schooler student or high schoolers, maybe the early college period, as well as some of those sixth graders looking at our leadershipmies and I I shouldn't preclude it. It can be 6 through 12. Um but you got your best chance at 6 and 9th. Um and then our third application period is that magnet window and then of course the official hardship transfer window that opens up in March. And then this will be our new website. So once you make a final decision later tonight, all of the information that's officially approved as the assignments for 2627 will be added to our main enroll page. We will keep the proposal site open for a little while through about January 15th and then we'll sunset that page because then it will no longer be a proposal. Well, it won't
094be after tonight, honestly. But we will keep the assignment planning page open in perpetuity because that does help families plug into the next round and the next cycle and see how we do the process. But again, we'll just be directing families directly to our enroll page when when they come in. And with that, Cher Heerty, I turn it over to you or perhaps Quinn. >> I was going to say I was just going to say excellent job. >> Excellent. All right. Thank you. There was a lot of information to cover. We really appreciate your ability to streamline that and really hit the high points in the areas where we've had the most community feedback. I want to note that there has been a lot of evolution. It's subtle, but it's impactful in terms of the
095changes to the plan. And we'll have a chance to discuss that later tonight at the general meeting. Board members, do you have any questions for staff at this time before we uh again bring this up again in our general meeting? Miss Evans? >> Thank you. Um I was trying to find it and couldn't. So, at the public hearing, I believe one of the speakers from the Southerntherland community said that that community had been moved multiple times. Can you please address that? And I'm sure you did in the website and the virtual sessions, but if you could please address that for us. >> The last time that community was reassigned was when White Oak Elementary opened. And so while they've had some reassignments over the last 10 years, it's nothing in the three-year window that we
096would talk about in terms of a rapid series of reassignments. So they were reassigned most frequently. Most recently when White Oak Elementary opened, I think that was eight years. I can get that note for you for tonight. >> Followup. >> Sorry, I shouldn't have moved my mic. Uh middle school changes, high school changes, just the one >> the high school change would be Green Level. When Green Level High School opened, they became part of the Green Level Base attendance area. And then Mills Park, I think that alignment was made when they became part of White Oak Elementary, but I'll get you all the specific dates and times for later tonight so that you can have that. >> Thank you. >> Great. Any further questions? All right. I you'll have another crack at them later tonight
097and we will see you then. Thank you. All right. We'll move into our next phase of our discussion of the strategic plan. Thank you, Dr. Robinson. And I want to assure you even though we are behind schedule, we do want you to present make to to provide us with the full presentation even if we do need to start our general meeting a little bit late. >> Absolutely. Thank you, sir. If we can get the SL Thank you, Chair Haggedy, Vice Chair, uh Swanson, board members, and Dr. Taylor. Today's presentation continues the strategic plan discussion we began on November the 4th when we review priority one, student knowledge and skills and examine goals one through three related to graduation proficiency and growth. Uh this afternoon we're going to shift our attention to priority three, operational effectiveness.
098So as we move into this data, it's important to ground our work in the district's mission, vision, and core beliefs. These are the promises we make to families and the commitments that guide every operational decision. Whether a bus arrives on time, whether technology works when a teacher begins a lesson, whether classrooms are safe and comfortable, whether families can easily engage uh with their school. All of these refle excuse me, reflect our core beliefs that every student deserves learning supported by highly effective staff. This is one of the many lenses through which we approach operational effectiveness. This slide illustrates the importance of operational effectiveness to our strategic plan. When HVAC systems fail, instruction stops. When buses are late, attendance drops. When hiring lags, class size rises. When technology falters, learning is disruptive. Operational systems are not
099background work. They directly shape school climate, time on task, and overall student experience. Three priorities, seven goals, four pillars, 20 aims. That is our strategic plan. So our goal today is uh twofold. We want to dive deep into priority three, operational effectiveness. And we want to receive forecast on future deep dives. So when we talk about priority 3 operational effectiveness, we're talking about the systems that make every school day possible. This includes but not limited to facility maintenance, transportation, technology readiness, learning environments, staffing pipelines, and customer service for families and employees. These operational components are essential, but what matters most is the impact they have on people, our students, our families, and our staff. Goals six and seven sit at the crux of priority three. Goal six focuses on parent and family experience, ensuring families
100feel welcomed, informed, and able to navigate our system. Goal seven focuses on the employee experience, ensuring staff feel valued, supported, and equipped with the tools they need to be effective. So, as it relates to goal 7, our first all staff survey, which was conducted in spring of 2024, gave us new insight into our workplace culture. Senior leaders reviewed those results and identified opportunities for improvement. But today the data you will see highlights areas where we are making meaningful progress as well as the operational challenges that continue to require focused attention. So at this time I will turn it over to Dr. Leanne Alfred Keith who will introduce today's presenters. Thank you. >> Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to join you to dive deeply into priority three operational effectiveness. We are going to
101have a panel of superstars joining us to talk about each of their areas of work that support operational effectiveness. The first is Dr. Kimberly Burton who leads the family and community engagement committee who is going to share their progress on goal 7 family experience. >> Good afternoon. As you heard Dr. Robinson communicate, um the fair family experience shows up in our goal six. And so I'm going to be spending just a little bit of time with you talking about the family survey data from um this past spring, which was our most recent deployment. In looking at the data on the slide, um the family experience was measured um in the panorama survey with two categories, one being school climate and one being low barriers to engagement. So you can see over time since 2023, we
102have continued to increase in the favor favorability of those responses. For example, in 2024 for school climate, we had 75% of our families to say um that our school climate was positive. And then in 2025, that percentage increased by 3% to 78%. So over time we are continuing to hear the voices of our families communicate um but overall our school climate tends to be positive. The other um container that uh we used to measure the family experience was the barriers to engagement and again since 2023 we've seen consistent increase in that favorability. For example, in 2024 for low barriers to engagement, 86 of our 86% of our families said that there were low or no barriers to engagement. And then in the spring of 2025, that increased by 3% to 89% of our families representing
103there um is low barrier to engagement or no barriers to engagement. So when we look at the total number of responses, we know that just the numbers will show that between 2024 and 2025, we saw a little bit of a dip about 1.5% and a difference in the total number of responses from families. However, what we want to note there is though we may have seen a 1.5% dip between 2024 and 2025, the overall favorability of our families rose. So, we may have had a few less families completing the survey, but the families that did indicated that our favorability has grown and increased. And that is something um that we certainly want to celebrate while understanding that our board goal is 95%. And um we are currently at 89% and so we are working toward
104hitting that goal as we've consistently done in the past three years. So, now moving on to um talking about that family experience and the response rates and what that looks like over um our three uh largest um subgroups. So, overall you can see just under 36,000 families completed or responded to the survey. And when we think about that in terms of the percent of the student population, that was around 22% of our families. If we break that down and we begin to look at those particular subgroups, you can see that our white subgroups or our white families um reported at around 45%. Which is pretty consistent with the percent of the student population that's at 41%. We also will note here that the next two groups noted on the slide have a higher variance between
105the percentage of families that reported and responded to the survey and the percentage of student population. For example, you can see that only 11% of our Hispanic families responded to the survey, but that group makes up 20% of our student population. So that tells us that we have some continued work to do around ensuring that um we get the most family voices that we can possible um and have that be a little more comparable to the percent of that particular student population. And then finally we'll look at um just some overall data around that family experience and favorability. Um again those two buckets barriers to engagement and school climate. When we consider barriers to engagement, um we looked at the data between title one funded schools and non-title one funded schools and you can see
106overall the favorability was the same. When we look at our white subgroup and that favorability between title one funded schools and non-title one funded schools, again the data reports that that favorability is the same. There welcome. When we look at our black subgroup for barriers to engagement, our title one families show just slightly a greater favorability at 90% while our non-title one funded schools are 89%. But still fairly comparable. Our Hispanic subgroup for title one funded schools for barriers to engagement indicated 90% favorability and our non-title one schools 86% favorability. Little bit of a variance there but still pretty comparable. School climate about the same between title one and non-title one schools. our uh overall um there's 2% of a difference there in our title one and our non-title one funded schools. Our white subgroup
107uh report favorability at 76% for title one funded schools. It's the same 76% for our non-title one funded schools. And our black and Hispanic subgroups are also reporting the same percentage of favorability for both school climate at title one funded schools and our non-title one funded schools. We see comparable overall scores in each of the scales for our title one funded and non-title one schools overall. And when we break this down by the three largest ethnic groups or racial groups, there really isn't a big discrepancy. Um, and so we will continue as a district committee and as district staff building the capacity in our school staff and our central services staff to ensure that our families continue to report favorability in these two measures. measures as a part of measuring and assessing how we are
108doing with these two areas. Barriers to engagement, school climate as a result of what is requested and asked of us in the strategic plan. >> Are there any questions at this time? Board members, do you have any questions for staff at this time? We'll start with Miss Gordon, then go to Miss Rice. Hold on. Let me go back so I can reference the slide. Um on slide nine where we are talking about the response rates. Um we see that we clearly see that there's a huge discrepancy um among the subgroups of families responding. Um which makes me question what are we what exactly are we missing? Um, I guess I have questions about like as far as um black families and Hispanic families who are responding or who are not responding like where are we
109doing research around why they aren't responding around accessibility around um whether they feel comfortable enough around whether they feel like their lived experiences are really being um reflected in the questions in the survey. Can you say more about that or absolutely um I can tell you that the district committee is working really really hard to hear the voices within this data and to build the capacity in our staff to be able to ensure that more and more our families are feeling more welcome um in our building. Um for example um last evening um from 4:30 to 6 the district hosted um the first in the professional learning series and we had over 70 registrants for that session on a Monday afternoon at 4:30 and the speaker last evening um was Mallerie Mabalia who works for
110the Fred Rogers uh production and I'm probably going to tell my age here, but I'll tell this because it's relevant here. Um, Fred Rogers um is a spin-off of what I grew up knowing as Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. And she entered into that professional learning, saying to all of us, "Hi, neighbor." to send the message that in order for us to create welcome environments and welcoming and inclusive environments, we must perceive our community as our neighbor. And she did a lot of talking about how we can do that and how we can turn simple school nights, literacy night can be so much more than having families come in and us tell them what we want them to know. And so it was really an eye-opening experience and there was lots of positive feedback from that. We're
111going to continue the series. There will be one in January and another in February that will lead up to our big summit. So we're working really, really hard to make sure that we're addressing these discrepancies. The other thing that I will point out about this data is that when we think about that discrepancy that we see when families self-report, they may self-report one way, but in Infinite Campus, it could show up a totally different way. We have some families that answer the survey multiple times for different students and then they enter in a different self-reporting for um what their race or ethnic group is. So, um, we need to make sure that our families understand how important that data is for us to break down this information and to support our most marginalized groups that
112we can see the discrepancy with. The other thing that I'll point out is we offer the survey in a variety of languages. In our title one funded schools, we do have the opportunity to offer paper surveys in that language. And so I think we need to to consider um other strategies that will be helpful to ensure that we're reaching every family. >> And if I may add, Dr. Burton, um a little context for board members that we will have a new community engagement level strategy for the district-wide survey this year. As you may recall, we were launching the mapping initiative in last spring, which was at the same time as this survey. So there wasn't as much community outreach. There were a few emails to the community partners who had signed up, but our mapping
113signups were much lower and that type of thing. So we were relying almost entirely on the schools for their outreach at that point. But this year we will have um an increased strategy for community partners to help us be able to get out the responses as well. um that's already underway and we do think that that may be a good way to reach groups that have been more marginalized because we have several community partners that are part of our mapping initiative that that is their specific focus. So we'll be giving them new tools this year to ask to participate on the survey on our behalf. >> Followup. >> Go ahead. >> Thank you. Um, and then my other question is around um the next slide, I think on slide 10, the the surveys that were
114sent out to title one and non-title one schools, are they the same? >> Yes, they're the same survey with the exception of three questions that are asked around title one funded schools that the law requires that we ask. Other than those three questions, the survey is exactly the same. Who determines the questions on those surveys? We work a team of us on the uh family and community engagement committee which I will stop and share here. Um that team is very diverse. It is not just staff. Um it's community members, it's business leaders, um it's a cross representation of a variety of departments that work closely with our families. And so that committee comes together and we think about what the strategic plan is asking us to measure and we work with Panorama to ensure that
115these are bias-free questions um so that we are measuring what we're being asked to measure so we get that feedback and we can use that fe feedback and turn it into action. >> Does each school have have one of those committees or is this like a large is this a overall district committee? >> Great question. This is a overall district committee. We do have some schools that in their school improvement planning, they have created family and community engagement committees. In our title one funded schools, we do ask that there is one staff member who who is a liaison for family and community engagement to help the school do that work. >> Okay, one more comment. >> I was going to say last time you said one more question and I heard several sneak in there,
116but please go ahead go ahead and follow up. I just want to know what I'm getting. >> My last my last comment, I promise. Um I will say speaking as a parent who who who has children who currently have children in title one schools and a child who is not in a title one school. I would appreciate the um the rethinking around the surveys being the same. The communities in our district, we serve, we have a very large district and the communities in our district look extremely unique. Um and while I can appreciate the fact that the uh family engagement committee is very diverse, I think we will see some changes in these numbers if we started looking at individual communities. >> Thank you. Thank you for that feedback. Um I'll also share here that
117um some of the work of the committee we meet monthly um to talk about the professional development goals that we have for the district and for staff. Um all of us engage in that work um when we have uh the other responsibilities. And so this is the family engagement work and part of the strategic plan that I have the pleasure to lead as chair um is the only one of our pillars without a department or without that infrastructure. So when our committee comes together each month, we are really looking at the data to help us make informed decisions. We've already begun that work um with what uh Dr. Alfred Keith talked about as far as going out into the community. There are some free response questions on the survey and some of the families said
118in that free response that they want to see more of us out there in the community and less of us asking them to always come to us. And so this summer we started that back together tour because we heard that feedback and we've been out there in the community um as late as this fall continuing those efforts. So, we will continue to receive this feedback to continue to look at the data and make sure that there are informed changes. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. We'll come over to this side of the table to Miss Rice. >> Thank you all for the hard work that you do. Um, you know, family engagement is something that I believe in strongly. I'm going to try to stick to the point and ask the questions the best
119I can. Um, when we talk about family experience, um, are we talking about and the with the people that we surveyed? I'm just trying to get points of clarity, honestly. Um, the people that we surveyed, were was it just the families that participated in the community engagements we did or we're talking about a district-wide survey that we did? So, we're talking about a district-wide survey. So, thank you for clarifying. So before I really ask my questions then cuz I needed to make sure I understood that. So, we're talking about a countywide survey where we sent it. Uh, I'm very curious um if at some point um chair um or through an email, I'm very curious to see what those questions look like. Um and only because if I I I am very proud um of
120the reflection of the numbers that we see here talking about favorability. Um, it's just for me what I'm seeing here concerning community engagement and then what I'm seeing within the numbers that we just received with uh achievement and things of that nature, they just don't correlate for me. And so I'm trying to better understand if we're engaging families to this degree and if this is so great and so grand um and everybody feels so comfortable in their school. I'm trying to see why does my suspension rates look like they look. I'm trying to see why does my student achievement numbers look like they look and I'm trying to figure out what you guys are doing. That's amazing of how how do we correlate that into the classroom um to help which is what all of
121this is about. Um and so um again um I can see that with the favorable response if you were looking at when you broke disagregated the data around um race uh as we see that our um white children perform better than our other subgroups. Um, I look at my district alone and my district alone has a 35% um, proficiency rate. And so, um, I I need to better understand what we are identifying as barriers of engagement and what we're identifying as school climate. And so I'm trying to understand and how to be fully excited about these amazing numbers that say that this is favorable of where we are in this 80 90 percentile range. Um which I think is great. I just need help better understanding what you're or what we are as identifying because
122we're all the district. We're in this together. What are we identifying as a supposed barrier? And we what are we identifying of what good school climate look like? And I'm just saying what I'm seeing here doesn't reflect in my other data that I see with the school system as a whole. And I'm really trying to understand the difference between the two. I could be completely off. It could not not have any correlation. I'm always open to hear a better interpretation, but these numbers don't reflect the data that I just received um two board meetings ago and I see some of my colleagues shaking ahead. There's a disconnect for me. Um and I'm hoping that you guys can close that disconnect for me. Um and and how how do we how do we Yeah, I think
123my I think I maybe I you know I always love to try to interpret if you can for me but um >> we we would be happy to um bring those specific questions within those two categories back to you all so that you can see what specific questions families were. >> Well, if I'm not mistaken, you've shared both surveys with us before like all of them through. So, Miss Rice could probably get the whole survey, not just those questions. So, you could get the whole thing. Yeah. Okay. >> But, and then the underlying point is that if there are problems that are identified that come to us, does the volume of the personal feedback match up to what's reflected in the survey results? Is that >> I I think so, Chair. Um I think I
124think that's a fair uh assumption >> that you're giving me. Yeah. I'm just the data doesn't add up for me and I'm trying to get someone to help me understand what I'm looking at. What I'm hearing cuz what I'm hearing and what I'm looking at is absolutely phenomenal. It really is. I think it's fantastic. But what I see in my other data does not line up. If you're telling me my school climate is really like this, then why does that not reflect in my data with student outcomes and student achievement? And so there's a disconnect and I need that disconnect to be explained or I need us to re-evaluate as Miss Gordon said, what are we really asking? And are we leading questions or do we have leading questions to give us a particular outcome
125that we want to see? >> So Mrs. Um um rice draw blank there for a minute. I'm getting old. >> Uh so I do appreciate the question and um and one of the things that I would share is that um um the public may not see an alignment in terms of um how parents feel about engagement uh and an increase in student achievement or academic achievement. And so what I want to be clear is that uh whether parents engage or not uh whatever those barriers that exist in terms of academic achievement, we know that's going to be something that will take a tremendous amount of work. Uh that's why I tell people that uh the amount of work that's required in a title one school on a consistent basis is completely different in a school
126where you know those barriers are not the same. Uh but uh what this information does tell us is that while there's still a lot of work to do uh on the academic achievement side and you see we're continually doing that work but we understand that we are doing a better job at engaging those parents uh so that they will feel welcome when they come to the school even though those uh academic barriers uh social emotional barriers may uh persist. Uh but uh one of the things in resolving those barriers is making parents feel that we are having better engagement with them. Uh and so we can do all the things to improve academic achievement, but if we haven't done clear, consistent work to make parents feel welcome at school, then we're missing the whole mark.
127So, I do appreciate you bringing that question to the forefront so that anyone who's listening know that one of our primary responsibilities is to make sure that they feel welcome at the school that they believe we're engaging them in the right way. Uh, while we continue the the academic work of closing those gaps, which we know is is going to take a lot of work. Part of what we kind of heard with our realignment and regional structure today that that work still persists. But, um, I get your question. And I appreciate you asking that. And I think, uh, we at least want to be able to say to parents, uh, we can't do this work without you. And we recognize that we need to do a much better job in engaging. And I think the,
128uh, the data shows that, uh, you guys are on the right track in terms of engagement. We appreciate that. We're reflecting that in the responses, but let's keep hitting on that academic work. So, I appreciate that. Chair, if I ask one last thing of our engagement, I can thank you, Superintendent Taylor, for that. Um, within our metrics of what we're using about engagement, did we at all use um a federal um metric that was out uh quite a while ago that I think is even in our textbooks. I'm sorry, I can't remember. I think I brought it up before in a meeting is that when we're talking about engagement, certain things are supposed to be happening at certain tiered levels. Um, I still need to try to figure out and find that. I found it
129one time, I need to find it again. Um, just curious, are we doing that? because technically if we look at the federal uh metrics that it had, one of the things that I remember cuz I was on the committee here in Wake County Public Schools when I when we presented that to develop um some of our first early stages um family engagement plans. Um it was when you walk into the school building, there's not supposed to be a stop sign there because that communicates I don't want you here. And so you were supposed to change the different styles and structures. So, I'm just curious that when we're doing the things of community engagement, are we using certain um uh scientific methods that we know um are engaging to people socially, emotionally to feel welcome and
130things like that and are we using those particular metrics? So uh yes ma'am we are looking at what effective evidencebased strategies work because we know that there's a difference between what is researchbased and what is evidence-based that has been proven to work. Our committee and our district follows the research of Harvard University and Dr. Karen M who is one of the largest gurus in this field um in the nation. >> And so part of what Dr. M's research tells us that we have to do when we have families in the building is that we always have to link to learning. So to your earlier point around making an alignment between this data and favorable results on student achievement data, we're on the right path to ensuring that we give schools and equip them with the
131knowledge and information to effectively engage families. So families feel like they are a part of the educational experience and so families feel like they are true partners in that work. And so Dr. Map and her team tells us that if we do not engage families in sharing with him how they may help their student at home and how they may connect learning in school with opportunities to practice learning at home, then Dr. M tells us that that is a missed opportunity. So we share with our schools that while certain things that we do with families in schools has its place. for example, all of our very nice carnivals and our PTA events. Those are all wonderful things that have their place in schools, but Dr. M and team give us the research that tells us
132if we don't engage families and link to learning, it's a missed opportunity. And so, we are on the right path with that. We are building professional learning to ensure that all of our school staff and district staff understand that that is a priority for this work. Thank you. Uh, Vice Swanson has had his question had been addressed. So, we'll come around the table. Miss Evans, Dr. Ing anything. Is Mr. Hershey still online? >> He doesn't have any questions. All right. So, please continue. >> Thank you. All right. Thank you so much, Dr. Burton. We really appreciate it. We are now going to move into looking at operational effectiveness from the Ames lens. So, we were just discussing goals. Now, we're going to discuss aims. So, those would be aims 13 through 20. They cover things
133such as maintenance and operations, highquality staffing, transportation, tech services. Um, I am excited to welcome first back to the table, Chief Mark Strickland, who is going to share updates on maintenance. And I'll cue, can we get the slides? All right, awesome. Thanks. Yes, we'll be looking at several related metrics that we use to measure those aims starting with maintenance. Thanks everyone. >> Welcome. Good afternoon. Thank you all. Um, so I have a couple of slides for maintenance. We also have an emphasis today in discussing some items in transportation. In between AJ, Dr. Matillo is going to talk about high quality staffing and then at the end, Chief Padulla will end up talking about tech services. I I don't think my microphone's on, but the button is is pushed. >> Pull it a little closer. >>
134Okay. How about now? You hear that? My bad. So, uh, in any given year, the district generates about 200,000 work orders. They're characterized by the severity of them, the need, and and whether or not they affect life safety. The emergency work orders, which we try to get to within 24 hours, are typically a category five, and then they they go down to some urgent and normal work orders, and then we get to the more mundane or cosmetic things uh that um typically take longer to complete. So, as we look through the the 200,000 or so work orders that we generate each year, we looked at the the data from 2024, that calendar year, excuse me, that school year from July to June and also from 2025. And as you can see in the slide at
135the top, um for completed work orders, um we we did pretty well, meaning in 2024, we completed um over 75% of them. So 26% of the work orders that were submitted in 2024 remained open. We did have some improvement in 2025 in that we lowered that to about 20% of our submitted work orders remaining open. If you jump back to the left hand side, you'll see that uh our priority five work orders, we we try to um address those within less than 24 hours. Those are things that that we say typically will happen that will shut a school down, uh such as obviously an HVAC or or a boiler event, loss of utilities, if we've got any spills or leaks that are problematic within the building, the urgent work orders, and these are the two
136most critical categories. The urgent work orders are those that we try to handle within 7 days. um as I'll discuss in a moment on the right hand side at the bottom. We're not to that point yet where we're addressing those within seven days, but those are typically things where some backup equipment is a problem or we've got some other plumbing or um electrical issues that we need to address. Many of the HVAC categories fall within this second category uh category 4 of urgent work orders. And then I'll note that in so far in this first quarter this year, we've had one school closure due to essentially an HVAC problem. On the right hand side, the the chart, the blue line that starts at the bottom left and goes up to the top is just indicative
137of how many days we typically want for each of those work orders to take place. I think it's worthwhile to note that the majority of our work orders take place uh or are in categories three and two. And so in the category three work orders, we're not meeting our goals in terms of getting to them in less than 30 days. In our category 2 work orders, we have shown some improvement from the 2024 school year, and we're getting to those a lot quicker. Obviously, those are easier work orders to complete. Many times it is work that our staff can self-perform and then unfortunately the the end of it um our category one work orders which are typically cosmetic work orders which may involve things like painting or mulching or small drywall repair or carpet. Um
138we are focusing our resources in other areas such as areas three and two. Um, moving to the next slide, uh, we want to talk a little bit about our maintenance recruiting for this year. We do have a a new maintenance recruiter. This is a similar model that we followed for transportation and it has been successful for us. Um, down at the bottom, you'll note that overall our vacancy rates uh, fill rate for this year is 92.4% for the positions that we have. I think it's worthwhile to also point out though that in environmental and grounds we're um we've made some improvements but we still have a ways to go and then again in energy and physical plant even though we've made improvement we still have a ways to go there too and I point uh
139the energy and physical plant out because that is where our maintenance technicians reside for the operation of of our boilers and chillers and our physical plants. It's also where uh our electricians and plumbers reside. Um as of today, we are down to a small number of plumbers uh in the district. I think it is also worthwhile to note that even though overall our field rates are pretty good uh in those two categories, they are not as good as they should be. And we will continue to advocate for additional staff. for a district our size. We've not added uh much staff over the last several years and that will be a another ask of us as we move move forward in the budget process and then I think that's AJ. >> So I think that's a
140great place to pause actually um for um first if there's anything Dr. Matelli that you would like to add as it relates to that maintenance recruiting or questions uh from uh the board about maintenance. >> Sure. Is there questions? Uh Dr. Ing, >> thank you um Mr. Mr. Strickland uh for giving us some um clarity on on the issues and um in terms of the timeline. Um can you comment on you know I know that you mentioned about the like you know strata of different urgency of addressing uh different um fixes. Um assuming that it is a um lower priority um uh request for u uh uh maintenance repair. Um uh how how do you explain or the the approach to prioritizing the um the the um uh jobs? You know, is it based on
141first come first serve? Is it based on the you know u the the cost of it? Is it based on the severity of it? Uh can you please clarify? >> In general, the cost is generally not a factor. So in terms of the priorities of the five that we have, um the priority fives and fours take the most precedence because those are the ones that will close schools. Um uh the priority ones, which are the cosmetic ones, uh based on availability of funding and manpower, we don't get to a lot of those. And again, that's painting, mulching, um any minor cosmetic work, uh any minor alterations or things to buildings. So, as I shared, the majority of the things that we're able to accomplish are in the categories of the three and two. And category
142three are things like loose door handles. I'm reading from my chart here, uh typically a warm classroom, key request, dripping faucets, things like that. And then to a lesser degree in in category two, they would be uh things where there are some lights out, small drywall repair, uh replacing some sensors, maybe some broken glass replacement, maybe some uh graffiti. So, a lot of this comes down to funding and manpower. Um we try to utilize the funding that we have and the manpower to accomplish the the largest number of tasks that we can get to. um we're not getting to everything as evidenced by the number of open work orders that we've had for the last couple of years. So until we can get some additional staff uh to take care of some of these category
1432 and three items, again we're focusing on the things that are most urgent. >> Sure. So um assuming everything being equal in terms of a level two level three um would you say that um it's easier to accomplish a small job um that involve one person rather than having um a larger job that requires multiple people. I mean in in terms of you know how quickly you can respond to those requests. >> If I if I think I understand the the question um can we do a bunch of small jobs or a few of the large jobs. So again that depends on manpower. It depends on what the the issue is. It depends on where it's located in the county, what other projects that those uh facility maintenance technicians are working on. But I I
144would think in general um we have to focus on the larger more intensive projects because they can do us the most harm although the smaller easier projects are easier to do. >> Thank you. Are there any Mrs. Rice? >> Um just to pick you back off um Dr. the wing um in what he was saying. Um I I have a I have a difference of thought um with your statement, Mr. Strickland. Uh simply because it's the small things that we are neglecting are the very things that improve school climate and culture and well-being of being in the school. And I I hear every time we come to operational effectiveness and our maintenance and operations, I constantly hear what we cannot do um because of funding or manpower. The challenge that I'm having with that is
145that in the spaces that I'm in um that does maintenance and operations, I'm finding people who are very capable of doing the jobs in which we are saying that we cannot do. And so I since we have Mr. Matillo here, I am um I come to our departments and I'm asking um the last time we had a meeting around this, I'm asking about how we're searching, how we're looking, who we're looking for to actually do the work. And I try to be as professional and polite as possible when I'm asking those questions and I'm asking us to dig deeper with the type of people we're looking for to do the work. I don't know if we have a particular I don't know what it is um for me to stay professional at this board table,
146but I know for a fact that there are people capable of doing some of this work and are not given opportunity to do this work. I see it as I engage with people across the state who deal with schools. Yes, Wake is the largest. I take nothing away from that. But I implore us to look at various folks that can do this work. I implore us to shift our mindset of the reasons for you feeling that we're only going to do the large projects only because it is hurting our working conditions of folks. it is um hurting our students of feeling safe and wanting to be in a place to come to school. Believe it or not, the when we talk about student well-being and when we talk about well-being of people period, what we
147um encounter with our eyes and how we feel and being in space is determined how we can actually think and work and move. So, if every day I come to a building that's dilapitated, the mulch is not done, the paint is shipping off the walls, the bathroom toilets don't work, the bathroom sinks are taped up with paper bags, and I'm not talking about what I think. I'm talking about what I know. I'm talking about what I have seen. I am saying that we have to do something different um than this constant deferred maintenance type thing. It is harming our staff. It is harming our students emotionally well-being. I have emails that I believe was even CC to Dr. Taylor and I think maybe even the chair around the fact that these are citizens who don't
148even live in my district anymore but live in other areas and specifically shared in an email that their schools on their side of town does not look like the school that they graduated from and what it looks like. and they were concerned and they came and donated a substantial amount of money to the particular school that that's their alumni. And so I want us to rethink our thought process of what we think might be the best strategy when it's actually doing more harm than what it is good and it's causing a outpour and an outcry in community about making us look like we're not capable of doing something. why I think that your staff and that your team is very capable of doing a particular thing. I just think that we need to realign um
149and reallocate where we're thinking our money needs to go and do something in a different manner to make people feel like they actually want to show up at our schools instead of leaving and running to charter schools. >> Thank you, Ch Vice Chair. >> So, great points, Miss Rice. Um the the reason two things I think the reasons we focus on on those higher priority items are is that um they are things that can close schools. And so you know our one of our main charges is to keep schools open in terms of uh staffing and where we are. I I checked today before I came over here and we have two plumbers. Two for the entire district. two plumbers out of six total positions in the entire district today to service 200 schools. >>
150So, um >> I'm sorry. >> Well, one of the things I'll I'll add to that is uh um we had a process this num uh this summer uh with what we call a sweep team. Uh and so we were able to actually do this during the summer because there were not students in the school. Uh but what this process allowed us to do is to go out to a school uh and that team spend an entire day there fixing and addressing uh those lower level um work order type things such as a loose door and things of that nature. And so the schools are very appreciative of that. And so uh what staff is doing now is trying to identify the way that we can be able to expand that type of team during the
151regular school year. So, one of the things we do recognize is that uh our first responsibility is to address those issues that close schools. Uh but when we have a more some more effective way of dealing with those um ancillary things that don't close the school, but when I walk by and see the door on the hinge in the bathroom, uh those are the things that we want to try and have a team to be able to deal with that. So, it was successful during the summer. Um, but we're still looking to figure out how we can expand that during the regular school year when all schools are in. >> All right. Thank you, Dr. Taylor. Um, I see other people have some stuff, too. I know Sam has something. Can we patch Sam in?
152>> Can I be patched in? Can you hear me? >> Yes, sir. >> Uh, thank you. Um, over the last couple of years, we hear about the vacancies. The board has had discussions on this open to ideas. How do we pay more? Do we if we have six, you know, four open plumbing plumber positions, do we make it, you know, reduce the number of openings so we can spread that salary around and hopefully get a couple of more couple more. And so what I'm kind of getting it is we've heard this. we as a board are open to ideas, suggestions, changes. Um, and and also kind of can you explain how all of this information you're giving us informs the budget decisions that are made before they get to us? And one last thing because
153I'm on remote um, and I have shared this with Mr. Strickland about it is important that we do more of the little things because those are those have big impacts in the community. If kids come home and they say that small things have gotten done, we talked about Durant and you know the bathrooms. if they go home and tell all their family that the bathrooms have gotten done, that's going to spread in the community and that's going to help us as Miss Rice pointed out in our competition against charter schools and private schools. So, I am in favor of exploring what we can do better to address more of the smaller issues that have direct impact on our students. That was a lot. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Hershey. Mr. Sherman, do you have
154any response to that or >> I was trying to remember the first part of his question. Um, I I think I know it it boils down to and and I think this will bear out as we continue down the road of of looking at at how we are staffed. Um, I don't think it's any secret that we haven't kept up with staffing and maintenance and operations for a number of years. >> That's a fact. And um we opened four new schools last year counting uh Hilltop need more next year which is being used for swing space that will be another one. And although we have taken the dollar that we have and have um we can either spend the dollar with contracted services and that costs a lot of money or we can convert those
155dollars into positions. um that dollar only goes so far and we are past the point of needing more than a dollar to service the 200 plus schools that we have. >> Thank you, Mr. Strickland. And if I can, I I want to jump in on this because this is not a secret. This is nothing that we need. While new ideas are always appreciated, we've had a proposed answer for this and we've had this proposed answer for years and this board has not taken action on it. And I will say it was not included in this year's, you know, recommendation from the superintendent and the superintendent's budget and I brought it up and there was not support around the table for it. But it's the idea that has been referred to and I brought it up
156at our joint meeting with the county commissioners as the maintenance and operations formula alignment. While the salaries of maintenance and operation employees have fallen significantly below market rates, the maintenance maintenance needs of our buildings have been deferred to create and maintain funding for teachers and classrooms. This has created a constant backlog of work orders, many of which involve regular repairs to heating and cooling systems stretched beyond normal and recommended life life lifespans. This is something that has been in our budget year in our budget book every year since seven of the eight of us have been on this board. It goes on. WCPSS has a multi-year initiative to adjust the maintenance and operations budget to the industry standard based on the current replacement value. WCPSS is currently funded at 77.6% of the industry standard for
157maintenance. We're spending only 3/4 of what the industry says we need to be spending to maintain facilities and operations of the size that we manage. This is the standard for maintenance, operating capital, and capital improvement funding projects. The plan began as a 5-year implementation, but is extended to an 8-year phase in and that was without any expansion this past year. So now it would take 9 years just to get to that. So this is a conscious decision that we are making when we are faced with limited budgets and where we prioritize and where we spend our money. We can't spend it on everything. And you know you have to prioritize where that money goes. I don't think anyone will fault us for money that we've put in the classrooms and money we've spent supporting teachers
158and supporting students. But the learning conditions and working conditions in our building also supports students. And because we don't typically associate those with the educational process, I honestly believe in my time on this board, they receive less attention and less priority. And it's been stated year after year after year what we need to do. And calling something maintenance and operations formula alignment is abstract. It's not as direct to people as something like dental benefits, right? But if you have to choose where you put money, this is an area that we've identified where we need money where we have failed to fund it where it needs to be funded. And so I just want to put that back that is that is not you know we can we can find areas of improvement for staff. We
159can look at practices. We can look at greater efficiencies. But the bottom line is that we have to fund the salaries at a competitive rate and we have to have the number of positions required. You can't have two plumbers for over 200 schools plus other facilities and expect things to be maintained on a timely basis. We just can't. So, I wanted to get that out there. You know, you all can agree or disagree. We'll find out at budget time, but I I wanted to get that out there on the record. So, um, other comments or other thoughts at this time? >> I have follow before Mr. Hershey, um, begin to speak. Um, I'll stick to what you were just saying, >> you've brought that to individual board members. I've supported that piece just for clarity
160so that you don't think you're a lone ranger. However, um when we see authority within the board and and who leads and how leads, it's these first three center seats. And when we uplift something that we know we're passionate about and make sure it's right there, I support I support these spaces and these pieces. if the superintendent doesn't put it in the budget and if it's not lifted up in a in a line as if you're saying the clarity that you just made for it again. Um I think that's something that we as a board need to reook and re-evaluate so that we keep coming here. The challenge that I have is if I hear Mr. Strickland talking about he's doing high priority things so that the so that the school doesn't get shut down.
161Well, we we've been doing the same thing. And the schools did get closely shut down without, you know, intervening with P places where we are. And so what I'm saying is, you're right, we have to do something different. We have to be more aggressive toward it and um change what we're dealing with here to keep recruitment up, to keep people wanting to come to the schools. And so I'm hoping um that our superintends us tonight that when the budget comes around, and yes, we know our budgets are slim, but it is the county and the county's um you know um legal policy obligation to fund um our schools so far as our building um and and maintenance pieces to that. So I say let's bring it again and Superintendent Taylor I hope this time you
162know highlight it in the budget of where it needs to go even though I know that's a very tight thing but it's early on for us to know where it is if we're shaking our head across the table but quite frankly I think that community and as well as myself I'm tired of hearing excuses without change. Thank you. >> All right, other comments or questions? Dr. In >> um just to follow up with um Mr. Hershey's comments, I I I agree with him in terms of the little things um that make a big big impact on our the quality of life, you know. Um uh you know, it's like when you have a bunch of uh credit card debt, you know, um you're always taught, you know, to pay off the smallest one first, you
163know, because that'll make you feel a whole lot better than trying to just continue to make a small dent in a very large debt. Um so I think the lowhanging fruits of some of the smaller jobs is well worth considering uh as we have to we have to take care of all the urgent urgent business. Um but if there are some um lowhanging fruits that can we can fix that'll make quality of life better for our our students and our teachers I I am supportive of that. >> Thank you. All right. Are there other questions or can we continue? >> Chair, if I may, real quick, >> please, Mr. Hershey. >> Uh, so two quick um points. You know, I the budget is conversation. I'm assuming there's money there to currently add four more plumbers
164and that sort of thing. So, um, that's one part of it, but also to Miss Rice's point, often times we get the budget, this is not in there, and now we're trying to work around the edges, a few million here or there, and then having to make those decisions versus it being in the budget or some portion of it being in the budget in January. And so when it gets to us, it's already there as part of what is being prioritized. So I want to support that as well. >> Mr. Strickland, go ahead. >> There is funding already in the budget for those six pos or four other positions, plumbers. >> All right. Thank you, Vice Swanson. Did you have a point? >> I did. I was going back to find my options for my
165from this past budget with uh uh the Mr. neater shared, but I do believe there was some adjustments to the budget uh that was to address it was a small dent, but this budget did move some money towards HVAC uh to make sure that so I just wanted to to you know add a addendum to the record. So it's it shown that we were able to move some pieces out of this budget, but it did not fully address everything. thing and so I did not want that to be out there that you know we did not do those due diligence but I know it was some options um and I am trying to locate that but I I do recall that that was uh taken care of because there was three additional options that we
166were able to move which was um putting money back into dental addressing the um low performing moving that money back and moving a small percentage back towards HVAC to get that but I I can't remember what the number is off the top of my head, Mr. Strickland. I >> I think one of those things may have been um Well, I'll wait until I get facts. So, >> all right. >> And I do want to add that um um when we talk about the the field rate. I don't know if if uh Dr. Matillaa was going to mention this or not, uh but you can see that there has been significant uh movement in terms of those vacant positions. We we do recognize that's also fluid as well, meaning that we may have six plumbers and
167then four leave. And so we do have the funding there for that. Um in terms of u school closures, um I think we've we've done a couple of things. Well, we've done one thing internally to change how we do that and we can see that we've only had one school closure this year. Uh we also know we were blessed with good weather as well. So we don't want to take all the credit for that. But there are some internal changes that we made. Uh but I do want to um highlight what what Chair Hagerty and others have said in terms of um those changes that would be needed in the budget and and you know Mark uh was uh Chief Strickland will say this to me all the time. uh and so um that you
168know there will be things that I will bring uh but I do want to be clear to everybody that um there is a finite amount of resources uh and so when we begin to make these changes uh they're going to be painful changes uh and I know that um I would hope that the public would accept and understand that uh that that one of the things I wholeheartedly agree with is that uh if we continue to peace meal uh then we'll never going to get to where we need to be. Uh and so that is part of uh that hard reset that we know has to happen. Um uh but uh I don't hold back punches and I'm always about clarity that we know how very difficult this is. Uh but we'll continue to do
169that work. Um one of the things that will also be reflected is uh the work we're doing with um uh the team that will be doing our uh salary study and and um um staffing study. So, we had a conversation with them yesterday and you're going to clearly see that reflection. Last thing, um, uh, there are things that continue to come in comp services where they have made changes, uh, in positions in terms of, uh, higher positions that haven't been filled and they now want to change those to to create more lower entry positions that can eventually metriculate into those positions. Uh, but just wanted to share those things. Uh, but the work does continue. All right, thank you. All right, we're going to do just a quick check. Um, we are our time is
170expired, but are we close to the end of this one or do we need to break this one up to? >> Yes, >> Dr. Robinson. >> Yeah, we're going to need to break this one up. We have uh transportation, we have high quality staff, and we have technology as well. All right. >> With the time that would need to be allocated for a very uh in-depth discussion, it would take more than the 10 to 15 minutes left. >> All right. In that case, um we will relieve you all. Thank you very much. We look forward to continuing the discussion of the strategic plan and the progress made on these metrics. >> Thank you. >> All right. We'll need to take about a fivem minute break to uh change the room up to get ready for
171our board meeting. So uh this will close our work session and we will try to reconvene here at um 5:45.