Board Meeting 7-20-21

001oh say good evening welcome everyone to our wake county board of education uh meeting it's july 20th calling this meeting to order at 5 45 we do have a quorum all board members here president along with superintendent moore you can stand with me as we recite the pledge of allegiance for which it stands on a nation under god indivisible with liberty again i want to welcome everyone thank you for being with us and joining with us here uh those that are here in the boardroom physically and those that are joining us virtually i appreciate your patience as we try to get everyone in in a safe and orderly fashion and so we will get started with our agenda starting with superintendent's comments so i'll turn over to you superintend more thank you chair sutton and

002board members i'll start by congratulating three enloe high school students who recently received national recognition for pioneering technical technological innovations in may daniel shen a rising senior at enlo won a 50 000 award from the regeneron international science and engineering fair for his development of an ai powered facial cue control module his innovation has been adapted by medical researchers in sepsis shock diagnosis and by meteorologists attempting to predict hurricanes and last month rising enlo juniors lydia owens and lindsay templeton were among the national lenovo scholar network mobile app competition winners their app called destigmatizing health care provides students of diverse backgrounds with easy access to information on mental health and sexual health resources this marked the fifth straight year that students from enlo's bioscience academy placed in the top five of the lenovo app competition

003nationally our strategic plan core beliefs compel us to provide students with relevant rigorous and meaningful learning these remarkable young people demonstrate what's possible when we deliver on that promise their ingenuity is truly making the world a better place producing students who are capable of such innovations requires teachers well-versed in stem and project-based learning 47 teachers from 18 of our schools recently honed those skills as part of their annual summer stem professional development program organized by wake ed partnership teachers got to work with companies such as ibm credit suisse basf sas john deere and novazymes on a variety of projects equipping them with modules experiments and design process activities they can take back to the classroom as one example teachers participated in a science lab experiment with novazymes to look at the impact of enzymes in

004laundry detergents the goal is for each teacher to embed at least one of their activities into a project-based learning unit with students this school year i'm grateful to wake ed partnership and all their business partners for sharing their expertise to the benefit of our teachers and ultimately our students congratulations to two recent graduates for being added to this year's list of national merit scholarship recipients athens drive high school graduate sarah thomas and fuquay marina high school graduate luke trexler were among the 1 000 national recipients recently announced they joined 13 other wcps students who received this prestigious scholarship earlier this summer just to become a semi-finalist students have to place in the top 1 percent in their state on a qualifying test for the chance to win the 2500 scholarship students must submit an application

005and essay detailing not only their academic achievements but also their leadership and community service roles out of the roughly 15 000 students who become national finalists only a few thousand earned scholarships congratulations again to sarah and luke on this high honor finally i want to recognize darren coe our district's director of athletics who was recently named the athletic director of the year by the north carolina athletic directors association the ncada cited his leadership on state and national levels he has served as president and as board member for the state association he currently serves as the liaison to the national interscholastic athletic administrators association for which he has co-authored several national position statements on such issues as gender non-discrimination and equity and inclusion in particular darren was hailed for successfully leading the safe return to athletic

006participation amid the covet 19 pandemic he led a cohort of large school system administrators in shaping policies and serving as a support system for coaches and administrators struggling for answers athletic participation was a crucial lifeline for the social emotional well-being of many students throughout the pandemic darren working with health services and other district leaders implemented protocols that allowed for maximum participation while keeping student health and safety as a top priority he is an asset not only to our coaches and student athletes but also to his colleagues across the state and nation congratulations darren on this well-deserved recognition and that concludes my comments thank you superintendent moore for those comments and congratulations to mr cove and all those that were a part of your comments i want to welcome everyone back particularly our colleagues welcome you

007back to the table and to our meetings it's been a busy summer time we normally take off one of our meetings obviously we meet twice a month but during that first meeting which often falls during the first week of july independence holiday we take that time off and the district shuts down so we are glad to be back glad to have you all back and welcome to those that are here during that time of the break we know that uh death is something that is expected but is often untimely uh and during the course of the last uh three weeks or four weeks or so that we have been away we have had a number of untimely deaths and departures from our wake county family both here in the community students as well as some

008of our staff a number of accidents as well and so i just ask that you all join me in this moment in a time of silence a moment of silence for those that we have lost over the last few weeks thank you for that and our thoughts and prayers are with those families who have suffered and suffer their loss during this time this time i'll go into a board member comment starting with vice chairman hat thank you chair sutton um it is the start of our new academic year our year-round programs are going and thriving and although this is a routine that many of our year-round schools are familiar with this year it's a little bit different and for our traditional schools they are working on their summer school program and hearing a lot of

009positive things coming out of that and certainly want to extend gratitude for all of our staff members faculty that have been a part of that of that extended learning program especially our our teaching assistants our bus drivers and our cafeteria workers who are not only providing meals for our students that are in school but also working with wake county to provide meals for those students who depend on them while school is out so thank you all very much gonna go to my uh my right this time and so i'll start with uh johnson hosler i just want to go and reckon and say i did love that show i literally i if i could sing i would have led with singing the words along but i can't sing so i will spare you all but

010what a nice little break in there and the beauty is i actually don't have any public comments so i think that's a great note for me to end on is you didn't have to hear me sing thank you thank you miss johnson hosta mrs cash thank you um i'll just uh echo miss mahaffey's words about the year-round program starting i think they're doing a good job of getting going and it is an unusual year so i appreciate that and also the summer learning program i have heard really really good things about that and i've heard from parents that is doing well and i appreciate all the people that put that together as well as teachers and staff that have worked hard to get our students to recoup some of the learning that was lost um

011and also i just want to say that yeah i appreciate also the fact of mentioning the deaths on we've had quite a few and thank you chair sutton for the moment of silence um wakefield high school did lose a student and it's been a rough year for them a rough summer and so it's always hard when we lose people that are in our community as well as our family and then i also want to mention to the people in the public that you know we are getting hundreds of emails on both sides of the subject of math so we're getting hundreds on each side and i usually pride myself on responding to everybody but at this point there's so many i don't know that i could respond to everybody but we are definitely reading them

012and i appreciate your input thank you thank you mrs cash mr hagerty like the others in deference to the full house tonight i'm gonna wave any comments so we'll have more time for them thank you sir mrs carter all right thank you i just wanted to speak because i've been going around too quickly about the summer learning camps i've gone to nine of the schools in my district that are hosting the camps and i cannot speak enough about the phenomenal work that i have seen of the school staff and i've heard the positives i wanted to share very appreciative of the incentives that were passed by the board and recommended by staff to help you know with their summer many of them work anyway for the summer and this provided them something very economical and

013doing what they love so i just wanted to pass that on and just thank you to the staff and just it's been great to see so many students from elementary to high school enjoying learning and enjoying being in school and i think it's great just to you know quick reminder that yes learning can be fun whether you're in elementary school whether you're in 12th grade so that's it thank you thank you mrs carter coming around mr scott thank you and good evening and i did want to also extend my condolences to the family and to everyone who knew ms diane pridgeon who also who passed away unexpectedly this summer she was a principal at forestville road elementary school for many years and then continued to be interim principal extraordinaire throughout the district and she was

014also a passionate advocate for students in eastern wake but but really all students she was very student centered in the work that she did in was just a phenomenal phenomenal person and i know she will be missed for some time but uh the the positive impact that she had on so many people who she inspired is something that will benefit indefinitely and i also wanted to congratulate our multi-track your own schools for the start of their school year it was kind of like the scene from the the blues brothers where john belushi was saying there was a flood locus i mean the start of the school year there was a hurricane power schools was not working which was the state that wasn't i mean it was just one thing after another and i have a

015feeling that all of those students for the most part had a great first day because of the enthusiasm of our principles and the dedication of all the people who work to make to make that happen to bring them to their schools and to make sure they have a good time when they're in them so i just want to extend my gratitude to all of our schools and i see our modified calendar staff are getting ready to welcome back their students so just a lot of exciting things happening in the district thank you thank you mr scott dr martin thank you i too want to congratulate all the year-round schools that have started and i really wish you the best in this in in the school year um the other comments that i'll make as i've

016tried to do uh since the pandemic is just try to keep people up to date on what the current statistics are and as of last night the data reported on the wake county uh health department's website when you take that into an average seven day rolling average the case rate is up to 47.7 cases of covid per 100 000 population here in wake county sadly that is up 2.8 times what it was three weeks ago when you go to the north carolina department of health and human services website that data is broken down as to age cohorts because it's statewide it's a week delayed so this came from a slightly earlier time which means the numbers are higher than they are here today but from that we learned that the five to nine year old

017population which is approximately our elementary school population is at 61.7 cases per hundred thousand population the 10 to 14 year olds which is approximately our middle school population is at 70.5 cases per 100 000 population and our high school uh approximate high school the 15 to 17 year olds are at 49.9 per hundred thousand to put that deaths are not included deaths are not uh the biggest issue here and we don't need to respond uh here i'm just giving the information um just to put those numbers into context the cdc suggests that a infectivity rate of 10 to 49 cases per 100 000 in a week is considered moderate transmission and a rate of 50 to 99 is considered substantial uh transmission so all of our school-age populations have hit that substantial which is the

018second highest category and it's going up and we're close to that for our county-wide population the last point of reference it's worth noting is that our five to nine year olds make up six percent of the wake county population but they make up eight percent of wake county's coveted cases the 10 to 14 year olds make up 6.8 percent of wake county's population but 10.5 percent of the coveted cases and the high schoolers are pretty close to a number of cases matching the percentage of their population but our middle schoolers and elementary schoolers are seeing a case rate that is about 2 percent higher than their population rate so that's the current status we all want to see this pandemic come to an end to do that get vaccinated and take all prep to end

019this pandemic we just all need to make sure that we get vaccinated and take all appropriate precautions to keep each other and ourselves safe thank you dr martin lima asked please refrain from any outbursts of of any kind if i have to ask again i'll ask you to be removed from the room thank you mrs kushner thank you chair sutton to my colleagues i'll echo the congratulations to our teachers who are starting year-round calendar after coming off a very stressful years and to those who are doing the summer learning i was able to go to lacey elementary today and read to a class of rising fifth graders they were working hard and they were coming from too lacey from not only lacey but olds and con elementary schools and the staffs had also combined from

020those three schools so it really was a testament to a comprehensive school system coming together to address the needs of kids who really need the extra camp this summer and i got to read what the road said which is a very inspiring book by cleo wade i recommend it to everyone they were pretty talkative groups so they asked me to bring these suggestions that we should have spaghetti and meatballs during lunch sometimes and pancakes for breakfast every day would be great so i appreciate the students feedback and look forward to feedback tonight thank you see mrs deluca here so um i'm glad that you are here to hear their feedback ma'am thank you thank you ms kushner that concludes our uh information board member comments uh thank you for those uh comments and also the

021comment relief from a few boyfriends as well appreciate it uh at this time before i ask for approval of the meeting agenda i do want to ask that we move one item from consent to action uh this is an item under uh consent on the facilities uh the bids for maintenance and operations custodial contracts there were a few contracts that were inadvertently left off of the agenda earlier so we're moving that item to action so that if any board members have any questions about those contracts we can do so during that time or the action again this is an item under consent under the facilities contracts bids for maintenance and operations custodial contracts moving that item from consent to action with that change amendment if i can ask for a motion to approve tonight's agenda

022as amended chair sutton i make a motion we approve the agenda with amendments and if i could just add with the understanding that the hr appointments can happen before you go back into closed session since they've already been discussed okay all right so that includes uh our hr appointments as part of the with already part of the action agenda right just doing it before you go back into closed session i second that motion so that's a motion to approve tonight's agenda as amended uh march my vice chairman happy second my business cash there in your discussion hearing none all those in favor share about sound you know oppose nay eyes have it tonight's agenda is approved that takes us to the public comment portion of our agenda public comment is accepted in writing and video

023or in person during regular meetings of the full board in response to cover 19 guidance from the state state health officials capacity limits have been increased at bought at board of education meetings and limited social distancing is in effect face governments are strongly encouraged for any member of the public who is not fully vaccinated including children under the age of 16. during public comment session you may speak for up to three minutes you will see a yellow light at the podium when you have 30 seconds remaining then a red light when your time is up if the public comment portion of the agenda exceeds 30 minutes the board chair reserves a right to conduct other board business before inviting remaining speakers to the podium the following citizens submitted comments as part of our public comment

024portion of this evening's agenda their comments are linked on the same online agenda we're using for tonight's meeting that agenda as well as guidelines for those wishing to submit comments for future meetings can be found at the school district's website wcpss.net under the tab label school board we have 187 written comments from members of the public the topics and speakers whose comments are attached to the agenda are as follows there are 158 supporting both supporting and opposing the mass mandate 22 speakers on supporting and or opposing curriculum two on sros two on teacher pay and salaries the remaining three are on the wake county public school system versus jewel cigarettes one on non-faculty paid coaches the other on human subjects violation and enacting unconstitutional orders of those we have we allow for 20 speakers during

025our public comment period so i will now call those names in order of those that are submitted the first is angela bridgman i was born in 1971 it was a different world my school career offered no place for me to be my authentic self and no validation i was offered a life of shame and hiding of isolation and fear i was 11 years old before i even knew there was anyone else in the world like me i had few friends i couldn't let anyone get close i was afraid they might figure me out my young life was a life of fear shame and loneliness shoving us back into the darkness will not make us go away or stop being who we are we did not choose this but it will cause us to have low

026self-esteem and will probably inhibit our ability to achieve academically and acclimate socially i've spent most of my adult life fighting for the basic dignity and humanity of people like myself so that today's children who identify as transgender would not have to grow up as i did and along the way i've seen much ugliness from vitriol to attacks on our character being never given the benefit of the doubt the worst of motives ascribed to us just for being who we are along the journey of my life there also were those who validated me and showed me kindness that became my source of strength most of my adult life i've fought for those who follow me so that they may find through kindness and validation the strength that i had i thought that after all i'd been

027through i was too strong to be hurt anymore i was wrong in 2016 i sat in our state legislature and i listen to our representatives make hurtful and baseless accusations against people like me that we were all pedophiles and predators and nowadays of course they want to accuse us of wanting to cheat at sports please now think about your kids for a second who haven't had the time to develop the strength i've had to develop your kids hear those hateful words directed at people like me they hear the viciousness and the fear-mongering is that what you want your kids learning wcpss has in recent years made many strides towards equality even opening an office of equity affairs with the state goal that all students have the ability to reach their full potential and lead productive

028lives yet never once on their website are trans or lgb people mentioned the silence is deafening how can you help all students reach their full potential with this glaring oversight or were we left out intentionally equality matters for those of you who believe that your love of jesus calls upon you to vilify people like me i remind you of matthew 25 40. that which you do to the least of these so also you have done unto me treat us as he would jesus treat all people as he would jesus being trans is not a choice kindness is choose kindness thank you ann rollins thank you chair sutton the board of ed members it's nice to be here with you all this evening i'm ann rollins the executive director of the post center and vice chair

029of the wake county human service board and i want to encourage you to include the youth risk behavior survey as a part of your school mental health plan with a wholehearted and passive permission approach as described will be described because we're not in order by my colleagues dr thomas ray and nahil patel a student in wake county public schools so why is data so important from my point of view as a non-profit leader and champion of youth well-being there are three factors of major importance i would like to highlight the first is grant funding that benefits children youth and families of wake county as you might imagine the post center seeks funding to fulfill our mission in a number of ways including writing for federal state and local grants for any funding application developing a

030data-driven statement of need is a key to a successful request for funding funders place a high level of trust in the cdc's yrbs many funding opportunity announcements cite yrbs data and the announcement and clearly indicate an expectation that local level data be cited citing 2013 yrbs data is a weak representation of our data but not having weighted yrbs data is even weaker while wake is the only large district in the state of north carolina currently that has an active permission approach to yrbs data as a result when competing for funding wake is currently at a disadvantage compared to others who are able to cite yrbs with confidence in their respective districts the ultimate result is less competitive applications and reduced likelihood of funding and resources for our students secondly the nonprofit community in wake county

031utilizes this data for identifying where allocating existing resources and areas of priority will be met for example youthrive has implemented bullying prevention campaigns suicide prevention mental health campaigns based on historic data as a data action team we count on ryerbs data to monitor how collective efforts are doing when being measured oops yrbs should be a reliable tool to monitor along with efforts with the school mental health and not just shoot in the dark so active permission forms are challenging in that anecdotal feedback from school staff consistently includes that some families won't have the time or attention or history of completing any forms from school and those youth always miss out on getting that data heard and responded to so thank you anna watkins um hi my name is anna watkins i'm here today to request

032that mass be required in elementary schools until all students are eligible to be vaccinated i'm the mom of two students at farmington woods elementary neither are old enough to be vaccinated we chose virtual academy last year and there are only two choices for this school year a whole year in person or a whole year of virtual we chose to go in person next year as my kids desperately need the structure of in-person school and the closer contact with the teacher we made that decision last spring when students were wearing masks in schools coveted rates were declining and the vaccination for younger students was anticipated for early fall 2021. two of those things have already changed coveted rates are rapidly rising thanks to a more contagious variant and the vaccine may not be available to elementary

033school students until winter those two things make us nervous about sending us kids to school in the fall but a strict mask requirement has is proven to be effective at reducing spread i hear people saying kids generally don't get very sick with covid but studies have shown up to 30 percent of children will have long-haul coverage with the delta variant the symptoms of long-haul coping can be significant and can affect all parts of the body my sister is a doctor of physical therapy here in kerry she has seen clients who have difficulty breathing with exercise for as long as four months it then takes people several months more to return to their normal level of fitness and energy level these are young active and healthy people having these problems i do not want that for

034my children or any child in wake county i think we can all agree that students being present in school is key to learning masking will result in less quarantines and more time in school for students and teachers more time that my kids desperately need my children ages five and nine are very used to wearing masks and they will be very fine wearing them for another six to nine months my job as a mom is to protect my children and we have done that for the past 16 months by masking staying at home as much as possible social distancing and for the adults getting vaccinated we never stop trying to avoid this virus and i know many others who are still doing their best to limit the spread of covid the school system can also do

035their part and provide a safe environment for our children the pandemic is not over masks are simple effective and necessary thank you snail marshall my daughter made this with her friend you know what children like more than crass breathing smiling seeing people's faces chanel marshall president of raleigh i have two girls currently in the school system one will not be returning one i share with our father we can't find an alternative right now wake county is a public funded school we are the public do you understand how many empty seats that we are going to have this year i'm also a mental health counselor the emotional mental and health repercussions from these children being masked for this past year and a half are here irritable we are going to recover from this for years now

036this young lady spoke about keeping masks on and listen when we look at education we talk about what the data mrs po i don't remember your name talked about the data education is about data okay and you can't show me data that supports masks work alternatively i can show you tons of data that show the damage that masks do and i think at the end of the day that's what it has to come down to not what the news is telling us not necessarily what the cdc has to say because let me tell you what there's agendas with these pharmaceutical companies i'm going to leave this over here here we have the american academy at pediatrics is greatly funded by who pfizer i'm not going to go down that road right now because i could

037be considered a conspiracy theorist don't want to do that surgeon general right here says doubles down mass increase virus risk right we've got our dear friend fauci i've got videos of him saying children don't need to be masked let's see we have a bunch of research that talk about things that are on the mask strep bacteria we haven't talked at all about mass cleanliness we haven't talked about hey are you cleaning your mask every single day are you taking them off every day and these little ones that come out of the box the ethanol oxide that these children are breathing in dentists have talked about the oral damage that's happening we don't know the long-term effects in terms of lung cancer we're not having that conversation the bacterial infections that are happening from these masks

038let me breathe co2 i mean this is science 101 right we breathe in oxygen and we breathe out what carbon dioxide carbon dioxide is our waste leaving our body we're leaving it in our masks we're leaving it here just to breathe back in like that is science 101 any education forum should be understanding that it shouldn't be up for negotiation and as my last couple seconds let's talk about the mental effects little children can't see smiles little children are dying they are having suicidal thoughts i deal with these students every single day these children need to have these masks but it's not okay [Music] dan fagan thank you for the opportunity to address the board my name is dan fagan i live in raleigh and my youngest daughter is a graduate of broughton high school

039i'm also an educator i teach economics for the north carolina community college system i've never attended a board meeting and i've never spoke at one obviously spoken at one but i wanted to come out tonight to talk about the conversation that we're having this debate that we're having about the application of critical race theory in our public schools actually i'm not sure that the debate is really about critical race theory because critical race theory is not taught nor is it proposed as curriculum in our county primary school system i think the debate that we're really having is about whether we will want to teach young people to evaluate for themselves whether we're living up to our founding principles that all americans are created equal it's about our children considering whether power wealth and status is

040enjoyed in fair measure by all americans everyone in this room knows that that's not true the real questions that we need to be asking instead of talking about crt are one whether we want our public schools to teach young people to expose the gaps between our ambitions as a country and the reality of every american's experience second question is are we willing to have our children look honestly at the systems and institutions that create and dispense power wealth and status and recognize when they give or maintain advantage to any group because the data says that it does do we trust our third question is do we trust educators then to guide our children to be more critical thinkers my experience with fellow educators is that they understand the age appropriate and ability appropriate learning methods

041which will help students help this country live up to its ideals of fairness and meritocracy by recognizing the bias which can blind us i'm asking that the school board here recognize that bias exists in all of us as unintentional as it usually is and secondly that you support curriculum that teaches honest critical thinking thank you for your time [Applause] cam mackey i'm going to keep the streak alive fedor good evening board members and superintendent moore as a veteran social studies teacher and mom of two young students i'm baffled by some folks resistance to teach the past and the present honestly those challenging the teaching of honest history would do well to consult the declaration of independence where a large section of that document is devoted to listing historical grievances for all the times i've taught

042the declaration of independence i've never heard from a family whose ancestors lived in britain in 1776 that this content made their child feel guilty many of our grievances from the declaration of independence are rectified and enshrined in our constitution this historical pattern of expressing grievances then celebrating remedies we work together to achieve is how americans pursue a more perfect union when we teach honest history and honest present we teach empathy and growth not guilt a few years ago when my son was in kindergarten learning about the civil rights movement he offered his class the example of a black man at starbucks who was arrested after trying to use the bathroom he told me about this on our car ride home but i didn't know where my six-year-old heard about that incident when i asked him

043he said he heard it on the news i was watching even our kindergartners are flies on the wall soaking in information when my kindergartner processed that event on his own he didn't identify with the white employee and feel guilty he identified with the black man who had to use a bathroom and felt empathy i don't want politicians to interfere and tell him he came to the wrong conclusion about 10 years ago in my middle school world history class i welcomed a new student from china mid-year shortly after his arrival i was set to teach a lesson on tiananmen square which many know as an ugly historical event censored in china out of empathy i worried about adding to this student's culture shock by exposing him to this event after consulting with colleagues i did not

044censor the event from this student since i would be perpetuating china's censorship in my american classroom there were no complaints from the student or his family after that age-appropriate lesson when we know better we do better folks trying to stop kids from knowing better are also interfering with their ability to do better as they fulfill the american call to pursue a more perfect union efforts to vilify educators and censor our past and present are more reflective of history's most notorious authoritarian rulers we must call on our state legislators to allow our students to grow with facts and empathy and i ask this board to continue to do the same and support our district's equity work thank you kristen balor good evening superintendent board members my name is kristen beller and i'm the president of wake

045ncae our local affiliate of the north carolina association of educators the state's largest education advocacy organization for public school employees children their families and educators deserve to be welcomed onto buses and into classrooms and schools where they can trust the other members of the community to be honest and truthful with them at schools across our county children know that as adults an educator's first job is to keep them safe no matter what role we play in the school building our second job is to help them do their very best learning we help them expand their knowledge and build skills we know that learning thrives when we invest time and energy into building an environment of trust and respect and i'm proud of our schools for building classroom communities that prepare our students to live learn

046work and play in a district where diverse backgrounds are honored and treasured we want our students to see the world and understand its people and its history we want them to see each other and cherish moments where they hear each hear and share their own personal stories and histories in our schools we don't just tolerate different backgrounds we celebrate them and we acknowledge the truths that are part of them as trained professionals who spend countless hours collaborating with other trained professionals educators work hard to provide age-appropriate lessons that will help our students build their knowledge and skills we carefully choose resources and activities for their age and developmental level that help our students grasp concepts that are new to them and expand their previous knowledge and understandings about the world around them learning fundamentally is

047challenging it forces our brains to adjust our schema as teachers activate what students already know and help them make connections to new information to further develop and build their knowledge this process is the same no matter how old a learner is or what the topic is and as adults we have felt our brains work to incorporate new understandings into our already existing uh bank of facts and information and as educators we have the responsibility and the training to develop age-appropriate lessons and activities to help our students access true information and build new skills regardless of whether we're supporting students in place value phonics or the difficult parts of our history that are impacting this moment our work is to create a safe and nurturing learning environment that gives students both the space and the support

048they need to move in and out of an expanding schema resulted in a confident and lifelong learner educators are committed to providing an honest education and space where students receive the comfort and safety they deserve knowing that the caring adults in their school will always provide them with the truth students deserve honesty and we ask this board and this administration continue to provide us with the necessary resources to provide age-appropriate experiences that both support them in growing and expanding their current knowledge to incorporate new information and demonstrate our belief in them as lifelong learners with rich diverse backgrounds thank you clayton diller hey good evening i'm the dad of seven kids six of whom attend wake county public schools so i'm here in opposition to wearing masks there's a couple of other issues that i'll

049also touch on i think mass are a personal choice i don't have anything wrong with people wearing masks or sending their kids to school with masks but i believe as their parent i should have the ability to um you know send my kids to school without a mask i don't think the data supports the idea that masks prevent the spread of viruses you know speaking from a scale perspective even an n95 mask is like putting up a chain leak fence around your yard trying to keep mosquitoes out the particles are just too small there's too many gaps so you know forcing kids to wear masks also covers up one of the key features that really identifies you as a person it's your face it's your smile it's the it's more than just your eyes it's

050it's the chill it gives children an ability to see each other and to relate to each other and that's what i'm my kids are missing in public schools or wherever else it is that they go where they're required to wear masks i want our kids to be able to develop friendships and be able to see each other's faces it's so so very important um so i think being forced to wear masked it essentially goes against you know everything it is to be american i mean we are a country of choice we have the choice to wake up every day and live the lives that we want to live and this is one of those choices that i think we need to you know continue to maintain earlier mr martin pointed out some some data and

051the data that he pointed out shows an infection rate among children of roughly 0.065 percent so if that's the infection rate then the mortality rate or the hospital or hospitalization rate is far less than that the reality is we just don't see children or even adults at any massive scale dropping dead from this virus i wanted to just also talk quickly about the role of education it's it's to inspire students to read to learn math and science to discover the arts and the place within them the knowledge of those subjects which is necessary for them to be successful in their adult lives it's not the role of the education system to push social agendas to introduce glorify and promote lifestyles and disorders including homosexuality and gender dysphoria naturally topics like these are confusing to young

052children and using tools like the gender unicorn to influence them into calling someone who they know to be a male for example a female is dishonest and harmful to them it's an it's actually an attack on the truth and they understand that um so regarding crt i think this is just another mechanism of division pitting people against each other um the people that are pushing this are like the the friend of the spouse just keeps on bringing up the negativity over and over again until they ruin the relationship we've got to stop doing it i'll just stop end with a little bit of scripture our lord jesus made sure made it very clear whoever receives one such child in my name receives me but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me

053to stumble it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea thank you laura carver thank you school board members for the opportunity to share my comments this evening i would like to address the concerns that i have over the face covering requirement according to the fda's website under the emergency use authorization face coverings are not fda approved for the general public and classified as a medical device i wonder how many parents are aware of this fact the north carolina department of health and human services toolkit and the wake county public schools website does not disclose the face coverings that will be required of the students are not fda approved parents and students should be given proper informed consent and

054public documents that the medical device being required of students at school has not been fda approved when a product is not fda approved that means there is not adequate safety and efficacy data available through large-scale clinical trials i had concerns last year over the face government requirement so i had an appointment with the pediatric pulmonologist who stated that a child's carbon dioxide level would increase while wearing a face covering and it would cause the compensation of the physiological response of an increased respiratory rate so the body is having to compensate for the excess carbon dioxide is being trapped within the mask and then re-inhaled by the child and when it should be completely exhaled into an open-air environment the child's heart and lungs are having to work harder to breathe while wearing a face covering

055i've done extensive research and not been able to find any large scale clinical trials that have been done in the pediatric population that examine face coverings and this relation to respiratory rate pulse oxygenation oxygen atmosphere carbon dioxide levels blood acidity cortisol levels cardiopulmonary stress and pathogen growth on face coverings these are all serious health concerns when the nose and the mouth are extracted by obstructed by a face covering and the inhalation of oxygen can be reduced and carbon dioxide level is increased for multiple hours at a time what we do know is that face coverings are uncomfortable for some children who just want to breathe freely without having cloth placed over the openings on their body that are intended to receive fresh air and expel carbon dioxide osha sets safety standards for workers for things

056like oxygen atmosphere percentages carbon dioxide levels yet there are no established safety ranges for these in children and no specific tools outlined in the department of health's toolkit to spot check a child's oxygen and carbon dioxide level while wearing a face covering at school in a healthier setting workers are trained that if you touch the outside of your mask even just one time your mask becomes contaminated it must be replaced with a clean one turn of a young age are unable to maintain proper cleanliness as they can sometimes touch the outside of their mask repeatedly causing contaminants to be lodged on the face covering and inhaled into the mouth and nose potentially placing the child at risk for infections due to the moisture-rich environment that a cloth mask can create yep the evidence is now

057clear that the risk to children from death of this virus is almost zero children do not transmit the virus at high rates and the incidence of child to adult transmission is low school children should not be placed at additional risk for health problems from wearing a face covering that has not been fda approved to prevent a virus that has no significant risk to their survival i believe face covering should be optional at school and parents should decide what they believe is best for the child all students should have the right to breathe freely and treated with equality when it comes to decisions about health interventions thank you for your time and listening to my comments michael flaherty good evening it's my first first time speaking to a board of education and i appreciate the opportunity

058i was a high school teacher for 35 years before i retired and um i wouldn't want to be in the profession today and my daughter taught for my five years here and then after starting out teaching elsewhere and she's left the profession i guess the first thing that hit me right now is this notion of fda approval we we have 99.5 of people who are vaccinated not getting hospital hospitalized and not dying we're not seeing a thousand people a day dying anymore that's that's science that's the data and oh my god my my heart goes out to you especially the the children wearing these masks my little four-year-old grandson i take him to preschool his first experience in with a mask out with the mask grandpa comes with a mask you know i don't i

059don't want it either but god safety comes first our health comes first i i know mental health's important i know we're breathing and stuff but my god this is life and death this isn't fooling around oh maybe the little kid won't get sick maybe the teenager won't get sick bring it home to grandma grab it's all right by god we should be at the end of the pandemic and i say we are in the middle of it with this covet variant now this delta variant is going to cause problems as long as people resist vaccination and resist doing what we need to do for to eat for each other we wear a mask to prevent others from getting it and i do feel safe now that i'm fully vaccinated and i did get that fda

060unapproved pfizer double dose and i just feel so much relief being able to see my children and my grandchildren again and i just want to go with the science and i want to say i appreciate what you're doing and i particularly appreciate the delicate balance you need to walk between people who don't want to deal with these masks anymore and those of us who want to follow the science follow the best information of the experts no different than the history teachers who need to be respected and allowed to develop curriculum put it in the hands of the people who know what's best and yeah finally we've got a reckoning here with truths that have not been told and it isn't critical race theory which is a graduate level matter and i speak from experience it

061is period the teaching of the tulsa massacre the wilmington massacre things i didn't know after teaching 35 years of history american history in a classroom so something was left out along the way and those things need to be included now and it's not an agenda it's an effort to tell the whole truth it has not been told thank you for exercising caution and following science and the recommendations of health care professionals giving me the time to speak here tonight and again let me say if you agree or disagree with the speaker that's fine but please show all speakers a level of respect disrespect to any speaker will not be tolerated michelle craig my name is michelle craig i am a parent of two wake county public school students and a former wake county public school

062classroom teacher two things are on my mind today as i ask our leaders to stop playing politics with our students our children must come before self-interest first i ask that we keep masking in schools we must trust science and prioritize the well-being of our younger students who have not had the opportunity to be vaccinated the north carolina general assembly gave a half a million dollars to the abc science collaborative to study club in 19 in schools they concluded that proper masking is the most effective way to prevent the spread when vaccination is unavailable vaccines are coming and we need to respect our students by continuing to wear a mask until they have the opportunity to be vaccinated second i ask that we teach age-appropriate truth about history our history in this united states has been

063full of injustice not that long ago as i began my teaching career i taught about the first thanksgiving like it was a big happy party i taught that columbus was a hero with no mention of the devastation his discovery brought to the native people that's the way i learned it in school i learned the truth after i became an educator and then i changed the way that i talked i attended north carolina public schools from kindergarten through 12th grade i was shocked as an adult to find out about the devastating events of the wilmington massacre in 1898. history.com explains that poor white farmers joined with freed black americans against wealthy white segregationists who believe that they cared more for the interest of banks railroads and affluent constituents more than the common man for more than

064100 years the story was hushed one reason we teach history is so we don't repeat mistakes from the past more than 100 years ago the most progressive city in the american south wilmington was decimated for greed and self-interest flash forward just about a decade ago when our own wake county school board attempted to resegregate our schools and privatizers in north carolina have attempted to dismantle our public schools ever since one of wake county public schools core beliefs is that the board of education superintendent and all staff value a diverse community that is inviting respectful inclusive flexible and supportive we almost lost that a decade ago and i hope we will uphold the core beliefs as we teach about diverse past and present politicians hope to distract the public from asking important questions about real issues

065how about like how the general assembly is failing to live up to the constitutional responsibility to fund a sound basic education for our children as a parent i trust our educators as professionals and expect they teach the children about race and the historical systemic impacts as they build and sustain relationships with our children and prepare them to contribute to our society misty clark hello um good evening thank you all for letting me speak tonight my name is misty clark i'm the mother of a rising fourth grader and sixth grader in the wake county public school system and i'm here to speak on behalf of advocating for freedom of choice with regards to mask in the upcoming school year as you all know with the pandemic from the very beginning the children have really bare carried

066the burden of this pandemic really protecting the adults and protecting the most vulnerable in our population and we've asked them to miss school to miss events to miss the field trips that my daughter was looking forward to birthday parties their time with their grandparents all in an effort to protect the kids and then or to protect the vulnerable and then when it came time for them to go back to school it's very inconsistent we asked them to mask up with double pie mask they wore them and i don't know about you if you've ever seen a kid wear a mask but very much even sometimes adults but they wear the mask and they'll blow their nose into the mask and then they'll like cough into the mask and they'll lick the mask and they'll chew

067on the mask and they do all these really disgusting things with the mask and then they have to wear that snot rag all day long unless they go outside for their five-minute break where they're all lined up socially distanced with the wind at their back they can take it down for a few seconds pull it back up and then wear the snot rag for the rest of the day but a lot has changed since they did that and they were so gracious about it but a lot has changed and now we have vaccines that are readily available for anybody who wants them they're effective i'm vaccinated my husband is and anybody can have one and if you don't have one today and you're adult it's because you chose not to and the most vulnerable in

068our population in north carolina it's about 90 percent who are vaccinated and so we have means to take care of this now we're asking our kids to again mask up as they go into the school year and why i don't know you tell me i went and downloaded the hard data from the nc dhhs and then what i found was of the 1.55 million children school-aged children who go to school we have seven and a half percent infection rate of the seven and a half percent infection rate we have point six percent who are hospitalized of that point zero zero three percent passed away from this which is by the same exact number of deaths to the flu last year further that in the state of north carolina your child is 13 times more likely

069to die from cancer they are 15 times more likely to die from suicide yet we want to put all these draconian efforts into place they are 29 times percent more likely to die in a car accident yet we all drove here in a car and we're not saying don't drive because we're hoping that we may save one life there it is time for the adults to not want the kids to protect them any longer and to stand up and say we've got this remove the burden from them and allow them to get their childhood back and to be able to go to school and you guys have the ability to do that because you were elected officials from a local government not here to strong arm and enforced from the government you have the power

070to give our kids their childhood back so thank you very much thank you for listening to me and i thank all the speakers here tonight so i appreciate it thank you repeal the tail uh good evening my name is nikhil patel i'm a student at inlo high school a wake county 4-h gis club member in the post center's teen health advisory council and youth empowerment group i'm advocating that wake county public school board implement passive permission or opt-out policy to administer the youth risk behavior surveillance active permission has a lot of challenges for example anecdotal feedback from school staff consistently includes that some families don't have the time attention or history of completing any forms from school so those youth always miss getting to have a voice and share their perspective and info also some

071teachers don't prioritize and emphasize it so there's always been times where a lack of effort by the teacher to get forms back resulted in zero one or three participants in their class in my roles in the community i'm challenged to conduct needs assessments and develop peer education community education and policy recommendations based off of those assessments related to resources and programs i will argue that good policy should be built on good data again an accurate understanding of where we are doing well and where we need to improve is critical to continuously revisiting and revising policies and practices to promote the well-being of myself and my peers now let us consider joule recently a national study showed that 41 percent of high schoolers have tried vaping information like this would be an immeasurable help to create

072appropriate policies and could lead us to create the best ways to help wake county students combat this pressing issue i'm part of the po youth empowerment team where i have presented and advocated against the use of vaping and jewel for teenagers as a high schooler myself i have first-hand experiences that include seeing my friends vaping walking in a bathroom during break to only find it full of students vaping secretly and even being asked by one of my peers if i would like to vape you inhale nicotine and various chemicals when you vape so now imagine those different chemicals harming an underdeveloped adolescent brain the brain fully develops at age 25 so teens put themselves at a dangerous risk every single time that they vape now let us consider the fact that there's currently no comprehensive

073local wake county data showing vaping statistics among middle and high schoolers without this data leaders like you could potentially miss out on creating better policies to help teens in wake county thankfully there is a solution by implementing yrbs surveys we can now have unbiased anonymous data that can paint an accurate picture of the vaping problem in wake county and now we can have the means to combat it i don't ever want to see one of my friends harm themselves by vaping but i'm optimistic that with the proper data gathered by yrbs surveys we can all come collectively to take down vaping once and for all thank you for your attention to good data for wake county youth and standing against the tobacco industry and their exploitation of my generation thank you for your time renee

074sequel hi y'all this week i was talking to a student at enlo hotwell former student a new graduate of endless high school and we got to talking about you guys and what what she might want you going to know about her experiences at enlo and i thought it was really interesting because i hadn't thought of things in this way anyway her name is victoria smith and she was talking about the curriculum that she had at enlo high school and she she took ap and honors classes all through her high school career and worked really hard and it was heartbreaking for her to realize it at enlow and at many other wake county schools the only classes that specifically taught black history was an elective a single standard elective usually taught by white teachers and sadly

075that was it there were no classes for indigenous asian hispanic lgbt btq or disabled communities that address their histories as well on the other hand our white kids get to take european history and other classes that teach about white history and provide them with college credit and to add insult to injury that one elective is an academic level course where the highest gpa points you could get is a 4.0 while other history classes are provided with that 4.5 or a 5 for an honors or an ap level course what we are telling these students it is literally less valuable to learn about african american history than it is to learn about european history if that isn't blatant discrimination victoria and i agree we don't know what is african-american history is important to this country it

076is integral integral to this country it permeates our the growing our agriculture it permeates the very foods we we eat our black indigenous latinx kids they all deserve their histories to be integral to all of our history classes they shouldn't be just an elective they shouldn't be talked about just in march they need to be fully integrated into all of our courses our kids deserve no less than a full and complete history that includes all of the people of the united states thank you robert morrow good evening regarding mass requirements in schools uh many of you are unwilling to make wearing a mask optional solely because of the executive order and cdc guidelines the milgram experiment experiment is a famous scientific experiment from the 1960s that showed that people are willing to do terrible harm

077to other human beings as long as they were told to do so by an authority figure and that brings me to my first point it is your duty to do what's best for the children requiring masks is wrong it is unhealthy for the children union roman salisbury and harnett counties have already done what is right they stood up and said no realistically speaking there is no recourse should we make masks optional what exactly is the governor going to do if 200 plus schools defy his executive order the mandate has no enforceability this second port second point pardon me is that if you support a mask mandate i need you to reflect and think about why you've come to that conclusion over half of all u s students now attend schools in states that do not

078require universal masking in the classroom the only reason we have a mass mandate in schools in north carolina is that the governor decided it to be so one person one is making this important decision for 11 million people these are our children we know what's best and we need to be making the decision of whether or not they wear a mask we've heard a lot about delta tonight it is a dangerous and more transmittable than the original strain but populations particularly develop the vulnerable elderly populations are largely vaccinated and that's certainly true here in north carolina that means that diagnosed cases aren't nearly as dangerous the fact remains the children are largely unaffected by covet as evidenced by something like a 99.99 survival rate sorry about that i had nothing to do with that let's

079try to set some goal posts here the original goal post was don't overwhelm the hospitals that's not an issue right now the next post was give every adult the opportunity to get vaccinated now the goal seems to be zero covet but that's not going to happen and it was never likely going to happen the most likely outcome was always that covet would become seasonal and we harped we hoped far less deadly than it was originally which is what is happening thanks to vaccination what i've witnessed over the past year what we all of us did to our children enrages me we failed all of us history will judge us harshly school closures and will show that was unnecessary the isolation the lost learning all of it was nothing short of child abuse shame on all

080of us for not stopping it this board needs to step up and do the right thing i demand that this board votes on a motion tonight to make mass optional in schools we the people deserve to see on the record who is willing to stand up be an adult and fight for our children thank you samara ramos brown [Music] good evening and thank you for your time from the time on the floor i don't know how to speak in circles so i'll get right to the point i'm an immigrant a latina immigrant not latinx that's ridiculous i'm a mother i'm a homeschooler and i'm a taxpayer in way county to name a few of the reasons that i'm here tonight you may ask yourself why am i here if i'm a homeschooler well the answer

081is simple i believe in community my children do commingle with kids in our community who attend the public and private school systems so whatever is being embedded in our community via these channels is of great interest to me my message is very simple stay in your lane and in case you need to be reminded what your lane is let me help you your lane is to teach math science language and arts physical education history real factual history not the woke history to alleviate the fragilities and sensitivities of an already broken over medicated and weak generation i can't speak for every parent here but the far majority of the ones i know and interact with are not interested in your indoctrination they are also not interested in you mandating experimental drugs into their children's bodies or

082depriving them of a normal school childhood without masks your messages are void of science logic and common sense and this needs to stop if you really are interested in social justice i assure you teaching children to hate one group of people over another or to teach them that they are inferior or oppressed over another group is profoundly unnecessary and detrimental try rather to focus on the literacy rate of black and brown kids in your school districts or healthier school lunch choices or teachers without aggressive leftist agendas lacking the moral combat compass to be around kids on a personal note i am a latina legal immigrant married to a black american who also happens to be a 21 year old veteran navy veteran we are educated elevated successful individuals without any government interventions or handouts and

083yes we have ids our message is loud and clear we're not oppressed and we certainly do not need you your teachers your unions your special interest groups to brainwash the upcoming generation into believing so especially because they will become adults that will interact with my children and some focus on what is good beautiful and great about this country we don't want your work woke education your indoctrination in your medication god bless tammy blackard cook hi thanks for having me i'm tammy blackard cook longtime citizen of raleigh small business owner and a mom to one child who's gone through the wake county public school system from kindergarten through what will be her senior year in high school this year as a white parent i'm troubled by the misunderstanding surrounding critical race theory or what i like

084to call just a true full history of this country i really believe that we underestimate our children's ability to think critically about the world and find their place in it teaching the full sometimes darker history of this country will not white children with guilt or cause further divisions that are already here i believe our children when given the opportunity to learn the good the bad and the ugly will develop a more complete compassionate response to the real problems facing this country our children black brown and white can only develop shared solutions to problems when they share the same history and understanding of how we got here and they don't have it now if wake county truly believes in its four c's communication creativity critical thinking and collaboration then why then we can't keep teaching history

085that's been whitewashed for example why can't our kids learn that several of the progressive new deal programs under fdr like social security intentionally discriminated against african americans it doesn't make the whole thing bad but it happened talking about these issues will not our white kids with guilt it will not divide kids they already know that problems exist and they have existed for a long time when we are willing to look at our full history in context we learn how to more honestly talk with each other across the races and learn how to move into a place of compassion for each other and for ourselves for white families we have to be more brave and we have to be brave enough to allow ourselves and our children to look at that stuff that makes us really

086uncomfortable i teach my children every day that just because you feel uncomfortable about something that does not make it wrong or bad it's just how it feels in that moment and we need to stop pushing discomfort away because growth is not always comfortable thank you [Applause] theresa bolden okay i've never been to one of these before thank you for having me so um it's a little too loud we have two kids who are re-entering the public school system this fall they will be attending high school and they are very excited we took them out of the public school system because they were falling behind with the virtual learning setup we made the decision based on the risk of covid presented to our kids that they were at far greater risk of suffering from the lockdown

087and virtual learning than of covid i don't know of anyone in our circle of friends and family under the age of 75 who died of covid but we had several family members who suffered emotional damage from the lockdowns including death by suicide and another attempted death by suicide in different states that's two incidences in one family so i'm here today not just to talk about the lockdowns but the demand but to request that our tax dollars are dedicated to ensuring that not just our kids but all kids regardless of their economic status and school options get a quality education so that they can compete on the world stage and succeed if these kids don't succeed it should be because they chose not to and not because our public school system failed them i believe that

088our teachers should be focused on ensuring our students are proficient in math reading science etc internationally the u.s now ranks in the middle of the pack in education and in some communities our children are functionally illiterate our good teachers shouldn't be distracted with trying to embed things like critical race theory equity sex and gender vaccines mask mandates social distancing virtual learning or any other distraction into the curriculum that would be for us the parents we should have the right to see our tax dollars spent simply on educating our kids then we can choose to vaccinate our kids if we so choose we can make the decision to mask our children educate them on critical race theory or sexuality and gender or whatever it is it's completely up to us how we chose choose the extracurricular

089learning i don't believe the public school system should be involved in that so for me this being my first meeting i feel like it's just the beginning and i'm just trying to learn and get involved and get to the bottom of why some people feel they have to ask for the obvious which is a quality education for not just our kids but all kids thank you thomas wrote good evening i know several of you but for those of you that i don't know yet i'm dr thomas ray my phd is in educational research and policy analysis and i'm the senior director of the education at the post center for health education i am also a former wake county public school teacher and currently serve as the chair of the data action team for youth thrive

090the bulk of my career has been dedicated to the well-being of youth in wake county in north carolina and i've been honored to work with several of you in different capacities toward that end over the years i want to commend you for the work you've done with the school mental health planning and the careful deliberation in which you engage to protect our youth and promote their well-being thank you i believe your recent school survey policy serves to codify protection of the personal and private information of our young people and for that i also commend you specifically tonight i want to encourage you to include the youth risk behavior surveillance as part of your school mental health plan revisions in such a way as to ensure sufficient i just lost my place there sufficient response rate

091and minimize biased results in other words i would like you to consider supporting a policy position that aligns with your current policy but amends the current policy to allow a passive permission approach specifically and uniquely for the youth risk behavior surveillance or yrbs as you may know the yrbs is a centers for disease control biennial surveillance that is administered to middle and high school youth across the u.s the questions are focused on youth health and well-being and the surveillance responses are critical information for organizations like the post center for a number of reasons i along with my colleagues who have already spoken have detailed some of those reasons but i also want to point out that this is a scientific surveillance system and that the private and personal information of each participant is highly guarded

092personal identifiable information is not collected as part of the surveillance with the new electronic administration that is effective this year classroom teachers wouldn't even handle any paper forms entered into the computer and automatically gone in an aggregate aggregate manner so that prote the personal and private information of students is protected and the historic approach with active permission has has been challenging at best so it's been challenging for community partners who rely on this data as you've heard for grant writing and other reasons i'm encouraging you to shift the approach for yrbs to one that is passive permission in nature through automated announcements and existing notification system parents who truly are averse to their young person participating will have the opportunity to opt out and that that should be afforded them yet let's make sure that

093our young people's voices are heard in in this research thank you tracy tank hey before i get started i just wanted to let you know that different legislators have signed this sign so they are also in favor of making masks optional for our kids i gave you all a sheet of paper that has the case rates on there i hope that the attorney actually gave them to you all good what i want you to specifically notice is the pattern on there the seasonality of this virus okay you'll notice that the rate went up in july of last year and then it's gonna and then it went down same thing is gonna happen this year mr dr martin failed to recognize that the um the cases are three times lower now than they were this time

094last year the incidence rate is two times lower than it was last year and most importantly twelve percent of zero to seventeen-year-old students um have been affected since august of 2020. 14 of the 18 to 24 year olds have also been affected that number has not changed that percentage has not changed masks or no masks kids have not worn masks since the hockey game they're not wearing masks this summer and we're not seeing that rate change the delta variant is no more virulent than the other strains and while it's more transmissible we can see here in north carolina that no change in the cohort percentages were affected the death rate hasn't increased and in fact last year this time it was 15.29 deaths per day it's currently 3.33 we are not in the middle of

095this pandemic we are at the end this is also going to be seasonal we need to learn to live with it without masks for our kids they're not the drivers of spread because of the physiological differences which i would be happy to share with you afterwards the the bottom line is they're they're they just are not and it's not going to matter whether we are on the delta strain or the omega strain okay masks should be optional for all students we already know that five districts in north carolina have voted to make it mask optional we also know that many charter and private schools are not going to require masks this year and 40 other states as well the other thing i want to point your attention to and i only have 30 seconds left

096is that the position paper that was written by the abc collaborative study they did not use a control yet they had access to schools in wake county who had a 25 percent non-masked population within their schools they chose to not include this data and i want you to ask the critical questions which is why okay i'm out of time so i'd be happy to talk to you about the rest of the things that i was going to talk about thank you all right that concludes our public comment speakers for tonight that moves us to our information item which we just have one and that's an update from our superintendent superintendent moore good evening again um two quick updates that are a recap from the work session first we provided in the work session today an

097update to the board where we reviewed the status of virtual academy some of the items that we had already gone over since it's been a month since our last board meeting and then we provided an update on where we are with hiring vacancies in our virtual academy programming we still have a couple of weeks to go right out a couple weeks ago before our year-round students start so we will prioritize those positions in year-round schools but we are doing work across the board for all schools for those students whose families have chosen virtual for the next school year and which is around ten thousand which is i think a good indicator that our families and our students feel comfortable at this point being in schools in person we also discussed as a second item in

098work session an instructional assistant bonus we looked at our data and we are continuing to look at our data to see where our vacancies and hard to fill positions are and in the work session we provided a proposal to the board to provide a sign-on bonus to our instructional assistants who are hired after july 1 2021 and and is a 1200 bonus that will provide 600 after in the october time frame once they join the district and then we'll continue into the next school year with another six hundred dollars if they remain with the district that item is on your agenda this evening for board action and then the last piece that i would i would just mention um it wasn't a work session item but it is my understanding that sometime this week that

099the north carolina dhhs or the governor both are planning to provide substantive updates to what is in the current toolkit for schools our staff is waiting on that information so that we can get what those updates are going to be i anticipate that if there is action that is required by local boards based on those updates that we would be discussing that at our august third meeting as that is the next meeting of the board so wanted to go ahead and provide notification that as that information is released staff will be reviewing it and and we just need to see what's in it um but that the next opportunity that we have right now would be august 3rd to bring something to the board that concludes my updates thank you superintendent moore for that update

100chair sutton i'd like to make a motion to approve consent items as amended okay second got a motion for mrs kushner second for ms johnson hofstra to approve the consent agenda as amended during the discussion hearing none are those in favor show about china opposed nay has having consent agendas approved which that takes us to our action agenda and the first item there is our item from finance the instructional assist assistant sign-on bonus what's needed might be aj is that right okay so he went to go get him okay dr matilda welcome thank you in my apologies i was watching a delayed feed evidently good evening again during our work session we presented a recommendation for a 1200 recruitment bonus for instructional assistance to help fill positions ias serve a critical role in our schools

101as they partner with teachers and directly support students in classrooms with an 11 percent vacancy rate in these positions we expect a 1200 bonus will help us attract the quality candidates we need to fill these important positions while we are recommending this bonus this evening we have to couple the recommendation with a future proposal to significantly improve the hourly and therefore annual compensation of our current and future ias and we look to provide updates to the board on that as well if approved the bonus would be paid to newly hired ias on or after july 1. although we're calling it a sign-on bonus the first installment of six hundred dollars would be paid after three months in the position and the additional 600 would be paid in november of 2022 providing the employee remains in

102an ia position through october 31st if you have a revised prices in your materials tonight that reflects the change to the structure to pay 600 for the first installment and then 600 for the second installment requesting your approval of the ia recruitment bonus this evening chair sutton i'd like to make a motion that we approve the instructional assistant sign on bonus second act motion from vice chairman happy second from board member cash to approve staff's recommendation for the instructional assistant on bonus in the amount of twelve hundred dollars during the discussion mrs carter all right again i just want to i know i've said some of this in a work session but some folks weren't with us and i do think it's important and worth repeating so bear with me i appreciate it so i

103do thank you for bringing this but i just want to voice again my strong concern and looking forward to seeing what is going to be recommended by the staff the options for increasing pay and for those who are wondering to get to 15 an hour as an ia you have to work for wake county for 20 years 20. so and there are multiple grades where the pay needs to be addressed you know 16 through i believe it's 22 or 23 that are below 15. so i just want a voice that this is a welcoming because i have been concerned about the openings that have consistently been there since i've arrived on the board and increasing somewhat and i'm hoping that this will help fill those positions and look forward to seeing pay increases thank you

104yes ma'am dr martin thank you and i'd like to reinforce that concern as i also noted in work work session i am generally not in favor of this bonus approach i recognize that we do have a critical need and that is a tool to try to meet the need so i will support the bonus but i will recognize that this bonus if it goes for throughout the whole year is equivalent to a 75 per hour raise and a ia would have to work three years to get that same level of bonus so we're bringing people in equivalent to people who've already worked with us for three years so i think just highlights the need the critical need that we systemically address to pay for these very integral members of our team mrs christian thank you

105and i and i also would reiterate the fact that we have a such a specific need in special education so as part of the next steps in addition to finding ways of retaining our current staff really what can we do as a board to support our special education classrooms that truly rely on these ias so i think we've heard a lot of feedback for those next steps dr matilda thank you yes ma'am and i appreciate everybody's feedback and while we recommend the bonus we also concur with with the sentiments at the board table and we look forward to using the 10 million 10 million that the board has set aside for non-instructional uh not certified positions would they focus on the lower paid scales like the instructional assistant so i do appreciate all the feedback

106and look forward to that continued work and providing updates to the board and will that come in august as well or do you need more of a glide path to try to respond to some of those i think you'll be part of the budget resolution once all the budget stuff including the work at the legislature happens the state did increase their base their starting salaries to 15 as well as the county so i hope that that's correct soon follow suit thank you and we are hopeful that that happens as i know this entire board has expressed concern about raising the salaries for our classified staff to 15 an hour i think it is important that we uh wait to see what the state does doing that we can uh uh complement or offset what the

107state does so hopefully that will be soon but that this is certainly a focus on both the staff and the board to address salaries there's any further discussion hearing none on the motion to approve staff's recommendation for the instructional assistant sign-on bonus those in favor shall assign in the opposed nay eyes have it the request for the instructional assistant signup bonus is approved thank you for the support as well as the feedback thank you next up is the school mental health improvement plan uh mr ko good evening chair sutton superintendent moore and board members as you may recall per session law 2020-7 passed in june of and north carolina state board of education policy shlt003 passed in november of 2021 requires each school district to approve a school mental health improvement plan an overview of

108the wcps school mental health improvement plan was shared with you at the june 15 2021 work session and as a reminder we will bring you a report of our progress related to this plan by september of this year and tonight we bring back the wcpss school school mental health improvement plan for board approval thank you mr cole for bringing that back and i entertained a motion to approve the school and for health improvement planned as required by state law i'll sir i'll make a motion to approve the mental health plans brought to us this evening thank you got a motion from mrs kushner second from ms johnson hofstra to approve the school mental health improvement plan uh that is required by north carolina state law and that was brought before the board in a previous

109work session and here tonight during the discussion ms carter mrs carter thank you well thank you for this first of all and i just wanted to comment on some of the questions that you had answered that we had raised earlier about ensuring families are aware of resources for mental health at the school level and i just want to highlight you know the work that's being done to try to ensure that that information is on individual school websites as well as not just the county-wide because i do think that's important because sometimes that information is missed and anything that we as a district can do to ensure that students and families are aware greatly appreciate that thank you miss carter thank you chair sutton um and i um for disclosure i serve on the po on

110the board for health education and so have um are am sympathetic with the concerns that on the speakers brought today that we do not robustly and have even since before i was on the po board have had a concern stemming from some commissioners and others who want to work with us to improve mental health of our students who want to target uh nicotine use of that is increasing our students so i do want us to consider ways that we can more robustly participate in the youth risky behavior survey um i think we're talking about juul later this evening and we don't have as good data to tell us what's happening with our students and their tobacco use we have a there's a jewel vaping place that's opened within the last month right a block from

111broughton high school these organizations are targeting our students and our youth because they know that's um where they can get their future customers so i would hope that we would take some of the considerations that were raised tonight and make some plans for more robustly participating in that survey thank you thank you for that feedback ms kushner this is dawson hosler thank you chair sutton and i certainly echo ms kushner's point of view i think when i first came on the board i talked about the yrbs because it is a surveillance survey that asked a myriad of questions that are extremely important to non-profits in full disclosure including my own regarding how we write grants and the services that we can provide which include mental health support services national hotlines like the suicide hotline all

112of those things locally are funded based on data and without the use of this data most of us are writing grants using national data that's not reflective of our local data and again as a parent i certainly understand the concerns of having passive consent but as you heard dr ray mentioned i do believe the yrbs deserves an exemption because one it is a national surveillance survey so it's not a personal survey as we've heard many parents talk about their concerns before so i think it's important to highlight that and also to make the direct connection to why many advocates including myself have advocated for our state legislature for a mental health plan while we recognize the school can't do and be all things to all children we also recognize that schools are places where children

113do disclose and so to ms carter's point having it available on our website for our students who may not be willing to disclose but will use it as a resource but more importantly for parents to use it as a resource as well and i know that you and your staff have worked diligently to bring this to us and so i just want to reiterate to make the connection from the comments that we heard earlier both from mr rawlings and mr patel and dr ray around the importance of making the connection of a survey a surveillance survey that could be extremely helpful to wake county public schools and our students and our families thank you ms johnson hassler last year mahathir thank you chair sutton i have no board or organizational stake in this survey i

114do have a question hearing dr ray say that the survey is now completely done online so that confidential data that our students are given doesn't even go in the hands of a staff member is that correct what we're hearing yes so i think the anonymized nature of the survey is something that that is in consideration but i think something else we may want to look at is like what policies are impacted by this request and if the board decides to take take an action where we do want to create avenues for the passive approval i think we have to look at the policies with our attorneys to figure out what are those implications and just as we heard from students that helped inform our our new vaping policy it used to just be tobacco and

115we updated it when we heard about the concerns about vaping i i'm hopeful that this could perhaps inform some future policy changes that are driven by uh students rather than um those of us sitting here so thank you thank you mr mahaffey this is scott thank you um and and again i appreciate the work on all of this i agree with my colleagues about uh looking to see what work can be done around the the youth risk behavior behavior survey and as we do look to different ways to make sure our students and families have access to these different resources i'm not sure how much signage we have in schools right now i know on college campuses it's common to see like in the stall of the restroom to see relationship abuse and you know

116different types of and also how to seek out help so different making you aware of different things to be to notice in terms of mental health physical health and then ways that they can also access that so even just as as many different ways we have that to make sure that students are aware and also normalizing seeking help is i just appreciate the efforts that we're doing already yeah ms scott i think that's a great suggestion that's something we can talk about with our communications team as we think about how we continue to roll out this information this is k we may have already talked about this how do emergency room doctors let um what is their avenue of letting information i know they can't give out much information but all their referrals usually go

117into a behavior specialist somewhere is that how schools get information about students that are struggling or do you know miss cash are you talking specifically if a student has to be hospitalized for something always into the emergency room yeah so i mean we predominantly work with our alliance health partners so you know when when a student is admitted with you know with our partner you know facilities or hospitals anytime a student is discharged our alliance health partners will help our district staff get the necessary information to understand what that student went through and make sure that we're supporting them once they are discharged from the hospital setting so does alliance house work with rex duke wake med all those hospitals that are releasing students i can i think i'll have to find out and confirm

118like what relationships they have but they do have relationships with several of our facilities i would like to have you check that i just know that a lot of kids come through the emergency room and are released and don't necessarily go to the behavior setting only because there's not enough beds yep thank you for that question muskash all right here in a further discussion uh those in favor of approving the school mental health improvement plan shabbat signing off all right any opposed nay eyes have it emotional passing school mental health improvement plan is adopted thank you sir thank you i might be coming up again yeah i got a couple of board policies starting with uh board policy 1610 7 800 professional learning okay yes sir good evening again chair sutton superintendent moore and board

119members we're bringing to you board policy 1610-7800 for first reading as a revised policy and our revisions reflect updates recommended by the north carolina school boards association and when given final board approval it will replace current policy 1610-7800 mrs kushner chair something thank you i remove approval of board policy revisions to board policy 1610 7800 on first reading professional learning got a motion from mrs kushner checking from dr martin to approve board policy 1610-7800 professional learning on his first reading during the discussion seeing none all those in favor show about sign of eye opposed nay eyes have it motion passes board policy 1610 7 800 on professional learning is approved on its first reading next up is about positive 6120 our student health services yes sir so we're bringing board policy for first reading as

120a revised policy and again our revisions reflect updates recommended by the north carolina school boards association and when given final board approval it will replace current policy 6120. thank you chair son i leave approval of board policy 62 6120 student health services for approval and first reading and the major component is that it adds the mental health plan to the revised policy much of mrs kushner second from dr martin to approve brought positive 6120 on student health services on his first reading during the discussion thank you mr sutton so as you heard from most of the board members i think everyone around the table sees and values the importance of the mental health plan that was required by the state but this is something that you as you all know i've been pushing for for

121some time that we take that and we elevate it into our policies you know our policies are statements of our values and direction they survive us even when we're gone and so elevating this up to the same level that we treat physical health nutrition and other issues was very very important to me and i really appreciate the staff's work to bring this to us in policy and ms kushner's work getting this before us today thank you thank you mr hagerty thanks sir any further discussion seeing none all those in favor of board policy 6120 student health services on his first reading show by signing any opposed nate habit motion passes board policy 6120 student health services is approved on his first reading next up word policy 4400 on attendance this is the final policy i'll

122be bringing to you and so we're bringing a board policy 4 400 for first reading as a revised policy and the policy revisions reflect updates made by the staff that were reviewed at the june 29 2021 policy committee meeting and when given final board approval it will replace current policy 4 400. chair sutton i make a motion that we approve board policy 4400 attendance for first reading these revisions um for to complete a trifecta from mr code today thank you sir for your work on these three policies second now the merchant from mr kushner second from mr hegarty uh to approve board policy 4400 on attendance on his first reading during the discussion seeing none all those in favor share about signing by all right your opposed nay nay all right uh promotion passes uh

123board policy portal 400 on attendance on its first reading on a vote of eight to one thank you sir thank you all right next up is uh an action action item by the board on the harmful impact of vaping on students this is to discuss or consider a potential lawsuit against jewel or the company's role in valet the wake county board of education will consider whether to file a lawsuit against jewel labs inc for the harmful effects its products have had on wake county students as cigarette smoking among students has declined the use of e-cigarettes to vape has substantially increased jewel labs inc is the largest manufacturer of e-cigarettes controlling the u.s market e-cigarette manufacturers have marketed their products as a safer alternative to to traditional tobacco products using fruit and dessert flavors to attract

124young consumers resulting in what the u.s surgeon general has declared an e-cigarette epidemic among youth a december 2020 report stated that 41 of high school teens in the u.s had tried vaping and 22 percent had faith in the previous 30 days vaping has been marketed as a safe alternative to traditional tobacco products but your products deliver high concentrations of nicotine that lead to addiction these products have been linked to breathing and lung injuries seizures strokes and death according to the center for disease control nicotine can harm adolescent brain development impacting attention learning mood and impulse control vaping endangers our students health and has placed a burden on our school system but more than 100 school citizens in the united states have already filed suit against jewel wcpss will be the first school district in north

125carolina to file a lawsuit against jewel it will seek to help hold you accountable for its role in the vaping epidemic similarly north carolina attorney general josh stein filed suit for north carolina against jewel in 2019 over its sales and marketing practice practices to underage users in june of this year jewels settled the suit brought by the state agreeing to comply with their consent order to modify some of its current sales and marketing practices in north carolina and 40 million dollars that consent order was signed by north korean superior court judge amanda hudson on june 28 2021. so at this point uh is there a motion is there any discussion do when i recognize attorney janet black turn it black do you want to provide any further comments thank you chair we'll be very brief

126we know that you guys are particularly aware of this issue and frankly if mr patel would like to come follow us around and make presentations about vaping we would appreciate his help because i think he as clearly as possible has explained what the problems are with the students with respect to vaping and you've heard a little bit from other people about the problems with teachers and vaping and then we know about the impact on students ability to learn control impulse and to be able to pay attention school systems are difficult what the work you're trying to do here is remarkable but for us to be able to present to you an opportunity for there to be a risk-free methodology to potentially get compensation to allow you to do some of the things that you believe

127are important we would relish that opportunity and just as a reminder about that my firms from greensboro from north carolina phil federico is here from baltimore we have two other firms that we're working together we're working on a contingency fee agreement we advance all of the costs so as a result there's no risk to the wake county in any kind of way about being out money if we don't recover anything then there is no fee that you owe no matter how many lawyers we have working on this but i think what you heard from mr patel in particular is the fact that use of vape is illegal in north carolina if you're under 18 and that a company has come in and provided an addictive material to our students and as a result the school

128system has problems has control problems that it shouldn't otherwise have and that frankly about two-thirds of adolescents don't even know that vapes contain nicotine much less the consequences from it we and as we have provided i know is the power points available to you uh with respect to your materials and i won't go through that unless there are specific questions but we think this is an opportunity that the board can really make a difference you are powerful you are the largest in north carolina what you do matters and we think that corporations shouldn't be able to come in and make it more difficult by providing products to underage individuals that is going to appear their ability to learn not just short-term but long-term as well and we would be honored to have the opportunity to

129assist the board first considered this item as a closed session item under attorney-client privilege several weeks ago is brought here now for consideration and discussion i do want to be clear and make sure that i'll understand that the system would not pay any out-of-pocket fees or expenses for participating in this case that would be paid on a contingency fee specifically the attorneys will be paid a share of any proceeds that the district receives as a result of a positive outcome in the case that is correct your sudden and if there's not a positive outcome nothing is owed by the wake county board of education the north carolina or the or the wake county school system in any way shape or form it is advanced and it is completely one of those things where the risk

130is on us if we're able to perform then the outcome is something that's going to benefit wake county school system and we would love to be able to do that and the action item would be to approve the retainer agreement to hire these fine lawyers to bring this case and then secondly to authorize the filing of this lawsuit so that's essentially what the the action item would be i'll take it in two but i'll go ahead and take any discussion first so i know we normally take the motion and second first but if uh discussion might help bring some platform for anybody that feels comfortable in making the motion so at this point i entertain any discussion from the board mr hegarty all right thank you mr sun you know this was an issue when

131i came onto the board i told many of you this was the number one issue that most high school parents were coming to talk to me about and it was one that was very frustrating because at our level so many of the precautions so many of the policies so many of the steps we tried to take even though we could make progress weren't effective in making long-term progress against the problem you know the very nature of these devices and some of the things that are manufactured are put out there in a way that allow allow kids to hide their use you know you see them disguised as usb drives as pens you know it becomes almost a game to see who can use these in class without getting caught and you know i came here

132with a lot of naive ideas i guess about what i thought we could do something about it and again while we make progress it's tough going up against something that big and even though we've had a lot of other problems before us in the years since my first year this is still a problem i hear about but now i also hear it more often even from some middle school parents not even just the high school parents so if this is something with the authorization of the retainer and then joining this suit that we can if this is an action that we can take that will make a strong difference and will you know potentially you know strike a blow against something that's bigger than us right by joining with other people other school districts around

133the state i think we owe it to ourselves to to do this we can keep doing all the good work we do and again we'll recognize the post center and all the good date work they do with their annual conference and their public education events all the hard work that our principals are doing trying to fight this this scourge in our schools but but this will be this will be a real action a weighted action um this will be something i think they'll feel and i think this will be something that uh will make a difference so at the appropriate time mr chairman i'd support both motions thank you sir this is cash um i agree and um i do i want to recognize anne rollins is here with the poe center and she and

134her the people in her area led an excellent two tobacco forums that were well attended great speakers um it brought a lot of attention and and you have two students with you and lilly han had to leave or couldn't get in but name the two students that are west european and then today was waiting outside hoping to get in and so can you tell the um you want to come up you can go ahead is that okay she comes up or not thank you hello everyone my name is tajinay givens i'm a rising sophomore at wake forest university i've been really passionate about this issue for several years now and i was actually involved with the lawsuit against jewel labs by the north carolina attorney general so i think this is a really important issue

135that really needs the focus and really needs attention and i guess and mr mattel you did a great job of presenting earlier um and virginia johnson oh good god everybody and we appreciate that so productive much and working with you and also our county commission everybody's worked real hard and the students have done a good yeah i mean and i'm glad we've got a policy and i appreciate the fact that we have a policy but i did want to recognize these students too that have led and lilly han was here but couldn't get in but um i think it's great that we're involved in this and thank you mr um as well about that as too thank you mrs cash vice chairman happy thank you chairs miss ward black um when you spoke to us

136um one of the things that you had talked about was not just the the potential financial benefits of this for our school system but also you likened to the the former joe camel lawsuits on stopping the excitement and the direct advertisement to our young people can you speak a little more on what that could potentially look like because i think stopping that enticement is is very very important the number of adolescent smokers was dramatic 20 years ago and now that number is down to about four or five percent [Music] what changed in all of that was litigation frankly litigation that made it where you do not see cigarettes in magazine ads anymore you don't see the placement in movie and movies particularly you don't see large race tracks named after particular cigarette manufacturers anymore that

137those changes pulled it out of the public eye and frankly that is an important part of this the critical mass the large number of school boards in the united states that are prosecuting these cases the others that are putting press pressure on on joule frankly including the case by attorney general stein here in north carolina all of those things add together to put pressure on a company to change behavior and that is frankly what we're hoping the cat is really out of the bag for so many young people that are already very engaged in vaping and they're addicted and something dramatic will have to happen before they stop but maybe we can stop the next set of middle schoolers from getting started thank you mrs carter well thank you for all this information and bringing

138this to us and miss mahaffey and uh several you've hit on some of the things i wanted to mention but i just really want to reiterate not only you know about stopping but also helping our students like you just kind of mentioned with cesarean plants and getting that because it is i mean in middle schools it's in high schools it's in classrooms it's in cars going to schools it's on i mean it's just it's so accessible and so easy to do and i just can't thank you enough for bringing this to us and i look forward to the vote tonight thank you mr sutton i'm sorry would it be permissible for mr federico just to address the abatement question sure quickly thank you the abatement part is probably the most important part about our job

139um certainly with jewel you know our mantra in this litigation is uh truth transparency and accountability the only way in this country that you really get anything done is accountability and and uh altria uh is one of the owners of jewel and they are a very wealthy company and and uh all these school boards around the country for example we represent uh chicago which is the third largest school board in the country are coming together and working as one and it started out like a david against goliath kind of scenario and when it's over it'll be very reminiscent of the tobacco litigation and very reminiscent of the opioid litigation in which uh i'm heavily involved but in the opioid litigation which is coming to an end the biggest part of that is the abatement you

140can't flip a switch okay in these schools to get kids to stop using jewel immediately it's going to take a decade okay it took that long to get them addicted it's going to take them that long to get them get it out of the school system the abatement needs to be funded it's very expensive to spend a decade funding a abatement and that's what we're here to provide for your school district and every school district in the country so really the abatement part is every bit as important as the money that you've lost in the past and we think we can provide both for your students and your future students mrs scott thank you the only thing i wanted to add was i don't know if our friends at the municipal level county level or

141state level can also address not having vape stores so close to schools i don't know what what can be done about that but i hope this conversation excuse me could set that we uh the board received emails from parents concerned about vape shops within walking distance to their schools so i don't know if that is something that that our friends can do at different levels of government but i hope that the potential for that to be addressed and that conversation could be started if it has if it has not already i don't don't know that the conversation has started but i hope that this might be a first step in that important step in that direction johnson that's a great point it actually i don't think it's been started around vaping but wild's chair one

142of the conversations that we had quite a bit with the city around ordinances is convenient stores that sell especially actually in low group of parents that came to me that are extremely close to our high schools that have young people who don't check ids for anything at those convenience stores so for me this is a great place to have a follow-up conversation around city ordinances and zoning around both convenience stores and vaping stores near our schools because they are indeed designed by enticement and so i'm sure that group of parents who actually now all of them have graduated in low eagles uh would be glad to have to hear this conversation come back up this is cash i'd just like to add to that and i think it would be great if my suggestion would

143be for the students to go to the city council of raleigh and have this conversation um and address them i think they're the ones that we could start with i know you have a great map that shows where all those those places are dr ray let's get it to them all right if i can entertain a motion to approve the contingent fee retainer agreement agreement between the wake county public school board and federico and staten pa war black law walcott melodia kelly and schoenberger and baron and bud pc so moved second got a motion from mr hegarty second from vice chair mahaffey to approve the contingent fee retainer agreement that i just stated during the discussion hearing none all those in in favor shall about sign of i oppose nay i have it the contingent

144fee return agreement between the wake county school board and the law firms just stated and listed and our agenda is approved i can entertain a motion to move forward with a lawsuit and then get litigation against jewel labs inc all right so make that motion second now the motion from mrs cash second from mrs carter for the wake county public school system to move forward with litigation against jewel laughs with regard to the harmful effects of vaping during the discussion hearing none all those in favor shall about sign lava hi any opposed nay eyes have it uh wake county public school system we'll be moving forward with litigation uh in partnership with these law firms to initiate litigation against your labs thank you very much yes ma'am thank you for the opportunity we know it's

145an important step and we are honored to have the chance to do this and we're going to do as good a job as we possibly can for you all and for your students thank you very much thank you can i have one remaining item and that is a facilities item regarding bids for maintenance and operations custodial contracts yes thank you good evening shares thought members of the board and superintendent moore this item was originally on your consent agenda for the evening we're now bringing it as an action item because of the change that was made or that we want to make to the pricey and the backup materials obviously subsequent to it being posted on friday july 16th the pricey is for what we call jocks or job order contracts essentially these are contracts used

146by our maintenance and operations department throughout the year to have third party contractors perform services including contract custodial work hvac installation and repair work landscape maintenance landscape installation tree service work flooring installation maintenance and repairs general construction and repairs painting and other contracted services related to maintaining our schools again this is not associated with the building of new schools or renovation of schools rather than maintaining of existing buildings it was discovered after this item was posted on friday that not all backup materials were included for this item in assembly the backup items are a one-page summary of all the contracts being brought to the board for consideration of approval and then should be an actual copy of each of the individual contracts the full contract what we discovered on friday was that six of the

147contracts while they were listed on that one page summary sheet the actual contract for those six was not included as in your backup materials so as a result of that we would like to pull those six contracts from this tracy from tonight's agenda and i'm going to list them out for the record um bring those back to you at your august meeting because they were not provided in the materials and let me list out what they are the six items that are listed on the summary sheet that there was no backup contract for the first one was the cmg solutions for routine custodial services in the amount of 4.192 million dollars the next one we are asking the poll is to j's building maintenance again for contract custodial services in the amount of 3.42 million

148dollars the third contract we are pulling is to omnico inc for contract custodial services in the amount of 1.050 million dollars the fourth item or contract i should say we're asking the poll is the ak building maintenance for routine contract services in the amount of 674.5 674 572 and then the last two a contract to watco service corporation for hvac installation and repair in the amount of 100 dollars and the last one a contract to np puricon for mold remediation in the amount of one hundred thousand pulling these six contracts will bring the total of the contracts remaining that we are asking your consideration of approval for and effectively the precede to an amount of nine million five hundred and forty thousand four hundred and twenty dollars again those six contracts and possibly either some

149other job order contracts we try to bring them all at the same time at the beginning of the year sometimes we have some stragglers come in but we would plan to bring those six contracts possibly other joc contracts to your august third meeting and with that i will ask the board's consideration of approval with these changes motion to approve second got a motion to approve the remaining items uh uh under uh the facilities item which is maintenance and operations job order contracts and service agreements uh as amended and voting later on the remaining six is there any discussion hearing none all those in favor say no opposed nay eyes have it the contracts are approved as listed on our agenda i'd like to compliment staff and their dedication to the process every time and i

150appreciate that thank you great thank you thank you if i could entertain a motion to approve the superintendent's recommendations and hr appointments that were discussed in closed session all the hr recommendations so moved second got a motion from vice chairman happy second from mrs cash to approve the superintendent's hr recommendations uh as discussed in closed sessions on the agenda is there any discussion hearing none all those in favor share about sign of all right opposed nay eyes was having those hr recommendations and appointments are approved can i entertain the motion and return to closed session for the items i'm sorry before we do a closed session can i ask a quick question um the 40 million dollars that uh came to uh through josh stein's um lawsuit that is now i guess i guess i

151went into general assembly that's where it is right now that money are we going to be able to figure out how we're going to get to use some of that money for things like the tobacco forum that's going on and some of the abatement pieces um rather than just having it go to the general assembly i think it goes to the state's general fund i'm not sure but i'll let well that was my biggest question we can certainly follow up with the ag's office to see how that will uh you know positively benefit school systems so okay because i think it's important with the fact that we do want to do things for our students for abatement like we said and we can start sooner than later and that's what it was for but thank

152you i appreciate that that were 10 of the student population got it on it thanks been in touch with the ag's office as well on on the issue of convenience stores vaping centers being close to schools as well on that so i'll i'll have two things to follow up on that's great thanks thank you all right is there any further business to come before the board in open session if not if i can entertain a motion for the board to return to closed session for the items previously stated and is listed on our agenda chair sutton i make a motion we go back to closed session for the items previously stated second got a motion from vice chairman happy second from his cash to return to closed session for the items previously stated and as

153listed on our agenda during the discussion hearing none all those in favor share about china opposed nay as have it we're now in closed session thank you very much thank you all for joining us this evening hey you