001oh um okay um [Music] cgi do you know yes uh is all right front center hold on to that surfboard it's going to get bumpy oh okay good evening everyone and welcome it is tuesday april 19th 2022 at 5 44 p.m and we are calling this regular meeting of the wake county board of education to order i would like 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 i want 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
002disruptions disruptions by any person or persons of a public meeting will be subject to action in accordance with general statute 143-318-17 we have a quorum of all board members present and we'd like to welcome dr gardner here as superintendent moore is off at the magnet schools of america conference if you would all join me in standing and reciting the pledge of allegiance indivisible with liberty and justice for all we begin this meeting with a little bit of sadness as i share the news that a long time wake county employee and current principal coach freda cole passed away this week ms cole served as a teacher assistant principal and principal from 1977 to 2012 before formally retiring in her retirement she went on to serve as an interim principal or assistant principal on 19 different occasions
003whenever a school was in need she was working as a principal coach coach at the time of her passing serving our families and schools and students to find the life of frieda cole and our deepest sympathy is extended to her family and her friends and if you would please join me in a moment of silence as we honor her work and contributions thank you very much at this time i'll turn it over to dr gardner for comments from the superintendent's office thank you thank you chairman happy for leading us in a moment of silence in memory of free to call frida kohl as ms mahaffey indicated has worked with our district from a long time and has has a rich tenure with our school district we're grateful for frida's outstanding leadership and service during her
004tenure with wake county as reflected by the numerous roles she continued to feel even after her retirement we know firsthand of her love for working in schools and we deeply appreciate her commitment to our district as she continued to support our students administrators and staff our deepest sympathy is extended to the family and i ask that all of us keep her family and our colleagues in your thoughts tonight is my privilege to offer congratulations to our 2021-22 teacher of the year finalist who were announced on april 6th we have 10 finalists and i'd like to call each of them by name tonight to highlight this ex recognition cindy parker a physical education teacher at yates mill elementary george bartlich a 9th grade english teacher at inload magnet high magni maggie childress a seventh grade ela
005and social studies teacher at austin ridge middle brandon soros a sixth grade social studies teacher at east millbrook middle cindy alala a kindergarten teacher at willow springs elementary julia mitch a kindergarten teacher at sycamore creek elementary kristen chabel a second grade teacher at buckhorn creek elementary jermaine howell a fourth grade teacher at cedar fork elementary caroline olson a special education extended content standards teacher at broughton magnet high and laura newhouse a first grade teacher at dillard drive magnet elementary teacher of the year candidates are nominated and elected by their peers at their individual schools and then they submit an e-portfolio to a final selection committee that highlights their work and their philosophy around teaching these ten finalists who i've had the opportunity to recognize tonight will now appear before an interview committee panel that will
006select the final teacher of the year for our district the winner will be named a special celebration that our district will hold on may 11th we are truly blessed to have as many excellent teachers as we have in our district so it truly is a remarkable accomplishment that these felons are being honored in such a way by their peers as the most talented best and brightest in the district we owe a gratitude of thanks to them for what they do in the classroom each and every day touching the lives of young people so once again i would like to extend congratulations to this esteemed group of teacher finalists of the year congratulations are also in order to marcela roy our senior director of long-range planning who was named planner of the year by the north
007carolina chapter of the association for learning environments extremely exciting this award recognizes educational facility planning excellence and it is the highest and most distinguished honor presented by the organization a graduate of north carolina state university ms roy began her career in the university's facilities planning design department before she joined wake county schools more than 20 years ago as a senior facility planner she later served as planning director for two years before assuming her current role as senior director of long-range planning then her during her tenure with our school district she has helped to lead four successful bond-funded building programs totaling more than 3.1 billion dollars that have resulted in more than 125 new schools and major addition renovation projects ms roy's positive energy her professionalism her knowledge and respect for others have served her well
008in a variety of public settings including board and community engagement meetings with the support of state and local leaders and our wake county taxpayers we are fortunate to have state of the art facilities across our district for our students and staff ms roy and her colleagues ensure the best use of our public funds and they create learning environments that help students grow and succeed congratulations ms roy on this well deserved honor school counselors at fuquay arena high school have earned a top national honor from the american school counselor association or what is known as asca they received the recognized asca model program or as some of us know it as the ramp award this award is given to schools committed to delivering a comprehensive data informed school counseling program in accordance with the asca national
009model the designation is valid for five years and each member of the school counseling team will receive a free membership to asca for those five years the work of school counselors has never been more critical or vital so it is encouraging to see a school recognized for the quality and the commitment of its school counselors our thanks go to the counseling team at fuquay verena high school and the work they do on behalf of our students and staff every day congratulations to each one of you finally this evening i'd like to recognize shannon adcock and her family and consumer science students at dillard drive magnet middle school for participating in a very unique charity project they are making dresses to send to an all-girl orphanage in mexico part of an international initiative called dress a
010girl around the world that sends handmade dresses to girls living in extreme poverty last year more than one million dresses were sent to over 82 different countries as a global studies and spanish emerging magnet school diller drive magnet middle has a mission to teach students how to be active participants within our community both locally and globally by hand sewing these dresses ms adcox students are showing their care and concern for these fortunate children less fortune children and another part of our world and i know they love receiving these gifts you can learn more including how you can support this effort with supplies by visiting wcpss.net address we now have a brief video that we invite you to show see and to celebrate these students and actions for the work they're doing on an international level
011congratulations to each one [Music] what an impressive display of the world thank you audience for recognizing their work i hope they can hear that applause so thank you chairman happy that concludes our comments for tonight thank you dr gardner uh always wonderful to see the work that our students are doing in school to not just help their own skill set but to have that service and global mindset understanding different contexts and different struggles throughout the world as as kids are moving we certainly look forward to celebrating our teachers and our finalists in may and i hope all of our traditional calendar teachers had a restful spring break and for those on year round i know the time of clopening is upon us and i hope some restful time for you and that really concludes my
012comments by sher hegarty thank you chair mahaffey um i'll keep it brief i do want to express thanks to our partners with the kerry chamber of commerce for again hosting our staff to special appreciation events as you know last month they honored our carey principals and then this week they honored our assistant principals with a very nice appreciation event that they held also thanks to the north raleigh or the northwest raleigh citizens advisory committee for their meeting talking about student security and security issues in our schools and we're going to continue this conversation going forward few other things coming up just to let you all know about we have an exciting ribbon cutting at york elementary school which was my elementary school when i attended wake county schools back a long time ago um and
013we're really excited to see the new building the new capacity with all of the kids moved back into the building and we'll have the gifts of gold event coming up next week this is april 26th this is a wonderful event i know some of you have heard about the pieces of gold event that we do hopefully you've had a chance to see it either in person or remotely this is another event that we do this will be at crabtree mall again on the 26th special arts night that we do in collaboration with the united arts group here in wake county that celebrates a lot of the fantastic talents of our students and a lot of the good work they're doing so if you're available that night come on out and see it and support our
014students thank you okay let's start with miss johnson hustler no comments thanks ms mohave oh well miss kushner thank you for honoring i'm free to call this evening i first met her in 2000 mid 2000's when i was on with the wake pta council and she was at the temporary site for forest pines it was a fairly controversial move but bill mcneil sent a rock star to be that principal and every parent i talked to that year was just blown away by the experience their child had that first year with miss cole she was truly a rock star principal and she will be missed yesterday i was very glad to be with dr martin and the rest of our team to ms cash and miss mahaffey and i were able to cut the help cut
015the ribbon at wake stem early college and i'll let dr martin say more but i think it was an amazing display of the innovation that's going on at the high school level in our schools and thank you to dr ware and everyone who put that program together yesterday thank you miss kushner miss cash yes so i didn't have many comments i enjoyed yesterday a lot um i think that school surprised me so much and the principal gave some great remarks and again dr martin you had a great speech yesterday so i'm going to allow you to talk more about that i do want to mention there's been some concerns that have been brought to me and were featured in the newspaper recently about a program that might be attended by six teachers at millbrook high
016school so being that the school is in my district um i did what i normally do i go do my homework and so i love going into the schools whether they whether i'm supposed to or not at that time but i i go in and i'm always welcome so it gave me the opportunity to go back to millbrook high school which is a place that's dear to me and meet with the assistant principals and actually got to do my homework i think any elected official before they speak out about a program or either for it or against it should have actually visited the people that are doing the program so that's what i did yesterday and i found out that the program itself and i'm going to speak about the grant a little bit later
017but the program itself is an excellent program and i think what the public needs to know is the sequence of events on how this program came about and the funding for it so i spent some time with one of the aps and the initial goal of this program is for the teachers at millbrook to assess a culturally culturally sustaining teaching certificate but it's through the unc charlotte school of professional studies and if you know anything about that school it's a very good school and it has a lot of good programs for education so i read through the program and i one of the things that the program is the goal of the program and the certificate is to provide a staff with the latest knowledge and skills to provide a responsive learning environment for a
018highly diverse student body so if anybody in this audience has ever visited millbrook high school as much as i have it is a highly diverse body and the program was applied to and it was the teachers were they got in but then at that point they needed to go for funding and so the program had nothing to do with the funding that was gone for so at that point they went out and sought funding and one of the application grants that they went for was from a group called we are so i read through the we are qualifiers for the grant and there is no qualifiers to do anything based on them for this program so it is simply a funding issue and i think that's what's important the sequence of events the program was
019gotten into then the funding was sought and the funding has very little of anything to do with the program if you read the program if you want to go visit millbrook high school and see what the program is about i think they would love to show you that i know that dana king always always focused on her campus being safe and secure for all students and one of the things she worried about a lot was the number of suspensions but the type of discipline they had and she wanted to be sure that her school was safe and if you were ever at millbrook high school you would know that that was very safe campus and the students were well loved by the teachers i think that what this program that they're going to do now
020and i was very wary about it i was worried about all that i went to look for and i could not find anything that i felt was not right about the program and i think that the unc charlotte course that they'll be taking is going to help the teachers a lot to better accomplish the goals that they continue to meet the needs of all of our students and to keep those students safe and secure so i wanted to share that tonight because i i feel like if if there's anything that we see in the newspaper or anywhere that is spoken out that the best way to know what's really going on is probably to go to the people that are involved in the program and so i found out that it was a great reward
021for me so wanted to share that thank you miss cash and thank you for clarifying that dr martin thank you i'd like to begin by uh thanking dr gardner and dr mcmillan who came to our bsc a couple weeks ago now and led the working group to discuss the input to the strategic plan we had a very lively and engaged discussion and big thanks particularly to all the principals who really engaged in the discussion with families we had a very robust community conversation as a couple of noted we had the wonderful ribbon cutting at the stammerla college high school just down the road here that facility has been renovated and is a wonderful new space a huge improvement from where they started over on the chemin center and then they moved to the cherry building
022and now to to this space which is actually designed to be an educational space as i walked around that space with the students who you know because i like to walk around with students so let them show me what's important what you really see and this is a great follow-up from our discussion earlier with facilities issues is that if we build places where students want to be it's probably going to be a space where people want to learn and that was absolutely visible as i walked around the school with the you know the students who would tell me about what's done in this space what's done in this space the connection between space and function uh is high i did have a great opportunity to share i like to prep you know direct my comments
023towards students um you know and uh so a little bit of the history uh behind uh science education really goes back to 1944 with the van over bush work trying to recognize as we came out of world war ii that the country needed to strategically invest in its people particularly students and science was one avenue where that investment needed to take place and that became the birth of the national science foundation which has its co at its core both funding for uh research but also for education and that really was the birth of what we now know as stem education but i went on to use that sort of the acronym of stem to recognize that i mean they're talking about past present future you know stems of the past are things like this would
024right uh there's a lot of structural aspect to understanding the history uh we can turn uh historic stems into mulch we can burn them for energy but it's important also to think about stems of the present and the purpose of the stem is still to provide some structure but most importantly for stem is you're a conduit for nutrients nutrients to flow from the roots up through the plant bring those nutrients to the leaves to the flowers to to keep the plant uh healthy uh and and and ongoing so i encourage the students to be stems of the present right it's not that stem is somehow better than any other discipline it is part it is a conduit that is critical to all other disciplines but the real challenge to the students is to be stem
025of the future and the stem of the future we don't know what it is yet because that's going to be the seed and my challenge to the students is not to just be if you will the heirloom seed which is the same as it's always been my challenge is not to be gmo seed where the seed is under the control of corporate entities but rather my challenge is for them to be good hybrid seeds so as they are stem up today what is their hybrid going to be it needs to be a mix of many people many ideas and if you've got good hybrid seed that's going to be the most disease resistant and going to give you new products for the for for the future and so that's really my challenge that to that
026great school where these it is it is a wonderfully diverse school and it's a wonderful space for this learning to take place uh so great to be with them uh finally i do i think it is important for us to keep an update uh on what's happening with respect to covet unfortunately the uh fifth wave that was likely is uh coming uh we're right it's starting to uptick uh wake county's numbers uh the latest numbers as of uh this morning where we're at 124 cases per hundred weekly cases per hundred thousand population that is up 56 percent from the week before and 50 up 50 from the week before that so we've got two weeks of increase what's happening here in wake county schools it's a little hard to see because we were on spring
027break last week but the last week of reported we were mirroring that uptick just like we are in the county so numbers are going up um we need to be prepared because if we look around the world the fifth wave was higher than the fourth wave uh so we if we work together we might be able to keep some things in check but it really needs to be cooperative work we're at the beginning stages of it now let's work together to keep it from getting out of hand the state did change its reporting structure so it's a little hard to give as updated information the state is now only reporting up until the the previous week so we don't have the most current but uh not last week but the week prior to that the
028five to nine year olds were at 48 uh cases per hundred thousand population the 10 to 15. 10 to 14 year olds were at 54 cases per 100 000 population the 15 to 17 year olds were at 69 cases per hundred thousand population that was when the county as a whole was at 86 and we're now at 124 so all those numbers are going up and we'll know next week what they are for reference the 18 to 24 year olds were at 147 that week so the 18 to 24 year olds are top uh the populations at that time the 25 to 49 year olds were next at 102 cases per hundred thousand population just a reminder that 100 100 cases per 100 000 population is what was considered highly transmissible we're fortunate that hospitals
029hospitalizations are not up yet but you're starting to see a little bit of that uptick so this is the beginning of an uptake it is all of our responsibility to try to get this thing controlled so that it doesn't so that it doesn't get worse so that we don't see more impact in our schools and our community and frankly particularly to the vulnerable in the community around us we all have a responsibility to try to keep each other safe thank you miss carter thank you um and i wanted to start by saying tomorrow is data manager appreciation day and i just would like to shout all those data managers out because they have quite the job i'll say and they just do so much and i know we've talked about staff and all the adjust
030adjustments they've had to made and they're no different through all of this from all the schedules and everything so thank you for everything you all do every single day and switching gears a little bit was spring break so not quite as much going on in a large majority of our schools but i did enjoy catching a carrie high school softball game actually at green level never been to that field before and it was a great game not the outcome hoping for but it was very close and got to see a home run i mean she that carry eye girl knocked that i mean it wasn't just like barely over the fence i mean it was gone so she wasn't playing so i mean she was but she wasn't so i okay okay sorry anyway i'm
031just sorry i get but uh it was a a great game nonetheless and the other event was of course another beautification day at kingswood and really appreciated it it was the first saturday of spring break for that school so but there were still folks that came out even had a grandparent come out pulling weeds we did this is the first time i've had a snake encounter-ish so i'm just not a huge snake fan but it was okay i switched to digging holes and i planted three native trees because that's something they're really focused on is a north carolina native different plants and trees and whatnot and expanding that at their school so i want to thank everyone for that organizing that and those that did take time of their first day of spring break to
032come out and help and yesterday i call it a blast from my past i attended another united arts artist in our school event and it was roger day so roger day and he started off by saying and he had his davis drive elementary shirt on he's been coming to davis drive for 19 years okay so both of my kids you know so i knew the song you know may or may not still have the memorized mosquito burrito you know it's just kind of a thing once you hear it you kind of you can't not forget it so it's wonderful it was a great opportunity because the students learned not only they get to hear them of course obviously but learn about the songwriting process what he works through and then connects for them what they're
033doing in their class already and how that can translate into writing your own songs and of course they came up with couch potato song which i'm just saying let's you know watch out so it was it was great i'm looking forward to getting the link to the um to the version that was created um but i appreciate the partnership with united arts and another opportunity for our kids and a special shout out that was miss culver's class i thank you for letting me join in on that event and next week if you're interested and you can't get your feel of musicals like myself east carey middle school is having their shrek 2 musical on the 28th yeah 28th the 29th and the 30th and uh you can show up and get tickets at the door
034or you can buy them online i'm excited looking forward to i feel like it's been forever since i've been in one although it hasn't been and next week is district 9's board advisory council meeting on wednesday the 27th at 6 pm it will be virtual and we will be doing our strategic planning with staff at that time and i'm really hoping folks comment is because it's virtual i'm hoping more folks can hop on and share your ideas and your input and really help us gather that information so there is a link to register for that on the board calendar in my blog or feel free to just email me so that's it for now thank you great miss scott thank you i wanted to offer a congratulations to a lot of our students who have
035been participating in the all-state ensembles we had so many students participate in all disciple region and so many move on to the all-state ensembles as well so congratulations to those students especially to their teachers and to their families for encouraging those kiddos to practice and stick to their goals and to the clinicians who came to travel to help all of those students as you know on our agenda this evening is uh is the opportunity for um public hearing for input on the superintendent's recommend proposed budget and we'll be having some folks come to our district one board advisory council meeting on monday at 6 pm at news river middle school so also exciting for for many people to get to see the inside of that school for the first time and then we are dr
036gardner hopefully having our virtual meeting about the input for the strategic plan as well but when we're talking about the budget it truly is as dr martin mentioned when we're looking at an investment in people and investment in our future our children are just so precious they are so they are actually our future they will be the next leaders they will be the next teachers they will be the next scientists they will be the next inventors and to know that we have folks who go into each and every detail of that budget and to be able to to be a part of that process and to know that it's not just numbers on a page i said this earlier with a little bit more emotion but it's not just numbers on a page these are
037actual human lives that are impacted by this budget it is one of the things that the board is responsible for doing and it may not always be exactly where we would like to see funding going but when i look at things and i say is this a good faith effort absolutely and we need and should have and listen will listen to input from the public but i can say wholeheartedly that the the good faith effort is there to serve because we as a board i can say i think i can speak for everyone at least for myself we absolutely believe how important it is to serve our children and to meet their educational needs each and every day and that concludes my comments thank you thank you miss waters thank you chair mahaffey i just
038wanted to share a couple of school visits i had the pleasure of taking i visited powell elementary recently and that was a walk down memory lane because my son attended kindergarten there years ago and so it's great to be back and to see their new magnet theme which is play and ingenuity which i believe is the only play in ingenuity magnet school in the entire country and they have done a phenomenal job in making sure that learning styles of all children are incorporated in their instruction i really enjoyed it and one of the highlights was visiting the pre-k classroom which i have a pre-k student at another school and got some hugs from from those kids and so it was just wonderful to be at powell and see all the good things that they're doing
039and the way that we have so many options for our learners within the district and then had a chance to visit carnage middle school and was super impressed by the entire experience i actually was waiting for principal johnson in the lobby and an 8th grader came over and introduced himself to me and gave me a rundown of the school pulled out his phone and invited me to a tedx event that they have coming up on april 30th at 11 30 he sent me the link and so as ms scott was talking about our students being our future leaders that was on full display when i went to carnage just seeing all the students and how engaged they were and how many options they had and the options in terms of classes were was amazing from
040odyssey of the mind to forensic science to robotics it was just really impressive to see carnage on display as my first visit there and i also enjoyed a visit to communities and schools which has a number of success coaches i believe in five or six of our middle schools and had a chance to meet the success coach for ligand and so lots of good things going on in district four as in all districts but really enjoyed my opportunities to go out and see some of the good work and see what's going on in our magnet schools so very thankful for that opportunity thank you as we move on to the approval of the meeting agenda it has been asked that we move items 6a and 6b regarding jordan driving school from consent to action so
041with that amended change i will accept a motion to approve the meeting agenda thank you dr martin second second thank you miss johnson hossler we have a motion and a second any discussion okay hearing none all those in favor signify by sign of eye any opposed nay right thank you the meeting agenda is approved with that change we now move on to our public hearing of the superintendent's proposed budget during this public hearing you may speakers may speak for up to two minutes you'll see a yellow light at the podium when you have 30 seconds remaining and a red light when your time is up we ask that you please remain at the podium and remain on topic our first speaker is jacob arthur good evening thank you very much i will keep this very
042brief i just have a few questions that i would like us all to consider here in this room and those watching at home what if money isn't always the answer what if a 2.1 billion dollar a year budget is more than enough to make wake county schools the best in the nation what if wake county schools were as successful as private schools whose tuition can often be less than half of what wake county spends on our public school students what if over 400 million in covid relief funds were treated as a temporary package to combat pandemic learning loss rather than new permanent expenditures what if creating a budgetary fiscal cliff as student enrollment is declining is a sign of fiscal malfeasance what if nine million dollars promoting training and curriculum that teach our students and
043teachers to view everyone through a lens of ethnicity gender and oppression is actually creating more division and a waste of money what if math and reading proficiency scores have been rising since the creation of the office of equity affairs rather than declining over the last decade what if that nine million dollars was spent on ensuring the academic achievement of all students and not on your social agenda now what happens if i'm wrong about these questions nothing but if i'm right this entire board that has continued to vote on these budgets has been so irresponsible as to abdicate your authority to run wake county public school system you should be held accountable for that and should be voted out of office in november thank you very much our next speaker is michelle morrow hi i appreciate
044the ability to be able to speak with you guys i had the privilege of sitting in on the joint county commissioner and school board meeting about six weeks ago where you were talking about the budget and something that struck me that i want everybody in the public to know is there was a lot of discussion about food insecurity there was a lot of discussion of how we were going to manage to keep that 400 million dollars that jacob just spoke about um in the budget in perpetuity and a lot of that was discussing the social emotional issues that our children are facing and i would say i think that part of the reason our children are facing such social emotional issues and we're finding such an increase in anxiety and depression and drug use and
045suicidal suicidal ideations is not because of the color of their skin it's not because of the mistakes that people made in past history i think it's because we are putting on the little shoulders of our young people responsible ideologies that they are not able to handle and i want to say this in terms of you mentioned mrs cash the um the we are project i think everybody needs to understand that the founder of that project dr bullock rhonda rhonda bullock she has stated things and i have them here on her twitter feed if you'd like to see them the question do black women really want to have white women as friends she's also claimed that she is an expert in white children's racial identity i have this question both she and her husband who happens
046to be the executive director of the equity um equity office of equity affairs in durham which seems like a conflict of interest to me um but i would say the question is show me the proof when both of you have phds from the state of north carolina show me the proof that you were kept from reaching your dreams and your goals because of the color of your skin it is simply not true we are telling our children our lie and we need to start focusing on preparing our children for life and stop putting this ideation in their mind and making them believe that because the color of their skin they they're either oppressors or they're victims because it is simply not true our next speaker is daniel grant king daniel grant king again this is
047on the superintendent's proposed budget good evening chairman hafiz superintendent warren boy members i would like to first of all say thank you i have read a matter of fact i was one of those in attendance with the joint session of the commissioners and the full board i think what really kind of concerns me is how we the verbiage um of what we are intending or what of what really you all are intending to do with specific items in the budget and one of them is increasing salaries not only for our teachers but also our non-certified staff because as you know we have dealt with a pandemic going on what two and a half years now and of course the state has not really given educators from years ago appropriate raises hopefully as the budget process
048continues with the board and for commissioners i am also asking each of you to consider what is an appropriate outcome what is the outcome that you all intend to do when this is finally passed also as you all may know that i currently chair the state board subcommittee with our advocacy with our educators and instructional assistants and when i talk to many others at different schools across the state they is is different all over but my point is when i talk with people across wake county they have major concerns because people have to work two and three jobs just to provide food for their families and so it is my hope that with this budget that you all will consider not only the cost but also the inflation that has incurred thank you our next
049speaker is latha muhammad good evening i am here just to remind you all of the importance of prioritizing in next year's budget line items that support culturally affirming books and curriculum as well as to ensure that we continue to fund our behavioral support services i think it's very important we actually held an event right outside the window about an hour ago really focused on appreciating and celebrating libraries and librarians and books as a mother of children in wake county as a person young person who grew up in libraries i know the importance of literature of books of culturally affirming books for transforming lives and you know people get up here and say all kind of foolishness about the books that i know i want my children to read and i want their peers to read
050that confirms and affirms who they are you um yeah i'm really pissed off by the the ignorant people that show up here today yeah i'm sorry miss muhammad and and mr stahl i'm sorry that yeah yeah anyway yeah well whoever said that you decided that that was appropriate to say that needs to whoever said it they got it what i said yeah so i'm here again to appreciate and affirm the need for a budget thank you our next speaker is susan book mrs ladies and gentlemen any language is not tolerated i'm going to ask that speaking out while someone else is talking is not okay ms book i want to thank the staff and the superintendent's office for all their hard work on the budget as we begin to fine-tune things i want to remind
051this board of their commitment to equity in the fall you all signed the lead with leandro local pledge you made a commitment to equity you made a commitment to many students particularly students of color students from economically disadvantaged families students with disabilities english learners and or rural students who have been denied the opportunities promised to them leadership begins on the local level and continues to the state one cannot sorry excuse me one cannot advocate for something if they're not leading on it themselves so take a careful look at the budget and the bond make sure you're leading with an equity lens here on the local level you have the power to affect the learning environment buildings should be well maintained and be a place that any child can be proud of are we proud of
052all of our physical buildings that crucial first impression that attracts parents and families to our schools in the first place all students should feel pride in where they go to school leading with leandro means a commitment to cultural affirming reading materials it means a commitment to our black and brown students with grants and money towards equity and their needs put first and not at a second thought we should be proud of all of our efforts to be anti-racist i know this board is committed to what leandro stands for you've already voted on that resolution i'm now watching you as you all take action on that commitment on a budget that lifts up every child in wake county thank you [Applause] all right thank you i'm gonna ask that we could please take a five minute
053break ladies and gentlemen thank you very much for allowing us to have that brief recess i want to share that personal attacks and insults are not okay in our meetings and we ask that you keep your comments to yourself while someone else is speaking please silence your cell phones as well in the event of emergency landing your seat can be used as a flotation device that concludes our public hearing of the superintendent's proposed budget and we do move on to public comment we only had the few speakers for the budget but please if you have further questions or comments reach out to your school board member and share with them as we will adopt our budget at our next board meeting we will now move on to public comment public comment is accepted in video
054written and in person formats members of the public are welcome to offer comments or criticism directed at substantive ideas actions or procedures of the board and individual board members in the interest of maintaining civility and decorum however speakers are encouraged to refrain from personal attacks and insults directed at the board individual board members staff or members of the general public the laws and policies of north carolina provide that issues or concerns involving individual personal matters are confidential and therefore not appropriate for public and comment settings concerns related to personnel issues may be addressed through applicable wcpss personnel the grievance policy and or other applicable policies speakers including students may discuss issues and matters of general concern but should refrain from discussing confidential student information concerns related to confidential student matters may be addressed through applicable
055wcpss personnel the grievance policy or other applicable policies we have no video comments but seven written comments from members of the public these are found attached to our regular meeting agenda we have three on a we are contract grant two on class rank and one on inclusion and one on school library books during public comment speakers may speak at the podium for up to three minutes a yellow light will illuminate at the podium when there are 30 seconds remaining in your time and then a red light will signal your time is up please remain at the podium during your speaking time any materials you wish to share with the board should be handled handed excuse me to the board attorney either before or after your comments and again i asked that folks who are not
056at the podium please refrain from commenting in a positive or negative fashion while someone else is speaking this is a sacred part of democracy of public comment being able to speak to your elected officials please honor those three minutes our first speaker is katie long good evening my first appearance here in this room was on september 7 2021. i provided public comments on october 20 october 4th 2021 october 19th january 4th 2022 january 18th and here i am today providing my fifth public comment on january 18th you were served a letter of intent against your insurance policy you were again served on february 15th both times you denied the violation stated in the letter of intent you laughed but you're really laughing at yourself for annoyingly willingly and intentionally violating your oath and the laws
057you a sword to uphold which will circle back to you soon let me remind you and the public again a few of the failures under your current so-called leadership budget mismanagement condoning obscene material learning loss your district 4 candidate debacle redistricting business transportation and school meal interruptions poor academic performance underpaid staff and enrollment decline that's just a few let me remind the public that the school district is in fact funded swimming in funds the strict the district does not need any more money you all have failed in your fiduciary duty and responsibilities and accountability of these funds there's a decline in student enrollment because of your incompetency but yet kathy moore is asking the commissioners for additional funds in the amount of 600 million dollars really the district received over 400 million dollars in covert
058funds but there's been no physical accountability for these funds which were not dispersed to our children accordingly nor was it about their health the school lockdowns and mass mandates had an impact on our children because of this there's been a significant learning loss there has been there has not been any discussions or disclosures about a plan to overcome these issues your radical irresponsible spending is on unnecessary overhead and liability which included bonuses for yourself but nothing to help rehabilitate our children in reading writing and other stem learning topics equipping our children to advance to the next level and preparing them for the real world the current failed curriculum you continue to implement in a clear demonstration of your assist systematic pattern of behavior to dunk down our children instead of making a priority to help
059our children be successful the latest is that you're planning to adopt an allegiance with the we are group this program is nothing more than an indoctrination of our kids teaching them to hate and to discriminate against one another's gender and race your agenda is very clear for two years our parental rights have been stolen from us we have had enough and we will vote you out i'm katie long a candidate for district 7. i long for change meet me at long4change.com our next speaker is jessica lewis [Applause] good evening parents are you awake yet this board continues to keep failing our students this board is more interested in sexualizing our children and teaching them how to be racist do not take your eyes off their hidden agenda instead research stand up and speak out many
060parents have already pulled their kids out of the school system for numerous reasons one being that this current board is not willing to let the parents have a say in their children's education it is our job as parents to keep exposing how corrupt this board is and to get new elected officials on this board in november there is a great lineup running against you all who will welcome parents feedback lindsay mcafee called the pornographic books in our library's inspiring lindsay i'm curious to know what makes these books inspiring to you is it the graphic pictures or the explicit words unfortunately my kids schooling come november is based on whether or not we flip this board there is no way that will allow my kids to continue under your leadership why does this board feel the
061need to push critical race theory in our schools crt states that all white people are oppressors while classifying all black people as hopelessly oppressed victims does that sound like something our kids should be taught in school crt is promoted as an anti-racist movement when in reality it encourages discrimination this parents is why it is so important to know what they are sneaking in our children's curriculum do you want your child to be judged on the color of their skin i certainly do not why are you not teaching our children that every child matters and that success is not given but it is earned through hard work putting crt into the curriculum in schools is causing more harm than good because it is a divisive debilitating and racist teaching practice this is not an anti-racist movement
062crt screams racism my children are taught to treat all people equally and with respect my kids do not treat a person differently based on the color of their skin i do not want you teaching my kids otherwise get back to the business of educating our children and getting wake county students proficient in reading and math by leaving skin color and pronouns out of the equation the what we are nc group y'all are asking to be approved has a video on their website talking about white privilege and the title is dear white parents they claim to be a group teaching our children and a racist education but they are clearly segregating by a person's color with their tactics maybe you should create a survey one that is not divisive and ask the parents of millbrook high
063school on whether they think it is a good idea to implement this racist program in their child's school clearly you have all not made the best decisions for our children it is past time for you to start listening to we the parents and forgo forego your agenda that is not working please stop pushing your sexual and racial propaganda on our children just a friendly reminder that there is still time for you all to resign your positions before november so we the parents can make our kids education great again our next speaker is good evening i'm here today to voice my serious concern with the grant proposal with we are as you know it is short for working to extend anti-racist education and it has in its mission statement i quote to dismantle systemic racism in
064schools and beyond i had a chance to see their video dear white parents and i find it troubling their message is that white people are inherently racist but i contend that there is a greater issue at stake i grew up in the south after coming from hong kong when i was eight years old and i did not experience any racism yes i i got picked last in softball but that's because i couldn't play and since i didn't know much english a few kids did make fun of me but did i see that as racism the fact is the idea of racism was completely foreign to me and in my eyes i was being judged for not being able to do something well and do you know what i did i worked twice as hard to
065learn english so i can get good grades at school if i was not accepted in a group i did not point fingers i looked inwardly to see how i can improve myself after all these years i still can't play softball but i am not going to blame anyone else for it truth is racism is not inherent in people because of any particular skin color what is inherent is our evil nature because we live in the fallen world it is wrong to teach children that racism is the source of societal problems and that the only solution is an anti-racist vendetta against those dear white parents black kids need not see themselves as victims and white kids need not mentally flagellate themselves because they are white this organization called we are wants to dismantle racism but they
066are in fact spreading racism to our kids at an age when they are most impressionable so the greater issue at stake is how should we educate our children this anti-racist ideology is a dangerous distraction from our mission to educate the next generation the test scores are going down and they are worried about white privilege let's go back to the fundamentals and teach our kids reading writing and arithmetic let's go back to teaching them history and civics without finger-pointing we should raise the educational standards instead of settling for mediocrity for the sake of equity our educational dollars should be used to create critical thinkers not radical activists any association with we are in my book is problematic thank you our next speaker is chad stahl hello so as of this evening this is twice now wake
067county public school system has accused me of something beyond my presence this is the second time and my apologies for that mr stahl i realize i said that over there i don't mean to take from your time thank you okay so i'm going to fill in a couple of the uh holes here from mr martin's covid presentation so this is the uh north carolina department of health and human services governor 19 respiratory surveillance april 3rd through april 9th 37 cases per 100 000 people who are unvaccinated have governed 23 cases per 100 000 of vaccinated individuals and 28 cases per 100 000 of boosted individuals so i think since i graduated a long long time ago and went to school a long long time ago 23 plus 28 equals 51 that is above and beyond
068the 37 cases per 100 000 of unvaccinated covet positive individuals correct that math does check out so uh and also just another little loophole half a million coveted positive people are vaccinated we have 2.6 million from the start of the pandemic until now testing positives that's 20 percent of our total coveted positivity all vaccinated people so just to keep some perspective i'm sure the ideologue will start banging masks on people's faces by the end of summer so just keep it in perspective and fill in some of the more data please so that we don't have to pretend like we're all dying from govid we've tested over 26 million only 2.6 that's 10 percent of testing i'm like riled up sorry 26 million 2.6 have been positive that's only 10 percent and out of that 20
069are vaccinated so if we're going to go back down that road let's please keep it weighted on the level of how it impacts us not whether or not we're testing positive let's just keep some clear perspective uh in regards to you know this this race thing i my wife is puerto rican my child is half puerto rican and half white there's no better way better word to put it but you know i um we look at racism very differently i wasn't going to talk about it because i i genuinely think that our governing bodies want us all to be stripped away from all of our individualism right we want faceless children we want genderless children we want raceless children we want godless children i think even miss kushner not too long ago called this board
070out for the slight silly policy about not letting children have homes anymore now they have to have places of residence but still supported it but recognize the fact that it was a little not not really necessary i can't believe you even spent your time worried about whether a child says i have a home versus a residence i grew up split home i had two homes home is where your heart is so let's keep some sensitivity in mind with these kids thank you thank you our next speaker is colleen miller [Applause] thank you i have letters for each of you with a copy of a law i wanted you to become even more familiar with first of all i'm really alarmed at the trend i see in our public schools today at no time during my
071daughter's tenure in wake county public schools did i observe books with the shocking content i have recently seen my grandchildren my great little grandchildren are finding books in their schools with graphic images and texts with descriptions of blued conduct ranging from oral and anal sex vaginal intercourse masturbation and other sexual activities these books appear to have no real literary artistic or scientific merit as a concerned citizen i do not suggest banning books absolutely not on the contrary i expect the staff to select books with appropriate content for the audience that is age appropriate books should be curated based on criteria such as reading level maturity and community standards materials with the topic i mentioned are not appropriate for minors and the books should be removed from all k through 12 public school libraries as well
072as restricting their access in other libraries the school system is absolutely has no role in providing obscene obscene materials to minors i expect schools and the public libraries to be responsibly managing the materials they house with the same care that we manage our movies our alcohol the playboy magazines on the shelves there's no banning call we don't call for banning we're there's no impingement of the first amendment however there is a law there are laws on the bush and they must be enforced and you'll have a copy of that law that is nc state statute 14-190.1 obscene literature and exhibitions violating this law by permitting access to obscene and pornographic materials to minors is a class one felony felony what gives schools the right to violate the statutes sometimes it appears to be done under
073the guise of sex education seriously i found a book in carroll middle school library middle school sex is a funny word with numerous graphic drawings of naked genitals as well as pages of describing masturbation on page 71 but having a penis isn't what makes you a boy having a vulva isn't what makes you a girl seriously as a medical laboratory scientist i can state unequivocally there's no scientific mirror in that statement it's a lie another graphic book i found in public schools is what girls are made of graphically describing a boy performing oral sex on a girl my legs fell open make room for his mouth he looked and looked like a cat a bowl of cream he fit his penis against me pushed inside this is sexually arousing young readers members of the school
074board are accomplices and distributing obscene material to children legitimizing sex of by and against minors including pedophilia wearing children's pliable immature brains with predictable injurious outcomes as well as sexual bullying and grooming our next speaker is carrie bligh so uh this was supposed to be pete and i's third history speech to you but he couldn't be here and i need him for props so instead i'll give you a speech that i've been avoiding i often wonder how you made somebody like pete and i frustrated and angry parents pete and i raised a child on the spectrum and you don't get any more patient or flexible or reasonable than that i was raised by a north carolina teacher my grandmother was a vice principal pete's grandmother worked in a public school cafeteria you couldn't find people
075who respect this institution or the educators in it more than us and i hate walking up to this podium every single time when i think it's time to stop and i want to give up i remember a promise that i made and i feel a little guilty when our son started making poor grades five years ago in math we told him he was lying when he asked his teacher for help and he said he wasn't getting any there was nothing to study we didn't understand nothing but he was not lying because three years later i still can't get learning resources in a math class i am still hoping that you will revisit and evaluate your secondary math curriculums and student learning resources soon and so i feel the need to repeat this your high school
076students have not been using your mvp district provided math curriculum in two years no workbooks no modules your middle school students seem to be asked to use open up math curriculum to fidelity they are given a workbook with math questions in it despite our advocacy this is what it looks like today i was watching my child do her homework this is the question you've not been able to answer for us if a student cannot do a math problem in their district provided math workbook then where are the district provided resources that show them how to do that problem this is what my child let me know number one no teacher ever looks at the math workbook kids are responsible for writing down correct answers the next day number two you do not get graded for
077your math workbook only that you put something in the blank it doesn't matter what it is my child informed me that when kids can't do their work as what's happening right now in front of me they go to mr morgan walk through videos of open up resources lessons on youtube then they find their labeled math lesson fast forward it to when mr morgan solves the math problem pause it and write down the answer that's not critical thinking that's not rigorous that's actually cheating and just to be clear my child didn't even understand that this was cheating because her response was there's nowhere else to go to understand what to do mom and they wouldn't give us these links if they didn't expect us to use them so what else are we supposed to do did
078you all even know that that was going on you are correct that these discovery-based math curriculums are changing our children i knew that they would three years ago because i just watched you teach my second child how to cheat [Music] our next speaker is russell lichtenstein good evening everyone my name is russell ligenstein we are talked about a lot tonight the fact that a grant for this organization is even being considered shows where our school board's priorities lie this is simply racism under the guise of anti-racism i wonder how many parents are aware of what we are stands for for instance the moment you open their website you see a video entitled dear white parents probably don't see too many websites that say dear black parents admittedly i only made it through the first couple
079of minutes before turning it off because listening to this woman tribalize all white people as doing a certain thing or in this case not chil teaching their children about racism is in itself racist any time a person or group of people is discriminated discriminated against for an immutable characteristic the color of their skin for example this is defined as racism this organization is open only perpetuating a narrative and monetizing division again based on an immutable characteristic what is being taught is the antithesis of what dr martin luther king jr taught preached and spoke about i teach and have taught my children that we judge everyone on the content of their character not the color of their skin my children are introduced to racism more by organizations like we are than they are in school where
080they have friends of all races religions creeds etc might i suggest more people might i suggest teaching more people like about the likes of mlk junior i gave you a copy of his letter from the birmingham jail written in august 1963 if you're not familiar this is a profound piece of literature every student should be privy to in addition to the founding documents of our country both the declaration of independence and the constitution also how the democrat and republican parties were established in their history these are all but tiny portions of our history that show why we are an exceptional nation meaning exception to every governmental system up to the point of our founding that our government is there to protect our god-given right not give them to us this transcends race that is what
081we all have in common why not promote these ideas rather than promoting racism and promoting division so couple the funding of this divisive and racist we r group to the sanctioning and distribution of pornography to our children among many many other issues we have a choice november keep these board members and they're filthy to the corrupt cdc the ncae and to frankly everyone except the parents or vote in new members who will put their fealty where it belongs to the education not the indoctrination of our children our next speaker is ruth willenbark from students to teachers to administrators and universities there appears to be widespread agreement that an exact class rank is harmful many of you were part of the 2016 latin honors decision so i know you wanted to fix class rank eight years
082ago class rank is a serious issue affecting wake county students staff and principals and has been exacerbated by the pandemic students and staff need your help class rank will not solve itself you're in a position to fix class rank we have already offered several solutions that are immediately implementable i recognize these solutions came as a surprise as you've always understood class rank to be required by state law however neither state law nor state board policy holds such a requirement the specific method to calculate gpa and class rank is not in the statute therefore there is no state law for an exact numeric rank the statute is under the university of north carolina and is specifically for exchange between dpi and the unc system therefore there is no state law to exchange class rank with out-of-state
083schools or private universities there is no need for legislation for you to solve the class rank problem for your students and staff i'm assuming your attorney has confirmed this the universities also need you to do this class rank is supposed to help the universities but first as we've discussed in previous meetings class rank especially during the pandemic is not an accurate or meaningful measurement of relative academic performance so you're requiring away county principals to certify transcripts with class ranks they know are inaccurate and misleading these ranks are then sent to universities and scholarship committees who use it to deny scholarships and admissions secondly providing class rank is actually harming the university statistics wake county has academically strong athletes musicians even national merit scholars outside the top 10 percent if schools admit them their stats and
084therefore college rankings are harmed similar students from other high schools are not being ranked our preferred solution is for wake county to move to a latin honors class rank immediately dpi grad 009 states class rank is calculated based on weighted gpa a latin honors class rank is calculated based on weighted gpa and therefore complies with policy a latin honors class rank does not violate any laws the evidence in favor of replacing the exact class rank is overwhelming thank you our next speaker is tucker willenborg students across wake county are concerned about the importance of class rank admissions this is with good reason the vast majority of other school districts have ceased to report class rank resulting in our class ranks carrying even greater importance here's a sample of the statistics the following colleges consider class
085rank to be either important or very important in ambitions unc chapel hill princeton yale ecu clemson uva nc state william mary appalachian state that's just a sample at state schools the majority of students have a class rank at appalachian state is 88 at nc state it's 77 but at out of state schools so that cornell at 22 brown and case western are 23. class rank is an anomaly with so few students reporting class rank to these out-of-state schools our class ranks can dramatically influence their overall statistics colleges value these statistics the percentage of students ranked in the top 10 percent directly influences their college rankings accordingly students ranked outside the top 10 percent are seriously harmed in admissions of the more than 1 000 students mit enrolled for the class of 2025 0 or from
086outside the top 10 percent zero that is the only data point we need the top 10 however is not the only dividing line when enrolling just 270 students why should a school like caltech even consider a student ranked 50 150th in their own high school or even 10th often they don't in a class-ranked study in pennsylvania a university of pennsylvania admissions officer told school officials that a highly qualified graduate had been rejected because she was ranked 15th out of 320 students they said if you didn't rank her she would have gotten in similarly an assistant director of enrollment management at penn state university have seen applicants time and time again rejected solely on the basis of class rank the problem is even worse today since the pandemic standardized tests are almost universally optional depriving students
087of an opportunity to differentiate themselves from their peers in the standard environment without these tests class rank when provided carries even more weight it is the only relative measurement colleges have a colleges have available in an era of historically low acceptance rates we need to allow our students individual strengths to shine this will never happen although strengths are overshadowed by class rank four from the dean of admissions at the highly selective institution if you can do anything in north carolina in your district it's to get rid of class rank it is killing your students when they apply to our institution because they have class drink attached to them thank you our next speaker is crystal barren as part of school library month we celebrated literacy week at nighttale high school where we honored students literary
088freedoms we had some special visitors alison reed kendra allen and susan bach were kind enough to come out and read to our students yes even high school students love a good read aloud we were sad to miss miss scott but we'll definitely invite you the next time as part of freedom week our students learned about intellectual freedom and their first amendment rights commonly known as the freedom of speech through my research i was reminded how important the courts are in defining our rights in tinker versus des moines the courts determined that students also have first amendment rights and they do not shed them at the schoolhouse store allowing students to peacefully protest as long as it did not disrupt the school environment many of our students recently exercised this right when they walked out in
089protest of the anti-trans legislation that is sweeping this nation lamont versus postmaster general determined that the right to receive information was actually protected by the first amendment as well for we cannot intelligently speak about something if we are denied all perspectives this was affirmed with island trees versus pico where it applied to students who protested the removal of books from a school library just because the board disagreed with the content once again our students rights were protected the 14th amendment further protects students rights in public schools stating that the state cannot interfere with the constitutional rights of the public to get students thinking critically about their rights during literacy week we had a bracket challenge in the spirit of march madness which was very exciting this year five different classes had five different results because
090we all have strong opinions about our rights one class chose island trees versus pico as the champion court case even over the snapchat case one student said just because everyone is not okay with the book doesn't mean you should take it away if they don't like it don't read it and then it will just sit on the shelf not affecting anyone another stated you shouldn't take books out when they make you uncomfy because they could help someone else the first amendment also protects your right to speak out in favor of censorship if minors can be expected to respect the difference between hallway humor and public speech humor as determined in bethel versus fraser adults should too i would imagine if i read tom sawyer in this venue y'all would be mortified by the racist language
091that is a part of our history censorship is a slippery slope texas is currently reviewing 850 books many of which teach children about their rights florida is now pulling math textbooks you need only look at every authoritarian regime in history to know that censorship is ugly parents you still have full authority of your child's first amendment rights but not all children's rights intellectual freedom is the basis of our democratic system we expect our people to govern themselves but to do so responsibly our students and families must be well informed librarians in wake are proud to serve our public school students all of them we are a diverse public who should not be denied our constitutional rights thank you janet peterson hi my name is janet peterson i'm a wake county public school retired teacher the
092team and i that i work with has identified over 40 books that are obscene and their places in the library makes them available for dissemination to minors some of the books that we have identified are sex manuals some are the porn version of harlequin romance for teens some books are fantasy porn some are memoirs that not only scarred the writer but scar the reader i want to share two award-winning books with you the first is identical by ellen hopkins this book warned one the american library association quick picks for reluctant young adult readers uh these books are for young adults 12 to 18 who for whatever reason do not like to read the purpose is to identify titles for kids for recreational reading the book identical has multiple sex things including bondage it has scenes
093of a father raping one of his daughters multiple times while the other daughter watches one stanza is i covered sick at the sight but unable to divorce myself from the horror i felt kaylie's pain and when daddy was done and she cried i cried too that book is located in 12 schools in wake county for recreational reading the second book is jesus land by julia sherry's it won an alex award the young adult library services association award the alex award are given to 10 books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults ages 12 to 18. and in this book a teen has her boyfriend sneak into her bedroom multiple times it's a regular occurrence and they have sex and it's quite explicit he pulls off my underwear retrieves the silver square from
094the nightstand and kneels between my legs and rips it open you can use your imagination of what happens in this memoir julia recalls growing up in a conservative christian family in indiana with two adopted black brothers and parental abuse and general racism that they faced the last part of the memoir recalls time spent in the dominican republican and there was further abuse inflicted there now reviews don't when when you go to select a book reviews don't tell you all about the sex they don't tell you all about the language or the content or the things that are forbidden uh to be said on facebook or tv or in a workplace would be considered sexual harassment so my point is when choosing books for children's libraries much needs to be done prior to the purchase it's
095not enough to look for those ala award-winning books or great reviews you wouldn't buy a new car without a test drive no matter how good the reviews were media specialists librarians even principals need to read and examine to judge whether that book is appropriate thank you mental health our next speaker is amanda [Applause] so hello again i came today excuse me to ask why we need the group we are if we have the office of equity affairs are they not doing a good job i have a few clips that i want to play evening we must begin we must bring attention to the fact that we're living and learning on stolen land i invite you to head to the website uh insert your location and copy and paste the native tribes that once care for
096the land you're currently on so my question is to my district representative mr haggerty do you know and have you publicly acknowledged your law practice functions on stolen land do you know what tribe cared for that land [Music] we have another one this does also remind me if you're looking for a district 7 rep that's a female minority you can look for katie long you can find out about her heritage at long for change our purpose for this evening is to bring our state and local leaders together to talk about the attacks against crt and education we want to cover the up the recent uptick in violence against school boards locally and throughout the country and our goal is to start creating a more unified public response to this anti-truth-telling and anti-democracy movement we are
097not teaching crt in our schools we need to talk about so we are feels that parents are again causing violence against school boards anti-truth-telling anti-democracy i am wondering what is wrong with teaching the actual ugly american history and letting the facts speak for themselves i teach crt in our schools we need to talk about underfunding of public schools and focus on that let's talk about how we have over funded independent schools without public oversight through public vouchers that's the real issue that's what we'll be talking about and attacking in north carolina so what they want to attack is school choice in case you missed that some things that we are has available or endorsed they have critical race parenting workshops they have launched some people need to be fired campaign for teachers that don't align
098with them they are encouraging uh stop black educators from going to prison for cheating they advocate no prison no probation no fines and basically no accountability there are systems based on race that were used to elevate those who identify as white and to oppress those who do not primarily those people of color people of the global majority and black people specifically and crt says let's look at that we are not teaching crt in our schools we are not teaching crt our next speaker is sean collins thanks i'm pretty late so i'm going to read this quickly tonight as you consider technical changes to your board policy on bullying and harassment i thought it would be appropriate to discuss some of the bullying and harassment taking place nationally as well as here at the school board
099and i ask you today to use your words on behalf of my community a couple weeks ago justice katanji brown jackson was placed was painted as the poster child for democrats everywhere soft on crime especially with child predators a fan of critical race theory opposed to the gop's outdated and unscientific notion of gender and sexuality fortunately for her democratic u.s senators used their voices to defend justice jackson and make clear that these attacks were unfair misrepresentative and unacceptable these attacks after all are not based in logic they are designed to stoke fear in their base that democrats are coming after their children it is part of a national strategy rooted in homophobia and transphobia it is nothing new and neither is the silence of those elected to represent me that's y'all every meeting i wait
100for my nine elected school board members or their superintendent to stand up and offer a full-throated defense of my community and a similarly impressive reproach of the bigots and nerdwells who come before this board to spread their insidious brand of ignorance and misinformation yet every meeting i am disappointed in the first half of 2021 just in the first half one in four lgbtq plus youths attempted suicide according to the cdc one in four and almost one out of two considered it i don't have time to explain my personal story growing up as a closeted gay student in this very public school system but i will say that i'm very lucky to be here today how much do you care about the mental health and physical well-being of the students the wards under your care i
101have heard during this pandemic a great deal of talk from this board about that very subject yet when given the opportunity to protect lgbtq plus children you have all chosen to remain silent having even one affirming adult can greatly improve the mental health of lgbtq plus youths and thus increase the odds that they will live to see adulthood today as you consider your policy on harassment and bullying i am asking this board to use your words during your own comment periods at the start of each meeting to show the children of wake county that they have not just one affirming adult but 10. protect these children thank you our next speaker is kristen beller good evening dr gardner and board members our public schools are a legacy to be proud of here in wake county
102we have support staff who commit an entire career sometimes entire two careers post-retirement to supporting student learning in cafeterias and classrooms by transporting students safely to and from school we have more national board certified teachers than any other state and or school district in the nation we have a magnet system that other districts admire you can only hope to replicate we have 20 000 dedicated adults working hard each day to support and nurture the growth of 100 and 160 000 enthusiastic and eager young people's learning we have so many amazing things happening in our public schools each day that we have the privilege of taking all of these gifts for granted tonight i'm here to offer a reminder that we cannot for one second of one day take the gift of public schools for granted
103our public schools and the ways that we currently lead the nation these didn't appear with the wave of a magic wand they were fought for and won by many generations of wake county communities and leaders who were determined to ensure that every child had access to the public education system that supports a thriving community of residents from birth through retirement they recognize the power of a strong investment of public schools in our public schools and the impact it has on the quality of life that we all experience later as adults and it's incredibly important to note that before wake county public schools even existed over a century ago public schools in the south were treasurer fought for and won by newly freed black leaders who knew intimately the reality that literacy was yielded wielded as
104a gatekeeper to full and active citizenship and participation in democracy it is not a coincidence i'm sorry i wanted to add when we teach our children their true history we don't teach black children that they are victims we teach them we're able to teach them that they are the descendants of brave and brilliant freedom fighters who created new systems when the old ones excluded them it is not a coincidence that the folks who don't believe our children deserve the funding for well-maintained fully resourced and fully staffed learning environments are also promoting privatization efforts and support efforts to other and isolate children and adults who they view as different those are the same efforts that movements led by black leaders have fought and won several times over for many generations and over many decades and it's
105not a coincidence that the privatization efforts disproportionately hurt black indigenous and other people of color but what we don't always acknowledge is that they harm white kids too before construct before reconstruction white kids mostly poor white kids but many white kids didn't have access to public education at all the black leaders who won them over a century ago won them for white kids too so right now as our board prepares to send a final cip request and soon a budget request the county commissioners i challenge our community to tap into our generational memory and remember that investing in our public schools it's our legacy and our duty but it's also a gift and a privilege our next speaker is becky lou hobbs tall person hi i'm becky lou hobbs i'm a long time resident of
106district four so let's talk about the fiscal cliff presentation and superintendent moore's budget proposals from the fiscal cliff presentation slide 13 addressed response to interrupted learning instead this slide should have read the plan to help the learning loss caused by the school board's decision to close schools followed by forcing students to remain in virtual learning environment oh yes and also ignoring or scoffing parents who pled that their kids were not learning so what is the response to combat this learning loss caused by the virtual learning environment spend more money on virtual learning resources and then there's a question about textbooks the current budget allots 4.3 million dollars for textbooks on page 60 of the proposed budget more than 5 million is allotted to textbooks so i'm going to ask what textbooks i've had kids in
107the system for 10 years i have never ever once seen a textbook so what is this money actually being spent on the budget doesn't say so now let's move on to contracted services so how do we know 41.8 million dollars is a responsible amount being proposed what are the details of contracted services here's an example through public records requests we know the current contract for farrington smith is over 1.3 million dollars but there's no breakdown of the expenditures listed with that signed contract there have been no contract bids competitor bids in at least five years and since the firm has been rent representing the school for so long with no competition they should easily be able to produce a breakdown of their services it's not with the contract and then there's yet another bond request
108by the board on the november ballot you guys know this is like asking for another credit card because you've maxed out all your other ones so this proposed budget is full of proverbial holes these holes need to be plugged there have been no line item audits of the budget the board has no accountability and certainly no transparency no more this must change i'm becky lou hobbs i'm candidate for district four beckyforwake.com that concludes our public comment moving on to our information items we have updates from the superintendent's office dr gardner thank you chair mahaffey this afternoon in our work session that was conducted prior to our board meeting tonight there were two agenda items as part of that work session one was from our facilities and operation division focused on the seven year rolling capital
109improvement plan at the beginning of this presentation an overview of the cip timeline was presented just to set the stage for the work that has been occurring for a number of months now and following the last several proposals we highlighted the input that has been received from the board and acted on in the revised cip proposal that will be coming eventually to the board for approval some of that feedback included adding certain schools to the existing list to receive renovations those schools include athens drive high school zebulun north garner middle school that was zebulum middle school i should have said zebel middle school north garden middle school and washington elementary the addition of those to the list was all based on the feedback that the board provided after several presentations and work with our facilities
110and operation division we're thankful for this robust feedback from our board in making these modifications or suggestions to the current list as part of the presentation this team staff highlighted the new schools that were included in that would be included in the proposal they also highlighted the renovation projects that are part of the cip proposal and highlighted the program requirements that are will be part of the cip proposal the cip resolution will come back to the board at its april night or for approval tonight in the april 19th board meeting in just a few minutes so i want to thank the facilities division for their hard work on this on this cip plan the next agenda item was focused on letters training for those of you who may not be familiar with letters letter stands
111for language essentials for teachers of reading and spelling this is training that is required of our teachers who work with pre-k through grade 5 students with this requirement we are trying to focus on the implementation of this particular training for these teachers it does require a significant amount of time and to do that we want to address the implementation as best we can so tonight the academics team presented some proposals for the board's consideration and feedback they included proposed calendar revisions for the 2022-23 school year and the staff also presented a proposed bonus structure that's in alignment with the state requirement as part of the calendar proposal just to highlight it includes a possibility of adding six early release days in the 22-23 school year providing opportunity for teachers to engage in this course work
112that is required of the letters training it has a 12-hour implication to our current bank hours as well a factor that the board will have to consider whether this is the avenue that we seek with regard to the implementation of this training to meet this also it was discussed the possibility of adding five minutes to all of our instructional calendars in order to ensure that we maintain the 1025 instructional hours and have enough banked hours to address any weather emergencies going further the team outlined for the board possible planned bonus structure this is dependent upon two factors completion of the letters training units of study as well as mastery of the content stipends would be paid after completion of volume one which would be units one through four or and or after volume two through
113units through five through eight again for participation and for the mastery of the content the funding source for this would be our sr-3 funding and it would total around 16 million dollars for the stipends we appreciate the feedback that the board gave today with regard to these considerations that are on the table for how we may implement this training the feedback was very helpful and the board asked for this presentation to come back for more discussion so that it could be unpacked further so the academics team will be prepared to do that at our next meeting to unpack further some options that may deal with time in the implementation phase whether we go the route of early release or some other structure some of the input that you gave today and support for the stipends
114eventually thank you all right thank you thank you dr gardner we now move on to approval of the consent items is there a motion to approve madam chair i'll move approval of the consent items as amended second all right thank you very much we have motion in a second any discussion okay all those in favor of approving the consent agenda signified by sign of i any oppose nay all right thank you moving on to action first we are in the policy realm and dr crane is going to go through our first policy 2302 yes chair mafi chief of staff dr gardner and members of the board i'm here to present to you the first reading of revised policy 2302 remote participation and board meetings revisions reflect updates made by staff and the north carolina school
115boards association and our staff when given final board approval it will replace the current version of this policy it was reviewed at the march 29th policy committee meeting tonight we request the board's approval for the first reading of revised policy 2302 remote participation and board meetings thank you dr crane miss kushner thank you dr crane and miss mahappy with that i would remove approval of the revisions to um board policy 2302 remote participation in board meetings for first reading okay all right we have a motion a second any discussion all right hearing none all those in favor signify by sign of i i any opposed nay all right the motion passes thank you dr crane next we have board policy 6402 and joining us is mark winters thank you chairman hafi board members and dr
116gardner i'm here tonight to present you the first reading of policy 6402 participation by historically underutilized businesses it's a new policy created by the school boards association as part of the policy migration project it was reviewed march 29th at the policy committee meeting at that meeting we noted we would add language that aligned with our existing prohibition against discrimination harassment and bullying you'll see that added language and highlighted in yellow at the beginning of the policy tonight we request the board's approval policy thank you mr winters and madam chair i make a motion that we approve on the revisions to participation by historically underutilized businesses second okay we have a motion in a second to approve this policy or first reading of this policy any discussion ms kushner thank you and i appreciate mr winters
117highlighting um the the added language and i'm sorry mr pollins isn't here but it does specifically say that we will mimics the anti-harassment bullying language that there will be no discrimination against any person or business on the basis of race color national origin sex sexual orientation transgender or gender identity disability age or religion so it does mirror what we already have as anti-bullying and anti-harassment policy thank you for highlighting that and it also puts a good faith effort language as opposed to having set percentage because that i think is more usable for staff so i appreciate the work that was done in policy committee on this policy thank you thank you miss kushner further miss waters i'm sorry there was there had been some discussion to have a specific let me try to find it
118a percent for participation by minority-owned female-owned and other non-traditional or underutilized businesses and after discussion there was we talked we the staff thought that would be too rigid if we put a specific percentage because then would it need to be that exact percentage not under not over so we wanted to make sure that we put a good faith effort and that we specified that um bids should be and maybe mr winters can find this more easily than me um mr kushner if i remember correctly the biggest issue the percent was the language had been the percent of registered um uh minority-owned businesses and whatnot and a majority of the minority-owned businesses that we contract with are actually not registered with the state so we had extensive discussion about the registration or not and the leader
119of the minority owned businesses uh effort in in our district asked us to not have the specific language about the formal registration with the state because not all of our businesses want to do that registration process and right now we actually have more use than we would if we sort of fixed it we would we would limit a lot of applications if we went to the state registry so that was a lot of the discussion that we had and we added the blue language that's in there to have at least one vendor bidding on each project but i'm sorry i didn't mean to cut you off with swatters um require for the businesses to be registered as hub but that was sort of my question over within the policy the original policy that we are
120mimicking from the migration am i correcting this had a percentage but what we are like sorry the um the original policy from the migration and i'm still understanding this process had a percentage but we're proposing a change that excludes the percentage mr winners do you recall so we had a percentage for our construction vendors our building program and we still have that percentage which is a state requirement there is no state requirement for the non-construction type programs the thought was was to add a similar position percentage in the non-construction our concern is and if we if we take the vendors that we work with that are hub vendors today we would actually be close to that percentage however they're not registered with the state so if we ask them to register with the state we
121may lose their business because they're not interested we have contacted them and asked them to register so the piece is are we do we want to do business with hub vendors or do we want to do business with hub vendors registered with the state we choose to do business with hub vendors at least at this moment depending on the board's decision and so the percentage would only be applicable to those that are registered so if you take out the percentage is is the percentage being in there the deciding factor as we look at those that are registered versus non-registered and the reason i ask is because i feel like if you don't have some type of number or goal it's hard to know that you are successful and this can be you know really subjective
122based upon who's in that position to to find out if we are actually you know making progress toward using hub businesses so is there the distinguishment between um if the percentage in there does that mean that the vendor has to then be um registered with the state so if i ask that question yeah so that is the state mandate for construction what we offered and superintendent moore discussed this also is that we can create a report take in those that are registered with the state add those that we use that are not registered with the state and although state documents wouldn't recognize that group of vendors we have every vendor with wake county noted as a hub vendor and we would share those reports with you in a finance committee or in front in the
123full board or wherever you would like so we're offering to do that as a separate report that would give you a percentage if i could just interject too that i um there are legalists associated with this that if necessary we could address in closed session but i recommend the current language miss johnson hustler so thank you attorney bloomberg for your recommendation however i wasn't at the meeting so i still don't understand why we wouldn't choose to be leaders and just put a percentage for hub businesses and remove the requirement to register that's not to you it's to the board because the board can make that decision it is yes ma'am mr winters do you recall your face do you recall that percentage no no he's i'm just curious if anyone recalls what that percentage was
124why we wouldn't use it the percentage is still i don't up for debate for me it's more about why can't we just use the language so the state normally yeah presents a 10 of the business i mean that's what it is on the construction side and it would probably be the same recommendation for non-construction right so back to the language is that the percent of who applied or because i mean if you don't apply you're not a right it's a percentage usage okay so i don't see how that works if it's not those that have applied because you may have a wide variety of who applied i would struggle with that we need to discuss this more than it's probably not ready so if i'm not mistaken i think deborah wallace and pam gales were
125in favor of not putting a percentage because of the greater flexibility it offered them to work with registered and non-registered that doesn't mean they would not have an internal monitoring procedures that they would continue to maintain on a spreadsheet spreadsheet with documentation within the department itself because they too want to increase that percentage but as as mr winters has indicated that sometimes those businesses that are not registered are discouraged from applying to begin with and so if we are not careful with the language both registered and unregistered and a percentage attached to it as well then we may not have the flexibility that we would have if we would have our own internal monitoring system our own internal percentage without putting it necessarily in policy that would discourage some who are not registered from being
126part of the business so let me ask a basic question is it illegal to just put hub vendors because i guess for me the argument isn't the percentage at this point it sounds like you all keep answering the question about percentage versus answering the question of why can't we just put the percentage and remove the word registered i'm that's the only question i'm asking that's my question so if you're asking so in terms of the registered or not registered that's a board call i mean you you guys can do that yeah that that's a board called the the the percentage issue is a legal issue that i'm happy to provide you know legal guidance yeah and to my earlier point i actually am asking the board what is a why why i'm just going to
127jump in why is um why do you not want to register why do people not want to register because it's too hard or it's not an easy process but it's not terribly difficult and miss gales has offered to assist vendors in the past and they have not been interested but that gives an advantage doesn't it to the vendor it would give them an advantage to do business with other businesses throughout the state but many of the companies that we work with are only doing business in wake county but that's not helping the businesses i mean to help them register would give them more opportunities outside of wake county so i don't think we're helping them ms mcafee i'm happy to withdraw my motion and we can we have a we could take it back to
128policy committee if that would make us more you know just we need to get it right and and be able to explain it more clearly and i apologize for not being able to do that more clearly no i think i think these are good questions i think these were questions that come up but i think it's good when we you know question and and challenge ourselves again and i appreciate the the discussion the ability and the flexibility to move yeah i mean and that was the question that we asked at the at the meeting is as well so what was the answer from board members because this isn't a staff question the answer well we very we very clearly followed the guidance of miss gales because she she had very clear reasons why she wanted
129the language that she did my perspective was taking the the advice from the person who was closest working in the field i have in my notes that an issue was raised about issues between purchasing and services uh and and magnitudes of purchasing contracts versus uh services a lot more of our hubs or with services i don't have the details of that that information but ms gales no no but but what i'm saying is miss gales gave us advice and i think as a governing board from my perspective i was trying to take the best advice from the staff so that's but i agree with mr kushner let's bring it back let's talk about it as he mentioned the majority of our hub vendor contracts are for services much of our money may be spent on
130for instance technology there's not many hub vendors that will sell us 50 000 computers so so most of it is on the service side but it's the will of the board and we can make this policy read any way you would like to but we i will tell you that if we make the vendors register it will be difficult and to be clear that is not my interest i understand and is there um a time sensitive nature to this i'd rather get it right than rush through it we're we're practicing what's in this policy already where we're requiring a hub vendor and and we're asking for a hub vendor and we're advertising and in areas where hub vendors can see it so we're we're practicing the details behind it already thank you and i would
131appreciate if we move forward because i i do i think we all kind of felt that that same question that miss johnson hustler is asking and felt compelled and to ask those questions and and perhaps aired on the side of staff of finding ways to help miss gales i know there's a strong entrepreneurial group that works with our local chambers of commerce with wake tech that can help with that information as well so we can help find pathways for these vendors because we heard very clearly that it's helpful to them that if they are registered with the state but that does not preclude us from working with them right the majority of our vendors that we work with now are not registered okay so ms kushner you withdrew your motion is there another motion on
132the table well i guess chairman happy i'd move that we re-refer the policy back to the policy committee and schedule appropriate um review again um invite staff and then answer some of the questions that have been asked here at the board table okay is there a second to that all right all those in favor is there any discussion all those in favor of referring this back to the policy committee signify by sign of i any opposed nay all right mr winters i believe you're with us for the next policy as well i am next policy is 64-21 pre-audited disbursement certifications a new policy part of the policy migration project when adopted it will replace current policies 8610 pre-audit certification 8621 certification of disbursement it was reviewed at the march 29th policy committee meeting tonight we're
133asking for board approval the first reading of 6421 pre-altered and disbursement certifications i'll be glad to answer any questions chairman happy i move approval of ford policy 6421 as new policy for first reading pre-audit and disbursement certifications so okay thank you we have a motion by ms kushner second by vice chair hegarty is there any discussion on board policy 6421 okay seeing none all in favor signify by sign of eye any opposed nay all right the motion passes moving on mr winters next policy 6441 is part of part of the policy migration project it will replace current policy 8351 maintenance of bidders list it was reviewed march 29th at the policy committee meeting staff suggested adding language regarding the inclusion of the bidder's list as historically underutilized businesses you will see that added language highlighted
134in yala at the end of the second paragraph tonight we request board's approval the first reading of 6441 bidders list chair matthew i remove approval of um policy success bidders less for first reading okay we have a motion by mrs kushner second by dr martin is there any discussion from board members okay seeing none all those in favor of board policy 6441 uh please signify by sign of eye any opposed nay all right the motion passes mr winters and the final policy for me is 6442 vendors list again part of the policy migration project it was reviewed march 29th of the policy committee meeting and we're requesting board's approval of first reading of policy 6442 vendors list chairman happy i move approval of the final policy revision or replacement for six um on vendors list
135this evening 6442 vendors list for first reading thank you we have a motion in a second on board policy 6442 is there any discussion all right seeing none all those in favor of board policy 6442 passing for first reading please signify by sign of i any opposed nay all right thank you mr winters we now move on to board policy 7100 recruitment and selection of personnel for first reading and this is dr anthony matilda good evening chairman hatha mahaffey chief of staff dr gardner members of the board here to present to you the first reading of revised policy 7100 recruitment and selection of personnel revisions reflect updates made by the north carolina school boards association as well as wake county staff when given final approval it will replace the current version of this policy it
136was reviewed at the march 29th policy committee meeting and tonight we request the board's approval of the first reading of the revised policy 7100 chairman happy i'm of approval of the revised version of policy 7100 recruitment and selection of personnel the main change is that it includes language that will bar discrimination based on pregnancy and childbirth for hiring employees all right thank you we have a motion for ms kushner second by vice chair hegarty is there any discussion okay seeing none all those in favor signify by sign of i any opposed nay all right board policy 7100 passes for first reading thank you dr matilda moving on to the facilities portion of our agenda we have our cip presentation this was a part of our work session so this i'm sure will be a quick
137recap um mr douglas cognite good evening everyone good to see you all again we'll wait for the deck to come up on the monitor for a moment please great next slide please happy to be here with you again as dr gardner noah we were happy to be here this afternoon and share with you this very update we will be sharing the final version of the 2022 capital improvement plan update next slide please in this slide we took a moment to review the timeline for 2022 what we have achieved thus far this year as we've had the opportunity over several months to review its staff level and then to bring to you at monthly meetings the following updates space standards and legs program assumptions student enrollment the cost model the executive summary and the rubric prioritization
138of course we're here with you this evening seeking final approval next slide please in this slide you'll see option 1a like alpha this represents the slots that are in the 2022 version of the seven year rolling cip plan it's broken into two categories we have our major renovations as well as our new construction under the major renovations we see the following schools north garner middle school lockhart elementary school brentwood elementary school athens drive high school briarcliff elementary school washington elementary school liggin middle school and zebulun middle school in the new construction category we have hs3 as we know which is already in our seven year rolling plan happy to report also that the wendell elementary school opportunity would be in tbd number one which is in the wendell zebulon area we have the opportunity to
139build a new building and move the current student population into that location pool road site is currently under control of the district which is estbd number two and then finally northeastern raleigh site would be three important to note anything the disastrous does require land to be acquired next slide please in this slide we take a couple of moments to show you where we were on april 5 which was option number one that was our initial discussion and recommendation coming out of that we received very good feedback and we appreciate that from you all we came back to the facilities committee last week and are happy to report the following things number one we heard that major renovations were very important to the board and as a result we were able to move three of our
140new construction slots to the major renovation category so that is a net add of three to our major renovations which is very good secondly we also heard that it was important to have a major high school renovation within the seven year rolling cip happy to report that we were able to do just that with athens drive high school we also heard important feedback that balance in our district is critical especially as we look to the eastern part of our district happy to report that we were able to meet that that feedback and include zebulun middle school we're also as i noted earlier able to build a new school for wendell elementary school and lastly north garner middle school we are happy to report that we can do a major renovation on the existing campus we
141can increase the capacity to a large middle school and at a track which they currently do not have on that campus all a strong statement that we're able to provide greater balance to our district as a whole and also increase major renovations across the district next slide please in this slide this captures the new school portion of our seven-year cip plan you will note that at the fourth line from the bottom wendell elementary school is now reflected reflected appropriately no other changes to note next slide please this slide captures the major renovation summary and there are several to note north garner middle school lockhart elementary school brentwood elementary school athens drive high school prior cliff elementary school washington elementary school ligand middle school and zebulun middle school next slide please this slide captures the critical
142program requirements within our seven year rolling cip a couple of important notes the life cycle building component which is your first line shows a very nice increase in years fy 24 and 25 which as you know are in the next bond that provides us the opportunity to make a difference in our schools if something is not in a major renovation category we're able to use some life cycle funds to address some of those issues also important to note that our partial renovation category steadily increases as well which provides opportunities in many of our schools next slide please this slide captures the final totals for this year's version the 22 2022 final cip plan it totals at 2.632 billion dollars it's important to know that in the bond years fy24 and fy25 if totals as follows
143664 million 604 thousand of which 530 million 700 000 would be within the bond next slide please and with that happy to take any final questions or comments if we could first start with a motion to approve this um seven year rolling plan dr martin on behalf of behalf of the facilities committee i i would like to thank staff for the very hard work and i'd like to make a motion that we uh accept this plan for both the next two years but the seven year rolling plan i'd like to second hand okay thank you very much we have a motion in a second are there is there any discussion mr hagerty thank you um and i thought i want to thank you again for your presentation during the work session i think we answered
144a lot of great questions during the work session anyone who's interested in the topic i'd definitely recommend going back and watching it and seeing some of the information there there is one thing that i noticed that i had a question about that i missed in the work session i just wanted to clear up we're very excited about uh h3 coming in and that project um but i know with that h3 campus it's two campuses right there's the wake tech campus and then there's the portion that's on the the parkside campus and i just wanted to get a little more explanation of the parkside middle wake early college project versus the h3 project in terms of their funding and construction how that breaks down so the h3 is relative just only to the high school and
145as we know that is in the morrisville carry area specifically and only and then are you are you asking specifically about the combo so the combo's in the the previous previous funds right yes it is okay yes i just wanted to make sure that people didn't know we were building half the school and not the other of course absolutely thank you thank you when you look at those numbers right the planning is done for that so the bond will have the actual construction dollars for the middle school and wake campus h3 is planning money in the bond to be built in the next two-year cycle miss kushner thank you um that's my happy and i i know this is 11th hour but with um the elementary school three to be determined we kept the northeastern
146raleigh site but i see now and i apologize for not bringing this up at work session um that the design funds for that school would be in fiscal year 28. is there is it possible for us to to either do northeastern raleigh or the um west cary morrisville area given and make that decision closer to when we have enrollment numbers and might be able to um is it too cumbersome to have it as either or in this long range plan and base it on enrollment or do you need us to be more specific well i would and thank you for your question i would just say for the purpose of tonight um when you look at and i'm assuming you're talking about hs3 for the west carrie morris film no yes es3 the very last
147one that has six and a half yes listed for um fy28 okay and you but your question was asking if that could be done at an earlier time compared to no no no i'm saying keep it in that year okay and have as the the notes say northeastern raleigh and i'm wondering should we keep it open that it could be northeastern raleigh or um es5 west cary morrisville area based on enrollment and and whatever crowding we have that we the closer we get to that date make a decision between those two sites at at a later time and just say in this plan we're going to do one of those two yeah we get yes we can we can have that flexibility that's based on what the information that we have today right yes so
148yes we can have that flexible just so that i mean i'm not asking to change monies or schedule or anything just for that as a the board to keep have as an option based on enrollment that we might need to and based on where we find land and i see it's you know it is our lower it's the last project so um to give us some flexibility in making the right decision the closer we get to that yeah that makes sense it does yes eastern school we don't know what it is yet whether it's elementary middle or high for either of those sites elementary middle or high we don't know i'm just saying no they're both they would both be elementary well we need to talk about that so i brought that up during the
149cip meeting don't we well we've got a lot of discussion about this and should i'm wondering if the notes right i mean the the es2 tbd is also out there planning in 27 not to be constructed until 29 it feels to me like maybe all of the tbd it's appropriate to have the notes here because that helped the conversation but i think what you should should we even just take those notes off at this point because we're you know what if we're not planning until 27 what changes are there going to be so i mean when we may need to change this the notes what we've always said about this rolling seven year plan is the next two years are fairly fixed the next two years not quite as much and the next not quite
150as much and so here i would hate to have a sort of locked in that right this is the like you're saying the planning that we're thinking of today we really can't lock in for four or five years down the road so should we even just take names off of the notes with respect to those tbds with respect to any tbd but not a renovation i mean keep the renovations there taking the areas off do we know what they are and i i just i think the area should be on there i just don't think the level of the school is decided yet look for one area miss scott i i agree i would miss cash and i have talked a lot about just because our high schools between um the on that northern part
151of wake county that the areas that we share are pretty full um but and i absolutely agree and there are so many things now that do impact where additional seats are needed with the way charter schools are approved in north carolina right now they can pop up you know basically the next year and that that interferes with the way we do our planning which i think is a better where i think we are being better stewards of tax dollars with the way we do this and the way we are using bonds um to help achieve this but my only concern with just having um maybe we could just have an either or sort of thing or you know this is where we're anticipating but if is there a way to put in writing you know
152but potentially changing to here you know to make better use of the funding does that make sense i just i don't want to say like we'll just do it trust us to do whatever we'll need i think the commissioners would like to have a an idea yeah i agree that we need a balance of specificity and flexibility um so i did not mean to disrupt any of that but and i think they would understand i think they're well aware of the the impacts that do shift uh priorities so to be just to clarify one thing be clear in the new construction section under estbd1 we've made it clear that that would be the wendell elementary school okay that's number one number two that is a site that the board controls that is the pool road
153site okay so what we're talking about is estbd3 correct we're contemplating something that's six years out which absolutely requires flexibility and the ability to go back and look at it as we get closer to that date i mean we could even have a current expectation colon i mean i i wouldn't i wouldn't have a problem with that but that may be too complicated vice chair hegarty i was i was just going to say the the numbers that you have laid out i mean are very specific in terms of costs and estimates per million and those estimates will go up and down depending on the school size but we're putting together a request for bond package and so we have a limited number of dollars and while the cip could change i think we should kind
154of hold you know steady in our request for the numbers there is that agreed okay yes yes yes and and that's for the two years where we've got yes right we're talking about the six seven years out and then that's where we have flexibility i know one of the things that we've talked about too and just mr condon you know i i just ask so for example how important is land already being acquired or secured to the prioritization of a project for example like if we had a good opportunity that arose in any of these areas could it move a project up or down on that list it would be all part of the conversation part of the target circles in the west cary morrisville area that have been there for as long as maybe
155even longer than i've been on the board and we've been flexible with renovations and new construction in the past i know miss cashew advocated very well for west millbrook to get on that renovation list so i appreciate this conversation i think understanding the flexibility and the need for flexibility six years out but also letting folks know what we anticipate this money to be used for i think is is important is there any further discussion or questions from board members ms carter so i know i will be supporting this even though i do have my you know just you know i have my issue about carry high because i'm not going to you know go against major renovations i mean we need the more better but i you know i still do have that concern and
156i'll still say it but i will be supporting i do appreciate the ad you know additional that you pointed out um three additionals since april and kind of spread out around the county so thank you okay we have a motion in a second i see no further hands for discussion all those in favor of approving this um cip seven year rolling plan please signify by signing by any opposed nay all right the motion passes we move on to our resolution requesting and petitioning the board of commissioners for the county of wake north caro carolina to provide necessary funds for the purpose of paying the cost of school facilities very good thank you again uh as as chair noted uh this would be the resolution coming out of the approval this evening that would go directly
157to the board of commissioners it would be for years fy24 and fy25 and it would be as follows a total of 664 million 604 and uh bond piece of that 530 million seven hundred thousand uh you all then would be going to the board of commissioners requesting that they conduct a general obligation bond referendum in year 2022 to authorize the issuance by county of general obligation bonds in that very amount all right thank you and i think it's important that we know that what folks will see on the ballot is the ask for borrowing 530 million 700 000 dollars in general obligation bonds which can be borrowed at a lower rate so that we can be more fiscally responsible in the building and so we've heard from our county commissioners that there is a commitment
158to the buildings the renovation everything that we just discussed in our prior meeting what we're doing is asking the taxpayers to help us be fiscally responsible and approve this bond so that we can budget responsibly so um dr martin i believe you motioned to approve this resolution all right we have a motion in a second any further discussion dr martin i'd just like to add on a little bit to the comments that that you just made particularly in light of one of our our speakers tonight who suggested that the reason to go for a bond was because we had maxed out our credit card and i just want to note that it's quite quite the contrary if we maxed out our credit card our our credit rating would be lousy and then if we tried
159to borrow that money it would actually be more expensive and so i just want to highlight that i believe it would be very uninformed of anyone running for office or looking in the county to say that we don't have needs for renovation for facilities and maintenance and whatnot we don't want to be uninformed that would be irresponsible for us as a board and as you noted it's because we have good credit that we're great this has to be done it is cheaper for us to build on the bond than it would be cash and by the way if we use the debt model then newcomers who move into the county help pay for these needs if we pay it all by cash it's everybody who's here now and if our credit were bad then the
160cost would be higher so i just want to make sure that the public understands that this bond is the most fiscally responsible way to do to begin to address these very critical needs throughout our county thank you and we know our county is very proud of their aaa bond rating and we're happy to help them continue that is there any further discussion questions okay seeing none all those in favor of adopting this resolution and sending it to the commissioners please signify by sign of i any opposed name all right the resolution passes right thank you all very much thank you we are moving on to what was pulled from our consent agenda this is information on jordan driving school we have a two contracts and mr brian pittman and mr drew cook are here to
161help answer our questions on this i think many of us have heard about the backlog yes ma'am and just a quick procedural question both of these items 6a and 6b are related but i'm assuming we would need to take a separate vote yes sir each correct okay so as ms mahaffey referenced we are sharing information this evening on some adjustments to our driver's education contract for some context in february 2019 the wake county public school system accepted a bid from jordan driving school to continue to provide driver education services for the wake county public school system this is currently the second renewal year of the contract for the 21-22 fiscal year staff is requesting board approval to amend the original jordan driving school contract to unencumber funds that will then be repurposed for additional contracts
162to address the current behind the wheel backlog as the board knows but just for public reference and benefit driver education training consists of two parts one is a classroom instruction piece and the second is behind the wheel training a backlog has formed during the pandemic related to the required behind the wheel driving primarily due to one a period of time where behind the wheel driving could not be safely implemented and 2 a lack of drivers returning to this work after the pandemic due to increases in pay opportunities in other fields throughout the current school year the district has been taking proactive steps to reduce this backlog including the implementation of cobit safety protocols that allow behind the wheel driver training to begin again earlier this school year the proposed jordan driving school contract amendment will
163allow us to repurpose existing funding to increase our capacity of trained behind the wheel driving instructors by contracting with jordan driving school and two other vendors during the late spring and summer months while there will always be some gap in time between classroom instruction and behind the wheel training we believe this effort will get us back into an acceptable range of approximately six weeks between these two trainings the supplemental contracts that will be implemented this spring and summer will pay a higher rate per person for completion of behind the wheel training to compensate for current market costs of staff gasoline and other necessary costs related to running the program while we would of course prefer not to pay higher rates for this service number one the cost will be covered with lapse funds from the
164existing jordan driving school contract so this is not new money this is repurposing money that otherwise would not be spent and likely reverted back to the state at the end of fiscal year and two it allows the district to return to a position where we can offer all students equitable access to driver training and the opportunities that having their permit and their license offer and i think in terms of equity we know that there is a avenue that students can pay a higher fee a much higher fee with private vendors and still get their behind the wheel instruction that's not available to those that can't quite frankly afford that cost so with that staff is requesting board approval of the jordan driving school contract amendment as indicated under item 6a of the agenda and mr
165pippen and i are happy to answer any questions you may have i'm sorry ms cash did you want to are you making a motion i was going to make a motion to accept the recommendations okay you go first okay fantastic well i would move that we go ahead and approve the the amendment to the existing contract with jordan driving school okay we have a motion and a second and as mr cook said we have two votes the first one is on the contract amendment the second one is on the contract to address backlog but i'm sure we can discuss both now seeing as they're well related miss cash yeah i asked for it to come back as an action item only because of what you just said was perfect uh because i wanted i did
166want the public to hear why we were making a contract with jordan and how we were actually going to go out with other vendors as well because there had been a lot of as we all know but the way you explained it was what i wanted the public to hear exactly so thank you great thank you thank you miss cash ms carter all right thank you um yeah and i was just gonna thank you for speaking to it because i know um i've received quite a few questions about it and i just i think it's important too like you noted this is not adding any additional cost so i think that was very important to note but i'll just say as a parent that's lived even well my mom was right almost at covered one
167was even before there's been a backlog for quite some time and and what you spoke to is so true because we would have folks be like oh i just paid three four hundred bucks and i'm already done and oh you all have six months so it um i really appreciate the attempts to make all of our students be able to have this opportunity within our schools and not have to go and pay several hundred bucks when many do not have that opportunity thank you yes ma'am yeah and just to raise the point i appreciate that we're being proactive on this this is something i hear from high school parents very frequently i mean trying to get into driver's ed right now is like trying to win a radio calling contest you know you wait for
168the word and then you race race race and try to get in for one of those few seats and they just aren't there and everyone either keeps putting it off and putting it off or like has been said they have to turn to like a private driving school that they're paying for a large amount out of pocket and that keeps a lot of potential drivers from that training so i really applaud you all bringing this in i'm support going to support this amendment and then the second one that you're asking for right thank you all right further discussion okay hearing none of those in favor of approving the driver education contract amendment with jordan driving school um please signify by signing by any opposed nay all right motion passes our next is the contract to
169address backlog i think we've fairly well addressed it but if there's anything else mr cook so it's the supplemental contract and so just quickly in february an rfp was initiated to identify driver education vendors that could provide behind the wheel driver training to students in the wake county public school system for the purpose of addressing the pandemic related backlog and staff is requesting more approval of that contract at this time i still make a motion thank you miss cash is there a second i'll second it all right with a motion in a second is there any further discussion on that okay hearing none to approve the contract with jordan driving school to address the backlog please signify by a sign of eye any opposed name all right thank you both very much all right thank
170you very much thank you all right at this time i will entertain a motion to go into closed session chair mahaffey yes sir at this time i move that we go into closed session to consider confidential personnel information protected under north carolina general statute 143 318.11 a 1 a 3 and a 6. to consult with the board of education attorney and preserve the attorney client privilege is provided for north carolina general statute 143-318-11a3 to consult with the attorney employed or retained by the board in order to preserve the attorney client attorney client privilege between the attorney and the board to consult with and instruct board staff for negotiating agents concerning the position taken by on or behalf of the board in negotiation of price or other material terms of a proposed contract for the acquisition
171of a portion of certain real property in northwestern wake county having wake county pin 0746-86 and to consider confidential student information protected under general statute 1115c-402 and the family educational rights and privacy act 20 united states code 1232g all right we have a motion by vice chair hagerty a second by ms kushner is there any discussion hearing none uh please signify um going yes thank you sign of i and he opposed to going to close session say nay all right we are now in closed session you