Work Session 5-18-21

001all right good afternoon and welcome to uh our work session of the wake county board of education uh it is thursday i'm sorry tuesday may 16th i'm trying to get the week along here uh thanks everybody for being here uh we are joined by all board members uh hearing the board turn it over to dr graham welcome everyone again thank you for the invitation mr sutton thank you superintendent moore for inviting me as well and i hope you're all doing well this afternoon i am more than honored to be here to engage you in a short conversation about the work of the drive task force it is our hope that in educating and making people aware of the work that we've done that we can begin to see a more representative educated workforce not just

002classroom teachers but across the board and i'll talk more about that in just a moment so we'll bring up the presentation i understand that i have about 30 minutes with you and i promise you that i will move quickly in the old saying of john wood and i will move quickly but i won't hurry i want to make certain that you understand what we're doing here next slide please so in my 30 minutes that i have with you this afternoon there are three things i'm going to focus on first i'm a former classroom teacher so i don't believe in making assumptions i don't do assumptive teaching so i'm going to put us all in the same space so that we're operating from the same point of reference so i'll take 10 minutes to do that

003as we talk about teacher diversity in the state of north carolina then i'll talk to you very briefly about the drive task force what we were convened to do and what we're currently doing and then i will conclude by talking about the recommendations zeroing in on a few of those recommendations that will be pertinent to you here at the local level next slide so i will begin by helping to ensure that we understand the issue so if we go to the next slide what i'm certain you're familiar with are the demographic data as it relates to our k-12 classrooms when we look at our k-12 student demography we know that the majority of our classroom students k-12 are ethnic racial minority students about 53 percent however when we look at our k-12 classroom teacher demography

004nearly 80 percent of our classroom teachers are white that is consistent with the national average 80 percent white so there's something that's in the water as we say that we need to pay attention to but i want to make certain that when you look at the bottom slide or the bottom of the slide there that we understand that it's just not our classroom teachers the majority of our teaching assistants the majority of our principals administrators the majority of our counselors are white so the entire system if you will the ecosystem is white and has been that way for decades so the question becomes what's occurring in the water that's leading to this outcome next slide please i always like to say on this slide that if you think help is on the way you are

005sorely mistaken when we look at our classroom teacher pipeline and what we see occurring in our four-year traditional educator preparation programs we see that nearly 81 percent of our candidates and our epps educated preparation programs are white and we look at our alternative pathways then while the demography looks somewhat better it's still predominantly white so the pathway the pipeline continues to yield the same demographic that we see in the classroom year after year after year next slide the reason this is problematic and we've paid more attention to this and we've gotten more data that makes more sense to us over the last decade in our educational research efforts we are learning more and more that our teachers of color have a direct impact on k-12 student learning about 20 years ago 30 years ago we

006we saw that the impact of teachers of color really influenced kind of the social aspects of what occurred in the classroom now we're learning more and more that there are cognitive impacts on what occurs with our students so we see positive impacts on student reading and math scores with our teachers of color we believe and we attribute this primarily to what we call culturally relevant pedagogy and culturally sustaining practices in the classroom it's our belief that our teachers of color bring to the classroom this ability to focus on three criteria as gloria ladson billings talks about it academic excellence so there's an emphasis on ensuring that students are learning when it comes to respect to reading proficiency mathematical and computational skills critical thinking so on and so forth so there's that influence and that emphasis

007on academic excellence the second criteria cultural competence cultural intelligence taking that content information and situating it in the lives of students and where they're coming from so that they better understand not only their own cultural background but understand the cultural phenomenon in which they live and exist and the third criteria critical consciousness how do you now take what you've learned and leverage it so that you improve your community improve your society it now gives learning a purpose and what we know about collectivist cultures these are students who tend to come from racial ethnic minority groups learning to benefit others tends to be the emphasis how do i help another improve that element of critical consciousness is critically important so we're seeing that our teachers of color tapping to those three criteria so it's just not

008about focusing on academic content knowledge it's about learning with a purpose to improve society for that reason we tend to see that black student black students tend to express interest in college at a higher rate when they're taught by teachers of color and we also see that they're less likely to drop out when they're taught by at least one teacher of color now what happens if you can string a number of teachers of color back to back to back in the academic experience not just of students of color but all students and i cannot emphasize that point enough this is not just about students of color this is the benefit for all students so if teachers of color are having this type of impact on students of color and all students then what can we

009do to increase the pipeline and to increase their presence next slide please yes sure all right concern here is the exodus of our teachers of color what we see nationally is that our teachers of color particularly our black male students are leaving the classroom at an alarmingly high rate 24 higher than their white counterparts when we dig into the data and ask why is that the case we find that our teachers of color express that they are devalued they are often silenced they are questioned pedagogically and they are questioned professionally the place that should be their home their classroom often turns into a place of nightmare not only from students not only from parents but also from colleagues and supervisors it's that environment that creates this mass exodus for our teachers of color and i

010always say that the best recruitment tool is your retention if you're not retaining individuals they now become the mouthpiece for why others should not pursue that profession next slide please so the drive task force will go to the next slide the drive task force was convened by governor cooper by executive order number 113 on december the 9th 2019 there are 34 members who serve on this task force diverse representation from across the state individuals who are coming from k-12 schools principals superintendents classroom teachers we have individuals who come from institutions of higher education our public and private institutions across the state individuals from state agencies individuals from the business sector and policy makers our job is to ensure number one that we wrote a report and i'll talk more to you about that in just

011a second that focused on how we can go about diversifying the educated workforce but we're also charged with advising the governor on issues relative to equity as it relates to our k-12 classrooms in the state of north carolina so the next two slides on the next slide i'll show you just very briefly a few of the folks who are serving on the task force you will see that it is grouped and again very diverse in terms of representation so you see individuals from human resources you see superintendents you see classroom teachers if you go to the next slide you'll also see individuals who come from state agencies like the department of health and human service you see some of our lawmakers so for example zach hawkins representative there from house district so a very diverse

012array of voices talents and experiences driving the work of this task force no pun intended next slide so our major homework assignment if you will was to submit a plan to the governor by january 1 of this year where we were asked to do five specific things number one the governor asked us to assess the state's progress toward increasing k-12 public school educator diversity number two he asked us to articulate short mid and long-term strategies that would increase educator diversity in our k-12 classrooms number three he asked us to identify assets that would aid with the recruiting retaining supporting of educators of color number four he asked us to propose metrics and standards to evaluate success in these areas aforementioned and finally he asked us to prioritize these recommendations so that we could enact an

013action plan that would go about increasing educator diversity next slide so we thought about the work we thought about the continuum and that continuum is how do we go about recruiting candidates of color not only for the classroom k-12 but also for our educated preparation programs whether it's traditional program or the alternative pathway so we thought about this work in terms of recruitment the preparation process and then what do we do to support and retain teachers of color once they're employed by districts next slide and we'll go to the next slide so what i'd like to do now is just kind of give you a quick overview if you have not had a chance to read the drive task force report i strongly encourage you to do so our recommendations are structured in this way

014there are three specific recommendations focused on recruitment making certain that we're thinking about how we recruit students of color into educator preparation programs and candidates of color into the k-12 classroom there are three recommendations focused on preparation focus explicitly on those notions of culturally relevant pedagogy and culturally sustaining pedagogies there are three recommendations focused on support and retention and then there's one global recommendation where we recommend to the governor that there should be an objective third body providing oversight of the implementation of these recommendations as an action plan connected to those 10 recommendations are 46 short mid and long term strategies those strategies align directly with each one of those recommendations in some way so what i like to do over the next few minutes that i have with you i'm going to zero in

015on a couple of the recommendations next slide so i will focus number one on uh the first recommendation which is a recruitment focused action and i apologize to reading to you but i'm a former english classroom teacher and this is what we do we read to people number one offer affordable post-secondary access through scholarships loan forgiveness and tuition reimbursement programs to address the disproportionate financial burden incurred by aspiring educators of color and you'll notice with each recommendation that after every recommendation in parentheses we identify the bodies that we believe are most responsible for making this recommendation an actionable item so i have intentionally highlighted and put in boldface red font district leaders there's a lot into the recommendations but we believe that the districts in many of these spaces can drive no pun intended the

016work that needs to occur in these spaces this recommendation is critically important because we believe if we can't afford enough money on the front end for scholarships while we emphasize that there are other things that we can put in place to ensure that we are forgiven loans and things of that nature this is critically important for students of color when you begin to analyze the data on loans to attend colleges you will see that our students of color incur more financial debt than other ethnic groups in order to attain their four-year degrees so if that's the case and we know that can be a barrier on the front end then we have to find mechanisms to alleviate that pressure or that concern otherwise students of color may not choose this profession so the more we

017can assist with loan forgiveness and tuition reimbursement programs then the better off we are let me also say secondarily that it is critically important that we make these opportunities clear explicit and without rigor we put a lot of hoops in place unnecessarily and people recognize those hoops and stay away from these opportunities so that's recommendation number one we believe it will help with recruitment particularly when it comes to students of color next slide the second recommendation focuses on recruitment as well expand and develop entry points into the educator pipeline that are based on models with proven success in recruiting racially ethnically and linguistically diverse educators these generally include your grow your own programs so we're encouraging districts to think about how you create grow your own programs and then what types of resources financial human

018and otherwise would be necessary to not only stand up the program but to ensure that the program can be sustainable and thrive over time so the idea and we're seeing this nationally is with these grow your own programs we're seeing more people of color enter the k-12 profession because there's a pathway of investment in the community where you have place-based people so creating opportunities such as these pipelines can help diversify what we see occurring in our k-12 classrooms next slide recommendation number five focuses on preparation adopt evidence-based elements of successful national residency models across the state's educator preparation programs in order to strengthen preparation of pre-service educators of color there are two great things that we're seeing with these national residency models and these are different from the residency license so i want you to

019separate these in your mind the residency license is now what used to be lateral entry or the alternative pathway a residency model is a full-blown program where candidates enter in cohorts they're placed in the classroom in a full-time basis they're surrounded with an array and buffet of services support services instructional support and otherwise and they take their coursework at the close of the day if you will after they've been in the classroom teaching so it allows them to have concrete experience and then they connect the concrete experience to the abstract theory which flips what we do in educator preparation programs oftentimes in ed prep programs we give you theory first then we give you more theory then we give you a little more theory and then we put you in the classroom for a fraction

020and we hope that you make the connection this takes that model and flips it on its head what we're finding with national residency models that are critically important and effective number one if you move through a residency model you're more than likely to remain in the classroom we're seeing nationally a retention rate of those teachers who are prepared through residency models somewhere around 85 to 88 percent retained in the classroom over a three year period that is extremely high the other thing that we're seeing those candidates who come through residency programs the impact on student learning is amazingly high so what we know is if residency models are working in terms of helping us retain these classroom teachers and they're having significant impact on student learning then we must invest more in residency models having

021said that residency models are not cheap before i left north carolina a t when i was the dean of the college of ed we were fortunate enough to secure about a six million dollar grant from the department of education a teacher quality partnership grant tqp we use that six million dollars to in enact a teacher residency program we were able to pay full-time salary for the candidate to be in the classroom we were able to pay for instructional supports we were able to pay for those students to earn their master's degree while they also worked on their teacher license we were able to pay for professional development extremely costly however it's an investment worth making it's an investment worth making so i can't emphasize enough that at the district level we have to start thinking

022a little more creatively about how we replicate these national residency models next slide please and support and retention focused recommendation number eight develop and sustain pathways for advancement that are tailored to the needs of educators of color including providing financial logistical support for obtaining national board certification expanding career ladders to keep effective career educators of color in the classroom encouraging educators of color to teach honors level ap ib courses i'll stop there what we know for sure based on our data analysis north carolina leads the way in terms of national board certified teachers in the united states here's the issue 93 of our national board certified teachers in the state of north carolina are white 93 percent that's not a typo i didn't say it wrong nine three percent okay what we know for sure

023with national board certification there's a 12 percent pay increase if you receive that type of pay increase the likelihood of you leaving the profession now decreases precipitously so how can we ensure that others are becoming national board certified how do we broaden participation this must be a focus of the work that we do not only must we broaden participation we also must think of ways to ensure that classroom teachers have ways to remain in the classrooms and earn additional compensation without thinking about moving into administration don't get me wrong there's nothing wrong with moving into administration but many of our teachers of color have little interest in administration they would prefer to stay in the classroom how can we ensure that we're creating career ladders so that they have the opportunity to do so and

024earn additional compensation and the final thing i'll say here before i move on we also have to make certain that our teachers of color have opportunities to teach in classes such as the the advanced placement the international baccalaureate and so forth we see so few of these teachers in that space and please know that these teachers observe and see that inequity that factors into that slide that i shared with you earlier about why people leave the classroom that factors into the decision to leave the classroom if i'm not being treated as a professional and i see differential treatment when it comes to this issue then why should i remain if you're not investing in me then it suggests that you don't care about me and if you don't care about me then i likely won't

025stay with you next slide please so what i want to do is share with you very quickly and then i'll be quiet on the next slide a couple of the current actions that are in play now because of the work of the drive task force and i won't say that we drove the work necessarily but we called attention to it i won't go through all of these but what i will share with you is we know for sure that the governor has recommended in his budget several action items based on the task force recommendations we also know that in the house several bills have been proposed teaching fellows as one we see that the there's a actual bill called the drive teaching bill that's come out of the house so there's a lot of work

026that's occurring because of the effort of the drive task force it's not enough however this is a good start but there's so much more to do that's part of the reason why me and task force members were moving about the state advocating educating making certain that people are aware of these recommendations making this aware of the report so that we can begin to figure out how we can collectively and collaboratively work with districts work at the state level so on and so forth to increase the number of educators of color that we see in our classrooms so i'll stop there um about 25 minutes in and i want to be mindful of your time and your agenda so let me pause there graham thank you for this first of all for leading this important work

027i can't say enough and i think my colleagues will agree how important this is we've talked a lot about much of this work uh here just a couple of quick questions and leave it open to my colleagues one are we able to get a copy of this presentation yes as a matter of fact you all have a copy now so okay yeah good it'll be loaded in assembly as well right and then secondly and you touched on you know what districts can do in many of these recommendations do you have any thoughts about what boards of education can do specifically to create the conditions for success and implementation uh of of these any any policies come to mind policy ideas implications obviously some physical implications as well but can you say a little bit about

028what boards of education specifically can do absolutely i think you you kind of answered it in your question by saying paying attention to the policies looking at those policies from an equity lens are the policies that are currently in place creating inequitable opportunities and if so how do you fix them or do you leave them alone and oftentimes what we see people leave them status quo because it's the easiest thing to do the challenge is making certain that you're paying attention to your data to see where those inequities are being produced and then revising those policies or creating new policies that would address those issues number two ask questions ask what's occurring in the classrooms pedagogically ask what's occurring with the preparation of principles the preparation of teachers the preparation of support staff ask a

029lot of questions and again from that equity lens and i guess number three and i guess i should have started with this is number one as board members make certain that you truly understand what it means to look at things from an equity lens are you educating yourselves when it comes to diversity equity and inclusion are you having those conversations in an intentional way these shouldn't be afterthoughts these should be planned efforts part of your work sessions are you taking time during your work sessions to educate yourselves in this space of diversity equity inclusion so you can start thinking differently about policies practices and so forth those are the types of things that i would ask and i challenge boards to give thought to and execute thank you for that i probably have more questions

030i can answer but i know we don't have a lot of time and i don't know if any other board members have any comments or thoughts mrs cash and dr martin yeah i i like the residency program concept because i think that um and i would like to see if there's a way to um make that less expensive somehow because i think that is a real good way to do it um i think we'll have a gentleman speak tonight that is actually would like to be part of something like that and we need to be very open because i think if if we want to partner with these young men they need to be able to call our school system and be able to have an opportunity to come and help us do some things

031so i think that might be one thing that the school boards can do is to be open to people that would like to have residencies with us agreed and i think the more you can think about your budgets and how you can reallocate dollars to support efforts of this nature while at the same time partnering with our business community our business and corporate sector want to get involved i've talked with so many business folks and they all say the same thing we want to get involved but when we go to the districts they don't know what they want us to help them with they want us to help them with things at the school level like these little parties after school and there's nothing wrong with that but we want to help disrupt systems and

032so forth but they're not coming to us with sad plans to get into that space that's a direct challenge to me and it quite honestly frustrates me to hear that so those are the types of things that i would encourage us as educators and those of us who support education to give some thought to how can we address and present more concrete proposals to our business and corporate community where they can partner with us in these ways thank you mrs cash dr martin thank you and thank you dr graham for the presentation um i i i'd like to explore a little further on you know you noted the top issue and i couldn't agree with more with in my career in education as well is the top issue for retention the top issue is retention

033absolutely because if you're not if you're not valued in the organization if you don't see a place to excel gain support you're leaving absolutely and and and my observation granted i am white i i recognize that uh but my observation is teachers of color are often the canary in the coal mine showing us structural problems with the system in general um and and yet even in the recommendations and your your eighth recommendation i believe it was was addressing retention on i'm curious why it became number eight and if we couldn't challenge it to become number one sure um because that seems to be the number one uh issue uh you know last night i looked at some of the drive uh report and you know it's absolutely clear and i think i think it gives

034direction for what school boards and school systems need to look at it's easy for us to decry the pipeline and and and wish that there were a way we could almost buy our way in sure to equity sure you can't do that don't work that way you got to change the system absolutely you got to look in the mirror to take your language from your report um you know it's not unique to educators of color but the lack of professional autonomy faculty faculty decision making educators of color are more likely to be placed in schools that are designated as high need may face organizational issues like staffing limitations insufficient funding higher demands on educator accountability those aren't dollar issues those are system issues that we have control over absolutely you note that educators of color

035may find themselves compelled to serve an additional support roles outside the scope of their position as educators bilingual educators often serve as linguistic intermediaries male educators of color often assume disciplinary roles due to the perceptions that they can connect with particular students especially black males this is a list of things that cost no absolute dollars absolutely but they require a change of mindset absolutely that says we're not about compliance right whether it's having our students comply to our standards or our structures or what have you or to have our staff comply to their principles right it's a mindset shift it's looking at creativity there you go instead of compliance absolutely so i appreciate what's in the report if i can give any advice push whatever is put that up to recommendation number one because that's

036no dollars it's mindset but that's what's going to give us change yeah i am in everything you just said the only thing i would say is the the order of the recommendations and we write it in the report before we get into them we didn't prioritize those recommendations they're just grouped one through three recruitment four through seven focused on preparation eight through ten focused on uh support and retention so no prioritization there but if we were to prioritize them i couldn't agree with you more thank you thank you dr martin vice jim mahaffey thank you chair sutton and dr graham thank you for being here and highlighting this important work i think it's something we've been talking about as a board for a very very long time so to see these recommendations just very clearly

037stated is just very helpful in sharing why this work is important and and recognizing that i had two questions and the first one maybe dating myself a little bit i remember there used to be federal perkins loans and i believe that ended around 2017. where if you went and worked in a low income title one school you could get those loans forgiven after a certain number of years are there any similar programs still happening that we can you know point to for kids that are interested in college yes one of the ones that i would emphasize and ask you to pay attention to is called the teach grant t-e-a-c-h it is from the department of education there was a little bit of a dust up a couple of years ago the department of education was

038going to phase the program out and we fought like the dickens to keep it in and we've done so however people aren't taking advantage of the teach grant the teach grant essentially allows you in many ways it's a loan forgiveness program or it allows you to enter an educator preparation program pursue your teaching certification at a reduced cost so if you're a full-time student it pays a certain percentage towards your tuition if you're part-time it pays a percentage towards your tuition and as long as you after graduation work in a school district for four years i think it is they will forgive that loan amount that you have remaining so the teach grant is the one that i will point to and say we're not using it nearly enough people aren't aware of it for

039some reason i i kind of blame us if you will for not marketing and advertising it to the extent that we should great i'm glad to hear that because i know a lot of friends of mine in education really appreciated that perkins loan because when you get into teaching there isn't a lot of money but you your own loans are owed right away exactly and i appreciate the highlight of the residency program i think ms scott and i were talking about our own teacher prep program where it's you know here's how you learn to do the things and then you get dropped in a classroom right and that tiny chapter on classroom management kind of goes out the window i'm curious in looking at you know what are the barriers to you know aside from

040student loan debt or access with other institutions of higher education and excited that the teaching fellows is being lifted up what is there something in here talking about students who have want to be teachers having a positive look on education from their own viewpoint having been a student and and what that whether a difficulty in high school or an experience as a student of color may be a barrier as well and how we can work at the district level with our student achievement and and our social emotional learning and and our diversity uh inclusion and equity efforts to make this seem more like something students want to go into sure the report doesn't necessarily address that explicitly is kind of implied one of the recommendation gets at creating more opportunities for k-12 students earlier in

041their matriculation to start thinking about teaching as a profession so what we can do in that pipeline and even touching the community colleges so we do have a recommendation that gets into that space what i will tell you from our educational research and i've done research in this space as well your point is a valid one oftentimes what we see particularly we start looking at students of color who are high achieving when they're one of the only ones in the classroom and then they look around the school and they realize that there are very few classroom teachers who look like they do it sends a very explicit message not implicit explicit message that this environment is not for me so they don't start thinking about the teaching profession as a viable option because they don't

042see evidence of it being a viable option from their own k-12 experience those are the types of things that we must address through this work you become what you see and if you don't see yourselves then why do you think you should become that that's an issue that we have to deal with thank you dr graham you're welcome thank you bye chairman i'm happy it's jonathan hosler thank you i'll start where miss mahaffey landed because that was actually my first question um and again thank you for being here and sharing this invaluable data so my my question was actually twofold in terms of resources i certainly agree with dr martin it's mindset shift and so two things for me with educators for mindset shift is really providing the data to support that what what you're

043saying is accurate so i guess which clearly as a black woman i certainly personally have my own experience of 12 experience of being the only one and that certainly impacted how i view the educational space but i still think that it's easier said than done for people living on the other side of it because they do see their students excelling which is counter-intuitive to the edge to the long-term impact that their education is having so if teachers are seeing their students of color excel then that feels like the six that is successful with without understanding kind of the explicit bias that that is being put upon the student of color so i'm curious in terms of resources for changing the mind shift have you all thought about like what does it look like to help

044teachers understand the data better in terms of you can have this ap student the one who's doing exceptionally well but the outcomes for that student are not reflective of their educational attainment and then the second is exit interviews especially for current administrators so that they actually really do have the data to support what what you are documenting here when those teachers are leaving their feel for all the reasons that you've expressed here so i guess i'm really asking for resources for current administrators um and leaders like the school board that we can implement to actually show that this data is true in our district to really start to shift the mind frame sure the report alludes to several you know research articles and things of that nature that you can tap into because we don't

045necessarily have an entity you know we're a task force so we know we're here for a short period of time so what we talk to and what we speak to in our strategies is making certain that we are connecting with existing organizations that are doing this type of work for example the dudley flood educational equity center now heavily involved in this space the public school forum so the more that we can connect to existing entities in many ways and we speak to this in the report in many ways we have a lot in the state of north carolina we don't know what we have that's right i agree we haven't done an audit of what we have and then there's no coordination of the effort it's just all out there and if you stumble upon

046it you stumble upon it so in many ways we have to find a way to do an audit to bring together what it is we have and then make certain that people are aware of those resources and can easily access those resources without stumbling upon it uh far too frequently i hear people say i wish we had and i say well we do have they just didn't know we had yeah i totally agree we're certainly resource rich and then i'd i'd be remiss if i didn't also comment on one of the statements ms mahaffey made as you can imagine i know a lot of educators of color and what i can tell you is they can still apply to have their loans forgiven if they're a title one school but guess what they have to

047have paid on those loans for 10 years and guess what happens for people of color who have no generational wealth those loans are in default as soon as they graduate because one the teacher's salary and they're not they are responsible for their own loans so so i can tell you i probably can name dozens of teachers on top of my head right in our district who can't ever receive those loans because they are required for 10 years consecutively of paying on those loans without default so so again to your point as you stated removing the hurdles is a huge to your point the rigor which i i think is quite profound because we talk about rigor and academics so much and therefore we've put all this rigor that has for so many folks who could

048potentially be educators in our public schools are not because that rigor are certainly barriers for certain people and uh the final point i'll make and then i'll be quiet the greatest misnomer in education is rigor we believe that hoops equate to rigor no hoops are hoops they're barriers they're challenges it's not a rigor i can have a rigorous classroom with one assignment but we believe five assignments is equivalent to rigor no one assignment can be rigorous so we have to start to dr martin's point earlier we have this it's a mindset shift we have to shift what we have convinced ourselves of that our data actually tell us isn't working it's my concern about showing the data right because the data is there it's we don't believe it or else our mindsets would have shifted

049as a and i mean we collectively right as an educational field we continue to perpetuate those misnomers and i'll say this to the data point i said i was going to be quiet i can't um there are far too many times when i present the data and it's as clear as day and the response will be where'd you get that data from let me look that up myself as if you looking at the website it's going to be any different from me looking at it there are people who question the messenger not necessarily what the message is but they question the message as well it's it's a little more than just presenting the data if you already have it in your mind that that can't be true that cognitive dissonance is going to be problematic

050for you so that's part of the challenge as well it's as i tell my chancellor it's not just us telling the story we can tell the story all day long it's how people receive the story and sometimes from whom they receive the story this gets back to your story about the recruitment right we can recruit you it's wonderful but then you get here and if it ain't that one person who has to leave exactly tells way more than the 10 people that you recruited exactly we got to focus on retention we got to focus on what it's like to live it absolutely too many of my students at nc state don't want to go into education because they see the hoops absolutely the headaches the hurdles we've got to change that it's got to be

051a valued profession it's got to not be part of the reason why it's so white and female is because education is still largely a second job profession we've got to make education a first job profession there you go and then we're going to attract more teachers of color we're going to attract a lot of people absolutely so let me get to your first job professional couple other board members quickly mrs kushner you had a comment i think mr hegarty you had a comment as well well thank you and um i know we're running short on time but thank you dr am from coming and i um started my gray hair will betray me but i started first grade in the segregated school but by the time i graduated from fayetteville city schools i'd had half

052my teachers were teachers of color because we had fayetteville state there and i had many graduates from fayetteville state and i now can reflect on what that impact was for my k-12 education so i'm sad we're talking about this in such still such start terms but um i appreciate the role hbcus have but i also um hope that we also emphasize 80 percent of our teachers are probably white women and i'm i want them to have cultural corrections too so i hope that we um will continue to emphasize well i hope we will emphasize that for all of our teachers while also holding on to the need to expand our teaching workforce that looks more like our kids absolutely thank you for making that point i say this all the time it's going to take

053about that this is being very liberal it's going to take about 10 to 15 years to swing the educated workforce so that there are more teachers of color at the level which we believe it will be representative and that's being very gracious in the interim what are we doing in the interim that's right yeah in the interim what are we doing with those candidates of color excuse me those candidates who are already in our educator preparation programs to ensure that they're culturally competent and culturally intelligent oftentimes we see that our educator preparation programs pay very little attention to this issue it's a class three credit hours in a series of 120 credit hours that ain't enough pardon my ebonics there okay you might be short as the classroom management right right exactly exactly so one

054of our recommendations speaks to making certain that we're paying attention to the north carolina professional teaching standards we have to ensure that those professional teaching standards place more emphasis on culturally relevant pedagogy anti-bias anti-racist language and so on and so forth so that educator preparation programs will follow suit in their curricula ed prep programs will always follow standards if the standards emphasize it the ad prep program will follow it if the standards don't mention it the program won't think about it that's what we're finding that's the way to get at disrupting the system thank you that i appreciate having the report that had many strategies for us because it's going to take many strategies absolutely so thank you dr thank you thank you for raising attention mrs kushner mr hagerty thank you if the answers

055are in the report all you have to do is say it's in the report right right check it out but i was curious when you start looking at the reasons that are expressed about either why teachers leave the profession or maybe don't go into profession what did you see did it even show up on the radar either questions about racial imbalance in administration at the principal or the ap level or racial imbalance in the schools where a teacher moving into a community if they're the only teacher of color at the school might not necessarily feel welcome was that a factor at all or not so much excellent question we saw it more showing up in the supervisor and the principle so when we talk about diversifying the educated workforce it is critically important that we

056think broader than just the classroom teacher if 68 of your principles are white then they may not necessarily understand some of these issues that we're talking about relative to diversity equity and inclusion and if that's the case are they creating a truly inclusive environment where these teachers of color now feel like they're professionals feel like they're valued so on and so forth if that's not what's occurring then of course that's going to impact what happens on the retention side we see a great deal of our teachers of color talking about racial microaggressions in their schools whether it's from their principals or from their colleagues and if the principal isn't aware of these racial microaggressions and how to create the environment then unfortunately you're going to see these issues perpetuate and lead to the type of

057environment that will have our teachers of color say this isn't for me these are the types of questions back to chair sutton's question earlier when boards of education things that you can pay attention to asking those types of questions what are we doing in these spaces to address principal preparation principle for professional development what are we doing in this space of diversity equity and inclusion so on and so forth these are the types of things from a policy perspective from a budgetary perspective so on and so forth that boards of education can play a huge role asking hard questions and not letting people off the hook forcing us to get into this mindset shift that is for me the greatest issue a lot of this stuff costs no money it really doesn't do we have

058the political courage and will to make the decisions knowing that you might be criticized for it therein lies the challenge thank you i want to thank you all for the robust discussion thank you sorry to have you for for being here you and let me thank governor cooper for putting this task force together you all can see not just why he is the uh provost at winston state or why he was the dean of the school of education a t but you can see why he was chosen to ch to chair and lead uh the drive task force uh thank you thank you for being here you make a5a problem i appreciate it and i hope that uh um as you as we as you see there are lots of layers to this discussion a

059lot of ways to attack this to this issue it's one that's not only statewide but nationwide as well perhaps there's some way that we as a district as a board as a staff and team can look at ways that we can perhaps drive no pun intended some of these recommendations and make sure that we're doing our part here in wake county to diversify and make the representative make the teaching enforcement representative and inclusive so thank you for the discussion dr graham i'll just let you know that um you can go out the back door where our assistant superintendent for human resources dr matilda will meet you all right again thank you thank you for that um we got several other uh items that are are pretty meaty and i want to save some time uh

060at the end for a pretty important discussion so i'm going to sort of move through [Music] not quickly but certainly expeditiously and make sure that we're touching on some of the topics that we need so the next one is summer extended learning updates for 2021. good afternoon everyone so i know we want to stick to our time and so i'll stick to my talking points as best as i can but i don't see how we can listen and engage in that discussion without just thinking more broadly i can tell you there are several instances even in my own talking points that i've scratched through and made a note just based on some of what dr graham just shared and i i'm here today to share an update on summer learning but i think you know

061this is another opportunity that i don't think is entirely disconnected from the discussion that we just had and i think dr graham just said 10 or 15 years down the road and i couldn't help but think over there as i'm going through my notes thinking about the the technical aspects of this update which students might have an experience this summer that could change the trajectory of their life that they might not have otherwise gotten in a quote unquote normal traditional school setting so just wanted to acknowledge that and thank dr graham as well so good afternoon everyone it's great to be here to share an update as a follow-up to the presentation and discussion you just had an hour or two ago in the finance committee meeting on compensation incentives for staff we do appreciate

062the opportunity this afternoon to bring you a brief update on several other important components of our plans for the 2021 summer learning program and i think i'll let the slides catch up again our plans for summer learning recovery and enrichment program are being developed as a component of a broader strategic framework as the district prepares for the 21 22 academic year like the other areas of work that you see represented here in this graphic we have a cross-departmental team working with multiple stakeholders to design and implement extended learning opportunities for our students with the primary focus right now on summer learning this team is co-led by academic senior director sarita smith and brian pittman both of whom are with us virtually today to respond to any specific questions that you may have when we get

063to that section in just a few minutes so just a brief recap again to kind of level set everyone to set the context for the summer learning program it's important to point out the basic requirements of the legislation around this topic hb 82 which was passed with the specific intent to mitigate the impacts of covid19 on at-risk students requires that districts provide instruction on specific subjects as well as offer enrichment activities such as art music and technology reading math and science are key areas of focus as we work to not only solidify concepts from the school year that it is now concluding but also build scaffolds for understanding and success in the new school year that's upcoming as required by the legislation the wake county public school system will provide among other things 150 hours

064of instruction meal and transportation services and build physical activity into the k-8 student experience each day students have been identified using data points such as current course grades as well as eye station data at the elementary level testing data and other academic factors schools have been empowered to identify additional students based on data points that they may have at the school and classroom level additional students are being invited to participate as seats are available at that individual school also summer programming for students with ieps who are instructed on the extended content standards will run simultaneously with summer learning at the same sites same dates and same times so a little bit about some of the preliminary numbers which i know was a topic referenced in the finance committee meeting a little while ago at this

065point schools have sent out invitations to eligible students and begun recruiting staff who are interested in participating in the summer learning program with approximately 23 000 total invitations sent out we now have an initial view of the number of students who have committed to attending thus far overall we anticipate that upwards of 16 000 students will participate in summer learning programming and it is worth noting here that we're seeing a slightly higher acceptance rate from families than what we have historically seen with our read to achieve camps in past years as this slide indicates at elementary schools we have 9425 confirmed students thus far middle school 3544 and at the high school level just over 3 700 presently we do expect these numbers will continue to evolve and likely grow in the days ahead as

066more families accept the invitation to participate this is particularly true at the high school level where we'll be adding students who need credit recovery services based on spring semester academic outcomes that have yet to be finalized and determined obviously as we've discussed previously the building of student need and interest of course requires staff who are capable and available to support summer learning programming positions have been posted on the district's website upon what we hope will be board approval tonight of the compensation details that were discussed discussed earlier uh we will begin efforts to communicate this information first internally and then from there we'll assess what the additional need might be and then recruit externally as well overall we do anticipate that we'll need in the neighborhood of somewhere around thirteen hundred teachers along with counselors

067instructional assistants and other staff to make the summer program successful i'll note we're also working with transportation and cns staff to identify needs and recruit staff to participate in the program as well just a quick check i know there was some conversation earlier with our secondary schools found that about 60 percent of our schools indicated they do not see any issue at this point with filling necessary positions and almost all other schools have said they may have to recruit for one or two positions so overall schools have indicated right now they feel good about their ability to meet anticipated staffing needs we're also presently seeking that same level of feedback from our elementary schools here in the days ahead overall then the general feedback that we've gathered thus far at least appears to indicate that

068the proposed incentives that have been shared and discussed are having a positive effect on the recruitment of staff to participate in the summer learning program which is of course good news to this point in the presentation we have frames summer learning as somewhat of a set of tasks getting the people in place engaging families building strategically focused curriculum etc it is critical though that we frame summer learning not as a set of isolated tasks and importantly not as quote unquote the goal rather it's important to view this as one strategy in a larger effort to support students all students in fully and successfully re-engaging in post-pandemic learning for summer learning we've identified students who show signs of struggle in reaching the level of achievement that we know they're capable of if the work of supporting

069them stops when the summer ends then we'll have achieved little in the form of positive and lasting impact therefore obviously it's important for us to continue to monitor and support these students both those who attend summer learning and those who do not as we move into and through the upcoming 21 22 school year there are intentional connections here between this work and the additional intervention supports that were discussed in our board meeting two weeks ago those additional staffing resources will provide us an opportunity to be strategic about how and when we work to move these students not just to being proficient but also being successful and ready for the next rigorous challenges that lay ahead resources built for summer learning to support our teachers will also transition into the new school year for example the

070resources we're creating to support summer learning will next be shared with teachers strategically to support interventions for example to help and align help align and orient special education curriculum assistance teachers with instructional resources that will support the success of the content standards for their students in short again we view summer learning as one piece of a much larger puzzle so another piece of that puzzle that is important obviously is to recognize that our community partnerships are so valuable one of which we thought we'd take a moment to highlight in this presentation today we're excited that the ymca is partnering with us to provide an integrated experience of camp high hopes and the wake county public school system summer learning experience camp high hopes as you may know is a summer day camp subsidized by donations

071to the ymca's annual we build people campaign campers participate in character development activities literacy instruction sports and swim lessons camp high hopes is offered to wake county public school system elementary and middle school students this year the camp will include the wake county public school system summer learning curriculum and be facilitated by wake county public school system teachers we hope that this partnership will help in preventing families from having to choose between camp high hopes and the summer learning program so we're hopeful that this partnership will help prevent that choice that families would otherwise have to make and we're grateful at the opportunity to partner with the ymca finally it's important that once again we call out the fact that we do want summer learning to be fun it is the summer even more so

072than the traditional school year this experience we feel like has to be engaging in one that truly refreshes both the students and the staff who are participating learning will need to feel somewhat different than what students may have experienced in the past school year past school year plus examples include things like elementary reader celebrations such as steam days for kindergarten wax museums and more hands-on activities such as science labs and experiments building representations of mathematical concepts and at the secondary level in particular we want to be intentional about building in career development connections importantly we are focused on utilizing social emotional learning in order to prioritize relationships and building the soft skills that support long-term success and i just i think it's important here to be very clear that when we say soft skills that

073doesn't mean fluff that means foundation so when we're talking about social emotional learning and building relationships especially for students that struggle we know that those trusting mutual relationships built on a foundation of respect are vital to student learning that is the foundation it's not the only thing but it's a critical component as you may know we'll have a counselor present each site we're working with counseling and student services to build some common goals as we anticipate counselors are going to be heavily involved in classroom guidance small groups and one-to-one interactions with students throughout the summer camp program and as we wrap up we'll highlight just a couple of key next steps first we will continue family engagement work to get as many students participating in summer learning as possible second we will continue to monitor

074the process of recruiting teachers and orienting them to curriculum resources to support student learning this summer and lastly we will work to continue building and solidifying partnerships with other community agencies and organizations and one of the takeaways that i noted that i think was important among other items from dr graham's presentation was how important it is for us to be very specific and intentional as we build those partnerships so we can be very clear about what the needs are and where those community connections can be made so we certainly will be focused on that so with that chair sutton that's a quick overview at this time we're happy to answer any questions or hear any feedback you may have thank you mr cook for that important update and thank you for the reference to the

075previous speaker as well any questions comments thoughts conversation from the board mrs kushner thank you a quick question um mr cooper we can so we're continuing to recruit students and those who have not accepted if we've not heard them because last week you know are we targeting are we targeting students who had high unexcused absences as well as students who may have been failing in the first semester so i believe attendance is probably one of the components that there's a factor that can be considered obviously as you well know a lot of times they're intertwined and attendance reflects performance and vice versa and so certainly that's one of the factors involved and i think to your question those invitations have gone out and it's not too late for families to commit and so the numbers

076that we've shared for example today are what we've heard from thus far and so we certainly encourage families to continue and by the way schools will continue that outreach and so particularly for students where we know there are high needs whether it's a counselor at a school or even classroom teachers that that reaching out will continue in the days ahead so that we can get as many of these eligible students participating as is possible so we hope that 16 000 number will continue to creep upward thank you mr prep dr martin thank you appreciate the descriptions of the program uh question about the partnership with camp high hopes which uh is a great program maybe a twofold question one is will all of our sites have a high hope type partnership or will we only

077partner with already existing high hopes organizations and and maybe secondary to that you know camp high hopes serves people who might not have been in the list who got the invitation will this program now be integrated there as well um i mean i i love the idea yes sir of the partnership and i think it gets toward you know learning is much more than just sitting in a classroom and complying with some standards yeah so the partnership i think is great but i'm just curious a little bit more detail as to how it's going to flush out yes sir great question dr martin so i'll start that and then i'll let sarita or perhaps brian jump in with more details but um the camp high hopes would be at select sites that partnership so it

078is not all um and i'll let sarita speak a little bit more potentially about what what that interaction will look like and how that will kind of integrate with the existing summer learning program that might be happening on that site with those qualified and eligible students so serena if you're available i'll let you speak to that a little bit well and as that's addressed to the sites where there's not the partnership will there be that kind of activity integrated in some other way that may be part of the answer which is why i wanted to get it in right now yes sir serena um thank you dr martin for your question you know i hope it would have been that we could have like a camp high hopes at every wake county site but the

079wise capacity to do that is limited so yeah as drew mentioned it is just the current sites um the why is giving parents the option some parents just want the camp field and they don't want the summer learning academic play piece so those students can still attend camp high hopes without attending summer learning but any student who comes to camp high hopes will also have the opportunity to be involved with summer learning thank you part of our work this summer and in year of our early discussions we have talked about what potential partnerships we could plan for at all schools next year working with the y and ken keith is also reaching out to some of the other agencies like the boys and girls clubs that are near schools that you still they can partner

080with and also looking to find out um you know particularly like what curriculum they may or may use that we can sort of use in the future so we are continuing to look toward the future for those partnerships as well thank you this is cash thank you for that mr cook that's really good i i'm really glad that you talked about the correlation with camp high hopes because i think that's going to be really a good program for us to be working with so thank you for that and i also appreciate your emphasis on soft skills because i do know that that was lost during remote learning and i think that's a really important part to bring back so thank you for that too i wondered when we when we talk about at-risk for children

081that are not meeting their potential how are we looking at that is that measured some way yeah that's a great question so first of all the legislation obviously was not specific in terms of how exactly each lea would define and identify what constitutes quote unquote at risk and so it was left to districts to make those determinations and so you know obviously course grades and how students are doing in their classroom is a critical piece of that um to the degree that's appropriate and available standardized assessments although that's a data point that you know you could argue is you know fraught with peril in normal circumstances the last couple of the years it's it's even more difficult to just rely totally on that so that's one of multiple data points things like the eye station

082assessments and other data points that classroom teachers and schools may utilize so you know as much as possible we provided at the district levels kind of the parameters that schools could start with recognizing that in some cases there may be data points that one school has that another school does not have access to that might allow them to better define and delineate which kids in their building have the greatest need and will be eligible so you know obviously we did our best at the district level to strike that that balance uh look good that makes sense and so will teachers actually be able to recommend kids that they feel did not meet their potential but did not necessarily maybe fail or at risk or by any certain tasks so they could notice a child that

083just could do better will they be in this program so that's a great question again it's a follow-up so and i'll let sarita perhaps talk a little bit about that what i would say is that the legislation and its intent is was clear in the intent to address specifically the needs of at-risk students those students that are experiencing academic struggles again with the understanding that districts and schools would help define exactly what that means and so in some cases and i i think you know where my mind goes is what about some of our our higher functioning students and students that typically perform at a really high level and perhaps over the past year plus they haven't performed at that same level um it you know just because they may not be captured in the

084net the wide net that's being cast here i think it's important to recognize and even for students that are struggling academically and are well below what their level of performance would typically be expected this is not a one-shot deal and so i think part of the message that we have to keep going back to is this this will be an important experience we see it as valuable we're devoting a tremendous amount of time effort energy and resources into making it something that is meaningful but it is one piece of a much bigger puzzle and part of that bigger puzzle involves what kinds of classroom instructional resources and instructional practice will be able to implement systematically beginning in 2122 to be sure that we're capturing all the needs of all students and so again this is

085one piece and so i know there's probably some question about what about my student or another student there will be something to address the needs for everyone right this is just one of those and serena you may have additional details in terms of how schools are identifying students with needs and how that term at risk may be defined yes so we recognize that student learning happens on the progression and at different rates for each student so although we provided schools with a baseline roster based on defined criteria schools had the flexibility to add or remove kids based on their current level of performance so at the period of time when we captured the data the student might have been showing a need for extra support but they may be at a point now where that

086is no longer the case or we may have a situation where a kid wasn't indicating a need for extra support but given the recent data that there is a need so schools did have flexibility to add and remove kids based on what they were seeing currently and miss cash i'll just kind of to forecast a brief preview we're actually going to be coming back into this in this forum next monday at the student achievement committee and part of that presentation will be specifically focused on for example what we're doing to address the needs and the supports for our academically and intellectually gifted students and so we'll be speaking more in detail about how it may not be summer learning per se but how strategically we're working to ensure that all of our students are having

087their needs addressed you know again to your point what we don't want to have happen is to presume that a student is doing quote unquote just fine when you and those are the very kids that sometimes if we're not careful fall through the cracks and perform below what their potential is and so we'll we'll speak in more detail about some of the programming and strategy that will involve our aig and advanced learning kids next week as well just one final question i'm sorry but um this kind of goes back to what i found some of the principles of our schools with the most needs i needed help was when you look at the numbers and you reach out to the families you know one counselor one principal and some of the staff like at one

088of the schools that i was trying to get help for early on that just couldn't reach the kids that weren't getting on some of these schools may need extra help getting their parents involved in enrolling in these programs their numbers are so high of the kids they want in is there a way to help some of these principals and social workers yes ma'am great question i can tell you that broadly we have been working with our counseling and student services staff to ensure that we're targeting what some of those interventions look like what are the additional supports what are the additional communications the follow-up that needs to occur because i think to your point right we do have to be concerned about who those 6 000 or so kids are that received invitations that have

089not yet accepted them and so i think to your point we need to be and will be really intentional in following up to make sure that we've done everything that we possibly can to get the kids there which is step one getting them there but then i think also to your point making sure that they've got the resources and the supports they need knowing that in some schools and in some communities those needs are going to be greater that's exactly what i was hoping here thank you mr cook uh one one final question and and i i'm gonna admit that my question is probably a little bit loaded uh and that you probably won't have an answer so i guess i'm sort of asking as a both question and something to kind of prick our

090thinking awareness at the same time i know that we're still trying to assess to some degree what is the impact of the pandemic on learning and so we we we have this data on the front end that you know tells us the students that we want to try to address and support you mention the conversation next week around what strategies we will implore you've also talked about the the amount of time energy effort resources that are going into this effort and the bigger picture so i guess i'm thinking about the bigger picture and and are we thinking about i have thought about metrics if you will in terms of the impact of of the pandemic on the learning what the regression looks like and and if there's a you know let's say we call it

091sort of a pandemic gap uh similar to an achievement gap if you will what that gap is and and how we will know that we're making some ground in terms of the recovery of that learning or loss learning loss opportunities so how are we sort of measuring are we thinking about sort of any metrics related to that so that in six months or a year or two years or five years that we have recovered some of that that students are sort of caught up that our investment of time energy resources has paid off made a difference so that we're not sitting here two or three years from now we've spent an enormous amount of resources and and we still don't know you know sort of where we are so how how do we sort of

092prevent prevent that is that am i making sense a little bit in my question absolutely yes sir that may be a loaded question but i would also say that is probably the question that we'll have to be mindful of as a district not just through the summer and into early next year but as you referenced years down the road and so to answer your question right now we we don't have specific data and metrics i think i just shared with you kind of the the broad excuse me the broad net that we've cast given one of the concerns and challenges that we've had for the past year plus is that when we're assessing students because of the the various environment that students are in it calls into question the the accuracy and the validity of

093those assessments in a way that exceeds even what would be expected in normal circumstances and so i think part of in part of i think a response to your question will be the other half of next week's presentation in addition to providing an overview of aig and advanced learning and what we're doing now and moving forward for those students the other part of the presentation will also be a broad framework and an overview that will touch mr sutton at least in part on where we are going moving forward and what type of balanced assessment system we're going to have to have in place to be able to monitor the impact of our our programming and our initiatives and it has to go obviously has to go well beyond just course grades it has to go

094beyond attendance certainly has to go beyond standardized assessment scores but i think it has to be part of a balanced assessment approach you know for example one specific thing that we know is going to be needed in our schools next fall is some type of a you know a combination of pre-assessments and screeners and formative assessments once we get kids back in the in-person environment although we'll still have kids that are in the virtual environment which will have to to figure out how to manage and mitigate those challenges but i think long-term that is the question that we're going to have to figure out as a district and you know i think without knowing with any degree of specificity what some of those skill gaps are it's going to be really hard to your point

095to measure what the impact of some of this work is over the course of 21 22 and in the years that follow yeah i will also add too that we are working with our data research and accountability and also we're looking at some outside groups that we may partner with to not only look at just test scores of students assessments when we return to school but also the fidelity of our logic model i like the summer learning it's not just about a single score but it's also about the pedagogy about the curriculum and the level of implementation the efficacy fidelity of the work that's being done so in each step along the way we're going to be collecting some of this data starting on the front end so that we can work through so that

096we to your point in three years from now we'll have some hard data about the work and not just single test scores either improving or not thank thank you for that that's helpful and just helps me to know that we're thinking about that so i appreciate it yes sir very much glass i'm happy thank you uh chair sutton your questions spiraled into a question that i had in my apologies it's a little off topic but as we're talking about looking forward are we able to put supports in place for the next few school years while these kids are are moving through our um our district so that and i heard you talk about you know the the entrance tickets and and the pre-learning and and i think that's but just so we have the the

097scaffolding as these kids spiral in their learning when they hit you know the american revolution again and maybe they were in fifth grade there can be a little bit more of that base and that our teachers have that support so they don't have to go and search it out that's a great question and i think what you're talking about really are those scaffolds that will have to be built and i can tell you that we have dozens of academic advancement staff that have for weeks and in the coming weeks we'll be doing nothing but creating those resources to push out to our teachers in a way that can provide them with access so for example that that fourth grade teacher who has been teaching fourth grade for 25 years who is accustomed right as any

098other teacher is to having some degree of of range of students entering that classroom i dare say we probably can expect that that range is going to be wider than it's ever been potentially and so it's going to be important in that example to provide that fourth grade teacher with resources that do pull back into third grade content so that they don't have to go out and seek it for themselves and so we we absolutely are committed to providing those instructional resources those materials and that has to be how we kind of redefine what core looks like and i think we've said this before we're not going to summer learn we're not going to intervene and we're not going to remediate our way out of a multi-year pandemic and so what you just described it's

099a challenge and i cannot uh we can't overstate that's a big lift it is a huge lift and it's in many ways a fundamental shift for a lot of our teachers and you could argue all of our teachers in one way or the other um but it's one certainly that we're committed to helping and that vertical alignment piece is also always very tricky especially when you're dealing with grade levels that go you know that fifth sixth you know eighth ninth um as they're they're moving through our schools i would be curious if that's also happening at the state level as they're looking at standards and how we can help our teachers with the standards because that takes time and sometimes those pacing guides are really tight one question i have for our year round camps

100are the time that's built in one of my curiosities because i know the the summer camp allows we have a broad summer time for that but our is there room for our instructors to have a little bit of downtime or are they going right into and our students as well right into the the summer camp or track out camp um for that intervention yeah that's a great question and i'll let um i know sarita has worked extensively in taking a look at the calendar and trying to figure out how we can ensure that you know there's continuity but also some level of respite for our teachers that have literally been working around the clock for the last 365 plus days so serena do you want to speak to that question briefly sure so yes we've

101been intentional on allowing some track out time to those families that follow a year-round schedule so the way that is outlined currently each track will be in summer learning for two weeks and then they'll have one week of track out thank you all right thank you mr cook for that mr smith thank you for your addition to that as well much appreciated all right thanks so much all right our next item is initial planning for the 2022-23 school enrollment plan proposed timeline and i see mr carosa making his way to the uh podium good afternoon sir how are you all right oops just trying to pull out my powerpoint here sorry okay chair sutton members of the board thank you for having us staff is here to present the 2022-23 enrollment plan this is the

102proposed timeline so for this year we are proposing that draft one will be brought to the board on september 21st during the board work session that would then open up public feedback sessions between september 22nd and october 18th we would then circle back with the board to provide feedback on october 19th and then present draft two on november 16th just to kind of put some of this in perspective last the last time we did this which was two years ago we presented draft one on october 1st so we're bringing it a little bit earlier we are also incorporating an october 9th meeting to share feedback we just felt like trying to open up a window for collecting feedback considering covid and trying to identify ways to collect that parent feedback in a safe uh matter

103giving us a larger window to do so would be beneficial for all and then to present that feedback to you get your feedback on what we're hearing from the public and then present draft 2 roughly a month later that would then bring us to december 7th with a final vote which is in line with the previous years that first meeting in december we do have an optional november 30th meeting this is something that in the years past some boards have chosen to exercise this option we just left the date open staff will be available if you choose to have an additional date for public uh public input or whatnot but then we would bring the final vote again to the board meeting for a final vote so work session to recap final draft and then

104a vote at the meeting and that's all we have um any questions or concerns regarding the proposed timeline like i said starting a little bit earlier than we have in the past but ending right about the same as we usually have all right sounds great mrs cash um i'll just i think this is for superintendent moore if possible um you know a couple of years ago i think we were working on some things in some of our districts and um i just wondered if there's any guidelines especially in my district there was some work done to try to do some movement and i feel like this year some of us are working together to try to get our areas more diversified closer to each other you know more like each other rather than with capacity

105and other things um the last time we were stopped kind of in midstream and not doing it i'm hoping that this year if we want to make changes in our districts that we can do that is that is there a guideline on that i think that um the process that that the office of student assignment has started with mr carosa is to seek feedback from board members specifically on the the areas within their districts that they want to see some changes or that they've been working with the community on so that he can incorporate that information into the draft that he brings kevin all right any additional questions mr hegarty thank you so i know we've been doing a lot of work with facilities utilization in the facilities committee and elsewhere and as we talk

106about assignment one of the things that we look at is crowding in different schools this seems like it would be on a timeline that would allow us to continue that work and maybe come to some some resolution on some of that clarification that we're seeking does that sound like we'll have the latest information available by those states i do think that the intent is to have the dialogue and the sort of back and forth that's going on about how to finalize the fur the facility utilization report prior to having the planet the draft one yes yes that's my understanding yes jackie thumbs up up there all right you know the further discussion by the board on the timeline is kushner this is a quick um reminder mr carotza can you remind us of the three

107schools that we'll be opening in 2022-23 yep so the three new schools will be apex friendship elementary on the apex friendship campus with the middle school and high school we have barton pond elementary which is over between leesville elementary and bailly wick elementary on the south side of 540 near strickland road and then we have herbert aikens middle school which is on the herbert aikens elementary campus thank you all right seeing a further discussion uh by the board thank you thank you so much for that update all right the next item on our agenda is a presentation of options to shift the bail tiers and and start time so again this goes back to uh some work that started earlier and uh staff is bringing us to another report on some of those options to

108look at transportation and shifting our build schedule so mr anita thank you sir good afternoon chair sutton members of the board and superintendent moore if i could go ahead and ask sharon if you could put the slot deck up please and while we're waiting for that i'll go ahead and um i'll start but this afternoon we're bringing back an item that we originally brought to you at your march 16th work session and at that work session we reviewed with you what a number of other peer districts have done to shift their high schools to a later start time and also reviewed three options to consider for the wake county public school system and accomplishing such a shift and now i will wait until we can get the deck up there we go next slide please

109and next slide please great so today what we want to do is provide a real quick recap of what those three options we presented to you are and then walk you through a series of questions related to the three options but before we go any further i want to confirm that what we're presenting and talking about today are not bell schedules for this coming year they are not for the 2021-22 school year next year's bell schedules were approved by the board at your april 6 meeting and with the exception of the additional will springs high school and a slight change to fuquay verena high next year bell schedules will be the same as the current year belt schedule so just want to make that abundantly clear next slide please so this is the first of

110the three options we presented to you back in march and it basically keeps the existing three-tier structure in place and it keeps the same standard tier assignments in place as well with the standard for high school being on tier one middle school being on tier two and elementary school being on tier three but what tier one does is give sort of three options within this option of shifting all three tiers to a later start time either by 30 minutes 45 minutes or 60 minutes obviously we're not limited to those it could be could be 15 minutes it could be 35 minutes could be any number of minutes as long as they stay aligned with each other so as you look at this i want to just point out that these are the bell times we

111target having the buses arrive at the schools 30 minutes prior to the morning bell so that students can eat and obviously with bus ride times the actual pickup time in the morning will be earlier by whatever that ride time is in the actual drop off time at the stop in the afternoon would have that ride time added to it next slide please so the second option was to actually swap what are the standard assignments for tiers and what we put out there for you in march was to switch elementary to be tier one middle to tier 2 or middle to stay at tier 2 i should say and push high school to tier 3 basically a swapping of the standard for elementary and high um i want to note that we currently have exceptions to

112who's on tier one two and three and under a scenario like this we could continue to have exceptions to that and examples would include for example where we may have a middle school and a high school that are on the same campus and we have them running together effectively as we're collecting them from the draw area and bringing them to the combined campus another example would be where we've got for example districts excuse me county-wide draws that we're also bringing for some of the magnet programs and then we're bringing them into a central place and perhaps shuttling students to a middle school from a high school so those would be examples of where even within an option two we would have exceptions to meet specific needs next slide please and finally option three which is

113essentially a hybrid of options one and two it would be a swapping of the tiers in this case example putting elementary on tier one and shifting high school to tier three but then within that still shifting to a later start time using the example here that would allow the elementaries under this scenario if they shifted 30 minutes to not um have a 730 bell but rather have a 8 o'clock bell or further 8 15 or 8 30. but you can see as we work through the tiers that has implications next slide please so of the peer districts we reviewed and we shared with you back in march this is a summary of the changes that they wound up implementing durham county winston-salem and fairfax county virginia all went down the path of changing their standard

114tier assignments you'll note that in all three cases high s excuse me you'll note that how they swap tears was not consistent but they did swap tears the other two districts we reviewed montgomery county and anne arundel maryland kept the existing tier structure but wound up just shifting the start times and you can see in both those cases they did not shift them significantly next slide please so and as we shared with you again in our last presentation as we continue to discuss this and consider options it's going to be important to remember that changes the bell schedule have community-wide implications for parent schedules for staff including those working second jobs for before and after school providers including siblings who might be a before after school provider implications for after school activities athletics arts students

115may have jobs after work as well and again as we shared our initial modeling indicates that not well that all three of these options would not have a material impact from a funding perspective they would largely align within the existing resources we provide it's just shifting when we use the resources to do what next slide please so what we'd like to do now is ask the board to break out into three small groups and i'll speak to that in a moment and we've got three questions we'd like to pose to you have you go through some discussion in your small groups on those questions and then report out after that discussion and do these one question at a time we would ask that one person in each group take some high level notes and we

116would like to collect those notes and staff will then collate them and put them together and then provide them back to you and as far as actual groups i know we're in different times with social distancing but perhaps the board members at the board table formally could discuss together and then the board members in the front row could discuss together in the audience area and the board members in the back row and we talked in chiefs and if the board members in the audience would like to separate to get further apart the chiefs would be glad to make room for you so it's however you choose so with that let me switch and and i will say that um bob snide miller from transportation is here and i'm here obviously we will rotate amongst your

117groups glad to answer any questions provide additional information to you as you work through each of these three questions so the first question next slide please we would like you to discuss is the board has directed staff to look at shifting high school later start time research indicates middle school students can also benefit from a later start time does the board desire to also include middle schools to have a later start time as we review this overall shift understanding the implications for elementary schools so with that the specific question is should we include middle schools in that direction to ensure that whatever shifts we have provides them a later start time as well and with that i would ask the board members to break into the three groups and we'll give you maybe 10 minutes

118or so to discuss i think with three questions mr sutton all three questions just the one we'd like to do one question at a time and then ask each group to report out after each question if that's okay oh yes sir so i don't think god i so half an hour so the times that they put in the program though how long are they on the bus that they'd be getting home after five if that's like a 210 exit no i mean okay i mean they don't have a two-hour ride well that's what i mean the other thing i thought about was switching just middle school and high school so that high school you know goes a little bit you know gets a little bit more sleep gets home a little bit um you get

119gets home a little bit later um so yeah and then again you don't mess with elementary school well in no case do i want anybody getting on a bus at 10. yeah do you have the the schedules there yeah because i mean nobody needs to be starting school at 10 a.m you know it's hard enough for parents that have to get parents at nine see i like that one i like that one a lot see 30 versus something like this because like 10 15 i don't think you can ask that anybody but you know 30 minutes you might be able to but still this gets you awful close to 10 which makes it really hard like lindsay's point which was you know i might not have to be at work at eight but i have

120to be at work by nine and now if i can't get in here that does make that pretty hard but and so then here's this one here's the so so like i could live with this i wouldn't want to do this and so so on this question as far as middle school yeah so whether middle school should go back up to the three options so then this is swapping high school middle school so yeah this one keeps middle school where it is and it's asking if you would change this one would you also change well like leesville you got all three right there i want to ask a question we'll look at the man here yeah all right do you know do we know what the is there like an average bus ride duration or

121is there a target like we say we don't want kids on the bus longer than this okay and do we know do we know has anyone figured like an average ride because i know whoever's getting on first whoever's getting on last would be very different but just kind of like a district number is yeah so on option two where was kind of flipping middle school in high school i'm sorry elementary high school it looks like middle school is sliding slightly earlier though from 8 30 to 8 15. the state has been but the question being around really want middle schools to start later in option two which is what i like we're pushing them up just a little bit a little less one kid's up you know 5 30 6 a.m the other kid's up

122at like 7 shaking to get onto the google meet before it starts um yeah so because that's a question i want to come back to too but for this because we've run out of time what do you think so there's option one so we're going to move on to our second question we're 30 minutes only but where are you and where are you from lindsay which is so wait what is that i think that's the first question what's the next slide so on that option one then is that i don't understand is that a no uh the second question is some studies have wrecked i'm sorry next slide please and she okay um we'd like you now to discuss the pros and cons of options one two and three please [Music] so just on the

123middle school the slides are wrong he told me so keith was no you were no but it didn't you know in some cases like again i was looking to swap them with high school having to go earlier just for me now that we're on question two and evaluating three options the reason you know i can't go with option two is i can't put the elementary kit school kids home first you know that's just that's just putting more child care requirements on too many people in my opinion yeah and it's fine you know just different things okay i thought the second question was yes that's the middle school yeah we did that one right that's the second that's the second question doesn't recommend the start times of north early other 8 can improve the outcomes of

124the little student that later starts but it's upon the boards of humanity will consider the shift of 30 to mitigate the communication implications okay so and keeping a perfect record i'm gonna again disagree with lindsay and for me i think 30 minutes is better than nothing i think even if it's 30 minutes for those high school kids i think it makes a difference i don't think it has to be a whole hour [Music] like option three shift and put it i read the question to just mean if you're looking at any of the options option one or option three is 30 minutes sufficient versus 60 minutes yeah i would rather be 30s okay so then that then that's a yes what yeah what do you think all right so then that one's and we're all

125in agreement on there that even 30 minutes we can consider it doesn't have to be 16 months [Music] so then on that question three comparing options one two and three did you have an opinion on option three yeah and you get more into the traffic and everything else but is that anything we could afford or not and i'm learning from sharing and granted 200 kids in my middle school kids and then they go to the high school so our start times but it's a question lindsay had for bob and it was one i was thinking of too you know it's not so much the start time as it is the wake up time and so where you have magnet schools or kids that have like a non-proximate bus ride you know say you're going from

126boston ridge down to southeast raleigh like what time do you have to get up to get on the bus to get there in time so all these complexities do you need okay again please thank you and now we skip the question we're going to do a model order but that's not really that important the final question some studies have recommended start times of no earlier than 8 30 a.m for adolescents other studies indicate improved outcomes with as little as a 30 minute later start time based upon the board's review of studies will the board consider a shift of 30 minutes to mitigate implications of changes for all stakeholders mitigate the other changes in the other options again if we could take about five six seven minutes and then we will report out all right so

127we can come back together so david can wrap up folks that we can come back together so david can wrap up okay thank you um everyone for breaking out into small groups what we'd like to do now is have each group report out one at a time and report out on all three of the questions and and we're not asking to go into a phenomenal amount of detail we would like to collect your respective notes but if i could ask mr sutton the group sitting at the board table to report out to begin with i think mr hegarty has those notes thank you so uh mr neither we had we went through the three questions with the first question how important is it that middle school and high school both have a later start time

128this was an area where we had agreement in the group all of us said that really we did not think that it was it was a requirement that middle and high school both moved back i had chairman sutton say no vice chair mahaffey say no i leaned no would consider it if we could do it but there were a lot of cons and complications that were discussed with question two is a 30 minute change of start time acceptable if rather than a full 60 minute here everyone did agree that yes 30 minutes you know if if 30 minutes 30 minute later start time was possible we would all consider that it did not have to be a full 60 minutes then for the different options that were presented i think we had uh no consensus

129on any of them everyone had a different perspective in terms of option one uh mr sutton and ms mahaffey both did not prefer that option that was the option that i did prefer ms mahaffey had commented that that was one that she thought might make the school day too long for elementary school children not the school day but just their whole day from when they would wake up to when they ultimately got home for option two mr sutton and ms mahaffey both liked that one i did not like that one for me i felt strongly that having the elementary school children arrive home first before either middle school or high school was a big problem i thought it would put a big burden on the parents for child care or similar situations and then for

130option three mr sutton had said no ms mahaffey had said yes and i was leaning no sort of like for some of the same reasons that we discussed earlier is there anything else anyone would like to add yeah i think for option one it sounds great my my biggest concern was having elementary students if you do that shift that most of them what i hear from parents is they get up early and then they go to school later and so to push that back i i thought would not be helpful for our elementary families although it would benefit our our high school students definitely okay thank you and i guess going to the back now if i could ask ms scott miss cash and miss johnson hostler i'm not sure who's going to report out

131but one of you we had a we had a very robust conversation uh about this but um i appreciate all the work we appreciate all the work going into this we certainly appreciate the complexities mr seidmiller's department tackles regularly um so our discussion kind of regarding the three questions kind of came back to to some general concerns the middle school switching the middle school we pretty much all agreed that that was not uh let me get to the question here i'm so sorry we we did not think that the middle schools needed to be included when separated like that we also the the concern we had with just moving all of the tears up would be the before school care for elementary students um i think a lot of folks who do take their their

132children via carpool to school would probably not be interested in utilizing a before scare a before school program they take their kids straight to school probably for for a reason that works works best for their families and then of course the financial impact that could have on on many families um the we had asked the question we had the luxury of asking mr steinmiller if we were just to move the heist which wasn't one of your questions but if we just moved to the high schools like let's just move them to start later um he just off the top his head doesn't you know not just off the top of his headset that would require hiring several hundred additional drivers and we always are a little short each year as it is so that was

133that was our concern um but i think we really sort of appreciated the winston-salem uh swapping those uh swapping the tier assignments that's the that was the model that we kept coming back to as a group uh and and thought that especially having the three tiers which unfortunately just seems to be what what we have to work with right now without being able to hire several hundred drivers right now so that was the the model that we came back to some of the discussion is looking at middle school as having them start earlier it's only three years so so i think that's it and i'll let ms cash or mr johnson hustler add anything if they'd like to all right can we move on to the next group okay yes and the last group uh

134dr martin miss kushner and miss carter so we had likewise a robust conversation uh and i think where we landed number one is the board cannot make the decision independent of very strong community feedback i mean we have heard a lot of community feedback that says start late we all know that an 8 30 start time would be ideal but there's also a lot of community feedback that says school also can't go too late in the evening and so i think we really need to find a mechanism to say you know here are the options you know what's the latest we should start what's the latest we should get out and we've got to have community input this really cannot be a board makes a decision and declares it for everybody else so that just

135goes uh over over everything in terms of switching the middle schools the middle schools really are the sweet spot of the calendar of the bell schedule right now the 8 30 to 3 is the sweet spot and so to move anybody out of that sweet spot does not make sense and really middle schoolers and high schools aren't that different so i you know i think christine had a little bit more support to move the middle schoolers early but overall we recognize the middle school calendar is the sweet spot it's important for everybody um in terms of the three options uh i think we've had unanimous agreement that option three is kind of a non-starter um it it just it seems to combine the challenges of everything to option one um the the thirty minute shift

136seems to be the most doable option i'm not gonna say necessarily the best option but the most doable option because um you know particularly with after school activities or before school activities that seems doable without um you know creating too much disruption again community input is needed you know the difficulty with the the shifting everything back 30 minutes is with the elementary schools we already know that the 9 15 start time is very difficult for many families particularly if they have jobs if it's at all a dual career so if you move the elementary school back you almost require there to be a good structure of uh before school care and and that has cost implications uh you know do we provide it or do families have to pay for it there's all kinds of

137issues related to that um so that's issue with number one issue with number two on a 415 um end time for high schools seems pushing the acceptable timeline as superintendent moore noted that particularly like athletic teams that have to play when there is light on the field means that you know they're going to dismiss at 130 anyway because that's when the games can be played because of when the sun is up and so then people are going to be missing class time there's also job applications at implications and whatnot so the 415 is really late for high schoolers alternate but the but the positive thing out of option two is that if the elementary schools start early then we've talked about the need for perform providing quality after school care uh you know that would

138create a structure that again we could create a strong program of after-school care it would have to be universally accessible across the county but that option would become more viable if the elementary schools started uh earlier you know i think um i think the one question that we sort of all well to your question 30 minutes versus the 60 minutes yes 30 minutes is good in fact probably the most doable but we keep asking are those the only options um and and one thing that we would like to see considered is can we collapse to a two-tier we already know that middle school and high school buses tend to run about half capacity so would there be a wave talked about just a little bit and you know can we collapse middle school and high

139school runs if we can collapse down to a two-tier system then uh or closer to a two-tier system then we might be able to [Music] find a better compromise so complex discussion did i summarize it yeah i think it was fair that if i was more supportive of option two particularly with emphasis on having more robust and uniform after school care for elementary school students if they started if elementary school started earlier we could be more uniform in how we do child care and i think covid the pandemic showed us that child care is a great need that is not being robustly met in our community and and i echoed that i think our group was concerned about the late end time for high school but i put a higher priority on getting a later

140start to high school i think that than my other two colleagues if i'm being fair no that was it and just really i feel like for us the importance of getting community buy-in which has been set but i i think it's extremely important all of our community partners and any ways that we can work with them the better because bell schedules is absolutely how we we affect the daily lives of our families um pretty precise pretty intimately and and i know that that was a high and i think one of the options we need to ask the community is if they want to just keep everything the same that needs to be one of the options we ask them about so that's a good transition to the last slide can we put the slide deck

141back up please and next slide and next slide okay to finish it up i want to talk about next steps we're going to begin developing a comprehensive list of implications for school-based activities and associated implications for participation across lea activities based upon the options obviously we wrote these next steps up without hearing your feedback so we may modify these slightly we're going to begin developing a process and a structure around gaining stakeholder input which you've just been speaking to and the stakeholder input the list up there is not meant to be inclusive but it demonstrates how widespread the stakeholder group is it's all aspects of our community and we want to begin looking at what data may be available in other districts that have already gone through a shift like this to see what their

142what improvements and student outcomes have been so again i'll leave you with that we've got a lot more work to do this is a very complex process as i shared with you on the 16th of march most but not all districts took this as a multi-year approach i laid out a very aggressive schedule as an example on the 16th and we will keep our foot on the gas but again the importance of doing this thoughtfully and with input we think is is very important can i ask a final question share something sorry um mr needer can we also look at i know the county is being so thoughtful and and trying to expand bus service their own public transportation service and is there any way we can um work with them to expand our own

143capacity for transportation and what that i know that that might be just for older students or high school students but that can be also an option thank you certainly it's my happy thank you chair sutton uh mr nader i also was wondering you know i know we have the feedback from the american association of pediatrics but if there were local pediatricians that could speak to this um i think that may also be helpful as we're seeking that community feedback which is you know dr martin highlighted that the importance of that as well and i also know we had a drive-through job fair on the 15th and we have another one coming up on the 22nd what are things looking good mr snide miller did we get some interest while he's coming up let me let

144me just speak to the the local pediatrician piece we can certainly look at that i do want to let you know let one of the small groups know that dr mcmillan and data and accountability he and his staff did a review of what research is out there and pulled it together we chose not to share that with you today we wanted to sort of keep today what you'd already seen and then begin asking some questions to get your thoughts but we will be bringing that to you as well thank you for the question ms mahappy so we did have our first drive-through bus driver recruitment campaign this last saturday on the 15th and we will have another one on the 22nd we picked four areas across the county where we manned the staff to just

145have anybody come in you know see if there's some interest collect some information and see if we can't just begin to make those contacts we had some turnout not what we wanted but we were dealing with the fuel shortage and we think that that may have contributed as well as we're really just starting into a massive campaign to recruit so we're going to continue to have those types of events and reach out and see what we can do so thank you all right thank you for this update and we will continue to discuss this further and look for ways that we can also involve the community and stakeholders through some input sessions or what have you as well so i'm going to be looking for that thank you thank you staff um so that sort

146of pretty much brings our work session to a close out hope to have some time to have a brief discussion and get some board member input around the new updates or the the opening of restrictions with mask wearing and the restrictions um both indoors and outdoors were sort of out of time uh at this point but i i just will say in in the past we have uh generally made some uh incremental approaches as the restrictions uh have eased in an incremental fashion uh now that all restrictions have been uh relaxed um that puts us in an interesting position and one that i'm that i'm not sure was hoping to get some feedback uh but i'm i'm not sure if if anybody's ready for us to go from zero to sixty uh at this point

147but how we uh think strategically about uh sort of a phase and a thoughtful approach as to as to how we reopen particularly with our board meetings here and at central office obviously some of the guidance has been provided with regard to not wearing masks but that being not being the case in our schools a little bit different thinking uh here and so we want to just be thoughtful about again how as we begin to to open up one one thought or approach is uh maybe offering an option to those that wish to participate uh here in in this room as we go to board meetings with an option of either producing proof of vaccine or wearing the mask could be one option but again something that we're thinking about seeking some guidance on and

148so jonathan you want to add anything about where we are but i can say that we are looking at all of our options from a legal standpoint and just seeing where we are as we move to lesser restrictions as well mr bloomberg anything you want to add i know time is really short i would say at this point when it comes to board meetings that the two sort of levers around masking and social distancing at this point are really a board decision that you know how the board will make those determinations that essentially between the governor's order and the guidance from dhhs has basically said that that's now a scenario that's sort of a local a local decision on it so you know primarily dhhs is saying that that the continued requirement on masking indoors

149is is for situations where there's the expectations that students would be present um and in a in a previous an environment like a board meeting which is the prevalence as adults attending that in in general there would not be the masking requirement but that there is still a recommendation from dhhs on masking but the primary point is is that that's then up to the board on how to proceed uh with social distancing uh yes no with masking yes no what types of of conditions circumstances would the board like to put in place on any of that if any is a board call so i think i just want to frame it in that way and i'm happy to delve into it further than any other opportunity but i realize that time short thank you and

150i will say what we have done in the past is we have tried to be as responsive as we could when we've heard any changes in those restrictions what has been our guiding practice as of course the board knows we have our executive committee meetings uh on the wednesdays in between our board meetings when we plan for those meetings whatever guidance was in place at the time that we planned that was the guidance that we followed in the meeting oftentimes as this past week happened you had the cdc guidance come out thursday the governor's lifting of restrictions happened on friday because our meeting took place on wednesday and that was the guidance we were under when we planned for this meeting today it's difficult to sort of change as you all will know on a

151dime and move things that quickly uh when it comes to bringing in the media public that torch so we generally have stayed under whatever guidance we were under when we plan for these meetings so so today of course we are we're sticking with what is the previous guidance not the guidance that that came out on friday that will also be the guys who will operate under tomorrow for policy committee meeting beyond that we will again make some decisions around now the new guidance and operate on that under that guidance going forward but for today and and tomorrow's policy committee meeting we're still following the guidance that was uh the previous guidance prior to to friday so i would ask board members if you have any thoughts um any opinions recommendations um please share that with

152me or send me an email mr bloomberg includes superintendent moore uh and and uh you know we'll take that under advisement uh as we move towards making any sort of shift uh at this time really quickly really i just want to be clear you're only talking about a change in our business operations because our school operations are still covered by the toolkit that is that is correct okay thank you i just wanted to be talking about board meetings and how we operate as a board here in this in in this setting uh and some of that may or may not be used by superintendent moore as she go on staff within the building and central office but we're talking about our business operations here as a board and our committees and that and that sort

153of thing so that's what that covers and that's just 100 clear and you said it perfectly but since i was asked i do want to stress the point that that the toolkit was specifically referenced in the governor's order and it is and it's also from senate bill 220 that this still the guiding primary document that dictates what schools do and how they do it and it and it is absolutely still clear that the you know face coverings are required you know at schools and the the interpretive question is just the interpretation question is as you start to depart from a school then does the requirements still apply or does it not and the guiding principle is are students going to be there i mean if students are going to be there then the toolkit still

154applies and the face covering requirements is still in place if they're not expected essentially to be there and again we're talking about indoors then it becomes now a local discretion whether it's central office whether it's school board meetings so i i appreciate the question i just you said it absolutely mr chairman but i wanted to stress it as well and so again you know we have tried to align with what is happening in our schools and and school buildings uh this is now probably the first time where there might be a bit of a departure uh if you will so it's important for for me and for us to know the leadership of the board's comfort level uh as we you know move in a direction as again as restrictions have been lifted so please

155get those to me share any thoughts um except by email or grab me pull my arm or whatever and let's talk about it again i hope that we might have some discussion here but we've run out of time so with that our work session today is adjourned and we'll get ready to start our board meeting momentarily thank you very much for joining us this afternoon you