001All right. Well, all right. Good afternoon everyone. Uh, welcome to a busy loaded work session of the Wake County Board of Education. Today is Tuesday, April the 18th, and the first item on our parade of hits today is uh the fiscal year 2026 through 32 capital improvement program. We have David Bernett and Mark Coney. David, I'll turn it over to you. U actually I'm going to Well, what we were going to say is that um we have uh presented this at facilities I believe last month and the process now is to share it with you all today. is also on the agenda tonight for an action item later on this evening. So, um most of the board has seen this before. So, we've asked Mark to kind of do a high level presentation and go
002through the same slide deck and be glad to entertain any questions at the end. We know we have a busy day today. Wonderful. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Chair. Uh it's a pleasure to be here. Uh for those that haven't had a I hadn't had a chance to introduce myself, I'm Mark Cooney. director of program controls with facilia design and construction. So the presentation uh is the executive summary update for fiscal year 26 through 32. It's a 7-year program of uh highlight the summary of uh our funding requirements as well as our schedule proposals uh for the new schools and existing schools. Uh we'll update uh new and existing schools. I'm going to highlight the additions and changes at a high level and then also uh present the program requirements uh which are both uh
003bond funded and cash funded which is an addition that we haven't previously presented to you uh folks um but like to highlight which ones those are. So this is slide is for new school funding. Um, we've brought the first two schools, Morrisville High School and Parkside Middle School, uh, as a previous board agenda item back in January with the the switch of the sites. Uh, this show highlights the the funding requirements for those two schools. Uh, since our fatcom meeting, uh, the third item, uh, new elementary school has now been identified as Marshall Road Elementary School outside of Windendell and then Pool Road. Those are ones that will be funded in fiscal year 26 and 27 uh that we'd like to highlight. The uh there are no other new schools added uh as far as
004naming go. We have added the last item as a a placeholder in the future. Um this time next year we'll we will be coming to you guys uh to add new schools and program requirements uh for those items. Yeah, specifically we'll be adding requesting their names too. Uh the next slide is uh existing schools for renovations. Um these schools are all um with the exception of Zebulun and Wendell and Carrie are all in design and we're actively pursuing design. So as he we progress through the design, we receive estimates from the uh see CM at risk contractor and provide us um these a lot of these numbers and uh they will be refined as we move forward through the next years uh to to give uh more accurate more refined numbers. Uh but as far
005as these go uh we've been tracking very accurately to our estimates. We've been pleased with that. Um again we will be uh adding and identifying uh more schools next year. So for this year there's no changes uh uh below Zelin Middle School. The third uh category is program requirements and the last two slides if you have any specific questions we'll go we can identify those uh what these items are and give you some more details on them. But uh Again, as I mentioned earlier, there's we've broken them into two categories, the debt funded and the cash funded items. One highlight cycle building components. I was looking back uh fiscal year 22 compared to fiscal year 26 is a a 58% increase in funding for those for that item. So there's been a significant uh uh
006movement as far as increasing the funding on life cycle items. So this total is uh nearly 1.3 billion uh which is focusing on the school requirements. The last slide is just a summary of the three categories um and the total program is nearly $3 billion over the next seven years. The last two slides are the program requirement explanations. If you have any have any specific questions, I'll be happy to answer them those. Uh, all right. Thank you. So, those of you who were in our finance committee meeting, this might sound very familiar. Sorry, our finance committee, our facilities, our facilities committee meeting. Um, we did go through this and we did have some long robust discussion. Um, as you know, I had some very strong thoughts on some of these items that I shared with
007everyone. Uh, I don't want to beat a dead horse. Um, we did talk about some directions, some priorities, and how we choose to spend our CIP money. Um, before I get up and say too much, I wanted to go around the table and see if anyone who didn't attend facilities had any questions or thoughts first and then we'll get to facilities committees and then I'll uh wrap up anything at the end. Miss Mafy. Yeah. Um, just a clarification question. I appreciate the diagrams at the bottom as you know folks who are listening or maybe hearing these words for the first time so they can familiarize themselves with things like crimp and snap etc. Um in that line, can you just um state the difference between debt funded and cash funded programs? So under a uh
008different bond programs, there's different percentages uh whether it's a limited obligation or a general obligate obligation uh bond. For the purpose of this is the county will basically fund it through their cash holdings. Um what that does is those items are not um basically we're not paying debt for them over the life cycle of the bond over the next 20 or 30 years depending on what the bond requirements are. The other debt items we do pay basically a debt interest on those. So those are the main reason we break those items up into two different categories. Thank you. All right. Further questions from anybody who's seeing this maybe for the first time who didn't see it in facilities. All right. Uh we turn to our facilities committee chair, Mr. Hershey. Um since the facilities meeting,
009we've had tariffs. At what point do we receive like I know we have to order stuff well in advance for these these builds and and we have a lot of uncertainty. They could all be gone tomorrow or in a week. At what point are we doing a re-evaluation of time frames and how do we do that? Is it even possible given the circumstances of the their on again offagain nature? Um so we will go through the design process and we will be looking at the budget and the CM at risk will also be very much a strong partner in that effort. Um, as we go through the design effort, we're always checking that budget and making sure and seeing how we're doing compared to it. Yes, there's a lot of volatility right now and that's
010very hard to predict as we get closer to big time. Really, that's where we're going to see where we are as we again as we go through the design process. We'll make be making adjustments as necessary. Um, and uh so that's really the best answer that we can give right now is that we're going to be looking at the budget. We're going to be looking at the market uh and the economy and uh and trying to to steer the path uh you know to where we're going to meet meet the budget you know that the project will meet it um at the end of the day if uh if prices are substantially higher uh yeah then we'll have to do some significant um cause on that and uh it could be that you know some
011other some some financing arrangement might need to be of touch but Well, when we get there, we'll look and see what those options are going to be. We we haven't heard anything concrete from our partners yet. Okay. So, we have been in touch with Thank you. And so, Mr. Hershey, I I will, you know, I think uh that is a question that uh I think is appropriate for the public to understand that um what we're seeing now, we can't predict what the future would look like. So that means that steel may be at a price now and you can slowly increase or decrease over time, but if there's a major swing or a major change in a cost of something that could throw a project out of whack, that's something that nobody would be prepared
012for. So I think the public does need to understand that there's a major change or swing in funding uh in the cost of materials that can obviously cause everybody to go back and re-evaluate what kind of projects they may have in place. So, we will always have those contingency funds that deal with an overrun, but I think you're absolutely right. If something major like this happens, uh, it would require that you go back and re-evaluate everything that you're looking at. So, I think it's an appropriate question. Thank you, Mr. Hershey. Anyone else who was in facilities who heard the presentation and maybe had any other thoughts or questions at this time? Okay. Thank you. Um, as you know, if you attended, um, I raised some questions just for the board to consider about board direction
013for staff regarding our capital improvement program and our priorities. knowing specifically that this is um the product of a lot of people across different units of government working together trying to plan ahead for Wake County's needs. It's not something that we look at and propose changes to lightly, but it is something that over the course of the last two years at least, we know whether it's been staff, whether it's been parents, others in our community, people have brought concerns to us related to these items. And I believe based on feedback we've gotten at this board table um in our committees that looking ahead in this multi-year plan, there are modifications or at least changes in direction that as the board we should talk about and give direction to staff for future years of this program.
014Specifically, we've identified in different committees, and I can't say too much about some of them, but in our security items on this on this page, for example, we've we've identified and expressed concerns about the timetable for completing these security improvements. We've talked about um expenses where spending more money can save us money operationally. If we're able to increase, for example, our maintenance and no longer defer as much maintenance, then we can keep our systems running better longer and it'll be less expensive in the long run. We also know that some things that we might have on here are expenses we're incurring that will require additional operating expenses. The more tech, you know, the more technology devices we have and we purchase, the more staff that we need to maintain and provide technical support for those
015devices. So, when we talk about this in our business meeting later today, I want to identify some items for the board to consider. I have two different options where I'd like to get your feedback on direction for staff. Not that we would change anything going into fiscal year 2026, but looking at 27 through 32, possibly rearranging or rep prioritizing some of these items to address the important facility needs, the working conditions and learning conditions that our kids face in schools in terms of environmental impacts. Um, looking at our mobile classrooms and trailers. um and a couple other areas where we might be able all of these items are important, but we might be able to rep prioritize some things to address these urgent needs. So, uh when you see it again in just a few
016short hours, I've said most of what I was going to say now, so I won't have to say it again. All right. Is there any any final thoughts or any other questions anyone has about uh the CIP? Quest Swanson. Thank you, Morer. for the next phase when we begin to name schools for the 26 uh for the next school well yeah next year's 26 um what will that process look like I know many of us um have schools are on that list so I want to know what is that rubric and whatnot I know Mr. Strickland, you and I have had many dialogue about this particular topic. So, I'm just trying to get some framework around. It's an involved process. We have lots of seats at the table filled by uh various uh people in
017the district. Um we do have a rubric that we have been working off of that was uh the basis of everything that we've done uh to date. That was that existing condition survey that was done in 55 schools with a square footage 30 years old or older. So, that's what we've been working on. Um we have listened to the comments that you all have shared with us about various schools uh over the last year. Um and what I can say to you moving forward is we'll follow the same process taking into account the information that you all have shared with us. Likely next year I know staff may not want to hear this but there may be a few more options for you all to consider. In the past, it's been rather cut and dry
018for the schools that we needed to move forward with. But next year, uh, once that group sits around the table, and that's the CIP group, that's a larger group of both, uh, Wake County staff and Wake County public school staff. We look at the data, we visit the schools as we did last summer, and then we'll make a recommendation to you all. And again, next spring, there will be lots of recommendations. Followup, please do. Thank you. Uh, Chair Harriet, I know there was some discussion at the board for all the board members to take a tour with the commissioners to see some of those schools on the list. Is that still in the work? I know, um, we've had some conversations about it's been hard to to get everyone together. We have done some one-offs
019internally with some of our board members. They wanted to visit some of their own schools. Um, but we'll follow back up with the county. I think that would just a last comment. I think that would be very helpful as we begin this process so everyone can see, you know, the shapes that some of these schools are in so we can all make a a great decision. I understand that there's certain amount of spaces and not all the schools can be on the list for this realm, but I do think it would be helpful for us to really be able to see that and make a bas a sound decision. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Chair Swanson. Miss Rice, thank you. um in the heart of uh board member Swanson and I want to see if
020it possible can we put a smart goal on when this we say we're going to come back um to see about a timeline that he just asked that he just asked about so can can we get a a smart goal in place for that so that I know for my own calendar and so that I I'm kind of can we commission the visits no other naming well he talked board member Swanson can you Please repeat what you just said around you just asked about when we would be able to visit our schools. You talked about it. You've asked for that and we're waiting for a time when we're convenient. Um Superintendent um Strickland said that um he'll follow up with that and so I'm actually asking for a smart goal for the followup. Yeah. Does
021that make sense? It does. I just need to Yeah. It's important for timing because of where we are in the school year as well. because, you know, for example, all of our high schools will be shutting down for graduation. Won't be back again until late August, depending on what we see with different school calendar bills. Um, but so do you have an idea for a timeline or an estimate that we could shoot for? I I want to make sure I'm I'm understanding. So, the the schools that will be named next year that we will present will be next year at the same time. So that that's the pro every year in the spring we bring this CIP update to you all. So that will be coming 11 or 12 months from now. That's part of
022that's part of it. So in terms of setting up the the site visits, um I'll reach out to the county tomorrow. Again, we've had some preliminary discussions with them about that. Um, I think there might need to be some further discussion about uh how many schools we might want to go see because there are a lot of them on the list. Um, it may be helpful for staff to go through the data initially and and narrow the list somewhat and then you all with the county go visit those schools. Would that be helpful? So, I think I'm off. I don't think that's what I'm asking. We because we understood that that has been a conflict. You've been working on that to get scheduled. Um, board member Swanson mentioned as we as board members visiting our
023schools. I think he was very explicit in saying he knew we could not see the schools that are getting ready to be released this upcoming time. It would not possibly for us to be able to make the recommendation, but we were referring to the year after that. Right. And so of what you're talking about. So, what I'm asking for is before we leave the table, can we have a smart goal or a timeline of when we as individual board members or however it works best for you to to be able to share with you which schools we want to go visit and to go see so that we can plan how to prepare in the year following so that we know this is a school and this is the situation. For instance, if we have
024schools with trash bags around our students sinks, um I would like to see if that's actually happening or has it already been taken care of, right? That kind of stuff. so that I can share, hey, maybe our school, this particular school can possibly get on a list so that we can help with what we can see, how we can advocate for the schools and not only just our schools, but what other schools you might see that may not be in our district, right? Because we serve all of Wake County schools um to be able to share recommendation because people's calendars are never going to sync. Either some will be able to be a part and some will not. And so I don't want to hold out that process of me not being knowledgeable or my
025other colleagues not being knowledgeable in advance um before we get that. So that's what I'm asking for. Do you think it would be helpful if you tried to do it in the summer when school was out? I'm thinking more about traffic and buses and things like that where the sites might be a little more accessible if that works for you. I just needed a timeline. Let's try to do it this summer and and maybe um we look at our initial list and then we can share with obviously the board which schools that might would be and then also invite the appropriate county commissioners as well and then would we also be able to share um other schools that may not be on your list? Okay. Yeah. And I think that that's good. I know Miss
026Mafy had some question. Okay. Mr. Hershey. No, there just so board member Rice is aware, maybe this is a good opportunity during the small group sessions about the 20-year plan to kind of get some feedback from individual board members. That's good. Go ahead and get some of those identified now. Yeah. Thank you. One thing I learned about school boards, we we plan ahead a lot. All right. Are there any other questions about the CIP at this time? Again, knowing that we'll have more discussion about this as an action item tonight. All right. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, David. All right. The next item we have uh on our work session agenda is on the multi-track yearround schools facility utilization and student achievement. Um I know we have Mr. Corrosa. Um and you'll
027have some additional folks presenting too. Uh let's see, Dr. Katie Rouse and Alec Hister. All right. I'll turn I'll turn it over to you once we're loaded up and ready to go. Hello. All right. Hello. Excited to be here today. Uh, I'm joined by two really great people and I'm going to introduce them in just a second, but I just really wanted to take the opportunity to just kind of peel back the onion so you and the public can see all the work that goes into the decisions that staff makes. So today we're going to be talking about the multittracky around schools, facility utilization and student achievement. So purpose today is to give you updated research around multitracking around schools. Multitrack year round schools as you know are important tool that we county uses to
028address long-term growth and today we're going to provide you with data and recommendations for the continuing work uh with policy 4150. So here's our alignment to the strategic plan strategic priority 3 and aim 20. And so here with us today is Dr. Katie Rouse. Katie is a professor of economics at Elon University. Her work on multitrack year round school calendars has been featured in a wide range of media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, WUNC North Carolina Public Radio and the Cincinnati Inquirer. Most recently, she was among national experts on a included in a segment on year-round school calendars for NPR's marketplace. Also joined by Dr. Dr. El Castrera who works with our office of research and uh data research and accountability who I've also worked on several other projects with and really excited to
029continue to work uh with him in our uh department to collaborate. So here just some district facts I just want to level set for anybody who's just chiming into these conversations. Now we have basically three different types of school calendars. So when we talk about year round, I want to make sure that we're understanding that we're talking about either multi-track year round or single track year round. Um we also have modified calendar schools and traditional calendar schools. And all of these calendars adhere to the general statute 115 C-84.2 which means that we have a minimum of 185 days of instruction or 1,025 hours. And when we talk about multittrack year round, they operate on four different tracks of the school year providing additional capacity gains. For example, a non-multray round school could have a capacity
030of 716. But if we make it a multitracky round school, that would bump up the capacity to 924. And the only time we gain capacity is when you use it as a fourtrack multitrack year round school. All right. So, I'll turn it over to El. Great. Thanks, Len. So, uh, good afternoon everyone. Um, so just wanted to highlight a couple, um, features of this research. Um, what made it possible? So this research occurred through what's called a research practice partnership model in education research. And in that model um researchers uh and practitioners are going to spell out their priorities um identify their goals for the research um and use data analytics to um understand and address a problem of practice. Um and we do so in this kind of long-term and mutually beneficial relationship that
031results in original research. uh which is what we're describing today. Um importantly too, the RPP model is a way for um the department that I'm representing right now um data research and accountability to support members of this of this community in making datadriven and evidence-based decisions. um in presenting to you all before I've mentioned too that we've got a we have a number of RPs um going on with a variety um uh of institutions um both universities um and research professionals at research firms like Mathematica um just wanted to give you a bit of background there about how this um work happens right and now I'll introduce Dr. Katy reps. Hi, thank you. Uh, so I want to take just a minute to thank um Glenn and El for bringing me into this to work.
032I have to say that I've been a professor now. This is my 16th year at Elon and this is the first time that I've been able to share research with a group of people who might actually use what I'm uh talking about. So that's exciting. It's not just going to be stuck in an academic journal. Um, so uh we sought out to evaluate three uh main questions. Uh so first just providing an overview of the history and the current state of the calendar use in the district. Um second describing some of the relevant um crowding and cost considerations surrounding different alternative or alternative um calendar models. And finally and perhaps you know most importantly understanding the extent to which the calendar affects student learning and achievement. That's the number one goal of any uh school
033system is to ensure that children are learning. And so, um, we really want to take in into account how any changes are going to affect, um, achievement, right? So, I'll kind of go through these three questions. The first one, Glenn hit on some of this already, and you everyone in this room is probably familiar to some extent um about about the calendars that are currently used. Um, they're certainly not new. Um, they were introduced back in around 1990 in the district. Um, a large change occurred in the 2007 and 2008 school year when the the district was experiencing a lot of growth. I happened to be living here at the time. Um, I went to UNCC for my PhD. So, I was living in Kerry. Um, and so this was on the news, right? It
034was very contentious and this is actually why I'm here today because I was a newly printed uh minted PhD student and um saw an opportunity to to research and see um what effect that this change was going to have on students. Um so again this this calendar does not extend the school year. It just redistributes the the days. You all use a 4515 model and use both the um multitrack and the single track. So my expertise and my research is focused on the multitrack model. So that's where I'm going to focus my attention um in in sharing the results with you today. Um and the majority of the year- round calendars that are used here are are operating on the multi-track model. So this first graph just sort of illustrates this. Um this is the
035use of the year- round calendar over the last decade or so has been fairly stable. Um and the majority of those uh year- round schools happen on the multitrack. So that's the red bar, red part of those bars uh illustrates the proportion that are multitrack. So contrary to popular belief, often times these calendars aren't implemented to address learning, right? They're um implemented instead as a solution to overcrowding. Uh overcrowding is problematic. I think all of us are aware of the different types of issues that can occur when a school is too crowded. Um, it can lead to large class sizes, teachers can get burned out and it can uh have negative effects on achievement. So, I did a study many moons ago now back in 2012 focusing on or examining how crowding affected student achievement
036that was done with data from the county, from the district. Um, and I found that it did have a negative impact on reading achievement in the most severely private schools. So, this is certainly something that we want to try to avoid, right, if possible. And the nice thing about the multitrack model of um year- round education is that it allows a school to increase capacity um by about 25%. And so, this can be a cost-effective alternative to new school construction. When I was living here, I know I think Panther Creek maybe opened when I was I was living right over there and it opened and already had mobile classrooms, right? So the new school construction was not able to keep pace with the growth and so this was a a solution and um a good
037one right it's a cost-effective solution um to that however right uh we also know that when a school is operated all year round it's more expensive to operate relative to a traditional calendar school so there are additional expenses operating expenses that go along with um a school being open all year round air conditioning utilities maintenance administrative costs and so on Uh so you know on the one hand it can be a cost savings tool right um when you're thinking about it in really crowded high demand areas but on the other hand if the school is not being fully utilized or it's underutilized it's going to be more expensive to operate. Um and so the research suggests that this this calendar becomes cost effective around 115% of the capacity but it can be financially burdensome um
038when a school is underutilized. So right that brings us to what does that mean here? While um while growth has somewhat stabilized uh relative to what it was when I was living here um you know 16 years ago uh there's still areas of the county that are experiencing high areas of growth uh high levels of growth and high demand for schools. Uh and so in those areas I think it makes sense to continue to use this calendar. Um but there are other schools and I want to show you u this slide here. This picture shows the percent of schools that are currently operating on a multi-track year round schedule that are underutilized. So I ran this two ways because there's um the issue of trailers. So whether or not that's considered as part of the
039capacity or not, right, this is um not permanent space. Um and so on the left hand side, that's the proportion of schools that um are underutilized when we just look at permanent space. And so obviously there's a higher proportion of of those that are underutilized on the other side when we consider the additional space um provided by trailers. But I think this provides an opportunity in some of these areas where the schools are underutilized to consider converting them back um to a traditional calendar. You'd save some money. Um of course we don't want to make any big decisions based on cost alone to the extent that the calendars affect student achievement. Right? That's important consideration. And so that was my primary task here in terms of uh the new analysis was to investigate the extent
040to which this calendar affects student achievement. So um importantly and this is often um misunderstood this type of calendar doesn't add school days to the to the school year. So oftentimes you'll hear and this actually came about quite a bit with COVID learning losses where this idea of we should use year- round calendars came came up again. Um but it's not clear whether this calendar would be beneficial. Right? On the one hand it could. Right? If um providing shorter breaks does help to diminish some of the learning losses relative to the longer summer break then yes maybe it does help to alleviate some of the learning losses. But on the other hand it could provide more disruption. Right? So if you're breaking up the learning and you're out and then you have to come back
041in and get readjusted. It's possible that could also be harmful to student learning. So even from a theoretical standpoint, um it's not clear whether the the calendar is going to be, you know, beneficial or or hinder learning. And so it's really important here to use data and see what the data says about the extent to which it actually does or doesn't impact learning. So my first very big paper coming out of grad school looked at this big policy change you all did here in in 2007 and 2008. And while it was contentious and I know it caused a lot of unrest uh among parents and the district from my perspective, this was a great uh policy because it allowed me to investigate um this idea of of how does student learning change under a different
042calendar where I was able to observe the same kids in the same school under two different calendars. So the idea that the district mandated it was a really good thing from a research perspective although you know parents weren't necessarily thrilled by the mandated nature of it. Um but that was a really rigorous study and um we found essentially no effect. So this is what I say my claim to fame is publishing good papers with zero effect right but uh but it's it's consistent with the theory right if if it doesn't matter how learning is distributed it just matters how many days kids are in school this is this is perfectly reasonable result that it shouldn't matter it's the same number of days of school um and that's what we found and even when we looked
043at subgroups uh racial different racial and ethnicity groups we didn't find any measurable effect for any particular group um we had a second follow-up study that I mentioned mentioned before about the crowding uh and we did find that the calendar did help to offset part of the negative effects uh of crowding and the most really crowded schools. So again this provides sort of additional support for the idea of using them when schools are really crowded. Um but I I won't date myself but these this study is somewhat dated now. Uh now I'm in year 16 so it's done quite a while ago and so we want to re revisit the issue with updated data. So I don't have this really nice what we call natural experiment that was created by the policy change uh but
044I was able to use data graciously provided to me um by by LK Glenn to in to evaluate how achievement differs in year round versus traditional schools now. Okay. So I I looked at it over the last decade and then focused in on the last few years. Um what I'm about to show you I want to explain before I show you. If we just compare average test scores in the year- round schools versus average test scores in the traditional calendar schools, average scores are higher in the year- round schools. But this is just average. And so we have to be a little bit careful here because this is not necessarily because it's on a different calendar, right? There's differences among the students that attend those schools among the schools themselves. And so we can use
045statistics. I just I I used um regression methods to control for differences among the student characteristics and teacher characteristics schools to then try to look at well if we pick a you know a sample of schools that has similar students and they're similar schools one happens to be your own and one happens to be traditional do we see that same difference in achievement and the answer is no. So that change that you'll see in blue in a second is the average. And then if you look where you can barely see the red, right? So there's a reason there's a reason you can barely see the red side is because it goes down to zero. So the blue um on the top that's for the last 10 years. The bottom is the last few. Then we
046have math and reading. You see the same thing in all four quadrants here. Um, but essentially while there's a difference in just the average score, once we control for differences in those different populations, those differences essentially disappear. And so these results are consistent with the earlier findings. Um, as a parent, I would be reassured that if you switch my kids calendar, it's not going to affect their learning, which I think is comforting. I have two kids and I would I'm a professor, right? I I really value education, so I'd be very upset if I thought that something was going to harm their achievement. But it it I I would be reassured that it's not. Um so if you're making decisions based on costs, you don't have to worry about whether it's going to negatively affect
047kids either, right? Right. Converting back and forth either way. Um so that led us to our three main um recommendations that came out of of this work. The first is to consider converting some of those underutilized schools that are currently operating year round to a traditional or single track model. Uh but to continue using them in areas where they're needed, right, in the areas where there's a lot of growth where it's going to be hard to build new schools or more expensive to build new schools. And then finally, right, we recognize I'm a parent. Um I know that there are other considerations that parents care about when it comes to calendars. Um, most importantly, what happens if my child is on a different calendar than myself and I'm working and how do I find them
048care? Um, and certainly that will be affected depending on what kind of calendar you're on. So, I think working with local child care providers to try to make sure that families have accessible and affordable care um, regardless of the calendar, right? either in the summer or during trackout times is going to be important and I think would also help reassure parents that um the district understands the different dynamics that are going on when you're thinking about changing their kids calendars. Um so that's what we have. Uh I guess we're happy to take feedback questions. Thank you. This is a topic that we talk about from time to time and we've been hearing you know like anecdotal evidence of this for some time but it's great to actually have you come in and be able to
049present it in person. I'll go around the table. Do any board members have questions about the presentation? We'll start with Miss Evans. Thanks. So, um, couple questions and a comment. Did you have you looked at and done any research on other districts that use a year round? I have. I have worked on one policy brief with a co-author that that looked at this. In California, demographics were very different. So we have a paper looking at teachers and what we found was that it didn't really affect teachers here where it was put in places where the characteristics were very different than where she was looking which was LA. So it was very different populations. Um there she was finding like negative effects of the calendar but again when we kind of merge these together in policy
050reports we've argued that the impact depends on the populations where it's implemented. Okay. Um my second question I just want to make sure I understood you correctly with the having to reach 115% capacity to be cost effective. So that that's um 115 15% capacity on the four track year round for it to be cost effective. I don't know what slide that was 13 I that Yeah. So that's a um a number that was taken from a prior study. Imagine just overall capacity. So if if you take a traditional calendar and it's above 115% capacity, you can accommodate that. You would reduce the capacity by putting it on a year round calendar. Sure. I think it's um considering the permanent space on a traditional calendar and then Okay. Um and then just a comment um for
051you know the public discussion about it. um we are now uh forced to compete in different ways than we were in 089 with universal vouchers and the proliferation of charter schools. And we do I see this as a valuable tool in offering parental choice. Um tonight in close session we are looking at student transfers and we do have families that request a year- round calendar. So it's just something I think we all need to be mindful of. That doesn't mean that we can't reduce some, you know, get them if they're under underenrolled. I'm not saying that, but I'm just saying that is a piece of this conversation that we need to remember. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Evans. Any other comments or questions? Miss Rose. Um, just to help me a little bit more with
052the understanding of of what um we were just hearing because I kind of had a similar question. I wanted to know with the uh multi-year round track with in the beginning parts on uh on on number slide 11 right we talk about the multitrack um the single one and then we talk about um of course when all tracks are full so with the data that you're showing are are you showing that there can be possible improvements even if we just do the single track it has to be all four of all four one group is out at any point in time so you're using the building is full. Mhm. Throughout the whole year, but a single track, everybody's out at the same time. So, nobody's in there when everybody's out. Okay. And so, one I
053got to go back to my notes that I was typing to ask. So, are we looking are are you also is it correct um or is it true um when you're saying that if we do this and what you just showed us shows some improvements in student achievement when all tracks are going and is it a possible recommendation that you all are asking for for with our overcrowded schools that um we look at implementing um or shifting the school because of the academic implications. No. Okay. No. No. I I would argue no. So that the um overall the achievement so take a step back. When we when we looked at this in 2012 in the most crowded schools it partially offset the negative parts of crowding because it's decreasing it's increasing the capacity right? So
054it's decreasing crowding. Um but if you just look at you know among year round versus traditional there's essentially no effect. I wouldn't I wouldn't argue. I would there are other reasons that we don't want crowded schools. It could help partially offset the negative effects from on achievement, but it's not going to totally Okay. I just want to make sure that's okay. Thank you. That's it. Thank you. Other questions, other comments? Miss Matt, I just want to say thank you for staying committed to this work so that we can continue to share updated data with our families. Um I think you know not only um with Dr. Sarah and his group but also having an outside trusted source like Elon looking at this I think that partnership is really valuable for families to see you know
055if you move here from a place that doesn't have year-round schools that the calendar isn't going to impact your students academics and they'll have more stability um in assignment. So thank you. Thank you m questions other comments. I mean it seems to me that you know without any noticeable documented academic impacts definitely without you know the documented benefit. We're really talking about savings in construction and capacity costs versus savings in operating costs. and that it's really just kind of evaluating each school independently on whatever the crowding and capacity terms are in terms of calendar recommendations. Is that fair? Okay. All right. All right. Well, um this has been great. Again, this is something that we have heard about, but we have not actually seen it presented and laid out so professionally before. So, unless there's
056any other questions from the board. All right. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. fresh off the heels of that conversation. We're here to talk about calendar conversions for 2627. So, I just I want to stop and just say that one more time. We're looking at calendar conversion recommendations that we're going to provide to you today for not for the upcoming school year 2526, but for 2627. We've heard loud and clear from the board that you'd like a longer runway as possible for parents so that they can make adjustments. And so, what we're asking today is to make a recommendation to you about one particular school that we'll talk about that we're requesting that their uh school calendar be converted to a multitracky room. So here again talking about proposed calendar changes for 2627. Um
057utilizing school calendars is necessary to address our long-term planning needs. And this work again is aligned with our policy 4150. Again same strategic priority and aim as the last presentation. And thank you to Susan Pium who's here with us today. um she's always big about sharing her websites. And so this is another great website for families to go to um after today's presentation if they'd like to get more information. We'll have a thought exchange up there as well. We'll have one specific to the school that we'll be talking about today, Lake Myra. And then we'll also have a thought exchange that we've already put out to the public at large um getting their feedback on just general uh questions about how do we utilize calendars for long-term planning. So many of you have seen these
058slides before and I'm just going to take a moment just because there are a lot of people who are just plugging in for the first time today. So we have a six-step process in the office of school choice and how we deal with long-term planning needs. Right? We start with our annual forecast update. We go to we present to you projected crowding information. We review the CIP, which is one of the things we did today. Um we started the annual enrollment plan. You'll have another kickoff meeting I think next month with Miss Pullium. Um we'll review the uh cap schools which we've already done cap school for the 25 26 year and then we're here at step six now addressing other school utilization concerns and that could be many different things. So here's data and
059recommendation. So again step one you've got your forecast. This slide you've seen this before. This is part of what um Marcela Rory used to present. This is the updated one for this current school year. The dark blue line is our projected forecast for the next 10 years. And you can see how it's changed over the last several years. This is a map you've become familiar with. And so the map on the right is the updated version of this. So this is based on I believe it's 2025 to 2034. So the next 10 years. And you can see how it's changed ever so slightly. Um, you'll see some of the larger arrows becoming maybe smaller, a little bit more spread out. As we're getting more and more data from our municipal partners, which we really appreciate
060their input as part of this process, we're able to then project where we assume these students will be coming from. And this helps us on multiple fronts with reassignments, the capital improvement plan, um, renovations and and all the such. So then our second step of the process is projecting school crowding. Again, we'll have our application windows open. Um, at that point, then we'll once the students get settled, we'll have our projected aotments that go out for the district. And then we also have our facility utilization planning, the different changes to uh new schools coming online, capacity changes based on renovations that will be coming online for that next school year. And as part of the backup material today, you'll see some of that information loaded. So, these are the updated projected crowding maps. Ideally, you
061want to be in the yellow, right? That's your 90 to 100% crowded. White or orange and red represent either underutilized or over capacity. And this just gives you a good visual of where our current state is, where we project to be for the 2526 school year, elementary, middle, and high. So then, as part of our capital improvement plan, we identified where we're building new schools. So the schools in green are the schools that will be opening in 202526. Hilltop Needmore Road which we'll be talking about this upcoming school year uh as part of our enrollment plan for that will be opening in 26. 2027 will be Morrisville High School. 2029 will be Whis and Parkside Middle. 2030 will be Pool Road. And then 2031 will be Marshburn Road. I added Little Creek to this because
062we are talking about Eastern Wake schools. And so I just wanted you to see that we do have a future land bank site elementary in this area as well. And so that's a visual of this particular chart that you're familiar with. Again, um this is the capital improvement plan showing you by year which schools will be opening. You could also see that certain schools will be serving as a swing space for others. So Marshburn Road actually will be completed in 2029 and then it'll serve as a swing space for Wendell Elementary so they can get their renovation done in that time. And again, all of these are subject to change based on uh building timelines and whatnot, but this is where we're projecting moving forward. And then as part of the capital improvement plan, we
063also have renovation projects. Sometimes we're able to renovate schools and increase our capacity or maintain the current capacity and just upgrade the facility. And so I just wanted to give you a visual and then the next slide will spell it out in a chart form again of where we have renovation projects that are included in the current CIP. So these are projects that have been named already. Okay. And so as you can see some of those in the eastern area, you've got Lockhart, Wendell Elementary, U and Zebulun Middle School. And again, there's the chart for those. So then very shortly, Susan will be coming to you and talking about the annual enrollment plan, the kickoff. She did an initial discussion. She'll have another one with you in May. And then that starts our information that
064we kick off to the public. We've reviewed all of these different data sets. We've made these decisions not in a silo. We've taken all these data points. We've tried to figure out what's the least impactful way for families um to enjoy our great schools. And so what are we going to do to address those long-term uh capacity needs? Part of that is cap schools. And we've tried to do um a better job each year of reducing this cap school list um mostly because the transportation that's associated with it is becoming harder and harder to provide and so it's starting to impact our other schools. So, as we can with regards to the capital improvement plan, whether it's new schools or renovations, whether it's calendar conversions, which we'll be talking about now, whether it's uh reassignments,
065what are some ways that we can try to reduce the number of capped or overcrowded schools? And again, I I mean, these are things that are out of our control when you're talking about building because we are at the will of our municipal uh partners who have the authority to build and continue to build. Um some of our partners are really good about seeking our input before they approve plans and we continue to urge them to continue that process. We're really thankful for that um that opportunity, but until we are able to have a more um solidified effort, we're still going to be in this situation where we're constantly playing catch-up to the growth in our area. So here we're in step six. Uh we're mostly at steps four and five of this right now.
066Um, but again, like as I've said, we've reviewed CAP schools. We identify which schools are not in the CIP. Um, we identify schools that are not operating on a multitrack calendar, but have long-term crowding concerns, which is something we'll talk about today. Um, I think if you remember Pine Hollow Middle and Rollsville Middle, that's step number three where we looked at year-round schools that do not have future long-term crowding concerns and we made recommendations in the past to convert them from multitrack to traditional calendar. And then as part of those processes, we'll reach out to families. We'll host engagement sessions. Um, we'll do a thought exchange. Um, we can do some public feedback um virtual sessions or face to face, whatever the board wishes. Um and then we'll make recommendations to the board um based
067on all of that feedback. And so we do have a um a thought exchange out already. It's a general one for the public and I just wanted to give you a little bit of um information based on that. This is hot off the press. Um so I got it as of this morning. This I took it was a district-wide um thought exchange. I did we asked them for where are you uh responding from? So which part of the county? So I did take the eastern part of the county's responses. So it's Nightdale, Eastern Wade, Wendell, Zebulun respondents. Uh we had 67 respondents from this particular area that generated 41 thoughts. There were 569 ratings. Okay. And the alignment was medium, which is a promising um response from that because that means where you see low
068means you have extremes, right? People for it and people against it. Medium means they're a little bit more in the middle. they're a little bit more aligned, not completely aligned, but a little bit more aligned in their thoughts. Uh, the AI summary, I'll just read it for you. Respondents emphasized the need for educating families on the benefits of year- round calendars, maintaining consistent teacher work days, and considering child care logistics. Concerns included the impacts on students routines, the need for smaller class sizes, and the importance of aligning school calendars within families. Many preferred traditional calendars for ease of planning and consistency, while others highlighted the benefits of year-round schedules in reducing burnout and learning loss. Cost efficiency, transportation, and the availability of trackout camps were also significant factors. Some suggested using evidence-based data to guide
069decisions in considering modified calendars to break to balance breaks throughout the year. So again, these are parents thoughts. So based on the information we just shared to you, you can see there are some conflicts between what the data tells you and what parents feel. Okay? So I wanted to share that with you today, but I I did think it was really important and I didn't plan this. It's you know when you look at the last sentence, some suggested using evidence-based data to guide decisions and that's why we wanted to bring to you that presentation previously because our main business is teaching kids, right? And so we wanted to make sure that whatever decisions we make, we are not purposefully hurting their student achievement. And so that's why we brought um Dr. Katy Rouse uh to
070meet with you today. So some of the top topics um or comments that were rated uh breaks are needed for students and teachers to prevent burnout and student loss um and learning loss. Sorry. U staff and students stay healthier when they have regular breaks. Um sister schools are aligned on the same track. I'm thinking that's elementary and middle school feeders. uh when they say sister schools because it wouldn't make sense if you had two schools on the same track. Um we also have um move to modified calendar to give kids and teachers more breaks throughout the year. I I love that one because modified is a great calendar. Unfortunately, due to state laws, we're not able to utilize that calendar anymore. And then uh please don't put teacher work days midweek. Keep them Friday or
071Monday. So that's something for the calendar committee to consider as well. So, I wanted to share that information with you because again that really just kind of shows that we are reaching out. We are getting uh input from families. Um our staff recommendation is to convert Lake Myra to a multitrack year round for the 2026 2027 school year. They're currently operating on a track 4 calendar. Um this will increase the school capacity from 616 to 814. Okay. And so how did we get to this decision? I'll just recap again. When you look at the projected crowding for this um in the circled area is the base attendance area for Lake Meyer. So on the track 4 calendar they are over 110% crowded. Um first thought when I look at this map is so why don't
072you just reassign students to the neighboring schools. They're underutilized. Well I wanted to make it very clear if you could see Carver to the uh northeast. So the east and northeast is the white area there. They're at 100% crowded if you take away their trailers. Trailers are meant to be um uh temporary capacity, right? Uh Nightdale to the north is 106.9% if you take away their trailer capacity. And Lockhart even further north of that is 112.7%. And so while I you know we do have some seats available in the um temporary classrooms, I also want to go back and make you look at the map of the um the arrows. This area is a very high growth area. So any um seats we have available today even in our temporary classrooms will be taken with
073the growth that's coming to this area. And so that would naturally this would have been hey look let's reassign instead of trying to convert a calendar but I'm just trying to help people understand the thought process as why we're making this particular recommendation. So again you can see I circled you know the Wendell area the Lake Myra area. You see the large arrows. We have projected growth in this particular area. Wendell is growing and again the CIP. So what else do we have coming in the CIP to help this particular high growth area? We have Marshburn Road coming on. We also have Wendell Elementary that's going to be going through a renovation. And again I had shared with you that we do have a landbank site uh Little Creek Elementary in the Zebulun area. So
074we do have longer term options but look at the dates. you're looking at 2031 before we can get additional seats in this particular area. So in the meantime, this is what's supporting our recommendation for converting uh a track 4 only school to multitrack. So next steps, so I've met with the area superintendent and the principal of the impacted school, met with the staff uh to address any questions or concerns. Uh ongoing we've started a thought exchange and we'll open up a new one specifically for Lake Myra families. if you feel it's necessary, we can do a public a virtual public engagement session. Um, so far the feedback we've gotten online, again, you can see us in support and understanding of the why. And I'm hoping that this presentation will help um solidify that as well
075with some data. But anything else you you think we need to do in order to um get feedback from parents so that you can make a decision, we will certainly do. And then I'll open up to questions. Thank you, Mr. President. Let me start off and just ask the middle schools that uh students progress to from Lake Myra, what what does that look like? Adult middle school and it is on the traditional calendar. So, they already have a mismatch feeder um when it comes to elementary and middle. However, they do have 612 alignment with their high school. They're both on the traditional calendar. Okay. Thank you. Questions, Dr. Dr. A. Um thank you. Um, has there been any kind of thoughts about talking to the community regarding, you know, like the needs for after child
076after school care? So glad you brought that up. Uh, because because of the the change will require some changes in the parents, you know, needing that, you know, after school care and all that stuff. Yeah. And and part of the last presentation we just had was a recommendation to do such and I've already reached out to staff members from the town of Wendell. We're planning a meeting. Um, and I just started collecting names of who to invite to this particular meeting. Um, and then also we'll be I've already reached out to members of the community in Zebulun. And so we'll be trying to bring everybody together with our childcare partners uh that historically have helped our students and our communities uh their parks and reccks department. So we'll bring a lot of these people together
077for a discussion to let them know because as you see the growth coming in the Wendell Zen area, there will be a need for multitrack around schools. And so we will be starting these conversations to help them start to plan ahead for having affordable care in these areas for their families. Thank you. All right, further questions about calendar conversion. Um, you know, Mr. Crow, I know that we have some other elementary schools that are on a year- round calendar. And when we have these conversations, we get a lot of questions as board members in terms of, oh, what will happen to say Sycamore Creek Elementary that just had the middle school change and some others? Is this the only conversion that you're recommending for this year for this upcoming 2627 year? And do parents at
078other schools, can they take any sort of uh can can they take it to the bank? There won't be a calendar conversion before that. So, this is the only planned recommendation we have for the 262 27th school year unless the board directs us to do otherwise. Okay. Um, shortly thereafter, we're going to start doing more uh outreach to families in particular areas because we do have some schools that we'd like to talk to um about potential conversions for 27, 28 and beyond. Um, thinking that if we start these conversations early enough that will satisfy um your need for letting parents know in ample amount of time. Um, some of these conversions will will be a traditional to a multi-track, multittrack to traditional, track four to multitrack, track four to traditional. We'll look at them. We're
079trying to be a little bit more strategic and aligned with the recommendations that we'll make. Um, trying to align them with the the annual enrollment plan as well. So, if there's any adjustments to feeder patterns we'll need to make as well, we can certainly align those. But definitely you will see um ones coming probably next spring for the 2728 school year. Okay, that'd be Thank you. Let's see. Miss Edmonds and then Miss Crawfield. I looked at the timeline. I was just I was my question was going to be was today was was today the first day that we're hearing about it. But no, because of the thought exchange comments that you read and then I'm looking at slide 23. So I'm good. Thank So just to clarify though, so we did have an open uh
080thought exchange just in general getting feedback, but for for the Lake Myra parents, this is the first time that they're hearing that their school would be impacted. Okay. Okay. Okay. Miss Cfield, um I just wanted to ask about the feeder is Wendell Middle School. So that's traditional, correct? And have we have how much of the community has responded back about that being um or what kind of impact that would have for them? I remember in another meeting that we had they said that elementary and middle school really more aligned than middle school and high school. So how does this affect that area if their option is only traditional and middle? So as long as the school has been open and I can't I don't have it off the top of my head of wake when
081Lake Myra opened but as long as it has been open it's either been multitrack or single track and it's always fed to Wendell Middle School which has been traditional. So they've historically always had a mismatch feeder pattern. Um we haven't heard a lot from parents. Um some staff members when I went to meet with them did talk about you know what do we do if the children are on multitrack and they want their um siblings to be on multitrack for middle school. Um while we don't have any calendar options where we provide district transportation families are welcome to apply to multitrack year round schools they would just have to provide their own transportation if if approved by staff per policy 4150. And if I could just follow up what is the capacity at uh the
082middle school? Oh, because we have a lot of growth going there. 936 93 936. Yeah, it's at 770 right now. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Further questions. All right. So, Mr. Cros, will this be something that comes to the board for a vote or is this just for information? So, so that's it. Will we will need a board vote. Um, now the question is when. Um, we can bring it in two weeks. Um, if you feel like there's enough information and you've got enough to make a decision. I am keeping the um thought exchange open till the 18th as of right now. Um so we can provide you some input then if you'd like to do at a later date. We can do that as well. Miss Mafy, did you have a
083recommendation? Yeah. Um if this is the first time that Lake Myra parents are hearing that Lake Myra is specifically on that list, I think to keep it more open. Um I know you said there was a possibility of a virtual public session. I know that that is more work for your staff. um but I think would be greatly appreciated by families just so they can hear directly from staff as to the why that we heard today. Um and so I think you know if I'm I don't want to throw dates out there but like September might be enough time for families to wrap their head around it and then they have a full I'm looking at Miss Pam. I need to know before September so we can include any other recommendations. I see. Okay. I
084will rely on more than two weeks and and before September. What about the first meeting in June would give you 30 calendar days plus Yes. to get feedback and have I'm now looking at Susan to make sure that that'll work. We'll shoot for the first meeting in June then. So feeling around the board that's a good thumbs up. All right. I think that I think that's a good proposal. Zoom or is that just the thought exchange that would virtual public? Yeah, we would do a virtual meeting as well. Miss Bow, did you have additional and just for context because this area is exper experiencing high growth, we've had separate long range planning discussions with the community already and there's other exchanges going on and I can report on that in June which are saying the
085same thing that largely we understand we're growing. We feel like Lake Myra going multitrack isn't a huge surprise. We do have other concerns about childcare and trackout camp and calendar alignment. Those certainly are not going away. The there's multiple fronts where the conversation's been going on in the community. Not this specific recommendation being heard. So I agree that some specific touch points on this recommendation are important. So just for clarification, um I I'm assuming you don't need this as a board work session item. Do you want us to just bring it as an action item to the board? So this way we can share any updated data at the podium and then you can vote or do you feel like you would have a longer discussion about it in work session and then as a
086consent item whichever you'd like to do just let us know. I can't tell from some of the nods. Is that nodding to the work session or nodding to the action item? I think action item. Action item. Not yet and just discuss it at the podium. Thank you so much. Great. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Mr. Corrosa. So, uh, now we turn to the proposed 2025 budget work session. Um, all of you have had opportunities to submit questions to Miss Kinsey and her team. Uh, you'll see in the meeting materials for today, answers to many of those questions. if you haven't had an opportunity to review those before. Now, um, Miss Posie, Miss Kinsey, and I don't know if anyone else will be joining you can lead us through the presentation. I did not plan
087on standing up here, but we appreciate those uh flexibility. You got to, you know, Robin, we pivot when you can. Um, well, good afternoon, Chair Hagerty and members of the board and Superintendent Dr. Taylor. Um, you got that pulled up. All right. So, uh, on March 18th, you received, uh, Dr. Taylor, superintendent's proposed budget. And then on March 25th, we had a followup and just shared, uh, from respected chiefs, uh, the plan purpose of, uh, repurposing dollars to balance the budget. And so, uh, since then, you've had an opportunity to review the superintendent's proposed budget, uh, send in questions to Miss Kinsey, and, um, today we're going to go over those, um, questions and respond. And so, we have our chiefs here to respond, uh, for their respective areas. And, um, I I guess I'll
088handle some of the, uh, hot topic down questions. All right. All right. Thank you, Miss Fosy. Miss Kinsey through the questions. Um the first one was a question about if there's a senior administrator in human resources for each area for each region that would align with the area superintendent and we do have that. Um so there is a senior administrator of staffing for each of the nine areas of the county. And in the superintendent's budget, we were adding an additional position to align if we had been able to expand to that 10th area superintendent, but those are being removed from the budget since we're not Why has it been hard to hire nurses? Um there is a nationwide shortage of nurses. So we've um pasted in some information from the Health Resources and Services Administration
089just showing that um the shortages are projected until 2037. The demand for licensed practical and vocational nurses is projected to grow faster than the supply. Um the supply of nurse practitioners is projected to exceed demand over the projection period. But the distribution is the most important issue there. The third question um was about restructuring how the vaping settlement funds will be used. um and staff will provide an update to the board on the plan utilization of the settlement funds for anti- vaping initiatives. Then there were several questions about concerns to the adjustments for maintenance and operations. So um we were providing more details broken down by the different areas within the maintenance budget. Um and just as context, the total budget for custodial services is about $46 million. The total budget for maintenance is about
090$45 million and the total budget for utilities is about $39 million. So the sum of all those is about $131 to $132 million. And that just gives you a context for the total that these cuts would be um these adjustments would be against. So the recommendation in the superintendent's budget is to adjust custodial by $850,000. Um, the impact would be reduced or no high dusting areas in buildings higher than 6 ft. No power washing, sidewalks, awning, school signs, or other exterior areas. Eliminate all non-rine services. Um, no contracted subs during the day to cover absences and no supplemental help for floor cleaning and wiping. The adjustment of 250,000 for regional maintenance. The impact would be to eliminate or reduce floor or carpet replacements or changes requested by schools. Repairs would be done but few replacements.
091No painting except where related to follow-up repairs for maintenance work. Adjustment of $180,000 for energy and physical plant that would eliminate contracted preventive maintenance for boilers and utilize maintenance and operations staff for the work. and an adjustment of $180,000 for grounds maintenance that would eliminate mulching services, both contracted and in-house efforts, no support for athletic fields over seating or ariation. Um, reduction in pruning or replacing plants. Um, can there be another option for the reduction? Other options will have a substantial negative impact on basic day-to-day cleaning and upkeep of schools. The next question was about grounds maintenance and does that include playgrounds? There's limited funding for playgrounds in the maintenance budget. However, a number of repair um refurbishment or replacement projects are planned using our um building program capital improvement funds. How do the reductions
092impact custodial services? Um basic cleaning will continue to be the priority at all of our sites. Schools will not receive supplemental help with floor waxing, buffing or carpet extraction or when um staff members absent are out. This is a shift of another question. Um the um board members asked fellow board members if you should consider limiting outofstate travel in an effort to create savings. So restricting use of the board's budget for outofstate travel is the decision the board can make. Um the board's current budget for workshop expenses is $24,000. At this time about half 56% of the current year budget has been spent or is encumbered to be utilized. There was a question about if there's an overlap of our priority high schools funds that are included in the superintendent's budget and support for our
093restart schools. So the superintendent recommends adding $1.6 $6 million to help six of our high schools as they transition from re from from title one dollars. Two of those schools are also restart schools. So Nightdale High School and Southeast Raleigh High School are in the restart program. So they could possibly get assistance from both the priority high school funds and restart resources. The next question was sharing the impact of the assistant principal formula change on our schools. So for assistant principles, there's no change recommended to elementary and middle school formulas. The high school formula would change by 100 students in the fifth tier which allows more months of employment for schools larger than 2,999 students was removed. If we isolate only the formula change, the impact would affect five of our high schools. What is
094the revised formula for counselors? Um, so again, there's no change for the formula for our elementary schools. The fifth tier was removed for our middle schools and the ranges were revised for second to fourth tiers for our high schools. And we've pasted in the before and after formulas so that you can see the differences. Question 11. If we're unable to adequately fill behavioral health support positions, can we remove vacancies and improve salaries? Again, just to give you context, um, for behavioral health support positions, we have a very high fill rate for counselors and social workers. We're at 99.26%. 26% for our counselors and 98.65% for our social workers. So that's not a area where we have concern with a great number of vacancies. Psychologist is a little bit lower. Our fill rate is 92.06%. Um
095so it's important to keep in mind that underlying the operating budget, we already assume vacancies throughout the district. We've talked about that several times. If the actual overall vacancy rate exceeds the number of estimated vacancies, then lap salaries do occur and transfer to savings. But given the fact that our overall fill rates are high and we're not realizing material lap salaries, eliminating eliminating vacant positions does not directly translate into savings in a dollartodoll manner. There was a question that if in the superintendent's budget we decrease the recommended increase of supplement from a 3% to 1 and a.5% would that cover the cost to possibly reinstate the reduction that was recommended for dental. Um so the superintendent's budget recommends the local supplement increased by 3% aligning with what we think the legislature might do for base
096pay which is an increase of $5.7 million. It also recommends um if the board's budget recommended a 1 and a.5% that figure would change to $2.8 million and that would be sufficient to reinstate the adjustment to dental because that was $2.5 million. Question 13. Um based on the starting salary for a new teacher, what would the 3% increase in compensation equate to in real dollars? So, if we look at the entry level teacher on step zero, that increase of 3% would equate to about $1,450 over the 10 months. Um, and just for comparison, the consumer price index has averaged 2.8%. Then a question on the dental. Um, have we considered lower cost alternative providers? Have has that be considered? Um, have we looked at the NCLEX plan through the state government um, office of human
097resources? So, NCLEX is a supplemental insurance package that's offered by some state agencies, community colleges, and universities. The dental plan product offered by NCLEX is administered by Metife and staff will research where the Wake County School System is eligible eligible to participate and if so, we would review that associated dental plan. The next few Um the next question with several parts is more concerned about the dental insurance um adjustment. Could there be a sliding scale? Um a sliding scale based on employee salary level is being looked into. Um the sliding scale model currently under review by the state health plan has four different annual salary tiers under 40,000, 40 to 65,000, 65 to 100,000, and over 100,000. Um so any sliding scale would comply with federal and state law requirements. Could we get the same
098coverage for a cheaper rate? An RFP was released and awarded to our third party administrator to oversee the self-insured dental plan through 2026 based on the most cost effective and efficient plan options. Our self-insured plan has proven to be more cost-effective than PO plans with flexible options to customize the plan benefits for staff. Are there other options for reduction to replace this? We are recommending these changes, but um we are not recommending these changes, but some examples would be um things that could be looked at that are in the budget. Um permitting the lab salaries to be used for our restart programs, that adjustment to $5 million is not something that's legislatively required. So, that's something that could be looked at. Um the increase of 3% for the supplement is also something that could be
099looked at. Additional reductions would require further analysis and adjustments of formulas and staffing um and reductions in nonpersonnel. So again, we aren't recommending those two, but those are two things in the budget that could be looked at. The next question is the superintendent has adi advertised for a senior level position which has never been filled. Has that position been eliminated or is it still funded in the budget? That position was repurposed to support funding for a 10th area superintendent. So that position is no longer in our budget as an all the positions associated now with the 10th area superintendent that was we were hoping to expand to um are now a component of strategic repurposing in the superintendent's budget. So none of those would be in the budget. There's been some discussion about whether the
100new sustainability policy would require the creation of a sustainability coordinator. Has that been created? Um the position of sustainability coordinator has been created and approved and is proposed to be funded out of our building program, the capital improvements plan. So it's not part of the operating budget. And then the last question we had that had been submitted or was from our last session. um what do the reductions in supplies and materials for chief of staff chief of schools look like? Um would that impact marketing costs for our magnet program and provide examples that could affect schools? So the office of magnet and curriculum enhancement um has adjusted their has made their reductions. They would not negatively impact magnet school programming, school staff professional learning, staff student supplies and materials nor the marketing for magnet and
101recruitment. The identified reductions will occur in central line items such as office supplies, equipment, and contracted services. All right, those were all of the submitted questions. Um, of course, we're free to ask any question that does come up. Um, Mr. Swanson, as as Vice Chair Swanson, as also the budget committee chair, do you have any do you have any remarks about schedule or timeline or how we're going to proceed? I will defer to Chief Neer and the finance team. I know at the hopefully at the upcoming finance meeting um we'll be able to really take a deeper dive and start looking at some options because I know our time is coming to an end with this budget process and so I will when I mean coming to an end, we have to meet that May
10215th deadline. So, just make sure that we're still able to walk through the process, lay out questions, and then start really looking at options um of what may need to be added, what may need to be removed to accommodate some of the the pieces that we're hearing from the public. Great. Thank you. Um going around the table, questions about the presentation or other budget questions. We'll start with Miss Evans. Thank you. So, um I think we're all kind of alarmed when we hear that we're not going to have a sub when a custodian is out. Is that what we're saying? Yes. So, um they can can move people from other schools as needed that we felt like we could. I I mean I'm just thinking about as you can imagine teachers, principals, other staff being
103asked to um I mean it's one thing to clean up, you know, if a child has an accident, it's another to clean something up that might be more um major like a anyways have one person during the day and the majority of the cleaning takes place at night. There might be opportunities if the day person is out could shift someone from the night to come in during the day. We've discussed that. Okay. So I did I meant not general cleaning but something that occurs. We you know don't want to burden teachers and principles with that. So um that was alarming to me. And then my other question if I may please. Um Miss Kimy you said you were talking about the APS. Yes. And you said I just to be blunt I didn't understand what
104you meant. You said that if we implement only the formula change that it would impact five high schools as opposed to what? Like if you say if we implement only I didn't understand what you meant. Um so the when we calculate the impact of changing the formula we looked at next year's projected student counts for our high schools. So we assume that that's just the the number we have in students. We looked at using that number for the current formula and for the new formula and the difference impacts five schools. What really happens going into next year is the current formula using this year's student counts as a as a principal is looking at the change from one year to the next is looking at any growth or decrease in number of students from year
105to year. So when they look at their a lotments, it's a combination of that new formula on next year's students compared to this year's formula with this year's number of students. So I was trying to say to isolate down only what the formula is doing, not changes in students from sight to sight next year. The formula change really only impacts five schools. Okay. Yeah. Does that help? Yes. Do you look like you wanted to add something? Yeah, you got it. I'll be any followup assignments. No, thank you. Okay. Thank you, Vice Chair Swanson. Thank you. Um, and thank you all for diving, presenting these questions to us. I also want to thank Chief Luton and her team for putting together an avenue and a vehicle for staff to share their concerns um, regarding the budget,
106which has been helpful for us as well. So, thanks to your team and to you, Miss Kimy, and your team. Um, so my question was about I wanted to follow up with the um, one the question was about the 1.5 being the 3% being reduced to 1.5 to cover the dental I know we have some staff that are on local dollars and I know we try to accommodate whenever the state increases to match those folks. So if the state was to give a 3% and we do not do the 3% to cover the dental, would that be a disadvantage for those staff? Like could you dive into that a little bit more? Right. Um the in that particular answer we were looking only at the supplement piece. So the 3% the legislature might approve that
107we're guessing. I mean if that if that came true the base budget for teachers regardless of which fund that would be applied. This is where we the superintendent's budget recommended adjusting the supplementary pay flat dollars by 3% to align with what the state might do. You do have the ability to change that not do it at all or do a different percent or whatever the board might want to do. So if I could give maybe an apples and apples of example regardless of the basis of an employes's funding let's say we have a um central office employee and their annual salary is $50,000 a year and regardless of funding source and the state says we're doing a 3% increase that $50,000 a year central office employee would receive a 3% increase or I believe that
108works out to $1,500 a year. Um the teacher who made make a total of $50,000. A piece of that a supplement though. Let's say $42,000 is base pay and uh $8,000 is supplement. If the board chose to not apply an increase on the supplement, regardless of base funding funding source, that teacher would get a 3% increase on the 42,000, but not a 3% increase on the 8,000. So overall of 50,000, but the actual percent here will be 3% here be a little bit less than 3%. Follow up. So thank you. So essentially trying to cut cost to well I shouldn't say cut cost trying to find ways to cover the dental it's still not a win-win situation. Um I guess that's the piece I'm trying to get to just to be blunt. So even if
109the dental was still removed teachers still are not going to be able to see it. It's still a cut in their pay essentially. So, I don't think I would be in favor of supporting that piece because it's still not helping teachers. I mean, I would love for us to find the the the 2 million, 2 and a half million to just cover the dental as a way for us to do benefits because I my concern is if we go with that that proposal, we can still lose staff because of the fact that our surrounding districts may not offer what we're trying to do or may give more than uh what we're presenting at the moment. So I I just yeah that's just not a a scenario that I'm comfortable with. So thank you. Thank you
110respons um well that was my question and the reason for it was I don't like to make a I don't like to advocate for something keeping the dental without being willing to have a proposal of where we find the money. And if we just if we get rid of the dental and keep the 3% it's going to be a net wash s like moneywise they're going to get the the 3% and they're going to immediately pay it at least this way they would still get a raise for a little bit and they would keep the dental and then and what she didn't read and what was in the documents which you read out which is I would like to then revisit it after we have the state and federal because the other part of it
111for me is if we see a big bump in beginning teacher pay, do we then maybe focus that supplement increase on the veteran teachers instead? And yes, it might seem unfair, but if they're getting 4,000 more here and a thousand more here, maybe we do more targeted. So, I was trying to think of ways to keep the dental and then maybe revisit the supplement when we have the state and federal stuff, which who knows? So that was my I don't love either, but you know. Yeah. No, and and I appreciate trying to find some alternatives because that's what we're all trying to do. Yeah. Right. Find the best budget possible. Dr. Taylor. So, Mr. Chair, um I do appreciate those questions because it does I do think that uh provides a lot more clarity because
112what we want people to recognize is that the supplement for teachers as as uh Mr. ator um characterized in that example um $8,000 um 3% of it is around $240 but at a one and a half% you're probably talking about $120 and so the difference is $196 and so that means you would be impacting teacher supplement and there would be that difference but we also want to remind people that there are roughly 16,000 people that participate in dental and so if there was an adjustment made to the um to the supplement that you could have a teacher that does not participate in the dental benefit and they would still end up losing. And so we know that uh obviously this is one of those areas is going to be very tough uh and and we're
113still in the process of finding uh a replacement for the dental piece. So we'll talk more about the sliding scale because it has a lot of information that you will see in terms of who will be impacting who won't. But but the but the question about uh the supplement piece I think is something that is very appropriate because it does impact people differently depending on if they participate or not participate. All right. Um I was a statement but we'll go to Miss Mappy first. Yeah. I just want to follow up um from what you said Dr. Taylor and thinking about people who do and don't participate in the dental program. I think you know I I don't think we can get those numbers today but to get a breakdown of like within those sliding scales
114how many people do participate and how many don't and I we actually do have that sorry I missed that part. Okay. Um and so yeah I think just never mind I will go back and read more thoroughly. He's going. Okay. That's that's that's what I was going to say going into it. I think it's clear from the comments you've heard today and then previously that I think most everybody around the board is concerned about the dental insurance cuts. And so whether it's, you know, finding something else in the budget that can be cut so that we don't have to make this cut, whether it's trying to find a way to address the cost of the insurance, finding another provider, there's a lot of different options on the table. Right. And so this next item is
115one of the things that was suggested which was looking at a possible sliding scale and that will give us a little bit more information about this part of the budget and I think help all of us as we weigh different options. So are you ready for that? I was going to ask is there any are there any questions about any of the information in the Q&A specifically? Miss Cfield, I just wanted to know um you said the jewel um that they will get they will let us know. When will we find out about that part? What was the question? Um trying to look Yeah, there's there's an answer there's an answer in the document about the jewel settlement that says staff will make a presentation. It's vague. And so Miss Cfield, I think if I
116can put words in your mouth, we're just asking when will that presentation be or when will we get that information? So, so I'll update you about the presentation um and get information on when they plan. Well, there we go. Yeah, I think I think it's on student achievement. Yeah, we tentatively planning for student although we can right expedite that if necessary. So, so this is this would and and I I know the the question that you have and I can answer that. So when we were talking about using the jewels settlement, uh that was just for this year's budget. And so when I talked with the staff, I had to to clarify to them that it was not a plan to use the jewel settlement and never replace it. And so what Terry has now
117said since then is that it maybe would make more sense just to make a a fund balance appropriation as opposed to seeing the jewel settlement because it's all in the same pot. Uh but either way, whatever we would use from that settlement would be fully restored. So the board could use the full breath of the jewel settlement for the purpose that you talked about. Now the plan that they're going to present doesn't require that all of that funding be used in the first year period. So I think it's over a fiveyear period of five plus. Yes, it's a five plus year period. And so what that does is it gave you the ability to be able to use that front fund, a portion of that now to deal with a budget situation, and then you
118would have the next several years to be able to address um uh replacing that dual fund. All right. Um just some some final thoughts on the Q&A before we go forward. I did want to say the question about hiring nurses, you know, talks about the national shortage, but it would seem that if there's a national shortage, that would increase competition for the nurses that are available. And then if there's increased competition, then one of the things that'll drive that competition would be salaries and benefits for those teachers. And so, as when we revisit this and come back to it, we might want to we might have some questions about how our nursing positions compare to others either in the public or private sector. knowing that there is a nursing shortage but then what does that
119shortage mean in terms of how it affects us directly. Um the second thing is just and we we had some questions about it. I do want to say the cuts to preventative maintenance and maintenance and operations you know specific I mean all of these have been elevated. I think that we're all concerned about these specifically when you talk about cuts for like boiler maintenance and saying that we will offset the cuts by utilizing our existing maintenance and operations staff, but we know that we've been experiencing many vacancies on that same maintenance and operations staff. It seems like this is an area that the public has been very clear that they want to see strengthened and here we're proposing something that would weaken our ability to maintain those systems. And so when we get into a
120bigger discussion, I just want to go ahead and forecast now that I think between the dental plan and maybe maintenance and operations, these are two of the areas that I'm sensing and from some conversations with board members, I think we would like to revisit and try to find where we can find funds to offset some of these. Okay. All right. So let's hear about the first item which was the um dental plan and this idea of a sliding scale and see if this could be something that we could look at. Yeah. Um yeah, we heard uh very clearly at your last um meeting discussing the budget and in the questions and answers, you know, concern about the change or proposed change and also could a sliding scale be looked at. So, we've got just a
121handful of slides. Um, gives a little background, this may about the numbers of employees, um, and some other demographics, if you will, and then we've got some scenarios of what a sliding scale might look like. And, and so, one bit of clarity I do want to add so that everybody will recognize that I had a chance to to look through the various comments that we received and they were really good. uh and most I won't say most people but a lot of the comments said that they couldn't believe that the dental benefits were going away and so we want to be clear to everybody that even in this proposal it was not a recommendation that we take away uh dental benefits it was just simply the portion that the employer paid that that would be
122an additional amount that they would have to pay so we would have never recommended that we end the benefit altogether and I think that was the impression that some had uh but the information that we'll share about the sliding skill is what you all have asked for and that's I think some really good information. Um so I'll just let they do that but I just wanted to share that with you. Okay. So just a a few bullets of background just over 16,000 employees full-time employees participate in the plan either with self coverage or coverage for themselves and their family. And I could break that down of that 16,000 just under 6,000 not only cover themselves but also have family coverage. Um if the premium were to shift to the employees responsibility, we couldn't do that
123for the entire fiscal year because it has to be done on an open enrollment calendar basis here. So if any change were made in this first year there would only be six months of savings and then in the second year there'd be a full 12 months. Um so the local if if what was in the proposed budget which we do hear strong concern about if that did come about the six month savings in the first year be $2.5 million and then in the subsequent fiscal year be annually $5 million in savings. So currently employees pay themselves if they're participating whether they're covering themselves or their themselves and their family. They pay $6 a month to cover themselves. The district pays $28 in addition for each participating member. If a participating member has their family covered
124as well, they pay the full cost of the additional family premium. The district does not cover that. So, as far as a sliding scale, we took a look at what the state health plan is considering because the state health plan, as I think everyone knows, is looking for the coming year to also shift to a sliding scale based upon state employee salaries. And what I've got here on the screen has not been approved yet, but it's and they call for illustrative purposes, I think. But, uh, it's an example and it shows the breakdown of what the state might consider as far as salary ranges. They've got four different bands under and these are annual amounts under $40,000 a year. 40,000 to 65,000, 65 to 100,000, then over a 100,000. And you can see how at
125least at the state level and this is they say 300,000 state employees. You can see the percentage of employees in each of those bands. So most in the middle two bands much less in the lowest and the highest band. So what we have done is put together a little whatif scenario and we can run different numbers but we just ran I think five different examples. This first example shows effectively what's in the proposed budget which would shift that $28 to the employees responsibility. And you see there, um, $2.7 million of savings. And I know I just referenced $2.5 million. You go back a slide. Um, maybe it's the reason for that difference, it would create local savings of 250,000. But there other funding sources like our grants that it would impact that would not be
126available for other use. That's that additional 250,000. So I know that could be a little confusing. So this again is just what is included in the board's proposed budget. You can also see here um similar that we've got the same bands 0 to 40,40 to 65 65 to 100 and 100 plus. But it's interesting here you can see and these our Wake County employees and you can see 164 16,422 of them. The middle two bands again had the highest percentages as far as numbers of staff. Band one, the lowest one, um, again a much lower number. And then band four, a significantly lower number, much lower than even the state percent. Now, looking at some scenarios beyond what was in the board's or the superintendent proposed budget. This looks at a sliding schedule based upon
127salary. It uses the same bands that are in the what the state is looking at. And you can see over there on the far right column in the upper chart on the right, band one, just an example, not a recommendation, instead of $28 a month, what if it was $14 a month? Band two, instead of $28 a month, what if it was $18 a month? Band 3 26. Band 428. Just a whatif scenario. And in this scenario, instead of generating savings of $2.7 million, it would generate savings of just over $2 million. So if this type of scenario was implemented to reconcile back to the superintendent's proposed budget would require finding about $700,000 of reductions somewhere else. The next scenario um uses a slightly different sliding um schedule. It is 18 20 24 and 28
128at the different band levels. You can see there's not a lot of difference in the savings. It again uses the same um proposed state health bands. The next scenario, we've adjusted the bands. Um and the first band goes up to 45,000 instead of 40,000 and then 45 65 65 100 plus. And again, we've adjusted the actual premium amounts that would be additional. And again, you see in this scenario, the net savings is very similar, but still about $700,000 less than in what was in the proposed budget. Here's a scenario where we have actually adjusted the bands. Now that first band is anything below 50,000 not 40,000 and then 50 to 75 75 to 100 and 100 plus. So again we've shifted the bands and we've put in differentiated monthly premiums. These are just examples. Any
129of these could be gone up down and again you see now it's back closer. the savings are further reduced and the largest impact of that was by raising that minimum floor up to 500,000 for the first band. And those were the examples. We can run a myriad of different examples though both on the bands and the monthly amounts. And again, this is just for information for the board. Thank you, Mr. Neer. And you know, I know it's a theoretical exercise, so I appreciate that you went and you found like a model with the state plan to try to use. I know that different board members might have all had like their own idea sort of what they were looking at. So let's go around and just sort of do we have any feedback in particular
130or we'll start with Vice Chair Swanson and Miss Mathy. So thank you all for laying out these scenarios. So I think for me I wanted to see what it would look like if we covered the the you know having versus the employers paying 16 or 20 or 24 if we were to cover those amounts for potentially bands one two and three with a cap at maybe or bands one and two or or whatever that would look like. um to see what that could potentially look like versus again having the employer the employee make those contract. Mr. Swanson, I think we can give you that information pretty quickly from this slide. Um because effectively um let me go back one more. This slide here effectively shows the savings of what's in the proposed budget. So if
131you look at these bands and these are the state bands, they could be tweaked. You can see on the bottom portion of the chart far right six-mon savings. If we covered if the if the district continued to pay the full premium for employees participating let's say on band one and two, we would have to find what is that about $1.6 million of other reductions to make. those savings would basically come off. If you wanted to go up to band three and cover the premium for those employees in full, then the total savings are just from ban 4 and that's about $71,000. So the district would need to find an alternative of about $26 million of other reductions. Followup. So, could we see a scenario that says if we covered this 2.5 million, this is what
132we would have to then not fund? Um, that's something that I want to see in the budget before I could feel comfortable, you know, moving forward with this budget. those two pieces, the um the dental being the biggest piece. I understand that folks, you know, I I think it's important for folks that are listening to know that if the state legislature increase teacher compensation, we would be able to really move the needle on other issues, but because the state legislature has neglected to pay teachers what they're worth, we are doing that on the local level to recruit and retain. So I I I want to lay that piece out, but I also want to say that I just want to see some other options with this. Do you have a Dr. Taylor? Yeah. So I'll
133add to that that um and I think that's a good recommendation, a good ask, we will come back with several. Um but but I think when you talk about the different bands, um but I want the board to recognize that the majority of the people are in bands two to three. And I think that's where you want to have those different scenarios if we're looking at really I know you're talking three and four kind of below that what that would look like. So we can as we said to come up with additional options that you would show you what those look like. Uh but again there are um a million different ways that you can do it but I know where your focus is and so we can do that and I I don't feel
134comfortable counting folks as money. So I I mean just because someone may be at that band three at the 100,000 piece, we also don't know what those folks are doing and what other necessities they have. So I don't want anyone to assume that because you make that that that higher band, you can afford that. So I I just I I don't feel comfortable with that, but I would like to see what that looks like. Let Mr. Neer respond, then we'll go to Mr. Matthews and Miss Coffman. Sorry, Mr. Swanson said everything I was going to say. So well done. All right. Thank you, Mr. Mr. response also in response to what I believe I heard from you. We are working staff is working because we did hear the concern both in your last work together
135with us as well as in your questions. Great concern about this. So we are working through some different strategic repurposing that would allow us to do nothing no changes to the dental and it would basically this could come off the table but it would impact something else and I'll just reiterate we're at the point that no matter what we bring it's going to impact something right but we are working on that we'll bring that back to you at your next work session. Okay, you miss I know Mr. Neer knocked something back in my head. Um, so you know, one of the hard things about this budget is that you know things like adding counselors, the assistance principles formula, the digital learning coordinators, those were all things that we were excited to bring back. you know,
136I remember when custodians were now on a five-day schedule as opposed to, you know, I think it was like Tuesdays and Thursdays for some schools. And um and it's really disheartening to see that that we're back here mostly because of choices outside of our control. Um, one of the things that we did do as we talk about HVAC and maintenance, um, was I remember there was a celebration when we made schools one degree cooler in the summer and one degree warmer or one degree, sorry, one degree warmer in the summer, one degree cooler in the winter. And if I remember correctly, that was about 3 to 3.3 million in additional costs to do that. Looking at those temperature set points, even that one degree to one degree, could that offset the cost of this? Um,
137I would want to look into it and review that to confirm. It would certainly have an impact. Would it fully cover the cost? I would want us to be able to look at that a little more closely. Okay. But would that have an impact? And I'm looking at Mr. Strickland. it would impact. It could, but depending on the weather, the rates, um, that's less of a sure thing than something else. And we could quite honestly find ourselves in a in a difficult position or a deeper hole if rates or weather conditions were were bad. But we can certainly Well, it was a different story when we put them back up. So, yeah. Well, it and it is something that's going to happen to your point. Um it was one of the budget reductions we did
138during the great recession to balance the budget and we did realize utility savings. We'll go back though and see what the numbers were. And and so Mr. H, if I could add to that that um I think you're you're spot on point with that recommendation that if you change those set points uh then you will absolutely have a say. Uh but the unpredictable part is as Mr. strictly said is that you don't know what might happen with the weather in terms of having to run it longer or the cost of fuel is going to go up. Uh so making the set point changes by itself will result in a savings based on what you would be spending. But the unpredictable part is what happens with the weather, what happens with fuel cost. So, I would
139say that every year that you put in uh a number for utilities, it's just you hoping that it's going to land there and you never really know what it's going to be until you begin to go through a year. But, uh well, these changes won't be impacted. I only have to decide them today, but if I recall correctly, these changes will not go into effect until January of next year because the insurance window is November of this coming school year. Okay. All right. Um, continuing around, Miss Coffin, um, I had appreciate you bringing all these options, um, to us. Um, and hopeful to see the option that you talked about for us to not take the people that's really going to affect our our teachers. Uh, you said that the state bonds can be. Can
140you explain that more? I'm sorry. I said early when you were explaining that you said that the state bonds could I'm sorry bands could be tweaked. What did you mean by that? Well well let me go back. Good question. Um most of the scenarios we ran just use the salary ranges that the state health plan is considering. They haven't approved it. So most of the scenarios I think all but one use these same salary bands. We could run different scenarios with different salary ranges again with the um design that the higher the annual salary the higher the premium and the monthly premium and the lower the um annual salary the lower the monthly premium. So what I meant is we could in running different scenarios we could make different changes to that. We are not
141required to use the same salary bands that the state is considering. Is that just on this or is that in general? That's just for purposes of this. Um and then I just wanted to go ahead comment. um you know some of the changes that they went over um and appreciate the answers to all the questions but I think it's important that some of the changes and things that we added last year we put back were for the benefit of the classrooms. So it's just um you know I understand we need to look at where we could save money to put in a different spot but on page two where we spoke about all of the facilities changes that that were there. which is really concerning to have those losses come away when we know we
142already need to improve it. That that's a place that we're going to go to to try and make savings. And I would prefer us to not I mean I don't think there's anything of those options that is even a really good option to consider as we're trying you know I mean we have HVAC issues and all these other concerns that we're having not having maintenance floors or dusting like some of these things just don't even seem like it would be acceptable to our families. So, I just wanted to make a comment about it. I would prefer us to find something else for that as well. I appreciate that and I think some other board members would support that as well. Um, Mr. Hershey and then I'll have some comments. The um year 15 teacher salary
143with the supplement is what? Um, what? because I'm trying to see who's in band three because that's a pretty wide band and you have a lot of veteran teachers that stop at like 72 or 75 based on state pay and supplement. They were getting caught up. So I'm kind of wondering like what that you wanted which um which step specifically 15. Yeah. So 15 to 24. So step 15, no national board, no masters is 63,565 without the supplement. No, that's total. I'm sorry. That's the total. Okay. So Okay. And so what's step 24? I just want to know who's going to get caught up. 65 to 100. Step 24 is 65 694. you know, that's the group that doesn't increase much as they go through based on the state in that plateau. I just, you
144know, my my focus is on the veteran teachers that don't see anything and taking stuff away there is more pain could be more painful than so if we're going to do bands, I which I'm don't love these, but I would narrow them significantly the 65 to like 75 and then maybe 75 and up. But, uh, it's just a pretty wide group of, um, staff members that get caught up in that that range. And those are pretty significant differences. 65 to I think 65 starts at 21. Anyways, that's all I had. I'll ask some questions. Yeah. So if we go back to slide five, I want to make sure that I saw something correctly. So if all participating members, regardless of income, the the change would require an additional 28 per month by participating staff. That
14528* 12 is $336 a year. Okay. We also know that we've talked about a 3% salary adjustment. We've looked at and again to Mr. Hershey's point it gets complicated who gets the supplement, who's locally funded, who's state funded and then you know last year Swanson has pointed out and Dr. Matilda has pointed out you might have national board certification you might have M's pay. There's a lot of things that really direct that salary. But one of the questions we asked earlier in the Q&A was just even for a starting teacher what that 3% would be. And that was about $1,450. So, if I want to make sure when we say that we're proposing a 3% supplement, does everybody does every WCPSS employee that is a salaried employee get that 3%. Yes. Let me just clarify
146though. Um if the state were to legislate and the board were were to approve let's say a 3% increase and the board then approved an increase in addition on the future supplement all employees would receive a 3% increase on their total pay. So by including and this just gets back to the proposal about do we reduce that supplement from like 3% to 1.5 or something like that. If we give 3% looking at the model of like a starting teacher, we'd be giving them $1,450 a year, but then we're taking away 336 for the dental. So, I think, you know, we've talked about different bands and everything and like different amounts they might pay. I think some of the concern is for our lowest paid employees and that we would want to pick up all of
147that, not just like a reduced amount because like you know again I don't want to disagree with with Mr. or Vice Swanson's point about you know stereotyping what people might need with their income, right? But I think it will be harder for someone making under 40,000 to assume that than someone older, right? And and so just I I don't want to I don't want what he said, which was valid, to be misconstrued, that I think we do care. We have more concern about the impact on those employees that are making less. If you take that away, giving the supplement, I think everyone comes out ahead, but that 336 can impact different families with a greater impact depending where they are on the scale. Is that right? It's going to impact everyone. Yeah. So, yeah. Okay.
148I just wanted to to make sure that point that point was made, Mr. Hershey. Well, for clarity on the numbers though, the 1,400 is a 3% on the entire So, if we're talking about just the supplement, the supplement 3% would be about $280. Good point. Right. Cuz it's about 7,000 * 3%. So, it's even less than that. So, it's the 3% on the local supplement only. Yeah. So that's why when I talk about the 1.5, it would just the supplement, it's about they come out ahead doing it that way versus if we cut the dental and gave the supplement, they actually still come out behind or roughly even. And so that's why I've been Yeah. I I think a way to characterize it is that um if you only adjusted the supplement to 1 and
149a.5% and used the savings to offset the dental uh they would not lose. They would move ahead. Yes. But not as far as everybody. So I think that's a good way to characterize what they teach you with a supplement, right? You don't lose, but you don't gain as much either. and and and that's why I say come back to look if we can enhance later but never cutting. Yeah. So then to that point and M I think Mr. Hershey is right we I would want to see what that cut was compared to what the what the increase on the supplement was. What that actually comes down to. Maybe the question in the Q&A wasn't asked as well as it should have been. My bad. No, no, no, no. It was I think it was my
150question. I could for for the step zero on that scale that Dr. Matild just referenced, basically a teacher without a master's degree, without any national um board certification. The 3% increase just on the supplement on step zero be $220 a year. So each month be about $22 for a 10-month bro. Okay. Versus and half of that and half of that instead of $220 and some sense be $110. Okay. Thank you. All right. Any more questions about the the dental insurance issue? This sliding scale. Vice Chair Swanson has said, I think our next budget and finance committee is on the 29th and so maybe that would be a good target to bring back other scenarios or um you know I know that we'll get this posted up later if you can dist actually if you want
151to distribute this um to by email to board members first and then we can post it in assembly for that upcoming budget committee budget and finance committee. That way everyone will have a copy of it and that'll let us work on different ideas in terms of you know with the data that you've given us about what board members might support. Does that sound like a good option? Okay. And again that should not stop anyone from continuing to research some of the other options that you've mentioned looking at other providers other insurance methods and anything that we can do to address the cost. That's your Swanson. So, I know there was a question about another dental insurance company. Is has there been some outreach thus far? So, and and if so, how quickly could that feedback
152get back to us? Great question. We have I believe it was NC Flex. We have looked into it. We're still determining if we are eligible as a public school system to even participate. We did look at the premiums. It was administered by Metife. They offer three different levels of plan. Kind of a lowest premium, lowest coverage, medium premium, medium coverage, highest premium, highest coverage. And on first blush, it appeared that even at the lowest level, the family coverage would be higher than our current plan. We also know that we just had an RFP out less than a year ago, maybe about a year ago, because the current contract with Delta Dental as our administrator, I think it began in 24 for 24, 25, and 26 if I'm not mistaken. So the RFP is recent and
153it was chosen based upon the most cost effective provider. Thank you. We are still looking into though um that that vote because again any shift in plan would have to follow a calendar year and require significant upfront time to go through the process of running an RFP. But we feel we've done that in the past year year and a half. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Neater. Miss Edmonds. And then I think Vice Chair Swanson has a suggestion for where we go from here. Go ahead. So it it's kind of on the timeline piece. You mentioned the budget finance committee meeting. Can can some of the this dental question stuff be answered on the 22nd rather than Yes. It's like a boat van. Okay. That that was Okay. M did you want to uh Right. So I
154think for me I just want to figure out and and don't want to speak for the chair but I think um just to kind of get a temperature check of what are some of the needs in the budget so we know how to structure the 22nd work session the budget and finance committee and if there needs to be an additional meeting postm May 6 we have a temperature check of where we need to go. So, I wonder if we could just go around, you know, the table, figure out what are some of the the needs that you're hearing or what you want to see. So, therefore, we can help staff understand where we want to go versus throwing everything at the wall and trying to figure out what's a great idea. Uh, do we want
155to just go around the table or how would you like to do it? I think that's appropriate. All right. Um, so how about for modeling uh what the expectations are? How about if you begin and then we'll go around? That's how a good facilitator should work. So, I think I've laid out what I wanted to see is the the dental piece. Um, doing as much savings as we can for HBAC maintenance. Um, you know, trying to find a way to get ahead on some of the deferred maintenance. Um, I think those were two of the biggest pieces that I've heard in that I've heard from folks is that, you know, how do we move ahead on that and close those gaps? Um and then coming up with some options of hypothetically um what happens if
156if we were to receive 35 million or 30 million and not to kind of I know it's like the big elephant in the room but I I don't want to really well what happens also if we don't get the federal government funding you know from the US department of education I know our magnet schools will be tremendously impacted so coming up with some scenarios of what we would see if the whatever happens to the federal government. We know that's going to impact us, the state and and and the local as well. So, those were some of the scenarios and I'm happy, Miss Reer, to clarify when I need to clarify with you all about that. Okay, Miss Gordon. Um, I'd like to echo everything that Vice Chair Swanson has has stated about the dental insurance
157piece, but um, I also wanted us to really take a a close look at um, of the of the actual um, positions that we are talking about eliminating or cutting, which of those positions um, are direct student impact positions? Um cuz if if you know we are all at this table for children and students, it's important for us to keep them first at you know at this at this discussion and those positions that are closely um that touch students every day. We should be trying to save those as much as possible. um in contrast to positions that don't necessarily not to minimize anybody's position or job title, but in contrast to those positions that do not directly impact students. All right. Thank you, Miss Maf. Um yes and uh just reiterating the um not just
158the look at the different bands but also Mr. Hershey's suggestion of what that would look like um for someone at each of those bands if we suggestion with the um supplement. I think just being able to see it ahead of time to digest it a little better in real numbers or realish numbers I guess um would be helpful to understand what is the cost differential for our staff members. Thank you Miss Russ. Thank you. Um, I just wanted, it's really simple. Ditto, um, Swanson as well as, um, Miss Gordon. Um, she summed it up for me as well. Um, and I guess just to reiterate, um, we have, yeah, we just we just have to it's hard and everything, like you said, is needed um to do the job, but what what are some things
159that we really have to target on that? That's um that's a classroom situation that we can't um let go. And with everything else, we kind of I just kind of I think I've shared this with some other board members that I'm just in a space of we at this point we kind of have to take it back a little bit to some oldfashioned education, right? Just a little bit. Just a little bit. We won't say innovative, but meaning the teacher meaning whatever these teachers need, I'll put it that way. whatever they need to relieve stress from them and their financial situation so they can focus on student learning is what's most important. And while all these other things that are in other areas of the budget does have an impacts and effects, at the end
160of the day, hey, I gave it last year about everybody has to have somewhere to stay, right? That's the first thing we're always going to pay. And I think that our teachers, well, I was going to say teachers, our staff receiving everything that they need to live well, meaning whether we have to cut a whole bunch of other things, but paying them and giving them everything that they need as a resource is the primary thing because if they're not well, they cannot teach our kids. I don't care what we choose to do in this budget. If we do not take care of these people, you're not going to have anybody to teach. And so that literally has to be our number one priority and figuring out the other stuff as it may. There may be
161things that we like to do, but taking care of their salaries so that they can focus and not be stressed in other areas of their life. And I'm saying this because I need my um staff to hear this, at least from me. the other stuff that's in a budget, cut it. Give them what they need and make sure that they have what they need in a classroom to teach because at the end of the day, that's what you need. That's what they're trained for. And give them that and any other supplemental pieces that we need out of student um academics, which is important. But outside of that, the other stuff are things that we know are tools to help, but they're not the primary things. And so, I really want us to hone in and
162focus and for our superintendent to dig a little deeper, have a deeper dive and look at what are the basic fundamentals of education that we need because right now financially that's where we are as a as a county, as a state, and as a nation. particularly what we're seeing right now. And so I really want people to think about how do we impact teacher staff well-being so that they feel good about coming to work so that they can teach children because when people who have to pour into other people are well on theirel are well on the inside it affects everything else around them. And and I'm going to continue to uplift that because I strongly believe in that. And I might sound like a broken record, but our teachers, our staff, I don't want
163to keep saying our staff is struggling. They're struggling and they're still holding on because they are love what they do. Every janitor loves what they do. Every bus driver loves what they do. They're not doing what they do in the educational system because it's always easy. They're doing it because they love it and it's hard. And the best we can do is cut out the fluff. I'm just going to be very plain and simple. Cut out the fluff. Pay these people what they are worth the best that we can with the money that we have. cut out anything that's not essential so they can do the work in the classroom so that everybody can live well for the next at least financial year until we can see what we can get more. So I'll stop
164right there but that is where my heart is and I don't know what that look like Mr. neater from you all sides. I don't know what that looks like to our superintendent um and to um our key staff, but there are certain things that I think that Miss Koffield is trying to say that I hear other board members are trying to say. Um there are some more areas we can cut. We're just not we're just not openly talking about it. There are some more things that are a little that are not necessarily for learning. It's good. We need it. It's a tool, but it's not necessary that we can find it to do what we need to do. We know that maintenance and operations already is 1.2 billion. Is that right, Mr. 1.2 billion? Are
165you with million? That's it. 1.2 million. What we talked about earlier, right? Um with CIP and stuff. So, we know that those those are, but out of a $2 billion budget, the majority we know is about employment, right? Pay the employment and the rest of the stuff we can figure it out. But people need to be paid or our students aren't going to survive cuz our teachers aren't going to survive. And I'm going to keep saying it because I keep meeting teachers and I keep I keep hearing it in my day job. I'm running into educators. I'm running into staff, not just only in Wake County, but in our I do stuff across the state in the nation. I'm telling y'all, if we do not take care of these people's emotional well-being, it's not going
166to be good. I don't have to say it, but I'm speaking from a professional standpoint. Even with HR, I don't even have to say it. I just already know because of the climate and HR can't say it, but we don't know how many of our staff is already either taking leave or already having emotional challenges because they're dealing with all of this stuff. And if we don't stand up and make it as easy as possible for them to give them everything that they need so that they can do their job without collecting two and three other jobs. And I know that's a state challenge and I'm going to close. I'm sorry. I know that's a state challenge mostly, but I'm saying cut out some of the other fluff. We shouldn't even be talking about dental.
167That's not even a That's not even a conversation we should be having because it should be understood we're going to do it. We shouldn't even be walking around in this circle. We shouldn't be looking at bands. It's just we're going to do it. Period. Pay these people and give them what they need so they can teach our kids and so they can be well at home so that our children can be well at school. I'm done. Mfield. Um so just sharing my brief thoughts. Um the facilities like I just recently said that's a priority for me. I don't think that we should be um taking away from that. Um we need more if anything. Um the dental I would like to see us find savings somewhere else. And I do want to um have two
168clarifying things. Um the restart was that from the the funds that we suggested the last meeting is that from the administrative end of things or is that from what we're supplying in the classrooms? I just want to be clear about that. That's a it's a $5 million amount of resources that our area superintendent can utilize to give the 40 schools that have the restart status resources beyond formula. So it does go directly to the schools. But you had said in the past that we've only used up to5 million. This year the allocation was $6 million that has been utilized. 5 million of it was allocated to schools and went directly into people that are working either their pay or adding additional positions. $1 million was used for um staff development and um supplies and other
169non-personnel costs. So this adjustment from 6 million to 5 million we don't we don't want to make any of these reductions but when we have to um it was looking at let's don't cut into the part that was used to allocate for people. Okay. So um I have quite a few restart schools and I've had some really good um experiences with that. You know I've lifted up the Verdam Elementary School before and I do not want to see that hit. Um, I think that's something that is really turning some of our schools around and it really concentrates on some of the things that they need in those schools. So, for me, I don't want to take anything away from the classroom if it directly affects it. Like Mrs. Price said, I I feel there's other
170places that we can concentrate um and we can remove and and use this. Um, and then the permanent building subs, we had 3.7. Um, for me, I know that was a big deal for us to put that on our budget last year, and I think we should really keep it. It really does affect our students. When you have um when you have kids in the classroom that either a student a teacher has left or they go on maternity leave, whatever is the reason, an injury, those students that are in there every day are missing out when you have various subs that are coming in to try and fill in that schedule. So, I really think the building subs, the permanent building subs makes a huge difference that they can have somebody cover that. So, those
171are my four categories that I would really like us to kind of steer stand clear of. Thank you, Dr. Ray. Um, I just think keep thinking about Dave Ramsey, you know, rice and beans, beans and rice. Um, we have to figure out how to live with less. Um and actually um you know I I agree we need to probably spend more money on the page back amendments and and and any kind of studentf facing you know staff that we have we need to take care of them and keep them but everything else like you know you talk about fluff we need to look at where it is that is fluff. Um, I just got an email from the constituent and a teacher of of um that said, you know, who said, you know, we need
172to look at I I know that we have already central office have already made a a relatively big sacrifice. Um but he mentioned about um uh putting some of the central office uh personnel that have teacher experience in a role where would be beneficial for the the local schools. Um I don't know how that works but um but that you know that was um and he admits that it's an unpopular idea. Um but it is something that we need to kind of look at, you know, how do how do we um reserve some kind of a uh partial um time in in the school? um a way to um put some of our our uh teaching experience that is no longer being used actively to be used in the school in a in a sub
173in a subcapacity or uh you know um in a way that uh would help the the the individual school. So, I don't have the concrete ideas, but you know, I I you know, I just got to see that today and I it it's got me thinking. So, thank you. Thank you, Dr. Hang. Miss Edmonds. Don't have anything to um request for staff to bring back. I do have a request of my board members who have described that there's fluff available in this book, which I didn't find any. So, we got this book when a month ago. Has it been a month? And we got our questions today, this list of questions. Um, that was our time to bring to staff uh where we thought the cuts should occur. And I didn't see any new suggestions
174um of different places to cut. So, I'm happy to give I've got this little tab of sticky notes with these little skinny ones that I'm happy to give this to whoever wants it and go through your book and tag the fluff so that we can give that to staff so that they know where to make the cuts. You can have it. Thank you, Miss Evans. Oh, and may I say one other thing? The idea that an organization of this size, we have more than 200 schools in this next upcoming school year. And how many students do we have? 160 4,000 160,000. I don't I don't forgive me. I don't remember the number of employees. The idea that we can operate on a skeletal c crew in central services to manage that kind of an organization
175is inappropriate and absolutely just ridiculous. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hershey. Um I don't need an answer now, but I think I don't know when uh we spoke a little bit about it. the organizational study. I think we desperately need it at some point because we've got to we're having the same conversation we had last year about central staff and I think it's just important to have because we don't know. So, I don't know when that's supposed to come. The other my only my other point and you know I heard that it's not we don't want to name schools when we're talking about cuts but I hear from some in my district concern about schools losing three and four positions and that can be really tough on a school any school so we have to
176be really mindful of that and I don't So that's a part of the budget conversation so much as it is, you know, for staff to say, how do we make sure when we're doing these that we're not pulling four people out of one school and maybe only one out of it. So that's just the only other point. And I do want to say also um that I do think it's important when you're advocating to keep something that we got to bring to the table. It's tough to cut. That's why I did, you know, the supplement thing may not be popular and people may and I'm okay with that, but I just think it's important that when we, you know, I love the building subs. I don't know what we would cut and so that's why
177I'm not proposing it. But I would fight for it and and if there was the ability to ask for more money from, you know, the state or the county, I would do that so we wouldn't lose that. So I agree with the importance of it, but I'm just not seeing where we cut to keep. It'd be one of the first things I would try to to get back for because I know the principles in district 6 have largely loved it. So, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hershey. So, I you know, I appreciate all of this feedback. I know by board member we've heard the dental plan pretty much everyone address that is an area that we'd like to see addressed. We've heard many board members talk about maintenance and operations and you know I think
178this is an area where we hear so much from the public. We know that there's some money we spend that we're spending money but it can save us money later on. And if we don't make some expenditures, it's like not changing your oil or not maintaining your car. You save a little bit now, but you'll have a big expense later. I, you know, I I echo Miss Edmund's comments about fluff. You know, I'd like to see it identified because I think there's a conception that's out there that well, any large organization must have large bureaucracy, right? But when we see the ratios, right? When we see the number of plumbers we employ like in our our central staff compared to the number of schools we have and we compare that to other school districts, you
179know, one plumber for every 50 schools. When we see like the athletic directors and we talk about adding sports, we find out we have an athletic department of two people for 200 schools, right? It it's important to see, you know, I I totally get that people want to understand what the staff does and what value that we're getting. And I think it's right to be able to justify that. But I think I I I think we can't just assume that because the central office is big that there's some positions that that are unneeded. And it's it's just something that I hear a lot. And then I go and I I'll talk to people in the public and ask them to identify what it is or or give examples of, well, what would you cut? Do
180you not want a budget and finance team, right, that performs the audits and provides our fiscal accountability? You know, do you not want professional learning and professional development that we say is so important for the quality of the education we provide in the classroom? It's not something that's directly investing in the classroom in terms of paying it through a school, but it's paid through central office. You know what? You know, is it is it you know, you know, where in the the many operations that we have, do you see something that's non-essential or or or non-desirable? Bring it. And and we can have that discussion. But but I I do want to see if if we do that, I'd like to see something more concrete and then we can weigh it on the pros and
181cons and justify it. You know, I think I think taking care of our staff is something that is this key importance and that's something we've always done in Wake County and this is why I think Wake County is one of the best places to teach in all of North Carolina. Um but then other things impact that too, right? when you have buildings that have to close or that we don't close them, we just keep them too hot or too cold. When we see, you know, and it's not always the buildings that are old. We, Miss Mafy's a district, we went to Lufkin and you could see examples of mold, you know, you can see impacts on air quality and a lot of schools that we go to and how that impacts teachers, humidity, sorry. You
182can see you can see the impacts that has on teachers and their working conditions. you hear the teachers bring it to us, the desire that they want to see the county invest more in taking care of these facilities where they work. Um, you know, we've got to prioritize and put together a budget that's going to reflect those priorities. If we can't do everything, you know, we have to have the tough conversation about what is the most important. Um, and so, you know, kudos to M Mr. Hershey for putting a proposal out there for saving a program or fixing a program that he wants to see saved. Um, I think we'll all have to do a lot of that to come up with the final dollars that we need. So, I'll end it with there unless
183our budget chairman has any concluding or final comments. I do. I am not recommending going over the superintendent's number. I would encourage my colleagues to stay in those parameters. I understand there's tough needs, but I also think to the chair's point, we have to, you know, stay in those parameters. I I I get Yeah. And I'll I'll go there. Stop there. Okay. I think the super Dr. Taylor had something to add. All right. Dr. Taylor, if you want to close us out. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, the first thing I'll say to the board is that our responsibility uh my responsibility as superintendent is to continue to bring you options that you can consider. And so I know that uh we've brought some things to you all and you've given your feedback on those and
184I can tell you that uh the work now uh is deeply involved in looking at how we can address both the dental and the maintenance and operations piece. Uh and so we will continue to bring those options to you all as a board so you will have those to consider. Um, uh, I also recognize that as a large district, um, we are super lean at the district level and and I'll just be honest about that. I've I've been in districts all over the place. Uh and um I continue to be amazed at how we do it here uh in Wake and I do want people to recognize that and that I applaud this board for the effort that you have put towards teacher compensation because that has been clear that you're doing somebody else's work.
185Uh and that's, you know, not something that you should have to take on. Um I can tell you that um I appreciate uh wanting to stay within the superintendent's budget. Uh and so uh whatever changes we will make, we're going to make sure that's reflected. Uh but I would also say that uh the real work will will start uh when the commissioners give us that budget. And if we are if they are aligned with where we are, then it gets much easier. Uh if that number goes down, uh then we know this work continues as well. Uh but we remain committed. We're going to continue to do the uh all of the work to to provide you those options that are available. um uh and and and we won't stop on this. So, I just
186wanted to share that with the board and um and again, we're open to any of the questions or that you may have uh continue to send those to us and we'll give you the answers. All right. Thank you, Superintendent Taylor. It's not an end, it's a beginning. Um and so really at this point, what I'd like to do is close out our next meeting. We'll have we've talked about our budget and finance committee meeting. We've talked about the work session. Before our next board meeting, we'll give us some more opportunities to discuss. Again, if there's any specific inquiries that you have, please route them to staff and we you the more time that we can give them to get the information that we need, the better discussion that we'll have. Okay. All right. Mr. Motion
187to go to close session to consider confidential personal information, confidential student information to consult to consult the board attorney as uh protected and provided under a number of general statutes listed in our motion to go into close session from Mr. Hershey, a second from Mr. Swanson. All in favor? Any opposed? All right, we'll clear the room and go into close session and start on some of those close session items. Thank you everyone.