001Lord I pray that you will watch over our troops our military and all those involved early uh First Responders Lord take us through this school year and keep us all safe in Jesus name I pray amen amen the United States of America and to the stands one nation God indivisible andice for all all right good evening and welcome to the October 28th board meeting um we will start the meeting um with the reading of our vision and our mission to have a board member who would like to go ahead all right our vision is Dorchester School District 2 desires to be recognized as a worldclass school district expecting each student to achieve at his or her optimal level in all areas and providing all members of our district family with an environment that permits them
002to do their personal best our mission is leading the way every student every day through relationships relevance and rigor okay thank you Miss Bates at this time I will will call the meeting to order and I will ask for an approval of our consent agenda so moved a motion thank you Mr Guthrie motion made by Mr Guthrie do I have a second seconded by Miss Bates any discussion okay hearing none we will call for the vote okay and the motion carries six in favor one absent all right and we will move directly into our district highlights and we will welcome Miss Troy to our Podium to present them to us thank you you're welcome I feel like I'm just a little off that's okay there we go good evening board chair Dr Wimberly superintendent Dr
003robins and our esteem board members this evening we are here to celebrate our nationally recog recognized schools in the capturing kids Hearts program this program equips Professionals in K through 12 education to implement transformational processes focused on well-being relationship driven campus culture and student connectedness through experiential training expert coaching character-based curriculum for students and personalized support it's a culture shifting sustainable process that be that can be used in classrooms staff meetings athletic programs cafeterias on school buses and in the home National showcase schools go above and beyond in creating a safe and welcoming environment and experience Improvement in the areas of student achievement discipline referrals academic rates graduation rates teacher satisfaction enrollment and teacher retention at this time we ask that each school and their representative come to the stage for recognition one at a
004time first off our nationally National capturing kids Hearts showcase schools category in this category we have first up Oakbrook Elementary this is their sixth year in a row receiving this honor attending is Kim buen principal Marisa Sab cord assistant principal and Penny bird assistant principal [Applause] thank you also in this category is Windsor Hills Arts Infused Elementary School this is their third year in a row receiving this honor attending Mr nunar Mr Dugan and Miss Young [Applause] thank [Applause] you and our final cap category is capturing kids Hearts Rising Star schools category first up is Knightsville Elementary attending Miss Claire subber principal Mr Jamie McDow assistant principal Mr Daniel Meyers teacher Miss Courtney bruffy Title One facilitator [Applause] thank you next is San Hill Elementary Mr Vincent Joy [Applause] thank [Applause] you and rounding out
005this category is Fort Dorchester Elementary School attending Miss Annette Pletcher [Applause] thank you once again let's give all of our capturing kids hearts a round of [Applause] applause at this time I'll turn the podium over to Amanda Santa Mar director of nursing and Health Services followed by Dr Michelle lainer principal Somerville High School good evening Dr Wimberly Dr Robbins and members of the board this evening we've invited two of Our Community Partners to help celebrate the achievements of several of our schools in promoting health and wellness within their communities with us this evening we have Lindsay O'Neal program coordinator for the MUSC Boeing Center for children's wellness and Rachel Stanley development director of school engagement with the American Heart Association they will both share a little bit more about their programs and then recognize schools
006and students um with their accomplishments Within These programs Lindsay will present first followed by Rachel and as we um announce each school if any Representatives here from that team would come up to the front to be recognized that would be great hello everyone I'm Lindsay O'Neal the program coordinator at MUSC Boeing Center for children's wellness and I'm here tonight because we are going to recognize the top three schools in the rising star for our school based Wellness initiative and I just want to give a big shout out to Dorchester District 2 this is I believe like the sixth year that we've had 100% participation from all schools and all schools received a wellness award for this past school year in the total was 18,8 $0000 that in Wellness awards that will go back into the
007school this year for more Wellness initiatives and it our okay go through no it's okay for the rising no the grand prize winner was Joseph Pi Elementary and I believe we have some [Applause] that one the runners up yes yes so oook Elementary School was our second runner up [Applause] and next we have Hill Elementary [Applause] and lastly we had Dr Eugene sire Elementary they received the rising star for the most points increase from the year prior [Applause] okay and I did yes I did bring the fund check if you want for the whole [Applause] District okay and next up we have Rachel with the American Heart Association good evening thank you all so much for having me I'm Rachel Stanley I am the school engagement director with the American Heart Association for kids heart
008challenge previously known as Jump Rope for Heart and your district has just been such an incredible supporter of our mission and we are just so so grateful I'm honored to be here tonight to recognize some top schools top District top student but also really just to say thank you it is really incredible to see the work that yall do to promote health and wellness I think everyone in this room knows someone who's been affected by heart disease or stroke and makes our mission more important than ever so thank you um so I want to start off kids heart challenge we are it's our school-based program and we want to empower students to make healthy choices we want to make sure they're learning about their heart learn handson CPR through our program learn about the warning
009signs of stroke but also how to give back and help others and so your District really truly goes over and Beyond with that so I want to start off by saying thank you because of that y'all were number four in the state raising over $81,000 in life-saving donations and y'all's Clacks are on the front so yes so thank you so so very much you can go to the next slide so you can see your ranking there so really thank you so so very much and then I would like to now recognize the top three schools in the district um in first school I you can go to the next slide is Reeves Elementary um thank you so much they raised over $110,000 to support our mission and miss cing and miss bellish are absolutely amazing
010[Applause] awesome thank you all so much and in second place we have um Knightsville Elementary um Co coach Basel and Mr olssen do such a great job of implementing this program anyone is here receiver oh thank you yay thank you all so much raising over 9 ,000 so awesome thank you and then third place is Fort Dorchester Elementary School um raising over $8,000 to support our mission um Miss mortier just does such a great job so thank you all so much yay and last but definitely not least we recognized him last year um I would like to bring up Jacob Bodner from flowertown elementary he was the number 17 fundraiser in all of South Carolina raising over $2,200 for the American Heart Association [Applause] thank you so much you're so awesome and I just want
011to say too you know those are the top three schools but y'all have every single Elementary School participating and that is just absolutely incredible and just want to say thank you and then I do want to share um a quick update so um to give your students um a handson Hands-On learning experience for handson CPR before they graduate the American Heart Association has worked with choke construction to ensure each dd2 High School will receive a CPR and schools kit including mannequins for them to practice on so that will be something I'll be working with Amanda to get to your school so thank you all so very much for all that you do for us thank you oh sure [Applause] good evening superintendent Robbins board chair Wimberly and esteemed Schoolboard members it is my honor tonight
012to introduce two accomplished brothers and graduates of Somerville High School this past summer for only the fifth time in Major League Baseball history two brothers have been drafted in the same year from 2017 to 2024 the msas helped lead the Green Wave to an average of 22 wins per season with a massina earning All State or All Region honors in each of those years after graduation col missina a 2021 graduate of Somerville continued to cell while at the University of South Carolina during his tenure as a Gamecock he was a two-time All-American and a recipient of the Johnny Bench award which is awarded to the top catcher in the country not to be outdone by his brother Carson mesina a 2024 graduate achieved his own success as he was selected to the 15U and 18u
013United States national baseball team while part of Team USA Carson closed out the championship game helping lead Team USA to a gold medal their Journey to the 2024 draft to the Colorado Rockies for Cole and the Toronto Blue Jays for Carson is a result of their hard work dedication and support of their amazing family Michael and Becky mesina who is a teacher at Oakbrook middle school and their younger sister Callahan who is an athlete at her own right as a member of our lady Greenway volleyball team Somerville is honored to have such prolific Brothers as part of our Greenway family we know this is just the beginning of a new journey and an amazing career for Cole and Carson we're looking forward to continuing to support them in their professional care careers as professional athletes
014at this time I'd like to call their family up [Applause] thank you so we have captured kids Hearts we have healed them to keep them healthy and we also have outstanding athletes I think that just deserves one more round of applause [Applause] that completes our highlights for this evening wow that is going to be hard to follow was awesome all right so great to hear about all the awesome stuff going on in the district and I think it just puts in perspective how much um extra stuff our schools our leadership in our schools and our teachers and um staff are all working to do all that stuff takes a lot of time so we are very fortunate all right moving on on our agenda the next item is our public comments um and we have
015none this evening so we will go straight into our board chairs report um first item t tonight um are our board goals so board members um as you remember we are in the process of trying to finalize those um Dr Robbins has included in our packet um where we are in that that process and so if everyone could just please um take the time to look at those and continue to send in your feedback so that we can finalize them um at our next meeting which will be the final meeting of this current board and so I think it's important that we get that taken care of before we um have the turn over to the new board moving forward are there any questions regarding that process okay great all right well thank you um
016you can reach out to me too if you need to um to talk through any of that um and then the next thing I also wanted to provide an update for um as we all know we have an election coming up and we will have some um new board members um So based on our board policy BBB um new board members will take office one week after the election has been certified um and this year is a little bit challenging a little bit different situation than we've ever had because we do have all seven seats up for um election so after reaching out to the election commission um we have found out that that the election should be fully certified by the county and the state by November 14th So the plan in place is
017to have a um the because of that date the current sitting board will run the November 11th meeting and um the new board will be sworn in at a called board meeting scheduled for November 21st um that that is that will be one week following the certification of the election so please um put that date on your calendar if there is a possibility that you could be sworn in um that's November 21st the time to be decided um and I also will be sending out some information regarding the oath of office um and swearing in procedures so look for that to come out for me um shortly and then feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions and I'm also happy to take any questions now if anyone has okay so
018at our next meeting the November 11th meeting we will say goodbye to two of our board members and we will celebrate all that they have done for us so I look forward to the Celebration part of honoring them and what they their service so I do not look forward to seeing you go but I look forward to honoring you so um but that is the plan in place moving forward and I just want to make sure everyone has a good understanding of that and just clarify anything questions okay excellent all right right just that little bit of housekeeping to get through so now I think we are ready to move on to our board committee reports and we will start with our policy committee Miss Pates yes thank you madam chair uh we had a
019policy committee meeting right be right before this one yeah right before this one and we brought our policy for our cell phones to update it to bring it in compliance with the new state regulation uh that will be at our next board reading board meeting for first reading and then we have several policies tonight for first reading so I'm going to go through those now um we have policy JJ instructional resources and materials policy igl library and instructional materials selection and adoption policy or igle library media center materials concerns questionnaire igle E2 citizens Review Committee Information Form keec concerns and complaints about instructional resources KR concerns and complaints about constructional res instructional resources and kece W citizens request for review of educational materials that was mouthful so um Madam chair I'll turn that over for
020you okay thank you Miss Bates um so uh that is coming out of policy I mean out of committee um so um I do do not need a motion um so um at this time do we um have any [Music] discussion make sure we captured I think it's in there we had has a lot of discussion about the sele not the selection committee but the Review Committee I know I think we had made some updates so I just want to make sure we I looked at it earlier and I thought I saw it and now I cannot find it so I apologize the selection citizen um the citizens review which one because we had added an additional District person is that right it was the district level administrator that we added okay perfect just wanted
021to make sure that that was in there which I see so no questions thank okay any other questions or discussion okay um so then at this time I will ask for a motion to approve the policies as permitted from as presented from committee you could I make a motion to approve the policies as presented oh I okay yeah no I think we just need I'm sorry I apologize at this time yes we just need to um vote on the policies um coming out of committee so yes okay and the motion carries six in favor one absent thank you Miss Bates next we have our finance committee Mr Guthrie yes so the finance committee was also able to meet this afternoon in we were able to discuss the compensation for our daily rate employees those are
022both the adult support and the health room assistance and the committee was able to recommend course of action number two which is going to be a $350 stien um for all those daily rate employees and we uh for your consideration we move that to the full board for a vote okay so board members um I believe we all received that in our packet um and so coming it's coming out of the finance committee to approve the um second recommendation um the second option second course of action um so again that is coming out of committee so I do not need a second do we have any discussion is that at so it looks like 73 74,000 is that coming from just the general fund okay all right great okay no problem any other discussion or
023comments okay hearing none at this time we will call for the vote oh you're good sorry it's a little slow this evening okay and the motion carries six in favor one absent y That's all from finances right thank you Mr cther um facilities committee Mr Farnsworth do you have anything for us this evening um I do not if Miss Hughes doesn't have anything we do have some items I know the superintendent will cover for four facilities in his report so thank you okay thank you that concludes our board committee reports and so at this time I will turn it over to Dr Robbins for our superintendent report thank you madam chair members of the board um we have several items for you tonight um a lot of academic things we want to disc discuss uh
024and share with the board as we kind of move into this new environment of accountability uh with a modified um school report card from South Carolina so if um Thad could come up to the podium he's going to present on our school report cards and kind of what that means for dd2 moving forward so Mr schm floor is yours Dr Wy Dr Robins members of the board um excellent thank you so much yes we finally got our anticipated school report cards in and so we're very excited to be able to present with you the information tonight we're very excited we have six schools who um earned an overall excellent rating and you can see them up there Ashley Ridge beachill Fort dester High School Joe Pai Elementary Rawlings Middle School of the Arts as well
025as um Reeves elementary school so we're very excited for them that is a great accomplishment overall report C ratings this year we had Ted um 10 schools earn a good overall rating seven earned an overall um average rating two earned a below average um overall rating in no schools were labeled as unsatisfactory I know we see here a little bit of digression in the numbers and in the direction that we don't want to go but I'm going to offer um um I'm going to offer some information that we maybe maybe have you think about that a little bit differently than how it looks at the moment so just kind of um if you could just press pause on any feelings that you might be having at the moment um so some there are some key
026changes to the way that South Carolina handles the report card um while it's a bit of a reset um we think that they definitely align with what our beliefs are as Educators so let's start off with the student growth indicator this is the perhaps the biggest one it is a um it's a it is no longer one formula is now three and they do some wonderful things where it's no longer just going to be currently it's normative how well did we do compared to other people so um but the state came back now and they've got a new plan which we really like where every student is going to get their own Target and every student is going to get a stretch Target but it makes it much more Criterion based so um and there's
027two more formulas that go into it which basically makes this um indicator this part of the of the report card uh a very different measurement than it was last year um El indicator some adjustments were made um probably Fair the feds came down and said we needed to make some changes and unfortunately for us um across the state not just for our District um every school um probably lost a good one to two points off the top this year just because of not having those students in other words if you wanted to liken right off the top our schools from this year to last year you'd have to pretty much add two points to their overall score to get something that's even remotely Apples to Apples um and for some of our schools that we
028had numerous schools that were within literally we had one school who missed a rating by 0.3 so that would have been a very welcome point or two for them preparing for Success indicator um as you may remember this did not exist this year for elementary or for Middle uh as uh we took a pause year to do some field testing so this kind of shifted some things we'll talk about that in a moment and then our high school student success indicator is a brand new indicator that has been introduced to the high school report card it kind of fits along the lines with the graduation rate and we'll talk about that in a moment too so my little demonstration here of apples to apples is going to be a common theme um for everybody tonight
029so academic achievement um as you already know is I presented on our um our test SC test scores our test scores didn't really move much our achievement didn't really move much um we're still beating the state average um as you can remember this were our test scores our test scores didn't really move um a whole lot although we did saw saw a little gain in math the our overall rankings as you can see um for uh for this is for grades 3 through eight Elementary Middle mid our rankings pretty much stay the same um it's just a big hold year right we kind of just held our ground um for our high school when it comes to the achievement uh we again we're beating the state's averages um we as we um remember when I
030presented about the uh the test scores we saw a little bit of an uptick in algebra actually we saw a nice uptick in algebra and just a slight decrease in our Ela and that played out and it changed our um our rankings there a little bit um in English and algebra but uh when you get once you get in the top 15 top 12 it gets really competitive there's really not much wiggle room for I mean one or two points can make you slide slide a good bit um the one thing I do want to point out here and I want to go back for a second is you know this you you can sit here and you can say with our achievement for both high school elementary and middle if you want to compare
031report cards for the academic achievement indicator last year to the academic achievement this year it's Apple to Apples nothing's changed we are we are good um on making that comparison the uh when it comes to preparing for success I don't even know if I should put apples up here because we didn't have the indicator at all but what what does play a role here is that the absence of this indicator is normally about 10 points about 10% of the report card it took those points and it pushed Five Points over to the ecademic achievement and to growth making those two other indicator ators weigh more than what they weighed last year which is going to come back to my theme of it's a little difficult to make a comparison from last year's overall rating points
032to this year's overall rating points um moving on to preparing for Success actual results again we didn't have it for middle and elementary and as I presented last time with our scores we had a little uptick mology um a little dtic in uh our US history but overall that that that played well we're still above State averages and as far as our rankings are concerned um the the state must have really improved in biology because we improved in biology as well but uh they just outpaced us I guess to uh have us drop that much but um our US History right about the same our US History went down yet our ranking went up so again this is sort of that normative comparison again preparing for Success when it comes to high school absolutely you
033can compare last year to this year get an idea yeah till two years ago was the field test so yeah last year to this year you can definitely compare those are apples to apples student progress here's where we have my little depiction of our apple and watermelon sure we're still talking fruit right right student growth to student growth but it is this year it is not Apples to Apples okay the student the student are overall um progress points as you can see there we're in a dead heat with the with the state average um but we've got basically three different formulas um that are that are playing out here um one of the formulas is what like from last year which again is we were our district is right with the state um and this
034was the old formula that they're still using to count for one third of these points and then they have two more um formulas that they're using for Target points and percentage points which are more of these Criterion base points that they're bringing in and again you can see here we actually are slightly beating the state averages so um again without getting too far into the weeds um this is the place where most points were lost um when you look at our overall thing this reset of this calculation really was responsible for about 70% of our change in our performance overall so um academic achievement didn't move much um as you'll see with climate and the others didn't move up this was the this was the category with this reset year which is fine we now
035know what the new what the new rules are we know what the new you know uh calculations are going to be so next year will be the true year of um our Improvement in this category and um we kind of flip-flopped 22 we were 45th last year we were 20th um and and this year we're um 43rd overall in this state for our growth and as I kind of put up here this is definitely a reset um year and it had a very large impact on our overall points the graduation rate um again this year uh outpacing the state um we've had some very high numbers for for many a long run there um we did drop down to um for the overall for the district at 89.4 um our dd2 ranking we slipped a
036little bit there from 9th to 17th this past year and again going back to my analogy Apples to Apples nothing with the graduation rate changed we're calculating it pretty much the same it's Apples to Apples it's definitely a fair um assessment that to look at those two and compare which brings us to our next High School Student Success indicator this is a new one but it's it's new and it's not new in the sense of it's basically measuring the graduation rate of every class as you go so it's how many how many kids in your freshman year are already to are making app up here looks a little different because it's a little new it's a new Apple to our uh our calculations but this year is basically a baseline data year but we are
037outperforming the uh the state on this which is um which is great the I also do want to mention that it did also change a little bit of the point value so they took the point values that was our College and Career Readiness indicator and our graduation rate um indicator they took some points from both of those to create this new category of high school student success indicator but again it's kind of measuring that same thing just in a different way instead of just looking at you when you're graduating they're looking at your progress as you go through to graduation um and the high school success rate also has kind of so they have one overall score but it's kind of composed of two different um elements the first one is your onrack Readiness which
038they're saying this year um I can't I can't read my own numbers up there it's like in the 80s like 86 if I think I'm right um but the and uh our district for the fiveyear success rate this is where we really showcase um with um was it 93.5% of our students um being in in that 5year success rate and what that means is that even some students who maybe weren't successful after four years when they're supposed to graduate um the state comes back and looks at well in your fifth year did you earn a employability credential did you earn a diploma or did you earn a GED and if you did that gets to raise your um your overall effort so that's great and it it um ended up being what we were eighth
039in the state for this for this component so that's great because really this is the endgame right this is did you correct mistakes along the way did you heal the kids along the way and um so we're we're very happy with that um ranked eth and also remember when we're ranking here um we're up against some districts it's also how you define a district right because some of the governor schools are considered to be a district and I don't not quite sure how you compete with that but um we do uh College and Career read um again one that we're familiar with what counts on the report card is the or they want you to be College ready or career ready and again we're knocking out out of the park there um a great average
040actually that was a pretty good average for us for our historical um our students graduating Court who are College and Career also um a good number here at 34% that means you've qualified in both categories um then we have the kids who are ready for for college ready and the kids who are career ready so some different measurements and again I want to say that this particular indicator it's Apples to Apples nothing's really changed um yeah the point value and the overall report card thing changed a little bit but the measurements didn't change um how you can qualify didn't change and as you can see there we're um we're still you know leading the state in all of those different categories so um we're we're pretty excited about our college and Care Readiness um and
041what we're doing with CTE and CTE completers um multilingual Learners um again we had a we had a great performance um again this is where I would encourage you to add about one point or actually one point that's going to actually about 15% to 20% to that number if this were last year um which would actually be a pretty high number but the fact that they took this the feds made us take a certain portion of the population out and the quickest way I can explain this to you is if you have 50 kids they're going to measure and 10 of them used to be like a sure thing for you only 40 kids tested half those kids passed the test test right so that's 20 out of 40 well those other those other 10
042kids used to come in and used to be 30 out of 50 well the FED said no wa they didn't like that so now we're now now we're judged by 20 out of 40 so that automatic