001Miss Pullium and her team have worked tirelessly on this project and so I'm excited for you to see the work and I just want to thank her for all the work that she's done because she tremendous she's tremendous in what she does and so I'm really excited for you to see what she's got. She's done a lot of outreach that she'll share with you as well and so I'll turn it over to her. Thank you, Chair Hagerty, Vice Chair Swanson, Superintendent Taylor, members of the board. Thank you for this opportunity to share with you the initial draft of this year of the 26 27 enrollment plan. Um, as a quick update to what we've done for you materials wise in these attachments, which should hopefully be going live soon, there are five separate attachments. The
002first is a copy of the presentation itself. The second, in response to feedback from the board, um, is a review packet of materials we've been sharing with you since March. So we won't have to go through all of them today. You have them there for your reference and for any family or community members that might be joining us for the first time in this discussion. They can also refer to those to know that you've been having this discussion for a while now. Um in addition, we have an updated copy of the public engagement summary report. We created this for the first time last year. Got it to you just in time for your public hearing. Realized how valuable it was. So we're now getting it to you earlier in the process. So this does include
003a handful of updates. You'll see a revision section. Many sections were touched simply because we were updating participation numbers. So, it's not substantive changes in most of the sections, but there are data points and a couple of summary statements that have been updated um as a result of the closing of the most recent thought exchange on July 31st. In addition, we have historically included both of these two additional attachments. One labeled 4D is a copy of the detailed maps. These are PDF versions of the after maps, if you will, for the proposals that are included. Uh, anybody who opens these on their computer can actually zoom in and see down the street level. So, these are much more functional if you're trying to explore the map than perhaps the ones included in the slide deck.
004So, we find these are helpful for parents and community members who want to do that more detailed review. And then uh 4E is a copy of some of the data reports that are baseline resets for us. Most of the growth projections, actually all of the growth projections are based on the most recent forecast which was done for the 2024 cycle. you received that presentation back in February. Um, so this is just the foundational sets of data over the last couple of weeks that we've used to sort of re-calibrate those forecasts based on current headcount. So that's what's in your attachments. So without further ado, we'll go ahead and get rolling. Um, so a special thank you to Glenn. As much as he's thankful for me, I'm thankful for him and his supervision and support really
005and encouragement. uh our entire office of student assignment team, our geospatial analytics team, um our area superintendent, many principles, our long-range planning team, the facilities design and construction team, many many partners in that planning group, and of course our parents and community members. But I would be remiss if I didn't have a special thank you for both Miss Zulian and Miss Carelli to C to for their support and getting all of our communications together and ready for today's presentation. So for today, we will briefly, and I do mean briefly, I will use my speed voice, review the assignment planning process as well as our board policy 4150 as they relate to developing our annual student assignment enrollment plans. We will spend an extensive amount of time going over the initial staff recommendations that are included
006in this initial draft. Then we will quickly hit on some highlights of the timeline where we go from here and then give you time to share any thoughts, comments or questions before we go into our public engagement se sessions related to this draft. As a reminder, this does align with the work of our strategic plan specifically in our family and community engagement aims both aims six and 12 as well as with our operational effectiveness aims both aims 14 and 19. And now for the first time we are sharing with you the new um enrollment proposal website. So the one that you see on the top line 2026 enrollment proposal went live about 8 minutes ago and it is contain it contains all of the information and resources related to this initial draft. Um in addition
007if families are looking for the address lookup tool they'll want to visit this site. They'll find it there. if they're looking for information on the upcoming virtual information sessions, open house, that will be there, as well as other curated resources to help them understand and digest this plan. The lower uh site that you see, that's the one that we created a couple of years ago. That's the perpetual or perennial site that is constantly being updated. The two do cross link to each other. So, if you find yourself on one or the other, you can easily find the other information. Um, but that's where families might want to go or community members might want to go if they want a deeper dive into the planning process itself. And so quickly again, I'm referring you to item
0084B in your uh packets so that if you wanted to look at that review material just to refresh your minds back on March 4th, we came to you with an initial touch point to talk about public engagement. On May 6th, we came to you and talked about the goals for this year's plan. you had some additional questions. So, we visited with you on May 20th and June 3rd to follow up on those specific talking points or concern points. And then on June 24th, we had a touch point to go over what we knew so far related to what we've heard from communities preparing for the event. As you'll recall, we have a roughly a six-step process. We're in step four. We've been in step four. We stay in step four for quite some time, but
009we're quickly advancing through the last few phases of step four. Um and so then we'll jump into steps five and six and start the cycle all over again. So just a quick overview of how we arrived where we are today. We start with an enrollment forecast which as you can see over the last three years has become more and more aggressive. Um in addition we take that forecast we distribute it across the county so we can have a better understanding of where that growth will occur across and throughout the county. Then we take some of that information and use it to project crowding for the coming school year. We did this back in the February March time frame. So this is respective to this current school year. However, it's still the projections because we have
010not hit any of our headcount days to be able to um update these to show what the actual crowding is today. But based on these projected crowings, we the planning team was thinking what can we do to support some of our overenrolled schools as well as our underutilized schools that have available capacity. In addition, we work with our facilities uh design and construction team to understand better what's going on with our capital improvement program to know what schools are opening, what schools might be undergoing renovation. I will briefly stop here and say that although Sworth Creek will complete its renovations in time for the 2627 school year, we're going to use a similar strategy that we did for both Balkam and Balkam Elementary and Fway Marina Middle and just hold off a year. Let the
011new school effect kind of happen for that community. let the community settle into its new space before we come to you with any recommendations for expanding its face attendance area. May not be necessary or it may. So, we're just going to give it one year before we do that. So, you won't see recommendations for that in this year's plan. Similar with Fugquway Marina Elementary completing its minor renovation projects. We'll wait a year and see how moving into the new space impacts the enrollment before coming to you with any longer term um changes. Then we slide into step four. We've completed the public engagement step for the spring portion. We've completed our review with you of the annual goals and we're now in the thick of releasing to you the initial plan and then going through
012all of the processes that get us to final approval. We'll come back to this in just a moment. I do think it's important to share how we got here at least within these steps. So, we did conduct that public engagement. I just wanted to give you an update. As I mentioned, when we met in June um on the 24th, we were still uh we still had a thought exchange that was ongoing and collecting feedback from the community thanks to our communications department. We kept messaging our community and they responded. We had over 894 additional participants uh participate in that particular thought exchange between the June time period and today um and they added an additional 738 thoughts. So it was really a much richer um experience for our community members. We'll talk through some of
013those results in just a moment. In addition, some of the recordings that we posted had additional views as well. So recordings of those virtual information sessions that we held in May, we had an additional 74 views of those sessions leading up to today. So that's something that we think is important that those assets are being used and they are um being helpful to my to our family members. In addition, our website starting at the top there, our digital assets, we're at a total of 57 page views altogether, which is an additional 236 views during that time period. to be expected. It's a little lower just because we're not in the throw as I imagine today. We'll knock that number out of the park. Um you'll also see the red footnote here which will show up
014on all of the public engagement sections. The all of the details on this are included in your public engagement summary report. So I would refer you to that for any detailed analysis and um information. However, we did have one ongoing thought exchange that we didn't talk to you about. We just wanted to give you a quick opportunity to review the information. not a lot of surprises. The core question that we asked the larger community was as you think about school assignments, what do you value most about your students current school and what would you hope for in a school assignment? Just thinking broadly about what what's important to you um for your student to have a successful school experience. And so you'll see some common threads that we've seen in other conversations with our community.
015distance was one of the top rated. These are the three top rated thoughts in this particular exchange. We want a school that's close to home. We hear you loud and clear. Proximity is important to a vast majority of our community. The school community, the sense of home away from home, feeling like they fit in, feeling like they're welcome, feeling that it's a safe place to be and to learn. Um, I thought that was an interesting way to phrase that and love that it got so much attention from our community and was so highly rated. Um, in addition, the stability piece, and I think I did not pick and choose these. These are literally the three highest rate of thoughts, and they're all slightly different, but tell the the same story we've been hearing for the
016last three or four years. That keeping the same school assignment, having consistency, not only for the students, but for the families with their school relationships is really important. So, again, a total of just over a thousand participants in this particular thought exchange. Well over 18,000 total ratings of those over 900 thoughts. uh for your information the thoughts had about a 20 to one ratio of ratings to thought and that pristine number is 30 so that's really good that means we had really good participation and a lot of people looking at each other's thoughts and comments um however there was love alignment so we have some polarization here I might really like close I might really like academic programming and to me those are two separate things and maybe we don't agree it's okay um it's
017not uncommon for us to see this at this point in the planning experience but it lets us know that we are not a community of one, we are a community of many. Looking at the actual thoughts that were posted when we started doing the theming work to try to figure out how to categorize them, uh the six main themes that came up were quality of education, which you can see on the left of this particular screen. And if you're flipping quickly, we're on slide 18. Um you had school community and stability as a another topic or category. Proximity to home had its own special standalone category. school calendar and that could be a mix of all things traditional, year- round, modified, but just concepts related to school calendar, diversity and inclusion came up as well
018as operational considerations. And I'll pause because when we were reviewing this, my team was like, "Oo, they care about operational efficiency." I let you. These are things like homework. These are things like before and after school care. These are schoolbased operational considerations. Um, so they're slightly different from We got excited. Oh, they care about how crowded the school. No. No, no, no, no. Um, but as you can see for quality of education, we had 479 total thoughts in that category, 434 in the school community and stability, 224 in the proximity to home, 179 in school calendar, 83 in diversity inclusion, and 31 in operational considerations. Once families and community members started rating those thoughts, the deck shuffled a little bit. The quality of education moved to that third position. Nothing significant here. I can tell
019you the different rating values, but proximity to home really did get the highest rating of all the thought groups at a 4.1 average rating for the comments in this particular category. For school community and stability, again, no surprise. It was one of our top rated thoughts, a relative average of four. And remember, this is on a scale of 0 to or 1 to five. Quality of education got a 3.9. So, it's not a low value by any stretch. Diversity inclusion was 3.8. School calendar was also 3.8. And then those operational efficiency sitebased logistics type concerns were a 3.3 when all the ratings were done. So what I'll share is that all of this provides insight, right? It's not a yes or no. It's not a survey. It's not a a mandate per se, but it
020helps us better understand the unique experiences of our community members as we're preparing recommendations for you to review related to school assignments and school enrollment plans. What we're seeing is really no major shift. Stability is still important. Calendar continuity fits in that stability cal category. Cohort continuity fits in that stability category. Capacity management, that's probably more staff driven than communitydriven, but you do have some parents that are concerned about the size of classes or the number of students on campus or the opposite side of that being a school that's a little bit underenrolled and not having sufficient resources to have all the types of positions they'd like to have to support their students. The policy guidance piece is more of a staff driven. We have a policy that has four pillars. We acknowledge that our
021community is really raising that clarion call for proximity and stability. Yet, we have to balance that against the policy goals of student achievement and operational efficiency. So, where we can find win-wins, we brought them to you. Um when we can't, we'll explain where we are. Um a quick review then we've reviewed those goals with you. I thought it was important to just remind everybody what we said we were going to do. We said we were going to bring to you a plan that has um information for a new elementary school, its base attendance area, and any theater pattern alignment or calendar alignment issues that need to be considered as well as any domino impacts for nearby schools because when you open a school and you move a lot of students out of one school, that
022might be too many and we might be able to backfill. Um so you'll see those recommendations. We did look at those completed renovation projects and as I as I announced earlier, we won't have recommendations specific to those. We're going to let those sit for a year before we bring you any specific recommendations. As far as crowding and transportation, you will see recommendations related to this area. We do have some to address ongoing crowding both within the new school opening and separately. Um and we also have some recommendations to help make more efficient transportation routes for our transportation department um to support those goals. And then we also told you we had some carryover items in that sort of stability category based on what you approved for the 2526 plan and those are included in this
023draft. So we'll come back to this in just a moment. But um I do want to say you'll notice on here there's 3A. I don't want to bypass that letter right there, the review of public feedback. So at 3:30 the website went live. At 3:30 all that information was shared. Shortly after or at about that time, we started sending the mass community message saying, "Hey, it's being presented. If you want to join in, the link to the YouTube was in the information as well, so they could just click on that and start watching us live." Um, in addition to links to the website, we also have been working with our impacted principles. They have a principal toolkit with information that they can share directly with their family members at their schools, both in print and
024in email. So, they've got both versions and English and Spanish language translations already provided. Um, in addition, we'll be hosting virtual information sessions, an open house that will be live and in person, and we'll have recordings of everything that we do that's virtual, so families can also participate asynchronously. Of course, we'll have a thought exchange going so that we can already start collecting, I'm sure it's getting hits now, um, and collecting information from families that may have questions or concerns. And we'll use that to drive our FAQ portion of our website. That will be regularly updated between now and October and again between October and November. And of course, update that public engagement report for you as you prepare for your public hearing on the 21st. So, I'll tell you all that again later if
025you want to hear it, but I just wanted to say that that will all start effectively starts today. Um, we will come back to you and talk to you about captain overcrowded schools after we've know what's officially approved in the enrollment plan to see where we've made some progress. You'll notice that several schools on this list were impacted by the 2526 enrollment plan. So, we're monitoring the impacts of that implementation to determine if any of these can be adjusted. Please know that we may be bringing to you with this conversation uh recommendations to add or remove students or schools from the list, perhaps to change the overflow school if that partnership has gotten a little uh little heavy on one of the schools. And so, anything in that bucket will be brought to you probably
026in December for an initial touch point and then for further conversation in January, February for approval. Um, we also wanted to draw attention to the fact that you did convert a school approve a conversion for a school lake Myra Elementary to go from track 4 only to multitrack due to the growth, the continued and ongoing and non-stop growth in that region. We did evaluate this particular board approval and realize that at this point making adjustments to the base attendance area is probably not necessary because of the actual growth in the base itself. So, you won't see any recommendations related to this change in the plan as well. We're going to let that calendar change take effect. Let the enrollment growth that's happening in that region fill up the school, monitor that before we come to
027you with any potential expansions, let's say, of the base attendance area for that school. We don't think that it can support. So, all of the information that got us to today is on this website. Now, here we are. Did I do it fast enough? >> Yeah. Is this just about the process? You just said I will late Mara. You were saying that you don't think that it could support it changing to track 4. >> We don't think it needs additional base. We think the existing base attendance area will be sufficient to fill in all those extra seats that are being generated. I just want to make sure. >> Yes. Sorry. Thank you for that clarification. >> All right. So, what we hope you'll find today is that as we walk through the recommendations that are
028included in this initial draft of the 2026 27 enrollment plan that you can hear me underscore for you that there the recommendations are going to reflect both the data that we've carefully evaluated and the feedback that we've collected from our families and community members. We hope you'll see a balance between those two uh points of information and emphasis u as we review proposed changes. So again, the top website is where you go to find out information about the actual proposal. The bottom website is where you go just to learn more about how we got to this point today. We'll start with a quick overview of the schools that are impacted by base assignment changes. You'll see that it's a much reduced number of schools as compared to last year. We're only opening one elementary school
029and the vast majority of the elementary base assignment change recommendations are related to the opening of that school. all of the ones that you see sort of in the lower south um eastern corner of the map. Um off to the far east of the map, you'll see a little area that's related to crowding in the east. And off to the west, you'll see sort of a blue area that's related to crowding in the west. So those are two separate recommendations, but everything else is related to the opening of Hilltop Needmore Elementary. In addition, you'll see at the middle school level, the only recommendations that are included here are twofold. one set to support the opening of Hilltop Emore and create K8 calendar and cohort continuity. Um in addition, you'll see some that are related to
030that other crowding recommendation that we're going to have on the east and west. And then a third element of the middle school recommendations is a followup to last year's approval of the change for certain elementary schools to come into Balkam on traditional that still had a year-round middle school. So this is to create K8 and cohort work uh count of continuity for those families. And then at the high school level there's just a total of four high schools impacted. One set of schools is related to the opening of Hilltop Needmore and creating a K12 cohort theater pattern um as well as addressing some crowding issues and the other is that follow on to those apex area recommendations from for the 2526 school year that needed a better feeder pattern going through K12. One thing we
031have realized over the last several years is the the 85% plus of the questions we get are about. So if my address is changed, what happens to my student? Do I have the ability to stay at my current school or not? Would I need to provide transportation? So we thought we would start with the recommendations for stability rules before going in to the proposals themselves because this really is where the rubber meets the road. How does this impact me and my family? what staff is recommending based on what we've seen working well with the last couple of years with those expanded stability rules that you were able to support when we first opened Woods Creek Elementary and now again for 2526 Pleasant Plains Bowling Road and Rex Road Elementary is that if a student and
032an address is being assigned into the new school will have slightly more restrictive or conservative rules to ensure we have a healthy population to open the school with. So only fourth and fifth grade siblings would automatically be eligible for those stability transfers to stay at their current school should they choose. So um this would be without transportation as we're trying to route those buses now to the new school instead of to the old school. In addition based on all that feedback we've received and we get a lot of support. There's been a lot of support for this particular set of rules. Let those kindergarten through third grade siblings not only come in with their fourth and fifth grade sibling but go ahead and stay through fifth grade. And so that we're going to recommend that
033same set of rules that we've been operating for the last two assignment cycles. Families really seem to support it. Principles are able to management. They've already been crowded for a while. So just slowly changing that overcrowding to regular crowding um seems to work. Okay. Um we do remind everyone that these requests would need to be submitted specifically during the stability transfer window. It's on all the slides. I won't say it every time. And that's just to ensure that this because some of these schools are cap schools that we're going to be talking about. maybe not this set but others to ensure they get that seat before we start call backs or before we start any other process. So all of these would be assured as long as they submit them during that window. We'll give
034you really specific details on these as we get closer to the approval date because it's not germanine at the moment. Uh but it would be before the holiday break is our our plan just like we've been doing the last couple of years. The other thing I want to stop and note here is that a lot of families will then ask the follow-up question. Okay, this works for the students I have and that one rising kindergartener that I have, but I've got a three-year-old that'll come up in a couple of years. What happens to that student? Well, the good news is the regular transfer rules will support the family for that younger student. When that student's ready to join kindergarten, they'll be able to join a sibling per normal rules and they can put in their
035request during the regular transfer period. They won't have to participate in this particular process. So, they're covered on all sides. The also the benefit of the stability transfers is that if families put those transfers in in that J November, December time frame, let a couple of months go by and realize I don't think we can make carpool work or oh our best friend has actually decided to go to the new school and I don't want to separate the students from each other that you know really get along well. Um they can always put in a backto-base transfer in that hardship window and we can approve those without question. So, it's best to go ahead and put it in in the stability window when time comes and then make those decisions later if you can't have
036it because once we get to the regular transfer window, if they're too crowded, if we're already hitting class size limits, we might not be able to approve them. The rest of the students then that are impacted by changes in this particular set of recommendations because there's only the one new school opening is Hilltop Needmore. All the rest we would follow what you've uh been permitting us to do for the last couple of cycles, which is all students at all grades that are currently attending a particular school. They're going from an existing school to an existing school would be allowed to stay as long as they can provide transportation. Same rules about the kindergarten sibling. Sixth grade will also work and 9th grade will work. So, if you don't mind, I'll kind of pop through these
037because it's the same basic rules at all three levels. And again, those regular transfer rules would support families for students that are a year or two behind this particular implementation year. So now let's dive into some specific recommendations. We'll start with the opening of Hilltop Needmore. As you'll recall, Hilltop Needmore is currently serving as the home for Fuway Marina Elementary while their campus is undergoing some minor renovations. So it is actually operational and functional. I took a tour of it just the other day. We're going to host our open house at the site since it's open. Um that way families can get a peek at the school that they're being assigned into. And so just as a reminder about where it's located, it's sort of in the I guess it's still northern I guess that's
038what we would call it. Um in the Fway Marina area um near 401. So we're going to make a unique recommendation for you. We do recommend as we have been because this is the last of the elementary schools coming in this region quite literally the last in this region for the foreseeable future that we call it a multi-track year round school that you approve it as a multitrack year round school. However, based on the needs today and calendar alignment issues in this region and feedback from community members and staff, we would ask that you allow us to operate it on track 4 only for its first few years. and if the enrollment and when the enrollment finally gets to a point where we need it to be multittrack, it's already pre-approved to be multitrack and
039then we can just bring it to you to to do that. Um, we'll explain why when we get a little bit further in, but the middle school alignment that we're seeking here would be Westlake Middle, which operates on a track 4. The students are coming out of schools like Banks and Westlake, which currently operate on a track 4. This would provide the most stability we can for families from a calendar perspective while also giving us the flexibility as staff to use the extra seats in the future year. So for the first few years, the capacity would be 716 and when and if needed to flex to multitrack, it would be 924. The impacted schools at the base assignment area that would be used to identify addresses to assign to the school are Valentine Elementary, Banks
040Road Elementary, and Westlake Elementary. As you can see, Valentine is currently a multitrack year- round school. The other two are currently track 4 only schools. We have moderate crowding at Valentine projected for 26 27 and 2728. We have significant crowding uh projected for banks. Part of the reason why Hilltop is needed and then West Lake doesn't have those same crowding issues. So, it we'll talk through what we're going to do to support Westlake. for a point of reference for you on these slides. If it's a blue bar on this top row, that means this is if we make no changes. So, if we left with the status quo, we didn't open the school and left these base attendance areas alone. This is the projected crime. In addition to the opening of Hilltop Needmore, it creates
041an opportunity for a little bit of what we've used I think the terms we've used are cascading or domino effects in the area to kind of like we did in the Holly Springs area the last year with opening of BS and and Bowling Road in the FIFA area. So there are a handful of schools that we're going to impact because of we were opening Hilltop anymore. If we weren't opening Hilltop, we might leave them in. So that's Middle Creek Elementary, Oak Grove Elementary, and Vance Elementary. Two of these operate on track 4 only. One is currently a multi-track year round school. You can see their capacities with trailers. I didn't point this out on the last screen, but that's the total capacity of the school with their trailers. By way of example, Middle Creek currently
042has 13 classroom trailers. So that's it's a significant amount for an elementary school. So we're not necessarily trying to use all of these seats. Uh but the projected growth in the Middle Creek Elementary base, particularly one of its satellite areas, is really showing massive growth in the coming years, even with the trailers. So, we're looking to provide some relief to the school. Vance also has about five trailers. Oak Grove has about five trailers. So, you can see the difference between the crowding levels if you were to maybe subtract those trailers from the campus. We're not quite ready to do that is basically what I'm saying. All right. So, the maps, it's been about a year since we've looked at these. So, let's just take a moment to orient ourselves to how the maps are set
043up and then we can more quickly go through the others. The map on the left represents what the current base attendance areas for are for all of the schools impacted. The shading area is then the area that's being proposed to be impacted by whatever the reassignment move is. The map on the right then would show you if you were to approve it as we're recommending it today, which we're not saying you will, but you if you were, then these would be the new attendance areas for these schools based on the recommendations that are included today. The color coding lets you know which school is which color. We do see somewhat duplicates, but um for your reference, if I start on the far right, Vance Road is the longer column that's sort of in blue. Banks
044is that pink colored right next to it. If I go in a little bit further, it's mostly Banks, a little bit of Westlake, a little bit of Valentine. That yellow then becomes the new Hilltop need more base attendance area. If I go back to my left map, the upper quadrant on the left that's light sort of a blue color similar to the Vance color, that's West Lake Elementary. The orang-ish yellow color on the middleish part of that map is Valentine Elementary and that sort of tan color on the top left would be the Middle Creek Elementary. So hopefully that helps you figure out how to read the maps and certainly you know we can answer any questions needed. Another thing that we've done is to add a layer to help you figure out okay so
045what are we talking about? So the area that's identified as one on the left is a portion of Westlake Elementary that we're recommending become part of Hilltop basically because of transportation flow egress and just natural uh breaks between neighborhoods. It's a very small sliver as you could see on the earlier slides. Westlake Elementary does not need relief. It's not overcrowded. So we have something to backfill as well. Oh, sorry. Valentine Elementary, you'll see the number two on the left. that represents the small portion of Valentine Elementary that we're recommending become part of Hilltop. Now, these are existing families for both one and two. So, this would provide sort of instant relief, if you will, for Valentine so that it would have a little bit more room for the growth that's in the remaining portion of
046its base attendance area. And then the larger darkish pink color hashtag on the left hashed out area on the left that's labeled as number three represents the a significant portion of the current Banks Road Elementary Banks attendance area that we would recommend become part of the Hilltop Needmore area. Some of this community is expecting it because the school's very very approximate to their their community and their subdivisions. Um others know it's coming. We've been talking about the school for about three years so they know these recommendations are coming. The difference between the Westlake and the Valentine portions for this base area is this also includes growth. So we talked about this over the last couple of years of trying to have a mix of existing families and undeveloped land and where residential communities are coming
047online so the school can open a little bit smaller but grow into its space versus opening full and then us having to reassign two or three years later. So this is following that same strategy. The other recommendations that we're talking about are related to Middle Creek. So since Westlake Elementary will lose a few students and they don't really need to and Middle Creek standing to have a a big jump in its enrollment area labeled number two, we would recommend come from Middle Creek to Westlake as you can see geographically it makes a lot of sense by the exit or the egress I should say and the transportation routes it makes sense. Um and then on the left the one that's labeled number one we would recommend this portion become part of Oak Grove. This portion
048is already assigned to Lefkam Road Middle, which is a multitrack year round middle school. So, there's a bit of a calendar mismatch here today because it's track four to a multitrack. So, this would create some calendar alignment, K K8 cohort and calendar alignment for these families. Um, we're going to continue to monitor this area because the growth for Middle Creek was a little surprising, but not to be um not not un not unrealistic. So, we're going to continue to monitor it as we get our 20-day headcounts in or ADM reports, I should say, as we look at what's going on with developments in the region. If we feel it's a little too aggressive for this first year, we might come back with a a revision to reduce this just a little bit. Um, we don't
049want to underenroll Middle Creek too quickly while they're waiting for the growth to come. And then the next map that you'll see here is again related to the opening of Hilltop. As I mentioned, we took a significant portion of the bank's attendance area to create Hilltop in that initial set of recommendations. So, this would look to a portion of Vance Road Elementary. As you saw, it was projected to be pretty crowded. It's a relatively smaller campus. Multittrack's not the best option for that campus just because of how small it is. So, we're looking to take this area and reassign it from Vance to Banks, which will sort of be the third phase for Vance. As you'll recall, it's been impacted by certain assignment recommendations over the last several years. This area is already aligned to
050Westlake Middle, so that creates a nice alignment there from a cohort and theater pattern standpoint. So, it would just be an elementary change. All right. So, if you were to say yes to all of Whoops. If you were to say yes to all of those changes as currently proposed in the initial draft and if every single student were to take their new assignment in year one, this would be the potential result, the potential impact on the schools. You can see a much better balance across the schools. No one's pushing up against or over 2627. We've got some room to grow as we go into 2728. reality stability transfers will shift these numbers around a little bit, but this gives you an idea of why we're making the recommendations and where we're trying to head. You'll
051notice that two schools, Banks Road and Westlake Elementary, have those three stars beside them and those projected percentages. That's because they're impacted by both a move in and a move out. And so, we just wanted to share that this reflects both of those sets of changes. So, this really does keep uh Westlake from changing too much in its enrollment. Um, it does bring banks down, but it gives it room. As you can see, it has some growth in the remaining portion of its base attendance area. That year-over-year change between 2627 and 2728 is a good indicator of how much residential development is online in these areas. So if we were to go with the track for only recommendation, Hilltop Neborn could open as much as 69% full in its first year, but we know that's
052not likely to be that full because of stability transfers, but it might be somewhere close, which is why we feel comfortable making the track for only recommendation for these first few years. There's some room to grow. We're not pushing up against a large growth number. The next set of recommendations that you see here are what I call uh complimentary recommendations. So, with all of those elementary changes, we've accidentally created some K8 either calendar or cohort misalignment. So, we want to clean that up, too, while we're here. We've learned from our families, just do it all at once. Don't chip away at it. Let's get this done. So, we're trying to be responsive to that community feedback as well. Just go ahead and get it all done. Especially with those generous stability rules. If I can
053drive myself, I can stay where I'm at and I don't have to immediately change to these new schools, but the community will over time. So, what we're looking at here are recommendations coming from the existing Dillard Drive Middle or Diller Drive Magnet Middle and Herbert Akens Road Middle. The Dillard Drive Middle you'll see labeled as number one. It is a very small area, impacts a very few students. This is the area that we're recommending come into Westlake Elementary and it operates on track 4. So, we're recommending they go to Westlake Middle on that track four, be on those same campuses and have that K and um calendar and beer pattern continuity. The yellow line that's just on top of that is 540 if you're trying to find yourself on the map. The larger circle that's
054on the lower portion that's labeled number two would be portions of current Herbert Akens Road Middle School that would be recommended to become part of Westlake Middle. Herbert Akens is fast growing. There's a lot of development in its remaining base attendance area. It also operates on a multi-track year-round calendar and having track 4 elementary schools feed into a multi-track year round middle school creates interesting pressures and dynamics on the school to try to make accommodations for all those students when I have other students coming from other multitrack schools that we're also on track for. Um so based on the crowding and the calendar misalignment, the recommendation is that basically all of the newly identified hilltop need more base become part of the Westlake community so that the whole school all fifth grade would have that
055cohort as well as calendar continuity. So this is being recommended to support not only K8 calendar alignment but K8 feeder pattern alignment also to take advantage of available capacity in the region and relieve overcrowding at Herbert and Kingsburg Middle. The Diller drive is really just to align feeder patterns. um Diller doesn't necessarily need that relief, but as a magnet school, we can certainly fill in any available seats through the magnet application process. [Music] So, when we're looking at these, we'll just kind of put everything together for you. The top layer is if we were to make no changes. So, the ones with the blue title, the orange labeled one is if we were to go forward with these recommendations, what the projected impact on the schools are. As you can see, it does provide a
056modicum of relief to Harbor Akens Road Middle. takes advantage of some available capacity at Westlake Middle and doesn't significantly impact alert drive. Similarly, there would be some K12 misalignment if we were to then walk away. So, we're making a recommendation at the high school level as well to support K12 theater pattern continuity for these families. Uh the recommendation here is that a portion of what is now the Willow Spring High Schoolbased attendance area that would be the Hilltop be more elementary base become part of Middle Creek High School. So you hilltop West Lake Middle Creek is a a nice and and sensible sort of K12 cohort feeder pattern with the Westlake campus being very very approximate to the Middle Creek High School campus. In addition with the growth in crowding in the Willow Spring base
057attendance area, we are at a point now where we need to relieve them um so that they can continue to support the other students that are coming into the remaining portion of their base. So again, this portion that's labeled one is recommended to come from Willow Spring to Middle Creek for cohort or feeder pattern alignment as well as to relieve crowding at Willow Spring High School. Here you see the number differential. As you can see, Willow Spring is creeping up somewhat quickly. um projected to be significantly overcrowded soon and so this would buy us some time and and get them right sized a little bit. And so that's all of the recommendations that are specifically related to the opening of Hilltop need. The next set of recommendations that we'll talk about are related to following
058up on recommendations that were approved for the 2526 school year. So, as you can see here, you previously approved a change in base attendance area for the area highlighted with the circle from either all of Chapel Elementary or Salem Elementary into Balkam Elementary that took them from a multi-track year round elementary into a traditional elementary. At the time, we weren't quite ready to come up with middle school and high school recommendations to support this change. We asked for grace with the community to bring them to you this year. And so, we're honoring that commitment today. What we're recommending is that specifically those two areas, the one that's labeled one is currently at Lufkin Road Middle for that multitrack calendar alignment coming out of Olive Chapel. The other section labeled two is currently at Salem Middle
059for that multittrack alignment that they originally had at Salem Elementary. We're recommending they become part of the Apex Middle attendance area. It's a very logical K8 theater pattern for this community to go from Bohome to Apex Middle. In addition, it creates that K8 calendar alignment of traditional to traditional. So you can see here the projected impacts. I will draw your attention to the asterisks at Salem Middle. They're going to be part of a set of recommendations later on. This shows the total impact of both sets of moves. So as you can see, it's a little bit of in a little bit of out to kind of keep them somewhat balanced. This does provide a little bit of relief for Lufkin, which is projected to continue to grow. If you'll recall, the Woods Creek Elementary base
060attendance area is part of their base is rapidly growing. Um, and so we want to make sure that there's space at Luckin to support the students coming into that community. While Apex doesn't necessarily need additional students, they do serve as an overflow for Apex Friendship. So when that overflow status relationship changes, they could support this long term. This same area had a high school that didn't quite make sense, per se. if you're going to go welcome in Apex Middle and then back to Apex Friendship High School. No, very few students go from Apex Middle to Apex Friendship High School. So, the community even asked for a little bit more of a Apex Apex cohort alignment. And so, we're supporting that here, especially now that Felton Grove is open. This gives us a year to let
061some of those seniors on stability transfer out before we add more students to the campus. Um, and so this Apex High School can support this long term, but this gives us that one extra year that we needed to allow for some resettling between the schools in this area with the opening of Felton Grove. Apex Friendship will continue to experience growth in the remaining portion of its base attendance area. So we uh feel that this move supports both schools as well as the community by having a nice K12 theater pattern. So again being recommended for cohort and theater pattern. You can see here the projected impacts. Um, Apex Friendship is a bit of a low, but there's more, what we say, dirt turning, earth moving in their base attendance area. So, this will not be a
062long lived. So, that's honoring the commitments from last year. The last set of base assignment recommendations we have for you. We looked throughout the area throughout the district to see where do we have capped or overcrowded schools with nearby available capacity at schools that might be able to support some of that enrollment without having to maybe convert to multitrack or something like that. We know that that sometimes is something we have to think about. But we found two areas in particular, one on the west. You'll see on the top left image um I've highlighted for you the area that is the White Oak Elementary base attendance area. The school is aware of how crowded and and they are and they are capped and capping and they have continued growth in their base attendance area. This
063is represents the Mills Park Middle base attendance area. As you were well aware, the school has been capped for a number of years over 10 I think at this point. 2012 I believe was when the cap was originally placed on this school. And while the growth in the northern portion of its base attendance area has slowed, the southern portion has not, particularly the portion that's aligned with White Oak Elementary. And as you can see, we're not done yet. Uh the growth continues in this region and even with the opening of Parkside Middle in a couple of years, it won't be sufficient enough to properly address the long-standing crowding at Mills Park Middle. In addition, hopefully you'll notice that by beside both of these schools to the right, there are some white areas. Those are schools
064that have a 90% or below uh utilization rate that have some available capacity. So really truly in response to the community feedback, changing either of these schools to multitrack year round was just really not well supported. And while that is an individual fact, we have the available capacity nearby. So reassigning students seem to be the compromise in the middle. Um so we do have to provide relief to these schools so that they can support their enrollment and perhaps not have to cap out students in the future. So what you'll see here are we have a little tag along. Um the areas that are labeled as one, the top and lower portions of the pink. Uh those are portions of the current White Oak attendance area. These are established neighborhoods. So we are not looking at
065new development per se. We're looking at existing students. We would recommend that they become part of the Turner Creek Elementary base attendance area. The egress routes are good. There's connection points. Transportation can easily be managed. I don't want to overstate this, but in some cases, they're actually closer to Turner Creek than they are to White Out. Great. I know that that can sound sour. and I don't mean it to be it just but practically speaking they could actually be closer to Turner Creek. The purple area that's labeled two um is a portion of the current Salem Elementarybased attendance area but it would create a a really interesting transportation dynamic in that space. And right now there are very few I think maybe one student. So we're getting ahead of the growth in that particular area
066before it takes off. So, if we can assign those three areas into Turner Creek and take advantage of the available capacity there, it does a couple of things for us. One, it creates transportation efficiencies by have, you know, bringing those groups together as a whole lot. Two, it lets us take advantage of the available capacity at Turner Creek. As you can see, there's a significant amount of space available. And the remaining portions of the Turner Creek base attendance area are low growth, stable areas. There's no new subdivisions coming. So, this will allow them to have a population of students that they can support the enrollment of the school. I caution you, remember that those lower numbers are if every student takes the new assignment in year one and some of our capped and overcrowded schools.
067They're very popular. Families may not be ready to leave right away. So, the I don't know that we'll get to 99% at Turner Creek in year one. Uh but we certainly have the space to take all of the students should they all eventually find their way over to the school uh because these will be existing to existing so they'd have those really generous stability rules. However, it does provide relief to White Oak as you can see that is desperately needed as there is growth continuing in the remaining portion of their base attendance area as you get closer to the county line. Um so then this particular set of recommendations for Salem Middle um are to relieve Mills Park, but it's really specifically to align the feeder pattern. If you take them from White Oak, if
068it's traditional and assign them to Turner Creek, that's multitrack. We've now created a calendar mismatch and we hear from the community whenever possible, can you please give us KA calendar alignment? It's not always possible, but here it is. In this part portion of the county, we can honor that request. So the two areas that are highlighted in blue on the left that are labeled as one are currently in the Mills Park Middle base attendance area. We would recommend they be aligned K8 calendar continuity and take advantage of the available capacity at Salem particularly with the other recommendation we're making to take some Salem students into Apex Middle and align them to Salem Middle. This would create calendar alignment, cohort continuity, and take advantage of the available capacity in the region. This particular area has a
069significant number of students from Salem Middle going on to Green Level High School. So, we're not recommending any high school changes at this time. We think there's a a strong enough cohort going that that K12 continuity would be okay. So, here you can see the projected impact on the two schools. And again, this is if every single goes every single student goes in year one. And again, in this community, I would imagine there would be families that would exercise the stability rule, and this might be a more of a trickle effect than a rapid effect. The other set of recommendations related to crowding men are at the east um on the eastern portion of our county highlighted there for the circle that you see on the left um is circling a majority of the Zebulun
070Elementary base attendance area. All of the Wakeland based attendance area, Wakeland Elementary base attendance area. And you can see a little couple of areas that are white or yellow. Uh the yellow on the bottom left is Wendell Elementary getting ready to undergo a major renovation. can't really add students to that campus. Plus, they're already at 100%. The closest school in this area that's somewhat approximate is Carver Elementary. And so, we'll talk about that in just a moment, but I wanted to highlight for you the unprecedented growth that we're projecting for the eastern part of our county. This is going to be a very new and different experience for this region. It's been pretty stable for a very long time. Wendell Falls came in and really picked things up. The Roseville community had its own experience,
071but this corridor along 64 and 87 has not experienced this type of growth. I don't know if ever. Um, so we've got a lot of of homes that are coming online really quickly. We have a lot of homes that are coming online and maybe going straight to lease. So, we're getting people moving in very very rapidly. Um, in addition to the more traditional single family homes with offer to purchase contracts, we've got apartments and it's it's affordable housing within the county and some of it also has a decent amount of land, right? You can still get a half an acre or so of land and that's something that's a little different maybe than other parts of the county. So, just >> we need to buckle up. You have already approved funding for Marshburn Road Elementary,
072which is in this general region. We've named Little Creek Elementary and Zebulun, but it has not been approved for funding yet. So, we do have some relief coming, but it's in the out years of the CIP. So, we do need to um address some of the projected crowding today. What you'll see here on this map is that we're looking at this area labeled one on the left that's currently assigned to Zebulun Elementary becoming a part of the Carver Elementary based attendance area. As you can see, there's a park just north that's already assigned to Carver Elementary. So, this would create a little contiguous transportation route, if you will. Um, the border on the right is Little Creek, like the actual Little Creek or Little River, excuse me, Little River. The northern area that is kind
073of red at the top of the green for those of you that are familiar with the region is the old quarry road and the railroad track line um out there. So, it creates a nice contiguous little area to bring students to Carver Elementary. Many of these addresses are Wendell addresses, so hopefully they'll be excited to be able to go to a Wendell address school. Um, yet to be seen, but this would provide a modicum of relief to Zebulun Elementary um and take advantage of the today current available space at Carver. And I'm very careful when I say the today available space at Carver. Um, as you can see here, Carver is also projected to experience growth on that northern portion of its attendance area, very approximate to the new Marshburn Road Elementary School. So, we
074know that when Marshburn Road Elementary opens up, it will likely impact Carver Elementary by taking away some of its base attendance area. So, by doing this, we're sort of getting ahead of that change a couple of years early and giving them a base attendance area that's a little bit more sustainable long term when that when that happens. Um, but as you can see, both schools are going to continue to need our support either way. The growth that's coming to this region, a little plug, Zebulun Magnet Elementary is one of our magnets that's working on market share. Yay. They're doing a great job. The other thing that we've got here is that no Carver students today currently go to Zeulan Middle. So for K8 cohort alignment, we would recommend they come from Zenula Middle and join
075Wendell Middle. So they'd have that cohort alignment with all the other Carter students. This is not being done based on capacity or crowding just yet because the crowding right now is at the elementary level. It will grow forward and impact our middle schools soon. Uh but you'll see here that that area labeled one is that same area. And again, we're recommending this just solely for feeder pattern alignment. They're all already assigned to East Wakeake High School. So, this will be the last recommendation in this group. Um, and you can see here again, it's not based on any crowding concerns. It truly is just to create that count, that cohort alignment for students coming out of it. And that's it for the base assignment changes. So, we tried to keep it small knowing we had such
076a big one last year with the four new schools. So, we tried to keep it as small as we could, but we do have a couple of calendar application changes. So, just as a reminder, we bring these to the board because these do require board approval. What you're seeing here on slide 84 are recommended based on the proposed base assignment changes. So to read this chart, the two blue columns are where the students or a particular area might currently be assigned and that particular area currently sees whatever options that you see in that second column has a calendar application with transportation application option that they can apply for and if they're seats that could potentially be seated and then we'll run a transportation route. The two orange columns on the right represent well we're proposing
077let's look at that top row. We're proposing that a portion of Banks Road Elementary become part of the Hilltop Leadmore Elementarybased attendance area. Over the last several years we've not identified a calendar application school with transportation for our new schools partly for transportation efficiency and partly to make sure the schools have run. And with our recommendation that Hilltop be multi-track year round to operate track 4. It's not the same as the other types of tracks. So, we're recommending they just wouldn't have a calendar application with bus. Let me be very, very clear. They can still apply for magnets and transfers and anything else based on their individual hardship needs and we can potentially approve those just if they're approved, they would not have district transportation, particularly if it was a transfer. Some magnet options obviously
078come with transportation. Um, and so that that all none of that changes. If you go down to the bottom, slightly different. Ma Zedulin Magnet currently has Carver as its modified or year- round calendar application option. Well, if it's assigned to Carver in space, then obviously it wouldn't need an application. So, 84 recommend or shows you some other schools that are impacted already don't have a calendar application option. So, they didn't need to be included in this set of recommendations. You'll notice maybe like a Westlake's not up here. They didn't have one to begin with. So, it's okay. this the ones you see on slide 85, we've been really working hard to reduce the split transportation areas. Um, if you'll recall in our heyday when we had quite a bit of transportation, we could offer sometimes
079more than one calendar application choice with transportation, which means that for some of these areas, I could have a bus coming in for base students or let's use that Abage Creek example. I could have a bus coming into that same neighborhood to pick up kids and take them to Multitrack Grassfield. I could also have a third bus coming in to take students from that same neighborhood to multitrack durand. It's just not sustainable for us longterm to keep offering two options and sometimes any. So what we're looking at with the Abbottz Creek recommendation is there's a Abbottz Creek currently has Brassfield Multitrack yearround and Durant year round track 4 as calendar application options. We looked at the numbers the impact was less severe if we reduced to Durant and Durand is much more approximate to the
080school and to the base attendance area. So, our recommendation is that uh the students at Brassfield be assigned to Durant and then they could participate in any of the transfer processes if they'd like to if they didn't want to go to Durant for year or they could do the stability transfer to Brassfield and provide their own transportation. Hodge is a little bit different. They're a year-round track 4 school that currently has two traditional calendar application options with less than five students using both options altogether. So, we're creating two really, really inefficient bus routes for very few students. So, our recommendation would be to just drop the calendar applications, clearly not popular with this community, and then to just offer those families that are impacted the ability to do a stability transfer if they'd like to
081drive themselves and stay. There are more, but a lot of them are tied to other assignment concerns that we have and we thought it'd be too much too fast for families and that we should wait until calendar unless the calendars are changed. Maybe a North Fork Pines or a Pleasant Union that you're going to talk about later today. It would be unfair to make those changes before you've had any of those conversations. So, we there's about 22 or 23 more of these still out there. So, we'll be bringing them to you as it's appropriate, but also balance stability for families in with the conversation. um at the middle school level then the only proposed calendar application changes we're making are truly based on the recommended base assignment changes. So for the top two just recommending
082taking away the calendar application al together for the bottom three rearranging and resorting based on the new base. So Apex Middle students have Lucken Road Middle as a year- round calendar option. Salem middle students have Apex as a traditional option. So be maintaining that for as long as we can in this area with the crowding. This actually does help us some to move students around. So we wanted to maintain that option for families with this initial set of recommendations. And with that, I'll remind everybody that all of this information is on our 2026 enrollment proposal site. I feel like it's probably hitting records right for for touch points. The assignment planning page will obviously be maintained. And then where do we go from here? So, we're pretty deep into our assignment planning cycle with you
083as a board. Some community members may be plugging in for the first time. So, anybody who's joining us for the first time in this conversation and hasn't been along for the ride since March 4th, we just encourage you to go to the website, encourage you to look at the board materials, all of the data and evidence and public engagement feedback that was used to form these recommendations. It's all available. um on on our sites and in those board materials. After today, we won't come back to you officially until October 21st. We're going to give ourselves six weeks to do some virtual information sessions to gather some questions and feedback from principles and to also work with our area superintendent. We're going to take all of that information and bring it back together to see if
084any revisions need to be made. I kind of gave you an idea maybe like the Middle Creek Elementary example. Do we need to make adjustments there? Is it too much too fast? Um, we also will have an open house. It's scheduled for September 24th. We're going to host it at the Hilltop Needmore Elementary site. Um, the principal at Fway Green Elementary has been gracious enough to host us there. So, that'll be good. And then that'll be an opportunity for people to come meet the principles of their new schools. We'll have some table tableabling and resources from our district resources available so families can get questions about before and after school care, transportation, those sorts of things. Very similar to the format that we used last year. and then we'll come back to you on October
08521st with any recommended revisions, a full update on what we have public engagement wise so that you'll have a completely updated public engagement summary report before you go into your public hearing that'll follow that same night. Uh, thank you for agreeing to move it up. We received a lot of feedback from families and community members that doing it in November just felt way too close to the final approval date that it didn't feel as if there was enough time to be responsive to the feedback. So, thank you for agreeing to move it up so that we'll have that time. What we'll do then between October 21st and November 18th is get to you a fully updated copy of any of the materials that you need based on that public hearing so that you'll have them
086in hand when we come to have a final conversation with you on November 18th with the final set of recommendations and request your approval of the plan. So, that's what we'll be doing in the interim. I mentioned all of this already. There's our website, Mr. Malone's favorite website, and then we turn it over to you, Chery, and the board for any initial thoughts, questions, clarifying questions, whatever it is that you need, this is your job. >> All right. Thank you, Miss Coding. Um, board members, you've seen the presentation. I think we're all excited about opening a new elementary school. And then you've also seen staff's recommendations for addressing other issues around crowding capacity and then also that cohort alignment which is so important keeping kids and families together through most of their academic progress if
087we can. Opening it up for questions. I see Miss Evans. >> Thank you. On slide 46, you mentioned kids that feed into Lufkin. Can you tell me where that is again? So that would be the group that we're recommending coming from Middle Creek Elementary to Oak Grove. Okay. >> And that would create a K8 calendar and feeder alignment Oak Grove to Luck. That's a very natural feeder for that area. They're the only students from Middle Creek Elementary currently that go to Lin. So it's it's a bit of a disconnect for that area. >> Thank you. That's it. >> Thank you. Miss >> Thank you. Um thanks for all of that confirmation. Um on page 45 there is on the top of Vance all the way up to the top is another looks like Valentine at
088the elementary school. >> Yes. So that is not going to change. >> Correct. That's one of their satellite areas. Talking with the school and the principal they're comfortable being that assignment area and from a numbers perspective that makes sense for us. So at this time I don't have a recommendation for that. >> Okay. And I want to show you >> is that a commuting issue? It looks like it's just a lot. I mean, we're squaring everything off, which I think is >> it's this is a a little bit tighter map. Glenn, do you know the distance? >> I can't know the exact distance >> because this is so zoomed in. It's not as far as it may appear, but there is a commuting factor. Yes. But the transportation route, I think, is probably pretty streamlined
089looking at Mr. Strickland where it's probably a single bus that goes picks up the students and brings them in. So, the route's probably actually pretty efficient. >> Okay. >> There's a significant number of students in that area. There is. Okay. So, it works well. It just looks like it's all the way across and >> Okay. >> They're filling the bus with >> Okay. >> buses actually. >> And we are continuing to look at all of that, but balancing it against the other pillars of the assignment plan. It was challenging. >> Okay. [Music] >> And I I'm pretty sure you said we're going to talk about North Forest Plans >> at the board meeting. Okay. And that's all I have. All right. Thank you, Miss Cfield. Any other questions about the plan at this point? >>
090Um, thank you, chair. Um, Miss Thank you as always for an amazing job in such a short time that you present this. Just a just a simple question. um on your page 15 where you shared the participation numbers. Will this be your methodology moving forward with parents? I heard you mentioned something that you did a little bit more outreach um and connectivity and you had other supports and you got more feedback like almost a thousand people more from your feedback. So you find this method a little bit more efficient. Um what we're finding is that if we can offer sess sessions virtually and asynchronously, we actually really do get more participation. When we host inerson sessions and I'll refer you to your engagement summary, we get maybe a 1% return rate. But when we do
091something online or they can watch online or they can watch a recording or they can participate online, we tend to get magnitudes more participation. One of the ways that we're expanding, I'm glad you asked, is there is I'm going to mess up the name. community connection. >> Community connections, our community partnership newsletter, we sent it out that reaches folks who don't have um children in the system who might not necessarily get our traditional communications and if we ask community partners to send it out on our behalf to churches, to community groups, etc. >> And so that's a new tool in our toolbox this year that we will be leveraging very hard. >> Very good. Thank you. All right, any further questions? There's a lot here to absorb and uh I'm sure we'll publish it for
092the first time. They'll have lots of feedback as well. So, Miss PL, thank you for sharing the timeline. Thank you for sharing the plan and um unless there's anything else. That'll conclude our discussion of draft one of the uh assignment plan for today. Uh we do have some additional time. At this point, I'd like to entertain any motion to move into close session to uh consider some of the items on our closed session agenda prior to going into our general business meeting. >> We have a second. We have a motion from Vice Chair Swanson that we move in the close session. We have a second from Mr. Hershey. Trying to look. This will be uh the board will move into close session to consider confidential personnel information protected under GS143 through 31811 A6 and 115
093C319 to consult with the board of education attorney and preserve the attorney client privileges provided for in GS143811 A3 to consult with the board of education attorney and preserve the client privileges provided in GS143 through811 A3 due to current litigation. Also to consult consult with the board attorney employed and retained by the board in order to preserve the attorney client privilege between the attorney and the board and consult and instruct board staff or negotiating agents consider concerning the position to be taken on or behalf of the board on the particulars of the acquisition of real property interests for public infrastructure improvements related to Swift Creek Elementary School and the associated site and to receive the board's instruction as to the position to be taken on behalf of the board in said negotiation. And then finally
094to consider any confidential student information protected under GS 115C42 in the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act. >> A lot of stuff again. >> All in favor of the vice chair's motion to move to close session say I. >> Any opposed? >> All right, we'll move to the close session at this time. We'll give the conference room a few moments to clear and then we'll recond.