001good evening everyone it is tuesday august 2nd at 5 30 pm and we are calling this regular meeting of the wake county board of education to order i want to welcome those of you that are watching at home and those that are here in person to observe the board of education as it conducts its official business and i want to take a moment to highlight board policy 2310 which states wake county board of education meetings are conducted for the purpose of carrying on the official business of the school system the public is cordially invited to attend board meetings to observe the board as it conducts its official business persons who willfully interrupt disrupt or cause disturbances at an official meeting may be directed to leave by the presiding officer members of the audience should show
002respect for speakers and rep by refraining from loud comments or other disruptions by any person or persons of a public meeting will be subjected to action in accordance with general statute 143-318-18 at this time we have all board members present including the superintendent and our attorney jonathan blumberg and i would ask that you all rise and join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you all at this time i'm going to turn the microphone over to superintendent moore for her comments good evening there's still time to donate to the wake ed partnership's tools for schools back to school supply drive each year north carolina
003teachers spend an average of 526 dollars of their own money for costume supplies for their students wake ed opened tools for schools in january to help close that gap ensure that all students have the supplies they need to focus on learning hundreds of teachers have already taken advantage of this program by shopping for free classroom supplies at the tools for schools store in kerry with many more signed up to do so there are donation drop-off sites all over the county you can also shop from the amazon wish list and have supplies delivered straight to tools for schools headquarters or make a financial contribution go to wcpss.net tools for schools to find a list of drop-off sites and most requested items the back to school supply drive ends august 16th it's almost time for another back
004to school tradition the kickoff to kindergarten event at marbles kids museum on saturday august 20th from 9 a.m to 5 p.m rising traditional calendar kindergarteners can learn the basics of kindergarten so they are prepared and excited for their first day students will go through a lunch line hop on a school bus and try out some typical school day play parents can also learn more about various community resources the event and museum admission are free for rising kindergartners and their families pre-registration is required go to wcpss.net kickoff to learn more and register congratulations to dr maria rosa rangel director of family and community engagement in the office of equity affairs she recently received the innovators award from the leadership institute for future teachers program at nc state university lyft is a five-day invitational program for students
005of color and bilingual students who are rising high school seniors and are interested in enhancing their leadership skills and exploring a potential career in education dr rangel who oversees the wcps family academy has been an educator for 26 years and was recognized for her outstanding commitment to promoting equity and inclusion the fifth core belief of our strategic plan states that our district values a diverse school community that is inviting respectful inclusive flexible and supportive dr ange's work in support of this belief has benefited countless of countless numbers of students and families congratulations on this well deserved recognition lastly students from 11 elementary and middle schools recently participated in summer champs a week-long summer camp hosted by the helping hands mentoring program students rotated through science creative writing art and the power hour a daily workshop
006designed to push students beyond their comfort zones the camp was hosted by barwell road elementary school please take a look at of this video of our students in action i want to change the world and i want to be like it is the next day but you wake up in your bed what a drink i made a i am from poem and that is how ananti this fighter got all of his stories [Applause] some are fun that concludes my comments thank you superintendent moore we want to make sure we welcome our track 4 and modified calendar students families and staff track 4 started this past friday i do want to take a moment to lift up our austin ridge middle school community they were informed that their computer science teacher miss robin wilson who was
007a formerly a faculty member at cary high school passed away after visiting family out of state and so we want to lift up those students their their school families and miss wilson's family as we as they deal with her passing and in their time of of mourning and grief and counselors were at the school this morning to help out students and faculty wake ed tools for schools i had a wonderful time volunteering seeing our our teachers it's an incredible program where teachers get 100 points every quarter in order to shop in the school store there's even a free wall of gently used items that were donated from companies i highly recommend all of our wcpss teachers and staff looking into that wake ed partnership also recently hosted a career accelerator for students so they could
008see different um possibilities outside of the classroom for when they graduate and our summer stem program that helps our teachers out and so we certainly want to thank wake ed partnership and their partners for all that they do in order to help our students see what's beyond the classroom help our teachers and also in not just in the tools for schools but in the summer stem program and how they can bring learning back to their classroom so those are my comments by share hangarty thank you chair mahaffey uh you actually covered a number of the topics that i was going to talk about we have seen a lot of great success with the wake up partnerships tools tools for schools drive and then the summer learning program they're doing has been really exciting and some
009of the great job experiences that they're providing for for our students one thing that is coming up in addition to well as you know you said track four schools has already begun but then traditional calendar schools kindergarten registration is coming up at the end of the month now and that's going to be a very exciting time we have a new kindergarten i'm going to hold this up for miss cash because this is our new school principal at barton pond elementary stephanie costa and we've got a lot of new exciting stuff about the school coming up and a lot of the residents have been asking about kindergarten registration so we're really excited to get that started i just wanted to make that point for you thank you miss cash i think we'll start with you yeah
010i'm going to beat that uh speaking about brassfield elementary um actually i was invited by the new principal there miss mr elliott to go to their meet the teacher night that was on the 28th and he's hilarious i must say so when you get chris mccabe and mr elliot together it's pretty funny you can't imagine but anyhow the meet degree meet the teacher night was just totally filled in their new renovated school and so many parents were out i saw so many people i knew that were bringing their last children probably that they have high schoolers and middle schoolers and now kids going through elementary so i had it was kind of like old home week for me in brassfield and we missed stephanie a lot but mr elliott is going to be a great
011act to follow her so i'm very proud of him as well and the following morning i went to brassfield again because they have the renovated campus and was able to walk with the pta and many of the parents there i'm just so impressed with our pta people they just you know they're in the schools they're they're not really acknowledged must they're not known by so many people but they work there every day and they we went around the new campus looked at some things some things that they'd already done themselves to the renovated campus and changed and the inside of brassfield is beautiful some work on the outside left to do which we were we will be talking about that the inside is beautiful and then also principal faircloth and principal sanchez from durant road
012middle and durant road elementary invited me to a beautiful 97 degree saturday event outside at the marsh creek park and i spent an hour and a half they and all their teachers and their pta again amazing were all there for about four and a half hours and they went to the communities that attends their school that are not near the school and um i could not even get into the pavilion it was so packed it and i was there late but it like i say it was 97 degrees the kids and their parents there were wicked partnership was giving out the tools that the children needed for school there were people interpreters for the community to help people sign on to powerschool there were i'm going to give better kudos to people by name and
013the next board meeting but there were so many people there to actually help them fill out their forms for free and reduced lunch the fact that these parents were just moms and dads and whole families came out to just find out what they could do to make their school their kids successful in schools and the teachers were all there and the counselors and the principals and it to me i think it was the highlight of the last six years that i've probably had now i've said this a few times to a few of my principals but that day was a highlight to me because it it made it made what we're all about helping all kids in wake county and so i was glad to be there i visited a few other schools this last
014week to do some things and welcome back to the year-round schools of course track four so it was just a it was a really good week getting to see parents teachers staff principals do what they do best thank you miss cash miss johnson hossler thank you um not much news so i will start with thanking burwell road for hosting helping hands which you saw an amazing video that speaks to our community partnership and our school partnership and i've learned nothing else on this board it's the community doesn't often know all the partnerships that we have in our school system and helping hand is a long-term partner for the school and probably the first community partner that i met in our schools when i joined the school board because at that time they were actually running
015after school programs pre-coveted in some of our schools specifically in district 2. so we are glad to have them back in our buildings and being a partnership that as dr martin always says learning should and can be fun and that's certainly what we saw this summer with the helping hands program at barwell elementary so thank you to all who made that possible and helpful moving on to partner continue with partnerships you heard some of our board members mention at the last board meeting and i was very even more excited after listening to our board members to go to the boys and girls club one of the things that i did not know that was new to me and they do a lot of amazing things they're a major partner in addition to being able to
016see several of our little kids i did not play ping pong but i really was tempted but i'm not that coordinated but that was a game that they wanted to play and i was like i could probably beat all you all in foosball because that was my game but ping pong is not my jam um and i did not get wet outside it was 97 degrees and they were having water fun but i will say i learned two things that i did not know that many of you may know but i would guess the bulk of our public probably doesn't know this when our kids go through boys and girls club and they are part of their education cohort those education coordinators go into our school and work directly with our teachers and sit in
017the classroom to observe their students to ensure that they are contributing to changing the educational outcomes for those students that i mean that was tremendous to me and so i met with education coordinator actually who now is moving to another job but still at the club but she walked me through several cases and students and partnerships and one of the things that i think is important that we all know but it is also for her she said the difference it made is some days teachers were just glad to have another hand in that room who cared about students who needed the support that speaks volumes to our partnership but also more so to the community hopefully that speaks to the need that we need to fully fund our public schools so that when we have
018partners that's not the gap they're feeling but certainly there are other gaps that we need them to feel but it should not be filling the space that our educators need support in their classroom so thank you to all the great things i learned from boys and girls club and the second and last thing that i'll say about that is they currently certify students with servpro through the boys and girls club so they can go through the program and be certified for jobs and there's a whole list of things but those are two things that i want to highlight that i didn't know going in and i should also note i've visited them all eight years i've been on the board i was like the good news is you always learn something new and those are
019two things that i'd like to lift up about those partnerships with the girls and boys club and lastly welcome back to all of our students educators and families who are back on august 1st we so eloquently christen in our house as a house full of wake county public school lovers is it's a and none of us have ever been on track for a year round but it is our first day of acknowledging it's time to get ready to go back to school i'm a southerner my mother believed that i should go to bed early and start practicing good school routines so i've been trying to institute out of my house it's like it's august 1. it's time to start back getting to our school routine and my daughter's like you know that's not a real
020thing for sleep right but in my mind we are preparing um so august 1 while we did not go back to school uh with our year-round calendar modified calendars who are also back we did begin the preparation to start back school so the hustler household is slowly addressing which is our late start for this year in a very long time starting later this month but we certainly are geared up and excited to have folks back in our buildings and ready to learn and parents and volunteers ready to engage as we all prepare for those of us who are left on the traditional calendar thank you thank you miss johnson hustler miss carter thank you and kind of continuing on with the wake ed plug there i had the opportunity to visit the one of a
021portion of the one of their career immersion days and the one i went to was at wolf speed and really appreciated the opportunity it was great of course i go and they're like i know you i know some kids from davis drive and then one student he remembered just from being at a navy junior rotc event from cary high was great very diverse group of students and not only that but i just have to talk about that to one of the activities okay yes they learn you know they sat there that interns telling them different things about different majors one actually switched their major after getting to college which is always useful to hear because some folks feel like if you can't ever take a detour sometimes you do and so it was interesting listen
022to that part but then they got out these things called making makey go and i've never seen them so some of you have right so now i i want one um and it's just like okay so excuse me but usb like stick and i'm probably saying this all wrong but this is how i remember you plug it in and it's got like an alligator clip okay and then at the end there's like this metal thing so they're learning about what's um a conductor what and what's can do might be saying that wrong anyway and so they had different objects they passed around so the students would put it to the metal part and then they had a website they could go to and it would run this little thing and say if it could was
023conductive or not that kind of thing which is great well then we took a side track and this is where i really okay so electricity was great yes but then you could use it to do flappy bird okay so i'm not good at video games i'm just gonna put that out there but um at all whether it's on the phone console any computer i'm just that's not my thing i enjoy them but i'm not great so but it was great to see because students you know they're like all about and ways to use like someone were using a paper clip to still use this makey makey go thing to control the flappy bird on the okay so some of them got like to the twenties um and then one student was like you've gotta i'm
024like okay i'll try it okay i couldn't get to two i mean and i was just i was really trying but the whole thing but it was just great to see their excitement and then they transitioned to the interns had made like a homemade operation game i'm sure i mean i grew up playing like the real um well they had a you know and again using the makey makey go and having that there it was just a great um just a great afternoon that i spent with them and had it just want to thank wake ed for that opportunity and all the partners because i know there were so many businesses that participated but that was just one little snippet but i appreciate that and yes i went to the raleigh girls club and i
025obviously i've never been to one i've never visited to learn all about it but it was fantastic they were playing i call it a fierce kickball game inside that was wonderful to see and then they were working on different dance groups and then you talked about the servpro and all that but then they took me to the art room and talked about one of their girls won a national they enter a national contest and they have a winner the raleigh girls club actually has a winner they're working on getting like a something to put up for that work that got that award but it was wonderful to hear and i would like to go and visit the teen center too because not just the boys girls but the teen center is just i think just
026as important as the other two and would love to learn they need volunteers by the way if you know you're interested because those students are coming to us as well and that's another way to support our students and for those who are thinking well they pay what do they do seven dollars and fifty cents for an entire year if they have it that's it and so they are pouring in a lot to those kids and it's whether you have the ability to pay or not you know but even if they do pay seven dollars to 50 cents the whole year so i think that's an important because they do some amazing work with those students and that has a direct impact on not only what happens in our classroom but also what happens when they
027leave because many of them come right back and volunteer some actually end up coming back to work there and it just can have such a tremendous impact on those youth so i appreciate all the staff there the volunteers and those who support those programs and lastly i'll just say it's great seeing all the high school in particular athletes really in action the middle school the bands marching bands i know green hope's marching band went on a field trip and so it's great to see all that and congratulations because there are some teams at rosters that have already been put out there so congrats to those who have made some teams and keep working hard for those who are still working on that at this point but i'm looking forward to seeing some great events coming
028up soon so thank you thank you miss waters thank you chair mahaffey and i'll say thank you to ms johnson hoster for the reminder to get to bed early so i passed on to my three and my 12 year old tonight and as a new board member it was really important to me to get out and visit all the schools in district four and i finally completed that i visited longview school last week and of course the students were not there so i had a chance to sit down with their principal principal harris and really get a chance to learn more about the school community it's a really special place it serves students who have a lot of needs and that school community is really important to our district and important to our state and
029so principal harris has been a teacher at the school and is now leading the school and he has such energy and excitement to cultivate the needs of the students so i'm very glad to be able to be a part of the work that is being done there and i look forward to going back again when the students are there and fuller elementary has a new principle so i wanted to welcome principal hernandez to the district he is new to wake county so i hope his first couple of days have been exciting and i look forward to getting over there to see the new school fuller school building and also wanted to welcome back all of our track force students as well i hope they're having a good first few days of school and that concludes
030my comments thank you thank you miss scott thank you um again i appreciate the acknowledgement from my colleagues about the weekend career accelerator was able to even see um senator crawford who represents the eastern part of wake county and she was able to come back and and help with that as well and she is an east week high school graduate so but so many great things and i appreciate all of the the on our social media being able to follow along with all the great things that the students are doing and a huge thank you as always to our local business community for partnering with our schools and ms carter said the thing about the marching band so we we do have um marching band camps that are taking place now or took place already
031so um i can tell you that if you if you hear one of those bands warming up and you want to know if there's any way you can help them they will always appreciate donations water bottles gatorade and so forth so please make sure you reach out to them some some people go to football games no offense to any of our football teams but some people do do go to those they call them marching band games so just keep in mind that they they they could they could use some support and love too wanted to say congratulations to windall elementary school's pta they received recognition recognition for their efforts and outreach and support that they're doing um with with their school and they they do an amazing job and a huge thank you to all
032of our ptas for really stepping up in particular the last few years and uh and again thankful for the work from activate good that ms cash and miss johnson hasla are partnering on um supporting the schools that don't have active ptas and um and also filling in that gap are many of our chambers in district one and throughout some of the local municipality chambers are doing great works with providing school supplies and just helping celebrate our schools as they either have started or are getting ready to start and and ditto to the we're going to bed early tonight to practice but i like that no i i won't blame you but um you know a lot of great passion from our our schools as we get things started and just remember this this is this
033is another uh it's a big lift for our teachers and our principals right now they're they're still stressed they're going to need a five-year vacation at some point not now please for the ones who are here no thank you so much for for loving our students because they feel it and our kiddos deserve to feel supported and excited about school our public schools i say it i'm gonna keep saying it as long as i can they they remain such a unique and sacred and special place where we all come together um and and learn to do things together and appreciate each other so thank you thank you miss scott dr martin thank you uh i too want to congratulate everybody the school started track four uh really glad that for the conversation we had today
034in uh the budget finance committee meeting thank you to the staff for what you've done with the recommended budget very glad we're going to be able to see some raises for our faculty and staff all that said it is still disappointing that those raises are far from keeping up with inflation so um you know if we're lucky it's not not even half the rate of inflation so yeah glad that some progress is made and yet unfortunately we're still falling behind that also raises a concern you know miss scott just gave thanks again for all the teachers and staff staying in the schools i want to share that uh thanks but i'm also equally concerned with staffing it's not just locally to wake county it's national news that we're having a very difficult time hiring enough
035teachers and other staff those who are still committed to education thank you those who would consider it please do consider it it's a very important profession in spite of all the challenges that get thrown at us it's a very difficult profession but it's a very necessary profession for our society so thank you and we need to do what we can to try to make the profession as good of a profession as it can be and safe working conditions which brings me again to the covet update we had good robust discussion about this um in work session i believe there's still a lot of work that we need to do um you know i i frequently get where do you get your numbers from uh i do not generate any numbers i uh merely collect data
036that's publicly reported if anybody wants to know the seven day weekly average i mean it's not that hard to calculate you can go to wake county public the wake county coveted website and you can click on the data button and you can see the various graphs and graphs in which they you can get a table of the last 14 days if you want to know the current seven day average rate generally you should not count the last four days reported because they will change as more numbers come in so disregard the first four days uh sum up the next seven days take that number divided by the 1.12 million population of wake county multiply that by a hundred thousand and that will give you your case rate per 100 000 population right now that sets
037us at 315. we've been bouncing between 300 and 330 for the last two weeks all trends are showing that the numbers are going up that unfortunately that 300 to 330 is kind of the bottom of the well and we're poised to see that well take off pretty much right away based on last year's trends uh two weeks ago there were 91 students 51 staff who are out with covid well infected uh more those are the new infections uh last week there were 127 students and 34 staff so those numbers are approximately twice what it was one year ago so uh what we're looking at if the if we had a virus that was equally infectious as one year ago we're looking at going up into september where we will have probably one to two thousand
038students out per week and 200 to 300 staff out per week so that would be uh if the trend continues with the same level of infectivity so we're looking unless we take different action we're looking at a substantial number of absences coming up in the fall right now the state data does the disaggregation the state data again is is two weeks old the latest is for the week of uh this uh 717. uh at that time the state data had 300 cases per hundred thousand population for a week the five to nine year olds were 199 the 10 to 14 year olds were at 197 the 15 to 17 year olds at 123. so as typical when students are out of school the school-age population is below the county average but that trend has now
039started to uh shift uh as the students have gone back for year-round school so a lot of concern a lot of work that we need to do as a community and i'll conclude by noting that i remain very concerned that we need to enhance our policy and practice particularly for students and staff with special needs there's very clear instruction by the cdc and the department of education we need to provide equal opportunity uh for all students and that sometimes requires the rest of the community gathering around to making it safe for everybody else we do that with peanut allergies there's absolutely no reason we should not do that for covid we've got work to do let's do it together as a community so that all students have an opportunity to learn in their classrooms thank
040you miss kushner thank you and i'll be brief just welcoming back all the students that have started school on the modified and multi-track and track four calendar and happy summer continued summer to those who are starting later this month it is a late start the 29th thank you miss kushner at this time i'll take a motion to approve the meeting agenda so moved second okay we have a motion in a second any discussion seeing none all in favor please say aye any opposed nay okay thank you very much we now move on to public comment public comment is accepted in video written and in person formats members of the public are welcome to offer comments or criticism directed at substantive ideas actions or procedures of the board and individual board members the laws and policies
041of north carolina provide that issues or concerns involving individual personnel matters are confidential and therefore not appropriate for public comment settings concerns related to personnel issues may be addressed through applicable wcpss personnel the grievance policy or other applicable policies those offering comments to the board including students may discuss issues and matters of general concern but should refrain from discussing confidential student information concerns related to confidential student matters may be addressed through applicable wcpss personnel the grievance policy or other applicable policies we have nine written comments from members of the public if you would like to submit comments as part of our public comment portion they are linked on the same online agenda we're using for tonight's meeting and that agenda as well as guidelines for those wishing to submit comments can be found at the
042district's website wcpss wcpss.net under the tab labeled school board we have five comments about election days one on thanking teachers one on school curriculum one on title nine changes and one on coveted planning and accommodations for those that are here in person you may speak for up to three minutes a yellow light will illuminate at the podium when there are 30 seconds remaining in your time and a red light will signal your time is up in the interest of maintaining civility and decorum speakers are encouraged to address their comments to the board of education and to refrain from personal attacks and insults directed at the board individual member board members staff or members of the general public please remain at the podium during your speaking time any materials you wish to share with the board
043should be handed to mr blumberg our board attorney either before or after your comments we have 14 folks who have signed up for public comment today starting with eva f lee um good evening and thank you for allowing me this opportunity i'm eva ali assistant council commissioner for recruiting for okanichi scout council and district membership chair for the north star district comprising much of wake county as this school year kicks off my son is a rising senior at millbrook he earned his eagle rank just two weeks ago and he is doing his best to become a midshipman at the u.s naval academy next fall scouting focuses on citizenship and character development using the scout oath and 12 points of the scout law those skills and character traits promote good behavior and academic success in the
044classroom locally okanichi now has an inaugural class of 25 female eagle scouts nationally the judge approved the settlement last friday and okanichi is honored to welcome in september at the annual friends of scouting event in raleigh the 43rd president george w bush it is an apocal time in scouting wake has 145 active scouting units including cub packs scout troops and we are one of the top councils in america okanichi wants to better reflect our community eagle projects alone counted for more than ten thousand volunteer hours of community service and not including unit service projects our commitment to our community and youth is strong and we have increased our commitment to youth with financial need substantially okanichi is committed to making scouting available and affordable to all wake families i would like to invite the families
045of wake county public schools to join okanichi council for families to come and camp out with us under the stars whether at the 2 000 acre scout camp near carthage a mud cats camping and many local unit activities there's no substitute for learning environmental stewardship outside as an adult scouter since 2014 myself i would put it squarely before this board that scouting offers lifelong extensive adult leadership training and skilled adult mentors that teach over 135 merit badges for youth which lead to marketable skills and we are ready right now to launch explorer clubs and posts for middle schoolers and high schoolers whether at a school or at a local fire police ems trooper or sheriff station to help wake municipalities recruit teenagers to learn experientially about great careers okanichi would like to become a proven
046community partner to wake public school board and the school system leadership and citizenship and so much more we are publicly asking the board if it's possible with policy and the only policy i have is um [Applause] to host a community a county-wide or district-wide scout night in the fall with scout tables at fall open houses thank you miss lee thank you you're welcome to email the rest of your comments to a member of the board thank you we'll share that thank you our next speaker is erin schultz good evening uh thank you for the opportunity to speak here this evening and thank you for the work you do as a school board it is really appreciated um i'd like to discuss curriculum and the inclusion of gender identity pronouns and diverse families first it's important
047to acknowledge the diversity present in wake county public schools and all public schools across the state and country every school has families with members of the lgbtqia plus community some schools have families with transparency some have schools with trans kids non-binary kids gay and lesbian students these people are members of our school community and deserve to be respected and represented in books photos and curriculum the kindergarten social studies curriculum expects that students understand how individuals are similar and different the objective for that standard is explain similarities in self and others you cannot expect a teacher to meet those objectives while ignoring the fact that there are gender diverse students in their classrooms one way to meet that objective is to ensure the class library includes books featuring diverse characters there are dozens of children's books
048appropriate to kindergarten and preschool that include transgender non-binary and gender non-conforming children and i want to make one other thing abundantly clear teaching about gender is not teaching about sex it is not sex education and is not discussing sexual activity gender and sexual identity are completely different acknowledging that some families have two moms or two dads is just the same as recognizing that some families have foster parents and some families have grandparents and some families are multi-generational they're all valid and loving homes schools owe it to the students teachers and families to represent and respect all members of the community students who see themselves represented in curriculum and books feel more supported and are more academically successful thank you our next speaker is michelle morrow hey thanks for giving me this time i appreciate it
049i had the privilege of going to the house select committee meeting yesterday where they were discussing how we were going to use our monies to overcome what's happened in the last two years of learning loss and where we find ourselves right now and i just i'm hoping that you guys are going to take what they talked about and maybe we can make a plan for overcoming what's happened to our kids in the last two years i don't think it's just been two years if i'm going to be honest with you i think that we have been mismanaging our funds for a really long time and i'm going to tell you one way that that's happened bureaucratically yesterday they had to the dpi mentioned that um most people know we received 6.1 billion dollars in covid
050relief money just for the educational system here in north carolina and my question is how is it that we have spent hundreds of millions of dollars and we've started a new department that is called the office of learning recovery and acceleration and they spent the last year and they said they did rigorous robust research they know everything about every student and where they've tested from the time they got into school until this past year in 2021 and they said you know what they came up with wow lo and behold kids have got to be in school for to see people's faces and to do in school let me tell you for the last three years parents and teachers and students have been telling you guys the same exact thing why is it that we had
051to spend hundreds of millions of dollars and now you know what they said when they were asked are there any schools within north carolina that potentially aren't the kids aren't 15 months behind in math one or in math eight or eight months behind ten months behind in english um one and they said yeah there are a few schools and when they were asked what have those schools done differently the number one was in union county because they opened up sooner than any other county in north carolina but beyond that the question was have you talked to the administrators have you talked to the teachers have you talked to the people on the ground and what have they done to help these students to get where they need to be and it hasn't been done you
052know what their response was their response was well that's what we're going to study in the next year so why don't we take the next hundred million dollars for the sr3 section and now we're going to determine that no you know what we need to do call these administrators call the teachers find out what works i completely believe that we have the expertise we have the staff we have the knowledge and we have the money in wake county to prepare our kids for life there is absolutely no reason why 50 we're all bragging about the fact that wake county came in eighth you know in one of the recent polls about the great school system did you read the fine print 90 graduation rate and out of that almost 50 percent of our graduating seniors
053are not proficient in reading and math we are relegating them to a life of minimum wage work that that was the statistic less than it's 46 percent 44 percent of our students are are not reading profanity not math profession and 50 are not reading for efficient next speaker thank you hops [Applause] hey good to see you guys again as you know i'm becky lu hobbs i've been here many times i just want to say welcome to the new school year you know school started for some kids for others starts at the end of the month and i'm personally looking forward to it you've had three school years that have been affected by covid so now i'm wondering what this fourth year is going to bring and i sure hope it's going to be different i'm
054looking forward to the school year with my children i'm looking forward to meeting their teacher in person and not on a computer screen i'm looking forward to seeing all their smiling faces and not hiding behind a mask i'm looking forward to kids eating with each other at lunch and not sitting separated or isolated or on the floor i'm looking forward to kids being able to play with each other and to hug with each other and not being forced to stay at least six foot apart i'm looking forward to being able to volunteer in my child's classroom and not being told parents aren't allowed but ncae members are i'm looking forward to my child children resuming their learning journey and not having to focus on government control and what i'm most looking forward to is a
055new board that focuses on quality education and listens to parents so what have these few years left for our children educational journey as michelle said the house select committee met yesterday and north carolina department of public instruction had a lot of data showing by subjects how far the children were behind they said in some cases it can take three to four years to get back on track just thinks what we've done to our high school age students and i will stress again union county how did they fare because it was asked specifically about union county at this meeting they said schools that did not close long and were in person performed better like union county but schools that were closed longer and did virtual learning had worse results wake county so what is wake county
056going to do to help get our killed children back on track you know we had read to achieve over the summer and from the people i've talked to there's been some success with that that program but the committee spoke about just sending kids to remedial classes is not the answer we have to identify the areas of the children are not proficient to tutor them specifically in those areas and time and time again tutoring has been shown to be the most effective so what is wake county going to do about that providing more tutoring tutoring services to our children so once again you know i'm very hopeful for this new fourth school year that we've been affected by covid i'm hopeful for the change the students need i'm hopeful for the november elections thank you so
057much they're our children our future thank you our next speaker is carrie bly okay i don't want to change my speech but that was a hard work session to listen to with your advocacy for special education children's dr martin when you and i had a very bad conversation years ago into the rules of this room i won't repeat anything but what bothers me the most is that your rationale makes sense when you're talking about something that you care about like masks but doesn't apply to parents who have a special needs child that are just trying to help their kids learn core subjects at home you are right at the same time i think we can and must do better i know you've talked to people who have tried to get accommodations that are extremely frustrated
058so are we it's in my child's 504 that she get visual learning math material that i've never seen in the four years we've been coming here the system should be required to make accommodations for the disadvantaged students and the burden should not and cannot wholly be on the disadvantaged students and i'm going to add family to get my child to learn math to go to a four-year college we have to pay for outside tutoring it should not wholly be our responsibility you may not you may need to require certain environments so that all students including special needs students have access to a public education that does apply to students who have executive functioning skills that can't stand the loudness of the room when they're all sitting together every single day so you're right i think
059we can should do better us old people we didn't come into this world with the inherent skill set of being able to take detailed notes on subjects this was my original speech you and i acquired such knowledge by emulating our teachers emulating how they orchestrated their information and presented their notes and by emulating the formats we saw in our formal textbooks we learned to identify main topics then map our brains to organize subtopics categorize prioritize and file away we use those maps to focus stabilize lock-in and record information you actually do this with your board agenda it's set just like our old thesis outlines but our children today don't really understand or have the opportunity to develop skills like that do they if you really think about it because beyond basic chapter organization and novels
060they've rarely seen or experienced non-fiction material laid out in an organized fashion and we have found that absence of such structure in your secondary math course is to be debilitating to our kids information needs to get from point a to point b somehow and when you don't provide students with organized math learning material by default you have forced these kids to become scribes of their own learning content like monks hand copying books and dusty bateman basements students have been frantically copying notes from overhead product projectors for years or whiteboards due to lack of resources teachers are forced to print out lengthy worksheets fill in the blank to use this core content that's me thank you miss fly thanks our next speaker is pete fly i'm so proud of her you need to listen to her
061more all right an estimated 65 of the population are categories categorized as visual learners that's why we've been coming here for three years asking us if you can show what students are visibly learning in a math class or show us what materials they have to visibly review the math skills they're supposed to have mastered throughout the year you implemented new middle and high school math curriculums based on some very serious cognitive assumptions that students can acquire basic math skills based solely on task-based collective learning yet you have not collected well you may have collected but you haven't presented any actionable data on these programs in almost five years now we want to see that data we want you to dig deeper don't you want to know how it's actually working you did contact a third
062party to evaluate the implementation of these curriculums before the pandemic hit and it was not exactly a favorable report we're still wondering why you're not asking some very hard questions if students are facing grade recovery courses and have to go to summer school because they failed high school classes and were derailed from the graduation timetables wouldn't you like to know what classes they're failing what's derailing them why fifty percent don't have basic skills when they leave high school because based on our conversations in the community our suspicion is it's mostly math or reading all right don't you think this might be a worthwhile topic for discussion for this board you seem to be good with asking academically gifted students if they are challenged enough but why aren't you asking average students if they have the
063resources they need to do their math homework every night why not ask parents if they have to pay for outside math tutoring you barely engage 14 percent of your middle school math teachers before purchasing and implementing open up resources in 2019 that was 68 out of 500. same curriculum adoption you're only able to engage approximately point zero zero zero one eight percent of wake county parents that's 28 out of 160 thousand do you want us to ask them how it's working for them just a side story for an example my daughter came called me into her room last year to help me complete a dream box assignment it was a geometry game because she had no idea what a math compass was never seen one a day before in her life next year she's going
064to be able to drive and she has no clue what a compass is or how to use it to make simple angular measurements we've been coming here for three years now we've asked you on multiple occasions to grab one of the books and actually try and do a problem on your own and we have a feeling if you'd done it we'd be having different conversation but most of you i would assume have not i may be wrong but that's how i'm seeing it so we got a new challenge for you take the online wake tech class because pretty much at the rate that they're going that's where a lot of them are going to end up try taking the online class there that's set up exactly like how your classes are set up here and
065see how well you do with that because i can tell you it's a lot harder than it looks thanks our next speaker is cole mcmullen hello uh my name is cole just a little bit about me this is the first time i've been here uh to speak here but uh i moved from kansas city about the end of 2020. uh i was fortunate to buy a home with my wife last fall so whenever i'm thinking about school options in the future obviously wake county public schools is going to be top of mind which brings me to my concerns that i'm here to talk to you about today regarding just the inclusivity of lgbt plus students in our public schools i want to share a few statistics i've been shared with me from a 2013 national
066school climate survey i realize this survey might be a little dated but i do think the information is still relevant only a small percentage about 18 and a half percent of lgbt lgbt plus students were taught positive representations of lgbt plus people history or events in their schools uh yet in schools with inclusive curriculum uh these students were more likely to report that their classmates were somewhat or very accepting of lg lgbt plus people than students in schools that did not have an inclusive curriculum 74.1 percent of lgbt plus students were verbally harassed at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation about 55.2 percent were asked because of their gender expression acting either too masculine or too feminine the average gpa for lgbt plus students who were frequently harassed because of their
067sexual orientation or gender expression was significantly lower than that of lgbt plus students experiencing less harassment which kind of gets me to my broader point in the future i would like to see a school board that commits to protecting teachers who do use lgbt plus inclusive materials at all grade levels it is my understanding that the school board effectively enacted uh house bill 755 at a local level even though it hadn't been passed into state law which my understanding is that that is not an inclusive policy so that i would find that very disappointing as as mentioned by one of the board members tonight even teacher salaries are very low and it's very difficult to keep up inflation morale is very low and on that note of morale being low i guess what we what
068i do not want to see is morale being even lower if teachers are cannot feel safe to have inclusive materials in the classroom so the lgbt plus students feel safe and that they're in an inclusive learning environment i'll wrap it up there thank you thank you our next speaker is daniel grant king all right good evening chairman happy superintendent moore district staff i am mr grant king currently i'm an educator with wake county also i'm a candidate running for district 4 this november on this evening i would like to first of all give a welcome back to those in the year-round and non-modified calendars as the school year has already begun for many and of course i will begin on the 29th with traditional calendar regarding the budget as as district staff continue to work
069with each of you on the budget and the new salary changes that will be made for the new upcoming school year i would like to just take opportunity to keep in mind that many teachers and educators have left this profession because they have expressed concerns time and again to each of you and many of educators have felt unheard while the budget is looming i am urging each of you to think about the retention and how you all could come up with different ways to make sure that our educators have the resources the time and also how we are going to be able to not make sure that educators stay within this profession like dr martin said this evening even though the challenges come in the midst of it all we stay for our students and
070that is what matters at the end because when they leave the school system it will be up to us wondering how they're going to make it even into the future so as we prepare and as election days is less than 100 days away i want each of you on this board to think about how educators and why they have left because nine times out of the 10 think about it educators have wealth of knowledge based upon not only in the education profession but in the workforce as a whole so i urge this board yet again to think about the ways that you all and district staff could work together not only to increase compensation but to increase the resources that are given so that our students and families could come through our school doors and
071be able to say that wake county was able to provide the resources necessary for their child or children to succeed again i would like to thank the board for what work that they have already done however there is much more to be done thank you so much thank you our next speaker is christina spears good evening superintendent morgan chairman hafey vice chair hegarty and board members i'm christina spears a special education teacher by trade currently serving as wake ncae's president we are an affiliate of the north carolina association of educators and part of the national education association the large largest labor union in the united states wake ncae values celebration we believe expressing gratitude and celebrating victories big and small will sustain us in the face of challenges and uncertainty we believe hope and empathy
072are essential parts of our planning process that allows us to reject fear and hopelessness wake county public school system has core beliefs that are essential to how we choose to operate as a school system i want to highlight core beliefs three and five three states well supported highly effective and dedicated principals teachers and staff are essential to our success for all students and core belief five says the board of ed superintendent and all staff value a diverse school community that's inviting respectful inclusive flexible and supportive i lift up these two core beliefs in the face of challenges like vacant positions that impact the work educators do with students each day which is an issue facing countless districts in the state and across our country and in light of uncertainty like full funding from the state
073for the fate of dpi's licensure and compensation proposal the new school year is a perfect opportunity to choose celebration joy and hope over fear futility and hopelessness i always appreciate superintendent and board members comments that highlight our schools celebrate our staff and our students and remind us of the hope for our future i want to recognize and celebrate the progress we have made as a district regarding conversations and decision-making as we continue to deal with global health concerns and how to best use remote instruction as appropriate for our community i'll use the rest of my time to celebrate the many public school workers who have worked hard to safely and effectively welcome students back to our school buildings i want to highlight the joy i've seen on social media during this back to school season
074fresh fits for the first days stories about how much families and students love their schools and their new teachers new hire orientations where workers are excited to join their school community i hope folks including wake district leadership board members staff students families and community members choose to celebrate our public schools and lean into back to school season each wednesday wake ncae wears red for ed to show our solidarity and love for public schools tomorrow i'll be wearing red to celebrate the joy of back to school i invite public school staff and allies to join us and continue to share why we love our wake county public schools thank you our next speaker is chad stahl hello happy tuesday the collaborative for academic social and emotional learning castle i just released an article recently that speaks
075to not only the fact that children have suffered a loss in learning but they have also suffered a loss in emotional learning so they put this thing out with five bullet points i like this little excerpt so i'm going to read it to you part of the difference between good stress that motivates a student to perform well and toxic stress that can lead to mental and physical health problems is whether a student feels otherwise stable and able to control and limit the source of stress so we talk about exemptions and we talk about honoring each individual child i'm just curious if that means for all children that need the exemption or you wanting to shift the opportunity for exemptions to only certain children and not all children on the the lost learning you know i
076haven't seen anything or heard anybody really talk about okay hey there is a gap i think last year we were all told that it didn't exist that it was just made up it was a false construct they're not learning they're not losing any learning they're not no no kids are resilient kids are resilient but yet i don't see us testing that resilience in the academics i see it's only testing that resilience when it comes to restricting them masking them keeping them home finding out how much they can actually handle how much they can take that's what we have done and i think that this board sends so many mixed signals right if you are there are two of you here tonight with masks on if this were a political outing where you were supporting your
077candidate of choice you would be mask-free and high-fiving one another and hugging one another so i'm just you know the mixed signals is so hard to follow it's so hard to track it's like i don't understand are you are you wearing your mask here because you're afraid of one another you're afraid of the people 30 feet away from you but then when you get into your political bubble and covet is gone is there is there something there that i'm missing is there a reason why we keep seeing some of you guys in political settings enjoying the company of others but then when you're here in the public setting it doesn't i just don't understand it maybe one day someone will say you know what i wear my mask at board meetings because of x y
078and z but whenever i'm somewhere else in a group of people i choose not to wear my mask because of whatever reason because it's really hard to follow if i were a child and i were looking at my board member and i'd go okay well when do i get to take my mask off because they can't tell you're telling them one thing while you're doing something different that's not leadership that is not leadership our next speaker is tracy taylor [Applause] good evening actually yes i probably finish that sentence by saying it's not leadership it's hypocrisy that's just my take i listened to a little bit of the work session today so i didn't get a chance to see all of it so hopefully i'm not me speaking about this but added again dr martin spoke
079again about the hospitalizations and how wake county was so fortunate because we had all these extra beds even though we had all these cases so we were extra special because we could accommodate way more people at our hospitals than maybe other counties but when you actually look at the eight different categories of the regions that are in north carolina you can see today that we are at risk of no issues with hospitalizations as a matter of fact hospitals across the north carolina are losing money because they're only 67 percent occupied and people who work in the in the hospitalization or in the hospital systems know that when you're profitable it's when you're at around 90 to 95 capacity but i digress ms scott spoke about how she was concerned about the children having access to
080remote learning if you know we should have to go to remote days and all of that and miss scott i actually agree with that and one thing that maybe we can use to address that goes back to the bly's comments which are i don't know maybe textbooks right we can use those on days that schools are closed but again i digress i'd also like to address what one of the speakers said about union county actually a few of them how many times did i come here telling you that there was no statistically significant difference in counties with masks on versus masks off i am so tired of having this discussion i've had it with several of you on this board privately many times each from one of you i heard well you know i want
081to know what's going on in the rest of the country my response was all you need to do is look across the ocean because what's going on there is happening here well you know i really don't care what happens in israel guess what all of a sudden cody kinsley said what happens over in across the ocean is what happens here so does just does now what i say make sense to you we've got to get past this mask issue and forcing children to mask schools in wake county opened mask optional last year schools across the nation opened mask optional there was not an issue there was not a problem can we just move on thank you taylor our next speaker is mike nutt good evening thank you for your time i'm a father of a
082rising third grader at khan elementary i was dismayed at the recent resignation of a valentine elementary teacher because they had inclusive supplemental materials in their classroom the image that got her in trouble with the right-wing extremists on fox news was in every way appropriate for a preschool environment that was a picture of two people maybe one of them was pregnant that's it the poor mental health of our queer students is a crisis in north carolina and we need to be doing everything we can from the earliest stages to create welcoming environments for children from every type of family and that includes basic representation and teaching materials queer people and queer families have a right to exist and therefore families of every type should be represented unapologetically in classroom teaching materials so let's be clear about
083what just happened hb 755 was shelved in the general assembly this summer but the bigots got exactly what they wanted in wake county when this valentine teacher was forced to quit these right-wing extremists launched a nationwide harassment campaign that successfully bullied a well-loved teacher into resigning this will further embolden them if our teachers cannot depend on our school system leadership to defend the use of includes inclusive teaching materials in all grades then don't say gay has already been implemented in wake county if one teacher can be forced to resign any teacher can the main homophobic goal of hb 755 has already been achieved here it didn't need a single republican vote it was voluntarily implemented when nobody on this board fought to intervene in this situation by failing to protect and reinstate this teacher and
084promise that it would never happen again this war willingly did the fascist work for them how do we prevent this from happening again if our school board cannot protect our best teachers from bigots then they need to be replaced with school board members who can in an email i asked my district 4 representative if she would commit to protecting inclusive teaching materials in all grade levels and she declined to do so now i ask will any of you are you ok with don't say gay being the unofficial policy of wake county schools or do you want a legacy of protecting our teachers when they do the right thing our next speaker is brandi sullivan miss sullivan here no our final speaker is rachel hungarian okay that concludes public comment moving on to our information items
085we have our superintendent update superintendent moore good evening again i'm going to cover very quickly the finance committee as well during finance committee today the board was presented with the options that will come forward for board action at the next board meeting on the 16th regarding the final reconciliation of the budget that will include a move to a minimum of 16 an hour for staff in the district a four to four percent raise implemented for all staff based on the legislative outcome we included also the dollars that it would cost to make up the difference between the 56 million that was requested from the county commissioners and the 50 million it was allocated as well as the increased costs associated with some of the benefits and salary changes made by the legislature we look forward
086to to bringing that to the board on the 16th at the next borden meeting and continue to welcome any questions or public comment as it comes in during the work session today we had two items on the work session the first one was health guidance updates and these focused on our current situation in the county and in the state where we find ourselves based on the cdc community metrics we also talked about the sunset of the strong schools tool kit from north carolina dhhs the shift to looking at the cdc guidance and the recommendations that are made there and as a concluding sort of statement we are continuing to work with our local health department on on how to implement that guidance and there were a number of issues that were brought up by the
087board that we'll need to have some follow-up on and we are meeting weekly uh and regularly with the health department so we will include that as a part of our work there and bring back updates as needed for the board we also had a presentation from academics on some changes to legislation this year that provided a continuation of the option for districts to use up to five days or 30 hours for remote instruction for emergencies in the district we just had a discussion about how staff was looking at that option we communicated that for us it really is a last resort type option one that we would not look at until after banked debt hours and days and or other teacher work days and options were being used and really what we're looking at is
088if something requires a calendar change like taking spring break or winter break or something along those lines that we would we would that would be when we might consider it however there's no decision at this point we've gotten feedback from some students from some staff our next step is to get some feedback from families on the pros and cons we know that that our remote asynchronous days as they were during the pandemic were not met with great success with some folks and not others differentiation among grade levels all that sort of thing access to technology becomes an issue all of those and so there's no decision before the board on this they're just continuing to gather information based on the flexibility that is allowed by the legislative changes and we'll continue to bring you updates
089as we get more information and get more feedback and that was our work session thank you thank you superintendent moore for that recap anyone interested in knowing more about what we just heard can go back and look at the finance committee or the work session when they get archived on youtube um up next is our consent agenda is there a motion to approve the consent agenda second okay you have a motion in a second any discussion seeing none all in favor please say aye hi seeing er sorry any opposed nay okay emotion passes moving on to action items our first action item comes out of policy and is board policy 4150 school assignment and transfer second reading with us is ms susan pulliam senior director of student assignment and this is being brought to action
090on second reading because we had some changes when it was on first meeting thank you chair mahaffey superintendent moore and members of the board i'm here to present the second reading of our revised policy 4150 school assignment and transfers revisions reflect updates made by the north carolina school boards association and by staff the policy was reviewed and presented for first reading at the july 19 2022 board meeting at that meeting the board directed staff to incorporate additional language in section b temporary membership caps you will find the added language highlighted in yellow on page three of the revised policy additionally we were advised by council that we should insert additional language within section c assignment of students to particular schools and numbered item one students admitted based on domicile we did bring this to your
091attention during the july 19th meeting but you will now find the added language highlighted in yellow on page four of this revised policy when given final board approval the revised version will replace current policy tonight we do request that the board approves revised policy 4150 school assignment and transfers ms kushner thank you chairman happy i move approval as president of board policy 5150 school assignment transfers revisions on second reading we have a motion and a second any discussion i just thank you you did and thank you mr bloomberg for putting words together and for student assignment thank you for doing this this is i think this will cover all the areas we were talking about appreciate it and i appreciate ms cashy bringing up the issues about capping so that we make sure that we
092have clarity for our schools and for the staff to make sure that we're being fair thank you any further questions or discussion on this okay we have a motion in a second all those in favor of passing um the amended policy 4150 school assignment transfers please signify with sign of i any opposed nay all right that passes thank you very much thank you very much and we will bring as an information item updated rnp once it's finalized okay thank you up next our proposed updates to the 2022-2023 instructional calendars with that is mr glenn croza and miss tamani anderson powell good evening jeremy haffey members of the board superintendent moore staff is seeking approval for the revised 2022-2023 instructional calendars staff uh brought to you during the board work session on july 19th possible revisions
093for election day and juneteenth day so today we are seeking your approval for those revised calendars what i would like to propose is that we um approved just the calendars with the exception of multi-trackie around we have a presentation we'd like to share with you today to discuss um some additional ideas that we'd like to discuss with multi-track year-round calendars okay so that would be a let's see what do we want to do the presentation first and then we can adopt all the calendars or are you looking for we're looking for a vote at a later date for the multi-track year on calendars we'd bring it back after this discussion okay so requesting approval of all the calendars changed with the exception of the multi-tech year to multi-track year-round calendar and whether you want to
094do the motion second and then discussion or discussion first we're good either way okay bye sure hecarim so with this so at this time i would move board approval of the proposed changes in the 2022-2020 instructional calendars with the exception of the multi-track year-round calendar at this time second okay we have a motion and a second uh any further questions or discussion on this why don't you go ahead and go with the wrinkle okay all right so the slide deck that we have here we're bringing to your attention um the multi-track year-round calendar so as we looked at instructional days and at the end just one more thing these slides are available in assembly if you'd like to look under mtyr at muntei multi-track year round we're trying to pull them up as well okay
095we so we should look at the one that's says retest summer retesting that's the wrinkle okay that's a wrinkle so as staff looked at the multi-track year on calendar we also got feedback from schools regarding the end-of-year testing that we had during summer school this year and so since we're bringing changes to you right now for juneteenth and for election day we wanted to be proactive and share with you some concerns with regards to having the number of instructional days in order to fit in possible testing if you choose to elect for summer school and the retesting again for the 22-23 school year just to recap in 2021-22 we participated in this program we used bank days for the multi-track year round calendar schools on june 28th and 29th so that schools could administer the
096testing prior to july 1st we preferred to do this before july for several reasons there were concerns over logistics for transportation and food service concerns over staff availability and concerns over impact on clothing activities as you know we've had discussions before a lot goes into the clothing where you're closing out one school year and opening the next staff trainings and whatnot getting the buildings ready so taking those days for testing would take away from those activities for schools [Applause] so for 2022-23 if you choose to do the summer school program again we have several options we'd like to share with you option one would be to use the remaining two bank days for june 29th and june 30th just a reminder you use the bank day for election day and then the factors to consider
097multi-track year-round schools would then have no bank days built into the calendar option two you could move december 22nd which is the first day of the winter break and october 10th which is a district-wide work day to june 29th and june 30th the factors to consider there would be using december 29th would reduce the number of days off for winter break which doesn't seem to be a a choice that you'd like to do use in the past for when we looked at election day october 10th is a district-wide work day but it would not impact letters training for multi-track year-round schools option three would be to use the october 10 teacher workday and one bank day therefore you would have october 10th as a teacher work day we would no longer have that for multi-tracking
098around schools it would remain a work day for all other calendars but it would not impact letters training and then they would have one remaining bank day in reserve for multi-track and again this is just for multi-track around schools when we looked at the the the days to add there's many days that people are requesting that we do not have students in the building the election day became one that we talked about earlier there are multiple days that our schools are used as polling sites and so as we look forward to creating these calendars we're going to continue to seek your guidance with regards to which days we should prioritize first as we're looking for providing teacher workdays throughout the district in this year we used current early release days for letters training and so
099the days that we used for the hours that we banked for letters training we could use that moving forward for 23 24 to implement these testing days at the end of the multi-track year on calendar should you choose to continue with that so just to review and next steps staff is recommending to use a teacher workday on october 10th and a bank day in order to complete the retesting if you decide to participate again in 2022-23 the early release days again would be that time that we can use moving forward to participate in this program and that staff will bring the multi-track year-round calendars for 2223 back to the august 16th board meeting for approval and i open up to any questions okay bye sure hagerty thank you so uh chair mahaffey what i'd like
100to do i think it'd be appropriate at this time is to amend my motion that the motion is for board approval of the proposed changes for all of the 22 23 instructional calendars with the adoption of option three the staff recommended option for the summer testing as presented by staff well if no one seconds it it dies for lack of a second so i mean is there a second to i think we need a little bit more discussion before we make that determination the reason is because i mean i have no problem with it but to make a calendar change without having the opportunity for additional feedback is generally not something that we do so i mean this gave us some feedback which is important but i do think that it's generally important for calendars
101to be able to hear from the community in case that we missed something so that would be my concern about adding it tonight so if we're if we're debating the motion then i have more i can say but if there's no second then we'll pause it i don't hear a second okay so we're back to the original motion which is all calendars except multi-track year-round so we'll go to the other hands that we're up dr martin we'll start with you so my question which potentially would have allowed me to endorse this we talked in work session when we were talking about calendars about how elementary schools have more banked time than um traditional calendar school than high schools middle schools i think are intermediate but so my question is even though we technically don't have
102the banked days if we ass if we work from a framework where all schools have the same number of bank days if we go to that differential model recognizing that elementary and i do believe middle schools also have more bank time than do high schools would there be the opportunity to just go ahead and use two bank days to take care of this if we did that then i would be glad to second the motion because that would not change anything could i just make one possible suggestion there's no problem with having two different motions on this item it seems to me that there is a motion in a second that i'm not hearing any dispute over and that's to deal with all of the schools other than the year round perhaps if you just
103voted on that if the board's okay and then and then sort of take up this issue further so that we're not into the amending complication if that's something that would be okay with the board yeah if that follows parliamentary procedure i think we're good with that is there anything on the um calendars aside from multi-track that there are questions about with board members or discussion points i think we're thankful for the calendar committee and staff's work on making sure this happens i think we heard that going forward at least general election day we'd like to make a day where our students are not in school moving forward so with the original motion being all calendars aside from multi-track year-round adopting the proposed changes um can we get all in favor to say aye all right
104any opposed nay okay that motion passes now moving on do we need emotion we need emotion you can have a discussion we can just discuss it's being presented and i just have one question the proposal that you're making um on the year-round schools that is not in the materials yet does it it doesn't have all of that i mean in the actual calendars that are attached we do not have a copy of that calendar just to come back at the next meeting and show it in the calendars okay thank you for having me just have it in the slide deck okay thank you very much so so for purposes of discussion then i won't push adoption of the multi-track option at this point i do see that staff's recommending bring it back on august 16th
105i was just hoping you know for families trying to get some more certainty about what the calendar looked like if we agreed to it and there was no objection i would rather pull the band-aid off and go ahead and do it but it i will go with the staff recommendation about this you know the multi-track schools that we have do tend to be in a lot of our most populated areas and the county sets these elementary schools as polling places i don't know how many voters will get in 2022. it's an off-year election if you look at our previous off-year election uh 2018 parkside elementary had over 2000 voters that came in on that election day year round i saw carpenter also year round 1670 sycamore creek year-round elementary 1500 voters and it just goes
106on like that austin ridge had 1250. now at this recent runoff primary austin ridge might have only had between 60 and 80 people the whole day so there is a difference between the elections that that we have so i think the need is just as great or even greater at some of our year-round schools multi-track your own schools because of the volume of voters that they're getting on you know on our general election day but i have no problem with deferring to the 16th if that's what the board requires miss cut thank you um and my question about the the presentation from staff right now for the multi-track year-round calendar is really more centered around the um the re-testing because that was something we had discussed we allowed staff to to do that option if
107i recall um but then we i don't recall there being a lot of follow-up in terms and and perhaps there was from dr mcmillan but follow up on how how many people um utilize that how many families utilize that because that's different from read to achieve but it there was we allowed staff to do that because the state did provide funding specifically for retesting and i was just curious this would be to accommodate retesting and i just wondered is the state providing special funding for that again are we anticipating that and um and how how was that utilized this past summer well i think that we would need to bring the report we don't we're just we're still gathering the data on like the results the impact of that we don't we don't have all
108those those results don't get certified until the fall so we would have an update for the board in the fall making the decision about the calendar allows us to keep that option open as we make that decision moving forward miss cash i guess you the year-round principles have input on these calendars right so you've taken good care of them we've gotten feedback from them yes thank you miss carter did you have okay yeah that was i was going with that but also i i wanted to kind of add a little bit is just for those who might not be aware the retesting and just retesting it's actually a time period where the students are coming in and we're working with them or our staff is so i think that that's important i would like to
109keep that option on the table that's just just for those who but it would be very helpful but the data is not all available yet so but it would be helpful if we could have that but i think it's an option just because get some of the students that are struggling back in to get some of that work extra work there so i think it helps that that is a an opt-in and not a requirement for our students um okay is there any when it comes back i would welcome looking to see if we can use that elementary middle additional bank time because i don't i i don't think we need to i think i think we're a complex enough system we need to do a better job of differentiation and i think this could
110be a situation where that might be possible don't know yeah i'm always hesitant to get rid of a teacher work day but i would appreciate seeing the calendars again and what that would look like on the 16th so i think we're going to table this for now but general support for election day continuing but we'll learn more on the if you have any other 16th points that you'd like for us to bring the table just ask well i think i think the one that we've heard already perhaps might be if there's a general consensus from the board that we take a look at the a second look at what bank towers are actually available at the elementary in the middle school and include that as as a part of the information we provide the board
111yes i think so yes yes and i think having the overall number of year-round schools that are polling sites i think mr hegarty's data is very compelling how many hundreds of people are going through our schools i think it's the sad commentary actually that we're that safety is a concern on a day when we're expressing democracy and voting and that our students aren't witnessing that because of safety concerns that's just sad to me but i do hope that that by doing this all of our staff members our educators and everyone at wake county will go to the polls they'll take their children with them if they have children at home so that they can witness democracy in action and and certainly make sure that our employees are out there in force thank you and certainly
112a voter trying to access a voting site during carpool or a parent trying to get in and out of carpool when your school is a voting site is also now thank you that carpool and um yes and hundreds of people coming doesn't always work miss cash when we so when we see how many of our schools year round and schools are used and how many days are used because i know we do an awful lot of early voting i do want to look at that because i think we need to know if we need to do additional funding for whatever security we need i was convinced three days right the board has directed staff to continually look at in future calendars the november election date i think any further than that would require some additional
113conversation as a footnote and an aside i have contacted been in contact with gary sims from the wake county board of elections to set up some time to discuss some align potential for alignment on messaging use expectations and so forth so that's that's kind of an aside aside to this but that should be happening sometime in the next couple of weeks and in this particular case i think what we're looking at also is are we and i just want to be clear our plan was thinking to bring this back as an action item for multi-track around with any further discussion at that point but if you feel it requires more discussion we could put it for a few minutes on a work session but but we would still want to vote on it that same
114night so all right thank you okay thank you mr croza we will look forward to that discussion on the 16th um i think it'd be appropriate to miss cash's point i don't believe any of our schools are used for early voting our schools are only used for precinct voting election day voting okay thank you i did not know that so i appreciate that mr hager and i had this conversation we think the only exception is the southeast raleigh ymca which is also the southeast raleigh elementary school but i think that's the only one that has been an early voting site so our next action item is a board action so there's no staff member for this to present we have our board advisory councils and it's determining board advisory council membership for the 2022-2023 school
115year so all of the schools each school in a board member's district has a board advisory council member they meet four to five times a year to discuss information with board members and we want to be able to provide clarity to schools the community board advisory council members so we're going to review the eligibility for membership in bacs in light of the redistricting and online changes in board election districts board policy includes following includes provisions about eligibility this is all in your precinct prices on simply and i believe mr bloomberg also sent us an email with different options um for this so there is option one um implementing new election districts at the start of the school year so making sure our board advisory council members meet those criteria i'm not going to read everything
116that's in the process for you all option two is can implement the old election districts at the start of the school year and implement new election districts after the elections and option three is a kind of a hybrid and allows at-large members to serve in either older new election districts and then implement the new election districts for bac members that are based out of a school to change after the election um each option has its own [Music] you know ideas so we are leaving this open so that board members can make a motion and have a second and have some discussion on that going forward so is there a motion for a particular option one two or three or board advisory council members miss cash i'd like to make a motion for option one for
117option one so that would be implementing the new election districts i heard a second who's that from miss carter thank you all right any discussion on option one i'll just note that i think it i'm sorry dr martin i think i think uh what biases me two things that bias me toward option one is number one i believe in stability for the schools i think bacs are for schools more than they are for us we need to listen but they need to be the organization and their stability throughout the year i think is important and secondly option one is most consistent with policy requires no revisions of policy and uh you know policy is there not to give stability uh and so while we can do uh exceptions to policy i think in general it
118doesn't make good sense so i strongly support option one okay miss kushner i also wanted to just say that option one is probably the cleanest and the easiest for our schools and area superintendents to implement so it works that works thank you okay i will yes miss carter i have support option one but i did i want to throw this out here now so correct me if this is the wrong time to do so but i had mentioned previously my concern about another section of the policy speaking and i don't know if i should mention it here or not i'm just asking for i think we can bring something to policy committee meeting to discuss it further if you want to review i don't know ms kushner is this policy coming back to policy committee
119anytime soon it's more so about since their part of the policy is requiring us to set the meetings for the school i i mean just because like for myself i know i'm not going to be there so i'm going to do it if we're still going to require policy no doubt but i also feel like i'm doing it for someone else that could you know one they can does that make sense i think i've mentioned the whole we don't get well we could just wave the policy at some um and we would that be possible to do with this motion to wave policy on or did to it some future meeting i mean on that specific moment sorry i mean my suggestion was the the policies not here for review i'm not in any way
120undercutting the suggestion i i mean you have a very good policy approach that goes through and is considered by policy committee and i that would be my suggestion on how to deal with the suggested policy change um on that and um and this is here before the board on how to determine the membership for this coming year and what i understand the motion just for clarity is it's option one which would be right at the start of this school year essentially starting now that you guys would be implementing the bac's membership based on the new election districts um okay thank you and i think and and i'll say this as someone who came in you know and and took over bac's from a member um you know if there was a date that didn't work
121i was able to work with the bac and let ms allen know if there were changes so if we set the dates now and they don't work for a future member i would hope and trust that that future member would work with miss allen and their bac to find something that would work for them um yeah but that does you know i think we can make sure to stress that with our bac members for our meetings um that we're not sure if a new member comes in if things change um but we'll you know so we have a motion a second for option one is there further discussion mr hagerty and i regret already having to bring this up and have more discussion but i do need to have some clarification from council because the
122language and the policy that i think allows this is what you've highlighted or what was highlighted in the pre-sea within a reasonable length of time following the oath of office for newly appointed or elected board members or after redistricting board members will have responsibility for reviewing council membership and reinstating individual membership subject to the approval of the board of education okay so i think i understand the intent of that and the intent of that would clearly give us an opportunity here after redistricting to go forward with this but i just want to make sure there is no conflict with a council members must meet eligibility criteria for the new district at the start of the year resider have children you know in the new district so when they say new district do they mean new
123district coming out of redistricting or do they mean just new district in terms of a new a new school year or a new board member so you have the new election districts and so right now as long as the member meets the qualifications for for the for the new districts either being residing there or having a child at a school in that district and they meet the eligibility requirements okay see that's that's where i'm a little concerned because if it's circular if it points back to the other eligibility requirements the other eligibility requirements state to be eligible to serve the council member must reside within the voting the voting district or have children in a school within the district of appointment right and we know from election law that when you have a when you
124talk about the district and a district has changed the district does not mean necessarily the future district when you have a vacancy for example right now we had a house of representatives member from wake county who left and left a vacancy so in order to appoint a replacement they pulled a replacement from the existing legislative district as it was drawn from the 2020 election not the district as it is drawn for the 2022 election and in fact i believe the representative selected may not even be eligible to run in the 2022 election because that was the definition of within the voting district it was the voting district as it was constituted at the time of the election through the end of that term so i just this is how this has been interpreted before and
125so i just want to make sure that your interpretation of this because i see the intent of the policy seems like we could do it but i just wanted to make sure there wasn't a conflict with the eligibility requirement so if i could and i know some board members have some hands up i think it's a bit of a legal interpretation so if you don't mind i'll jump in i mean we looked at this number of times our interpretation is the board has redistricted and you've passed a resolution you've redistricted that's the districts that are posted by the county board of elections you've redistricted and so the new members would have to meet the new districts and and there i don't see any conflict in policy beyond that the law allows the board broad discretion
126in determining membership and so there will be no doubt that by vote tonight the board is is giving its intent to say you want to use the new districts to determine membership so i do not see that there will be any legal problems at all with this fair question i appreciate it dr martin by way of history the reason the only reason why we're in this situation is because we're in the legal limbo we used to be staggered term districts and it's only since the the the staggered terms were unresolved back in 2013 that we could even be in this scenario if you look at the last time redistricting occurred there was staggered terms and based on the staggered terms not everybody went up for election the year following the redistricting but the new districts
127applied to everyone so to follow the same logic that applied to the that you raised to the house and senate where they run every year that's a different scenario than what has historically been the case and we're moving back to that case on this board uh because it'd be really weird to uh you know if you've got the staggered terms those not up on the stagger would represent you'd end up having some schools represented by two bacs and some with none so the intent of the school system particularly with the staggered terms and we're getting back to the staggered terms i believe is to have it all happen at the same time different scenario than you raised in the house and vice chair hegarty i had the same question and i was leaning towards option
128two for that reason um and then spoke to several of my bac members that would be departing my district i wasn't able to reach all of them and they strongly preferred option one just citing that it was easier for them to report with one and knowing that we would be giving them similar information and they would still have a way to give feedback to the district so i was glad to get their feedback and so i'm i'm also in support of option one following those conversations so is there any further discussion okay hearing none all those in favor of adopting option one implementing new election districts at the start of the 2022-2023 school year for board advisory council memberships please say aye hi any opposed nay okay emotion passes thank you we will now move
129on to closed session chair mahaffey yes sir at this point i would move that our board move into closed session to consider confidential personnel information protected under general statute 143 1 a 318-11 and a 6 and wallace v wcpss i see file number 18-024675 further to consult with the board of education attorney and preserve the attorney-client privilege as provided for under north carolina general statute 143 318-11 and to consult with an attorney employed or retained by the board in order to preserve the attorney-client privilege between the attorney and the board and to consult with and instruct board staff or negotiating agents concerning the position to be taken by or on behalf of the board on the particulars of the acquisition of the real property for public infrastructure improvements related to the early early learning center
130at memory road school site and to receive board instructions as to the position to be taken on behalf of the board in negotiation and relation there too finally to consider confidential student information protected under general statute 1115 402 and the family educational rights and privacy act 20 united states code 1232g and i would like to add that the real estate item has been removed from the closed session agenda so i'm not going to ask you to reread it and amend it but if we could all just amend that in our head i would appreciate it and i believe that has been updated uh in simply ah thank you sorry i didn't see that i forgot about it okay all right we have a motion and a second to enter closed session for reasons previously stated
131and again with the um amendment of not including the real estate item that was shared um all in favor please say aye any opposed nay all right we are now in closed session thank you