03-03-22 Special Called Meeting: District 4 Candidate Interviews

001good afternoon everyone we are here at 103 in the boardroom for a special called meeting on thursday march 3rd to do interviews for the district four seat vacancy on the board of education at this time we have five people who have submitted a new application or re-interest in this position please note that dr michael t williams has decided to rely on his previous interview we spoke with him previously so that is noted in our schedule for today but i just wanted to remind everyone that although we will not be hearing him from him today he is a candidate for this position and that was his discretion so we have four interviews today but five candidates our interviews are set to begin at 1 15 and as done last time we will be voting right after

002the interviews using the same method which would be rather than a voice vote a ballot which mr bloomberg has with the names on it and mr bloomberg will you remind me do we need to do a vote to use that method of election you're all over it yes please if there could be a motion to proceed by written ballot with respect to the appointment of the vacancy that would be great well we will get to that because i am uh jumping ahead of my agenda so we um i kind of put things in the call of order but we have a quorum everyone is here in the board room and before we move on to any motions we will begin with the pledge of allegiance thank you i pledge allegiance of america to the republic

003for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right so as mentioned we have five candidates we have a method of election that requires a is it a waiver of policy mr bloomberg yeah yes we would waive board policy and proceed by written ballot all right can we get a motion to that effect a motion to wave forward policy in order to proceed with written ballot today so moved thank you dr martin do we have a second thank you miss kushner all right any discussion all in favor please signify by a sign of i i any opposed nay all right we have no further votes on that but if there are any clarifying questions from board members before we proceed now would be the time we will also

004have some time later on in order to if there are any further questions about the ballot but i i think having done this before we um are fairly familiar with the process by share hegerty thank you chairman happy so just for clarification because we went through this process before yes sir and with this new round of candidates additional information was requested of all the candidates for the vacancy that is correct would mr bloomberg be able to review that information for us and just confirm for anyone watching that all candidates meet the criteria that we established well we have i mean i'm happy to go through that each candidate had to submit a resume a letter of interest discussing the strategic plan three letters of reference the new pieces were asking for voter information so voter

005registration information as well as proof of domicile which would be like a utility bill and you will notice that there is an email at the end of each packet from our assistant superintendent for school choice planning and assignment his mr crow's department did look and and check to make sure that based on the information provided by candidates each person that submitted was domiciled in district 4 and we've received some emails from our consultants that are involved in redistricting just to confirm that they are in the new uh district for just for purposes of our our own knowledge and the knowledge of candidates did that cover it yeah i believe so all complete applications all been reviewed and and meet the domicile requirements um the the advertisement that was very detailed is included as well in

006the materials and and you've seen that as well as long as we have a little time before the first interview just reminders um that's governed by board policy two one one five unexpired term fulfillment um and you all are proceeding by written ballots i'll hand them out at the appropriate time it does require it would require with everybody here five votes in favor of a particular candidate uh to uh to confirm the appointment um and if that doesn't happen in initial rounds then we have plenty of ballots here uh to do that and just i know this is something that that everybody knows but there's been a lot of work on this diligence and the like and would like to extend a appreciation to melissa allen for her just daily communication with me on on

007this as well yes ms allen has compiled all of these portfolios for each of our candidates has been in contact with them has coordinated with the newspaper to make sure that we had advertisements out and you'll notice that mr michael farmer who was a previous candidate in the last round did withdraw so again thank you miss allen we know that this was a lot of diligent time effort and detail that went into this um any further questions and if they're please please you talked about the balloting mr bloomberg so how would we do that given we have five candidates how would that those rounds go would we just you you with each ballot you would sign your name okay um you would pick one candidate one candidate only and you would sign them and they

008would be sent to me and if an individual receives five votes then they're going to they would be the appoint the person that would get the appointment but you don't you don't list them you don't rank them or anything like that and we're just going to keep going until someone would others would would we eliminate like doing rounds would we do all five every round or would we eliminate go top two top three or drop four top three top two do you see what i'm saying we're not 100 percent we're not here all evening having two two two two votes i guess is what one so the question would be what is the mechanism to address if you are unable to get five on the first round yes i'm sorry thank you for rephrasing my

009concern so i i am hopeful that you'll get the five on the first round and we won't have to get to that like judges do they try not to answer questions unless they have to but i i can tell you that my first suggestion would be that you all would just revoke for a couple of rounds and then if after a few rounds you're still not able to get five there could be a recess after that for opportunity for people to reflect but then also that other other other efforts could be to vote at that point we'd like to narrow the field so if there was a you know a vote to narrow the field where the majority of you would vote to eliminate a candidate or something like that then that is a possibility

010but um but but i'm hopeful that we wouldn't get into those eventualities thank you because there have been instances of one hour and a half such rounds and so that's just going on and on and unable to and and you know that might be what we need to do as well so i will leave it to my colleagues and the only other thing that i would add is is that there's not a legal requirement i know the board very much wants to proceed and make an appointment today but there's not a legal requirement that the board act today so that if the board is unable to get five votes today then the meeting would be adjourned and you all would meet again and try again so it's it's it's not you know i know that

011the board wants to do it wants to proceed wants to take action but i just also want to be clear it's not like the law says today you have to appoint somebody you obviously have taken multiple good faith measures and and are doing so today to try to fulfill the obligation to fill this appointment thank you and many thanks to everyone at this table for making this uh work with your schedule today i know we all may have had prior commitments and i appreciate all of your commitments to this board into this process so thank you with that it we've got a couple minutes before our first candidate at 1 15 so we'll just take a couple minutes and we will bring in ms waters at 115 yes miss cash of course i just um

012we've been very careful to not talk about these candidates and i want to re-emphasize that because this was the co the comment about we would likely have five i just want to be careful that we clarify that we will have no way of knowing that we could ever have a majority vote on this because there's been no conversations between board members at all and so there's a very likely chance we won't have a majority vote so i just want to clarify that no i think that's very important i think you know making sure that this is that it's known that this is our first time with many of these candidates having a conversation with them i know mr grant king has elected to re-interview but as far as any contact with these candidates or speaking

013with each other or members of the public honor about this vacancy i think we've been all very diligent as board members to be to honor the the vote that we had last time to make this a a fresh thing so i appreciate you bringing that to light and and just highlighting that um so and miss kushner hopefully we won't be here for an hour and a half voting but if we are we'll we'll cross that bridge when we get to it i guess as as mr bloomberg noted all right well i will go get miss waters and um we will begin shortly and i'd just like to point out for the method of voting i just kind of went in a method of questioning i just kind of went in a different order but it

014just kind of ping-pongs and then had someone choose two numbers for additional two questions nine and ten and those numbers were two and four so miss johnson hossler and miss cash have the additional questions this round so and then i think if we can go around and make sure that we introduce ourselves i think that would be helpful and we'll start off with that are you going to keep time in terms of giving them a little bit i think last time you did a really good job i am happy to do that i will get out my time keeping device now so i'm not doing that well our candidate is here thank you and so we'll have 45 minutes and again [Music] if i could just get maybe some head nods you know a few

015minutes for introduction from a candidate and then a couple minutes for conclusion as we did last time is that all okay all right here we go okay thank you so much miss waters thank you so much for being here um i'm as i said lindsay mahaffey i'm the chair of the school board and i represent district 8 in western wake county i'm going to ask my colleagues to introduce themselves right now and we'll start just kind of going around the table with district one hi i'm heather scott i represent district one jim martin represent district five welcome good afternoon i'm christine kushner i'd represent district six which is mostly central raleigh okay hi i'm chris haggerty i represent district seven hi monique johnson-hassler i represent district two hi roxy cash district 3. hi karen carter

016district 9. ms waters thank you so much for joining us oh and our attorney jonathan blumberg my apologies um uh thank you so much for signing up to to come and speak with us today to submit your name to be a part of this process um just a little bit on how it's gonna be structured we're gonna give you a couple minutes to introduce yourself and then we're going to ask you a series of questions we have 10 questions they are in front of you so if you're a visual person don't feel like you need to remember everything because it'll be right there and and then we'll give you a few minutes at the end to share a little more about yourself if there's something we may have missed or that you'd like to emphasize

017and we'll have a total of 45 minutes but we don't have to use all of that time so all right thank you so much so if you want to take a couple minutes and tell us about yourself well it's a pleasure to meet you all and i appreciate the opportunity do i need to speak is that green light on it is okay go ahead miss waters okay well it's a pleasure to meet you all and i really appreciate the opportunity to share about myself on paper and i'm also grateful for the opportunity to share about myself in person my name is tara shonda waters and that's quite a mouthful in fact i had a co-worker yesterday asked me if i had a nickname because he's only known me as tara and so most people do

018know me on that shorter version and i am very fortunate to have grown up as a student in the wake county public school system and my parents recently had their house renovated and they came across some items that belonged to me in high school things that i hadn't seen in over two decades things that i had completely forgotten about and a couple of those things really stood out to me and the first thing that stood out to me was an old newspaper and this newspaper is from millbrook high school and i had forgotten i was on the newspaper staff and that's really interesting because i went on to nc state and i earned a communication degree and a minor in journalism i spent my early career working in corporate communication at progress energy and then

019a wonderful opportunity opened up for me to be able to pursue a master of public administration through a fellowship from the department of housing and urban development and so while i was there i had a chance to become an adult high school ged instructor and that was quite an experience something that i hadn't really thought about doing but it just came to me and so that made the second item really important to me i found this whole award from the future teachers of america so it's really affirming for me to think about the things that happened to me in the public school here in wake county and how they've really shaped my career even to this day i went on to work at wake tech for a number of years i was an instructor for

020employability skills helping job seekers who were in transition and then most recently i started a position with the city of raleigh i oversee a program called volunteer raleigh and what we do is connect volunteers from a variety of different backgrounds to organizations that are in need of helping hands so we're kind of a matchmaker between the volunteer and the service opportunity so it's a real pleasure to look back over my early school years and to see where my career is today and see how those have really come together and so it's an honor to talk with you this afternoon about the possibility of being the representative for district 4. thank you miss waters and i've got the first question please describe how your professional and community service experience will guide you in representing district four

021and in your work on this board of education well my very first professional opportunity came to me while i was a senior at millbrook high school i was hired to serve as a cooperative education student at the system office so i would leave millbrook high school early and then come to the central office and i worked in grants administration and that was only supposed to last for one year but i actually ended up staying until my senior year in high school the staff really invested in me and helped me to grow professionally so by the time i graduated from college i was really prepared for a career and i was able to enter corporate america very well equipped to be able to do the job at hand and so working in corporate communications i have

022learned the ability to communicate with individuals from a variety of different backgrounds whether those are individuals with executive roles or whether they are individuals with entry level needs so i can communicate very well both written and orally and i also have a chance to work in education as an adult high school instructor that helped me to understand the needs of students who maybe didn't have the best experience in their younger years and so that really gave me a passion for education and to be able to advocate for early learning in addition my work at wake tech has given me a real love for education and the opportunities that individuals from all kinds of backgrounds can still access no matter what stage in life and then as a parent that has also given me a great

023lens into education i am in kind of two different worlds i have a preschooler and a middle schooler and so those worlds coming together has taught me a lot and so i think looking at both my professional experience as well as my personal experience there are a lot of skills that i could use to be able to hopefully provide a perspective to enrich the needs of the students in district four and their families afternoon i have again i have uh the second question fulfilling the requirements of service may require 30 or more hours per week many during the hours between 9 am and 5 pm how are your current commitments and responsibilities allow you time for board meetings and other board responsibilities well one of the things about me is when i commit to something

024i really assess my ability to give it my all i'm a very performance driven person and i like to ensure that i'm able to fulfill all the duties of any commitment that i make and so i feel that i'm able to do that i have a wonderful opportunity with the city of raleigh that gives me a chance to be very active and engaged in the community in fact the division i work in is called neighborhood enrichment services so there is a great need to be able to connect with the community and build relationships and so and just in my personal life i'm a person that is very high energy very driven and so i enjoy being busy and doing things and working finding myself without a lot to do is actually more stressful to me

025and so i think i would be able to balance the commitments required of this position as well as maintain my employment and my family life thank you miss waters as you probably know we're in the middle of budget season and working on strategic planning and so could you comment on two or three specific strategies or initiatives that you would advocate for in working to develop either the new budget or our strategic plan and being a little deeper than just the initiative what would you how would you propose to sort of carry them out well thinking about two or three initiatives i'd like to focus on three that are important to me number one community engagement number two diversity equity and inclusion and number three the employee life cycle and by community engagement i mean ensuring

026that individuals from all walks of life have the opportunity to participate in the public process through my role with the city of raleigh i've had a chance to engage with something called the international association of public participation that's called iep 2 commonly in the field iep 2 is actually a spectrum of engagement and they start with the most basic level of engagement which is to inform the public all the way up to empowering the public to make a decision so based on that spectrum there are different techniques that work best for different communities so i would advocate for adopting the ip2 model for community engagement and being able to spread that throughout the district so there's a common language and a common way that the public is engaged to increase the number of people who

027are participating in the public process and then when it comes to diversity equity and inclusion one of the things that i would like to see is just working with communities to address biases that are impacting students across the district particularly that is probably something that we've all encountered we make decisions about people based upon how they look outwardly and there are a number of students who are facing that daily those perceptions can be very negative and can impact the ability to be able to function at their highest quality in the classroom and so sometimes these biases are not known and people don't even realize that they exist and so i had a wonderful opportunity to participate in a training from a professor from morehouse college his name was dr bryant marks he did an amazing

028training on implicit bias so i'd like to start there as kind of a baseline for breaking down the issues of equity and inclusion so that there is an opportunity to invite more people into the conversation and then do additional work to build on that but starting with uncovering those biases i think is an important step because there are biases that are shaping the future of our children that people don't even realize that they have and so making sure that every student has a sense of belonging when they're in the classroom and when they're participating in activities i believe can start by addressing implicit biases and then the third is the employee life cycle and i mean looking at the process from pre-hire to retire and all the steps that are in between but particularly focusing

029on the early stages looking at the candidate experience in my role at wake tech i had a chance to work with a lot of job seekers in transition and looking at the employee employment application can be very powerful in terms of attracting talent i was reading a great article from the society of human resources management and they talked about the importance of employers actually doing their own application to make sure it is user friendly and it is accessible to all who are wanting to apply and then additionally making sure that it is compatible with technology particularly as more people are completing applications from their phone and so just looking at the entire employee life cycle but putting an emphasis on that pre-hire and making sure that the candidate experience is a good one so that

030you are attracting more talent and that you're not losing people in that kind of pre-application process as there is stiff competition for talent and a lot of employers are doing one to two clicks for employment applications so remaining competitive throughout that employee life cycle hi i have question four what strategies can the board of education undertake to support effective teaching and academic growth including growth in academically challenged children as well as the academically gifted student when i think about this question it makes me think about one of my early jobs i worked at progress energy and they had a slogan it was called people performance excellence and that was more than 20 years ago that i worked there but that still sticks with me people first ensuring that we have supports in place that identify

031the needs of teachers and understanding that they have lives they have challenges and making sure that their wellness supports to help address some of the stresses that are unique to this time where we're and covered and lots of stressors are happening to every individual and so making wellness supports easily accessible to everyone my sister is actually a nurse and she works in the biggest healthcare system in the state of florida and they use a wellness app that you can use from your phone it's called ginger and you can get wellness support very easily from that app so making sure that wellness supports are in place for teachers and then also empowering teachers to make decisions that are in the best interest of their class and then giving them a platform and a voice to be

032able to express ideas for innovation and creativity and then additionally giving opportunities for professional development so that everybody feels that they have a chance to grow because educators in my opinion are typically very eager to grow and to learn and they want to keep their skills up and so making sure that those opportunities are available for professional development and so that would lend itself to be able to support children no matter where they find themselves whether they are really high performing or whether they are needing additional supports when you put those supports in place and you think of people first performance the excellence will come so that's my opinion so i've got the next question and i know you addressed this um so maybe you can expand a little bit more from your answer in

033the third question but wake county is quite diverse economically racially and culturally as a school board member how do you envision your role in providing equitable opportunities and outcomes for all students well i think i had a chance to attend training not too long ago and i asked a diversity professional that what what do you do when you deal with a topic that is so polarizing and brings out so many different emotions for people and how do you have these really meaningful conversations and one of the things she said that stuck with me was inviting people into the conversation and so that's one of the things that i would like to be able to do is to invite people into the conversation in a place that starts off with with opportunities to learn more about

034communities and learn more about people that they may not have access to on a daily basis and then delving into uncovering biases through formalized training and then building on those steps and then also ensuring that there is staff that is dedicated to issues of diversity equity and inclusion to be able to serve as subject matter experts and provide guidance throughout the district but ensuring that people from the community are invited into the conversation have a chance to share their ideas and experience people that they may not have ever encountered before i think that's a important part of the conversation and just to share a quick story i taught a class at wake tech last year and i had a really interesting thing where i had three students who had never met who turned out to

035be cousins they were all from an indigenous tribe called the hollowapony and they made the connection two of them had the same last name and that was the first time in my life that i had ever had a chance to encounter someone from an indigenous community and it was so enlightening and so enriching and i think there are many people who've never encountered certain communities and giving opportunities to do that in a place that's comfortable we'll invite more people into the conversation and gain more support for this type of work hi i have question number six enrollment in wake county schools is impacted by growth and by school choice what are your thoughts about current and future assignment goals for wake county and the role of choice in school selection and how can we make

036wake county public schools the most attractive option for families in district 4 and county-wide well i grew up in a very small community in my early years it had one high school one elementary and one middle school so it was not a lot of school choice so coming to wake county was quite a gift for me and i think it's a gift to so many parents and children i remember the first time i went to a magnet school fair i was just overwhelmed by the number of options and i think that is such a gift to the children of this community and i think that we have a great opportunity to let parents make selections about what's best for their children and that might be going to a magnet school or it may be going

037to a neighborhood school my own children have had the experience of doing both and what i've learned through those experiences is that every child is different every child has a unique set of needs and i think giving parents all the information that they can use to make the best decision for their student ensuring that they have the right fit for their child because every child has a unique set of needs and making sure that parents have the information to make those selections and giving the opportunity for choice whether it's based on a certain type of program at a school or whether it's based on location families have different needs and different circumstances and i think having such an array of choices for students is going to be continually attractive to individuals as they come into

038this area thank you thank you you're welcome thank you miss waters so just to follow up on that idea and i love the fact that you were able to attend east millbrook and millbrook and so you know firsthand some of the benefits of those magnet schools so as we talk about you know giving parents choice it's it's choice with some goals right we know that when we can avoid high concentrations of poverty within a school it's good for the student achievement school wide so as a magnet school graduate and the parent of potential magnet kids what i guess what is your position on how we can expand or grow our magnet programs if there would be other changes you would make and you know are there other approaches to maybe addressing poverty you know high

039concentrations of poverty in school that we should explore well magnet schools historically have been such a wonderful tool for ensuring diversity among our schools and so being able to continue to support the growth of magnet schools is really important as advances in our community and technology continue to grow i think always assessing the magnet programs to make sure that there are programs that are attractive to students and doing a real delve into best practices across the nation we have wonderful school districts across the nation so i'm a big fan of benchmarking and exploring what other districts are doing and modeling after those districts that are doing it well and so i believe continuing to assess and make data-driven decisions about the programming where those schools are will continue to make the magnet schools attractive and

040in terms of other ways to do that i think just continually inviting people into conversation so they have access to information about schools my own my own son he was able to attend a magnet school for kindergarten but because he was in a regional program he came out of a magnet school and so we ended up in a school that was not a magnet school which turned out to be quite a gift to us and so it's a very special experience and so just letting parents know that magnet schools are a wonderful option and then they're also wonderful neighborhood schools and making sure that parents have information where they can learn about everything that makes a school special in fact i think about my son's school where he went to elementary for the most number

041of years lynn road elementary and if you've ever gone in that school it is such a beautiful place because the media center is in the center and you cannot get to any classroom without passing hundreds and hundreds of books and so every school has something that makes it really special and being able to give schools a chance to say this is what makes our school special i think is going to attract more people as opposed to maybe just what they've heard or what they see when they drive by a building but once you go into a school there's a culture there's an atmosphere you can feel the energy and just letting schools have the opportunity to tell their story in a way that parents can make informed decisions whether that is a magnet school or

042whether it's a neighborhood school thank you appreciate it thank you i appreciate it oh my pleasure thank you miss waters um we all certainly know that the that each of our schools is special and so i think we all enjoy when that's recognized by members in the community we do we're doing well on time we've got about 25 minutes left so we're on question 8. going back to the role of the board and kind of your own personal experience can you describe a situation in which you were required to carefully decide between two strongly convicted conflicting viewpoints and the process by which you come to a decision that balances the needs and desires of your constituents or or folks that you were working with with the needs of the system as a whole so um

043you know what when you've had a large decision there there are two polarizing points how do you get to that that decision and and how do you share that decision with with folks okay well when i saw this question it made me think about when i went on my initial interview at wake tech it was a panel interview much like this but on a much smaller scale and as a part of the panel interview they actually did a role play exercise and the people who were interviewing me really got into character and so they played the role of students who had got into a really heated conflict and it was supposed to be my role to gain control over the situation well i was not prepared for that and i kind of bombed on that

044part of the interview but actually still got the job but i said if i'm going to keep the job i'm going to have to develop these skills where i can maintain an atmosphere of positivity and order and so through my years teaching at wake tech i really learned some important skills and one of the skills is to really set the atmosphere and set the tone at the beginning and set the expectations at the beginning so letting everyone know that they're welcome and they're encouraged to participate in the process will be something that i always like to do and if there are conflicting views i really try to use my communication degree and look at ways to present messaging in a way that people can receive it because a lot of times it's just about wording

045to make sure that you're using terms that are effective to communicate so if there are conflicting decisions that i have to make and sometimes that was the case when i was an instructor at wake tech or when i was supervising classes at wake tech there are needs for students and then there are absolutely performance measures and rules that that one has to follow as a as an organization and so just balancing those making sure that you're doing things that are ethical that are proper and then balancing those with the needs of the communities that you're serving so assessing ways to communicate things that are maybe not comfortable but in a way that people can receive it i think is an important skill to be able to do that thank you very much my pleasure thank

046you again what is your understanding of the difference between the role of the board of education and the role of the superintendent and staff when i think of the stupid superintendent and staff i really think about the superintendent having an opportunity to really be the voice for the students and the staff are in direct contact with the students and so i think as the superintendent's role is engaging with the students needs and and more on a personal or a student basis and when i think of the school board i think about the policies and the procedures that are governing the actions that impact the students and the individual schools and so the board has a tremendous responsibility and can make policies and decisions that are impacting the way that schools operate and the way that

047funding is allocated and the way that resources are allocated so making those big picture decisions and then as the superintendent is able to roll those out and implement those decisions and making sure that they're implemented as the board has outlined and the board is representing the interest of their particular district and the people who they represent the families the students and others who live in those districts giving a voice and a platform being that representative for those who are not able to be in in the room but representing what's best for them and making decisions that are in alignment with the values of the community and that are fiscally responsible that are responsible in terms of long-term vision for the district looking at the district from a strategic point and being able to move it

048forward but still having that finger on the pulse i think both have the finger on the pulse of what's important and best for the students that are in this district uh miss waters about 70 percent of those living in wake county do not have children or of school-aged children and what can be done to enhance the interaction between the school system and school board and the broader community of wake county who actually do not have children in our schools that's a great question and i'll tell about a group of senior ladies that i met a few months ago they're called the carrie stitchers they are just the greatest women i think i've ever met they meet every monday at the cary senior center and they are the behind the scenes people who make all the

049blankets for newborns in the hats and different comfort items for people who are experiencing medical needs they make dolls for children who are going to have medical procedures and so the newborn hats the children dolls and none of them have children who are of that age but they saw a need and they had a skill and those two came together and i think that is what can happen with the 70 not i didn't realize that number was so high but with that 70 percent there are wonderful opportunities to be able to bring the skills together with the need and i think about one of my colleagues her name is sheila she's been talking to me about a concept called abcd it's asset community development and that's when you take the micro talents of the community

050and connect them with the macro needs of the environment so you can look at someone who has a specific gift and then be able to connect them with an opportunity to serve within the school district i think sometimes people don't realize that they're welcome and invited and included in the conversation because they don't have children and so making sure that that is welcoming there's also a really wonderful platform that i became aware of not too long ago it's called bang the table and a lot of local government organizations use bang the table as a way to increase engagement and it's almost like having a separate website but not that competes with or pulls away from your normal website but it's devoted strictly to community engagement and i had a chance to use bang the table

051it makes it very easy for people to find out how do i get involved and do it very easily so making sure that there's a way that people know easily how they can get connected to the community and to the schools is really important and i'll say in my current job as the program manager for volunteer raleigh i'm seeing people who are registering with me almost on a daily basis multiple people are saying i want to get involved and they are filling out applications and asking me to help them find somewhere that they can get connected and many other people just say i just want to help i just want to help they don't know where to get started and so that's why the program that i work with actually exists so if you make

052it easy for people to find out how they can get connected let them know that they're invited to bring their skills and talents into the district then i believe that more people will feel that they can actually bring something to the conversation and be engaged whether they are people who have children who've already gone through the school system or whether they have smaller children or maybe they plan never to have children they have lots of things to bring to the students of the district whether that's allowing them to look at what type of career they have and where they work and giving those types of career exploration or if they have a hard skill like gardening or landscaping that they may want to use for a beautification process but making it easy for people is

053the first point and making them feel welcome i'm big on giving people a sense of belonging so making me feel people that they belong in that space is very important to me thank you miss waters thank you so much for coming today if you want to take a few more minutes if there's something you'd like to emphasize or highlight or share that we didn't get a chance to learn about you please take a few minutes and and do that now okay well thank you so much uh for the opportunity to share i was looking through my phone and i came across a picture actually um brought it with me but i've sort of vacillated on whether i show it or not because i i didn't ask the people in the picture whether i could show

054it so i've decided not to but i want to just tell you visually what the picture is it's a picture of my son at one of his basketball games and his first grade teacher mrs manaza is in this picture with her two children they came out on a weeknight to see him play basketball and they were there cheering him on he had his own little cheering section and mrs manaza is a phenomenal teacher she actually came to t-ball also i'm just down the street from here she lives in north raleigh and she came out early on a saturday morning to see him play t-ball and i was a little bit embarrassed because when i got there she was already there with her folding chair and so teachers in this district are doing a lot of

055things i have so many stories i could keep you here all day telling you about the special things like the message i got from my middle school son's teacher this morning saying that i realized that your son's birthday is coming up and i want to wish him a happy birthday and he's going to have an email tomorrow to be able to acknowledge that just the very special things that teachers do to really enrich the lives of our children it really is so so special to me and it's not just teachers teachers are doing more than teaching bus drivers are doing more than driving buses my grandmother drove a bus for more than 30 years when i was growing up their bus drivers are doing more than driving the bus and social workers are doing more

056than reports and everybody's doing more than can be really verbalized and i'd love to be able to be a support system for those who are really passionate about the work that they're doing there's just so many stories that i could share with you and being able to join in that work and then and speaking specifically to district four i've had a chance to visit a number of schools in district four based on doing some magnet school tours and a couple of them memories stand out when i went to powell elementary we did the tour and we found out all the information about the schools and i was feeling a little bit left out because i needed some information on special education services and that wasn't a part of what was going on so i just

057asked someone hey is there any way i could find out about special education services and they were like sure and so they actually went and got the teacher who taught cck she came out and she spoke with me really lovely and never thought a thing about it but she turned out to actually be my son's kindergarten teacher so building that relationship going into that school really made a difference for me and then when i think about i also went to hunter elementary and on that tour what was special about that was hunter actually had some parents there and i remember this was years ago but i remember there was a professor i believe she was from meredith college and there was also a mom who was a stay-at-home mom and one was a woman of

058color one was not their lives seemed very very different on the surface but they had this common space where their children were in the school had a love for learning and had a chance to get to know a different community and work together to really advance the work of education and so over the course of my career i have had a real joy in the opportunities to work in education both as an adult high school instructor working with students who didn't have the best experience on while they were in school and what i learned from some of my students who were so eager in fact i had a couple of students who worked third shift and they would walk to my class after having worked third shift all night so there's a real hunger for

059education and and to make it easy for people to access education and feel supported feel a sense of belonging i think is something that i would like to do and particularly for district four i pass so many of these schools multiple times a day whether it's going to my house or whether it's going to my office downtown and i'm very interested in the people who live around me and the community around me so i really enjoy being a part of the decision making process whether that is as someone sitting on the board or whether it's a voice in the community that gives ideas and input i think just having the opportunity to gather information and ideas and bring in people from different communities will be really enriched and be able to support the work of

060our students and then be able to look in 20 years when people can pull out things from high school and say what i did in high school made a difference for what i'm doing in my career today ms waters thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today and this afternoon and we very much appreciate you submitting yourself to to this process and and your desire to be a part of this organization for for our community and for our students thank you well the pleasure is mine thank you so much and board members we have some time before our next interview so if you want to take a moment please feel free so i figured we didn't want ourselves okay uh um oh oh i actually didn't see this that's funny

061yes okay so we're staying right we're gonna stay i don't remember if i thought about it and it's okay i'm sure i can't that's not intense right yeah thank you all right oh okay at least i don't know which is worse mine was calculus but i had to get some caffeine i was going down i was like i could feel myself like i didn't even know it was my turn i was like oh jesus like i started messing with my computer trying to like stay focused i was going down there oh okay hey we'll be starting just a minute thanks miss lou hobbs we have are going to get you a set of the questions that we're going to read so um let me is that green light on all right excellent well she's she's

062get we've got a separate one we're good we're good i suggested the same thing and miss allen is going to get a new set so but um we will we can chat in the meantime so we're we've got yeah because we don't need the questions to start but we'll we'll get them to you so um [Music] so we're gonna take about 45 minutes first of all thank you for being here thank you for submitting your name into this process and wanting to be a part of this organization and and take on this role um we're we've got 45 minutes to talk i'm going to introduce myself and ask my colleagues to do the same i'm lindsay mahappy the chair of the school board and represent district 8 which is western wake and i'm heather scott

063i represent district one which is eastern and northeastern wake welcome jim martin district five uh sort of the lake lake wheeler watershed hello i'm christine kushner district six and representative central and western and a bit of north raleigh hey i'm chris haggerty and i'm district seven and that's northwest raleigh morrisville and west cary thanks good afternoon monica johnson hustler district two which is a small section of south raleigh olive garner and a significant portion of fuquay verita roxy cash i represent uh district three which is mainly north raleigh and some of northeast raleigh i'm karen carter representing district nine and i'm mainly carrie a little bit of apex a little bit of raleigh so as i said we're going to talk for about 45 minutes we will get you we'll wait for those questions to

064come for miss allen we'll have ask you to introduce yourself for two or three minutes yeah take two or three minutes introduce yourself and the questions yes we can hear you as long as the green light is on it it works sometimes you hear an echo sometimes you don't and then at the end anything that you want to share or reiterate we'll have a few minutes at the end like i said a total of 45 minutes and yeah if take a moment introduce yourself i have been a resident of wake county for a very long time goals thank you so i did a had a change of career and i'm more i'm into more of an agriculture business role now and that's why i've been working for um about 15 years or so at this

065time i love where i work and it's given me a lot of skills uh in order to that you know would be very uh applicable here you know as part of the school board's responsibility is to run the business of the school system and that's what i've been learning a lot about in my role and uh as a business operations manager uh you work a lot with contracts and negotiations i've even had opportunity to work with uh international businesses it's just given me a lot of fields i work with a lot of you know different countries uh people in germany netherlands south korea it's been a tremendous opportunity and i think that diverse background really gives a great perspective for a school board member thank you miss lou hobbs and you've got those questions in

066front of you so i'm going to start with the first one um and you've touched on this in your opening but if you could continue to please describe how your professional and community service experience will guide you in representing district 4 and in your work on the board of education okay well i'm going to touch on community service first in that when my boys my oldest is now 15 entered the public school system i was quick to want to get involved and i did that through the pta um i did everything i possibly could while maintaining a full-time job but you know i served as vice president secretary we even did arranged doing landscaping projects i don't know if you guys are familiar with powell i'm probably the only school that has chickens and that's

067been a very interesting project to teach the kids about that in addition to that i've done a work through my church volunteering at other schools trying to support the teachers there as well i did touch on my position uh right now through that i've done a lot of drafting of contracts i'm responsible for drafting a lot of company policies and procedures and working within various departments to make sure that they communicate well because that's usually where the breakdown occurs is when you have one department here is trying to do one thing and then a second department is trying to get to the same goal over here doing it a different way and they're not communicating with each other and that's where things fall apart and that's part of what i do is to make sure

068that the communication line is open and to merge those two systems together thank you and this mahathi may have said we've got 10 questions in 45 minutes so we just did one of ten so thank you thank you next question fulfilling the responsibilities of service may require 30 or more hours per week many of those hours during the workday 9 a.m to 5 p.m how will your current commitments and responsibilities allow you time for board meetings and responsibilities which you've also touched on a little bit to be more specific about that i've already discussed with my employer because i've been there for so long um and i truly love where i work but i just felt coming here was very important the kids kids need a voice and the parents need a voice but um

069i've already discussed with them that i can i'm going to be allowed flexibility in my job to allow for the hours that are needed um i'm sure that there's advanced scheduling i've heard you guys talk about scheduling meetings before so with that advanced notice that they're going to be more than happy to accommodate whatever i would need in order to serve on through the board thank you mr hobbs as you're aware we're in the middle of budget season and still working on the strategic plan so could you describe two or three specific strategies or initiatives that you would advocate for in working develop to develop either the budget or the strategic plan and not just a list of the strategies but how would you envision their being implemented okay well first i'm going to touch

070on parental involvement because the parents are partners with the school system you know the children that the parents send you know that's their most precious thing in the world to them so we have to treat them as a partner now parents are able to engage at different levels some have full-time jobs prohibits coming them during the day others you know may be able to come during the day but couldn't come at night but there's a lot of different opportunities to volunteer and there needs to be a little more coordinated effort to to put that out there of what is available for parents to do and the doors need to be open for parents to come in to the to the classroom you know as you know it's read across america week and i had the

071wonderful opportunity to read to my child's class last week and and it was horrifying to me that that was the first time i was able to step into the classroom and i understand you know the situation but still it it we're three quarters of the way through the school and i've never been able to go in to the classroom and there's many opportunities like that that parents could come involved you know do something for half an hour and go back to their job responsibilities as as opposed to just doing this one week and letting that know more in advance because that has been a problem with engaging parents at least at the schools that my children have gone to is the advanced notice of these volunteer opportunities are coming out a day or two ahead

072of time and for parents that work no matter what type of work that they do they need more notice than that the next thing is is really about the curricula and specifically there's two points with that and one is making the curricula um more transparent to parents and the others is textbooks i have found with my children they learn in different ways and one of my children could not understand anything until i started having him use textbooks other kids can do things online so we have to account for the different learning styles of the of children and the only way to do that is to bring the textbooks back i know we have a budget line item for that i've never been clear on what exactly that's been spent on it has just in my

073experience with the schools that i've worked with there aren't any textbooks so i'm not sure exactly how that funds is being spent the other thing is the curricula parents could be more involved if they understood the curricula and not have to go ask the teacher and it needs to be we need to have a platform that's consistent among all the teachers my experience when dealing with a middle school was that teachers had various platforms they were posting things and it was a lot of time just to understand the platforms trying to figure out what was going on and it needs to bring that into one house to be consistent amongst everyone so that parents can have time to look at the curricula understand where they can get involved and understand how they can help their

074child you know when they're around the dinner table and what they can ask questions about what happened in their class today and have a more stimulating conversation with their children regarding their education okay i have question four um what strategies can the board of education undertake to support effective teaching and academic growth but including the girls for the academically challenged child but also for the academically gifted child that is very important and it's interesting that you're putting including the academically challenged and the academically gifted together um i'm gonna i know it's a long time ago but i'm gonna tell you a story about my brother and back then it was harder to identify learning disabilities but he would test very brilliantly in um mathematics but could barely read and understanding the differences in the different

075subject capabilities of students you know that students can be gifted in a certain area and may have difficulties or be at a normal rate in other areas and to be able to accommodate that as i haven't seen that going on i do think there needs to be focus more focus on the academically gifted students i personally do not have experience with [Music] those who are disabled and how are challenged but i i know that there are laws in place to dictate what needs to be done to help them but i don't think there's anything in place for the academically gifted and when you have children that are not challenged with their education they're going to stagnate and they're not going to try and push forward they're just going to start to disengage and a child

076who's not engaged with their own education will not advance in their own education you have to make it you know interesting to them you have to challenge them but not challenge them to the point that they're going to give up because they they're just they're going to fail and they just don't want to go any more forward you know that's a fine line and programs need to be developed i i'll back up no programs don't need to be built we have programs in place the programs need to be tweaked in order to accommodate that because i do think we have groundworks in order to already make these accommodations in the system and i've got the next question number five wake county is quite diverse economically racially and culturally as a school board member how do

077you envision your role in providing equitable opportunities and outcomes for all students so yes wake county is very diverse i was doing a little bit of background research because i was so little when we moved here and realized that the counties quadrupled in size that was um stammering but the population of all different ethnicities and backgrounds have increased a lot we have so many international companies here so we have people coming from all over the world coming here to get an education so i think that's a tremendous opportunity for the kids you know my children have been going to powell and a carnage is where they were in middle school and those schools are very diverse and i like it that way my neighborhood's very diverse you get a lot of different when you have

078a lot of different viewpoints and a different backgrounds it makes life much more interesting so as a school board member i would want to be in with the schools to encourage people to talk about their cultures and their backgrounds and their different experiences in life because even amongst the board here there's there are different backgrounds that each of you have and it's going to create a different viewpoint of how you view things in life and it's important to talk about those in a rational way thank you um let's see number six over halfway through enrollment in wake county schools is impacted by growth and by school choice what are your thoughts about current and future assignment goals for wake county and the role of choice in school selection and how we make wake county public

079schools the most attractive option for families in district 4 and countywide well i'm kind of still going to back up the reason my dad moved us here was because of the wake county public school system and how excellent of an education it provided i i think there are things that have been happening uh and this is before covid that have been the scores are declining i did a five year comparison and i was appalled to see the decline in math scores in particular and how they've declined over the over the past five years but to make wake county attractive you have to make it the best education available so that's what students the parents of these students will want to choose the enrollment for the 2020 to 2021 year as you know declined by i

080believe it was about 2500 students if i remember correctly so a small decline i don't know the enrollment numbers for the 21 to 2 school year but those are going to other options the charters and the homeschooling and private schools so if you're going to attract families to come to public school the way you do that is to make sure you have a top-notch education which goes back to making sure that if you have children that are academically gifted to make sure that we have programs for those children if you have children that need assistance in an area that we have programs for those children and and continue expanding the programs um in the stem the science engineering and technology because you know we've got so much going on with computers that um you know

081there can be programs that are more specific to that and make more of them because i know these classes are in the various middle schools and high schools but they're still limited and so to make those options more available will attract parents to come back into into the system so miss lou hobbs i appreciate your um experience as a parent of students and magnet schools and so just kind of being able to be inside the schools and seeing them and knowing your kids experience you know the goal of the schools is to help break up large concentrations of poverty right right and we've seen that when this happens test scores improve so whether it's magnet schools other schools of choice what what other options do you think that the district could explore to kind of

082serve the goals of the magnet program i would first look at how you do magnet school enrollment um my understanding is that for magnet schools there is a base assignment and then you base that do a formula to get the number of students that are allowed there as a magnet seat the problem with that is when you have school at schools with low base assignment that decreases the school numbers and that's been happening at my kids elementary school which is a shame because it it's a great school um i know covet has taken a hit and it's you know their reading scores are down and the kids are still struggling with that but beside that the um uh i hate to keep picking on the one school but it's it they changed their magnet theme

083many years ago so it used to be gifted and talented and now it is a center for play and ingenuity and that's really a wonderful theme and that should be expanded to the middle and the high schools because engaging kids and making it fun is going to make them learn more there's um i forget the exact name but one of the electives that the children can take it's it's called like world games and they develop these um countries and they have to figure out how their government works and how they're ruled i mean that could be expanded upon so much in the middle and high schools to be much more complex and i personally i was highly involved in the future farmers america and what i learned about parliamentary procedure and the government was actually

084through that program it wasn't through the school system but it was it was fun so we had competitions and you would um you know the kids would form teams and we would have parliamentary debates so for those of us with because i'm one of them that can sit quietly for hours on end and take notes that's really what our current schools are designed for but that's only a small percentage of the population so the magnet schools is where we have the opportunity to create lift different learning styles for these other types of engagement you know girls have a tendency to be able to sit longer than boys especially at the young age so you you can accommodate all of that and and once again picking on pal i mean how much fun is it that

085they get to take an elective and go take care of chickens i mean really they go we we built one of the things we did was we had the art class paint fence pickets and you know i got a team together we built the fence so now they can go and sit in the um a fenced-in area and read to the chickens um there have been other programs within the magnet schools that have had like a grandma or grandpa and once again you know my experience is really a lot more with the elementary age i haven't been because my middle school has been covet affected not quite sure what the normal experience would be but you know those type of engagement is is paramount some of the school fundraisers my parents always come with me

086what to these things and my dad's out there teaching the kids how to you know put grass and and you know blow the blow in your hands and make that whistle sound you know so having that kind of engagement with the older generation is important because there are kids out there that don't have that opportunity to engage a grandparent or an elderly person and it gives them a different perspective as a child than just maybe a single mom or a single dad that might be raising them because they have such a limited circle and i think all of that can be engaged in the magnet system now i know busing is a problem with the magnet system as well powell in particular pulls from the entire county so i do think that needs to be

087looked at because although i would want every magnet school to be open to every student i also can tell you how it is when your kindergartner had an hour and minute bus ride not not fun so those are those kind of logistics that would need to be worked out but i do think that more and more schools need to have a magnet program within them thank you for those answers thank you miss liu hobbs and i just want to share that we have 24 minutes of time remaining so plenty of time we're on question 8 and kind of pivoting back and i appreciate you highlighting the world peace game i think that's always a wonderful program um can you describe a situation and really more of your your thought process and how you came about

088not the details of the particular situation when you were required to decide between two strongly conflict conflicting viewpoints and taking that how would you use that process to come to a decision that balances the needs and desires of your constituency in district four with the needs of a school system as a whole well with what i do on a day-to-day basis i have a lot of conflicting viewpoints part of that is um listening to both sides or three sides however many that there are because you know however many people in the room that's however many opinions that you have is to listen to that and not and i say listen so that you understand what their concerns are and start the process of discussion so that you can talk about the problems to see where

089there is overlap i mean it's no secret that i've been before the board and i've disagreed with a lot of what you have but part of that is we need to have a discussion in order to find out what there's there is common ground somewhere we have to just find it and that's possible and that's with that works with people in business that works with schools that works with working with children in a class it's it's a skill i've been developing it i've still got a long way to go that's something that you just learn through your lifetime but as far as how i would you know relay that to the constituents one of my problems has been a resident of district forks i've been a resident for there for 16 years is unfortunately the

090previous board member never responded to anything and that creates in itself a certain level of frustration even when you disagree that you you just get a brick wall and that's important to make sure that those channels of communication are open when we so that people can voice what's going on and i'm sure there's a ton of concerns within the various schools that i know nothing about and the only way to do that is to have some sort of open forum where parents can can discuss those what's going on and maybe we can identify some common issues among several schools versus a specific issue that needs to be handled on a case a one-off case basis but it goes back to open communication channels thank you very much what is your understanding of the difference between

091the role of the board of education the role of the superintendent and this well the board of education uh runs the business of the school system it creates the policies the procedures it is the leader of the school system but the board is not the day-to-day operations of the system and the administration of that goes to the superintendent she is the one miss moore is supposed to whatever the policies procedures and direction that the board has is supposed to take that back to the schools to direct them and then the staff is the implementation of that to implement the policies that and procedures that have been put in place by the school system okay i have the final question so about 70 percent of those living in wake county do not have school-aged children and

092so what we'd like to know is what can be done or what are your suggestions that can be done to enhance the interaction between the school system and school board with the broader community of wake county who do not have children in our schools well it's always been it's been my dream to kind of have what i would call an adopt-a-school situation we started this with my church local area outreach and we adopted wendell middle school and during that time when they were teacher work days for their training we would provide them home cooked lunches we would go in and if the teachers needed help on a work day or after school sharpening pencils or helping in their class you're doing something classroom we would do that some of the community would help with reading

093with the kids or tutoring the kids as needed because what we did was we got a team of people within our church it was about you know anywhere from about 10 to 15 people that had various skill sets that would go in and do various things because not everybody would help when we would provide meals but there was other people that could go in at specific times to help with getting the classrooms ready or delivering supplies or or reading books with the kids you know doing some tutoring and you know with all the the church organizations religious organizations civic groups you know there's 191 schools i know there's well more than 191 civic organizations or churches in the area that could say this is my school that we're going to adopt and we're going to

094help them and you know when they need a need they have a need they call us um and it and that that creates a wonderful partnership it creates a wonderful connection with the community by doing that you know we we worked with that middle school because they were our neighbors you know it's one block down really um so it's not that hard but to do that on mass to promote that that would be a wonderful program of engagement to engage a lot of these community organizations to say okay here's our list of schools here's the ones close by you you know figure out who they could put them in touch with the principal and that's how we started as i i spoke with the principal and just like hey what are your needs we wrote

095them letters we wrote them cards of encouragement and the teachers loved it it just helped pick up their spirit so much because you know sometimes days are great but you know when you're dealing with people there's always those days where you just wish you didn't have to see anybody and we all have those days and having those notes of encouragement really really made a difference in the teachers lives and i was honestly disappointed when covet hit and we had to to shut the program down i'd really like to see something on that more range at a a school level thank you so much i think we're all looking forward to steps towards normalcy as we move forward thank you so much for speaking with us today if you want to take a couple minutes and

096either go back or or hit the point that maybe we didn't touch on that you wanted to share with us and um please go ahead okay i really appreciate the time to interview with all of you and and to tell you a little bit about myself you know i as i'm going to repeat again a graduate of the wake county public school system i really did value my education here and i really do look forward to the opportunity to help make it a wonderful top-notch education system you know as you know we are the 15th largest school system in the country and with our population stats we're also larger than eight states which is you know a little bit mind-blowing but i know the student population even though right now seems to have flatlined people

097are still moving here in droves and it's only going to get larger and larger so i look forward to being able to work with you on expanding the system miss lu hobbs thank you for taking the afternoon to come and speak with us today and i will walk you out thank you thank you and board members our next interview starts at 2 45. yeah i'm sorry yeah teachers good afternoon miss bouncer thank you for being here thank you for putting your name forward and your interest in representing district four and joining us on the board of education my name is lindsay mahaffey i'm the chair of the wake county public school system and i represent district 8 which is western wake and i'm going to ask my colleagues to introduce themselves okay hello i'm heather

098scott i represent district one which is eastern wake and i'm part of northeastern wake as well okay welcome jim martin district five we represent the lake we lake wheeler watershed okay good afternoon christine kushner district six representing western central and north a bit of north raleigh okay hey good afternoon i'm chris hagarty i represent district seven which is northwest raleigh morrisville and kerry okay hello monica johnson hostler district two uh the southern part of raleigh garner and a significant portion of hugue marina okay and i'm roxy cash district three uh it's mainly north raleigh and a little bit of northeastern raleigh okay hi i'm karen carter i represent district nine primarily carry a little bit of apex and a little bit of raw okay i'm the school board attorney jonathan blumberg okay thank you and

099we have 45 minutes of time set aside for our conversation today we'll start by asking you to introduce yourself for a few minutes then we have a series of 10 questions and then have some time at the end to wrap up share anything that maybe we didn't hit on that you'd like us to know about yourself and and then we'll be done and we certainly again appreciate you being here so if you want to introduce yourself to us we'd greatly appreciate it okay good afternoon again my name is tama bouncer and i am a retired teacher with 30 years of experience 27 of those years were in wake county and let me see currently i'm the president of wake retired school of personnel and we work with community service and issues that are connected with

100being retired health care the financial part piece of it advocating for cola and just other issues that we present at our meetings that will impact our members i'm also the secretary of the raleigh apex naacp and that is in my church i do some i have some responsibilities there as well so i have four adult children and two cats so so that's pretty much that kind of puts it in a nutshell thank you miss bouncer and um i have the first of the ten questions so um first question is please um continue to describe your professional and community service and that experience and how it will guide you in representing district four as well as your work on the board of education okay with my professional service i feel that with the teaching and interacting

101with children and adults that having over time learned the importance of listening and there are times that we're talking but we're not listening and when you listen you can hear what those concerns are and it's also making sure that you're listening without that personal that this is a personal attack that the concerns that they have the way they present it may seem personal a personal attack but it really isn't that it's just that they have the concerns that they're voicing and when you listen differently and say okay i need to listen to their content and not their presentation then i can deal with or help them deal with whatever the concerns and issues are and that passes over into the community service as well because it it may be something very easy and it may

102be something very challenging but how we listen and then how we respond to what that concern is has a lot to do it may be everything to do with the outcome of the situation don't always have to agree but when i understand what that position is then i can handle it better and so that's pretty much how i have and i feel that that would be the same because working with waken cae and having visited schools talk with staff members and having been in the classroom which is different it gives that opportunity to know that everyone doesn't think the same and you can give one example and you have two people and you have two totally different perspectives but it's making sure as far as i feel with the board that what is done is

103best for the children that's the objective what is best for the children and also what resources and other elements are needed to help the staff members do their work effectively and it's for me it's understanding the school can't do it all and i think that sometimes the parents feel that they that the school should do it all but the school cannot do it all it's a preparation and having worked with middle school students for about 10 years and then the rest of the time the other 20 well 22 years because five years i was on leave so to speak with waken cae that dealing with the can well the elementary students can really help prepare to deal with the older children and with adults because there are times that we assume that the knowledge is

104there but when teaching for me is teaching with the assumptions that the knowledge is not there and that in order for those students to do their best is dealing with them or the adults that you explain it from a perspective that this is all the information you need to know i'm not going to assume you know everything and that does make a difference at least i hope it does thank you and i hope that answered your question i have the next question fulfilling the requirements of service may require 30 or more hours during the week which is primarily 9 to 5 pm how will your current commitments and responsibility allow for time for board meetings and other board responsibilities okay one thing that i did do because it took me a while to kind of

105put everything into perspective i looked at the board calendar i am familiar to some degree with the responsibilities of the board as far as the meetings are concerned because for three years i attended every board meeting including the work sessions and i also attended some of the committee sessions some county commissioner meetings as well as city council so i know that there's a time commitment and with district four there's going to be that additional time to meet with the constituents in district four to find out what their concerns are and so that they can be addressed talking with principals at schools staff members at a staff meeting listening and so i know that there is a time commitment as far as that's concerned with my current responsibilities some of those i will be giving up

106because of the time that i've spent in the positions and i just don't feel that any well for me being in a position for x number of years that it's at some point you give someone else an opportunity and so i i do understand that commitment thank you sponsors you know that right now we're in the middle of budget season and we're also working on the next strategic plan so if you wouldn't mind could you describe two or three specific strategies or initiatives that you would like to advocate for in the budget or the strategic plan and not just a list of the strategies but how would you envision working at their implementation okay with the strategic plan i did look at that some looked at some from other states and i'm thinking that an

107expansion of the pre-k program i went to the website to just find out how many schools in wake county have pre-k and the language was pretty much there are several you know that it does exist but i didn't find a specific number i may not have gone to the right place to do that but their children who come to school come to kindergarten and they have not had the opportunity or it just hasn't happened for to prepare them you know their numbers alphabet reading sight words and when they start first well kindergarten if they had don't have preschool and if then when they get to kindergarten and those things are expected they start already behind and i know that third grade is the pretty much the testing grade so if they don't have those skills

108in place with the sight words and building on those for vocabulary and not only for reading but for comprehension because a child can read something to you but then you ask them what did it mean or tell me in your own words some struggle with that so the comprehension piece is also exp is important but if they if with with the pre-k program if they are prepared or at least have a better understanding of what their expectations will be then that will help them as they move from one grade to the next but if they do not have that foundation then it's going to be a struggle and with some of the cutbacks you may not have that teacher assistant in the classroom to help so you have that one teacher who is working with

10915 to 20 students and it's hard to get to everybody and so but if they have that foundation when they start kindergarten then it's a more level playing field for those students and because when i was at my last two years were at hunter and we were as a specialist we were asked to help in the classrooms sometime at you know some point and for the children who were unable to read or had problems reading and these were second grade students but you know knowing that the next year was going to be a real challenge for them because with the test you know reading is needed in everything you know because even math you have a word problem you have to be able to figure out that if there are more steps involved that you

110to get to the answer you just can't read it through and think okay well the answer is this without looking at it and taking it apart and seeing well what did this say but it's getting that foundation and so that's why i'm thinking a pre-k initiative expanding on that would be very helpful then another initiative if any way to work for more pay or an increase in pay for staff because they're teachers who are leaving because they can't afford to live their their teachers i mean when i left there were teachers who qualified for federal programs because their income just was not what it needed to be for them to i guess survive on a teacher's salary and i was looking at an article it was yesterday that their companies that teachers are leaving they're

111great you know they're happy they're ready to hire them because they know that they have a skill set that will work with their company and be able to pay them i know that the board is probably limited as far as what can be done as far as supplements and that but it's advocating lobbying and it's not all you know teachers will say well it's not about the money but it is about the money because if you are if your income is not going to allow you to live a quality life on some level then it does impact and if they have families that impacts them as well and so that is the other initiative just that lobbying for if there i know the working conditions survey is sent out each year and just also looking

112at that to see what is said and also taking a look to see if the questions that are being asked are the ones do they need to be revised so that you can really get the information that's needed because i know that when i would fill it out i thought well there are some other things but it's not on this survey so the working conditions impact as well i have question four what strategies can the board of education undertake to support effective teaching and academic growth including the growth for academically challenged students and the academically gifted student that's an interesting question this is a question that i think that teachers would the answers would vary for what their needs would be and i would say to support effective teaching and academic growth that making sure

113that whatever the curriculum is is one that is doable because i taught music and if you go to the go to dpi's website and pull up the curriculum for each grade level it's what is to be accomplished is not really going to happen and you know you kind of pick and choose you know what you're going to teach but it's just being realistic in what those objectives are and what the students can accomplish there are the testing and i'm not sure how the how much testing is involved now the different places of evaluation takes away from instructional time because when that testing happens then you lose some time and if the child is not at the point where they need to be to really do complete that test or evaluation on their own then you

114lose time that you don't get back and that to me does make a difference it is a curriculum that has input from the staff members because they have the expertise they are the ones who will be presenting it to the students working with the students helping them to learn as much as they possibly can and so i think that with that one of the strategies see what the teachers have to say and then have some input into what well with effective teaching and academic growth and children vary in there as adults do so one strategy may work for this child it may not work for another and it's not looking at it with the expectation that whatever is done it's not a one-size-fits-all it never really has been and that's in a way what we

115want it to be that whatever we do that would work with child a child b and child c but child a child being child c are different they may learn differently and it's recognizing that and it's also i think when there are concerns about a child's learning early on that that's caught because there are times that and that that process maybe can be i don't know if it can be sped up so that they really do get the resources that they need but it's kind of hard when [Music] a child has been evaluated say in first grade and they get to maybe second grade and that process has not really been completed so that they are placed where are given the services that they need to help them do the work and so i think

116that that is a really important issue that needs to be addressed it may have been addressed i have been out of the classroom since 2014 and i'm sure a lot of things have happened and it's also i guess with this one to support i'm not sure how many new programs have been kind of put out there for teachers to implement but it gives teachers more work to do but it doesn't necessarily translate to better information and teaching for the students you know you're working the teachers harder but does it really in the long run does this help the student and that does i think make a difference so i would say looking at the different initiatives that have been given to teachers you know maybe from another state it's you know there's something that they

117have they're doing there we bring it here put it in place but with everything else realistically do they have time to implement all of these programs in the course of the day you know elementary students are pretty much with the same teacher all day long but when you get to middle and high school they are moving about every 50 minutes or so to a different classroom which i think does make a difference as well but it's looking at those programs that are already in place and talking with the teachers and find out do we really need all of these or are there some things that we can cut back on that require their time that takes them away from their work because with planning for lessons that can that consume that can take a lot

118of time just the planning and you plan and then the students come in and you're thinking wow i'm ready to go and then it's like oh i didn't complete everything today and then the next time they come well and i didn't complete that today because things do happen and you find out okay i need to spend more time explaining this so that these children understand because if i don't explain it if they don't get it then they really can't move on to the next step and so it's doing i would say with these strategies and growth for academically challenged and academically gifted students having individuals work with them who can really work with them and i know that we want students to i'm thinking of what the turn is i know that uh across categorical

119but if they can at times be in classes with other students that's fine but sometimes you have to have it so that those students can be pulled and someone worked with them to addre so that whatever their challenge is can be addressed effectively and that doesn't happen by just putting them in the classroom of everyone else because sometimes they get lost and we don't want them lost okay i've got the next question number five wake county is quite diverse economically racially and culturally as a school board member how do you envision your role in providing equitable opportunities and outcomes for all students with this i feel that in talking well finding out what those resources are that are available what the particular schools need would be because some may need more than others so may

120need less but i would say that with the equitable opportunities and outcomes that if those resources at one school are the same or available at the other because the staff may or may may decide okay well it's available but that's not going to quite work for me and something else will but it's i would say making those resources available and then talking with the teachers to find out what they do really need or the administrator to find out what they really need to help their students do their best and that equitable it may be one school needs xyz the other school may need mri you know but it's just a matter of that individual evaluation because everyone having the same resources will not necessarily mean you'll have the same outcome but at least have it

121available that if it's needed it is there thank you number six enrollment in wake county schools is impacted by growth and by school choice what are your thoughts about current and future assignment goals for wake county and the role of choice and school selection and how we make wake county public schools the most attractive option for families in district 4 and countywide this question kind of reminds me of the [Music] i guess the uproar when a new school opens or new schools open and children have to be reassigned to me and it may or may not help but getting parents to understand early on that that might be a possibility and then they because i think with this sometimes it's more of the adult issue than the student issue you know and the parents want

122them to stay with those classmates that they've had since kindergarten or first grade and then a new school opens and because of the location adjustments have to be made this is kind of a life experience that things do change and there are times that we just have to we we work to adapt it may not be what we like or what we want but it's what's necessary as far as making the schools an attractive option doing everything possible to make sure that the academic goals are met at that school or at least that there is the visibility or the knowledge that these things are something on which they're working to provide the best education for the children at those schools and opportunities whether it's academic or extracurricular and for an attractive option parents talk to

123other parents parents talk to staff so they are the influences are going to be very different and then their parents will say well i'm assigned to school that's where my children are going and there are others you know because that's one reason they're magnet schools so that they're they do have choice they apply and if they are the application is processed and accepted then the child goes there some extra provisions are made but as far as current and future assignment goals the schools are built where they're needed and they will have to end up with students who are coming from schools that are already they they may already have a history with the school but i think that the board does what is best in the interest especially if there's a family then there are

124children maybe one who's moving on to middle school or if they've moved well within well within a grade of that school fifth grade and they have a kindergartener and they try to leave them there so that the children are not going to different schools but with future assignment goals is to i think just help the parents to understand they may or may not like it but it's the reality the county is growing and children cannot go to they they won't be able to just attend the same school if they are in a location where going to being reassigned is the best option so thank you so excuse me i know that you've taught in a magnet school and i would just like to ask you some more questions about magnet schools and how we use

125them in the district so you know this has been a tool we've used to help reduce high concentrations of poverty and minority isolation so what is your position on the effectiveness of magnet schools and accomplishing this other schools of choice or what other options do you think the district could explore related to this goal okay i feel that the magnet schools that the purpose for which they were develop i think that they meet that as far as what they offer and when i was having taught in a traditional school and a magnet school the differences were very obvious to me as far as the schedule was concerned because with the traditional school and being a specialist every child in the school came through my classroom at least well pretty much once a week with the

126magnet program that didn't happen there were children that i didn't see unless they chose one of the music electives and it's giving choice and it i feel that the magnet schools that that's it's a good idea i mean it's it's a good it works uh there are students who have opportunities for for for arts that they would not have necessarily and i was at hunter there was orchestra and a band and it was within the school day whereas when at swift creek if i if there was a chorus or kind of a performing group or something that needed to be done that had to be done pretty much after school hours it may be something that the teacher could do during their planning period but then it's pulling students from somewhere else to make that

127happen but with that built into the magnet program it gives students opportunities and helps them to develop skills that they may not otherwise have developed with the the approaches having the magnet fare so that parents know what those opportunities are what the different schools are and with uh i think that that is one way to kind of you know get the word out for the ones who may want to consider it i know that there are some families that already live in the district where that school is their assigned school so that i'm not sure how i know that they have the same opportunities as the children who have applied and our students at that school i don't know if there are any other approaches that should be explored and as far as because this

128is magnet schools being used as a tool for avoiding high concentrations of poverty and minority isolation i think it kind of somewhat balances out a bit but it's really looking at the population of the school whether it's traditional or magnet to see how that actually is and not just thinking that that is what it what it is so it's you know it's just being careful but magnet school schools of choice that's what they are choice they want to be there thank you miss bouncer can you reflect on a situation in which you were required to carefully decide between two strongly conflicting viewpoints and share in that experience the process by which you would come to a decision on this board that balances the needs and desires of your constituents in district four with the needs

129of the school system as a whole okay i can't think right off hand of um two strongly conflicting viewpoints i know the process for me would be to listen to those individuals and the viewpoints and from there have a conversation so that to see what if there was anything in common with the concerns and then from there figuring out what would work and be beneficial to the students because the students would be first and then because the desires of the constituents with the needs of the school system as a whole i i guess i think about the situation with masks because that was one of the uh public comments on at the meeting on tuesday and that seems to be ongoing so that would qualify as a situation that is you have very strong opinions

130about that and with the parents who do not want the students to wear masks as opposed to the ones who are willing to adapt based on the mandates that are provided but the objective i'm sure of the board is to do what is going to protect the students and it's i know there was one parent i was reading that said that they wanted their child's beautiful smile to be seen and i understand that but i also understand that a child's health and something that may be life-threatening to help protect them from that to me is more important than some of the other reasons for not or for not or for wearing a mask and it's one of those situations where you're going to get total agreement probably not but it's still working to do what

131is best for the students because students come from we look there are sometimes students who come to school already with something going on health-wise and they're there and then it has to be addressed and i've had that a couple of times that i remember when i was working it's the class comes in nine o'clock 9 20 whatever the time was and looking a child is not feeling doesn't appear to feel well put my hand on their forehead it's hot i call them [Music] the classroom teacher they come get them the child has a fever over a hundred and they have to go home well you know i think now with covet if children come without masks and i know that the mass mandate now is kind of you know things are decreasing so that's a

132good thing but i would say at the height of it it was looking at it from the perspective of what is the is in the best interest of not just one child but all the children and you may not agree and really you know you don't have to agree but if something happened to the child and that was not in place then you would be blamed thank you miss bouncer and i just want to note that we have 13 minutes left in our conversation and two questions left thank you what is your understanding of the difference between the role of the board of education and the role of the superintendent and staff okay my understanding is that the the board of education deals with policy policies that have been pretty much put in place that

133you have to make sure that those things are carried out and that you're doing everything in the best interests of the the students with the superintendent and staff i'm thinking that it's dealing with possibly curriculum issues schools the administrators but from a different level than what the board of education does but that this board specifically is dealing with policy that has pretty much been mandated to make sure that it's carried out and with students okay i have question 10 about 70 percent of those living in wake county do not have school age children so what can be done to enhance the interaction between the school system and school board and the broader community of wake county who do not have children in our schools that is with with that question because i've thought about that

134to a degree but with that question it is communicating and make sure that the ones without children understand the importance of preparing children for their lives that they will be here as adults and if i you know making available to them the the programs that and that some of the that are performances and things activities at the school so they can participate i know that at one time i went through to see what the plays were the musicals were in the spring or whenever at the schools and shared it with the retirees so that you know this is it's great in it it's great entertainment and it's not going to cost you as much and it's there in your community take advantage of it support our students support our schools and i feel that when

135they are aware or more aware so that when you have a performance it's not just the parents and the families who show up but you have members of the community who don't have parents or don't have children that they can then see also if you can get them involved on some level with tutoring or mentoring the students who need it because that is i would say a need you know you don't always have the the staff there in place and now with the use of virtual learning if they could and because i've as i've told the retirees i said check with the school check with the media specialist in your school in your community find out how you can help it may be recording a reading on that you that can be shared with the

136students it may be pairing you with a student that you can interact with on zoom and you don't have to be there but you can still help but it's knowing that these students are eventually going to be our adults because the adults won't be here none of us will be here forever but it's preparing them so that they can be the best that as possible as members of the community in which they they live and whether they have children or not someone's children someone's child or the children of someone in that community will eventually become their doctors their lawyers the person who checks them out at the grocery store all these positions will be filled by those individuals so it cannot be discounted that they're they're not important because they are thank you miss bouncer

137and thank you again for joining us today um if there's anything else that you want to take some time to touch on that maybe we didn't speak about or share with us we certainly appreciate you coming this afternoon oh you're welcome and one thing that i do want to say is that is thank you for the work that you do because it's not always easy and in listening to public speak that's when you find out it's not always easy but you do handle it with great professionalism and concern and even though the presentation may not be the best i feel that you're listening to the content so that you're making the best decisions and incorporate that in the decisions that you make for the children of this county thank you so good afternoon mr grant

138king and welcome back um although we know you're somewhat familiar with this process we'll go through the structure once again again i'm lindsay mahaffey i'm the chair of the wake county school board and represent district 8 which is western wake county and southwestern wake county and i'll ask my colleagues to introduce ourselves hello and i'm heather scott i represent district 1 which is eastern wake and northeastern wake welcome jim martin representing district five which is largely the lake wheeler watershed good afternoon i'm christine kushner representing west central and a bit of north raleigh good aft sorry good afternoon i'm chris haggerty and as you know i represent district seven which represents northwestern raleigh care western cary and morrisville hello monique johnson hustler district two southeastern raleigh gardener and a significant portion of fugue arena hi

139roxy cash i'm district 3 which is mainly north wake county and some of northeast welcome back um karen carter district 9 primarily carrie tiny bit of apex and a tiny bit of raleigh so mr grant king welcome back again um and thank you for being a part of this process and your desire to be a member of this board we have 45 minutes set aside for our conversation today we'll ask you to take some time to reintroduce yourself and then we have a list of 10 questions some you may be familiar with some may be new and then at the end anything that you may want to retouch on or that we didn't quite hit on or that you want to expand on please feel free to do so for a few minutes and i

140will be keeping track of the time so if you want to take a couple minutes and speak to us please do good evening uh chairwoman mahaffey and board members it is good to be back once again i am mr grant king currently i serve with the state board of education subcommittee on our educators and our instructional assistants and also i'm a wake county employee instructional assistant special education at south garner high school and of course i was the former second vice president with the teacher assistant association i just left that office so that i could continue this process along with running for the board of education thank you again and i have the question to start us off um if you could please describe how your professional and community service experience will guide you in

141representing district 4 and in your work on the board of education so of course with serving as the chair currently with the state board of education subcommittee with the advocacy work that we do of course we're in the process of budget season again and so we're of course working with legislatures and their offices and advocating that educators receive uh the tools necessary uh to be successful in the classroom while teaching our students each and every day um and of course with that process it's a little different and i believe that of course we'll be able to be successful because we have been in the past so with that prior experience with the with the leadership role that i currently am in i believe that i'll be an available asset to the board of education to

142serve with uh the students staff and many others in the community fulfill the requirement of service may require 30 or more hours per week many of those hours during 9 a.m to 5 p.m how will your current commitment and responsibilities allow you time for board meetings and other board responsibilities so of course the position i hold is a state position and so if appointed i was already told that i will have to resign and not only that i'll have to resign from my other offices as well so with that of course i'll be able to commit to that time frame because quite frankly it'll be a conflict of interest at that point if i was to hold two offices public offices rather thank you mr grant king as you've already noted and you've seen in

143coming to to the board meetings we're in the middle of uh we're beginning to we're beginning our budget season and we're also in the middle of working on our strategic plan so can you discuss two to three specific strategies or initiatives that you would advocate for working to either develop in our new budget or in the strategic plan and not just a list of the priorities but your thoughts on how they might be implemented so thank you for that uh board member martin because i recently went to a community event within the city of raleigh with ncae and a lot of that that was discussed and many members of the community shared their concerns and one of those quite frankly is having someone be a part of the equity affairs and that's something that i

144will be working towards uh making sure that the right person is appointed um to that office if appointed another thing that i will also add from that conversation at the community event was it was so many good things but there was like improvements and i guess one of those improvements is making sure not only that we have school resource officers in the schools but to make sure we have other advocates alongside them because of course there's been a lot of racial bias against certain students and etc that parents have brought up so that with that hopefully i'll be working in a bipartisan way with each of you to make sure that our families not only are safe but they have the support that is needed good afternoon i have question four what strategies can the

145board of education undertake to support effective teaching and academic growth including the growth for the academically challenged student and the academically gifted student okay so currently i work in the classroom as a co-teacher many may say or instructional assistant special education and i see a lot of the students i have i it's beyond measure how much they can really achieve you know even though i teach a self-contained classroom currently um where a students it like they all have different uh personalities different all different types of academic needs but at the same time they're being able to do many things that sometimes i just wonder how they're able to do you know like basic counting and basic just basic things like day to day things that they will be able to accomplish but far as the

146um support i think we need to continue to focus on retaining and also recruiting um teachers that work in these areas so that not only our students can succeed but our families and communities around the area of wake county could also see that impact that the leadership the impact that support and quite frankly you know making sure that they have the tools they need because when they do leave the system we have to then reflect on if they have really met all that they could have achieved while in the system wayne county is quite diverse economically racially and culturally as a school board member how do you envision your role in providing equitable opportunities and outcomes for all students well of course i'll be working in many ways with each of you and of course

147with equity affairs to make sure that there is proper training that there's proper protocols because even as african-american educators sometimes there's certain feelings that i have that i'm not going to express but of course i'll be working along with families and community other community leaders for input and of course equity affairs at this district level and of course i'll be advocating for the right person to be able to be appointed to that office thank you all right i have question number six enrollment in wake county schools is impacted by growth and by school choice what are your thoughts about current and future assignment goals for wake county and the role of choice in school selection and how we make wake county public schools the most attractive option for families in district four and county-wide okay

148so i had to reread so within my district alone when i was at the community event that was hosted by ncae parents have had mixed feelings about which schools their children should go to because they're having to balance out not only the academic but also the emotional and development and learning i feel that parents should have that authority to [Music] register their children or their child where their demons see fit and i say that because of course i would i'm the youngest of four and so my when my brother graduated of course from we didn't go to the same school that's my point and my parents had to really struggle because they had to really like get different opinions different different um i don't know what roy to say but they had to get different

149outcomes rather and so when i speak to parents now they say well why can i not register my child at the same school and we're living in the same you know within the same district so i think parents should be given that authority it should go back to the parents and not be left up to us to really tell the parents or the families where their students should go and that's how and of course i'll be working with each of you help along that process of course as as as needed or or when axed upon thank you so mr grant king if you could you know our magnet schools have been used as a tool to help us to reduce high concentrations of poverty and minority isolation in our schools what's your position on magnet

150schools other schools of choice and what other approaches should or could the district use to address issues of high poverty and minority isolation in our schools so of course i'm i graduated from a man at school so so i ought to know a little bit about it but i think um when i lived in district 2 i was a former constituent of district 2 actually and parents when we had community meetings parents will always say why i can't do x y and z and a lot of times the answer is i don't know so i believe magnet schools could make that impact not only because really it doesn't matter how it doesn't it doesn't matter where you're going but it matters that you're being able to learn and succeed and so what i think we

151should really explore is having like more input from parents and other community leaders because in this way when certain decisions are made regarding any school for that matter this way you would have input from all areas instead of just having a one-way decision and that's how i believe the process should be and it's just a matter of fact it should start with the community first and families first during any process dealing with this subject thank you mr grant king can you think of a situation and describe a situation in which you were required to carefully decide between two strongly complete conflicting viewpoints and using that process can you also share how you would come to a decision that balances the needs and desires of the constituents of district 4 with the needs of the wake

152county public school system as a whole and i will note we have 30 minutes left in our conversation and we're on question eight so we're doing well so recently we met as a state board of education subcommittee and i was asked of course about equity and how that's handled at the district level and it was kind of hard for me to answer that because i was really unsure but i also knew that there was a vacancy that i knew from long long ago and so one parent of course said during the public comment portion of our meeting that there should be an additional equity committee at the uh district level and at the state level for that matter and so what i had to do was to really explain to the parent that i would

153have to look into it and of course i'll have to ask the state board what the process is and what will our committee what role rather will our committee play because of course a lot of what i do is the advocacy portion and so with that before anything before anything i do i always try to go and seek other people that have knowledge in any area before any decision is made thank you what is your understanding of the difference between the role of the board of education and the role of the superintendent and staff so the role with the board of education is to of course follow the laws of the state that are governed by the general assembly and of course by the state board of education they implement policies at the state level

154and of course the department of public instruction which coincides with the state board of education and then everyone works together to implement those policies and to discuss and to further review and do all the processes that that are needed to be done with the superintendent she really oversees to make sure that the educators like myself follow what you the board has decided regarding policies and procedures and the staff works to everybody works together to make sure that all the goals um that you all have set all the policies and everything are followed and the difference is that you all make those decisions and the superintendent of course provides input and and many other key factors but basically superintendent is to implement a lot of what you all have decided um and i have question 10

155for you about 70 percent of those living in wake county do not have school-aged children what can be done to enhance the interactions between the school system and school board and the broader community of wake county who do not have children in our schools well of course currently at the state level and i would recommend this at the county level where we would have [Music] not more of a commission but like a family engagement committee where someone is the chair or the head from the community and also you the board participates in those meetings and and kind of get feedback based on um what they say and and what they would like to see um implemented and then of course then there's a process from there i'm sure that you all would have to decide

156as a board so with that i would be advocating for such committee because i do believe that those people that do not have children are a valuable asset to the system and they do contribute greatly mr crank king thank you so much for coming again and sharing your your thoughts on this district and and education is there anything else that you'd like to touch on before we we go and move forward well first of all i just would like to say thank you to the boy for having me back i know the last time things were a little bit different because of certain issues but of course if appointed i will be working with each of you sometimes i will agree and sometimes i will have to respectfully disagree and that will be for the

157greater good of the families of wake county and for my district district 4. and so with that just an extended thanks for allowing me to come and share my thoughts um on how we should do going forward circulated everybody gets one please remember to sign them only check one all right candidate and uh send it back around to me thank you i'll do the tabulations appreciate it very much all right thank you and a reminder even though we had four interviews today we have five candidates as dr williams chose to rely on his previous interview from january do we need some suspenseful music so um a congratulations to miss tashonda or tara waters she received five votes and has then been appointed by the board of education with the swearing-in pending miss bouncer received two

158votes and dr williams received one vote so that's the tallies um that we have and um i will make these available through the board secretary all right well we have our appointee and we'll be making some phone calls to all folks that submitted their names and we certainly want to thank all five of our candidates for being a part of this process um and we hope to have ms waters join us at our next board meeting with us swearing in with that i'll take a motion to adjourn so moved exactly all right all those in favor please signify by sign of eye any opposed nay all right thank you very much we are adjourned you