001welcome those of you who are watching at home and those of you here in person um based on who we have I don't know if we need to go through the whole reiteration of the policy each time you all are familiar with the same words that we have about our public comment policies and our conduct during the meeting's policies we're going to see if we can Skip and go straight into the meeting um I noticed that we do have all of our members in attendance so we do have a quorum established so at this time I'd like to ask everyone who's able to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge of aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the repblic stands na indivisible andice okay and so we will
002begin the meeting tonight with comments from our superintendent Dr Robert Taylor thank you Mr chair and good evening to you all I'm pleased to report that our annual summer Leadership Conference which was held July 24th and 25th was a resounding success more than 1,000 participants including principls assistant principls and Central services staff gain insights and Inspirations from nationally recognized experts Dr Adolf Brown Trevor Reagan and Kaylee Burke all of whom received Perfect 10 ratings in post-conference surveys that's really good uh the vast majority of the 83 sessions offered however uh were led by our own staff members uh and they receive rave reviews as well the average survey rating for the breakout sessions was 9.4 out of 10 uh they covered a wide range of topics including elevating teaching practices to achieve Equity maintaining a
003healthy work life balance using AI for professional growth and productivity analyzing data to improve student outcomes and addressing challenges uh challenging student behaviors I also have the opportunity to lead a session alongside my chief of staff uh Dr Robertson where we shared our experiences in navigating some of the most serious challenges facing our school leaders today uh I will add however I think that our most powerful session uh was a women's empowerment session led by doors Ashburn Council seon and Thompson was an absolutely wonderful event where we could um uh have uh our female leaders talk about how they can grow and be successful leaders as well uh it was a really powerful session I wanted to highlight that uh the conference which was my first superintendent was a hardening experience from start to finish
004our school leaders were engaged and eager to learn which tells me they are highly motivated to make significant progress this school year towards meeting the ambitious goals set forth in our strategic plan uh this conference was just one way we are giving our staff the tools they need to meet the needs of every child every day from day one my goal has been to lead the already exceptional School District to the next level of national Excellence this year's summer Leadership Conference was an encouraging indicator that we're well on our way so I want to thank all the people that U work to put this outstanding event together uh we know our challenge next year is to produce the same kind of conference uh for our teachers as well in closing I'd like to offer a
005quick word of congratulations to all of our staff members who have earned an advanced degree this year putting in the time and effort to earn a master's or doctoral degree while working full-time as an educator is a testament to your commitment to your profession and to your students I'm grateful to this board and to our community accounting Commissioners for deciding last year to offer supplemental pay for those who hold Advanced degrees we know how very important that is to our district we are one of the few districts in North Carolina to offer this supplement since the state discontinued additional compensation for advanced degrees in 2013 currently about 43% of our teachers hold Advanced degrees and expect that number to grow as a district we prioritize and incentivize continue in education uh you need to look
006no further than the support we give to the thousands of our teachers who have obtained national board certification considered the gold standard in teaching profession uh staff members who earn these additional degrees and certification certainly deserve to have that work recognized and rewarded but our students are the ultimate beneficiaries we know that our staff members who further their education H their own skills while staying up todate on the latest best practices allowing them to more effectively serve their students I can assure you that we will continue to do all that we can to encourage and support the professional growth of our students uh uh on behalf of our staff members again my congratulations to our newest Advanced degree holders I'll end by saying that I will ask that uh all members of the community please
007uh monitor our website as we will make decisions about uh the impending weather conditions that are um falling upon us uh so we just ask that you uh uh continue to be patient and look for any Communications from us thank you Mr chair all right thank you Dr Taylor um I'm going to begin my comments I'm I'm going to shift a bit from normally what we do oftentimes you hear us talk about what we've done I'd like to use this time to talk a little bit about what we're scheduled to do and and where we're going you know our year- round schools our back in session our traditional schools will be starting soon um and we have a busy agenda for us as we go into the fall so tonight we'll start with our budget
008reconciliation you know the budget process was a lengthy Pro process we started earlier this year we had I think a lot more board input than we have into the past a lot of study we had a lot of conversations with our County Commissioners we saw the County's budget we but we had to wait for the state budget before we could officially adopt a budget now that that's happened we're at the point where we can officially enact our state or sorry enact our budget with all of these changes and I know we have a lot of Staff a lot of our teachers a lot of our non-certified staff are looking forward to receiving the benefits of some of the changes that we made in our salary schedules in terms of pay and compensation and so this
009will be the first big thing moving into the year that we're able to do we have a number of other issues that you all have identified that we need to continue to take up as we go into the fall the number one item among these as far as I can tell has been our school launches and our school meals policy we've identified many of the challenges we know that there's work to do we know there's some policy challenges we know there's some budget challenges I want to extend a special thanks to Congressman Wy nickel for a round table that he held um just last week where he had he wanted to hear from teachers and staff and Schoolboard members about the issues facing our schools and this was an issue that I think everyone was
010United behind and I think the congressman took to heart that as a federal program the school lunch program is an area where he may be able to help us and provide some Aid and so I hope a lot of his con colleagues in Washington will listen to us and listen to the feedback about important changes we need to that program uh we've heard speakers and you've received emails from people that are interested in our mobile phone policy and I know I've spoken to miss Mafi about our policy committee and reviewing that policy as you know I've shared the policy with you all the last time that it was really adopted it was also covering digital pagers and Nextel walkie-talkies so I can't promise what a new policy will look like but I know that it's
011probably good to refresh that see what we're doing at a districtwide level and then what we're doing in a school by school basis as we open our schools as our traditional or as our yearound schools are already open we're continuing to experience some familiar challenges with HVAC we'll be talking about that we'll be talking about our transportation routes getting everyone ready either in maintaining the routes for our year- round schools that are up and running already and then for the students coming into our traditional schools and we're going to continue to see I think more evolving litigation around Title 9 and so we'll continue to get legal updates on that and the situation and where we are and of course that doesn't even begin to touch on reassignment where we'll have new schools coming online
012um we've talked in our work session about potential calendar changes at some schools and then just the challenges that come with opening new schools so it's a busy very ambitious agenda but I think there's a lot of very important things on that there's other issues I haven't talked about tonight but I know that many of you have talked about as well that we'll see addressed to but I just wanted to sort of take this meeting as we're going into August to sort of set the table let you see what's you know what's coming and then we can debate we can debate that we can order that we can prioritize that and see what other issues need to come on to uh need need to move up and down that ladder so thank you all very
013much I'm looking forward to tonight's meeting and with that I'll turn it over to Vice chair Johnson hos thank you very much and um August is the 8th month and eight is the number of new beginnings so thank you for beginning a new with um what is ahead of us um thank you very much um very few items um many of you know I've spent quite a bit of my time on this board uh trying to figure out what resources were um at at our schools and which ones are not and we will hear more about that at our next Community engagement committee um but a part of that is also visiting some of those organizations who do provide work for our students throughout the year but also throughout the summer and I'm I'm I
014know the superintendent went and I know other board members were offered the opportunity I strongly recommend that you do the visits with our partners like the Raleigh Boys and Girls Club and the YMCA because they have multiple programs in multiple of our schools um and I got the opportunity to go to literally the new Boys and Girls Club that's less than a 10-minute walk from my house apparently um I thought it was much longer and I drove there and was there like in three minutes um but it's the first it's new in Garner and so it was a great opportunity I like going during the summer usually they do an experiment for me but this time they were um teaching me how they are getting um certifications using um uh virtual reality but more importantly
015I always like to comment on the fact that they hire our students um many of you have heard me say I spent all of my Summers starting at 14 working in parks and rec which I loved might be why I'm not a teacher um but I worked parks and wreck um summer camps um from until I was 22 years old till right before I graduated and so I applaud our young people who are spending their time certainly getting paid but also still trying to oversee their peers um and so it was great to see some of our students who actually do also go to our schools be um employed by the Raleigh Boys and Girls Club and of course seeing the kids in their excitement I did not play Fool's balls the times well I
016used to be really good at it but this time I didn't play I thought I might be overestimating my ability at this point in my life um but please to my colleagues if you haven't been please take them up on their opportunity to visit and see the work that they're doing um with our schools and we certainly will look to Bringing bring some of them to our community engagement committee as well um lastly um um Miss rice and I both attended um events for summer Champs that our office of um Equity Affairs does which was amazing and you attend an event and you say yay and tell everybody they did a good job and you leave um I was in the grocery store and this little girl walked up to me and said you're on
017the school board I was like I'm not sure where this this going yes yes I am um but she wanted to tell me that she didn't get to tell me at the event when I commented um on her public speaking and her artwork that she went home and her dad later told her that my husband was his teacher that's all long my husband's been teaching um so again just a reminder to us that our babies are watching us and sometimes they know more about us than we know and so um often times when we're saying things in front of kids we don't realize what they're saying and how they're paying attention um and they are and her departure words for me um two things I said oh did you love the camp and she was
018like yes can you make it all summer next year and I was like I will get back to to oea about that um and I was like do you really me all summer and she said yes you had a great time um and then when I was walking away she was like and I might be a public speaker like you when I grow up so I say to you that you have no idea um our kids are always watching us and so again I love the full circle moments when their children who my husband taught their parents but more importantly to reminder that they are paying attention to the work that we do at this board table thank you thank you Vice chair Johnson Hustler and if I could I would still recommend foosball over
019pickup basketball at this point we'll turn we'll turn over to miss mahathy thank you chair Hagerty we do have that Tech policy coming up in September uh Dr Robinson and I wanted to reach out and get some feedback from staff and students and potentially families about the impact and how we're using technology so we can have a more informed discussion about how it's used in the classroom it is Olympic fever um and I just want to give a shout out to a Holly Springs High School alumnist who is in his second Olympics uh performed Andrew capab biano got the silver in Tokyo and he performed today on the 3 meter spring springboard and advances to the semifinals so if you are part of a household that has Olympic fever he will be uh the semi-finals
020will be tomorrow so we will be cheering him on uh Welcome to our track four students um the clopening is complete um with track three going out track four coming back and our early college students I believe begin tomorrow for the most part and uh as we're looking ahead for our families that are busy getting their traditional calendar Littles ready for that first step into kindergarten marbles has their kickoff to kindergarten this not this Saturday but Saturday August 17th from 9:00 to 5:00 um they can get meals they can go on a bus and so if you are ready if your kid is ready or if there's some anxiety in your house uh that is coming Saturday August 17th and that is the end of my comments thank you thank you Miss mafy we'll go
021next to miss edmans thank you uh three things to highlight since our last meeting first High Praise to the office of Equity Affairs for hosting an incredible Equity showcase on July 18th I'm glad Dr Chavis is here in the room so he can hear this it really was wonderful hearing from the 10 schools in that cohort about how they're implementing their Equity training two District Five schools were there Middle Creek Elementary and olds Elementary Middle Creek talked about the growth mindset and how the brain is a muscle they're working as a team to build Bridge gaps with students that need extra support old lifted up the story of one student who made significant academic gains after staff staff implemented their new Equity skills this student not only made academic achievements but her confidence was boosted
022as well and I loved hearing about a student mentoring program that olds has called um pack pups olds Elementary's mascot is a wolf because of their close proximity to NC State and packs pack pups uh pairs older students with younger students and this mentoring program uh helps build student confidence and creates a stronger School Culture by bringing the kids of different ages together and then there was um Garner High School in Vice chair of Johnson husters District I attended their session and I was so moved by the cander of the staff when they talked about their discomfort at doing some of the equity work they spoke honestly about how some staff members didn't want to talk about race or marginalized student populations at their school they didn't want to talk about their own biases but
023they did the work anyway and gained profound insights that will help their students that need the most academic support so congratulations and a big thank you to Dr Chavis and his team and all the school leaders that presented well done well done uh last week I visited the Boys and Girls Club teen center with Raleigh city council member Megan Patton the one by Enlow and they do such great work with teens in the area and these teen are there by choice largely by choice um even though some parents might make them go uh but there are many that choose to be there and um like Miss Johnson Hustler said the director at that Center is a former um boys and girls club um attendee so they have a new partnership with Wake Tech and um
024M chair uh Vice chair Johnson hustle referenced this I to saw some of the students that were doing some um certifications using the AI the virtual reality um headsets you know when Megan and I um city council member Patton and I saw that we just assumed they were gaming no they were doing uh job certification micro certifications I think they called them using this it was really really cool so and the the new partnership with weight Tech has someone assigned to the club that works with kids on Career exploration and job development skills like building a res resume and how to do an interview so we got to talk with her and I'm just so grateful for that Community Partnership and then the last thing is that um I went with Miss mfy over to
025Woods Creek which is in District 8 but a lot of stud or some students from District Five are assigned to the school and so I wanted to see it and I was just completely blown away it is a beautiful new school and the staff are energized and excited so I wanted to congratulate them on their first uh full school year thanks thank you next we'll hear from Dr ining thank you uh good evening um two weeks ago I had the privilege of checking out the power Scholars Academy summer program um I would like to thank uh Kim Keith at the YMCA for inviting me for the tour uh the power Scholars Academy is a summer learning program that the YMCA operates with in conjunction with the wcpss and read to achieve um so I met
026up with Miss Keith at River Riverbend Elementary School um and uh um this five week summer program um is uh designed to help students who have documented struggles with reaching learning benchmarks and it just so happens that um some some of the students there were from Fox Road Elementary so uh that's why I was uh invited um uh it also incorporates uh uh reach to achieves objective of improving early literacy in underserved communities by providing 72 hour hours of reading instruction for the second and third grades um so looking at the schedule I can see that the children had quite a full day uh not only do they have instructional time in reading and math but they also had uh two enrichment classes per day Monday through Thursday and then on Friday they have their
027fun day which is where they go for field trips or outings um one of the best parts for of the program for me is seeing the smaller class sizes um and the students really get more attention this way and and it was really conducive to learning um the highlight of the tour was speaking to one of the fifth graders who told me that uh this summer program really helped him to make friends and to build confidence um because of this he is looking forward to going to middle school in the fall um and it was also encouraging to uh hear some of the other success stories of of uh students who uh were more engaged with um and getting to uh to love to learn and to read so I really think this is a
028great program and um it's worth um the the money spent so well done um yesterday I had a chance to visit with John Walter and his mother at the hospital um he is currently at wake Med recovering from a traumatic brain injury uh that he sustained after an accidental fall from the back of a pickup truck on June 18th you you may have uh heard about it on the news um John had just recently graduated from Wickfield High School um and um he was accepted to UNCC Chapel Hill um I am sharing all this information I got from reading his Caring Bridge page as well as from talking with his mom and getting her approval to to mention this um John had come along way in the last seven weeks um in the early days
029the doctors were not quite sure if he was going to make it um there was a lot of uh pressure in his brain um so since then the brain swelling has slowly subsided and he is awake um but he's still dealing with a lot of um lung issues um he is still in the ICU but he's hoping to get out soon uh and and hopefully in the coming days will be able to go to a rehabilitation center um mom is very appreciative of the law and the concern from the teachers and staff at Wickfield high school and from the Wickfield Community uh in fact there has been outpouring of support um from the whole Wick Forest Community um they had a fundraiser last week at redinos in Wick forest and his younger brother came up
030with the idea of having people shave their heads in solidarity with John since John had to have his head shaved um for his um um uh pressure monitoring um so he still had um has a long road of recovery and so I'm sure that they would appreciate all your prayers uh and um you can also contribute to their GoFundMe page um by searching for support John's miraculous recovery Journey on that page you can also click on the link to his Caring Bridge page which um will provide an update on his condition um they are close to reaching their $50,000 uh goal but with the cost of healthcare and all that I'm sure that they will need much more expenses along the way as they uh as he recovers and as he progresses in his uh
031Rehabilitation and um I'm wearing this uh wristband to honor John's Journey uh and to remind me to continue to pray for him uh so please pray for him as well and his and for his family and consider a monetary donation to help this family out um I do have a couple of announcements um the John Lock Foundation is having a back to school launch party on August 17th from 1:30 to 4:30 it's a Saturday I believe and the first50 students to sign up will receive a complimentary uh school supply kit um there will also be some free food and fun for everybody who signs up um you can also um get more information um about this free event by going to johnlock dorg um finally um I wish to remind everybody that it's still not
032too late to support the tools for school um in their supply school supply Drive uh which uh lasts until August the 26th uh this is a great program to help teachers get free school supplies for their classroom so that they don't have to spend their own money uh so please go to wake at.org for more information and how you can donate to a worthy cause so that's it for my comments thanks thank you Dr r Mr Hershey uh thank you chair Hy um first I want to just reiterate uh what Dr Taylor said and ask for patience as uh the school system makes decisions regarding the upcoming storm um it's never easy it's frustrating for everybody and uh we appreciate um you you are being patient with the school system second I want to acknowledge
033our HVAC issues from the last couple of weeks we've had some closures um with that in mind I have made a request to uh Dr Taylor and Facilities um for a list of schools that have repeated problems with their HVAC systems when we can exp expect um those HVAC systems to be replaced if they are on the life cycle list and I've also asked for pricing so uh the public has a good understanding of what it costs when we replace them um side note on something uh Minnesota was in the news today and uh I just wanted to point out that their uh average teacher pay is uh 15th in the nation they uh all their kids get free breakfast and lunch in their state and they are top five business state so for those
034that think maybe we can't do both I just wanted to point that out that we certainly can and I will continue to advocate for higher teacher pay uh across the board for all of our staff at the board table um our ath ICS pick up on Monday I believe and so you're going to get my um I guess try trimester message of please be kind to officials please be kind to coaches uh coaches also please be kind to officials um our our students it's it's very clear they adopt the personality of their coaches and of the the people who are cheering them on and and you can tell very quickly uh which coaches um really Place high expectations on behavior on of their students and which ones do not so uh it definitely comes across
035and it makes it harder for us to recruit officials um on a positive note and this is for the board in case they they may not know this yet but our flag football season will I believe kicks off October 12th uh I know that because I got an email asking to officiate which I still cannot do in Wake County at home home games but I can do in other counties um but I'm very excited that for that and I really appreciate the board my uh colleagues support and making sure we funded that in our last budget um along the lines of Athletics and the Olympics um I want to I am a I I love the Olympics I watch them um but over the last and talking about sports sportsmanship over the last uh few
036days there was some real nastiness involving the Olympics um a uh a woman from Algeria was uh accused of being trans and you know all this nastiness by a lot of people most people who have not um apologized for being wrong uh I just want people to understand when we have discussions about things like Title 9 and Athletics um that you are speaking about human beings uh that it can really come across as bullying um it can come across from a real negative perspective this person through no fault of her own was just crucified by a lot of people and it was disgusting and uh you know I just want to give voice that it's really impactful on on people you're hurting when you jump to conclusions um to say nothing of the fact that
037for years anytime a woman has excelled in athletics they were referred to potentially as being more like a man and that uh on the flip side of that if a man did not Excel they were called you know don't throw it quote unquote don't throw it like a girl and and we got to move past that and acknowledge how amazing uh our women athletes are and that if you throw it like a girl you throw it like a boss now because that's what that's what girls do um so just want to uplift some of the uh nastiness that's been going on and encourage people to be a bit more kind and and inclusive in their comments thank you all right thank you Mr Hershey we'll come around the table to miss rice good evening everyone
038I'm excited to be here tonight want to express my excitement around the leadership conference that we that I attended um with the staff here at uh at Wake County um they were uh it was an amazing time attending the the conference the principes assistant principls and other District leadership were ignited and fired up um to support W County staff and students and to learn so many amazing things I had a ball Dr Taylor and I got to dance with our hands um and so it was really fun um I also attended uh the YMCA power Scholar Academy but I attended the bug sorry I missed you Dr Ing at Riverbend my schedule got a little changed um and so he's did did such a great job with expressing the importance of that program and what
039it did I attended also with Dr Taylor and we really saw some students who were so focused and so keen on the lesson just like really kudos to the Educators who were teaching the students over the summer because the classrooms were just in sync we walked in disrupted those babies and they didn't even move they were so engaged in their learning and their lesson and we got to sit with them as they did some of their work so it was really great to see um amazing Minds in action um so the other thing I'll talk about is tonight if many may not know it's National Night Out right um and so I just wanted to give uh a thought or message around uh the former principal Perry of Fuller Elementary who recently um passed away
040and I attended their memorial but I just know that tonight I just want to give a shout out that they're in the Idol wild Community um gathering tonight for their annual fish fry for their National Night Out they always do and they talked about as they laugh and um share an amazing memory of an amazing W County public school principle that understood excellence in education he was amazing um and then the last thing that I'm going to talk about what is Wellness right and we're going to talk about social Wellness tonight and so one social Wellness tip for for families and staff and administrators and the board members is to organize a community building activity such as a potluck dinner or virtual coffee hour this event can foster stronger relationships enhance communication and create a
041supportive environment for everyone involved engaging in shared activities helps build trust and collaboration essential for a thriving educational community so all I want to say to everybody is remember to be positive be productive and Live Well thank you Miss rice next we'll go to miss Coffield thank you and Dr in thank you for mentioning our graduate John I believe in the power of prayer and community and that could be amazing um my prayers go out to his family and friends and I appreciate you sharing that information so that people could also support him and provide for the family um and some sports have already started they're Welling to their workouts preparing for their season some of them are up at 5:00 a.m. to beat the heat um so I know that they're getting ready to
042start their season speaking of our students I'm passionate and I'm going to continue to advocate for removing these Title 9 charges and it has been really frustrating to learn that we are the only Southern state that is not part of pushing back on these changes that will directly affect our students and I plead with our leaders to stand up for our students and speak up against these changes I think it speak speaks wonders to our girls that our leaders are not standing up for their safety last meeting my words were twisted and I need to clarify my words it was implied that I was indicating that trans students were were dangerous and in fact that was not anywhere close to what I said in fact the boy that I referred to it was actually the
043girl that was harmed in Lowden County was not trans and that was my point my point was that blurring the lines and taking away those clear safe spaces and I mean we're talking about girls going to the bathroom and we're talking about taking away their safe spaces and even where they're going to rest their heads as sleep on field trips it's because of those lines that are blurred that someone can get hurt and that includes trans students the two girls in that particular County were hurt because of those BL Blurred Lines and because somebody entered their safe space there was nothing misleading or disingenuous about what I said and in fact I pleaded for us to provide single stalled bathrooms which was asked of us directly to in fact protect the trans students and provide
044them with a safe space a private space I do worry that this paper policy that we passed will not protect those students but it will entitle biological males into those safe spaces that our girls felt were their safe space and it doesn't protect our trans students either of course I'm very disappointed at the vote that we have taken as also knowing that there are many surrounding counties here in North Carolina that are not pushing this through either with 62 of our own schools currently exempt from these policies I'm also unclear how we're going to implement those to some of our schools and not to others I hope and I'm asking our leaders in North Carolina to step up and speak up against those title n changes in the last month I've met with a couple
045of our leaders in North Carolina to discuss things that affect our children at the classroom level collaboration is going to be key to getting to the heart of what affects our students and our CH our teachers most so a group of us met together and we spoke to our leaders about teacher pay longevity pay which still confuses me Master's pay our class sizes and how it affects us more education on drugs alcohol vaping and providing more life skills also the night Title Nine changes and our self own policies I think it's important for us to have these discussions so that they understand at our level what that means to us in our students one of our house Representatives Aon Pere was one of them through one of our work sessions a parent had learned of
046the difficulties that they would face with us losing a partnership with St Augustines and the alignment of the calendar changes that would prevent these students from starting with another partner this parent heard that it was at a state level and reached out to Aaron parade to get assistance representative Pare reached out to our superintendent Dr Taylor to see if we could use help with this and sought out others to create a bill and she moved it along pretty quickly to help these families start with the new school and in time so thank you to representative paray for reaching out to us for help and for collaborating to unite some of the or untie some of the hands that have otherwise prevented us from moving forward I know way county is grateful and so are the
047families um fun fact is this week was the 234th birthday of the Coast Guard one of the oldest organizations of the our federal government established in 1790 and it was the only Armed Force until of the sea until Congress launched the Navy eight years later I think it's important for us to recognize our military and we celebrate Memorial Day 4th of July his b uh this birthday and our upcoming constitutional day on September 17th so the whole season is filled with many ways for us to celebrate our American Pride it's important for us to call to pause for a moment and remember and celebrate these great things that our country uh provides our citizens and Americans because of those freedoms some of us without freedoms in some circumstances around us they where they are taken
048away we can enjoy these freedoms we currently have so I say let's let's celebrate our freedoms and recognize our troops for making that possible and speaking of about great things in America and sum c summer celebrations I would like to lift up the Sugar Shack ice cream in our district up in Wake Forest Roseville area they recognize the I pledge Across America where every child Under 12 who could recite the pledge would receive an extra scoop to promote their American Pride so thank you to sugar Shack for that I did also get to go out and enjoy it was delicious ice cream so if you're up in that area please go and enjoy and show them support we had a great group to go and support their American Pride and the local farm and it
049was a great way to show um how much they appreciate in America on another another way that we could pride ourselves by being an American is our freedoms of going to vote which we all know is coming up pretty soon um many of our seniors that have graduated this past year are now eligible to vote I encourage everyone to research and not listen to the misleading quotes and pieces of information but to take a moment to go find the entire conversation and see what it means to you and if you're not registered please go to the board of education site to find out how thank you all right and we will conclude with Mr Swanson Excuse excuse us we will conclude with Mr Swanson Mr chair you might should have read those comments to remind
050the folks my comments will be brief I just want to start by thanking Miss Haywood um and the KY High Community for an outstanding community cleanup day that took place on Saturday um we had um local landscaping businesses that volunteered and donated their time and their equipment so it was we had trees being removed and pruned and whatnot and so it was a great great time and we even beat the heat um next time I will not wear inow t-shirt because I got so much Flack from the Cary High Community but I had to remind them that I taught at inlow but I didn't have a carry High t-shirt to throw on but it was such great times I also want to Yes um I just want to thank uh Miss Haywood and the PTA
051again and uh commissioner Stallings um KY Town Council Members um Carissa Johnson and Michelle uh Craig who was also out there as well and the over 60 volunteers who showed up between the hours of 8 and 3 to uh beautify the school and in closing I just want to thank you Miss Johnson hos for reminding us about the power of our words um and hopefully as we move through this election cycle that we as board members realize the power that we have when we use these mics and how we have a role of ensuring that all kids feel seen safe and heard through the power of our words um because our kids are listening um when we talk about elections our students are paying attention Character Matters character is on the ballot and so uh
052do your due diligence and get registered and go to the Board of Elections to get to sign those forms and get engaged so thank you so much right thank you Mr Swanson at this point we'll consider the approval of our meeting agenda uh before we do that I would like to entertain a motion if any of the board members would to amend the agenda in reference to our requests for leave and approval of administrative appointments and transfers so moved second we have a motion from Vice chair Johnson Hustler a second for Mr Swanson to amend the agenda to have an immediate vote on um the approval of leave and the requests for leave and administrative appointments all in favor of the motion please signify by saying I I any opposed all right the motion has
053been sorry the agenda has been has been amended we now entertain a motion for approval of the amended agenda who said the so moved okay uh Mo motion from Miss rice second from Miss Coffield for approval of the amended agenda all in favor signify by saying I any opposed all right the meeting agenda has been adopted we'll go into just an immediate vote then on the approval of the uh HR recommendations that came out of a brief closed session all is there a motion so moved motion from Mr Swanson second from Miss callfield for um adoption of the items cons considered in closed session for administrative appointments request for leave and administrative transfers all in favor of the motion signify by saying I I any opposed all right thank you all I appreciate that moving
054that ahead on the agenda um the next item is an information item we have from academic advancement our North Carolina Symphony education program partnership and I see Mr Tucker attendant Taylor chair Hagerty and members of the Board of Education I'm pleased to introduce an important update regarding our partnership with the North Carolina Symphony the partnership plays a vital role in enriching the educational experiences of our students and it will be a significant example in the creation of Wake County Schools Arts education Visionary framework our framework will highlight how collaborations like this one that you'll hear momentarily providing valuable opportunities for all students fing a deeper appreciation for the Arts and enhancing their overall educational Journey with Wake County Schools as always our community continues to appreciate your support for Arts education for every Wake County
055student So today we're honored to have Jason Spencer Director of Education for the North Carolina Symphony and Rob Schiller senior Vice President of Finance Administration and CFO join us Jason will provide a brief overview of our partnership and opportunities it Prov provides every fourth grade student and every Elementary music teacher in White County Schools please welcome Mr Spencer thank you Mr Tucker and good evening everyone my name is Jason Spencer and I'm the Director of Education with the North Carolina Symphony I want to extend my thanks to the Wake County school board chairman hegerty superintendent Taylor and Jeremy Tucker for allowing us to present today we are excited to highlight the importance and impact of our long-standing partnership ship with the Wake County Public School System this partnership is instrumental in enriching the lives of
056our students and supporting the Arts across your the community you have some slides in front of you the next slide for more than 75 years the North Carolina Symphony has been dedicated to music education and serving communities across the state nowhere is this commitment more important than in Wake County where we strive to foster a love for the Arts among students our partnership with Wake County Schools is a vital part of this mission allowing us to bring the joy of music to thousands of students each year our reach across North Carolina is extensive of the more than 70,000 students we served in person last year more than half of those students were right here in Wake County as you can see in the slide our impact is widespread but we are particularly proud of the
057work we do here at home where the impact of our Outreach is strongest every year the North Carolina Symphony hosts education concerts that are curriculum aligned for third fourth and fifth grade students across the state we are thrilled to continue our collaboration with Wake County Public Schools ensuring that every fourth grader has the chance to experience the magic of live symphonic music we present a total of 45 education concerts around the state each year more than any other Orchestra in the country 10 of these concerts are exclusively for Wake County Fourth Graders this is more important than any more than any other District in North Car Carolina demonstrating our strong commitment to the students of Wake County and our dedication to providing them with meaningful musical experiences last year we served 120 elementary schools across
058Wake County through our education concerts each school is given the opportunity to visit Mandi Concert Hall in downtown Raleigh for a curriculum aligned concert and for many students including myself and maybe some others in this room right now this is the first chance to see and hear an orchestra in person creating a memorable experience that Sparks a lifelong appreciation and sometimes even a career in music our education concerts reach over 12,000 fourth graders in Wake County every year you'll see if you came to one of our concerts you might have seen some of these students from Underwood Elementary performing in front of the audience the strings um for our singal along this year simple gifts these opportunities are made possible by the strong partnership we have with the Wake County Public School System system and
059its board members along with the Wake County Board of Commissioners you'll see a few images in the slides from an education concert earlier in January where Representatives joined us in celebrating music education while our partnership with Wake County school shines brightest in elementary schools we also maintain strong connections with middle and high school music programs each season we offer free open rehearsals for middle and high school students allowing them to observe a working rehearsal in our concert hall in the slide you can see students from Diller Drive Middle School with band director Josh pagee prior to an open rehearsal and proudly wearing their custommade Symphony field trip shirts these open rehearsals provide students with a rare glimpse into the behindth scenes world of a professional Orchestra and the dedication it takes to bring music to
060life students also have the opportunity to talk and engage with mus musicians during the rehearsal additionally we facilitate guest artist visits to schools across Wake County here guest conductor Thomas Wilkins in the slide who serves on faculty at Indiana University and also conducts the Boston Symphony and Hollywood Bowl Orchestra spoke with students earlier this year at Mo Square Middle School these sessions are invaluable offering students the chance to learn from and be inspired by world-renowned musicians and conductors finally we invite students to perform in the lobby prior to our concerts from string quartets to full orchestral ensemble like a group we had from Mor Square middle school and their music director Todd Miller these performances allow students the opportunity to share their music with a wider audience and gain performance experience and a professional setting
061of course our work would not be possible without the dedication of music educators these Educators spend countless hours bringing music to life in classrooms across Wake County and we are committed to providing them professional development opportunities and resources coures each August we host a free professional development Workshop in Raleigh for Elementary music educators to come from across the state this Workshop is an opportunity for teachers to learn about the upcoming Year's education concert program exchange ideas and gather new materials to enhance their curriculum last year we welcomed 91 Elementary music teachers from W County to our Workshop these Educators left equipped with new lessons and activities to design to prepare their students for an enriching Concert Experience reinforcing the connection between classroom learning and live music this is a perfect segue to mention our 2024
062teacher Workshop which is scheduled for next Wednesday August 14th at the North Carolina Museum of Art we encourage all Elementary music educators to join us for a day of learning collaboration and inspiration as we gear up for another fantastic school year so I thank you all for your continued support of this this invaluable partnership which provides Wake County students with opportunities that might not otherwise exist a special thank you to superintendent Dr Taylor and director of Arts education Jeremy Tucker for your unwavering support and advocacy for the Arts in weake County your dedication makes our work possible so on behalf of the North Carolina Symphony and its musicians I express my deepest gratitude and look forward to answering any questions you may have thank you all right thank you and board members uh the presentation
063refer to is in assembly so if you didn't get a chance to look at it please go back and take a look at it um we've got a wonderful partnership with the North Carolina Symphony um Mr Tucker has done a great job in promoting this program and a lot of our Arts education if any board members have any questions uh for our representative from the North Carolina Symphony um you can ask them now if anyone has any comments you can say make them now Mr Hershey thank you it is amazing if you have not been to a concert yet it is wonderful it is emotional when the uh kids are interacting with uh as the concert is going on this is why uh sometimes we hear about getting back to the basics but you we've
064got to have the Arts we've got to have the Arts in elementary school K prek through 12 it's a fantastic program and I just want to thank you thank you thank you Mr Hershey Miss edmans same I just wanted to express my gratitude I'm very so thrilled that we have this partnership um and I did attend last year soon after um getting sworn in on the board and it was just incredible it was a great performance and as Mr Hershey said watching the kids and their reaction is priceless so thank you so much thank you Miss emmans Miss carfield I just want to third that I guess to say thank you I think it is really important for our students with the Arts and Music and sometimes it is just really an incredible space for
065those children that pull them through and it's just it's awesome to have a program like this so thank you for all the work that you put into it thank you and you know every year when oh miss mafy go ahead oh I just wanted to know what's the cost for the professional development on the 14th a free professional development work professional development that doesn't happen thank you so much for doing that absolutely thank you you miss mafy you know every year when we talk about the concert either when it's upcoming or uh have an opportunity to talk about this partnership just to give you an idea of how long-standing this partnership is Dr Taylor I remember attending as a fourth grad no no no no no as a fourth grader to this day and so
066you wonder sometimes that you do too you wonder about the impact this might have on your children and if us more decades than we care to say can still remember it to this day you know you really are making an impact on those students and so we thank you for coming out and presenting tonight Mr Tucker again thank you if board members have questions about the Arts please direct them to Mr Tucker and if you're aware of other events like this where board members might be able to come and and see and witness it please let us know and share those with us thank you so much for coming thank you all right all all right we'll transition at this time to the public comment portion of our agenda now speakers commenting on items on
067tonight's agenda will be heard before speakers on other topics Miss Chandler that'll be you'll be first on that but we do have an exception which is that we do give priority to our students so we have two students who will be speaking with us today and for them the rules might be a little bit different than we normally do we will give our students priority um so typically we say only one person speaking at the podium will be able to stand but if either of you need your parent to come up and help you to assist with the microphones to get them just right that's perfectly okay okay so just ignore that part of the rules that I'm about to read um for everyone else only the person speaking at the podium will be will
068be able to stand and all attendees that are not speaking are expected to remain seated obviously except for our two students um um members of the public are welcome to offer comments or criticism directed at the substantive ideas actions or procedures of the board and individual board members the laws and policies of North Carolina provide that issues or concerns involving individual Personnel or individual student matters are confidential and therefore not appropriate for public comment settings if you have an issue with one of these please see our staff here before you leave and we can make sure that you get direct attention to that issue those offering comments to the board including students may discuss issues and matters of General concern in the interest of maintaining Civility and decorum speakers are encouraged to address their comments
069to the board that's everybody up here at the table and must refrain from personal attacks or insults directed at the board individual board members staff and the members of the general public especially those that are coming out to speak with us today any materials you wish to share should be given to our board attorney Mr Rod Malone here at the end of the table and you can give those to him before or after after your comments don't do it during your comments because that'll take some time away from the time that you have um finally during public comment you may speak for up to three minutes the microphones are adjustable and again students if you need some help with that your parents can come and help you get them adjusted um there will be a
070green light it'll come on when you start to speak and that'll start your time it'll countown so when you see a yellow light and hear a tone that means you have 30 seconds left you don't have to stop then but it just means that your time is winding down when you see a red light and hear another audible tone however your time is up and that means the next speaker will be called to the podium speakers are asked to respect the time limit and can't speak no more than the 3 minutes and of course can speak for less time so we'll begin uh public comment tonight with our student speakers the first Speaker we have is Miss Lewis Honeycut speaking on Title 9 and she'll be followed by Mr Evan beretti all right hi my
071name is Caitlyn and I'm a middle schooler in Wake County Public Schools I am here to voice my opinion on Title 9 as a female student you are failing me and the other kids in our school system your job is to protect us not to make it where we can't even enjoy school anymore the fact that if I go on school trips there's a possibility that I can be put in the same room or bed as a male who could possibly take advantage of me that is wrong as a swimmer and a volleyball player if these males are playing the same Sport AS me I would not feel comfortable undressing in front of them I would not feel comfortable playing with one or against one they claim that they are female but still have the
072body and strength of a male which is a lot more than a woman that is not safe for the females you are ruining Sports and school trips for many I hope you realize that what you are doing is not benefiting anyone but hurting them I hope you know that you are failing me and the other kids in our school system my safety is being taken away by all of you that said yes to implementing the title 9 rule changes thank you so much to Cheryl and wing for trying to protect my safety and others safety good night thank you Miss Lou Honeycut our next speaker will be Evan boretti you got it yes so um obviously you can tell ev's um he's a he's a rising fifth grader and uh what we're talking about is
073concerning his bus transportation and so it's going to be can we kind of work together to talk about it is that okay with you typically we don't do that together but if you all do you think you can both do yours in the three minutes um can you give us four board members four okay okay we can let's just make it a fish I just ask for an emotion to wave policy to let both of you make your remarks thank you sir Father and Son jointly is so is there a motion second okay I heard a motion a second all in favor say I I any opposed all right so we'll hear from the Elder and Junior Mr beretti thank you so uh this is my son Evan uh he's a he's a rising fifth
074grader of pow Elementary and um we got an email from from Transportation on on May 29th saying that he was losing his bus um we need his bus we we've contacted them and we've even contacted Miss rice and um we've talked to Dr counsil and despite our best efforts they they will not help us they we got an email talking about um that if Evan wants to have a school bus he needs to go back to his home school Evan why don't you tell tell our friends here what um about all the fun that you've had at poell and why you need the bus um I need my bus cuz I can I can be with my friends and I can talk to them and when I'm when if I'm at that um if I'm
075having having to go to a high school every morning and have to be up really early I'm not going to probably get work done fast enough cuz I'll be very tired and it's not going to be helping when I have to be awake and staying at a high school alone and waiting for my bus and I'll have I'm going to have to do this the whole year which makes it very bad the other thing is is that you probably have detected that Evan looks pretty tired he's tired because I got him up at 6:00 like he would have to to get the bus I drove over to the high school and I planned out the trip like I do to drop him off drop his brother off at re Creek he had lunch at 11:00
076it's now 6:38 according to the paperwork we got Evan would be home at he do at Wakefield High School at 6:01 and regene he' be arriving home right around now he hasn't had food since 11:00 he has ADHD his medicine is well worn off and he still would have to do homework uh his chores he has to feed the dogs the cats um shower we need your help that they just they're not going to help us and you're you're our last chance Miss rice tried to help us um I don't appreciate having to ask you for help we need your help go ahead kid um we we really need your help cuz they're not they're not helping us at all they're just doing they're making it worse way worser and they're doing this for everybody
077everybody around cuz that's what my dad told me and I'm and it's like if nobody's going to get it it's is terrible white county is doing terrible a terrible job at helping people it's committ it says you're committed to Excellence it's not true it's lying they were the people wouldn't help us at all that's not fair it's not fair they are trying to help if they didn't want to help they wouldn't listen to us but they are so just I think you should apologize and say that you went a little bit too far cuz that's not fair I think I went too thank you for the extra time I guess we didn't need it have good even I'm going any objections I'm going to take him home and get him some food be cool that's
078quite all right thank you Mr ber and thank you Mr ber thank [Applause] you all right next we'll hear from Miss Chandler for an on agenda topic following that we'll move to our off agenda uh and our first Speaker following Miss Chandler will be Joseph Deon thank you s I'm almost not talk the okay I may seem like a lone voice but I geted to make my Alan um a achen with 227 signatur and no that's not everybody that's just everybody I could reach um I'm here to talk about what you're going to vote on today the moreful high school par mid Tri and you will see in the peti all the reasons why we feel this is a bad move but I think say I'm kind of feeling what every just said you don't
079listen to us because I'm honestly very disappointing in you right now from everything I've heard in conversations from people who know more than I do um first of all the Reon that you gave us is the n paring fa for the high schoolers if that were true you would know that way before you came up with a plan so let's just quote all out there that's not why the reason why if your plan for sports facilities fell through and I'm not going to call out in the fell through because that's not good point good point is you did not have a backup plan or a solid plan in place and then when that fell through you get think outside of us do we have to have a high school with a sport stadium in RTP
080could we not possibly have a stem high school or School of the Arts that and it may not be what we wanted it would have to be optional or we would have to figure something out but really could we not have stopped and fought out the box it said you put Sports on top of the safety of our elementary school students because sta show that the crime rats around High School go up and now you literally you can sit at right in the elementary school and see the high school B building that is how close they are and on top of that I was told recently yesterday and confirm with my own eyes I believe that building the high school editions have already started but the vote tonight so really what did you vote for
081you don't want to listen to us you don't want to listen to our CERN and you are can't get and gamble because right now parents in way county in North Carolina have more options for education on their children and you C and gamble that they are not going to leave and on top of that you are going to impact the neighborhood that par right next to NE thank you m Chandler our next speaker will be Joseph Deon and Joseph will be followed by Ashley forson good evening Mr Deon uh inclusion of gender identity within the anti-discrimination policy at the last board meeting paves the way for social transition by schools to help the the board understand ramifications of this decision I'm providing a link to the report of the 4-year review on gender care for
082NHS England uh led by Dr Hillary Cass the review concludes that social transition in schools is an active intervention even though it's it's not in a clinic proponents say that social transition is necessary to relieve children's distress over gender but there are studies cited in the review that show that the percentage of of young people who persist in gender dysphoria is substantially increased by social transition a number of studies over the years have shown that 75 to 90% of kids feeling gender dysphoria will outgrow it as they go through puberty if left alone without any intervention exactly the opposite of a German study cited in the review that found 94% of those socially transitioned proceeded onto medicalized transition approval and praise from authority figures like teachers encourages kids to persist in trans identity the cast
083review cited instances where transitioning students who previously had been socially isolated were now suddenly popular with with an an affinity group well well that's just great middle school clicks are are going to influence life-altering decisions the the cast review reports that clinicians have no way to tell which patients will persist in gender dysphoria longterm or not and and there are increasing numbers who have regretted that they did irreversible damage to their bodies clinicians report that patients present sent at clinics already fully socially transitioned from the schools with their hearts set on getting puberty blockers and hormones the Board needs to reconsider its policies on social transition because you're steering vulnerable Children and adolescents toward Lifetime medicalization with enormous iatrogenic harms thank you Ashley [Applause] [Music] forston good evening to the board um I'm Ashley forston
084I am here um to request that my daughter remain at her Bay School which is Riverbend Elementary um I did submit a transfer request for her to remain there but it was denied um I was also told that I was not eligible for an appeal um so I am here requesting that she stay there because her dad for one provides transportation and she also has a brother who's autistic and he has therapy which is in the same area as her school so if she changes schools that would be a really hassle really much of a hassle for us and also to the school that they have her in is a year- round school um that would not work for our family we don't have child care for when she's out of school we don't we're
085the only ones here in this area we don't have any family up here anyone to leave her with and we can't really for the child care at this moment um so I am just really asking that if she stay at her Bay school she's been there for all of her years for elementary her brother went there so we've known riverb for about 10 years now we're very familiar with it um so if you guys SE in your heart to just let her stay there um she's a rising fourth grader she's in the AIG program there she's excelling very well um we've built relationships with everyone there we know the principal personally so if we just could I would really appreciate it if we can just keep her at her Bay school thank you thank you
086I apologize for having to step away for a moment um we'll continue on with uh Kaylee Meers and Kaylee will be followed by John bailot is Kaylee here good evening good evening board members I am a mom of four kids and three of my kids are enrolled in a District 9 school and we have have really enjoyed our experience here but um I have been really concerned with Biden Administration title N9 changes and I just wanted to cast in my voice and support Cheryl Caulfield I was glad to hear that she is trying to fight for sex separate spaces for our kids and I also really appreciate Sam her's comments about um we all want kindness and inclusiveness for all of our different beliefs here in Carrie and the surrounding area and I hope we
087can accomplish that together without these the overstepped um Title 9 mandates thank you thank you our next speaker will be Mr BL or Mr bog followed by Julie pagee good evening before I get the green um I went to the link for the agenda it didn't work so I apologize if I'm off um but it is Title 9 so surprise you're fine go ahead thank you good evening board members thank you for your time and service many North Carolina schools have been Exempted from the harmful Title 9 changes that went into effect on August 1st these changes are not law and are being challenged by 26 States unfortunately Josh Stein won't join that challenge any student who speaks out against gender identity or fails to recognize someone's pronoun or speaks up for their own physical
088safety or refuses or chooses not to undress in front of the opposite biological sex can be punished for harassment showers locker rooms bathrooms and overnight stays should not and must not be places that disregard the safety and privacy for our students both female and male maybe some of you can't Define what a woman is but you should recant the policy change you implemented by going through a fast track the overhaul of Title 9 created in 7 1972 will be found to be unconstitutional and it'll be dragged out just like the Chevron decision parents will be watching those schools and more of us as the filing date has been pushed out for more parents to object these rules are seen to stretch out of shape the plain language of laws adopted by Congress that was MHL
089news the Young Americans Foundation female athletes United and moms for Liberty declarant have sued the Biden Administration to stop the madness moms for Liberty States we appreciate any information you can provide regarding how Title 9 has been handled within the Wake County up to this point and any changes that have been proposed or may be considered in response to the proposed rule change transparency and open communication are crucial in addressing these important issues it's crucial to ensure that any changes made to school policies are transparent respectful of parents' rights and in the best interest of all students I'm going to switch a little bit on a related topic I because I didn't have time a few weeks ago I visited the NC legislatures in June and July I and others met with over 30 uh
090Representatives Senor Senators Andor staff I had the pleasure of sharing a couple of the books found in the school libraries without exception that all either turned their heads and or showed disbelief in their reactions the common comment would was what is this doing in school libraries this doesn't belong there and those were liberal conservative Democrat Republican I visit everybody I'm good with everybody one Insidious book for Elementary grades says see when you were born you couldn't tell people who you were or how you felt they looked at you and made a guess maybe they got it right maybe they got it wrong I'm a boy but really feel like a girl at 5 okay thank you MRK you I appreciate it our next speaker is Julie pige who will be followed by our final speaker
091of the night Becky lops hell hi everyone I'm Julie Paige founder of moms for Liberty Wake County and chair of moms for Liberty North Carolina legislative committee I have two children in Wake County Schools I'm also a taxpayer and I say that to remind you all that you work for me as I see things there are only two people with Common Sense on this board Miss Coffield and Dr Ing the rest of you have lost your minds or your souls or both and this speech is for you the new gender discrimination policies that you ran through for approval at the last meeting are outrageous and an attack on parental rights freedom of speech and freedom of religion you claim that you had to do this to adhere to Federal Regulations that was a downright lie
092and you know it you cannot compare your actions on this to the parents Bill of Rights for instance also you were told of federal district court injunctions that prohibited K through 12 schools with Children of members of moms for Liberty from implementing title n changes based on violations of the First Amendment among other reasons yet you ignored this ruling and proceeded to show your true colors and your woke left agenda we see you and we hear you loud and clear now hear this and see me I will not lie to my children I will not tell my children to lie to others they will not play the pronoun game with the pronoun police I will not allow them to use bathrooms locker rooms and hotel rooms with girls who pretend to be boys I will
093not put them in a dangerous situation where they could be falsely accused of sexual or gender harassment period if that means we leave Wake County schools so be it my family will be only one of droves that leave public schools to save our children from this Insanity I've been coming to meetings and speaking to this board since 2021 I have asked for parental rights to be respected and for a focus on academics not social contagion my how far we have not progressed in all this time no child should ever be bullied however the new policies go far beyond that you know it and I know it more and more parents are waking up to the nightmare that Wake County schools has become one in four children in Wake County no longer attend public schools you
094wonder why families are leaving look no further than yourselves you are the reasons why you can fix this resend or revive these nonsense policies tonight do better show all parents and all students that you respect them thank you final speaker for tonight will be Miss Becky lobs Here Comes The Tall Person hi everybody I'm Becky lobs you know me been coming here for a while copies of the Court's injunction regarding title line were uh sent to you as well as the subsequent documents and as you should be aware more than 60 schools are protected under this injunction and more being added but I wonder what's been done to notify the affected schools have the principles been notified at the last meeting you passed policies 1710 and 1720 and the staff themselves said these policies made
095changes based on Title 9 regulations you you the board chose to disregard parents and ignore the injunction moving forward with these policies one of the many many problems with the policies is that the board and staff could not Define what a non what non-verbal meant in context of the policy in section A4 nor provide any examples in the discussion I was rather disgusted Miss Hill stated that and I quote it will depend specifically upon what the incident is it's really hard to get an exact description how can you write a policy that you don't know what it means so what about when somebody gives the thumbs up sign okay sign or the eye rolles so I know I've gotten them a few times every the years and teenagers are great for them you know who
096decides what's offensive you know who's going to get to determine that you know once again Wake County Schools is passing policies that use overly broad language and is very very subjective many concerns were raised about the safety of children and they were also ignored such as locker rooms and overnight field trips an amendment was even proposed to protect the boys and girls from utilizing the same locker rooms or bedrooms and overnight field trips but seven of you chose to ignore the safety of our children seven supported allowing situation that put boys and girls in the same bedroom seven of you support situations that could force girls to watch a boy undress in a locker room so with this I'm going to leave you with a quote from Thomas so education is not merely neglected in
097many of our schools today but is replaced to a great extent by ideological indoctrination you focus on gender and ideology and indoctrination when you should be focusing on academics remember four out of 10 students in W County cannot read a grade level get your priorities straight thank you all right thank you and that concludes our public comment period the next item on our agenda is consideration of our consent agenda so at this point if you've all had an opportunity to review the items on the consent agenda I'll entertain any relevant motion second I heard a lot there I will say that I heard a um motion for adoption of the consent agenda by Vice chair Johnson hosler and uh I'll take a second from Mr Swanson tonight all in favor of the motion for adoption
098of the consent agenda please signify by saying I I I any opposed all right thank you we'll now move on to our action agenda and the first item tonight is the item I previously mentioned the budget reconciliation recommendations that also be followed by our salary recommendation salary schedules for 20242 25 uh welcome Mr David Neer thank you good evening chair Hagerty members of the board and superintendent Taylor we're now at the point in the budget development process to reconcile the board's proposed 2024 2025 operating budget to the final County appropriation and the final state budget for the year the County Commissioners approved their 20242 budget in early June and it includes an increase in County appropriation to the board of education of $ 58.3 million while that increase is significant it still does leave a
099$4.9 million funding Gap to reconcile at the end of June the legislature approved Senate Bill 332 and that was in turn signed into law by Governor Cooper Senate Bill 332 approved the compensation changes included in the second year the state's bional budget for school districts and there were no other Provisions in that bill that had funding implications that would enter into the reconciliation of the board's proposed budget at your work session today staff presented recommendations to reconcile the $4.9 million gap That Remains the recommendations allow the board to fully preserve the staff compensation changes that are included in the board's proposed budget and those compensation changes included in the board's proposed budget are both those that were put into place by state legislation but also compensation increases for staff that go above and beyond what
100has been legislated by the state and those were approved by the board the recommendations presented at your work session today will bring the board proposed 2024 25 operating budget into balance and I now request your consideration of approval of those recommendations and be glad to answer any questions thank you Mr Neer so before we begin any discussion I entertain a motion so moved we have a motion for adoption of the budget reconciliation proposal from Miss Edmond is there a second second heard a second from Miss mafy all right is there any are there any questions for Mr Neer and or staff and is is there any discussion again just as a reminder for anyone tuning in we did have a presentation in our work session there were several questions that were asked and answered during
101that time but if there are any lingering issues or any other comments this would be the appropriate time for them all right I just wanted to say thank you for continually explaining things and clarifying things I know myself I ask a lot of questions and I know that it's we have a huge budget and a lot of information so I just want to take a minute to say thank you for you and your staff and all that you put together to make it clear thank you thank you Miss Coffield you know I will say that this was a very different budget process than what we've done in the past I want to thank all the board members for all their hard work um all the research and all the advocacy everyone put in I'd like
102to thank our County Commissioners for uh their support for their the budget that they passed which makes this reconciliation possible and for our legislators those that did provide additional funding for some vital programs I would say still Advocate that we needed more for other vital programs as well but I will be grateful and show gratitude for what we did receive so at this point we have a motion on the table for adoption of the budget reconciliation proposal it has been properly moved and seconded if there are no more comments I'll take a vote at this time all in favor of the proposal signify by saying I I any opposed all right the proposal passes thank you Mr Neer you're welcome do you want to move next into the salary schedules yes sir all right go
103right ahead okay also at your work session this afternoon staff reviewed the recommended 2024-25 salary schedules those schedules again reflect all of the State Legislative changes that were included in the state's seconde Bal budget and they also included those compensation changes Beyond legislation that were approved by the board and included in your proposed budget for the current year a summary of what was included above and beyond what was legislated includes a 4% increase to our teacher salary supplement bringing our classified staff to a minimum hourly rate of $17.75 an hour or 4% increase and including a step and grade differential to avoid salary compression and also for one section of our classified staff our bus drivers bring their hourly rate to a minimum of $20 per hour again with a step differential um and this
104$20 an hour we hope continues to chip away at the challenge that we Face here locally across the state and across the country in our our need to recruit and retain these important staff um if these schedules are approved tonight the new compensation amounts will be reflected in the end of the month August payroll and all retroactive amounts because these are retroactive back July one of the current calendar year um will be reflected in the September payroll so I now would ask the board's consideration of approval of the 2024 202 five salary schedules mot thank you Mr Neer go right ahead motion to approve the salary schedules second that was a race over there who who wants to take credit for the second D all right so we have a motion from Miss mafy for
105adoption of the 2425 salary schedules uh second by a nose to miss rice um any discussion comments or questions Dr um just wanted to clarify um the retroactive adjustment is a one lump uh in the September Is that how it works yes okay and and just to follow up on that to be clear it's not like a bonus which would be taxed differently it would be taxed as regular income and our employees would not have any penalty that is correct it is not tax as a bonus it's whatever amount that they would have earned at the new rate for the month of July great are there any other questions any other comments again I think the salary schedules really instructive I would uh refer folks to them Miss mafy I just wanted to reiterate I
106think it's amazing that we're able to get our employees up to $17.75 cents an hour for a minimum for our lowest paid workers and our bus drivers up to um $20 an hour and while we celebrate this I also want to acknowledge that most of these folks are 10-month employees and so for a uh 10-month driver um it takes 13 years under this salary schedule for them to get to $40,000 a year and 22 years for our lowest paid employee to get to $4,000 a year so just as we celebrate these things I think it's important to keep in mind that most of these folks are 10-month employees and the state does not allow them to cast their um cast their uh salary over the 12 months so they're really having to have a tight
107budget over the summer and they're coming up on some of the tightest times if you're a 10-month employee in a school system um so I am very excited but I also want to make sure that we keep pushing forward um for our folks thank you Miss mfy um any other question questions comments go back to miss Coffield um I just have a question in reference to what Dr Inc brought up up um when they get a separate paycheck or is it lumped in with their regular salary because it does affect their bottom line for them it is not a separate paycheck it is included with their pay um the tax withholdings are are withheld they're not done on a bonus basis and again tax withholdings are simply an estimate of the taxes they will owe
108and if they have over withholdings they will get a refund and if they have under withholdings they will owe taxes any followup good I'm just I mean at this point I'm I'm not really sure I know that they would really love that pay to go into effect I don't know what that would entail to get something separate I know for me personally when you know you get something additional on top of your pay sometimes it kind of lowers it and you don't see much of it even if they receive the funding or the the Retro amount as a separate check we are still required to make withholdings on it right the distinction wouldn't while there maybe a minor distinction and if it was let's say for four or five or six months that could be
109meaningful but with just one month really so it's just July to August yeah okay thank you all right any final questions regarding the budget reconciliation all right um the just last point that I was making was that the schedules are very informative in terms of seeing the support that we get from the county and what that County supplement means to the state base pay for our Educators so if you've ever wondered what our local support is and how that directly influences salaries you can look up any of the positions any of the schedules and then see dollar for dollar how much is covered by the state how much of that is covered by the county and then especially when you apply that to the cost of living in Wake County you can see how vital
110that support really is so um at this time we have a motion pending and I'll take a vote all in favor of the salary schedules uh proposed by staff please signify by saying I I any opposed all right thank you Mr Neer thank you all right our next item on the agenda is from facilities we have updates for morisville high school Parkside Middle School and the Wake College of information and biotechnologies High School hello Mr Bernett hello thank you um it's nice to be here and on that last score we're going to call that whib for short um hopefully I don't uh you know get things mixed up because it's kind of easy to do on this presentation we did this presentation uh for the facilities committee uh in June um so we can do
111the whole the whole show or we can do a much more brief one which is what I was expecting to do is a more brief uh presentation uh if you want more detail please ask questions um we're going to wait a minute and we're going to ask that the slides that were prepared are put up on display for everyone uh the second thing that I'm going to ask is that we do not get brevity in this presentation okay we have been contacted by numerous citizens num numerous partners and numerous stakeholders concerning information about this project and so we're going to make sure that we have a full hearing and that nothing is overlooked even if as you say you may have presented this information in another in another venue we want to make sure that
112all that information is presented tonight happy to do that prepared to do that and U so um as that is getting um um loaded um I can mention um a couple things I guess that uh really don't have anything to do with the with the slides and that would be uh as far as Athletics go for morisville high school and at its new location still planning to have the same approach uh if you recall from Morrisville high school we were using Cedar Fork um Elementary School developing some property some developing some of that Land There we were also going to be utilizing the track and field um at uh the weib and Parkside Middle School and that uh um we were going to be using uh USA baseball uh so we uh still continue to
113to plan to do that all right so we're still going to wait I appreciate your flexibility Mr Bernett but you know just don't want there to be understood that's right some of us are more visual Learners and we also want to make sure again everybody everybody in attendance and anyone watching streaming has the opportunity to get the uh same information yeah happy to do that and we do have a map and it's a whole lot easier to look at the map than to try to describe it so definitely with you um and it is an assembly um the presentation yeah I'll tell you what um we have a we have a suggestion I'll entertain it as a motion that we just take a f minute recess to make sure that we've got everything pulled up
114is there a second second for Mr Swanson all in favor say I I any oppos all right we'll be in a brief recess thank you for your thank you for your flexibility e e e B sh hour for you w in SCH nobody has PA they so they don't need to be all right if we'll call everyone back we can call everyone back to the table we'll go back into and back into the meeting one two three four five six s I for [Music] I have all right if everyone is ready we will gavel back into session in The Recess and pick back up all right Mr berett uh the slideshow is or the slide presentation is up and running please feel free to continue uh as you had planned thank you uh and I'll
115start off with the original plan for Morrisville High School where we had uh where we utilizing USA baseball which you can see on the the map there we were using uh uh CED Fork Elementary School where we were going to be developing tennis courts and uh softball uh along with associated parking and restrooms uh facilities uh we were also utilizing the Parkside medal school weib um the track and field U program and U we were um so um you can see on the the map where those are you can see that uh what's look what's shown as Parkside I'm sorry what's shown as little SL Davis Drive is actually is also the Parkside motal School we so just trying to help keep help people keep things uh straight and uh most of the time we're
116trying to use the site uh so that people again are knowing which site we're talking about um the and again the plan is that we're switching basically the users are switching the sites um the um uh and you'll see that uh with the new location uh with Morrisville high school at the uh little Davis Drive site it's actually a little bit better located you for those other facilities so a little bit less travel time uh we also have a little bit more on the U the the new u morisville high school property uh than we had before um the um next Slide the um next slide um a couple things about uh this uh new plan a in response to uh some issues to include uh soil issues um and definitely cost issues um we
117looked at uh coming up with a an alternative plan um what uh what this current plan is is that we said will continue uh to move into the little Davis Drive site um as it originally was planned uh we are looking at uh currently at a November 2025 um availability date uh we expect that the school will want to move in at that time but really if they want to wait till the following semester that's uh that's something that can be decided as we get closer um we this school is under construction uh it is at about 49% complete right now um so a lot of the unknowns are behind us and that's a good position to be in um and uh so it will be a temporary location the uh we expect that they
118would be there for about two years possibly maybe three um and uh and then they would move over to the Paramount Parkway site where we would be developing the new a new facility there I'll get to that one in a second um the Morro High School uh student body uh and school could start uh on an aggressive schedule as early as August of 26 um let's for realistic sake let's just say U August of 27 um and we feel that we would be able to beat that um or meet that uh there are many things uh other factors that are involved in the school is not just construction you know so we do need to have everything come together at the same time um we will need to be designing construction uh and constructing uh
119changes at the new morisville High School site uh and that would at the little SL Davis Drive property and that would include Stadium changes and uh and the uh and a parking uh deck so we do feel uh and we have had discussions with authorities having jurisdiction you know that uh um we uh will be able to open whib while we still may be making changes uh to the facility uh and specifically to the site that would be the parking deck uh and again converting a Middle School Stadium to a High School stadium um and at while all of this is going on we will be designing uh the new uh web's home and the new Middle School at the Paramount Property site now that is beside uh Wake Tech and U and so that
120that project will be uh in design phase and next slide please uh benefits of this plan uh this and this is a huge one weib high school um its permanent home uh would be adjacent to Wake Tech and we're very happy about that um and uh the principal AB Abby Stenberg is very excited about that location and uh and is very supportive of that change expect parents would be supportive of that change too as we would have ninth and 10th graders on that site uh which again is Right adjacent to Wake Tech and uh 11th and 12th graders would be at Wake Tech so parents who have um children and at both grades it's one basically one location to go to instead of two different sites another benefit um is that uh we're able to
121are able to accommodate the high school capacity needs so in this area of the County uh we have uh a couple schools a couple high schools with a lot of mobile classrooms um the number the capacity in the mobile classrooms was exceeding um the 12200 students that we were looking to have the morille high school capacity at um so we weren't satisfying that need um and we weren't even addressing the growth need in that area uh by moving relocating morso High School to the little Davis Drive site we were able to have a larger high school capacity right now we're we're we're looking at 1,00 and we have a question mark beside that that is something we want to confirm um and um but we know it's going to be more U than than the
122where we were at 1200 we're confident about that um so it better helps the ad the high school capacity issues um and um uh the construction cost uh the construction cost for morisville high school at the Paramount Parkway site was was very expensive it was cost prohibitive um I don't think we were going to be able to develop a mors high school um at that site so by switching sites uh it is much that cost is much further reduced um we were looking at a cost uh per student in the neighborhood of $170,000 um again per student um what we're expecting now at the new location is a cost of about $888,000 per student um and that's that's a 1200 capacity versus an 1,800 capacity that's how those numbers were based off of uh so
123that's is a significant change it's a significant uh help that also factors in the estimated cost of the additional work that we have to do at um the um little SL Davis Drive site that's including the parking deck that's including converting the Middle School Stadium to a High School stadium um and um I went pretty fast on that uh uh so if I went too fast if I left some gaps you know please you know please ask any questions you may have all right thank you Mr Bernett um again for folks that are interested I would Point them also to the facilities committee meeting that we had that had a presentation with maybe some additional information and additional details those of you who know me know this is a very important issue to me and
124the voters in in my district I don't want to monopolize or dominate the conversation so before I begin my bit I would ask around for anyone if they have any comments or questions context or anything else uh before I provide any comments Miss mafy thank you and thank you Mr Bernett I was able to see the facilities committee meeting back in June um this is a big change moving a high school um that was initially supposed to be near Wake Tech moving it to the little David Drive site what is currently happening at that site constructionwise is it the the Paramount Parkway site uh which is adjacent to Wake Tech uh the property that the Board of Education owns there isn't anything happening on that site uh where we are design wise as we're in
125conceptual design phase uh we sorry my question was about the little SL Davis Drive site that was previously or current is currently for Parkside Middle School right so that is under construction it is 49% complete right now uh we do anticipate the two site changes that we talked about that I mentioned and that's the parking deck and the uh converting the Middle School Stadium to a High School stadium we do anticipate a few minor building uh changes um and uh and we hope that uh that we are able to move on those uh quickly and before we build it we you know build this particular wall or or that particular wall um that we are able to stop that um that that specific area of construction uh so that we don't cost ourselves more money
126um and then we make the adjustment and then we do a change order for those but if we don't we won't if we don't catch all of those these changes are are minor um and the scheme of things we aren't looking at any additional footprint you know to the building it's all within the shell of the building okay and when do you anticipate those changes being presented to the board because I remember seeing the Parkside Middle School weib 910 site and I can go back and look at that but I think it would be helpful for us to see how that is envisioned as a high school and what those changes are okay um my other question is uh about community outreach so back in the spring our Student Assignment team uh was talking to
127folks in that area about the anticipated Parkside Middle School with the whip on site with this happening and with this change knowing that there was a facilities meeting in June and here we are in August what Outreach have you done with the community to hear or to let them know that this is a possibility either through office or in conjunction with another office yeah I I think the step The Next Step was this this step to make sure that the the board was supportive and and that we know what the marching orders are so from this point forward if the board is approving of this concept change uh then yes we will look at those those measures that need to be taken and then we'll schedule those and and any other presentations that need to
128occur okay and then if I'm remembering correctly it's about 1,500 students that are in trailers between Panther Creek and green hope is that correct that's the number I've heard yes okay thank you I don't have any more questions thank you Miss mafy I'll go to Mr Hershey then miss Coffield and Dr in uh I've got a few questions and a few things to bring up first um I just want to say that criticism of the process is warranted and criticism of uh us not communicating well is also warranted um I'm not going to play the blame game but uh accept responsibility that we as a school system did not do a very good job in this entire process um with that and I've I've spoken with uh the chair about this and with Dr Taylor
129and I've given I think I gave Mr Strickland a heads up what I would like to see uh as one of the results of us examining what we've done here is an evaluation of all the land that we currently own so we know potential cost cost related to building on that land if there's any surprises because for me this was uh and we're going to get to the numbers the cost in in a minute uh the the complexity of this kind of came out of nowhere and and so examining not only our process when we buy land uh but what we own now and what what those sites what we can build on those sites so it's all in one area and I don't you know people don't have to guess there might be a
130high school here or there might be an elementary or middle school here um and we'll consult with the chair and the vice chair on who does that report but sometime over the over the next 12 months because it's not something that that's going to be turned around quickly but I I'm going to insist on that for the board um the cost of this uh where we were building a 1200 um person high school was don't do it in per um student numbers what was the approximate cost going to be in construction the the construction cost estimate um with the CM fees things like that it was a total of approximately $24 million $24 million um so for me you know we have a an obligation to our residents a financial obligation we ask for a
131lot um we build through bonds you know that we have uh we know residents recently received their uh tax bills um so for me it's it's a responsibility to be financially aware and responsive to our community um that's why I completely support this change um when you when we had these conversations initially and we were asking questions about potential other sites can you go into a little bit of detail about what was or was not available in morisville I cannot um I I wasn't here and this this department doesn't do that work oh there is there I see Glenn over there uh cuz I just want I want people to understand that we did ask questions about potential other locations and it's a it's a matter of there's no land in Morrisville and that's correct
132there is no land in Morrisville um we were lucky to get this particular site um and so when we were not able to place a high school on that site we didn't have a contingency plan other than utilizing the existing middle middle school that was being built and there was no buildings no nothing we could just buy real quick and turn it around at a reason not that were aware of I I don't think Real Estate Services was even looking for I know they spent a lot of time looking in the past right yeah exactly let's be clear on that I just want to make sure it wasn't that real estate service just didn't look for options this has been a process of longer than a decade and again Miss Johnson Hustler as our senior
133most member REM is aware of it when I was in the state house over a decade ago we were working with morisville leaders on this so this has been a long process trying to identify any suitable school site in this area and we can speak some more to that later in the discussion but thank you and the uh that you actually you can stay there uh the it's really more of a statement um I think the capacity gains are really important for the high school in this situation and um so when people ask what are the primary drivers for me it's the cost was in far beyond what we were expecting the adct capacity is a huge bonus to us and we have to look at this not just at Morrisville but in as an
134entire County and what we're doing thank you thank you chair thank you Mr Hershey I want to make sure I had my order correct I think it was Miss Coffield next and then coming back to Dr ring thank you for that um so I did want to recognize a couple of things um with the that's a significant amount per student from 88,000 to 170,000 um you know especially as we sit here with budget trying to figure out how we're going to pay for you know some of the things that we have and I understand sometimes things need to adjust and the capacity we're increasing you said this the the students by 600 students Ball Park uh yes okay and and that hasn't been finally determined yet but yes which is significant because we spend a
135lot of time trying to figure out how we can transfer students around and how we can fill capacity and CA and all that other stuff so that's a significant amount of more students to be able to fit into a building I do have a couple of questions in regards to safety so when I was looking this up on the line I have I I don't live in that direction I've been over there I I know relatively where it is but um Watkins Road and Paramount Parkway seems to be the only real main veins that we could use around that property is that correct that's correct that's where the access would have to be on which one uh for Paramount Parkway uh for the we'll call that the RTP site just to distinguish that from the
136little Drive site okay so Paramount Parkway is adjacent to Wake Tech um so our access if we were developing that property is specifically uh Paramount Parkway uh we don't we can't access through wake teex property and and there isn't any other Road Frontage so for the middle school or am I swapping this out no you're right I am right okay so the Middle School we're going to be having is there any kind of walking available for these students or is this all car Poole as far as accessing uh going from homes to the to the site um uh I I'm not Avail I don't know the the uh pedestrian routs you know for for that site okay so and then there's nothing off of Watkins road is that correct there is an okay okay I'm
137I'm sorry I missed that last one it was a question about the placement of residential neighborhoods around the RTP site versus the little Drive site right um the um Paramount Parkway site is much more uh commercial um the uh let SL Davis drives is more residential and just bear with me a second the Davis Drive is going to be the high school now yes Parkway is going to be the Middle School okay so if you could just address for us the concerns you know we did get a a large amount of families that you know signed that petition we did not get to see it yet but there's a large amount of families that were concerned about the safety of putting of swapping them out and putting that in a commercial area so are you
138able to address the landscape and will high school and and the middle school will they be together will they be separated somehow like is the carple of one going to be going through the other okay so as far as the development that's anticipated for the new whib and the new midle school on the Paramount Parkway site uh we would expect that yes is going to be accessed via bus service via carpool um and and parent drop off um not aware of um uh the the sidewalk situation and again it's more of a commercial area I would not to anticipate uh students would be walking there as far as the buildings themselves it's not designed but we anticipated uh putting the the buildings together similar to the way it's being constructed at the uh little Davis
139Drive site uh we would be doing that really for cons validating our footprint to make it as small as possible to have as minimum uh cost uh you know for developing that that site so we anticipate again A A A continuing the the vision from the previous uh design again those those buildings would be together uh what we are currently looking at is we would master plan the campus um probably we'll have the uh the high school be a base bid and U and a middle the middle school uh could very well be a bid alternate we would be doing that uh depending on how our cost estimates are coming in and how our uh funding is looking you we will see how we are on that it's too early to tell on that this
140site uh this Paramount Park site is an expensive site to to develop um it it just always will be you know for the type of construction that we do and is that because um a previous presentation that you came to us you were speaking about the The Rock and and the amount of the amount that we would have to spend once you start digging into that you realize that your landscape's going to change because you just can't build through that rock uh so great point on the rock this site does have rock it also has soils that are moisture sensitive um there are times of year that we need to stay away from as far as uh Earth moving activities um so that is why we have to see when we would be going to
141bid when we would be doing those activities to be able to lay out a good schedule um the uh the type of construction that we do again is uh large flat surfaces uh that's whether it's a um a a football field um the parking lot um the building itself uh and we we're trying not to step you know too much we've got Ada um access that we is is is very as Paramount you in our design efforts uh so those are the kinds of things that that really we we look at and and can cost additional money we and in order to U have everything that we need uh that's why we're having a lot of these retaining walls you know that you see um in many of our uh new newer facilities uh and
142newer developments um and that uh and some of the retaining walls recently uh are very sizable and they're very expensive and they also dictate the schedule um and uh when we have a building retaining wall that dictates the schedule of what can be done in that building so I'm going to address the safety issue in regards to um relating it to and I don't want to throw my high school Under the bus because I know it's every high school student that's out there if you've been around them during morning lunch especially or afternoon they they they have um let's just say their their boot has happens to be very heavy so putting high school students around where either middle school and high school students are that will not necessarily be in a car if they're
143in the same space is concerning to me um it's concerning the way the high schools Drive period um but not having that safety aspect of them being side by side I think was one of the concerns so how could we address that have multiple sites we have multiple sites sorry we have multiple sites throughout the district where we have um a high school with either a Elementary or a Middle School Middle Creek has ones that are right across the street you've got Apex friendship as an elementary middle andah high on the same campus same thing with leeville and Wakefield um so the staff does you know work with the students to make sure that they're safe safely driving around the campus and and understanding there are other students um we also have Elementary and high
144schools generally have staggered start time so they're not coming and going at the same time Middle School's a little bit different but that's generally what we'll work on okay and then if I could I just have one last comment I think it's imperative that all of the Departments are working together as we're getting these um as we're obtaining these properties and I know that it's not easy especially when you get a property and you find out what's in it um and I know that Mr kzo and I went to the W far us to discuss the same thing like certain certain building areas and certain properties that are that you the public may think is available is not necessarily something that the school could use and I don't think it's just families that don't see
145that I think it's some of our leaders as we sat down and gave them not only numbers but we gave them sizes that we need and also pointing out like for WF fars in particular um the property line Cuts halfway through where Wake County is and Way Forest still continues but that's not where way county is so we're kind of limited to what we can get so I appreciate you clarifying you know what we could do in this area and I'm sure chair Hagerty you could add to you just said this was over a decade long of trying to resolve that and I think it's pretty important for people to understand that it's something that we keep visiting the only thing for me is the the safety issue I am concerned about that thank you
146thank you Miss Coffield Miss rust did you yeah I just have one thing um thank you for I know this is a lot of work for everybody to do it's disappointing we all agree about that uh I just have one concern when we finished um or we get into the continued building process can we make sure that the HVAC system actually works and make sure that we have the appropriate get people that know how to actually use the HVAC system or to repair it in its process because it would be very disheartening to see all the money that we're pouring into this building to turn around and have the same challenges we're having right now so it might I know it sounds a little comical but at the end of the day at we need
147the HVAC system to work to not pour more money into it so I really need for however we collaborate with the integrated pieces of whatever ever we do make sure that someone actually knows how to fix this particular system if anything does go wrong thank you Mr because I would add there's probably people working on HVAC systems right now um but around the district all right I'll look around to the rest of the board Dr in yes um thank you um I've been listening to all this and I you know was listening to miss Chandler's comments earlier and you know the more I think about it the more I'm upset said about it and and it's really like I I there's no pointing fingers the only way that that we can point fingers is pointing
148our at ourselves right I mean it and the thing that that bothers me the most is right now it is a communication we we have not done a good job of of discussing this with the community to see what it is that you know they you know they their their viewpoints on on this thing is and and and um I you know I feel like that the um you know I can't speak for the community but I feel like the community feels like it's they're they're being steamrolled and that that their voice is not being heard and and you know I I apologize to the to that Community for for for that that that that sentiment um and I do understand you know that we have what we have and we're trying to build the
149this project in a more cost uh cost efficient way um but we do have to listen to the the people to to to make sure that um that we are um uh meeting their needs but also you know uh making sure that that the the facilities that we we make are you know going to fit the you know the the the the future needs of of the area so um yeah I'm I'm still kind of trying to trying to uh think through this whole whole um uh change uh the swapping uh project and so I'm you know I'm I'm going to continue to listen thank you Dr R take a look around you're good okay Miss mafy I just had a quick question of is this a decision that we have to make tonight or
150is this one where we could do you know a more comprehensive presentation to the community and then come back and make the decision later or is it a requirement that we do this in order to make the changes that Mr or begin the changes that Mr Bernett was talking about so there'll be pros and cons with any decision in terms of the timing I'll let Mr brunette answer how it could affect construction dead deadlines and timelines yes we are under construction uh the um the current um l/ Davis Drive site is 49% complete and and and they're making Headway all the time the more Headway they make and if they get ahead of where we want to make changes it's going to increase our cost uh for those changes um we also have to know
151what we're going to be designing at uh at the Paramount Parkway site uh in fact we have a meeting a design meeting tomorrow um and if we don't have Direction tonight uh we won't know what we're designing um and uh so we will lose Time and Time costs a lot of money uh both in in inflation um and the the the burn rates with our cm and our design teams and things like that you're waiting you for us to you provide the direction uh we also have completion dates you know that we need to meet um and uh and a big one is really weib you know temporarily moving in you know to its location and then we need to have the new weib so that more so high school you know can move in
152in its entirety um certainly there are options you know but but they may not be palatable in force that didn't really clarify anything well if I if if I can there there are a lot of there are a lot of pros and cons and we can do whatever we want in terms of when we vote on this and when we don't any decision we make is going to affect countless other partners and parties and will have uh real cost implications on the project we know it's not getting cheaper to build things we know that if we miss certain deadlines it pushes we can't you know it might push construction back a month but we be unlikely to open a new school a month into a school year so that pushes pushes things back a whole
153another calendar year um we have agreements in place with Wake Tech and the existing weib School uh Staffing decisions that have to be made the construction contracts there's a lot of reasons why this is on the calendar tonight it was also going to be brought up earlier and we pushed it back to make sure that we would have time to talk about this so at at this point before we talk about any decisive actions I do want to speak on this so and I'm just going to apologize to a lot of you in advance because this will probably take some time but there's a lot of history here that's very relevant to this decision morisville and the the town of morisville Morrisville residents have been asking for a Morrisville high school for over a decade
154and whether they were private citizens whether they were Town officials many of whom have been elected gone into retirement some have come back some have gone again this has been a public policy problem we've been working on for over 10 years if you look at our seven-year plans and go back in time you'll see that we've had the the data to justify construction of a high school in this area for years we knew this was a high growth area we knew a high school was needed and the challenge has always been finding appropriate space and we've always been told any site that we found we couldn't meet all of the requirements that were needed for a high school we've looked at other options for example what how much land is required for athletic facilities and
155the feedback that we got is that it would be very unfair to the residents of Morrisville to be the only High School in all of Wake County that didn't have the same Sports options that every other High School in the county had and that was important to them and so as we looked for options and ways to address this one of the things that we looked at there was a lot of discussion and a lot of community support for a stem school and the idea that we could partner with Wake Tech for the Early College of information and biotechnology was a great way to get that stem School in Morrisville through a unique partnership that we had working with the RTP foundation for acquisition of that property near the Parkside neighborhood or sorry near Parkside
156Elementary in in the Breen Ridge Neighborhood just getting that property alone was a real C for the district because that property was not readily available and we had to go through a tremendous amount of red tape just to build Parkside Elementary and then get the land for the next to it for the expansion where we would put the early college and where we saw the potential then to put the middle school but we were told Morrisville still wants a High School Morrisville still wants a traditional High School and again all of the numbers and all of the cost projections all of the growth data all justifies it and it justifies a larger high school than a 1200 student High School in fact to kind of call this a full regular Traditional High School we've sort
157of been playing some games and Counting those weip students into that projection to talk about it all being one Unified High school campus even though they are two different schools with two different School numbers so I want to take you back then moving forward from our decision to purchase that land in the in the neighborhood next to Parkside Elementary to April of 2022 many of you weren't on the board but those of you who were remember we were brought a unique proposal it was a partnership ship between Wake County Public Schools Wake Tech Community College and the town of morisville where all parties had come together and found a way through a very unique land swap to be able to get land for the public schools to exchange some land that Wake County had with
158the town of Morrisville that they could use for parks and a fire station and all of this had to have the blessing of the Wake Tech RTP campus for whom we would be purchasing the actual property and again all of this was further constrained by other land use restrictions like the RDU airport and the airport overlay where we're restricted from building within the flight path you know there some construction you can put a commercial facility within that overlay Zone residential development School rols these are things that are limited so Against All Odds we found that unicorn we found a wonderful site where in partnership with Wake Tech and the town of Morrisville and then having to reach out to other partners like the town of kery for additional um athletic facilities we found a way
159after a decade to go forward and make it work and since 2022 this district and the board members many of whom aren't here anymore some people have retired some people have moved on we worked to get all of the agreements to make that Wake Tech RTP site work for a high school and it wasn't easy we had people that tried to torpedo his efforts as Mr Swanson knows he was able through his advocacy to ensure that we that the people that had come to us with some of the towns with their local local government agreements honored the proposals honored the honored the deals that we made to make sure that that high school would still become a reality now we didn't just buy land and dream that a high school would be there we had
160many parties that had reviewed this proposal board members were assured that this would be a challenging site but that the RTP site was possible and so we went forward and it wasn't just us it was also Wake Tech it was also the town of Morrisville and others all with the plans of building a high school on this site the RTP site and since 2022 years have gone by where we have all operated under that assumption so I want to flash to something Mr brunette said actually two things and while I respect you as a buildings expert on your communication skills I'm going to accuse you of something called burying the lead you started the conversation talking about problems with this site describing it as soil issues and cost issues but it wasn't until later in
161the presentation when you said I don't think we would be able to develop a high school on this site period and then Mr cor Roa came and added we would not be able to place a high school on that site now we've been talking about these issues for months and I believe you when you say that you have shown problems with design problem s with cost that make development of the high school at the Wake Tech RTP site at the at at best extremely improbable I don't know if it's impossible or not we know that the cost overruns would be twice of what they'd be on the alternate site but we had a plan that had been vetted that had we gone for forward and I'm also Dr Taylor I want you to know this
162history as well coming in for two years we had a plan and this is a plan that the neighbors knew that the County Commissioners knew that we had Joint Communications with all of our partners on this and then earlier this year that changed I will say that I felt as someone who's been supportive of this high school for over a decade I felt ambushed by the long list of and I believe they're real designed challenges that were brought up to me this was prior to a facilities committee meeting when I was still facilities chair or actually just transitioned off Mr Hershey become chair and we went through and staff detailed far beyond soil issues and cost issues I mean I F you know Miss Miss Coffield you're like me We like to take notes I
163filled must filled like three pages or four pages on the notepad of very specific design challenges on that site and so when it came time to what we would do about this we had a facilities committee meeting that was planned to update the the committee and the full board on development of this site and for the first time again we' had a plan going for two years all of the sudden there were all of these challenges cost estimates and I I was fearful we would get a recommendation not to go forward with the high school and Mr Hershey you were involved in some of those conversations with the facilities committee you remember that going forward this was going to be such a bomb for the community that we had promised this high school we promised
164not just the public we had signed agreements with other government bodies with other educational institutions that we were going forward that now all of this was jeopardized you remember we pulled the item from committee because we needed to let the town of Morrisville know before this hit Twitter we needed to let our Wake Tech Partners know that there were going to be problems with this site and so we had facilities committee meetings where we talked about some of the challenges with this site and that was probably the first notice a lot of people in the public got that there was a problem here there's additional Communications problems that we've had again you know you you know I God love our reassignment staff right nobody likes getting news that they'll be changing schools they'll be moving
165schools and they do a fantastic job with Community engagement but when you have the reassignment staff working on one side and you have our buildings and Facilities staff working on the other side sometimes messages cross you know the reassignment staff may not feel comfortable talking about things that haven't been released publicly but the facility staff might have been working on something for months trying to analyze something and because no board decision has been made it's not official but then when something comes out where does that leave the public where does that leave neighbors like Miss Chandler and the other neighbors who have written to me now the bigger policy issue for this board to consider and I don't we won't do it tonight and I don't know when we'll do this but it's a situation
166I brought up to Dr Taylor is we have to work out the communications issues and the governance issues between different Departments of the school district I've floated proposals to Dr Taylor about when we purchase land before it comes to the board and we vote whether to purchase it that you know we need additional review because for two years we had a plan and again this wasn't just something we went into without any due diligence there were assessments of the site there were other people involved other parties but legitimate issues have been raised and so now to quote my old boss we have our tail in a crack where now we've got to go back to people in Morrisville in the neighborhood and say you know what when we promised you this school and with all
167the information we had things have changed and that's a bad look and I apologize for it I really do I apologize to the neighbors I apologize to the town of moresville and I apologize to our partners at Wake Tech because everyone went into this with a plan I'm not hearing anybody take accountability and take responsibility for this so I'll take it if no one else is going to take responsibility for it I'll take it but what we're left with is a high school that has been planned for over a decade that will not get built unless we can find a way to move it to an alternate site and that site you know it would cost twice the amount and still may not get built if we try to force it at the RTP campus
168making this change disrupts good people in a good residential neighborhood it has the potential to disrupt our assignment plans it disrupts plans that Wake Tech has already made for that property and their instructional plans and I know they're not happy about it and I know that every town counselor in Morrisville is hearing about it and isn't happy about it all I can say is that I'm not happy about it we need to take responsibility for it and realize where we are and to me it looks like where we are is that we won't be able to build this High School unless we move it to the Middle School site there are disadvantages there are some advantages too I will say that we do have successful models of multiple grade levels sharing a campus you know
169I live right across the street from leeville Road and with leeville road I used to live physically directly across the street so that my house was right in front of the baseball field and so yeah we did get traffic in the morning Dr matillo used to be the principal at leeville Road and sometimes he would have to get out there and direct traffic through the neighborhood at the beginning of the school year until students could be responsible with driving in but I know at leeville road with the elementary and the high school and the middle school alt together there there is tremendous Community Support where Neighbors participate in the homecoming parades where young students walk walk in and get to watch the baseball games the football games a lot of the Athletics there there is
170great support where the high school students will come over and Mentor the younger students there's volunteers for after school programs and I know it's only natural to think about safety and crime issues but I would urge residents to please talk to Residents who live in neighborhoods that have these multi- multi-grade schools and see what they think see what they think and if there are improvements we can make if there are things that whoever's chosen to be principles in these schools need to know and need to address early on that we do it um we've been promising this high school for over a decade I I understand the bait and switch feeling that so many residents and partners have I really do I don't see another option that we have that's going to get this school
171built um the impacts on the middle school I will say residents in this area as we know have been reassigned at the elementary level at the middle school level if this gives us a delay to save those same kids who are getting reassigned to elementary school to let them do all three years at one Middle School without having to get leave for another Middle School I would do that I would delay opening of the Middle School to give those families just a little more stability and not have to be reassigned again so you know I know we need the middle school capacity but let's give those folks a break and not reassign that same cohort again can you do that though I can I I can I can guarantee what I can do I can't
172guarantee what the rest of the board will do but I appreciate you all letting me take the time there's a lot involved in this issue it is emotional for me because I know it's emotional to all the families and all the parties that have worked so hard for this so Dr Taylor I hope you've taken note of some of the governance issues that we need to address because I don't want to put another Community through this I do want to say I appreciate the hard work that our design and Facilities people have put in to developing a plan particularly when all of these issues that were identified this year came to light that still allow us to go forward with a high school when it looked like that project was going to be jeopardized and
173I still want to acknowledge and appreciate all of the hard work that was done on the real estate side and our Student Assignment side our school choice side even having either one of these sites because both the Middle School site the whib site and the High School site were things that we've been told for years just could not and would not happen and it took a tremendous amount for those to be made possible so I'm not happy with where we are but there is a path forward it took a lot of work even to get us here so I'm going to Advocate that we do go ahead we do approve this plan because this is the plan that will get the high school built this is the plan that lets us keep our promise to
174the moresville community and to all of our partners in the town of Morrisville the town of kry at Wake Tech at Wake Tech that we will have the high school here I think having a larger high school is a better plan I think having a smaller Middle School is a good plan because the Middle School ages are ages you know where we don't need as many kids compacted together right where having the the the the smaller class can really help build that community and again I really want to make it clear how strongly I feel that those middle school kids in that cohort not be reassigned until they've completed the ones that are just coming through last year's reassignment not be reassigned again until we can get until they have completed it we can open
175the Middle School it'll be great but let's let let's not risk moving them again and with that I'll yield the rest of my time Mr Hershey uh do we need to make uh do you need a motion to move forward I just want to make sure I believe so according to the pry this would be a motion to move forward if if that's the I will be making one I just want to say that um you know thank you for your words uh your motion comes through I want to just say we have to change this process and I I hope that within this is by the end of this year Cal not school year calendar year like definitive changes so we can move forward as a board and learn from this process because I
176Echo your sentiments like it was a bad process ultimately and you know we we did not do a good job on that front um I make a motion that we uh switch S um the Morrisville High School site to the Parkside Middle School site second there's been a motion from Mr Hershey a second from Mr Swanson is there any other discussion question any other comment Miss emmans um I thought we would take a minute to hear from the public um I know there's a representative here from the community but we haven't seen the petition um I we've gotten some emails but I thought we might be doing this at another meeting like a soon I'm not suggesting to drag it out for month but at least the next meeting so that we have time to
177have public comment on it or thank you so this was something that was previously discussed now according to parliamentary procedure we do have a motion on the table that has moved that has been moved and properly seconded we're still able to discuss if you do not want to take a motion at this time we would need a motion to table the motion or to postpone it to a certain um Mr Swanson I know you and I talked about this before do you have any thoughts that you'd like to yes I um this was brought up in executive and I had the EXA exact same thoughts and I I know um the chair and vice chair entertained me and and I appreciate that because this isn't a decision that we like to make um without having
178all the facts and including the public and so I I was I thought it was brought up in executive that there would be an opportunity for families to engage through thought Exchange and an opportunity for families to come to The District and either have dialogue with Dr Taylor or uh Mr Strickland about the potential changes so we can hear from them um I'm not sure where we landed on that but that was the solution that we had discussed so so a little context to that U that is absolutely uh what we are going to do uh I know uh Mr coros is looking for sites where we would uh give the public the opportunity to come and give feedback um and I if I can I'll just take one or two minutes to add context
179um I appreciate the historical background because that is something that anyone who is new to this process did not understand um and again I appreciate the motion to move this forward tonight that would be my recommendation that is why we brought it here um the one thing that I do know is that uh this pivot is obviously not perfect uh but I can tell you that uh you don't stand alone in this as superintendent this is on my watch uh and it is our responsibility to make sure uh from a um fiary position that we do what is best uh being able to have an 1,00 student High School uh is is way more appropriate than a 1200 uh and what you shared absolutely helps us understand why uh I do also recognize the issues
180that we have in terms of land acquisition and facilities and design uh and so we have talked about that change that will be implemented before this year is out um um I also understand that uh this communication process has not gone well we've all had to bear that together uh but in the end uh this is a a process that is going to serve the community better it's going to serve our students better um and um and we will do everything that's necessary to hear from the public whether you make this decision tonight or not to move forward we do owe them that and it's my responsibility to to hear from our public and what those changes and pivots mean and we will do that thank you Dr Taylor Dr in see your hand so
181thank you for your words uh it really helped to put it in a historical context um you know going back to the communication you know I feel like this success of this project you know it success it succeeds or or fails because of the communication and and what I want to know before I vote is what are we going to do about the getting the feedback from the the community even if we say let's say we decide to go ahead with this how can we make it better for the community what what is the concrete steps that we can take to make the community feel more at ease with the decision that we have made so so what I would say is that our first obligation is to explain to the community why we've had
182to make this change uh and hear the feedback from them and and we know uh that's something that we're going to have to endure uh but I think more importantly the second part is talking about what that pivot would look like uh not only with the weip site but uh any other designs that we would do uh on the on the parks side site whether that is the Weis uh building by itself a middle school that can um um that houses that but to be able to talk to them about what that pivot would look like at that site but we originally had planned for the high school um and ultimately to be able to provide as much information as we can really to the board and the public about uh what any development on
183that site would cost whatever it's going to be we know it's going to be cost prohibitive uh but we absolutely see the difference between putting a comprehens of 1 1200 student High School there versus any other project so it is about getting their feedback but about the pivot as well in terms of what would be on that site Miss edmans thank you so I I can I'm hearing from the facilities chair from the two of you that you know that's your District that you're ready to move forward and our superintendent is recommending that we move forward tonight so I can do that I I believe every everything the staff has shared with us about the need to do it so I'm compelled I don't need to be compelled any further but um I do think
184it is we're going off precedent by doing this before having that community meeting and hearing public comment even if we don't feel there's any other options um and so I want to be on record that I'm uncomfortable with this yes I can support it but I'm uncomfortable with this process of doing it before we've had the opportunity to review the petitions and to have more of a community meeting public comment whatever you want to call it thank you thank you Miss edmit Miss Coffield did you have a comment um yes I think that um before we heard your closing argument um I I it kind of really put a lot of um things in perspective filled in a lot of blanks so I appreciate your words um and I agree with what was said it's
185definitely heartfelt that it's been a lot of work that has been put into it um as far as the policy are we saying that we're going to go back in the way that we actually purchase and we're going to update our policies in order to do that can we incorporate some kind of plan A and B so that we are not finding ourselves in this kind of pinch again so so what I would say is is not necessarily a policy uh perspective but um ultimately what what I know has to happen is that if we purchase land that there has to be an opportunity for both Real Estate Services and facilities and design to have a discussion about property that we acquire uh have it vetted in a number of ways to determine uh if
186a site is suitable in terms of construction and cost before we make a commitment to purchase anything and and and the easiest way I can describe it is that I don't ever want to come home and tell my wife here's a new car for you and I haven't given her an opportunity to give feedback on what it is and so that's where we've got to make sure that whatever we do in terms of purchasing land and I can tell you that I I believe the Real Estate Services does a really good job because we know it is becoming increasingly more difficult to purchase land uh but at the same time we want to make sure that any kind of decision that we make in light of the the difficulty of purchasing land that everybody is
187is in agreement before we bring that to the board uh and I know that's what chair Hager and I have talked about uh that has to be corrected thank you Mr Hershey and just to add to that what I would like to see happen is there a conversation among staff about the size of a high school because it perhaps we should not have we I don't know how much we thought through the implications of a 1200 person high school and if that's something we are going to do in the future that needs to be well thought out long in advance so the board doesn't have to wrestle with the implications of that thank you Vice chair Johnson Hustler yes um you did an excellent job giving the historical perspective um and you know to to
188the chair's point I have been at this table the longest and do recall buying the land um and this is our second instance of needing land in Western Wake and making promises to communities that we build schools and we've had to purchase less than optimal sites twice um this one has probably been a bigger headache than the other but I have sat here long enough to know that purchasing those sites without full conversations which I think people are afraid to have and I say this from one person who loves our High School athletics to another is the real ation is also for this board to start socializing the conversation in our community of yes we hear that we're losing Mark and chair but that doesn't mean we're not growing and we still are building schools
189I don't think wake is going to be out of the business of needing to revisit how we how we build schools what's at those schools what's Equitable across the district um those are real hard conversations that the board is going to have to wrestle with to give the staff some direction and I think that really is going and that's I mean we're talking about a high school but it's true for all of our schools I mean we are super fortunate that I love that we have multitude of options at every level of our schools for Fields whether it's playgrounds or athletic fields we've done an amazing job as a district with our newer schools not the same at our older schools so we already have an inequity there so I do think we already are
190at a place too late unfortunately to have the hard conversation that I do believe is the board's conversation to have so that when you are in a place where we're purchasing land because there isn't a lot of options to purchase land and I agree real estate I mean they scour our County to find any bit of land that we can put a school on so I think it's also important that people know that none of these were individually independently wrong decisions everyone did their job it is the collective of all of these things that put us in a place where we did not have timely communication so I think for me that's the only thing that I would sum sum this up with is if we pull this apart everybody did what they're supposed to
191do however when those things were put together with small land size without I mean even as a board we knew the land was going to be awkward because of the size of it and shape but we and we're to the chair's point if back I mean we're already at the edge of where we can build in this County and still be in this County um I mean we're there but we didn't have a conversation I mean I don't know I mean I do think it's going to be Practice Dr Taylor that we probably as a board start saying survey the land before we purchase which is a cost right and so that's why the board is going to have to make real hard decisions because if you survey the land they would already facilities would
192be able to say ma'am if you do this it's going to cost you this much to build easement it's going to cost you right we don't currently do that because we're in such a crisis for land in our district so if I was to make a recommendation it is going to be that the board has to have all of this information to every piece of every Department's puzzle before making a final decision and making promises to our community all of our promises were from the heart right the commitments we made all of the partners who came to the table were because everybody wanted to do the right thing but that doesn't actually mean you always get the right outcomes and this is an example where the best intentions from every single group of people who
193were involved in here landed us in a place that is completely un unfair to a community that puts us in a place where we're making a decision where all of us are literally holding our breath to say we're here we've started to build construction is underway what do we do it's hard to weigh cost right there are cost to our community which we talked about whether where do we listen to the community at the end of the day listening to the community what are we relaying right and I think I said to them the we cannot vote today but the truth is we are not going to be able to do what we promised so delaying the conversation doesn't actually change an outcome because we're already building it's not like we got a clean slate
194and can start over we're there we're already into this what I believe that we owe at this point the community is one our apology two for saying we did not get this right and I know people especially businesses don't like to say we didn't get it right we didn't we didn't get it right for the community again with the best intentions but we're here so how do we have this conversation to ensure that we are asking Community cuz there's still a ton of input right I mean we got a lot of emails that give us a lot of things of like this doesn't work what are conversations do we have thinking outside of the box if we're going to have to put an elementary and a high school in the same location what things can
195we put in place to start to mitigate at the very least of some of the concerns that the community have that's the conversation at this point we owe the community is to Think Through are there out of the box things that we can do um are there ways that we can make this right cuz this is a repair with a Community um just as if we not do it it's a repair with a whole larger scale Community um and people who will come back to Chris and I and say you promised these things so I think that's the first thing I would say is I mean there's only one person here today but the truth is people are going to watch this and I think they have to hear us apologize and also be clear
196that we know now where those gaps in communication really lie and what things need to happen first which is the board can cannot make decisions and say yes we need a school there we got that land let's build this kind of school there we actually really need to have a lot of details which is also cost upfront and so I'm als again to those of us who will be voting on those things in the future I'm also acknowledging that it'll pay me now pay me later and we're at the pay me later stage and I would say we're going to have to move to a pay me now stage which is we are going to have to know what money we need to pay up front to have all the information to make the best
197decisions all right at this point are there any other questions questions for staff any other board comment are there any other motions we do have a motion on the table all right in that case I'll call a vote all in favor of Mr hersh's motion please signify by saying I I any opposed all right the motion has passed and we'll move to the next item on our agenda thank you so the next item on the it's time for Hagerty to retire agenda is addressing School utilization concerns with another school in my district one of two schools we'll hear from Mr carosa Andor Susan pum and Marcel rice just me meloy thank you good evening uh chair Hager members of the board superintendent Taylor uh staff is here requesting your vote to approve a calendar change
198for Roseville middle school and Pine Hollow Middle Schools from the multirack round calendar to the traditional calendar for the 2526 school year staff has presented information during the June facilities committee meeting the um July board work session and today's work session as well um I'll open it up to any questions or concerns you have before you vote so so I hear a motion from Miss rice to open discussion for adoption of The Proposal is there a second I hear a second from Mr Swanson all right we did have a discussion of this during work session and that was a continuation of a discussion we had at our previous work session as you know this is an issue where we have heard from constituents um with concerns we've talked about those concerns does anyone have any
199questions or any comments for Mr carosa at this time Miss mafy thank you um I just wanted to ask Mr Cora to re reiterate the um projected capacity just using this year's number for Pine Hollow and for Roseville um currently Pine hollow's uh utilization is at 63.7% on the multirack year round calendar and rolleville is at 53.1% utilization under the multitrack uh year calendar using just the numbers that we have for this year what is the projected uh what would the utilization uh be for Pine Hollow and rolleville if it were to move to traditional calendar today so it would be the 75 to 80% uh projected thank you um what you'd take is the um capacity for um P Pine Hollow Middle School would change from 1248 to 936 and so you just divide
200the projected enrollment by 936 and and then for p uh rolleville midddle school it would be 1248 instead of 1664 okay and can you repeat the projected cost savings as well and moving these yep so there's two sets of cost savings there's about 550,000 um uh in position um months of employment in positions between the two schools that would be a reduction year-over-year and then there's also the months of employment that the school system has provided to the schools uh for the additional teaching positions that they didn't earn through their enrollment so that's another roughly about1 hundred to $200,000 a year so you're really looking at about $750,000 in savings year-over-year thank you other questions other comments so i' I'd just like to reiterate a point that was brought up during work session which is
201you know to miss to the to the point from Miss maf's question there are considerable cost savings that we'll see by enacting these changes and there are a lot of public policy benefits we also have to acknowledge that this will destabilize a number of families in their calendars families that have more than one child where you have some families that'll be on a traditional calendar and some families that'll be on a multi-track year round calendar you know I you know I can tell you there are family members that are there are families in my district that are opposed to this I can tell you there are staff at these schools that really like the multi-track year round option that also enjoy teaching middle school there's not a lot of opportunities for that and that you
202they do not want this change um but I I can't find it I I can't look at the rest of my board members and ask you to spend $750,000 more a year just to continue this when the numbers aren't there the one thing I would like to ask is and again this is per year so I can't ask you to delay the decision um because that will cost us again money each year but what I would like is if we really can have that conversation that we asked about in work session with those feeder schools to try to see can we convert those feeder schools well let's talk to the families if the calendar stability is their primary concern would they rather be on a traditional calendar as well so they can have all of
203their kids on the same calendar kindergarten through high school or if they would rather keep their their their multi-track calendar for Brier Creek Elementary for Sycamore Creek Elementary and if we have the opportunity to have those conversations this fall you know that can help us so if we're making a change to these two middle schools for the 25 26 year hopefully any Elementary School decisions can be made soon after that if they're warranted if we can support them and I just want to make that ask and request yep staff can certainly do that all right um at this point we do have a motion it has been properly moved and seconded all in favor of the motion signify by saying I I any opposed all right thank you Mr C appreciate it we will now
204turn to a different issue hooray policy action agenda now for something that's completely non-controversial um our first our first policy will be uh board policy 3460 graduation requirements uh we're bringing up the mash unit please give them a moment or two um Mr Johnson Mr Mr cook sorry for the all I want to know is who won who won I wish there were good stories but um two two separate unrelated incidents um it's a tough job but we're going to push through and do our best to do justice to policy 3460 this evening I can't wait to see all the text messages from my friends and colleagues right now who are watching this picture on the screen but I'm going to turn over to Dr Johnson uh who will give you a quick overview and
205a review of the Visions to policy 3460 related to graduation requirements thank you thank you Mr cook academics is tough gig uh good evening uh chair haery Vice chair Johnson Hustler and superintendent Taylor when he returns and all other board members uh tonight for you for first read is policy 3460 this went to the policy committee meeting on June 26 it was approved to come to first read this evening it's a direct result of House Bill 256 and that house bill states that school boards can no longer require more than 22 credits to graduate all counties in North Carolina had to abide by this uh we can only recommend uh beyond the 22 credits the other piece of the house bill is that we have to create a three-year graduate pathway that students can apply
206to be in where they will graduate after their junior year we have put this in motion already because the house bill was already in effect this has been in communication with middle schools and high schools they have communicated with families parents Schools students uh and all the above of in order to make this happen we currently have 169 applicants for that three-year graduate option out of over 50,000 high school students that currently sit right now um that is as of 5:00 p.m. today for those applications with in front of you with those changes just as a reminder the red are the State School Board Association changes that have to be made the green indicates the language has been moved to another section and blue are the edits or revisions that we have made as a
207district again this is a North Carolina uh requirement this is not something that is just a Wake County exclusive piece I'm able to take any questions at this time all right thank you this was something that we had spoken about before uh Miss mafy I'll make a motion that we approve policy 3460 for first reading I heard um Miss rice for the second motion by Miss mfy is there any discussion any debate any questions for Mr Johnson unrelated to his injury all of my questions are for the legislature that approved this so no none at this time all right okay in that in that case I'll call for a vote all in favor of uh board policy 3460 on first reading signified by saying I I any opposed all right thank you making sure that
208there's not another one where we'll need to call you back up all right there's not thank you thank you um next up is board policy 4240 730 77312 child abuse and related threats to child safety on first reading we'll welcome Miss Woodson good evening everyone I hope you are well this evening tonight I'm bringing to you policy 4240 7312 child abuse and related threats to child safety for first reading revisions were recommended by the North Carolina School boards Association and are found on page five of the policy under Section section H um it was discussed at the June 25th policy committee meeting and when uh board final approval is is determined it will be replaced the current version of the policy effectively what we're asking or what is required is that we add um an
209opportunity for students to a video by the center for safer schools um and that it's shown no later than 5 days after the first day of school um and tonight we're requesting the board's approval for first read okay thank you Miss Woodson Miss mfy I make a motion that we approve this policy for first reading motion from Miss maffy second from Miss rice are there any questions about the policy the video has been properly viewed and vetted we have we've actually been at this for quite some time so we're we're ahead of the game with this no surprises or anything that's going to come back to us in terms of anything in the video I just got to ask all right thank you okay if there's no other questions comments or um other displays of
210just cynicism from myself we'll call for a vote all in favor of adoption of board policy 4240 7312 and first Reading Please signify by saying I I any opposed all right thank you Miss Woodson thank you next up board policy 7510 employment policy on leave it looks like Mr Neer will be presenting we're going to grill you with all of our HR questions Mr Neer all right thank you good evening again um tonight I'm bringing policy 7510 leave for first reading little background though this policy was previously approved by the board I believe back in April it was developed to be an overall leave policy covering all the different types of leave that an employee could take and with the intent then to have embedded within the policy links to the other specific policies or
211other policies that speak to a specific type of Staff leave so what we're bringing back tonight are modifications to section c of the policy and effectively an update to that listing of other policies with applicable leave these additions under section c were brought to the policy committee um I believe at your June meeting and so that is what we are bringing for you tonight for consideration as a first reading all right thank you Mr Neer and everyone should have all of these changes in the version of the policy which is in loaded in assembly Mr chair I'll move that we adopt this on first reading we have a motion from the sedment to adopt the policy on first reading we have a second from Vice chair Johnson Hustler are there any questions any discussion about
212board policy 7510 leave everyone has reviewed the changes if there's is everyone good with them and seems to reflect what we spoke about all right with no questions or discussion I'll call for a vote all in favor of board policy 7510 leave on first Reading Please signify by saying I I any opposed all right thank you Mr Neer thank you I believe that takes care of the HR policies so now we will bring back board policy 2310 public partic participation at board meetings on second reading all right so these are the changes regarding public comment there are two policies 2310 and 2340 were the changes if you don't mind we can we can talk about them together 2340 were the changes to the agenda which we had talked about uh we needed to correct the
213draft that was brought on first reading to reflect what came out of our work session if you all have had a chance to look and see what was uploaded uh for 2340 it should um oops it should list um the agenda as we discussed and then with policy it's not redlined but if you look through you can see in that one we've moved discussion and approval of the agenda to the very first substantive item um after I'll call to order and our Pledge of Allegiance we would then have recognition and information items followed by public comment then the board comments superintendent comments and then we are also adding an additional Clos session as needed or sorry an additional public comment period as needed between the consent and action items and closed session um and then
214I'll go back to 2310 is the uh public participation at board meeting policy this one uh the draft that you had seen was the draft we had when it was originally presented in the work session that we had walked back from so this just has changes that Mr Malone had put in based on our board conversation and then in additional clarification that the board may as a body also vote to extend time for public comment as well so uh let's start with policy 2310 these are the revisions that were made since the last last meeting um based on the discussion at the board table is there any well I guess first we'll entertain any motions we have a motion from Miss rice for for adoption of board policy 2310 on second reading second and we
215have a second from Miss Edmonds is there any discussion Miss Edmonds so I'm still not clear on 2310 if there is some way to allow espe especially with students for groups of speakers to stand at the podium because that's happened before and I don't think any of us mind that especially with students yeah I don't mind it with adults quite frankly I mean if if there's a person speaking and you know there's a group of them that stand together as long as they're not disrupting the speaker so I just want to be sure and it might be a question for um Mr Malone it is is it allowed in here that the chair could make or the board could make that decision on the spot sure I mean if the board wants to allow it
216you can either add it into the policy or you could Grant the chair the ability to do it it's not it's just your own policy that prohibits it so however you want to handle it we can revise the policy he you say we would need a revision to make that a a thing that the chair or the board could do know I heard him say the opposite that the board could do it under existing parliamentary procedure at any time sort of like earlier today we have the policy that says only one person can speak at the podium I did want to call for a vote because it was a change to policy but we easily changed it to make sure that the students parents could stand with them I I'm fine to handle it that
217way I just wanted to ask that question because I want us to be able to do that if we choose to um we'll go Miss rice and then Dr r so I I agree with Miss Edmunds um some things um because we we won't always be here and if we're looking to make um lasting change that is support of citizens voicing and demonstrating in a proper way then it need to be in policy so that it's understood that those are options whether it be allowed for the chair to utilize that option or just so that the public even knows they have that option to do it as as long as it's not disruptive but they should have an option thank you so when we've talked about maybe groups of people the policy talks about what
218is detailed in policy in sections three and four if either of you have like a change that you would make to three or four we can definitely entertain that as an amendment go ahead Mr Swanson sorry would that mean what any addendums or amendments that we make tonight would that have to then would this policy have to go back to Second reading or could we wave um second reading so the policy can go into effect for the upcoming board meetings so I'll get Mr Malone to comment on that I believe typically we have first reading as an open debate and second reading often comes as consent here because it is second reading and floor discussion I don't know that it would need to come back if amended for a third reading but I'll defer to
219Mr Malone no you could clearly wave I I don't even think you'd be waving second reading you could just revise the policy tonight and then approve it on second reading yeah you could definitely do that it it seems like and I'll I'll ask my more senior board members it seems like where we've changed a policy on second reading that we've just been able to make the amendment without having to bring it back okay thank you that's a good question uh Miss Mafi than Dr I'm not seeing anything in the policy that prevents what Miss Edmonds is asking for if I recall correctly that was something done uh with consultation at the attorney at the time to add that to board comments in order to um allow for a decorum in the uh boardroom but again
220that was something that was a chair attorney discretion at the time so I don't see anything prohibiting what Miss Edmond is saying in the actual policy unless I'm missing something Miss semmons do you want to respond yeah so I I thought that I saw that today when I looked at this before the work session but I'm not finding it now either so that could be my mistake as long as it's something that we can still do in some way I don't really care how we do it I I I think and then miss miss Coffield out well we have a couple speak I don't want to skip SK skip people whose hands have been up but I do want to say you know as as a practice I think this came about as like a
221safety and decorum issue when you had audiences that were speaking on contentious issues and different people were all coming up and down in front of other people if there was like any jostling or pushing or especially when there were signs that could be held in front of people there was the talk that it could be very disorderly now when you have a student group or you have and students could be disorderly but I mean you hope for the best right I think if there's conditions where it's appropriate I think we could handle it with a waiver of policy if that were needed but to miss mf's point I think a lot of this has just been practice not policy so Dr in and then I'll come back to miss Coffield um so a question I
222have is uh you know in our usual practice we've had when we've had multiple people coming um as a group they've often signed up individually serially and then so each one of them gets a slot of time now if we are going to let them come as a group are we allowing the whole Collective set of time for them or because be you know the the question I have is because we're we're limiting it to 30 minutes for the or or at your discretion but certainly if we don't know what they're going to be doing how can we know how much time we're going to allow for that first period of for the public comment that's a good question I mean if you're asking me as as chair I would think it's a meeting management
223issue that if let's say we had a 100 people show up I know we've never had a hundred in recent years but let's say we had 100 people show up and everyone then knew if everyone gets their 3 minutes this is going to be a long meeting you know because we do ask the speakers to identify the topic they're speaking on again we don't know if it's Pro or con but we might be able to ask hey because we have this many people speaking you know would any of you feel comfortable you know delegating as it says here to a representative or a spokesperson now that doesn't automatically extend the time that doesn't let that one person speak for 300 minutes instead of 3 minutes right um but it it gives us the flexibility that
224if a lot of people are there for support that they could designate a spokesperson but then to miss edan's point they could the spokesperson could say I'm here representing all of the people of say the greyland community who's opposed to this reassignment and then everyone could stand be recognized it wouldn't give that speaker the collective time of all the representatives if the board wanted to though they could extend the time and say well since you're stepping up as a leader instead of having 60 Minutes of comment we can give you an extra three minutes to have six minutes versus three or whatever it might be we would have the option but rather than trying to anticipate every possible scenario within the policy the ability to wave policy to address unique situations may be may give
225us the flexibility we want I think what we want to look at is make sure that there's nothing in here that restricts us from any option like that okay oh sorry Mr uh Swanson for the Parliamentary inquiry so I believe I caught the piece of Miss adman lifted up it's section eight um8 under policy 23 10 that says speakers may not give their time to another speaker or trade their time thought with another speaker um so there could be some some potential misinterpretation of this particular policy or this item under this policy okay that's that I I I'll let Mr Malone speak to that I was looking at three with the chair May provide for the designation of a spokesperson for groups or persons supporting or opposing the same position position and then four the
226board May provide for the selection of delegates from groups of persons suggesting or opposing the same positions when the number of persons wishing to attend and here it has a condition exceeds the capacity of the meeting room but to your point if people say sure I would go along and delegate that and they're expecting that they could get up and then yield their time that's where we want to make sure it's not daisy chaining out so that one person is speaking for like an hour right um Mr Malone do you have a comment or suggestion so a couple things one where boards have policies that allow people to delegate their time the policy is specific to that so it it would allow a person what happens in those board meetings is people sign up in
227order and person one can yield letter time to person two and then person two can yield letter time to person three and then person three can have nine minutes instead of three minutes um your policy doesn't allow that and I think that's what section 8 is addressing is that kind of or someone comes comes and signs up for someone else or they sign up for themselves they decide they don't want to speak and then they give their time to someone else I think that's what Aid is intended to address I do not see anything in here while the practice is only one person stands at the podium there's certainly I don't see anything I've read it twice now in the policy that would prevent the chair or the board from allowing multiple people to stand
228at the podium if you were to be so inclined I don't think you need to revise the policy to do that since the policy doesn't prevent it it's just been your practice um and was there another question or did I get them all all right so um now I think Miss Coffield did you have a question or did did I miss someone else Dr I got your question right okay all right and again you know it's difficult to anticipate every situation and we will always have situations arise during public comment you know I know I've seen some since I've been on the board I know Vice Johnson Hustler and Miss mafy have seen some that I haven't seen and I know there'll be ones that you see after I'm gone um we've had board we've
229had members of the public stand up and say they're one person and then we find out they're another we've had we've had public speakers stand up with their children only to find out that they're not actually their children um misrepresentations about schools they've attended I mean it's crazy right but it's also the public form that we've created and there's certain free speech um protections that if we have to air we have to air on the side of um allowing that speech so you know knowing that it's not going to cover for every situation um are we okay with 2310 on second reading that we're willing to move forward with it at this time all right I'll take a motion or sorry we have a motion on the floor I'll take a vote all in favor
230of policy 2310 on second reading and this would then go into effect for our next board meeting please signify by saying I I any opposed thank you all right so then we'll pull up Poli policy 2340 which I already introduced I believe you've had a chance to look at it there should be no surprises here everything should match up we double checked at this time to make sure that it um reflected what we talked about so um we'll entertain a motion for board policy 2340 or sorry yeah 2340 so moved motion for Mr Swanson second for Mr Hershey all in favor of wait I did have one question even though I've looked at this previously thank you it's very short go ahead um so in section g it says comments by board chair superintendent and
231board members generally we've done superintendent board chair board members that doesn't stop us from shifting things around in that yeah are we stuck in that grammatical order or I have not really I have no sense of um you know pride of authorship or anything with that that's how it came we put that in and I always like Dr Taylor well not always cuz sometimes he steals what I wanted to say I was going to say you could have your own video soon but this also gives me a chance to get put in the last word so I'm fine with it either way if you want to Amendment I'm open to the amendment if you're fine keeping it there is just a descriptor knowing that by practice we'll go in any order or maybe I should
232ask Dr Taylor what his preference is I don't have a preference I just wanted to ask the question just to make sure locked into something I believe Mr Malone I'll just defer to you that doesn't lock us into the board chair taking speaking before the superintendent does it so first this is the current language the way it reads now and that has not been the practice so I mean if you if you want to change it to reflective practice that's fine but well now but this this is the current language we did not change this looks a little bit all right so apparently this is how we've been doing it I've been missing great opportunities all along right we might need to give go back and give you some retroactive all right so we will
233keep that keep that flexible according to uh what Mr Malone has advised any other questions on policy 2340 on second reading all right in that case I'll call a vote all in favor of policy 2340 parliamentary procedures on second reading signify by saying I I any opposed all right that too will go into effect for our next meeting so when you look at your agendas you will see a different agenda make a motion we go into close session for reasons previously stated during the work session and on our agenda thank you Miss mafy I'm going to call the motion for Miss mafy and the second for Mr Swanson all in favor of the motion to go back into Clos session for the statutory reasons previously cited please signify by saying I I any opposed all
234right we're in Clos session um as we have already adopted our administrative recommendations requests for leave we will not be returning to open session after the meeting we will end after closed so if anyone was waiting around to hear anything after we we we're done all right thank you everyone good night e