2025-04-22 Work Session

001Good. It's good to be back. See you. All right, everyone. Um, to quote our attorney, Mr. Mullen, it is good to be back. So, welcome. Uh, today is, uh, Tuesday, April 22nd. We're going to open our work session. We have a number of important topics today. Um first we'll start with board policy 4318 student use of personal wireless communication devices. Then we have an update on migration to Oracle release 12.2 and twice weekly or sorry twice per month pay uh and we'll conclude with our budget work session on the proposed 2025 2026 operating budget is so for our first uh first topic the board policy 4318 our continued discussions welcome Dr. Clinton Robinson Mr. Drew Cook Dr. Dr. Julie Crane and Michael Martin. Is Mr. Martin here from RTI today? All right. So, we'll just

002uh we'll leave it in the capable hands of of those three. Dr. Robinson, Dr. Crane, and Mr. Cook. Welcome everyone. Um we are we say we have a singular outcome on this slide, but truly this is a four-part conversation and we have less than 30 minutes and counting down um aotted to get through this. So we will need to move with intention through this section. These are four topics that generated much discussion at the March policy committee meeting and they represent areas where decisions are needed for further governance guidance as we revise the draft bringback at next week's policy committee meeting. You see these four items that we're bringing today discuss what are emergency situations, how we will handle or manage confiscation, also liability and device status when it's put away. We provided you with

003a physical copy um that was included in the backup of the options language you'll see in the coming slides. This document includes the original language as initially proposed in the draft policy that we saw in March. As a result of our conversation today, we will bring you revised draft policy language at next week's policy committee meeting on April 29th one to three at this very same time. All right. Thank you, Dr. There are no questions. We'll go ahead and dive in. Any questions from the board? All right. Please proceed. Great. So the first um topic we want to address is what do we mean by emergency situation? Um if we look at um the Senate's um proposed bill for cell phones they mentioned for use in the event of emergency and the draft policy that

004we gave you which was built on a schoolboard association model policy also uses the in the event of an emergency language but that's pretty broad um and can be subjective. So um our initial plan was to bring you two options. The first is to define an emergency as imminent physical danger. So you will see where we have added in blue as we typically do um for policy that an emergency is a situation involving imminent physical danger that requires immediate communication. We could also go with option B which empowers staff to determine the need. And that um option school staff may in their discretion authorize brief use of a wireless communication device if there is a reasonable and legitimate need to communicate with someone outside the school during the instructional day. Students must ask for permission

005in advance and must honor any specific directions from staff regarding the duration or specific time of day for any such authorized use. And so, Dr. Crane, I know there are a couple of these decision points that we need to make. Would you prefer we go through each one individually and talk about it before moving to the next one? I'm my thought was we would spend four or five minutes per. You could we could have some discussion. and you can tell me which way you're leaning and then we will use that to if you if you prefer that we go through all the options first and then come back we can do that. No, my my thought was maybe let's talk about each one in isolation. It might be a little more efficient and then that

006way we can manage our time better. Miss Mahassy. Um, I like the flexibility that option B has, I think, um, than asking staff to have an R&D related to what that may look like or what that could be or for different schools because I think like yes, there's an emergency and we think of, you know, if there's, for example, a lockdown or if school is closed for some reason and kids have to go home early, but we know that there are some kids that may not have a health plan or an IEP, but maybe need a conversation with a parent or um I think being flexible for for me allows that to happen and to meet individual student needs that may not fit within a 504 and I thank you and and and I I

007agree with that. I think you know the the task we had defining emergency so we couldn't have um debate or discussion or conflict over what is an emergency gives us two paths. One is to for us to define it or the other to give staff the authority to define it but that still then puts it in the authority of staff to resolve it. And so let's say it's not a situation involving danger to the student but maybe it's a family member who's in you immediate sickness or peril. We could come up with a lot of excusable situations. Mr. Hershey, what do you think? Um, well, I have of course cross referenced Fairfax County Public Schools as I did initially and they use language um unless there is a medical necessity or emergency. Do we have

008medical necessity anywhere in this? No, I would because physical or I wouldn't use imminent physical danger. I think it's very narrow but um they use u medical necessity for emergency. Yes. Sw it. So I think I just want a little clarity around the school staff. Um and the reason why I raised that is because thinking of it's to keep distraction out of the classroom. We don't want teachers having to take away from teaching and learning to Yeah, I just feel like it's a little I I just want to see that flesh out a little bit more. But I am in favor towards option B. Um but I think a lot of this is again we we change this we've said this many times it's about changing human behaviors and so although we have a policy

009it's up to parents to buy in and to honor that policy as well. So, Pastor Swans, if I can uh follow up with with a question to you, you know, where we talk about like consistency from classroom to classroom versus flexibility, would you see this as a decision that maybe an administrator should make and it might vary from like grade like grade level to grade level or school to school? Right. Well, I'm only looking at from the high school. I mean, that's where I would really see a lot of that, you know, discretion being needed. I also do think to that point, chair heard, that if I'm teaching and I'm giving that that uh, you know, honoring those requests and Miss Baffy is the other teacher, that may not be as strict. So, I I

010want to make sure there is still some consistency and you're not seeing that one teacher's doing one thing and another teacher is not. So, if the policy is going to be there, let's make sure that it's consistent, not just from all 198 schools, but all of our teachers as well and administrators. I support that as well, Miss Gord. Yeah, I I um like uh Miss Mappy said, I do support um the second option, option B, because it does allow for a lot of, you know, flexibility. Um and it specifically names school staff and students at the at the center of the decision-m. Um I I would like to see some like guidelines or examples around reasonable and legitimate need, like what are reasonable and legitimate needs? And even if they are not guidelines examples that

011could be something perhaps that they could develop in rules and procedures. It could be part of a student handbook or communication with parents so at the beginning of the year everyone has consistent expectation about or information about those expectations. Okay. So the discussion that I've heard thus far um is that most folks favor option B. Um but there are some questions still around um consistency. So that if you leave your uniform at home and your away game leaves at two and you know you're have a parent or an older sibling there, one teacher says guess you're not going to the away game then. And another teacher says well you call your brother. We want consistency. Um, and what is reasonable and legitimate need there. Does the missing uniform at home qualify as legitimate and reasonable

012need or no? So, that's what I heard here. So, I Okay, I will take those notes and if there's nothing further, we'll move on to the next. I Is there anything further, Miss Mathy? Yeah. I I like um I and this is my middle school hat, right? Like that teacher to teacher, then you know who to go to. So um whether it's an administrator approving it or even a school counselor if there's a need to call um cuz someone's not answering the school phone because they don't know the number. Um but yeah, maybe a school administrator or counselor and then taking that burden off of the classroom teacher. Um Dr. Crane, is that this is language that is very similar to what Winston Salem forite uses. Okay. Wonderful. Thank you. All right. Unless there's further

013comment, we'll move to the next uh next decision point. The next decision point is about confiscation. Um, and we've given you um two options. The first uh the existing language that we provided for you just mentioned that confiscation was possible but we didn't spell out how to do that. So here we've given you option A and I we didn't have quite enough room on the slide to get all of option A there. It was provided to us um by Neil Rainey, our attorney who works with us on our polic many of our policy issues that gives sort of a three rules or three sorry I was listening to our three tests for whether or not you you know you would confiscate um and then in general a confiscated device should be returned um at the

014end of the class. Uh however, it could be held until the end of the day and if there's a pattern um and with notification, it could be held for a parent or guardian to pick it up um instead of return back to the student. Option B is a site decision. So each school administration shall specify a written and consistently implemented rule regarding the temporary confiscation of student devices. The rule shall address repeated offenses and specify whether and when a device may be held for pickup by the parent or guardian. As you might imagine, there are lots of different takes on this and in varying policy language out there across the state and across the nation. Some are very very explicit and specific and some are more general. All right. Um sorry we have a couple

015members who are watching remotely and we're getting some feedback from them. Um board members between the two the two options A and B what are your thoughts? So this time we'll start with uh Mr. Arshi the one. Um I I prefer A. I don't want to add more work to each school individual school and um we are school district not a district of individual schools. And I know there's some stuff that philosophy may not apply to, but I I'd like to just see consistent rules and lack of better word of punishment or discipline from every because the schools are going to know when they're different immediately and I think that makes it harder on staff to enforce. Thank you, M. Mafy. I also prefer option A because I think then it is a district policy

016and this is where you know your teachers or administrators can say this is the district policy. Um and sometimes the district in that situation has to be the bad guy. Um, I do want to highlight, um, one of the teachers in my district, uh, if there is a phone going off in her class, um, and it is not silent or is out when it shouldn't be, she will hand that student a lunch bag, a brown paper lunch bag from way back when, have the student put it in the lunch bag and seal it with a staple and put it on their desk so that she is not liable for that breaking. I know that that involves the purchase of lunch bags and staples. Um, but I thought that that was also a great idea especially

017because we are talking about expensive devices and I know the next part is liability but um just as a way for the point can be made without the student losing possession of the device. I think we coming around in this court. Do you have any comment? Um I am leaning more toward A. However, I do want to say about option B of it being a sitebased. I don't want it to go lost upon us that there are many many schools who already have policies in place that are working very well. Um, I know I can speak for one of my schools, North Garner, has has a great policy that they have in place. Um, though I'm leaning more towards a I do want I do want to highlight that there are schools that have really

018great guidelines already in place. Um, in that sense, I do support Swanson. Any thoughts? I mean, I I agree with both option A and option B, but I keep reminding myself if the policies to be consistent throughout all the schools, I'm more inclined to go with with option A. Um, because again, we eliminate the the piece of some schools doing it, some schools doing things differently. Um, but I also know it's also up to whatever they do on Jones Street may tie our hands even more and we may have to switch up, you know, tighten our language a little bit more. But I I do think as it's one of those pieces, but I would also like to know if a student has, you know, let's say that I'm the student, I've had my phone

019out, I'm doing something, taking a brain break or whatnot. um should I don't want students to be overly penalized for these pieces because again our our role is to keep kids in school so teaching and learning can happen but I also understand that there has to be some form of consequences um but again I don't think those consequences should be too severe at the same time just a reminder these confiscation um parameters are outside of uh discipline like this. We still have our discipline policy 4309 that is still in place about infractions regarding electronic devices. this is sort of in addition to that and maybe before we get to that got repeated, you know, so right, I can just see some teachers using this as a way of, you know, let's expedite the process. Let's

020get little Johnny out of here and so I'm just going to do So that's the piece that gives me a little pause and concern about this. And so again, I think it's going to take a lot of training, not just for students, but for teachers as well. Um, and I I like the example that Miss Mafy provided with the confiscation piece because again I I when I told I rarely took cell phones because again I didn't want to be liable if your phone was already broke and Mr. Swanson has your phone now I'm liable for it. So I I think the compensation piece I I think we may need to flesh out a little bit more with some great R&Ps so teachers can understand what they what the capacity and I I think that's a

021very good point because when what we're looking at is removal of the phone removal of the distraction there might be other ways to accomplish that and so the ability to have some flexibility like you given your example a way to be open to that should be preserved if we can and it takes away I mean because it's still there. It takes away the anxiety or the the amplification of an issue. If a student is worried that something may be happening at home or, you know, losing that device or having to have a confrontation in order to get it back, that can escalate a situation. Whereas, if it's there, there they see it. which is why I think it's, you know, again, I I know we're talking about budget later and brown bags have a cost,

022but but but still and this will flow directly into the next topic. Yeah. Um but is there any last points on confiscation? I mean, it's not really a comment also keep in mind. We also know so many students may have a cell phone, but it may not work. a lot of our students are able to communicate because of the Wi-Fi and so that may be an opportunity for students who are trying to get connected as well. So I do think there's a lot of parameters. Um and again I I think this is a policy that's going to need a lot of massaging. Um once it's repassed I'm sure we're going have to come back and do updates because it's new. But I also don't want to I just don't want that piece to be overlooked

023as well. And you know, let let's be clear, the state government, the North Carolina House and Senate are both rapidly working on enacting law that will require us to have a restricted policy. And so what we're trying to do is come up with the best possible policy given the parameters we've seen. And so we may not have it perfect, but to build in that flexibility, but also have consistency where we need it will be the best policy I think we can put forward. Um, so let's talk about the children. I'll just add that this is about uh expectations for teachers as you talked about. Uh, and so we um that'll always be up to the administration to make sure that we're not doing those kinds of things to put students um uh in a position

024where we're jumping on top of it. Um, I also like the option A that you all consider because to me it does set up the guidelines for a school so that everybody can be operating within the same lanes and there'll still be things that they can do from a sitebased decision, but they have the lanes in which to operate and I think that'll be good. So, if we're if we're ready, let's talk about liability. Um, and I'll let Dr. crane talk about the two options although I have um a question before you get too far in the discussion I'll ask after you present them. Sure. So our current language is option A that we're not liable um and option we're not liable for theft, loss or damage of such devices that they are the devices

025are students are personally and solely responsible for the security of those devices. Option B starts with that very same language but adds on the end um the school system is not responsible for the theft, loss or damage of such devices unless they are lost or damaged while damaged while confiscated. There are some districts who have who who have said uh you know we're not responsible even if something happens while it's confiscated. Right. Um and I I will um do Neil proud to remind that the the word liable here is actionable liability. So there there is negligence for which we would be actually responsible for action could be taken against us for that negligence. And and that was sort of where my question I wanted to go before we got too deep into the discussion. you

026know, we can't necessarily overturn civil law just by a policy, right? Right. Um, we can have a policy that uses language about students assume risk to the phone by bringing a phone or electronic device to school and putting out some of those elements, you know, for determining liability into the policy like assumption of risk. But I think we would have to go with option B. I don't know that we can wave liability as broadly as a does. I'll defer to council on that and to Dr. Crane your research on it, but that's one that kind of troubled me when I looked at the slides. I want I'd like to talk to Neil about option B. I'm not I mean I'm not really sure there's or I I guess the school system honestly what's happening here

027from what I can tell is the school system would be accepting liability in a situation in which they otherwise probably would not be liable to in B right because I think we'd otherwise have immunity against liability if something were to happen and this may be opening the door to accept liability for which we might not otherwise have but I'd be happy to talk to Neil about option B if this is the direction that the board is waiting. So help me out with that because the option that would be shielded from liability is that I mean is that a sovereign immunity thing because wouldn't that be waved by our purchase of insurance? Well, yeah, if you had insurance Yeah. and would generally do not not for you may not. I I mean I don't know whether

028you would have insurance for these actions. I mean, I guess you might. Okay. Um, but yeah, I will I'll talk to Neil just to make sure I understand what it is. It just might be you. We can still discuss it, but we might need more legal advice on it before making the final decision. Any other thoughts on it? But I mean, definitely we want to protect staff from any liability that could occur to them for following a policy and doing as directed by the district. Miss, is this coming likely to our next board meeting for first reading? This this will this will be brought to next week's policy committee meeting. Okay. So, we'll have an answer by then then. Okay. Yeah, I'll talk to you. Okay. Thank you. I'll bring the revised lang. Appreciate it.

029Thank you, Dr. K. All right. And the the last item is a consideration that we wrote um both options in. We just kind of left them with slashes, forward slashes in the in the policy language. Option A and option B. Option A is off and put away and option B is silent and put away. Um I thought it might be helpful just to throw out some considerations for each position. um for off and put away location services are off if your phone is off. Um you can't do the find my or see anybody on my 360 or something like that if the phone is off. Um silent and put away. However, I learned from Allison Reed who's in the room now that the correct phrase after policy committee is dependent devices, headphones, uh smartwatches, etc.,

030etc. Anything that is wirelessly connected to your phone, those are called dependent devices can be connected and active while your phone is on silent. So headphones, earbuds, smartwatches, smart glasses, Bluetooth file sharing like AirDrop and Amrop which is the Android coral area I understand and notifications with the buzzing and the vibrating. I know it's been an adjustment getting used to my Apple Watch um which does that and I have no idea how much it happens. Um so those are considerations for silent and put away. I will tell you that of the two pieces of legislation that are in consideration, the Senate bill says um that the wireless device is turned off during instructional time at a at a minimum unless through exceptions. Um but the House bill does not address it. And I understand the

031Senate both have made crossover. both have been passed on first reading in each chamber and the Senate's policy is in their budget which was released last week. Um so just Dr. Crane if you want to explain that last one a little more I'm happy to about the significance of it being in the budget. I'm not aware of the significance of it being in the budget but I'm I know that it's in the budget. often often times with legislation if there are items in controversy sometimes one chamber or the other will put their version of it into the budget knowing that the legislature will have to adopt some budget before they get to go home. So by seeing the Senate put this provision in their budget if you have to choose between the two it just

032shows they're going to fight for that language versus the House language. Still don't know how it'll come out ultimately, but that's sort of the forecast or the projection. We can see if that makes a difference in the language you want to adopt. Mr. Hershey, I would favor silence and put away. I think it's totally unreasonable to try to enforce or check or whatever. No, kids are just going to put on silent and put away anyways when they're supposed to. Most of them are not going to turn it off. And we're not checking 16. Wow. We're not checking 100,000 cell phones every day to ensure they're off. That would be a ridiculous waste of time. Other thoughts, Gordon? Yes. I I too um support the silent the silent and put away. Um while I completely support

033um supporting a policy that prevents distractions and uh from instruction. I also want to say that the cell phone also is used to make sure that we are um developing 21st century learners. Um there are several educators who use the cell phone for for instruction. Um, and when you think about having it off and put away, when we go back to those emergencies, god forbid if something happens, trying to fumble and turn the phone back on, that's too much of a a time risk in my opinion. Other thoughts, Miss Caulfield? Um, I was also like the option B for the silence and put it away, but I wanted to ask you know, do we need to add the AirPods because I know that's probably something that we all assume is in that language. Earbuds is

034covered by AirPods. Okay. Yeah, I just was curious about that language. Okay. Okay. Before Yeah, we go back. I'll give you the last word on it. That's that's your response. Yeah. I think option B at the note that I had wrote and showed to Chair Hagerty was maybe as a definition around put away. Um because again this is new. This is again trying to change human behavior. And so putting away a phone could mean simply sliding it under your leg. It's away. It's silent. However, I do think there, you know, I I would love to see a little bit more maybe in the R&P what that looks like or in the student code of conduct so it's very clear um for parents and for students to understand what that means. Okay. Um but I will

035tell you that of the districts that we looked at for option A and option B often put away is the position held by Winston Salem for side Charlotte Mech Cabaris Union and North those are all North Carolina and and Montgomery County Maryland silent and put away is held by Fairfax County Virginia Unified and Hillsboro County Florida. So, up to this point, we've had a lot of consensus and a lot of agreement. Um, I don't want to throw a bomb into that, but Mr. Swanson, Vice Swanson has got me thinking. So, I want to bring up this concern, see what you all think about it, and then we'll let people go back who have additional comments. So, understanding and appreciating everything that's been said about option B and to Mr. Vice Swanson's point about the definition

036of putting away. We know that most of these devices can be used and accessed while put away. And for me, if the whole purpose of the policy is to avoid distraction and to avoid use of the device, then simply putting it away by itself doesn't necessarily stop that. So the item about location services I think is persuasive to me and what you all have said around the table is persuasive to me. But how do we address that issue of use? Not where the phone is, but is it something as simple as just having in the policy a statement that use of the device is prohibited during this time and it is silent and put away? Miss Mathy. So I think we answer our own question in the draft policy because the policy says wireless communication

037devices and it says for the purpose of this policy wireless communication devices are any portable devices that have the capability to provide voice messaging or other data communication between two or more parties. Such devices may include cellular telephones and similar devices, smartphones, smartwatches, smart glasses, tablet computers, laptop computers, gaming devices. And so really what I think um the bigger piece is going to be is the headphones and and earbuds because the phone or the watch and the um smart glasses are kind of covered by those pieces. And I don't know of headphones that have airdrop capabilities, but maybe they do now. I don't know. Or you mind just giving somebody an idea? Maybe maybe one of our entrepreneurial students will figure that out. Miss Mr. Hershey. So I'll read this language. Uh phone accessories are

038also to be silenced and away when phone use is prohibited. Smart watches that serve a dual purpose may be worn, but the phone features texting and internet viewing and calls are to be off when phone use is prohibited. Everyone knows where I got Fairfax County. Fairfax County. I think that I mean I I like the idea of option A. I think option B allows for more flexibility and is just more realistic for enforcement and it's easier to say put that away. um as opposed to checking to make sure a device is quiet. But if you hear a buzz and it's in a backpack, you know, we aren't asking our educators to be on high alert if they hear somebody's phone buzzing in in a cubby or, you know, on the floor if it's put away.

039It's not ideal. I know that it's a lot. Um, but I think the point is to make sure we're educating students and I would hope that if it becomes excessive and we know it's from one kid, then a conversation can be had versus a Yeah. So for for me again I can see a lot of family, student and parent concerns about the benefits of like passive access, right? that the location services, for example, having the location service on doesn't impair the students ability to pay attention in class or anything like that. So, I have no problem with with keeping that permitted. It just is and maybe it's not here with device status, but maybe it's more if we're talking about student activity that we're just really clear that use of the device is prohibited more

040so than than where the device is. I'm perfectly okay with option B so long as we do have it stated that like use in the classroom, you know, unless directed by the teacher or some other instructional time is prohibited. So, I think we can take care of my concern so long as we have clear language on that other side. Does that make sense? And I like the language that Mr. Hershey brought up. Yeah. From his second favorite school district. I I grew up there, so I'm allowed to like that one. Fair enough. Further further comment, that's just Swanson. I mean, I'm definitely in favor of, but again, if the Senate's version passes, then that's the law of delay at this point. So, I just want to throw that out there so there's no contradictions. We

041put out our preference and then see what happens. Is everyone good with that? Y All right, Dr. Craig. So, we will see you next week at policy committee on April 29th. Um, I've already mentioned um House Bill 87, Senate Bill 55. Um on April 7th, Governor Stein um announced his council for student safety and well-being. Their first issue that was announced on April 7th, their first meeting was on April 14th. And their first issue, their first priority is best practices for school systems to implement cell phone free policies. So Dr. Crane, if I I could for a moment, I'd like to ask the rest of the board, you know, we're developing our own policy, but for the u the organization that Dr. Ukraine just mentioned if they're actually putting together best practices, how would you

042feel about asking staff to forward some potential concerns to the state as as they work on state policy, particularly this issue around liability is one that concerns me and that's one the state could address by law to protect our staff that might be a little more effective than if we just tried to do it internally. What do you all think? Is that flesher Swanson? So, it's very fitting that the co-chair is the is a member of the Wake delegation who I shared all these concerns with thus far. Um, and I know at that press conference it was indicated that they will, you know, give out sample policies, but it's also up to district. I do think if you know we can share our policies and get feedback and also to your point share those but

043I do think it's helpful that we have someone here in Wake County that can be close enough to give us some uh insight as as well. So it's not fallen on deaf ears. It has not. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? All right, Dr. Crane. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right, we'll move on to our next topic on the agenda, which I know is um I'm not even going to bother making up a joke. It's an update on migration to Oracle release 12.2 and the twice per month pay project. I just go that's why all the cameras are here. This is what they wanted to call it. my flag. [Music] We still want to semianual. All right. Thank you, Mr. Medulla. I see you have your staff here. Um, are you presenting or

044is someone else presenting? No. Uh, I will be doing a little bit of intro and then Jeff and David. All right. Thank you. Anytime that you're ready to present. Good afternoon, uh, board chair Haggedy, board members, Dr. Taylor. Thank you for the opportunity to talk about the Oracle ERP update. Uh as you all know this is pretty significant lift last year. We want to basically give everybody an update about what we have done some of the lessons we have learned out of that exercise. Also talk about what is that we have done with phase one of the five a month payroll. So just a little bit of history and background uh just to kind of jump. We use Oracle ERP in Bay County Public Schools. It's about 25 years old. We definitely put on new

045tires and put a new coat of paint last year. Uh but again, um ERP stands for enterprise resource planning. Uh it's any ERP for a large organization. It's a lifeblood for the business operations, right? So we use the Oracle ERP on the human resources side. uh it manages all the employee information, the payroll, the benefits, the time and attendance, the employee self-service, the manager self service and everything. And on the financial side, um it takes care of the financial reporting, the general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, fixed assets and cash. Pretty significant system for the business operations, right? Um and uh just a reflection about where we were last year this time when we spoke about the whole upgrade and why we have to do that. I just want to kind of uh talk about

046and kind of set a baseline about where we were last year. So obviously um the big thing was we were paying Oracle about $250,000 on an annual basis because we were operating a I guess end of life Oracle system to gain that additional support. We're paying Oracle $250,000 every year and we did that for 4 years. So that's almost a million dollars. So we don't have to do that anymore. We're done. Right. So, and the operational compliance risk obviously when you're operating a end of life system or a software um obviously we looking at payroll delays it can happen anytime right um but again when you're operating end of life software you cannot upgrade the system there's a lot of limitation the third party software do not work the way you want to work but

047also uh you know had a really old hardware so that could have crashed anytime, right? So, uh there was a lot of risk which were involved. So, it was a high priority project. It was a big rock last year. Um so, we we actually crossed that bridge, but we wanted to go and upgrade. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Jeff to talk about the 12.2 upgrade. Go ahead. Thank you, Sashi. Well, we did in fact upgrade to 12.2 from 121. And like Sashi said, we put new tires and paint. I think it was a little bit more than that. Uh we had all new storage, all new servers which encompassed new operating systems. Everything's new including the cables which is completely new install. Uh and we did in fact hit our target

048of going live January 1. Um we met all of the business technical objectives with this upgrade, all of them. Um we are currently now in what we call stabilizing period. So we're stabilizing the system. Um and we we are in a good place. it is it is quite stable and a lot of tweaking that's needed has already taken place. Uh what worked um it was a very successful transition. Um it was I think it's worth noting this this was a tremendous collaborative effort not just tech services all departments the entire district really came to this transition to this new upgrade and really worked together quite well. It was really uh everybody wants to be on a winning team. We were a winning team to get to the finish line. So, tremendous collaboration. Through that collaboration,

049it was rigorous testing. Tremendous amount of testing. And you're not just testing to see if things work. You're trying to break it. The 10 things you have to do every day. You do those 10 things, but you do the 10 things you don't do. So, there was a tremendous amount of testing to make sure to ensure that the system was ready to go. We also implemented a mature project management. In the past, we would we would certainly have a structure, but this methodology that we utilized here was very robust. We had testing scripts. We we really made sure that all the metrics were tracked. We utilized a new tool to do so as well. And this also allowed for communication and stakeholder engagement. The scoreboard is how I like to refer to it. You always

050want to know what the score is in the game. In a project, it's always good to be able to go somewhere to see where you are in the project and where you need to go. Lessons learned. So, when we went live, we did have a couple of bumps as expected. We had some printing issues. Now, we did upgrade, but we are still on an antiquated platform and printing services uh are are are some I say antiquated, but they are old. It's an old plugin method method that we use. And we did have some tweaking and some issues with printing optimizations of performance. Also to be expected, there needed to be some tweaking on the physical resources of the environment. Add a little bit of memory here, add some more storage here, those types of things.

051Operational constraints, limited resources. Uh we we didn't add any physical uh full-time employees to this job. We did everything that in house with the personnel that we had. Also, we had a lot of parallel efforts that was going on. We'll get to twice a month pay in a minute, but that was another significant amount of work at the exact same time with the exact same resources. So, the resolutions uh that implemented, we were able to fix the printing issues. We had a couple of navigational issues when we went live and we were able to tweak the performance as well. Twice month pay also successful. We also met the go live date of January. Uh some of the payroll metrics on that first payroll uh there was roughly 3390 in that payroll run that first one

052and approximately 49 had payroll errors in their actual pay. That represents approximately 1.4% of that that were actually processed. As the errors were identified, we quickly again collaboratively from tech services, accounting, compensation services, worked to mitigate those, make sure that everybody was communicated if you had an error and we remedied those in the very next payroll. A lot of the adjustments that needed to take place was keying. So, the frequency of when you had to key something has changed. So, the game has changed a little bit when you have to have everything completed. and some of the formulas in Oracle that actually fire the payroll had to be adjusted as well. There's a lot of scenarios when you have 3,000 people. There's a lot of scenarios where the each of those individuals in terms of

053the way they're configured and get and how they get paid and some of the formulas had to be tweaked as well. We did we did that as well. So, additional validations have been put into place to help with the validating the bay, making sure here at Wake County, we want to pay everybody 100% right. There's no measure to have a penny off. So, we always take the opportunities to make sure everything's 100% right. Um, and then we get to phase two. Yeah. So, I'm going to take the last couple slides to talk about phase two and our plans. Um, so just to clarify and confirm who was in phase one, who is in phase two? Phase one included our bus drivers, our safety assistants and transportation, our schoolbased uh CMS staff, and we also included

054our substitute teachers, not the permanent sub, but just a true substitute teacher. So now, who is in phase two? Let me start by saying who's not in phase two. Our certified staff are not in phase two. State law says we cannot pay them twice a month. We have to pay them once a month. School administrators are not in phase two. Central office administrators are not in phase two. And central techband employees are not in phase two. Well, then who is remaining in phase two? It's all the other graded class 5 positions that go from step 17 all the way through 30 other than those that were in phase one. Um the initial target date set for phase 2 was to go live July 1st of this calendar year. Um some lessons learned as it applies

055to phase two from phase one. Well, as we anticipated, additional staff time was required to enter um pay. Whether you're entering a 40 into a system or a 20 into a system, it takes the same amount of time. If you're doing it twice a month, it's taking twice as much effort. Um once we get our online time entry which is a module for Oracle up and live that will mitigate the impact of keeping it twice a month but it won't make it go away because proofing of it and checking if it still has to take place and take place twice a month instead of once a month. Our target to have that online is the fall of this calendar year. And the last two bullets you see up there, seller role, alignment and core oracle

056configuration completed. Those are things that our tech services, HR and compensation services have to keep our eyes on to keep things going accurately for both phase one and phase 2, both transition and ongoing. So, a couple additional considerations for phase two. Uh, as we look at that implementation twice a month, we now know that we have a July 1 go live date for our student information system. I should say our new student information system that we're migrating to infinite campus. And we do anticipate a learning curve will be in place for all users of this including front office staff, school administration, teachers and central office staff primarily tech services and academics. And also July is the time that our year round schools are beginning their new school year. So if we go to the next

057slide and the last slide, as a result of the lessons learned, the need to go live with infinite campus on July one and our year- round schools just beginning the new year, we're recommending that we postpone the live data phase 2 until the fall of 2025, just a few months. This will give the schoolbased and centrally based staff an opportunity to work through the learning curve of infinite campus. we hope um gets the other side of the opening of the new school year for both our year round modified and traditional schools um and getting our online time entry live. And just one last note, in an effort to get feedback from our phase one staff and the bus driver safety system and CNS and the schools, we recently sent them a short survey. I think

058there's three or four questions seeking feedback back from them on how they felt implementation of the twice a month pay went and some related questions including has it assisted them in what we were desiring to do and once we have the feedback from that we will share it with the board we'll also use it to inform our implementation of phase two all right questions for the board sorry questions from the Mr. Hershey. Excellent work. Um, I was thinking uh as you all have been doing this that we hear a lot in the news at the federal level about upgrading technology and all this. You know, there's a lot of stuff I don't like going on up there, but they did talk about that and people are not aware that we have actually been doing that

059work prior to what's happening at that level. So, I really want to commend you all. I think it this is great work. Um I do support the delay in the phase two. My question around that is you have the online time entry targeted for fall and then phase two right after that. Are we condensing too much where we should kind of build an expectation? Well, and I'll speak Shasha and Jeff. Um our thought is I think on the the the biggest concern is not going live online time entry. I think the biggest challenge with a little bit of unknown is what this transition to infinite campus is going to be and how much gez are we really moving from offices of the schools for the school administrators for school for the teachers and then for

060support staff back here. Yeah. And I'll add uh salary adjustments, what we call salary roll. Uh not knowing exactly when we're going to actually process that. That's a a pretty significant variable. You don't want to do both at the same time or in the same pay period. So it can go either after or before once we know that target. So if and if I could add and it was not part of the formal presentation. And it was my thought that as the summer goes on, we come back to the board with an update on how Infinite Campus implementation is going to be going because the year round school is going to start using it in July. We're not going to need to wait for traditional to open up and also give a better sense of

061then how we're looking for the the lineup of the online time entry and then ultimately the twice. That's what I was getting. Yeah. So, two two updates. on that one is May 20th I think the you know work session we are bringing a update on internet campus to make sure that board is aware of what is happening there's a heavy lift which is happening right now as we speak so we want to make sure the board is aware of what's happening going back to the time piece there are two pieces one is the electronic absence management right even till today we are doing our leave sheets in a p piece of paper we're going to make it everything electronic meaning staff has can use the system electronically submitted it to us to the approval for

062approval and automatically enters the plan fees and then the digital time entry piece. So both of the things I think is going to make a significant um improvement from the efficiency point they answer my question. Okay. Yeah. Thank you Miss Mafy. Yeah. Thank you. Um I'm going to work backwards um with the learning management system question. And I know we have the update coming out May 20th, but um as someone who has used car school for many many years um as a parent and prior to that um I know that July 1st, especially for our year- round families, is coming. Um and I'm glad Lisa's here. What is the communication plan for parents to know what's coming and how to um utilize Infamous Campus? I know they don't have access to it yet, but you

063know, are we power school is going away. Get ready for a new system. I'm pointing to Sarah. Sarah's got it. Okay. So, we've been working through this probably starting before January um putting together a plan by audience. We also um have already started looking at the resources that EPI provided school districts as a part of phase one to give to parents to help them navigate the new space and the new platform. Um I talked to a couple principles just to get a false check on like are they already getting questions? Are parents aware? So, we're working to really time those comms closer to when parents are going to be able to log in and see so we don't have to tell them here's what you're doing. Um, so we're we do have things planned to

064roll out to parents and community um in the coming months as we get closer to the July go live. And then will parent access to infinite campus and I promise this is my last infinite campus question require I think in order to get power school access I needed like a notary is that still like to prove I was who I was or you still have that verification then you will also get generated number okay to make sure that it's secure. So I wouldn't get that until the school year began. I can't frontload that. It will be prior to that. We just don't know exactly when I can wait till May on that one. Um and then David, you had mentioned the emails sent out to our um subs uh our bus personnel and our um

065CNS staff. Is that solely through email that or is there like a flyer with like a website? Um similar survey prior. Okay. did the same survey with this group and the potential phase 2 group in March of last year. We did a flyer. Um we work we also worked really closely with supervisors of those staff to say, "Hey, this is coming. Can you help us encourage our folks, show them the flyer, give them the QR code?" This time around for this survey, we used a different survey platform, which we're super excited about because it automatically translates for those employees that may not have English as their first language to have those employees. Um, and so yes, all the things. So, they can scan it with their phones. Um, it's accessible, easy to navigate. Um, and

066if we're going through the different channels to make sure that as many staff in that group as possible and give us their feedback. Thank you so much. Thank you, M. Heavy. Other questions for staff? Vice Chair Swanson. Yes. Um, thank you so much for these updates and I know it was a lot of work that went into this. I'm very appreciative of that. Um, my question is very simple. Um, those employees that are in phase 2, are they able to opt out of bimonthly pay if they choose to? That's a loaded question. I think uh it's a one-way street unfortunately you know uh because if we give it out it's going to be a operational nightmare. Um so our condition would be to make sure everybody's a part of that. It it really is everyone

067either maintaining access monthly or everyone in that phase 2 group moving to twice a month. All right. Any other questions? Well, let me say you saw the can the cameras all immediately vacate turned off the cell phones to this. But this was an important topic. We really appreciate your work updating us on this pay issue that staff has been very concerned about and especially you know the issue with the Oracle migration. We talk all the time about where we can find operational efficiency and this was one area that you know had continued to be a recurring issue for us and we're we're we're very satisfied and very proud of the work done on this. So thank you for that and thank you for the updates. All right. All right. And now we'll turn to the

068last item on our work session agenda, the budget budget work session on the proposed 202526 operating budget. Um, Mr. Nether will stay at the table and we'll invite Terry Kinsey up. the mountain. Thank you. Okay. Um this is your uh second formal budget work session discussing the proposed operating budget for year 2025 2026. Um as needed, you've got one more work session scheduled a week from today from the finance committee meeting. So today, um, we're going to review board member questions and staff responses that have been submitted since your last meeting two weeks ago. We're going to provide you some options to the proposed budget, the superintendent's proposed budget based upon feedback we've heard from the board thus far, and then turn it over to the board for any ongoing discussion. And then after that,

069we'll confirm what your next steps are between now and the board adopting a proposed budget. So with that, and we're not going to put it up here, but I will let the public to know the Q&A that we're going to start reviewing verbally. It's posted online. It's in assembly. Um or members in here that want to look at it, you can pull it up visually. And Miss Kimy, can I ask you to um begin reviewing that? Sure. So the first question asked that if we were to reduce the funding for the restart schools from 5 million to 40 million and if we were to decrease the supplies budget for schools another $5 from $60 to $55, would that be enough to cover the $2.5 million needed to reinstate the employer contribution for dental? Um and

070it would not be because those two adjustments would be $1.8 million. So it would be short of the 2.5 million deal. The next question is will the reduction in the clerical staff impact any restart or title one schools? So the clerical formula changes at middle and high school um do impact four schools that are title one or restart. East Wakeake High School is title one. Nightdale High School is title one and restart. South Garner is title one. And Southeast Raleigh is title one and restart. The next question, do we have 14 administrative leadership positions in technology? What would be the national average for leadership roles of this department for our size? Is this due to the amount of Chromebooks and hotspots that we've given to each staff and every student? Would it be possible to

071conserve devices for students in need only um and then have classroom devices and classrooms for students to use? What type savings could that bring? Um, our technology services division currently has four senior director positions and 11 directors. The administrative leadership um, positions in technology are below the typical range for school districts that serve over 150,000 students. Large districts of our size usually have 20 to 25 leadership roles. Orange County Public Schools in Florida with 209,000 students has 20 to 25 leadership roles. Charlotte Meccan, North Carolina with about 140,000 students has 17 to 20. Dallas, Texas has about 139,000 students and 18 to 22 leadership roles. Um these figures reflect the broader staffing needed to manage infrastructure, cyber security, instructional tech, data systems, and support services. The next question is, when do we expect to refresh

072the Chromebook devices that were handed out to staff and students in 2020? Um, Wake County School System is currently developing a sustainable technology strategy to ensure long-term effectiveness of our investments. A recent survey gathered from families and community on district issued devices. All options will be reviewed and feedback will guide formal recommendations to be presented to the board soon. In 2020, Chromebooks were distributed exclusively to students as part of a large-scale one-to-one initiative. Staff did not receive Chromebooks. Given the four to five year life cycle of Chromebooks, we have proactively begun the refresh cycle to ensure students have access to reliable technology. The current refresh targets students in grades three, six, and 9. Devices collected from this process are evaluated and repurposed as appropriate. Is this a possible savings option? And if so, what would

073that savings be? And it's about outdated software. We're executing a multi-year technology plan to modernize the infrastructure and systems our students and staff rely on every day. Districtwide effort includes major upgrades to both school-based and central systems. Aim at streamlining options operations, cutting cost, and enhancing service delivery delivery by adopting scalable modern solutions including AI powered tools. for transforming how we support teaching, learning, and district operations. Recent progress includes upgrades to core business systems, as you just heard. There we go. Um, and upcoming launches of business intelligent platforms, and invoice automation, a new student information system, digital absence and time management, along with several infrastructure and security enhancements. It's more than a tech refresh. It's a strategic investment in a stronger, more agile, and future ready school system. As we budget for technology, is this

074accurate that we've disposed of 80,000 Chromebooks in the last three years? We currently have an inventory of retired or damaged Chromebooks that are pending further action, including potential disposal, repair, or redeployment. At this time, the exact number of units designated for disposal has not been finalized. Our primary objective is to maximize the usability of the devices in support of student learning. Whenever possible, we aim to repair the Chromebooks and return them to circulation for student use. In cases where full repair is not feasible, we evaluate parts that we could potentially harvest. Um, cannibalizing non-functional units to assemble operational devices that meet standards for deployment. Disposal will be considered only after all other options have been exhausted. It's important to note that our approach prioritizes reuse and recovery of hospitals. How much is our budget for

075help desk and number of staff? Is it possible to see savings with this suggestion of possibly consolidating those? Our technology services help desk has seven agents who in collaboration with technology support staff manage more than 140,000 support tickets annually across the district. We have multiple specialized help desk each equipped with staff and tools tailored to the spec specific content areas. This distributed model is designed to address the diverse and unique needs of our users. While many team members are cross-trained, achieving first call resolution often demands deep expertise across multiple systems to deliver timely and accurate support. Moving forward, we will continue to evaluate opportunities to consolidate help desk operations districtwide to identify potential cost savings and enhance c um service efficiency. Question eight, um is a concern about removing um needs and functions at the

076classroom level. Um is there a way to consolidate any of these roles? Administrative reductions cover multiple areas including contracted services, supplies and materials, workshop expenses, elimination of software applications, reductions in travel, and others. 90% of the school district's operating budget is in our schools. On a percentage basis over the past 17 years, central office has taken the majority of budget reductions. And although the central services currently represents 9% of the overall operating budget, central services represents 38% of the reductions in the superintendent's proposed budget. Do we have many positions that do not require a 40-hour work week? Could those roles be consolidated? any of the positions that we um currently have that do not require full-time work week are already part-time. Is it accurate that our budget is 53% towards teacher salaries? What is that

077dollar amount? And can we get a breakdown of the remaining 46%. So, we um are pointing you to the object code pages on pages 50 to 55 of the superintendent's proposed budget. It shows detailed breakdown of the budget within line items within salaries, benefits, purchase services, supplies, capital outlay, and transfers to charter schools. You can see actually very detailed listing of each thing. The staff budget on pages 56 to 57 shows a breakdown of months of employment by type. Looking at that data, the months of employment assigned to our schools, 183,000 months that are budgeted centrally but work in our schools every day, 27,000. So a subtotal is 211,000 months of employment or 94% of our staffing are based in schools. Central services months of employment 12,000 which is 6%. The cost of teachers and

078instructional support salaries and benefits is approximately $1.2 $2 billion or 53% of the operating budget. The cost of staff not working in schools is about 5% of the operating budget. Do we have data on national averages needed in each department for a district our size? We've researched and have not been able to identify a resource with information about staffing levels. We are currently undergoing a market competitive study to compare salaries down to the departmental level. Could you provide clarity on when we would receive data regarding a structural study regarding salaries, positions, and national averages? An RFP was issued and a company was chosen to look at the capacity of Wake County School Systems current salary structure to compete in the marketplace. We anticipate the results of that study will be in place to inform decisions

079for the 2627 budget. How many new counselors have we hired since 2016? In 201617, we allotted 3,847 school counselor months. That would roughly that'd be about 384 counselors. The school counselor a lotment to schools in 2425 was 5,259 months or about 525 positions. Um, so we've grown about 136 positions or 1,362 months. provide details about the differences between the counselor positions affected by the formula realignment and the positions to be funded in the program continuity for behavioral health support services budget item. So, um I do want to make clear that on the program continuity item in the superintendent's proposed budget, we are covering the cost that this current year was paid by the one-time federal funds from July to September. So any of the behavioral health support positions are already moved to the local budget

080and are being paid from the local budget. But the first three months of this year, some of them were paid by federal dollars. So for next year's budget, we've just got to cover that three months that was not on local dollars this year. And then we've shown you what the difference is in the formulas u for both our middle and high schools where the allotments were adjusted by the tiers of numbers of students. How much funding is included in the budget to support the move to twice monthly pay? Um and you just saw a presentation about that. There is no funding in the 2526 budget to support the move to twice monthly pay. How much additional non-federal funding, if any, was required to offset the child nutrition services deficits? So, while our child nutrition services

081budget has dropped below the required two months of operating, they still have a balance to cover cost. So, their balance is not exhausted at this time. So, at this time, no local dollars are needed, but it is something we monitor as the year progresses. How many vacancies remain in maintenance and operations? And how many of these have been open for 6 months or longer? Um, and if there are vacancies, are these in danger of being phased out? Currently, maintenance and operations has 37 vacant positions for 444 months. 20 of those or 240 months have been vacant for 6 months or longer. At this time, there's no plan to eliminate any vacant positions in maintenance and operations. Keep in mind that when we have a vacant position, it doesn't equate to budget dollars that can be

082saved um because we budget our salaries and benefits very closely to the total amount that we have hired each year. The next question um is expressing that a concern um to not be in favor of cuts to a lot of the items that affect the schools, building substitutes, counselors, social workers, nurses, dental insurance, restart aotments and maintenance. Um and a and a question about the jewel funds and if those would would be reinstated. The superintendent has made a commitment to ensure that the full amount of the vaping settlement funds will be available for use for anti- vaping initiatives over the seven-year period. Next question. For comparison, can you provide data on how the central office function has grown for the past 20 years? The district has grown significantly over the past 20 years, comparing 2004

083five to 2023 24. We moved from 132 schools to 197, 114,000 students to 160,000, 15,000 staff to 20,000 staff. Our public education, as you know, is human resource intensive. 80% of our district's budget is for staff salary and benefits. As the district has grown, there's been growth in staff and non-personnel support. Over the same 20-year period, our operating budget has grown from 800 million to 2.1 billion. Most of this increase is attributable to the increase in the number of staff to support our students in schools and the increase in non-personnel support. Inflation has been a major contributor to the increase in the non-personnel budget and the wages. Wages, employer benefit rates, utility rate increases, and the cost of support contracts are some examples. For example, in 20045, our employer matching benefit rate that the system

084pays was 5.82%. So for every dollar in salary, we had to pay an additional $582 five.82 to the state retirement system. Currently, that employer matching rate is $252% which is for every dollar we pay an additional 25 cent 25.02 cents to the state retirement system. that's grown significantly as has our employer um health insurance. To get a sense of how the central office function has grown, we can look at growth in total expenditure over the 20-year period. Schools and direct school support grew 187%. Central office grew by 72%. During the same period, the cumulative rate of inflation, the CPI was 61.1%. And that concludes the Yeah. And just a a quick comment or clarification, you may have noticed some of the questions had after the question um some statements that were italicized. Those were submitted

085by the board members submitting the questions, but they were not the question themselves. All right. Thank you, Terry. Thank you, David. So, um let me open up this discussion. Oh, go ahead. Well, we do we do have some other options we'd like to present now, unless you would like to stay with the Q&A and ask any questions about staff responses. Are there any questions about the staff responses at this time? I'd rather go get that out of the way now before we get into the discussions of the new staff options. Okay. Well, um I had some points, but not necessarily questions. Um I do think that if they're not questions, I'll save them for the end. So, okay. All right. Thank you, David. Okay. Just have a a few more um things to share with

086the board. And there are a couple options for the board consider based upon the feedback that the superintendent and his leadership team and other leadership staff have heard from the board as they've been in conversation about the proposed budget. Um, and the first option to consider would be to remove from the proposed budget the proposal to shift dental insurance coverage premium responsibility. um employees currently pay $6 per month for self for their for their own coverage for uh dental insurance. So by by taking this option, we would remove the changes to the dental insurance program included in the superintendent's budget and would maintain a $6 a month employee premium for self dental insurance. So to do that, to implement that and maintain the county, the amount of county appropriation increase at 40.3 million would require

087identifying $2.5 million of other budget repurposing for the 2025 2026 school year. And the second option we'll throw out there based upon some con relatively consistent board member discussion and feedback would be to remove from the proposed budget the recommendations that are in there to regional maintenance, energy and physical plant and grounds maintenance. And to implement this option and yet to maintain the amount of county appropriation increase request at $40.3 million will require identifying another $600,000 of budget repurposing. So between those two items, not doing anything to dental, leaving it at $6 a month for staff for self coverage, pulling that piece out of the proposed budget, and also pulling the reductions in those three areas related to M out will require that we identify $3.1 million of budget repurposing if the board is desirous

088of keeping increase amount at 40.3 million. So, we've got some options for how that could be repurposed. One opportunity would be to move or find a different funding source for approximately 15 coordinating teachers. These are certified staff that support our teachers in the schools through coaching, mentoring, training, and they can be moved either to the classroom and we're currently looking at that. But we're also looking at alternate funding sources to keep them in that role, but not use state or local funding. Can you share the total number of uh coordinating teachers? I believe we have is it 60 in just in academics amount it's 50 plus just in the academics department just in academics is 50 plus and we have some district we have some in in the other that's academics out of all of

089academics so you got special needs has them and student support services has them and there are a couple other shops that have one or two here and there um and that savings for repurposing would be approximately 1.8 million. Another option to consider to support those two changes related to dental and m would be to adjust our all of our building HBAC set points by one degree. This came up I believe two weeks ago in conversation. And it's actually something that was implemented during the great recession and then finally we were able to get around it subsequent to then that would mean shifting heating set points from 70° to 69° and shifting AC points from 73° to 74° and the estim saved or repurposed budget here would be 500,000. And the third component would be to

090repurpose $1 million of community use funds and use those funds to backfill on our current local budget requirements to fund background checks for volunteers in our schools and also our school-based utility costs. We've done a review of historical community use carryover amounts and looked at annual expenditure and revenue rates. And we believe this shift of $1 million of repurposing would support this without impacting the community use program. So this slide is just the summary of those three items. It would create a savings or repurposing of just over the amount to reinstate or reverse the dental and the M& which I think was 3.1 million. So that we simply share with the board for their consideration. Thank you to the turn over Chair Hagerty. Okay. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Neer. I know that we have

091some questions. I saw uh Miss Caulfield and Miss Mafy. We'll come over to Miss Gordon and then we'll just go around the table. Um well on slide 18, I appreciate the conser conserving the savings. Um I think Mr. Matty had brought that up with the air conditioning, you know, has brought up that way with my my father trying to stay. So um I appreciate that. My question is um the coordinating teachers, you said other roles. Can you clarify where we would put them and will they have a reduction in pay? Like how would that work? There would be no reduction in pay. We're required based on their lensure and the contracts we have with them. There are contracts similar with teacher. Um and they would either be placed in the classroom and take over a

092teaching assignment and as we have teacher teacher turnover each year and we have to replace those teachers. these would become one of them or they and we're looking at this would continue in their current role as a coordinating teacher but we would identify an alternate funding source perhaps a grant-based funding source either way it creates those savings. Yeah. So to add to that, um we know that there are roughly 50 or so in academics, but um you all correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's about 160 coordinating teachers across the district. Uh and so now administration is looking at all those positions to identify where those 15 would come from. We know there are some that we absolutely will not be uh looking at um for repurposing or part of this reduction. Think

093about the exceptional children's program. that might be one of those areas. Uh there are some positions that will uh be vacant as well that will be a part of the repurposing as well. And so hopefully when we go through we'll be able to minimize uh the number of teachers that might actually end up having to go into a different position back to the classroom um having a different funding source. Uh but that's what we're evaluating right now. We are extremely confident that we can find 15 that will not impact the overall effort of coordinated teachers. Awesome. Okay. Thank you. And if I can follow up. Follow up. I just wanted to know um with the repurposing because it sounds like it's the same thing. What does that look like for the community use funds? What

094would we repurpose? Like if you had an example, it's a it's it's not a loss of anything. It's just a a balance that they have that they carry over and again it it's not taking anything away. Okay. It's using just an available balance. Thank you. Thank you. We'll go to Miss Mafy then Miss Gordon. Yeah. I just um when we can find out where if we choose to go with moving the coordinating features, what departments or what areas are impacted. um uh because of unless all of them are coming out of academics but I guess we're not sure yet is what you okay and I hope that we can find additional funding fingers crossed but who knows um I do want to say on slide eight with regards to the HVAC um I I want

095to insert a little bit of understanding that for schools that have a fourth floor um that one degree is a huge piece. And so Mark, I know um as we're factoring this in, if you're on the fourth floor where your science labs are in, you know, on a hot day, um that one degree can make a difference. And sometimes not, but I don't know if we can add a caveat in there for our high schoolers that will be sweltering. Um, but I do want to recognize that sometimes it is a little extra toasty up there on a summer day. Thank you, Miss Ford. Um so my question is around I think it hits on um both Miss Caulfield and Miss Mappy's uh question around where these um coordinating teacher roles will come from. Um we

096just heard from um uh CTE in the student the student achievement committee meeting and they talked about how um they have coordinating teachers that support with PD for Cte teachers and this is just one example. Um they also have coordinating teachers um to improve recruitment, retention, and training, which I can imagine all coordinating teachers do. And in the landscape that we're in um with even trying to recruit recruit educators and recruit teachers and one of the the causes behind that difficulty is because they don't have the support. So when we when we talk about eliminating 15 coordinating teacher positions, my my I go back to my original question, where are these 15 15 positions coming from? Um and I hear you when you say we are going to you know hope for and look for

097other um funding to possibly not have to move these 15 coordinating teachers. But I guess my question is has has has that been done in the past and you know in what capacity? Um yeah, that's my question. So again, uh part of what we're doing is is administration is going back and identifying where is the best position to to uh identify the 15 coordinating teachers. Um and so as I said, I know there's some areas that we will not be looking at and exceptional children is one of those. We have vacancies. That means those positions are already there but the support is not being provided because it's vacant. Uh there may be positions where uh uh we have uh multiple teachers uh in those positions and you know hypothetically we have 15 teachers that provide

098literacy support. We may decide to reduce that to 13 teachers. All right. So we just they're still going through the process of identifying where those 15 will come from. And so as soon as we're able to have that information, we'll share that to the board because we already know that's one thing that you do want to know is who will the 15 be where are they coming from and that would be if this is something the board desires to adjust the budget if there is no change. Um, we'll open it up to some other questions going around. I wanted to start with a couple things just for clarification if I could. Um, there's a couple things that I wondered about where board members have seen and evaluated potential impacts of cuts. understanding the need for

099a balanced budget. What I'm wondering is if the administration would be open to revising how some of those cuts could be implemented. So this is the first time I've suggested this so I apologize that it's new but for example with some of the formula alignments that formula realignments we've seen we saw that um for example I think let me go back I don't want to guess let me look at the exact slide um some of the secretarial cuts were coming from title one schools if we have a readjustment of the formula. Could we also apply an acuity model to it based on the needs at and the challenges at the school so that maybe we still target the number of reductions but perhaps we look to schools that might have more resources, a larger volunteer

100base, more private funding that maybe those impacts won't be as severe as impacts on the schools with the most uh lower income students. So the answer to that would be yes. Uh uh I know part of what we'll need to do is look at um when aotment formulas have gone out and and the time we would need to make those adjustments. Terry, I'll let you speak to what has already gone out to schools. Um yeah, we've we've already begun the process for allocations for next year. We started a little bit earlier due to the implementation of the campus. So, we have already rolled out the allocations to our schools using these new formulas. Um, for the particular schools that you're mentioning, keep in mind that there are resources the area superintendent have access to to

101provide resources beyond formula to our restart schools. And these schools also do have title one um resources that they can access. Um, we've got the funds that we are using to help schools coming out of title one for a year. And during this next year, we also plan to have a project where we're evaluating all of our aotment formulas and doing a thorough examination of those and to see if we need to change how we are allocating resources. That project has not begun at this time, but it will soon. And what Miss Kinsey is referring to is not for next year's budget, but it's really a long-term let's look at all of our aotment formulas holistically as a district. We have not done that. at any point since I've been here, we've tweaked and tweaked

102and tweaked and this would be a step back, but again independent of this budget process for next year. Okay. And and I think to sum up what what Miss Kenzie said, I think that at least for the four schools impacted by the clerical that may be of a of higher need, we've given they have some options to backfill, if you will, if that's a choice they wanted to make. Okay. I have some other questions about some of the the formula alignments that we're looking at with the the continued funding of the counselors and the behavioral support positions that are part of program continuity and then the counselor alignment. We know that we've had vacancies in counselor positions. Is the alignment more about where the positions are assigned around the district or is it about number

103of positions total in that if we have this formula alignment are we you know is anyone's will anyone be at risk of losing employment? that our intent is to does not include a reduction in force. Our intent is to try to it's complex try to segment it is to just as a district have a handful fewer counselors but not to let anyone go and then realign the formula. So by having fewer counselors, our formula for aotment still doesn't overall the adjustment is counselors and social work and it was looking at positions that are either vacant or will be vacant by the end of the this fiscal year and then the formula was relearned. Okay. Thank you. Um, I want to ask you about the maintenance and operation positions. And here it sounded like we had

10437 vacant positions, but 20 20 of those vacancies had been open for 6 months or longer. Now, what I'd like to suggest to everyone is that I think if the job is open for 6 months or longer, it speaks to supply and demand in the labor market. It speaks in terms of competitiveness of pay and you know this is an area that you know we know month after month after month people come to us with concerns about our ability to take care of the maintenance and operations of our buildings. And so here I I saw that, you know, lapsed pay wasn't necessarily the issue, but I'm wondering if if we're not eliminating any positions, but they're remaining vacant and open, is this somewhere where perhaps taking some of those vacant positions, reducing the number, but

105increasing the compensation might help fill those open positions that have been open for quite some time, maybe attracting some talent. We had looked at that during the pandemic for some high need essential positions. I didn't know if that was something here where we could address that need without necessarily spending more. And so the answer to that would be yes. Uh I know that uh one of the questions I get all the time is uh if we have a position that that we fund at a higher rate, what does that do for the other positions? So everything to me is all about uh what the market requires and what's needed in order to have someone to do that position. Uh and so you know you and I have talked about uh that and I tell people

106that um there are I can do lit literally every job in the district but I do not know how to network computers. And so when we think about technicians that is a market driven position and they're always going to be paid higher. we will be looking at those specific positions and doing the things to make them more uh compatible in the market and and increasing those salaries. And so the answer to that would be yes. So it's something that could require a change in the budget, but would it necessarily require a change in the dollar amount spent? It's just a reallocation within that salary. Absolutely. So, so if if hypothetically we have um you know dollars spent on these positions, you can reduce the number of positions, increase the dollar amount or there's just a

107whole different number of ways that you can make that adjustment. But the actual budget number in maintenance doesn't need to change, but you can reallocate dollars put more in the contract, less in the contract. And so that's something that I know Mark and I will be looking at because we know um in many of those instances where they are vacant, those dollars may be used to support contract work. Uh so you have to know when that balance and shift has take place. Mr. Der. Yeah. And a couple additional thoughts. Um, one, we do have out a market competitive study which will less than a year from now, but have to make the board understand it's an expensive study will show not only for our central office staff, but we're having them look at schoolbased staff

108as well. How competitive are we or are we not in the marketplace to compete for employees? So that's something that will inform this. And let me perhaps add to though more from a technical standpoint what Dr. Taylor just shared. Yes, we can take a vacant position or vacant positions and convert them to dollars. In the past, we've been very comfortable doing that. Okay, the midpoint on this salary for this position is X dollars. let's eliminate position and take those X dollars and convert them to contract dollars. We're not at that point anymore. And the reason we're not at that point is our fill rates have gone from during the pandemic and even post pandemic it well below what we would like to now in most positions within a point or two of full completion and

109or full fill. to give an example counselors and social workers. I think our vacancy rates there are under 2% in each of those two positions. So that said and by simple simply looking at we are not lapsing salaries into our overunder account currently any widescale elimination of a vacant position is not going to turn into a dollar value. So we really going to have to very closely look at that to evaluate what capacity we would have by elimination of positions to create funding on any kind of widescale basis and I think this market study will as well inform us. We have a HR compensation review process that's underway all the time in the system. One example would be and it really doesn't even have to go through the full process in our custodial services. Sometimes

110it's better to have positions, sometimes it's better for contract dollars. So there is fluidity in Mark's area and he can convert contract dollars to create custodial positions. He can close custodial positions to create contract dollars, whatever is most beneficial at the time. Maintenance and operations could do the same. So that internal process that we currently have, if there are dollars available within what we already have to make adjustments either to or from staff, um that's something that can occur. Mr. Strickland, if I may, and I'd like to also add u because we've been stagnant in M for such a long time with with the number of employees, we have employees that may be at an administrator level that had long been doing senior administrative work. So, we're also working on some comp cases to better

111align the work that they're actually doing um and get them in the right spot. So that's a another opportunity for us to create some pathways of work. Know knowing where we are with as many needs as we have. I've been reluctant to bring a proposal to the board for adding more money. We know that we've looked at multi-year plans for aligning this formula that normally would be about an additional $5 million or so a year. And looking at the other needs you all have identified that we need to take care of, I know that we can't go forward with what would have been the next step in that multi-year plan. But I also know that if we don't do anything, we can't expect different results. And this is an area that we have, I think

112we've heard clearly from the public, there is demand for addressing these problems. So, if we can try something new that might help move the needle and evaluate those results, see if they help us with some of these long-term vacant positions. We're just the labor market salaries have changed and we're unable to fill these. You know, I I think that might be something that we can do. Um, again, reallocating in the budget, but not having to look for any additional cut. Mr. Neater. Yeah. And I'd like to Dr. Matillo, I'm not totally put you on the spot. Um, we have recently, when I say recently, not in the past few weeks or even the past few months. I think it was perhaps last fall, maybe it was a little bit more recently, created a full-time recruiting

113position just for M positions and it's having a significant positive impact. AJ, without being prepared, could you just share some highlevel feedback on that please? Yeah, we were actually able to work with Mark to identify funding to be able to fund that position. We've hired about 40 folks in that position since January. And I think what it's allowing us to do is really just like we did with bus driver dedicated resource to sourcing all of those leads that we have. So, we're making some progress. I think what it's also going to allow us to do is to determine if we have this dedicated resource and we're still not able to fill a position that that could be more data to say maybe it is a compensation issue or another issue that we need to look

114at. seen some progress and we'll continue to work. But yeah, one of the challenges as a district, our human resource function is primarily focused on recruiting school-based staff and really there teachers. And so each of our departments kind of own the lion share of recruiting within the departments. And what we've done with bus drivers and now just begun a few months ago with M is recognize those departments don't have the capacity and we've seen not magic wand but we've seen material improvement in bus drivers and I believe we're beginning to see the same thing in maintenance and operations. Okay. Thank you Mr. Vice Chair Swans. Yes. Um I just wanted to reiterate the point I know Mr. you and I spoke about this and chair Harry just raised this question, but there was a lot

115of information out there that there's current counselors that are sitting in these positions that are going to lose positions. So, glad to know that that is not accurate and it's vacant positions and yes, so that's one piece I just wanted to make sure that those folks are listening are aware of that. Um, so I'm not inclined to support the removal of the the the coordinating teachers. Um but I do have a proposal I would submit for consideration which would have been I think the first question that Miss Kimy raised um which was a question I submitted about reducing the restart and the supplies which would equate to that 1.8 to reserve that 1.8 million for those coordinating teachers to include the dental and securing the pieces for maintenance and operation. I just think that there's

116no great option. We know that. We also know that we have to stay with the parameters that we are given. I mean, do what you choose, but that's what I'm leaning towards. Um, but I I think that's just where I'm I'm leaning. So, I I know that there'll be some additional questions, but that's just the proposal I wanted to put out for folks to consider. Thank you, Mr. Hershey. And then anyone who hasn't spoken, and then we'll let folks who spoke come back. So, um I'm going to put out another proposal and I'm doing it because my emphasis or my priority is on keeping as many staff in schools as possible and potentially not cutting any restart money to begin with because we know the value of that. And I agree with Mrs. Watson. I'm

117not in favor and and with this order. I think she was going there and cutting the co- teachers coordinating teachers. Thank you. Ro um I looked at our history of supplement um raises and if you take the potential savings from HVAC, you take the community dollars and you eliminate the supplement, you come up with $7.1 million. And I know some people are going to say, how can you not pay teachers? But I kind of view it as we are having to fire people also to give a small raise for the supplement. And if you did that and you took repurpose that 7.1 million, you would keep dental, you would keep M, you would keep restart. If we're not worried about the counselors because those are vacant positions, that would leave 2.4 million for additional staff

118to be kept at title one schools. I know we hear about staff like some schools maybe losing multiple front office staff members, prioritizing our schools where it really hurts. You know, I've heard the, you know, we all hear about the good things about restart. That's why I included it there as well to keep it at 6 million versus going to 5 million. You could also look at with that additional money. Uh any supplies we are cutting. And again, I I'm doing this thinking about staff and retaining staff. I would like to do it all, but I'm we're put in a position not to not be able to do it all. And so I it's okay if everyone thinks that's a terrible idea, but that was that's what I was put putting forward today to try

119to keep staff and and keep as much in the schools as we can and maybe the state will do their job and give an appropriate raise sides. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Sure. Um, Mr. Rice, did you have anything you want to say at this point? Oh, yeah. Okay. I'm just I'm just being patient. Uh absolutely. Um thank you all for his hard work and dedication that you did with uh giving us options. Um so I don't have a lot to say. Just to reiterate um my colleagues, one I'm in complete opposition of the 15 um positions. Um, I'm in complete opposition of touching any restart money. Uh, because we can increase student academics, which is what we're all here for when you're touching students who need the support the most and the teachers who need

120the support the most. Um, again, uh, touching the 15 positions directly impacts learning. Excuse me, Mr. If you want to just wait for a second so you can I guess so you don't let him blow that one down. All right. All right. I guess we can give Miss Rice your attention. We're reclaiming. Okay. We did. We did that for a moment. Some stuff. Yeah. All right. Okay. So, he play music. He walking out. Yes. So, great. Laughter is great medicine, right? The switch to wellness. Great medicine for this heavy dosage of stuff that we're taking right now. So, listen, um I completely agree with colleagues um with that. I know that you all have worked very hard to create these options, but the option of teacher repositioning and the option of restart funding, um I'll

121do some strong advocacy of no for that. um we can figure out some of the ways the last two that we talked about with um with maintenance and operations um those options. But yeah, I don't think I I don't think I need to deliver the point. I think everyone is made great arguments. I completely agree with what we said, but I'm not and I count and I already said I had three. No to restart positions and no to um coordinating coordinating positions. That's a no. Really? No. Um hiding in the Yeah, I none of these options are good options. And I think we all recognize and realize that and you know I think in many of these budgets if not every budget season we hear from Mr. Neater from the superintendent we share when we

122adopt our budget that so much of our budget is tied to people. Um I have to say I don't particularly like Mr. Hershey's option, but I also am interested in Mr. Hershey's option because I think it preserves what we have. But again, I don't like any of these options. And so, I don't want to throw it out, but I'd like to see it fleshed out more. Um, I know we have one more of these. We have a public hearing tomorrow. Um, I'm sure there are folks that are board session tonight and but I do think making sure that we can maintain our building, making sure that we can um continue to cover the employment piece for the dental benefit is critical. And so um that Thank you, Miss Mafy. Miss Gordon. Um, yes. To Miss

123Mappy's point, like to follow up to Mr. Happyy's point and to follow up to um, Mr. Hershey's point, um, I think it's important for us to recognize that every time that we hear from staff, every time that we hear from educators, those who are in the building, we are never hearing that they want to raise that. that that I know the the the conversations that we've had with librarians, the conversations that we've had with um with people that come out to these public um input sessions though they are due more um compensation that is not something that they raise. Um and so I think to Mr. Hershey's point, it's important. I think we have all made it clear that it is important for us to um to make sure that we are preserving those that

124those that are in those buildings every day working with students, counselors, coordinating teachers, um um digital learning coordinators, um those things that closely impact students are non-negotiables. I know for me, I know as a as a classroom teacher, someone who poured my all into my job and still was not compensated enough and still had issues paying rent, paying car notes, paying daycare. There is something to be said about these um these educators who are coming to the table not asking for a raise, but asking us to preserve um their actual positions. So to that I would I would entertain discussion around Mr. Mr. Hershey's um proposal. Thank you. That's just once. So I think I will I'm concerned about I appreciate M for you know finding ways to add and subtract things as needed cuz

125that is the goal. Um, I tried to find one that was a little less of a pause because I do think once we start talking about getting rid of local compensation, we're not able to recruit and retain. We know the state has to do their job by paying teachers. We have seen that at the local level, we have stepped up. I think that has been that expectation. So I'm concerned that if that option is taken away that we cannot be the the the district that is able to recruit and retain. The second largest district passed their budget that included local um increases their local supplemental pay. I think our neighbors are doing neighbor districts are doing the same. So that one gives me I I can't fully commit to that. Um, I think again the

126the energy has to be put on 16 West Jones Street where those folks are making decisions every day, some who have not stepped in the classroom, some who do not know what it takes to do the work that we do. And I think those are the folks that we have to rely on. And I and so I I just wanted to appreciate Mr. Hershey's work, but I just that one gives me a lot of points. Mr. Hers, before we go back to you, Mr. Before we go to you, I want to get a little more discussion on this point. Um, sorry, Mr. If you could just briefly, could you explain again how the supplement works in terms of who gets it, who doesn't get it, how it's applied, and if there are like, you know,

127pros or cons um that we could see from looking there for uh money to save some of these other programs. Sure. Um yeah, and Wake County Public Schools is not unique in the state providing what is considered to be a local salary supplement, but the state and let me actually I can pull up a current year document. The state currently has or has a state base different categories of teachers. those with just a bachelor's degree and no other certifications. Those with a master's degree, you could have you one of those with national boards. There's some other things as well. We also have separate schedules for special needs um teachers, but the state pays so much per year, so much per month. And then we as a county to attract teachers pay an additional amount per

128month that adds up to a year that becomes their total salary. When the state legislates an increase for teachers in a step increase, it's to the state piece of it, the state schedule piece of it and not the local supplement. So if over time and the local supplement is a fixed dollar amount. If over time the board's desirous of keeping a teacher's total wages kind of moving total wages up that any percent or amount increased in the state component would need to be matched by a component in the local supplement. if there were and and the three what's included in the proposed budget was a 3% supplement increase based upon an estimated 3% average increase in the state salary schedule for teachers. Um, so could the board decide to not increase it 3% and increase

129it 2% 1% no percent. Yes, that still and whatever the state legislates um would still be available. And one thing I would share with the board um is if the board is not desirous of going down the path of moving coordinating teachers or finding alternate funding sources, that was about a $1.8 million option. each of those 3% in the proposed salary supplement increase for teachers. I take 5.6 divided three I think is about $1.8 million M. So a couple of things one um if the state comes in under 3%. because we've set aside that we're targeting that for salary too. It would be a disappointment. How much would that change our outlay in salary? And I'm and I'm let me say that I'm asking this and I also want to say if the state covers

130master's pay or anything else and we end up with additional funds, the first thing if we did not do a supplement at when we um had to adopt the budget fully would be to add in money for a supplement coverage. So it's not it's I wouldn't please don't use desirous around not doing the is that we all want to do it. But to my question, if they come in under 3%, what does that do to our budget? Um, it's a great question and actually we had robust conversation about that yesterday. Um, as the state works through different iterations of its budget as it relates to compensation, it can impact the proposed budget before you as a board. I might be overly simplistic in one of a couple manners. It can require additional local funding or

131it might require less local funding. The Senate's budget proposal, we haven't run the actual numbers, but the Senate's budget proposal would likely require less local funding than what is currently in the proposed budget before the board. That being said, to make any decisions at this point about changes to the proposed budget based upon that we believe is very premature because it's going to be changing. The House is going to come out with its proposal. They're going to be going back and forth. And almost to your point, Mr. Hershey, it's kind of a wait andsee game right now. and the board's still the opportunity on the other side of that wait and see game to make final decisions about its recommended salary schedules. That's on the other side of a final state budget. And that's where

132I was going to go. So if they came in under 3% and we had otherwise covered what we wanted to, we would have additional funds where we could you put that towards the local supplement. That is a reasonable scenario. Yeah. So, that's kind of where I'm going with all of this. So, sometimes you can see a lower percent and it seems like, oh, we would it would not cost as much. But the Senate budget also has in it a lower percent raise, but also a bonus. And in some cases, that bonus plus that percent is a higher percent than what's in the superintendent's proposed budget for some of our staff. So, you have to look at the totality, right? And and that requires a detailed analysis. And at this point to run that analysis would

133be beyond a rhetorical exercise because it's going to change, right? If I can just quickly get you to clarify that. So like with the Senate budget, they have a three there. Not less than three. It's like a six or what? Yeah. It's it's they've presented it different ways, but they do have a spe a special uh raise for teachers, but then they specify a different rate for other school-based employees. Right. In our budget, we were looking to apply the same percentage across the board to all employees. It was our estimate of what they might do, but we know that but ours ours was universal at that same rate. It wasn't differentiated, right? Okay. Thank you. So, further questions? I saw Miss Caulfield and then anyone over here? Did you still have a question? Okay, go

134ahead. Well, I guess it's uh I have two I guess kind of questions, but it's really more of a concern. Um, we have some options for the dental, and I appreciate that we were trying to come up with other ways to save for that, but as I'm looking at it, it's cutting money from restart, coordinating teachers, building maintenance that directly affects our buildings where our students are. It's cutting building subs, supplies. It's all stuff that is educational needs in the classroom. So, I would really like some other options that are not actually removing from it. I don't think that it's just not a good idea. I think it's kind of really a bad idea to be cutting those things that directly affect the classroom because it's taking away from our teachers and our students. We're

135also having retention issues. So, I think it makes it harder on the teachers when we have all of these cuts and we're taking away all these things from the classroom and they're already strained. So, I'd love to see more options that are not directly in the classroom. And if you could just repeat what your suggestion was. It was using the community fund. I'm just because that was new today. The potential for HVAC though, um, Miss Mahavy's concerns about the heat is certainly justified. and then eliminating the supplement for now and then revisiting that upon um the numbers from the state when we have to adopt the official budget. And so that would that would generate 7.1 million in new repurposed funds to keep what you were talking about. Right. As much as I don't like

136the idea as well, it's trying to keep staff in schools. I do appreciate that. I just wonder what the teachers would feel it. I I tax them. I I'm sure. But it's We'll find out once the But it would keep more worth more than this. Do you have more Miss C? No. Okay. Miss Gordon, did you have a followup or question? Yeah, I actually had a followup to to Miss um Cfield's point. Um, you know, during our our very first budget meeting, um, I sat and I I really went through and I wrote down all of the all of the direct student impact positions that that we are that is being proposed to be cut. Um, and I just want to make sure that I'm accurate on my information. So in academic advancement we are

137proposing to cut um 10 positions. Five positions are nursing positions. Um in uh schools we are proposing to cut building subs altogether. Nine high school positions, assistant principal positions. Um, we're also on top of positions, we're also proposing to cut instructional supplies. Um, we are proposing to cut 20 counselor and social worker positions. um in addition to the digital learning 10 digital learning uh positions and now 15 coordinating teacher positions. Is it accurate in saying that we are making more cuts where the impact is direct where the impact directly affects students versus those that do not? So, so I would say um uh it depends. Uh and so to say that is not a d u an impact on schools uh that wouldn't be an honest answer. But if I say that um we've got

138160 coordinating teachers um and we uh eliminate 15, hopefully a lot of those positions are vacant. Um I don't think that would be the impact. Well, I know that wouldn't be the impact that we would expect uh if we have uh nearly 400 counselor positions uh and we are trying to identify 20 uh 200 vacant months between counselors uh social workers and I think school psychologist which uh they are hard to find. Um I would I would argue that reducing by those numbers uh will not have the impact uh of changing the services that we have in the school. Uh and so um while I uh absolutely understand the impact that any of these cuts will have on services that are directly um um received by schools. Uh I also recognize that this is an

139opportunity for us to better focus how we provide any of those services. Um uh as I always say um um to identify how you make those reductions uh part of what we recognize is that much of the resources are spent on staff. And so the idea is how do we minimize what that impact is? And so um um these obviously are not um easy recommendations uh for me as an educator because I do know the impact uh but I also know that um the primary responsibility that we all have is to make sure that the budget is balanced and and in many instances it will require that you look at personnel. Um um one of the things I'm always committed to is how can we be more efficient at what we already have? Um um

140I know one of the big things that we have to recognize as a district is the difference and you've heard and people have heard me say this, the difference between extra and excess. And so we always want to be able to have extra. Uh but if we can identify where there's excess, where there's redundancy, uh where there's duplication, uh even in our services that are provided to schools, that's when we have to take a look and this might be the opportunity to do some of that preet. But uh I understand every impact that you're talking about and uh and that is a difficult part of this choice. Now I I I want to respond to that as well because I think we all want to do what's best for what goes on in the classroom.

141But at the same time, I think we have to be very aware that to operate a school digit school district and to provide the resources for the staff in the classroom requires a certain level of management and administration. And if you look at the materials that have been provided and in the budget book and some of these staff answers, you will see that in Wake County, we are doing that very lean, especially when compared to other school districts around the state and around the country. If you look here at this was the answer provided in number 10 the months of employment. How many months are assigned directly to schools? How many months are budgeted centrally but working in schools? 94% of all of our salaried dollars salary and wage dollars are going into the schools

142with central services having only 6% If we don't touch positions that are assigned directly in the schools or assigned centrally working in the schools, we will not find the dollars that we need. And at some point, as we've talked about, we need central services staff. We have had meeting after meeting where we talk about a service we want to provide, but we're unable to provide it or provide it as efficiently as we want because we don't have the service that we need. You've heard me talk about several times, you know, how we have like one plumber per 50 schools and you compare that to other districts. We've seen here with the technology staff, the technology staff we have at central office compared to other school districts. The ratio that we have is far leaner than

143other districts in the districts, you know, other metro markets where we compete. We talk about providing, you know, greater efficiencies for it. Well, we need an IT staff to do that. We talk about um you know being able to perform these audits and have transparency. We need a budget and a finance staff to do that. So we'll never win the argument between the popularity and and the importance of putting resources in the classroom versus a quote central office, right? But the reality is there's a certain level of support we have to maintain and it's my belief that for many years we have been shorting ourselves in that area. If you look at the growth of the district. We've added, as you saw the numbers, you know, almost 50% more schools in 10 years, but the

144staff only grew about, you know, 30% to support that. About a 40% increase in the number of students we serve. And again, you know, with fewer staff, that ratio declining. We have more pe we have we we've added people, but now those people are supporting more schools and more uh students. than they have traditionally. So, you know, I don't see that we can just say we should just go to central office and take out th those positions. Where we don't have HR support, it affects us in our hiring and our ability to fill vacancies, where we don't have maintenance and operations support, it affects us in our ability to address all of these problems that families, students, and staff have talked about in our schools. So, you know, I will say I there, as Dr.

145Taylor said there are no good cuts to make, but you know, if I have a decision to make between retaining building subs, who I championed and I thought was a wonderful innovation coming out of the pandemic and I see have a very positive impact on our schools or finding a way to fund maintenance and operations staff to keep our schools open so they're not closed because the HVAC's not working, the air conditioning is not working, there's flood or there's mold issues. I'm going to choose to keep the whole school open and education continuing. So, you know, there are positions that all of these positions have value, but you know, we have to prioritize. They're not easy cuts to make. And I think you've all brought cuts that I think we need to revisit and find

146other ways to support. And I appreciate everyone who's brought different proposals for how we can avoid those cuts, how we can preserve the benefits for our students, I'm sorry, for our staff. Um, and and so I'm I'm interested to see how we do that. But I'm I'm not I'm if if no one else will do it, I'm going to defend the money that we invest on our staff at central office. And I will compare our efficiency here up against any other school district. So not to say there's not cuts that can be made or things individual things we can identify, improvements we can make, but I just worry about blanket statements about we should just take from central office without reviewing things individually. And Miss Gordon, please can I have a followup to that? Um,

147I in no way said or mentioned anything about central services. Um, but what I am saying is that in the same in the same spirit of making sure that we are keeping things a priority. What I am saying is of of the the the main priority should in my opinion be the staff that work in the school buildings every day with our with our kids with our students. I in no way mentioned central services or that that you know there needs to be these you know outrageous cuts to central services but I do believe in the same the same way that we're talking about the efficiency of our staff in our buildings for example when we're looking at vacant vacancies are we doing that across the board and in addition to um Question number 19

148where it says for comparison can you provide data on on how the central office function has grown over the past 20 years. I I can't I I guess I keep looking at this question and I'm like I need I need more. Maybe it's that I don't understand it. Um, but I think my message is very clear about the the student impact positions should be a priority. That is my that is my message. That's my overall message. Thank you, Mr. Hershey. And then Mr. Rice. M. Mr. Rice, would you like to Thank you so much. Um, Mr. Hershey. Um my Miss I'm I'm in the same vein as Miss Gordon as as I was taking notes and then she came right back and hit it cuz I was going to say the same thing. I didn't

149hear her say anything about central off time to go back to our home rules home our home rules of budgeting. Um as I said last budget year I'm saying this budget year there are certain things we do not touch. There are certain things we pay in our home budgets that are non-negotiables. We pay our mortgage. We pay our utilities. Those are non-negotiables. No matter what is going on, anything that directly impacts students, which are these positions, is a non-negotiable, which means we have to find it somewhere else where it hurts. So the same spirit in which we say um all the beautiful things that you said that that I I agree with to an extent I just offer a different perspective. Um I get it but just want to offer a different perspective. We know

150that those things are important too. But the same spirit in which we can say it's hard, it's tough, but we have to, then I propose the same thing and say it's hard, it's tough, but we have to find it somewhere else. Um, and and if we have to go through like I've been doing now and looking at certain things that we have cut that are directly impacting families and students, even things as simple as the money that's coming out of um the child care piece. If parents can't get their children to school, we have a situation in my district right now. You're talking about impacting student learning. Well, what happens when you don't have those people in there that teachers to help and students don't have anywhere to go so parents can go to work?

151Like really, right now, I have a school whose absenteeism is so profound because parents have to go to work and don't have anywhere for the children to go so that they can actually go to school. So therefore, they stay home. Therefore, our achievement rates will continue to be minimized and not increased when we directly take away things and even think about the fact that we even think about touching restart money. The fact that we even think about touching positions should be like it's like a no because that's a bill that has to be paid. It's like where do we touch other places that we know may have a direct effect that we know may not be able to it be it'll be a very minimal you know shoestring budget in that space. We have to

152look at that. We cannot ever think that going to our teachers and direct functions of a classroom is a possibility and that's a different perspective that I'm sharing. I'm not saying your perspective is wrong, but I am sharing and I stand in solidarity with every word that Miss Gorman's um Gordon said is that as we list it and I've been looking at the same thing over time, everything we're doing is directly we're pulling. If you go through and comb and look through everywhere, we've decreased and then we've increased. We've increased in areas that doesn't directly impact does not everything we do in the system impacts learning. We get that. But what but some things we need to look at that's not literally in the classroom. And while my central office staff is extremely important, I

153believe that our central office staff as another perspective what we can look at since you brought up central office staff, we can look at how we um are being most efficient with um the staff trying to service 200 now gearing to be 200 plus schools, 160ome students and what that looks like. Um, I think that if we do some things in a more communications audit type of um, thing, we might see a more efficiently run central office with the money that we already have within it that it doesn't have to be increased or even decreased, but using what we have, but using some more um, audits and a more in communication styles. What are we doing? How are we actually communicating from central office to schools and that type of thing so that we can

154see a better efficiency. So that's that's where I want to leave it there too of that I think we keep I hear it I understand it but I strongly believe we keep touching bills that we're not supposed to touch and thank you miss R and Miss Gordon and I appreciate that and for clarification if if you did not say central services and I misheard it I apologize for that but please Understand? My interpretation is that by implication, if you look at what the schools fund and you say we're not going to touch things that directly touch, you know, students in the classroom and all of that is off the table, what else is there other than the central service? So, if I misunderstood and there's other areas to target or address or things that I

155should refocus to, please let me know. And again, if I'm misunderstood, but to me, the implication was especially like 94% of the budget being in the school's 6% central office. If we didn't touch the 94% that we were then being directed to look at the 6%. Okay, Mr. Hershey and then Miss Caulfield. So, I had sent you the email and I think this is why we need it so desperately and as technically as a board we voted to approve this uh 10 12 10 months ago. Yeah. Yeah. We need the organizational study and it's for this conversation. It's for the public. It's for our school staff because we hear they say it too. Hey, just don't cut here. cut central services and it's a big unknown and by getting the independent one done I know

156it's a cost and we're trying to cut but it's crucial and we would not even be have we just need it and I stand by the vote and I don't know how the mechanics of we voted on it where is it kind of thing and I don't want to go way down that road but we need it so when are we getting this So, so what we can do is is uh go back to that RFP because it was issued and uh if the board wants us to revisit that, then we absolutely will. Um um and I agree that um it is good to be able to show in very real terms to our public uh what our staffing looks like. Uh so they can understand that. Um, I'll just give you an example because

157that's, you know, one of the things that I do when I go around the district and I talk to staff, uh, and I get a full understanding of where we are. And so, one of the early clear examples to me was when I was talking with the staff in maintenance and operations, uh, and they shared with me that we get over 300,000 workers uh, a year. That's right, for a district this size, with 200 schools, blah, blah, blah. uh but she also shared that the staff hasn't changed I want to say she said in 25 years she had been in that department 25 years so you can imagine uh 2005 she was here and we had 130ome schools but now that's increased and so the study will absolutely show that um where we are with

158other districts now we already have information on how much we've grown as a district internally both at central services and in the schools. Uh, and so that information we already have, but I think people do need to see the comparison with where we are with other districts as well. And they will absolutely see that there's a difference. Um, um, and and I'll just, you know, u reaffirm again that none of these things are easy. Uh, but when we know that 87% of the resources are in schools, uh, then that is where um um the difficulty in the work comes in. And so I think our biggest purpose now is to refocus and reorganize and reexamine how we use the resources. I I think that's very important. Even if that is school resources, there's nothing that

159says we can't be more efficient in those resources as well as the resources that we have have here at central services. So I think it's a it's a dual thing that we have to do and and this year has been about looking at central services for the 2526 budget year and then doing the same work for the 2627 school year as it relates to schools and and as um uh um Kim and others talked about I specifically want school staff principles to be a part of this uh because they can speak very clearly about uh what happens in their schools and and and a lot of what we've looked at um a lot of that has been based on conversations that we've had with principles and so uh you know they understand it but we're

160really okay Miss C. So I think it was Gordon and I kept repeating the same thing like the classroom but I think we had the the question number 19 that was answered. We went from 800 million in 20 years to $2.1 billion. That's a huge difference. But we grew by 65 new schools and 45 almost 46,000 new students. So I think for us sitting here talking about the budget to say that we'll cut the restart the teacher supplements even as an option coordinating teachers like we've talked about all of them to say that we can do that and I'm going to quote Miss uh Johnson Hustler has she always said both in right um I don't see why it is a problem to say if we're willing to cut all of this out of the

161classroom where it's going to affect our teachers and our students directly why couldn't we explore all those options. So, I don't think that speaking about central office is really problematic. I mean, we're talking about all of our dollars. We're talking if you can take teachers and things out of the classroom, why couldn't we talk about how many part-time roles do we have? Could we combine them and possibly pay them a little bit differently and, you know, therefore we save some money doing that? I mean, there's all kinds of options that could be thrown out. And yes, it is in central office. It doesn't mean go in and annihilate everybody. That's not what what I don't think anybody here is asking for that. All of this is uncomfortable. But to say that we're willing to risk

162all of that at the classroom, but not look at some of the other options, I think is just for for point of clarity, there's cuts to both in the budget. Well, we were cutting vacant positions, which as Mr. Ner said is really not spending. It's just we're I mean it's not savings. We're just not spending which we weren't before. Mr. Nater then well M rice to a point that is correct but that was a limited component. I want to if you look at number eight again, the reductions in budgets coming out of central office in the proposed budget in our repurposing represent 38%. Relative to the fact that it's only 6% of the total budget. There are cuts in the budget, significant cuts, and as a percentage significantly higher than anything, and I hate to

163use the word recommended, but included within a proposed budget. We again have tried to mitigate the impact on the schools and what is in the superintendent's proposed budget and the numbers are and so I just want to reiterate that it's not really so much about the salary as it is understanding the roles and how we can kind of condense and figure out what it is that we can do. And it's not just there. I mean I'm sure there's other things that we can look at. I know that you've been looking at it endlessly. I'm just to to only have the op these big ticket items are coming out of our classroom and it's it's problematic to say sure we're going to that. Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. Let Dr. Taylor look in align what he's trying

164to say. Yeah. And and ultimately uh when we look at the cuts I think is and I'm glad that uh Mr. brought that up because I I wanted to mention that as well that um one of the things I committed to was making sure that everybody knew uh the involvement that central services had in these cuts because I know that's always going to a question that's going to come up. What did you all cut? Uh and so when we think about being 6% of the budget but being 38% of the cut uh that is one thing that administrators here at the central service has done is to look at their departments and identify where they can make reductions and I can tell you that uh that work will not end. Uh we will have to

165continue to look at um uh where there are things that we need to discontinue or we call it strategic abandonment. uh but at the same time uh determine how do we increase the support uh that we have the schools. So so what I do know is that we will be looking at where we uh use technology where we reduce that where there are vacancies blah blah blah that absolutely has to happen but also what is it that's going to be needed to support the 15th largest district uh in the country. So that means if we look at human uh human resources, uh there is no way that we can continue to do this work without expanding what's in that department. And that's central services. Uh that's the clockwork behind the wall that most people don't

166see. Uh but if I look at u another large district in this state, they have a lot more resources. We have way more students uh and employees. And so that work will always continue. Uh but I I did want everybody to know that uh we were absolutely a part of this cut uh and that uh the the worst thing that we could do is is make these recommendations and not be able to see where the central services was a part of. But we get we also made an effort not to adjust any formulas in the classroom. So there are no adjustments to teacher formulas. There's no adjustment to instructional assistant formulas. So purely in the classroom there haven't been any adjustments that impact those ratios of adults to children. M thank you. Um while I

167value um while I think it's valuable to look at other districts and and actually what they're doing in comparison, I really do believe as well as Wake County as you mentioned we're the 15th largest in the district. I think that it's also time in a place where we need to learn how to lead too, right? I hear a lot of times when we share things that we want to say and we hear um leadership say um in comparison to um I think that it is great that we compare ourselves to what is about us, but I think Wake County is in a valuable space because of the resources we do hold in this community and in this space. I think that it's very I think it's a great time um that we look at our

168talent. We have the talent. We have the vision and we have an opportunity to set a standard rather than follow it. I think that we really need to recognize who we are as a district and how we function in the nation. Right? So I think some things are good. Look look at how well we fare in our magnet programs. Right? Look at how well we do. What is it? 28 um 35 was it 35 um opportunities, but Wake County brought home what 13 of the I mean seriously, I think it's really time for us to stop looking at what everybody else is doing and we need to lead and show and then we become the model in the example. I think that we need to stop looking at what um taking consideration to what they've

169done. look at our own needs of where we are as a county and as a district and then tweak it for us and lead. We have brilliant minds and educational people um in this room just alone who have some better answers but maybe sometimes don't have an opportunity to share those answers with leadership who are making these decisions. There are people even within our departments. So like how much time are we taking to really speak to the people that's in our department to say what do you guys think? Are we just only in those huddles of letting the particular ones we think that know the answer that's not necessarily doing the dayto-day? How often within our district are we scaling things to take the opportunity to ask the people who do the work every day,

170what do you think? Versus we sitting around the table making the decision, what is going to hurt the most? What can we tweak? You probably will find that it was it was in the trenches of our people would say really and truly we couldn't cut that, we can cut that. We do need a little bit more of this, but we can cut that. and next thing you know, you might have cuts that you hadn't even thought about because you're here and they're here doing the work. And so, I think that we should relook at what we see everyone else doing. And I think Wake should take a great opportunity and let us lead for a change so that people will say in their boardrooms, well, here's what Wake County is doing. This is what they

171did that was a little different. And so, I think that we should take opportunities to find what that is. But you'll never find it if we don't dig deeper and ask the brilliant minds that are among us. Not saying we don't do it. I think that we can do it a little bit more efficiently um and effectively with the talent that we have already within our staff. Thank you, Vice Chair Swanson. Thank you. And I just want to say to Miss Kimy and Mr. Neer and Superintendent Taylor, thank you all for presenting these options. You all listened to what we requested, which was dental and HBAC. Those two items are back, which we also knew there was going to have to be additional cuts. And I also understand which was not which was told to

172us years a couple of cycles ago, this was going to be a tough budget. We knew that when we passed 24 25. We knew 25 26 was going to be tough when we passed 22 23. So I don't think it's this is new to anyone. Um I also know the work that goes into this and if anyone at home has a 2.3 operating budget, we need to call them and figure out what donation they can get. But since they don't, we have to make the tough conversations and to do this because this is our job as board members. Hire the superintendent, pass a budget. Those are the two pieces that we have. And so I I do think um we have two more meetings and we have to pass a budget. I understand and I

173I hope that the general assembly will do better because again we are filling in the gap when the general assembly should be doing their job which is constitutionally their constitutional piece. So I think there are some recaps that we can do some next steps but again we have the 29 um committee meeting and then the May 6 work session to meet that May 15th deadline. and I'll I'll keep the rest of my comments to myself. All right. Thank you, Mr. Swanson. So, um, Mr. Neater, Miss Kimsey, and then Vice Chair and Budget Chair Swanson, um, we'll need to come up with a timeline for how to proceed. Yes. And, um, Chair Hagerty, if I could, this is the last slide in the deck. Uh, good segue. Again, if board members have additional questions, um, you

174can submit them, Miss Kinsey. Keeping in mind we don't have a two week gap between now and your next discussion. It's a oneweek gap, but we've got to have board materials done by the end of Thursday. like to say we can still give you till Tuesday of wait today is Tuesday tomorrow for any additional questions but that's a real narrow window then to get any significant number of questions researched and reply to um you do have uh as was earlier mentioned another the third in your regional public hearings and that is my understanding tomorrow at 6:15 p.m. at the Southeast Raleigh YMCA location. Um, you'll meet, as you just described, at your 29th work session. Ideally, at the 29th work session, which is taking place during the finance committee meeting, the board will arrive at

175consensus over any changes to the superintendent's proposed budget and we will bring that back to the board on May 6th for the board to approve its proposed budget for the 202526 year. If for whatever reason the board is not able to reach consensus next Tuesday on April 29th, as Mr. Swanson pointed out, you will have the opportunity for another work session on May 6th prior to your board meeting, but we would still ask at your May 6th board meeting that you approve your proposed budget because if you are not in a position to do that, you will be required ultimately based upon state statute to have a specially called board meeting to approve a proposed budget such that we can get that to the county by the requirement of 15th April. All right. Is everyone

176clear on those deadlines? Okay. Before before we break the work session, I do want to go back through a couple things that we talked about and just sort of take the temperature in the room. So, the staff recommendation that came back did have a restoration of the dental benefit. Can I just see informal show of hands? If you're not ready to commit, give me a side, you know, a side signal. But how many people are in favor of restoring that benefit? Okay. Um, we also had 600,000 for the maintenance and operation contracting. That wasn't all of the maintenance and operations contracting, but it was what they identified in there. And all those in favor of restoring that in the budget? So adding it back into the budget, you're saying yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. All right.

177Now, the reaction I got to the proposed cut concerning the coordinating teachers, I think, had less support, but I just want to take the temperature going around the room. Those in favor of that recommendation for the um 1.8. All right. Doesn't look like that one's going to fly. All right. And then there were two other ideas that were offered for savings. Uh the building temperatures with some caveat perhaps for some special situations in individual buildings. I could save about 500 500,000. Are we good with that? And then um allocating some of the increased revenues coming from community use. That was about 1 million that we could put back in. Is that okay? So, we have a gap to fill, but it's a narrower gap and I think this is something that we can do in

178the timeline that's been put to us. Yes, ma'am. Uh, how much is needed to for the for the positions? I need to know that number so let's let's go. We've heard we've heard a couple different proposals on different ones. Mr. Hershey, you had some specific ones that you had proposed. Um, and I'm not saying that this is the plan, but could you share the numbers that you had? Well, I I had talked about um I mean, I really wanted to leave the other jobs kind of up to staff to evaluate front office staff people. It I didn't come up with specific, but I had come up with putting the million back in restart and then that would leave about 2.4 4 million in other jobs to claw back. That's if people want to go back

179to the six million for restart or not. Um I'm open to that. It's it's just repurposing that amount in a way that pulls staff back in, but I don't have specifics. And you would balance that with the supplement. Yep. Right. Okay. C can I hear just for clarity for me please? Could I hear the number that we need to reach the number? And so we're saying 1.8 8 million is what if we were to move the 15 coordinators that is what we have to replace. Correct. Okay. All right. Just wanted to make sure there was a little bit of buffer. So if if you restore the dental which is 2.5 million restore the 600,000 for M that's 3.1 million. Tell me I'm wrong. Then if we a couple hundred thousand then the 1% change of

180the degrees helps with that.5 million community schools 1 million. So I'm seeing a $1.6 million gap in those things were agreed upon a $1.6 million gap. Follow up from Miss Rice and then Miss Gordon and then vice chair wants No, that's all I needed. I just needed to note the number that we needed to find and anything that if you go back through your notes and you don't hear it, get that to Mr. Neater and Miss Kenzie and then they can provide it to everybody in case anyone has the same question and that way we'll all have it as soon as possible. Miss Gordon, I know we were trying to find the the 1.8 million for the the the coverage for dental, but going back Oh, I'm sorry. 2.5. I apologize. Um but going back

181are we also is are digital learning coordinators still on the table or is that they are in the super so any anything is on the table and can be brought for discussion. Okay. Um we didn't really talk a lot about that today. So I didn't really get a sense that we had a majority for or against. Okay. That any position. Um Mr. Swanson Swanson. I think the there's a lot of consensus about the 1.8 to get us to keep the digital learning positions not the digital learning the coordinating teachers. I had a proposal which was removing adjusting the five million it was 5 million to four or four to five I can't remember I think it was five 5 million for the restart and $5 for the supplies which also equal 1.8 88 um as

182a a way of we're trying to find something adding something to find something to you got you to the same number correct okay and so m Mr. orordinator, Miss Kimy. Um, you've I know you've been taking notes through the whole conversation, so there could be other areas that we've missed, other things that we've talked about. Um, I'd like you, if you could capture different scenarios that were offered by board members, and then put that together, and then, uh, we'll get that prepared to send out to the board as soon as possible. Absolutely. Okay. All right. Do you have any final thoughts? I just want to get one clarity. I know Mr. Hershey said 7.1 million with 3% uh on the on the um supplement and the community and the one degree. Okay. But what but

183what does 3% represent? Is it was 5.6 6 million for the supplement and then the 1 million for community use would be 6.6 million and then I think the dollars for the HVAC is another 500. All right. Thank you, Superintendent Taylor. Um, so shoot. I thought we were gonna have time to do some close session, but I think we should all just get a little break and maybe a little bite to eat. Yes. All right. So, if that's the case, um what we'll do is we'll close the work session and we'll reconvene at 5:30 in the boardroom. Please be on time because we've got a lot of stuff we got to do in uh close session tonight. All right. All right. Thank you.