Board Meeting 6-15-21

001uh this all right good evening and welcome to the wake county board of education public meeting call this meeting to order 5 45 so welcome everyone uh here we do have a quorum as all board members here are present along with superintendent moore and attorney bloomberg so with that if you all would join me in the reciting of the pledge of allegiance nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right that'll take us straight to our uh information uh items and we'll start with uh comments from our superintendent superintendent moore good afternoon chair sutton and board members have a number of comments this evening i'll begin by congratulating all 12 000 members of the class of 2021 the largest graduating class in our district's history like the class before them these graduates

002experience the senior year indelibly marked by the pandemic i want to thank them for their resilience perseverance and grace through this unusual and trying period it was gratifying to be able to celebrate this milestone in person as each school held a graduation ceremony on its campus this meant of course that i wasn't able to see every graduate cross the stage as i've done in the past but i felt honored to attend many of these ceremonies i was especially pleased that at least three of the ceremonies i attended remarks were delivered in both english and spanish we can tell families we care but when possible it's always better to show them and address them directly our 2020 strategic plan goal states that we will graduate students ready for productive citizenship as well as college or a

003career my hope for this class is that the adaptability and grit that they've had to show through the pandemic will serve them well as they face the challenges of the future again my most heartfelt congratulations to the class of 2021. i had the particular privilege of attending one unique graduation ceremony last week six of our students celebrated their high school graduations as well as the completion of a year-long internship as a part of project search a total work immersion program housed at embassy suites hotel in rtp the goal of project search is to prepare students with disabilities for competitive employment when health regulations permitted they worked in the hotel for four and a half hours per day learning skills in a variety of jobs they also completed an embassy suites at home internship that included

004tasks similar to those they performed at the hotel including meal prep clean up laundry vacuuming and more the program will have these graduates prepared for productive citizenship and careers you can learn more at wcpss.net project search the national board for professional teaching standards has named wcpss as one of 79 national board accomplished districts this distinction is given to districts where at least 20 percent of its teachers have achieved national board certification candidates for certification analyze their teaching practices and impact on student learning take on leadership roles and collaborate with peers for 15 years we have maintained the highest number of national board certified teachers in the nation this success is thanks in part to the support that we provide all candidates at every step of the process from initial candidacy to renewal more than 3

005000 wcpss teachers have earned board certification in the end the board certification process leads to better teaching which ultimately benefits students my thanks to all who have done the hard work to achieve this certification congratulations to brent curran a cte teacher at panther creek high school who has been named the north carolina technology student association advisor of the year for two years in a row mr curran has led students to state titles in the test of engineering aptitude math and science or teams competition he also models leadership for his students two of whom now serve as state officers for the north carolina technology student association congratulations again on this well-deserved recognition finally this evening i would like to commend millbrook environmental connections magnet elementary school which received the prestigious green flag from the national wildlife

006federation's eco schools usa program the organization's highest honor millbrook was recognized for exceptional achievement in educating students about sustainability and improving the environmental footprint of the school facility millbrook students and faculty formed an eco-action team to audit their school's waste and consumption and energy efficiency this led to school-wide recycling reuse and composting programs and the creation of pollinator and edible gardens which raised environmental awareness and connected students to the natural world while improving the school's environmental footprint our strategic plan indicates that every student deserves to be engaged in relevant rigorous and meaningful learning each day this school-wide endeavor is a good example of how that core belief can also have a lasting impact beyond the boundaries of a school campus well done millbrook elementary that concludes my comments thank you superintendent moore uh i too

007would like to extend my heartfelt failed congratulations to all of our graduates of the class of we look forward to seeing and hearing about the great things you will do as you move forward i also want to take this opportunity to congratulate and thank all of the work that our schools our media principals teachers faculty and staff and the planning of the more than almost i guess 100 ceremonies that we saw normally we see about 27 28 ceremonies over the course of a few days at the convention center but with the restrictions we probably had close to 100 ceremonies so we could not get to all of them but i certainly was able to to make a few and uh was just amazed and and uh in all uh at the creativity the ingenuity the

008efficiency that we still saw many of our schools and our teams display over the course of the last few days from the ceremonies on our football fields to auditoriums gymnasiums uh just a a again a wonderful display of the commitment of ira county public school system employees to make sure that uh our students uh and families uh experienced um an opportunity that was lost for quite a few but we were able to recapture here at the end an important milestone and ceremony for our students and so they seem to be really pleased and excited as well as our families so we heard a lot of bull horns and cheers and screams and that sort of thing but really a great experience and opportunity for all so thank you to our principals uh our staff leaves

009us probably with an interesting quandary next year as we think about whether we go back to the convention center or continue uh uh ceremonies at the local school level but we'll wait until we get to that bridge and figure out what happens there but again just kudos to our our staff uh principals and all that made that possible so with that i turn over to vice chairman happy yes thank you chair sutton i certainly echo your congratulations of our class of 2021 and a thank you to our schools for making these special ceremonies for our students and many of our students in schools had individualized ceremonies as well some for those who felt more comfortable in a one-on-one setting and so you know i had one school where they were doing it all day and

010then they had a couple group ceremonies and then another day of individualized ceremony and so the time that goes into having that personalized moment and being able to capture that moment is is a lift but worth it for these students and hearing our students speak is always inspiring but hearing these messages of community of resilience of appreciation not just for their parents and their friends but recognizing their teachers and their peers for the lift that they've done and had over this year and recognizing that that has will allow them to adapt and move and and become those those folks that are flexible in any situation as they move on and in addition to that i had one school that particularly shouted out that they had seven students who were duly enrolled graduating not just with

011their high school diploma but their associate's degree as well at one of our comprehensive high schools so the academic success of many of our students was not hindered by this pandemic although it made it much more challenging and that is not every student's experience at all i also want to congratulate our kindergarten class who had a very unique year and are moving on to first grade as well as our fifth and eighth grade students those transitions are always challenging but have a different celebration this year and a huge thank you to our year-round schools it's 23 days until the next school year begins for them and certainly hope that they get some rest and relaxation as they finish out this year with our with our students because their work is not done thank you thank

012you vice chairman happy we'll continue right down the line mrs kushner good evening thank you chair sutton and mr happy and just wanted to thank the united arts of raleigh and wake county for their first friday where they highlighted students and the artists in schools that worked on creative writing and they highlighted our students work miss carter was able to watch live as well so i want to congratulate those students and united arts for their great support of the arts i think it's at this time when we're so polarized in this nation we've just seen how important the arts are to students this pandemic revealed that i really think the arts will be able to bring us together so very grateful to our partner united arts for their great work in our schools um and

013add my congratulations to all the our graduates and wanted to also highlight mount vernon which has an accelerated program in their boosters program where they had eight students graduate on to ninth grade these were students who were for some reason older or age inappropriate for where they were whether they struggled in elementary school and they were in sixth grade a year ago and going to mount vernon through an accelerated program they are now graduating ninth eighth graders going on to ninth grade so congratulations to ms johnson and all the great work of the staff at mount vernon for making sure those students go on to high school being on track to graduate thank you thank you mr christian dr martin thank you i do want to congratulate the graduates it's fun to be at several

014more graduations always exciting for me to particularly to see the families of the first time college graduates the smiles the the emotion is high uh that's always very exciting i had the great opportunity last week to have a virtual meeting uh presentation with the american council of engineering companies uh this group wanted to get some more information about the capital projects that are going on in the wake county school system and how they might get involved so hopefully we'll have a few more businesses registering with us because those that register with us we can then get information when bids go out um always very appreciative of our principles and don't make comments about just anybody retiring but in district 5 muriel summers is retiring from combs elementary school i was unable to get to the

015retirement party because it coincided with the athens drive graduation but i just want to from this table publicly acknowledge the phenomenal work of muriel summers i have uh so appreciated working with her over the years that i've been working with the school system you know her her crazy idea back when when combs was about to be closed and and she was given a very brief period of time to say come up with something if you want the school to stay open but you don't get any budget to do it and uh she had read the seven habits of highly effective people by stephen covey i met had met him at a conference and she basically said you know i think we could apply these ideas to school and hence the leadership programs began and what

016she created i think has been outstanding her leadership which is based on empowerment as opposed to a command structure has just transformed not only that school but the lives of many many uh children and teachers and adults around the world so muriel thank you for your many many years of service and you look forward to whatever you choose to do in your retirement yeah thank you as i also try to do uh covet update for wake county this uh the last week uh we are down to uh 18 cases per 100 000 population that puts us into the cdc moderate transmission range so it's the the second to the bottom um you know i had a chance to have dinner with a friend of mine who's a provost um at a university in a different

017state and he was shocked at our numbers because they're down around two and that's where we ought to be so still we need to be careful and the based on the north carolina health and human services website the five to 17 year olds are here in wake county are at 21 per hundred thousand population so the five to 17 year olds are above the uh county um and i i normally just don't respond to this kind of thing but um i feel a need for just a minor chemistry lesson because i do see these signs about co2 versus o2 i happen to be a chemist know a little bit about molecular sizes the carbon dioxide molecule is just slightly bigger about half again bigger than an o2 molecule the smallest size poor in an n95

018mask is about 1 times ten to the minus fifth meters uh your molecule of o2 or co2 is about two to three times ten to the minus tenth meters that means there's a hundred thousand the factor of a hundred thousand difference in the size of those molecules o2 and co2 can equally get through a mask there is no restriction which is why surgeons can wear these things all day so a little bit of chemistry says you're going to be just fine wearing a mask and viruses just might be stopped and you might save somebody's life thank you thank you dr martin mr scott thank you and good evening um and keep my comments short this evening again wanted to to share my colleagues in thanking our schools for hosting amazing graduations uh when you think

019about it they just they were able to just pull this off it seemed like that's what they had been doing for years and it was the first time that for for many for most of these schools to have a graduation in that way and not just from the ceremony itself but everything leading up to it very safe very secure very traffic you know all these little things that that seem silly to mention but they actually really lead up to everyone being able to enjoy the event so i know a lot of people were part of the planning at the district level in providing oversight and then of course at the individual schools that was a huge huge uh task that our school personnel did and in addition to to seeing a few phenomenal principles retire

020we have had many folks retiring and this year just want to extend my gratitude to the to our bus drivers our data managers everyone who is this is their time to retire please know that the the impact while you know why you may only work at a school for a couple of months too many decades the impact that everyone who goes inside those buildings to serve our students is something we cannot define and we could never truly know and it's it's great and i just wanted to extend my gratitude and congratulations to all those who are retiring this year thanks thank you mr scott ms johnson hossler thank you very much again i echo the comments of my colleagues for um for a great deal of gratitude to be able to witness um the success

021of our students who are matriculating on to the next journey and certainly also the the love and care that you get to see in those intimate settings of students really being able to come right back after they walk and give that diploma to hug a teacher or an administrator which you don't really get to see or we don't get to see the same in the larger settings so again just a real and parents alike thanking people personally so the personal touch and love um is always appreciated for me to be able to witness and share in with those families um one other thing again i'll be brief too it's been a very long over 18 months and so finally yesterday lincoln heights environmental connections elementary school was able to receive officially their center for the

022environment nc green schools award and so it was a actual physical award which was quite heavy um it's very nicely framed in wood as you would imagine given it's in the environment but also given that school was not in the number of teachers who were excited to share how they fully integrated the environmental connections as ms mahaffey knows into the school down to the artwork in its natural habitat on the walls to the i don't even know how many birdhouses we actually got to eat blueberries off the tree that where the pollinators worked they actually have blueberries that were not gone um and see uh blue jays babies they have their fur on them now so again we got to really see it in full integration from a kindergarten teacher to the art teacher the

023ways in which that they actually truly integrate and i i kept saying to them i remember when we discussed this theme and i'm pretty sure i remember how most of us voted this majority and you would not let that theme go um and so i mean so i i think that's important to to say that when someone feels strongly it's um it's important to pay attention because you saw this coming and the success is outstanding and and that the same is true for laura woods who we heard speak to us last week about encouraging us to really think about sustainability fully as a school district um and she also was awarded an outstanding environmental education educator as a result of this i mean i could go on the number of teachers who've been trained and

024certified and being environmental educators again a true full embracement of a magnet theme and again most of you know that was a school that was at the top of my list when i joined the school board to watch it turn around and to see it flourish was truly heartwarming and i appreciate them for inviting me thank you thank you johnson hustler this is cash um also the graduations i thought were exceptionally good this year i love the small settings um i know the principals they really had to have a lot of persistence because i know like at millbrook they had five because in most of my district all of our um gymnasiums are quite small so we had to have five graduations at millbrook and and a couple at a wakefield but um the fact

025that they were smaller it gave us an opportunity to see the kids and families more personally and that means a lot to me in my district and as miss mahappy so well said the graduation speeches by the students were unbelievable this year they always are our graduates speak so well at our ceremonies i wish everybody could listen to them unbelievable this year they did talk about the resilience and the stamina and the things that they learned that they'll take with them in a good way and the relationship building that was hard but then it when they came back to school how it worked out and it was it was really really well done the eighth and the eighth grade graduations and the 5th grade graduations were so much fun they were of course drive-bys which

026was not exactly what we normally would do but the the festivities and the cars and the fun and the teachers out there hopping in the back of some of the the trucks when they're going by it is really fun so i think i think they took a lot of the hard times and made it into a really good events at all these schools so i say thank you to everybody i did have the opportunity to go to muriel summer's retirement and she is a very like dr martin says she's a very special person means a lot to me and of course her retirement was kid-led as it would be and um a lot of tears and her family was there dr ashley thompson gave a really good speech and brought a lot of the kid

027things into into the front and that was well done she city council member was there proclaimed june 10 says muriel summer's day and then she got the order of the long leaf pine from um the governor cooper which was a big deal and it surprised her and it was a it was a great day and i hope i get to spend a lot of time with her after her retirement i plan to that's one of my highlights i'm going to do you won't retire and um what i said you weren't retired no i i've retired three times according to my kids just now you haven't done it just so you know i keep i don't know how to do it right you're right but i do get to hang with her even though i'm not

028retired um and then um just um i just want to say thank you to everybody in our schools as well for what they've done it's been a rough year but last year was tough this year's in roth but i'm looking forward to all the things that we learned during the pandemic and as christine kushner always said this is a good time for us to move forward with new and good ideas so i'm looking forward to that so thank you thank you mrs cash mr hagerty thank you mr chairman so again you can't go without congratulating all the fine young men and women in the class of 2021 getting out to each of these graduation ceremonies meeting the graduates meeting the parents how many proud parents were there and just the incredible feeling of celebration bringing

029everyone together to celebrate this milestone and talking with a lot of the students i made them a promise i would not use the words pivot resilience or unprecedented in any conversation with them for at least a year but it really was a chance to to get get around the district and see the wonderful things all of our high school students and staff and principals are doing you know from broughton with our principal of the year elena ashburn the wonderful ib program ms koshner mr sutton were there with me at that one um you know at kerry you know with ms carter just the really exciting things they're doing in cte and their culinary program was magnificent you know green hope again i saw miss carter there just how well you know principal hedrick has that

030school running and all of the wonderful uh universities and colleges that so many of their graduates are going to a real testament to the work that they're doing there i got an echo the leesville road high school the ceremony's so so nice i had to go to it twice i will tell you this there was no more spirited crowd than the parents and the students at leesville road high school and i saw the most inspirational speech motivational speech given by adult or a student at leedsville road high school it's recorded you owe it to yourself to take a listen to it and see that young man's address he had you know people cheered during graduations he had people cheering during the keynote that's how that's that's how wonderful he was you know millbrook you know

031just i think they set a record for the number of scholarship dollars principal king was saying that they brought in the accomplishments 12 for 12 million accomplishments of all those students panther creek high school continues to prove why it's one of the top rated high schools in the country the culture of success that spread there the partnership between the staff and the students and the families and sanderson one thing i want to point out about sanderson high school is that visiting all of these all of these colleges and talking with all of these we had more one-on-one conversations with the students and if you talk about students that really embody and reflect those four c's that we talk about is so important as part of our mission statement in terms of those students being creative

032communicators collaborative you know they had no no no fear there was they would talk with adults they would share they were interact their experiences and the stories they told in their in their in their experiences just uh principal dude was doing a fantastic job at sanderson high school and then southeast raleigh high school i had not been i had not visited for more than you know an extended time before and i was amazed at how beautiful that school is uh i was superintendent more talked about just the number the large number of spanish-speaking students bilingual students we have you know integrated into that school and that program and the exciting programs they have in stem and other offerings there it really was amazing to see this whole tapestry of all of the different high schools

033we have serving all the different areas of our county i do want to reiterate ms scott's congratulations to our retirees we have some wonderful teachers staff at all levels that are retiring i have to pass personal congratulations to a local favorite of ours uh leesville road high school teacher anz angie skioli is stepping down after a long and very celebrated tenure at leesville road high school there are a lot of families whose children have gone through leesville road have had history and social studies ap taught to hurt them by mrs skioli and she is beloved in that community and we wish her well in her next role and then the final thing is that we have another transition and they can't all be good stories but i really want to mention this individual professor jahara

034davis professor davis was a teacher that came to the county in the middle of the year she stepped in at ligon middle school where we had a vacancy created by covid so she's coming into new classes of all different levels new students she hadn't met before and the incredible job that she did getting those students excited motivated they had just class activities together outside of the classroom really creating a sense of community where so many classes you might have you know cameras off kids disengaged she really excited them and had them going and honestly i think she's a potential future teacher of the year she's not coming back to wake county she only had that temporary contract and she did leave she went to durham public schools but if she comes back you can tell

035i'm willing right now to write her a letter of reference and i hope that we can find more of these professor davises out there and really celebrate their accomplishments and let them know how appreciated they are thank you thank you mr hagerty mrs carter okay uh thank you i want to start a little different place i had the opportunity to attend my first ever wrestling match and yes i'm pretty psyched about it because now i'm kind of addicted to wrestling i think it's awesome i went to uh the tri-8 conference at cary high which i was told if you're going to her first ever wrestlemania that's where you have to go and i have to just give a huge shout out there was no ac of course right so for about five hours there we

036are and athletes are competing just um yes coaches are gently making suggestions from the sidelines and families and community supporters are there as well it was just a great environment and getting to learn about what wrestling is how it works and how things can just change like that so i appreciate the patience for kerry high as well for teaching me some things there and i know today wrestlers were at regionals i believe in our area and several have qualified for states so want to give that shout out and then i too obviously attended some graduations i had a great time i started last week with superintendent moore at project search and i too encourage you to learn more about that program just amazing students and a little bit of shock as i knew one of

037the graduates had worked with him years ago and it was made it super special had no idea so and the other two that you know are a little different were the score academy graduations and also the mary phillips and um those three particular graduations to me just really speak to what our district does that some and i'll be honest many of us who have worked in the school system do not know all of the programs that have existed and i think those three programs and score really is two on one because there's an a and b um but really speaks to what this district tries to do in meeting what children need and how sometimes there are barriers that we cannot see some we might you know be able to see and hearing what some

038of those students where they've been and how they have truly been able to step up and just do great things and having the school support that believe that they will succeed and keep that positive even at times when those students really aren't sure that they can and heard a lot of talking about that and to me it's really important work that i would like to see expansion of and even some additional things where yes i went to the traditional the carey high was a great again the air was broke but it was like we're outside shall we say and hearing the chorus sing was fabulous and the student that spoke one of them was the first high school graduate in her family and that is just to me yet another powerful milestone through my little

039graduation drive arounds and green hopes was fabulous as well crosswords flex is to another nodder to quote unquote traditional high school right and it speaks to again the different needs of our students and the apex friendship i had the pleasure of joining miss mahaffey for that and that was great as well but just really listening to the different stories going you know from kids taking a gap year some starting their own companies some who are going to continue to work some are going to two years college four-year college some you know just have a trade that they've already been certified in and they're hitting the ground running so i think it's just important to remember that all of our kids and students are important and really trying to work hard to see what programs exist

040what we might could have helped flourish a little i guess is the best way i can put that but it was a great and busy week but one that was very meaningful to me and i know many families and staff and i appreciate being allowed to participate in all that and of course congratulations to all the graduates and to all the staff i know some of you are getting ready or have already started with our summer learning program some are starting in six days some are be doing it in your track out and some already have other jobs because we know that's a reality for many of our employees but i hope that all of you take time sometime somewhere for yourself to re-energize in between all the track outs summer programs and all of

041that and then another quick shout out athletes yes there's a playoffs starting started at 6 pm with kerry high for baseball so i wanted to give them a shout out and good luck and i'll be hosting another d9 connection virtual meeting for those who live in d9 or work in d9 or have students in d9 on monday june 28th at noon and if you check out my d9 connection blog the link will be there thank you mr chairman i did i did forget to mention one thing if you'll indulge me for less than a minute which was i failed to mention one school and it was a school that you and i attended together and the superintendent as well and that was the graduation that almost brought me to tears because we got to see

042a special graduation with one of our own getting to give a degree to his own daughter graduating and so i wanted to congratulate you and your family on their graduation and your own member of the class of 2021 thank you i appreciate that i can't steal your thunder but i have to say because i forgot i actually thought you said it that i ran back and you didn't we had our first graduation at south garner high school very first one which was amazing for all the things and that was one that was actually also done in spanish and so i'd be remiss if i did not give up my tighten up titans a shout out i want to thank all the board members for your comments um and i want to thank you all here

043in the public for uh being patient with us as we go through these comments you have a busy nine-member board of education and has been a busy uh two weeks in the wake county public school system and so uh thank you all for bearing with us uh as we share our comments and a little bit about the work that has taken place over the last two weeks as we move to tonight's agenda a couple of changes one i would like to remove item 5b which is the harmful impact of vaping on students the potential lawsuit against jewel for the company's role in the vaping epidemic we have been made aware of some details regarding the state's case with respect to juul and so i want to remove this item and place it on our upcoming

044meeting agenda in july or july 20th so we're going to postpone this item and move it to next month's agenda then i would like to add an action item on the offer to purchase and contract for sale of 2.06 acres of surplus property the east carry middle school and that is a real estate offer to purchase so i want to add that to [Music] tonight's agenda so with those two changes if i could entertain a motion to approve tonight's amended agenda juror sentinel move approval of the agenda as amended second of a motion from ms kushner uh second from uh vice chair mahaffey to approve tonight's agenda as amended can i have a discussion on that sure um the fact that we do have our lawyer here with the present with the jewel case miss

045janet ward black is there not a way we cannot at least ask some questions from the board table about anything we might have for that agenda item that's being removed sure is okay all right so let me move that so let me move that to an information item and we'll ask you to come forward as well back in just just a second is there any further discussion so does that have to be a amendment is that added as an information item you're adding an information with the approval it would include an information item on the potential jewel litigation so we'll we'll move that item from action to information item and that's again item 5b on the potential jewel litigation so that is now being moved to information item instead of being completely removed and then

046there are other items suggested adding so with that we've got a motion and a second to approve tonight's agenda as amended is there any further discussion and to be clear i will amend my motion to include that change hearing none all those in favor share by signing oppose nay eyes have it tonight's agenda has been approved as amended so with that we'll go to the information item and start with an update from the superintendent to intend more thank you making sure our virtual recorder got all that gymnastics so as has been in my practice i will provide just a brief overview of the items that we covered in work session this afternoon for those who were unable to join at that time we had three items on our work session this afternoon the first was

047a presentation to the board on the required school mental health improvement plan that all districts in north carolina have to submit we went through the components of that plan it's available in the presentation and the backup documents that are in assembly for review so that the board could provide some feedback prior to bringing it back to the board at your july 20th board meeting for approval the second item on the work session was an update on the virtual academy and that update included a wealth of information about where we are right now including registration numbers we are at 11 500. that number has actually dropped from the last update that we gave you which is i think a good thing we provided additionally updates around scheduling staffing programming that will occur as a part of

048the virtual academy for those families who choose it it continued commitment to the fact that we are eliminating the concurrent teaching that was such an issue last year and then a brief highlight at the end of the presentation on the current senate bill 654 that's working its way through the legislature that was from in the senate went to the house they made some changes went back to the senate they didn't concur it's now in committee and the potential for the language in that bill shifting what we have planned for our virtual academy so we will continue to keep an eye on senate bill 654 and see what happens we know that it is important and we are committed to providing that option for the families who want it but we do need to pay attention

049to what happens in the language in the legislation and the final item in the work session was an update on the 2021 summer extended learning program camp wcbss where we provided you information on the sites across the district that are hosting the number of students that were invited between 80 and 85 percent of the students that have been invited are actually attending there's also additional students whose families requested to attend that were able to get into the program and we do have some folks who are currently waitlisted and we are hoping as we see the programs begin and who actually shows and begins to participate they will be able to get some folks off of that waitlist in particular at the secondary program where it's focused on credit recovery and kids work at different paces

050so those are the three updates from our work session thank you thank you superintendent moore our next information item uh involves an update from wake technical community college and uh as i did i'm sorry so i just uh skipped over public comment i apologize for that uh that that does not indicate my desire to lack up to not hear from you all so i apologize for that public comment is accepted in writing via video or in person during regular meetings of the full board in response to covert 19 guidance from state health officials capacity limits have been increased at board of education meetings and limited social distancing is in effect face coverings are strongly encouraged for any member of the public who was not fully vaccinated including children under the age of 16 or 12

051now during the public comment session you may speak for up to three minutes uh tonight's timer is out of order and so mr bloomberg will hold up a card to let you know when you have 30 seconds left so i think i think we do have a timer is working it just doesn't have the 30 second beep so we'll let you know when 30 seconds is left but there will be a beep when the three minutes are up so there you go all right uh so the following citizens have submitted comments as part of our public comment portion of this evening's agenda their comments are linked on the same online agenda that we are using for tonight's meeting that agenda as well as guidelines for those wishing to submit comments for future meetings can be

052found at our website wcpss.net on the tab label school board we have 37 written comments from members of the public the topics and speakers whose comments are attached to the agenda are as follows there are two speakers under mask mandate about nine speakers with respect to sros six speakers regarding attendance policy seven speakers regarding cameras in classrooms and then a number of speakers on a variety of topics ranging from the north korean high school athletic association investigation teaching tolerance and differences coaches red yellow cards school safety high school drivers the lawsuit potential lawsuit against jewel equity affairs crt surveys in high schools gender pronouns mass mandate and an inappropriate lesson at apex elementary unaccounted students dropout rate criticism and sustainability so those are the comments that have submitted been submitted in writing we also have

053a number of speakers that are here in person to provide remarks and so we'll start with those first up is sean pollins in its elementary and middle schools with plans to expand standardized curriculums to further grades over several years for those who don't know el curriculum is a heavily scripted curriculum marketed to grades k-8 which provides teachers with every lesson plan for every day of the entire school year it literally tells teachers what to teach when to teach it how to teach it what to say to students what questions to ask and how long to spend on each section of the lesson plan in theory this should make things easier for teachers especially newer teachers while ensuring that every child in the county is learning the same thing on the same day no matter which

054school they attend that's cool but there are some major problems with this strategy teachers are no longer allowed to teach the books and poems that spark the passion inside them that led them to become educators so many great works of literature have been effectively removed from our classrooms the diary of a young girl by anne frank the giver the outsiders a wrinkle in time watershed down animal farm then the list goes on we do not teach these books to any of our kids anymore instead of teaching these excellent stories that have been enjoyed for by students for decades we are teaching kids books like the omnivores dilemma a nonfiction book which details the environmental and animal welfare impacts of food choices or the big thirst which describes how water scarcity will soon be a major

055factor in our lives or world without fish an illustrated book for kids that teaches them about how we are destroying our oceans and overfishing these are important topics but i'd have found them super boring in middle school many teachers also find el curriculum boring for them el sucks the joy out of teaching it's literally making some of these teachers cry in frustration and i know some of you board members have seen this firsthand my little birds are everywhere and they sing songs of your lack of concern the last time i spoke on this subject i use the example of anne frank because my mother taught that book to her students for many years every teacher has their own anne frank i was given animal farm in fifth grade by my ag teacher and i read

056it multiple times you can credit that novel for my appearance before you today i always fight the power and i learned how to do so at pleasant union elementary i also discovered my love for fantasy and science fiction when my 9th grade english teacher now known as area superintendent dr savage placed in my hands a book called the wizard of earthsea i am now an avid reader because my teachers were free to share with me their own passions their own lessons their own love of great stories and their own joy if we are going to stick with el teachers should at least be free to create alternative modules and be given a chance to put their own stamp on their classrooms for example if an 8th grade teacher wants to teach anne frank and not

057the omnivore's dilemma there should be a process by which those lesson plans could be approved and maybe even shared with other teachers in the county so that our teachers can learn from one another and find ways to share their love of reading with their students and colleagues as superintendent moore mentioned our teachers are consistently rated the most highly trained highly educated teaching force of any school district in the nation year after year after year they are literally the best isn't it time we show them the respect they've earned and let them run their own damn classrooms thank you for your time jolene ellis hello hello thanks for having me this is my first time being here very excited okay oh cheer that's it am i over am i ready that's all i get okay all

058right my name is jolene and i am a mom of five and three of my kids are school age and two of them were attending wake county schools up until this past year when i decided to homeschool my kids as i grew concerned about mass mandates and social subjects being taught in schools my concern has grown substantially over the last year and today i want to argue against adopting critical race theory into our schools critical race theory is wrapped up in really beautiful words and ideas it's cloaked in phrases that sound really important and valid words like equity and inclusion that sound really beautiful but are masking a deeper agenda that i cannot support so i want to take a look at where critical race 3 actually comes from critical theory is a school of

059thought that developed through the frankfurt school okay one of the intellectuals who founded this school of thought was named max horkheimer and this is how he defines critical theory he said that the a theory is critical if it seeks to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them in other words critical theory believes that all men are born slaves to their circumstances that men are enslaved until they are set free this is the exact opposite of the founding principles of our country that all men are created equal and are born with the rights of life and liberty continuing this vein of logic critical race theory then is the belief that human beings are enslaved by the color of their skin when you teach children that their skin color enslaves them that their circumstances enslave

060them you teach them to believe that they are slaves and a generation of slaves will only lead to a generation of victims once upon a time our nation believed in slavery once upon a time the world believed in slavery nobody is disputing this and nobody is celebrating it but hundreds of thousands of men and women white and black alight fought in wars and in politics to upend this belief martin luther king gave his life in the pursuit of a dream where all human beings would be judged on their character not on their skin why then are we so intent on bringing it back critical race theory is modern day slavery it teaches mental enslavement keeping kids bound in unseen change based in the pigmentation of their skin the chains may be invisible but they are

061no less real if you really want to liberate our kids then teach them that they are not slave to their circumstances teach them that they are greater than their circumstances teach them that they are more than the sum of their color and their zip code teach them that who they are is not reduced to their physical characteristics teach them that they are stronger than any hardship that they face teach them that they are resilient teach them that they are american it's a very loud feat teach them that they belong to the greatest nation in the world and that they are free teach them that they are more powerful than any circumstance they face and then watch them change the world jessica lewis [Applause] hello i'm really not prepared tonight to speak because i got the

062email at 3 45 and i've been doing massages all day so but i will still come up and speak in front of y'all about the mass mandate and to free the mass free the smiles off our kids one being my seven-year-old he just turned seven has cyclic vomiting syndrome he's been vomiting for the past three years he gets really dizzy disoriented and even with in person school i got a call once sometimes twice a week to come pick him up so he was we weren't sure if he was going to go on to second grade the tier three team met and they said yes we think he needs to go on to second grade but we recommend the six weeks of summer schooling um my biggest concern about him doing the six weeks of summer

063schooling is wearing a mask and especially in the hot heat getting dizzy and getting calls and it's hard for me to work as a single mom you know not knowing when i'm gonna get a call from the school the other thing is is for their end of the year celebration we went to an indoor arcade they were not required to wear a mask we went to defy gravity 200 plus people in there um no one was required to wear a mask but what was cool is the people that wanted to wear a mask there was maybe like eight people in there they were able to wear a mask so i can literally take my kids anywhere and they do not have to wear a mask that's basically i mean i'm grateful we did the lottery

064to get in a b combs magnet leadership elementary even though we only live a mile away from the school we still had to do lottery i'm very grateful for the school marielle summers is one of the best principals i really hope to keep my kids in wake county schools but i don't know how long if you guys can't release if harness county schools can do it why can't you you say your hands are tied by governor cooper mandy cohen no stand up for our children that's all i ask got my own timer good evening uh mr chair superintendent board special thank you to board member karen carter ma'am even though i'm not in your district you continually answer my emails and i just wanted to give you a special shout out for that thank you

065very much but tonight i'd like to share with the members of the board of recent action with which i take issue my children have taken technology class internet safety classes they know not to share personal or sensitive information with strangers especially on the internet we learned that addition to nefarious purposes information can be used to record their movements feelings and health without their consent so at school they feel safe but last week they opened their laptops and homeroom like each day google classroom was there from a link they watched the morning announcements led by a peer but among other announcements was their classmates saying that the principal wanted all students to take a quick survey the survey link was just under the school announcements my children even again even though they're versed on sharing personal

066information took the survey their guards were down first because of the location their safe school and second because a peer asked them to they did not think twice hearing about this later i was curious so i looked up some policy information on the wcps website it states that due to the pandemic no surveys will be administered in the school year 2020 to 2021. in addition it also says that any future surveys will likely not be approved if they contain data collection of sensitive information it also states that surveys will not be approved if they fail to require active consent for the study participation this particular survey however was listed as a to do in a google classroom it was confirmed to have come from the county it did not show an option to one notify

067your parent first or two opt out in addition it asked sensitive information some of which i've seen on health surveys my point is this i was not given a heads up about the survey so i also did not have the chance to consent to the survey being conducted on my children i also did not know what content it contained ahead of time to be able to make a fair decision that's three strikes against what i thought was a partnership with the school system as a parent i do represent a portion of your customer base i'd like to suggest a better inclusion of parents when our children your students are asked sensitive questions i don't have time to go into the questions but i have confirmed some of them are on the basc maci 2 cdi2

068which are psychiatric evaluations which are only supposed to be administered by folks with certain credentials we moved to wake county for better education not more babysitting our children are complex it does take this village but i need your focus on for example helping them develop math strategies and look at all sides of history so that they're better prepared for a complex world i happen to have a masters in organizational leadership is with that bit of knowledge i'm going to suggest the next time you need to give a survey try a couple of options test it amongst yourselves first you can also offer it to a test group of other parents once tested you can give parents the benefit of the doubt and ask for their feedback [Music] so i'm asking you one thing imagine the

069culture you can create when you consider parents your partner thank you good evening in the words of one of our sitting school board members when someone is passionate about something it's important to listen i'm passionate about this so listen to this it's the school's job to educate in the main subjects and nothing else no propaganda indoctrination or expense experimental tests that seek to harm children instead of help them we need doctors accountants teachers with integrity engineers and more not blm and lgbtqia plus activists running our streets we pay your salary and as easily as we can pay it we can drain it and some of you are parents do you really agree with your agenda for your children or just the publics do you practice what you preach mr sutton doesn't as he's taken his

070mask off several times since he's entered the room or do you see yourselves as higher than those who elected you your job is to help administer curriculum not indoctrinate and brainwash children into fearing others hating others or preying upon one's gender identity the children are the future even though you're free from the facts of your policy now you'll be depending on those you've indoctrinated to help you in the future scared weak unable to think critically and responsible for your health care money and your grandchildren's education at the end of the day is the destruction worth the paycheck know that even if you don't believe in a higher power and you don't want to listen to us you'll have to listen to and answer to the higher power at the end of your life or when

071jesus returns you'll have to answer for why you forcefully masked children and kept them out of school you'll have to answer for why you pit races against each other you'll have to answer for why you promoted endorsed and taught pedophilia change your ways too much to handle all at once that's how we feel that's how our children feel and you will answer for it thank you have a good evening [Applause] julian hall julie hall good evening superintendent moore chiefs of staff dr gardner school board members and all involved in the strategic planning process thank you for the opportunity to speak some of you may remember me helping to give a tour composting tour at kingswood elementary i'm an environmental scientist educator and parent of wake county students i recently joined the wake green schools partnership

072a collaborative group of teachers administrators environmental educators parents local and statewide organizations we share common goals of engaging school communities to increase school sustainability and environmental literacy indoors and out listening to the board retreat session last week we heard both dr martin and mr hegarty ask that sustainability goals be incorporated into the revised strategic plan we can't wait to see this come to fruition it is the perfect time to seriously engage in work that was getting started pre-covered to develop a more formal plan regarding sustainability the wake green school partnership has come up with specific suggestions on wording to add a new objective of sustainability within the strategic plan and we have shared this with you through submitted comments today please consider these suggestions and incorporate sustainability language as you deem appropriate now is the

073time we would like to see the revised strategic plan include a vision of our school system as a good steward of our resources with the goal to create practices and policies that encourage environmental sustainability we want wcpss to equitably reduce environmental impacts and help develop students ability to think critically innovate and provide solutions towards more sustainable living districts in nc and across the country already have sustainability coordinators and we feel that wcpss is poised to hire one when adding this language into the plan some sustainability initiatives of course cost money up front but by conserving resources they pay for themselves in the long run also part of a sustainability coordinator's job is to seek out the funding that pays for these green initiatives this type of position will pay will more than pay for itself

074in a short time thank you for considering the addition of a sustainability objective to the five-year strategic plan the wake green schools partnership stands ready to offer the board's support in advancing sustainability efforts through this important working document thank you tristan good evening superintendent moore chair sutton and board members the challenges faced this year were not our school districts alone our entire community has faced was faced with an unpredictable and unprecedented challenge of navigating a global pandemic something that almost no one living had ever experienced sixteen we face this year as one of many elected leaders in the north carolina association of educators i had the opportunity and responsibility to create space as often as broadly as possible to allow educators in all roles to organize their thoughts and ideas for navigating the pandemic in

075a way that prioritize our students needs as they are inextricably bound to ours there were many times that we offered criticism of the decisions made by district leadership and this board sometimes our criticism was positive and reinforcing decisions made while other times our membership offered it with all with alternative choices we hope to be considered this pandemic has highlighted differences in thought and priorities illuminating opportunities for our community to more clearly understand how closely wound our students learning conditions are to the working conditions of public school employees at the root of any differences we held very tightly to the core of our vision an equitable quality public education for every child in order to realize this vision our state must begin to prioritize our students students need bus drivers and safety assistants to get them

076to and from school safely they need cafeteria workers to provide healthy balanced meals they need custodians and maintenance workers to provide clean and safe learning spaces they need school nurses and counselors to ensure their various medical needs and mental health needs are addressed by personnel trained to do so i could keep going but instead i'm here to thank this board for continuing to work on recruitment and retention of all educators in our school district who are not certified teachers but are absolutely critical to our students ability to um to successfully engage in learning as a teacher i can assure you that our jobs become increasingly more difficult to do well when we are unable to retain educators in all of the other roles thank you mr mr nieder and his team for thinking forward how

077this board can increase the compensation of educators who are supporting students and teachers and while our membership is grateful and supportive of these increases when it comes to retention of any category of educator i urge you to think about the and pay us fairly and improve the conditions in our buildings with high turnover rates pay us fairly and develop leaders that are masterful at creating nurturing climates that breed mutual trust and respect pay us fairly and create opportunities for autonomy and professionalism to thrive within each building it's the and that really matters so on that note thank you for listening to students parents and educators for hearing our criticisms and accepting the responsibility of adjusting to the changing conditions for governing with our students diverse needs in mind and please continue to push our state

078formally and informally to do better for our students to prioritize them as they prepare a budget and to pass a budget allocates the resources material capital and human that will support our public school students thank you jesse campbell good evening and thank you for allowing me to share my concerns on the mental well-being of children wearing masks and how you the board can help to practice i'm not here to yell call anyone's name or lose my temper that's not how i operate i only want you to listen and to help i've been silent for too long on this issue in fear of backlash not only for myself but mainly for my innocent seven-year-old first grader but i want others to know you are not alone in dealing with the issues that we are dealing with

079at home when it comes to mental health my son did well at first with all this he you know in school out of school in school out of school wearing a mask but recently we saw a shift he's become so distant versus the close and loving son i had he's very anxious he's constantly saying i just want to see my friend's mommy when will this end mommy to the point that he's chewing his mask constantly at school during the day i send five to school with a lanyard today he comes home the bus with its soaking wet today i had to take him to the pediatrician because he's developed a nervous tick in his body accompanied with a little bit of aggression according to his teacher she's seen the same thing for over a month

080adults are telling my son my seven-year-old child when we touch others we make them feel unsafe and we spread germs my seven-year-old is now scared to touch others because he may make them sick what kind of message is this do we not spread germs at principal of the year awards or hockey games with thousands of other people around with no masks what are we doing to our kids so how can you the board help look i get it talk to governor cooper talk to cohen talk to ncd hhs well we have and we are but we need your help and we need your voice i believe in my heart that at some point each of you joined this board and hopes to help children to have a great educational experience but somewhere along the line

081for some of you if you lost your side of your original mission whether it's due to social status maybe greed or further future career and politics i really don't know only you know but some of you have forgotten how to be advocates for children i ask you to consider speaking on behalf of the kids in this county some are struggling with depression many with anxiety i ask that you use your powers and your voice to be pro-choice on masks be their advocate i want to end with this chair sutton i gained so much respect for you at the beginning of this year when you were talking to this board about in-person school for middle school and high school students and you said we keep pushing the bar we keep bushing the bar and we know

082it's an excuse we have to give them a chance we owe it to them to give them a chance i am asking you all use your power use your voice give our children a chance thank you holly higgins butcher good evening dr holly higgins wilcher and i'm really glad to be here with you again this evening i want to speak to you a little bit more about brain development my area of expertise the opportunity to do the right thing moving forward brain development young children experience the greatest mountain most rapid rate of brain development from the ages of birth to age eight one of the most important areas of skill development relying on a healthy well oxygenated brain is social and emotional health and competence early childhood mental health and as i've spoken before about

083oxygen deprivation harming the brain there is also a critical window from birth to age eight where social emotional competence flourishes or it flounders the other skills we teach in school during early childhood math science reading they can all be learned during these different windows but if social emotional skills and abilities are not achieved during this time this critical window of opportunity is lost in other words you can teach an 80 year old to learn to read to tie their shoes to do math even do chemistry however an 80 year old cannot learn to empathy they cannot learn to identify feelings or emotions on another person's face recognize the feelings another might have by looking at their facial cues when children miss this critical window to develop these skills they face nothing short of a lifetime

084of neurobiological rehabilitation they in society pay the price and we see this in the over exhaustion of special education services the juvenile justice system in youth mental health services and the list of adult services is longer forcing children to cover their faces is signing them up for a lifetime of neurobiological rehabilitation the loss of these last 15 months of normal socialization the trauma that we have caused children by making decisions based on one set of health experts and ignoring another set of mental health experts is unconscionable and is blowing wide open a chasm of already rampant inequity of health outcomes and social justice we want for all children some might say it's a weak thing to do to change your mind however changing our minds when presented with new information that supports better decision making

085for children is one of the most honorable humble and noble things we can do and our children are worth it here's a testimony i know many of you are busy maybe you don't get to ask the children how they feel wearing masks all day eight-year-old lma we need to put children forwards and not backwards they will be not be able to do good things if they cannot breathe sometimes i have had many classmates come up to me mommy and class and say i'm having a hard time breathing can you cover for me so i can take my mask down for a second when i'm in gym or other places i feel the need to tell a teacher i'm having a hard time breathing i don't say anything because i'm scared this evening i'm asking you

086to put a motion before the board that if the governor's emergency orders expire july 30th then all mandates on children also expire effective july 31st please it just takes one of you to put the motion forward if these orders expire and all vote to approve this motion it's a simple resolution it's time for you the adults who are charged with caring for our children to make decisions on their behalf our role is to protect the children not the other way around thank you julie savage [Applause] hello i come to you as a mom of four wife of a physician assistant and he was also the deputy state surgeon for north carolina for the national guard and most importantly i'm a believer in jesus christ i have witnessed what is being done to our students teachers

087our nation and the world to push a spirit of fear which comes from satan the respiration trash muzzle were the bridges used to create a physical sign of fear to push an experimental drug on a global scale people did not line up for an h1n1 experimental shot because they did not see their neighbors muzzled throughout the world i bet no one here can show me a family photo where they wore their h1n1 muzzle to disney world you are acting as totally hotel healthcare providers forcing children teachers staff and bus drivers to breathe in the respiration trash for eight plus hours every day and just as mr martin had said if oxygen can get through then a virus can get through any person with any basic science knowledge should understand the dangers of bacteria staph infections

088hypoxia increased acne occurrences the detriment to dental health and increased respiratory health issues from breathing in warm worst moist carbon dioxide for eight plus hours a day massacre filthy and only exist in this public context because it gives a visual to a boogeyman the globalists have created one mrna experimental shot alone brings in 38.5 billion dollars to the unchecked non-liable pharmaceutical company you are enforcing what the dhhs is unconstitutionally forcing on us which is an experimental drug where those who take the injection take 100 percent of the liability vaccine manufacturers and administrators are shielded from liability from vaccine injuries and deaths under the national childhood vaccine injury act of 1986. quit forcing our children to participate in this theatric display to push an experimental mrna shot it's experimental it comes from the pits of hell

089in wreaks of revelation 13 with governor cooper's upcoming vaccine passport our students did not sign up to be part of your play you are asking more of them than god does he created us to breathe freely and tells us not to live in fear yesterday we stood outside of mandy cohen's office at the dhhs and we have these signs that in just 24 hours legislative members people of the public have signed in just 24 hours and we're against the mask you guys are breathing in your respiration trash you said for yourself that oxygen passes through so a virus when it gets through the the mask separates and goes faster anybody with science knowledge should know that grandma's matching mask is doing nothing to stop a virus it's all theatrics [Music] [Applause] good evening you've already

090heard from me numerous parents and even students the extensive research indicating the physical and mental harm of face masks the science data north carolina is now one of the last states to still have a statewide mass mandate for school children can now go almost anywhere including a hurricane's game with 15 plus thousand people and our governor unmasked tonight i want to bring to your attention to federal laws first according to the wcpss non-discrimination policy religion is a legally protected class free of discrimination and provided with equal access our religion also does not allow the use of facial coverings veiling the face no governor's health order school policy or pandemic supersedes our constitutionally protected rights you can see the u.s federal law title ix of the civil rights act of 1964. civil rights protections and responsibilities

091still apply even during emergencies they cannot be waived federal agencies state and local governments and recipients of federal financial assistance are an integral part of the shared effort to uphold civil rights to put this in perspective this would be similar to a school asking a muslim to remove their head covering for entry or a member of the jewish faith to remove their yamaka as a condition of entry i know this school system is dedicated to diversity inclusion and belonging so there must be a solution that allows all faculty and students the right to their religious and medical freedoms second this board as well as mandy cohen cite the cdc but the cdc offers guidance suggestions it only recommends masks not requires and that guidance is not a state or federal law however what is a

092federal law is 21 u.s code 360 bbb-3 that states no emergency authorized medical product can be forced as individuals have the option to accept or refuse administration of a product this includes masks pcr tests and vaccinations wearing a mask should not be conditional on getting a shot either all students have the legal right to refuse a mask and the shot and not be forced to mask because they decline the shot and again if parents are concerned they always have the option to choose to continue to mask their kids we will not let up back away slow down or be silenced we will continue to show up in your inbox and to these meetings you are between them which they called mask induced exhaustion syndrome or mies and here are some of the symptoms of mies

093increased blood co2 11 studies decreased blood oxygen 11 studies feelings of exhaustion 10 studies increased respiratory rate four studies difficulty breathing and shortness of breath 13 studies headaches seven studies dizziness two studies drowsiness five studies impaired skin barrier function with acne itching and skin lesions three studies decreased empathy perception one study and more may i share this with the board thank you the researchers go on to elaborate more dangers of masks warning of panic attacks reinforcement of claustrophobic fears disturbance of verbal and nonverbal communication blocking positive perceptions like smiling and laughing proven cognitive impairment decreased attention and increased risk of accidents while wearing masks but what about the risks of covert 19 the researchers continue studies conducted under real life conditions with outcome endpoints showing hardly any covet infections hardly any morbidity hardly any mortality

094and only low contagiousness in children are clearly in the majority so when new data comes in are we going to go with our old ideas or are we going to update counties all over the country in many states have already started lifting their mass mandates including in this state now everyone knows wake county school system is known for excellence so i don't see why this county can't be one of them so that's why i'm standing here today as a father of two will you lift the mask mandates for children thank you ladies and gentlemen i come here today before you to be the voice of parents educators and children all over our county who wish to inform you that we are very displeased with the implications and the ridiculous spending of this board since its

095inception the office of equity affairs has spent over six million of our tax dollars to train teachers that they are to tell children that they are racist simply because of the color of the skin that god decided that they would be born with before he even formed them within their mother's wombs you have allowed teachers to display blm propaganda and even include it in murals in some of the high schools blm is a marxist organization they encourage violence against police officers a deep hatred for our country and the abolishment of our entire criminal justice system the office of equity affairs equity what a horrible ideology to implement into education equality is the equal opportunity of all children to be able to sorry for them to reach their full potential equity demands the forced equal outcome

096of everyone all across the board education was the one place where you could come and you could change the circumstances that you were born into if you studied if you worked hard if you put everything that you absolutely had into getting yourself a good education you could get a scholarship you could improve your situation that you were born into you want to strip that away you want to take children's exceptionalism away from them and tell them because they are black or they are a female or because they don't know what gender they are that that is more important than the content of their character you can't even force equal outcomes out of two siblings that come from the same household but you want this goal to be county-wide upon completion of high school students should

097be able to read write and speak english in a grammatically and professional manner they should be able to understand how to do basic math the scientific method how their body is constructed how their body works they should have a detailed non-biased history of our country and all the major events in the world the whole perspective the good the bad the ugly all of it they should be inquisitive critical thinkers you should be teaching children how to think not what to think your job is to educate not to indoctrinate the truth is the school system is too busy and more focused on replacing churches families and communities the truth is this board is blatantly adhering to a marcus marxist political agenda and your ultimate goal is to turn the children of the next generation into communists

098julia mclaughlin [Applause] is julia mclaughlin here how about chris lincoln steve and gwen or dreafy hello my name is steven nguyen and i am a student from wake stem early college and i'm speaking on behalf of the student organization for future generations change nc over my academic career i've always been amazed by how my teachers would always try their best to help us and give us the tools we need to succeed even if it comes at the expense of their time and money from my teachers in my elementary school who gave me lunch monies on days my parents couldn't to my high school teachers who even admit a pandemic took time out of their day and helped students who have questions or needed help i've built deep connections with my teachers who have helped me

099with problems that extend beyond school and into my personal life especially in the middle of the coven 19 pandemic where teachers not only adjusted their curriculum to a completely new virtual format but also checked in on the mental well-beings of their students that's why i support education reform because it will fairly compensate our educators for the passion of teaching and it will give schools more access to resources like school supplies plus fund programs that target impoverished students across our state wake county has already done more in terms of county benefits for teachers and considering the importance of teachers throughout our childhood development we as students like would like to see similar changes in counties across the state so they can enjoy some of the benefits of having and retaining enthusiastic students like we do hi

100everyone my name is jortigada and i'm part of the executive team of the for future generations campaign continuing steven's statement i would like to introduce our student advocacy group for future generations change nc which we created to take our support to the next level this group was created to pursue and educate the members of the nc community as well as communicate with state legislators to support governor cooper's new budget proposal that will increase the funding for education specifically increasing teacher pay across nc it will also increase the teacher pay by 10 that will improve the pay for all education educators overall thank you to all our educators school workers and the ncae for all they have done and we hope that you support us too this campaign is not only about teacher appreciate teacher appreciation

101but also the improvement and reform of education system in north carolina and allows a greater number of qualified students to eventually become educators themselves we all love and appreciate our teachers and hope that this campaign makes a positive impact on the education system in wake county and north carolina as a whole thank you for your time jennifer woodley is jennifer woodley here all right thank you and that concludes our public comment all right moving back to our information agenda we have representatives from wake technical community college dr scott rawls and linda coleman are with us as they come forward we share a unique partnership with wake tech as we have many partners in wake county we have a lot of partnerships as you will hear more about a lot of ways in which you partner

102with wake tech as you were here in this update so yes good evening superintendent moore mr sutton chairman sutton members of the board and others who are present today i am really delighted to be here to talk about the partnership between wake tech and the wake county public school system it gives me great pleasure because we have enjoyed this kind of partnership for many many years you know one of the things that i always say is that in wake county we are truly truly blessed we are blessed because one of the ways we are blessed is because our citizens really love public education and that's a good thing the other thing is i am reminded of one of our former county managers who would tell us wake county is better off than 99 other counties

103and that is true that is absolutely true but the other thing is just as chairman sutton mentioned we enjoy a unique partnership and with partnerships we know that we have shared values we have shared interest and that there is power in partnerships we know that to continue this partnership is going to do great things and because it allows us to do greater things we know that one of our shared interests is our product and our product is our students and when we evaluate how well we do we do that by evaluating the success of our students and so that's what we're here to talk about today uh i don't know if you have the slides uh do we oh okay okay well you'll see that we have the reach and rally i don't know if

104you could go to the first slide after that and before i go on i wanted to say that i congratulate the 12 000 students who graduated uh this year and we know that we will see many of them at wake tech so we're looking forward to that okay uh so you see that we have a equitable access through economic mobility we will provide equitable access to higher ed opportunities regardless of race socioeconomic status previous educational opportunity or their zip codes students from underrepresented groups including minority and low-income students are able to enter our programs and access the support services they will need to be successful which leads to successful outcomes okay the second slide please okay here you will see a picture of a former chairman of the board of education dallas herring who said

105our mission has always who has said that we that we take people where they are and carry them as far as they can go and for those of you who may not know or may not remember but dallas herring was chairman of the state board of education and the community college system was really under the state board of education it only became a separate agency back in the 80s and so that was his whole thing and so our mission has always been clear and that is we know that we want to take students as far as as as they can go we want to carry them as far as they can go and so uh next slide please and so we uh this is where we double down on our mission through our strategic plan

106you talked about um superintendent moore your strategic strategic plan and some of the things that were in there and so we have some of the same values and goals in our strategic plan and so taking them where they are and taking them as far as they can go our reach and rally seeks to reach students in every part of wake county and rally around them to go as far as their dreams their talents their grit and resilience can take them and say that because of what board member chris hegarty just mentioned about the use of the word uh resilience but this is where we deploy our reach and rally plan among the activities that will help us to realize the promise of reach and rally and and i know that uh scott is going to

107share some more with you about this but we have um three activities we've already begun to launch some of the plans that we have to reach and rally we're going to have a summer bridge program for early momentum project which focuses on equitable access and outcomes we're going to have a student experience and the latter works which you're going to hear more about for economic mobility and initiative and finally the next slide okay here you're going to see what we are looking at in terms of really closing that gap between economic access and economic mobility and access and that's going to take several that's going to take several things for us to accomplish and one of them is of course learning students gain knowledge of the ksa's or the knowledge skills and abilities for labor

108market and transfer we want our students to be competitive so students compete a lot more can complete a lot more degrees and other meaningful credentials at a faster rate than in the past and with that transfer more students transfer with more we expect more students to transfer with credentials in less time than in the past and earn bachelor's degrees and of course our labor market after completion of the credentials students find sustainable employment where they earn a livable wage we have looked at several things that we have talked about the partnerships the kinds of courses that our students need to succeed we had a board meeting this morning where one of our main focus was on cyber security and we're looking at that trying to recruit students and trying to make sure that but you

109know they cost money a lot of these uh cost a great deal of money money that we don't have and it's just been very difficult so we have some challenges in front of us but we know that with continued partnerships with people like the wake county public school system and others we can begin to meet those challenges down the road and really provide our students with the access and the mobility that will lead toward better paying jobs livable wages and that is what we want for all of our students and with that i'm going to turn it over to scott thank you thank you linda good evening it's good to see all of you first i want to say is a father of graduates of the wake county public schools and as a partner and

110colleague with wake county public schools i really appreciate each of each of you and what you do for our children for our community so thank you as linda indicated we've been very engaged in the strategic planning what we call reach and rally it builds on our mission our core the dallas herring corps that we all live by take you know of going from wherever you are as far as you can go and taking students as far as you can go but we try to tweak it just a little bit because we know that it's not enough just to wait for students to come to take them from where they are but we've got to reach out more and we have to get out into all parts and particularly parts of our community where students aren't

111used to higher education and that's core to our mission and we also know that we don't really carry students but when we rally around them when they feel that rally around them at our institution that they propel themselves across our graduation stage and that's why we say reach and rally linda's indicated the the core elements of that let me just uh if you'll go to the next line and i'm not going to get into the weeds of this but you'll see some oh this is not there anymore well if it was there you would see some elements on there that uh some dollars okay some icons that really kind of talk about some of the things we're very focused on you'd see a pipeline to our universities you'd see a ladder what we talk about

112ladderworks ladder economics sometimes we'll say the truth is you know our students your students when they're in ninth grade if we did a survey of all the ninth graders in wake county public schools right now wake tech may not be the number one choice that they indicate the truth is though when they leave wake county public schools we are by far and our students your students don't come to us necessarily to come to wake tech but they come to go through wake tech to achieve their goals and to achieve their possibilities that's why you see a pipeline a pipeline to our great universities and we're the access point for so many students and so efforts to double those efforts uh you see us in creating our co-admission programs we will now have eight co-admission programs

113uh with now including a and t and you see unc charlotte to go with the great ones that we've had with nc state and unc and others and so that's a big part of the mission laddering we live in one of the most dynamic economies in the country but not everyone who grows up there has had the opportunity to ladder into those opportunities so we're focused on each rung not just one program or another but how each program leads to the next you would see what we call bumper guards bumper guards are you know for many of our students particularly lower income students it's not something about school that causes them to drop out something about life and that's why last year we gave out 4 food line gift cards as part of the year

114but we're going to do more and more in those efforts to make sure it's not the life causes that cause students to leave but what we can do to help them to stay you'll see in there what we call rumble strips rumble strips we have to we have to change our advising you know we're going to completely change our advising structure to make sure that students know how to get from one step to the next and we're working with them each of the way and then you see how we reach out and particularly reaching out to those parts of our community using the wake county health index those that are the students from from those lower ends particular efforts in that regard but our our commitment to reach in every part of wake county and

115so if you just to conclude you'll see things that are already moving little things but we're really proud of those green green shoots right now our communications and outreach how we're working more with the counselors in that regard how we're doing more in terms of our open houses but little things like we just had a first gift credit to credit suisse foundation for a youth apprenticeship coordinator that will coordinate with wake county public schools on youth apprenticeship expand dual enrollment opportunities we think that's very important my future nc indicated that's one of three strategic things that we need to pay attention to and i'm proud to report to you that as of today we are up 75 percent higher in dual enrollments than we had this time last year and we had a significant increase

116last year we're very focused on that and conversations about our early college high school futures we're really going to reach out to a partner with our title 1 high school specifically south garner now when garner has the new the new scholarship but we also received and we solicited a gift a great private gift where we'll have someone working specifically with us to work with those four high schools and we're going to do other things as well we're partnering with sir with programs that you partner with to serve underserved students we have a new memorable agreement with communities in schools juntos which is out of nc state and that partners the north carolina hispanic professional society we are forming those kind of strategic partnerships and we're implementing a summer bridge program for those students who need

117that extra early boost this year we did a soft launch and we have 20 students and you can see on the side some smiling faces from that first day and so reaching out to those students you know they're not at scale yet but that's the direction we're moving and we wanted you to know that and you see those smiles are what they're all about this is going to be exciting year at wake tech and you're very much part of what we consider our future because it really is our future it's not just wake tech's future it's not wake county probably it's our future is wake county and it's an exciting future i think we have seven new degrees that are starting this fall important areas biotech to go with biopharma that we have public safety

118administration building automation to healthcare sonography licensed practical nursing and the first foray real partnership between olive education the first community college teaching degree that's a walk-in to the schools of education just like the great associate engineering program has been with the schools of engineering so we're excited about that and we're going to have several ribbon cuttings and ground breakings thanks to the support of wake county for wake tech and you're very much a part of that as well one slide that you'll see there is our new biotech facility the rtp2 facility which we have designed in concert with the team here around the future early college high school in i.t and biotech fortuitously now it's apple and fujifilm and all these folks are growing they're just right down the street from us in that regard

119so it seems like we were thinking about that beforehand but lucky that that came along and then finally a very exciting new opportunity for us in eastern wake what we call east eastern 4.0 an engineering engineering tech focused campus which is right across from east lake high school and not far from knightdale high school and you're going to see some exciting things amazing corporate partnerships already on campus programs being offered by elizabeth city state and ecu partnership with nc state we're very excited about the future and we are very appreciative of our partnership with wake county schools and what we're able to accomplish together and we're honored to be your partner so thank you very much i first want to say trustee coleman uh thank you for your continued uh leadership and we look forward

120to continuing to support your leadership and involvement later on the agenda so thank you so much for uh your work uh dr ross thank you for your leadership and and your guidance of wake tech we appreciate your leadership really over the years both at the state level here now locally we watched you at work even testifying before congress so thank you for your leadership and we are just fortunate to have you here in wake county working with us and lastly we look forward to uh continuing uh to hear from you all uh both here at the board level and i look forward to you dr rawls and to return more uh continuing the partnership and just bringing continue to bring great uh and exciting opportunities we know from the work that we do at burnham

121malone to the health sciences campuses there's so much great work and we look forward to hearing more about that and hearing that uh here more often uh absolutely you want more shout out sure i noticed we gave some sports shout outs we need to give a shout out to uh princess beckwith who to from vernon malone high school who is going to the national championships in welding in the skills usa so uh just one extra shout out there so just a testament to the the innovative work and things that that we're doing and we're just as excited about all of our students that attend our four-year universities uh to two-year wake tech and just thankful for the opportunities that exist for students here in wake county so thank you and thank you for the leadership

122of this board thank you i appreciate you our next information item uh is the uh proper impact of vaping uh so turn it back if you want to come up forward yeah and i would just like to say as attorney black comes forward that i just so much appreciate your incredible responsiveness to all my questions uh just been a great resource and uh in going through this and i do appreciate it and also your cooperation and understanding of sort of the timeline issue that we talked about but thank you so much glad to do that so i know i don't know if you had any comments per se that you wanted to provide but i know uh we had questions from board member cash i want the opportunity to kind of have a discussion and

123if any other board members have any questions as it relates to again the new details and the impact on this potential lawsuit of litigation happy to answer any questions thank you for being here um so i uh i would prefer not to delay this um but i think there's i guess some reasons that have been given but what will this could could this hurt our chances of financial any money that would come back to this school system if we were to work further on a lawsuit it is the question if we if you delay if we delay and allow the state to do theirs ahead of us truthfully i don't think so okay okay that's what i wanted to know because i i don't want i i don't want the state to get something and

124um and we don't get anything because i think our our student body i mean i feel very very entrusted to my our student population who have worked very hard on this for two years and you know that as well as anybody and they want us to fight for them in this respect so um i would take that above anything that was going on in the state probably but i would do anything to fight against jewel actually but thank you for that yes i don't think that is a concern integrity thank you and thank you for making the trip back glad to again just to echo what miss cash has said i think everybody around this table this is uh and eve back on our senior leadership team this issue is a high priority for all

125of us and so please don't think that this delay is by any way anything that we want to diminish this work this is one of the first priorities that i had when i came to the board and before i came to the board i know that other board members have been working for years on you know ways that we can address these problems in our schools but you know there were questions when you have multiple lawsuits in terms of um what judges could award either as a judicial award or a settlement you know we we wonder sometimes you know what are the impacts could could we be excluded from a case by other pending legislation or other acts outside of this case and i was just wondering if you could provide just a little explanation

126or assurance of how that process works so are you talking about with respect to other actions that occur other actions where we may not be a party right but where someone might try to assign or try to exclude us from this suit right because of you know arguably you know they may say you have relief or other avenues of relief outside of this case right let me let me first address the north carolina state case and then you can tell me if there needs to be a broader response with them with respect to that there's a here's the easiest way to think about it it's not a good analogy but it's analogy okay so if if i'm driving home to greensboro this evening and i get hit by a drunk driver the state of north

127carolina will make a criminal prosecution against that person who's was the drunk driver they may take him off and put him into prison but that's not going to help my medical bills so the distinction between what's happening with respect to the state's case which is trying to prevent advertising going out trying to enjoin stop activity as opposed to compensate those who are out and who will be out funds as a result of the actions of joule is that a helpful distinction it really is you know sometimes when you know a lot of these terms are thrown around it's just important to put it in the context of what you know the the state's action might be seeking versus what this action with the other school districts might be seeking and i just wanted to try

128to get some explanation you know plain english like you're able to provide good thank you okay so then i want to on the reverse side is why would are not delaying an action tonight hurt the state would it well first off let me say that i don't know because i've not been parties to this these communications i can tell you that with respect to what's happening with the the mdl the where you guys will be involved in litigation in california that's a completely separate issue from what's happening with the state's case that's going to be coming up for trial in the very near future so i don't know why the suggestion has been made for the pause but i can tell you that my belief is in the scheme of things it's really not going

129to disadvantage you and what i hope to do tonight if you need it i want to answer every question that you've got so that when this comes back up you guys feel fairly comfortable with the information that you have and then i can just fill in any kind of gaps okay is that makes sense yeah and i hope the board members that are here will ask the questions tonight so that we don't have another delay on that sure that's my hope as a person that really takes us very serious the vaping in our skulls any further questions or discussions discussion i don't anticipate the further uh delay i think if anything was out of uh an abundance of caution uh if you will and the potential impact uh particularly given that that uh trial case

130is beginning sooner than what we thought anticipated i think when we first started in these conversations we did not have a date or there was not a date set for that state trial that that trial now has a start date that's coming in a few weeks and and so again i think out of an abundance of caution did not want to that to sort of interfere with the finality of that case well the delay is for two weeks or is it until the i mean now i'm confused i mean i'm willing to delay for two weeks but so our next meeting is not until july 20. i mean i mean i'm sorry until july but not past that okay and if i can just to be clear you use the analogy of the the traffic

131incident where there's a there's a there's a concurrent criminal case if there's a criminal conviction is that something that usually assists in a civil matter it can if there's a guilty plea but not if somebody's found not guilty so with respect to what happens in the state action it's going to get north carolina farther along than it currently is you're putting pressure in a financial way they're putting pressure in a different way and hopefully the end point is to limit the addiction of children to this product which it is illegal for them to participate in so that's really the end point so it's just two different methodologies to try to get to the same endpoint which is to stop children from vaping and becoming addicted to nicotine and if i may i just wanted to

132say one thing that i don't i don't think we had the opportunity to speak about the last time but there is information from the cdc that i want to commend to you and one sentence about that is that nicotine can harm adolescent brain development including four things ready attention learning mood and impulse control what could possibly be more important to be able to not have an artificial something come in and affect those four things in the children that you guys are trying to help you know and this is an opportunity for you to become advocates for children in a really remarkable way so i'm happy to answer any other questions chair i will be happy to step down as well i know you guys have had a long day thank you for that thank you

133for being here i don't see any further questions from from the board i don't mean to sound like this is a courtroom but we thank you thank you thank you and it's fine to tell me i'm dismissed cheers all right uh that takes us to our consent agenda uh if i can entertain a motion to approve tonight's consent agenda your son i'm moved to improve tonight's consent items as listed sorry second got a motion from mrs kushner uh second from vice chairman happy to approve tonight's consent agenda during the discussion hearing now all those in favor show about sign of eye opposed nay eyes have it consent agenda is approved all right that takes us to our action item action agenda and yes there were quite a few items on consent so i hope everybody

134has a chance to take a look at those uh first up is finance mr leader approval of an interim budget resolution for 2021 2022 yes good evening chair sutton members of the board and superintendent moore at their june 7th meeting the wake county board of commissioners approved the county's 2021-22 budget and the county's final budget fully funds the county appropriation requesting the board of education's proposed 2021-22 budget and that is a total county appropriation of over half a billion dollars 544 million two hundred and five thousand and ninety three dollars we still do not have a timeline on the state's state legislatures work on a state budget for next year and as this is your last scheduled board meeting for the fiscal year that ends june 30th we are asking the board to adopt an

135interim budget resolution tonight that interim budget resolution will allow the system to continue to pay salaries and ordinary expenditures into the new year beginning july 1 and subsequently bring to the board recommended adjustments to balance the board's proposed budget to final funding available that we know will be available to the board at a subsequent meeting so i would now ask your approval consideration of approval of an interim budget resolution for fiscal year 2021. 2022 excuse me yeah i make a motion to um adopt the budget resolution um as stated second motion from uh mrs cash sec for mr hegarty to approve stamps request to approve the interim budget resolution for the 2021-22 year during the discussion pastor manhattan just a thank you to our county commissioners for approving that ask and we continue to appreciate

136their partnership and um thank you mr neither to you and your team for putting this together so that we can have a start to the 2021 school year scott and i also like to echo my gratitude to to you and to the entire finance staff um for your work on that to our budget chair um roxy cash for making sure that we had all of the information that we needed throughout all these discussions so there's a lot of people that go into this work and i do want to say thank you and having just heard from wake tech i also wanted to thank our county commissioners they are just so obviously committed to serving the people who live in this county as someone who who moved here from out of state like so many people

137did it's it is just amazing to see i'm so thankful to live here and so thankful for their commitment to serving each and every person who lives here in wake county any other comments from the board again just thank thank the work of superintendent moore coming from her proposed budget to that of the board and our entire budget of finance team mr needer mr winters terry kimsey and that entire team as well as again our great partners with the county we do not take it lightly that they are excellent partners to work with but the fact that they uh fully funded uh our request and and while we're pleased that it was a reasonable moderate request they could choose to do a lot of things but they chose to to fully fund that and we

138certainly are appreciative of that and that allows us to continue to work on behalf of students and families in wake county so we're grateful for that so with that with no other further uh comments or questions uh all those in favor of adopting the interim budget resolution show about signify aye opposed nay i was having interim budget resolution as adopted for the 21-22 year thank you thank you sir next item is the bus driver sign-on bonus okay at your finance committee today staff presented a recommendation for a bus driver sign on incentive to use as a tool to target adding 85 additional bus drivers to our rosters in preparation for the 2021-22 school year although we have raised beginning bus driver pay up to 15 an hour just before the onset of the pandemic we're

139still having challenges as we shared with you during the finance committee meeting attracting new drivers in this relatively full employment economy the recommendation would pay a new wake county public school system bus driver a 400 incentive after being on the job for three months and performing satisfactorily and an additional 800 after being on the job for 12 months and again performing satisfactorily we also shared with you during the finance committee meeting presentation that we're reviewing vacancy rates for all support staff all categories of support staff and that we will come back to you at your july 20th board meeting with any parallel recruiting incentive recommendations for other types of support staff as indicated by vacancy rates and we may also come back based upon a suggestion by mr hagerty with a secondary bus driver recommendation

140for those new drivers that come to us already with the cdl so thank you again for that and with that i will now request the board's consideration of approval of this bus driver onboarding incentive chair mrs cash chair sutton i make a motion that we approve the bus driver sign on bonus the second tab i have a motion from vladimir mahappy second from it was cash to approve the request for a bus driver sign-on bonus during the discussion miss carter um i just wanted to thank you for your willingness to look at the other non-certified staff as well and i appreciate the bonus being broken up into two two parts um one is at three months and then the other at a year because i'm hopeful that we can hang on to some of these

141drivers for longer than this school year so thank you ms johnson hospital thank you and thank you mr needer for already responding to me but can you talk to us about kind of the impact meaning the number of bus drivers who are currently our year-round drivers that won't actually receive the bonus is there do you know what percentage that is of our bus drivers and kind of a distinction of what that means for those bus drivers who are working in our year-round schools and won't be able to be eligible for the bonus well this hiring incentive bonus will only apply to bus drivers that are hired subsequent to assuming the board approves it to the board's approval and the majority of since the majority of our schools are 10-month schools they're not year-round or modified

142the majority of our bus drivers are 10-month bus drivers and they are not um 12-month drivers and as a rule our more senior seniority gets a priority when it comes to 12-month assignments so new drivers would be assigned a 10 in most cases there could be an exception a 10-month assignment and wouldn't even if we hired them now they wouldn't first unless they have the cdl it would take them six to eight weeks and traditional is going to be cranking up then they wouldn't be working but even if they had the cdl they'd probably get a 10 month assignment so a follow-up to that thank you so excuse me so given that our most seasoned drivers are our 12th month already assigned when we when we look at the bonus versus those who are receiving

143it they are more than likely a larger percent of them are paid already over the 15 an hour is that correct that would be a fair assumption yes bless your manhattan and i would be remiss that if anybody listening is interested or knows someone interested in driving you can find out more information about getting this bonus at wcpss.net bus jobs it's all right always the man of course shameless blue all right any further discussion hearing none of those in favor of approval of the bus driver sign on bonus uh shabbat shalom opposed nay eyes have it uh motion is approved thank you next up is the uh contract services uh for student transportation for the 2020 2122 2020 2021. yes the transportation department has negotiated contract amendment proposals for the seven contract transportation vendors for

144the current year that is just coming to conclusion these vendors serve both our special needs student populations as well as our mckinney-vento student populations serving the mckinney-vento because frequently those student populations are coming from one part of the county and going to another part of the county to their base school and it's not conducive to the standard routing for that school in most cases the amendments acknowledge unanticipated burns placed on the vendors because of the pandemic including additional services that they've provided including disinfection services in return for a complete release of any claims under the terms of the contract on the part of wake county public schools to the vendor resulting from impacts of the pandemic total amount of these amendments is 567 thousand 712 dollars and 20 cents funding is available from contract you

145could call last contract proceeds when these contracts were not being used the amendment for each vendor is provided for you in your backup materials and assembly and i would now ask the boards consideration of approval of these amendments motion to prove the amendments for the transportation services second got a motion from dr martin second from last year i'm happy to approve the contracts for her contract services for student transportation during the discussion mrs carter i just like to acknowledge i know these vendors provide very important services but i think i need to acknowledge as well that we do hear of some concerns with some of the vendors and i would have preferred if there would be it would be linked to some type of performance i understand the part with the cares and the covid

146impact but i'm still concerned about just the things that have been voiced to us about you know late pickups no pickups you know and other issues that have been brought forth um if i could respond yes understood um and we did i don't remember if this came up previously but pre-pandemic we were working with the sea act group it's an advocacy group of parents with special needs students we were partnering with them as a district to look towards systems and structures and ways to improve on a myriad of levels communication the actual operation and things that you've just shared miss carter like pick up like timely responses and so i do anticipate in the near term that collaboration will come back and that will be a vehicle to continue to improve the services provided by

147the vendors and also how we interact with each other because as it relates to these services there are a number of different parties involved and everyone's got to be doing their piece in order for it to work well we've got our transportation departments involved we've gotten academics are karen hamilton and her team involved we've got the vendor the actual vendor involved what they're doing and we've got school administrators that are all piece of the puzzle but your point is well taken could we have like a bring back on that sometime in the next few months and perhaps as far as work that we're doing absolutely so i think um as we get the c collaboration started back up and moving forward we'll we'll bring an update at some point in work sessions of the footboard

148yes mr hegarty sorry mr newton i had i didn't think i had a question and then one just came up based on the conversation well are these vendors going to be assisting with the summer learning program for the students that are in the exception or the ucs classroom extended learning program yes they are okay great thank you all right any further discussion all right here we go uh all those in favor share about signing by all right an opposed nay i'll have it the contract is approved thank you all thank you sir all right that takes us to a few uh items from uh chief of schools starting with the 2022 2023 instructional calendars good evening chair sutton and superintendent moore i am here asking for approval of the 2022 2023 traditional modified and year-round

149calendar drafts that you have before you church and i'll make a motion we approve these calendars i second that motion got a motion from vice mahappy second from mrs cass to approve the 2022-2023 uh instructional calendars is there any discussion thank you i think we had good discussion of this at our last meeting i really appreciate all the information that you were able to provide talking about you know how the dates were selected you know we had some discussion around election day 2022 and i know you talked about some of the pros and cons you know both with having you know if if we were to try to create a new teacher work day we can't just create one we would have to move one correct and then you know the problems with moving one

150there is one in november but it's right there at the end of the quarter i was asked by some of our folks in elections administration to bring up the following facts and make sure everybody was aware of them just prior to our consideration and that is we use according to um this information 51 schools is polling places and that um the way the x the based on the 2018 general election the calculation was that they thought um you could have about an average of 600 poll 600 voters visiting each school that was used as a polling place if um schools are open on well regardless of schools are opening up but on election day and so that was a lot of foot traffic in school buildings cars and parking lots just during school hours so

151i wanted to bring that to everybody's attention thank you and thank you for that data mr hegarty and i also appreciate that you um sanderson powell included this the state calendar law because again in that week that we have the election there's a mandated veterans day that we have to have and so i think that also um diminishes our ability to you know have our that holiday or have a work day for 193 schools with the 51 that are pulling sites so again citing the calendar law is not an excuse it's an explanation of why we have to do a lot of the things we do with calendar that does not facilitate what we really want to do for kids correct so again shout out to the modified calendar which we can't so thank you

152thank you all right any further discussion cnn all those in favor of the motion to approve the 2022-2023 instructional calendar show by signing by all right any opposed nay eyes have it calendars are approved thank you thank you so much appreciate your work next up is it that's the offer to purchase something here's the code coming so i offered a purchasing contract for a sale of uh approximately a little over two acres of surplus property for east cary middle school we amended the agenda so this is betty i saw her earlier where'd she go mhm good evening sheriff sutton ladies and gentlemen i apologize for the delay you're okay you're fine i'm very pleased to bring you an update on a surplus property disposition that we've discussed with you previously we have with us today

153assistant town manager from town of kerry dana widmar who may wish to speak to you a bit as well we've been working with dana and her team now for years on the potential for the sale of a surplus property portion of the east cary middle school site that could be used through a collaborative effort with a town in wake county and an affordable project that the town of kerry has envisioned we have worked closely on that they've developed their project to where they have a good understanding of what they want to do how they're going to do it and their path forward and they have come back with us to with a offer to purchase the property we've reviewed it with board council and determine it to be within the fair market value range that's

154required by the statute and we would bring it to you today for your approval of the contract we are we added this to the agenda a bit of a last-minute piece to honor kerry's request they are ready to move forward on this and with the natural gap that you have in your schedule for july they were very appreciative of our consideration of it today so with that dana if there's anything you'd like to add you're certainly welcome to thank you dana whitmar and i am a resident here of kerry and so i really am very appreciative of all the work that we've done with you i'm here to answer any questions that you may have and and i'm hopeful you'll consider this request for purchase favorably and we really are very excited to be able

155to move forward and work with you on it thank you for being here and we understand you've got to deadline some deadlines too to meet yes so we are happy to try our best to accommodate questions from the award dr mark motion to approve the sale of the surplus property to tana carrick second uh mostly from dr martin second from mr hegarty to approve the uh offer to purchase the sale of surplus property during the discussion not tomorrow i'll just know there's been a long time in coming but i think this is a great project that will be beneficial to the community that which includes the school system so i'm glad it's finally working out thank you pastor my happy we're certainly excited to see carrie's foray into affordable housing and look forward to hearing

156more about your efforts on this project and other projects very good we'll get lots of information out very soon thank you you know the comments discussion hearing on all those in favor of the uh motion to offer uh offered a purchase uh showbox opposed nay eyes have it uh the emotion is approved thank you so much thank you again thank you for being here and we look forward to working with the town and the support of the county on affordable housing so happy to play a small role in that that arena so thank you so much all right next up board policy 4400 on attendance this is coming to us on second reading mr code good evening chair sutton superintendent moore and board members we're bringing to you board policy 4400 attendance for second reading

157and for board approval this policy is presented as a revised policy the revisions reflect updates made by staff and those recommended by the north carolina school boards association and it was reviewed at the april 27 2021 and may 19 2021 policy committee meetings and was approved on first reading at the june 1st board meeting we when given final board approval it will replace the current policy 4400 attendance chair sutton i'd like to make a motion to approve board policy 4400 attendance on second reading got a motion from mrs kushner second from mr hegarty to approve board policy 4400 on attendance on his second reading during the discussion ms cash well i don't know we talked last time about the situation where there was i don't know whether he made any more revisions after a conversation

158i think it was about a parent that might have a child that had to be picked up at one school and had two children in the same area and could not pick up the second child at that time because that would be called an unexcused absence so i'm trying to i want to go to dr clean and i believe we we did look into that and i'm not i think i need to review to see if like i think i'll come back to that but i think that's something that we are uh working as future work you know for for how we want to continue evolving this policy but i think for the june 1st it was to make sure that we had policy 4400 ready for the new school year going into the 2122

159understanding that there are additional iterations that and elements we need to add like that along with how our rmp is evolving so just this follow-up i guess then if a parent had a concern about that on whether they could put their two children into wake county schools based on that policy probably that decision won't be made before they have to make that decision this year we're we're actually going to say that's probably going to be out a little ways for that decision discussion but i believe from the june 1st discussion ms cash that's something that you all did ask us to bring urgently as a revision and we're hoping that that will come sooner than later okay but thank you this is christian and um just follow up would that be in rnp or would

160that have to be in policy i believe that was something that was recommended to possibly add to policy in terms of the list of reasons for excuse and that was something we're going to look into with our attorneys thank you and um i do appreciate all the work on this uh policy i just still have the same concerns around remote learning and not communicating clearly with the expectations since it we learned at the last work session at our not today but the prior one that it's not required for it to be reflected on the instructional calendars so i still have that concern thank you miss carter thank you for that any further discussion all right hearing none uh all those in favor of approval the board policy 400 on the second reading show about signing

161aye any opposed nay all right let the records show there's one day uh but other than that the motion passes board policy 4400 is approved on a second reading all right thank you all thank you sir next up is our sro memorandum of understanding russ smith and i think patricia robinson and dr gardner are here also in support good evening board chair sutton superintendent moore and board of education members as part of the board's review of the school resource officer program over the past year administration has engaged in numerous efforts to secure community feedback on the school resource officer program and school resource officer memorandum of understanding the presented memorandum of understanding reflects input from various stakeholders including law enforcement agencies the new memorandum of understanding term will be from july 1 to 20 july

1621 2021 to june 30 2024 board approval is requested this is cash i would like to make a motion to accept this mou [Music] sorry to mean to laugh in there it's not a funny issue is there a second i got a motion from his cash second from bachelor my happy to approve the sro memorandum of understanding uh is there any discussion and i i just want to take a minute to sort of update the board on where we are um thanks to attorney robertson we've been sort of getting a play-by-play uh almost by the minute uh hearing our emails i don't know if many of you all have had a chance to review your email during the meeting and mr smith help help keep me honest there are 11 municipalities we're seeking approval of

163each of the lea law enforcement agencies and those plus the wake county sheriff's department and wake tech is that part of the 11. it's just 11 total that includes the sheriff and wake tech okay all right so we've got 11. of those 11 we have agreement from my count six of those i'm sorry five that's the shared way county sheriff raleigh pd apex night dale carrie pd all are willing to sign and the wake tech pd there are no issues but is under review with his or her that's accurate we we have in writing the three uh town of nightdale raleigh pd and wake county sheriff's office i received verbal confirmation late this afternoon from the town of apex and the town of kerry and we've received i had a conversation with the the chief

164of police for wake tech who provide two sros in the district that they have no issues with it but is currently being reviewed by their legal counsel just to make sure you know everything is fine it accounts for about 80 percent of the officers in the in the district we're hopeful we'll have all 100 shortly so i'm sharing this with the board so that you are clear that we are approving this one to meet the june 30 deadline so that this is in play by july 1 but we're doing so in advance of having all the signatures from those leas but we are certainly trending in the right direction and fully anticipate that we will have the signatures of all of those by the time the this expires but we are approving this tonight in

165advance of having all of those chiefs signed so make sure that everyone was clear that we're and just wherever we are in that process that's your majesty uh thank you chair sutton um mr smith if you could walk through kind of the the process of this mou and when we reached out initially to law enforcement agencies um just so folks know how long we've we've been in communication as we're getting this minute-by-minute play-by-play so um you know we started the the initial review was last year and so we you know of course went through many of the um in just a second of course we went through many surveys uh focus groups things of that nature getting feedback we were in contact with law enforcement that time but as far as the the mou is

166concerned we reached out i believe it's been in march to provide kind of where we were and what we were we were seeking as far as the district was concerned asked for feedback from them at that time received feedback from some some we didn't receive feedback from we reached out again after you know i would say vigorous compromise and review of of the document at hand by the board as well as feedback from some of the agencies that were providing continuous feedback and we will see so we reached out again in may middle of may with a with an updated version and asked for them to provide any feedback that they may have by a certain date and then again we reached out again last week with the final version and asking if they were

167interested in being a part of this moving forward so there's been a lot of opportunities over the last two and a half months thank you mr smith mr haggarty thank you and mr chair i just you know from from this last year mahaffey's comments i just want to draw the contrast to what we what we went through the previous year you know where often it seemed like we have a deadline it's pending here's the draft agreement take it or leave it and a lot of us were not happy with that situation and so you know the the final product that we have here is the result of months of of long work hard work not everybody was in the same place where we started and yet you know with all of the meetings that we

168had feedback from the community numerous surveys lots of you know drafts that have gone back and forth communication with the different law enforcement agencies extensive feedback from them i mean it's it's amazing to end up where we have ended up but no one can say that we haven't had you know voices and feedback from all parties and it might not be what everyone you know what everyone thinks is the perfect plan but i think everyone has had input and they're there we really have gone through a very deliberative process to get to where we are today and i appreciate all the hard work that went into it thank you this is cash i appreciate the hard work that went into it as well thank you miss robinson very much for all the back and forth

169and i especially jonathan you'll be so glad not to have to listen to me so much i appreciate you putting up with me through the whole process so i do mean that uh genuinely because this has been and russ thank you for all that you do you do it in a calmest manner so how you're in that position you're in but i appreciate all of the work it's been rough but it's going great i'm glad it's a long contract thank you for that any further comments all right uh got a motion and a second to uh approve the sro uh mou all those in favor shall about sign about any opposed nay eyes have it and we will continue to provide an update as we continue to get signatures over the next uh couple of

170weeks between now and june uh i guess i would say and and negotiation attorneys speak we're somewhere between final and final final uh and and so if something happens and there's we don't get the signature not sure exactly where we go but we're pretty much at a final so i think we've kind of this is the version the board's approved signed off by multiple agencies and and we're hopeful the other agencies will sign off on it as well but the board has worked incredibly hard as well as staff to come up with a fair and balanced agreement and uh we were hopeful that that all the agencies will sign off at this point we put a stake in the ground all right thank you sir thank you we appreciate you yeah we can send you

171a smile through the mask all right i did all right uh our last item on the agenda appointment to the wake tech community college board of uh trustees um you're saying your praise in accordance with north carolina general statute 115 d-12 the board of education appoints four of the trustees on the wake tech community college board those terms are for four years and are staggered the term for linda coleman who you heard from tonight will expire on june 30th at the end of this month attached is a spreadsheet showing the current appointees of the wake county board of education as well as a profile of the coleman who has been considered for reappointment by the board so at this time i would entertain a motion to reappoint linda coleman to the wake county board awake

172tank wake tech community college board of trustees mr scott and is the motion just for the reappointment of linda coleman or the other i'm going to just linda just call me thanks for that clarification i'd like to go ahead and make a motion for the reappointment of linda coleman got a motion from mr scott second from dr martin to reappoint linda coleman to the wake tech community college board of trustees during the discussion just in in support i think this is a clear choice for everyone on the board you know linda coleman has a long history of supporting our community colleges both in the executive branch and as a state legislator you heard her today her knowledge her passion she's a fantastic board member and advocate for our system thank you for that any other

173comments and support of linda copeland or otherwise hearing none are those in favor share about sound of eye any opposed nay eyes have it linda coleman is reappointed by the wake uh board of education to the wake tech college community college board of trustees all right if i can entertain a motion to go into closed session chair sutton i make motion we go into closed session to consider confidential personnel information protected under gs 143-318-118183 and a6 to consult with the board of education attorney and preserve attorney-client privilege as provided in gs143-318-1183 gmv county board of education 20 adc 3551 office of administrative hearings rk on behalf of sk first wake county board of education 519 cv 497 bo ednc gsm versus wake county board of education 21 edc 01420 and to consider confidential student information

174protecting our gs115c-402 in the family educational rights and privacy act 20 usc 1232-g got a motion from vice chairman happy second by mr scott to go to closed session for the items just stated and is listed on our agenda during the discussion hearing none all those in favor shall by sign of eye oppose nay eyes have it we now stand in closed session thank you all for joining us and have a good night you