Good evening everyone. Evening. The Durham Public Schools Board of Education budget hearing is now in session. At this time, we wish to extend a warm welcome to everyone who is joining us this evening. The interpreters for tonight are Martha Roma Gillis and Vanessa Pine Ramirez. Thank you for taking the time to join us. The next item on our agenda is a moment of.
Silence. Thank you. And the next item is agenda review and approval. Colleagues, I'd like to make a motion to amend the agenda to add a presentation from our CFO immediately before the budget hearing. Second, it's been moved by Miss Carda-Auten, seconded by Miss Harrell Goff to add a presentation from CFO immediately prior to the budget hearing. Is there any discussion? All those in favor, please say I. I. I. It passes unanimously. 6. Thank you, Dr. Tabb. I'm sorry, Dr. Lewis. Yeah. Thank you so much, Bo Rogers. Good evening, board members, members of the the public., appreciate you adding this item to the agenda. We definitely know that the public hearing is an opportunity for the public to come in person to share thoughts, ideas, feedback with the board as it relates to the development of the budget. But we did want to take a moment to honor those individuals that participated in our online forum where we asked them to share with us what should be some of our priorities.
Moving forward as we think about our budget. So, Wendell Tabb will share some of that feedback that we've collected to ensure that those voices are are in this space as well. Wendell Tabb. Okay, if we'll keep the presentation, please. And we can move on to the next slide. Right. so, we just wanted to start this off, right, to lift up what we've been doing over the past few weeks and collecting feedback from the community about what our priorities should be as we work through this process. and so you know this public hearing tonight is first time that we've done two of those. but we've also had an online thought exchange that has been occurring as a part of our dollars and decision series among other activities that we've been pushing out to the public.
And so ahead of this hearing, we just wanted to take a moment to lift up the feedback that we've received online so far or just hit some highlights of that so that folks know that we have received that and we we've been taking that under review as we've had discussions. So if we can pull up the next slide and so this slide we just wanted to lift up just the the degree of participation that we've seen. So 1,531 participants and really great to see other folks inter folks interacting with each other's comments that they've submitted which I really enjoyed the feature of that product where folks could see things that other people had shared and express their support or advocacy for those positions.
So we had 28,229 folks rate individual comments to some degree. And on the on the slides coming up, we'll get to see some of those things that received a lot of votes. so if we could go ahead and move to the next slide. this just captures a representation of the folks who participated in our thought exchange online. And we can see just really a robust participation with parents, guardians, and family members. We did see overlap in in those populations. And so that's why this does not add up to 100%. And so we did have folks who identified in more than one category. So, we know certainly a lot of our employees also have students in the district. So, we've had some folks identify as as an employee and as a parent of the district. and much much to my joy, we did have some students who chose to participate in the process and shameless plug for the video that's coming out within the next week or so where we've interviewed a.
Student as a part of this process. So, really excited about the student participation., and then we've had some folks who just simply just members of the community., and that's their connection to the district., I think another important statistic that we don't have on the screen that we wanted to make sure that we lifted up was that we had 171 participants who did not speak English as their first language who did participate in in the thought exchange. So very pleased to see that interaction for us as well., next slide.
So this is a word cloud that the thought exchange produced just to lift up some of the frequent words that we saw in our comments right and so I think these are very much consistent with some of the public comments that we've heard throughout our various board meetings since I've been here just in terms of salaries retention pay and and our employees and so and transportation certainly also has a spot there preeminently on that in that word cloud. So just a another fun metric for us to look at as we were combing through these results. And the next slide please.
So just wanted to look at the summary that this this came up with and and this is something we really liked about this software is that it can take all of that information that we receive and and pull that together in a summary for us and really help us to kind of see a a a quick synopsis of things that were important to folks. And so we've really kind of called out in bold the areas that were of particular importance to the folks who engaged. Right? So, we saw a focus on increasing teacher and staff salaries. we saw a focus on ensuring that we have reliable transportation, improving our school infrastructure, which we heard from Dr. Lewis's student representative at our board meeting very very recently, student services and mental health, exceptional children, and reducing unnecessary administrative costs in the district.
So, these were themes that that came through very brightly through that exchange. next slide. So again, it helped us to kind of pull together sort of the top five themes. And so staff pay was right at the top of that list. staffing, just sort of as a separate issue from the concept of staff pay and that u we had we had enough folks convey concern about making sure we're adequately filling vacancies in the district and making sure that there's a high quality teacher in every classroom, making sure there's a bus driver on every bus.
And so just that general concept of staffing, transportation, no surprise, school safety, and then budget management, right? And so the the comments that we saw budget management were really focused on transparency, focus on the focus on the work that happens, in in the finance department and our efforts to communicate how the dollars are spent in Durham public schools. U so those are our top five themes that came through those responses. On the next slide, we'll lift up the three items that received just the most pronounced reaction as folks were able to peruse and see what other people shared. they lifted up the concern about competitive wages about support for our staff.
And so just wanted you to see what those three items were that had the most votes for people as as they went through this. there were some other themes that came through and we'll lift those up on the next couple of slides if we can go ahead and move to the next one. All right. So this one we had some concerns about facilities or buildings in general and so in terms of our looking at our the quality and the condition of our facilities. the second comment was sort of a twofur.
They talk about M's pay, but then they also plugged in a comment about our buildings and and taking care of our aging buildings. and and so then the third one just right adequate staffing to keep our buildings safe. Okay. In the next slide we had another theme right of transportation coming through and and just received positive reactions to remarks about addressing transportation and providing sufficient pay and resources for our transportation program. next slide. So we just wanted to lift up right some some important dates moving forward. so next week we'll unveil Dr. Lewis's recommended budget.
So we've you know we've been we've been listening at the past few meetings and we've been hearing feedback from stakeholders. Dr. Lewis through his listening and learning tour. I've certainly had many people reach out to me and express concerns. and so we've we've got some sense of what's going on on the ground. but then also looking at things through this thought exchange and then what we hear tonight you know we're prepared so anything anything compelling that we hear tonight we're prepared to make additions or modifications to the current iteration of of Dr. Lewis's recommendation that will unveil next week., we know we've got another hearing that's in the works and there is a poll that's in process to determine if that's going to happen on the 27th or April 8th or 9th. And so we will communicate that quickly once we've been able to confirm when that next hearing will occur. we do have a a board meeting coming up on April 10th where we will receive another round of.
Feedback from folks. so that'll be the second round of feedback that we receive after Dr. Lewis's recommended budget goes live. And our goal on April 24th is to receive authorization from the board to carry that forward in a formal way to the board of commissioners. And that will bring us ahead of the statutory deadline of May 15th for presenting a budget request to the Board of County Commissioners. And then from there we will engage in the county manager run of show for their budget development process and and engage at every appropriate step for advocacy for Durham Public Schools.
On the next slide, we open it up for the public comment period, and I will defer back to the superintendent and the board chair for management of the of the public hearing. Thank you, Wendell Tabb. Okay, we have two people signed up tonight for the budget hearing. So, a quick review of the rules. First, please state your name. And if speaking for an organization, please state your name and then the name of the organization. Second, speakers are asked to present their comments in 3 minutes., when the yellow light comes on, you will have 1 minute left to start winding up your remarks. When the red light comes on, it will beep, which indicates your time is up. Complaints about named staff, students, or parents should not be voiced in open session.
However, we are very interested in hearing your concerns particularly around the budget tonight., and board members will listen carefully, consider the comments, but we do not engage in discussion with speakers. Our first speaker is Micah Tweet Meyer, followed by Lauren Sartine. Good evening. Micah Tweet Meer, president, Durham Association of Educators. As a public school workers union, we stand up for our students and what they need the most. Our working conditions are their learning conditions, and we are the ones who work directly with them every single day. We know how DPS needs to improve to better serve all their needs. And it starts with valuing and retaining our staff.
We've spent the past few months holding over 40 meetings with hundreds of workers across the district, something only our majority union can do. And we have built a platform of top priorities, including eight urgent priorities for spring 2025. We have done the research and analysis because we want to support our students and workers. Our priorities have been shared with all of you via email and we have invited you to the staff development center on March 25th to discuss our specific budget priorities. Transparency is the prerequisite for workers weighing in on the budget and transparency is the prerequisite for change within DPS.
Our top priorities include addressing the classified pay compression issue, fixing the transportation crisis, fully restoring master's pay, among others. We've elected a team of 13 worker representatives to meet with management and collaborate. All we need is for management and the board to finally agree to value our collective voice as workers and start working together on solutions. Our union has been waiting for over a year for you to finally agree to sit down with us and listen to our ideas and how to improve our schools for everyone. We are still waiting and we are ready and we look forward to finaling finalizing meet and confer and discussing workers other top priorities on Tuesday. Thank you.
Hi, my name is Lauren Sartine. I'm a DPS parent., I guess I could have brought the 30-minute version of this. I didn't know so few people would be here., I have a close friend who likes to say that in Durham, we like to seem rather than to be. To me, that means we care more about how things look than how they function, about how words sound rather than what they mean. An example, so Wake County Schools has a proposed budget out that lays out very clearly about $20 million in budget cuts. They explicitly say when they're going to cut central services, what's impacting schools directly.
Unfortunately, coming into this budget hearing, we had no proposed budget to look at or react to., to me that's seeming rather than being. So I have a proposal. When we're talking about what we want to spend money on, that also means things that we have to roll back. And given the current political climate, we're going to have budget cuts anyway. So I wanted to suggest some things that maybe we could take off the table that we could press pause on while we evaluate what works and what doesn't.
Try to have some program coherence in this district instead of just 50 some odd schools kind of doing their own thing. So things that we could press pause on non-mandated testing, surveys, and other data collection efforts give students their instructional time back. Cut those contracts. We can press pause on non-mandated professional development and training. Let's take the time to figure out what teachers think is actually helpful. Let's give teachers their planning time back so that they can actually talk about what students need and address those needs. Let's cut those PD contracts. Technology. We brag about being a one-to-one district. We don't need to be. K12 or K through2 students don't need computers. Let's let them develop fine motor school skills, learn to write, learn to encode. We can cut those technology contracts. Curriculum materials. The most important thing for students is having high quality teachers. not curriculum. Let's cut the contracts. Finally, that brings me to contracts. I looked at the old board docs for this fiscal year going back to.
August. And through contracts and change orders, almost all of which weren't discussed or even presented. This board saw $230 million in contracts come before you. What do those go to? Most of them are construction and building maintenance. And I have to ask, how many DPS students could actually say that their buildings are in better condition because of it? Not mine. What I urge you to do when you're thinking about this budget is to look a little more closely at where the dollars go, who they go to, and ask yourself if those dollars are going to impact students directly. Thank you.
Thank you all., we appreciate your comment. Colleagues, the next item on our agenda is close session. Move that we go into close session for the reason stated on the agenda. Second. It's been moved by Miss Umstead, seconded by Miss Spire to go into close session for the reasons stated on the agenda. Is there any discussion? All those in favor of moving into close session say I. I. All opposed. motion passes unanimously. 6. We are now in close session.