001your holy name. Amen. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Good evening and welcome to the August 25th Dorchester District 2 school board meeting. Um at this time I would ask for a motion to approve our consent agenda and meeting minutes. >> So moved. >> Motion made by Mr. Guthrie. Second. Seconded by Miss Bates. Any questions or discussion? All right. Hearing none, we will call for the vote. motion carries. Seven in favor. All right. The next item on our agenda are district highlights. I'll hand it over to Mr. Bohan to get us started on that. >> Thank you, Dr. Wimbley, Mr. Dohy. Uh board members, I'd like to begin this
002evening's district highlights by inviting to the podium Mr. Ralph Hayes, executive director of the DD2 Educational Foundation. >> Good evening, Board Chair Wimberly, Superintendent Dy, and members of the board. I am excited to be here tonight to present our annual report, which typically wraps up with our fiscal year. So, this would have ended this past summer, but we're really excited to share some of the things that have been going on with the foundation due to the support of leadership in the district and honestly due to the support of so many of our amazing community leaders. So, um just kind of flipping through our annual report there and I think you have a copy in your packet there. The first thing that we wanted to put there was a plug for our two for two campaign.
003We often get asked when Kim and I are out in the community, hey, what can we do to help? The best way any individual can help the education foundation is by signing up for our two for two campaign. So, a lot of nonprofits when they're dealing with constituents, they're dealing with people who are writing them thousand checks or $5,000 checks. And we'll take those. That's great. We we love our partners that have the ability to do that. But we understand that many of our constituents who care about what we're doing and give to us are parents of children who are currently in our schools. So, we've really tried to break down that philanthropic barrier of people feeling like they have to write a check with a lot of zeros on the end. And we're saying,
004"Hey, give us $2 a month. Give us $2 a week. Buy a cup of coffee for a teacher." So, I really challenge everyone in this room and everyone who's listening, can you give $2 a week to support our amazing educators in DD2? And so, we really wanted to start with that and just put that there. And really for all of us understanding one of the most important things is advocacy, making sure that people know the district has a nonprofit just like many other nonprofits in the community and they can give to us in a taxdeductible way the same as they could to some of our amazing other nonprofits. And then jumping to the next page, just kind of highlighting some of the things that really jump out there. We're really proud of uh each year
005over the past five years growing the number of individual donation transactions. So that's the number of times we have either processed a payment either in person or someone has made a payment online. So 2,000 transactions for the year, that's more than 38 transactions each week or five and a half transactions every day, every Sunday, every holiday for the entire year. And so we're really proud of that to understand that people are continuing to support us throughout the year. Um, another thing that we really made a goal of ours a few years ago that we're thankful that we've been able to achieve is making sure that we make an impact on every campus in DD2. This includes our amazing friends at RISE. This includes our amazing friends at adult ed u because we see them as
006a part of our DD2 family and want to make sure that educators on every campus in the district have the opportunity to benefit from the Ed Foundation. So, we're really thankful for that. Um, flipping forward, we kind of break it down into a few categories here. That first one, in the community, is important for us. I think, uh, someone saw Kim the other day and they said, "Man, you're everywhere." And, um, that's really what we want to be for the district. We want to be a voice and a representation so people in the community see us. It brings a humanization to the school district. It connects our educators directly to those in our community. So whether that's at the Christmas parade or scarecrows on the square or uh you know working with partners at their
007events when they're doing something, we really like to be in the community and a representation of what amazing things are happening in our buildings each day. Um there at the bottom, we did want to take a second to shout out Miss Dorothy Cronamer, uh a friend of ours who has been a big supporter of the big event for the past four years. She lost her battle with cancer this summer, but we were just so thankful for what she's helped us do to grow that event. Anybody who's been understands that we try to elevate that every year, and she's been a part of that, but we were thankful to to honor her in our report right there. um transitioning to our teachers, which really is, you know, what we do. We want to make sure that
008our teachers have resources that otherwise would not be available. So, when you go through there, you look at some of the big things that jump out that we do uh classroom grants. We awarded uh right under $100,000 in classroom grants that are going right to something that a teacher said, "Hey, this is something that I need for my kids that's going to make an impact." uh first year teacher giving and teacher appreciation week. We gave away about $30,000 in those two initiatives to where every firstear teachers getting a bonus from the foundation to say, "Hey, welcome to the district. Welcome to the DD2 family. We want you to be here." Um, and then our foundation, $500 on the fifth is a big initiative that we do where we have a business partner each month who
009supports that and we select an educator who gets $500 from the foundation and it's really been something that has kind of caught on. We've had winners at campuses all over the the district. It's been great. But a couple other things to highlight. We're really proud to send educators to professional development opportunities when we have that. That's been something that in us working with teacher forum, they've asked for more highle PD. So, we're working with Mr. Doy and district leadership to make sure we're helping to provide those supports. Um, and then, uh, at the bottom there, you'll see that's actually a graduating senior. We partnered with teacher forum to have a high school graduating seniors teacher signing day. So those are people who plan to be educators in the future and we were able to help
010promote a ceremony here for them to feel special about the industry that they're going into which hopefully will in turn long term come back to support us. And then transitioning through to our students and some of this is really the fun stuff that the kids really get to touch, feel, and see. We're really thankful for the uh support we have with Miss Emily Delantis. We have an amazing CTE uh program in most of our schools in the district. And working with her, we've been able to support robotics at all levels, elementary, middle, and high. We've been able to send students to HOSA competitions and other uh events that are specifically STEM related. We've helped our a program at Ashley Ridge by providing them some of the hydroponic gardens so they can work with their outside
011growing and kind of see new age things. We also love working with our special needs friends and we had a great program this year that was actually initiated by students at Fort Doorchester High School to where they are making a curriculum to give uh special needs students in elementary schools exposure to STEM activities and projects. So you see our friend right there, he's got his hands up. That was a day when they were over at Windsor Hill and that was a great activity that they did and really uh just really humbling to see our students in our high school searching and finding ways of how they can serve our other students in the district. We also love uh serving our fine arts. you know, Jason Walsh and the fine arts program, we have are really
012second to none in the state. But being able to have somebody come in like our steel drums artist and residents who came here from Trinidad, stayed, went to programs all throughout the district, and then had concerts at our beautiful performing arts center really creates an environment and an opportunity for those kids that we can't necessarily provide here otherwise. And then uh with athletics, you know, making sure we're we're giving them some love, too. The uh the middle school all-star basketball game was really a great representation of that because it had students from all the middle schools in the district, uh males and females, and was really kind of a celebration of what they did. So, we're really thankful for the ways that we're providing some opportunities and some resources for our students that they touch.
013And then jumping through to the next page, we really wanted to highlight this and it's a good plug for us because the Somerville uh meatball run and Italian feast is coming up in October, but uh our friends Jay Lombardo and the team there have really taken this event to a huge level. And I don't know that we always step back and understand how beneficial we are to be partnered with this group. We are the sole beneficiary of those events. They give 100% of the proceeds back to us. Because of that, their lifetime support from hosting those events has now eclipsed uh $130,000 that they've been able to infuse back into the district. And if you've been to those events, you understand the magnitude of it. Uh the Italian Feast has grown to be the second
014largest event in Somerville each year, only behind the Flowertown Festival. And one of the great things is it's really a showcase of DD2. We have student talent from elementary to high school all throughout the day who get up on the stage, they perform in front of the community and have an opportunity to showcase what they're learning for us. But it's also connecting the community to them so that they're seeing what is happening within our buildings each day. So, we're really proud of how that event has grown and um you know, talking with them, that and many of the other events we talked about wouldn't be possible if it weren't for the many people who work for the school district who stand with the foundation. When we have an event like this, we we're to the
015point to where we're trying to slow down the volunteers now because we have so many amazing people in our schools that want to be a part of what the foundation is doing in the community that it really uh it really is something that is a great way for us to understand that we are uh building internal support as far as that external support. Um, so we're we're thankful for that accomplishment. And then the last page there, just kind of shouting out uh some of our larger sponsors. People who are showcased here on the back cover um are uh sponsors who have invested more than $5,000 over the past year. Um but as I stated, we don't need a $5,000 check from you. We need a $2 check from you every week or every month. So,
016we really hope that as you guys are talking to people in the community, you can encourage them to learn about the education foundation, to reach out to the education foundation and find out how they can be a part of all of the things that are happening in our buildings. And I do uh want to say it's not showcased in our annual report there, but honestly, the largest accomplishment of the education foundation this past year was the addition of the amazing Miss Kim Cahill. Uh Kim helps with the community relations department that we have here, but it really has made a big difference as far as our ability to stretch our connections for me to be able to be one place and her to be able to be somewhere else and has provided us a resource
017that hopefully allows us to continue to uh to grow as we move forward. But um yeah, thank you so much for everything this group does and I'd love to if anybody has any questions, thoughts, concerns, I'd love to entertain anything. >> I only wish the video tonight would have captured the look on Kim's face as you were talking about her. >> It was priceless. >> Thank you for all you guys do. It's great report. >> Thank you. >> So I and if you don't mind and and I'll rewind a little bit. Um, so it's it's interesting to think about the timeline of the foundation. Um, I remember the the very first conversation uh was with Bosch over 10 years ago and and Bosch basically came to the table and they said, "Hey, we have I
018I don't remember. I think it was $25,000. We we would love to provide that money to the district. Um, but you don't have a nonprofit. We would love to give that to the district, but we need a nonprofit." Um and so we started thinking and and of course came together with the foundation. And so then I think about going into that starting the foundation. Um the the initial leadership we had there the board fantastic get off the ground. The question was were we going to be able to sustain this? Were we just going to be able to pay our expenses uh from the foundation? So, we kind of went through that timeline. Um, and now we fast forward to where the the impact you guys have. And so Ralph, you and your board, um, hundreds
019of thousands of dollars, literally, if you add that up over years, millions of dollars that the foundation is is able to provide in directly into our school district because there's there's really not a whole lot of things where you can provide money having we a lot of us have been on the finance committee and and no offense, Tina, but but there's a lot of strings attached. There's there's different things when it comes to financial obligations for a school district and the way that you were able to uh provide those funds directly into our classrooms for our teachers um is probably one of the most impact impactful things that we can do as a district. So fantastic uh stuff. Just want to say thank you. Thank you for every single thing you do. I know our
020students appreciate it. Um and please please please know we appreciate you. We appreciate your leadership, your board, and and what you do for DD2. Thank you. >> I I do want to chime in and say one time, too, that um people are taking note of what we're doing. Not not to be hubris or anything, but Charleston County is starting an ed foundation right now. They're going through the process and have hired an executive director. Um we have friends in Colatin County who are frameworking out some things. Um, I just I want to say one of the things that makes us successful is the unique collaboration between our amazing board of community leaders, the school board here, and the district leadership. Um, serving on the national board for ed foundations. I hear horror stories all the
021time about power struggles and this person and that person. Um, everybody here just wants to make sure we're providing the best for our educators and our students. And um, it's just it's really motivating to know when we're advocating for these things that I have the support of the school board or district leadership or people in our corner. And uh and like I said, now trickling down to the school buildings. Um it it's almost overwhelming sometimes because I really feel like we have built a presence in each school to where people know who the Ed Foundation is. They know what we do. They see the things that are going on. And um I just I'm excited for us to continue to hopefully ride that wave and keep making more impacts. But thank you. Thank you, Ralph.
022>> Thank you, Mr. Hayes. Our next highlight covers some outstanding student achievement from Ashley Ridge High School, celebrating an impressive merit-based scholarship awarded through the Engineers Alliance for the Arts. Each year, this national organization awards five Chen family scholarship grants to students across the country. To be eligible, students must have participated in the student impact project and be pursuing studies in engineering, architecture, or construction. The program is designed to support students from underrepresented populations, helping them to continue their education at a college, university, or accredited trade school. This year, we're proud to announce that one of those five scholarships has been awarded to a student right here in DD2. Please join me in congratulating from Ashley Ridge High School, Hope Thornon. [Applause] Got it. All right. [Applause] Each year, the Palmetto State Teachers Association awards
023classroom grants as part of their reinvesting in our members program. We're very excited to have a visit from Mr. Craig King, PSTA director of teacher leadership to surprise William Reeves Elementary Media Specialist Melinda Sher Knight as a 2025 recipient. Miss Cheryl Knight's grant is going to support two sets of novels for her book club featuring genres ranging from mystery, adventure, humor, and science fiction. Students will receive their own copies of the books to read and will participate in discussions and extension stations to further enhance the plot, settings, and characters. Congratulations, Miss Cheryl Knight. [Applause] You say you got it. Perfect. Congratulations, Melinda. There's a really cute video of her getting surprised on Facebook. If you haven't seen it, it's a treat. Uh, thank you very much. This concludes tonight's board highlights. All right. The next
024item on our agenda this evening are board committee reports. We will begin with policy. Spates. >> Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh the policy committee met previous to this meeting today at 5. So we will have some policies next meeting um for first reading. Other than that, I don't have anything today. Uh you can take note of our upcoming schedule for policy committee meetings. And that will be all. >> Thank you. Next, we have our finance committee, Mr. Guthrie. >> Uh yeah, nothing to report tonight, but yeah, we have a September 8th, 4M policy or finance committee that that day. And then I think Mr. Lee had a couple things he wanted to to share. >> Absolutely. >> Yeah. Just some of the uh thoughts on our mind here from the finance committee going forward
025is try and find better ways to share information about what's happening with our district financing in ways that are consumable for the public. And so we're going to be working on that throughout the year and kicking around some ideas and whatnot, working with the the staff here in in the district to to help us do that. So we'll start that uh that effort to have our first meeting coming up. All right. Thank you very much. Next, we have our facilities committee, Mr. Farnsworth. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Nothing to report tonight. Uh upcoming meeting September 8th as well. Ours will be after finance at 5:00 pm. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> All right. Great. Thank you all. All right. Next on our agenda this evening, we have our public comments on agenda items, and
026we do not have any. So, we will go straight into our board chairs report. And again, I have some upcoming um some dates of upcoming events. I think you all are aware of these um and our upcoming conferences and just keep those in mind. Um we'll allow you to kind of plan into next year and I know some of the registrations for those are already open. So if you're interested in attending um just let Wanda know. Does anyone have questions about that or those? No, Madam Chair, but I did want to just um also if we could add on September 9th since we were talking about the DD2 Education Foundation, we do have the VIP reception at 5:30 and so just for board members to be aware. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you very much. I do
027believe we have a calendar invite for that as well. So, if you have not received that, just let me know or um we can speak to Wanda about it as well. So, thank you, Miss Bates. >> Any other questions, comments? All right, great. Next item on our agenda is our superintendence report. So, I will turn it over to Mr. Dohy. >> Thank you, Madam Chair, and the rest of the board. Uh, this evening, we have several items on the superintendent report, but the first is a uh survey that we did to start the school year, and Mr. Bohan was able to send out our thought exchange out to all of our staff uh regarding uh staff professional development, district professional development, how those first few days of school went, and also kind of the convocation.
028And so, uh, Mr. Bohan's going to share that, uh, data and so he can share with you. There was, I believe, over a little over just over 500 participants, uh, for a couple weeks that this was open. So, I'll turn it over to Mr. Bohannan. >> Fantastic. Thank you, Mr. Dhy. Uh, Dr. Wimbley, board members, happy to be back. Um, so yeah, a real quick overview of what the thought exchange is. This is a name branded product, Thought Exchange, and what it can does is it will get information in a couple of different ways. It can do that through survey questions. So we can ask it a direct question, not unlike a Microsoft form. We can give you choices, multiple choices. We can give you little scales out of five or out of 10 to
029choose from or we can provide comment boxes for you to fill in. The second portion of the thought exchange is a larger broader question and then you can type in whatever you want that satisfies that broad question. When other people visit the thought exchange, they're able to see your comments and rate them. So, it's able to give a thumbs up, a thumbs down on a scale of five uh to see a group um if we all agree or not. So, as I said, this uh this survey ended on Saturday. It was open for just over two weeks and we had just over 500 participants representing roughly 12% of our staff. This went out to all staff in the district and those staff provided 324 thoughts and nearly 7,000 ratings of those thoughts. So, first we'll
030hit some survey information just to give you an overview of who filled this thing out. Mostly elementary schools at 52% of our elementary schools uh filled it out and you can see the breakdown from there. Moving beyond that. So, how did you like convocation this year? And we were very happy to see that most everybody liked convocation this year. We had a different format. we mixed it up a little bit and so we got generally very positive feedback on that. Um aligned with that most people don't know that they want convocation to continue and so this is something that we're just that's why we do these things. We're going to take everything under advisement. And as you go down into the comments specifically, we can see that convocation represents an aotment of time to most
031of our teachers and whether or not that time would be onetoone back in their classroom seems irrelevant. It's how they feel about the time they're spending in convocation. So certainly something we can look at moving forward. Did they feel supported and prepared for their meet to teacher and orientation events? Again, most everyone said yes because we do have that not applicable down at the bottom. So, we're very pleased to see that. This is very interesting. Did you have adequate time to prepare your classroom or workspace? And the same percentage that strongly agreed strongly disagreed and disagree to agree. And so, we don't know if that expands out to experience or time or your personal journey of getting your classroom together. But very interesting for new employees. We had we had some that were just optional.
032So if you were a new employee, you could answer this question. How helpful was the onboarding and induction process? Very happy to see high marks for the induction and onboarding. And so this was the large question. So reflecting on the start of the school year and we looped in convocation, professional development, onboarding, orientation, and the five staff days before students returned, what worked well and what could be improved on. So our top ratings, this is an example of how the information comes back out. These thoughts were submitted and then other people got to vote on them. So you'll see the top three out of 324 thoughts there and they're all time related whether that's time in your classroom. We we got great feedback on the Wednesday start. A lot of people mentioned that in their
033comments and so you can go through all 300 of these and then we word clouded out. And what's that big thing in the middle? It's time. It's all about time. And so in summary of the exchange itself, mixed sentiments about the start of the year, about what they liked and what they didn't like, but the quest for time and that balance between their professional development and their personal preparation emerged as a significant theme for the thought exchange. And I'm happy to entertain any questions. It might be I'll get back to you because I have to dig deeper perhaps, but if you got something, I'll take it. >> Um, I have a question. Do can you break down in you guys looking at this and see if it was like elementary really loved convocation or maybe
034it was high school really love >> you can you can do a lot of those theoretical things if maybe elementary wanted to be in their room or maybe the older >> so you there are hypotheticals the the system of thought exchange is very robust and so you can go in using those survey questions and apply filters so that you're seeing answers as you said from only elementary or from only high school and see how those individual groups rated. We could break that sort of thing out very easily. >> Is that something y'all will do when you're of course taking it into consideration? Okay. >> Anybody else? >> Yeah. Yeah. The one thing that we'll do, we just kind of talked a little bit briefly about this today is again when you're looking at continuous improvement,
035looking how we can improve the first five days for our teachers. You know, what's beneficial as Brian said was time. Um you know the state gives us 10 days throughout the year. Um we have two staff days that our staff uses for their classroom. The other three are for either district or for school uh professional development. And so we go through that and so the one thing can we tweak that and give them some more time in their classroom because as Brian said the big thing came out of this was time. We don't do the convocation is that time then get back to the teachers so they can work in their classrooms. And so those are some things some of those big thoughts that we saw and were underlining things that we could improve upon.
036So um we'll definitely take this data back. We'll look at it. We'll share it with our admin team and then we'll actually share it with our teachers as well and then make some some uh database decisions on this information. So it's been very good. It was very helpful for us. And so I appreciate Brian disseminating all this information and putting in a u in a PowerPoint. >> I did very little. The computer did >> Thank you. >> Can I uh ask one follow-up question? So, you know, roughly 12% participation. Any sentiment as to why only 12%. >> Yeah, that's a great question. I wish I knew the answer to that. So, we we attacked everybody through Parent Square as we do, right? So, you're getting those uh direct messaging through email. You're getting the text
037messages. You're getting uh from every angle that I can hit you with. And so, they got an initial message and then two follow-up messages that led uh into it each time with an update about, hey, here's how many thoughts we've had. Here's the participation we've had. and it's a lot of fun and you should do it, but it's it's also the beginning of the year. And so the problem with rating the first five days leading up to school is you're doing it kind of in those first days of school. And so we are sensitive to that as well. But we wanted to strike while the iron was hot while those feelings were fresh. And so it's there's balance as to how we can do that. >> Could we potentially incentivize participating in service? >> Well,
038the problem it's not a problem. It's a bonus because Thought Exchange is properly anonymous. So even like if you were to go into a Microsoft form and make it anonymous, you'd still be able to see the individual answers from that anonymous person. Not possible in Thought Exchange. Each response is in a world of its own. And that's a bonus for us. We like that. I just want to say, you know, um, when I first heard about the thought exchange and we used it a little bit, I was excited because personally, in order for us to know how we can better serve those that work in our buildings, whether they're teachers, janitors, bus drivers, whomever, we need to know what they're thinking and what they're feeling. And so I'm a little disappointed that we didn't have
039more people to participate because once more I want to say it again. This is our way by of being able to get your thoughts and your feelings and how we can better serve you. It's good that we go into the buildings, but we can't see and talk to everybody when we go into the buildings. But this is your opportunity people to respond. And so if we have another survey, I would really love to see 98 being our level of participation. 98%. >> So thank you so much for all that work that you put into it as well. >> Thank you. >> Okay, if there not any further questions, we'll go to our piece is our safety and security update. Um Mr. Frell will be uh subbing in for Mr. Giant this evening. And so, Mr.
040Frell, >> good evening. Um, Mr. Giant is next door watching his son play football, so please for forgive me for stepping in. Um, we do have a safety update. It's about our open gates um as we continue to use those through the high school randomly times and locations. Uh, we've now taken it to the middle school and trained all our middle schools and happy to say that uh we have had open gate sessions and screenings the first 10 day of schools and all our secondary schools. So we are off and running with that and expectations are high. I was at Oakbrook on the first day that we trained Oak Brook staff and ran students through and Chester joined us. So as we were scanning students, Chester was scanning the classroom. So it was a great
041combo. So we really had a kids were great and uh the staffs did an outstanding job. So, as we move forward through our security, next week we start our school visits and we'll have security audits as we move through the schools in this fall and into uh the winter to make sure our campuses are as safe as they possibly can and identifying any issues for security and safety. Any questions? All right, I guess the next thing Yeah, the next uh one is our new bus driver incentive program that uh Mr. referral will kind of go over and uh it does replace our stipen to drivers making additional bus runs. That's what we've been doing in the past, but that does not affect every driver and so Mr. Frell and uh Mr. Schop has really they
042worked together to come up with a little bit better incentive that will affect all bus drivers and have an impact. So Mr. Frell, >> you know, as Mr. Dhy said, you know, the double runs main cause attendance. So, uh, you know, we were kind of kind of putting ourselves in a little bit of hole, but our number one is safety. So, we thought tying safety to make sure that our drivers are are, you know, dotting their eyes and crossing their tees when it comes to safety of our students as they're transporting to and from school. And like I said, attendance is the number one problems we have for double runs. So, by incentivizing making sure you come to work each and every day, we'll have less double runs. So, uh, we're we're excited and we're
043just asking you guys to approve, uh, the new incentive. Any questions? The one thing I can point out last year uh Mr. Schae was able to recognize six drivers last year um that had perfect attendance and right now when we started the the school year we had 160 drivers um since then we've had six that uh a few have quit few are on uh some leave and so that is has really hurt some of our bus times especially then doing double backs on that. So again, we felt like this would be something we could put together um hopefully that that would create, you know, our bus drivers being at work and it wouldn't create those double runs. And so um we appreciate you bringing you and Mr. Schop bringing this together. >> Is that I'm
044do we I'm assuming we want a motion, but quick question. Is that just is that from general fund? Do we know approximately how much we're looking at? Any idea? >> She does. >> She >> Well, she knows what we spent last year >> for the for the double run. 150,000 on the double run. >> Okay. >> Um yeah, I'll make a motion to accept the incentive program as presented in our packet. >> Okay. >> Second. >> Motion made by Mr. Farnsworth. Was there a second by Mr. Lee? Seconded by Mr. Lee. Any um questions or discussion? >> Okay. Hearing none, we will call for the vote. >> Motion carries. Seven in favor. One other thing to add about that, this will start in September um when we start this and we'll get this information out
045to our bus drivers. So, we're looking forward to to putting this in motion next month. So, next we have our finance report. Uh Miss Manet. >> Thank you, Mr. Dhy. Um good evening, Chairwoman Dr. Wimberly. Board members, um tonight we our finance team has prepared the first month of our new fiscal year. So, we have July of 2020 of the fiscal year 26 report. Um, so we've started over. I can't believe we're we're already at a new year. So, your first column um you see the actual numbers for the month of July. Then everything else in blue on the from August through June of next year um are those are the projected numbers with the timelines that we anticipate to receive those um funds and the timeline for spending those expenditures based on the budget
046that um the board passed in this in June. Um so for our first month of July um not a lot of activity because most everything that happened as far as revenues that were received were for the 13th month and they were recruited back to um June of 2025. So we don't have a lot there except for the state aided classrooms money which was the first payment for the new year. Um these numbers are based on our 135th day counts. So we're hoping that we get all of our students back in here from last year. So we can continue with those numbers from the state. Um same for our expenditures. Since our teachers run on contracts from August through the following July, anything that was paid in July was acred back. So that's why our expenditures
047look so low in July and then every other month after that you'll see high expenditure higher expenditures for the salaries and benefits mainly because of our instructional staff. And again, most of our budget um is for salaries and benefits and for operations. And as um Mr. Farnsworth was pointing out earlier, these numbers are look big and they look high. We have a $300 million budget this year, but a lot of it again is salaries and benefits for our staff. um we know where we landed for um our teacher salary scale which isn't which was lower than what we had wanted but we we y'all did such great work to get us where we were for this current year. Um so yeah, we don't have a lot of wiggle room in our budget but um we're
048doing the best we can with this little with this with this money. Um the next report um is our balance sheet for our general fund. And again, while the numbers look high, we have total assets of 83 million, total liabilities of 10 million, and our fund balance of 72 million. Um, those funds are keeping us through until we um receive our U property tax revenues in December. So, we're running off of balances for our fund balance that will get lower and lower and lower until we receive those funds in December because again, we don't receive our revenues evenly throughout the year. Um the next report is our schedule of revenues, expenditures, and changes in fund balance through the first month. You'll see our column there for um our ideal percentage is 92%. For our revenues,
049we were at 95. Um expenditures we were at 98. So we're doing well for the first month of July of our fiscal year 2026. And um as Mr. talked about for our first finance committee meeting with the board. It's going to be great. Talk about some new um reports. Y'all may see some changes and be like, "Wow, that's going to look so great and interesting." I love the finance reports that we do now. But I don't, but Mr. Lee wants us to make them more presentable for the public. And I agree. I I agree. We We can do some things differently. Really excited about that. So, um if you have any questions for me, I'd be glad to answer. Thank you, Miss Manet Manet. And the last two items we have our personnel report and
050our student enrollment recommendations. All right. So, board members, for our personnel report, um those were all included in our board doc. So, is everyone okay with proceeding in open session? All right. So, at this time, I would ask for a motion to approve the recommendations as presented in our packets. So moved. >> Motion made by Miss Bates. Do I have a second? >> Seconded by Mr. Lee. Any questions or discussion? >> All right. Hearing none, we will call for the vote. Motion carries. Seven in favor. All right. And then we have um student enrollment recommendations that were also included in our packet. Um and we will proceed with the ones under the superintendence report. Is everyone okay with that? And I would ask for a motion. Motion made by Miss King, seconded by Mr. Farnsworth.
051Um any questions or discussion? Okay. Hearing none, we will call for the vote. All right, motion carries. Seven in favor. >> Does that conclude? >> And that concludes our superintendent report. Thank you, Dr. Wimberly. >> Thank you very much. All right. The next item on our agenda this evening are public comments. And we do have some. So, all right. Our first one this evening is Mr. Jason Brockert. Good evening. I'm not even supposed to be here tonight. I didn't bring any notes. I didn't look at the agenda. I don't care about any of that. 365 days ago, I was newly returned to work from short-term disability, from our tragedy. A little later than that, my wife and I were supposed to be celebrating our 25th anniversary. We weren't feeling celebratory, so we didn't. I should
052actually be on vacation right now, making up that 25th anniversary trip that never happened. Strike two. instead. 8 days ago, I was in the emergency room trying to find out what was going on with me. Now, you know, the thing is all this stress, all these things that we worry about, they take a toll on our bodies. The things we don't talk about, they fester. The things we do talk about, we can try to change. I've been trying to change, been trying to help affect change. And back in May, I thought that maybe Doorchester 2 was going to help with that when I was told that at a meeting that you would discuss the potential of holding a vigil for the youth that we lose to suicide every week. But no, that hasn't happened. So
053then I decided that if you wouldn't do a vigil, I will do a rally. So that's what I've been working on for months. I would like to cordially invite all of Doorchester 2 administration, teachers, students, parents on September 13th at the Rollins Edwards Community Center here in Somerville. We are hosting a rally with all of the information and all the stuff that I would love to present at this podium, but I have to be limited to three minutes. So, I've been trying. You have shut the door in my face repeatedly. Julian Brockert meant something to a lot of people. To ignore that is just heinous. I have a bag of 30 guitar picks that I would like to request get delivered to the counselors at each of the schools in Dorchester 2. I have asked
054for I am presenting an olive branch. www.honoringjulen.com/events. See you there. >> Thank you, Mr. Brocker. All right, our next public comment this evening is Miss Erica Salber. Uh, good evening. I'm here to discuss the hiring process in this district. As a concerned parent, every child deserves to go to a school that is fun, loving, free of politics, and most importantly, safe. For some kids, school is their safe place. Parents should never have to question who their child is spending their day with. We should be able to trust those adults and trust that someone did their job thoroughly when vetting these teachers. With that being said, I don't know what the hiring process is compromised of. I think there needs to be more transparency of this process. What steps are taken to ensure we are hiring
055teachers with a solid background? Are references being called? Are there social medias being checked? If not, that needs to change. I'm not asking that you tell your staff to open up their private social media accounts, but we need to be doing everything that we can to try to make sure we are hiring the very best for our kids. If things are found that could raise some concern, it needs to be questioned. It needs to be looked into or move on to the next candidate. It shouldn't matter if a teacher has been there for 20 years. If all of the sudden something pops up that is discovered, it needs to be questioned and looked into. For the sake of our children's upbringing and future, I beg as a mother that you really look into this. Thank
056you. Thank you, Miss Sber. All right, that concludes our public comments. Next item on our agenda is our executive session. So board members, at this time I would ask for a motion to convene into executive session for student enrollment um recommendation. >> So moved. >> Okay. Motion made by Mr. Guthrie, seconded by Miss Powell. Any questions or discussion? Okay. Hearing none, we will call for the vote. All right, motion carries. Seven in favor. We are in executive session and we will return. Members, at this time I would ask for a motion to return to open session. >> Motion made by Miss Powell. Do I have a second? >> Seconded by Mr. Guthrie. Any questions or discussion? Hearing none, we will call for the vote. All right, motion carries. Seven in favor. We are back in
057open session. All right, board members, at this time, do I have a motion from >> chair? Make a motion to accept or apologies to uphold the district's student enrollment decision as presented. >> All right. Motion made by Mr. Farnsworth, seconded by Miss Bates. Any questions or discussion? Okay. Hearing none, we will call for the vote. Motion carries. Seven in favor. Right. Board members. At this time, I would ask for a motion to adjurnn. >> Motion made by Miss Bates, seconded by Miss King. Any questions or discussion? Hearing none, we will call for the vote. Motion carries. Seven in favor. We are adjourned.