Good evening everyone Edwards the Durham Public Schools Board of Education work session is now in session at this time we wish you 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 Martha Romo Gillis and Marty Ramirez thank you for taking the time to join us.
As always the first item on our agenda.
Is a moment of silence so we'll take this out.
Thank you the next item on our agenda is a gender review and approval move approval of the agenda as presented actually I had a Amendment to the agenda but yeah yeah I want to amend it sorry I'd like to switch the the item number seven and move it it's already been moved oh no sorry move it after we get the Point number eight so academic Services I'd like to move the appointment number seven move it after academic services.
I welcome that friendly Amendment all right second thank you for the clarification and the amendment so just for clarification we're asking to move academic Services item presentation from Technical Community College to to Item B item seven and then item eight within the Board of Education Durham Technical Community College Board of Trustees appointment okay all in favor of the agenda oh that's right.
Okay we have to do a roll call vote our chair instead is joining us virtually on Zoom so we'll start with Ms Umstead.
Good evening everyone I'm sorry I apologize. Thank you Jessica Carda-Auten but I Natalie buyer hi Alexandra valade Lewis hi Emily Travis hi and I will I so the amended agenda passes unanimously thank you the next item on our agenda is the board work session minutes from March 9th and April 6th.
Move approval of the minutes as presented. Second thank you that has been moved by Natalie buyer and seconded by Miss Chavez Sharon said this is Bettina Umstead I vote I Miss Carda-Auten aye buyer hi Miss validarez I would I miss Lewis hi Miss Chavez hi I'm Buddha thank you the next that has been approved unanimously both minutes the next item on our agenda is general public comments.
We have one public comment tonight so let's do a quick review of the rules we ask you to please first state your name if speaking for an organization please State the name of your organization speakers are asked to present their comments in this in three minutes or less when the yellow light comes on you have one minute left to start winding up your remarks when the red light comes on it will beep which indicates that your time is up complaints about Maine 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 Miss Arnett love.
Everyone I thank you for allowing me the opportunity to stand before you today with so much concerns with our students in Durham County Schools I am an advocate for the non-violence I work with religious Coalition for non-violent Durham we support families that's lost their loved ones to murder and I also accompany the families to court and what I'm seeing is our youth in court and I it's very disturbing to see that many young men there for first degree murder and when I'm sitting in that courtroom I'm wondering what is going on in your mind what are you thinking why did you what did you do how did you get there so I had the opportunity to go and sit in on a session at St Joseph which was very successful we're talking the youth were talking and some of the things that they said was there was having problems at home they were stressed they needed more security at school they were stressed out they wanted a counselor not a guidance counselor but.
They need a mental health counselor because it is weighing heavy on their mind you know they don't feel safe there and I know they don't feel safe because I'm in Boots on the ground I'm there when I see these young people's lives being taken and so I'm wondering what it is that the public Durham public schools has in place for these children it is important that you be proactive we think and I and every time I'm talking with families it's like oh it's not going to happen to my family but you never know but it's always good to have a plan in place now we've seen all of the mass shootings going around what are you doing to protect our students the last not getting into too much details but the last shooting of the three young men they don't want to go to school and when I hear these concerns from them I'm like well what are we going to do it how are they going to feel.
Comfortable in going back these are the things that I hear phone rings 24 7. Reverend love what are we gonna do I said I wished I had an answer for you I don't know but I have two grandchildren in school and I'm concerned with them what is your plan how do you plan to protect our children they need something the community needs to get involved in one thing I always say we cannot do this work alone we cannot do this work alone we want our children to feel safe going to get a good education not to go wondering if they're going to live or die and that's in their mind again because I see it when I'm sitting in the courtroom with these 17 year olds and 18 year olds murdered thank you thank you.
The next item on our agenda is consent item the next item on our agenda is consent items of approval of consent items second removed by board member Alexandra valderez secondary by board member Jeremiah Lewis any discussion okay karemstead hello I this is Bettina Umstead aye Carda-Auten sorry Miss buyer aye Ms valedard aye Ms Lewis aye Ms Chavez hi and everyone the.
Consent agenda passes you name it Miss Lee thank you sorry y'all bear with me we're gonna get a rhythm here we will now move on to academic services and presentation from Durham Technical Community College and DPS career and college promise partnership Dr mabenga thank you board member Rogers I have a great pleasure having my colleague here or president baxton we're going to present today what we've been working on for the past few years we have our team that they'll be presenting but I would like to say a few things before that if we can upload the Powerpoints there are a couple PowerPoints there that myself and present box and we're gonna go over before we pass it on to our staff while we're waiting for the Powerpoints to be uploaded I'm going to let's president Buxton to introduce the person the person or person that's he boards today then we're gonna go to our presentation president Buxton.
Thank you superintendent here we go chair Umstead from afar and members of the board it's great to be here with you and I'm accompanied by my colleague Dr Olu Rio who was our director of college group and high school Partnerships known I think to many of you and especially many principals in the system all right thank you president baxton please can we upload our PowerPoints I'm really delighted to be able to join prison box and to present the work that we've been working on for the past year I had the privilege to speak to the board of trust he's a Durham Tech last week I recall I was accompanied by some of our staff members here the same presentation that was presented there that's the presentation that we'll be presenting to you as well today still waiting for that PowerPoint.
So while they're trying to upload these I think the topic for tonight's discussion is going to be or presentation access opportunity and completion I've been really working really hard with present boxing to give us a little bit flexibility for our students to have access to Durham tech classes our goal here pretty much we really want to make sure that our students not only the graduating with high school diploma they have access to those credentials when it comes to certifications also making sure that some of them are also graduating with our social degrees I think if I recall probably last year we had roughly 40 to 50 students that's graduated with some kind of associate degree from all our specialty High School including our Comprehensive High Schools we graduate we graduated last year probably about 1800 students our goal and our mission here as we collaborated with Durham Tech we really want to make sure that we can get to 20 percent of our students really graduated with those credentials either associate degrees or certifications the.
Bottom line we really want to make sure when our students leave they can be employed or while they're going to University or colleges they can also have a meaningful job as they're pursuing their degrees that's what we hear and the present boxing has been really flexible to make sure not only our students will be able to live our campuses to go through Derma Tech but we're going to try to Pilot something starting with Riverside High where College professors for Durham Tech they can come to our campuses and be able to offer those courses so that's the flexibility that I've been looking for for years and are likely that prison backs backslan is really flexible really willing to work with us one more statistic that I would like to present let's go next slide please.
There's one place I think if you can see the red our students that are graduating from us we have about 42 percent of them the first year then I'm matriculating to any of the universities that's not good but I think we really want to give them a head start here with Durham Tech either they can have those certifications and be able to get meaningful Employments or leaving us with a social degree that will save a lot of money to our families and our students as well without further Ado I'm gonna pass it on to president Buxton to make a few comments before we pass it on to our our staff superintendent thank you we are very excited to be here with you today we you should know that we were fortunate to receive some funding from the AJ Fletcher Foundation which allowed us to bring in RTI in a team led by Megan Doyle some of you know her as a former superintendent North Carolina former principal of the year in North Carolina.
And a team from RTI served as the facilitating entity to bring our two systems together and think about the goal of accelerating degree completion for high school students and be in thinking about how with all the incredible opportunities we have in this region I mean we feel very blessed to be a community college in this region because the pathways we can bring people to in terms of jobs and gateways to Great universities we don't believe that needs to start when someone comes to us after graduating from high school we've got great state policy context in the state that allows students to come tuition free to us and what superintendent mubenga and I started talking about is we probably ought to have 10 times quite literally the number of students who graduate from your system and graduate from us whether that's with a certificate a diploma or a full two-year degree non-credit credential like a bio work that has purchase in this labor market and create incredible opportunity but.
More to the point we need to make sure that that's equitable we have lots of students who come to us because they have information they've got access they've got the ability to get to us they've got the ability to pay for books you do a lot to make sure that all students have that opportunity but all students don't take that opportunity we can graduate your students tuition free and we are looking at ways that we can also address the books and transportation it's going to take and what we would be I think is probably the first school system in the state to really be a kind of early college opportunity high school for all students would have access to that whether they were at Middle College High School Dobbs Early College city of medicine or School of Technology so this is really a landmark effort to put people on a path early to accelerate credential completion and then broaden those opportunities to create affordable higher education if.
They're going to go on to two years or as the superintendents and move directly into employment in the region and so Dr arrillo Julie pack and a broader team have been part of this at a much deeper level than we have that's for sure and can talk you through the details of how we can build on the foundation that we already have to do this that's the great part of this work and the goals that we're setting to make sure we stay focused on getting to 25 percent of your graduating seniors year after year you might show we might show them that I think we have one more slide that we didn't talk about and these are some numbers that I think give you a sense of the opportunity if we go one more slide about the percentage of students and this is across the three districts that we serve so Orange County schools in Chapel of Carver are also in our service area we're under a percent of students across these three districts.
That graduate with a degree or a certificate and you see also the graduation rates for students who come to us out of high school and finish what we know is early momentum is critical and when students complete that first year and get those 30 credits in the likelihood of their completion of a degree or a high quality credential goes up dramatically that is much more likely to happen when they are situated within both of our systems the kind of support systems we can put around them your dually enrolled students do better on average than our students as a whole and so when we accelerate these opportunities we're talking about very different numbers for this community of young people who have credentials of value and degrees that give them access Life Sciences Advanced manufacturing Healthcare skilled trades and universities like Central State Carolina a t I think those are our slides if we go to the next slide please so our next slide talks about the framework for attainment to this goal next slide.
And so we know the theory of change is what we're going to have to do and looking at that change we know we're going to need collaboration and partnership with our parents students and families we also know we're going to need shared responsibility and accountability we're going to need simple action and collaboration and of course mentioned earlier Financial Resources textbooks Transportation are all key factors and barriers for students doing CCP and with all that we will then hope to obtain complete completion for degrees and certifications for our students next slide so we want to take you a little historical data to just let you know where we are now so the next few slides are going to look at that so this slide indicates the amount of students who are are earning those credentials now through our schools over the last several years and as you can see we've had a steadily steady incline however if you look closely at the numbers we're only at about 25 percent 26 percent at our Cooperative.
Innovative high schools which are CMA during School of Technology and middle college those are the ones that we have in partnership with Durham Tech and we're at even much lower that's a very little yellow I mean orange blip down at the bottom there for our Comprehensive High Schools so we have room for growth and we look at the next slide please this again is small to try and get it all on the page but these are all of our high schools and you can see those over the past few years and you can see the ones that have taller amounts are our Cooperative innovatives that are in partnership with Durham Tech with I should have brought them up glasses up to the counter so I think CMA is on the left middle college is in the middle and then Durham School Technology on the right thank you.
And then we also we don't just want to increase the the completers the number of completers we wanted to make sure that we are looking at completers as it relates to our demographics and Durham Public Schools so I think I'll go to the next slide so looking at the demographics you see that it is even with males and females a high percentage of African-Americans and so we want this demographic to reflect the attainment by these groups in regards to completion of CCP so that males and females which we know females right now are a higher gender group that are obtaining completion numbers and males of course are our lowest one of our lowest demographic we want this demographic to be this in comparison to what they're obtaining while attending Durham Tech Community College next slide.
So what is the go we want 25 percent of DPS students 90 of Cooperative Innovative high schools which is German School of Technology city of medicine Middle College High School and 13 of Comprehensive High School students will obtain completion of a Durham Tech certificate or degree by the time they graduate from a DPS high school next slide so yeah that's exciting and so you heard two different numbers there because this is kind of a this is really a two-pronged approach because we have two different types of schools with the Cooperative innovatives that are the smaller schools that are set up for students to start earlier with the degree and the intention is when students graduate from our Cooperative innovators that they do have the Dual degree they have the high school diploma and an associate's degree and then the comprehensive schools so you know there's a lot more options at the Comprehensive High School some students may choose an AP pathway or IB but also there's room in there scheduled in to.
Complete a Durham Tech pathway in terms of a certificate a CTE pathway those kinds of things and so or even an associate's degree we do have a small number of students at the comprehensive high schools that can can complete who have that initiative and so between working at the different schools and the different strategies we can raise the whole level up to 25 percent next slide please. So what did the team recommend we were looking at increasing the targets so the First Column at the beginning is the problem to the Innovative high schools and it shows the target population for up until 26 27 and then the bottom shows Comprehensive High Schools entertainment levels for those students so by 2026 and 2027 we would have 323 students attaining a degree or certification for comprehensive high schools it would be 203.
Next slide so how are we going to do this it's a big question this is a lofty but a exciting goal so how we plan to achieve this goal so some of the things are in the pipes is we need to accelerate schedules so helping students start to take their High School classes a little earlier in regards to history's Math and Science to give them more flexibility their 11th and 12th grade year we also want to look at different Pathways that are accessible for students but they can complete within a semester then I'll let Dr pack add on yeah I think the other pieces that we want to make sure is that we're educating our families and our students about what the options are early on not when they get to high school but before they get to high school so they can make some good decisions even in the middle school and then you know we don't want to have leaks in our pipeline right so we want to make sure our students.
Come in ninth grade they have a plan they're executing their plan they have support along the way to execute that and then also what are some things that they can do in Durham Public Schools that also articulates to the Durham Public Schools so some of our CTE class excuse me some of our CTE classes actually articulate to the Durham Tech pathway so they could take some classes with us they can finish their pathway with Durham Tech and still graduate from high school with both the high school diploma and a certificate so lots of lots of ways to keep them in the pipeline and graduating because we know research tells us that those students that do this successfully here in high school have more staying power they have more persistence and they're able to get through when they get to the next level next slide please.
So again this is about the difference between the comprehensive and the Cooperative high school so the Cooperative innovatives again they are set up at Durham School of Technology it's all about I.T the pathways there or for I.T at Durham at city of medicine it's Health Science focused those Pathways have been set up for those students at middle college there's a lot more flexibility in the and the pathways that they choose and again it's very similar making sure that those students have support to be College ready before they get into High School making sure that once they get into High School their support to move through that and you know make a successful transition into doing both high school and college work oh I think that's the last slide next slide.
Let me make a couple comments here all personal to prison boxing before our board can now have their discussion if we have access to the Clearing House reports of our graduate when they go to universities unfortunately some of them do not survive some of the general classes like chemistry biology and all that I think one of the reasons because in most of those classes you have about 300 400 students in a class the beauty about this partnership with Community College where you have those students in biology or general chemistry class with 30 students so a teacher or instructor would pay close attention to them versus going to NC State ECU taking those General classes because I mean a year course University is about 25 000 minimum so our students that are graduating with us with Durham Tech that's about a saving of fifty thousand dollars but I also wanted to make a point here with this plan it's going to cost us a little bit more money but I think.
President bison has a great idea that is going to push with our County Commissioners with college promise we know that any student that's graduate from DPS they have some funds there president baxton is willing to have a conversation with commission to say what can we found advance for those students while they're still in a high school to cover some of the course of textbooks and things of that nature Transportation yes there may be some challenges there as well we are really willing to address those needs because this is with ambitious goal and it's really very promising for our students president Buxton before we pass it back to our Madam chair here I would just add that this is a very doable I mean my colleague said it was an ambitious and exciting it's a doable goal because we get the systems that we can build on to do it and it's also doable because it's we can waive tuition and so if we think about taking that 500 per semester the.
Students get for up to four semesters and rather than waiting until they graduate from high school to apply that against tuition and we can forward the funding and use some of that for the books and transportation that might otherwise inhibit their participation we don't need the tuition out of Durham Tech because we can waive that the other thing I'd want to make sure is clear we're not interested in students just coming and taking a bunch of courses with us what we want as students to finish and to have options because we see this as a partnership to increase educational attainment and increase individual and Economic Opportunity for people to take care of their families themselves and begin to build generational wealth we know we need to start earlier we have many students we'll have many students still coming to us at different points in their life but we think we can start earlier create a financial advantage for them create clear pathways through and build on the systems that we already.
Have in place so very excited about this partnership I think we'll be doing something that many other districts and community colleges will try to follow and it'll be the right thing for their communities we've just got a different level of collaboration in this community I think makes it possible to be a leader so that Mr superintendent yielded back thank you all for the wonderful presentation yeah okay board members any questions comments Miss Lewis. Thank you for being here president Buxton and thank you for the presentation I think this is exciting to look at the opportunity to grow our program in partnership with Durham Tech I'm very excited to see the projections that you all had I understand you all were what I heard you saying she worked with RTI to come up with this blueprint to follow and I just I think to your point Dr Peck we had to get our parents aware of this program and I've said this before we have to do just a better job of branding in.
Particular I think about Durham School of Technology when we changed their name from Hillside new tech to Durham School of Technology there was opportunity there and I don't know if we missed that window when we first made the change to do more so I would definitely like to see us doing more around that advertising for that school and that they're that they're going as to Durham Tech you know so like just I look forward to seeing a comprehensive marketing plan to get the word out there for our families my question around the going from 63 to 323 is what I jot it down 63 students currently in our Innovative high schools to 323 and at first I think 63 sounds low but what I know is we're we had like a hundred kids coming each cohort so that senior year is at 63. how do you propose that we would get to 323 based on our current ability seats within the spaces that they're in right now.
What would be the plan to get to that 323 and having seats in space yes thank you for that so ideally we across those three schools we would have 300 graduates that are coming to us with going through the ninth grade graduating with an associate's degree and in the high school diploma currently that's not happening there are a lot of things that we've looked into figure out what was going on with that some of it is that understanding that understanding what the Cooperative Innovative is about those schools parents may have chosen the school for different reasons like a smaller School environment and so again it's that we've been working over the last couple of years with those principles to make sure we're when they're talking to their their parents that they're being very clear about this is the the goal and the purpose of this school and we're going to continue to to do that so that as we get each class comes in more of those students are there for.
That dual enrollment so that's part of that the other part is having those systems in place inside those schools to support the kids along the way so that as they get to the senior year they're actually finishing and graduating with the with the degree okay so math making the math make sense that 63 is across those three schools again so it's not a hundred out of each school but that's what you want to get to is getting these children these students across the finish line so not necessarily more seats but getting more to completion thank you for that explanation and then the last thing I want to ask about is the comprehensive slide I'm aware of our Pathways for the Innovative schools and when I looked at the comprehensive what I saw was more support in the transition to get them to take these classes and typically when they're in the comprehensive schools that that rigor that they're looking for they get through their honors classes and AP classes what kind of support just an.
Idea of what you're thinking about what that support would look like for the comprehensive schools to begin choosing the CT and not that the Durham Tech pathway getting these credit hours I think Riverside will be a great example to you so in the fall 23 Riverside will be our first initiative we are coming to Riverside High School third period and during that time we will be offering three courses during those three courses ACA 122 a study success course to prepare them and help them understand the rigor of a college course English 111 and com 231 the ACA 122 will actually be a five-week course so they'll start off with that and then they will finish after those five weeks and start at English 111. so a were we're integrating this into their high school schedule so they don't have to leave and they understand the college for coming to you two individual two-year plans we want the students during the class to understand how their high school and college courses connect is there any.
Overlapped kind of History 131 America history replaced our College course excuse to be replaced their High School course so all those preparations will be done as well as looking at doing study halls and any additional support systems in the high school to help prepare them for their college courses so we're really looking at creating a Innovative College schedule on a high school campus to support students that we know already have a rigorous schedule as a high school student outstanding thank you thank you for the explanation that really did bring it to life for me and I think this is a wonderful plan thank you for bringing up with in your partnership and working together Dr mabanga and president I believe Riverside is going to be the pilots if it works really well we'll be able to scale it up duplicate that to other campuses as well.
Anybody else. Yeah I'm really grateful and excited about this presentation already there's so many conversations around the rule that Durham Tech plays currently and what you know the role it can play as we continue to expand and I love the notion of every single DPS student understanding like this is a resource for them and I mean I'd like to see the number of DPS students who are involved with comprehensive the comprehensive high schools and the CI what is it the initial collaborative Innovative schools those are great opportunities to interact with Durham Tech but I also know that hearing from colleges about children students who don't have don't meet the MCR requirement it worries me right we owe every single one of our students just the ability to go wherever they want to go and Durham Tech is is a partner in the sense that it does provide opportunities for students and I hear you I hear you president JB Buxton when you said you know we don't want the kids to.
Just take a couple of courses you know we want them to attain something so attainment is definitely a goal and they can get certification but I also know that you are such a great partner I'd like every single student in DPS to know that this is a resource for them whether it's for certification we need more early childhood especially as we want to grow the you know Universal Pre-K is something that this county has committed verbally has passed a resolution almost a decade ago we have past resolutions in support of that and I think that we're going to be growing these efforts we're going to be growing this effort because this is definitely one of the social drivers in terms of starting kids off from the beginning with care making sure that we reduce trauma and impact to children and so investment in Durham's children means expanding Early Childhood programs and I see a really neat opportunity with that and I'd like I think when it comes to the partnership.
I would Envision A Moment Like A a time when every single DPS student can be duly enrolled DPS and also you know Durham Tech to take some courses some of them will get certifications in you know bio bio medicine biomedical Pathways and hopefully also understand the pipeline with nccu that already is growing you know their biomedical capabilities and so but I'm worried about MCR and I know that that's not the goal of this partnership however I do know and want to just acknowledge that you do play a big role for many students who are not able to meet that basic minimum requirement of minimum course requirement for the for the colleges and the other thing I'll say is just thank you for showing up to community events whether it's the anti-hispanic professionals having a table there a lot of our students were working as a district to make sure that every student has access to College counselors sometimes that conversations may not be happening in the school building for whatever reasons we're addressing that.
Well troubleshooting we're trying to make sure that first of all Staffing you know being able to have the ratios that we want to have and aspire to with funding that we need right but I know that those events in community are also opportunities for them to even get that level of conversation and maybe even pique their interests and even Explore this option and I'm really encouraged by the percentage of 25 but I I think that metric can grow substantially you know in terms of students who take a course or or decide that you know they want to they want to do a certification program or not the other thing is the conversation that is happening with a lot of leaders and I want to shout out mx-con and they have some priorities they've been talking about in terms of access as well educational access and these areas of also like language access as well you know we're going to need languages Beyond just Spanish we're talking about every language we've already seen the trends in.
Arabic Pashto French so many different languages and so I think that that's another area of opportunity to continue to partner and I know that even our staff is you know coming to Durham Tech to get certifications and those are game changers I mean when it comes to interpretation that is I tell everyone it's not about it doesn't matter if you have a PhD in in sociology that doesn't mean you're going to be a good interpreter right you have to have the skill set and the certification program is geared towards towards that so I want to definitely shout out like the Educators that you have at Durham Tech to do such a great job in terms of helping us with our bilingual capabilities so I also see that as a part of the pathway of the CTE because that's another Avenue where if we have students who want to you know become like multilingual resources for wherever they want to go CTE I I love this collaboration so many other thoughts just.
Just wanted to kind of put that in in the the MCR requirements and of course out of state tuition is a whole other conversation that I will save but I do want to you know continue that conversation about our kids that are having to pay out of state tuition until that gets addressed at the state level we definitely know that Durham Tech is is accessible to to students when sometimes colleges are not because of that out of state you know cost and so I'd love to continue just hearing a little bit more about how we're approaching that conversation and I know it's been ongoing for a while but it's it's happening everywhere else as well so I'd love to continue that conversation with you thank you thank you Miss Carter I've not saw your hand and them inspired then we'll go to chair unstead thank you so much for coming tonight this is wonderful I I love all of this I'm really excited about this partnership I just had a few questions for you all.
I it sounds like you've done some work to explore why so few of our students are earning a degree or certificate what are some of the barriers that are in place like is this about Transportation or is it a lack of infrastructure within the schools lack of support staff so I think in order to be able to increase attainment we need to fully understand what's getting in the way of that I think it's a combination of both but let's talk about Financial Resources textbooks on a force layer is still expensive and so a map test book is 200 and a family can't afford to get a textbook and a student can take the course Transportation getting to your high school and getting your Durham tech for some individual could be one car on a family parent has to work first so transportation is also another key barrier for students again with textbooks as course fees a kid could take a science course and that's an additional thirteen or fifteen.
Dollars it might not sound a lot to many but that's a lot for many families and so when you add all this up financial and transportation is a huge barrier for many students to start CCP and I'll let Dr pack add other areas I think those are a lot of the external barriers that we were we've been looking at there are funds in The Cooperative Innovative schools grant for CMA and Durham's glow technology to cover the textbook piece because that's part of their grant money but in general if you're in a comprehensive high school and you want to to do that currently it's pretty much self-initiated self funded self you know getting yourself there that kind of thing and so that's what we're trying to address bringing the college to the students to start with to give them a foundation of being able to take the classes at their own location where We've looked at ways to pay for the textbooks and the fees so and then remove the barrier of transportation and that way.
When they're ready they can move on to the campus of Durham Tech and be more successful but you know there's there are some internal infrastructure in terms of how the schedule supports or doesn't support students going it particularly at a comprehensive high school so they would have to schedule their day at the end of the day or the beginning of the day to be at Durham Tech currently to get back and forth to do their High School right that makes sense and it sounds like you're talking to families and students to learn about that's where that was gonna be my one of the other biggest barriers just knowledge a lot of parents that we interact with they come to us their 12th grade year and now there's only a semester there getting reaching students as early as I'm sorry Elementary at this point right is is about Community knowledge and connecting and we're doing parent sessions and we're really trying to figure out how do we reach families.
Where they are not where we are that's the only way they're going to know about this opportunity so I think that's another huge barrier just families not knowing about this awesome opportunity and being able to help to get them to this point so they can get here in one one final thing is about perception too so in in a lot of families the idea of four-year education four-year college is the standard right and and so what we've got to change the perception about Community College and the quality of the courses that students will receive and I think students understand don't understand that they receive the same quality Point addition for a community college course that they take in school as they do for an AP course so you know there are some perception issues that we've got to address not just with our students but with our families as well thank you so much that that all makes sense I look forward to seeing how we can adjust infrastructure to make sure.
That we can accommodate students you know if they have transportation and everything that then we can adjust their course their school day to make sure that they can access this and also that we have the staff need in our schools to provide that knowledge and support and kind of guidance through the system it sounds like that might be something that's needed as well and you'd mentioned earlier about wanting to educate families about opportunities while the kids are in middle school which sounds amazing Elementary School would be great but so I look forward to hearing more about how we're going to be doing that too because that's exciting thank you so much so I'm just so excited this is about the most exciting thing we've considered in a long time it reminds me of when taxpayers in Durham said they would tax themselves higher to give children Durham promise scholarships like over 10 years ago and how over the years we've struggled to actually connect our students with the opportunities and the funding there.
And to me this is you all as leaders and you all as staff leaders saying yes and how are we going to innovate and do this in Durham for our children and how are we going to do it quickly I'd love that you're setting audacious goals I love the 13 to be 15 or 20 percent as y'all keep showing our students and our families how important this is for their future we talked a little bit about language Justice and how this is a critical opportunity for children that might be undocumented to earn two College to their associate's degree with us paid for everything right so that's so critical for us to get that message out in the community deeply while we work to to address the out-of-state fees with the rest of the state what is the rise test requirement that was on the pipeline maybe you talked about it maybe I missed it but on that pipeline there's a test requirement going down your pipe Pilot's placement test so for Early College High School.
They take the test their life grade year so it has been a barrier but what are we doing to help we're working on creating connecting first the teachers with the test so teachers are taking the rise test math and English themselves always a different experience so they can go back and help the students we want to make sure that they're being prepared for this test we're also looking at other ways and other classes they can take not all college courses require the rise placement test so looking at other Pathways to connect am I missing anything else that we're doing we're also looking at alternate ways as far as the the right now the rise is the test but there are other ways to qualify a place into and you know just be in this broad as we can in terms of what opportunities we look at to make sure students can move forward and process I would love it as you'll continue to work on this and I know you are it does.
Go back to Middle School it does go back to you could knock that English one out in Middle School you could knock your math one out I mean you have to open up you have to open up time in your schedule and so I hope y'all are talking about summer opportunities to knock your PE credit out and things like that ahead of the year are y'all looking at like I mean because we have this new financial literacy class that high schoolers have to get we have all kinds of little things so have you all talked about any of the summer ways to bridge some things the short answer is yes some of that is not in place yet and but what we have been doing for summer like this summer we're given extended opportunities for students to start in some of these Pathways if they haven't before so and then we're attaching them with the summer piece that we're attaching some pre-apprenticeship so that they can get paid to to do the course of.
We are recruiting in the schools but I'll use this as an opportunity for the families at home there are spots available if you're if your son or daughter is interested in 9-1-1 certification that is a high demand industry that they they need folks in and we you could graduate and be working in a well-paid job with benefits I think Miss Valley valade as I mentioned early childhood education we are doing a pre-apprenticeship with early childhood education course where they will get their own clinical in in Center hours paid for so there's probably another one that I forgot and a bio worked so president bumpston mentioned the biowork certification that has so much in need right now with all of our biomanufacturing folks that are in this vicinity again a certification that can get them into a paying job well-paying job right off the bat so those are opportunities happening this summer and if you need more information about that feel free to reach out to me that's great and when we get to.
Growing together soon I'll be asking this but I'm wondering if we have maxed out capacity at all of those Cooperative programs or if you all have talked about whether we could grow capacity at any of those programs as we go forward particularly systems baby is here like Middle College like or have you all talked about going down from and including 9th and 10th graders like are there ways you're looking to expand in those directions as well I saw a president bison was looking at me so we're gonna tag along here so we have a great initiative we're working with some other partners Duke University included as well so we have a vision of really spending our middle college to become an early college so that we can have up to 400 students but we have a good partner with Duke and other places if the funds come through I think we'll make it really quicker president Buxton we have the granted too many opportunity because the voters of Durham passed our.
Bond your bonds and ours we'll build two new facilities one folks on life science one Allied Health that's going to give us a building that will bring all of our Allied Health programming out of now that will open up which creates an opportunity to do an early college and have an early dedicated facility which you need for Early College in the way that you don't quite for Middle College because of the grade span so we see this as part of this larger effort and we've got some work to do over the next few months to see if there's a pot of money we're going to have access to but we I think are pretty committed to move down this road even if those dollars aren't there to keep looking at ways we might expand fantastic the other group of students that I think of so much as PLC students and as y'all continue to dream and plan a lot of them graduate are graduating early from over there and ready to do.
Their next thing and if there's ways to connect those students and the needs that they have and their hopes and dreams I hope that we'll continue to reach out deeply into to that school community and The Homeschool families I know we get a lot of them in Middle College and so I know y'all will intentionally build Bridges there going forward but I'm just so excited to see what y'all can do and the innovative ways you're bringing actually the programming to the students and I look forward to the next report on this thank you your Armstead Vice chair Chavez we'll round out our comments thank you all for the presentation many you know my my work is college access spent 10 years doing that so I just am very excited about everything that's happening here for all the reasons y'all stayed already stated the economic opportunities for students the future thinking about future attainment of four-year College goals having that early access will be helpful and the other thing I have a couple of comments.
And questions I think there are some things that DPS will need to work on improving to make sure that our students are ready to be engaging in those college courses so how do we make sure we raise the academic level and support that we're doing in our Elementary in our middle schools so that students are ready for those college classes it also makes me think about the FAFSA and having all of our Juniors or all of our seniors so maybe even earlier start working on that document and start planning and completing that with families so it's not foreign to them and not one more barrier that prevents students from thinking about taking college courses you all showed the I think it's the district demographics but I would love to see the current demographics of students who are participating in college courses just so we can kind of see where we are and know where we want to go the other thing I think about marketing is how much our students are.
Going to be really great marketers of the program and what we're doing and I wonder even if we have student ambassadors or I mean student influencers like we are in an age where influencers are what is marketing strategy and so how do we Infuse our students and parents who have participated in this program to be able to share their stories with other students and get them excited and help them understand how to navigate those college courses and so that's I think I really think interesting idea to think about for marketing one of the other things I wanted us to consider too is and I think you all mentioned this but it sounds like our early course options are maybe not getting at this but how we can get more certificate programs in our schools like I think about how we have AP courses we have IB courses we have those honors courses but for some of our students who are on a career trajectory how do we make sure that some of those certificate.
Programs are now in their school as well so that they don't have to do that travel to Durham Tech and so it sounds like that's what we're building out to and those entry courses I think that we're piloting it didn't quite sound like they were certificates but I hope that we can really think about that if we brought the Spanish interpretation program into a high school so many of our students could be graduating and like ready to go into a job with that interpretation certificate and so wondering how many of those other opportunities might be available to come to our schools I'm gonna pause there see if there's I can't see y'all so I don't know if you have a response and then I have a couple more comments let me go first then president baxton I said this at the beginning it took us a while to get to this place where the president is willing to let those instructors come to our campus that's a step in the right direction.
I think there was another barrier there pretty much with our principles they were struggling with AP classes versus dual enrollments we have to get them to a place where you can accomplish both I think that was a hurdle that we're able to just to jump but I think the next one is with students and our parents as well so they can understand I'll give an example for Middle College city of medicine I mean the goal or the mission of the school was not for students to graduate with our social degrees that was not the expectation just go small school rigor graduate but now we're bringing another emphasis that's becoming a part of the vision of the school students that are going to city of medicine they have to go now they have we hope that they're gonna graduate with a social degrees so that's the expectation now that we're going to work with our counselors backtracking looking the scheduling I think we're going to be able to get there where's.
That bison just a couple additional comments I think what we're talking about in a lot of ways is when you're a high school student in Durham Public Schools you're also a college student and that's the opportunity you get as a parent when you're a DPS you're also a college student JRM State you talked about the certificates we've been doing a lot of work to look at the certificates we offer across our seven Pathways especially the high school certificates Dr Rio not in our head over here partially because what we found was we had a lot of certificates that we didn't see the labor market value in and we had students in classes getting certificates that weren't tightly tied to jobs and so we took a lot of steps to take those certificates off the books so we could rebuild our certificates so in 2023 to actually lead to something especially in the I.T industry and especially in places like Advanced manufacturing building engineering skilled trades we don't want people to just get.
Kind of the version of a participation certificate we we need something that matters and when they walk it to employer it means something so that's where absolutely we're going to be building those out and this is this gives us that partnership to make sure we've got them in the right places but I think it's a totally different thing for us to be accountable with you to work with parents to work on scheduling to work on Pathways to think about courses that ought to come to you I will also tell you I also don't want to lose students coming to us because I think there is something that I see in your dually enrolled students or your new graduates when they come to us and they get on campus and they realize oh everyone else just looks like me I I belong here College I'm I'm College material that they really understand when they get on that campus and it becomes very real for them in a way that if we just brought.
The whole college experience to high school I'm not sure we would quite get so this this kind of mix that we've talked about where we get to the high schools to do certain work we're getting high school students to come to us is I think a great match or a great mix that then is going to cause a lot of people to realize completion is for them and this opportunity is. My thumb said did you have other questions yeah I just I agree with what you said president Buxton that we don't want to try to replicate that college campus on the on the unit on the high school campus because it is something different about when a student is especially a first generation student or a student of color is on a college campus right and what that feels like for them to be in that space I think I want us just to make sure that we're considering college readiness and career Readiness and so I.
Think that yes we know we have to as an AP student or as an IB student I have an opportunity to earn earn course credit through some of those courses but I also want to make sure some of our students who are not in AP and IB have an opportunity to earn some credit too towards and I'm glad that y'all are revamping those credentials but they have an opportunity to earn that too because those are because if you want to some people use opportunity youth or other different language but I think those are some of our students who graduate and then aren't really sure what happens next and who often sometimes may take courses here or there but don't necessarily have a clear pathway into what is a career or what's going on so I think that is another group of students that I'm thinking about who may not be as clear around what college looks like for them but how can we start getting them also acclimated to some of the.
Opportunities at Durham Tech so they can see themselves in a career opportunity there so that's kind of what I'm thinking almost like two different or some overlapping but some different groups of students who will be supported by this initiative if I may you can't see me nodding I'm nodding I mean when we talk about the associates of applied science and you think about things like life sciences and the ASM biotechnology you think about what we have in building engineering skilled trades and health and wellness it may be that the majority of students are actually in applied degrees or applied certificates and diploma programs or equally as they are in kind of a college-going pathway where they're going to get two years with us and then move on to Central Carolina wherever they want to go so absolutely and and we serve that broad population often students who do dual enrollment are thinking of it more in terms of four-year College access and they're going to get a couple years or something on the way.
But we've got such a br we have seven Pathways and that really only describes two of them that we have opportunities to move into really great jobs in this region and again this might be you know a couple years down the line but how would our Southern School of Engineering and sustainability skills trades Pathways get connected to Durham Tech so now they automatic like we already have some skills that they earn from high school now they have their certificates and they're straight out into a career right so some of those opportunities that I think are also available with this partnership so I hope that we keep those students also in our mind thank you Miss Chavez thank you very much I'm also very excited about this I think it to me it is a way for all of our students to feel capable and I think that meets our mission and I love the idea of them having developing this identity as a college student as well because I think that that really.
Matters to students they're figuring out their identity and if they can see their themselves in as a college student as someone who's going to a particular in a particular direction I think that's I think that's awesome a couple things that come up for me I like what you said about barriers and you know really addressing those particularly for families with less resources but you know in this context in this at this point in time student debt is such an issue and so this really combats that where you know I remember hearing a NPR story a few years ago about how people in the worst position are those who didn't finish their college degree but did accumulate some debt and and so but they never they don't have the bachelor's to then go on and get a a job that you know requires that qualification so I really I I think that's great I like the goals that you set I think they're realistic if we can expand on those that's wonderful but I like having.
Numbers that we're trying to achieve in the next few years and I just I wanted to say it's the Innovation for me I I love this being a model as well that you know we can really showcase as a district and hopefully invite other you know other North Carolina districts to to take a look at as well I agree with a lot of what my colleagues here said I I am very interested in how this will draw some of our most vulnerable students and those who might not thrive in traditional academic settings as well so I'll be if you have any comments on that now that's fine or I'll just be interested to see how we engage those students going forward those who you know we see kind of drifting away if we can get them back and get them into some programs that really they get excited about and feel connected to I think that will be wonderful also very excited for this as an opportunity for our undocumented.
Students since they don't qualify for in-state tuition I think the undocu scholars report even or with some report that said basically this is the best way for undocumented students to get college credits and so this is this is awesome this you know takes that on and also with DACA being so vulnerable at this it's been vulnerable in the courts but at this point in time one question I had around that was our ESL students able to would they qualify would they be able to with to participate in these programs I know that you all have ESO courses as well but can our ESL students would they be able to go directly into some of these certificate or associate degree programs so yeah the great thing about the cabinet College infrastructure is we have we have courses that are meant to get you from kind of basic ESL all the way through English for academic purposes and so if you need extra English language acquisition supports to.
Get you to a place to have the kind of fluency you need to succeed in academic that's what we do with students often older coming to us and immigrants coming to us but that's the ability we have so if if young people are coming later in their high school years or the beginning of their high school years and need some of those supports we have those those courses that we can and we do some of that partnership already with DPS especially in some summer efforts but that would be one pathway where we could provide those Sports that's great to hear and the other thing I was just thinking about was talking up these programs and opportunities in middle school and you know I'm just thinking about how that will happen and you know working having worked with young people there are there are times at which they they have an ambition but they may not see how to get there and so I see this as a real opportunity to kind of.
You know paint them a picture of the latter the steps that they will need to take and and make it really concrete for them and and so that's exciting to me but I don't know if you have any thoughts about that now otherwise look forward to seeing how we talk about it with you know with our middle schoolers and just get them excited about the future them those are all my comments thank you I think one one comment towards that is that we really are are developing and honing in on our four-year plan development in the middle school but really it's more like a seven year plan so we're talking to them early and we're using resources like Zello because we don't expect you to just look at the Durham Tech offerings and go oh hey that's for me right you really need a little bit more education about what what these courses go towards so it's a really multi-program approach like educating our students educating our teachers so that they can have.
The knowledge to help guide our students because they're so influential so we're doing things like externships with our teachers out in the community in Industry we are working you know we're not the only ones that are going to make this happen we can't be so we're working with our counselors our school folks and our CTE counselors to make sure that everybody's being able to talk about these things and then Durham Tech I think has been a great partner they're willing to step in with us not just to the high school and to make this happen but in the earlier years as well and so I think all of that put together is going to be part of how we get the middle school on board and excited about the next steps I'm gonna put a plug in we're doing an emerging program for councils and cdcs so they're coming to Durham Tech this summer and they're going to experience the pathways right I call it adult summer camp because they're they're one connecting to.
Students and so like Dr pack was saying and these are the opportunities that we're doing middle schools come to our campus we make sure our department comes and speaks during the tours we make sure we're implementing that the summer camps that we collaborated with we make sure we're talking to them today we're doing presentations we're there so that's just some of the groundwork that we're doing now and of course over the years it's going to expand but that's just the initial steps awesome thank you so much thank you all Miss valdars says another comment but I want to get in a couple of questions and comments I thank you so much for the presentation and agree with most everything that my colleagues have said but I would be remiss if I don't bring in my background in higher education Academia in regards to the curriculum standards particularly those that DPS is offering now that we're one-to-one we need to make sure that we're keeping up with what's happening over at Durham Tech making.
Sure that our courses remain Innovative in the curriculum that we're using allow Educators and instructors to communicate directly and give feedback with students making sure we're using the best culturally appropriate curriculum making sure we're using things that are going to have standards and really evaluate the curriculum that we're using so that our students when they get into seventh eighth ninth grade they're not looking at something new when they turn to Durham Tech and look at the and look at the rise test and say oh I can't do this they are already experienced with the technology and we know that electronic resources are less expensive than actual textbooks and we have the ability to use them so let's leverage that Miss Valentine yes thank you I just I had another thought when I was when I heard you speak about making sure that certification programs or anything that Durham Tech offers has a route to success to labor we don't want to you know have kids spend money and time getting certifications and I just wanted.
To hear a little bit more about what were some of the certificate programs that were discontinued and then also ask a question about where you you see Allied Health slash bio medicine biomedical biowork programs where do you see it going now that we are experiencing AI pretty much in every system in the medical field I mean algorithms are running pretty much operations and in the healthcare's DPS has already done two things or it's it's contemplating two things with AI which is a big topic right in terms of like you know how there's awareness of systems and efficiency but also like keeping in mind biased which is algorithm bias which is huge and I just wanted to hear a little bit more about like our students having opportunity to engage in those conversations even you know as they continue to navigate systems themselves you know like whether it's the healthcare system and they go and they work in the healthcare system and they're seeing processes maybe some of these programs are but keeping that lens of.
The the ways that right now we're having Innovation changing every facet of systems and how they work and being able to be in the conversation now versus after you know when things are implemented and then we're starting to see maybe the downstream impacts of an algorithm that is biased that is that is causing harm and harm mitigation like how do we get our kids on the Forefront of that and I just wanted to hear a little bit more about programs that are discontinued and where maybe there's a possibility to create I I once heard you say that you know you're willing to like explore certification programs or kind of you're in the creation mode as well just as as you're monitoring efficiency of programs so I'm just wondering if AI has room in any of this absolutely and I'm just on the on the programs we discontinued we took a look at every one of our degree programs that certificate diploma degree and we were looking at first whether there was actual.
Projected demand that went into the future could we actually show that there was demand for these specific programs and did they lead to a livable wage now there are a few places like early childhood we did not keep that standard because we don't feel like we can walk away from Early Childhood we can't walk away from EMTs we can't walk away from law enforcement but in the rest of these areas we looked at does it lead to a livable wage is there demand in our labor market and then started to look at what our completion rates looked like and made some choices most of the areas we we discontinued six whole degree programs about 30 certificates most in Allied Health I.T where at one point the occupation and the certificate made sense or the degree program made sense we're not there now I'll give you one medical office technology don't need an Associates from Durham Tech to work in a medical office role it might help you get the job but you're.
Not actually you don't need that to get the job now you can come back and do continuing education and so we do continue education but then that's 250 dollars not twenty five hundred dollars a year to get through so it was areas like that where we just saw the labor market had shifted and we were no longer we're meeting demand in fact they had fallen off AI is clearly an area and we're right now building an advanced manufacturing program that will essentially get into automation and to some degree ai ai probably more through data analytics or having some early conversations the key is we don't want to guess we're not going to guess we're just we're going to figure out through industry through employers what they need what those degree programs look like with the actual learning objectives are what it takes to get in there so yes we're in creation mode because we're having to be responsive to a very Dynamic labor market in this area and we can move pretty fast the accreditation.
Process doesn't always move real fast but we can when we can get faculty and that's one of the bigger issues here because the com the competition and you all see it especially in your high schools but we are moving we are trying to move in those areas well and that's a this is a place and I'll wrap up here where your students would have access to these programs other in high school and then whatever they want to do after that once they've gotten that credential I mean that's up to their the options they want to pursue to get into that industry to go on to four years to continue to get another certification with us that might build especially in I.T so that's the exciting part about where we are in this community just follow-up comment I'm so grateful that nothing touched and I I got to tell you got messages from folks excited about this presentation who also told me make sure you lift up the community health worker program please.
Don't ever do away with that I mean it's a great example we need to create we need to create more during the covet pandemic it was a game changer in the ways that communities that were disenfranchised from Healthcare systems were able to through that program have conversations with providers have conversations with administration at the hospitals have conversations about mobile clinics and so many ad like the advocacy met the you know the the need and the healthcare social drivers and everything else so it was just a wonderful thing and they are so excited and they shared those pictures everywhere in Durham Tech you know that collaboration with Dr Viviana Bianchi I'm telling you even to this day they're still celebrating that that certificate program and I know that at this point it was like mostly parents but our students also there is a whole focus on youth engagement during the covet pandemic how important it is to have messaging coming from the youth and that program is also such a wonderful.
Program I think for our students as well in terms of having you know be a community health worker thank you we're very proud of that program thank you for mentioning okay thank you all so much for your presentation Miss buyer has one last question sorry one last question it's really short Dr MinGa has Dr Julie Edmonds a friend of yours been involved with his planning team or will she be in the future with her work and publication on early colleges as a model in her work at UNCG.
No no she's not involved and I was not aware of her expertise in that area so definitely as we're doing this work Dr pack we take good notes of that I have all the content information about her then the former DPS parent yeah brilliant UNCG researcher but her publication this year was early college as a model for schooling and evaluated all the Early College Programs across the state and know she would love to kind of help us innovate because she's local thank you also thank you thank you all so much thank you for being here the next item on our agenda is our Durham Technical Community College Board of Trustees appointments I'll get us started on that so as you all know Durham public schools has four seats on Durham technical community colleges Board of Trustees president Buxton reached out to me and shared that we have some appointments that we need to make one of our appointees Dr Pat Ashley's term will expire soon she's currently serving I.
Believe as the vice chair of their board and would like to continue to serve we also had one of our appointees unfortunately passed away John burnness who was a fierce advocate for Durham Tech and the Durham Community he is greatly missed and so we will also need to appoint someone to fill his seat and then finish the rest of his term and talking with president Buxton as well as other board members I would like to bring Dr Pat Ashley as well as our previous board member and chair Mike Lee I believe he's also now almost Dr Mike Lee to serve on the Durham tech board of education so I would like to bring both of those as nominations board members and we're also happy to do a motion if we're ready we're ready so our move that we appoint Dr Pat Ashley for a new term and appoint Dr Mike Lee to fulfill John barness's term second has been moved by Tiera Umstead and seconded by Miss buyer to appoint Dr reappoint Dr Ashley and.
Appoint Dr Mike Lee to the Durham Technical Community College Board for Durham Public School seats any discussion I can I I'm sorry Mr Rogers can I add one more Alexander yeah I also want to add thank you board members for or Mr for supporting this motion I also want to add we in the past for our Durham Tech appointment process have brought names just as a collective and decided but it has been noted that we might want to think and consider a different process and so we will in the future be thinking about what an application might look like and study the city and the County's process to make sure that we have a process that is open to folks who might want to serve we're also closely monitoring the legislation that's happening in Raleigh and so we hope to continue to monitor that to see what happens around appointments and make sure that we'll fall in line thank you any other discussion thank you chair but Tina I was just.
Gonna you know mention that that this is definitely something that the community wants to be involved in like you know heads up about when these appointments are happening opportunities for folks to apply for us to have like a really good transparent process about how we do this not that this isn't but what I'm saying is that there isn't you know definitely a timeline what people can expect obviously even in this case one of the seats we it's unfortunate right that that seat opened up very unfortunate and I'm very sorry I could you know just feel the impact of that but there's questions as to terms and there's multiple appointing bodies and it gets a little confusing and I know that I also had questions like you know what seats get appointed by the governor what seats get appointed by DPS what seats get appointed by the county and so many questions around that so I appreciate our chair just naming that you know we are who aren't barring any legislative action definitely committed to improving.
And having a a clearer process for this but congratulations well the nominees are on the floor so yeah Miss Lewis thank you for giving that update sure I'm stead with the process and things that are going to be looked into going forward I would just also like to say I remember when we did this two years ago and that last appointees that we made one of our questions and our inquiries were about getting quarterly or yearly updates on the work that's happening I just want to put that back on the floor again that I would really appreciate those who have been nominated to keep us abreast of different developments happening throughout the year as well thank you all those in favor say ah but we'll start with Miss Umstead this is Bettina Umstead I vote I miss Carda-Auten hi Miss buyer hi Miss validarez hi Miss Lewis aye Ms Chavez aye interview aye our appointees have been improved unanimously Dr Pat Ashley and Dr Mike Lee congratulations TiVo thanks for serving.
Okay we will now move on to operation Services Board of Education budget update kind of requests for increased Appropriations Mr Lucy are you ready I am good evening board members you know I like to have fun or if you don't you'll learn tonight yeah well I wanted those things offline tonight we come to you with our local request to the county for the 23-24 year we've been working together on this and we're very appreciative of your support as we've come down the road here to get us to the point where the ask is for our classified staff this year to make the classifieds classified study a reality for Durham Public School staff it also has in there and we're going to go we're going to jump to just to slide five if we could we've talked about the enrollment we've talked about some of the highlights of before we just want to talk to you tonight about the the 10.8 million dollar ask the critical points to this is we're.
Looking at four and a quarter percent salary increase is part of this for certified staff we're looking at the classified salary increase of four percent retirement rate going up as well as health insurance going up not knowing what the general assembly is going to end up doing for it or how they're going to adjust these numbers as we move forward all the money will be needed when it's all said and done because if they go up a percent that's another five close to four hundred thousand dollars for a certified staff they go up a percent here they go up a percent there for classified it's going to be a little a little less but still the all the money that we're requesting here is a necessity the biggest line item we have of course is the classified salary study 4.1 million dollars which is going to be needed to cover the increases in the salary study as well as some of the push down that we're going to get from state salaries because.
We're not going to get all the money we need in those buckets to make this happen giving us a total of nine million dollars that we'll be requesting from the county we hope that they will give all of that to us so we can move forward with our classified salary study and then of course the real key to all of this is the is receiving additional funding for the charter schools it's about 20 percent so we estimate it to be about 1.8 million dollars additional asks that will need to come with this request for classified salary study and salary increases this is all about people so we're looking at a request of 10.8 million dollars if you go to the next slide please as we look at this next slide this is your where we are today and what we're asking to go to for next year if you look in your current approved column we have operations of 137 million dollars Charter Schools 33 million dollars totaling 170 million dollars in.
Appropriations just for that purpose alone if you look at the operation funds that we're requesting we're looking to go to 46 million dollars while the charter schools are going to go to 35 million dollars with that the 10.8 million ask would bring us to 181 million dollars 1243 or 87. Again I state that those dollars are needed to make this all happen not unrealistic from the standpoint of our need we're only asking for what we feel is necessary to improve salaries across the district we also have other funding and we're not asking for any increases in that our pre-pre-k grant funds we get two point we we get two million dollars annually the 508 140 is from the quarter Cent sales tax that started out in a little over a little over 400 000 they added a few more they utilizing the quarter sales tax to use as a county Appropriations for the purpose of providing us part of our asks we also have Capital funds that were appreciative of getting six million.
Dollars for on an annual basis so as we look at the total for next year if all funds are granted to us we're looking at 189 million 451 in total coming through the district to the district for the purpose of supporting staff and charter schools. Our Capital outlay funds at six million dollars one day we're going to have to look at that again and say are this is this enough from that standpoint right now we have the Esser funds that we're using for the purpose of doing a lot of extra work in the schools so from that standpoint we'll be looking at that as we move down the road with the cost of cost increases that have come about over the years the one six million dollars that we now have dwindles fast so hopefully we'll be going to the county in the next few years to get some additional money for our extra above and beyond costs that that are needed in capital.
Next slide please just wanted to give you a picture of our revenues for the year what our estimations are looking at the state providing 35 percent of our funding a little over 259 million dollars in Revenue almost 200 260 local funding again the 59 159 million that we're looking to receive does not include Charter School funds if we remember that keep that in mind Federal funding we're looking at about 36 million about 80 million coveted funding a capital is based on where we land at the end of this year we just have budgeted currently 145 million dollars but as you can see with the local funding and the capital funding alone the county is doing a fair share of providing support for our school district at 40 million 40 percent of our dollars from that standpoint looking to start off the year near 734 million dollars in our overall operating budget that we have to track diligently so that's one of the things that we're going to continue to to do.
As we change over to our new system go to the next slide please I just want to talk to you a little bit about the budget by purpose as you can see almost 400 million dollars is going into our school-based instructional services our Capital Investments are significant 140 million operating Operational Support 75 million administrative and instructional support 25 million we spend a lot of this money on salaries alone salary and benefits close to 80 plus percent is going to salary and benefits human capital is a large cost thus the need for the 10.8 million dollars to make this reality if we can slide down to the budget calendar which is on page 11 slide 11.
I just want to point out that next week County manager will be bringing their budget to the Board of County Commissioners as we have to do by May 15th of each year we have to tell the county that this is our final ASP of the year so we're asking you tonight to approve us to move forward with the 10.8 million dollar ask though we have many more needs keeping the 10 million dollar ask in place for us to be able to implement the salary study in 23-24 we will have more information from the county on when our public when our adoption of the or meeting to present to them first between May 16th and June 7th they'll have a public hearing on May 22nd and then they're going to have the adoption of their budget by June wealth of this year in the June time frame we're also going to be coming to you with the interim budget resolution which is asking can we continue into the next school year.
We need that approval from you as well so that's the movement on where we are in the budget calendar from that standpoint I asked for your approval to make this our request to the Board of County Commissioners. Thank you so much for the presentation board members. Is there a motion and we can get a discussion too and we have some discussion yes so I want to start with gratitude to our finance staff for always keeping us on track and transparent I want to thank Dr mabinga and HR for doing the salary study that showed us what we already knew that we've fallen behind Market rates in a lot of areas I'm so appreciative that this ask when fully funded because I trust that our commissioners are supportive our manage County manager is supportive this ask we'll get all of our staff to 17 an hour do I think that's enough not really not in this market and so I still hope that we can cost out what it would.
Be in the future as we go forward to match Public School Employees to the starting rate of County and city employees so that we are together in all things taking care of of our folks but especially our entry-level folks first and foremost so I think the county is going to 18 20 an hour or something like that did we have any chance to cost out what that jump would be for our employees no we did not cross that out at this point in time I'd like us at least before we go talk with them to be able to start putting laying the groundwork for that conversation next year same thing with Master's pay for our Educators I keep hearing them because they're looking at that in Wake County and it's tempting because it has gotten so expensive to live around the triangle area I know we had talked about mental health needs in the past and so getting you know having some numbers to continue the conversation with our colleagues on County Commission I.
Think is going to be so important As We Lay the groundwork for future conversations I also think one slide we brought in the past that I necessarily see was whether we're keeping up with inflation or cost of living like so while we're raising base wages I'm not quite sure that that we're even keeping up with inflation and every adjustments and so I I think that's important for us to continue to acknowledge the other piece that that I want to secure and talk about in the future and Dr Monk knows that six million dollars that we had secured commitment from the county three years ago Dr Monk Is that about when we started so that was for that's for routine maintenance but things that that we don't anticipate but they blow they go badly during the year we still have these HVAC things going wrong we have parking lots to pay we just have stuff that's not fun to pay for I don't think with the cost of construction and those escalations in.
That market that that 6 million is going quite as far with our square footage needs as it has in the past so I think it's going to be important for us to continue to have conversations about that amount going forward and I know y'all are thinking about it and talking about it I'm I don't want to disrupt the the strong work that you all have done building this ask I want to be clear too that when they see that slide Mr Lasorda with the 10.8 million and they see the 4 million tied to the salary I want you to be clear and say we have to have the entirety of that funded can you say that like again to make sure there's no confusion as but because they've looked at I've seen some of them look at it and go oh you only need the 4 million to meet the salary study and that's just not they can't it can't be broken apart like that no it cannot it has to be the full 10.8.
Million dollars for the purpose of ensuring that we have the funds necessary to implement the classified salary study plus the salary increases that are part of that salary study and the other piece of course is the certified piece that we have to have as well to ensure that we start off July of 20 of 2023 on the solid ground and as far as a timeline for the state budget which is totally out of our control do we have any idea where they're coming together on on between the house and the Senate so the house has put out their budget the Senate has not rolled their budget out but they're supposed to put it out this month they should be able to put it out sooner rather than later but they like to use the Memorial Day holiday to make the legislative staff work to get their things ready that's how it has happened in the past to get to the point of both of the budgets being out in the open.
With that there are some gains in the house budget should they move in that direction but not significantly for what our needs are there's a lot of shuffling of money around to take money out of our instructional support allotment per se and set up other alignment allotments with psychologists and social workers and others which more re puts more restrictions on local school districts to operate their their programs and they've been doing that as we all know for many many years restricting on an annual basis we haven't seen any movement with actual funding for Leandro coming through but they still have had 28 years to try to bring it so we look forward to them actually in six billion dollars yeah to move that forward and then the other bill that is a particularly concerning is the voucher bill and the the unconstitutional expansion that is proposed of unconstitutional vouchers I will say and so as our parents are wondering how and where to Advocate I encourage folks.
To keep an eye on that bill along with a host of other bad bills that are running in Raleigh but when families are making choices and when we're looking at enrollment and we're looking on growing together if we can increase enrollment if we can do the kind of programming that we are trying to design and dream for our students these are our community schools these are our children we can do more when we're making decisions collectively together than if people are making individualized privatized decisions thank you sorry you know how I go some of that time was actually Mr lasures but yes I'm done thank you have a comment and then I'll go back to the board members here.
I'm sorry you cut out Miss Roger so I think you called on me thank you Mr lasor for this presentation I think I appreciate to your reminder of you know we presented this information to the board of County Commissioners and they will have their budget opportunity I think it's important for board members us to remember that they remind us not to try to increase this at the last minute as a courtesy to them I think one of the things I feel really good about our ass for this year and want to and keep it where it is but I do want us to and maybe this is even in the presentation to the county that's coming up in June put the cost for Master's pay up there as it currently stands just so we have a sense of what that is and I want us to look forward to make including that and potentially next year's asked I think I mean Wake County is too close and it's too easy.
For them to get some of our really amazing teachers I think a teacher emailed us and said it's almost a ten thousand dollar difference for her and that's that's a big difference so we need to be thinking about how we are competitive with that change I also want us to consider I know a couple board members and other community members have asked us around that differential pay so want us to consider doing some research into that for the upcoming budget so thinking forward to next year and then I feel like I always bring this up and I hate to be that person but I know that so much of our federal dollars are coming to an end so I hope as if we're thinking about our budget for the upcoming and when I say upcoming year I really mean the budget that will be presented for January 2024 that we include information around how we are supporting many of the positions that we're current that are currently supported by federal funds how are we.
Sun setting those positions or moving in them into different allotments so I just want to make sure that we are thinking about that and that's on the Forefront okay points well taken anybody else Miss Beyer I think our chair Bettina Amstead for naming the advocacy around differential pay and definitely preparing for that I always just bring it to those two cops you know when it comes to EC and ESL I understand that a lot of the you know emails or campaigns might be true one or the other but both of them are are capped and I think that that is something we have to reckon with as a district that serves you know a significant amount of students who need these reports so my my only ask is just adding to what our chair Umstead mentioned in terms of like kind of calculating those numbers and showing us the numbers for both EC and ESL yeah I don't know why the State caps it and I always like just take the.
Opportunity to thank you for keeping us abreast of those limitations on services to our most vulnerable students.
Just briefly oh sorry just briefly I'll Echo some of what was said or just reiterate that in the next year I'd really like to see data to help us make decisions about both the differential pay for EC and ESL staff Master's pay it's a great idea to put in the presentation to show now like what that could what we could be asking for we might be asking for next year and then also for us to keep thinking about paid parental leave and as we're doing all of this to think it'd be helpful to get a sense for how other districts are providing these different salary increases or benefits like what's working well to retain staff and recruit staff and improve morale what's not and then see different options for different options and then what funds might be needed so like for paid parental leave like if we were to provide 12 lead 12 weeks of paid leave you know how much would that cost including substitute Staffing right or.
Six weeks what does that look like as just an example so for each of these like what you know by differential pay that could look like a number of different things for ESL and EC staff so it'd be nice for us to have like a menu of options where we could choose like ABC based on what our budget looks like thank you so much. I just want to retweet what my colleague said and say thank you for for the budget I feel good about this and just always appreciate your thoroughness thank you so much for this presentation I'm really really appreciative and always appreciative of slide nine that talks about the object that we're paying items on our people matter and you know we Center people at the first of all of our policies and so we can always say thank you and just appreciation to them but being able to pay them a living wage is going to go a long way and I reiterate we need to try.
To keep up with the city and the county with their minimum wages and making sure that our people are getting paid enough to live and live well in Durham parental leave the EC and ESL support and differentials we want to see it all we appreciate you taking care of our numbers in this way we will provide those numbers for you and give you as much detail as as you need we look forward to seeing that and I appreciate our our board working in good partnership with the board of County Commission and not adding to this ask tonight at the last minute could you welcome a motion are we at that point or do we I am always welcoming emotion move approval of the Board of Education budget request for 2023-24 second it's been moved by Ms fire second day by Miss Chavez to approve the budget for 2023 2024 all those in favor please say I yep no we're going to start with Bettina this is I Miss Lewis aye the budget passes unanimously.
Thank you the next item on our agenda I think belongs to you too it does it's a finance Kind of Night all right we're going to do after funding update for 2020 2023 quarter three thank you Miss Harrell Goff you're welcome we can go to the next slide please again our covered funds were provided to us starting back in 2020. these funds specifically were enacted in May of 20 from the federal government and we have three pots of money that we look for in this in this as we call Esser program is there one has has come to a completion at the June of last year answer two is coming to end in September of this year as well go to the next slide please and sr3 will be in 2024.
September as we look at the cares act and gear funds that were initially appropriated to us those really came to end in September of 22 we actually through the summer finalized our expenses in that of this past year bringing our balances down to Zero from that standpoint no more can be spent out of these programs they haven't and then that total was only about 13 million dollars which the majority of that we used for purchasing laptops to be a one-to-one initiative from that standpoint in the district next slide please if we look at these next set of funds these are the funds that we still have in play through September of this year we have to have them encumbered by the top part in the green which is about 48 million dollars that we started out with we're down to current amount balance remaining that's unencumbered or spent at this point in time of 7.9 million dollars the last time we came to you with the report through December we were at a.
Little over 11 million dollars so they're spending down the monies as we go our big pot is the emergency relief Grant PRC 171. That's what we're using for our HVAC systems we use for our Outdoor Learning areas as well as other Personnel throughout the district in the schools as well as throughout the district for the purpose of supporting the schools counselors Mental Health Counselors other supports to help teachers in the classroom to continue to work with students as they came out of the covid time frame and back into school teaching and learning coaches math and language from that standpoint all those things were factors that were needing to be put in place these will be the types of positions that are eliminated when the Esther funds go away at the end of 2024.
Right now we're we most of our expenses that we have left in the Esser funding is in the operations area but they're spending those number those dollars down quickly when getting some HVAC system Replacements at the tune of 300 000 plus dollars a pop that's not reflected on here because that'll be in the next quarter because we've just we just started receiving those in for the summer work that will be going on from that standpoint we have a lot of other little pots of money that we'll be working through for the purpose again expenditures this year or and encumbrances or at the point of 14.8 million dollars with like I said was 7.9 million dollars left if we go into the blue section which is our sr3 money that expires in September of 24 or we have to have it encumbered by then and liquidated by January of 25.
That's where our major dollars are still remaining again our PRC 181 which is the emergency relief funds for sr3 is where we have the bulk of the money and we have a lot of little pots of money that create for the needs of students throughout the district and programs that we need to operate to assist with some of the programs are state designed that we can take charge of and some of these are we have more flexibility on some of the things that they've given us that have not been that are being used are Gaggle grants money for the the Gaggle system that we have in place they have other small pots of money for enrichment programs math enrichment programs for driver training so there's a lot a lot of little pots of Outreach money for areas to support the students and the programs in the districts but the major part of course is the PRC 181 which we currently have another 62 million dollars to spend outside of the encumbrances and.
Expenditures that are in place right now but as I said with PRC 171 there are a lot of encumbrances going on yeah since March 31st that are part of that bringing that total down as well so we're in a good place we're monitoring this as we do with all our federal programs we work very closely with our federal programs area Dr Danner and his group to ensure that we are in a good position and that we're spending the money appropriately all these expenditures go through that area for requisition to make sure that they're part of the plan and make sure that we're audit compliant when the audits come Auditors come in to visit us we have a great work and relationship as I said with them and without that area keeping me straight keeping us straight we work we tag team to get it right and so again we're at a point where we have about 85 million dollars that we have to spend through September of 24 in this in this Esser funding.
Or Esser what we call sr3 so we're still working through those plans again every year we have to revamp look at our programs decide how we're going to spend the money be reminded then in September we're going to have another extra bonus of fifteen hundred dollars so that's going to wipe out eight million dollars of this right away from that standpoint so we're in a good place with our expenses and availability of funds as we move forward next slide please again we're in quarter three of the 2020 22-23 school year just a graphic for you to see where we are next slide please and again the allocations by area I'm not going to go through each of these slides but as you can see we have 56 million dollars tied to academic Services operational Services another 52 million dollars we have school level strategies 12 million dollars administrative service types programs at 1.6 in staff and recruiting of these funds at 28 million dollars overall so we are targeting the.
Money for the purpose of ensuring that we are looking at the programs as a whole and utilizing these to bring staff in as well as to continue growth with our students and provide those summer school programs that are needed next slide please I think we can go a few down because they're pretty much all three they're very much the same next slide next slide as we look here at the relief funds and what we have left to go this just gives you a breakdown by area of academic Services the operational services Recruitment and Retention School level strategies and administrative Services giving you remaining balances for each of those programs in the academic Services area of course you have the summer school programs and that will be part of that major factor probably be good eight four to eight million dollars spent in that you also have letters training that's going on for the purpose of up upfitting for our letters programs across the district that's going to be a couple million to two million dollars.
Will be spent on those types of stipends as well so there's money that's already planned to be spent and I can assure you that we're going to make sure that we spend all these dollars appropriately now we might get down to the nitty-gritty at the 24th hour of when some of these smaller grants that we had looked at in previously might have some dollars left over but there's nothing we can necessarily tie those dollars to to spend it appropriately but I can assure you it'll be very little left if any if you remember back to the initial dollars that we received from the state at the beginning of the pandemic that came through the state themselves they had little pots of money that we had to spend and at the last minute after we had already made all our expenditures and made sure we spent all our money they said that you can move the money around and spend it for whatever your needs are but we had already gone past that point.
And we wanted to make sure we had spent all the money prior to them coming out that ruling so with that said next slide please just a quick look at your Esser positions as you can see we have a lot of positions that we have allocated out to the schools a hundred and 109 were allocated for the purpose as you can see a lot of them 86 of them are filled we have people coming and going all times so there's always some vacancies in some positions that just couldn't be filled at the school level but we did put a significant number of positions out there for the schools to be able to ensure that they they had what they needed for resources they asked for those positions and were provided them so it was their their needs they they saw this past year well the past two years actually and some were able to be filled the entire time but many were in and out so there's always some lap salaries from those.
That will go back into the pot at the end of this fiscal year we have worked with the schools Dr Stewart Kim Hager in HR as well as the other HR technicians worked with the schools I believe we're putting out a little over 40 extra positions at this point for next year that the school said were needs to continue and we'll continue to look at that as we move forward so we're in a we're in a good place to be able to ensure that there'll be some continuity in some of the needed positions at the school level and again we may we'll probably be putting out some more as needs arise throughout the school year to utilize the money at the school level next slide please so this just gives you a summary of the positions that were here at the department level for the purpose of supporting the schools doing some of the initiatives that were necessary workstation technicians support our one-to-one initiative custodians to support additional needs in the schools for cleaning.
So from that standpoint we put out 119 other positions across the district that were for the purpose of ensuring support in the schools currently 45.5 of those at the end of March or sales next slide please. And as we talk through all of the Esser funding it's just one part of our overall piece of the budget I'd like to open it up for any questions and discussions that you may have at this point in time.
Anybody care to go first it'll be okay if there's no questions I'll go first okay since nobody else wants to I appreciate your presentation thank you for staying on top of these funds we absolutely have to spend them when would we ever get such a windfall again and I guess my question or items of note are. Is probably for Dr lasang as we are evaluating current open positions based on the school position summary how many of how many similar positions are open compared to what are phasing out and is there something that these people could move into and and what does our evaluation tool of whether or not these Physicians on the school level even on the district-wide level were effective in changing outcomes for our students so we are in the middle of the work and the planning of we have termed positions for the ones that are ending and so even in allotment meetings and discussions and all of that we're already planning for what happens with those positions as they end.
Whichever year they end based on the positions we work very closely with cni as well as Dr Stewart and her team as far as the assessment of the positions that also clearly came through in the allotment meetings because there were some allotments that were there for year one for these funds that aren't there for year two or year three and then they're as mentioned earlier there were additional positions that were added based on those needs and so we can try to compile some information just with regards to the factors determining that Effectiveness and all of that but we we have positions for those who have performed well that want to remain with us and we're already working on them so it's not I do not anticipate anyone who wants to work and they're committed to Durham Public Schools not being able to find something just as long as we can review to their credentials and be able to look at the vacancies we have available thank you anybody else.
Yeah I think it's along the same lines of how we're evaluating which people that we're employing are actually having a significant impact on our students and knowing that we can only have them for another year right not wanting to to set positions in place that we'll have to pull back but we keep hearing in almost every school visit I go in I know my colleagues are hearing it as well that the kids are not okay after the pandemic not just academically but in in mental health and and so many ways and the staff are not okay so are there things that we can do to support their wellness and healing with people this year and and maybe Dr Miller got you've had this conversation with your principals or with your student Advisory Group I mean or teacher Advisory Group and your student advisory do you have any insight and targeted ways that you're thinking about adding targeted folks and it's having laps I mean having not being able.
To fill all of these is also concerning right because these are positions we we said needed to be in place and and maybe even a halftime person is better than nobody in some of these roles have what qualitative kind of feedback are y'all getting or is it just more we're on a short timeline and we have to act quickly all right thank you for the question as we're going through the process of allotment in the school system I mean in the schools our HR folks academics as well I think Paul this year mentioned that folks that were around the table our principal will come with their needs these are the position we had let's say Jordan High School 100 positions and we're looking at our enrollment as well was that what it's going to be next year and based on those conversations that's how we're making those adjustments I understand that the first year with pandemic we had a lot of position that we allowed it at the school are those needs completely disappear.
I'll say no but are we getting to the point where we're making some transition I think pretty much most of the principals left the allotment meetings they were satisfied in the past they will come to me say I did not get all my ways but this year was way better oh it's by the father visited a couple schools today where the prince was like we had this program would love to continue with that as well I'm gonna pull that to Steward Mr lesueur to be able to have that conversation again so the bottom line here principal will run the table we're looking at the knees that ahead but we're not going to be able to sustain all 109 that we had at the beginning of the pandemic and there also needs an operation that are we addressing as well but also keep in mind we're going through our new strategic plan things have to be aligned with our strategic plan we are doing our school improvement process where we're going to school we're.
Evaluating the situations all those need to be tied up with money what we take into accounting commission is just for the salary adjustment with our classified employees but all these other needs that are tied with us good Improvement the new strategic plan without going to ask for candy commissioner this time those are needs that we may be able to address with some of the SR fund for one year and then moving forward we'll see what we can go to Board of County Commissioners I think there was another some position there with IET 11 positions that we started with the pandemic we're going to support them with Sr funds but in the same time in the back of all the local funds that we're able to accrue in the past few years we're transferring those folks in the permanent role even when the airsoft fund will be gone those folks will be able to be sustained because those are the positions that we need so if I can be brave we are really working with.
Our principles and when they come around the tables to tell us their needs as we decided to cut few of those positions I think we're in agreement with our principles but a few that think that they still need more I8 and things of that nature we are having those conversation I appreciate it the agile are talking with them though if they like especially for targeted summer enrichment and opportunities for where students have fallen behind we had hope last year that kids were going to bounce because they were so glad to be back together and in person but if there's I wonder if there's there you're open and listening to them on summer enrichment and also like scheduling and digging into which of our kids are falling behind in credits and that kind of credit recovery and and those and I'm hearing you say yes I just want to be you've been explicit I'm sure with them but you're you're using these funds to meet their needs in creative ways yeah.
Definitely but at the same time we're also struggling with Personnel not all our let's say 2400 teachers will love to be employed during the summer they need break they've been burned up as well besides some of the legislative mandates some programs that we're going to put in place this year we're gonna also emphasize on transition Elementary to middle middle to high school that's going to be our Focus but at the same time we also have some Community Partners booster and all that kind of stuff that they're also offering programs that we're going to make available to our families to take advantage transportation is a dilemma as well with all our bus drivers willing to come to work for a few hours versus having another employment somewhere else where they can work full-time so those are all the Dilemma that we're struggling with and we're making the best decision with the good programmatic that we can offer to our students no I appreciate it I know y'all are juggling a lot of logistics with all.
These vacancies I was delighted to hear from nurse Howard yesterday when we were together at the Hub farm that all of our school nursing positions practically are filled I was surprised but I told her that would be a great thing for public affairs to to highlight and so that we could actually fill those positions that the county has allocated as well using whatever skills she has thank you all I think that's a good once you made I think we probably have maybe 30 positions with Kenny and a lot of them still vacants.
Thanks chair Armstead has some comments and questions yeah thank you all for the presentation and I'm appreciative of how we spent those dollars so far I want to kind of go back to I think maybe Miss Rogers started this question and Miss buyer finished it but I I wonder if this is a presentation about how we are making the transition from these allotments because I think about in some ways the people with the allotments are there to help build capacity at the school for academic growth so I'm wondering as we're making this transition and schools are having to shift their allotments what did we learn like what growth did we see from students what mental health supports were available and that we need to keep and then what things are we feeling like we have the capacity to hold without an individual position so that's what I'm kind of and I want to figure out how we make sure we think about that in relation to academic growth and student.
Wellness and teacher retention maybe as well like three of our kind of big goals that we're working on and I think I kind of I heard that we're having conversations but I would love if we can make sure that we're linking how we think about positions to the academic growth and for us as a board to get a presentation on what's that look like in those allotment processes and how we've built capacity from them thank you chair Armstead that's your work that's we're gonna do give us a few more months to be able to to dig into Data to make sure that all the position that we're able to address to add to our schools what were the impacts and what will be our rationale to be able to continue with those positions moving forward give us time to get some data I'll say probably that should be a conversation that we probably need to to have maybe around October because we gotta finish this Academic Year.
Got all the data and then start the year and we're gonna have all this data report cards in place and then some of the qualitative data we've surveyed things of that nature we're gonna compile all this and then I will be able to come to you having a conversation and I think at that points we'll be gearing up around December to start talking about the next cycle of the budget and that would be really good place for us to have those conversations appreciate that and I.
Enactment or large influx of cash School builds up really great programming and when that money goes away that programming goes away and oftentimes students suffer so I just want to make sure that we've built whatever we need to build kind of in the foundation to make sure that as some of these positions go away our students still have what they need Educators have what they need so they can succeed. Thanks y'all I think that's oh miss validaris has a question just going back to the the ways that we support summer learning opportunities and this is just something that I just I know we mentioned you know that we are using the funds towards that there's a request from instructional assistants to have a better picture of how many opportunities will be available for this summer I know that we have more than six opportunities between extended school year we have some of the bridging programs for students going into into changing moving to middle school or going into high school we also have you.
Know AIG has opportunities as well like there's so many different ones what what is not clear is what it was what is clear is that instructional assistance can apply to any of those any of those summer opportunities and they're more than five but what's not clear is because it's contingent on the school's allocating saying how much how many employees they need but also funding I you know that question of funding and being that we have these funds that are you know we're in quarter three for for Simon I mean we're in quarter three and and and some of them are are soon to expire so I just wanted to hear a little bit more about communication around the number of opportunities because as with anything else whether it's Community Education and like before and after school the the slots being limited the same thing with summer opportunities being limited also for staff who want to do it and they just want to get a better picture of how many opportunities they'll have yes sir.
I'm just sorry for coming from behind you to answer the question I am working with we do have multiple departments and schools with different summer employment opportunities I'm working with my colleagues to provide a as comprehensive an update as I can in the coming in the coming week with that information. Thank you I guess my follow-up from that is when I look at the Esther School position summary I mean the education it says there's an allotment of 29 positions positions field as of 331 23 says 10.
Is that 10 for the upcoming school years that currently 10 like working right now and that can be a follow-up because we don't these are individuals that are in payroll that we're utilizing the answer funds for at this point in time so yeah it's for this year and again we're going to review what as we move forward into the upcoming year what the needs are and if Community Ed is still in need of those types of positions we will continue to support some of those in the upcoming year they do they are getting a significant amount of money from the state through the state programs that are going on that are above and beyond this funding that we have in here for Esser so not all the funds are necessarily needed because one they can't find enough staff to to take on the roles for community-head purposes it's and some of them they already have vacant vacancies in place we understand that there's a waiting list but again it's about addressing that having the.
Needed staffed for their Staffing levels as well thank you I think that's everything for everybody right great thank you Mr Lister you're welcome okay great we'll now move on to our summary of follow-up items is that Dr Monk tonight it's me hey all righty starting off with Durham public schools and Durham Tech partnership we want to make sure that we create new branding and advertising around the Cooperative Innovation schools as well as reaching out and letting families and students know about our dual enrollment program with Durham Tech and think of ways to utilize our students in that marketing and we also want to make sure that they're aware of all the high demand careers that are out there that are associated with this partnership and and certification program these areas include but are not limited to early childhood development Emergency Management and bio and bio works we also want to make sure that we are providing opportunity for our students to be both College and Career ready and then make sure that our both the.
Durham Public Schools and Durham Tech curriculums align and are culturally relevant for our students congratulations to Pat Ashley and Mike Lee for their appointment as Durham tech board trustees the board requested that for the the that we call style even though it's not included in this budget but the cost out what it would look like for our starting salaries to be commiserated with the starting salaries of the county and city government and for next year's budget they would like to see data regarding differential and pay for EC Masters pay ESL Etc and let's see and then the Esther funding Mr lasso gave us an update we got about 46 remaining for total Ester funds and then we're gonna collect and analyze the data to show the language between the positions that are funded with the Esser that could potentially go away and how that's impacting student growth that's what I have thank you oh miss Chavez thank you I just had one thing to add which was a request for the parental leave model.
Thank you thanks okay tonight thank you so I would move if we go into closed session for the reason state is on the agenda. We have to do it is there a second I second thought. All those in favor of moving into.
Closed session chair Umstead this is Bettina Umstead and I vote I miss Carter Island I miss buyer aye Mr vayadaris Miss Lewis aye Ms Chavez aye and I wrote Our Renee on closed session.
Coming out. We're now back you know this session Dr mabenga Madam chair I'm here to seek the approval for the personal reporters discussed at a closed session move approval of the Personnel report dated May 4th 2023. Second all those in favor say I will start with Miss Carter I Miss buyer aye radar aye Ms Lewis aye Ms Chavez aye and some said are you there I am this is Bettina Umstead and I vote I personally report is passes unanimously thank you.
Hi we're neon shirt thank you this is.