Good evening everyone the Durham Public Schools Board of Education work session is now in session at this time we wish to extend a warm welcome to everyone who is joining us this evening the purpose of this meeting is to inform our parents staff and constituents about the work aligned with our mission to embrace educate and Empower every student to innovate serve and Lead the interpreters for tonight are Martha Romo orgale orguile sorry and Marty Ramirez thank you for taking the time to join us.
We will begin with a moment of silence.
Thank you everyone next we will have our agenda review and approval.
Move approval of the agenda as presented second all in favor say aye aye all right the are any opposed all right the agenda for tonight is approved and now we will move on to the boardwork session minutes from February 9th 2023. Of approval of the minutes from February 9th 2023 seconds thank you all in favor say aye aye any opposed the board work session minutes from February 9 2023 are approved and now we will have general public comment. So first a quick review of the rules first please state your name if speaking for an organization please state your name and the name of the organization second speakers are asked to present their comments in a specified time which will be three minutes this evening when the yellow light comes on you have one minute left to start why one minute left to start winding up your remarks when the red light comes on it will be 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 with regard to public education safety of students or to the operation of the school system finally the board members will listen carefully and consider the comments but we do not engage in a discussion with speakers our first Speaker tonight is Minister Paul Scott and to be followed by Kevin Primus good evening Dr mabinga Madam chair members of the school board tonight I am here to support the resolution against House Bill 187 the anti-critical race Theory Bill the anti-racial Justice education Bill the anti these truthful self-evident Bill the anti I might not agree with what you say but I would fight to you to the deputy defend your right to say it Bill and finally the truth crushed to the ground the anti-truth crust to the ground will rise again bill on Tuesday this Tuesday this bill goes before the K-12 education Committee of the house and I hope other school boards across the state stand up because in this case silence is content.
We have to stand up against this bill not only locally but Statewide and also these attempts to crush the rights of our children nationally and this must be done it must be done now we must stop this bill because in my opinion this bill is a perfect example of the Lynch pin legislation that holds systemic white supremacy together thank you for your time thank you our next speaker and our last speaker will be Kevin Primus. Good evening Dr mubenga I'm Madam chair Madam Vice chair members of the board I wanted to speak about two things I really wanted to speak about one but I feel compelled to speak about the second one the first one is just really supporting the proclamation for arts in our schools month and encouraging us as I had some conversations with a couple of Arts Educators one who is currently in Durham Public Schools former president of the North Carolina art Education Association is one of our Public School Arts teachers and then another one who was in our Public.
Schools who's now in the Washington DC School District just to kind of get their feeling for you know this is an exciting Proclamation what ways can we help to make to implement this in in ways that are very meaningful and some of the feedback I got I got from them was can we can we think more creatively about integrating the Arts with our Quark subjects something that we we talk about but in the experience of one of these Educators who's not here even in the DC School District with you know schools that are really focused and they pay their teachers a lot still have trouble getting core teachers to integrate and to collaborate with the Arts teachers so that the Arts isn't just something separate but it's something that's integrated and they can reinforce and sometimes teachers are very willing as Arts teachers to integrate those things those themes that are in the other core courses but it's hard to find time to play and it's hard to find that support.
And then you know the the other idea being that that time needs to be protected that sometimes we're having kids who are very young who don't have the course motor skills to develop the fine motor skills and that art proceeds writing and that we really value the the natural progression that Maria Montessori and many other are many other Educators have gone before us to to show us how humans develop and sometimes by taking out or kind of putting on the sideline the Arts it's not a good thing but what I feel compelled to talk about is a video that you may or may not have seen from maybe five or six days ago that got on some some news sources about violence on a school bus that could have happened anywhere in the country but apparently it happened in Durham I don't speak Spanish the video I saw was in Spanish and I don't have answers many but I did have a conversation with a lifelong friend of.
Mine who is the chair of the Florida Council on the social status of black men and boys he's by racial in terms of his mother was Puerto Rican his father was black and the level of violence even in his eyes he was a police officer in Pittsburgh and and in Baltimore so very you know intense settings the level of violence for a school bus was was kind of off the radar for him and he strongly suggested a community conversation I'm not I don't know who was involved I don't know who the students were the parents maybe it's already happening maybe it's already in the works but if if we can have a community conversation and bring people together because the community is talking about this this incident and I think that would be a very important helpful thing for our community to feel that this is not something that would even if it's an isolated incident continue thank you thank you.
Thank you and that concludes our public comment for this year this evening we will now go on to our consent items and I will take move approval of the agenda I guess all in favor oh all in favor say aye aye any opposed okay it passes unanimously and now we will go on to our first item for discussion which is a resolution by the Durham Public Schools Board of Education opposing house bill 187. This resolution. Addresses the bill now on the state legislature and House Bill 187 equality and education and we will as it is a bit long we will read the first page of it and Madam chair if I may there's so many pieces of this and I know time is an issue but I I just ask that we read the whole entirety of the bill if it's possible yeah thank you so much let's go ahead and read the whole thing then and we will start with Ms Rogers and each take a section resolution of the Durham Public Schools.
Board of Education imposing House Bill 187 where is House Bill 187 equality and education states that public school units shall not promote that a mediocracy is inherently racist or Sexes that the United States was created by members of a particular race or sex for the purpose of oppressing members of another race or sex or that the rule of law does not exist but instead is a series of power relationships and struggles among racial and or other groups and whereas if HB 187 is enacted it would prohibit Educators from discussing the full facts of U.S American history when several constitutional amendments were created to redress racist and sexist beliefs and policies in the original U.S Constitution for the purpose of restoring the rights of previously oppressed members of a race or sex and whereas HB 187 asserts that the United States was not created by members of a particular race or sex for the purpose of oppressing members of another race however the 13th Amendment of 1865 abolished slavery a system in which.
Members of a particular race had in fact oppressed members of another race and whereas House Bill 187 asserts that the United States was not created by members of a particular race or sex for the purpose of oppressing members of another race however educators would be prohibited to debate or consider teaching about the Jim Crow era in which a series of laws prevent African Americans from accessing rights such as voting or holding office and whereas HB 187 asserts that the United States was not created by members of a particular race or sex for the purpose of oppressing members of another race or sex however Educators would be prohibited to debate or consider teaching that women were not granted the right to vote until 1920 under the 19th Amendment and even then African-American and Indigenous women were still routinely denied their voting rights and.
Whereas a sound education including accurate facts about all aspects of U.S American history including systemic racism and discrimination is guaranteed for every North Carolina Student in our state's Constitution and whereas more than 65 years after the Supreme Court ruling on Brown versus Board segregated schooling is a particularly profound And Timely demonstration of the ongoing Persistence of systemic racism and whereas in 2017 Durham Public Schools created our office of equity Affairs charged with ensuring equity and educational opportunities for all DPS students regardless of race or ethnicity and whereas in 2018 DPS developed a strategic plan with a guiding principle which states we believe in equity our students and schools need dessert our students and schools deserve Equitable access to the resources and opportunities they need to succeed during public schools and the community must distribute these resources in a manner that eliminates inequities and whereas in 2019 the North Carolina State Board of Education adopted a strategic plan which defined Equity as an essential guiding principle and whereas in 2020 the North Carolina State.
Board of Education passed a resolution to support equity and excellence in North Carolina public education and whereas that resolution stated that the state board will review and appropriately revise its policies through an equity lens and commit to work with the superintendent and the Department of Public Instruction to create and maintain an equity officer to ensure consistency and continuity with this essential guiding principle inside and outside the agency and whereas in February 2021 the North Carolina State Board of Education approved a new social study standards which were developed by Educators to ensure that a more comprehensive accurate and honest history was taught to all students including content on racism identity and discrimination and whereas the House of Representatives in the North Carolina General Assembly recently voted along party lines to advance House Bill 187 and whereas these bills are partisan divisive and are the result of coordinated work by the American legislative exchange Council or Alec and the Heritage Foundation and whereas House Bill 187 attempts to restrict and prohibit honest conversations about race conflicting.
With existing state and local education standards and infringing on the Free Speech rights of students Educators and staff although the bill states that it cannot violate freedom of speech rights and whereas DPS follows the North Carolina standard course of study and teachers and DPS have the support of Administrators Department chairs curriculum Specialists and instructional coaches as they plan lessons that help students Master the content of the standards whereas in DPS our curriculum and trainings include a race Equity lens and culturally responsive instruction as well as these trainings are offered from content expert Consultants as we work together to dismantle racism and work together towards a more just future and whereas DPS Board of Education policy 3100 affirms that our board recognizes that curriculum and development must be an ongoing process in order to continually address the changing needs and diversity of all students and to fulfill the educational goals of the board culturally responsive curriculum is critical to achieving this goal and to nurture the cultural well-being of the students and reflect the long-term.
Interests of the community whereas DPS continues to unanimously approve equity-based policy and resolutions to advance practices of diversity equity and inclusion to support all of our diverse students and staff to create a more Equitable and inclusive experience where black students families and staff can be affirmed and can express themselves in a safe and positive way therefore be it resolved that the Durham Public Schools Board of Education urges members of the North Carolina General Assembly to vote no one house bill 187 and be it further resolved that the DPS Board of Education urges members of the NC General Assembly to focus on developing a robust public education budget with an equity toolkit that fully supports students in North Carolina and be it further resolved that the GPS Board of Education urges members of the North Carolina General Assembly to focus on the following shared recommendations from the DPS Boe legislative agendas to address Statewide Equity concerns including but not limited to fund dedicated Equity directors for every local education authority to develop and share best practices.
Statewide adopt a comprehensive anti-racist and inclusive curriculum for every school fund professional development that includes diversity Equity social emotional learning inclusion cultural competency and anti-racist training expand the North Carolina teaching fellows program especially at the SB hbcus and increase representation of teachers of color support all students families and staff including people of color lgbtqia plus students and staff students with exceptional needs immigrant students and families and people experiencing homelessness and poverty and expand Title IX protections to protect students against sexual assault signed this ninth day of March 2023 thank you all yes thank you so much I just wanted to thank I want to thank Minister Paul Scott you know this is this is one of the great things of working together with our community and listening and and you brought this to us at the last board meeting and you you pretty much alerted us right because we're handling so many different things but we cannot lose sight of these things that are definitely attacks and there's so many.
Attacks on the education of our students things that attack the Dignity of our families things that attack the Dignity of History itself and the veracity of History itself and you came to us and you said you did this right you know when it was house bill 324. And the expectation and the accountability is do right this time too because we cannot let this wave come over us and not take a stance and I just want to thank you this board does work really hard and this was a board effort and so we we would just want to thank you and I think the voices of Durham you know Durham voices community members leaders who also weighed in and and talked about the ways you know including you know our this board went through so many different revisions of this and I think all my colleagues were all the ways that we threw in you know because we we needed this to happen but there were you know certain things about how.
Do we acknowledge the work that is that is being done you know as we are trying to create the buffer the necessary buffers to protect our students and so I really thank you for all your work and I think the community that stands and supports our students as well okay yes ma'am I make a motion that we pass this resolution of the Durham Public Schools Board of Education opposing house bill 187. Second I'm gonna ask if there's any further discussion and at this moment also share that I just want to add a few grammatical edits.
Okay we're gonna vote first and then I will in my discussion quote. Okay my apologies okay it has been moved and properly seconded is there any further further discussion now my comment is I just want to clean up a few grammatical things there are a couple ands missing is there any other discussion I trust that you can work on those with Nicole yes yeah I think so thank you for bringing those to our attention but no no edits to the content yeah okay all right great let's go ahead and then with those minor little edits go ahead and accept the motion in the second and vote everyone in favor say aye aye aye and any posts all right it unanimously passes our resolution against House Bill 187 thank you everyone I wanted to note as well that we are missing one board member and who had a prior commitment and we'll be here at a later all right now we are going to move on to our next item.
Which is the contract for new financial and human resource system and I will pass it to Ms Giovanni thank you madam chair good evening Dr Mubanga board members colleagues and Community this should I just wanted to let you know that the board did approve when Mr lasur brought this to you on February 9th a contract and to move forward with a negotiations on a contract for a new Erp system so we did work on that including so myself Mr Malone and miss Lynn at therington Smith did go back and forth and with negotiations with the provider and we did come up with a contract that suitably protects Durham Public Schools moving forward none of the substantive information that Mr Lister believes your Paul oh I'm sorry Paul none of the substantive or financial information has changed it was simply which is why I'm presenting it because it became a legal issue just to get the contract moving forward so we did finalize the negotiations on this early yesterday afternoon which is.
Why it was added a little bit late well late to the agenda and we are asking the board since you hadn't seen it just out of an abundance of caution to have allowed you to see this contract so we are asking for approval of this so that we can move forward with Paul's Erp. Thank you Ms Giovanni any discussion I would just know how excited Mr Leisure was about this contract and this new financial and HR System and the improvements that it's going to bring for our staff so with that I would just move approval of the contract with Villages for the new wind gauge financial and human resource system how'd that do second right it has been moved and properly seconded all in favor say aye aye and any other any other discussion any post okay it passes unanimously I'm getting my flow here forgive me all right thank you all very much and now we're going to move on to another item under Miss Giovanni the update and.
Status on the training on lgbtq plus lgbtqia plus individuals thank you if you could pull up the PowerPoint please just to bring back before we get started to the board's recollection Miss Chávez and I were tasked with working together to put together a training regarding lgbtqia plus matters for the board and the superintendent's cabinet we have worked needing for many many hours over many many weeks to make sure that it is a robust and impactful training and I do believe that we have achieved that next slide please so there won't be a lot of substance in this because obviously we are working with the presenters on the substance just want to recognize their expertise and not really dictate to them what needs to be shared but we found folks that are experts in their fields and we are working with them to craft what the substance will be but this is a logistics update just to kind of let you and the community know what we are working on.
It will be broken into two separate trainings 101 and 10 and 201 101 will be groundwork and setting the stage on identities and experiences for elected boards 201 will be a state of the law around the country in North Carolina and then an interactive workshop for boards next slide please this is a kind of tentative outline regarding what the subjects are just kind of guide as we're working on the actual detailed work so just wanted to kind of share that with again for the community and the board to take a look these may change depending on what the actual experts do share with us we did want to make sure that several of our presenters were I did identify as members of the lgbtqia plus Community even though we do have several allies as well but so we're going to obviously defer to those experts and these are just kind of General overviews next slide please again this is the state of the law we have the legal counsel for nsba and.
Eva Eva with Arrington Smith not even going to address the last names anymore they're going to come and present for about 45 minutes I know while Mr Malone and I may be enthralled by the law not so sure everyone else would be but they will be there you know to answer those questions next slide please and then we have invited gender Spectrum a national group to come in Dr Rose Chung is going to come and present they have kind of a generic list but we're just going to defer to them again we've shared with them our policies on gender supports and equity and have kind of given them a little bit of guidance but we're again going to wait for them to share their expertise next slide please next slide so the location of the trainings will be at the mini fort Brown Staff Development Center the 101 will be held on April 21st and that will again take place at the SCC and I did receive confirmation that May.
19th will be the date for 201 and you will obviously I will share additional information out with you as I obtain it but if you could please hold those dates in the would be lunch starting at 11 30 in the actual training going from 12 30 to 4 30 on both of those dates and just again April 21st we'll be in person at SDC May 19th will be in person for the board we will stream in the other two presenters for fiscal reasons primarily because we have two different people coming in and the topics that they'll be presenting on will be our I mean it'll be to being presented virtually so they will be virtual streamed in but we will be in person at the SDC next I believe that's the final slide I'm happy to entertain any questions as well she's been working doing them large share of this work thank you thank you thank you thank you Mr Giovanni for presenting and yes we are very excited to move this forward.
And present it to everyone and also let the public know where we stand on this on our progress with this training we hope this will be a very foundational and and really give us a a bit of a a guidebook for where to go what to continue the work in our district to support our lgbtq plus students and are there any comments questions Miss Beyer so just deep gratitude to you Miss Chávez and Miss Giovanni for working on this I'm so excited that this is finally coming to fruition it's so I my only question is I know board members will be there will it also include senior leadership staff how are you all thinking is it just us is it deeper than us or is it principles How Deeply is the training going to add to that it did say four boards so is it geared towards boards or will it could it be also geared toward other folks so primarily that was our Focus because the role of boards and governance and.
Just making sure that it would be able to be implemented by Boards like what it is that you're sharing as you're making decisions on policies Etc so it is targeted towards boards but they did affirm for us that it is appropriate for really I mean anyone right but the focus is going to be on board and as of right now we were thinking since we want to make sure that it's not I don't know Intimates maybe not the right word but just to make sure that we can really have those kind of robust deep conversations it would just be limited to board members and Dr Memphis mubanga's cabinet but our plan is obviously not stop here I mean I think I'm not maybe it's not speaking out of turn but I think that the plan is for us to continue you know with educating all of our DPS staff members but this initial training would be that would that is the my understanding of what the board had wanted and that's where.
I think Michelle is Michelle Chávez I'm terrible today I'm just I'm like what in the world. Maloney yeah nice to have some light-heartedness at our meeting so thanks Miss Giovanni on for just kind of clarifying that Sharon said I know we had talked a little bit about the possibility which now I'll kind of open up about inviting task force members to join as well if we if they have already agreed to participate in our lgbtq plus task force without it being mandatory for them it is a long eight hours so maybe if you want to share any thoughts on that so it is a publicly noticed board meeting and it would be open to the public to observe if they you know in person at the SDC but it was kind of following the retreat model where the training is primarily focused towards the board and Senior leadership but it is an open meeting so any members of the task force or the community that would like to be you know in the.
Audience while the training is occurring it is an open meeting but we could encourage that I invite that if people are able yes okay Ms Rogers so I'm very appreciative of all the work you always put in to those I do want to ask that we get an opportunity to Circle back on the task force and make sure all the invitations have gone out to all the people that we expected to go out and that we've gotten a response from folks before we kind of like open up meetings I mean like it's open to the public they can come but if we haven't officially set the task force and started the meetings I hesitate to try to invite them to something.
For that but I know that Mr Saturday has been working on the invitations and and we will probably have an update on that soon maybe the next meeting or but I know there's been a lot of work going into that into the invitations and seeing who who will be on board with the task force so your point is well taken and let's see where we are with when we get a full update on the task force yeah I know I appreciate that so much too I I know we have a lot of I'm glad senior staff will be there with us and intentionally there cabinet folks there I know we have a lot of internal stakeholders that this is near and dear to their hearts and overdue so I hope that if if some folks need time off or need to get a sub to be there they they could you know I don't you know I know this isn't the last training but I know it is it is.
We have a lot of internal expertise and passion towards how we can address these issues in an ongoing way and and how they're playing out in this at the school level so I hope folks will be able to join and then accelerate our next plan for for really more deeply training at the school level folks yeah but thank you so much thank you any of their comments questions yes chair instead just ask a question about costs how much will this cost for the district just curious yes the ballpark cost will be about fifty six hundred dollars for all of the speakers and but not including any catering but about fifty six hundred dollars for and that includes actually Eva from thurington Smith also so just making sure we're ballparking it but thank you I just want cure always curious to know what our investments are for different training so let's pass I also commend that you know this is going to be a public meeting that's going to be streamed and it's going to.
Have interpretation so I would defer to the board on the streaming I I think the board would y'all would make that decision I just I understand that there might be components that will not be streamed because it you know they're I understand there's parts of trainings and if there's like the general educational component of that training for that to be streamed and that to be available to everyone because we these are resources that we can't just spend all this money and it's closed off to only a small group of people anybody in DPS needs to know what our policies are we're working on interpreting translating the policy book and this is one this is in our policy book and you know and there are families who right now have questions about what's the policy because it's not yet available in Spanish or different languages so the thing is that you know this this resource might be what they're going on right now in terms of how this training and how the policies kind of.
Paint the picture of what is DPS attempting to do to protect all our students right and so I think that the educational component should be streamed and then you know if there are definitely the work session pieces that might need to you know have that level of fostering that environment right I I understand that maybe that part will will not be streamed but there's the educational components it's our money's worth for everyone to have access to this thank you does anybody else have a comment on that yeah I just want to Echo what Miss weather has just said I'll agree completely with her this good investment that we really need to stream this the training as we said cabinet members and board I will pretty much caution us to be able to open this at this point to all our employees we don't want a lot of folks coming out in the classrooms as we're dealing with vacancies and all that kind of stuff but if we stream this.
This is a good resource that we can use in the future training with our teachers and principles and so forth so that will be a good compromise yeah I appreciate Dr do we have staff that are identified on the task force we've been through so many lists that's the group I was actually trying to think of as well I'm going to defer this to Mr sarif we do and we are still adding to the list I am working with Miss Chávez and jeremstead on the list we're still working on it filling it out some of the invitations that we've sent out have not been responded to so we're still building it out I'd say that you know.
The enforce members of course could come but they I think might also need their own training to make sure there's kind of norms around common language and understanding as well and so I think I don't want to get too off track but I think they'll need a separate training as well to help make sure that they're ready to go with their work. So I'm hearing a desire for the educational more informational kind of lecture pieces to be streamed so that everyone with interpretation so that anyone at the schools can be have access to it and it is also linguistically accessible to to our families who are primarily or entirely Spanish speaking and and then we will maybe break up some of the time to have more conversation that is not streamed that allows us to go a little deeper as a board and upper Administration okay all right great and this is just for information thank you.
Yes we oh. Next we have a an Arts okay I'm in the right place arts in our schools month Proclamation Dr Hardy would you like to come to share okay thank you thank you so much good evening to our board members Community Dr marbinga as.
You heard in our public comment this is arts in our schools and we are excited to celebrate that tonight it's my pleasure to introduce Mr Jeremy Tucker director of Arts education for Durham Public Schools who will introduce our proclamation to be read by our board celebrating March as arts and schools month and this is before the board tonight for Action Mr Tucker good evening Dr Irma Binga Vice chair Umstead chair excuse me chair Olmsted and vice chair Chávez and members of the DPS Board of Education Arts education is one of The Shining lights of Durham Public Schools if you visit one of our schools you are bound to see right now our students and teachers busy working on their spring musicals presenting visual art exhibitions spring instrumental and vocal concerts as well as dance piano and maybe even a guitar recital district-wide we offer 20 District Arts events throughout the year that includes every DPS school just recently an evening to shine was presented safely by over 500 students in partnership with.
The Durham Performing Arts Center and with the DPS Foundation our DPS Arts Educators LED our students and for the very first time this event showcased our Visual Arts in the program our community host M.C Pierce freelon presented all 200 of our elementary performers with a copy of his book live on stage and we are so lucky to provide each of you with a copy as well a first for the Durham Performing Arts Center was offering streaming translation services provided by our very own DPS multilingual Resource Center to our Spanish-speaking families who were able to enjoy the entire performance in their language we were also excited to offer ASL Services during this year's performance and which was also a first for this production additionally almost 2 300 community members attended this event which is the most ever that have attended and we were most proud to have every single School represented on stage this year it was certainly an evening to shine for our students and District on stage.
We want to thank you for being present to witness our incredible students live on stage each of you are here 100 attendance the community needs to hear that also too our multiple partners departments and community members that truly gave all of our students a platform to shine to continue recognizing our student and teacher successes we do want to invite each of you to the following District events that remain this year our teacher art show with music teacher performances will be presented in partnership with the Durham Arts Council we have an opening scheduled for this Friday from six o'clock to eight o'clock as well as on April 21st from 6 to 8.
Middle School all-county chorus concert at at DSA will be presented on April the 14th at five o'clock we have guest conductor Dale Duncan from Atlanta Georgia that will work with our students and teachers Elementary all-county chorus in partnership with the Carolina Theater will be presented on April 18th at six o'clock with guest conductor Jason Alexander Holmes from Cincinnati Ohio DPS Elementary art show at the Streets of Southpoint will be April 17th through April 29th and the secondary art show at streets of South Point will be held from May 1st through May 13th arts in our schools month is an annual celebration originally proclaimed by the U.S Department of Education that showcases the accomplishments of students in dance music theater and visual arts Nationwide this annual celebration gives our students our teachers and our key decision makers a chance to appreciate how essential Arts education as well as Arts programming are in all of our schools the Arts not only allow our students a vehicle to express themselves but also reinforces.
What students learn in other content areas across the curriculum when the Arts are integrated purposely we also know that when students are enrolled in arts courses and participate in after school Arts programs they have a higher attendance rate as well as a graduation rate DPS celebrates the importance and value of Arts education during this entire month of March and all year but especially this month we also celebrate the power to change all students lives increase School attendance as well as academic performance DPS continues to build its well-rounded and its well-earned reputation as a state leader in arts education and programming hitting records for participation in dance music theater and visual arts for the mentioned reasons we believe in universal access to Arts our school administrators each of you our Community Partners and teachers are working in unison to ensure that we provide both the inspiration and the infrastructure to ensure participation by all of our students so thank you Vice chair Chávez I yield to you and the members of the Board of Education to.
Read this year's arts in our schools month Proclamation thank you very much Dr Hardy and Mr Tucker we are so proud of the Arts in our schools and we're very proud to attend an evening to shine a few weeks ago and if the public has not seen pictures on our social media they are available so we will read this Proclamation each of us taking a section and maybe start with Ms Rogers again Proclamation arts in our schools month whereas all students have the right to an Arts education that includes dance media arts Music Theater Visual Arts and Performing Arts taught by certified art Educators in partnership with Community providers and whereas art education has the power to change students lives and whereas Arts education is a key to reigniting students learning in a post-pandemic world and whereas Arts education helps nurture healthy inclusive communities where all points of view are respected and whereas Arts education experiences help students understand their own cultural roots and appreciate others cultural roots and traditions and.
Whereas Arts education supports the social and emotional well-being of students and fosters a more positive safer School environment and whereas Arts education is part of the well-rounded education for every student as outlined in the every student succeeds act and in state law therefore be it resolved that Durham Public Schools Board of Education pledges to maintain and grow the Arts education programs as well as proclaims March 1st through 31st 2023 as arts in our schools month and asks all to celebrate the importance of the Arts in our students lives signed the ninth day of March 2023.
Thank you everyone. Miss valladares this is very exciting and I just I I want to thank our staff I want to thank you know our wonderful wonderful directors everyone who has been involved to support Arts but especially I mean when we when we have Jeremy Tucker we are so proud of all the work that you've done and all the ways you plug in and believe me it is it is it is just medicine to see our kids enjoying the Arts to see their faces I mean you can't pay like there's there's no amount of money we can throw you know at just an intention and then to see that materialize you know there's there's no price tag that's what I'm trying to say there's no price tag to what we were able to see at the show in the evening to shine but I also want to tell you something else that was so encouraging because some of my colleagues and I went and visited a school and I'm telling you how.
The Arts the integration kind of what was mentioned tonight about how to integrate how can we Empower our teachers to implement arts in in the curriculum right and so we went with my colleague Millicent Rogers and my colleague Natalie Byer we went to DSA and they were doing you know the 150 faces of Durham history right and it was like an exhibit but here's the Artic the art component was that our students were supposed to look up some some folks and and figure out and they named artists and people who were musicians and also of course Paulie Murray and they had their own presentations and we were kind of sitting there and there was definitely this air of these students are already giving us the information and how they're able to integrate that and what is their response and there was like a really good good reflective piece that I felt was very artistic it was it was very beautiful in the ways the students shared about what this project.
Meant for them the ways they interacted with one another kind of shared Stories the ways we had to share our own stories they made me you know also like appreciate the Arts because in the background Miss Kim Eugene Fox georgino right had in the office so you know in the office there was a background in music and it was Amadeus and that was playing in the background and I was like immediately like this is creating the environment for these kind of projects and this kind of Engagement and I I did I did do my own engaging in Arts education by kind of sharing my rendition which was really fast of Japan satwa and I kind of shared it and I was like because I told Miss Kim jugino that just just hearing hearing that that element of creating the space you know for students to interact to create and and I know they're going to further that work I mean they're going to come back and maybe next time do more you know involve.
More of the Arts but I want to encourage our Educators in as many ways as possible not just this month as you said the whole year Arts is life-changing Arts can be the experience that will be engraved in your brain and they both know what I'm talking about because I've there are things engraved in my brain because there were people who focused the Arts thank you I made the motion already ma'am I'm I didn't make the motion okay I'm is that can I make them I'll make the motion that we the motion to pass the proclamation arts in our schools month second is there any further discussion I just said Thank you and to all the Arts teachers in all of our classrooms and across the district Jeremy for your recognition not only in Durham but across the state but also all the teachers and Educators every day who are helping engage our kids just want to say appreciation to them and our community members who also support that work.
Museum and Durham history was a part of that exhibit but we know we have several other community organizations to help support our kids in the classroom so thank you thank you and also to pierce I just want to showcase this amazing book that we all received tonight you know daddy daughter day and so what a great job Pierce did emceeing and it's great to see Durham alumni sharing their Arts talents with the world so thank you all awesome any further discussion all right it has been moved and properly seconded and now all in favor please say aye aye any opposed all right the Arts in our schools month Proclamation unanimously passes thank you if we can go ahead and pull up our priority 4 presentation tonight the board will have the opportunity to hear information from both priority four and priority five our priority four leads are Dr Stacy D Stewarts chief of schools and Mr Williams out of Chief Communications officer at this time I will turn it over to Mr Sutter.
Members of the board fellow cabinet members guests and all the ships in C thank you very much tonight I'm excited to share information with you about the priority for strengthening School family and Community engagement if we could go to the next slide please we have a wide-ranging team of DPS staff members and colleagues who have helped us on the three goal teams that actually went through a bit of a transformation this year reflecting reorganization and transformation in Durham Public Schools and I'd like to ask Dr Dietrich Danner and Messina Cooper to please stand very briefly they are the leads for priority for goals for a 4B and 4C 4B and 4C for family school and Community engagement and Community Partnerships were combined and the leadership of those teams was shifted reflecting the the changes that Dr mavinga made organizationally in moving Community engagement tasks some Community engagement tasks into Dr Tanner's office of federal programs and Community engagement and clarifying Ms Cooper's role in charge of marketing and strategic Communications as well.
This has been a really good realignment and refocusing of our efforts that is going to carry us forward as we go into the next five-year strategic plan if we could go to the next slide please in depth the priority the the goal descriptions go for a by 2023 DPS will improve the perception of each School based on the following four questions and the teacher working conditions survey supportive School Community a supportive of the school school maintains clear two-way communication an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect in the school and overall my school is a good place to work and learn goal for B that DPS will strengthen family and school Community engagement by demonstrating a 20 increase in parent and family participation in school programs and foresee by 2023 every school will have a community partner that is committed to providing meaningful programs and services to meet the diverse needs of students as with so many other of our priorities and goals kovid had a great impact on us and.
Having a having a pandemic drop on you in the middle of a five-year plan is nothing anyone was anticipating but we are proud of the efforts that we have done to rebound from the pandemic not just academically but also in terms of priority four on the next slide some detail as with so many of our other goals in the Strategic plan we had annual benchmarks for Community Support two-way communication and trust and mutual respect and a good place to work in the in the in go4a I have said this several times that the the use of the teacher working in conditions survey as a proxy for Community Community feedback about our schools was a bit of a compromise at the establishment of the strategic plan what resources what information what measures do we have and it was an imperfect one but it was something that we could track year after year after year if you go to the next slide you will see that we largely met our goals in 2019.
2020 and 2021 you'll see a consistent increases from Top from the on the first three lines in each category the ones that I want to call to your attention however the most important ones for this report are the purple line and the blue line at the bottom the purple line represents the teacher working condition survey results in 2022 and the blue line below that was our Target for this year so this was the first year that we fell short of those targets and the 2023 teacher working conditions survey Is Yet To Come and is being in the process of being rolled out for our employees on as we go on the next slide you see the strategies that were established by the Strategic plan committee back in 2018 to establish formal relationships and collaborative structures to engage stakeholders facilitate open dialogue with stakeholders engage parents of the larger community and ongoing dialogue about the changes needed to prepare more students for Success diversify methods of two-way communication regularly survey students families and.
Communities build a culture of collaboration and share decision making focus on continued professional development for teachers ensure teachers have the time tools and Trust they need to improve teaching and learning as you can see some of those strategies are less about engagement and more about the teacher working conditions survey as a tool so if we go to the next slide and we look at some of the key accomplishments by July 2023 at the at the close of this Five-Year Plan that are focused on engagement you'll see that we have worked on that on school perceptions through several different tools and also worked on two-way Communications the Showcase of schools restoring that after the pandemic establishing the use of engage.dpsnc.net which we're in the process of ramping up again for the latest growing together around soliciting robust Community feedback for the equity policy work developing a student enrollment working group publicizing the district through print materials such as the spark Insider magazine that goes to every subscriber and purchaser of Durham.
Magazine as well as as we just heard an evening to shine our Blackboard app which is which has been a long blank time coming and is about to get a further upgrade as we roll out to parents more instructions about how they can use it to actually sign in and receive direct messaging from us and coming forward we are pleased that we are receiving increased support from the DPS foundation for some of our marketing initiatives backpacks that went to all of our Pre-K Partners filled with coloring books and goodies but also marketing materials for Rising kindergartners telling them how great it's going to be to be a part of Durham Public Schools we're also working with them on a project for targeting Rising fifth graders to make sure that we have additional additional support for our middle schools and this is these are projects that Ms Cooper as director of marketing and strategic Communications has really taken the lead in and has solicited lots of support from DPS foundation for helping make those possible.
The growing together project is an ongoing thing it is an example of robust engagement that has also taught us how much more we need to do in the future in the future and the parent ambassador program that we've established to provide two-way Communications and we're continuing to roll that out we're looking forward to soon having a parent Ambassador at every school that is priority that is goal 4A if I can move on quickly to goal for B by 2023 DPS will strengthen family school and Community engagement with a 20 increase in family of parent and family participation in school programs it's important to I would like to I'll go briefly through the strategies and the first one is the most important one the Family Academy as the Hub and the universal platform for apparent engagement programming as we are expanding what we are required to do with title one to what we should be doing as a best practice at every school the things that we do work for all of.
Our students and their families increasing multilingual communication partnering with Community organizations to sponsor engagement establishing routine methods for obtaining feedback demonstrating improvement in public perception and utilizing an annual parent survey to gather input regarding family participation in school programs and it's important that we go to the next slide and repeat that the next slide I'm sorry one more Endura Public Schools family engagement is a shared responsibility in which schools families Community agencies and organizations are building and fostering relationships in meaningful ways where all stakeholders are committed to their Children's Learning and Development it is important to us that this is about more than just perception but about authentic relationship building and connection with our families so that they can influence our schools and we can support them in influencing their students on the next slide some of our key accomplishments again Family Academy I can't I can't emphasize enough the importance and the support of the multilingual Resource Center they have an important role that is separate from Community engagement they are service.
Providers they provide mandated services that are very very very important but they are also tremendous Reef resources for ideas and and and strategies and assistance in ensuring that our engagement reaches the entire community we have the title one parent family engagement and advisory Council we have the parent ambassador program again which supports that engagement further and I've already mentioned how this goal this this family engagement goal worked so well with our partnership goal for goal 4C that we just combined the teams because there's there's too much Synergy there I also want to particularly highlight that one of Dr mabenga's non-negotiables for our schools this year that he set out that all schools are required to engage parents in meaningful ways that result in trusting relationships increasing enrollment and collaborative partnership for student achievement and these are the things that Dr Stewart my co-lead on the on this priority team has emphasized with her principal supervisors and the relationships going forward there and then final goal in the in priority.
For 4C by 2023 every school will have a community partner that is committed to providing meaningful programs and services to meet the diverse needs of students in 28 in in 2019 the first year of benchmarks we pretty much blew that out of the water with Effectiveness because if you even take a if you even we'll go to a couple of slides ahead of our definition of Community Partnerships we weren't just talking about random stuff we were talking about significant significant academic social emotional benefit for these programs and even with that more restrictive definition practically every school had that partnership right out of the beginning and I am going to show you thanks to Dr dander's team you have received a handout that lists it's just a sampling of the school partner the partners that our schools have and it's page after page and line after line of organizations businesses Faith communities who are working very directly with our schools that our schools have told us they are receiving important support for.
Engagement for morale building for to tutoring whatever our schools have tremendous Partners in a community that truly values public education if I could go to the next slide the strategies including a comprehensive needs assessment at every school that could benefit from Community Partnerships identifying Community Partners for every school establishing relationships between school and Community Partners and evaluating the effectiveness of those Partnerships and then the next slide has that definition showing that we are really focusing on academic college career Readiness or social emotional Partnerships with our schools every school has at least one and as you can see every school has has a village behind them to raise to raise a child so key accomplishments by July 2023 yes all schools have at least one Community partner and we are developing a new partnership engagement process and a rubric for schools to assess the effectiveness of those Partnerships in conclusion before we take your questions and Dr Danner and Ms Cooper are here to help me out as well as Dr Stewart.
We're excited about what's coming next the the definition of community engagement that we've been operating under has evolved significantly since 2018. Community engagement we thought of early on as just being out there when we think about Community engagement now when we see what our partners in City and County government have been doing when we see the great steps forward that we took in community engagement with growing together as well as the opportunities for even greater success Outreach and equity we're taking those lessons to the we're taking those lessons to heart and we are working with the strategic planning steering committee for the next five years to really really strengthen our focus and our intentionality about engagement the next five years are going to be a significant step forward and with that we will take your questions.
Thank you very much Mr sarath for walking us through that and are there comments questions Ms Rogers thank you all so much for working on this I'm really excited about the idea of every school having a partnership Community partner that's really helpful I think that lots of schools rely on that and I know it helps has a positive impact on the outcomes of students lives I think I'm gonna work backwards my first question is around slide 16. about the development of new partnership engagement process and developed the rubric for school says that's effectiveness of Community Partnerships so this plant this strategic plan is sunsetting but we're still in development phase in this instance when do we expect to have the rubric so that it is active and ready to really assess those Partnerships so the intent and Dr Danner I'll ask you to comment if you have anything to add but the intent is to develop that so that we will have something to build from for the new strategic plan.
That's going to be approved before July 2023. That's the that is the goal that is the goal okay okay is there a place that schools that don't currently have a partnership are not or know that there's something missing in there tool chest of Partners for them to go and look and see what other schools have if they can lean on other community members something like this that they can access to see what's working and what's not working yeah we don't we don't intend for this to Simply Be an item for your folders this is information this is information that we can share with our with our schools we know that some of our schools have more access to resources than others we know that it's important to Foster natural relationships between constituencies and their schools but also to ensure that the schools that are that have been left out are not left out so we have the we have Partners we have partners and we have a strategy around.
Partners for a reason I think that it is fair to say that we are we are and have been since we came back from the pandemic Evol we've evolved from the everybody's got a partner which everybody's got a partner to what is a stretch goal what is the future how do we ensure that schools have what they need and that is a very important part of the engagement planning for the 2023 to 2028 Five-Year Plan okay I'm looking at the list and I'm wondering is there anybody in the cabinet level or just below the cabinet or at each individual school that's looking to diversify the list because there are some places where we could have some more Community Partners that like to see more masks on the list I'd like to see more food pantries on the list I can think of a whole lot of agencies I know this is just a sampling but are we intentionally looking to diversify our list of Partnerships absolutely and this is you know this is.
A start this is a self-reported start the next step is identifying what's missing and identifying what can be shared okay and some schools are listing ptas and booster clubs and I know that a lot more schools than the ones that are listing them have them are we making sure that they're leveraging Partnerships that already exist or are we letting them self-identify these their Partners so this began as self-identification and illustration this is the next step one of the things that I wanted to do and do in presenting this information was to give credit to those partners and to make sure that we are celebrating them so that you know them and if you see organizations there that you have that you have an affinity with that you can share with them and give them give them credit but it's also again it's this it's it's the start what's missing what can be shared last question is there a formal partnership necessary like some contract or mou necessary for schools to call them a community partner.
I'm sorry. So we wanted to begin with an initial stage of identifying Community Partners for every school now that we have Community Partners identified for every school we must dig deeper and so in order to do that we must ensure that we have a rubric that assesses the value of each partner and that's what we must develop and have approved before June 30th and so that's our goal so we can roll this out in our Leadership Retreat with our district leaders and our school principals so they will have a better understanding of what it means to have a meaningful deep in relationship with a community partner that will involve a former relationship thanks y'all.
All right hello. Okay Ms Meyer thank you all I I really love an update on this plan and maybe it's because I've been here so long I kind of so much appreciate how far we have come from a staff of two or three to actually having fully built out social media having fully built out an app of our own which y'all didn't talk about too much but is is an exciting thing and so I just want to applaud all the work and all the steps and all the people that have both envisioned all of this and just done the work and acknowledge that you all know there's more to do and so like one of the things that I look for and I've have I just curate and find ptas and and our school Twitter accounts and things like that have we aggregated that so that if someone is new to a school part of their introductory package is you might want to join these groups or follow us here like is that have we.
Can I can I go and find the the GSA at all the high schools from our Central website like are we still working on building that kind of district-wide knowledge base is that a piece of it that's still coming that is that is still a work in progress and you can see a reference to that that we're working towards that in the I believe the in the 4A accomplishments that you know expanded use in social media that also includes letting families know where that where that information is we have an opportunity an important opportunity before us with the launch of the launch of growing together in 2024 to ensure that we have information about every school and every school program and every and all of the reasons that people should enroll in those schools and also how they can find information be connected to the gsas know where the social media accounts are know how to get on Instagram Facebook and if it still survives in 2044 Twitter.
That that is very much part of our ongoing work it is not finished by any means but we are looking forward to that opportunity you have approved the use of the McKenzie Scott donation and part there is a component of that to ensuring that we are helping to put our schools best faces forward through growing together and using some of that resources will allow some of those resources will allow us the bandwidth to really really support our families in a way that we haven't been able to up to this point I appreciate that and I appreciate how far we've come also in terms of language justice but also acknowledging especially that we need to keep pushing that accessibility forward as well even you know having sign language interpretation at evening to shine I mean so much of of making our district inclusive is important as you all continue to stretch the goals here and and stretch what we can do as a district and y'all continue to win Awards.
I will say like one thing that's always bugged me about this about 4A particularly is that the only metrics we had were teacher working conditions which are one metric but we don't actually have necessarily great metrics for this and I kind of keep it temperature check on a bunch of social media things and you know we do have more ambassadors and more parents that come and and engage in a more nuanced conversation about our schools and and we have great folks like really singing our praises and and and standing up for the incredible work our teachers and our principals are doing every day but it also just takes one negative experience for someone to just trash us and these are these are all built relationships that that we're building trust with folks and we're building that in person after a pandemic and so maybe it's something that we need to invest in more and I'm glad you know some of the Scott money is going there but as y'all dream and envision together.
And work with the DPS Foundation that's exciting I I think this is a really critical time for us to continue to support this trust building work and so just bring us your dreams with this new strategic plan I think it's I think it's super super important all right and again and I can share that one of the things that we're going to be doing in the very near future is we have an annual parent engagement survey that is that is shared in all of the tradition all the traditional ways but we're also going to supplement that with taking advantage of the app and the new Blackboard communication system that we have we're going to start doing some phone surveys of our families phone app email it all goes into the same place are you satisfied with the communication you receive at the school level are you satisfied the communication you receive at the district level and I prefer to I I appreciate getting information through these channels just really simple quick.
Phone surveys of our families that could touch a lot more people than we're currently touching in English and Spanish right and that you didn't even talk about the podcast I didn't hear you talk about the podcast but that's also another exciting use of social media technology the app itself do you have numbers on how many families are using that and did I miss that if you said it you did not miss that I'm gathering those numbers one of the things that I'm doing in the next couple of weeks I need to work with Tony on that but there's one level of functionality in the app that we need to push out to our families and train them how to use that if they sign in through the app if they connect PowerSchool to the app we can directly communicate with them through the app so it's another way that they can hear from us without getting a phone message that they may hang up on after 20 seconds because they get so.
Many things like that so I'll have an update for you I owe that to my colleagues on the cabinet as well but once we've done that push so that it's going so that it can be more of a two-way tool than a than a one-way tool I'll have those numbers for you thank you so much Ms Lewis good evening everyone sorry I came in a little bit late and missed the presentation live but I have looked at it beforehand and had a couple of questions you may have answered in the presentation so I won't go into a whole lot of questions I will follow up and watch the video of it but one of the things I saw is that we were meeting the metrics year over year for the family engagement oh not a family gauge for the engagement at each School Community partner at each school and that every school has at least one Community partner when I came in just now what I was hearing was we don't necessarily.
Know the the quality of that relationship we're going to do some deeper work and make sure we're having good quality relationships I think that might be what I heard I think we have we have from our rubric from the definition of the partner that emphasizes academic college career Readiness or social emotional we're confident that every school has at least one partner that fits that bill but where do we go from here and that was part of the conversation that we've just had so we have lots of Partners what we don't have yet but we will have by the end of this by the end of this Academic Year is the rubric that will help us study that evaluate that and drive us moving forward in the next strategic plan thank you for pointing out this piece of paper in front of me because this is what I was looking for what does it look like quantity wise in each of the schools broken down this was exactly what my question and to Ms.
Roger's Point earlier this is self-reported so this is just a start all right yeah okay chair chair I'm study thank you all for this really rich presentation I think this is my time on the board we've come such a long way in our public affairs and being able to communicate all the great stories about DPS I've appreciated seeing more communication on our local news as well about the things that are happening here and I think that's because of the work of you all's office I was talking to someone recently about how the herald sun is not really a thing anymore and so I think that means our public affairs office now has to be their own kind of news source in many ways the people in the community about what's happening so thank you all for doing that and doing it so well I have a couple said if I could interrupt briefly while you're complimenting the work of my public affairs team I also want to compliment the work of Dr Danner his.
Team Pablo Friedman his team and all the work that's being done in engagement as well as marketing and Communications the collaborative effort is what I'm hearing which we know is true I have a couple of comments questions I wonder about how is the central office level supporting schools in their Communication in this engagement I think you know the metrics here are from you all look at I know a central office way but it's kind of a both end you've got central office doing communication you got schools can do in communication and is there any ways that you are supporting and connecting with each other or trying to streamline how that works so one example of that that I want to lift up is what we're doing with growing together as we go into the secondary phase of that and which we're in which we will be sharing some information with our community about tomorrow as a matter of fact we worked as you know really really hard on Elementary engagement and we.
Heard your message loud and clear about the importance of school level engagement and we are doing a lot more at the front end with the secondary engagement with providing Communications toolkits and resources for our schools so that they are better positioned better supported and feel like they've got a little more Breathing Room in order to share information about what what's being considered what's being asked we're going to survey our entire Community starting next week about about growing together secondary and we're giving our schools a lot more support in how to get that information get those surveys out to their families that's a huge Equity issue because District level communication can only reach so many so easily I appreciate that learning from the elementary and thinking about implementing that differently for secondary and I'm sure we'll take the lessons we learned from this and may use it for whatever happens next but I think that balance you just kind of illustrate is so important families will probably listen to the weekly call from their.
Principal maybe sorry chip over the call sometimes from you so how do we make sure that we balance that out it's not like some Deputy superintendent for operations hasn't told me that he hangs up on me frequently that's my stuff sorry it's probably because he already knows what the message is going to say that's probably what it is the other thing I wanted and I also appreciate you all talking about the communication kits that you're kind of sending out I think that would also create schools having similar messaging that they're pubbing in a way that I think is really helpful because you might have one school to have someone that's really great at doing this another school that has someone that needs some support so that's good on the thought about the depth of relationships with Community Partners I wonder if the question is more of like what schools are missing and how can we support them I think schools are really good at deciding who they want to.
Partner with and then saying no actually when that partnership isn't working I think I trust our leaders to do that and so for you all's time it might be better spent thinking about what Partnerships we need to find to match versus trying to figure out the depth part because I really just think schools have a really good handle on like principals are pretty good at saying no and yes to what works and what doesn't work that's just something for y'all to consider and think about and then as we are going into this new iteration of the Strategic plan you talked about wanting to be better what are you thinking about big picture as areas of improvement that you want to focus on I know the Strategic plan is in process and there's a lot of community conversations but I didn't know if your team already had some thoughts about where you want to focus we do have some thoughts I don't want to get ahead of the steering committee.
So we will be coming back to you but I think one of the things that we are being very intentional about in this iteration and what we're bringing back to the steering committee is a more laser-like focus on engagement for its own sake the authentic communication authentic connection as a district public perception isn't of course it's hugely important but the the work of the school district the work of the priorities the five priorities is all about continuous Improvement of the school system academically social emotionally Human Resources engagement and operations if we do all those and if my team tells the story properly that will take care of itself so priority four we're bringing to the Strategic plan steering committee goals that are laser focused on the authentic two-way engagement to promote relationship thank you that's all my questions all right thank you so much I did talk to you all and we went over all this and you brought so you brought this which it excites me so much.
And I'm so grateful so I'm not gonna ask a whole lot of questions because I've I've had my my go I just want to just let you all know how appreciative I am of this list I see a lot of you know Partnerships that aren't yet reflected and I understand you know to our chair betina's point that there are maybe some Partnerships that have been sunsetted but we also there are some Partnerships that even if they only served one time for example I believe it was our chair Bettina I believe it was my colleague Natalie Beyer we went to ikepo for the shade structure and so I looked in EK point I was like okay let me look at Ike Po and I saw it was a Dermatology Association that donated a shade structure and then also I didn't also see equa on there where Echo helped with the rain garden and I know that this is Melissa Rooney right and and helping with these Partnerships so there's definitely.
Opportunities for us to there may be historical maybe maybe the dermatologist Association it was a one-time kind of thing but I think those in-kind donations of materials maybe money or there's maybe ways to kind of tell those tell the story even if you know there might be current Partnerships or they might be one-time Partnerships and I think those are all legit and valid the other thing I just wanted to share is you know that I know you know we have so many partners and the question that community members have asked since the 18 million we're still having conversations Dr mobenga that 18 million you know there's so many conversations oh my goodness and the question is well how many you know we see what the money's going towards right and we see that you know like some money is going to go to support you know like mental health and and the festival the whole the whole child approach that the EPS Foundation has so we have it we have a precedent for supporting.
Community efforts and they're like how what other community efforts are we supporting and the question is how does somebody do that like say for example and I didn't see it on here like Aaron Harris Sidekicks you know we know that there's definitely like the The Hub farm that Hub Farm has requested our support and we've all kind of seen that like they they're definitely our partner we know that the Durham Literacy Center is not featured on here but they have been working in our schools and they're not listed here and Durham Literacy Center they're like we have results and so how do we continue to kind of look at these metrics because I go to my the point of my colleague Millicent Rogers who said the rubric right to kind of see if there's a program that needs to be scaled up at what point does DPS say hey I will meet you where you're at and let's expand this program because Durham Literacy Center is are doing a great job you're.
You know you're showing metrics at these different schools let's let's promote that and I also know that this is already a conversation that our admins are already having Charles Hamilton Foundation you know like you know there's there's boost oh my gosh I have to say Booth science program of course you know not on this list but yet there are some schools like they're feeder schools elementary schools and and you know there's you know the Life Center Cornwallis and and so many others and the Thomas mentorship Leadership Academy so there are so many different opportunities also just because today we passed the Arts Proclamation you know we have Americorps that has artists year I believe which is something else that is an opportunity these are like upcoming offerings that maybe a school is like I want to have one of these Americorps you know trained artists to come and help with you know development of activities for our kids and so I think that even just if somebody reaches out to us I'd love to.
Send that to you all and be able to say hey these people reached out and they said artist year is happening we have some amazing artists who can come in from all parts of the world because you know Americorps gets from all parts or all parts of the United States actually and are willing to do that and so we have that opportunity on there the other thing that I will also say is college access College access College access College access you have no idea the number of students I talked to and I asked them have you talked to a counselor about college access and some of those answers are sad you know and I know that we have a an understanding problem in terms of our students being able to have that but we have Partnerships with and right now my I know that we have Partnerships with Duke and UNC and I know it's a c College advising core and so they're not on here but those Partnerships what high schools have.
Those Partnerships you know whether from UNC or from duke those College advising Court there's also latinx Ed it's not on this list but they're also like they have supports Adelante Coalition cfnc Juanes and Juana like college access is one of those things that is an equity concern like how many students actually get to talk about college and kind of map out their future so I'd love for us to once we have the robust list to start categorizing you know these are these are schools that have college access Partnerships and that way we can start even looking at where the gaps are because College access is an equity concern and every student should have access and we also are growing our own the other thing I would just want to say is that Community Schools the pillar of community engagement it's a pillar and we know that there are some schools that have somebody who's designated who actually does these Partnerships but this is something we have to do as a.
District and I agree that this is you know that pillar is a pillar of you know part of the Strategic plan in terms of like how we want to continue to to to stay true to these these Frameworks that talk about you know how to provide support for the whole child and so in that in that support for the whole child is also the supports that help the family a lot of a lot of supports that come for students themselves may not include the family you know like if there's programming the school day the families don't get to participate but there are those Partnerships that will help us with one of those metrics that you shared which is two-way communication now my only caveat to this thing is that you will not have two-way communication if you the department that actually does this with families in terms of interpretation like our immigrant Community is diverse and we need to scale up because I saw that world relief is on there and I think.
World relief because they are supporting us in that area because we have yet to build that capacity to hire people and we're not even meeting the the basic number for the Spanish-speaking population that is the dominant the group right now in terms of like percentages but we have other languages that are growing we need to anticipate those changes and so my question is we spend some money and we gave some money to create a family engagement Center and I believe in that because I think that this all of this if there's questions from community members I want the family engagement I want them to have those conversations about how do we how do we support or how do we scale up or you know what how do we get funds and support and how are we listed on the website in terms of resources and I did send the website for our family engagement Family Academy those links I was sending them out to folks for folks to check out but.
We also need to make sure that we do not forget that two-way communication includes the equity piece of giving families the ability to engage and not have language be a barrier and so how are we going to also even though we didn't give any money to the MRC with the 18 million but we always talk about the MRC here the MRC there the MRC with growing together the MRC how are we scaling that up so that you know we we do what the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 said that we have to provide that resource for families and make sure that there is no inequity in terms of barriers because of language and all the other important things so that's on my own so one question how are we ensuring that as we build the family engagement Center and we do all this stuff that we do have two-way communication and increased language access capacity.
It's fire there is that's a loaded question all right thank you so much I'm gonna go back to your previous concern about growing MRC I completely agree with you but I would like for all of us to understand this couple things number one for 18 million dollars it was one-time money and we were very very reserved not to put positions there that's going to be reoccurring number two I'm really glad that we're doing this growing together as you can see the trend in a lot of our Urban District Across the Nation as well enrollment is going really down anytime enrollment is going down that means funding is not coming to us sorry we're gonna wait to see until August where we're gonna end up I think at one point where 33 000 students now we're floating somewhere 131 so for us to be able to get funds from the states we gotta have those babies on the seat for us to be able to be pushed in those positions we're.
Going to make sure the funding has got me from the state as well the number three I would like to say this there are a lot of needs if you recall the last presentation was done last year or not not unless your last board meeting I think one of our depressing issue that we are facing at this point seventy percent of our staff that are coming to us there are a lot of Entry or emergency license folks so what is really keeping me up all night here it's pretty much how can we have enough mentors to be able to support all those students and teachers in the classroom I completely agree it would be a lot of needs when it comes to counselors and so forth but we also have some Community Support Emily k Community in school those coaches and all that we have a great community that are coming pretty much to support our students when it comes to college access and all that are we really where we need to be not.
Yet we still have a lot of needs but I just bear with us we really want to work really hard to improve our enrollments because when enrollment is a a student's course the money that we get from the state close to seven thousand dollars per student having a good thousand students that's a lot of money that can come to us so that we'll be able to start adding positions in other departments so well noted if I can be brief well noted and we really want to make sure that's all we are providing our families with supports that they need to wear Communications yes definitely you need to be in Spanish as well to make sure that app and loan is not going to be sufficient for our families that's what we're starting with this initiative people for what's the community engagement that's how we presented we have half million dollars there that's just starting I think with that you're gonna see that we're gonna try to expand it.
Because we are planning to you start one money as well to support that particular initiative but stay tuned as we're moving with this next strategic plan we'll be able to come up with a lot of details on that Dr moving I'm sorry the title one money just for clarification I don't want funds federal funds right can they go to the MRC because it's it's actually a right it's it's actually you know civil rights of 1964. can Title One funds come towards the MRC and be used to meet that basic level requirement of giving access to families there's a specific formula when it comes to Title One how we need to appropriate those funding based on the formula per school and then there is what we call set aside money that's come to the district and sometime in the past with that set aside money we support other initiatives that we're pretty much reoccurring and then we have one percent that's for Parental involvement need to be pulled out of 31 money so.
To answer your question yes there's a possibility but I do not know if those funds has been committed in the past for other initiatives so we we are open and give us time here to see how we're going to progress with this new strategic plan and puts the money where you need to be. Right I have just a couple comments and then I think move on if there are no other comments I wanted to say thank you again Mr suddath and Dr Danner and Miss Cooper for all your work on this and I wanted to say that I am excited about the tool kits as well I think that's a great initiative to support our schools in communicating through growing together I I want to just make a brief comment about the the slide I'm not sure what number it is but for priority for 4A where the 2021 percentages for all of those four metrics were higher and in some cases substantially higher than in 2022 and I'm just wondering if that's.
A result of a sense of unity that happened during the pandemic and then where it kind of fell back after after we went back in person and some of the just realities of being back in in person and and the difficulties of kind of catching students up and all of that kind of affected how teachers were feeling about the their working conditions so so that was just one one point I wanted to make on that and then I just wanted to say about the Community Partnerships I think this is a great a great start in our data collection around this and I imagine there are a lot of ways that this list will be able to be used I also just wanted to say that our I hope that something that will come out of this is that different Community Partners will see the benefits of being part of a partnership with DPS as well in order to kind of facilitate the growth of that so I think this is this is great for us.
To know what we're doing but it's also great for the community to receive that information and see how maybe they can increase their involvement or get involved with our public schools and and leverage the resources they have and and also see the rewards from that as well so I hope that's something that will come out of this sort of bringing to the surface what the nature of Our Community Partnerships and and where sort of regionally they fall so those are those are my comments are there any other comments yeah yeah go ahead the universities that we have some so I am so proud of my alma mater nccu being featured in a lot of these schools I have also had conversations not recently I don't know who on the board is having the conversation right now but my concern has always been from the time that I've been you know with Duke the the Duke and Community Affairs office and how they've they have like these Legacy Schools that they have.
Over years you know and the question has been can Duke expand you know that that commitment and so Dr mubenga you seem like you have an update on that or oh yes he does okay okay great yes I think prior to Dr Stephanie Williams arriving to Durham Duke was supporting eight schools surrounding Duke now pretty much the strategies has been all the fonts have to go straight to our DPS foundation and based on that that's how they're going to dispatch they support all the schools in addition to what Duke officer Durham that's supporting the funds to send straight to the foundation if there are other pertinent needs that we have that will open for us to have those conversations so that they'll be able to support now they're supporting pretty much the whole District not only the eight school that needs to support traditionally and as a matter of fact Dr mobingo wrote a piece about Dr Stephanie Williams that's in the current issue of Durham magazine their influencers section or anything there's a two-paced.
Two-page piece about her that speaks directly to the expansion of the service they have they were a great partner for us before she has kicked it up another notch. Okay I think we're ready to move on thank you so much for this update all right next we are going to have a we're going to talk about the retention bonus of fifteen hundred dollars proposed from the Esser funding in September 2023 and Mr lessor will guide us through good evening board members we've had this discussion before we're bringing it to you tonight in regards to a fifteen hundred dollar bonus out of the Esser funding in September to use up whatever is remaining in PRC 171 that in September of 23 and also we'll probably have to use some of the 181 but we have to plan ahead so we'll bring it to you tonight to allow us to move forward with the planning of that and the budgeting of that as soon as the beginning of the fiscal year starts fifteen hundred dollar retention bonus.
To be paid in September to all employees that are on payroll status in August and from that standpoint it's a short turnaround because we're going to have to do it early in the month no later than the second week because we have to do we have to close out that program and spend all the money by September except for those things that are encumbered in salary and benefits can't be encumbered so with that said it will be paid to all individuals and pay status retirees substitutes all of all Personnel we will have a floor of five hundred dollars because we've got to turn this around so quickly anyone that's in Pay status will get at least five hundred dollars with that said we always have to pay the Social Security that goes along with that as a matching benefit from that Stampede standpoint and as well as the federal taxes that will be applied to those checks so we asked you tonight to approve that so that we can go forward with our planning.
Can you say how much the total is going to be yeah we anticipated being about 7.5 million dollars could fluctuate but that's what we're going to be planning on at this point in time. Thank you Mr muscle germ set thank you all for this update this feels like maybe the third or fourth time we've done a bonus which I think is really appreciated by our staff and I'm really grateful that we have had the foresight to do that you mentioned though running out this account and needing to close it out and so I was wondering are we thinking that this might be the last time that we did or I don't know if I want to even put that out there but it sounds like we are rounding out one round of federal dollars this year so just want to hear your thoughts on that correct in the fall we will be running out this pot of money we still have PRC 181 we also have projects that are.
Planned for that those funds at this point in time we'll have to reevaluate it as we move down the road and as we get closer to the end of next fiscal year of 23.24 because it has to be spent by the end of September 24 except obligations that are out there for contracts and things of that nature that can go forward as late as January of 25. I'll just follow it up so I again appreciate you all doing this kind of work it makes me and I think this coupled with our advocacy on increasing teacher supplements this budget asked for this year for increasing classified staff like we hope I'm wondering what other initiatives we not need to put in place as if we oh if we have to Sunset the bonuses because I think there's a time where Federal money will be gone how we continuing to help support our Educators that's kind of a finances slash HR match but I'm wondering how do we also continue to to support them and there's.
Something there for that that's awesome let me start off with that then I'm gonna proceed to Mr be sure I think for this particular bonus we're very fortunate because of our summer programming which we're supposed to put aside about 10 million dollars we did not really serve a lot of students so our fast forwarding when we get to this summer depending on how many students we're going to serve that's the fact that we're going to depend on to have some kind of flexibility if we recall there was about 42 to 45 million dollars that was assigned for operations now we are really moving quickly with that you're going to see the money is going to go down quickly it's only in the area of academics and some of them with their positions that we had and that now we are sunsetting some of those position contact tracers and all that kind of stuff so we're not going to know much until probably at the end of June once we.
Finish with 171 we finished our summer programming then we will know how much more we got remaining then we'll be able to make some adjustment from that point but regarding supporting our Educators I think this time as you know we're bringing this Saturday for our classified employees and we're gonna see what our legislatures will do for our Educators and then moving forward in the future and I will see how we can work with our County commissions I think for this year we really wanted just to make sure that we address our classified employees.
Ms Rogers thank you so appreciative of the staff that continues to come back to DPS year after year another bonuses help that it's clear that half time people will get 50 of the bonus it'll be prorated based on their percent employed do we have a deadline of an employment date for their attention bonus well it would be August 31st when we do our final pay for that month because we have to turn it around right away so somebody hired in July would still get their attention from yes okay anybody that's in payroll status as of August 31st will get a bonus in September thanks yeah I appreciate y'all bringing this I appreciate that there is federal money to do this and as much as possible we share it with our Educators and our every staff member and the work they do is so important North Carolina Has Fallen way too low in compensation in I look forward to the governor's budget which promises double digit raises for people let's see if we can make some.
Noise and make that happen because this is the state's responsibility not the feds this is the states this is not the local Board of County Commissioners this is the state and we're so appreciative of the strong relationship and Progressive County Commissioners that will partner with us to take care of our people and get them up above 17 an hour I am confident this year Ms Rogers and I had a meeting with some of our instructional assistants and they did ask they're starting to get used to these regular bonuses and they said can we expect it in the future can we expect in the future I said I don't I don't think we're going to have this kind of federal money in the future I think it's we need to be honest and open and clear with you all this is limited the ability to pay our IAS to do before and after school care that's limited I mean we're gonna have to figure all these pieces out without this infusion of federal money so.
I think it's important for us to be honest with people I think it's important for us to communicate this in paper as well as an email to folks I assume y'all are going to let people know quickly so that they do get excited about it and think about it over the summer as a reason to return but we need to make sure it's not just email I know you all have plans for that and I wish we could do more like because North Carolina needs to do better by the selfless professionals that are working in every aspect in Child Nutrition in custodial work it is all glorious important collaborative work on behalf of students so thanks for bringing this as as one small strategy that helps our people stay with our children.
Thank you so much for bringing this presentation I I will say that 5e you know the the extreme physical and operational responsibility as it relates to our bus transportation there are anytime you have efficiency words of efficiency words of the rating that we have I just wanted to know what's behind that rating because I would imagine that bus disruptions you know if there's a bus accident if there's issues happening inside of the bus that's going to affect efficiency like if a bus has to stop right now we we've seen sorry but I just I will come back to that piece I can't wait because I did tell the community members that there was no way I was going to come to this board meeting and not acknowledge that we have an issue and it's not a new issue and I I went to schools here but I will wait and thank you so much for my colleagues I I can't wait.
All right we get excited about our work any other comments or questions this is for Action yes solid move that we approve the bonus for September 2023 second then any other discussion okay all in favor say aye it's been sorry it's been moved in properly seconded all in favor please say aye aye any opposed okay it passes unanimously fifteen hundred dollar retention bonuses from Esser funds thank you Mr Resort and now we will move on to our strategic plan priority five and so Dr Monk I'm passing it to you thank you Miss Chávez I appreciate it and good afternoon board I don't know what I'm most excited about the 1500 of the talk about Transportation so thank you for both of those opportunities priority five is for insuring fiscal and operational responsibility which we take very seriously because we believe that this priority is certainly in support and service of student achievement I'm joined tonight by Mr laser who's my co-chair in this priority and we also have Miss director Harris.
And Mr Palmer that are with us tonight as well if we can go to the next slide please and again a couple more thank you here you can see there's a lot of people that it takes to to make this priority work and we're so appreciative of the work that they do year after year to help us reach our goals next slide please and go one more everything is centered and is composed of these five items enrollment efficiency Student Assignment facilities and resources operational services and and financial services is all about things that are tangible and again that support our student outcomes next slide please and one more please here are our priority five goals they remain the same as they were back in 2018.
Making sure that we are fiscally responsible that our grounds and our schools are maintained in a way that they're clean they're healthy that we have appropriate class sizes for our K3 in particular and that we are improving our transportation efficiency next slide please and one more and now I'll turn it over to Mr Lasorda to walk us through 5A so 5A our fiscal responsibilities critical to success of our district we'll we'll exhibit the fiscal responsibility measured by Clean external Financial audits each year and received the two Awards Association of business officers and government Finance Officers Association certificates please to let you know that through 20 the 2021 audit we have gotten those clean Audits and we have gotten those two certificates so moving Us in the right direction strategies maintain strong financial and internal controls always critical in our business continue to apply our new accounting standards that we get and provide good financial management is consistent across the board next slide please as you can see we got our four stars so far.
We're going to continue with that process and if everything should go the same we're consistent in what we do we don't expect that this 22 audit will change any be any different 21 22. Next slide please I'm not going to go through all these one of the things we went through was implementing a quarterly MSR report for the board to make sure that you all understood where we were headed that's in place we want to talk we talked to you a few times about working on establishing and modern financial and human resource system thanks to your approval this evening we'll move forward and training's already started by the way we're really excited about that and the next steps is closing out the sr2 funds in September that's going to be a big project for us to get done but we will do that working with the principals and the staff across the district in regards to bringing them up to date on changes that come about on an annual basis or monthly.
Basis from that standpoint and then of course beginning to work with wind gauge very exciting times we are in right now so we're looking forward to a brighter future next slide please all right and thank you Mr lesour School cleanliness if you can go two slides please thank you and we also are collecting blue stars I'm we're also joined by Mr Clifton Williams I do want to recognize him I I want to thank Clifton in large part for making sure that our schools do are maintained properly and clean I would say that we're probably higher than the 90 of all of our schools been at that level of cleanliness mainly because of the Esser funds that we were just talking about whenever you're funded well and you can put it towards these types of initiatives you have way better outcomes we do have a note here that that funding will come to an end of September of 2024 and so we need to think critically and strategically about how we can still maintain those levels.
So that we can keep our learning environments in a in a healthy and safe manner next slide please here you will see the items that are in place right around the pandemic time just before we did a presentation with the board in which we set that level to cleanliness as is rated by the APPA in in progress we're continuing to buy materials supplies do training with our staff again thanks largely parts to the Esser funding and we're going to continue on with those with those trainings and and constant Improvement next slide please classroom space this is exciting for everyone if you can jump about three slides please we open up Lion's Farm we are under construction right now with Mary massenburg we'll be opening up Northern High School even though it's not related to K3 and then we have Glenn Elementary that we're going to be bidding here in just a couple of months so this is really critical to the way that we're going to be able to.
Service our students it is a symbol of our appreciation for our families and our desire to have them in our school system and and our facilities and Building Services staff are doing a wonderful job in opening day schools up on time even though in the midst of a pandemic where it's hard to get labor and material if you can go the next slide please and I've talked about every one of those things we're going to go to the next slide please and that's our learning environments if you can skip to two slides all right a large part of this initially was set around the vestibules themselves as it relates to school safety we have integrated though into that outdoor lock-in mechanism making sure that all of our exterior doors lock properly as well as adding the the key fob systems to a lot of our schools and we're going to continue on with that our next phase would be to do indoor and outdoor lighting upgrades a lot of that has actually been funded.
With a lot of refunds you all have approved those contracts previously next slide please so right now we are continuing to update our learning environment guidelines previously they've been centered around elementary schools because those are our first schools out but as we start to move into our design and construction of our middle and high schools we will also be updating our design guidelines around those which would also include our furniture and Technology upgrades and then some of our next step of course would be for the to Abate the fire code violations we've all taught that nauseam about those things that we need to do to upgrade our facilities there and then again it's been about five years since we've done our comprehensive district-wide facilities assessment and so we need to do that as well and that would be a part of what we'll start into late summer early fall next slide please and then the most anticipated Transportation efficiency I didn't know this was going to be the.
The yeah the main course here if you can go two slides please here we have our transportation efficiency rating for each year a lot of this was held harmless because of the covet pandemic but we will be back to the way that the the state judges us with that if you can go to the next slide please we use various different strategies to help with our transportation efficiency things such as the bail times introducing technology through the use of edge log Parent Portal and then in the future implementing our spark card where we can basically take attendance of on of our students on the buses as it relates to the the transportation efficiency that Miss validaris was talking about I can have Mr Palmer come up and and he can give you definitely the technical way that the state does it but it's not related to the efficiency that that you may think it is as far as how quickly can we get students you know to and from school.
It's more mostly about how efficients are our routes where we assign students to and and those kind of things but Mr Palmer if you want to give a brief definition of that. Thank you Dr monkin good evening good evening all it says I have three minutes here so I'll try my best very briefly just that we want to tease apart some of the different measures that we would think about as it relates to transportation service so efficiency quite literally means how good are we at performing our services in relationship to the resources it requires to perform them and that particularly relates to loading of students on buses on routes there again director Harris and his team in transportation are some of the best in the state if not the country as it relates to doing the most with the resources we have I think Dr Monk for the for the time being I'll leave it at that in regards to other indicators of service that might include consistency and so forth.
Those are additional points of conversation that we can certainly answer questions about as you may have them but efficiency really is how much can we produce with the resources that we have and there we do Benchmark with some of the best here in North Carolina and Beyond thank you all right thank you Mr Palmer next slide please and so here are some of our quick wins as Mr lasurer said once again the the certificate of achievement for financial reporting we've received that We are continuing to invest for Capital and equipment and increased Staffing allotment using Essa funds for our cleanliness in our buildings Mackenzie Scott Grant I know this we've already talked about that but a million dollars of that is going towards upgrading our Emergency Management communication system which is certainly important and then 5V with Transportation utilizing technology for turn-by-turn navigation real-time GPS to improve some of those efficiencies that Mr Palmer lifted up student safety and Communications with families and with that like I said we have a lot of our.
Operation leads here with us as well as finance and we'll open up for questions great thank you so much and we are going to start with Miss Rogers thank you for this update much appreciated all around I'm glad to see the stars I guess my first time first I'll do my comments and then I'll do my question so my comments around the cleanliness of the schools and when I was in high school there was a student that I'm realizing now that my kid acts like his name is Spencer and he was always walking through campus picking up the trash it was very important to him I think it's going to be important as we move into the new strategic plan to make sure that we're including students in the care of our campuses we make here in Durham because we when we get in the car we don't drive like there's nobody else on the road and so we all have a collective duty to make sure that our school's.
Picked up to make sure that we're doing some cleaning I want to see some initiatives around make a difference day and Earth Day in April so that we're making sure that our communities and our partners are coming out working alongside parents and families and really investing in making sure our schools are clean if we could do that quarterly that would be ideal I don't expect them to go in you know with the Cleaning Solutions and things like that but it's a shared space and we should all care for that shared space I do have questions around efficiency and transportation and I did not email you so I don't expect an answer right now I know in Wake County they are eager to take on some of our students who live in the county of Durham but in the city of Morrisville I don't know what that looks like in Chapel Hill can we get an update on those numbers and if we expect that to make our travel more efficient.
And I was told it was like four students or something like that but I could be wrong. Yeah so yeah let us look into that and then we'll we'll send an email out to the board okay thanks. All right other comments questions thank you for providing the information and I I do agree there are metrics that we also have to look at and director Joe Harris nobody envies your job nobody envies your job it is a hard job I really appreciate the graciousness the responsibility the commitment that you have you know to tend to believe me I even what I sent to you all and other people said I know there are other you know there's so many folks letting you know about things it is definitely indicative of Durham just just being in crisis we have a gun violence crisis we have a lot of stress there's trauma upon trauma upon trauma and one of the most hard environments to be in is to be enclosed in a school bus for sometimes.
Even more than an hour you know because of whatever reason traffic you know Durham is definitely becoming their areas in Durham that are already starting to gridlock and I complain about coming from Raleigh from work but Durham is also starting to get gridlock and so we've had you know accidents we've had emergency situations you know I really commend the school for Creative Studies and the principal going with the students and you know we have to coordinate with the the Durham Response Ambulance right and there was all these different factors so much that goes on and I do not and be your position because I know there's there's so much that comes at you and I just first want to thank you because we know this is this is a hard job to do with the shortage of bus drivers but there's a call from the community to for us to figure out how to support your department because obviously this is affecting the safety of students it's also the question about having.
Enough monitors and you know it was interesting to have Community conversations in the community has been asking these questions for years and you know they were able to kind of share some of the what those conversations were like like for example we can't just have parents parent volunteers step up and say I want to ride with my child because my child has been bullied and I want to ride to the school and I want the bus to drop me off like we have you know best practices and we also have guidelines and we have laws you know that you know there's background checks and then there's also like you know vetting and that whole process of who becomes who is a monitor who's not a monitor but the question that the community has is because I see that goal 5e says that we are you know putting some monies towards emergency Community 5D says communication Emergency Management communication systems I wanted to tease a little bit more I want to hear more.
About how that it's it's money that's coming from Mackenzie Scott Grant which serves our McKinsey Scott families right our families sorry Mackenzie McKinney okay Mackenzie Scott Grant will go towards updating the DPS Emergency Management Communication System but I I just wanted to know a little bit more about the that communication system and how it will help us because we have to keep an eye on you know the just the the bus accidents that are happening and the response time and how to communicate with families I don't know if that is included in there you know we learned a lot and I think all the community at school for Creative Studies are just a lot of a lot of love and also like acknowledgment that there's so many different pieces to this there's a piece that we own there's a piece that the city owns there's you know in the principle trying to do the best job and and the families definitely wanting to know how can we improve emergency communication so that's one one question.
The other question that I have is there is a question from community members and I want to thank Mama Nia for these questions in terms of strategy five evaluate School programming to ensure effective use of Transportation funds when you talk about programming is there an opportunity to provide programming for students in that enclosed environment that is we're talking about trauma students who need trauma support and are in these buses and this is a prime place where there's not enough like there's not enough Personnel you know sometimes we have you know absent monitors sometimes we we're looking for monitors we're trying to fill the gaps and it's creating all the different pieces for trauma to be exacerbated and for there to be bus violence for there to be more of those things that we're trying to mitigate like bullying for there to be even disruptive kind of things that don't help us in terms of trying to not have any accidents we don't want to have accidents and the bus.
Driver is trying to do the bus to keep the eyes on the road and then who's kind of handling and you know helping kind of keep kids down so the question was whether some funds School programming funds can be used towards programming that is happening on the buses so kids are you know being enriched if there's some kind of kits you know that that we can have if there's some kind of investment that DPS can have in terms of providing programming for the kids that are riding the buses so they cannot you know so we can reduce some of these these issues that we have all right I'm gonna start off and then if Mr Harrison Mr Palm have anything to add certainly welcome them all right so 5D is for our campuses doesn't mean that we won't expand out to how we communicate with with buses because we're an Enterprise System but this is particularly for radio and Emergency Management Communications at our campuses that's what 5D is for.
As it relates to the programming that they're referring to here that is largely what growing together is where our programs on our schools located how can we regionalize and so that buses aren't going all the way across the county north south east and west and trying to get people to the type of school programs that they want to go to as well as some of the time changes that we did so that each School level is on the same block of time as opposed to having you know some Elementary start at 7 30 others at 9 30. so that's the type of school programming that we're discussing there if good I did it right okay thank you all right just a follow-up is is that is that something that we can do or look into in terms of what funds could be used because the the thing is also and somebody made the point we want to incentivize bus ridership like if we were we were saying we have the service right.
And those Services they're going to be looking at the quality of the service and of course we have our rating and that's great but it doesn't mean anything to families who feel like it's unsafe you know and we're going to have families who sign up for the buses but then don't do the buses because the children the child is like I don't want to be on that bus with some kids who might jump me like that that is a real thing that I've heard from families where they're signing up for the service but then not doing it and their kids are avoiding a situation and so my question is I understand what this encompasses but how can we think about supports because to be a trauma-informed district means we have to look at where those pain points are and one of our biggest pain points is exactly what's happening in the buses and so what resources and to the point that Mama knee was making like you know these are conversations that she's.
Having about programming on the buses you know giving being able to be an equity driven District that is looking not at giving everybody parody because there are some kids who are bus riders who a snack is waiting for them in the car that was the point she also made so I want to give credit like they're they're being greeted by a parent who's able to pick them up I'm not able to pick up my own kids from my own school you know I'm I'm working in Raleigh I'm all the way over there right and it's like I think about those families who are impoverished right who who are definitely doing the best that they can to thrive in Durham and all the different the gentrification that is happening in Durham and they have the choice the only choice is the bus system and they're saying what can DPS do to be Equity minded to make sure that these kids are taken care of that you know that that bus ride can become a bus ride.
That that includes whether it's programming whether it's more supports whether it's it's something that will calm you know kind of calm keep keep keep the environment conducive towards better relations among students and reduce bullying thank you I'm trying to tag team with Dodge a monkey I just wanna I wanna be honest here it's a challenge when it comes to bus violence and all that kind of stuff DPS is not the only place it's we have fights on the buses awake other places as well our job is to be proactive to make sure that's all our babies are safe as we're working with our bus drivers and I think to your idea of how can we get our students engaged on the bus while being safe it's something that's give us time to be able to reflect on that I know we're working closely with our book Harvest we're getting books and now every family should have a rip 12 books and all that kind of stuff that can be something.
How can we incentivize our students to be engaged on the bus and things of that nature I don't think that we're going to trust that responsibility to our bus drivers as it's really tough job for them to do but give us time to be able to work with our Educators and our principals to see how can we make it more engaging while they're on the bus but I just wanted to be really transparent I've done this work for a long time fights on the buses happen everywhere all the time I kudos to our bus drivers that they have to keep focus on driving and find the right place to be able to pull over and to make sure that before they can interfere instead of stopping in the middle of the road that's really challenging that's it's all all over the place give us time I think I take it as a something that we need to reflect on and be able to work with our staff to see what would be the.
Best things that we can put in place to be able to get our kids safe and engaging on the buses but let me also take this opportunity with it too say kudos to our Transportation anytime I'm on the new watching the news and other District where parents are ubering their kids from school to the school then when I look at our department I say we're doing a lot of things beside the conversation or as you know we start paying with our profit attendance and I heard other dishes they're trying to copy the same thing as well so we're trying to be really proactive and I'm really proud and I know some of our family that struggle but I have not heard it any stories about a student being ubered so we'll do really well and I don't want to add more responsibility on you guys there but we're going to work with our principals and to find a better way of how can we keep our buses safe and I.
Just really wanted to finish to say this I've seen fights on the buses and we got an educate our bus service to stay focused but we also gotta have to help our students and our families gonna support us to be able to prevent those violence on the buses I think it's such a great opportunity on this strategic goal especially to think are people that are doing this work transportation y'all are running it because you run you've got people running two three four routes stepping in and covering things at the last minute early in the morning late at in the evening custodial staff when we go in our schools I know you all see the same thing the floors are shining like it's we've just come back from Summer but we're in the middle of the school year and that's because people are working so so so hard so please convey our appreciation to them our payroll staff and and finance staff we're we're asking them to drop bonuses here.
And there and to do all kinds of things while they do pay in substitutes on a on a bi-weekly basis instead of monthly like we y'all have done so much that we've asked you to do as we move towards equity and so I want us to to if you guys can convey that appreciation from us to them for for that ongoing daily hard work they are such an important part of our team and also does Miss Sandra Clemens white who retired who was our board liaison and then we shared her with you all over there but we miss her please convey that to her everybody that's part of the DPS team is such a critical critical part of the collaborative work so thank you that's what I think of when I think of this strategic goal chair Armstead I will repeat all of Ms Byers thank yous but thank you all and I think about the thousands of children that you're transporting every day and so we know we have incidents that we in areas.
To improve but there's still thousands of kids kind of getting back and forth every single day which I think is a really great and impressive fee that y'all do I hate to be like the person again it's like oh 2024 is coming soon and you all talked about how a lot of us are funding is supporting a lot of the work that we're doing thinking about custodial staff and keeping things clean like are we planning for what happens after that and and what does that look like for us I think we need to be thinking about our budget in almost a two three four five year cycle and I just keep hearing our Sr funding is great and is funded and allowed us to do a lot of really good things but we need to prepare for what happens after that because I still want us to have really beautiful schools and great transportation and all of that so I don't know that's an open-ended question or not but just curious to know.
When are we going to hear about what happens unfortunately in the fall of 2024 when this funding goes away yeah I'm glad you lifted that up I think Capital funding always gets people excited because that's new buildings and and Renovations and things like that but equally important is our operating funds and that's how we pay for custodial staff and supplies and materials and so I think that as we continue to grow in our relationship with the county and that funding that we increase that just like we've done our Capital increases and I think that we've demonstrated that when we have that funding we're able to move the district forward with our capital and improvements and I and I know for a fact that we'll be able to do the same thing as it relates on our operational Services side because we're doing it now with the Esther funding so we got to continue those conversations and make the link between the two and especially in the last couple years.
And years that you've been here Dr Monk in your leadership have been able to increase that money I was here before we didn't have that regular capital outlay I would love to know how much money we're thinking we're using for Sr funding right now and so how much that potential ass might be from the county in 2020 4 20 25 20 like when those come just so again we can kind of get our heads wrapped around what are we thinking about for increased to ask I think that would just be helpful for planning because I'm sure that we're also going to be thinking back to teacher supplements at some point and something else is coming at some point so how do we think about these budget asking a little bit of a five year almost what's coming up absolutely so the last time that we did the calculation we said that we needed close to 15 million dollars a year for the operational type stuff now that's broken down into a couple of.
Different ways again part of this capital and renewal to make sure that we're replacing items before they break I'm sure that you all get emails if the air is off and there's testing going on that is not an ideal time for a chiller to go off well it is an ideal time is whenever it's you know November you're not using the chill well maybe here in the South you are but typically you're not you can plan to take that down and replace it the other portion would be those operational funding so that we can increase our custodial Staffing levels right now we're probably running at about 27 000 square feet per man person but we would like to get that down to like 18 000 square feet which is a significant amount the other thing is there's times where we can't do the deep clean-ins that we want to do because our schools are occupied a lot and so we also want Staffing for the evenings and the weekends and.
Which time you would probably want to pay some type of shift differential right so those are the types of things that we want to do and then the preventative maintenance the preventative maintenance allows all this new equipment that we're purchasing to last a much longer time and operate more efficiently which goes back into our energy consumption which goes back into how much money we're paying with our energy bills we'll be avoiding some of that cost which puts more money back into the classrooms so we see it as an investment in your assets which in turn is going to invest in our children's educations I appreciate that number 15 million we might need to I don't know it feels like the Cadillac version we might need to figure out where else we go from there but I remember we're adding square feet so we're adding Murray massenburg we added Northern high school and our in our elementary schools that we're that we're building are basically going to be brand new and larger and.
They're replacing our old and out of date mobile classrooms and putting People Under One Roof so we're getting larger it's going to take more money for us to operate advocating on the funds because like we're gonna need it the other the other half for you for unit we got at our last meeting you all thought about learning environments that's indoor I think and outdoor facilities so we had comments around the track at Hillside and I know that you all like our we've approved contracts around track so I just want to hear a little bit of the process around when you decide to replace and repair tracks at our high schools so a part of the facility this condition assessment that we'll be doing we'll be looking at our athletic facilities the hillside track in particular there's a repair purchase order that we're doing for that to get it in shape for this track season but we're also looking at if the polyurethane that's being proposed is a better option than the.
Latex that we have and so we'll have a a Improvement plan for all of our tracks that are related to that but on our Middle School side there are some tracks that we are using a different type of Lottery fund to resurface those and that's underway now thank you that that's all my questions I'm going to go to Ms Lewis and she haven't spoken yet and then Ms Rogers Dr monkey seemed really excited about this presentation and everything you're sharing right now thank you thank you for your hard work thank you to our transportation team our janitorial team doing an outstanding job working towards five stars from this Five-Year Plan so definitely congratulations there I remember talking a few years ago about the bus drivers being the first person that our children see those who ride the bus and we talked about the diversity training for bus drivers such as just culturally responsiveness smiling when kids come onto the bus not assigning seats by gender things of that nature I'm wondering as much as turnover.
We've had and as much work that we've done to retain perfect attendance I had not heard that on the news of other districts taking that or wanting to follow our lead but I have heard that Bell schedules people are starting to visit that we did you know two years ago so again Durham leads is my point as we're we've talked about that a few years ago with the training are we still doing that type of training for our bus drivers yeah and I'm gonna actually let Mr Palmer come up and and speak to some of the trainers we've been able to do and thank you to Dr mabango we actually have principal Phillips that used to be a club is our director of classified training now and so I am excited again because not only are certified folks getting professional learning but also our classified employees I actually got to set I got to sit through one I think it was last week with some of our operational leadership team and it was a.
Very good train and in one of the videos today showed was a little boy whose first person was the bus driver and they first showed the video where he didn't have a good interaction with the bus driver or whenever he got to school and how his day went versus whenever he was met with a smile and a good greeting not only on the bus but also at school but by the school Personnel so training we believe is critical to how we Implement our strategies and do our daily jobs but in addition that I'm gonna let Mr Palmer speak about some of those trainings that we have thank you Dr Monk and Miss Lewis to kind of build on Dr Monk's response within School planning and operational Services we actually have the first two opportunities in the day to help every child feel supported and start right ready to learn not only with bus service but also serving breakfast when they arrive at school so total we have between transportation and.
Nutrition 600 staff members and it would be elastic in that and say Yes bus drivers and our bus monitors that are on Route are important to be able to support children as well as their families but also our staff that are deployed at the area lots and in central office of course they're again in our school kitchens so under Dr Mubanga and Dr Monk's leadership we've embarked in coordination with Dr Bullock and Miss Phillips with regards to professional development for all of our classified staff we were just actually at a session within the last few weeks here with our bus drivers and our school nutrition staff the same training Dr Monk was referencing Professional Standards for communication really talking about emotional intelligence talking about the importance of empathy and putting ourselves in those little tiny shoes and thinking about how would we want our days to start way back when and recognizing that we have a gift an opportunity to set the day right for our kids and so This Is Us.
Leaning very much into the whole child emphasis within the board and districts priorities and we're excited to have that opportunity that's one vignette one little sample of the professional development that our staff will be going through over the years ahead thank you for that well done and as I think about bridging school to home I'm glad Ms bayaders you brought up the conversation on programs and Dr Dr mabenga responded that you know maybe even with book Harvest that's an idea that you are already thinking about that need a bit more time that's what I was wondering like do we have bus safety that's shared with the students is there like an orientation or onboarding or what is it what it should be like to ride the bus especially when it's their first time what the expectations are what they could do instead of just sitting there anything like that type of orientation for our kids and then communication to the parents if the parents we can be engaged.
In a way that helps us to reinforce the message from the schools I've had some conversations with some different School personnel with bus issues and I can just say again Transportation the the leads at the schools have been so responsive and checking into matters immediately and quickly I just want to make sure we're having Communications to bridge school to home that parents can support parents and Guardians can support messages and that kids learn how to ride the bus too that we are teaching that good idea just want to acknowledge that good feedback thank you I like having a good idea every now and then and then the last thing I'm gonna say is a disparity study we're talking about partnering with accounting on that and that did not come through or with the city I know that is truly important so we get a baseline of where we are and that we look at where we need to build so I'm I'm bringing it back up for a.
Conversation I think is about 300 000 is it where what are our next steps at this point since we were not included with the county disparity study the city had already begun what are next steps. I was going to say yeah that's it that would be the next step is to is to identify some funds so I think that this is something that that Dr Mubanga and Paul and I can discussing since we aren't able to partner with those entities and and see if this is something we can do for ourselves thank you Ms Rogers sorry yeah major Kudos to the folks in the office that are ancient accounts in the mornings in the afternoons I call a couple of times a week I'm hearing from community members still that they're still waiting for transportation do we still have a wait list for transportation do we have what about for students with disabilities are there issues and discrepancies there with getting those folks on the bus and to school and while you're coming up.
And I'm PR just kind of putting this here for our notes as a collective for the Strategic plan I'm glad y'all are getting five stars I'd like to see us with some measurable metrics and the next strategic plan on how quickly we can get these routes assigned and the bus is functioning efficiently because it has a direct impact on student outcomes but that's for all of us as a collector good evening so in regards to students that are waiting for transportation we're not aware where there is a backlog of any students that's waiting for transportation currently right now when students come in on our upload daily our staff is working on uploads each day in regards to Transportation what possibly could be happening is it could be an address mismatch or it could be a student is not coded yes for transportation and so if you have some areas in where you've got students sending information to us and we'll be more than happy to look into it and see.
What's going on with it in regards to the special needs we are working very hard to make sure that we're meeting the needs of all the families and in some cases I'm there possibly could be one where or two where there is a couple days delayed in US routing them simply because we have to make sure that we have all the necessary equipment and things of that nature in place to make sure that we are meeting the needs of the IEP as well as making sure we have trained monitors to be able to support those students within the bus to and from school or contracted services and so we have a clear communication plan with those families and how quickly they should expect Transportation or if they should expect Transportation if there's a delay yes ma'am thank you that's why that is I want to let you know the edulog application I'm hearing language access is one of the things I'm also checking for and you know families are.
Grateful for it you know they're able to use it our website has the you know the instructions and so I've been able to like I love it when every day I'm like let's go to the DPS website and you know and it's important because we need to have as much information for our families and they're able to download it and it kind of gives instructions you know frequently asked questions I think we need to update in for anything that we any technology any any app I mean let's do FAQs like you know that that keep being updated and so just in case there are families who have issues with that but I I really recommend you I'm going to go back to the annual efficiency rating and I understand this is about the bus stops the efficiency and Dr Palmer you explained like you know you have to take into account are you choosing the best routes and are you choosing the best bus stops within the radiuses that you're looking at.
Can you tell us how Durham being Durham with the unique populations we have in Durham how we take paying attention to kind of like that balance or that the word is not balanced but it's kind of like a little bit of that the Lord I don't want to use compromise because we shouldn't have to compromise on anything but what I'm alluding to is that we have a population like McDougall Terrace and based on efficiency based on the map it might make sense to have the stop right here it's it's you know you can do the calculation and kind of see where it is is it central to most of the students that are in building nine you know for example but if there are Community concerns about safety and say for example and I know this is the case because I know like you all you know there were emails and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who sent the emails but there was that conversation about efficiency versus like people right like.
At what point do we kind of say this might make sense from an efficiency standpoint in terms of the route or in terms of like having it at this particular spot but if they're saying that's a spot where number one there's no supervision there's you know we're kind of detached from where families are actually able to you know be there and kind of take a look and and support our students how have we managed that conversation and is is that something that you also can provide to the people who are establishing the rubric right who are grading us who don't understand that you know we're having to make some choices that are Durham like durham-based because this is a particular place that needs that kind of attention and how are we communicating that to them to let them know like this is actually the most efficient when we when we not only take into account just the distance but also just the safety and also these other parameters that they may not know about.
A couple levels to respond to there I think one efficiency and Equity are not always in contradiction to one another and we lead firstly with service and safety efficiency of course is the third pillar for us and we are mindful of it as well as environmental sustainability but really Upstream of that how good are we getting kids to school and we do so safely those are the two guiding lights for us and so when it comes to stop placement for example I cannot think Joe please correct me if I'm wrong but we try very intentionally with stop location designation we've had many instances just this year where there's a request from parents or neighbors to say hey let's move it a few houses down because Miss Smith has eyes on the street and that would be a great plot spot to be that's Dynamic we realize that every year is different but we are also trying to have going back to the rubric for a moment consistency with where we're.
Placing stops and what information loads into that right we cannot do the door stops that we would all love to do where we pull up to the door and the driver honks twice and one runs out for the bus that's not possible given all things what we are mindful of is that we have a lot of information now that we didn't used to have that includes not only we use that term optimization of how good are we at loading the buses we're good at that but also can we at the same time be good with providing a high level of service consistency predictability and safety for our families and kids and we think that is something that could be pursued simultaneously that they don't have to be in contradiction candidly our level of service when it comes to consistency a minor disruption can have a big wave effect because we don't have enough drivers we've had that conversation over the last years it's not a new phenomenon but I think Dr.
Munkle did it to it Upstream we've done many of sort of the best practices that now our peer counties are looking to and saying okay let's let's do what Durham's doing to miss Lewis's Point let's let's watch Durham lead the way and try to learn from that it's what has allowed us to prevent to Dr mcmega's comments cutting service entirely that said for those watching at home for those that are interested in the topic we need bus drivers and we will help you get your CDL passenger and school bus designations you know we have principals who when we need them they're on the call Miss Smith we have Nicole we've got we've got folks that understand the need and the charge at hand and so I I would I would fully respond there again and just say efficiency and safety and Equity don't have to be in contradiction but we have to be planned and intentional about it and we're very focused on that not only for this year.
But moving forward as we think about the next strategic plan and Beyond I want to thank you for that because I I know you're all you know looking at these things and it makes me proud you know the way that we are but it's Attunement right we're tuning to the needs of our families I know that this presentation included the custodial piece and I'm so glad that we have you know our dedicated staff and I I do have you know just also appreciation for meeting the goals keeping our schools clean I will tell you that in the same way how do we continue to optimize but also be people first my concern is the same concern about shortage we have we have a shortage sometimes we have folks who not just because of the vacancies because every time we see those those reports we see that there are people signing up for these positions and we're trying to do the best to keep everything all the positions filled but even just.
In terms of just daily life where people have to take a day you know sick day and when it comes to a goal where we want to have the school sparkling clean but you have people calling out like I know that when the students come in the next day they just want to see the school clean but I want us to also be an employer that is people first what does that mean that means that if there's one person right who other people called out and there's one custodian and that custodian is responsible for the work of two three people because say for example that that particular night people called out sick you know how are we continuing to maintain like expectation we don't want to ever be the kind of District that you know attains gold like our goals on on at the sacrifice or over exertion of of our staff and so I do have that concern and I know that we think about this but I.
Just wanted it for the community to hear you know if for example like there's communication with the school like hey you know the they're you know the the cleaning of the school at 100 it couldn't happen one person can't do 100 of a cleaning of a school and maybe there's like a side that is that is not going to be as kept but there's communication about you know we have the necessary Personnel to make sure that the entire school is taken care of but it's not going to come at a cost of one employee having to scurry and stay you know and and fret about oh my God the whole school has to be clean and people called out sick so I just wanted I want to like highlight that and I wanted to just hear it also and give give time and room for how we're I know we're doing this but how how we're navigating complexity and navigating challenges of shortages good afternoon good evening everybody.
So we're I mean our focus is to always just treat our people right you know I mean starting off with uniforms make sure that they have the equipment that they need you know we're trying to do those things to encourage people to come to work you know to have the things you need to do your job I mean employee celebrations you know all these type of things we're trying to consistently be consistent that just so they want to come to work for the time they're there you know we utilize Tim Services if it needed to support like schools that may need it for a temporary amount of time but you know our true focus is just to treat them right consistently so if we're doing that I mean I feel confident it don't come and then they can come in go have the stuff they need and then they'll go home but you know overall it's just treating them right every day thank you so much Mr Clifton Williams.
Thank you so much for all you do Miss Beyer so I just was looking at the Transportation website on at DPS and there is good safety information and FAQs for families to have conversations with their students at home I think it's great that that content is there and I heard you say and I just want to make sure that this is still a good number 919-560-bus that still works right that is the number 919-560 b u s s I've been calling that one for a long time but I have always known you Mr Harris to be so responsive to family concerns student concerns individual concerns and I know sometimes families will hear stuff that our drivers aren't necessarily aware of and and will need to be shared with you all and so I know 560 bus will get them an answer and get them support for their students and thank you so much for leading this important effort and that's all I wanted to get out there to folks if they don't know that number.
Thanks very great is there are there any other comments discussions right we thank you so much for your presentation on priority five and with that I will we will move to a summary of follow-up items yeah so Dr Hardy is conveniently left all right not a problem so as it relates to the update for the board lgbtqia plus training we're going to make sure that the invitations have been sent out to the members of the task force and Mr Southern will follow up with an update to the board staff will work so that we can actually stream that training and then look into a separate training for the task force since the training is centered around governance the priority for update Mrs Southard will provide the board with an update of the number of families who are utilizing the DPS app staff will have the community engagement rubric developed by June 30th 2023 we're going to think more about the breadth instead of the depth of Community Partnerships strength and congruence between district and school.
Level Communications and ensure we have college access Partnerships with house at the high school level priority five make sure that we include students and the the cleanliness metrics for the the next strategic plan example given was something like Earth Day a number of students who live in Morrisville will check out that for you and get you an update on that bus ridership orientation and I think Miss Beyer for lifting up the information that we have on the website and then we're looking into a way to make it more of a actual you know training or program for our families we're going to look into the funding for the disparity study out of our own coffers we're going to think about some different metrics that we can include in the next strategic plan around route assignment assignment timeliness and then do a back update for anything that we may be changing on our website do you have anything else okay thank you programming yes I think that's going to be a yes we will do some.
Programming yep what buses will do okay yeah all right good thank you okay that's great all right I would move that we go into closed sessions or the reasons stated on the agenda second any discussion it has been moved and properly seconded all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed okay with that we will move into closed session.
Okay I got it we're now back in Open Session Dr movinga Madam chair I'm here to seek your approval for the Personnel reporters.
Discussed at a closed session move approval. Second it's been moved and properly second any other discussion all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed please use the same sign it passes unanimously and with that we are adjourned.