001that's probably okay um so oh good evening everyone it's tuesday june 7th 2022 at 5 52 pm thank you for waiting while we finished our work session which extended a little bit longer and we're 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 as the board of education conducts its official business and i'd like to take a moment to highlight board policy 2310 which states 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 respect for speakers by refraining from loud comments or other disruptions disruptions by any person or persons of a public
002meeting will be subject to action in accordance with general statute 143-318.11 we have a quorum with all board members here superintendent moore and attorney neil bramey you'll join me in the pledge of pledge allegiance to the god of the united states of america and into the republic for which it stands one nation and under god indivisible with liberty and justice thank you we now move on to the information portion of our meeting and we'll begin with comments from the superintendent good afternoon chairman happy and board members i begin with congratulations to kirsten taylor who today was named the wcps school counselor of the year during a surprise ceremony at lincoln heights magnet elementary school ms traylor has been the school counselor at lincoln heights since 2018 she is a leader in her school among her
003colleagues and in the school counseling profession this year she received her national board certification for school counseling her comprehensive counseling program at lincoln heights has created a safe and welcoming environment that works to improve outcomes for all students she collaborates with the community resiliency model restorative practices team to lead restorative circles that promote systemic change in response to conflict she coordinates the grow ambassador program the rotary readers and the kindness club and she secured a grant to provide calm down kits in all classrooms school counselors provide essential behavioral health support for students to help them overcome obstacles and succeed given her many and varied contributions to her school community and the district ms traylor is a model for her students and colleagues congratulations on this well-deserved recognition congratulations are also in order for dr jessica
004loman who last week was named the 21 wcpss school psychologist of the year dr lohman has been a school psychologist for seven years and has practiced in wcpss all seven years she currently serves bockham and oak grove elementary schools dr lohman coordinates the school-based mental health team and serves as a consultant on both the autism and low incidence teams at her schools dr lohman serves on the school leadership team developing and implementing school-wide behavioral health supports she has provided data analysis to identify areas of need and has led professional development to enhance teachers understanding of classroom-based behavioral interventions dr lohman regularly consults with special education teachers service providers district personnel and parents to analyze data identify student needs provide instructional recommendations to support students she is passionate about making sure students get the individualized support
005they need to improve achievement my thanks to dr lohman for providing a comprehensive level service to both their students and fellow staff members four of our outstanding teachers have been named kenan fellows by the kenan institute for engineering technology and science at nc state university leslie aguirre of holly springs high sherilyn murray of northwater college and career academy jill ray of vernon malone college and career academy and emily simpson of athens drive magnet high school keenan fellows used the knowledge and tools gained during the year-long fellowship to develop innovative educational resources and programs for their schools districts and the broader community a summer internship of at least three weeks is at the centerpiece of the program and is supported by 80 hours of professional development that focuses on instructional strategies for integrating data literacy digital
006learning and project-based learning our third strategic core belief states that well-supported highly effective and dedicated teachers are essential to success for all students the skills and leadership capabilities these teachers will learn through the keenan fellows program can only serve to make their students better prepared for success in college and career five wcps students lost a congratulations day five wcps students are among the more than 2600 winners of the latest round of national merit scholarships the winners are dylan schneider of apex high josh bott of green level high grace vaughn of holly springs high andrew norris of middle creek high and adenae miratib of wake college of early health of early college of health and sciences in this third of four rounds of the prestigious scholarship program sponsor colleges or universities have selected winners from among
007finalists who plan to attend their respective institution these awards provide between five hundred and two thousand dollars annually for up to four years as you may recall 10 wcps students won national merit sponsor scholarships last month and seven won corporate sponsored awards in april we hope to announce even more winners in the final round next month finally this evening graduation season is upon us which gives us all time to reflect on the accomplishments of this year's graduating class and our district's ultimate goal of graduating students ready for productive citizenship as well as college or career as we think back on our own school experience how many of us would love to find a teacher who had an indelible impact on us and thank them we gave several members of the class of 22 the opportunity
008to do just that surprising teachers who made a difference in their lives so please take a moment to view this video as these seniors express their gratitude hey miss boston oh my god [Music] i had to come and surprise you like i got to see she looks like me right i could see how far people would look like me and go it's like confirmation that your work is really nice thank you thank you thank you why are you so proud i just want to say thank you for making some me welcome you're like your favorite teacher ever she was just always amazing but it just kind of gives you that confirmation of what you're doing is good and just those days where it's hard you get pulled from students like her and think of these
009moments and you can get through anything i still remember saying uh goodbye to you every single day and i i still remember all the snowflakes and the class and everything and i really loved it and i want to say thank you i do remember that he said goodbye to me every day because not a lot of kids do that this is where i'm gonna cry so the worst thing about teaching is that i don't know what happens to my kids after they leave my classroom so for him to come back and tell me i'm going to chapel hill i know i chose the right profession i don't know his class was just a lot of fun he's a great teacher great guy the impact that your class had on me moving to north carolina i'm
010so happy that me being your teacher meant so much to you but you guys meant so much to me [Music] that concludes my comments [Music] i mean i feel like at this point we should know what's coming every year but if you have a graduating senior please have them take time to reach out to that one teacher it really does mean a lot i want to congratulate our track one students families faculty and staff on finishing their school year and our traditional calendar schools will finish up this friday and i would like to extend my congratulations to those students families faculty and staff as well we had a year of renorming and revising our school days and i want to thank all of you for continuing to put your trust in this district a special
011congratulations to our high school graduates we are beyond excited to celebrate with you we had some of those celebrations in between our last meeting and this one for our early colleges and those schools that are on the modified calendar um and we know that there's more to come if you have plans in downtown raleigh this weekend plan accordingly though we'll be around the convention center mostly our hearts and thoughts continue to turn to the tragedy in uvalde texas at rob elementary wake county schools in a commitment and a priority to safety continues to audit and provide security upgrades to our schools and the district has recently undergone a school safety assessment and is is at work implementing suggestions from that audit there is an executive summary of this audit available from the main page of
012our website by clicking on parents and is found under safety and emergencies there is also a an anonymous tip line at for wcpss so if you as a faculty member parent or student has a tip that you need to share that number is 919-856-1911 and that is also on our website and we've had many updates from our senior director of security on the work that his team does in our safety and security you can find those videos on youtube and i imagine we'll be having some updates soon as we go through this audit i was honored to join our holly grove elementary students in honoring memorial day the students presented information on the importance of this holiday heard from veterans shared the gettysburg address and the poem in flanders fields which symbolizes the poppy this
013was their 10th year doing this ceremony due to weather the missing man formation that is done over head was not able to fly but always wonderful to see the honoring of that day and those who are no longer with us um from [Music] paying the ultimate sacrifice in our in our military i'd like to take a moment to congratulate our superintendent kathy moore yesterday was named regional superintendent of the year by the carolina central regional education service alliance and the winner of the north carolina state superintendent of the year will be announced in the fall so congratulations superintendent moore and lastly our county commission met yesterday evening and approved their budget for the upcoming fiscal year we know in north carolina school boards do not have taxing authority and we work hard to partner with
014them to supplement our budget the commission unanimously voted to provide additional funding to wake county public schools beyond the county manager's recommendation and as heard in our finance committee today we are monitoring any budget changes that may come out of the state's legislative short session but our priority remains on staff compensation so that our students can have qualified consistent adults to support them in their education that concludes my comments today vice chair hegarty thank you chair mahaffey so you know we had an extra week between our last meeting in this meeting and the calendars filled up accordingly there was a number of important events all around the county excuse me we had north carolina general assembly debate over the parents right bill that was debated in the senate i was able to go down i
015saw ms kushner there too and we got to see a lot of the debate there in person in addition to some of the floor debate i attended a really informative and really great event at enlow that their ptsa had hosted on the teacher and staffing shortages but i'm going to defer to our board member who represents unload because she was one of the esteemed panelists and had a lot of great information to say but i just wanted to give kudos to a job well done at that event for miss waters we had parents from barton's pond the new elementary that will be opening this fall in up the strickland road neighborhood in north raleigh reach out to us with concerns about walk zones and what might be going on when new students start attending that
016school and i want to give a compliment to mr bob snyde miller and the transportation staff who really worked with parents gave them the reassurances they need that we will be providing bus transportation to all of those families where there are no sidewalks there are the schools inside raleigh city limits but the area around it is outside and if any of you have ever been on strickland road especially during carpool hours you know that is no place you want kids walking by the side of the road so special thanks to our transportation staff i want to thank miss weaver's third grade class at parkside elementary for hosting me we had a wonderful conversation about uh pollinators parks and uh ecosystems and those kids those are track three kids they're getting ready for a much greater
017dive into their life science unit and so i wish them all the luck with that several of us attended the teacher assistant of the year banquet and special congratulations go to mr richard jones who is named the wake county teacher of the year by the teaching teacher assistants association we met all 10 finalists got to learn their stories and also honored all of the retirees who were had given their sis given their years to the system while it might not surprise you to hear that there were many retirements there were some people that were looking to leave the system the one thing that i saw and miss carter who was with me i think you saw this story too were just kind of the expressions of sheer and genuine gratitude we heard from so many
018teaching assistants about their time in the classroom and their time spent with our students and how much it meant to them personally and that alone made the made the event really worthwhile at least for me i don't know what your experiences were chair mahaffey and i also got to visit wake tech early college of information biotechnology which we are excited about this is morrisville's first high school it will not be their last but wake tech president scott rawls hosted us and we also got to meet some of their some of the wake tech board board members and candidates that will be coming and you'll see more about wake tech when those folks you know come up to us for appointment but we got a nice tour of the college early college as well where our
019students would be and they answered several great questions for us we had the signing day for our future teachers program if you attended the finance committee meeting today you heard that was one of the programs we have to try to address the teaching shortage and you know we all tend to look local so i don't know how much you look nationally but there's a national teaching shortage with fewer candidates in colleges and universities around the country that are looking to go into the profession and so innovative programs like what we have here are a great way to um you know kind of keep local students that understand wake county public schools in that pipeline and so it was it was great to see all of all of those folks miss mahaffey had already talked to
020chairman hafey about the county commission's actions today i want to extend my thanks and my gratitude as well also for the county commissioners who took time to meet with us allowing us to share and explain our budget priorities having good relations with the county commissions and having open and two-way communication really is essential for success i think we're able to explain a lot of things that you know and hear from them what their concerns were to kind of help them arrive at the decision that they reached at so the last thing that i want to mention this was important the timing of this couldn't have i think someone joked either been any worse or any better um we planned a community meeting about school security issues and it happened to take place the day after
021the uh vivaldi shooting this was at hillburn academy and we did have our senior director of security russ smith there and what we heard i thought was incredibly valuable mr smith did a fantastic job talking to the community about our lockdown process about the school safety assessment and audit that was performed by the school safety advocacy council he talked about the areas of improvement we need to make and he listened and he took feedback from parents parents who had their own concerns concerns that were brought to them by their students maybe their older students what happens you know we'll do lockdown drills and sometimes we'll have a real lockdown in a chaotic time of the day maybe classes are changing or maybe it's lunchtime students are coming on and off campus what do they do
022what do the students do who are locked out how can we better improve all of these processes and procedures it's one thing to have a book of policies but it's another to actually carry them out and make sure that everybody's on the same page and knows what to do and i really appreciate mr smith taking the time listening to all the parents and then staying after the meeting to answer the additional questions as well this is you know something that i don't know about the rest of you i've had many parents come to me with several different ideas several different concerns and i'm sure we're going to be talking about it in future meetings for months to come thank you mr kushner thank you chairman hafee and and just to add mr jones that our
023ia of the year is from river bend elementary a um district six school it's going to be district four at the school this year so congratulations to mr jones um and congratulations to all our graduates i think we could hear the roars from both reynolds and may monday throughout wake county to the joy of graduations i'm a graduation junkie because it's just such a wonderful place of joy and happiness for the students who are who are going on to their next level so it's wonderful to participate in those coming up as well thanks to hodge rhode for having us to volunteer with wake up and read it's always it was a great fun spending the morning with that wonderful program making sure students are expanding their personal libraries and yesterday ms carter and i were
024able to be in miss mcclasken's 8th grade science class at mills park middle they are brilliant students trying to help mills park become more sustainable so solar panels on the roofs gardens expanded both including on window ledges having bees pollinate the the gardens but also expanding recycling some some real str um sound suggestions for us on how we can be more sustainable in our schools thanks to her for having us there and also to the commissioners we need to lift up how supportive they have been and they also yesterday importantly expanded their own and i said this in the work session and it bears repeating their health and human service budget and um just want to challenge our system to our school system to work with our county partners to make sure that our students
025are connected with existing services in the county that can support their their needs and their families needs and their parents needs so i'm excited to continue to work with our wonderful county commissioners and i appreciate mr hegarty raising issues of students and school safety it's been on all of our minds i believe so um i would just ask parents and families if you do have weapons at home please secure them make sure that your children do not have access to firearms it's we we know what we should be doing and i think we all can step up to keep our students and our children safe thank you thank you miss kushner this waters thank you chairman i've had a really great couple of weeks out in district four visiting some of the schools some great
026excitement great things going on in in our classrooms and as i think about our schools i really want to give some kudos to our custodial staff because they are a really important part of the school community and that was really on full display for me when i went to poe elementary i was like this school is spotless and so i really appreciate our custodial staff for all the work that they do throughout all of our schools and my visit to poe was really special as had a chance to participate in breed across america they had their map and after they confirmed that i had read 10 minutes for the day they did allow me to put my sticker up on the map and so it was great to participate in that and to see all
027the great things going on at the school academically they have such rigorous programs there and then also with their music and arts program it was great to see that they start orchestra all the way in kindergarten so amazing things going on at poe elementary and also had a wonderful visit to wilburn elementary principal teasley is doing an amazing job leading the school community very exciting and vibrant and energetic environment we had a chance to visit a lot of the classrooms there and i especially enjoyed the time that i spent in the evs classroom both the students and the teachers were one of the highlights of that visit so really appreciate the time to get to know more about the school community at wilburn and fuller elementary was having their field day when i went for
028their visit if i did not have to go back to work i would have enjoyed being in the dunking booth so that was a lot of fun to get to see the kids out and enjoying and it made me think of my own elementary school days and that was always a fun time for me being a part of field day nightdale elementary great visit and thank you for allowing me to come to see the school miss scott coordinated a visit and so knightdale elementary will be coming to district four so it was great to be out and visit the school community there and see all that is going on at their school and mr haggerty mentioned the inlo ptsa they invited me to be a part of their state of in-low panel which was focused
029on teacher recruitment and retention such an important topic and as you can see from the video where all the seniors are going back to thank their teachers there is such power in the work that teachers do and so we want to make sure that we advocate and attract teachers into such an amazing profession and so was so glad to be a part of that panel with mr mike chappelle who's the senior director of talent and acquisition here for the district and also professor aaron horn from nc state and representative julie von hafen as well so a great panel great discussion and always great to see mr haggerty in any event where i can attend i appreciate his encouragement and so lots of great things going on in district four and i also had a chance
030to go to wake up and read event at walnut creek elementary school and so as a parent of children in the district it was great to see the other side and to have that experience where the children actually get to go and shop and pick out their books and such excitement to build their school library their home libraries and to see how they go through the process of picking out their books and so i really appreciate that and so if you have gently used books at home save those for their next drive and they will be loved in a new place some so keep that in mind and congratulations to the class of 2022 really special to be a part of those graduations and really great to hear what their next phase of their journey
031will be it really makes me excited to think about our students and the next generation we have some great amazing talent in the district and as as a mom and of children in the district i know safety is a concern for all of us and as i have visited all the schools one of the things that has been really special to me is to be out with the principals and i've often said i don't know which principle has been out hugged when they walk through the school communities and the way the children react is just a show of how loved and safe they feel in their schools and i think that we need to continue to do all that we can do to make sure that our schools are safe for our children and so
032i'm so glad that this district is being proactive and doing work to hear from parents and to look and be willing to to really be proactive in the way that we protect our school communities our children deserve to be in safe places and they um yes so so i just thank you for the opportunity to share about what's going on in district 4 and very grateful thank you miss waters miss carter switching it up tonight i see [Laughter] all right thank you yeah like where's she going i want to start out with i just say it y'all know me i started out at west carrie middle school seems like a while because we did have that extra week there they had their spring concert for the beginning in concert band and what i thought was
033kind of an extra treat since many of those students will be moving on to kerry high school some of the kerry high band students came and performed with them so it was just a great evening a performance and coming from middle school i appreciated this comment uh by band director mr anderson there were some really cool lights that were reflecting on the ceiling and that's why they were there because they were really cool lights and they looked really cool and the kids loved it and so i know that sounds like such a simple thing but it's lots of things like that that helps build connections with our students and i know you're like what but coming from middle school that really resonated with me because i could just see something like that happening in the
034classroom but it was just a wonderful performance the students did awesome and they had some special effects with some smoke coming across the stage some as well so i appreciate all of the volunteers that make that possible as well not only the students but also the families and the community members and the art teacher i want to thank mr miller because as he did previously he set up an art gallery so you had a two for one if you went you got to walk around and see some great artwork that the students had been put together throughout the school year and just different different projects that they had done so i want to thank them for all of that and then it's been mentioned the future teachers events there was also the luncheon that we
035attended to celebrate those who are participating those who were being hired for this coming up school year those who were just wrapping up and it is just such a great program the signing of it last year i may or may not have made a comment about really liking some music to come on because i'm kind of you know i just think it's kind of like the athletic events a lot of times you go to the signing and so i just appreciate that feedback being well received and the music being added this year it kind of took it i think music can take things to another level so i appreciate that it just adds to the excitement for this program and such a wonderful event for these students who are willing to say you know what
036i want to come back and i want to work for you all and this is a great place they've come through our system and i'm wanting to come back and serve so thank everyone for all your work on this especially miss morris i know who does i don't know if she's watching or not but i appreciate everything you do for that and the i know the teachers association celebration has been mentioned but i call it a hopping event because i feel like they kind of have a great way to have fun and really celebrate everyone they had all of the school each teacher assistant from the schools that were present line up so in the it was just amazing to see that and have them walk down the stair case where we were at and
037just really celebrate each of them and the amazing work that they do and those again congratulations mr jones from riverbend of course and the six retire the truck retirees that were honored i thought it was quite significant that all of them had at least two decades of service to our district um and that really shows their commitment and their joy and what they find and they do for our students and our staff and our families and this is kind of a side note because i like little side notes but they also gave out like a best dress and if i just have to give this plug because i when i was at david stern middle school mr gaude was an ap there and if you know who he's now the principal at oakview i think
038i'm saying that right yeah if you know him you know that is so appropriate he won one of those awards and so uh principal god day you you are still you know you're still carrying that on so appreciate that and that carries on into the classroom and the connecting with the kids or at least i saw it firsthand when he was at davis drive middle school that helps with the connection and the relationship building so i'm just gonna i know that's a little off topic but just i had to say that and the other one an athletic event was a couple on one night it was a green hope had their signing event which was is always great for students who are choosing to take that academically to the next level and also whatever their
039game may be whether it be tennis basketball baseball swimming taking it to the next level congratulations for your hard work on that and all those who have supported those students because it's not only the academic and behavioral support but also the athletic support because it takes a lot to have these athletic programs running in in full gear and then also i went to the cary high school athletic awards ceremony and i just have to say they do one night and the athletic director shout out to him mr rogers and his daughter who put together the slideshow and help with the pictures it was fabulous i loved it because it honored every single team that they have in one night and they would call them all down and those who were present all lined up at
040the front and everyone got to encourage them not just if they were winning an award or not but the whole team every single one and the athletic training program they have there which is tremendous and they honored the seniors got senior awards and also special various awards but it was just a great event and yesterday i was with miss kushner at mills park middle school miss mckay caselyn's class i believe caslin thank you and really this it was spotlight on the students and their sustainability because we hear a lot from our community members parents and those who are in adults but the students really did their research and really took on took this very seriously they gave us statistics some surveyed students and at mills park they looked up costs did cost analysis how much
041it would cost to do it how much we could save and it was just a great work i really think too as i was listening and coming back just proud of also the models that they did some of that was you know the rock garden everything i'm just saying it was fabulous but um it really speaks to me a lot because i hear some things and you know i'm like oh i know a school that's doing that right um and you know again go back to i think it would be helpful to really find a way to connect schools and resources and partners in the community who are willing to help our schools put certain things into place because it could just um really kick start that around our district so i'd really appreciate those
042students just um and not being shy and some of them had some amazing personalities that i was like wow they could come and just speak here and just keep us i mean they were just fantastic so thank you for that and in closing a special shout out to the green hope unified track and field team they left for orlando florida on it was last week but it's the week-long national special olympics competition and they are there competing and cheering on other athletes as well but uh best of luck to you all and job well done for even making it there and qualifying so thank you that's awesome and i know i met miss mccaslin as she was presenting at stemposium which is presented by wicked partnership so i know many teachers would love to get
043involved with that but sadly she's moving to the first morrisville high school dr martin thank you i'd like to begin again with congratulations as others have noted big congratulations to the instructional assistant of the year a great event and all the retirees the district would not function without rias they provide amazing resources and amazing relationships to children which is such a major part of education others have noted that the graduation season is really going to be starting uh in full this weekend but the ncaa our wake county stem uh early college and vernon malone college and career academy uh graduated uh what was two weeks ago uh so congratulations to all of those graduates uh again i think it's important that we keep an eye on covet infections as reported for last week which was
044a short week a four day week we had 945 cases here in wake county public schools there were 722 students 233 staff um it is important to note that uh in this last spike we have had more staff out sick than uh by uh almost one and a half times than we had in the january february spike the january february spike well there was still more pandemic control measures in place we had only three weeks of what i would call extreme staff absences and i'm calling extreme by more than 100 student staff out we are now into our sixth week with over 100 staff out so um uh by not taking as many precautions we are seeing more cases and uh we're seeing uh this spike drawn out so i strongly encourage everyone when you're
045indoors in significantly populated locations you should be wearing a mask right now based on the data that was just released this afternoon the reported cases in wake county are 400 cases per hundred thousand population i and notably that we have plateaued at that level of reported cases for the last eight days starting to climb up just a little bit so we had dropped but it looks like that plateau is often times the signature of it going back up so we are definitely not out of the woods on this and the state numbers are all are two weeks delayed now but we're basically seeing student level cases competing with the overall community cases so we're getting substantial spread in our schools but also from the state reported numbers recognizing the wake county schools is about 75
046has about 75 percent of the total students uh what we basically see from our absences that are reported there's at least a three-fold uh unreported uh level to the state and that's because of home testing and whatnot so kovid's with us covets real uh i'm still recovering yeah it's not fun and uh wear a mask particularly as you go to graduations and highly populated populated populated locations we want you to celebrate we want you to engage but but please be safe and wearing a mask voluntarily will actually help reduce the spread finally i need to reflect on the last couple weeks as an educator because the last couple weeks have been very difficult as an educator the mass shooting in uvalde texas i think hit deep to everyone who's been in the classroom everyone who's
047been in the classroom has looked at doors to understand who might go in and how to protect those that are in your classroom it's sobering i'm you know at the elementary school you probably don't think about it as much but at the high school and definitely the university level you you look for those relationships with students who has had a history and a background that could turn violent um i've had students that i wasn't sure and so i look at those events and i feel it i feel it also as a parent and you know who um but for the grace of god it could have been my children it's tough it's tough as an educator and the response we often have heard is to the schools we need more safety plans well this school
048district has worked very hard over the last as long as i've been on the board to make sure our safety plans are up to date there's no such thing as a good enough safety plan mr smith does a phenomenal job of running our security team and ensuring that we continually audit and improve our safety plans we have safety plans in place but safety plans can't protect everything and they can't be completely public either because safety plans have to have private aspects you don't disclose all of your potential vulnerabilities so to political figures who are asking for everything to be public i'm sorry you can't do that that increases vulnerability we hear all kinds of talk about better control of entrances we've been working on that as a member of the facilities committee as long as
049i've been on the facilities committee we can't harden schools we can make them safer and we do that if you look at all of our new construction we take entry and control of who's in the schools and sight lines incredibly seriously we look at that for every renovation that we do as well but we recognize that we have a lot of schools that could use better entry control problem is that costs resources it's not something you can just flip a switch and all of a sudden it's taken care of and oh by the way even if you had the the dollars to build all of those vestibule entry systems what people don't often don't recognize is that if you do that kind of a major renovation now by federal law you have to bring the
050rest of the school up to 80s up to ada standards we're talking major major investments oh by the way these are investments that we should have been making for a very long time we shouldn't wait for a crisis to make these investments you can't do that in a short period of time it requires a long-term commitment that's what we need we need investment we've heard a lot of people calling for mental health support oh by the way has anybody followed this board's budgets over the last i don't know how many years where we have been calling the state legislature and local funders as well to try to get us up to the nationally recommended norms of counselors social workers psychologists nurses in our buildings is there more of a mental health crisis in this country
051than other places no is there a need for mental health yes please please please invest in what we have been trying to call out for years and years but no instead we had a distraction we had this uproar about some flash cards they were supporting diverse families i've looked at those flash cards there's nothing inappropriate in them were they part of the curriculum no were they valuable to some families probably from everything i've heard and i don't know the personnel details but this was a highly regarded teacher who got bullied and harassed over flash cards if your life in existence is so fragile that flash cards are going to somehow socially engineer a child i'm sorry what we did is we made it more likely for people to leave the classroom we didn't need that
052blown up to be a nationalized politicized thing we need to respect diversity we need to respect our families and if there is an issue let's take care of it not blow it up to a national political issue all but we have to have this distraction called this parental bill of rights i tried to read that bill i've read a lot variety of legislation and i'm sorry most of what i see is a bunch of word solid with hot button issues this isn't a parental bill of rights this is a desire for parental control control of their children when i look through a lot of the vocabulary in that thing i see parents calling for control in ways that they themselves would not want their parents to have controlled their life we need parental engagement in
053education yes we don't need parental control of education our children are not things to be controlled our children are people to be engaged with to be inspired we don't need that distraction what should we do we need to look at what will encourage teachers to go into the classroom we need to invest so teachers want to be there in safe spaces in support of mental health issues in support when there are curricular issues we need to stand up to bullies and not let bullies drive our good teachers from the classroom and if the legislature has questions at a minimum just fun leandro it'll go a long ways to making our classrooms and our schools places that people want to be in and for professionals to engage and not question whether they belong there thank you
054[Applause] not sure i can follow that but thanks um well the highlight of my week was going to something i've not been to before was an ib graduation at millbrook high school and i i don't think i've ever been to an ib graduation but it gave me a whole new insight into community and the ib graduation had parents that had been involved with their kids all four years at millbrook high school and it was a community that was amazing i want to say that dr saunders did a great job of honoring dana king at millbrook for the ib graduation he told a story which i kind of remember but superintendent morrill remember better that she fought really hard for the ib program and in fact took it away from another high school and then we
055gave it back i think and refunded it so they had two funded high schools for the ib program but she got her ib program and and that that was just i think it was a great honor to dana king it showed her personality and what she the grit i'm going to do better do better about this ib graduation i've got to put some notes together but the speeches at this graduation were amazing they were by somewhere by the students and some were by the teachers and coordinators and every time i heard something i'd say oh i gotta write that down i need to write that down it was the most amazing set of speeches but what it showed me was that these kids get into this ib graduation are this ib program and they work
056extremely hard and they went through covid but did not complain about it and stuck with it and the grit that they showed and but how they talked about it at the graduation was that it it made them better at facing life in so many ways and it was their coordinator who was extremely funny said it was kind of like getting on a roller coaster you know you get on it you know you're going to get off of it but you don't know what's going to happen from the top to the bottom and so and you really can't get off in between so it was it was a highlight and i will give it better credence later when i can look at the notes that from the teachers that i'll still part of what i've done
057mostly i think the highlight of also that was my highlight but spending time following the end of school events in our schools is so uplifting these are parents that truly are involved in our schools on a daily basis they're working on their ptas they're in the classrooms they're working with their kids every day they are truly involved parents and they have set up end of school events even in some of the low wealth schools that just really struggle to thank the teachers and staff there and um it's it's been fun to watch and i thank the parents that are in our schools every day for what they do as well as our staff and our principals it's been a lot of positive another favorite thing i got to do is been meeting with neighborhoods about
058neighborhood groups about student reassignment calendars my favorite part about that is that i get to bother glenn carosa and um since he's over magnets and capacity and student and stuff like that there's a lot of questions in this stuff about capacity and things and trans he's not of transportation but it is good to go out and talk about calendar upcoming possible calendar changes neighborhood reassignments possibly things that might impact the neighborhood that i want to have open dialogue with so the other thing is i want to totally say thank you to russ smith and his department i've known russ a very long time as many of the people in our audience have and i trust him completely and the fact that we've had this safety and security audit just recently and if you have not
059seen that it's very well done by an outside company and we've learned a lot about it we've got a lot of funding issues to look at but i feel very fortunate to have him and the other people in his department in wake county and finally i just want to say thank you to the wake county commissioners for being such good partners with us i'm a big person about partners in our community and i just want to thank them i just do not take that for granted so it's a good thing to end the note on thank you miss johnson hossler then i will start there miss cash echo the sentiments of the appreciation of our commissioners and some of you know i strongly appreciate the increase in universal lunch that commissioner claiborne and i started
060when he initially came on the board so that was great to see that they well couldn't meet our full needs understood the conversations and are paying attention to our conversations and we've been talking about rising costs of our our lunches and the impact that that has on our students so for me that speaks to the level of their engagement and paying attention to what's happening on our school board so i certainly will start on that note of appreciating them i mean i i guess i will say so after uvaldi i was in dc for work and got was meeting with doj specifically but as you can imagine all they talked about was uvalde what happened they had just been on the ground there and one of the things that i think and we when i
061say justice it's their office of victims of crime looking at how they fund families who've been disenfranchised and how do they provide therapeutic services as a result of the loss how do they help rebuild the community both structurally safety and mental health-wise which it was hats off to them i was glad to hear all that even though i was like i'm here for a funding issue but one of the things that i walked away from that after that meeting and of course you all know i'm married to an educator i have a child in school was truly how we all have to pay attention after the fact because unfortunately until we do commit to change this in our country which i do believe is a decision that we can make and have the ability to
062make as a country then part of that is remembering the broad sweeping impact it has on those communities and so one of the things that that the director i was meeting with said that she heard from families was just the mere acknowledgement that families were harmed in a way that we can't describe they still don't have all the words for but so were all those educators in that building who in that moment truly their intentions were to protect every student in that building not just in their classroom but truly emotionally what that means and again the fact that they won't also be able to fully understand the way that that implements our brain development and so you all know i spent a lot of time talking about trauma-informed work but but the reality is when
063trauma happens it changes our brain and we have to retrain the brain and how it responds to trauma so we literally have to have to be actively engaged and i think it's just important to say because as i said last board meeting our communities don't have boundaries so that's also true for all of our educators in wake county they watch that trauma and that is also impacting who they are and how they show up in our school buildings and so while physical safety is vitally important but so is emotional and personal safety as we watch our folks prepare for what for most of our educators is a very short break especially our year-rounders and so just recognizing seeing those graduates thank us teacher and we all have teacher appreciation which we generally don't pay as
064much attention to in high schools i strongly recommend if your children are still in school that you remind them to thank those adults in that building one because we don't do it enough and two because it truly is a part of retraining the brain and who they are and how they show up with their students so um that's that's my request for um how we take care of each other as a community um and also remembering that our safety is includes our physical safety our personal physical safety as well and we have a long way to go and you know i know several colleagues know where my husband teaches and i generally don't panic so the impact i'm telling you to retrain the brain was my first panic when my husband's school had a lockdown
065generally i'm like oh they'll figure it out because i also trust our security at wake county public school but for the first time i wasn't prepared for my own physical and emotional reaction my daughter's been in a lockdown i can tell you it was not the same because it was less than a week after uvalde so i'm and i generally i just think it's important to share a personal experience of how trauma impacts us even when it wasn't directly in your space i had a completely different physical reaction this time and as i think most people will but again as i said we don't often think about the personal implications until it happens and then all of that trauma comes back to us in that moment so please take care of each other and as
066you've heard one of my colleagues mention the county has been very resourceful and committed especially for the last few years for how we respond to behavioral intervention county wide and so again a huge appreciation now more than ever the need for those things on to happier news uh like all of my colleagues we certainly love graduation although i'm pretty convinced now i'm not going to love it as much next year when i have a graduate because i'm starting to have a lot of feelings about being an an afternoon really like maybe two children would have been better but nonetheless i do enjoy graduation and especially our smaller graduations that we've been to because we actually get to hear what students are going to do and again you've heard us talk about this at student achievement
067not all of our students are going on to higher education and so for me that is a space in those smaller schools where we actually get to be proud and share the accolades regardless of what their next steps are is i think that's just a value that many community members don't know if their children don't go to small schools that that is the only space for me as a board member i get to see us be proud and give accolades to our students regardless of what their next step is because we clearly speak to we want to prepare our students whether they're college career or military ready and that's what we get to hear when those students walk across the stage and we hear what's next for them and again i think it's important they
068need to know that we're applauding them just as loud regardless of what their next steps are because they truly indeed have crossed the stage into monumental changes and i would be remiss if i didn't say as you can imagine with covid the speeches have been far more funnier for those that i could actually really hear because some of our some of our graduations have had a little mic issues but those that i've heard i've i mean they've just cracked me up because i've been really personal very direct about the impact to covet on them so again it's it speaks to the ways in which our students are trying to figure out how to move forward and also realizing just like me as a parent that gosh you rushed this grow up thing but it really
069isn't all it's cracked up to be so i've enjoyed also listening to our young people um you all know i also love our performing arts like many of our colleagues and my daughter teaches dance as well as takes dance at a very large studio and so i always volunteer every year so parents can watch their children on the stage while i am backstage taking care of their little ones um this year we didn't have tv so i had to figure out how to entertain them not my gift you all so because i'm on the school board i was like let's talk about what school we go to and your favorite teacher and for the record that was a hit they loved it um and then they started asking each other why is that your favorite
070teacher um so it really helped me manage six to eight-year-olds by talking about their schools and how much they love their teachers and so i asked them all to make sure they went to school for those who were still in school that they go back and tell their favorite teacher that they told somebody that they were their favorite teacher because most of them said oh i never told my teacher they're my favorite teacher mind you they've had about two teachers by this point but it doesn't matter they have a favorite teacher um so because that's what my daughter said she's like you know they haven't had that many teachers all right and i was like don't ruin it for me and these kids this is fun they're excited um so so again and of course
071watching them on the stage and you know they're little so they're like mommy they're calling up from the stage and watching the gleam in their parents eyes it's just a reminder of how important our resources and access to are so i'd be remiss if i didn't mention that there are several studios in our county who are also subsidizing so much of our performing arts to ensure because we do realize the importance of giving kids access and opportunity that can afford it and so thank you to all of our partners and especially the large number of teachers i saw coming to see their children outside of school it means a lot to the students but it also means just as much to those parents who were thanking those educators for being in the space on a
072friday night or saturday morning saturday night or sunday because i saw one at a 11 o'clock performance on a saturday morning so thank you to all of our educators who come to support your students outside of the the classroom in the school building because that speaks to the community that we're hoping to build and lastly i'll thank the two municipalities that um that are in my district uh thank you fuquay for inviting me to your leadership and we were able to talk about all of our schools because that's really what they want to know is what schools what they do but but we also talked a lot about all the other education adjacent issues like public servant housing i had several public servants who were part of this leadership team that i met with and
073we talked about the fact that most of them because it was in fuquay have moved to harned or johnston county and don't live in wake county and we're able to truly understand what that means for our educators in that conversation so again i don't have to tell my board members but because you all visit us every month i think it's important for you all to also begin to have those conversations in your community that there are so many education adjacent conversations that are invaluable to making us and keeping us as a great public school for our young people to attend and to create community so please continue to talk about what is it like for affordable housing what does it look like for traffic and engaging in traffic studies because all of our educators are
074impacted by all those things that aren't just about the reading writing arithmetic and performing arts in our school buildings and so i encourage you to start talking to your colleagues and neighbors and friends about all of those other issues that directly impact our public education school system as well um so thank you fuquay for always engaging me into the amazing companies in that community who strongly are public school supporters i learned that every year that i get to go back i get to hear from john deere and bob barker about how much they really care about our public schools and i'm lifting them up because i realize every single year they have a ton of people there to talk about and praise our schools and that's the only opportunity i hear from them so i
075don't think i've ever publicly thanked them for their support but certainly thank you and lastly garner is also in my district and so one of the things that i've been talking about especially around school suspension and creating school community when our kids transition from elementary to middle or middle to high is ensuring that those feeder schools are connected and we actually have that happening in the new gardner parks and rec building thanks to my timber drive teacher miss tracy little and their pta for hosting the first family event in the garner new gardener parks and rec and we had representatives from all of our feeder schools in the hot because it was a 97 degree day and they were all outside talking about their school so that not just the students who were especially our
076fifth graders ready for middle school and are but but the parents also could have those conversations about what they could be doing around transition and again a great partnership with the town all the town leaders were there and really appreciating what again i think we've talked about a lot but it is our first foot forward in garner to create a partnership between our schools in garner but also the town of garner to really ensure that families know that regardless of where you live when you're assigned to a garner school you're a part of the garner community so thank you to the folks in garner who made the commitment to all of our students who attend schools in garner thank you thank you miss scott thank you thank you ms johnson hustler for saying that about
077the relationships with the municipalities i've been very fortunate over the years that wake forest and roles will do great work for their students and their communities with leadership teams with their chambers and and with the town and knightdale is incredibly supportive of their schools and wendell and zebulun every month that their board meetings invite recognized students and employees from our wake county schools to come in and say hello so thank you for for um for acknowledging that and highlighting the the important relationships we have with our municipalities i wanted to say a huge congratulations to gabriela burwell from nightdale high school she's been acknowledged before by the school system but they did have their their national competition and while she was not one of the finalists for the national competitor she was a finalist but
078she did not win the competition for poetry out loud but just an outstanding work we we heard her um deliver she she spoke at the teacher of the year uh ceremony just just an amazing talent and if you recall 2021 the north carolina poetry out loud winner was also from night dale high school so we have some amazing things happening throughout the county but i always like to highlight the parts in eastern wake as well a lot of our teachers are finishing up their national boards applications around this time of year and that is a huge lift on any year but this year i mean just it's amazing i wish everyone the best of luck as you're awaiting those results but please know that just to even make it to that finish line with the
079with the application process is a huge accomplishment and a thank you to again to all of our educators and our school administrative teams this year i personally know three people who heard the calling of education and are now full to our full-time teachers and one is a teaching assistant in a regional special education program and i know that there are people many people like that across our um our district who who stepped up and so thank you again to everyone for sharing your talents i also wanted to offer just an acknowledgement of a wake county public school system graduate many of you if you watch the news national news right now have probably seen andrea pete from the team drea foundation she is a wake county graduate she did the the hunter liggin in low
080magnet track and and starting back in the 80s so when the the magnet program really just started her parents took the leap of faith and and they were so grateful for it and they still talk even though it's been a couple a couple of decades they still talk about the impact that it had on their lives and everything that they were so grateful to the opportunity for their daughter and and the opportunity to serve neighborhood children in those schools but andrea was diagnosed with als in 2014 at the age of 33. sadly i know too many of us are familiar with just what a horrific horrible cruel disease als is and andrea started experiencing symptoms after she did her first uh 70.3 or half iron distance triathlon and started stumbling felt like she was having
081muscle cramps wasn't sure and then was diagnosed shortly thereafter she continued to to complete a sprint triathlon after her diagnosis and then continued to to race in triathlons using a recumbent trike but was still able to swim on her own and she would use her trike for the the bicycle in the run portion of the race and she has started this foundation to raise money for for als research specifically ls tdi they do great research and not just treating als but finding a cure that's what we really want to have happen and so she had set a goal prior to coved to do a marathon on her recumbent trike in every state all 50 states and she met her goal on may 28th i believe where she competed in the prince of wales marathon and
082and so she met her goal raised i think just in that effort alone over a hundred thousand dollars for als research but i share all of that to say this is these are the the amazing people we have in our school system who graduate with these goals and service to others and when we look at those four c's i think so many of our graduates even if they don't raise you know a million dollars for for a very important cause they do go on to share their gifts and talents with with the world and that's all we can we can want um as we were listening to some of our presentations um about safety and with several um we had an alternative learning center teacher talk about the importance that her students feel safe that
083we showed that we're there to help them and her two outstanding principals share what they do in their roles as leadership to make sure that their schools and their teachers are able to provide safety for their students because i'm sure many of you have seen if you've been in a classroom that you have to maslow before bloom that you have to have those fundamental needs in place before you can then go on to access education and really do the the higher layers of synthesis when it comes to education and those those first three things in maslow are physiological safety and love and belonging and as i've been thinking and processing i mean i i have a fourth grade daughter um i was columbine happened my first year teaching and as as ms johnson hustler noted
084it it stays with you you can't shake that and honestly you shouldn't be able to shake it because you should process it do better for yourself and do better for others and i'm just thinking that there are two it's pride month and the way that we treat with our words the way that we treat people with our words particularly lgbtq people i i've heard some things over the last few years i mean for many years but it's just heartbreaking because our students need to feel safe when they're in a school and they need to feel safe and feel okay with who they are you know going back to my my fourth grader when we were at the pediatrician's office for one of their well checks um i got the pamphlet on on puberty and uh
085and one of the things that mentioned was lgbtq considerations and that you should please you know talk to your parent talk to a family member or talk to a teacher because in some families that's the reality you might not be able to talk to mom and dad we hope and and pray that our kids will always want to come to us but that's that's not always the reality with our words knowing that we can do some very we can damage so deeply i ask you to please think of with your words what can you do to provide safety for others what can you do to provide our students with hope at a time where our society needs it more than ever that's words that are not going to cut or hurt or be violent to
086someone else for their identity for their political affiliation and i just ask that we consider now more than ever what can we do to give our students hope thank you miss scott at this time um i will entertain a motion to approve our meeting agenda so moved second we have a motion by ms johnson hosler second by dr martin is there any discussion hearing none all in favor please signify with i any opposed nay we spent some more time than usual on our comments this evening and i want to thank you all for your patience four words really stuck out parents community partnership and safety and i think as we move on to our first information item from the office of academic advancement we will continue those themes so i'll ask mr drew cook michelle
087woodson and kim keith from the ymca to join us and we have some other community partners in the room as well mr cook thank you chair mahathir superintendent morgan uh just to note uh miss woodson is with a new granddaughter in georgia right now so her regards otherwise she would be here um so thank you for that that segue in the transition and as you reference chair mahaffey i am excited to be here this evening um with some very special guests and community partners seated over to my right and we're going to spend a few minutes just taking some time to highlight some work that the district has been engaging in with with several members of our community and community organizations over the last couple months that we're really excited about in terms of the
088potential impact on our students in a positive way moving forward so i'll start with just a little context to kind of get it started it does go without saying i think at this point that the wake county public school system like every other school system in the country has had to confront and tackle challenges unlike those ever seen before or during the covet 19 pandemic everything as we all know changed quite literally overnight when brick and mortar schools closed in march of 2020 how we talk how students learned and how we reach students in need all shifted in an instant what did not change however was our dedication to serving wake county public school system students and families and to be clear by our dedication i'm not referencing just the wake county public school system
089i'm referencing our broader community we truly double down i think on that commitment and we'll have to do so in the months and years ahead moving forward one strategy and commitment among many that will be essential in supporting the success of our students is strengthening and expanding our collaboration with community partners to meet the academic and social emotional needs of all of our students we know that when schools and community organizations like those represented here this evening and many others work together to support learning everyone benefits especially our students this evening we wanted to take a few minutes to highlight the growing and strengthening partnership with our community and how this partnership will serve to strengthen and support us in addressing the needs of our students in the months and years ahead emerging from two
090years of coveted response our goal is to capture all that we have learned and apply it to our work as we move forward in a way that will strengthen the foundation for how we teach and how we provide extended learning opportunities importantly both within the school day and beyond the school walls and limits of the school day our intent is to employ a graduated approach as we expand this partnership into action we'll do several things including remaining engaged with our stakeholders and also forging a sense of ownership among those that we serve and those that we support we'll also ensure that we're better aligned in terms of our vision for what good teaching learning and support services looks like with feedback and input from multiple stakeholders and we will also work to align our efforts
091with the ongoing development of the district's strategic plan obviously much work lies ahead but it's exciting work and work that is full of promise and in our view limitless opportunities and with apologies to the board who's now seen this slide four times in the last four hours i will say that there's probably many folks in the community that have not so if you'll indulge me for just a few minutes as a point of reference for this work and other efforts moving forward we have been in the process of mapping out a longer term comprehensive effort that we believe will transition our district into and through pandemic recovery we believe that unprecedented times call for unprecedented reimagining and reinventing as an important complement to rigorous standards aligned instruction taking place in our classrooms we fully expect
092that high dosage tutoring can and will have have a positive impact on student outcomes to be clear and as we talked about earlier this afternoon we have no notion that we can just quote unquote tutor our way through an effective pandemic recovery effort but if done with strategy and with purpose we believe it can and will be an important and impactful tool especially if we're able to harness the collective energy and willingness of community partners like are in the room this evening so here as we plan the next phase of delivery of high quality instruction and strong support services for our students we know that these desired outcomes which our board has seen but many members of the public have not will take some time to achieve and just to highlight a few of these
093a pre-k-12 comprehensive balanced assessment system a structure and process to provide core and supplemental instructional resources and materials that will enrich and support the curriculum and enhance student learning high quality core instruction and tiered supports that are visible in every classroom every day a comprehensive professional learning system for teachers and staff strategic communication and collaboration pathways as evidenced by the work that we're sharing this evening a multi-year finance and allotment plan to resource and provide direct service to schools and to students and also an evaluation and improvement cycle that guides systemic processes and refined implementation in other words how do we know if it's working and if it's not working as well as we believe it should what adjustments can we make moving forward so in the few minutes that we have with you this
094evening we want to briefly focus on three key areas first our current state including strengths resources and needs of our students and our community partners second we also want to provide just a brief overview of our still developing plans for the fall of 2022 and beyond and third a look at our next steps in strengthening expanding and aligning extended learning opportunities for students during the 22-23 school year and beyond so every time i see this graphic i immediately think of our former longtime literacy director sherry miller as you know we have a long-standing foundational belief that literacy is a right and not a privilege more than a logo and even a statement of belief this is really in many ways a call to action every child has the right to read and together as a
095community we must protect this right so here to talk a little bit more on how we can strengthen our collective focus on this work and even outside the typical school day is one of our valued community partners miss kim keith with the ymca kim i will turn it over to you thank you mr cook and school board and superintendent moore it's our pleasure to be here tonight to share this update with you teachers and reading researchers generally agree that essential components of early elementary reading instruction should target phonics phonemic awareness fluency comprehension and vocabulary however many educators and literacy experts have argued that reading fluency is commonly neglected as part of a student's core reading curriculum in the united states estimates suggest that at least 40 percent of fourth graders do not have strong enough
096reading fluency and this is a primary barrier to students proficiency proficiency with reading comprehension through the framework that we're proposing tonight a partnership with the helps education fund will help address reading fluency as a need for our students the helps education fund is a local nonprofit focused on promoting educational equity through collaborative partnerships one of the programs that the helps education fund offers is the helps intervention help stands for helping early literacy with practice strategies the helps intervention works with one-on-one and small groups is an instructional program designed to improve students reading fluency and their confidence it's supported by rigorous research appropriate for elementary school students as well as middle school students it's easy to access is feasible to use meaning it can be implemented by volunteers and lay people in the community as well
097as by educators and it's also proven and an effective strategy that's been already implemented by many community partners and educators in the district the main goals of helps are to strengthen a student's reading fluency and confidence as a reader and as students improve their reading fluency they are better able to focus on and improve other important reading skills including comprehension as we began this partnership conversation we really wanted to take a look at the current state where are we starting from as we think about our future we did a survey in the district and here are some of the results of that survey 53 percent of our elementary schools currently use the helps intervention intervention team facilities facilitators and or intervention teachers are predominantly the staff that use the helps intervention in our schools 77.3
098percent of those who responded to the survey are using helps in the one-on-one model and 31.8 percent of them are using it in the small group intervention model the ymca and others have already been using the helps intervention with wake county public school students the ymca since 2019 other community partners who are a part of wake up and read our community collaborative that is the local affiliate of the national campaign for grade level reading have been using the helps intervention since early 2021. as part of our strategy we need to connect and align programs and services looking for connection and alignment across programs and seeking to identify opportunities for alignment it's important that community partners and the district align our programs and services to find positive outcomes for students this will allow student progress to
099be the primary focus of our work as we strengthen the capacity of our tutors students and families we will see positive academic and behavioral outcomes for our students again the helps education fund and the helps intervention are a critical part of the strategy and our strategy will be to target students and tutors with the correct intervention for the gap we will be addressing the helps education fund will allow us to allow us to support intervention for students in reading fluency our community partners the helps education fund and the district will target students in grades 2-5 some of our considerations for implementation as we're assessing our current capacity and building for the future it will be important for our partnership to identify the focused population of students again we'll focus on grading students in grades 2-5
100that have a targeted need to focus on reading fluency additionally we will want to align this work with other commitments and priorities within the district and the community agencies that are a part of this collaborative we're currently assessing our current staffing the district is assessing current usage funding and communication structures one place we've chosen to begin this work is with schools and community partners that are already doing the work who already have the infrastructure in place as a strong foundation for us to move forward professional learning will be provided for teachers innovation intervention facilitators community partners and volunteers as we consider the process to scale this up to more students schools and partnerships we will continue to assess where we are and where we are able to strategically grow all while monitoring the positive impact
101on our students in terms of our next steps there will be ongoing communication and collaboration with the helps education fund and our community partners we will identify schools and communities community partners who want to be a part of this effort we'll establish criteria to systematically identify students provide professional learning for wake county public school systems staff and volunteers as well as community partners and we'll plan for data sharing to monitor student progress through data sharing agreements which will allow us to monitor individual student progress we're currently planning for a launch in september of 2022 but remember this is the beginning of the work and we intend to grow as we see our capacity grow and i'll end with a call to action this obviously sounds very ambitious for a launch in september of 2022 and
102there will be an opportunity for the community to support this work research identifies that high dosage tutoring will positively impact student outcomes in order to meet the needs of our wake county students we will need volunteers who are willing to commit to this work preferably volunteers will work with students one or more times a week which will allow them to build relationships and provide consistency and regularity to our students additionally this work will be targeted to ensure that the right intervention is provided to students with the targeted area for growth and that the volunteers in partnership with the schools will monitor that student growth this will be an ongoing commitment for all of us to ensure better outcomes for our students and i'd like to invite tom tom oxl community leader to share his thoughts
103as well thanks tom thank you thank you chair mahaffey and superintendent moore board members it's nice to be back here with you it's been a long time and first let me thank all of you and the teachers and watching the senior staff for 27 months that have been terrible and without your strength of character and commitment especially at the school level i don't know how we'd be as well off as we are but we are damaged as we are across the country some business leaders in charlotte and i started talking in january about learning loss and we couldn't understand why nobody was talking about it we started pushing at the state level at the various state leadership levels and we quickly came to the conclusion that no one thinks this is a solvable problem we're
104not educators we see significant learning loss exhausted workforce those two won't work well together we must go to the community and we started pushing for involving trusted community partners the answers we got back is it's not doable it's not doable superintendents leaders said we don't see how it's possible i said what about wake county they did say if it could be done it could be done in wake county i thought you all might like to hear that well i went to most trusted community partner in way county that i was aware of which is the ymca of the triangle area and they're more than just wake county they're in seven counties with 17 clubs doug mcmillan and his organization are truly not just a ymca it is one of the best ymca organizations in the
105country and when in early march i pushed doug and said can you help recruit thousands of tutors to help the thousands of children and teachers in wake county who need you he said absolutely we'll do it no thinking required when i talked to superintendent moore just a few days after that and said the ymca is ready to step forward do you think your school system would accept a trusted partner to take some shared responsibility she said of course we can with the ymca we can get anything done we did also talk about other trusted community partners who could join in the ymca so it's not just the y but their leadership team is fantastic so that sounds good but there's a lot of details to be worked out i can tell you after being on
106the ymca board for four years they will do whatever it takes and as a community representative as a business person who still sees us as a problem that's solvable with a community that steps up to help our schools when asked and it's happened in the past but not to this level the community is ready to help we want it to be asked and business people retirees church groups everybody will say i need to step up now i've done nothing to help the community for 27 months and this is the most important thing i can do nothing is more important to the future of wake county than wake county public schools so thank you for putting your dedicated staff to work on it thanks to the why and their leadership and the other groups that they'll
107be leading as they figure this out and i can tell you one other thing this isn't happening anywhere else in the country we've been trying to find anywhere where they are going to turn to a community partner for assistance and we can't find it anywhere there's a lot of talk about learning loss how to solve it with us or money but what they're no one is talking about is this so we're lucky to have the resources we're lucky to have a board and leadership that we have in wake county and optimistic to come september i'll be tutoring in schools half of our office in nightdale will be tutoring in schools and we look forward to the opportunity of being of assistance thank you so thank you thank you tom and kim and i'll just close
108before we open it up for board comment and feedback we always run the risk of missing somebody but i do want to just recognize some of the folks that have made the trip over this evening and have been very patient in their show of support among us here this evening we've got madison reed from the boys and girls club latoya montague from communities and schools amber simmons from read and feed and in addition to kim and tom we've got from the ymca lisa humphries tony campion and also doug mcmillan and if i've missed somebody please forgive me all right thank you so much so happy to hear any feedback questions comments the board may have dr martin so start thank you to everybody i also want to just give a shout out to the helps
109program the help program was designed at nc state education psychology professor john began i've known john for quite a number of years we i met him years ago when i was working with the park scholars uh on exactly this issue how do we deal with with with literacy education uh he's done some outstanding research and this helps program really works it's not gimmicky it's it's getting in there building engagement uh building fluency so go wolfpack john if you're out there listening thanks good work thank you miss carter i was just going to share my appreciation as well and then just also say i hope folks that are listening you know we've heard from a lot of community members who've come and spoken who want to be involved we've gotten emails from folks who want to
110be in schools and want to be helping and i really hope they're on the lookout and for communications about how they can get involved with this what sounds like a wonderful program and i'm very excited to hear about the another community partnerships because i always applaud those thank you miss cash you know how i feel about this program program i think it's wonderful but thank you to this group of people and tom oxon for being the most persistent and the best board member we've ever had and hopefully he'll be back on the board one day and um and for the and for the for the ymca and all the partners and through i really appreciate you guys this is just makes my heart smile for the partnership and our community leaders um we we need
111this and i'm so glad that wake county is doing it in the first in the count in the country so thank you ms kushner thank you and i'll just add my accolades miss cash you've been um persistent focus on this as well as mr awesome um and doug into the all the leaders at the y and our partners we are so just to echo my colleagues um i do agree wake county public schools is the critical um a group of in the wake county to serve our children and i appreciate the focus on the community coming together to serve our children and help us during this time so thank you mr cook for coordinating all this and superintendent moore for your leadership very grateful bye sir hagerty thank you i know we won't have all
112the answers tonight but i do want to go back to miss keith's comments about a call to action because obviously you can have a lot of wonderful ideas but the key is action and so i look forward to hearing what our next steps will be in terms of what we can do to get out engage the community recruit more volunteers how we'll roll it out build it up scale it up i think he said um but we all need to be active recruiters out there working with our community partners in the nonprofit sector in addition to the business sector we need to be missionaries for this and just go out and find as many of the willing who are willing to join us in this effort so please let us know what we can do
113and mr cook if you and staff can continue to let us know just as board members and individuals everything else we can do to support the effort thank you yes sir miss johnson hustler i echo my sentiments and great appreciation to all of you um uh tom oxfam you definitely have convinced me of two big initiatives since i've been on the board so i guess i could say you and roxy cash probably can't convince me of a whole lot is what this boils down to miss cash um so that but that speaks to um for me and we talk about our students as ms scott just talked about drea but it's also the historical and institutional knowledge and love for this district from folks like tom oxon who served on the board ms cash who
114served and came back mr fletcher who served and came back like we really have an amazing commitment from community members who step up either back to the board or back to moving the board to the next phase of becoming an innovative school district like we overuse the word but this is an instance where i think it's necessary we have been isolated as institutions for farc and i mean every institution not just educational institution but for far too long like if we separate behavioral health from physical health right we as a country silo things and i think what this does is for me hopefully speaks volumes to our community but also to our educators that you are not in this by yourself it is okay to take a break and call this community to action to
115allow you the space to rejuvenate while we still commit to our students the y is an amazing partner again back to ms cash who made it happen with child care during covet this is just another example so you might be our community liaison of literally of all times as long as doug macmillan so doug i'll add you to the list you can't do anything i mean i'm just saying like but truly it speaks to the commitment of this community and to to rise up in the midst of the amount of turmoil the bad press the negativity our students here and see that so i hope the way that we talk about and i appreciate the news put in the spotlight ms keith i was tickled when you saw the news moving his camera to zoom
116in on you but i hope that it gets just as much press as the things that speak negatively or have a negative impact to our district that this is our district as hard as it may be for a school system to give up some of its control over education i think that this speaks volumes to who we are into to who we are and who we have the ability to be as a community so thank you all for pushing and tugging and stretching us to grow um because in the words of the public school system you all love glows and grows and i think the grows is going to help us glow like this is going to stretch us but i hope the community is watching this in a positive nature because it is going
117to take all of us and we all have to be ambassadors of our public school system children are not mr oxford has already laid down the challenge his office in night dell will be volunteers so all other business owners please step up to the plate as well thank you all for your support and the willingness to really be stretched on this i miss scott thank you and i i process things like a couple of minutes slower so i feel like these are the most amazing comments have been said um and i i wish i thought of my question immediately but um miss keith is you remember when we when we met a few months it seems like it was three weeks ago or maybe it was four years ago but it was that's how covet
118time works but we were talking about um the the literacy deserts and so one of the things i'm hopeful for is as we recognize that there are parts of our community that have a high need for for for literacy supports also might be the same communities that may not have the resources and time to volunteer and i know we have great uh go triangle we have you know there's so the limitless possibilities to try to bring tutors and and volunteers to to those communities and um and yes and in nightdale and in zebulun we have some pretty big places there that hopefully will help out with this but thank you so much this is to know how hard many people on this board have worked and just continuing to support private public partnerships with the
119school system and superintendent moore for your willingness to to make that happen and thank you so much to our community leaders for for um for serving our kiddos thank you i'll provide just a couple of closing comments i think one thing that's really important to note is that the folks that are that are here with us tonight and that we're talking about partnering with us and helping ramp this up already have presence and support in our schools whether you're looking at reading feed or cis or the boys and girls club or the ymca they already have presence and support after school support and programming for our kids and to provide an opportunity to align around the work that we do and target some of the population that has needs and a consistent structured program that
120actually meets the point of needs for those kids is incredibly important and the i'm not i'm not going to diminish the kind of training that it's going to take and the time and and that work that's going to have to happen in order to accomplish this but it is one of the um really most exciting things that i've been able to talk about and be a part of um and i talked about it some really at the beginning of this school year without really having a mindset about what that mic could look like um and i'm just glad to see that other people were thinking about it as well and that we're able to come together because i do think that if there is any place in north carolina that can do this it is
121certainly awake and i'm i'm proud to have the partnerships with the organizations all of you are really close to what we do and how we support students and and i'm just excited about the work moving forward with you so thank you and we know that this is going to be a marathon not a sprint um this recovery doesn't happen overnight um and it our educators have been doing the work and we'll be continuing to do the work but if i'm going to continue with metaphors it takes a village and so thank you all for being a part of this village and stepping up in ways these past few years that we didn't know we needed you and i just want to thank you all for continuing to be partners in this work for our students
122and my only question is when will people know that they can sign up to be to be determined all right we will make sure so we're in and part of what we're doing happy is we're we're speaking this into existence right and i think part of part of the premise here is to mobilize and generate the energy and obviously the key next step for us is going to be how and where and when and whom we're able to harness that energy so i think more to come and we will be back with additional updates and information to the board and certainly be sending out communications to the community through our schools and through the district as well in the weeks ahead thank you so much um sincerely appreciate it and i'm looking forward to to
123seeing this work um and speaking of updates it's time for the superintendent's updates so thank you [Applause] i'm just providing some updates from our work session today for those who are unable to listen or be here at that time we covered a number of items in the work session today beginning with a conde continued work with our board members on the strategic plan we came with some updates to our core beliefs including some added language around well-being and student agency and quarterly four a new core belief seven that addresses some areas that the board members and and staff and others had expressed were sort of missing from our core beliefs in the prior strategic plan um we also then moved into looking at um strategic priorities for student outcomes and that really came from the
124feedback that was garnered from the thought exchange with you know thousands of people in our community our teachers even students engaged in this work and narrowed down the areas of interest to three areas in terms of desired student outcomes and how we might move forward with those we then also moved into talking about goals and whether we keep one goal or move into maybe multiple goals look at grade levels and those kinds of things so we appreciate the board feedback today so that we can bring back additional information it looks like we are going to look at more than just one graduation goal um and i think also um the last part of our work session on the strategic plan item was really talking about what we called essential conditions which then someone called maybe
125pillars that would be the kinds of things that need to be in place in order to achieve the outcomes and so there's there's a lot of aspirational language that we're looking at right now which is really good at the overarching frame of that but our work to continue with the board that will come next will be explaining how those sort of aspirational goals beliefs and whether they are essential conditions or pillars will then filter directly into the work that schools do or operational staff are engaged in and so that our community as well can understand and hold us accountable for what we put in the strategic plan the second area that we talked about really was the summer programming our summer learning update uh you know last year we had a lot more legislated requirements
126around what we needed to do in the summer we've scaled back to the things that we do with a little bit more intense focus on the populations with the read to achieve that we have that we're required to do the high school credit recovery some cte accelerator programs and so we just went over the opportunities that our students will have the next item was additional work on the aig plan well actually that was a deferred item i believe the aig plan that we have to submit every three years to dpi we went through that information with the board we will be submitting it to dpi by the july 15 deadline so we will likely be bringing that back to the board for approval at your next board meeting and you that was one of your
127attachments as well so really the presentation was to give you what you needed so that when you read the pres the actual plan itself it'll make sense and then the last item that we talked about in work session was the comprehensive plan for equitable discipline practices we took a little bit different approach to our work and our data reporting around student discipline which we actually didn't get to today will be deferred to the next work session but we front loaded that work today by really talking about the connection in the other areas academics student support services office of equity affairs the people who need to collaborate to ensure that our discipline data looks differently because it's not just about consequences it's restorative practices rehab it's about learning different tools it's about respecting each other and
128making sure that no student checks their identity at the door in order to access high levels of teaching learning so all of that work um it was important that you hear from the different groups that support that as a front load to what we look at in the disciplined data so that you have an understanding of how it is comprehensively addressed in a district and since we didn't finish that presentation we will bring back the actual data that goes with it at the next work session and that was our work session thank you 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
129members the laws and policies of 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 the applicable wcpss personnel the grievance policy or other applicable policies those offering comments to the board including students may discuss items 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 appro applicable policies we have 13 written comments from members of the public their comments are linked on the same online agenda we are using for tonight's meeting that agenda as well as guidance for those wishing to submit comments for future meetings can be found at the school district's website
130wcps.net under the tab labeled school board we have five comments on support of lgbtq inclusive classrooms four comments about election day one about board meeting decorum one on transportation one on covet 19 response and one on gun violence for those of you that are here to offer public comment in person you may speak for up to three minutes a yellow light at the podium will illuminate when there are 30 seconds remaining in your time and a red light will signal that your time is up in the interest of maintaining civility and decorum however speakers are encouraged to address their comments to the board of education and refrain from personal attacks and insults directed at the board individual board members staff or members of the general public please remain at the podium during your speaking time
131any materials you wish to share with the board should be handed to mr ramey our board attorney either before or after your comments our first speaker tonight is susan book hello my name is susan book i'm a wake county parent all students have the right to feel safe at school i realize there are so many external forces that we can never truly defend against however we have the power wake county public schools to control lots of internal forces every child should feel loved and accepted when they enter a bus or walk through the threshold of a school they should feel affirmed and know that they are worthy of love and respect this to me is what school safety is all about it is knowing that there is someone in that building that is safe to
132talk to without judgment or critique when tragedy strikes our schools have a tendency to harden to put the burden of school safety on children to police them more to monitor them more to judge them more i'm asking you to do the opposite as we move forward i want you all to love them more to police them less to trust them more students don't perform well when they're afraid they don't learn when they don't feel safe so let's make a school that supports all our children let our children see more rainbows not less let them see art that reflects all types of families that children feel affirmed in their culture every day let children express themselves in all the languages they know embrace diversity embrace neurodiversity i want to see more positive calm down spaces and
133less secluded scary places will all that protect our school against an armed gunman no but that is far beyond the capacity of wake county public school board i hope everyone is doing what we can to change safety on a national and state level what we can do at this level is nurture children don't dismiss emotional well-being from our curriculum fear doesn't help any student become a better student a well-regulated mind and body however indeed help all our students learn a student who sees themselves reflected in the faculty the leadership and the curriculum feels a sense of belonging when we feed our hearts we feed our minds as well i know we're trying in wake county public schools i'm asking us to prioritize despite the noise and the hate directed at so many innocent student souls
134we need more programs that affirm our students we need less police in the hallways that seek only to intimidate and arrest we can put better people in our hallways that seek only to assist and affirm that is what wake county public schools can do to make schools safer we can simply make our schools a wonderful place to learn thank you our next speaker is becky lou haas a little bit taller here hello i'm back again as you're aware i have been a long time resident of district 4 and i've had kids in the school system in district 4 for 10 years now last board meeting i was attended once again to provide public comment that is both legally protected and constitutionally guaranteed and i was a little bit disappointed in the behavior of the board
135at that meeting because during that meeting the board allowed a constituent to address other constituents and not the board for two minutes before they intervened i understand that could happen but it shouldn't have been allowed to happen as long as it did and during this two minutes the board allowed this constituent to make several derogatory statements such as selfish and despicable and made statements suggesting that parents do not have the right to protect and advocate for their children i will remind you my child is my child and this education system is part of our their constitutional right but it does not give you the right to raise my child so once again i'll state i was very disappointed of the behavior of this board that you allowed it and it's not the first time something
136like that has happened but it does highlight that there are many things that people in the system do not agree on but i do believe there is something that we can't agree on that we are concerned about our kids and our education and particularly the learning loss that have occurred over the past two years and we are concerned about the safety of our children now in regards to the learning loss we've been over this before of the declining scores you know the math 1 79 not proficient there's so much to be done the presentation was interesting to say the least but you know i've been part of a group that tried to assist a school and the thing was as when covid came we were no longer allowed in the schools to help at all
137not as a parent not with a place i was with and here you are touting another organization to do it so i'm excited that they're there but at the same time we've tried this before and you guys haven't let us do this and in regards to safety it was mentioned about the audit i look forward to going to see that but where are we going to get the funds so might i suggest that trim some of the fat you have something else on the agenda tonight from k12 insight and that's been in place for five years and it is not improved communication like it's supposed to it has not been streamlining virtual virtual learning or anything i suggest you get rid of that because we've spent one million dollars in the past five years on
138it and direct those funds to help our kids stay safe learning loss is real test scores have declined let's use money to protect our kids and not pet projects focus on providing quality education there are children in our future thank you our next speaker is jimmy riles um good evening thank you for letting me come address tonight um my name is jimmy riles i'm a father of three kids i have a an eight-year-old who's finishing second grade right now and two rising kindergartners and i'm here because i'm really dismayed at the way that politicians have been using our schools to target gay and lesbian and transgender kids being a kid is really hard being a teacher is really hard and doing either of those things while lawmakers are scapegoating you must be impossible because of
139the way our society treats them lgbtq kids are already more likely than others to struggle with mental illness and even to attempt suicide there are studies showing that they're 33 more likely to harm themselves if they don't feel affirmed in their school settings and i want to repeat that risk is not higher because of who those kids are it is because of the way that we treat them delaying acknowledgment of the range of gender identities and sexual orientations in these early years the way that house bill 755 does misses the window when kids learn who deserves respect and who deserves acceptance um already my second graders classmates are talking are using the word gay as an insult they're saying that's gay you're gay he's gay she's gay as though there's something wrong with that this
140is a thing they learn early i know that you don't have any control over the legislature but i also know that it's import more important right now than it ever has been for the school system to show its support for kids and educators who are gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender this state seems to be turning its back on them and the schools cannot do that i want to challenge you and school administrators to do more for these kids to resist banning books that honestly show lgbtq lives to support lgbtq student groups loudly full-heartedly don't reflexively cave to witch hunts like the one at ballentine elementary school give these kids what they deserve thank you for your time thank you our next speaker is l prince hi thanks for allowing us to be here
141tonight and share a commentary my name is elle france i live in cary i'm a parent of queer and transgender teens who attend inland high school who keep texting me because they know i'm speaking right now keeps popping up over my my screen i'm a lifelong resident of the greater raleigh area and i went through k-12 here in white county public schools myself i was deeply disturbed by the recent resignation of a teacher who was the victim of backlash simply for doing her job in an inclusive manner with inclusive educational materials that merely reflect the families and the lived experiences of countless wake county students many are concerned about the chilling effect that this has had and will continue to have wake county public school system employees who wish to be inclusive and supportive if
142the board does not seize this opportunity to level set the position of this district i'm here on behalf of queer parents transparent and queer and trans students to ask wake county public school system to move from a school system which has been quietly supportive to one that sets the tone that other systems in this state can follow our kids need us right now more than ever queer kids are under attack nationwide in 2022 alone across 28 states and astounding 300 plus bills were introduced attacking the freedoms of lgbt people more than half of those targeted queer youth the board needs to be crystal clear with its employees that the legislation introduced in our state has not passed is unlikely to pass and regardless that our responsibility to our kids has not changed with our kids
143trying to survive in such an environment web county public schools can do its part to educate the children in our district that they are valued and accepted for who they are by acknowledging their existence and teaching their history it's time for wake county public school systems to deliver a clear consistent message across the entire district to school administrators school counselors educators and students that our schools serve to support all families including lgbtqia and gender diverse students parents families and educators this would include clear communication from the board that not only does this district accept and support but that it expects the acknowledgement in classrooms and school newsletters of current events these are things such as international day against homophobia transphobia biphobia national coming out day intersex awareness day asexuality awareness day i hope that one
144day we'll see in this district education and commemoration of world aids day in our health classrooms introduction uh to the history of the aids crisis in america in our american history lessons during my time in wake county public schools learning about these events was unheard of today we're fortunate in this district we have employees who can share this important information with our students we have educators who are safe zone trainers we have many who are out and proud members of the community time is up i'm sorry just uh just to finish up please use the power that you have to make children and families in our county feel valued and seen by communicating with all wake county school system public employees miss friends sure i'm sorry your time is up sorry thank you our next
145speaker is amanda lund this ain't this don't scare me these were the words from a 12-ish year old girl talking to her about 8-year-old brother they were standing behind my 12 year old daughter and i waiting for a roller coaster at busch gardens saturday the language was harsh it made me uncomfortable especially being around my daughter i was contemplating saying something but as i listened i noticed her voice and the words she was using sounded just like the main character in the hate u give a frequently banned book while she was posturing really hard in regards to the roller coaster i could hear the potential trauma that she has had to endure in her life trauma that i have been fortunate to keep away from my daughter as i pondered things that may scare a
146child more than a roller coaster i couldn't help but to think of vivaldi where children body painted themselves with their classmates blood simply to survive i've also been listening to lawn boy by jonathan everson while many get stuck on the language and the sexual content i was listening for the value the main character states the library was the most stable thing in the world at the library a kid had a chance what i wanted was a book something plain spoken a book that talked about disenfranchised the disenfranchised with realism and grit where the books where were the books with characters like me while i might find some of these books harsh in their own ways they speak of various voices perspectives and experiences that may be all too true for students in our district children
147deserve to have the opportunity to hear their own voices and situations reflected back it's also important for them to hear situations that don't resonate why because it helps their critical thinking skills in determining for themselves who they actually are who they want to be and what makes them them there is no better life skill that we can teach our youth than that children deserve to be supported and encouraged to be themselves some have spoken towards the trauma of simple face mask while spewing hate and untruths about people like me who sorry they seem to miss some of the real issues facing our children and our youth like lockdowns a lack of equitable representation and grown adults calling anything that even hints at the lgbtqia plus community inappropriate this leads to higher rates of suicide and
148homelessness we need more inclusive curriculum as well as more curriculum speaking towards mental health like we do physical health and we need to really support our teachers thank you our next speaker is lana witt ms witt good thing for friends who nudge you thank you good evening board members i see a number of faces who plan to run for re-election after hearing board members over a year now you must not be too frightened of covid nor leadership you've offered i continue to wonder what your greatest fear is as a community leader and sadly we all know fear motivates voters i wonder what platform you'll present to the community in 2022 who will you be accountable to will your priorities echo the ones from your 2020 election will you continue to endorse teaching colors on flashcards
149to preschool students ages three and four while simultaneously introducing agent appropriate content like the concept of a pregnant man as happened at ballentine elementary in chairman hafiz district 8 or labeling concerned community members book banners when they request guardian notification or consent before introducing masturbation and same gender intercourse to elementary age students through accessible library books as an educator in various countries i'm not afraid of the world i am concerned with the direction of our county public school culture do you equally protect all families lgbtqia those from traditional blended and mixed nationalities like mine what's happened to majority rule and minority rights which includes even families who sense a lack of recognition and respect for traditional male female roles and the idea of an age of innocence inclusion and promotion for the sake of exploiting
150and benefiting some while excluding others are not the same instead of proclaiming yourselves moral and medical professionals maybe you'll finally begin to address the learning loss that so many concerned wake county parents have brought to you by monthly over the past two years hopefully you'll address actual academic instruction like age-appropriate science that men don't easily carry a baby men don't easily transition to female appearance nor women easily to men or maybe your priority will focus on reading and math involved in actual fatality rates from covid for ages 0 to 18 in wake county compared to prior covet death rates in our community will you address increased suicide rates following this board's unanimously forced desensitization depersonalization and dehumanization of classmates and educators by the policies pushed by curriculum and policies like abc science collaborative who didn't
151allow for mask exemptions and encouraged peers not to eat near one another nor see one another's expressions in spite of proven limited transmission rates of covid most around this table walk in lockstep with our governor on january 18 2022 even our governor recognized the importance of parental choice in education by proclaiming at national school choice week you can't escape the legacy of your years of re-education and a decade ahead of us in remediating the damage to our community even paul coe admitted as a priority for two-year-olds regarding training them to wear masks thank you our next speaker is nathaniel dibble [Applause] good evening uh last time i saw you guys we talked about uh the top's grocery store in buffalo and this time we are talking about an elementary school in uvalde i'd like to
152thank all of you especially you um dr martin for addressing the things that led up to uvaldi we've listened to your words tonight and as community members and as students we look forward to seeing that you turn your words into action and that uh sorry not only to protect the physical security of our schools but also the mental security of our students minds now while the details of vivaldi were still unfolding our state legislature was doing their best to protect our elementary school students not from guns or bullets but from things they deem more important than that house bill 755 is north carolina's don't say gay bill as i'm sure you're aware it proposes that no mention of sexual orientation or gender identity should be allowed in any classroom from kindergarten to third grade furthermore
153it says that should a student bring up those topics in the classroom that a teacher needs to report those students and out them to their family because the student mistakenly decided that their classroom was a safe place there's no way around it this is state sanctioned bigotry we've seen it with hb2 and we're seeing it again with this bill education is meant to prepare students for the world i think we can all agree on that and a cornerstone of that premise is culturally relevant education that's the reason why we teach civil rights figures in schools and that's the reason why we teach cultural identities in schools that's the reason why our education has adapted over time now it is long past time that we begin teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity in our schools
154as well if you take what i'm saying spaces outside of this it is my belief that you can make my voice heard or your voice is heard in places that otherwise they wouldn't be able to be heard and in the meantime board members you do have a chance to have a direct hand in change in policy in this county you have the chance to make this county a shining example of acceptance across the state you have the chance to create progressive policies that your students can use as a stepping stone to success and you have the power to create policies that other counties can use as a template to help their own students you have the power to fulfill the promise of a safe classroom for your students students like me are willing to speak
155out about what we need but we do need people like you to listen to us a broader trend of change starts with you thank you our next speaker is carrie fly [Applause] sorry i didn't hear you um this is our third history speech to you although i decided not to use props i hope i gave you them a paper to give to you this one is more about the current events of math curriculum pete and i do not come to this podium until we exhausted every avenue at our own schools to get resources and we're not at 500 parent teacher conferences all year because we already know that our teachers can't hand over resources to our children that you don't give them they can't give our kids what they don't have and pete and i
156are kind of pray to god but road to the shore kind of people and this speech is about what i've found in the math curriculum world that we've tried to get help with the number one things that people say to us when we commiserate about our kids having troubles learning math and middle and high school is if you can't afford tutoring you're going to have to find a textbook and teach them yourself and we have tried and that's easier said than done as we've often spoke of the changes to standards and sequencing that swept the math resource table clear 12 years ago and that's narrowed the playing field astronomically and when you break down an entire institution you leave ample room for profiteers to swoop in you create a problem and then they sell back
157the solution and they haven't sold you back half of that solution math curriculum companies are privately funded now and they're created they changed their names they changed hands they get bought and swallowed up by other companies if a math curriculum gets a bad rep it seems you can just change the name the community forgets and one might actually argue that ncdpi selected open up resources for you in when they were one of 13 states to partner with a company called k-12 oer collaborative that changed their name to open up resources and came to our table the state of math is like the wild wild west the mvp version that you have today as your district provided math curriculum no longer exists it has now been swallowed up by open up resources and is called open
158up resources high school math but it is the exact same modules there's a great article i gave you last time entitled why is everyone providing the same oer math curriculum and today i handed you a graph of the most popular math curriculums adopted by school districts today you should instantly see the monopoly and stagnant nature of those curriculum options that was what you could look for if you did what i wanted get rid of mvp get rid of open up resources you have one option on that paper five of them use the exact same middle school math modules and questions there's no variety pete and i haven't been standing up here telling you that this math curriculum is deficient without a reason there's a reason and there aren't many options and we've been asking you
159to help us fill those gaps as a district it doesn't matter which curriculum you choose on that page they're all going to not show visual learning material for children that need that thank you miss fly our next speaker is jim walsh jim walsh okay uh jackie milazzo i could probably just say ditto dr martin good evening my name is jackie malazzo and i am the mom of two amazing and autistic children in wake county public schools one at holly grove and one at preschool at ballentine i proudly support our public schools teachers and school board members who support inclusivity my son's preschool class was unfortunately in the news recently for decorations deemed inappropriate by our school system the decorations in my child's art center included families of diverse races ages sexualities genders and abilities the
160teachers actions to include these images follows one of the core beliefs of wake county public schools which states the board of education superintendent and all staff value a diverse school community that is inviting respectful inclusive flexible and supportive by removing the pictures and calling them inappropriate the school system failed to uphold one of its core beliefs and the person or persons who made this decision should be held accountable the parents and children in the special education classroom were failed when the school system would not stand against the homophobic request to remove these images we were failed when they decided to not inform us that they removed these pictures from our child's class months ago we were failed when the school system showed a lack of public support for our preschool teacher when this issue made
161national news all of which ultimately led to our incredible preschool teacher resigning and not ending the school year with our children as our teachers are required and evaluated on embracing diversity in the classroom i struggled to understand the decision to remove these pictures i do not need to tell you about the teacher shortage we're facing especially special education teachers who would want to work in a school system where it appears any parent complaint warranted or not will have the school system bending over backwards to appease them for fear of negative publicity if a parent has an issue with these images that is their business but it doesn't change facts that families and persons who look like these images exist in our communities and schools and they have every right to see themselves in their classrooms
162by removing these cards the message is sent that differences in all of us are not okay every child deserves to see in their classroom that the differences between us are accepted and not scary or wrong please ensure that this representation continues to happen support our teachers when they create an inclusive classroom and do not give more power to the hate-filled voices thank you for your time thank you our next speaker is kimberly pope hi there my name is kim pope i'm a wake county parent of six-year-old twin boys i'm here to ask the board to please consider installing door barriers in all wake county public schools i've chosen to speak in person because the emails that i sent to the board on may 28th have gone unanswered i've also reached out to our deputy director
163fire marshal braxton tanner superintendent kathy moore the wake county sheriff's office my school's pta president and our principal we as parents want the last line of defense to be the best line of defense that's the classroom door while security cameras and on-site resource officers are very much needed we need more than locked doors that can be breached we want our children and teachers to be assured that they are safe when the classroom door closes i've done my research on the best solutions for door locking systems and i want to recommend the board look into rhino wear lockdown systems from campus safety solutions the company is located in jacksonville north carolina and the product is manufactured right here in night dell they've installed units and other school systems across the nation and locally they're in iredell
164county east wake academy and several others currently in process i have no affiliation with this company other than what i've researched and conversations i've had with corporate personnel this system is an ada compliant military-grade active threat lockdown solution it's installed at fort knox the navy was so impressed after seeing a break test that they recommended this device via every naval facility in the world it's the only lockdown system that is fire marshal approved for single motion egress it can be operated by an adult or a child in one second to gain safe haven in a moment's notice it can be unlocked from the outside using a custom key assigned to school administration it can be engaged every time class starts and all day to provide security and peace of mind using a wi-fi signal installed
165at the bottom of the device it has the ability to be connected to existing security system software it can resist any effort to breach the door short of breaking the surrounding structure therefore buying valuable time for law enforcement to help using this lockdown system will make the classroom a safe haven where students and teachers can relax and be more assured of their safety and security recently a position has been started across wake county we have over 500 signatures in support of this device so far in closing i ask you to look into the rhino where lockdown system as it provides the level of protection our children and teachers deserve i look forward to your response and i look forward to continuing this conversation offline thank you thank you miss pope our next speaker is janae
166mobley good evening my name is janae mobley and i'm a proud mother of two valentine elementary fireflies in fuquay verena district 2. and that is where i want to start valentine elementary we've been part of the school community now for five years and counting and what an amazing and loving community it is we are fortunate that every year without fail we have had wonderful teachers lead and inspire our girls to work hard dream big and be it in virtual classroom or in person when i asked my rising second and fifth graders what they loved most about their school without hesitation i was told it was the teachers and the school spirit proudly on display and it's not just the teachers our school administrators staff and parent volunteers all work together focused on one goal to
167build a safe and inclusive environment where all of our kids can learn grow and glow for all fireflies glow means to give and earn respect lead by example own your actions and work hard every day if only everyone could embody these traits as this board is all too aware working in public education in any capacity is a true labor labor of love particularly in this state and it's in this politically charged and polarizing environment but that's where we are today because of this environment we are hurting the ones we claim to love the most our kids our school was tossed into the international spotlight over a drawing of a same-sex couple expecting a child that's that's it a loving couple uh expecting a child uses part of an art display weeks ago intended to show
168that families come in all ages shapes sizes and colors just like our very own school community hardly inappropriate we should be celebrating this pre-k teacher who's been praised by the actual parents in the classroom for the incredible work she has done to help their kids thrive many with special needs instead this teacher felt forced to resign with our kids the ultimate victims as they have lost as well as our community a beloved and incredible teacher as a parent i believe we need to both normalize and celebrate our diversity kids that learn this at an early age develop a stronger tolerance and acceptance of others fostering friendship kindness and empathy all traits we need more of in this world and we need to do whatever it takes to hold on to teachers and school administrators that
169do just that it is still unclear to me if the concerned constituent is even a part of our community or has kids in school at all after all a question about curriculum or resources in a classroom is typically addressed by the school or even the board of education not a house representative nevertheless this unknown individual appears to be just another actor in the political theater that is playing out across our country searching for problems to fit an agenda instead of solving the ones that are staring us in the face let's talk about those issues real issues facing way counting public schools across north carolina school funding teacher pay school safety facility maintenance and upgrades to improve indoor air quality food insecurity and school nutrition lack of nurses bus drivers counselors support staff and moving our
170state from an embarrassing ranking of 33rd overall in education that's where all of you come in i truly appreciate all the work and self-sacrifice of eating board members that you've made thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak thank you our next speaker is laila haddad hi my name is layla i'm nine years old and i go to washington elementary school in raleigh i am in the third grade and one of the things i love about my school is how diverse it is i have classmates from all over the world including india venezuela mexico and japan as well as different types of families i also love how much you have fun and also get to learn a lot my class gets to talk about what their culture is like in india for example people
171get to do this thing called holi and throw color bombs up in the air to make everybody colorful i learn so much every day my teacher helps us learn by making school fun i'm so happy to be back to school in person being in virtual school was hard but our teachers were kind and helpful even the school's on the screen now our teachers have worked so hard to help us catch up even the students who are struggling to learn i also love being in the band at my school i love playing saxophone and my band teacher helped me and guided me all the way through one of my favorite activities is that i got to do this thing like show and tell but a good big kid version called share box during showbox time i
172got to bring this book to school every day and let other people read the book which was called black heroes by erlisha norwood it was really fun listening to stories of black people who made a difference we learned about people like martin luther king jr and jackie robinson learning about these heroes made me realize that i can make a difference even though i'm a kid my schools have taught me that i can have an impact i hope that our schools continue to teach us about different people and different cultures teaching us about diversity is so important and i i'm glad that my school thinks diversity is something we should all learn about it's also great that my school welcomes students from all different types of families and cultures thank you for listening to my speech
173thank you layla and thank you for telling us the incredible things that are happening at washington elementary our next speaker is tracy taylor good evening board members and superintendent moore tonight at the board table a board member said that students are trying to figure out how to move on from covid wake county private schools students as well as students in other states that opened in the fall of 2020 figured it out today is day 814 of the governor's state of emergency it's all about the money right no one of the board members said tonight we shouldn't wait for a crisis to make these investments on june 10th 2020 20 but 2021 there's this from the governor how long the state of emergency needs to continue oh sure the state of emergency needs to continue we
174need to continue to draw down federal funds we need to continue yes it is all about the money never has it been about the students and teachers success with 20 to 30 20 to 30 proficiency in reading and math your investments investments have not produced a positive return of investment and require greater scrutiny versus asking for more money spending per pupil is not equal across the board which would be okay if student outcomes and proficiency were higher for example in 2020 mills park middle school students got 20 76 48 per student west cary middle school 7509 bug elementary 13 thousand nine hundred ninety five powell elementary school thirteen thousand seven hundred thirty nine how much money will it take for students to have academic success twenty thousand thirty thousand forty thousand per people meanwhile from
175fall uh from twenty eleven to twenty twenty elementary student teachers uh staff increased only by one percent other professionals increased by 189 percent and central office staff increased by 56 percent you want more money from the state and wake county you and the board of commissioners want to and have been increasing taxes so students can succeed yet you turn around and become more top-heavy and pay an attorney to litigate against parents while teachers and students are an afterthought parents are tired of the lies and lack of full disclosure we were told that medical mask exemptions would be honored they were not you tell your coveted stats and you don't give full disclosure and you also don't know what you're talking about you didn't even know what pool testing was your hubers your hubris is deafening
176our next speaker is pete fly [Applause] hi so first i want to start off by saying i do applaud you all for noticing that there was an issue apparently taking a very long time to lobby and advocate for that issue and put together a nice outside of the box way to try and solve that issue with everything we heard earlier with helps what confuses me a bit is that we're only looking at reading with that and i don't see any of that same thing going on with math yet earlier today in your work meeting you showed a slide that had three columns about math one about english one that had math and english together talking about the um the the loss the learning losses happen in aig and the math ones were worse than the
177english ones so why is it so hard to think that maybe we're still having an issue with the curriculum in math as well you can talk about learning loss with covid you've talked about how we need to hold the kids accountable why is it so difficult to think that maybe one of those factors might actually be the curriculum itself and why are you so strongly against trying to work towards looking at data that may help show that i've spent three years coming up here i'm missing my playoff hockey game right now because i am here listening or trying to talk to you about all this and i hear all the applause and everything going on and i wish they were still here because i would love to turn to the community and say yes we
178need your help in math also because unlike in english where apparently we have resource to go i've got to either take out a large car or a small house loan to put both of my kids through tutoring monthly to help them get through the basic math curriculum that you have right now that's not learning loss by the way just a little thing on that learning loss word learning loss means that you had it in the first place and you're losing it but we're not identifying when they don't have it at all so it's easy to sit behind covid and say that kovy caused all of the problems that we have but be willing to bet you've been talking about the reading thing for longer than just covid because of the amount of people that you
179thanked and how much effort they've put in over the years to come here and advocate for it this is an issue and as carrie told you who is much smarter than i on all this stuff it's an issue you painted yourselves into a corner on because now you literally have one other program you can look at to be able to help out instead of trying so blindly to tell me why this is so good can we at least look at the option or look at the data objectively to see if maybe that is one of the multiple issues that could be affecting our kids right now and why they are having so much trouble in math because dropping from the 90s to 22 isn't just because some kids didn't take the eog thank you our
180next speaker is brad martin brad martin hi greetings wake county board of educators staff and administrators my name is brad martin and i'm with k-12 computers our organization helps school districts across the nation maximize the value of their i.t surplus on average our organization increases school districts i t surplus revenue by 200 to 300 percent making our organization k12 computers the highest paying company in the nation for it surplus exactly how we're able to increase the revenue for our school districts is when the devices are outdated we send gaylords and boxes to your school's warehouse the outdated devices are placed in our boxes once full we transport the devices to our warehouse in lexington north carolina our team then categorizes by grade level each device deletes the data and repairs the broken computers to increase
181the value each device is entered into a serialized audit report accompanied with a data deletion certificate afterwards the devices are repaired they go to a electronic reseller platform to get the market value bids on the school's equipment we have a transparent honest process and we keep you updated every step of the way for example we have been servicing guilford county schools since january last year their total revenue for their i.t surplus was ninety thousand dollars their current payout to date with us k-12 computers is that a hundred and fifty thousand dollars projecting to hit three hundred thousand dollars by the end of the year which is an increase in revenue of more than three hundred percent with the added funds it can go to the security of the children or to the staff the administration
182the school bus drivers wherever it sees fit for the school districts so once again my name is brad i'm with k12 computers and we're really looking forward to helping your school district in any way we can thank you very much for your time thank you for your comments our next speaker is christina spears good evening chair mahaffey vice chair hegarty board members superintendent moore and district staff i'm christina spears wake ncae vice president and president-elect currently serving as coordinating teacher in the office of equity affairs happy pride month i'm disappointed in the lack of comments recognizing the importance of pride month amid the news from valentine elementary mentioned by dr martin and the climate ms scott described for our lgbtq students in schools pride month is an opportunity for us both to recognize the struggles
183and injustices faced by queer folks and celebrate and affirm their gender and sexual identities core belief two says every student is expected to learn grow and succeed while we will eliminate the ability to predict achievement based on social and cultural factors like gender and sexual orientation a recent survey by glsen showed that 86 percent of lgbtq students are harassed or assaulted at school based on personal characteristics like gender and sexual orientation how might our queer students learn grow and succeed in environments when they are more likely to experience harassment and assault than their cisgender heterosexual peers the answer lies in core belief number five where we say we value a diverse school community that is inviting respectful inclusive flexible and supportive i'm proud to work in the school district that has core beliefs that acknowledges
184and affirms the diverse people and families in our community in celebrating pride month we have an opportunity to see and understand our queer students colleagues and community members and honoring the history of pride we have a chance to be courageous in making decisions that interrupt inequities for our lgbtqia community as wcpss updates its strategic plan where skills like respect empathy and the four c's are rising as necessary for our graduates i hope we will be intentional in considering how to build the capacity of adult stakeholders to cultivate these skills in our students how do i show respect and empathy for folks across difference like gender and sexuality how can we build critical thinking skills in a way that allows students to be critical of the socio-political context that perpetuates inequities for certain groups of people
185how are we being creative and collaborative and interrupting injustices against our most vulnerable student groups the lack of proclamations tonight sends an implicit message about our commitment to working toward justice for all folks regardless of gender and sexual orientation my hope is that the folks seated in power in this room choose to defeat fear by speaking truth to power i hope we choose to be courageous by sending an explicit message about how we realize these core beliefs in our classrooms and schools and we clearly demonstrate support for leaders principals educators who are working to realize these beliefs every day thank you for your time labor and consideration thank you our next our next speaker is crystal barren hello my name is christelle behrend and i am the librarian at nigel high school today is the
186first public public board meeting of june when we celebrate pride month i'm proud to work at a school where we are visible in our efforts to show our students that we are safe and judgment free we may not be in session right now at khs but our library worked with our gsa club to create an early pride display for may those kids were motivated they created an amazing 3d flag in the makerspace with all kinds of recycled materials including and i'm on date myself here vhs film we even had one of our knit wit lit club members who just learned in it this year knit one of the colors and one student did this amazing information board on the anti-trans legislation sweeping our nation state by state unfortunately that board will need to be updated
187as north carolina entertains its own hb 755. this display was a collaboration designed and driven by kids who are passionate about their rights and proud of who they are many who got there after some very bumpy journeys the thing about being part of the lgbtq community is that just because they're proud at this moment doesn't mean that they will continue to do so they will have to make the decision to be seen by every new person they meet they will be judged by some called names and discriminated against by others and disliked sight unseen just for who they are by a few so yes pride month is an important affirmation to remind our lgbtq students and staff to continue to be proud of who they are i'm excited to be volunteering at the first apex
188pride this saturday but i was dismayed to hear that the apex festival commission made the decision not to do drag story hour they reacted out of fear because they've been receiving threats since when do we take away from the many because of the few who are allowed to get away with threatening someone since when do teachers resign amid threats with no apparent consequence to those making the threats and since when does our school believe that its entire parent base is made up of families who have a far-right conservative view i want a school system that i can be proud of one that stands for core belief five and one that will stand behind supporting and in front of protecting those teachers who are in classrooms making core belief com core belief five come to life
189i wanna be a proud employee of a public school system that affirms all identities all students and all families without apology or age restrictions i want to be proud of my school district for taking a stand and putting in writing solid rules and procedures for how to make sure we're following policy 1710 with regards to our lgbtq students so that perceived lgbtq friendliness is not inconsistent building to building i want to be proud to work in a distance a district that knows and affirms the value of pride month we cannot let those who threaten us dictate how we operate we cannot let hate win we're not putting our lgbtq students back in the closet our next speaker is kristen morrison good evening board good evening superintendent moore it's very lovely to be here with you
190this evening and i would like to start by first thanking you for your leadership no doubt this last couple of years has been an unprecedented amount of work both mentally physically and i'm just very grateful for the way that you've led us through the pandemic i'm here tonight regarding the 22 23 and 23 24 academic calendars and respectfully request that you revisit those calendars to align a teacher work day with election days i will provide some data to you at the end from the public data that's available on election day 73 wake county schools serve as polling locations and of these locations 55 are elementary schools 13 are middle schools and 5 are high schools these schools serve 53 272 students which is almost 34 of our wake county student population on primary election day
191last month i discovered a drop-off that my second graders elementary school was serving as a polling location that day and his school had obviously taken precautions the voters were entering through a side entrance straight to the cafeteria to vote and there were polling election volunteers that were trying to serve as a barrier between those voters and their entrance into the building however the students did cross paths with the voters as they were getting their meals for lunch and my anxiety that day was greatly heightened as i imagined these scenarios where it would be so easy for a voter to bypass a volunteer and make their entry into the school building across the country a staggering sorry the county across the county a staggering 38 785 voters entered school buildings last month to vote wake county
192school buildings this is an alarming security risk to me it concerned me that day and a week later as i watched what unfolded at rob elementary school it was a crushing worry so today's world is unpredictable and we have no ability to be immune to such a tragedy unfolding in our own community one of my friends recounted their experience voting last month in a wake county school walking down the hallway alongside of the students who were transitioning between classes to make her way to the library she had she noticed no supervision she didn't have an escort and this obviously concerned her the school that she voted at had 464 voters that day and 1064 students were exposed to those voters with no security in place or no obvious security in place while there are many
193arrests that we can't predict we do have the ability to mitigate this one and we can align a teacher work day with election day so that our students can stay out of the buildings and safe with the extra visitors in those school buildings i compared the published calendars with elections upcoming and i have some it looked like there were some observable shifts that could be possible to mitigate these circumstances i'll pass that off as well i'm hoping that tonight if it's not possible to adjust the calendar that at least raising this involves some conversation about student safety at elections thank you for your time thank you our next speaker is michelle morrow hello ladies and gentlemen and superintendent moore and board members thanks for letting us come and speak i did want to speak about
194safety and also the scholastics in our schools because i think that they are combined one in the other i think we definitely have a solution and to your point dr martin when we were talking about how we're going to pay for this i really do think that there's a way to do this i think we definitely need two years ago about this time you guys had a zoom session that i was watching from home talking about that was kind of the height of when they were talking about defunding the police and you discussed the possibility of even removing student resource officers that we had just recently i know mr hegarty you were in a conversation saying that we do have some student resource officers in high schools a few kind of spattered throughout middle schools
195but there are none in the elementary school and i want to say this it is very commonly known across this country that these people that are criminals that intend to do harm they do not want a confrontation they go to the places where they know that they will be able to get away with the violence that they desire to do which is the very reason why so many of us probably have a home security system in our homes right and they even say that just having the sign outside of your house makes you safer right than if you don't have the help because these people do not want to be confronted i think if we had if it was known that there were student resource officers in every school in wake county that you would
196lessen the chance of there being any chance that our children or our um or our staff is going to be harmed i'm also going to say this so many people talk about it being fearful because you're going to have police officers they're going to be armed people were saying you want them to walk around with ar-15s absolutely not there are so many plain clothes clothed people right now that you and i don't even know what they're doing but they are all around and they have the ability to keep us safe should it be necessary i think in addition so many people here are talking about the fact that children are being bullied there have been studies that are showing that part of that problem is that handheld devices and i think when we're talking about
197saving money i was in a meeting a couple months ago when we were talking about the money that you're needing and potentially having to put the the bond on the um on the election this fall most of what was talked about in the needs to help with learning loss was talking about i.t and digital issues and getting more devices into kids hands and then all the i.t and even the man came and discussed how expensive that is i think we need to take those handheld devices out of our elementary schools and even the first two years of our our middle school we need to go back to textbooks so we can understand when we've lost something so that people can help their children outside of school with things that they maybe they didn't understand and
198i think having student resource officers is also going to be helpful for bullying in the schools for children to feel safe in the in the hallways and even for teachers to feel safe in the classrooms because we all know that not every school is a wonderful and easy place to teach so thanks for your time thank you this concludes public comment [Applause] at this time i will entertain a motion to accept our consent items i'm chair i move that our consent items be approved second all right thank you miss kushner and miss johnson hassler is there any discussion hearing none all in favor please say aye aye any opposed nay we move on to our action items which begins with policy and that is board policy 3410 testing and assessment program first reading and dr
199brad mcmillan will be joining us good evening chair mahaffey superintendent moore members of the board i'm here to present on first reading our revised policy 3140 testing and assessment program the revisions in here reflect updates made by the north carolina school boards association to intend and are intended to align with changes to the state's testing program guidelines this revised policy was reviewed at the may 31st policy committee meeting and when given final board approval it will replace the current policy 3140. so tonight we request board's approval of this first reading of revised policy 3140 testing and assessment program and with that i'll take any questions that you all may have and madam chair i'd like to make a motion that we approve revisions to um board policy 3410 testing and assessment program for first reading
200second thank you miss kushner and miss johnson hustler is there any discussion i was very grateful for the conversations we had at the policy committee meeting thank you all right hearing nothing else all those in favor please say aye any opposed nay all right thank you very much dr mcmillan thank you we now move on to board policy 3432 professional learning communities first reading and with us is miss emily mountford senior director of the office of professional learning good evening good to see all of you again chairman happy superintendent more members of the board i'm here to present the first read of our new policy 34 32 professional learning communities this will be a wcpss specific policy as there is no corresponding north carolina school boards association policy it will create a new policy that
201will be given final board approval it was reviewed at the january 26 2021 meeting as well as the may 31st 2022 policy committee meeting we offer one additional change based on committee member comments the first sentence of the second paragraph section a should read plcs may be organized in vertical subject level cross-disciplinary teams or singletons tonight we request the board's approval for the first reading of the new policy 3432 professional learning communities mr kushner madam chair i'd like to make a motion that we approve new policy 3432 professional learning communities with the additional language that the smallford just went over in section 8. all right is there a second second thank you any discussion dr martin as i noted in the policy committee meeting i do not support this policy while i'm a very strong
202supporter of plcs i do feel like this policy is not an effective governing policy i think it has too much detail that that could be could be described as very prescriptive as opposed to governing i think a lot of that prescriptive language should be as examples of things that plcs could do and could go in the supplementary document but i i recognized that that was not the majority of the committee's perspective but that is why i will be voting no on this policy like i very strongly support plcs yeah but i don't believe this policy uh meets the standard that we should have thank you dr martin misscott thank you and i just wanted to could you please re re-read the first sentence of the second paragraph under section a the revision the revision sure
203plcs may be organized in vertical subject level cross disciplinary teams or singletons thank you is um is singleton's a work like is that a is that a word everybody i mean we know it but but i honestly had never really heard um that role phrased that way until the pandemic when we were talking about support for singleton so i was just wondering is that term something that will be someone will understand if they happen to be reading through this policy yeah it's a pretty widely used like verbage for any uh teacher that is the only teacher in their building and so based on the conversations that we had at the committee meeting we thought we wanted to add that there it is reflective already in the guidance documents that are linked in the policy but
204we wanted to make sure that we pulled it out and actually put it in the policy for us thank you and in that same sentence level i assume that means grade level and i just wondered if that should be spelled out as grade level of subject slash level is is also understood i mean i know that's just a semantics question but it it does reference grade level and we could add grade if if that's what the board feels i think grade level might be clearer just because uh same subject or you know would apply to all others that are not leveled so if level here is just grade level that might make sense absolutely so could you repeat that edited for us just so we're sure absolutely thank you plc's may be organized in vertical
205subject slash grade level cross-disciplinary teams or singletons mr hagerty yeah i just want to reinforce ms scott's concerns about the use of the word singleton and i'll dispute that it's a commonly used term it might be in school administrative terms but outside of school administration i'll bet there are very few parents that understand what that means and i understand that this policy is more geared toward internal operations but we have internal rules procedures and other documents where that kind of language is appropriate i just don't know that it's i shared the same concerns i wasn't going to mention i'm glad miss scott did and i'd rather have a more plain english definition of what that means in the policy um i i just i don't think that should be dismissed shouldn't we just call them
206single subject teachers that would work fine with me as opposed to something that rhymes with simpleton okay that's i mean i think that's fine i think you are correct that anybody who works in a school knows what it means but i don't think that uh if a parent is reading it they're going to understand it so single subject teacher society yeah my response was more of if the school knew what it meant but i definitely agree with you that parents may not know so the revision would be single subject and i'm fine if you put singleton in quotes for the folks that do know that i just speak on it but i think having it in plain language i know we don't like redundancies but sometimes they help we could um if we reference singletons
207in the guidance or we could put a single subject and then put in quotes in the guidance singleton just to make it shorter wonderful all right any further discussion or questions from miss mount mountford okay seeing none all those in favor please signify with i i any opposed nay right all right thank you with one objection motion passes thank you miss malford thank you we now move on to board policy 4342 student searches first reading we will be joined by our senior director of security russ smith good evening miss mr smith thank you good evening uh chair mahaffey superintendent moore and members of the board i'm here to present tonight the first reading of our revised policy 4342 student searches revisions reflect updates made by staff it was reviewed by the board's policy committee meeting
208during the meeting on may 31st 2022 when given final board approval it will replace our current policy at that meeting on may 31st committee members requested additional language to be added regarding parental notification of suspicionless breathalyzer tests you will find that additional language highlighted in yellow near the bottom of page 4. please note that the current policy includes language in section a in the last sentence which requires a school administrator to promptly notify the student's parent or guardian of a reasonable suspicion search tonight we request the board's approval of the first reading of revised policy student searches and chairman happy i make a motion that we approve for first reading board policy 4342 revision student searches all right thank you miss kushner and mr hegarty any discussion yes sir i just want to thank mr
209smith and the staff for the revisions to the policy one of the things that was very important to us was that if you did have a student that came and had enough alcohol that they were triggering triggering a breathalyzer that they could get home safely and that you wouldn't be putting them out as a risk to themselves or to others so thank you for those changes i think they're very good and i think the parental notification family notification are good additions thank you very much any further commentary or questions okay hearing none all those in flavor please say aye any opposed nay all right thank you mr smith our next policy is board policy 7503 teleworking first reading and we have dr aj mutillo good evening chair mahaffey superintendent moore members of the board i'm
210here to present the first reading of our revised policy 7503 for teleworking revisions reflect updates made by the staff should probably clarify that this is our second round of proposed updates on may 17th you approved revisions to permit teachers and other school-based employees to telework on unprotected teacher work days beginning with the 2022-23 school year then in last week's policy committee meeting we presented additional revisions that would help move this policy from one where employees would only be permitted to telework on emergency situations to one that would provide additional professional flexibility to work remotely in certain situations these additional options for telework in the proposed revisions include intermittent telework on non-instructional days for 11 and 12-month administrative and clerical staff discretionary telework as well as for central services hybrid and full telework positions these recommendations
211were reviewed in detail at last week's may 31st policy committee meeting and when given final board approval it would replace the current policy tonight we request the board's approval of the first reading of the revised policy 7503 for teleworking and chairman happy i'd like to make a motion that we approve the proposed revisions to board policy 7503 teleworking for first reading second okay we have a first or we have a motion and a second for this policy is there any discussion ms carter okay so i know i always say this but thank you so much i really do appreciate your willingness to continue to look at this and look at ways that we can provide what i view as a benefit for our employees and i also appreciate looking at the different options of employment
212the hybrid option just in full tele work i just i think it's vital right now especially with the workforce how it is across industries and anything we can do to help support our staff members and encourage them to stay with us and also recruit new staff i fully support so thank you so much you and your team yes ma'am thank you thank you and as you were saying that ms carter i saw the arrow from mr cook's presentations fly through my head so it must be normalizing mr haggerty thank you again i just echo ms carter's statements you know you know the difficulties that we have in teacher and staff recruitment and retention and anything we can do right now to add another competitive tool a competitive option to keep our staff here and to
213attract more staff is just really vital to the health of the district as i've been talking to people in the district over the last couple months you do have some that are considering their careers where they might go they're looking at offers you know in other districts they're looking at pay but it's not just pay working conditions and working environment are a big part of it and to be able to where it's appropriate offer this as an option i think will be invaluable to the work that you do so i i'm glad that you brought this policy and uh we'll be supporting it thank you thank you sir ms kushner thank you and um and i think we talked about this at the policy committee meeting and it bears repeating just the the equity across
214the district and i know that we need to have um our school level leaders that in each building the principles be able to determine the balance of telework but i do hope that hr will be giving some guidance so that there is some equity across the system so that um we do there might be some hesitant leaders out there who who may not embrace teleworking so i hope that there's going to be some proactive work to educate our leaders about the potential for retaining employees and working this into our our systems so it's going to be a leap for some of our leaders and i can acknowledge that's understandable but also given where we are we should be supporting our employees and utilizing this thank you yes ma'am all right any further discussion or comments
215seeing none all those in paper please say aye any opposed nay all right passes thank you very much we'll now entertain a motion to go into closed session chairman happy yes sir and move that at this time we move into closed session to consider confidential personnel information protected under gs 318-11 a1 a3 and the ever important a6 to consult with the board of education attorney mr neil raymie today and preserve the attorney-client privilege is provided in gs 143-18 a3 due to current litigation lp by and through jp and kp versus wake county board of education and others eastern district of north carolina case number 520 cv 481 dash bo and nb versus wake county board of election at the office of education my apologies at the office of administrative hearings see i could get all
216the numbers right it's the letters that were throwing me at uh 20 eastern district court 3684 and mokwa versus wake county board of education and brenecki wake county superior court 22 cvs 006170 and finally to consider confidential student information pretended and protected under general statute 115c-402 and the family educational rights and privacy act 20 united states code 1232-g thank you is there a second all right thank you dr martin all right all in favor please say aye any opposed nay all right thank you we are in closed session you