03-01-22 Board Meeting

001um oh yes [Music] well [Music] um oh um [Music] um [Music] um not exactly [Music] this yeah [Music] good evening everyone it is tuesday march 1st at 5 33 p.m and we are calling this regular meeting of the wake county board of education to order i want to welcome those of you that are watching at home and those that are here in person to observe as the board of education conducts its official business face coverings are recommended but not required for those in attendance at this meeting i want to take a moment to highlight board policy 2310 which states wake county board of education meetings are conducted for the purpose of carrying on the official business of the school system the public is cordially invited to attend board meetings and to observe the board as

002it conducts its official business persons who willfully interrupt disrupt or cause disturbances at an official meeting may be directed to leave by the presiding officer members of the audience should show respect for the speakers by refraining from loud comments or other disruptions disruptions by any person or persons of a public meeting will be subject to action in accordance with general statute 143-318-17 we do have all board members present as well as superintendent moore and our attorney mr blumberg at this time please join us in standing for the pledge of allegiance of the united states of america and to the mother for which it stands nomination under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you very much we now turn this over to superintendent moore for her comments good evening board chair board members

003congratulations are in order to the six wcps schools that have received the purple star award from the north carolina department of public instruction this designation is given after an application process to schools that demonstrate a military friendly practice and a commitment to military students and family our purple star award recipients are allston ridge elementary bug magnet elementary fuquay verena elementary willow springs elementary durant road middle and millbrook high school purple star award winners are required to have a staff member as a designated point of contact for military students and families and to provide annual professional development addressing special considerations for military students and families in addition purple star schools provide resources for military families on their school websites as well as a transition program to support inbound and outbound military students and families i'm proud

004of these schools for supporting our military families i thank them for their service to those who serve our nation look forward to additional schools joining the purple stars fourteen wcpss educators yesterday were named 2022 mountain to the sea scholars by the keenan fellows program for teacher leadership at nc state university scholars will participate in a series of site visits to allow them to learn first hand from field experts on a variety of water conservation issues affecting north carolina from wetland restoration in the mountains to aquaculture on the coast these interactive learning experiences will translate into relevant lessons they can share with their students and fellow educators the scholars are angie headley and chelsea laura from a b combs magnet elementary alexandra boyd and lottie peppers from apex friendship high christina valdia and danielle mccaslin from

005mills park middle whitney masterson and chad oakley from panther creek high tamitha brown from southeast raleigh elementary charnese newkirk from southeast raleigh magnet high samantha aycock and megan foster from timber drive elementary and alyssa gasparini and kimberly perry sanderlin from wakefield middle congratulations to these outstanding teacher scholars our chief technology officer marlo gaddis is the 2022 recipient of the making it happen award from the north carolina technology and education society or nc ties second recognition so far in the last few months this award is given to a person or team that has made a significant contribution to advancing the integration of technology into the curriculum to improve teaching and learning winners also advocate for students and educators to have the resources and tools they need to develop 21st century skills mrs gattis is certainly a

006worthy recipient of this award for her many contributions to growing technological access and capabilities in our district to advocating for technology as a tool and resource among her many achievements she oversaw the distribution of tens of thousands of laptops during school closure which paved the way for wcpss to become a one-to-one technology device district well ahead of schedule congratulations ms gaddis on this richly deserved honor two wcpss employees have been named winners of magnet schools of america regional awards gregory eiman a stem coordinator at brentwood magnet elementary school of engineering was recognized as the teacher of the year in region four which encompasses magnet schools in kentucky tennessee north carolina and south carolina and abby stotzenberg was chosen as the region for principal of the year ms stotzenberg was principal of vernon malone college and

007career academy until she was recently named the first principal of the new wake early college of information and biotechnologies opening next school year these awards recognize educators that exemplify the magnet mission of offering innovative programs that promote equity diversity and academic excellence for all students congratulations to mr amen and mrs stotzenberg for their commitment to advancing the goals of magnet schools as i mentioned at our last meeting february was love the bus month all across our district there was an outpouring of love and appreciation for our transportation employees in closing tonight i'd like to share this video that highlights just a few of the ways our students parents and staff express their gratitude [Music] so the governor has declared this week school bus driver appreciation week all week our students have been working on letters

008notes and pictures for the drivers they make our world go round so we appreciate them and they have stuff with us and we stick with them we've got a basket and we've got a warm chick-fil-a get in there good morning come on in i enjoy talking to the kids i do because you know i like to hear what they got to say too i'm not just their driver i'm their friend sometimes give them advice when i think about how long i've been driving i'd be like wait a minute that long sometimes it seems like it just goes by you're just driving we had biscuits and then little goodie bags some homemade chocolate stuff i mean it's such a tremendous responsibility it's just all the all the more important to just to recognize what what they

009do we appreciate all you do the guys that work on the buses and and fuel the buses and all that to keep them uh to keep them going it requires everybody from you know from the driver the mechanic the routers the supervisors uh you know everybody everybody has to play their part i like being out here on the road i like dealing with traveling you know there's a lot that goes into making sure that when the kids standing at the bus stop and ends up at the at the schoolhouse door doesn't just it doesn't just happen you don't know you're special until they let you know that you're special they say thank you say good morning to you and do make it feel like it's worth driving [Music] that concludes my comments [Music] i just

010we spent all of last year driving our kids and so this the the start of this academic year when my kids went to get on the bus and it was that same bus driver that had gotten to know them over the years i mean the hugs the moment i think we held up the bus route um and and just a huge thank you to our bus drivers and those folks that support our bus drivers and if you are interested in being a bus driver there are information sessions that are ongoing and you can find out more at wcpss.net bus jobs wake up and read has ended their book drive as uh yesterday they will need folks to sort the books up at their spot on capitol boulevard they will be collecting please go to wakeupandread.org

011to learn more about it we are starting read across america week a few of us got to go to apex elementary they combine read across america with black history month and it is just lovely to see students in the classrooms and feel that buzz and excitement and take a moment to read whether it's a first grade class a kindergarten class and even a fifth grade class um this past week both fugue marina and apex had some historic markers to um put be put in place in their town to acknowledge uh the history of um fuquay springs high school fuquay consolidated consolidated high school and apex consolidated high school and as dr martin martin was a speaker at one and miss johnson hustler was at the other one i will withhold that but just very exciting

012to see that acknowledgment of our history um put into a permanent remembrance for our students and for our communities and i want to thank dr pettiford and his team who were at my board advisory council meeting last night talking about mental health and specifically the community resiliency model and the science behind that and we know of course as educators that if we are helping our students by addressing maslow's hierarchy of needs we can get into deeper learning with our students so many many thanks to them for coming out and taking time to discuss that with our parents and our staff and mr hagerty thank you chair mahathi um again i was also pleased to be able to join you and others at the at the ceremonial at the ceremony that they had for apex consolidated

013high school and the marker ceremony if you don't know about the project and everything it means this is something that dr martin had been very instrumental in and i'm not going to steal his thunder because i'm sure he has some comments about it i will say if you are able to obtain you are able to view a recording of the event it was absolutely phenomenal hearing from people who were actual alums of the school the impact it had on their lives and the impact it had on their community as well as some other speakers who had some very good remarks as well um was able to attend several of the read-ins that we had this week i know many of you have as well i participated at apex elementary at hillburn academy always loved going

014on to the hill as they call it and sharing time with those students i don't have much more to say tonight but i know that many of us have been glued either to our tvs or our telephones trying to follow the news of what's been going on internationally and i know that you know whether you have any personal anxiety whether you have any other other stress i know that we're all at least watching what's going on with the russian invasion of ukraine and as many divisions as many differences as we have in our community lord knows we've got a lot of divisions i hope that this is something that maybe we can all come together on and show some unity and some solidarity in support of the people of ukraine at this at this very

015very difficult time and do everything we can to support them thank you very much miss scott thank you and good evening and thank you for for for raising that mr haggarty it certainly has been weighing heavily for so many um i i was able to attend the uh arts in action at wakeline elementary i mentioned this yesterday during our student achievement committee meeting if you're not aware of arts in action it is a program for at some of our title one schools for fourth grade students where they they have artists who come in to work with them they participate in dancing and singing every student in the fourth grade participates and so do their teachers and it was just an amazing performance i had attended a student performance and the uh the fifth grade students

016came in and they had participated in this program of course virtually the year before but they all still remembered the warm-up dances and they were dancing along during the warm-ups and it was just just a great experience to to see students able to shine to to use their gifts and talents and of course the program itself was was related to relevant standards for fourth grade as well and also black history month it was just a it was a great performance and i'm so thankful for the grants that allow united arts council to come and work with our our students and although i did not go to apex elementary school i was able to participate virtually in a read-along in one of their classrooms and we we listened to a recording of mufaro's beautiful daughters which

017was a just a great story the author oh my goodness his name just left me um it was an illustrator and uh was in in the uh several awards have been named after him it was just it was very meaningful and just so great to see how enthusiastic students are about who else likes to draw and who else likes to to write it was a great way that apex elementary school honored as you said both black history month and read across america and i'm glad sherman halfway mentioned the the wake up and read please do volunteer it's it's really fun um it's neat to see all of the books come through too if you are like me you get nostalgic about some of the books that you see that people have donated especially the ones

018with your little ones when you remember oh my gosh i remember reading this to my my kid when they were a baby so please do volunteer march is music in our schools month which is great because tomorrow is pieces of gold where we'll get to see performances so excited about that please take a moment to thank your band director and all of our our directors who've been doing this virtually i know many band directors are are looking forward to actually seeing what those embouchures have looked like um underneath their their masks so um it's it's been challenging for them but they have just done such a phenomenal job and this is national nutrition month as well so last week i also had the opportunity to speak to some community leaders or speak with there's a

019group meeting some community leaders in wake forest and everyone who volunteers with food pantries and other non-profit groups that provide food to our community have all expressed the increased need that they've seen lately i mean just so much so um if you if you can find it in your heart if you have the the time if you have the finances the treasurers please consider donating and helping out some of these non-profits who are working with our most vulnerable communities and it is also my favorite favorite uh 12 year old's birthday today so happy birthday for mom dr martin thank you i too am looking forward to pieces of gold tomorrow night we had a great introduction and update on arts in our schools yesterday at student achievement committee meeting but i do want to call

020out the folks at middle creek high school under the direction of meredith garrett thank you for the invitation the students put on big fish which was a really neat musical there's a lot of musicals going on i encourage you to go out um you know i think that that was a really good interesting musical i think the kids did a really great job of sort of catching capturing some of the complexities of growing up with parents who are well you know we parents don't let's just say it's interesting to hear a lot of the discussion that parents know best when we actually see that uh being a parent is actually quite complex it seems that parents know best except when it's their parents a whole another story but the kids did a really good job

021of of capturing the complexity and that's what we want out of theater is is really to to understand emotion and to be able to express it and they did a great job as a couple of my colleagues noted it was really an honor to be part of the celebration uh honoring the well really unveiling of the historic marker for the apex elementary and apex consolidated high school and this was a rosenwald school i think it's important to recognize the rosenwald schools we almost really ought to call them booker t washington rosenwald schools because booker t washington really worked with julius rosenwald to identify the need for schools for previously enslaved children rosenwald had the money booker t washington had the ideas and uh you need both uh and uh that that celebration was was uh

022wonderful um you know we started the uh program respecting our history building our future because if we don't know our history we're doomed to repeat it and but we but as we understand our history we we can build a stronger future so we started that effort uh here in wake county schools we identified there's 40 plus historically black schools here in just in wake county the apex historic marker marks i believe the fourth historic marker now um that will be street side marker panther branch school has a marker on the school but we got a few more to go uh it really will be exciting uh when we can acknowledge uh we're locally internally uh acknowledging them but we really need the public acknowledgement so people can see that but a real special thanks to

023mary linda hall jordan and doris battle who are community members who have just really rolled up their sleeves to to move this effort forward thanks to mayor jack gilbert for participating as well because it really is a community effort to both understand our history and make sure that we build uh our future um finally i do want to provide update on some of the coveted data um you know there's a lot of people who would just like to wish it away and wish that it by declaring dates it would be done unfortunately we can't do that this week going over the data last night the data is the most mixed upside of data that i have seen since i've been tracking the data so it's actually quite difficult to completely know what's going on from

024the county health services we're currently at about 136 cases per 100 000 population but if you go to the cdc website it's which is correct i actually can't completely tell you the cdc ranking hasn't said 189 cases over the last seven days 18 deaths in wake county over the seven last seven days 93 new hospitalizations over the last seven days so that's what they're using in the in their new metric that puts us here in wake county in a state of high transmission where some of the conflict comes if we look at the wake county public schools website we saw that last week there were 274 student cases and 56 staff cases that's up 10 among our students and up 70 percent uh among our staff now when you look at the numbers uh there

025is um an aberration in the student reported cases based on uh one school's reporting where they lump multiple weeks together so there's some variance there but even if you take out that variance the student cases are at best stable but possibly going up on the thing that's actually quite confusing is that the number of cases recorded reported on our wake county public school website for last week are about 10 percent more than the total number of cases reported uh to the north carolina department health and human services website for the five to 17 year olds so here's a point of confusion we have more people reporting it's usually been the other way around it's usually been a 50 to 70 percent under report to the wake county public schools compared to the to the health

026and human services website i cannot tell you what is going on all i can tell you is high levels of confusion in the data i have to suspect that what this means is in the wake county public school system we have a number of people who are sick are taking the home tests and that's not getting reported to the uh department of health and human services website on we you know from the numbers that we get from the north carolina department of health and human services website we still have the highest infectivity among our two to four year olds based on their numbers which i know cannot be accurate based on everything else that's there that it's at least relative the two to four-year-olds are at 202 cases per hundred thousand population they're followed by

027the five to nine year olds and frankly the parents of the five to nine year olds the 25 to 49 year olds both are pretty much tied at 160 cases per 100 000 population so we're clearly not out of the woods if the numbers reported in our in the school system itself are any indication we've hit a low and maybe going back up that's not what we want to hear but that is what's been happening around the world so please everybody please be careful we're still at high transmission we're not through this thing if the what we do in the next month is really going to impact whether we go back up or whether we continue going down it is not a time to let up it is time for added care thank you ms

028kushner thank you chairman happy and um on a somber note the wake county school system lost a great public school act activist and and supporter last month when peggy chern passed away she is a former principal in wake county schools teacher educator she led up our magnet programs our year-round programs our equity work she was an incredible advocate for the merged wake county public school system tireless throughout her career both in the school system and in retirement i met her several times out and about when and she was always such a positive force for social justice through public schools so to her family she has left a legacy in wake county that will live on and may her memory be eternal peggy churn we will miss her greatly the district 6 board of advisory council

029is going to be meeting on at noon march 9th we're going to be meeting virtually and talking about our um election districts getting feedback on election districts as well as the calendar and bell schedules so looking forward to that and as already been mentioned i was able to be at apex elementary for their rita thon and with the celebrating black history month it was great to read about the greensboro sit-ins with a fifth grade class and talk about black history that happened not that far away from wake county to talk about the woolworth sit-ins it was a fun to be in miss gail's class and tomorrow i'll be at brentwood celebrating their read across america and i want to read this quote that i came across in some light reading james baldwin said you think

030your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world but then you read it was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive who had ever been alive um and that and thinking through read across america and the power that books have for our students both in and outside the classroom i'm grateful to all the teachers and principals and schools that are going to be celebrating reading in the coming week thank you miss kushner ms carter thank you this month is also national athletic training month and i wanted to start by just thanking all of our athletic trainers who are just essential to our athletic programs and on that note i took a little road

031trip for the first time ever visited greensboro coliseum i've been to the aquatic center but that was where the state championship was held for uh wrestling and i was able to just go to one day out of three but it was a great event to see our students there who had qualified in competing and the fans had some students come up to cheer their fellow students on even though it was about an hour trip for or an hour and a half depending on where you're at in what county and i just want to thank all the volunteers who help the athletic programs our families who support them our coaches and the referees i know north carolina high school athletic association is always pushing because they need referees and i will push out a little bit

032too because athletics means so much to so many of our students and of course congratulations to all of the qualifiers and those who ended up placing we had quite a number of state uh placers so um and as mentioned the uh apex elementary read-in the third annual african-american read-in i enjoyed being in miss um bourne's fifth grade class um great students um at the end they didn't ask me my age so that was awesome or the year i graduated from broughton or meredith they kind of let that one go but they you know wanted more jokes which i'm not that great at so i offered at coming back and reading maybe a riddle book or a joke book you know what have you but i appreciate the opportunity and for reaching out to all of

033us for that and as miss scott's already mentioned it's music in our schools month and i just want to say i know we had an update yesterday on fine arts but just speak to not only music but all of our fine arts and just how much that means to so many of our students and i appreciate all of the teachers who have put so much into that for our students to have a wide range of opportunities and our families who support all these programs and our community supporters that come and support as well and i too attended the middle creek high school big fish performance uh friday night and it was great the orchestra pit it was great having the live music versus you know it and over the speakers and the students for me

034it's all about seeing you can just see when you're looking at some of the students leaving it what i say leaving it all on the stage and it was just um great because i just felt like so many of them did just that it was just amazing and just thank you to everyone who made that possible and to those students who were involved whether you're on the stage or in the orchestra pit you did a just fabulous job and to their director mrs garrett and uh for all those who came out and supported because it was pretty packed when i was there friday night and i heard they were their numbers were pretty high on ticket sales so that was wonderful and to closing my next board advisory council meeting will be march 31st at

0356 00 p.m and waiting to see if it will be virtual or in person at this time waiting to hear back but thank you miss cash thank you sharon mahaffey and i appreciate your recruitment for bus drivers you're always a champion on that so thank you um mr haggerty i appreciate you bringing up the national landscape as it is and i i don't think i can add anything to what you said but i think and i've been glued to the tv too and very sad about what's happening but it does put it put our lives into perspective and it's always good to look to look across the globe and see how other people have so much to deal with so i think you you talked about that well so thank you which brings you into

036i was going to talk about the purple star awards but i'm glad you did a really good job uh superintendent moore of explaining that and it leads us to a little bit from ukraine how we need to support our military families um all all the families and military and and have go through a lot the servicemen do but their families do as well so i'm glad that we're very involved in wake county with that i did have my board advisory committee last evening at northridge elementary and we were able to talk about some things we had a well-attended uh back meeting and we talked about the volunteerism in our schools and wanted to be sure that our my principles all understood and were we all on the same page with that and everybody said that

037they were getting quite a bit of volunteers in their school and they were open to that and they were excited that that was open so if anybody feels like they're not having the opportunity to volunteer as a parent in their schools i think principals are pretty understanding that that that is what they are open to do we also talked about the mask requirement i talked a little bit about how even though we said mask recommended but not required that teachers there had been lots of questions in my back meeting about what could students expect and that a principal said that teachers would not be able to ask a student to put a mask on since it's not required and so that they wanted to be sure and we all we talked a lot about that

038in our back meeting because the principals wanted to the parents wanted to and it it was a very positive conversation so i appreciated the fact that we could do that activate good spoke and did a great presentation amber smith did an amazing presentation and we again spent a lot of time discussing our pta involvement and booster club support the things that our schools need and which led a lot into the volunteerism that we wanted in our schools so that was um we had really good conversation last night i was very appreciative of the principles being very open and i think we had um we were all on the same page that was good and um i also want to say and thank you for bringing that up miss kushner peggy chern was a role model

039of mine i i thought she was immortal so it's just to lose her i mean when i was on the board in the 90s i got to work with her a lot and she was in administration at that time and i just she was always a happy person smile beautiful lady and we will miss her so again i want to say that as well that i'm going to miss peggy churn a lot thank you and miss johnson hustler thank you i agree thank you superintendent moore for bringing up our purple heart schools much of my district borders harnett county so we have a lot of military families who actually live right at the wake county border who attend our schools in fuquay so thank you for acknowledging the work and of course inviting other schools

040to join in honoring our families because when one serves in the family the entire family is giving their service to this country so thanks for the invitation for other schools to join that as well um i too felt the nostalgia wake up and read however it was my personal books that i was that i literally was like oh my god i read this um so but i also forgot how super allergic i am so i literally my eyes and nose was running the entire night to like the old book but one thing i will add that i did not know which i'm sure those of you who have gone to help sort by the way it was not fun for me i'm ocd so i kept asking all these questions and he was like we'll

041figure it out it's okay so with that said i want to thank our librarians who are volunteering their time to actually resort what i sorted because there were librarians there that night resorting when i sorted um so and and we you know we always give a lot of kudos to all of our folks i love when we make the extension especially in the and i love our school bus that we extend it to not just the people that we see that give to all of those professions but acknowledging that there's so many people behind the scenes so we often acknowledge our librarians but i had not personally acknowledged them in the work that they're doing with wake up and read the last thing about wake up and read which you all know i love partners

042read so we're still doing that so please please please consider always signing up to be a partners read you do have to commit to at least the first half of the year or the whole year to read with the same student but the other thing wake up and read sorting is doing is if there were books that were given that they can't use you can actually take them yourself so they're like activity books that we wouldn't that they aren't able to use and so i actually found a few for two littles in my life so just another reason to go sort is so that you can also go through all the um all the things that they have that they're not going to be able to to use with our schools so and again thank

043you all who participated in the book drive greatly appreciate that like our colleagues thanks apex elementary for inviting us all to read every year i choose a book that i can connect with so that i can make the connection as a black woman on our school board to our students so this year i read hidden figures which while they're not from north carolina most of them are from virginia and they're all members of my illustrious sorority alpha kappa alpha sorority so i also got to talk to them about going to historically black college and what that means and um and the way our greek life continues throughout our entire life for public service so i always love that i miss you yesterday on the hill mr haggerty i was right after you um i have

044to say i think the superintendent knows this i have known our principal at hillburn um since before she actually graduated from undergrad so i also know her mother so i also got to read with mama thorpe as well so it was a great day to be on the hill um because i had not seen her mother actually since before she retired from nc state so it was a great day on the hill as well um i also want we talk about this and we know our substitute teachers are amazing but i read in a class um where there was a substitute it she had already taken the time before i got there at 9 30 a.m so they had just only been in school less than an hour and she already knew each kid's name

045and was calling and i as someone with a difficult name when somebody acknowledges and works hard to actually call you by your name you feel seen and heard in a very different way i think i was almost in tears like watching her literally help me call on the kids as they were asking me questions and so a lot of people don't understand the importance of actually being acknowledged by your name and she took the time to make sure i could have the pronunciation of the kids names that we were calling on so i absolutely want to thank all of our substitutes for the hard work that they're putting into a classroom that's not their own but they're doing their best to make it their own and make those students feel just as important and so

046that that absolutely was um touching to me to watch it substitute in action and really be that thoughtful in a class that she had not been in before so that meant a lot to me and again just reminded me to thank our substitutes for the amazing work they're doing every day i also want to thank you dr martin as miss mahaffey has already done i still have my map that you gave us of the roosevelt schools and so it was a great pleasure to be in fuquay for the fuquay consolidated schools and fuquay springs high school i also which you mentioned the mayor of apex but i think it's important that we know that for our our municipalities outside of raleigh don't always necessarily feel super connected to us as a district i can't tell

047you how many times mayor madison gil thanked me and kept thanking ms mahappy and i for the engagement for allowing the town to be a part of it and it was also beautiful because both commissioner haynes and commissioner williams are both products of the fuquay schools and so commissioner williams was able to talk about his experience as a student and of course commissioner haynes talking about his whole family having gone through there so it was certainly a special occasion i'm an always great i also should know i don't think miss parker is in here um apparently they love and know miss parker a few questions so they also were thanking her which i i never been i was like that is so sweet so i kept making her stand up when they acknowledged the school

048board and our area superintendent was there as well but again thank you dr martin for starting this project and i also think it's important that you acknowledge that we call them rosenwald schools but certainly certainly philanthropy matters it did then and still does and so again thank you for putting that on our radar and as a district allowing us to move forward and allowing our towns to also find their place in that part of our history as well before we became the wake county public school so i do think it makes a difference for our towns to feel connected to us in that way so again thank you um lastly on the list um i also want to you know again acknowledge the emails are still coming in and i appreciate them and slowly so

049after i sorted the books then i was sick for a few days trying to overcome all my allergies but i do want to note that a couple um of our educators have reached out and so again they are usually like parents in my district i get to and and one of them or several of them sent several messages and and i think it's another reminder to us to acknowledge the professionalism and the bus driver actually was the reason why i remember to bring up these emails is because people they of course what we pay them is important but the way that we treat them is probably more valuable than what we could pay them in terms of acknowledging the professionalism um and so again reminder that was a reminder to me when the bus driver

050said just saying it makes me feel special so i also want to thank the educators who've reached out and acknowledged that it is our job to always and every board member at this table does it but it was a reminder to me to thank them for the work that they're doing as we start to pivot yet again so again thank you all for your work and your commitment to our students as we have yet another pivot in the coming weeks thank you thank you very much we are now moving on to the approval of our meeting agenda we do have one amendment and that is to move something from the consent items to the action items and that is number five under academic advancement the letters for intervention in aig with that move can we

051get a motion to approve the meeting agenda sure i'm happy i move approval of the meeting agenda with that um one exception moving five to action thank you miss kushner second and the second from ms johnson hostler any discussion all those in favor signify by sign of i hi any opposed nay all right with that we will move on to our information item which is our updates from superintendent moore good evening again if you were not able to attend our work session today we had two items in the work session that i'll briefly recap the first item was the presentation of the proposed bell schedules for the 22-23 school year the bell schedules included the start and end times for our four new schools that will be opening next year no changes to existing bell

052schedules there is one question that was asked by board member hagerty that we'll be bringing back more information on the next step would be for those bail schedules to come to the board for approval on march 15th the second item on the work session agenda was a review of the proposed 2324 school calendars for traditional multi-track year-round and modified calendar schools as i told the board at the work session this is actually the normal timing for when we bring calendars we've been bringing them late the last couple of years due to the impact and changes of the law and the pandemic and so forth but this is 2324. and it is traditional multi-track year-round and modified calendar so those are available for folks to view and provide comment on we will be bringing those back

053to the board for approval as well the process for the calendar does go through a calendar committee that involves parents teachers principals community members that all review the options and the laws in north carolina regarding the creation of a calendar prior to bringing those drafts they were also reviewed by the student teacher the su the superintendent's teacher advisory council which is includes one teacher from every school at a at an earlier meeting and we get feedback from all of those groups as a part of this process and those will again come to the board on march 15th likely as a side note the calendars for our early college schools come at different times and they come literally the year of because we have to wait for our college or university partner to set their academic

054calendar so our early college partnerships with wake tech nc state and st augustine university should come in the next month or so and those will be for the 22-23 year and that concludes my thoughts thank you superintendent moore we now move on to public comment public comment is accepted in video written and in person formats members of the public are welcome to offer criticism or comments directed at substantive ideas actions or procedures of the board and individual board members in the interest of maintaining civility and decorum however speakers are encouraged to refrain from personal attacks and insults directed at the board individual board members staff or members of the general public the laws and policies of north carolina provide that issues or concerns involving individual personnel matters are confidential and therefore not appropriate for public

055comment settings concerns related to personnel issues may be addressed through the applicable wcpss personnel the grievance policy or other applicable policies speakers including students may discuss issues in matters of general concern but should refrain from discussing confidential student information concerns related to confidential student matters may be addressed through the applicable wcpss personnel grievance or other applicable policies we have 29 written comments and one video comment in from members of the public we have 15 supporting or opposing covet preventative measures including mask requirements three comments on books and 11 other comments going from occupational course of study support cck policy on in-school appointments athletic boosters timber drive in response to board member comments thank you address scammers criminal background checks community recommendations for district 4 and busing for special needs students for those of you that

056are doing in-person public comments you may speak for up to three minutes a yellow light will illuminate at the podium when there are 30 seconds left in your time then a red light will signal your time is up please remain at the podium during your speaking time any materials you wish to share with the board should be handed to the board attorney either before or after your comments our first speaker is kim maney well so i don't know if you guys have ever seen one of these before this is a dog whistle and i don't know if you know what one sounds like but for the members of this board and for the parents of wake county dog whistles sound like anti-mass mandates they sound like anti-vaccine mandates they sound like anti-equity they sound like

057anti-lbgq initiatives they sound like crt they sound like parental choice all are meant to distract this body and wake county parents from our mission to from its mission to provide quality free education to our students and fully support the teachers administrators and staff who provide the heavy lifting to meet this goal the last time we focused our attention on dog whistles this county lost its accreditation i thank the members of this board who stay focused on meeting our mission for students i may not blow up your email or your voicemail that i am here and you have my support and you have the support of many parents who are like me i call upon all wake county parents to ignore those dog whistles and stay focused on our mission for our for our children and

058their education and support this board our teachers and our schools thank you so much for your time i appreciate it thank you our next speaker is susan book hi i'm susan book in my experience sometimes wake county schools has not made decisions that always reflect inclusion and i was very personally saddened to add mass the mass decision to that as well in fact superintendent moore even mentioned at the special meeting not just iaps or 504s but home hospital as a way for families to cope with masks becoming now only recommended our overburdened underfunded special education programs were never meant to deal with being a mitigation effort for a global pandemic in addition home hospital is not only a last resort but a life-altering event for many families it is not a full school day but

059a few hours of instruction of one-on-one and even before the pandemic we had trouble staffing home hospital is not a way to deal with a pandemic nor was it designed to be my own child's iep is filled with accommodations in the spirit of inclusion how many of these accommodations would benefit his school and all children as a whole we have provisions written in because so many policies vary principle by principle bathroom policies hallways foods allowed are not allowed from fidgets to seating are we thinking of inclusion why not think inclusion from the very start why not look at things parents are putting in their ieps and ask if it's beneficial to all policies that benefit disability students might actually just be good policy wake county schools is willing to have this conversation and more about

060disability issues please don't put us into a third party discussion i quite frankly don't want to focus group with family resource center or alliance health again if wcpss is truly serious about inclusion policies then it needs to be done with actual stakeholders policymakers educators and families need to talk directly for once finally inclusion isn't just a disability concept it's a concept that affects behavior discipline and mental health it is one that we should look at when we look at books we offer the curriculums we choose and the history we teach every child should see themselves at school every child should feel safe and part of the student body finally inclusion is a concept that we need to cling to as we write budgets going forward the principles of the leandro cate are those of equity

061and inclusion and you all voted for that resolution use the concepts of equity and inclusion as your guiding principles for the budget and for your policies thank you thank you our next speaker is wing ning good evening my name is dr wing ing thank you for the opportunity for me to speak i have been a physician in raleigh for the last 16 years i am here today because i have a 14 year old child with down syndrome and i would like to speak with you about special education when my daughter was about to transition to kindergarten we had an iep evaluation done by some staff therapists since she also had hypo has hypothyroidism we knew her energy level would potentially affect her performance she was taken to an unfamiliar room away from us to be

062evaluated by complete strangers needless to say her evaluation really did not reflect what she could do we were given an expert opinion which would determine what program she would go to in order to meet her individualized education needs it was around that time that cross categorical kindergarten was being implemented we simply did not agree with the assessment and we did not see how education could be individualized when you are grouping children of varied skills together in one classroom so we chose a different path for her my wife has been homeschooling her for many years and her reading comprehension now is at fifth grade level her math spelling and english skills are at seventh grade level i have heard countless stories over the years of parents having to fight to prove the ex experts were wrong

063why is it that the system assumes they know better than the parents we as parents know how best to get our children to engage in learning no matter if they have special needs or not i think that parents are to have the greater role at the outset in the whole iep process and there should be continued partnership between parents and teachers on how to get the children to learn since the onset of covet parents are even more absent from what goes on in the classroom are we to assume that all the children we will get the same level of attention in the world where the squeaky wheel gets to grease teachers will likely have to pay more attention to the students causing a disruption leaving the quiet child to flounder you talk about the importance

064of diversity equity and inclusion how about recognizing that there is a diversity of learning needs it's not a one-size-fits-all model how about making sure that everyone has equal access to tools to help them succeed if schools can provide adequate tutoring support i believe our kids can do more than you think you talk about inclusion how about giving our children more opportunities to be included in regular classrooms especially for those kids who would most benefit from them please do not think it is an act of compassion to put our children in a self-contained classroom when you put our kids away the other children of the school are missing out on a valuable life lesson on accepting physical differences and seeing the person inside i know all these proposals cost money so perhaps it is time to

065rethink your spending priorities let's steer our money away from agendas that divide us by our physical differences and focus on teaching children all abilities our next speaker is adena softa i'm here today to address this board and my ongoing concerns as a community member and advocate for the parents and children of wake county public schools last time i shared with you all how i was born in a communist country and was raised in a post-communist society i want to share a quick story from my childhood when i arrived here and what it was like attending school for the first time i was in fourth grade i didn't speak english didn't know anybody and i was terrified of the unknown scared that i would never make friends and embarrassed that i didn't speak english when i

066think about the atmosphere that you've forced our children into for the past two years i can't help but think what my experience would have been like today i can imagine how those kids are navigating every single day today as you continue to choose money and power over empathy care and passion for helping the children and ensuring that they have the opportunity to learn in an environment that promotes america freedom and liberty as a little girl i watched my parents sacrifice everything that we had in a country that we knew and how easily it was for them to leave it all behind and start over with two little girls two suitcases and the guarantee of the freedom that this country would provide it was all worth it i can't imagine coming here from a third world

067country only to find out that kids are learning critical race theory versus constitution restoration training i repeat crt constitution restoration training in our u.s constitution it states the following celebrating the constitution to commemorate the september 17 1787 signing of the constitution of the united states congress has signed september 17th of each year as constitution day and september 17th through 23rd as constitution week in 2004 public law 108 447 section 111 was passed requiring the following each educational institution that receives federal funds for a fiscal year shall hold an educational program on the united states constitution on september 17th of such year for the students served by the educational institution with that i want to ask you all and you don't have to answer today but i would i welcome an email back can you acknowledge

068that every school that is a pub a part of the wake county public schools is enforcing this requirement since you in fact receive federal funds i will end with this a primary object the united states constitution should be the education of our youth in the science of government in a republic what species of knowledge can be equally important and what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are the future guardians of liberty of the liberty of the country george washington thank you miss safta our next speaker is kristen beller you're welcome good evening superintendent moore and board members i'm kristen beller president of waken cae this is lisa mohammed the executive director of education justice alliance and we're the first of three speakers that you're going to hear tonight about the upcoming appointment

069of a new district 4 board rep as you prepare to interview applicants and appoint a representative for the district 4 board seat many of us were concerned that the current process does not include space to hear from parents students or staff connected to schools in the district in the future we would like the board to reassess this process and create room for community engagement before filling a vacant board seat in the absence of a process for engagement eja waken cie and the wake retired school personnel felt it was important for us to create space for parents students and staff who are learning or working in a district 4 school to share what we want and need in our next board rep last week a diverse room of parents public school staff and residents and community

070supporters gathered together to discuss our schools our district and the connection we hope to have with our future board member it's important for us for this board and our next representative to know that district 4 schools are amazing places to learn to learn and grow sorry we're proud of all the great things happening in our schools and we want our next representative to be to just as proudly share in their successes people shared that they that we have incredibly dedicated teachers and staff as well as strong administrators in our schools some of our schools have developed strong connections to universities and built relationships with members of the business community additionally our schools have incredibly supportive parent teams in communities that reach out to celebrate school staff and students as well as partner to create family

071engagement opportunities and support student achievement inside the classroom and through a variety of extracurricular activities including our athletic programs and teams our schools are also places that present opportunities for students to use their voices to advocate for changes that improve their learning environments we have many wonderful magnet programs in district 4. there are so many choices for amazing public schools with unique programs and philosophies because of the variety of academic programs and specialized learning opportunities many of our high school students graduate with credits for college given them a strong start towards a successful college experience additionally special programs like the graduate graduate and engineering programs at southeast raleigh magnet high school prepare our students for smooth transitions into college or the workplace although we are proud of the accomplishments of our district 4 schools our

072next representative we look forward to you hearing those and receiving those um with what we hope will be gratitude for the community reaching out to you thank you our next speaker is robin livingston [Applause] good evening over the last two years obviously everybody's been through a lot and i came here just to express my gratitude to you as a board for doing the hard work making tough decisions in spite of immense pressure in all directions i know and i also want to express appreciation for all the teachers in the county bus drivers janitors cafeteria workers and innova administration everybody's been through a lot and i i don't know if you know the pandemic is over or not we may go back and forth but i appreciate you know you're going to continue to continue to

073make good decisions and and wise decisions and i just i just want to express gratitude thank you thank you our next speaker is lana witz okay good evening board of education thank you for taking time for public comment again i just want to take a moment and acknowledge that you've officially lifted the mask mandate as of march 7th it's only taken us about a year to get that accomplished and i do thank you although i want you to understand that as a board the power has always resided with you i think that across our state there is an illusion that the governor gets to dictate the authority of the local body of a school board specifically he originally asked us for 14 days to flatten the curve that's now turned in to almost two years

074which is 730 days as of march 14th abc science collaborative has been an authoritative entity that you've allowed to dictate to students and parents whether or not their faces are covered specifically abc science collaborative and embarked on a study that has been hidden from the public and has been embargoed until april 1st ironically of 2022 that proved and showed that the transmission between students to adults is non-existent 11 school districts participated in that study funded by the nih and i acknowledged this months ago at the end of august and early september in emails to all of you as well as in public comment as we move forward to lift the mask mandates and restore freedom for our children and give consent to parents i continue to ask you is this the type of school system

075that you want do you want a governor dictating public education at the local level is that what you were elected to do to listen to the governor or were you elected to listen to the parents that live in your neighborhoods and in your community i encourage you tonight to do what many school boards across north carolina over 70 of them to be exact have already done and enact the power that you already have entrusted to you to lift the mask mandate and make it optional give the authority back to the students the parents and the children in our communities our next speaker is crystal bayern hello my name is christelle behrend i'm one of the librarians at nigel high school and a strong ally for all of our students and our staff before i begin

076i would like to give a shout out to the tgif team at night dale high school jennifer jeff brian jessica laura and alicia we are so excited to have learn earned the learning innovation award for our professional learning model from nc ties your librarians your staff and your students that you're going to hear tonight we're doing good things in wake county and you should be proud last night i had the pleasure to attend a session with authors and student activists who are passionate about their first amendment rights the students in pennsylvania tried to make their voices heard but were forced to turn to protesting to overturn a decision by central york's board of education to pull an entire diversity list of books and action they did without the support of policy it's not surprising that

077this list of books that spoke spoke to the authentic experiences of bipac and members of the lgbtq plus community they pulled them with the intent of reviewing them as a board even though there were four pages worth of resources that were curated by their own professionals needless to say they didn't have time to do this it got swept under the rug and i would say that their board overstepped their bounds and their expertise librarians in wake county have a master's degree in library science are trained in book selection and collection management and are in tune with the demographics of their schools and they do in fact read many many books these library professionals follow board policy 3200d in choosing materials researching reading reviews and working to ensure that their collection fulfills their collection management plan

078and that all students feel represented we don't avoid adding books to our collections because they are uncomfortable race relations in texas in the 1930s were uncomfortable out of darkness being brown in america is uncomfortable lawn boy identifying as non-binary and a binary culture is uncomfortable genderqueer war abuse suicide police brutality and violence these are all headlines and they are all uncomfortable banning books doesn't change that when we leave our comfort zones in the safety of a book we grow and so do our students they learn to think critically through deep exploration and hopefully even have some hard conversations at home this trend of censorship that's sweeping our nation stems from fear and while it doesn't hurt book sales it does hurt the people reflected in those books our students by making them feel like there

079is something shameful about their identity we hurt lgbtq plus students when we don't stand up for their rights we hurt our bipock students when we try to erase the racism that exists we hurt all our students by denying them stories that might give them a greater understanding of someone different than them books are meant to be windows and mirrors into reality even when reality is uncomfortable i asked the board to continue to respect the process and policy 3210 listen to your student voices support the decisions made at the school level by your trained professionals and committee thank you thank you our next speaker is julie page [Applause] julie page arrogant incompetent disingenuous superior discriminatory apathetic these are just a few words that come to mind when i think of this board follow the science you

080say which science actual science or political science actual science is never stagnant it is ever-changing based on new hypotheses theories and research actual science otherwise known as real science is how we learn and grow as a society actual science is not capable of addressing equality freedom compliance and quality of life political science also known as populist science is nothing more than virtue signaling at its finest suppress objections questions and expertise drive away public discussion the only correct way is the approved narrative if you do not comply you are labeled as uncaring and hateful you are then canceled censored outcast in society you lose your freedom and your liberty not a small price to pay our kids have to mask on the bus for school but not for activities our kids have to mask in the

081gym but not during a game our kids have to mask in class but not in this meeting our kids have to mask at school but not for any other activity in their lives make it make sense the discrimination of hypocrisy is both outstanding or astounding i'm sorry and abhorrent do you remember when we said that cloth masks do little to prevent transmission do you remember when we said that we would have to learn to live with covid do you remember when we said our kids are suffering do you remember when we begged and pleaded to give choice back to parents of course you do what changed the actual science didn't the political science did entities pushing the accepted narrative are changing their positions why polls numbers the majority in this country we the parents are

082not happy the awakening is here the fallout from your actions will begin soon as thousands upon thousands of wake county voters begin casting ballots they will remember your transgressions your arrogance and your condescension your reign will end peacefully be prepared for whatever it is you're going to do next because it will not be holding elected office in wake county moms for liberty is coming for the people's seats that you've abused when you don't listen you no longer deserve to hold office 250 days to parental rights 250 days to freedom and liberty 250 days to living in reality let the countdown begin thank you our next speaker is diane chandler every meeting before public comments tim mahaffey states in the interests of mccain's civilization speakers are encouraged to refrain from personal insults or attack directly at

083the board individual board members staff or members of the general republic apparently that guidance didn't apply to the board issue ms scott quote without throwing out snarky memes there are work to be done definitely ironic considering the snarky a derogatory meme that makes scott herself and dr murray light last week mr kushner called our concern quote a display of whimpering last week mr kushner and mr scott referencing examples of adults screaming at children wearing rest what is this example if you're going to use one example to characterize an entire group of people you better be specific dr martin called our real concerns about mass complaining called us because we recognize that our kids are suffering because of these policies you may have a degree in science dr maureen but i have a degree in child

084development and masters in early childhood and elementary education which leads me to definitively state that these policies have sorry have adversely affected child development and education and that should be your number one priority of the board you also called it irresponsible and say you entire politics making decisions about science or education you say that you always follow the recommendations of public health yet you're the only ones who vote nay on every single mass vote last week while the health experts had changed their recommendations are you perhaps warm-making and political it's funny that you said bullying about max one way or another is unacceptable because that's exactly what your words are doing i do want to thank the board for finally voting to let the mass mandate though again the worrying and recommended cannot respect those

085of us who realize it is not recommended for social developmental or educational reasons i do also appreciate that healthy children will no longer be forced to make educational gains due to quarantine however i am here to request that the county guideline concerning sickness go back to regular policy the current policy requires any child with copay-like symptoms could either take negative get alternative lungs from doctor remain out of school be denied their right to education for five days cognitive symptoms are every possible exemption not all kidneys are covered and it's time to stop treating it as yet i was required to test both of my children because they had a summoned bug and allergy licensing even though we had covered not we had less than 90 days ago why is there no consideration of national immunity

086giving why should i or my insurance be required to pay money for unnecessary tests and my child possibly missed more schools why should i have to keep my child doing unnecessary doctor's appointment especially symptoms have already stopped a doctor no had never been required to return to school before this thank you miss chandler our next speaker is sage claussen good evening my name is sage claussen and i'm a senior at cary high school i have come here today as a student and as a concerned citizen to speak about the scourge of book banning and the threat that it poses students across the nation and in our own community i am upset and disheartened that wake county has been dragged into the national culture war surrounding education and what is being taught in our schools the

087talking points of intolerant people seeking political power have sought to turn our school system into a pond for their gain and with that they seek to forcibly impose their values on all wake county students the books out of darkness all boys aren't blue and lawn boy have all been challenged by a parent of a student at my school and i am frustrated that as a mature teenager there are adults who seek to limit my choice of literature and to believe that i am unable to make a decision about what i can read those who advocate for banning the aforementioned books do so under the pretext of the responsibility to safeguard and protect children from books that might steal their innocence however you don't have to look very hard to see that there are common threads

088between books being challenged across the country and in wake county we need to call actions to ban these books what they are blatant discrimination and the erasure of lived experiences these books feature people of color and individuals in the lgbtq community and challenges against them invalidate the identities and struggles of individuals who are finally able to see themselves represented in literature today on top of that it prevents students from outside these groups from learning how to be empathetic towards people from different backgrounds in my personal experience some of the most productive and meaningful conversations i've had have been in english class about books that include characters whose lives are much different than my own the beauty of reading is that through the bond the reader forms with the characters they are offered a window into

089other people's lives reading books that challenge your thinking allows you to find the shared humanity that connects people of different identities and backgrounds and fosters the growth of empathy and goodness knows we need more of that we live in a nation that is more polarized than ever before and connecting people of different walks of life is our only hope towards finding unity at the end of the day my peers and i know our limits if i don't want to read a certain book i don't read it if parents don't want their kids to read a certain book that is a conversation they need to have with them i can make choices about what topics i can handle when i go to the library my teachers should not have to live in fear that their classroom

090libraries will come under fire from individuals who want to force their personal beliefs upon thousands of wake county students my peers should have the freedom to find books that support them in their education and personal growth i urge the school board and wake county families to stand up against and reject attempts to ban books in our schools thank you our next speaker is amanda lund mommy mommy i don't want to go to school don't make me go to school can i stay home with you today that's my ten-year-old this morning she's in the fourth grade she has not had one normal school year this year her previous teacher has left to find another position i'm a massage therapist and quite regularly i have teachers laying on my massage table crying they're at a crossroads where

091they can no longer financially or mentally afford to remain in the profession they absolutely adore i say this not to blame any of you sitting before me today but to shine a light on some of the real mental health realities that we have i'm here to say that you're really not to be blamed the world has been a little crazy lately we've had a pandemic that shut down the entire world we are now more politically divided than we have ever been you are doing the best that you can with the knowledge that you have and the resources that have been given to your disposal you take your time to listen to experts to immerse yourselves in the various school systems listen to the students and all the extracurriculars that i heard you speak about earlier

092tonight you will open this up to members of the public like myself to share our opinions yet quite often you are subjected to negative hate-filled rhetoric on the daily actually right now can i get a round of applause for these fine folks standing allowing us to be here today i appreciate you i appreciate what you do for our students and keeping their best interest at heart now to highlight the real problem our north carolina general assembly has failed time and time again to fully fund our public school education the last budget they passed they left six billion dollars in surplus in addition to other reserves and our rainy day fund that is used for emergencies that six billion dollars could have put a nurse in every single school that six billion dollars could have added

093more school counselors to help with the mental health issues that our students and staff are facing it could have given teachers more pay better resources more supplies better benefits and more support all of these would improve the mental health of our students and our staff so i ask all those in the room as well as those watching on the live stream to take note of the dates may 17 and november 8th those are our next elections please do your research and find candidates that will fully fund education thank you our next speaker is cecilia joyce good evening board i'm cecilia joyce a proud parent of an in low eagle senior and i'm going to like to continue to speak about the community expectations for my district 4 school board member we want our next representative

094in district 4 to be accessible and a good communicator who is honest authentic empathetic diplomatic listener we want someone appointed who will prioritize communicating with school staff parents and students in district four we want a leader who is open to hearing our concerns and who will be responsive and transparent we would like the board advisory council bac meetings to be ongoing or at least quarterly and hosted in different locations throughout the district we also want all communication and meetings to be in english and spanish to ensure language access our next representative should be prepared to intentionally reach out to parents and engage with other organizations and leaders in our community in addition to the quarterly bacs we want someone who welcomes creative ways to nurture parent school relationships and engages parents and community members on

095issues before they come to a vote we also have many community centers throughout our district that could be used to host gatherings off campus to broaden the potential for parent engagement while strengthening community partnerships some family members or residents may need the accessibility of an off-campus gathering space while they work with the school board school to build a more trusting and positive relationship we want a representative who intentionally engages with our latinx parents and students in district four our next representative should be reflective of the historic racial community that makes up the district while also having an understanding of the history of wake county public school system and its connection to this community we value a candidate who has supported and advocated for public schools either as an educator or a parent the conditions in

096which we all live have created many opportunities for division and polarization on topics that are important to student learning we need a district 4 representative who can listen to community members understand and acknowledge the problems or issues being brought to them and become a partner in navigating those challenges we need someone who is willing to be a champion for diversity racial equity and inclusion because all of our schools face challenges related to those areas our next board representative should want to prioritize passing an equity policy for our district with community input and support as a way to address disparities and discipline and to ensure equitable access to gifted honors and college placement classes we want our next representative to prioritize fully staffing the office of equity affairs our next representative should also understand the need

097for racial equity training to be required in all parts of the school community with an option for parents to have access to this training as well inequitable distribution of funds instructional materials and staff is a need that affects many of our schools and students i think i'm gonna have to stop there thank you morgenstein why would i care what books are banned in schools or what i can and cannot read why does it even matter one word empathy defined by merriam-webster empathy is the action of understanding being aware of being sensitive to and vicariously experiencing the feelings thoughts and experiences of another in other words it's putting yourself in someone else's shoes according to the cultural research center forty percent of generation z my generation identifies as a part of the lgbtq community 40 percent

098i myself do not identify with the community as i am a 16 year old cisgender straight white girl fresh out of cary north carolina it wasn't until i started researching this topic that my eyes were open for the first time about why this matters i have always connected with the characters i read about in books whether it be by skin color sexual orientation or experiences i have always felt a sort of connection between myself and the characters i read about this is where the idea of empathy comes into play even if i feel a connection to characters it doesn't mean others do too everyone has a different life with different things they can relate to why shouldn't we allow everybody to see themselves represented in a way that is realistic and lifelike i'm not thinking

099about myself i'm thinking about marcus the black transgender boy who feels alone in explaining the pain afflicted onto him every single day when he asks to explain to people why he does not want to be addressed by his dead name i'm thinking about ella whose strict parents would kick her out of the house if they found out she was a lesbian yet they're blind to the fact she suffers with extreme anxiety and depression from this feeling of isolation i'm thinking about valentina an only child who feels a heavy burden from her parents to have kids although she wants none i'm thinking about lee who doesn't seem to understand why everyone turns and looks at him when the class is discussing the japanese internment camps of 1942 even though he's korean i'm thinking about aditya whose

100parents don't have the money to buy her the book she wants for her upcoming 16th birthday and the only place she can read it is at school tonight i'm thinking about every silenced voice and unheard story that we will never know and i hope you do too thank you our next speaker is emerson phillips hello my name is emerson phillips and i'm a senior at cary high school i'm here tonight to speak on the issue of banning books in our school libraries as i know you've already heard a couple of my peers talk about as well in the recent weeks and months there have been a handful of challenges to books in our wake county school libraries such as all boys aren't blue lawn boy genderqueer and out of darkness i am here tonight to

101speak to our school board members of course but also to speak to those watching at home i'm speaking to parents teachers citizens and fellow students over the past months the student voices on issues that impact us directly have been few and far between i am hoping to provide a small glimpse into the importance of books to myself and to many of my fellow classmates firstly books give students a safe way to learn more about themselves many of the books being challenged are ones that tell the stories of queer people and people of color children and teenagers deserve to see themselves represented in books to be taught that they are not in some way wrong and that they can do amazing things when we see characters and people like us in literature it shows us that

102we are not alone in our identity and that is okay that it is okay to be different whether it be our sexuality race family situation or something else while some teenagers may find themselves represented in books like harry potter or the hunger games others find themselves represented in books such as out of darkness or lawn boy all are equally important to keep in libraries when we are restricted to what we are when we are restricted on what we are able to read in schools we are being fed the narrative that books primarily about straight and white people are what is accepted by society banning books also robs students from learning about others who are not similar to them reading books written by authors of different races sexualities and upbringings exposes students to new perspectives of

103social issues and the world as a whole reading about different perspectives creates broad-minded individuals and cultivates empathy as well as understanding in today's children and teenagers our generation will be the future and i hope that as a whole we will be open-minded towards people different from ourselves keeping books that tell unique and often less told stories on the shelves and schools is the first step towards this goal to parents i understand wanting to have control over what your child reads but please do not take away the opportunity for another student to find themselves represented in a story to the school board please do not take the decision of banning books from school shelves lightly those books may impact our students in ways unimaginable i hope tonight i have helped you understand even a sliver of

104the importance of keeping books on our school shelves though some stories may be controversial they can make the difference in the life of a student who needs it to quote george m johnson from his memoir all boys aren't blue there is truly something to be said about the fact that sometimes you can't see yourself if you can't see other people like you existing thriving working we deserve to see ourselves represented in books we deserve to read and to learn about those different from us banning and challenging books in our schools is a threat to a more open-minded society thank you our next speaker is steve bergstrom good evening as is typically the case i end up scrapping my speech and just deciding to address some of the issues that have been brought up here today

105uh mr hegarty brought up that there's a lot of division in our community the inability to engage in healthy debate is something that has been lost in our community as of late and i think that needs to be brought back in that's what parents are upset about is that the board fails to listen to differing points of views it is at the height of disregard for those you choose to represent you choose to represent them that you shut them out you ignore them and you malign them i don't agree that it's division in our community i think it's diversity and when this board votes 9-0 on almost every single issue that shows a lack of diversity of thought and a lack of diversity of opinion across wake county that's what parents are upset about that

106their views that their opinions that data stats we can give you all the data points that we want to mr martin here is concerned and and doesn't understand the data right now well maybe that's because all the mitigation efforts over two years don't actually work what is working is the harm and ineffectiveness of mandates and shutdowns that have continued for two years today is national self-harm awareness day in high school among high school teens suicide is the number three cause of death in the pandemic suicides jumped among teens over 99 percent one in five high school teens contemplates seriously committing suicide and what has this board done to address that to address the concerns of concerned parents who are coming and saying these are problems in our families i have personally come to you and

107asked you to address these problems and i have been ignored and maligned along with many other parents who have simply asked to have their children's voices heard there is a lack of diversity of thought there is a lack of diversity among this board to be able to represent the people you chose to represent i'll end with this dr martin said if we don't learn from our history we are doomed to repeat it the history of this board of the last two years has been to malign anyone whose opinions and data don't support your views or don't support the political stance you're taking i would ask you to rethink that and if you don't i think you'll come to the realization that the wake county does not agree with you in november thank you our next

108speaker is elizabeth norville my name is elizabeth norville i'm a retired teacher i have taught a total of 27 years in four different countries including 13 years in wake county i grew up in south africa when i was 15 our history teacher required that we read a book by leon euris a jewish author our teacher assigned the task because he wanted us to know about the holocaust i read miele 18. this novel set in german-occupied warsaw before and during world war ii covers the nazi occupation of poland it is an account of the uprising of jews living in a ghetto against the plans of the nazi regime to exterminate them although the book is a novel eurus was praised by critics for his in-depth research an accurate portrayal of historical events for the first time

109i was confronted with the inhumanity that one group of people was willing to inflict upon another it was a very difficult book to read i remember having to pause and take breaks because the atrocities committed against characters i had come to know and identify with were too hard to stomach by assigning this book my teacher opened up a new world to me it is imperative that our young people receive the opportunity to empathize and identify with people unlike themselves we need to allow them the dignity to make their own choices the history of this country is full of examples of bravery and courage i applaud the school board for standing firm against calls to remove books from our libraries books that provide students with the opportunities to experience vicariously the lives of those who are

110different yes this may cause discomfort but we are not called to have comfortable easy lives we are called to be our best selves to work for the good of others in our nation and in our world when i lived in south africa i was so inspired by the example of the united states of america the home of the free and the land of the brave let us guarantee our children the freedom to read what they choose let us be brave enough to embrace ideas and people outside our comfort zone thank you our next speaker is tamita brown [Applause] all right all right good evening superintendent moore good evening board members i am the last of the trio that were had a speech together we have had at least three elementary schools built with the purpose

111of creating supportive school communities prepared to meet the diverse needs of the students within them and there has not been a long-term sustainable plan of support for any of the three we need deep investment of funds staff and resources at our schools for our students to be successful the public school staff in our schools should be reflective of the students and parents and families attending the school we need more black and brown educators but we also need support to make sure they experience success and stay in our schools this begins in high school with encouraging students to become teachers and attention intentionally providing black and brown students with opportunities that nurtured this career path we want our next representative in district 4 to support ensuring more teachers of color in our schools the climate and

112culture of our schools have impact on our students we want a representative who will advocate for relationship-centered school communities that have culturally responsive curriculum and testing our students need their teachers and the support staff at their school and on their buses to be trained to support their social and emotional health and wellness they need more school counselors and social workers they need their schools to be well resourced for the intensity and diversity of needs particularly during and after the the global pandemic we're all living through many of the families in our communities will benefit from a transition from the traditional way schools operate to a more integrated system of support for the school child and family this takes great investment but we believe our students their families and our school have our school staff deserve

113much such an investment in their success and well-being part of developing a school climate that nurtures healthy social emotional wellness is having consistency and language and practices that reinforce expectations for our children's behavior every adult should be contributing to the success of the students in our schools by modeling desired behaviors and explicitly teaching them how to engage with their peers and school staff when a student makes a mistake or doesn't meet the expectations that are set we should be treating it treating as an opportunity for them to learn how to do so our students are learning what to do and how to do it regardless of their age they are learning every adult in a school building should support them in their learning currently we have many students and families who experience fear and anxiety

114in the press and the presence of police there's a history of police intimidation that transfers to schools when police are present as a reinforcement for discipline issues i'm not going to be able to finish but i do want to say please take this in consideration from what we have said we are concerned parents staff and community members i represent this shirt because i am 276 1-0 i am a parent of a child at southeast raleigh high school i am also a teacher at southeast raleigh elementary school and i live in 27610 thank you miss brown our next speaker is katie longer katie long after that we have amanda hollibine amanda hullibine they put the pronunciation here for me oh thank you okay that concludes public comment at this time i will take a motion to

115accept our consent items motion to prove second thank you very much any discussion all those in favor of the consent items please signify by sign of eye any opposed nay all right we move on to our next act our first action item which is with adam mitchell from farrington smith and blake esselton from map figure consulting to discuss the required redistricting of board election districts following the 2020 census and discussion and possible action related to the method of election for board members so before we get started just a quick preface this is so that we can have an accurate number of voters or a representative number of voters in our districts this is not student assignment thank you good evening board members superintendent more it's good to be back with you again this evening my

116colleague blake esselstyn is here as well i'm thinking of this as as a conversation in three acts we'll try to be brief but i'm first going to brief you on the public engagement process and sessions that you asked us to undertake with your staff we're then going to turn to the substance of the redistricting plans we'll give you a very brief reminder and then open up the floor and welcome your discussion uh and and consensus if there is consensus to be had today and then uh the final part we will be talking about the method of election and see where we wind up on that and what we want to propose to the wake county board of elections so as you know at the february first work session we presented three alternative redistricting plans to

117you and after a brief discussion you asked us along with your communication staff who's been fantastic by the way to undertake a public engagement process this is one that goes far beyond what the law requires you want us to go out into the community talk to people hear from people engage in conversations and we did that via two in-person sessions a virtual session and a specially designed web landing page that brought together a bunch of information regarding redistricting and allowed for an online comment uh card or or form we had the the two in person sessions the first was on wednesday february the 16th 6 30 p.m at crossroads 3. we had paper comment cards there a qr code that would allow an attendee to submit a comment via the website we had fantastic spanish

118translators there unfortunately there were no uh attendees dr martin did come and he said that we did not need to give the presentation just for him since he had heard it already the second session was tuesday february 22nd 6 30 p.m at the media center at southeast raleigh high school the same setup there was one attendee we did provide our overview presentation and and did have a conversation with that attendee she was new to the area and and i think she was interested in learning about the district in general and had some general questions about redistricting i would not say that there was any direct feedback about uh the plans but but a nice and interesting conversation the virtual session was held on wednesday february 23rd 6 30 p.m [Music] blake and i were present

119there were four board members present miss kushner was present for a brief period of time but very graciously dropped off the call so that there wouldn't be any quorum questions there were nine attendees on the virtual forum so we got a we got a nice turnout uh we provided our overview and then engaged uh in in a question answer session and of the nine participants two individuals asked questions and and one made a comment i'll go through those in just a minute as i mentioned there was a uh specially designed web landing page we received two comments from the page and i included those in in your materials i'm not going to read them they're rather lengthy we received one comment by email via a board member who forwarded on to us and the the

120questions and and these were from the virtual session uh as i mentioned one one person just asked general questions one virtual attendee had missed the early part of our conversation and so she asked us to review again the criteria that were used in creating the plans and then one attendee asked several questions including about racially polarized voting minority opportunity districts and prison gerrymandering and we engaged in conversation and responded to those questions that same individual made a request which was that the home precincts of incumbents be shown on the interactive map uh it this relates relates to the issue of double bunking or incumbency protection and this individual didn't have any objection to that but what she said is that viewing the home precincts would allow her or others to judge how much of a

121factor it was and as you all know i presented that request to you everyone consented and as of yesterday i believe blake added that layer to the interactive map so if you go on there now you can click on a layer and it will show the precinct that each of you lives in so i think it was it was a fantastic effort i wish we would have gotten more turnout but it was not from a lack of effort i know that that staff pushed out information to community organizations chamber of commerce chamber of commerce's interest groups etc etc so there was a real effort to to engage with the community and we certainly enjoyed the conversations we had wish that there would have been more but that that was the process so i'll pause there

122and see if there are any questions on the public engagement sessions before we transition into the plans all right hearing none if we can hopefully someone has powerpoints pulled up i'm not sure but if we can go to the presentation that we gave at our last meeting that has the alternative plans in that blake's going to spend a few minutes and then i'll come back up and we can talk about next steps and if we can't pull it up that's fine as well we can we can certainly do it without it adam do you know if if that presentation that you're talking about was loaded again for this meeting yes it is okay it's an assembly okay it's the second one and this slide the second one down i just want to make sure everybody

123knows i think that might be if if it is possible to get those up i think uh slides starting at slide 31 would be ideal but i just wanted i know uh i think pretty much all the board members attended one of the meetings so they saw a a review presentation very similar to the one we gave on february 1st sort of an abbreviated version so i'm not going to spend a lot of time on this i just wanted to essentially provide a reminder that there are three plans they're all different and if i were to give a very nutshell capsule of each one i would say that uh option a has the simplest changes so if there is a plan that kind of minimized the the disruption that would be option a and there

124was a significant focus in that option on balancing high schools and the area superintendents option b is similar in that it's only marginal changes and and looking at high schools and area superintendents was a priority for that one although it was achieved in a different way i think that option b achieved a little more success with the attendance areas and the the goals of reducing the splits and those option c clearly has the most change but if you look at the stats the tables that were included in the slides it does perform better on the the area superintendents and the high schools in terms of balance but it does so at the expense of of changing the shapes more significantly unless folks have have questioned or wanted to look at something specific on one of

125the slides i'm happy to turn it back over to adam like do you i'm sorry do you by chance have the maps available those were very useful to look at so for our um for the i was able to go to southeast raleigh and um and having maps with the detail were really helpful yeah the the printed maps that had not just the high schools but also the other area schools i thought were very helpful especially for people who are like really visually learner like yeah i agree it was great to have all of them yeah they were just at the meetings interactive maps online you can get to that detail but for for me to sing the big picture um was very helpful i was gonna say if we can make it available we'd

126be happy to put them up either in here so that folks can take a look at them or the board conference room or something that would be great yeah i do know they're available as pdfs that staff gave us the opportunity to review them before they got printed so where are the big ones that you're talking about tim has him all right tim i hope you're listening we need to put them up thank you and blake if we may we may have questions about the maps but i think a lot of us would just like to hear the whole presentation first before we really open it up to discussion well i i do think we are about there at the point of of opening it up for discussion we've talked about redistricting what it is

127the legal principles we've talked about the criteria you've given us guidance on those criteria we've presented you with three plans we've taken those three plans out into the community and had conversations and engaged in feedback and so i think now things do come back to you as a board and the the it is the time i would say to discuss and debate and ask questions i think the goal is is to reach consensus on a preferred plan and i when that happens is up to you it it could happen tonight or if you need more time you need more time but i think that the goal is to to reach consensus and then to direct us to prepare the resolution and other documents needed and then we bring that back to you at your subsequent

128meeting for a final vote all right so do maybe finish go around the table and hear people's thoughts ms mahaffey yeah go ahead thank you chair i'm happy if i could one thing i'd suggest is we have the three maps which seem like a great jumping off point and so i know as you've talked to people about the maps or as you've looked at maps at yourselves you might have questions about individual areas or things like that but i think one thing that might be helpful is we can start with the maps and maybe go around the table and just sort of see you know do you have preference between the three options do you favor one over the other maybe if we can then find sort of a base map if there is one

129that maybe we all agree on then if we have individual questions or you know specific recommended changes then there are changes to a specific map and not either the original districts or something general i just think it might be easier to sort of track proposed changes if we could do it from one jumping off point all right i think i saw some heads nodding with that so let's go around the table miss carter why don't you kick us off okay i'm not hopefully this is what you're asking for if you're just asking personally where there was an a b or c yeah what you preferred um torn between a and b uh leaning more towards the b than a but that's where i'm at not uh has to be a or b but would prefer

130b but that's where i'm at right now specifically because c is the specific plan that we heard from the public that did attend that they had concerns about as well thank you miss cash so what do you say about the public they didn't like c oh yeah the c okay now okay um i would like to look at the big maps so i'm not totally ready but you the process you're doing is wonderful how we have the interactive maps and i i definitely between a or b i guess and i hadn't talked to miss scott much about this but i lean towards a only because i have not been able to explain the configuration of b to to people in district my district and miss scott's because i think it goes out and picks up

131heritage and the map looks a little strange on that where a looks more contiguous to me i don't like c miss johnson hustler i i concur with my colleagues def which i think you all know when we discuss this we i don't like c either um i mean i don't have a lot of change so i've said you know i pretty much feel like the changes i i want aren't actually reflected on these maps and so i guess i feel less likely to weigh in a or b mostly because c just looks not contiguous but a or b there's not a lot of change for me at all in either of them but that's because my district was also pretty much already where it needed to be in terms of number constituents ms scott sorry

132i heard from several folks in windall that they were not fans of c because that does effectively take wendell falls and moves that into district four as the town of wendell is growing it's very important to them to keep wendell one community even though we do have you know the the window falls neighborhood and area they still very much want the downtown areas to feel like it is all one connected group and so they are of course just concerned um about that splitting so it's feedback that i just received from them in conversations i've had with uh when we're looking at the difference between maps a and b the conversations i basically had with folks who live in wake forest is you're too big to put all of you into district three um that would

133then offset the balance that we're trying to achieve and have to achieve with this process and what i explained to them the difference between a and b although you're absolutely right it looks strange is that the heritage campus the elementary school the middle school the high school would be moved and since they're kind of they're considered a campus even though they're just around the corner from each other um that it would be about keeping that campus together if we have to lose some of wake forest to even things out in in the map b process that that seemed to make the most um sense and then um i honestly don't personally don't have a strong preference between a and b and didn't hear a whole lot of feedback strong or negative for a and b

134dr martin uh yeah as i made clear before c is a complete non-starter i think we've heard that from the community um yeah and so as far as i'm concerned it should be gone i don't have a strong preference between a and b i default a little bit more toward a my reason for that is because i think it does a better job of continuity to our high school assignment districts and also does my sense is that b splits up a lot more municipalities and i find that i mean district five has historically had the greatest number of municipalities touching five and but but being a majority of none uh and that municipalities don't really necessarily govern our schools but there's needs to be a really strong relationship between municipalities and schools and i i

135think that there is a lot of value to that there's not a big difference between a or b if any tweaks are done i would encourage us to look at keeping municipalities minimizing the splits to municipalities so some hybrid of a and b would be fine i'm not strong one way or the other but but but that would be my advice if we go to uh any kind of variation i would say that's would be what i would look at miss kushner thank you miss mahappy um i think um given the parameters that we gave our consultants i think b is the middle ground that covered all of um all of what we had requested and it doesn't go to either extreme of a or c certainly c is a i think is eliminated but

136i think there's some things from a that we can put into b so i would suggest that we start with b as the as the base map and perhaps look at what some of us might like about a and see if we can incorporate it for my district b seems to bring school communities together better so just looking at district c i mean district i mean six um i would um also drives me to suggest b being our our base map mr haggard thank you and i think continuing a theme i i thought c could be somewhat problematic and again i want to hand it to our consultants they did exactly what we asked them to do but then sometimes when you see the final product it just seems like that could be very confusing

137as you're trying to explain to people based on where they live who their school board district or district representative might be um i think like like like ms carter i lean toward b between a and b although i think a or b either one could be a good jumping off point um i think as i've pointed out you know there are some splits in municipalities but some splits because the size of municipalities are going to be inevitable right like wake forest i think is one that would need to be split morrisville is one that would you know if we keep all the other criteria in the school assignment areas we probably have to split so but i do think there are maybe a couple areas once we like pick one map we might be able

138to make a tweak or two and improve a couple towns at least so maybe they're not spread out of spread over three districts maybe it's just over two districts or something like that that can be helpful so i would recommend b over a i shared with miss cash that district a made me a little sad just because the elementary school that i went to where peggy churn was principal and others and even though that's the elementary school where the children in my neighborhood are currently assigned that would go into a different district in a and there are several other elementary schools and other schools nearby that would no longer be in my district but that's just a matter of personal preference well and then let me just ask um adam or blake whoever it's appropriate

139if we pick a particular district and then we had some specific guidance like we like bee but could you make the border along wake forest or night dale look more like a different different plan you could do that right absolutely okay thank you all right and oh go ahead and absolutely try okay oh yeah absolutely that the numbers have to balance and sometimes you may need to move something else but you can you can make a good and i you know it's it's always having the district that needs to lose the most population it's kind of you built um relationships with these communities so it's really hard to look and see this but i know they're going to be in good hands but for me b was the one that stuck out i think the

140the compactness of it um c i mean district 5 and c just just kind of made the whole thing not not work but with a i thought it was strange that i had to shrink but then i was picking up a precinct that is not in my current district so it seemed strange to shrink but also to grow and so i gravitate towards b well ms mahaffey i was keeping a tally sheet and kind of based on the comments i think i'd like to propose that maybe we consider plan b as our base map and then from there if anyone has individual suggestions for changes we use we recommend changes to plan b and that way we're all looking at the same map and have one common point of reference miss cash um i just

141so i i'm still looking at i mean i would be fine with that i i was trying to figure out the student assignment plan of feeder schools that are going on right now because we do have some complications with wake forest and north raleigh that tend to overlap on feeder schools and i don't i don't have a preference one way a or b i just want to be sure we weren't breaking up feeder schools in a district too much and i think it's because i don't really know where we landed on our last student assignment plan with feeder schools i think i'd like to talk to student assignment a little bit to see if there's any overlapping and the scott may know better than i do on that what specifically for well like when the

142wake fields and the wake forest patterns were intersecting i didn't know if the wake forest high school was taking feeder patterns out of wakefield no i think we put them you think we fixed all that wakefield i believe so um that most of that had been i guess would change reassignment too but and then my calendar option had also been something that had been moved you know to to north raleigh schools okay well i'll just i'll look i'll just ask that was um student assignment to be sure there's nothing i had i don't i may be re yeah so anyhow that's fine whatever you decide okay and madam chair if i can just make a couple other points you all know this but i just want to make sure it's it's clear in the the

143record that one neither blake nor i had any individual conversations with any of you about the substance of the redistricting plans and two we did not look at any election or partisan data in preparing the plans thank you well to if if i may miss my happy just to start suggesting a few other things i know miss cash you'd suggest you had some preferences for plan a up around wake forest if we look up there the differences between plan a and b and miss scott this is this affects you directly as well would you all be in would you all prefer to have more of those wake forest precincts together in the same district i guess with with the high school or would you prefer to have i guess would you would you like to

144have those districts sort of match the assignment areas better maybe reflect more of a than b what what assignment areas so so all right if hold on a sec let me pull up the interactive map or i can look at some others here so like if you look at all of these maps they're built on like precincts they're sort of the building blocks so if you looked at let's see do you have it there yeah yeah this is b is is there a way to pull up the interactive map and i'm sorry if we haven't done it it would be great if we could get it on the screen it's in it's in the materials or no no that's not it's not in the materials but i think for me uh useful because that one

145has the overlaid on the high school district i'm sorry overlaid on top of the high school districts and the municipalities uh you know so that that's where you know for the for the wake forest area right i was just making sure were you if you were talking about high school assignment districts or were you talking about elementary i think when you start to go into elementary yeah okay i think high school just because it's so broad compared to and we can't lose sight of the fact this is driven by voting voters and precincts and and there are election districts and i do think it helps to look toward the school communities and there's examples of that for example having in 2010 when they put moved broughton into district six it made a lot of sense

146to have it out of district five so that's just one example um so i think looking at high school communities is useful but let's not get too uh driven by it yeah i'm i'm probably more likely to look at communities of schools than probably somebody that's been in politics longer than i and look us at the bigger you've been in politics and i mean but i've never been politically involved in the whole business of the district so much yet thank you i just and i do think it's miss scott maybe miss scott has more of an input on this because you're going to be losing one high school either way and it'll either be the wake forest high school or the heritage high school um and so i i don't have a preference i just

147looked at the v map and thought it looked a little strange dipping out and picking up heritage but it makes sense because i'm picking that's what we're trying to do with this map we're trying to do the right thing with redistricting so again i am fine either way i'm fine either way just to kind of highlight where we are towards looking at plan b as your base and seeing if you're going to recommend to the consultants any tweaks or changes that the consensus of the board would ask that to be the case right so so for example what you could do and i had to pull up the map i know it's coming up here and then maybe we could look at it you know those there's two precincts in plan b the two building

148blocks that go for right now in plan b from district 3 up to heritage i think that's going to be 1912 and 1920. they sort of form that arm that sticks out or the thumb on a glove or whatever imagery you want to use if those went back if those went back to one like they are in plan a then the precincts just north of there in wake forest i think that's 03 1903 1905 1911 maybe they go to three from one and you'd have to check to see if things balanced but that would give you a nice clear line and give people good recognizable landmarks for where the district is instead of you know sometimes it curves around here curves around there people would know if you were let's see what is that road

149i was looking at the east-west one sorry if if you're north of 98 you're in district one if you're south of 98 over here you'd be or you'd be in district 3 and then if you're south of 98 you'd be in district 1 instead of you know sort of a more abstract description when will those big matters be up we can go with b and i can look at a big map and i'll be fine i'm sure tomorrow they just want the large paper maps yeah i mean are they in a closet here or do we have access to them or can we get a pdf or okay [Laughter] yeah i'm probably i i'm maybe making this bigger and if it's not if we don't need that the maps have arrived [Applause] [Music] just put

150a and b on a chair and we will yeah we'll we'll come walk around we don't need c thank you for bringing them because because one of the in looking at them at southeast they're two small you know things that seemed that stood out to me was one um that apex high school is not an eight and eight just seems a very apex district and so if there's some tweaks to the high school maybe apex high school goes into eight and [Music] fuquay verena high school can go to five and b just to to keep apex and eight and then in two and i apologize for talking both well high school really should stay in eight or two there's a lot of requests for that in the community i would say if you do anything

151to five you should put more of athens into five instead of splitting athens quite so much between uh five and nine but district five does need more kind of higher growth area too though just to keep up with the other districts and maybe miss my house don't disagree i don't know but um if i could finish my thought sure go ahead um the other and again i apologize because it it's in district 2 there are two garner schools that have been and again two is the garner district north garner middle and creech road if they could if they could stay in two and i think hopefully it won't mess up the balance of the population and i think that would move from four to two and again it by looking at the maps it just

152seemed to make more community sense but um and it retains some continuity so those would be my two specific um reflections from being at the southeast raleigh hearing ms kushner if i if i may just to add to that i saw kind of that same thing with splitting garner and that garner precinct one of the things the consultants identified in one of their maps i will say one good thing about c right is that there are some other cases where some split municipalities the split was reduced and so if you wanted to make that reduction to kind of reduce the split of garner you could potentially i don't want to speak for miss johnson hustler he knows their district better than i do but over on the other side of the district you have a

153precinct that includes part of night dale where night dale is split between one four and two and perhaps if that one went to four you would keep knightdale in nightdale instead of splitting garner they're between four and two i think i think that would balance things and knight dale had been in four had started i know it wasn't one for part of it was in one as well but it has been in four and i think it's a the other thing about bee is that the the river bend schools although i mean i love them and i i hate that they're it they they are more connected to wake forest and and the north raleigh area than to just my district six where it was more central so river bend but they they are and

154b in um either one or three i can't remember so i'm reinforcing that that doesn't need to change has river been is moving in you're saying moving out of your district to where yeah district year oh i'm sorry to four sorry from six to four i was just thinking in terms of keeping track that if we went board member at a time with suggested tweaks and then see whether there's consensus around the consultants trying to make that happen if the numbers and then go first so that we can keep track so because there's you know just a lot of different suggested changes and everybody's given input which is great but i think it'd be really helpful to see if the board sort of supports that tweak and if the majority you know sort of supports

155it then that the consultants and adam would have direction yeah let's try to change b to make that happen um would just be one suggestion that's great because then i can just agree with mr hagerty and ms kushner and two is done well i think that's okay but i'm not i'm not sure i'm going to understand when they start saying taking this and this and this well if i could kind of synthesize what mr bloomberg was suggesting but not invalidate anything that miss kushner said i heard maybe four specific areas um and then what i propose if chair mahaffey would be amenable to it is we've talked about maybe some changes around wake forest between one and three we've talked about maybe some changes around apex there was some change and it was debated about

156the area around fuquay high school and then we've talked about those two district two changes to reduce some of the splits if you follow mr bloomberg's suggestion and just let anybody bring up any other changes they have then maybe if we could take a brief like five or ten minute recess and let folks look at the maps and some of those feeder patterns it might help inform their decisions and then we could come back and then just consider what the board thinks of each specific suggestion and then that way we would have clear guidance for the consultants miss cash i don't know i mean i'm just that's a lot of different changes to look at tanaya and i'm trying it's important for me to look at the maps and understand them i'm not sure the

157changes around wake forest if we keep the heritage in three than probably the wake forest i don't know i can look at it again now these new changes i do want to look at the map again but i don't know if i want to look at it and make those decisions tonight but you guys know your districts i guess well our boat is we're not we're providing direction tonight our vote is either the 15th or potentially a special called board meeting in order to do that so we do have we are going to be revisiting this um but i think you know for if we want to take five minutes and just look and then we'll just come back we heard a lot of proposed changes and then we can process and and take a

158look and come right back and and discuss so let's do that okay oh uh right okay all right let's get back to it thank you for the time all right so we are going to round robin again we'll go in the same order and if there are no changes to your previous thoughts then that's okay just let us know miss carter um i you want me to speak to the whole all nine districts or just my district i'm going to clarify on that first let's go with your district or both yeah we'll go with both but specifically district nine for you okay i just i want to clarify for it yeah um so for me i'm i support how district nine looks in option b i know there's the concern about apex high but i

159also know we were looking up there and talking about the possible impact then on how then they would balance that if that was just because of the number wise where district 9 sits but you know i'll defer as well to you jeremy happy on that but that's my two cents and then we were looking at and for others in the other districts i personally would defer if you have a preference and it's your district i mean that's where i stand on that because i look at it and there are some things that look a little strange but when we were up here talking there were some explanations being given about the again about the number and the balance and then possible how there's another community that's connected to that kind of thing so i don't

160know if that's helpful or not but that's not what it is miss cash yeah i i don't totally care between a and b um i think i think b heather and i spoke about some things that made sense that b might be better and maybe maybe there's a little part of um there's a little part above nb that we might want to move around i think heather and i should talk a little more and break it off of b okay so kind of getting that cleaner line between district 3 and district 1 should the numbers allow it if the number's allowed and see how we we can work on that together okay miss johnson hustler well as i said i i feel i'm you know again a little selfish because i'm a little bit i

161feel a little bit easier to manage however i do have to say for me personally which dr martin said earlier but i'm not sure that he said it for this purpose but for me reminding us that splitting splitting municipalities which i've spent my entire time getting to know garner so of course the recommendation that both uh mr mahaffey and miss kushner made to move 16 which cr which is mostly creech road which is currently the split precinct but it's also i mean one half of creature road is garnering literally the other back half as raleigh so so if i had to make a change i would do that because it would allow me to have all of the municipality of garner which could actually happen in a or b depending on which one my colleagues

162like the best for their districts okay miss scott and and again i don't have a strong preference between a and b but i do i i think hearing it's important to me to hear also the feedback from my colleagues which which for multiple reasons favor b over a so going with that i do i do think it would be a great opportunity since we're looking at you know potentially touching some precincts that had not looked like they were going to be impacted before if we have the opportunity to put put to ask for potential changes to be made to make things look a little more clear than that would give miss cash plus and that's a legacy that i would love to pass on to the future so if anything i would minimize the apex

163holly springs and increase the athens connection that said i would not drastically change because i think that could cause more disruption ms kushner um i would um again say that i think b is it would be the great base map and and given the um whatever if any changes miss scott and miss cash want to make and and miss johnson hostler i'm i think that would would be ideal mr haggerty um again i i like plan b i don't have any changes or anything to recommend to district seven in terms of how it's drawn um i do think we can reduce the splitting of some municipalities in some areas like we talked about in district two so i'd lend my voice and my endorsement to that and you know any any changes or map we

164bring up you know i i'm not going to tell anybody else what i think they should do in their districts again i think there are some changes you could make to make some of the lines a little more clear but i'm not going to i'm not going to fight you on it if you don't want to do it so thank you and then again my preference is b i'm sad to lose apex high school but i also know that i have to lose a lot in my district and i would be sad to lose any high school so if it would be possible great and if it's not possible i fully understand and you know i'll still find ways to connect with the cougar community right ms carter you you still let me come yeah

165all right so um but thank you all for this i know this is a 10-year process we've seen how our communities can grow over the years and certainly we have heard some feedback from the community whether formal or informal and we do have to discuss the method of election that we get it right and obviously as you all have recognized every change can can have a cascading effect doesn't always happen and and what what we will do is we'll reach consensus on what you're asking us to to look at blake will look at it and we will let you know we can do this check or we can't do this and here's why and i think that it certainly would be my goal to to have a plan uh that that does as much of

166of what you've asked as it possibly can do along with the proposed resolution at your next meeting or if we need to say to you we can't make these changes and here is why then we would come back with plan b and of course it's up to the board what it wishes to do but that i think that's how we would approach it just to keep keep keep keep things moving along so we overwhelmingly heard plan b and if you can make these changes that's great and if not we understand that right mr haggerty thank you so i know in order to make redistricting real right we'll have to pass a resolution and the content of the resolution is going to have to be very specific in terms of like which voting blocks are going

167to constitute which particular district so understanding that we're not voting today but if we're asking for changes and then we're going to review those changes and then we may or may not accept those changes the more we delay the harder it's going to be for adam and blake to come up with the document that we will need to actually vote on so if understanding that i've heard you know you would like more time to look at some of these i would like to put the idea forth that we come back a week from now on march the 8th for a special meeting just on redistricting so that we can hear what if that timeline will work for the consultants what that final plan might look like so that we could have a final vote on

168the 15th rather than looking at something on the 15th and maybe liking it maybe not liking it and then pushing that vote in towards april you know we're the last local government i think in wake county to adopt a redistricting plan and i know it's a long time before filing but i know there's a lot of citizens there's a lot of people in the community that have been looking for this and been waiting for this and so understanding good reasons for delay i'd like to propose that we come back a week from now see a final map so that we can vote on the 15th and move forward all right and let's give folks time to look at their calendars before we decide on that i think that's a great proposal but let's save that

169decision can i modify that recommendation we've got a relatively light facilities agenda we had talked about doing a more off-site thing but we already have the facilities committee meeting from three to five on wednesday and i believe that and and we haven't completely followed up but mr strickland and i talked briefly i have little doubt that we could probably condense what we're talking about to an hour and so we've already got that three to five blocked out i would say there to either the three to four or four to five if that would work for folks okay so just to be clear which day would that be for everyone that would be wednesday the ninth day the ninth so i'm we're act tuesday's much better for us than wednesday i'm sorry to say yeah and

170other counties as well yeah i actually don't think that there's going to be a lot of variation i from what we've talked about there's nothing dramatic going to come back i think it basically needs to say sort of here it is yes or no i think the board needs to sort of don't need them we do need them but i don't think it's they could be remote they could be faces on the screen maybe we'll see um they're going to come back with the recommendation but we can see that fairly easily on tables and if they were remote they could have the interactive map and they could show you on there like what these change would look like all right well we will yeah all right let's come back to that discussion let's move forward

171with this summary and then we will move on to method of election and then we will go on to next steps be it the eighth or the 9th thank you so this has been very helpful uh the the clearest possible modification that i'm hearing is and it seems to be sort of a one precinct for another is this the garner nightdale uh that would affect the district two in district four um and i'm seeing nods i i we looked at that during the break i think i have a good understanding of what that would entail as we've said one of those was a divided precinct one is an entire precinct so the populations may not line up but um i understand that one the um as far as between districts three in districts one am

172i understanding that board member scott and board member cash would want to confer and propose something and the rest of the board is okay with letting them make a proposal and then i would get that in in writing or something is that i'm seeing i'm seeing nodding heads but i i haven't received as as i've understood there's not a clear okay but but the the board is okay with uh the representatives of those two districts yes requesting something if they decide to do so that would be shared with the whole board um and obviously in enough time so that you can incorporate it how much time would you need to be able to incorporate it if a meeting was going to happen next either tuesday or wednesday i think two days would be fine i

173uh will not be able to work on this until thursday or friday so and i imagine the materials are going to be due on friday so i will make a point of it shouldn't take long um i think this time we they may not be able to do it for a special meeting but yes and then the uh holly springs and apex whether that um less of the holly springs in apex area b in district five and more of athens and district 5 meaning that there's a chance for district 8 to get more of apex and that would depend on the numbers i know it's such a large district that has to shrink because we all moved here from somewhere else or most of us did in the past 10 years i guess so i

174mean if it's possible great and if it's not i fully understand and um it i wouldn't put it high on your priority list yeah i thought we'd i thought the consensus would there was not consensus around that but i could be no i didn't didn't really well i think there are two different things right i think we heard athens and i think we heard apex so i'll let dr martin speak to the athens portion i mean i think what we all recognize is precincts have funky lines too and i have spent more time looking at municipalities and uh at high schools rather than precincts so i recognized that precinct lines probably could have done some of that kind of funkiness so i'm with miss mahaffey this that is not high priority it's probably worth a

175look at to see if you know there's something that can be done but it's not a high priority okay any other proposed modifications those are the ones that that i had reflected here in my notes i think that was it okay yeah miss johnson hostlers yeah yeah okay okay yes okay sorry i should have turned my mic all right we're getting to that after this and i would just say miss scott and miss cash if you can get your written request to the superintendent and miss allen by email and then they can send that to us and copy the rest of the board what's that thursday my understanding was that the idea is to have a meeting next week and not on the 15th if we're if we're aiming for the 15. no i think

176we're we're aiming for the 8th or the 9th if we get those maps on the 8th or the 9th and then you know i think bring us back map b and then the map b plus or b 2.0 and then we'll decide from there but i think we need to adopt something then and we need to get something by the to the board of elections sooner rather than later the 15th being the absolute latest date all right julie if we can get the method of election revised presentation up so board members in in your materials i think there are two versions of this powerpoint we're going to look at the one that says revised or corrected or something along those lines and so yeah so this is a a separate but related topic uh and

177and it's about how the board is elected the system or the method of election if we can just go ahead to the next slide which is the timeline i'm going to do a brief walk down down the history of elections in the school system and then we'll land on where we are now and where we need to move forward so 1975 the city and county schools merged there were nine single-member districts created six-year term length they were staggered odd year elections and the non-partisan primary method was used so that was the first system for the wake county merged board of education in 1977 a local act was passed by the general assembly kept nine single member districts four-year term length staggered odd year election and the non-partisan primary method 1981 another local act redrew the

178districts after the census the general assembly did that as opposed to the board i'm not sure why but that's what happened and the system was switched to the non-partisan runoff method that system was in effect until 2013 in that year the general assembly passed a law that created still nine districts but it was a system where there were seven districts plus two regional super districts there were four year terms staggered even year elections and changed to the nonpartisan plurality method as you all know there was litigation that challenged that 2013 law was first heard in the federal district court which upheld the law the fourth circuit court of appeals struck down the district plan as unconstitutional it then went back to the district court to adopt a remedial plan and when you look through the

179materials related to the case the the court was clear that not all of that 2013 law was struck down just the plan the actual redistricting plan the districts themselves were struck down the district court had to deal with the fact that there was this ongoing litigation there was an election that was about to occur and it was the general assembly's job to craft a constitutional plan and they didn't do so and so the court had this very difficult decision to make where the deadlines were coming an election needed to be held and so judge dever crafted a system he used nine single-member districts a two-year term length and and that was for this very specific period to try to keep an orderly system of elections and to give time to allow the general assembly to

180to adopt a new plan there were non-staggered even-year elections again he felt like it was important that all voters in wake county be able to vote in that election and that is why all seats were up and he invited the general assembly to adopt a plan which again has not happened you all know that there's legislation that's pending in the general assembly it has it has not been adopted and right now all seats are up for election in 2022 and the interim plan has expired because it says in the interim plan over and over again until the general assembly adopts a constitutional plan that hasn't happened or until the return of the 2020 census that has happened and so that creates this environment where it's it's not clear what governs but we are going to

181walk through this systematically and and give our best analysis as to what the law says and to invite or suggest that you as the board not decide because you don't have the authority to decide but to make a suggestion or proposal to the board of elections saying this is what we believe the law says this is why and then it's up to you board of elections to run the elections so if we can move to the key legal principles slide and i've hinted at this already you do have the authority to redraw your districts that's what we've been doing you don't need approval from anyone else to do that but you don't have independent authority to determine your method of elections we're in uncharted waters because of the reasons i just discussed and we're going

182to give our best interpretation based on the statutes and the cases and our starting point is session law 2013-110 which was struck down but only in part and so what we're trying to do is parse out which portions of that wall remain in effect but leaving the rest the part that is struck down to the side which again is the districts or the districting plan itself all right if we can move to the next slide we're going to just walk through the the different factors and i will share our best legal interpretation and then we can certainly discuss so the first is nonpartisan the elections for the wake county board of education have always been nonpartisan including in session law so our best legal interpretation is certainly that elections remain nonpartisan there's really no reason

183to think otherwise but we're just trying to cover all the bases next slide please nonpartisan primary should also say runoff that was in effect and nonpartisan plurality the primary or runoff methods were used up until 2013 the 2013 law switched to the plurality method which has been used ever since and nothing about the court decision suggested that the plurality method was unconstitutional or was called into question really at all in the litigation so our best legal interpretation was that is that the elections would remain via the plurality method under that 2013 law next slide please even versus odd year elections from 1975 to 2013 elections were in odd years session law 2013 110 changed it to even years again nothing about the court decisions suggested that there was any issue or constitutional problem with even

184year elections and so our best legal interpretation is that the elections should remain in even years term length there were six year terms initially after merger for a short year term i would say that the the bulk of the history of the school district there'd been four-year terms except for that remedial period that was a very specific there's a very specific purpose to that and we believe that the best legal interpretation is for your terms based on the long history combined with the fact that the two-year terms were again for a specific remedial purpose there's nothing about the about the the cases or the statutes that suggest that four-year terms in any way are are unconstitutional so that would be our best interpretation stagger terms so some version of staggered terms have been in effect

185since 1975 again except during the remedial period for the reasons i discussed session law 2013-110 included stagger terms the stagger was based on the 7-2 regional super districts but nevertheless there were staggered terms in that law and again nothing about the court decision suggested that any that staggered terms were unconstitutional in any way so our best legal interpretation would be that stagger terms be in effect we can go to the next slide so you can see the text is a lot smaller on this one because this one's a little bit more complicated and so this is the issue of well how do we get to stagger terms because where we are now is you're all up for election and to create a stagger you need to to do some things in order to get onto

186that staggered framework and there are a number of ways to do it there's there's really nothing in the court decisions that give any specific guidance about it but i would say that a common approach in general to create a stagger from when everybody's starting at the same place to create a stagger is to let it is to elect some number of districts for a two-year term and some number of districts for a four-year term and then subsequently all elections would be for a four-year term and that essentially creates a runway to the stagger as i sometimes refer to it it's not the only way but i think it's the most common and favored approach anytime you get into extending terms there can be complications with that and so one possible suggestion is to go the

187two four-year route that then raises the question of how do you decide who gets a two-year term and who gets a four-year term again there's no specific guidance on this but one option that you could suggest and there are other options but this option almost uses a mirror approach to session law 2013-110 and in that law districts one two seven and nine were elected for three-year terms or shorter than normal terms shorter than four years districts three four five six and eight were elected for five year terms or longer than normal and the reason that you have that three five model is that the general assembly was was taking you from an odd year stagger to get you onto an even year stagger so again this option that that could be considered is to take

188the districts that were elected to the three-year or shorter terms under session law 2013-110 and have those districts be elected to four-year or longer terms in 2022 and then the districts three four five six and eight which were elected to five year terms could receive two year or shorter terms this year to create the stagger now i want to be clear just a minor technicality yes the the the ones to five years were not elected to five-year terms terms were extended by one year okay decreasing reflected to four-year terms the general assembly extended the term right right that is a technicality that to some people i think would be significant yeah okay thank you dr martin uh so again i do want to be clear that that this is this is an option this is

189a model there's nowhere in the law that says it needs to be done this way you could uh you could take the approach of saying that we our interpretation is that the seat should be staggered and and leave it at that the board will leave it for the board of elections to decide you could give them this option and say this is merely an option you can consider other options but obviously i think it's becoming clear that that this this particular topic of creating the stagger it's just a little bit more complicated because there's no binding law or precedent that's really saying this is how you need to do this so next steps my recommendation would be that if we're going to take this issue on and we're going to make suggestions to the board

190of elections provide them options that we could fold that into the redistricting resolution so it's one package that basically says here are new districts and here's what we propose we'd forward that onto the board of elections and then i think we all realize that that ultimately they decide how the election is going to be run they administer the election uh and we're clear that we are not we are not deciding how the election should be run we are saying these are our interpretations and our proposals or recommendations so i will close there and be happy to answer any questions ms kushner thank you and thank you mr mitchell i think um it's really critical to get to a staggered terms and i think your method of getting there is the cleanest that that we could

191propose to the board of elections so i think all the suggestions are sound and um i hope that we can expedite this so that the board of elections can then get these settled so thank you for bringing this and um i i'm grateful for the detail miss carter i agree with that in particular on how to get to staggered terms because i know you know i like the fact that you're saying there's no no clear based upon the previous law so i do appreciate that and do agree with the interpretations that have been provided and i like the fact you relying on what the previous law was before this remediation was fun so thank you further questions or comments ms cash i saw yours first um you did a good job i am very disappointed

192that we have we have it on even years but then again i don't know if this board is nonpartisan so much anymore so i think every time you put a non-partisan election on even years you're making it a partisan election and i may be the only one that thinks that but i just remember that we used to talk about that being such a high quality for a non-partisan board because otherwise people don't really know what they're voting for when they hit that part of the ticket unless they've gotten a slate from a party so it's a huge disappointment we won't have it on odd years but i know that apparently that's not going to be a possibility so it's just disappointing to me i just think it's bad for a non-partisan board to be on

193those even years thank you miss cash mr hegarty thank you and you know miss cash to your credit and our credit i mean we went to the appropriate agency the legislature to try to get them to change it right and this board came back and endorsed a plan that would have gotten us back to those odd-numbered elections and we saw what we got back right so even though even though we can't reason that's probably true well what i'm saying is that even though we can't change we don't have the power to change it now that's not to say that it can't change in the future right well we'll have to keep working at it i i just wanted to commend um adam blake again especially adam this is a very complicated issue i thought you've

194analyzed it very well i think the timeline really explains kind of how we got to where we are and this is something that can be very confusing it can be very complicated especially for people that weren't here didn't see the history didn't follow it but i mean i concur we had a stagger and we had four-year terms in the original legislation a new bill was passed that also had four-year terms and also had a stagger and then we had the judicial order that temporarily removed it until there was either legislative action or what was it the legislative action or the 2020 census right and so we've arrived at that time so it seems clear to me if you fall back to the statute that's on the books and where we are we should have the

195stagger we should have the four years but you're right without any statutory power to extend terms of that any statutory power to shorten terms i think the only only way we can proceed is to give it to the board of elections and have them resolve it i know that the county commissioners also had like their terms set in their resolution that they did for redistricting so i think it's perfectly appropriate that we put our request in the same resolution that we send to the board of elections i appreciate you sharing requests and i think it's important that we recognize who has the authority and who doesn't and i appreciate the suggestion for staggering the terms i think giving a proposal will help and of course you know folks at the board of elections are welcome

196to do with it as they see fit but i think if we provide clear direction to them there's at least some effort that we put in they don't have to reinvent the wheel so thank you for the work that you've done adam and thank you blake any further questions comments it seems like there's a solid consensus that that for adam to be able to incorporate that into the resolution once the board does it so i don't see any need since you're not actually voting on the resolution tonight to do more unless you see otherwise adam no i i feel like i've received clear direction all right thank you and so board members our choices are to do this on tuesday the 8th which works for our consultants but we don't have anything else on the

197calendar or piggybackit with facilities dr martin has graciously offered us either the hour of three to four or four to five on wednesday the ninth we could just quickly go through what your preference is we'll change it up and start with ms scott starting with me yeah tuesday or wednesday um i'm so sorry i had my calendar up uh either i'm indifferent so i'll defer to someone who has a difficult schedule all right dr martin i can make either work i would much prefer it wednesday which is already scheduled to consolidate meetings okay miss kushner i am the same i prefer wednesday to consolidate mr hegarty tuesday i i can do tuesdays i can do either of the two days as well so long as the consultants can be there even if it's remote we

198can make wednesday work okay miss johnson hossler yeah i don't have a preference fortunately i checked the calendar and surprisingly i could do it either wow miss cash i can do either okay miss carter i could do either but i would prefer wednesday since we already have that time so okay we heard very clearly a preference for wednesday and so blake will definitely be remote if i can change things around i will be here but i will definitely be remote if i cannot be here okay so mr mitchell would three to four or four to five work better with your uh running around okay um so i will defer to dr martin to decide what that time is going to be with our facilities team um let's have facilities go at three and then they

199can go home a little early okay so miss allen we will have a special called meeting on wednesday the ninth from four to five to discuss uh the next steps and i believe the praises can kind of be the same as to what we have today so thank you very much for coming and we look forward to hearing from you next week and ms scott and miss cash will get that information to you as soon as possible thank you very much and i may be able to get something to you on friday wonderful that would make our staff very happy you can enjoy your weekends more with other maps to look at absolutely thank you thank you very much next on our agenda is the letters for intervention in aig contract that's language essentials for

200teachers of reading and spelling mr cook thank you for staying with us where else would i go so good evening chair mahaffey superintendent more members of the board staff is requesting contract approval for language essentials for teachers of reading and spelling or letters as it's commonly known professional learning for both elementary intervention and aig teachers as outlined in session law 2021-8 senate bill 387 the north carolina department of public instruction early literacy program is required to provide a training program to educators and administrators working with children in pre-k through fifth grade to ensure instruction grounded in the science of reading and outcomes promoting reading achievement in students in alignment with this legislation the state of north carolina will provide training to pre-k 5 teachers special education teachers ell teachers and one instructional support specialist at

201the elementary level the state contract does not include elementary intervention in aig teachers the wake county public school system seeks to include this group of teachers in this training as we believe they are critical stakeholders in the elementary school structure for supporting literacy instruction for all students so to that end we are requesting board approval of the contract for professional learning and i'm of course happy to answer any questions or share additional information thank you mr cook before we move to discussion do we have a motion to approve this contract ms kushner chairman happy i move approval of the letters contract for intervention in aig second okay second we have a motion in a second and miss cash i'm going to turn this over to you well i just i i'm sorry i was not

202here on the 15th um and um for the work session which i wish i had but i had read through most of the presentation my concern was when it was brought to us on a process today it said aig and i'm always a little concerned about us acting like we're putting half and 400 and some thousand dollars into aig even though it's an intervention really and i think at dr mcfarland i spoke today a little bit about interventions helping with aig children but the funding that i'm concerned about for aig children is the one that addresses those the top of their classes that are not being challenged and are being are leaving and so i just don't want it to look like we're funding aig services and i don't think intervention the intervention piece is

203funding aig services that was my concern and it still is so i can i can respond to that miss cash um so a couple of things i think that i'll share um first of all i i think it is fair to say that this is an investment um in our aig program um although technically i think part of your question may relate to this this is not coming from aig funding this is coming out of title ii dollars which are targeted for the specific purpose of professional learning and teacher training and i think it's i think it's a fair question too in terms of um you know the the intent of letters and reading instruction and i think one of the things that we believe strongly and this even ties a little bit back to

204our conversation and presentation with the student achievement committee yesterday is that we do have an obligation to meet students where they are um i think we've we've been in front of the board and had many discussions over the past six to eight months and we'll be back in a couple of months about aig programming and some of the the efforts that we're engaged in right now with hanover research to provide a comprehensive kind of programmatic review of that program to identify where we can improve but i think a couple of things are important to point out number one and i've written some things now so forgive me letters is not just about intervention for the most struggling readers it's about teaching and learning for all readers of all levels so i think that's a misnomer

205sometimes where folks kind of assume and presume that once we get a kid to the third grade and they can read we cut them loose and they're done and the reality is is that is that is a process that never stops in many ways and so for example with our aig classrooms the pedagogy the instructional practice that our aig teachers and our intervention teachers and the rest of our teachers and instructors in elementary school they'll be able to better meet the needs of individual students as they learn and strengthen their own reading skills so for example you know a third or fourth grade aig identified student who by the way may or may not be identified as aig in reading right they could be identified for math but not reading but they would be able

206to have practice and structure in a way that they might not be able to get otherwise teachers would be able to refine their their practice you know for lack of a better description once a student is able to read words accurately then they're able to really dig into comprehension and that can happen for an aig identified student as much as it can for any other student who may or may not be identified i think another thing that we would mention while an aig student may not struggle with word recognition or decoding they can still have impediments to the the learning of reading into their own literacy journey and so i think whether or not for example a student is identified with dyslexia or has that type of a struggle this this learning framework letters would

207provide teachers with the ability and some training and tools to better meet those learner needs and so i don't know that we would necessarily try to categorize this as say hey look we're spending these dollars towards aig specifically it's more of making sure we're not leaving aig and intervention out so that all of our instructors at the elementary school level are on the same page in terms of the pedagogy the instructional practice they're providing to students and i think we felt like that was really really important um which is the reason we wanted to include them in the training starting this spring felt like i needed to bring up the fact that i didn't i didn't really like the aig attached to the prices and i think we heard clearly in our budget discussions that

208we recognize the need for more aig exclusive funding as we move forward as well are there any other questions or comments not directly on this just a note of appreciation and observation i think we've all talked about you know that it's time to look at our aig funding understanding that our state money is limited and just trying to come up with new and creative ways we can to make progress on that issue and not letting this slip until just the next time the aig plan rolls around and that being the next time we talk about it so i appreciate this discussion thank you yes sir all right seeing no further hands up all in favor of approving this contract for letters and all of the things that went with it sorry letters for intervention in

209aig please signify by a sign of i any opposed nay all right thank you very much mr cook all right thank you all right next if we could get a motion to approve the hr recommendations that were done during the previous closed session chair mahaffey i'd like to move that we approve the hr recommendations from the prior closed session second all right do we have a motion in a second any discussion all those in favor signify by sign of eye any opposed nay all right mr blumber you have another settlement announcement the board has entered into a settlement agreement resolving claims raised in the matter of fc by and through his parents kc and kac versus wake county public school system 21 edc 03525 pursuant to the agreement petitioners release any and all special education

210claims arising from the allegations of the petition and claims regarding educational services through june 2022 and the board will pay a total of 150 000 for any and all costs that were could have been sought pertaining to the underlying claims that's my announcement this evening all right thank you mr blumberg at this time i will entertain a motion to adjourn second all right thank you dr martin and miss johnson hostler any discussion all in favor please say aye any opposed nay with that we are adjourned thank you all very much you