2025-06-24 Work Session

001of what planning is. We jump straight into what can you do now? So they can see right away if there's a virtual information session that's coming up, if there's a thought exchange that's open so that as we go through the planning process, whatever the most current way to participate is available will be right there at the top of the page. And we do update that if weekly if not, you know, as appropriate as the timing um demands. We also added a resources section. Right now I think it's at the bottom of the page. as we migrate to our new server, it'll be probably two locations so that if there's additional resources that might be helpful to families, they can access them right from this page. Our idea was really just to curate everything here. So,

002if you bookmark this page, you could come back and find that refreshed information as you visit the page. Um, we have met with our municipal planning partners and they have also started including this with some of the materials on their own websites because we know our our municipal partners sometimes get the call about school assignment issues when it's really not part of what they do, but this helps them to direct their citizens to better resources. We've also repurposed what was originally called the future schools page. So, if you visited the page about a year ago or even six months ago, it used to be called a future schools page. It was a subset of this larger page. um to more accurately reflect what's on it. And what it is is all of our public engagement

003outcomes. So, we retitled it public engagement, reorganized it so we could highlight the feedback that's already been collected relevant to this year's planning cycle. And we added, of course, the spring 2025 section to highlight the information that's been captured specifically over the last several months. Please note that the spring 2024 and the spring 2023 information is still included and available and accessible from this page. We just wanted to highlight the most recent feedback that we've received. Another of those four sort of methods that we use are live sessions. And we do live sessions in two formats. We either do them in person at our schools in media centers for targeted groups in impact areas or we host them virtually online so people can access them from the comfort of wherever it is that they are

004um and join us for those live sessions and get have an opportunity to post questions and get them answered live and in person. um or live I should say the virtual information sessions are also recorded and those recordings are posted to the website as a resource for anyone who couldn't join us for the live session. So it's a way to not only have synchronous opportunities but asynchronous opportunities and in-person opportunities. So we're really trying as hard as we can to offer as many options for people to engage with us to learn about the planning process as well as provide more importantly feedback and insight that the planning team can consider when making final recommendations. The other two forums that we use are the online forums. We've over the last several years, we've been using thought

005exchange to host our online forums. For the spring sessions, we'll host a unique thought exchange for each individual topic or region. That way, we get that unique feedback from that area that's not all mixed together across the whole district. But we also do a global one for those that are in areas that maybe aren't in those target impact. Maybe you're not near where a new school's opening, but you still would like to participate. that actual thought exchange is still open again based on feedback for a longer run of time to be able to engage. So that one will stay open through July 31st. I do need it to close so I can summarize it before I see you in September and also take the information to the planning team um for any changes or adjustments

006and recommendations. So that one's open through July 31st and we are sending reminder messages in our community messages and as we can with our community partner newsletters. The AI supported interviews is a tool we started using last year. We did formal traditional focus groups first. We're partnering with our data research and accountability department and they're great for getting insight and deep information. The only challenge is it really restricts how many people can participate because in order to do those you have to limit how many people are in each focus group and it's just a for operational efficiency effort. You can only have so many of those and and get there. But with the online AI supported interview tools that thought exchange has been creating, we actually can send it to anybody who has volunteered to

007participate and they can all join in. So we can really expand access and get even deeper insights and greater breadth of information from those those participants. That one just closed on June 13th. So what you'll see in here is that there's a quick review of what we've heard, but we'll have a deeper assessment um for the next version of the engagement report. So that's what we did or how we did, you know, how we reached out to families. Uh now we'll take a few minutes to go through how many people engaged um as well as more importantly, what did we hear? What have we learned? So just as a quick by the numbers, uh the pre-release engagement activities, meaning enga activities we've done since March, we've had as of June 17th, so I have to

008always put that out there because at some point we have to stop collecting. Uh we've had 4,771 page views just for this cycle. So we've had many many more last year and we usually will see an uptick on the assignment planning site once the draft is released. Uh but this is a really good engagement level ahead of time. So 4,771 page views. In addition, our live sessions, we had a total of 61 individuals attend our in-person events. 15 attended our virtual sessions, but we have had 92 views of the recording of the session since that time. So that's expanded outreach again that asynchronous opportunity through the online forums. To date, we've had 955 participants and 737 thoughts across all of them across the five uniques and the one general again as of June 17th. And

009then in the AI supported interviews, we had over a hundred participants, 111 specifically that actually participated in the AI supported interview and gave us more um feedback on that one specific question. I will say those numbers are down from last year if anyone's going back and look at last year's report, but keep in mind last year we were projected to open four new schools. This year we're projecting to open one. So that lower attendance and participation is to be expected with a smaller plan. The other thing we wanted to highlight is that the live session prompts. We started the live sessions in 2023. It was a first sort of toe in the water coming out of COVID of doing some inerson events and at that time we basically asked the same question of every group

010that we were in front of and we only went to areas that were projected to be impacted by the opening of a new school. This year again in response to feedback we broaden that topic range a little bit and went to a couple of different areas that are just experiencing different kinds of concerns. feeder pattern concerns, crowding concerns, growth that may not have a new school coming in their area. And we also went to areas that have a new school projected for 26 27 as well as for 2728. If you'll recall, we try to get out to those areas at least 2 years in advance. So, we did have our first Morrisville High School conversation. The prompts then changed this year. So, nothing big to go over. I'm not going to read each one of

011them, but we just wanted to highlight that we asked a unique and different question for each area based on what we knew those communities were wanting us to engage in from a recommendation standpoint. They're asking us to think about things as we come up with recommendations. In these live sessions that we host at schools, it's truly an interactive process. These are the chart papers. These are some photos of page one of the chart papers for each of the sessions. You'll see dots on these. If you look really closely, we had as many as four or five pages in some of these sessions of thoughts that were collected. These are neatly typed up and organized on the website for you. You don't have to read through them. Um, but they are folded up in my office

012just in case I ever need to refer back to them. So, that's just to give you an idea, but what we heard across all five, again, remember five different kinds of topics. two related to new schools, high school and elementary, and three related to growth and crowding, feeder pattern alignment, capping and underenrollment or underutilization. Regardless of which session we were in, these three themes came up quite regularly. Theater pattern and calendar alignment, managing growth and capacity, and stability and communication. So that's not lost on us that regardless of what kind of conversation we're having, these are key points for families. So that's important to the planning team and um as we partner with our communications department to think about future opportunities for communicating and messaging that these are important areas for us to be highlighting

013and and and focusing on. Um if I go regionally here are some top sort of main concerns that were unique to each area. So specific to the areas. So in the Apex area we weren't there specifically for two reasons. one, we have um some crowding and underutilization in nearby schools and and that's an ongoing issue. We also have an area that we recently as a board you approved a change in the assignment area for school and we all acknowledged at the time that created a calendar misalignment and a cohort misalignment. So we wanted to get feedback before we made recommendations for how to remedy that. So there were sort of two core topics happening in this one session. And the main unique things that came out of this different from those three that we just

014reviewed were addressing that calendar misalignment. So that kind of hits on the mark of what we thought we needed to do and to make better use of underenrolled schools. And in this particular community's conversation, they were thinking about um Turner Creek Elementary in the Eastern Wake area. This is an area that's projected to be a next new high growth area. We do have some property out there, but those schools are a little farther down the CIP plan. In fact, one's not technically on the plan yet. Um, so we were going out there to say, "Hey, while we wait for these schools to come online, how can we support you and help you with the growth and the crowding and what do we need to be thinking about?" Um, they brought up that charter and homechool

015trends impacting enrollment in their local schools was top of mind for that community as well as this one. I'm going to interpret for you supporting for uh faster big boundary changes. Um, an idea that we know we're growing. We've seen what's happened in other parts of the district where you've kind of year over year had little micro changes to kind of address that growth. If there's any way to sort of do it all at once so that we don't have to wait each year to decide, oh, am I going to be impacted this year or not? The idea of can we just get the region settled and get all the decisions made and perhaps do a big bold boundary set of changes and then just move on to the next step and then not have

016to worry that year over year we're going to be coming back and chipping away. So, it's just an interesting perspective. I think other communities might appreciate that same sentiment, but it was drawn out from this group in particular. Hilltop Needmore Elementary, that's this is a place we've been now for three years. The first time we engaged with this community, we thought the school would be opening in 2526. The second year that we engaged with the community, we thought it was going to be opening in 2526 and then we found out it would be delayed to 2627. So we've actually had three opportunities to engage with this community in preparation for the opening of the school as its own standalone you know enrollment and they just were looking at not just but one of the two

017of the things that kind of highlighted were ensuring that the new schools assignments reflect existing calendar patterns. So knowing that you're drawing from a track four school and a multi-track school and another track four school. Think about that when you're making recommendations to open the schools to provide stability for families. And then also think about the nearby communities. there is a neighborhood that's very very close if not sort of wrapped around the school location. Is there any possible way for assignment to the school was sort of the thinking there. Morrisville High School. So whenever we go to high schools it's a whole different right a whole different lens. It's a whole different time period for families. So there's there was an interesting I think one of the first statements that was made was is there

018any way for it to be multitrack so we could have multitrack alignment K12? just an interesting perspective from families. So, I'll let the academicians tell you whether or not that's a good idea for high school. Um, but it was just an interesting perspective to bring forward. So, again, not unique to this area to talk about calendar alignment, but a very specific request that isn't possible. So, we'll we'll get some information on that and we'll share out whether or not staff would be comfortable recommending that. Um, historically, we have not. Ensuring robust programming and staff makes up a new high school. This is something we see with every high school change or every new high school that we open. Please be thoughtful about equitable access to curriculum, electives, extracurriculars, sports, that sort of thing. Make sure

019my student can still have a complete experience at this new school that they would have had at their current school. And then the North Raleigh area, this is an area where we we had some ideas in the enrollment plan for last year in the initial release about aligning some theater patterns at the middle school level, but didn't get full support. So they kind of got backed out of the plan before we got to that October version. So we promised we'd come back out and re-engage and see how did we miss the mark. And so there's similar to other areas but specific to this region. Let's look at the calendar consistency. We're in an area that just recently had a middle school convert from traditional to multitrack or excuse me for multitrack year round to traditional.

020So now there's concerns. Could this not be a way of like a pattern for our area? as it time for us maybe to have more traditional alignment uh K8 or K12 um but particularly K8 and then there were concerns that for certain schools maybe there the student to resource ratio might be off maybe in one school they're feeling like every 20 or 30 kids gets this particular resource and in other schools maybe they feel like 60 or 70 kids are still being sorted by the same sort of ratio of resource. So just bringing to the board's attention that there are families that are concerned about how many students are being served by individual staff members particularly in the support areas. It was less about classrooms and it was more about support services. Um, so when

021we did the online, so again those were our in-person events. When we did um the online forums, the thought exchanges, we basically asked the same question. That way anybody who was participating only in the thought exchange could also give us feedback on those same questions that we, you know, prompted the the inerson groups with. And so this will give us our feedback in a little bit more analytic way because there's some um AI support behind this tool that allows us to depict and count and quantify. Um, and so I'm going to go through these quickly because we could we can ask questions at the end. But for the apex area, you'll see two charts. This first one is the total thoughts. And I just did them in alphabetical order. So the apex area total thoughts

022had five core categories. Uh, stability and minimal disruption, cohort continuity, calendar alignment, proximity to school, new construction, and resoning. So that means thoughts of similar types and natures within those core categories were were posted. the most in that stability and minimal disruption um category with I don't want to say the least because obviously very comparable toward the end but the fewest um in the new construction and resoning however when participants were then asked to star score between one and five do I feel aligned with sentiment there's a little bit of movement that stability and disruption goes from being the most quantified but it becomes the second highest rated the one that was second highest rated cohort continuity excuse second volume quantity became the first highest rated in terms of cohort continuity was of prime importance.

023Now I want to be very careful here. This is like 4.203 versus 4.202 kind of business, right? So it's they're still basically neck and neck. But you what the star scores do for us is it helps us to see whether or not there's alignment in this area. There seems to be relatively similar energy. you notice everything's over a 3.5 average score for comments, but the alignment across particular sort of if you want to say dividing topics is kind of low. So there are split perspectives on certain issues in this region. And that's just something for us to think about that there's not a unifying path on certain topics probably calendar and and others. But just to give you a quick review, these were the top three comments that were in this particular thought exchange. So

024sibling and school calendar, all children from the family being on the same school calendar, siblings on the same calendar. So clearly you're seeing that stability, that continuity being top of mind for this area and getting the highest ratings. There is a fully interactive version of these reports for each of the thought exchange available on the website. So if anybody wants to look at all the thoughts and look at all the analytics and all the charts, click on a bar and see which comments made up that bar, they can do all of that. And you all still can do that as well. um are fully interactive. For the Eastern Lake area, the topics were a little bit different. We started with the, you know, I thought this one was interesting. Community factors. What's a community factor?

025Um so community factors are things like keeping families together. Maybe don't change a student assignment midstream of their education. Allow kids that are already established to stay where they are. Stay closer to home. Um perhaps the way the current school districts are set up, maybe rural families in a school doesn't offer the same amenities as some of the schools in areas with newer construction. Um just something to think about. So just a lot of things that were nuanced specific to this community. So the by volume community factors was the one that had the most comments by volume calendar options had the least amount of comments. And then there was a little bit of a switch. diversity and equity popped up as the highest rated set of or category of thoughts for this particular thought exchange

026with about a 4.2 overall rating. Um so that's just something to think about that's important to this community that we think about that when we're um developing assignment areas. The alignment for this one across the board was medium which actually is a sign that there's a little bit more agreement between the participants in terms of how they see what would normally be considered a divisive issue or there's several points of commonality to say it differently. The top three comments here are keep families together, don't change the mood string, um allow kids already established to stay where they are, and then just make sure that there's a plan to guarantee that as all this growth is coming to our region that there's going to be staff to support the schools and the staff and the students

027that are being served by these schools. Don't talk me more. Again, this is our new school, so proximity was the most voluminous, the most numerous set of thoughts with sibling attendance being its own special unique category. Um, and so then here we see a little bit of a switch here, but I think the the theme is the same, neighborhood integrity and proximity kind of still being at the one and two spot. And then sibling attendance now jumps into the third place when we start starring these and start scoring these. Um, this is not atypical of getting closer to the actual opening of a school. The closer we get to the actual opening of a school, minds shift toward how's this going to affect my family and what do I need to do to keep my

028family together. We're a little theoretical a couple of years out, but as we get closer, it's now, okay, wait, let's think about how this is going to impact my family next year, which makes sense. When we look at the um top three top comments, apparently the Crooked Creek neighborhood is on board if they want to go to Hilltop Needmore. Lots and lots of thoughts from this particular community. They're very very approximate to the school location. So it does make sense that they would be um excited about being able to go to the school very close to their neighborhood. Um, and then of course thinking about the middle school feeder patterns and that's something we mentioned that based on all the feedback we've been receiving these last several years that thinking about that cohort continuity when

029we're making assignment recommendations has been part of our strategy. And so you'll most likely see recommendations across all three levels for the opening of the school just to help support that cohort continuity thread. For Morrisville High School, we're two years out. Um, so it's going to be a little bit more theoretical, but there's still going to be some specific things about, you know, are we thinking about proximity? Are we thinking about stability for this one, community and equity, I do want to highlight that this focuses largely on the equity of academic access and extracurricular access. Again, that kind of what we heard in the opening comments that making sure that my students going to have an equitable experience at this new school that they would have had they been at their old school. By rankings,

030transportation actually jumped into the lead. Again, we're talking about micro differences. So, the difference between transportation and proximity was 0.1. It's a 4.2 versus a 4.1. But again, thinking about transportation this early on is actually a little surprising for high school. So, I think this might be thinking about how are my kids going to get to campus, how if I have a student driver, what's that path going to look like? We do see that as a unique concern for our high schools. The alignment on this particular form was medium. So again, some common um energy around the various and the top thoughts if there's any way to walk to the school because we do know the location has been um identified as that spot right next to Parkside Elementary. So it's possible there might be

031some walkable areas. So if that is a true statement, then we certainly would look to try to identify those for assignment to the school. Um, thinking about how far a student would have to travel by bus if they were assigned to the school is something they want us to be mindful of. And then keeping neighborhoods together. This is something we've been really hearing clearly over the last three years. If we're in a neighborhood, if there's any way possible for our neighborhood to go to the same school. Um, if our neighborhood's that big, maybe split between two schools, but try to limit the number of schools that one neighborhood is assigned to by base. And then the last one here again just alphabetically is the North Raleigh area. And this was the one where we were

032doing a followup to that conversation from last year about feeder patterns and just some stability in this area. And now we've recently had that change in calendar for Pine Hollow. So kind of engaging the community around that topic. Community impact seemed to have the most volume of comments and then when they started rating them, proximity to home became very important, but community impact was still up there um as as a a level of importance. But that continuity kind of in the middle. And I think this is probably what happened last year. That continuity or that cohort continuity is important, but perhaps it's not as important as going to school close to home or perhaps it's not as important as feeling like you're part of a community at a school. So these are the top three

033comments for this particular exchange. Talking about fear patterns, talking about the second comment essentially is the same sentiment, keeping kids from the elementary school together as they progress into middle school. um said differently might be described as a fever pattern or cohort continuity and then proximity which we saw there out in the star rating. All right, so that's a lot. The other thing that we did was our AI supported interview. This particular question we've asked in slightly different ways for about three years now. As we deal with ongoing growth and crowding, we're hearing more and more from families particularly at the elementary level and again particularly in high growth areas. If there's a way not to reassign this perhaps convert the school to multitrack year round. Is that preferable? Right. Get capacity at the school

034for a lower cost than perhaps building a new school. It's a much reduced cost. It's a staffing cost. It's not a construction cost. Um can we do that instead? Well, if we do that, we don't need to do that at the middle school level as much. So, can we we hear a lot about K K8 calendar continuity? How how can we manage it if we can't promise that, right? So if at the elementary level you're multittrack year round but your middle school is traditional because we just don't need the capacity at the middle school. What does the district need to know to help support your we feel like we're getting similar enough responses across this three-year period that we probably won't be posing this question in future we be jumping into new questions. But what

035we've learned, and again this one just closed on June 13th, so this is a rudimentary review, is that the impact on family dynamics is something the district needs to think about, particularly if it creates mismatch calendars for siblings across multiple grade levels. Um, we have some perceptions that there's general apprehension emphasizing potential difficulties, particularly planning things like family vacations and even increased child care costs as you have children on different calendars. Calendar preferences. Um so the statement preferences for school calendars are pronounced. There are very few people who will say I don't care. Almost everybody picks something. I love traditional. I love multitrack year round. There's very few that are you know whatever. There's not a lot of those. So there's a lot of profound preference one way or the other. So this would be

036alignment low, right? There's so based on your position, based on your family, based on your perspectives, there's a calendar that you think or feel or um you prefer or that you actually believe works better for your student. Some do appreciate the flexibility of year round. Um others think the traditional is better just with normal family and community schedules. So again, there's that split concept. So that's that's clear. We know it. Got it. For school and community logistics, this is thinking about the logistical concerns. And this was a a slightly new piece that got teased out with this particular group is that if my family's on different tracks or calendars, does that impede our ability as a family to fully participate in either school? So, it's a slightly nuanced thing that came out of or perspective

037insight that came out of this um that we hadn't really heard um in previous engagements. So it was good that we continued asking the same question. Um and then the education and childcare views just this is that balance between I believe this is better academically for my student versus I believe I need this for childcare purposes. Those sort of sometimes run in conflict with each other. But again we'll provide a more detailed review of that in September when we've had a little bit more time to to dig through the results. As I mentioned there's one more online forum outstanding that hasn't closed yet. It's closing on July 31st. So, we'll bring you that summary um as we get closer to September. We are monitoring it. It's not that staff isn't looking at it, but we

038won't bring you the summary to work. So, before we get into open questions, just real quick, some planning implications. So, what we've learned so far is that the planning team really needs to double down on stability. Stability is something that's really, really critical, important for families, and we need to continue to review and prepare recommendations that keep that in mind, particularly our stability transfer rules as well. Calendar continuity continues to be top of mind. So, we need to continue to evaluate the feasibility of offering K8 calendar alignment at least. Um, and I say evaluate the feasibility. We know that that's not going to be factually possible everywhere, but where it is, we're going to try our best. Cohort continuity is slightly different because it's not necessarily just about the calendar. It's about where do the

039groups of students progress as they age forward. So, it is a slightly different sentiment than calendar continuity. And so there is evaluating the feasibility of continuing to make improvements there. If there are any areas that are split, maybe a fifth grade group that goes to two or three different middle schools by base assignment. Is there a way to to find some some narrowing of that so they can go together into sixth grade as a base? Capacity management. We are obviously our district is aware. I think our our parents and our community are, you know, they're aware of what's happening in their backyard. They know about the growth in their area. They know if their school is crowded. They know if their school is underutilized. and they want us to as a district to be mindful

040of that. That's that's good taxpayer or stewards of taxpayer resources um as as we are called to be. But we do need to acknowledge those unique regional concerns and we kind of highlighted some of those earlier. Certain regions can handle certain calendars, certain regions aren't as really wellprepared. Their infrastructure is not there to support it. Certain regions are prioritizing calendar. Others are prioritizing cohort. So, just try to as best we can think about those as we're um moving forward with any planning recommendations. And then policy guidance. As staff, we'd be remiss if we didn't, you know, anchor it all back to the beginning, which is the policy. We do recognize that our families and community members really prioritize the pillars of proximity and stability personally and as families and we're needing to balance that against

041the district's need to maintain our student achievement and operational efficiency goals. Thinking about opening a new school. You know, we have a lot of people. Can't we just open the new school and let new families go there? How many kids will be there on first day of school? Right? So practically when you take that idea and try to put it into a practical application, it gets gets a little difficult. But can we do a better job of balancing new enrollments with existing students? Yes. And we've been trying to do that over the last couple of years. Uh we need to deal with our capped and overcrowded schools. We need to take better advantage of our underutilized schools, especially those that are right next door to those caped schools where we can keep someone in their

042same community but better utilize the resources that we have available. So those are the types of things we're talking about when somebody sort of balance these two perspectives against each other. And so with that, here's where we are in our planning timeline. The next time we are scheduled to see you to talk about this is in September. Again, that September 2nd date is in response to earlier. If you'll recall, we historically brought these to you maybe September 15th, even as late as October 1st. So this is just part of responding to the community to try to get them as much information as early as possible so they know what the decisions are and can plan around and that also gives us plenty of time to do an open house between the September and October dates

043to engage families before we come back to you and you have your public hearing. So with that turning I'm a lot to cover but thank you for taking us through it. You know the one thing that when you talked about calendar changes, we've talked a few times around the table with information you brought to us also about uh schools where rather than looking to convert a school to a multi-year round to accommodate growth where we have some multi-track or single track year round schools where because they're underenrolled, we don't really have efficiencies as far as the cost of operating that school. I just wanted to make sure that was something that would be continue to come back with you uh with recommendations for those as well. I think uh our next scheduled time is early

044August. And then sort of related to this, my district has sort of a unique situation where we have a K8 school and in that school, you know, we have, you know, very strong enrollment at the K5 level, but then the enrollment drops off at the 68 level and it's been a struggle to keep the middle school component of the K8 fully enrolled and if that's something that you could look at as well. We can. Okay, great. Thank you. question for board members. Miss Gordon, I don't have a question. I do have a a comment. Um I just want to say how much I can I appreciate the intentionality behind engaging families in a meaningful way across different modalities. It speaks volumes to the work that we are trying to do and it it speaks volumes

045to repairing trust where distrust is. Um I know that student assignment is a lot of heat. Um, but I can I I just want to put it out there for everyone to hear that this is this is a true representation of how intention intentionality behind community and family input and feedback needs to be brought forth in all aspects of the district. Um, it it says a commitment to um shared decision making. So, I can appreciate it. Thank you. Other comments or questions? Dr. A. Yeah, I just want to echo the same thing. I think, you know, from my my area, I mean, North Raleigh definitely, you know, we don't have a new school, you know, shiny new school to to think about. And so asking the families to be involved in some of the more

046details that are not designed to, you know, talk about a new school. I think that is a worthwhile conversation. I think we should do more of that to to highlight that. Um uh because you know I I've been hearing you know the the stories about the the mismatch calendar the the feeder pattern that doesn't seem to make sense and and we need to get that feedback up front rather than in the back you know. Um and uh one of the thing that I' I've also noticed from reviewing a lot about these uh situations is that siblings seems like this this day and age siblings are no longer grouped all together in a close together in age. They seem to kind of have a wider wider range of ages. And so our our um rules regarding

047siblings um and going to the same school as your sibling or or in some ways you know going to to the same having that same tradition of going to that same school. um where it's something that we we hear about but then you know it's like we're we're getting caught in this situation dialogue or you know the siblings are so far apart of age that they it doesn't really match anymore they can't they can't go to that school even though they another sibling had gone to that school. Um so just something to think about you know it is a changing in um kind of family family dynamic or family grouping. Um, and you know to be to be fair in some of these cases with the age range as fast as Wake County is growing,

048you could have 10,000 20,000 more students from the time that the oldest child went to the high school to the time the youngest one comes through where we've had to build new high schools and change assignment areas, but that family loyalty still is very strong. Right. So, I appreciate that. Any other questions, Miss Wes? Um um Miss Podium um we've come a long way having been here and uh like uh Miss Gordon, I definitely respect the office of student assignment. I just want to only add to say the way that you break down community engagement and the thing that perked me and made me start typing was when you said not only are we realizing that we're not going to take all the questions, we're going to break down one question and one topic to

049focus on. And so my thought behind that was this is the way how we um can engage better um with our district when we know that charter schools and other schools are concerned. This is how we make our district better. And I think that your department um Mr. Carrosa and that department is really honed in on what engagement looks like um by the way that you all break it down. know I'm so I know this kudos um to you guys but that data that you collect and if we across the district as a board um across um districts and departments can look at community engagement in that way and learn how to collect data in a particular way. I think we'll be able to make better decisions to make Wake County a greater appeal to

050all families. Thank you. M any other questions? Something that was said to to trigger one one last thing is that we were looking again at school calendars. One thing that we've talked about particularly in the eastern part of the county is that we'll have counties or sorry, we have schools on the modified calendars, but it doesn't look like we're going to get maybe the school calendar relief we had hoped for this year in the legislature and then maybe looking at the efficiency and efficacy of those calendars. I know the idea was originally trying to align those with community colleges and then going back and making sure that through that progression your feeder schools were aligned on the same calendars. Right? If you had older children had a modified calendar high school, you wanted to keep

051your middle schoolers or even elementary schoolers on that. But is that working for families or is the problem with the calendars creating more trouble than maybe we're seeing in terms of benefit with that community college alignment. So I don't show not sure which way it would come out but that might be something to look at as well and thank you for acknowledging the work that Susan and her team have done because they worked really hard to try to really engage and take the feedback that you've given to that saying we want to hear more from families and so I really do appreciate you acknowledging that. Um I just one last thing I would like to ask please take the time to go through the report that she's attached. Um, I think it'll be a really

052good reading for you as we prepare for uh the initial draft of the assignment plan. So, you can really understand and hear not only what you hear from phone calls or emails from parents, but the parents that engaged in these activities, you can really see and understand what they're telling you. And so, with that, you know, we'll take any other questions or direction as we move forward to end this topic. All right. Thank both. Did you have a question? Okay. Thank you, Miss P. Now, Adam, as you're reading the report, you feel like there's something missing or something that's oversimplified and could use a little bit more detail. Any feedback to improve the report so that it's useful for you as a tool? We're happy to receive inward. Say thank you and go back. Thank

053you. All right. Next on our agenda, um we have a presentation on the core team with Mr. Strickland, Mr. Bernett. This is a this is an item that came to the uh committee and to the board uh previously actually recently um there's some minor changes to it very minor changes and really can speak to those specifically if you have any questions on those. Well, I think you could explain what we've been doing. So, basically, these changes just reflect the work that you know, you've asked us to continue to do the work with the county to try to work more hand in hand. And so, as we try to find opportunities to uh jointly acquire land or jointly work on projects that will um support the the vision of both boards, this is what we're asking

054to add to this uh particular. So really it's just formalizing the process of bringing them into uh additional discussions that we have on our core team to really uh plan better together to see if we can u help achieve those goals at the same time. That's really the minor edits that we have. We've been doing this for some time correctly core team. And so because of different changes in different places, we've been able to to move that to the forefront. And so for some time we've had some pretty robust conversations about land, what we own, what we're looking for down the road. And this was an opportunity to get that in writing and formalize it. So um let me share with you too, you know, I serve on the board of the state school board

055association and when we talk to partners to other districts sometimes I think we take for granted the really good relationship we have with our county here in Wake that's not enjoyed by I'd say the majority of school boards around the state particularly with Kurtland purchase with planning and with these joint projects. And in my time as chair, I've had just a lot of collaboration with the county commission chair. We've talked about not just the projects you've seen come to the table, but just like individual board members have had other ideas for future collaborations. And it's things like this core team that make it possible. We look at our long range planning. We look at maybe shifts in direction where board members express, you know, maybe rep prioritizing one item or another item. Being able to

056go to the county, discuss that, look at the forecasting and where we can go and and what the potential is really is so important. So, I know there's a lot of legal ease here that I know you might if you had a chance to go through it, but I really support this and would encourage your support of it as well. Can you tell on the consent agenda for later this evening? Any questions anyone has? Miss Rise. So with this agreement and the collaboration that you all already do with this agreement um dig further into collaboration around I know I I'm always talking about this with with types of purchases with what um systems or things like that that we're going to purchase within the school. Will you as a core team sometimes discuss those particular

057factors around the internal pieces of the school and what it might look like or is it just share with me a little bit about what that collaboration looks like as a as a collective team? Sure. And first thing this is this is over 5 years that it's uh updated continues that that uh that process. uh the focus of this document and the core team actually is more on the construction design and construction of the facility. So it's much more a CIP you related. We really don't get into uh purchasing uh equipment or those types of things. It's it's much bigger picture um and that makes sense. And as Chair Haggardy said, um I know this is unique to anywhere we've ever been. It is a great tool for accomplishing the common goals of finding land

058and and building school. It's great relationship with the county and coordination with surplus property uh making sure that we're we're working together on uh proposals for how to use that land uh both on the county side and um the school system side. Right. And I'm aware about those parts. I'm just I'm looking at in my mind I'm I'm going back through um experiences. I'm going back through data of what where we've been and where we are. And while this core team I think is necessary and important, I'm just trying to see how much um more will we um improve within the core team um so that we don't have certain um hiccups along the way um that we possibly have had in the past. So, I was just curious to how much more will the

059core team engage a little bit more, but it sounds like this is like you just said, it's just really the the five-year update that we're doing. And so, the only thing that I would like to say around the the core team is that I would really love for us to or when you all meet together to dig a little bit deeper um to avoid some of the things that we have avo that we have not been able to avoid in the past. If we're going to say that we've got a great collaboration, let's improve the collaboration so that we don't have certain hiccups that we've had in the past. Mr. If I may, uh, and I appreciate that, Miss Rice, uh, in the short time that I've been here, this is, I think, absolutely what

060I've seen is that, uh, each successive year and iteration is about how do we improve this? Uh, and I don't want to be the dead owner. Uh, but I can tell you this is something that I believe is unique in the state of North Carolina. One of my responsibilities at DPI was going out and working with boards and commissions uh when it came to putting projects together. And I can tell you both being at DPI, being a superintendent, uh, this is something you don't see. there's usually uh a I don't want to say contention uh but a school board has to do a tremendous amount of work to get a commissioners to really support and buy into building new schools or whatever that construction may be. So we have a process where there's a collective

061approach to how we acquire land, how we build projects, how we fund that. I I really do see that is something that's unique and that is probably something we need to take on the road to share with people. Um so I don't want that to be missed. Uh that it is about improving this as each step goes by and and I think that benefits everybody. Uh but when we look at uh what our needs are and how they continue to grow and to know that uh you've got a group that purposefully plans what that's going to look like. You don't find that anywhere else. And my experience has been telling commissioners and boards uh not to destroy something that's going to cause them not to be able to have quality schools. So I just want

062to share that not to be the dead. It is about how do we improve each year and that's what I've seen that and we will certainly take that into account this process. Dr. Um yes um thank you. Um this is good good work. I I really am uh happy to see that collaboration. Um I just wondering um what's what kind of outreach to the municipalities uh do you plan on within this this core team you know uh in terms of um um getting feedback or or in um or responses from the municipalities because you know obviously they're not part of the you know involved in the actual planning of building but they're responsible for some of the infrastructure and the and uh and the growth that is part of those that the the community. So

063we need to you know what we can do the to have some more teamwork in that sense. So so several responses. So of course this is between Lake County public schools. Um, as far as involvement and projects from towns and municipalities, often that is a negotiation each and every time. Um, and it depends on what's there uh what needs to be there, what needs to be done, um, what what the town, the municipality can bring uh, to the table on that, what they already have planned, um, what they need the the developer, the board of education to develop. Um it that's really a negotiation which should have and on top of that our longrange planning department meets annually with each municipality to discuss long-term growth concerns. Um any that helps us develop the areas or

064where we look to buy uh new school sites if necessary. Um any new those maps that you see with the arrows that show the growth. All of that comes from feedback we get from municipalities and those conversations. So could we do more of those? Certainly. I think annually is probably a little bit more appropriate because you're looking at, you know, an annual report that comes out and then we have conversations throughout the year, but like when you get that one report at the end of the year, you know, exactly of what's happening to that point moving forward. So, but we can continue to do more. And I I wouldn't want to miss the opportunity to say that always want to have a a push for unifying development ordinance on the countywide for all the towns,

065not municipalities to approve on what the development uh ordinance will be for schools. So, it's one set of rules, not a different set of rules for every single town, right? As well as impact statements. Uh we often have um certain municipalities will reach out to the school system to get an impact statement on based on any new development to see do we have space at the available schools how will this impact the school system and several have gotten on board but we'd love to have all of them participate and Dr. And I'm I'm glad you asked that question. I'm glad that they put that in there uh about the UPL and I think that is the one collaboration that we do want to have with municipalities. Everyone is responsible for uh construction within their own

066municipality, but we also recognize that there are 12 or 13 different ways that we have to do that. That has an impact on how we construct buildings. And so that's the one uh agreement that we would like to see come out of the work that we do with municipalities so that when we begin to design schools uh we have a design that we can almost put anywhere versus having to meet something that a particular municipality uh may require that building that cost 100 million here may cost 120 million something else simply because of that uh design requirements that they may have. But great question I think that is where Uh the last piece for us lies. An interesting point you heard there. We were contacted by several municipalities requesting impact statements for how might impact

067the schools and vice versa. We also have a municipality that refuses to consider that saying that they are prohibited by law from considering such things. So that's just the diversity of opinion we have here in Wake County. And I'll leave it at that. Mr. Hershey, you had a final question. Are we needing a vote on this? If so, when? Well, tonight's agenda tonight, is it? Yeah. We'll double check. All right. Other questions? Thanks, Mr. Strickland, Mr. Mr. Corrosa. And I know it was warm in here a little while ago. We did place a work ticket with the landlord and and it's all I have been biting my time because, you know, we have people here that are interested. They they are struggling today, too. HVAC services. So, all right. That stuff. I believe we'll hear

068from Miss Tiffany Lawrence and Mark. I don't know if you're part of this one or not. No, you did not. Okay. I mean, it was Yeah. So, I'll I'll lead off and quickly hand it over to Tiffany. You all want to hear from her. Anyway, um we had a discussion um at one of our previous meetings about meal prices. I believe the ask was for us to bring back a proposal recommendation to you all which uh particularly we'll be doing today and um that's where we are today and this is uh on the action item agenda for later this evening. Um good afternoon superintendent Taylor chair board members let me be back to talk to you about um school nutrition today. Um, I did not change the PowerPoint, but I did have a few things

069from our last meeting that people asked questions about that I tried to address. Um, and so I'm just going to go to those slides that um, they I tried to put a little update in the corner or new slides if you knew. Um, some of the things that impact um, our meal prices are labor and food cost. So, I tried to address some of those things. Um, someone asked in the last meeting about if we were paying, you know, competitively against other districts. Um, I looked at, um, Durham, Charlotte, and Guilford because there those are kind of districts that are big like us. Um, and so we're paying 1775. Um, it's slide number nine. Um, um, we're paying 1775. Oh, it's me. I'm sorry. I'm you. Yeah, I need helpers. I forgot. So, 1775 is

070us. Dorm is paying 17 um Charlotte is actually paying um $20 an hour and they started doing that this past January and Guilford is paying 1634. So, we are not at the bottom but not at the top any longer when Charlotte made those changes. Um wages and benefits. So, one of the things that we talked about last time was trying to look back at some 10 year history items. So, we did that for this for hourly wages about 10 years ago started at 1158 and notice they kind of stayed steady. Um, fiscal year 20 was co um a lot of districts across the nation had to raise prices because people didn't want to work because they it changed how we worked. Um, from that time we've gone to 13 and now we're at the 1775.

071On the far side, the column where it says salary and benefits, that's showing you the total cost impacting our budget. Currently, we're running about a $74 million budget. So, when you look at projections for fiscal year 26, um, our benefits and wages are costing us, the state is cost us about $44 million. When you really look at that, that's almost 60% of what our actual budget is. And so that's really high when you talk about what it takes to run a school nutrition program. Also, we broke it down to retirement, medical care, dental, and workers comp. And so if you look back, we started 10 years ago like previously asked. Um we were paying about 15% of our worker silver sal if a worker made $20,000 15% of that was retirement that we were responsible

072to pay on our side. Um and we've gone from 15 10 years ago to we're up to 25% of their salary. Um medical at that time was about 5,000. Now we have all we're at 8 over 8,000. Um, dental was at 291 and now we're at 336. And workers comp was 1 one and a half% and now we're up to 2.8%. So when you look at those costs overall, you see 30% 36% change in retirement benefits. Medical 31% change, dental 14 almost 15% and workers comp 42% change. And so you can see how the labor costs are impacting us, you know, overall um food costs. So one of the things that we talked about last time is how the cost of food is impacting our what it takes to put food on the plate for

073our students. So we looked at um 10 years for that as well. We didn't try to look at every single item, but we pulled out some things that are our popular items that our students see all the time. So, our chicken sandwich, um our pepperoni pizza, um chicken bites, broccoli, green beans, and our milk, which is on almost the majority of our plates. Um when we look at the chicken sandwich, 10 years ago, it was 38 cents to provide that. Now, it's $1.15. Um the pepperoni pizza, and it's actually not the slice, it's the square pizza that's sorry, square pizza that's popular to our elementary students. So that went from 26 cents to 47. If we were talking about a slice of pizza like with the older kids sometimes get that sometimes goes almost up

074to a dollar. And so that shows you the difference in price. Um chicken bites um we were at 43 cents and it almost doubled in price to 91. And then vegetables kind of stay steady but it varies based off what's going on with our farmers and things like that. So that will impact like if they have a dry season or a crop goes bad or things like that will impact price. And then the milk um fluctuates with market. Um it's been pretty steady. The only thing that kind of changed during co is a lot of milk companies went back and redid their contract to make sure that they could account for things like gas, you know, labor like all other vendors did as well. So, continuing on with food prices, just looking at the chicken

075sandwich. So, this year we served 674,000 chicken sandwiches and that increase in cost was a little over $300,000. So, just trying to break down so you can see how it impacted it. Um, the square pizza increased 35,000 and then the chicken bite 114,000. And that's just districtwide data based on all the schools. And then last time we also talked about the distribution case. And remember that was the case price. So when a driver delivers a case to our schools, they add a a search charge to every single box. Um that increases it's almost a dollar this year. Um we had an average of 444,000 cases delivered. And when you increase that case price that's in our new contract that we just uh approved um probably like a week or two ago, that's going to increase

076our food cost $352,000. And so just kind of saying showing that. So last time we showed the area meal prices just to kind of remind you where everyone else stands. And remember I mentioned that some dishes have free meals based off their free and reduced rates. Um we are at a different um we're at about 35 36% so it's different for us but that's just what we had last time. Um I also wanted to talk about the angel fund because when you talk about meal prices you kind of want to be reminded what we're doing in um school nutrition for Wake County. So, we created an angel fund, which means that we're covering student meals when a student doesn't have money to fund their account. Um, this year we collected about $127,000. We currently have,

077when I did this slide, we only have $55 left. Today, we might have about $2,000 because we get donations periodically, sometimes monthly, daily. Um, the $16,000 that you see are donations that some people donate specifically to an actual school building. So, you may have somebody that says, "I want to give money directly to York and that goes into that school's fund." Um, and so that's the money that's there in those accounts. So, it's it's used for the same purpose. It's just not in the overall district angel fund. So, that's where we stand with that. Um, just showing you that this year alone we covered 5,800 breakfast for our students with the angel fund money and 27,000 lunch meals with the help of the angel fund. And that's important because like I mentioned before, we're not

078allowed to actually provide meals for students. And when when the community members don't give us the angel domain, then eventually we roll it up to the school board to say, "We need you to cover those funds to cover those meals. Um, another question that came to me um, this week was, "What does it cost to cover meals for all Wake County Public School students?" And so, just a quick calculation, currently, we're only feeding about 13% of our breakfast of our students for breakfast and about 35% for lunch. So when you look at just what we're feeding right now, if we were to cover the gap of students who might have been paid or reduced and you know don't get full free. So we're going to cover the gap based off what we get from reimbursement

079to maybe what they might pay us. Like if a reduced student paid us, we pay the difference. So that'll be 670,000 for breakfast to just cover the current fee eat students that are eating, not new students. and then 3 3,957,000 for lunch in total that would cost us about 46 $4.6 million to cover the current students. And I just want to make sure I'm pointing out current because let's say we go up participation or something like that or more kids come to the building, which if we give free meals, it's more than likely more kids would eat, which means that this cost would definitely exceed the numbers that I have here. But this and then you also have to take into account that when we increase price sometimes students might not eat because they think

080they don't want to pay more. So it's a lot of unknowns in calculations. Oh, this is not on the slide, but I did want to talk about um expected revenue. So with the So my recommendation is that we increase breakfast meals 25 and lunch meals 25. And so with that, the goal is we hope to see an increased revenue for breakfast of $1717,000 and for lunch $554,000 in lunch revenue impact by increasing the meal prices to 25. So that's just kind of like trying to answer most of the questions. If I miss something, feel free to ask me and I'll try to answer to the best of my ability. And then that's it. All right. Thank you, Miss Lawrence. Let's go around and uh we'll take questions. I'll start over here. Um Miss Evans and

081then Mr. Hershey. Thank you. So, um thank you for trying to dig that data I asked you for. You were saying that we cover about 13% of students for breakfast. Those are students that qualify for free and reduced lunch. Some of them do, some of them don't. So, that's just how many are eating. That's how many are eating out of our 560,000 population. And then what did you say about lunch? You said about 35 35%. And that number was 3 point what million for lunch. You got I heard 607,000 for lunch. 3.9 for lunch. Okay. And that gave us a total of 4.6 million if we covered all kids that are current currently eating at the current level currently eating. Okay. Thank you. No followers. Um, and I apologize if I missed it. What has

082been the reimbursement rate from the federal government over the last how much has it changed over the last like 5 years? I would say around CO it was running about three and a half and now we're at $454 something like that. Do we have any sense if that's is that tied to inflation? Do we know? Like do we have are they just kind of do we have any sense of where that number comes from? Well, for us it comes from USDA. So, right around this time, right? I know that like do we know how USDA calculates? No, but I will say that they spend a lot of time paying attention to what's happening for us at this at the national level. So, they are surveying directors all across the nation like what are our what

083are our prices coming in like when we do our bids and things like that. They're also watching the farmers cuz we're closely connected to what's going on in the um agriculture. So when they see things happen like chicken prices, eggs, like like the year of co eggs, like they're looking at all of that. They're even asking us what is it? What are we paying? And so they're looking at all of that when they think about the numbers that they pass back down to us. Is it the same reimbursement rate for every single county in nation? So are they so counties like us that are more expensive to live in we get nothing extra and no the the thing that might be different might be a district that is high free and reduced might get severe

084need like there are different rates if you're severe need but basically it's the same it it varies some cents or whatever but but they're at the living wage do they take that into consideration when they are okay so No, that's okay. Mr. I think that's a that's a great question. That's something we probably need to engage with the federal government on in terms of reimbursement rates and locality. It's absolutely something you see the federal pay. Meaning that if you work at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the VA in Durham, uh your rate is one number, but if you work in San Jose, California, they pay the highest rate for the exact same job. And so that's probably something we need to have them to consider when it comes to reimbursement rates and and what prices may

085how they may vary. Uh but I do have somebody I can reach out to and get a little more information about what goes into that calculation for the reimbursement rate. We'll share that with you. Thank you, Mr. And um Miss L just briefly, Mr. Hershey touched on a question about those reimbursement rates. Brief review. Are there different reimbursement rates for different types of meals provided and what's the difference between them? Yes. So, a paid student, we get about 50 cents for lunch compared to a free student, we get the $4 and get you. Thank you. Come back around the table. Uh, Miss Gord, um, you you mentioned toward the end of First of all, thank you. Yeah, you mentioned toward the the end of your presentation, you said something like so when we increase the

086cost of lunch, some students may feel like they can't eat or they choose not to. So, similar to like if your something you really like went up in price and then you start thinking about, well, do I really want it anymore? So, some customers may walk away and say, no, you pass my threshold and some customers may continue to be here, you know, to purchase that item. And and oftentimes historically, and this is across the nation, when a school district w raises meal prices, you tend to lose some participation. And that's sometimes why we hesitate to raise prices. Okay. Um yeah, I guess that's the concern that I have. Um in the economy that we are in, you know, and I and I understand that those free and reduced lunch kids, they're going to get,

087you know, their meal regardless, but even like some of our middle class families who are still having a hard time, you know, trying to decide what they can have in their household and what, you know, what they can't put in their pantry. It's I'm just having a hard time with making our children decide that. Um it's seeing as though you said that when we naturally when we increase the cost then a child is faced with uh can I get that? Can I not get that? Well, it's not that they're faced with I cannot get. It's more about them choosing. It's kind of like um like Chick-fil-A back, this is saying my age, but back in the day, you could get a Chick-fil-A salad for $3.15. You got three chicken strips and a salad. And that's

088how I know cuz it was like my favorite. Right now, when you go, you can't get a Chick-fil-A salad for $3.15 with the chicken strips cuz I literally would separate it and eat it like a meal, but it really was a salad. You can't do that anymore. So, as a customer, I have to say, am I willing to pay the seven or $8 that it cost me now? I don't even know what it cost them, but you know, am I willing to pay that? So, it's not that they're choosing like they're it's like they're deciding about value and and a lot of times it's not even them because it's a paid student. It's really the parent, right? And the parent is deciding, well, do I have to put more money on their account than I

089did last year? And is that something I want to do? because that is what you decide on when things go up in price. And so I would think it's probably really more apparent than this thing. And and um Mr. Gordon, part of that is um part of the the calculations that you make to determine uh what those changes might be. So any business that that does that, they know that there's going to be uh some that choose not to participate, but you at the end uh are counting on uh that increase in in the reduced number of people that participate, you still have that additional revenue to be able to cover your cost. And so that's what Miss Lawrence means when she says we have to really uh calculate and determine if this is something

090that we want to do. But but what we currently know is that if we don't uh look at making the necessary increases that by default we won't have the revenue that we need. Uh and so it's better um um after we reviewed everything to say uh we believe we have a much better chance of having an increase having reduced participation perhaps than having the additional revenue. Uh and so that's kind of where we get to make that decision. Correct. It's it's definitely a balanced thing. And then like I said um previously um we're not just looking at price increases. So we're looking at menu items and things like that. And so a big way to make additional revenue is increased participation. And so with with my team we're working on what does that look like?

091How much participation do we think is reasonable? And and so on our side what we're focused on is how much can we increase breakfast and lunch to to help you know some of this offset, right? And so that's our goal on our side. Thank you. Excellent. Miss Rice, do you have any questions or comments? If not, I've got a few. All right. Thank you so much. Um, uh, let me see if you can help me understand this part for me. Um, we indicated or you indicated in previous presentations that this is an enterprise, right? And so with that knowledge, um, I receive the comments that my colleagues have said and definitely understand. I can take it from the perspective of a mother that's been in the system that has had three teenage boys at once,

092right? Um, in the system that we had to pay for lunch and having to weigh those particular situations. Um, but nonetheless, I still paid uh in case the kids wanted something else. There were stuff. It's just a whole budget thing, but it's a big budget, right? When you already got to feed them at home. So, um, teenage boys is all I have to say. Um, so my question is when I look at the slides that you presented about other districts, um, the other districts are important, but I lean more towards Charlotte Mech because they're a little bit closer in size, only a few thousand off than us. So, they're a little bit more realistic than the other counties for us to compare. And in that comparison, I noticed that they are able to do free

093lunch, right? Is it free? Free free free breakfast, right? And then $2, I think it said for the cost of lunch. So I wanted to ask a question around you can't control all the things with USDA, the prices. That's not where that's not where my head is. my head with this particular challenge that we see with feeding our children for me was how are we marketing our lunch program. I think sometimes we focus a lot on um the words free and reduced lunch and we've made it such a stigma versus focusing on the fact that this is our food program to feed our children, right? And so I would like to propose a different thought process when we market and advertise only based upon what you've asked us to do in your slide that says

094how to help right stakeholder actions school board CNS and CNS school level and my proposal is for us to look at maintaining and improving our school lunch program looking at it that when we are doing a market share program if we are an enterprise I would really love for us to look at using um more of enterprise principles, a lean six sigma principle in some degree around some six sigma principles as well as marketing principles in an enterprise area versus constantly looking at our program and our at our forms to say, "Hey, can Miss Miss Gordon, can you fill this out in case you need um some free lunch?" We need to change the mindset and the perception of our food program in our school system. It's not a you can eat if you can

095afford. It is we want our school lunch program to be well for all students. We want to create a dynamic that all students want to eat at school if necessary, right? And if they desire to. So, I really would propose that we look at how we market our program and getting people to fill out forms in a more of a data collection style than if it being can you just fill it out in case you need to eat lunch free. If we can remove ourselves from the free and reduced lunch thought process with our families and simply just ask the people to fill out the form so that we can improve our lunch program which then allows us to collect data no matter what your income is to then look at and to determine which

096way should we move our lunch program. Is the way that we feed our children through the USD way, USD um USDA way the way we need to go or do we need to look at a different model on how we feed our children because we're looking at a school lunch program for everybody, not a free and reduced lunch program for children. And so when we can get families to fill out forms in a way of a model around improving our lunch program itself versus only for those who need it. You'll get families to fill out a program or a form for data purposes, which may tell you you have more families in our system that can meet the other requirements that Charlotte met. cuz if someone is doing something different than what we're doing to

097get people to fill out that form to be able to reach the goal to give somebody lunch free unless they're automatically putting it in their budget to create a $4.6 million total. So my thought process and I'm going to stop but my thought process is how are we using this enterprise model to already know that we need $4.6 $6 million period to take care of staff, take care of food, but look at it as an improving how we feed our children as a program, not as a free and reduced lunch model. I hope that makes sense. It makes sense. And we are looking at it differently. So, some of the things that we're doing this year is that we're going to market differently. So, we're going to have a social media campaign related to school

098nutrition. Um, like I said in the previous meeting is one of the things we want to feature is who's planning our menu and that a lot of the people that are planning our menu are highly trained culinary wise. And then when you talk about collecting data, some of the things that I've talked with my team about is getting student surveys because the students are our first customer. So understanding what they want to see um and what they like and what their favorites are. And so as we transition through this next school year, we're going to try to implement more of the things that the students have identified as what they want to see. Um, but just want to make sure everybody's clear that it does take time in nutrition because the way the menu's planned

099when we do the bid, we plan a year, it's almost like we're a year behind every year. So even though we'll get data related to the menu this year, we won't be able to see those changes until we do the bid for the next year. And so we'll do minor changes, but I just because I want to make sure you know that when we when we see it, it sometimes takes time for us to to implement it. And so we are going to do some of those things. I would have to check in Charlotte Mech deep down to really figure it out. But normally when a district is offering all free, it's because they qualify at a higher free and reduced rate. Not that some dishes don't supplement like we do little things. But um

100Wake County is really progressive in my opinion and how we are approaching how we cover school meals. But I will research and get back to you specifically about Charlotte Mech. But and I understand that. And and so if I if I could uh Mr. Rice, um so one of the things that we know about Charlotte Mech is that they have much higher uh free and reduced uh lunch rates of parents that qualify. Uh you can find those demographic it's kind of in census data or or um data from um um um the health department, local government that provides that. And so by default, they're going to have that much higher percentage. And a lot of districts that have those higher rates, it is very easy for them to engage in C. And so that's why

101we do C at individual schools as opposed to the district. And so what you have to look at is the threshold of making a decision to do with everybody and whether or not you're going to lose money. So I can tell you when you're 60 and 70 and 80% free of reduced lunch, you'd be uh you'd be very unwise not to do C throughout the district, but in a district where at weight we're around 32 33% 35, uh we still haven't reached those numbers to where it would make sense to go all the way across the district. Uh C. Uh the other thing I want to say and and this is where I I appreciate what you're saying about the marketing piece. Uh Mark was very intentional in terms of who he hired uh and

102letting that be a part of what we do moving forward. Uh and I can tell you when I visit schools uh and people they sometimes they wonder why does he always go to the cafeteria? Uh but I'm not only meeting the staff, but I'm asking questions and I can go to two schools that have the exact same demographics and blah blah blah. Lunch uh breakfast participation in one school is 40 kids. Breakfast participation in the school that's exactly like it is 140 kids. Uh and so I can look at uh uh programs that have a high participation rate and the cafeteria managers have shared with me, well these are the kinds of things that we've done to try to get more kids involved and blah blah blah. And you can see a distinct difference as

103to why there's a high participation rate versus a lower participation rate. And so I'm very excited about where we're going to go. Um, and I'll be quiet because people know I live and breathe this stuff about school nutrition. But that's what we're excited about and I think you're spot on point. It is about how we engage with our students and our staff to say this is a program that we want you to be a part of. Uh, and those participation breaks tell it all. I see my ladies nodding over you so they know what I'm talking about. So, yeah. And I want to add too like we are putting a lot of intention into building up our staff and letting them know that we expect excellence. And so I think that's a big part of

104it too is them knowing that when I walk into a school and I see a serving line that I'm going to say wonderful job or when I see something that I think is not consistent with what we want to see across the district, then I'm going to ask you what's going on. And so in in training my team to have that same expectation when they go out into the schools cuz there is a distinct difference. There are some managers that above and beyond a mate and then there are some managers that do not rise to that occasion and we want to make sure that everybody is rising to the occasion. So that is definitely the expectation moving forward. My followup is I I I I hear you all but I don't know if you hear

105me um and what I'm asking. I I hear you with why people receive what they're receiving at whatever district. That's not that's not my challenge. My challenge is again going back to how we're marketing. It's we know that they have those numbers CP because of that. My my issue is how are we marketing to get families to fill out the form? You can say we have 35% all day long, but of the 35% who really fills out the form. The goal is to get the people to fill out the form. My target to you all today was not about why they receive it. That's common knowledge. We understand that part. The reality is we have 35% of families that participate in lunch and 13% that participate in breakfast. Of the 13 and 35, who's actually

106filled out the form? What is our strategy to get families to understand it is not about free and reduced lunch. This is what I want us to hear and to move with the great ideas that I hear you're proposing and doing. I just want to add value to what you're saying that you're already going to do. Great. And that is how are we going to market to help families to not focus on the free and reduced lunch of the faculty that's the form but get families to focus on our food nutrition program overall for all students. It's not about that. It's the um it's let me read my note better. We have to market correctly. If you need help complete the form that's that's the we have to we've been doing it that way incorrectly.

107If you need help, fill out the form. I'm proposing stop doing that. That doesn't work because it affects certain famil family's dignity. My former board member, Johnson Hosler, has said it over 11 years sitting at this table. So, I'm going to say it a little bit louder, a little bit different, and a little bit more plain. Stop doing it that way. It doesn't work. We have someone that sat on the board for a long term that said it doesn't work. So I'm proposing we should say improve our nutrition program. Everyone can help. Even if you um even if you can afford I mean we don't say that but students um for even students who bring their lunch. We want to improve the nutrition program itself. We don't want to focus on people filling out a

108form because you're free and reduced lunch. We want to focus on this is an enterprise program pay um family education, right? Community engagement education. We want to focus on helping families understand filling out this form is not about your money and your income. It is about the data for us to collect to determine how we best can improve our nutrition program overall. And all I'm saying is in that data collection, we may find that we do meet those particular qualifications. And that's why I'm saying what are they doing in that district to to to get that data? They're get they're doing something different to get people to fill out that form to get that data. Charlotte Meckllinburgg is not a poor county. So, M. Mr. Rice, let me let me build a little bit on

109that because if if you hear what Mr. Rice is saying, you know, we're looking for ways that we're not doing the same thing that we've been doing that hasn't necessarily gotten the same results. And so this means thinking about things maybe a little bit differently. One of the things that we talk about, and it's a little bit of a cliche, but we talk about silos, for example. And we know that right now with child nutrition services, your team is doing a lot and you're doing a lot with limited resources, but are there ways we can all work together better? So, for example, one thing that I'm proud that we've been able to do for several years is add a lot more staff in other areas in school counseling and social work and in our community

110engagement staff. Are there ways we could take advantage of this staff to work with families about nutrition, physical wellness, and well-being? Kind of repurposing some of the existing staff that we have to supplement all the hard work CNS might be doing. And I know it's a little unfair because you're the one in the seat, right? But what we're suggesting is that people who are not in the seat might find ways to help you in your work by looking at food insecurity issues and what might be available to help families helping families identify what is an adequate meal and are your children actually receiving this and the importance of that nutrition. And I don't pretend to have all the answers sitting up here, but just to give you some of the examples that we might be

111able to use other school resources so that again, while it's we all see the value, I think you've done a great job of explaining that a $4.50 reimbursement is much more valuable to us than a 50cent reimbursement, especially when we have all of these other families that could be eligible. What we want to do, I think, is find other ways to help families understand the importance of getting a good nutritious meal if they don't necessarily have the means. You know, right now families get a stack, am I right, of forms at the beginning of school every year, fill all this out. It's just viewed as more paperwork. But if this was something that with home visits or teacher visits or other things, the entire school community could help reinforce the importance of nutrition, maybe a

112benefit is that we do get more people qualifying. We do get that higher reimbursement rate, but more importantly, we have more families involved in that nutritional. Is that sort of what you're saying? That's exactly what I'm saying. It's about creating a wellness um path about nutrition and how we eat and how it helps with brain function or whatever that is. But just moving away from it being about collecting freely and reduce lunch numbers. I want us to because you're an enterprise. you you did I think out of the year or so that I've been here, you explaining that has been the best for me to comprehend so that I can best support your department understanding this is not something that's typically in our budget. You just told us plainly if we don't meet the 4.6

113million, we got to come to you and say, "Hey, you got to fix it because you can't leave a negative red. You can't be in the red because it can't operate like that as as the enterprise." And so with that, how do we support and do what you're asking us to assist with stakeholder education on CNS budget challenges, helping community understand if we create a model that's about wellness, food, nutrition, and wellness, and helping our children focus because of a balanced meal, you'll get parents who may not um who can feel like they can participate. One last thing. When we talk about food waste, when we talk about parents that send their children's lunch to school, if we look at what a model different program look like in food nutrition, you may get families to

114say, "Oh, okay. I'll pay the $5. I'll pay the the $450 for my kid to eat if you're going to provide this type of food, right? If you're going to do this." So, if that $4.6 $6 million. You might be able to change what it looks like right now in the cafeteria style stuff that we do. You might see a whole different model that you might can recreate for schools, you know, on each school level to do. It may not be this stuff that we're doing with USDA that most families are like, "My kids's not eating that." Right? So, that's all I'm saying is how we market. And look, I think we you now Dr. Taylor got me being nice. No, I was being nice. I really Okay, you being nice. Absolutely. And and so

115there's nothing that you said that we disagree with. We think you're spot on for it is about how we work outside of silos and how we have a collective effort to do this. One of those things that when we talk about food quality, you hear that all the time about cafeteria lunches. So, one of those struggles is uh if we have a a meal that is a higher quality meal, it costs more. Now, there's a difference between getting a hamburger at, you know, Carolina Ale House versus McDonald's. You're going to pay more for that same hamburger. Uh, and so we do understand that. Also, part of it is about direct certification, meaning that we get that data not from students actually filling out free reduced lunch forms. uh but it is uh direct certified through

116social services. I think it's coming through the state. They actually give us the numbers to qualify. So one of the things that I think we can go back and look at it and I know Tiffany may not know this but well you may know it actually I get a chance to answer but when did we change to direct certification? I don't think it's been that long ago right? Ever since I've been in we've had direct search but what what's different about CP is that it's directly tied to direct search. So it actually doesn't even matter about the kids who fill out an application for C. We're only looking at direct SER because that's how the calculation comes out. So that's a different piece and depending on where we are direct SER, they use a multiplier

117and then that's how they determine the the free and reduced application is in addition. I did want to talk about when you talked about the form. So there are some rules C part of the reason they created so that we don't fill out forms. So we actually are not allowed to collect certain data once we put a school into CP status because the whole point is they want to decrease the burden that it puts on districts related to paperwork. So that's kind of a thing. Um but when you talk about collecting data that's why I've asked my staff to go out and do surveys to actually meet with actual students. Um, I've asked them because I've visit schools and saw like kind of ambassador team. So, I've asked them to spend some quality time with

118the student ambassadors and say, "Okay, tell me what you want to see. What did you like?" Um, even with square pizza. I don't like square pizza, but I sat in was it Farwell across, you know, and when I tell you that baby was like, "That's the best thing ever when you have." And I came back to my staff, I said, "Got dog, we got to keep the square pizza." So, you know, so I am very open to hearing exactly what our kids want to see and and getting that data from them. And then when you talk about changing like wellness. So some of the things that we are working on because we do have a communication plan we work with um Corali on about one changing the perception and showing how wellness impacts also waste

119because we have some schools that have some waste programs and educating them on what does that look like? How does it impact us? Teaching our kids how to choose how to choose well. And so having the the full circle, my goal is for us to be not just a school nutrition program, but a meaningful part of a school and support the academics like what we do in the cafeteria should enhance whatever happens in the classroom. And so everything we do is kind of build upon that or whatever. And so I hear you completely and I I have an NBA. I'm all about the business if you really talk to me on the other side. Um, and my team knows that and so they are adjusting to how I think. And when we go into a

120meeting, I always ask, well, the first question I ask is, how much does it cost? And I don't always say no. I tell them all the time, I'm not afraid to spend money on quality food because I know that that that provides value, but I also have to be mindful because I have to look at the entire impact. And so I have to pick and choose, you know, where we go. But I absolutely I get exactly what you're saying. So I want to let you know I do hear you. I think that 4.6 million. Can I add one thing I was going to add on to yours? Um so in our C schools where we're having um not as great of participation, we started um we have signs up. So children we bring um students

121who bring back lunches or lunch boxes. We um kind of advertise, hey, you can come to the line and we request them, you know, we suggest they get milk, a fruit, a vegetable, and that reimburseable meal and they're also trying the um the food that we Oh, one more thing applications we we are digital mostly, right? you know, so the goal this year, what we've done is um we've tried to make sure that in the newsletter for the pro schools, the parent newsletter, I've asked my staff to actually go to some of the open houses so that way we can be more visible so that parents know what we have to offer and I think that's a big part of it also. All right. Thank you. Miss Evans has been waiting patiently and then No,

122I'm good. Um and I'm I'm also on board. Thank you, Miss Rice. Um, speaking of Charlotte, um, you know, unfortunately the community there has vastly fled their public schools and so the kids that are actually in the public schools look a lot different than the kids in Wake County. But in and I find that very very unfortunate. But in Wake County, we know that by and large our community still enrolls their children in Wake County public schools. And I think part of the communication piece and the um promotions piece, we do have many families that value equity and inclusion and community and have a global view and a community view of our school district. Um and I've heard one of the leaders at um Universal Meals for All, no, school meals for all NC talk

123about this. If we can get our families that can afford the school meal to buy the school meal and pay for the school meal and have their child eat the school meal, the more families that do that, then this that assists in the stigma going away. And so I love this marketing piece um to all families regardless of income about the community value of um supporting the school meal program. And I I think that'll benefit us a lot. I had a question about the Charlotte piece again. Just just curious that I understand the employment piece. So their their lunch cost is less, but they're paying their staff $20 an hour new this year. So, does the does the reimbursement that they automatically get because their population is different and receiving more qualifying more and so

124they're able to do the free breakfast but they're still charging for lunch. How does that work? How do they budget for a $20 hour aotment? I I don't know how to articulate my question to pay $20 an hour. I think that's the question. I mean, considering that they're less and Yeah. So, typically a C school is a very profitable school. And so, and and that's just from coming from Georgia, um Clayton County, which is a decently sized district, they 100% C. And the entire time that I've known that director, she's had a ton of income to do things that other districts don't because they collect that reimbursement for almost every student they eat. And so that it's it's it's a revenue game. Um, as far as know specifically, I do need to, like I said,

125I do need to ask specifically that director to see what she's doing differently because some districts have decided that as far as pay, even for us, that this is what's necessary for me to get somebody in the door of quality. And so sometimes we decide, you know what, we can't afford not to pay, right? And so I'm sure that's part of it, too. But I do really want to go have a conversation with her. I don't want to tell you something. I haven't had that wrong way and she's probably more than willing to give me that feedback. Yeah, no problem. That's just something that that Yeah. No, it makes sense. Well, and then some people wonder how we can pay 700, you know. So, cuz I tell other districts what we know and they're like

126and to the presentation we had before you that that supports this working successful relationship we have with our county commissioners because that is how we're doing the 1775 and we know that and we're great cuz when I saw that you know I have never seen that before $20. No, the the collaboration between the commissioners like is amazing. So, and and and Miss Evans, I will add to uh the other piece about um the school nutrition programs that vary in a school district. Uh and one of the things we don't know is what they may collect in indirect cost. Now, I know specifically they can't collect more than 8%. Uh so a district may choose not to collect any indirect cost or uh because whether they have that two months operating if you don't have two

127months you can't collect indirect cost. That's what we'll be dealing with this year. But they could have made the decision that instead of collecting that indirect cost we will leave that in the program so it can be more profitable. They can pay that additional amount. So those are all the different permutations that you don't know about but that could be part of it as well. Mr. Neer's got his hand up on a few. I'm just board members. In some ways, you could liken CIP to the condition Z. Yeah, sorry. Thinking of earlier presentation, right? Um, compare it to the federal programs that were put in place during the pandemic which more or less from a fiscal standpoint mirrored every student can eat for free. And effectively we got into one as a district of that

128full what is now $4 and some whatever cents full meal price reimbursement for every student. And what I'm going to share next is not a scientific assessment, but kind of a back of the envelope assessment of participation went way up. And it wasn't just because those who couldn't afford the meal now could afford it. I believe there were a lot of parents that couldn't afford it before, but they kind of said, "Oh, okay, Johnny or Susan, I'm not making you lunch this year. You're going to go get it at the school." Dr. Do you want to close us out? Sure. Um, first of all, I love the pizza when I was growing up, especially the crumbly meat on top. Okay. Um I I I I was had a personal experience at home um that my

129daughter who's also a very picky eater um you know we we've been making teriyaki chicken for years and she just wouldn't touch it. And then one day my wife had a recipe for Swiss chicken and she had second helping of something new. It was just something new. And and I asked my wife like, "What's what? How do you make so much chicken?" Cream of chicken soup and chicken and cheese and and breadcrumbs. Like, oh, that's not very sense. And so, I mean, I'm I'm just saying that, you know, change can sometimes help and, you know, and and and the and the students will pick will choose to, you know, to do something different. Yeah. So, so marketing, I I agree. Marketing is something that's important and and to market it with something good. Um, you

130know, it's it's not all it's not just just about words. It's about how how you deliver it and and if it's actually going to, you know, taste great, then they'll come back for more. Right. M Lawrence, I appreciate it. We've had a thorough discussion of we've got more questions and more feedback, but this was a lot to present back to back and we really appreciate all the work you put in. Well, thank you. Thanks. All right. Uh, next on our agenda, our final work session item is the maintenance and operations update from the joint uh board of education board of commissioners meeting. And for this, we're going to bring in the big guns. Oh, no. And this is going to be presented directly by Robert Taylor, who's the one who presented this information at our

131joint meeting. Um, so if you had an opportunity to catch that on streaming, then you, you know, already gotten some of the highlights, but we wanted to make sure all of our board members had an opportunity to get this information and then ask Dr. Taylor any questions that you might have that were not asked at the board of commissioners meeting. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um uh so I can tell you that uh Chair Hagerty uh Vice Chair Swanson uh uh Mr. Strickland was uh this was a really great opportunity for us to be able to share with the commissioners and I think the PowerPoint was shared with you but we wanted to come back and just briefly uh share what we talked about at the commissioners and try to thoroughly uh go through

132the information we have. Um we thought it was very informative. We got a lot of good feedback from the presentation and so much of this information um we know but it's always great additional conversations about uh so as you know we had our joint meeting with the commissioners uh back in March and out of that number of questions that they wanted us to be able to answer. Uh and so ultimately that is what uh this conversation was about is answering those uh eight or nine questions that kind of fill in the gaps on where things are. I can tell you that uh having the opportunity to dig deeply into this information revealed a lot. Uh so we just uh glad to share that. Uh the first questions that they asked was really about staffing and

133what are our numbers look like. And so this gives you information on just at a glance uh the number of available positions that we have. So the number that have been filled, the vacancies, the vacancy rates. Um so that was good information to share. We also recognize is that uh we talked about uh what our focus has been. It's really been on teaching and learning but now we've recognized we got the same kind of focus uh on maintenance and operation. Uh out of we begin to talk about uh numbers of employment. Uh we also wanted to look at what those numbers look like 10 or so years ago in terms of months of employment versus where we are. And so this is the surprising part. Uh and this uh has nothing to do with any

134member that's sitting here because I don't think you were president at the time, Mr. Mr. Chair. I think you have about eight years, right? Yeah. So you have two years. Uh but in 2015, we had about uh 2832 months of employment. Uh that is the number that we had. Uh and now we have about uh 2900 uh 2,916 months of employment. And so that difference is an increase of about 84 months. Uh that's about eight positions if you say 10 months, right? Or a little less than that if you say 12 months. Uh and so what we've been doing is working to try and fill those vacant positions. Uh and and now um uh we struggle to do that. Uh but we work very very hard with uh with a recruiter to make sure we

135reduce those numbers. So we're in a very good position now. Uh but we still would not use vacancies as an excuse. Most of this has been filled. Uh but we understand it's not about the field rate, but it's about what we actually need. And so to help you understand what we're talking about, uh in 1415, we had about 22 million square ft in the square feet in the district. And today we have 27.5 million. And we reopen those four new schools. We're going to add an additional 1.3 million square ft. So, you're talking about 22 million square ft versus 28 million square ft and you've only added 84 months of employment. So, uh not any wonder why uh some of the stuff we begin to struggle with. Uh so, again, here those open positions that

136we talked about um um and and this is what I I think is going to be really interesting in terms of uh why we struggle to fill positions, what the pay looks like. All right. So again, we put a size in it. But when you begin to look at uh what these positions are uh and what it requires to fill some of those positions, I want to take you to uh grade 18, for example, um uh with zero years experience, that's about $31,000 a year. In 32 years experience, that's about $45,000 a year with a 10-month employee. And so you grade 18, I think that's someone that might be a custodian. If we look at grade 24 and I think that is uh a craftsman, people who's going to be in the school working on

137things. Uh zero years of experience is $35,000. 32 years is $50,000. Now if you go down to a 12-month position, you see 42,000 60,000 for a 12 month. And then when you go down to grade 30, which is um I think we may have u uh an elevator mechanic or a boiler technician uh HVAC mechanic. These are those positions that we really struggle to fill. And this lets you know what the market rate is like. Uh and so one of those positions at grade 30, zero years, you start out at 44,000 and after 32 years you get 64,000. That's for 10 bucks. in a 12-month position, 53k starting out and 77 starting out. And so, think about that technician in uh in private industry, they be making a six figure salary. Uh and so, while

138we may have a person who uh who can come in and make 77,000, what is the likelihood that they're going to choose to come to Wake County if they can make 30 or 40 more,000 in private industry? Uh so that is where we do struggle in terms of trying to field position but that's something uh that we're absolutely working on to make sure we can address. Um uh they also talked about wanted to know in terms of recommended staffing guidelines and this is what we were able to share with them. Uh so this comes from the association of physical plan administration and they talk about what are acceptable levels of staffing. So you can see uh what those numbers look like in terms of level one through level five stat. Level one is the top

139of the top of the line. That's Cadillac probably what Microsoft uses. Uh level two is a desirable industry where you want to be. School districts want to be around level three. Uh uh you aim for level two, but level three is usually where you are. And so what you will see uh is that um uh we in most areas are going to be at level four and five. And that's what they call the crisis uh crisis level. Um now what that means is that while we may not have the position that we need uh we still rely heavily upon contract workers or any companies that come in uh to help us with that work. So remember we did talk about only 84 months being added since 2015. So that lets you know that personnel is

140a big part of where we struggle to try and get this work done. Uh but those are the things that we're working on. Uh so we already know we're below the market in terms of compensation. Uh and the only real good study was done about 10 years ago. And so that's why we've reissued our RFP RFQ whichever way we call the data. Uh so we can get the newest data to know and understand uh where we are with the market and to be able to share that uh with our public. Um so staffing is obviously one of the questions that they had concerns about uh and so we wanted to share that data with them. Uh the other question that they had was uh what has been updated? Uh and so this is I thought

141was really good information to be able to share uh because one of the things I wanted to know is that when we experience school closures, what does that look like when we compare that to where we're doing work uh and so I can tell you that our department has done a lot of work to upgrade facilities. Yes, sir. Just to be clear, can you identify what those districts are? um county commissioner district commissioner district. Yeah. So we did put Thank you, sir. Just in case you look up there for your schoolboard district lines match up too few of them. You got to take your principal out and draw an additional line to know where your district is. So thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Uh and so what we shared is that uh and and

142this is a little outdated uh just by a couple of months. So I did come in and and share the new data. I just shared the PowerPoint that we had, but so far we've had about 30 upgrades that were completed. So that's about five boilers, 11 chillers, uh four energy plans, uh and 10 HBAC projects. Mark, you want to tell them what energy plants are? You probably articulate. So energy plant is hot, cold, and air. So you got hot for heat, cold for cool, and air being moved. And and so what we want people to know is that while we continue to struggle, uh we also want them to know that we're working hard to update systems and this does come at a heavy cost. Uh but it's not something that we lost on. And

143with that, we also talked about uh the projects that are currently um um taking place right now. So that's about 35 projects. So you're talking five boilers, 19 chillers, three energy plants, about eight HVAC projects. uh and so those are the things that we wanted to share in terms of what are the upgrades that are taking place with heating and cooling. Now having said that uh we also have to balance this with any other type of uh improvements that we have to make uh and we always want people to know that all of our efforts can't be on HBAC. So that means we've got building automations in terms of the controls or any new technology that controls these systems. We have roofs that have to be replaced. We have asphalt projects. Uh when we think

144about our fire alarm systems, we had to spend a tremendous amount of money to get update with that this year. Uh tracks and tennis schools, elevator replacement. So there are a number of projects that have to be addressed outside of HBAC uh and chillers and bullets. And so part of that work is about how do we balance that out and make sure that we address uh all of the things that have to have attention. Um um here we talked about um the lost instructional days. Now I kind of want to bring this up in that in that one in three schools lost part of an instructional day uh over that past year. So that is really unfortunate. So that represents about 80 schools that at some point uh uh had to close completely closed early.

145Uh and so the list that you see here represented about 27 schools uh with work that is underway so we can try and prevent some of that. Um and while we talked about replacing units, I also left it up to the commissioner that we did have problems uh with newer schools and new equipment that's not listed. One of those things that we actually talked about uh was Fuller. Uh and then um Commissioner Stallings actually gave us kudos for knowing and recognizing that the superintendent was actually at the school and it had an issue and she had heard about it. You know, Fuller is a new school. And so what I talked about was the complicated nature uh of that system. And I went out um and I'll use this phrase again. I said we opened

146it up and it looked like the Starship Enterprise. That's how complicated those systems are. Um but we do want the people to know that uh even with those newer systems sometimes they experience troubles and a lot of that is technology related sort of like our cars now and something goes wrong uh most of us cannot fix it. Um so we wanted to share that. Um uh one of the questions they also asked was how do we uh triage what it is that we have to to fix when it comes to our problems. Uh so this matrix kind of shows what that priority is. Uh and so what you'll see is that uh we have uh a prioritization prioritization guideline that goes from step one through step five. So step one it might be things that

147are cosmetic and take 180 days to address those and you can go across that spectrum. Uh HBAC systems uh are those things that we address immediately almost within 24 hours uh if we can. So, we get those messages all the time just like you guys do about something that's not working at a school. Uh, and so what we want to do is to make sure that we address um a high percentage of our time in terms of what we address. Uh but this is what I want everybody to understand about where the frustration sets in that uh when schools have items 1 through 4 uh that may persist and take a long time to address and then on top of that you get a call that says we've got to close the school. That is

148where the frustration sets in. And so we recognize that. Uh but that's part of what we have to address in terms of um how we try to deal with those emergency issues and also deal with those other things that are hardest. Um one of the questions they also um kind of asked was how do we end up determining how we close schools? Uh and so this is part of the school uh facilities closure decision. There's a process that we go through to determine uh will we actually close the school. And what we also recognize is that if we're going to make a decision to close schools, then when do we have to do that by that means we got to do it to where the bus uh transportation won't impact other schools. Schools share buses.

149And so if we make that decision, it's usually around 11:00 11:30 that time frame somewhere in that time frame. And so now we feel compelled that we have to go out uh and make this decision. Uh now um as I began to look at these numbers, there was something that I discovered and I talked with uh uh Lisa Luke and I said, "Lisa, is this information correct?" What I asked her to do was to go back and kind of give me information on school closures over the last several years. And so she went back to about 2014 or 2015 or so. Uh and and I could count from 2014 to 2015 up until January of 2023. I can count the school closure on one hand. It might have been about five, four or five. Uh

150but starting in January, there was a change in that the number of school closures went just like that. And I was trying to figure out why is this? So part of that uh had to deal with what we believe are the shifting expectations of people not being in hot and cold buildings and now we're making those decisions to go um um and that creates a problem. And so, uh, he would share Harry shared with me that, uh, he knew the difference between, uh, getting a notification that something is not working in the school and and not being happy with that versus also getting a call and said, "By the way, you got to come pick Stephen up. The school is closing." And so, we know even the last experience that we had of of a

151notification in about 45 minutes, those things are not willing. So that creates um a lot of the the frustration in terms of school closure and how parents feel about that. So part of this change has been um making a different decision about how we close schools. So what what I can tell you is that before this when I got here I said well what my experience is every place I've been we never closed schools when when something stopped working. But that is part of the expectation that happened here. And now we recognize that uh people do look for that. And so we're now uh really having conversations about really trying to make decisions of moving kids around in schools, putting them in spaces where there still may be cooling and trying to prevent from closing

152in school. Now that is obviously going to be a difficult thing to tackle during the summer months when we have year round schools. And we know this particular week uh the index is supposed to be very high. And so I've been in contact uh uh with maintenance staff and and Luke Neland is out there working like uh working hard is what I'll say. Uh but uh but this is part of what we recognize is some of the changes that cause us to close. Uh, one of the questions that were all that was also asked was about supply chains and what I can tell you is that um, unless Mark has something different this year. Um, the supply chain is really been stable in light of all the things that have happened with tears. We haven't

153seen that yet. There's still a possibility that that may happen. Um, we also know that old parts are subject to availability. So, when we have a lot of old equipment, uh, if something breaks, uh, then it may take a long time to get those parts in. Uh, but right now that hasn't been an issue for us. Uh, Mark, I'll let you kind of comment on any new information we have about two things with that. Um, what we find in a lot of cases, not just with HBAC equipment, but also with firearms and other things, the equipment becomes obsolete and you cannot get parts for those components anymore. And then as far as the supply chain issues, we uh a year or so ago, we we tried to mitigate some of that by pre- purchasing some

154of the equipment that we may buy. You all may see that we will send a chiller package through where we may buy chillers for three or four schools at one time so that we have the equipment here when the contract is let we don't have to wait on getting that here or we can go ahead and mitigate any issues with the supply chain. So uh the other question that they asked was really about uh the age of school buildings and I thought this was very interesting that uh when you begin to look at the age of buildings and the age of equipment uh that certainly can can help people understand how monumental this task is uh to address uh aging facilities and uh some of these you will be familiar with. I know I hope

155no one was here when these buildings were actually first opening. Uh but I thought this was uh good information to know. It was certainly informative to me. Uh and so we have about nine schools that are 90 plus years old that represents about 4 and a half%. What we want to share with people is that while a building may be 100 years old, we also recognize that there have been a number of upgrades that have been done uh since 2025. So I certainly hope so. Uh and so you'll see those buildings that are there. Uh and then when we begin to look at uh buildings that are 50 plus years old, uh those numbers also begin to grow. Uh so we're talking about um 42 schools of roughly 21% of school buildings. And so think

156about a building that's 50 years old. When was that constructed? That 1975? I'm getting old. I think 60. So when I think about a 50y old building, uh I normally look at that as a relatively new building in terms of me being in school, but I have to recognize is much older than that. Those systems begin to get old. So think about uh in East Wake uh that was one of our modern buildings, but now we recognize that building is is open close to 50 years old. Uh and there's a difference in terms of uh what's needed to support that building. And so as as we go through uh you can see these various numbers uh 40 to 49 year old village we have about eight of those that's about 8 uh 4%. Uh so

157that number was not as large as I thought it was uh would be uh 30 to 39 year olds about 21 schools that's about 10 12%. Um and then 20 to 29 year olds is about 47 schools that represent about 23.5%. Uh but this um when we begin to think about buildings that are less uh than um uh 20 years old that represents 73 schools or about 35.5%. So that reflects the amount of growth that we begin to have as a district and how we begin to build those new buildings. And then that is where you you really have to make the decision about do we build new facilities or do we maintain what we have? Uh and we know uh that part of that decision was focusing on new building uh and and not

158putting as much on preventative maintenance and that has kind of landed us where we are now. So we know we have to pivot on that. Uh I think we've added about approximately 14 to 15 new buildings since 2020. So that is relatively new. Uh and we're having to report we're going to open how many this year? one for this calendar next year. I'm about to say no. We have about four schools we have. Uh and so uh uh that is what we do want our public to know is that while we do have new buildings, we have a tremendous amount of of old buildings. That means uh almost 60% or higher or 70% of of our buildings uh were are older than 20 years. and the young. And so that um lets us know that

159we're going to need a lot of support in terms of maintaining those buildings. Uh another question that they asked was about uh is how do we do preventative maintenance? So what you have here uh is just a pictogram of the different kinds of preventative maintenance uh that may take place at a school. So there are various kinds whether with the HBAC systems, the electrical system, uh fire and alarm systems, all of these things are are things that require uh preventative maintenance. And so when we think about uh HBAC preventive maintenance that can deal with filters, belts, having something grease, the coils, exhaust fans, uh and and this is uh for the most part handled by regional maintenance uh teams that will do that um um uh that preventative maintenance. Uh we also recognize that most

160preventative maintenance should occur uh annually or yearly. Uh but because of staffing, this is something that we now do uh every other year. Depending on the system, it may have more preventative maintenance or less. Uh but we do know uh that our ability to do this has been reduced. Um uh and this is either done by our staff or it's also done by any vendors that uh we may have. And so when we begin to think about uh the backlog, what has caused that? because there's a tremendous amount of of of work that is, you know, being backed up is what I'll say. Now, I've always used the rule of when it comes to preventive maintenance and repair that you do what we call the 8020 rule. About 80% of your time is spent on

161preventative maintenance. Uh I see Miss Gordon nodding her head and 20% on repairs. Um um but that is something that we continue to struggle with because of the emergency work orders that come up and actually slow that progress down. So when you look at HBAC, you'll see that about uh 48% of that is preventative maintenance and that's far from where we want to be. Uh but it is because there's so much time being spent to try to repair systems that we we struggle to get the preventive maintenance uh in. But that is something uh that we're going to um we've got plans in terms of our work order system and what we're going to do to address that. Uh so I do want to share that uh when you look at this slide, it'll show

162you uh the amount of work orders that generally take place at a school. Uh and so you see where where it says work orders uh and the number uh that are experienced at an elementary school, a middle school, and a high school. And so when we begin uh to to identify these numbers, we're talking about over 220,000 work orders a year. Uh and so that is a lot to address. What I can tell you is that uh when I met with staff uh when first arriving, um staff members shared that they had four people to process uh what was nearly 300,000 work orders. Uh and that is the same number of staff that they had 25 years ago. Uh and so that lets you know that uh uh these are things that um uh really

163cause this problem. So again here are the percentage of work orders by type uh and the number that take place. And so that does represent about 2 uh 20ome,000 work orders. Uh and so we um uh took the opportunity to go through and answer these questions for the commissioners. Uh and they really appreciated that. What they also wanted to know is well how are you going to fix this problem? Uh and that's what they really wanted to know. And so uh this is what we share with them in terms of what we are doing now some of the things that we'll do moving forward. Uh and and part of that is about deferred maintenance uh and funding needs. So it is about uh addressing both current and future needs uh and knowing that uh our

164resources are limited. And so how do we improve without getting new revenue? And so that is always a question uh that we will talk with commissioners about and talk with our public about. Uh if we don't have new revenue, do we have to work within what we have until we receive that new revenue? And so part of that is about re-evaluating our current maintenance and operations budget. And I can tell you that uh Chief Stricken uh really pushed back on this. He said, "Doc, we don't have any money now. What are you talking about, man?" I see Mark, it is really about uh going in and examining what possibilities do we have uh within our current budget to be able to allocate things differently. Uh but within all of that, we also recognize that we've

165got to continue to address things and not take things off the list. One of those examples would be painting. Uh, and so if we've got 200 schools, if we don't have some kind of painting rotation, if it's only painting one school a year, five school a year, one school a year, 10 schools a year, if we don't do that, then that's going to continue to grow. Bottleneck is going to be even bigger problem, which is kind of where we find ourselves at. So, it is about doing everything we can to re-examine our current um um maintenance and operations budget, but it's also about our current expense budget that we have uh within the district, meaning everything else that's $740.7 million that we're going to get from the commission. Is that our number? 740 something. Uh

166and so it is looking to see how we can eliminate uh eliminate duplicated services to streamline operations. This is not maintenance and operations. This is everybody. What is it that we doing that's that's duplicate? How can we get rid of that? Re-evaluate programs for possible u uh reallocation. Uh embrace strategic abandonment when necessary. So what that means is that there's only so much that we can do. there's something uh that we need to abandon and that's part of the work that we have to do. But it is looking at our uh current expense budget and and identifying where we can have savings and reduce duplication. Then we have the opportunity uh to redirect that money. Uh we've also had conversations about redirecting our CIP funding. So, one of the things that we recognize is that

167there are some things that are in the CIP that we feel we've already accomplished and we can redirect that. One of those is uh real estate acquisition. And so, we feel that over the next 3 to four years, uh it's I want to say, Mark, is it 30 million or 50 million that we put in the main acquisition? Um we've been putting maybe 13 million a year. About 13 million. So, if we would recognize uh that we're at a point to where we uh have acquired what we need for the next several years, there's a chance to reallocate. Uh we also talked about looking at technology investments and we spend roughly 26 to$27 million a year on technology. uh we recognize we're going to continue to have to spend a large amount of that money,

168but I did talk with Chief Bully and we feel very confident that the kind of reductions that we're talking about, our redirection will still allow us to focus on our technology program, but then be able to address other areas. Uh in terms of uh the personnel's strategy, we recognize that uh there are some positions that we've got to reclassify and realign if we want to be competitive. And so that means that if we have a chiller technician and at the top of our salary schedule at 12 months, he only makes $77,000. Then what do we need to do? We've got to go in and talk with comp services, submit that information, and say we've got to be market competitive with this. And so one of the things that I would share with the board is

169is where we will need support is when people come to the board and say why is the chiller technician making that kind of money. Uh so what I always share with boys is uh what is a market competitive salary and who is available to do that work. And so one of those uh conversations that I had many years ago was about the technology director. And I was asked why we pay the technology director that amount of money that's large. The assistant superintendent made that. I shared with the board that I can do every job in this district except network computing that is market driven. And if we want to have success, that's what we're going to have to pay a person in order to come here and do this work. And so that is part

170of what we know about uh our staffing that if it is something that's driven by the market that we've got to make that commitment and help others in the organization recognize that this is where we got to put that resource. Um we've had a tremendous amount of experience uh that have been vacant. So, we want to continue that work so that when we do uh add additional positions, we're able to go out and recruit people and bring them in uh and certainly expand months of employment in response uh to increasing district square footage. We got to have more people. Uh and that is also a big part of the struggle that we're going to have is how do we pay for that? Uh but if we continue to do the same thing, we know it's

171not going to get better. So, we want to make sure that we pay particular attention to the personnel strategy. uh also when we talk about personnel performances. So here we have about 27 different uh regions that fall under five uh facility managers right so that means these are small teams that are responsible for certain groups uh I talked with uh Mr. Nean and I know he shared this with Nate. Mark, I think they shared this with you, but one of the things we want to do is what we call sweeps. Uh going into a school and making sure that we address those levels one through four uh work orders that have not been uh taken care of. Uh and so to give you an example what that would look like, uh we may have a

172group of eight schools. And so we're going to continue to deal with uh work orders in the school. Uh but by doing a sweep that entire dedicated team will go to that school uh let's say bar will and that one day they will spend the entire day there addressing those work orders. If you do that with one school a week out of those eight schools you're going to have that dedicated staff um once every eight weeks completely in your school. But then there will also be times that they visit your school to deal with workers in the general sense. uh and so that's one thing that we know we hope will be successful but in addition it is about how we look at the data uh for these uh individuals that work in these different

173areas and what I mean by that is that if we are now able to say team one you're completing 90% of your work order team two you completing 42% of your work orders what's causing that it could be a reason for it uh but either way we look at the numbers and look at data, they understand that we're going to have an expectation about increased performance. All right? So, that's kind of what I shared in terms of how we track that performance. Um, one of the things that we committed to um is is having an additional conversation about our work order system. Now, what do you all hear as board members a lot? Work orders were taken out, work orders were not completed, and blah blah blah. Now what we do understand is that uh

174there are some legitimate reasons for that and there are some non-legitimate reasons for that and that's what we want to make sure that we do is is talk with staff about who puts in work orders, how we avoid duplicate work orders and what happens when we take out a work order. The last thing we want to do is to take out a work order and not reach out to you and tell you why we took it out because from your perspective if the issue hasn't been fixed, then we think you deleted that work order um um um in an inappropriate manner. But we have to say to you that this is something that's not going to be captured in the work order or you want this mirror replaced, but um security has told us that's

175not something that we're going to do. So there has to be the reasons uh and understandings about that. So we want not only maintenance staff to know and understand what the expectation is but also school staff about um how orders are put in work orders are put in who's responsible for managing that. Um uh one of the things that mate has continued to work on is contracts and contract personnel. Uh and so I know my first year uh he um had employed a number of of companies that were HPAC companies. Uh and he had to evaluate that performance and a lot of things were not where he wanted them to be. Uh and so that is a part of that evaluation process. Uh we also want to make sure that we properly manage any contract

176work that we have not just HBAC or Schiller but any kind of work. So we know uh that is a big responsibility that we have because we uh rely heavily upon the contract people. Uh one of those examples that was shared with me is that we had a contract plumber that was supposed to um replace a unit um in a large mobile unit at East Gone Magnet. Uh so they shared that well it take us about 3 days to replace it should be done. this was around the 1st of March when that work wasn't completed uh until May. Uh and so that means that if we've got a contract working that's supposed to be completing the work uh and we have to properly supervise that and if they're not doing what they're supposed to do

177uh then we have to end that contract and that's why we don't pay contractors the full amount up front. And so the the best example I can give you is what you do with your own homes and you have a person come out and do contract work and they're going to paint your house and you you're going to pay them $5,000. You give them $1,000. If they haven't completed that work in a timely man, what do you do? You come get your stuff cuz I'm bringing somebody else out to do this work. But that is a big part of what we want to double down on to make sure that if we're paying contractors, uh, then we're getting quality work. some of these areas we will also get schools involved. Uh an example would be

178uh if we have a person who's responsible for lawn makers or uh that type of work at a school and I've had many principles to tell me uh tell Mark that the person came out and cut the grass but he didn't do a good job or he didn't ed this but he didn't cut that fee. And so when I talk to president, they said, "Yeah, we will be glad to sign off to say that the work was completed in a satis satisfactory manner before that person's paid." And so I think that's an expectation that every uh contract person will understand that we can ask for what we pay for and there is no ambiguity in that. Uh the last thing I'll share in u answer any question that you might have uh and we always

179like to give our final thoughts on life cycle versus maintenance and and simply we say that life cycle is really like uh replacing uh an old car with a new car. So that means we're going to have units that have greased their um their lifespan and they have to be replaced as a part of life cycle. But maintenance is like changing the oil. whether you have an old car or a new car, you still have to change the oil. Uh and so that is part of what has to happen across the board. You won't be able to see the difference between those two. Uh what I can tell you is that um uh this presentation to the commissioners helped them really uh have confidence uh in what we plan to do to address our problems.

180They recognize that this is a problem that won't be solved overnight. Uh but what they wanted to hear from the school board and the superintendent is that you do have an approach uh to address this and and there are still going to be some problems. There's still going to be some closures, but now you have decided and put in a plan that shows us uh that you do have a process for addressing this even though it's not going to be done overnight. And so with that, Mark, is anything you want to add? But if not, we'll just answer your question. Yes, sir. or what we'll do, if I may be so bold, is that there's a lot of great topics here, a lot of things we might want to take a deeper dive on. Yes.

181And so I have like a whole notepad full of questions, but I also know we have some other items that we do need to get to and I want to keep this all on schedule today. So, Dr. Taylor, with your blessing, what I'd like to do is defer questions on this to either facilities committee, if that's okay with facilities committee chair, or to another work session. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. All right. Thank you for that. We'll keep you going, Dr. Taylor. This uh Partridge family style of this slide deck is really speaking to me as a child of the 70s. So, thank you for that. Well, I think uh uh information you don't see those as often. All right. Um I'm going to enter entertain a motion, Mr. Hershey. A motion to go to close

182session to consider confidential personal information protected under GS143-318 uh.1 A6 and 115C-319 among other statutes. All right. Is there a second for the motion? Second. Motion for Mr. Hershey, second from M for Miss Rice. All in favor of moving to close session say I. I. Any opposed? All right. We are adjourning the work session and we will move into close session. We'll give a couple minutes from the room to