4-5-22 Board Meeting

001to 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 any speaker by refraining from loud comments or other disruptions disruptions by any person or persons of a public meeting will be subject to action in accordance with general statute 143-318-11 we have a quorum and we will now please join in reciting the pledge of states of allegiance and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you all very much before we begin today we had an unexpected loss in our wake county community

002specifically our millbrook high school community and that is the unexpected loss of principal dana king who passed over the weekend if you will all join me in a moment of silence hmm thank you all very much and we'll begin with superintendent moore's comments so many of us remain shocked and deeply saddened by the sudden passing of our long time colleague and friend dana king with her sense of humor and fierce advocacy for her colleagues and students dana has made a lasting impact on thousands of people since she joined our district as an english teacher at sanderson high school in 1986. she served at principal at east millbrook for four years before beginning her tenure at millbrook in 2003. her students and staff just last week paid a heartfelt tribute to her as she prepared to

003retire later this month dana had the unique ability to make a large magnet high school feel small and personal she cared for one student at a time often pulling students into her office who needed a listening ear then helping them formulate a plan for success she also had ability to put a smile on anyone's face regardless of the circumstances she was well known for bringing levity and in turn some perspective to the most challenging of situations our hearts are with the millbrook community and with dana's family her husband rick her daughters katie and jenny and her three grandchildren as they grieve this tragic loss know that her memory and legacy will live on in all the lives she touched during her 42 years as an educator congratulations are in order to the six school athletic

004directors and one athletic trainer who received awards yesterday from the north carolina athletic directors association colin fegley the athletic director at green level high was named the state's athletic director of the year he has served as an athletic director in our district for eight years starting at green hope high before being named green level's first athletic director when the school opened in 2019 eric hall the head athletic trainer at cary high was named the state athletic trainer of the year mr hall graduated from kerry high in 1993 and returned to his alma mater in after six years at the heads of head trainer at southeast raleigh high jeff dunbar athletic trainer at garner high and mike joyner the recently retired athletic director at wake forest high each received a brave heart award for continuing to

005perform their duties amid personal hardship mr gu dunbar continued to serve the garner community while spending countless hours with his family in the hospital as his son battled an illness and mr joyner rarely missed work even as he underwent chemotherapy treatments for non-hodgkin's lymphoma finally crystal massenburg of south garner high travis cease of athens drive high and jason adams of pine hollow middle each were recognized as athletic directors of excellence for significant contributions in the field of athletics within their state region and nation it is well documented that the benefits of student athletic participation extend well beyond the playing field these awards are a reminder that the state of athletics in wake county is strong thanks in large part to dedicated leadership next i would like to congratulate apex friendship principal matt white for receiving

006the ralph kimmel award last week from the north carolina principals and assistant principals association the award is given annually to a retired educator who has made a lasting contribution to the profession and the association while mr white has not yet retired he has announced his retirement and plans to stop step down at the end of the school year mr white has 39 years as an educator 23 of those in wake county he served as principal of east cary middle salem middle and apex high before becoming apex friendships first principal when that school opened in 2015. he was named wcpss principal of the year in 2008. and mr white's leadership and dedication extends beyond his principal duties he has served as president of the state principal and assistant principals association in 2014-15 and continues to serve

007on that organization's board thank you mr white for your many years of effective leadership in our district across the state and congratulations on this well-deserved recognition finally this is assistant principal appreciation week and i want to join our students parents and staff members in expressing my gratitude for the countless ways assistant principals keep our schools running smoothly as a former assistant principal i know that it is a challenge to juggle the many responsibilities that come with the job assistant principles have a hand in nearly every aspect of campus operations whether it's facilitating transportation looking at other student services supporting classroom instruction other duties as assigned often that work happens behind the scenes so it is fitting to take this time to let our assistant principals know how invaluable they are to the success of our

008students i hope that we will all take the time to thank an ap this week that concludes my comments thank you superintendent moore on may 25th members of the apex high school community past and present gathered together along with the sisters and cousins of kevin e todd to commemorate him and name the field in his honor coach todd had many people who came to see him to see this honor bestowed for him in his honor past principals assistant principals no matter how short their time at apex high was past athletic directors coaches from other schools and one of his first players who was on his team when he coached at northgarter middle school in addition to naming of the field there's also a rock with a beautiful plaque inside to memorialize coach todd and what

009he meant to the community i'd like to congratulate the spice girls of apex high school for winning the north carolina junior chef competition always fun to see what our cte kids can do and speaking of that student hands-on experience day or shed and i know dr martin will talk on this as well puts our students in with business members of the business community for construction holly springs high school and heritage high school were named some of the winners we had carrie high leesville high and other schools participating alumni had come back to help coach teams and the most incredible thing was the job board where 12 students at that by the end of the three days walked off of that site with a job for when they graduate high school and that concludes my comments

010vice chair haggerty is away at a conference so we will start with miss kushner thank you chair mahathi and it certainly has been last week was so inspiring to to be with ms king and her family and her community and i'm sorry miss cash for the loss of your dear friend and for to all of us to our principal community for the loss of their colleague it was a day of celebration and it should have continued for so long so um my heart just goes out to everyone in the king family and then wednesday i was with um mr hegarty and superintendent moore at green hope high school where we had another emotional day of re-weaving our community it was such a magnificent day honoring captain brian smith and mr eric hall who at a

011cheer conference in february saved the life of a man who had collapsed robert gresham senior was visiting from charlotte and was watching his granddaughter in a cheer tournament and collapsed and his son gave the emotional description of these two men captain brian smith and our um kerry high athletic director of athletic trainer um eric hall coming to his aid and i appreciate the green hope community and the kerry high community coming forward to celebrate those two men and it felt like a moment of truly reweaving our community together after this such long time of being broken apart we needed i needed that i will see for myself i needed that moment to um to feel things were coming together and we and the need for us coming together in school communities and miss king's celebration

012was that too and um so we we need our school communities to um be elevated for what they are miss carter has spoken about this with her loss this last year we've had so much loss um that we need to take on i told miss cash we need to take on ms king's legacy and and live that her legacy every day remembering her that's what we need to do so i'll charge us all with that um ms carter also inspired me about musicals i was at martin for shrek jr which was great fun to watch all these kids in their green paint and wonderful story tell costumes it was um so i encourage everyone to check out a musical i think enlo's doing pippin and bro and broughton is doing chicago so lots of great

013talent in wake county schools also thanks to the office of equity affairs for hosting the young women's summit this last weekend some wonderful conversations miss johnson hostler and i had with these brilliant young women who are ready to take on the world and also to dr rangel for the being part of the hispanic professional education summit which brought together students from not only wake county from across the state to encourage excellence in education we also celebrate our national board certified teachers what a wonderful event because we have we lead the nation in this gold standard of teaching we have the best teachers in the entire country and wake county i appreciate the staff and schools supporting those wonderful teachers as they spread their brilliance and and work hard during a pandemic to renew or get

014board certified and also carroll middle schools welcome their new principal mr zarzeki with um a true leadership night where students were doing student-led conferences and leading their families and their parents through the school and again it was a celebration of being back in that school community so it was it's been a wonderful emotional two weeks thank you mr mahappy thank you miss kushner dr martin thank you i echo a lot of those congratulations i too want to start with remembering dana king i don't remember exactly when i first met her but she was one of the first principals i met who was not a principal at one of my children's schools we were i believe it was working on some equity committees that i was working on before i became a board member and that

015was dana uh and i have a heart i'm not i'm not likely to call her principal king or miss king because she was she she was that person and she cared about every every child not just every child of her school but of this district she firmly believed in the magnet program and wanted to see that succeed she touched thousands of lives i'm very sorry that i was not able to go to a retirement reception and now she's not with us but may her legacy live on as mrs kushner noted that's a charge to all of us uh as you noted mr chairman hafey uh yeah two weeks ago i was in a more normal element for me uh well i was leaving my normal element and going to the the our joint meeting with

016the commissioners we had a good meeting with our commissioners great to continue those partnerships but i spent the day with the with folks at the shed competition uh just huge congratulations to kevin kevin kimberly the cte the construction teacher at cary high school who had this idea i don't remember how many years ago of of initiating this competition where students would would you know build sheds the sheds get auctioned off it's competition you start with a pile of lumber and at the end of the competition there are sheds that can be uh sold and they're really high quality work i've interacted with that as as long as i can real super hats off to the holly springs team who well one of their two teams they had they initiated two teams but they had the

017first as far as i know it's the first all-women's team uh and uh had a great chance to talk with some of the young women um one in particular stuck out because she was interested in in going on toward a medical career uh likely into surgery and of course uh you all know that i'm gonna champion that like crazy because the skills you learn building with your hands are so related to science uh and frankly uh to medicine we are constructions and and to see uh the combination of uh that kind of cte hands-on experience with very high level academic performance was fantastic and particular hats off to the all women's team when i participate i always ask mr kimberly to you know put me where needed and i i got to work with a

018group who frankly had very little experience coming into the competition um and uh you know it helped keep that that that gang you know in the running uh day one and it was really fascinating and just such a reminder of the importance of this kind of hands-on learning because here were kids who at the beginning of the day were still awkward with the tools with measurements with how you lay stuff out and i'll tell you what by the end of the day in just one day the level of improvement was so obvious it you know it is it is so different to see active hands-on learning than just sitting there talking about in the classroom so hats off to everybody involved in that process it's such a great thing we now have a couple other

019competitions going on the next one coming up is going to be with the electrical wiring so again a number of these things are are happening we've had them in the past for architectural design so the the business community gets to actually see the product of our cte kids and many of them get jobs so keep it up great work i do have a bac meeting for district five coming up this thursday evening 6 30 at dillard drive middle school we'll be doing some of the work getting community input on the strategic i plan to give us the brief uh update on where we are in terms of uh covet data data reporting in the school system has changed so it's a little bit difficult to sort of give numbers that are meaningfully compared comparative but

020our wake county numbers are currently at 52 cases uh in a week per hundred thousand population that is up from uh the low of about two weeks ago when we were down we got down to the low of about 42 cases per 100 000 population so the cases are slightly rising again uh it's not clear whether this is the really uptick before ba2 or whether this is a bump uh on the way down um but uh karen needs to be taken those numbers are based on comparing our wake county schools numbers with the county numbers i would have to estimate the numbers are probably the formal reported numbers are probably 30 to 50 percent low based on uh the amount of home testing that is done from the statewide data if we look at the

021disaggregated numbers for the first time in quite a long time really almost uh in a year the school age population is now dipping below the rest of the county population the five to nine year olds are at 40 cases per hundred thousand these are weekly cases the 10 to 14 year olds are 29 400 000 population the 15 to 17 year olds are about 40 cases per hundred thousand and those are also however on the verge of turning up right now the highest cases the highest infection rate in wake county are the 24 to 49 year olds which are up eight percent from last week that's with reported cases that number is actually going to be will be significantly higher because the each week's reporting uh is a little bit low so the 24 to

02249 year olds are up to 62 cases per 100 000 population so things are trending unfortunately not in the right direction right now finally in the last week or two we've been hearing a lot of new talk about the state's consideration of a new way to pay teachers and educators in general and sadly with that conversation the old trope gets marched out of this myth that educators are afraid of change uh you know the folks from best nc you know excited in the paper educators are just afraid of change and i'll tell you what to march that trope out again now is embarrassing teachers and educators in the last couple of years have changed like crazy met needs throughout a pandemic in ways that nobody thought possible before uh none of us knew what to

023do before um and as uh it was some committee meeting somebody noted and i lived that experience as well you know we some of us in education hear people talking about you know all the binging on netflix or whatever during the pandemic i can tell you every not not a single educator was sitting there binging on on anything because our work went up uh working hybrid working remote the new forms of instruction you know what we dealt with change did we solve every problem no did we keep it from being a whole lot worse you bet educators are not afraid of change when they talk about the afraid of change in this new uh education or funding profile for educators they again are marching out the tropes of how testing and assessment and accountability metrics

024are what we need and we need to pay people based on these accountability accountability metrics well let me tell you folks if standardized testing and accounting accountability metrics would magically improve teaching we would have world-class education everywhere in this country but you know what ever since no child bit left behind we discovered in standardized testing and those kind of spreadsheet accountability measures well they may have some place they really do not tell us about quality education and they're not going to just reform things so i think i know who is actually afraid of change i think it's those policy makers and many of these alleged business reformers are afraid of change change that will actually work is to trust and pay educators as the professionals that they are you know what it worked in finland

025then it had some of the same challenges that we have and they looked at the situation and said what do we need to do they said we need we need to actually treat our educators like professionals pay them like professionals and you know what happened finland went and became the top uh in the world in terms of education so whenever you hear this trope of educators are afraid of change hogwash the folks are ferry to change are those who are trying to keep this crazy mythology going on that somehow we can do it cheaper somehow we can do it with standardized testings somehow teachers are afraid of being accountable hogwash let's lose our fear to recognize treat and pay educators as the professionals that they are thank you miss scott thank you um i want

026to start by echoing the sentiments of my colleagues and and just express my my prayers to everyone who knew and loved dana king just a such a tragic loss but my goodness her legacy is just an infinite wake of um a positive uh of the ways to use your voice your strength and your knowledge and education i just think of the number of people she served and i was actually speaking with someone and and talked about uh something that dana king had uh had had done i mean just a few weeks ago i said you know dana king did and so she just she has the she will always and forever her legacy will absolutely live on um as as miss kushner and and dr martin and jared mchale pointed out it's been a very

027busy time but full of hold of a lot of joy so so in these moments of loss there certainly has been so much to celebrate as well um i appreciated the opportunity to go to east wake high school where they had a presentation uh about their the the many challenges at their school but the many positive things of their school and i was thankful that douglas condon as well from our maintenance and operations was able to attend um it was a also a really great opportunity because they had both a teacher panel and a student panel and while as board members we have lots of opportunities to meet teachers and see them in various capacities it isn't that often at least for me that i've had like a panel like a question and answer type

028opportunity with teachers or students especially and those are the voices that we we really need to hear from we we hear from parents and and that's absolutely important but i think it's also the opportunities to have to talk to people who are inside those buildings every day is a positive one and i i hope i've mentioned this before i'm going to put a plug for that again but maybe we can find a way to incorporate a student voice into our board advisory councils or have some sort of input that we can hear from on a regular basis the window elementary science fair returned they actually had not had their science fair for a few years even prior to covid so it was great to see that come back and to see the students the projects

029amazing projects we have such talented kiddos and talented teachers and and dedicated parents who helped put on this great great event so it was that i appreciate and thank them again for the opportunity to judge the uh the projects and congratulate those winners and speaking of things that had not happened for a while as you probably are all aware we had mpa so the musical performance assessment for groups are choirs orchestras and bands have been participating in these where they are if you're not familiar if you were in band a thousand years ago like i was it's contest so they go and perform in front of judges who provide feedback and then give them ratings and i wanted to just extend to our music directors who maybe you didn't get to go back this year

030because your numbers did drop or it is hard to do that again to return to participating in these types of events because it is not an easy task to plan to prepare your students and especially if you've lost instrumentation i was thinking about our future farmers our all of our these sort of co-curricular groups that go out and participate in different activities and it's been difficult to get that going again but what i want to say to those teachers and leaders is that maybe mpa didn't happen this year but the experience that your students have in your classroom each and every day is what they'll take with them and that's what you have been doing and that has never been lost with your students whether you they are in school or not the connections they

031make in your classroom virtual classroom but especially in person is something that they take with them so hang in there and you'll get back to those contests very soon because i think the children are just going to keep they're going to keep wanting to participate in these types of activities that truly is as much kushner said bring us together thank you miss waters thank you chair i also would like to join in offering prayers and support to the king family the millbrook community and all those who loved and knew her as a milbert graduate and having gone back later in life to millbrook the loss is very personal i think to everyone here so lots of prayers in the three weeks since i have been on the board it has been quite a journey and

032i'm very grateful having been a student an employee a parent in the district and now a board member it is really amazing to see all the behind the scenes work that goes into keeping the district operating and our students receiving the great education that they do so thank you to all of my colleagues and all the staff who have done such a great job with the onboarding and explaining and answering many questions that i've had so that's been wonderful and in my first 24 hours on the board i had the wonderful opportunity thanks to miss johnson hossler to visit my first school which was mary phillips a school that i was only familiar with in name and so actually going there was what a beautiful experience and i think this is a school that is

033very unsung the energy there was so positive and so encouraging and they were hosting a lunch and learn through the north carolina transit workers association exposing the students to different career options and the students were so engaged as wonderful questions and just were so attentive i was thinking i wish i had been at that point at that age in my own life but to see them was wonderful so mary phillips is just an amazing school and if you've not experienced uh the environment there it is it's a very special place and also um over miss kushner i had a chance to step over into carol where i have a student and so the student-led conferences were really amazing and the special thing about carol and every school is very special that the special thing about

034carol for me is just how positive the environment is i think they've used every inch every wall every staircase to be a place for encouragement and affirmation so that our students feel good about themselves and feel good about being in the environment so it was a great opportunity to meet teachers and to be able to thank them in person for all the work that they've done and being back in the building was really great to connect with my sixth grader and to see his world and actually be there so very glad to have our new principal at carroll and then had a meeting at the southeast raleigh ymca which as you know is connected to southeast raleigh elementary and so i was like i can't be this close and not actually go to the school

035and so our meeting host made opportunity for me to go over and as we celebrate all the workers in our district i would like to say our frontline staff our receptionist they do a great job so miss data who is over at southeast who sits in a very open glassing space wonderful smile and so welcoming so i really enjoyed going over and meeting miss finner in an impromptu meeting they were so kind and so sweet so i didn't get a chance to tour the school but to see all the young learners walking around was really really special to me and on sunday went to inlo and wow enlo is doing amazing things it was really just the perfect blending of so many families so many students with so many interests i met football players i

036met students in band i met students in the performing arts and so many students coming in as in incoming freshmen it was just lovely to be able to see a school that represents our community and has a place for everyone and so principal jordan does a great job and the students really had such a strong impact on me at that event because they really took charge and were very able to answer questions and guide me along even one of their lead marshals she pulled me over and said come on you're going on this tour with me and so i appreciated that confidence again seeing how our students are demonstrating those leadership skills and being able to be the voice of our future is really great and then also joining in some of the work with

037the community equity leadership team so it's been a great three weeks and i'm looking forward to lots more to come so thank you miss carter thank you and i too shared condolences about dana king to all those who knew her anyone that was touched by her maybe she didn't even realize it and i just want to send the condolences to everyone there and yesterday was a school librarian day so i did want to mention that and i thank all of our librarians because this month is also school library month which is a very important part of our schools but also our the other side the public libraries outside of our school is very important in our communities another awareness month that is that touches me personally a lot is parkinson's disease awareness month and i

038just want to take a moment please indulge me a little bit because i do know that you know folks who work for our school system or families who have students in our system have been touched in some shape or fashion whether you yourself have parkinson's disease or you have a family member or friend and my dad had parkinson's and my mother has parkinson's disease and i just want to say to anyone who's listening there is lots of hope there's lots of resources out there it is a very challenging disease but there are lots of resources in our community i know our family the unc parkinson center for excellence was very helpful to us but the parkinson's foundation provides free support and lots and lots of information so just reach out and do not give up

039that's what i'll walk away with that for but switching gears a little bit i want to thank all the aps i know that's been touched on already but just knowing how much of an impact they can have not only our students our families but staff because i know when i worked in a school system aps were often there and the ones needed not only in great times of celebration but also when we needed support perhaps so i just wanted to thank all of them for all they do i did have the opportunity to attend another united art artist in schools event and this was at adams elementary the number drummer number drummer i think i'm saying that right i'll probably mess with m b's but uh it was just fantastic the way he merged math

040and how it connects to music and how you know guys you don't need to have an instrument in your home you can still be playing music bringing in multiplication fractions and uh seeing the students just really going at it with drumsticks and my personal favorites cowbells and the trash cans trashcan lids and it was just a great event and um just very important to continue all of those and there's so many i have another one coming up i think later this month i think it's roger day which i remember for quite some time uh i can i think have some of his songs still memorize for my children when he was around so i also enjoyed the shed of it as well the day i went it was raining and i was like of course

041but it was actually really helped in their work experience because when you're working outside um the job goes on unless of course there's tornado or thunder you know lightning but i mean if it's raining they have to continue those students were continuing they were walking through that mud they were hauling the shingles up they were you know and it was um a great event um i got to talk to the ocean i called him the osha guy because he kind of got upset because i had the navy junior rotc on and he was not a navy man but we worked that out but it was just great to see how he told me a lot of history and how long he's been involved and just a huge amount of community support and the jobs were

042wonderful because i just think you know every student has a little bit different path and anything we can do to encourage those different paths and help them on whatever their journey is is a wonderful thing and congratulations to about the new and renewed nationally board certified teachers that too was a great event especially considering everything else has been going on to be able to work through that process finish that and congratulations congratulations to all those teachers and right after that event i was lucky enough to attend my first lacrosse game never been to one of those i did that because there was one going on i was kind of shocked because it had been the weather and a lot of things postponed but the women's lacrosse at carrie high was still going on so i

043was able to catch that and of course a musical i you know i love the musicals and i went friday which was appropriate because it was freaky friday at green hope high school and it was just another magnificent event i just the cast the crew the orchestra pit the director team and i have to say it was not only the singing and the music but there were some serious jump rope skills i'll just leave it there that occurred um and it but it was just again i i love it i have another one i think it's east cary middle school is coming up later this month and shrek jr i believe as well but looking forward to that and last week was the district nine back meeting and i want to thank miss gaddis for

044always helping because we are doing virtual the rest of the school year and she helped with all of that and mr hofstedler and his team for helping ensure the materials the presentation was translated and having so an interpreter on the call i really appreciate all of that help and mr needer and dr martillo who are over there i want to thank you all for coming they did a great presentation on all of our staff challenges our vacancies the different steps that have been taken with compensation bonuses and also the wide variety of recruiting processes that are going on and ongoing and even we're able to celebrate some early i think i'm going to say this right early contracts is that how okay thank you dr vertilla that have been signed so it was great to

045hear and the next back meeting for district 9 is on april 27th at 6 00 p.m and again will be virtual and this will be the strategic plan input so i encourage folks to sign up and please come because we really want to hear as many from as many folks as possible and many voices so thank you miss cash um so yes so dana king was probably one of my closest friends so i probably emotionally won't say a lot tonight but i can say that i think i think most millbrook will say that about dana king being a really close friend because milbert high school is a community and you know as well as anybody i did walks around millbrook yesterday and um we coaches and i spent a lot of time around the gymnasium

046and the hallways i stood in front of her room for a while and um i don't think i've seen a room without a light in it before but we did talk about the trouble we would get into we did talk about kathy moore and how fun it was to break the rules but she would always say to me i'll tell cassie she'll be fine um and should i tell her before we do it or after and i'd say i'd leave that up to you dana because you know cassie better than anybody uh and kathy knew her well i don't think we would always tell our area superintendents what we were doing because it was easier just to let that go but i remember i remember the first time i met dana king it was when

047her she was made the east millbrook principal and i was still i was on the board of education in the 90s and somebody called me and it was getting dark out and they said east millbrook is burning down and i said okay so i went over there and dana king was there and it was kind of dark and her building was burning down she hadn't been a principal very long and here comes this lady out of the flames kind of walking out towards me and i said she must be a superhero and that's the first time i met dana king and um well she is a superhero so i'm gonna think more about the things that um that i can talk about later i am so happy that we had a retirement thing on the

048earlier this week ms moore you did a beautiful job of telling all the things that you two had done together for years and years and years and the area superintendents that had her told a little bit of her life a little bit at a time and covered all the things that she had done in her career it was a story well told her staff was there her two daughters and their families and little grandkids running around and her husband rick all looking forward to the next chapter of their life and she was too she was excited she you know all of our principals have been through a lot in the last couple years and they persevered and been exhausted but always smiling so i don't think that you'll anybody will drive down by millbrook high

049school ever and not see dana king standing somewhere um as they remembered her on the property and there's a a beautiful tribute that was given to her that day made by the the shop people that will stand out in front that just shows how what a light she is in the community and even though i know her light wasn't on in her office that day that i looked at it i just know that her light goes on forever but i'll share more as i think more about it and emotionally more prepared but thank you miss johnson hustler thank you i felt horrible all last week because i had um lost in my family and missed her tribute um so needless to say i was at family funeral and missed my happy call to tell me

050i think many of you know my my daughter goes to millbrook and what you may not know is millbrook was our first family when we moved here in uh the end of 1999 my husband's first school was millbrook so his first boss in wake county was dana king and i mean i you explained it well it's a community um and even once my husband left bill burke and my daughter was still at millbrook i have to tell the story uh miss cash is like a lifelong wildcat just wanting i don't know miss king is the chief wildcat this is the lifelong wildcat and so she um so ms cash was always at events at millbrook during our tenure and my husband has been gone from over for a while as a coach and he still

051had keys to mill brook still does we have this conversation as a part of our family processing what it means to lose someone that is the first person he worked for in this district and my daughter's current principal so i mean she's was a part of our family and that's also how she treated us and treated me prior to becoming a board member and i think you all have gathered she also had a sense of humor so she was like well you're a school board member now but you're still bobby's wife and i was like true and we also acknowledge that mrs cash is her consummate board member forever but i have to tell you at the last homecoming before covet with my best friend ms cash's granddaughter we were all decked out in our

052mealwork gear and ms king comes across the loudspeaker to give her announcement and she says and mr hossler still has keys this is still your home we welcome you back any day and i i was floored i was like homecoming football game did she just she was like yes i am offering mr hosler his job back and i i just think it's important that i mean it's funny and it's a thing that i remember because it's important to note that she lives such a long legacy but talk about a rule breaker like she offered a job over an intercom like um so so so that will forever be funny to our family and my daughter was super embarrassed because we have a last name like hustler so of course people like is that your dad

053and that went on for a couple of weeks like your dad got offered a job by the principal so so i think it's important that you know that not only did she have a sense of humor but truly i don't think that there is anybody who's touched the soil at mill brook who won't remember her legacy her humor even after she was struggling to walk she came to that football game i felt sorry for the football players like she sat on the bleachers with the football players during football season this this past season and i there's a number of things that we could all say um but there are people in your life that you just know that they know and she's one of those people who truly loved what she did and would do

054it at any cost and i think that speaks volumes to even when she broke the rules i think everybody in central services knew it was because at the end of the day her first priority was her community her school community and there is i don't think as a non-educator i think that that's what educators would want to know is that the legacy that they left is that they would do anything not just for her students i was married to one of her employees like for her employees i should also state when he became came to work for her i did not have a child and she he did not have a lot of time and she made sure those educators allowed him to have parental leave with me like she as the principal orchestrated what

055that could look like um so i could go on all day um but to your point her light still shines bright and the legacy will live on and all of us who ever ever communicate with her will have so many dana king stories i called her by her whole name which she also thought was funny i'm not sure why i just called her it seemed weird to call her dana after i became a school board member so i just call her her whole name but indeed the stories will live a long long and so are her legacy and i can't tell you the outpouring of love on social media from every student who ever attended bill brook so miss cash i know that a piece of you is aching far deeper than we can understand

056because you were also personal friends but thank you for giving a little piece of her to me as we shared her um as as co-board members while my daughter is at mobrook so thank you all for for those of you who are indulging us because life is short and i realized that in the last seven days with the unexpected death of my family like you wouldn't believe and the things that overwhelm you and i always tell board members and this is no secret um my faith and my religion grounds me and it's the thing that allows me to endure no matter how much insanity is around me and so i just trust and rest in that she lived the life fully that she wanted to lead and we can rest assured that she lived every

057moment of every day and not everybody can say that and for those of you who are listening who didn't know her if you take one thing from me that's what i would say is love and live fully and give to the things that you adore especially for our educators i know this is exhausting and i yet you still live fully and passionately and so just let that be a reminder that that's the legacy that we all want to live and lead and that people will say after we're gone well said so it's a little bit of sadness at this board meeting today and shock and as we move forward with the the business of the school district we do have to approve our meeting agenda there is an amendment to remove item six which is

058recognition recognition of the north carolina tech director of the year um she is unable to be with us today that she's not feeling well so um i'll move approval of the agenda with that addendum madam chair thank you we have a motion in a second any discussion hearing none all in favor sign of i any opposed nay all right moving on to our first information item which is the presentation of the superintendent's proposed budget for the 2022-2023 academic year superintendent moore good evening chair lindsay and board members as i prepare this budget proposal for it is clear we have moved into a new phase of our cobit 19 pandemic response while we are optimistic that the worst has passed we are also grappling with the effects of an event that could linger for months or

059years these challenges include staffing shortages academic recovery mental health issues and more with the generous help of county commissioners and increased federal funding we've made progress in addressing some of these needs but we have a long way to go if we are to put every child on a path towards academic success within our new reality in 2223 that has to start with shoring up our workforce in years past i have highlighted one of the six core beliefs found in our strategic plan to help frame my annual budget message this year it seems all together appropriate to cite our third core belief well supported highly effective and dedicated principals teachers and staff are essential to success for all students the national labor shortage has made it painfully clear that every single member of our organization is

060essential to success for all students that's true regardless of their role to cover gaps during the past year for example we've asked bus drivers to drive triple and sometimes quadruple routes to get students to and from school each day hundreds of central services staff report to schools each week to assist cafeteria workers custodial staff teachers and instructional needs instructional assistants with needs and vacancies in the schools i'm grateful to our employees for stepping up to face these challenges i'm also grateful to this board for taking appropriate steps to increase compensation within our financial means to further these efforts the bulk of this year's additional funding request is tied to raising employee compensation more specifically i am proposing that 35.2 million dollars be spent to increase employee compensation as part of a total request of 56

061million sixteen thousand three hundred and forty dollars in additional support from the county commissioners for the 22 23 school year in addition to the 35.2 million increase for compensation i'm obliged to include an additional 8.3 million for legislative requirements such as costs that are incurred due to charter school expansion and increased local costs for employee hospitalization and retirement benefits i'm also requesting an additional 6.4 million to support the opening of four new schools in 2223 apex friendship elementary barton pond elementary herbert aikens road middle and the wake college of information and by the work wake early college of information and biotechnologies as town leaders and parents can attest these schools are necessary to address areas of growth in our county where the demand for seats has outpaced supply the money requested here would cover the

062operational costs of these schools such as staffing supplies maintenance that are not included in the construction programs approved by voters the additional increases in this proposed budget are largely tied to six million dollars in long deferred operational expenses and overall rising costs some costs are so significant that it is only prudent to fund them over multiple budget cycles you will find a summary of some of those priorities in the pages that immediately follow this letter in the budget book i'm grateful to this board and to our commissioners for their strong support in the past which has allowed us to continue to have success in the face of unprecedented challenges for example results for high school end of course tests have close to rebounded close to their pre-pandemic levels our four-year graduation rate has remained over

06390 percent we have led the nation in the number of educators earning national board certification in our classrooms for 16 consecutive years magnet schools of america earlier this year named 45 of 54 wake county magnet schools as either schools of excellence or schools of distinction numerous teachers principals and staff members were honored with regional state and national awards including elena ashburn of broughton high school who became the first wake county principal to be named the north carolina principal of the year in closing i want to acknowledge a group of essential personnel that i have not yet mentioned are parents while this budget necessarily focuses on supporting our employees and how they support our students i would be remiss if i did not acknowledge the most important partners in education which are our families and parents

064for our parents this pandemic has been particularly difficult but the connection between parents and their teachers has often grown stronger in this struggle it is beyond doubt that such commitment and partnerships keep our school system and our community strong and it is the strength of those families and our ability to serve them that allows us to move forward together thank you for this time i will now ask david needer our chief business officer to provide highlights of the budget request thank you superintendent moore good evening chairman happy members of the board and superintendent i will now get into some more details of the budget if i could ask that the powerpoint slide that be put up thank you julie and if you could go ahead and proceed to the next slide tonight we're presenting to

065you the superintendent's proposed 2223 operating budget before we get into the actual budget though i want to share some background on the landscape and context that the budget was developed within shared a little bit of this with you at your joint boards meeting a couple weeks ago but i would like to review that again tonight we'll then review the funding priority areas and the actual budget with you and then lay out a path of next steps after tonight tonight's presentation is for information only as we go through the presentation you'll see that the focus is on local funding for the most part and the reason it is the only real opportunity that a board of education in north carolina has to request funding is with the local government or the county in north carolina the

066state legislature makes all the decisions about public school funding and in every state in the country the federal government makes decisions about federal funding next slide please our actual budget development process began later than any i can remember my 15 or so years here largely due to the late final budget coming from the state late calendar year 21-22 perhaps the good news out of that was it forced us through a lot of work very quickly 2022-23 is the second year of the state biennial budget and it does include two and a half percent average increases for teachers school administrators and support staff already in law for that second year as we look forward though the legislature will come in i believe in may for their short session one of the uncertainties out there is will

067they change make any changes to that second year of the biennial budget we'll have to wait and see um and we'll also have to wait and see if any of the economic uncertainty that may be on the horizon due to world events may impact the state as well as local government and federal government i'll speak more of that in a minute next slide please so one might ask why is the economic outlook a part of this presentation why does it matter to us well unlike most other states in north carolina boards of education have no taxing authority and they're fiscally dependent on other governing bodies i think we're one of only a handful of states where boards of education do not have that authority and they're fully fiscally dependent so we are as i said

068depending on federal state and local governing bodies for their funding policies and decisions and those policies and decisions are in turn can be in turn influenced by the state of the economy next slide please here's a chart we shared with you a year ago it shows the federal local excuse me federal state and local unemployment rates just as some general background high unemployment rates as a general rule are not good for the economy low unemployment rates usually are you can see on the left side of the chart the spike up at the beginning of the pandemic in unemployment you can see the rapid decline and now with quarter one of 2022 at the far right you could see they're down to or below pre-pandemic levels just for your reference blue is the national wine red

069is north carolina in green as wake county so you can see that as far as unemployment the state is doing much better than the nation and as far as wake county we're doing even better than the state the next slide please this next slide is something you've seen in prior years as well it's an index of north carolina economic indicators maintained by dr michael walden at nc state university the higher the number the better and as you look at this chart the downtick you see on the left side of the graph was the great recession and you see a long recovery to get back to the great prior the great recession levels and then the downtick you see towards the right side of the slide was the pandemic and you see the rapid recovery of

070it i want to point out three things though that dr walton points out about the north carolina economy because based on this economic leading economic indicators it looks very strong and positive he speaks to the actual state of the pandemic becoming endemic if that were to change and we all hope it doesn't that could have economic implications the second thing he points out is the conflict in ukraine and if the united states does get more fully or directly involved the likely impact that will have and likely lead to a recession in the country and finally he points out how the federal reserve will manage through the rising cost of living and inflation rates through their rate increases and that has implications for slowing the economy down too much and going into recession next slide just

071a couple more slides in the economy and then we'll jump into the budget a year ago when we presented the proposed budget we shared some information from with you from the north carolina legislature's fiscal research division when we shared that a year ago the division had just done a study in february of 2021 and then just a few months later in june of 2021 they made revisions to their revenue projections and that's the most recent study that we're aware of but if you look at the chart you'll see now that projected revenues for the current fiscal year between february and june grew by an additional 2.4 billion dollars up to billion dollars and that projected revenues for next year grew by an additional 2.2 billion so overall if you look at state revenues the actual

072revenues for 2019-20 of 23.9 billion and projections for next year of 30 billion that's about a 28 increase in a very short period of time in state revenues take away from this slide the state's looking pretty good next slide please the last slide i want to talk to you about on the economy and looking at things has to do with the wake county economy and i'm not going to go into details here but on the 28th of march the board of commissioners held a retreat where they looked at a number of things around all things budget and the economy there is a hot link in the presentation so if you want to go to the presentation in our assembly system online you can directly access the presentation materials in the agenda for the meeting included

073in the presentations though were projections for wake county revenues into next year and beyond and related economic information again i'm not going to go into details but overall is a very very positive outlook if you haven't been able to look at the uh presentation yet i would encourage you to there's a lot of really good information in there take away from this slide the economic outlook for the county is really strong for now next slide please now i want to switch gears and talk about some potential risks budget planning whether you have authority or don't have taxing authority is always just that it's projecting it's based on assumptions and in this case assumptions about decisions that other governing bodies will make that we don't control and perhaps at best have some influence over and so

074what's in our proposed budget are those assumptions what the governing bodies ultimately do are their final decisions and there can be gaps between those two and those gaps can create issues for budget adjustments so that's one risk second risk and i believe i spoke to this at your joints board meeting i want to mention it again the child nutrition federal reimbursement program that the federal government put into place over the last couple years during the pandemic that reimburses school districts across the country for all student meals is set to sunset on june 30th we have no indication that they will extend it beyond that that said we have concern we're doing analysis right now on what the revenue picture will look like one of the challenges is no one has had to sign up for

075free or reduced lunches go through the application process over the last two years there is a process for that and if the parents of the students that might qualify for that don't go through that process they're not eligible so we have some concerns there we may be coming back to you in may with a recommendation for meal price increases we've only done that a couple times in the last years but even if we do that and even if the board were to approve that it is possible that increased meal prices would still not cover our costs consider our costs for meals i'm going to over simplify our twofold food costs and labor costs we all know what food costs are doing and we all know what we're intentionally trying to do with our labor costs

076these are support staff paid some of the least in the district so stay tuned we may need to look at use of other local funding to supplement the cns operation in this coming year and finally i'll just point out that when the legislature returns in the short session they could make decisions to change either employer benefit contribution rates for health insurance or retirement or compensation changes which increase our need for local funding and when it comes to those two categories depending on the change it could be a large increase and so we don't have funding in there for that in the budget for that but that's why we list it as a potential risk next slide please jumping into the budget i want to go through how the operating budget is spent almost 90 89

077of every operating budget dollars go straight to the schools and i would posit that that next orange box of 4 percent we have to account for it separately based on what the epi tells us to do but i would posit that really goes directly to the schools as well because included in facilities and operations are the maintenance costs of the buildings the utility costs for the buildings the child nutrition operation the yellow bus operation the special needs transportation operation and so on so i would posit it's more like 94 percent ish that's going straight to the schools you do see a charter school pass-through of two percent but i'm going to speak to that in a second and then the other central office areas board of ed superintendents office communications academic advancement administrative services and

078technology services providing that backbone of support to our 193 but soon to become 197 schools i do want to point out that when you look at the local pass-through of just local funding and not the total operating budget eight percent of our local funding goes to charter schools that's by law so when we request additional funding from the county it's not all for the wake county public school system approximately eight percent of it is just to pass through the charter schools next slide please just a couple things i want to show you on this slide first normally federal funding represents about eight percent of our overall operating budget but you'll see here on this pie chart for next year it's up to 15 percent the reason for that is the large influx of pandemic relief

079funds mostly federal and so this pie chart will look like this for next year and likely the following year but then we face the fiscal cliff and it will likely go back to more of the normal ratios and i'll speak to the fiscal cliff more at the end of the presentation second thing i want to point out too on this slide if you look at the left chart about three lines down fund balance appropriation this proposed budget invests almost 25 million dollars of fund balance into the budget and again i'll speak more about that in a future slide next slide please so the prior slide showed a total projected operating budget of just over two billion dollars big number let me put context into that number by looking at funding in terms of per pupil

080the current year budget provides per pupil funding for wake county of nine thousand seven hundred ninety seven dollars that has wake county ranking at 98th in the state out of 158 districts the lower the ranking the more funding we're 98 out of 115. you'll also see on the slide funding amounts from out of state peer districts again i'll note that is from the 2018-19 year that's the most recent year this national data is available but again i would posit it still reasonably fresh to show the distinction between how schools in our state are funded versus perhaps some other peer schools in in different states nonetheless it tells a story and the last comment i'll make about this slide in the past it's frequently been brought up well some of these other out-of-state districts have a

081much higher cost of living and that has been past tense been the case now so much less so didn't do a formal study but just looking at the cost of housing alone in the triangle area and how rapidly is growing i dare say and we'll do some research but i dare say it's going to show the cost of living is playing less pain being less and less a factor here and again there's a start difference in some of these districts being able to invest up to 50 percent more per student in that student next slide please i want to now move into some of the funding priority areas again at your joint boards meeting in march we shared significant detail about the use of pandemic relief funding in response to interrupted learning so tonight i

082will simply note that this will continue to be a focus for the 22 23 and 23 24 years next slide please and you've heard already from superintendent moore the other top funny parties within the superintendent budget again with a heavy emphasis on staff compensation next slide please public education is a human resource intensive business eighty percent of our total operating budget goes to pay salaries and benefits to our staff state funding for compensation and legislation to maintain competitive rates was not where it needed to be pre-great recession and state legislation and funding to maintain competitive compensation rates has not moved forward to where it needs to be post-grade recession ironically this same post-great recession economy has arguably been the longest and strongest period of economic recovery and growth that any of us in this room

083have witnessed the lagging of salaries impacts all categories of staff but some more than others and the changes to the employment marketplace that have evolved through the pandemic event only added fuel to the recruiting fire and retention fire take away from this slide staff compensation is the fundamental focus for the proposed budget for next year next slide please got on this slide categories of staff that were having the hardest time recruiting and retaining and with the highest vacancy rates these vacancy rates were from earlier in march so they may have fluctuated a little bit bus drivers 22 almost one out of every four bus driving positions vacant you heard superintendent moore speak to the extra duty they're doing but that's not filling in all the blanks and i'll speak to that in a minute child

084nutrition workers 17 vacancy rate skilled craftsman in maintenance and operations 25 vacancy rate there's a little blessing in that one in that we can contract some of those services out we can't contract a yellow bus driver from another company but that said we're also competing with the red hot construction industry so they're they're limits there too special education teachers seven and a half percent and while that number is much lower than the other vacancy rates it's still significantly higher than the i think it's about two or two and a half percent vacancy rate for regular education teachers instructional assistants regular education nine percent vacancy rate special education sixteen percent vacancy rate and central services administrator professionals 10 vacancy rates these vacancies are directly impacting our capacity to conduct a core business i'll give you one

085example the lack of bus drivers i've heard stories of the last couple weeks consistently bus drive well buses when they get to the school late whatever student was on that bus is getting the class late they're losing instructional time that's going to impact them in addition when a school comes to pick up in the afternoon and arrives 45 minutes or an hour late student may be impacted by not being able to participate in some other regular or extracurricular activity or something to do with in the home but it's also impacting our school-based staff including our teachers who are required to stay there with those students and supervise them when they may otherwise be beginning their planning for the next day just one example next slide please so this board did approve in december to move

086our minimum hourly rate for support staff effective january 1 to 15 an hour that was big our graded support staff position saw increases averaging from forty three percent to just over five percent with the lowest grades who had the lowest hourly rate seeing the biggest percentage increases next slide please as you already heard from superintendent moore the proposed budget request over 35 million dollars to apply against staff compensation that represents 63 percent of the total 56 million of additional county appropriation that is included within the proposed budget and included within the proposal is shifting the minimum hourly rate for support staff to 16 an hour effective july 1 and addressing compression by maintaining step differentials and grade differentials i will note and you'll recall that in the state second year biennium budget their plan was

087to move support staff of school systems to 15 an hour minimum whether that stays or not we'll find out in a short session but regardless independently of this we're requesting local funding to be able to move to 16 dollars an hour minimum next slide please also included within that 35.2 million is funding required to increase our locally funded supplements for teachers instructional support and school administrators by two and a half percent which then aligns with what's in the current state legislation as far as average increases for those individuals so their entire compensation would go up by that percent next slide please this slide walks us through a bit of history on the focus of the non-certified support staff compensation take a minute and run through it just so you can see where we've been and

088where we hope to head but in 2019 20 we were able to receive through the generosity of the county commissioners just over just under 8 million 7.7 million dollars of additional funding that funding was used primarily to bring our bus drivers up to 15 dollars an hour effective january 1 2020 right as the pandemic was about to hit you'll see in the following year another 1.6 million dollars that was funding requested from the county so we could fund those bus drivers at 15 an hour for an entire year and not just for six months in 2122 you'll see the over 23 million dollar funding that was approved that went through all the improvements that were brought to you in december that you did approve the biggest one being going to that 15 an hour minimum

089and addressing compression um throughout the grades and the bands you'll also see on here um the 21.7 million that's included within the 30 um five million that will be required to go to the 16. there are other things in that 35 million as well as just the 16 an hour minimum and then finally we've got two estimates out there for 23 24 and 24 25 and those are estimates for in those years going to 17 an hour minimum and then in the last year 18 an hour minimum i do want to stress those are estimates we didn't run the numbers like we would have for this year's budget where accuracy is important but we wanted to give some sense of a ballpark of what would be required to continue this progress [Applause] next slide please

090so the superintendent's proposed budget does continue to move us forward that said even if the proposed budget does come to fruition much work in this area will remain next slide please the next budget priority in the current year's budget is also part of the multi-year initiative established pre-pandemic and for this coming year's budget it seeks 960 thousand dollars in local funding to provide additional instructional technology support services in the schools next slide please our utilization of instructional technology continues to expand the onset of the pandemic and going all virtual put that on steroids by effectively putting us into a student device one-to-one ratio pushing us onto even more digital content platforms providing additional student-teacher resource applications engaging additional virtual teaching platforms and also acquiring additional classroom technology all these things require support however because they've

091got to be working effectively and staff and students have to understand how to utilize them in order to leverage it next slide please this is a multi-year initiative as well and i'd just like to walk you through where we come and where we'd like to go we did invest in 2019 20 and 20 20 21 about 600 000 in this initiative in each of those two years and then for the current year we invested 869 thousand dollars but you'll see that's in a different column it's in the federal column we invested for the current year using pandemic relief funds our proposed budget for this coming year that's being presented tonight requests 960 000 of local funding to continue this endeavor i do want to point out that those resources that are funded by pandemic relief

092funds will need to be addressed at the with the fiscal cliff because the funding that they're currently on will go away at the end of 20 well into the 24-25 school year and so we will manage that through the fiscal cliff next slide please next priority area i would like to go over with you again it was a multi-year initiative established pre-pandemic an area of critical need related behavioral health supports counselors school psychologists and social workers ratios of students to staff have not aligned with our student needs or national standards and while we have made progress in the prior year endeavor to target national standards the pandemic has exacerbated the need for these supports this year's proposed budget requests 900 000 of pandemic relief funds and if i could ask you to go to the

093next slide thank you julie um i want to go through the history in 1920 you can see there was 1.7 million dollars of state funding invested just under a million dollars of local funding the following year 2.3 million dollars of federal funding and for the current year 8 million dollars of federal funding again just as i spoke to the instructional technology support positions the eight million dollars invested for the current year is using pandemic relief funds that will become part of the fiscal cliff because we fully intend to maintain these positions post pandemic and post pandemic relief funds so again i'm going to talk a little bit more about the cliff towards the end of the presentation next slide please final priority area i'd like to go over with you has to do with our

094maintenance and operations area these are the folks that make sure all of our schools are maintained in proper working order and as i heard during your discussion during the board work session on a couple of the facility items the fact that as these facilities get older and they're not renovated their needs for maintenance become more frequent and more complex i'll leave it at that so we started a few years ago targeting getting our maintenance and operations funding formulas to a national average of funding per square foot during the great recession as we made a lot of budget cuts and we try to mitigate the impact directly on the classroom maintenance and operations was one of many areas that received significant reductions so the proposed budget does request five million dollars of local additional local funding

095for this initiative and i will note and you'll see on the next slide we are also proposing removing two million dollars of maintenance and operations funding from the pandemic relief funds to begin mitigating that fiscal cliff so that said it really would be a net increase in funding for the maintenance and operations for next year three million next slide please so on this slide again you'll see the history in the first year of the initiative 2019-20 we were able to invest an additional 25 two and a half million dollars excuse me in the following year just one million i'll remind everyone that following year was the onset of the pandemic we had no idea what the economic implications were we went in that year with a very austere budget and went very late on these

096multi-year initiatives and then if you look at the current year you'll see we have placed 13 and a half million dollars of funding for maintenance and operations additional funding on the pandemic relief funds the current year for next year's proposal we're requesting five million dollars and then you can see the next three years 5.6 million dollars and that would take us to the national standard for funding per square foot we're currently at 87 percent of that standard next slide please want to switch gears you heard me state this already but beyond the additional 15 56 million dollars that's being requested from the county the superintendent's proposed budget also invests 25 million dollars of fund balance and if this level of investment is approved and remains board policy 8101 will need to be waived as this

097amount represents slightly over 50 percent of the june 20 21 unassigned fund balance next slide please you've already heard from superintendent moore that we're opening four new schools next year two elementary apex friendship and barton pond the middle herbert aikens and the early college of information and biotechnology they all will have operating costs that are not covered by the state utility costs maintenance costs perhaps less so when they're brand new and they also receive local funding for students that are not associated with their fixed amounts whether you have 50 students in the building or 500 students in the building so that represents the 6.4 million dollar request next slide please in the last category i will go over is a 4.9 million dollar request for newer expanding programs including a change to the high school

098assistant principal formula a change in retitling high school clerical assistance and upgrading them to receptionists expansion of magnet school programming both athletics and performing arts school allotment expansion aig expansion some central support positions i'm not going to get into the detail on this tonight given the time but details on each of these and actually every other one of these funding initiatives is included and these new or expanding ones begin on page 154 of your budget document next slide please so the budget document is now posted at our website pdf format available to look at or even download as the board works through the process of going from the superintendent's budget to the board's proposed budget to the board's adopted budget each of those will be posted on our website next slide this is a very

099brief orientation to the budget document i'm not going to go through it it's very similar to how it's been organized in the past i believe we now have one board member ms waters that has not been through this process i'll be glad to work with you and staff sort of walk you through it so we'll work something out if you would like that um next slide please all right i've been saying i'm going to talk about the fiscal cliff well here we go we've got approximately 30 million dollars invested in the pandemic relief funds in what i would call recurring expenditures that we desire to continue after the pandemic relief funds are no longer available the primary areas are behavioral health supports the instructional support technicians and the maintenance and operations funding as we developed

100this year's proposed budget there were competing needs for addressing the fiscal cliff now versus dealing with our number one priority staff compensation so you saw the limited attempt of two million dollar reduction of 0.2 million off of that 30-ish million dollars we believe we're gonna find another eight twelve million dollars relatively easily which won't have direct impact but i think it's likely we think it's likely that as we prepare a budget a year from now proposed budget we're likely going to also have competing needs so we've had some initial conversations and they will continue because we've got three budget cycles to address the fiscal cliff 22 23 23 24 and 24 25 and we may be regrouping and rather than looking at asking for additional local funding to backfill the funding cliff looking at our

101existing operating budget and looking at how we can repurpose funds within that existing operating budget so we can continue doing these initiatives that we have begun using the pandemic relief funding stay tuned more to come next slide so as you go through the budget document we'd ask you to send any questions to our senior director of budget she's sitting way over there terry kimsey to her email and at your next finance committee meeting and board work session depending on how it works out either finance committee or finance committee and board work session the board will have a budget work session where you will have the opportunity to discuss the budget and i'll cover that in a minute but we'll also review those questions board member questions and staff responses with you at the finance committee

102meeting and we'll also post those questions and responses on our website along with the budget documents again for complete transparency and so the public can see as well at your board meeting on the 19th you'll hold the public hearing on the budget and then based upon what direction the board directs the superintendent and staff to make adjustments or changes to the budget or perhaps sends us back to the drawing board on certain things we may require an additional board work session our target currently is to have you approve your proposed budget on may 3rd again that may need to adjust based on the need to add work sessions and we need to get the board's proposed budget to the county commissioners before may 15 to meet statutory requirements next slide and it's the last slide

103i promise at your work session again we will present the questions board member questions and responses but the primary focus of that is for the board to discuss the budget see if they aren't consensus about it see if they do want to redirect the superintendent and staff to go in some different directions and then we go from there and that concludes my presentation which again tonight is for information only and i thank you for your time thank you mr nader we look forward to getting our questions to mrs kimsey and seeing you again on the 19th for our work session thank you and what's the deadline for getting those questions miss kim's we'll put an email out we'll take a look thank you yes and we'll push the email on thank you thank you miss

104kushner next up we have our superintendent updates superintendent moore i'll just be providing some updates on the information that the board engaged on during our work session today the first two items of the work session were an update on the 2022 cip cost model update and the existing school renovation and replacement rubrics as we get ready to move forward with requesting from the county commissioners the funds that will be necessary to continue our seven-year plan for the building of new schools and renovation of existing schools which will likely require that our county commissioners look at putting a bond on the ballot in november the next item that we went over was the gaggle pilot that is being implemented in school districts across north carolina including wake county using state designated federal funds for internet security

105we went over the pilot schools that are currently engaged in that work the messaging that has gone out examples of the types of things that are being done and clarification that these are only wake county platforms that are part of the gaggle pilot things like you know regular social media twitter tick tock individual student email those are not they're not part of this program the last item that we engaged in during the work session was an overview of the student engagement team set grant this is a collaboration between wake county cooperative extension alliance health and the wake county public school system it is a multi-year grant that will provide support to four specific schools that will have the opportunity through some additional resources staffing and other connections to our community partners wrap around services for

106students who have high needs this was really born out of the work really during the pandemic where we did so much around food security with our partners in the community to support our students and recognize through our work and with our social workers and our county health partners that the needs extended beyond food security for many of our families so this will provide an opportunity to provide support to those students um and those were the updates from the work session thank you thank you superintendent moore we now move on to public comment public comment is accepted in video written and in person formats members of the public are welcome to offer comments or criticism directed of substantive ideas actions or procedures of the board and individual board members in the interest of maintaining civility and

107decorum 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 individual personnel matters are confidential and therefore not appropriate for public comment settings concerns related to personnel issues may be addressed through applicable wcpss policies the grievance policy 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 wcpss personnel the grievance policy or other applicable policies the following citizens have submitted comments as part of the public comment portion for this evening's agenda these comments are linked on the same online agenda that we are

108using for tonight's meeting that agenda as well as guidelines for those wishing to submit comments for future meetings can be found at the school district's website wcpss.net under the tab labeled school board we have 30 written comments and two video comments from members of the public the topics of which comments are attached to the agenda are as follows six on books seven on class rank two on prom five for thank you and ten miscellaneous comments including maintenance curriculum special accommodations masks germ theory drugs drug searches background checks transgender and crt alc student achievement ocs and lgbtq books for those of you that are here to speak in person during public comment you may speak for up to three minutes a yellow light will illuminate at the podium when there are 30 seconds remaining in your

109time and 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 handed to the board attorney either before or after your comments and our attorney is located right over there thank you first up is janet peterson hi my name is janet peterson i have a combined 36 years in teaching and working with young children 25 years teaching in wake county public schools teaching kindergarten through second grade i am since retired my team and i have read and reviewed books that are found in wake county public school libraries that belong in the adult book section and bookstores you're about you are allowing the sexualization of children and teens i'm about to read to you passages from some

110of those books that and i'm asking if there are any young people in here under 18 to please leave the room let me read you first some excerpts from the north carolina statute on obscene literature and exhibitions uh sexual conduct is defined as vaginal anal or oral intercourse whether actual or simulated normal or perverted masturbation excretory functions or lewd exhibition an act or condition that depicts torture physical restraint or being fettered or bound all of these items are found in the books that are in wake county public schools i have a few back here and there are many let me begin by reading to you from the v word book since i felt a particular longing for intimacy and sex that grew each year i kept to my romance novel novels finding new scenes i

111learned how to touch myself with my own hands how to draw circles with my fingers where my body liked it best when chat rooms first came into vogue i discovered cyber sex i would ask faceless men to imagine what they wanted to do to me blocking the ones who wanted to be rough clicking away from the ones that wanted to receive oral sex i chatted with the ones who wanted to enter me with their tongues and it goes on this book is full of it and it's in several high schools here and weight counting uh i uh let's see i tried stroking her stomach thighs nipples hip following the path of my hands with soft kisses it was all lovely but it felt like nothing was really happening flustered i pushed to get on my

112back maya boldly took a blunt a plunge and kissed her way down my body until she was on my kissing and licking that's in wake county public schools let me read to you from a poem from uh from the book identical and i'll just read a section the poem is entitled true to his word he ra it starts with tai wants uh ty's voice is almost a snarl uh he wraps his rope around my hands he ties it tightly i shake my head but he but uh excuse me i shake my head don't but he does should i scream would anyone hear would anyone care that's about bondage i have another about incest um and that's right here like i said in our books and i'm really sad um you've allowed a selection of such

113books into our libraries media specialists librarians principals review teams all have signed off on these books i tell you you must protect the innocence of our children and teams our next speaker is jim walsh [Applause] good evening parents and board members i would like to read the statute but it's already been read and i think you can maintain what was said a little bit and the school board has direct policies that override that law and those policies were given grant to the school board by statute of the legislator and the policies are that if material comes before the school board that is questioned it goes to the principal review committee and then another review committee and then another review committee and then comes to the board well we have a book blonde boy on november

1146 of 21 it was brought to the attention of kerry high school principal on november 22nd a response came back saying this book's appropriate on january 12th the central institutional instructional materials advisory committee recommended that the book stay and then it went to the board appeal here on march 10th the board decided two to one that this was appropriate material now i'm going to repeat what janet said if there's any children listen i personally do not want them to hear this lawn boy can be found in the following high schools apex carey fouque green level panther creek sanderson south gardiner in willow springs page 19. but there's one thing i'd never tell nick in a million years not that it really matters in fourth grade at church youth group meeting out in the bushes behind

115the parsonage i touched dick global's dick and he touched mine in fact there are even some mouths involved age 25 placing her knee between my legs she wrestled off the sweater and unbuttoned her blouse and pulled off her panties and she climbed on top of me before i even had a chance to savor the moment i'm not saying i was grateful to this day i remained grateful to gina and whatever when or combination of alcohol and restless prompted her to unbutton my genes and straddle me in the passenger seat page 91 you get the gist now i challenge our committee and our parents to accept this as acceptable practice in our school system this is not parents you need to get active in what the board is doing i would also say the parents are

116getting active oh they're homeschooling the only thing that needs to follow now is the cash to follow the student thank you our next speaker is tucker willenborg parker willenborg on behalf of the students of wake county i asked the board do you care about us will you take action to prevent a needless and harmful cause of suffering class rank instead of stepping up to support us amid the devastation this pandemic has unleashed on our lives this board is actively choosing to ignore us as the class of 2023 moves towards college application season i ask this board to finally act on class rank as a student at green level one of the highest performing high schools in this district i see the harms of class rank first hand it isn't pretty especially with the pc19 pandemic

117grading policy the competition is ugly numerous colleges state the class rank is an important or even highly important factor for admissions and scholarships some colleges even have class rank requirements requiring students to be in the top 10 for scholarships at green level however a top 10 ranking is a nearly hopeless endeavor an endeavor that harms every student green level has national merit finalists outside the top 10 percent green level has state straight a students outside the top 25 percent green level has students poised to graduate with this board's magna laude high honors designation ranked outside the top 25 ranked outside or ranked in the bottom 25 percent of their class students at my school employ harmful strategies to maintain the ranks some take multiple online courses at wake tech after school or over the summer

118triggering additional stress and harming extracurricular activities students utilize pc19 to drop lower weighted courses often with high a grades to boost their test rank subjecting them to unsightly past marks on their transcripts and as well as allegations of cheating from their peers whose ranks are lowered as a result nearly all of the top-ranked students at my school pick their courses explicitly for class rank choosing courses like microsoft word honors over much more valuable career preparatory courses like python programming you are harming our futures and livelihoods because of class rank this is the very definition of unhealthy competition none of us benefit all of us are harmed if this board instead calculated class rank using the latin honors methodology that was approved in 2016 we would have clear achievements targets and none of the tremendous uncertainty

119from which we currently suffer this proposal is fair it complies with state law it complies with state board policy it is in your hands to implement the current policy of printing inaccurate and harmful exact class ranks deals a tremendous amount of harm it impairs our chances of admissions scholarships and athletic recruitment it punishes us for choosing courses for our future goals it creates a painfully competitive high school culture and worst of all it isn't even fair therefore on behalf of students of green level high school and of wake county as a whole i request the sport updated policies on class rank policies that this board can and should change today thank you our next speaker is susan book hello first and foremost happy autism awareness acceptance and in my house appreciation month we should be

120celebrating our autistic students as well as our autistic staff and teachers and those who work in our wonderful buildings we should also be mindful that these students go out into the real world and my hope is that wake county schools can be an incredible place for them to find jobs just like everywhere else please make sure that your policies have inclusivity that not only affects students but also the work life that that might happen here now no one should feel shame for who they are or who they love i'm not really good at this i'd rather speak policy any day but today i'm here to stand with wake students who identify as lgbtq with their parents and with their community i'm here to stand with black and brown students parents and community i stand to

121promote a safe place for them to live and learn a place where their lives are reflected positively in the books in our libraries where history is celebrated debated but most of all taught honestly with primary and secondary sources available in their own schools this is the very least we could do please board i ask you to continue to lift up those who others might put down continue and invest in equity we obviously need the office of equity now more than ever love one another thank you our next speaker is carrie bly hello again this is our anniversary we started asking you for viable math learning resources for our kids april 2nd 2019 three years ago today is our second history speech to you last time we discussed how you vetted mvp and opened up math

122curriculums through imet equip and ed reports and while it sounds extensive and impressive we thought you might want to understand that they're all rooted in the exact same metric and foundational text today we want to run the history of the only other data source you say you use to pick our kids curriculum and that's her 2016 tntp audit the first time we ever heard that was in the june 18 2019 board meeting it was justification for why the board dismissed our formal complaints and you presented this tnt report as one of the major catalysts behind adopting new middle and high school curriculums i asked for a copy of that report and it took you two and a half months to find it and i'm going to repeat that it took you two and a half

123months to find a report that you paid a hundred and seventy thousand eight hundred and eighty one dollars for that you called a driving force behind your math curriculum adoptions and that was our first red flag initially what me bothered me most was the timeline you hired them in march 15th you did seven days of curriculum audits in april and may and then 27 days after you were done north carolina adopted new high school math standards june 2nd of 2016. that's when you told us that nc stopped operating under common core you knew that we were going to get new standards yet you initiated sent out an rfp selected and accepted tnt's proposal the only proposal that mentions common core standard alignment 46 times in their 13-page proposal to you that's a very good example

124of what we mean by a lack of transparency and a lack of communication now in dr martin's speech on june 18th he sort of asked a question after noting the dire state of math education he said that the low proficiency data nor the wake county audit did not result in public or parental outcry and it sounded like you were trying to admonish us well i have an answer for you we did not outcry because you did not release this report never wake county conducted a common core curriculum quality review changed the name of it then once you got the results in may you sat on them for six months until you reduced the 75 page report to 12 slides that you discussed six months later in november and a student achievement committee behind closed doors

125not on camera in the middle of a weekday no you did not hear us cry out you didn't hear us cry out until we saw our kids crying at the kitchen table because they got a 13 on a test again when we watched them hunched over their computers for hours trying to google basic math concepts to figure out how to do their homework thank you miss fly rachel blackwood [Applause] first of all thank you i'd like to thank each of you for serving over the last two years i know it hasn't been easy i know it hasn't always made you very popular but i do know and i was able to see that your heart was with the needs of the children and that is something that i appreciate as a parent and i'd like

126to appeal to the heart of the board yet again today recently there were discussions about moving some of the students from abbots creek elementary school to durant road elementary school to my school my children's school and those that proposal was fought by the community by abbott's creek parents and even the media but something was left out of that conversation the needed renovations at durant road elementary school was left out of that conversation you see abbots creek elementary is just across the street from us it serves a high socio-economic status base it's a brand new beautiful facility everything's in working order the students don't have to worry about if their bathroom is going to work or if they're going to a dilapidated trailer in a sharp contrast the students at brant road elementary school have a

127very run down school it's 30 years old we're not even on the renovation list we serve a very low socioeconomic status group of children many of our children are food insecure some of them are homeless they come to live and they live in deplorable conditions and then they come to a school that's been run down and quite frankly has not been maintained the way it should by the county and i know that the money is an issue but i also know that while my neighbors across the street abbots creek elementary school from the upscale neighborhoods get a brand new school with everything in working order our students deserve the same regardless of socioeconomic status they deserve they deserve the same and so i'd like to plead with you to put us on the renovation list

128to give us a chance to make our school look as beautiful on the outside as it is on the inside thank you our next speaker is lindsay tobin thank you as we are beginning to see the ramifications that the pandemic has had on our children there is significant learning loss as well as anxiety and depression and while most are acknowledging this instead of working hard to correct this we are lowering standards now this goes from babies developments all the way up to high school graduations and i believe we need to get back to the basics with our children's education we live in the greatest country in the world and our students need to have the best education in the world the focus needs to be on math science technology etc during covid one of the

129board members stated that there was much more suffering in the world and what is happening with our children and that is on full display right now every day but the only way that we ensure that that type of suffering does not come to us in future generations is to ensure that we are building strong future leaders our children cannot compete and will not have the proper tools to be great thinkers and innovators if we deny them a robust education in favor of personal causes we can teach about our government without bringing political ideology or rhetoric in we can teach about self-acceptance and love in the acceptance of others differences without sexualizing our children i personally know a mother whose first graders class was asked to vote in 2020 for either biden or trump i know

130a family whose second grader was given the gender unicorn handout my kindergartener knows nothing about these topics nor should he he is young and innocent why are we so insistent on making our children go grow up faster than they should years ago many people um were offended by religion being taught in public schools religion is a very per very personal to someone's identity and people can be uncomfortable with others outside of their family teaching this to their children do we not see politics and sexuality as very personal issues why would it be okay for them to be taught in public schools it seems that we are putting our personal fears and burdens of this world on our children's shoulders when our children's children look into the world they don't see politics they don't see hate

131they don't care what your skin color is or who you partner at home is and instead of taking this away from them we should learn from them thank you our next speaker is steve is sorry our next speaker is gil pagan um good evening school board our members wanted to bring to your attention a few books of many that are in the wake county public school library system one book and these books are pornographic in nature one book is called george and this book is about transsexualism and it also has references to incest this book called blankets uh it's a graphic novel by greg thompson has pornographic pictures inside of a boy and a girl having sex and there's also masturbation in this book and the third book is lawn boy which i'm sure you're

132familiar with lawn boy is a book that has a story in it about two mexican american boys that are 10 years old that go behind a church and engage in oral sex and that book is in the wake county public school library system and i'm going to read to you a piece of that book a page from page 91 what's normal then nick tell me that your porn habit the way you talk about women oh like you don't watch porn actually no you're a liar what if i told you i touch another guy's dick i said nick waved me off and turned his attention back to his beer what if i told you i sucked it will you please just shut up already i'm dead serious nick well i'd say you were a i put

133doug gobbles dick in my mouth the real estate guy yeah that guy nick looked around frantically what the are you talking about these are the books that are in the public school library system and by the way this book in particular was voted on by this board to remain in the library i don't understand why you would do that how dare you ignore parents phone calls concerns like this to pull these books out ignoring their emails how dare you take away the rights of parents to shield their kids from this type of stuff pornographic books in our public school library how dare you decide to put these books in these libraries at the hands of these children parents are upset they are angry hispanic parents are upset and angry because these books are in the

134public school system we demand you take these books out now from these libraries and put them away where they should not be seen or touched again thank you our next speaker is steve bergstrom [Applause] steve bergstrom our next speaker is amanda lund growing up i had the opportunity to attend three different public schools in grade school the second was in west tennessee the powers that be tried to shield students from particular subjects one of these subjects at that time was darwinism teachers weren't allowed to teach it students were not allowed to talk about it the message i received as a young child was that darwinism was the devil's work and that it was not suitable to be taught in public schools i am not sure exactly how i picked that up um it really could

135have been the result of parents and the public having meetings such as this but fast forward to ninth grade i had moved to western new york i was in science class and a teacher publicly taught about darwin's theories my jaw dropped my eyes bulged here i was witnessing a teacher teaching a subject that had not been previously allowed to be taught to me and the students were doing just fine they took it in like they take in every other piece of information that they receive in their school existence the teacher didn't teach it in a way that forced it as truth it was taught as a theory an educated guess that hadn't yet been able to be proven false by scientific evidence students were simply given a new piece of information they could use in

136their data bank to think critically about then in my freshman year of college my roommate self-identified as jewish again my jaw dropped my eyes bulged i'm not sure if i spoke out loud or if it was just in my head but what i thought was oh my gosh your family survived your people survived that's amazing that they survived the holocaust why did i think that due to a lack of diversity due to a lack of inclusive curriculum the only time i ever encountered the concept that a jewish person existed was in that very short segment that we taught about the holocaust diversity matters inclusive curriculum matters they foster new perspectives open-mindedness opportunities for critical thinking and empathy while reading writing and arithmetic are important these life skills also have so much value and our students

137deserve an opportunity to hear them and formulate their own opinions thank you our next speaker is lisa biser hello i am here to talk to to you about class frank as you've already heard some speakers already address we recognize that that class rank is often very detrimental to our students well-being i want you to know that this is an issue that's not just relevant to wake county students and parents and administrators my i'm a parent in the chapel hill carbo city school district we also care very passionately about this issue of class rank and how it can be very harmful to our students in fact our district over the past decade has tried several times to challenge the state rule that that insists on class rank um they haven't been successful in the past but

138there is some hope some opportunity now that there could be a different interpretation of this state mandate that would allow some flexibility with class rank and there is definitely some momentum in several districts in the state and so i encourage the board to be open-minded to what some of the opportunities might be i've got a real quick personal anecdote in terms of the damage to mental health to the sense of um extreme competitiveness that students high school students feel because of class rank my daughter is a freshman at unc chapel hill right now she graduated from carrboro high school last year she very much decided she would play the class ranked game and it absolutely is a game and from the time she was in middle school she was on a mission to have a

139high class rank we actually discouraged her from pursuing that mission because it didn't seem to be a very very valid use of life energy but she wanted to do it and she did it and graduated toward the top of her class and was happy with that now as a college freshman she has so much regret looking back on that incredibly stressful negative competitive experience that she had in high school and now she's the biggest advocate for anything we can do to change that environment the other issue i was going to mention is that professionally i have worked in the area of college admissions over the last 20 years or so and so i have the perspective and an opinion that the colleges do not want to see class rank um if it's there when an

140applicant applies to a university you have to look at it you have to consider it you actually have to report it and your statistics as a university are measured by the rank of your students but if it's not there you have more flexibility to kind of make the right decisions and holistically evaluate candidates so i've got a someone i know who's dean of admissions at a highly selective institution and she had one point of advice to me 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 rank attached to them so thank you for your time and i look forward to um hopefully having additional conversations about options in the state for

141changes to class rank thank you our next speaker is robin livingston so i've had three students in the wake county public school system two have graduated and my youngest is in eighth grade my kids have had some amazing experience in this school system i grew up in a small very rural town where schools were wonderful but had limited resources through wake county's public school system my kids have traveled to europe washington dc my daughter trained and performed with a world-class musician through her band program she also marched with her marching band at disney and my kids have had access to a much higher level of course than were available to me in order to continue that level of education we need to make sure our school system continues to provide as many educational resources as

142possible this is national library week in honor of that i would like to encourage you to make library book funding a priority libraries don't need fewer books we need more the wcpss website is available in eight different languages we have kids from all over the world in our school system these kids have different backgrounds experiences religions languages etc in north carolina a school librarian is required to have a teaching license and a master's degree these people are trained to provide resources that are age-appropriate for a wide audience some of these resources are not always going to be pretty in fact some books are very disturbing but not everything we learn about the world is going to be pretty the good news is the american voting public agrees in a recent poll commissioned by the american

143library association 71 percent of voters oppose efforts to have books removed from their local libraries this is bipartisan with 75 percent democrats 70 percent republicans and 58 independents opposing such bans 90 percent of voters and ninety-two percent of parents have a favorable opinion of the librarians who work in local public libraries and in school libraries most voters are confident in local public libraries to make good decisions about their collections and think libraries do a good job representing a variety of viewpoints the biggest takeaway for me from the poll information was that 74 of parents are confident in public school libraries decisions about their collections that means parents who are fighting to ban books are on the wrong side of the issue some of these parents come speak before the board claiming to speak for the

144parents of wake county but they do not speak for me thank you our next speaker is michelle manley hello i thank you for the opportunity to speak i had the the blessing of being able to be at your last meeting with the um both the county commissioners and you guys when you were a joint session and so i appreciate everything that was shared about the budget i i'm really concerned for this reason i don't know if you guys remember i have five children three of them are out of k through 12 now but two are still in and i'm really concerned about the quality of education and i feel like that really should be the primary focus of a school board of wake county being the 14th largest school district in all of the country

145we have an opportunity to really make a difference not only here in north carolina but throughout this this this nation and this is my concern a few weeks ago there was a there was an article in the charlotte observer that said that 18 50 of 18 to 40 year olds in north carolina will not be able to accept the new jobs that are coming to north carolina and you know in 2008 north carolina probably did better than any other state in getting through the recession and we're about to head into a deep recession again and what we should be wanting we should be preparing our children by the time they're 18 years old and they get out of high school they should be able to be critically thinking and able to take whatever jobs are

146available to them if they want to go on to a further education absolutely they should be prepared to do that but i think they should be ready for adulting at this point and what i would like to see i like to see curriculu textbooks come back i think we would have we would have avoided a lot in this pandemic if we were not completely relying on education through the laptop and i think what you said mr mr martin was absolutely incredible when you said hands-on learning works and especially for children that are in elementary aged education they like the experience they like being able to talk and to touch and to see and to feel they like specials we need to get books back into our schools that are textbooks so the parents know what

147the parent the children are being taught so if there is a learning loss if there is something that they missed chapters three inch two two and three and four chapters back they are able to then pick up on that i found a lot of talk about learning delays or whatever you're going to call it learning loss over over the last two years with covet but i will tell you we have gone in the last 15 years from being 18 i'm sorry being 12th in the nation here in wake county or here in north carolina to being 38th in the nation that is not okay we are a state that has opportunities from the coasts all the way to the mountain you can be anything that you want to be here in north carolina and i

148would encourage you we need to focus on educational excellence we need to focus on the foundations from k through third grade we should be focusing on reading writing and math and we need to get all of this political ideology all the sexual ideology everything else that is not focused on reading writing and math because if you can read if you can write if you can do basic math you can learn anything and our children deserve that in 10 short years every child that is in second grade will be graduated will be an adult and will be entering into the workforce we need them to be prepared to be the next leaders and to keep north carolina great thank you our next speaker is ruth wilmer ruth willenberg the current class rank system was created in

149the past 1995 and no longer works today so much has changed and given how much more complex and rich the academic offerings are for our students we have an opportunity quite frankly an obligation to change the system to more accurately and fairly recognize student accomplishments for wake county class ranks a 90 equals a 100. this creates a huge pool 100 150 200 kids all with unweighted 4.0 gpas instead of rewarding the accomplishments of straight a's wake county is punishing these students with a so-called exact class rank based on course weightings in class performance isn't even considered head-to-head wins perfect 100s make no difference microsoft word honors wins over biomedical technology in fact a 90 in microsoft word honors wins over a 100 in biomedical technology worse yet the kids who received ap computer science are

150ranked ahead of the kids who signed up but didn't get in and the kids who chose pass pc 19 over numeric grades in their academic courses are ranked ahead class rank in wake county doesn't measure academic performance given the problems with course scheduling especially with split schools during the pandemic class rank is not even an accurate reflection of desired course rigor it's broken wake county is actively certifying inaccurate data and harming students on behalf of over 200 parents and students we are asking wake county to immediately eliminate the class rank from transcripts and replace it with latin honors class rank this can be done now without any state level policy changes there is no state law to send class rank to out of state or private universities there is no state policy that class rank

151has to be an exact numeric rank or that weighted gpa needs to be four decimal points in precision nowhere all the policy says is that class rank is calculated based on weighted gpa latin honors are calculated based on weighted gpa a latin honors class rank based on weighted gpa does not violate any state law or state policy wake county can address the class rank problem by switching to latin honors thank you thank you our next speaker is jacob arthur [Applause] good evening my name is jacob arthur and i have four children three of whom are in wake county public schools with a fourth waiting in the wings i'm also a candidate for the district 7 seat on the board and i regret mr haggerty is not here i would have liked to have earned his

152vote i would like to use my time to address a great harm i see being done to our students through much of the curriculum coming out of the office of equity affairs and the inappropriate materials that are available in our school libraries it is no secret to parents that any student with a smartphone can access inappropriate material however there is no excuse for it being made available in our schools even in the name of affirming our students while your intent may be to make students feel valuable and worthy of recognition what you're actually doing is far worse by promoting these materials in our schools in the name of affirmation you're in fact teaching our students that their value as people is found in their sexuality or gender our children have value and are worthy of

153recognition and love by the fact that they are human beings and they are our children nothing more nothing less likewise much of the curriculum from the office of equity affairs is teaching our children to begin relationships with each other from a starting point of what makes us different rather than what unites us as human beings for example my seventh graders class is reading ghost boys to supplement their unit on frederick douglass in reviewing this book the school library journal is quoted as saying it quote provides an important window for readers who are just beginning to explore the ideas of privilege and implicit bias in other words critical race theory my wife and i are graduates of the wake county public school system i can tell you from my experience that the pushing of ideological materials

154is not making things better and it's not improving academics yesterday was the anniversary of the assassination of martin luther king jr a man who implored us to judge each other by the content of our character unfortunately the more this board pushes diversity equity and inclusion the less diverse equal and inclusive we seem to become it is time to spend our dollars on actual academics and not social agendas as your social agenda has advanced the data show proficiency in reading and math continues to decline over the past decade it is time to let parents parent it is time to let teachers teach again i'm jacob arthur and i'm running for school board you can find information at jacobartherweightschools.com thank you our next speaker is amanda holliben well i came here to speak about several things and

155um you know a lot of these things that have been said today they've been said already y'all have heard these books being read before and um actually on january 18th you were served with paperwork and part of the paperwork had statements with some of the very literature that was read from this podium in it saying how it was inappropriate also my son has accessed that he's eight on his wake county public school system laptop immediately pulled up genderqueer immediately was able to see all the photos both this board the kerry police department apparently is in the pocket of y'all also michael glover at liberty mutual amy bolton at liberty mutual all feel that this is appropriate it's appropriate for an eight-year-old to pull up those images it's appropriate for these surveys the survey that came

156out so you have gaggle right you want to uh follow what the students are reading you know what they're reading we've shown you what they're reading they're reading things they should not read but you you can gaggle them right but you you won't stop uh genderqueer from coming up on an eight-year-old's laptop so uh i find that odd but then you know this is a corrupt board so then i i realize that that's just how it is and things need to change in 217 days another thing that i found interesting is something that ncae passed on to the teachers for black history month and they give kid language for um suggestions for you know inclusiveness and i'm all about inclusiveness we should include everyone that's fine but there's a difference between inclusion and indoctrination so

157to say everybody has the right to choose their own gender by listening to their own heart and mind everyone gets to choose if they are a girl or a boy or both or neither or something else and no one gets to choose for them my teacher my son's teacher has told him something similar the whole entire class that's not her job i've sat here before and said it's not your job right first time i was here i was very upset about that and uh it's the same thing the teacher it's not the teacher's job i don't understand how we've got to this place where the teacher you know feels that it's okay to teach these you know ingrained beliefs in school it's one thing to include it's another to indoctrinate additionally there is queer affirming

158which is working towards a queer affirming network where heteronormative thinking no longer exists so the ncae is basically saying that the goal is so that kids do not look and think the mom and the dad that's normal that's not normal they don't want that to be normal why i mean does anybody know y'all don't [Music] our next speaker is peter bly pete fly good to see y'all i'm gonna pick up where kerry left off so uh now once we get over the timeline of the tntp curriculum audit and get over the fact that the report was never released to the public let's look at the report and its merits because that's really the most shocking part dmtp might sound familiar to you that's the group that would go on to write the opportunity myth education

159article in 2018. if you haven't read it you don't really need to you can just look at the tnt report that i just handed the nice gentleman over here it looks like it looks exactly the same so basically y'all were part of the propaganda practice that they were going through right then do you remember kerry's last board speech history number one when she told you that the curriculum evaluation tools of imet equip and ed reports were all based on the same checklist well right off the bat you need to read the fine print print in the assessment process of the tntp report because they also used the imet and eqip common core standards checklist so technically this will be the fourth curriculum evaluation using the exact same metrics what i just handed was a full

160copy of the 75-page report the 46-page proposal summary the 14-page tntp proposal summary and the tntp contract and 13 page initial proposal read the proposal first you know the one that mentions the common core state standards 46 times read it first then read the rest in succession because after we did that we immediately went back and re-read the tntp proposal and the first thing that came to our mind was why why did we even hire them in their proposal they clearly spell out that they will find wrong with our math and english curriculums just because you call them independent does not mean that they didn't have opinions and it feels like they had a pretty strong opinion and were very deliberate in the path they were trying to prove [Applause] you knew you couldn't purchase

161math curriculum since the year 2 2004. did you really need to pay an independent company 173 881 dollars to tell you that you needed a middle and high school math curriculum in the year 2016. when it's said out loud does that make sense to you because it doesn't to us you then turned around and used this tntp report to justify hiring another independent company garter inc so they could put together a curriculum roadmap to aid in the purchase of purchasing of new english and math curriculums and you paid them 273 000 so keeping up at home that is now half a million dollars almost half a million dollars spent in 2016 just deciding if you need math and english curriculums and how to find new math and english curriculums after all that money and time

162and expertise you ended up putting math workbooks in front of our kids that have zero math learning content in them anyway thank you very much thank you our next speaker is daniel grant king good evening chairman hafiz superintendent and boy members i am mr grant king and currently i'm an educator with wake county also i serve as the chair with the state board of education subcommittee on our advocacy with our educators and our instructional this month can you all hear me this month of course is autism awareness month and as a special educator in the classroom with our exceptional children i want to take a moment to emphasize when autism awareness month was first began according to history autism awareness month is a long month observed focused on raising awareness about the autism spectrum disorders

163and what it means to be artistic regardless of academics regardless of people and the difficulties and the discrimination that autistic people have faced in society of course my committee and i went over a lot of the advocacy issues regarding all kids and students with disabilities but we chose this month in particular to focus on autism awareness month and we also made a decoration in accordance with the 1972 artistic society established the national artistic children's week as a part of efforts to educate the community school districts and many others about how to support and not only have to support before his instruction in the classroom setting also it gives me great honor and privilege as chair of the advocacy committee that i currently serve we made a declaration making it very clear to the state as

164a whole educators and support staff along with myself and many others making it clear and setting the tone that we will continue to advocate for those who have experienced discrimination and bias regardless of gender and regardless of the color of their skin also we have had the privilege of meeting once again this month in preparation for our teacher appreciation week of course it is in may and of course with the advocacy work that we do we decided to recognize one of our very own one of my colleagues at south ghana high school none other than miss yolanda j townslamas we will be recognizing her on thursday may 5th at 1 pm and of course miss johnson hustler has been invited to attend that occasion so it gives me with great hope and reminding us that

165regardless of outcome everyone could still achieve thank you very much thank you mr grant king that concludes our public comments section for the evening madam chair moved approval of the consent items as listed okay we have a motion a second on our consent items is there any discussion all in favor of improving our consent agenda please signify by a sign of i any opposed nay the motion passes we move on to our action item which comes from our chief of schools and it is the instructional calendars for early college and that is glenn carosa with support from tamani anderson powell and paul domenico and paula i'm sorry paul good evening chair mahaffey members of the board superintendent moore this evening staff is seeking your approval for the 2022 2023 instructional calendars for early college high

166schools i'm joined this evening by miss tamani anderson powell and mr paul domenico from our magnet office if you remember back to march 15th during the board work session we shared with you the calendars that are uploaded to assembly this evening those are the draft calendars for early college high schools i'd like to just share with you that all of these calendars adhere to general statute 115c dash 84.2 regarding school calendars nuke the new early college that's opening in 2022-23 wake early college of information and biotechnologies has been conditionally approved by the state board of ed we're seeking final approval by the general assembly still they've assured us that they will address this issue during the early portion of their session however if necessary staff will bring this item back to you for additional discussion

167at a later date staff has begun the process to reach out to parents who are assigned to the early college for information biotechnologies and should we need to reach out to them again we will bring them in for further information as necessary with that we are seeking approval for the early college calendars for 2223. okay motion to prove okay we have a motion from dr martin a second from miss carter is there any discussion mr crows do you have a date as to when we expect to hear back from the general assembly or when we will inform parents so let me just pipe in real quick so it's a two-step process dpi recommends to the general assembly which early colleges the legislature a few years ago indicated that they would not fund more than three

168a year dpi has recommended three including hours in our work with the folks at the school board association superintendent association and other places it's our understanding that this will be an early part of the agenda when the legislature returns in may because technically you're not in early college until the funding is approved and so we're adopting a calendar that goes along with wake tech but should something happen with the general assembly we may need to come back and discuss that again and that is what we want to make sure that our parents understand that it's a conditional approval thank you for that clarification any further questions or comments why we just note yet another thing where the school system should be able to decide what is good for the school systems and this reliance on

169the general assembly is not good for education hearing nothing else all those in favor of adopting these calendars signify by sign of eye aye any opposed nay all right thank you very much thank you have a good evening and i'll see you now we're going to be moving into closed session and i'm happy to sit in for mr hagerty thank you and i move we go into closed session to consider confidential personnel information protected under gs143318.11 a1a3 and a6 to consult with the board of education attorney preserve the attorney client privilege as provided in gs143-318-11a3 and to consult with the board of education attorney and preserve the attorney-client privilege as provided in gs 143 318.11 a3 which i just said due to current litigation jb by and through his parent or guardian hb 21 edc

1700445 office of administrative hearings all right we have a motion in a second all those in favor signify by sign of eye any opposed nay we are now in closed session thank you you