Board of Education · Work Session · October 10, 2024

good evening everyone the Durham Public Schools Board of Education work session is now in session at this time we wish to extend a warm welcome to everyone who's 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 our interpreters for tonight are Mara Romo oriles and Vanessa Peña Ramirez thank you so much for taking the time to join us first item on the agenda is a moment of silence thank you the next item on the agenda is agenda review and approval colleagues colleagues I'd like to remove

1 that states that all employees and contractors of public school units shall be deemed to have worked for any scheduled instructional days missed due to Hurricane Helen during the months of

September 2024 and October 2024 that a public school unit has deemed completed and is not required to make up employees and contractors shall be compensated in the same manner that they have if they had worked on that scheduled instructional days missed so just wanted to share that right off the press from House Bill 149 from the general assembly thank you Dr Lewis um okay the next item on the agenda is uh the Board of Education meeting minutes from September 12 2024 move approval of the minutes from September 12th 2024 second it's been moved by Miss bu and seconded by Miss Chávez any discussion all those in favor of approving the U meeting minutes from September 12 20124 I I all those opposed okay it has been approved 60 um the next item on the agenda is

general public comment before we do that I'm going to um quickly review the rules um first please state your name if speaking for an organization please state your name and the name of the organization second speakers are asked to present their comments in um 3 minutes 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 your time is up complaints about name 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 is uh Vanessa pz

hello good afternoon my name is banessa pñ Ramirez and I see my time to chrisy clim um sorry the next um thank you and the next speaker is Matt Sears I sa my time to Matt Sears thank you good afternoon good afternoon thank you I'm Matt Sears I'm representing no one tonight and uh I'm going to seed my time to Christy clam as a favor to a fellow Community member thank you uh Christy Clen hello um I'm Christy clim physical therapist Dae member part of the classified group um friend and colleague desertified as well so I am here my thoughts and words but speaking on the feeling and the um experiences of all the employees that I've interacted

with uh I don't know almost 12 months now we've been we've heard y'all say we want to rebuild trust we're not going to keep making these mistakes we're going to do things better and do things different but let's just talk about four things that have happened in the last in the last few weeks that are the opposite of building trust or are making us think that uh anything is going to be different um in in the meeting a couple weeks ago when compensation was voted on it the motion was passed that returning classified employees would get the higher of last year plus three or these new scales was said by somebody I don't think the new scales are going to be higher but in fact employees at the time knew that the new scales were higher for some um spark mail comes out the next day does not say anything about returning employees getting the higher of the two it just says returning employees getting last year plus three myself along with others I know reached out to different departments and the board to go hey could this please be clarified zero responses retray comes

out are returning employees paid the higher of the two absolutely not EMP classified employees then send emails to the Departments and to the board to say hey I thought we got paid the higher of the two some of those responses are hm we'll look into that this is first time we've heard of it not true I myself know I emailed multiple times the department and the board with no response next thing about lack of trust being rebuilt all the issues with retray all of them employees are trying to help each other figure out what's going on by looking at Old scales new scales last year plus three email links and then we see pay scales start to disappear from the website with no reasoning as to what's happening weather closure I know I just heard what Dr leis said and gave that update but the last board meeting during the recess the email went out that there

was school was going to be closed for staff and students couple people sitting at the table up there I talked to in the hallway during the recess to say could you please clarify this looks like closure for both but we're already getting principal's emails saying we need to take it as a workday I was told in the hallway after the board meeting it is closed for both it is not a work day I clarified I can let my colleagues know this I was told you can next business day we get more emails you need to take that as a workday or unpaid leave here are your options nothing has come out said saying otherwise that doesn't build trust couple of nights ago about 10:30 I'm trying to help some colleagues figure out their pay differences looking at the scales they're still not posted so I have to go to the agenda site to go back to that living document that we were all excited about then I watched the consultant start to decrease numbers on those pce scales because it is live in Google first I thought I somehow changed something and made columns delete and then I realized I'm watching

numbers drop on what was voted on was anything changed on that document to say this has been updated have any employees been told that by somebody either in the cabinet or on this board no schedules get reposted today it still says adopted on 919 those were not the scales that were shown on 919 a year of y'all telling us you're going to rebuild trust and those are four examples that have happened since 912 I know you can't answer me now but I don't know what you would say even if you could emails that I've seen from colleagues that have sent something to HR it often takes multiple emails before they get a response again DPS um guidelines hand book I think it says we have 48 hours to respond we're going on 42 weeks sometimes and people still haven't responded some of those emails I think

the word gaslighting is often overused but I don't think it is in some of these cases they're dismissive they come across is well what are you talking about that that didn't happen what are you looking at how and don't please don't say well it's we've got an old system we have DOS and we can't do projections we're working in schools with mold with playgrounds that are falling apart with broken Gates but we still have to do our job is it ongoing carelessness and oversight is it intentional deceit is either one of those okay I wonder why I'm up here at the podium showing up day after day after day after day my counselor my my person personal health mental counselor that I go to way more often now than I did a year ago because of this told me last week you have to take care of yourself

and if you don't do something different are you going to have to take FMLA because you are so involved and nothing is happening you are you and your colleagues are fighting a systematic change that feels overwhelming but if we don't continue to show up and fight and say something how bad is it going to get can it get worse if I was sitting on that side I would be embarrassed some of the highest paid people in this district and every person working their butt off in the schools on a dayto day is wondering how do they still have a job why do we show up we show up for the kids it's sure not because I have a boss

that is motivating me to work hard and do the best I can and this is a great system we show up for the kids and I show up for my colleagues and my co-workers who are in the trenches doing the same stuff every day for the kids for the cafeteria workers is anyone acknowledging how their work is harder this year the prep that it's taking they've had people quit because of all the salary stuff they're being asked to do more and more with no compensation IAS they're being asked to do more I that used to get paid extra for taking a lead POS position that's gotten taken away ECI aren't really getting a supplement it was supposed to happen with the October pay they're not I aren't getting an EC differential like some other folks in EC that aren't but we're pretending to do things bus driver

shortages you're asking them to do more and more with less and less plenty of people on the Master's Pace still have question about where they're not getting it and they have something relevant that DPI would pay them for if it was before 2013 but because our inability to thoroughly look through and ask people that are in in it for help before making decisions they're not getting Masters pay people in EC who should be getting an EC supplement aren't getting an EC supplement because some people sitting in the higher buildings over here can't go to that department and ask for help or Clarity or understanding you have people with knowledge and want to and it appears that we have people making decisions that maybe don't have the knowledge and don't have the want to understand how much longer can I be at DPS I don't know but if I resign it's going to be at this Podium and I'm GNA say this is because of

y'all and I'm sorry Kristen I don't have some time to see to you thank you chrisy uh the next speaker is Kristen Southworth I'm trying to decide if I want to read my notes or not um and I think I'm gonna just choose to send this all to you afterwards um and use my time to speak about my own experience um so so I'm the mother of two EC students here at DPS and I'm also a graduate of DPS and my mom was an EC teacher at DPS one of the most critical factors that our school system faces right now as many of you know related to the

discipline actions is for our EC students many of them don't have teachers in the classroom and if they are there there we can't assume that they're going to be safe there are so many things that we can do related to restorative justices practices and all of the things that happen after there's an incident but I really want everyone to think about what is the proactive things that we can do one of those things is related to dyslexia dyslexia is in one of five students that's 20% of our students we don't even have 20% of our students identified so we're missing a huge bunch of students there and even the services that exist today they aren't enough I myself have to send my two kids

half a day to a special learning school here in Durham to provide for them to be able to learn how to read that is a privilege and it is often said that dyslexia is the privileged disability because when it is serviced those are our CEOs those are the people who are making difference the creatives the different thinkers the entrepreneurs all of those people that we want in our communities and it cost about half a million dollars more to raise a child with the dyslexia and that is because the school systems are not set up systematically to provide those Services the teachers are not given what they need for those services so I'm here tonight to ask you all um I'm going to follow up with an email that provides a lot of great

resources and I hope that you take the time to read them and look through them and really think about the equity issues of literacy being a right and not a privilege and the impacts of that on the school to prism pipeline that we have those issues here in our community so I that's my time but thank you very much and welcome Dr Lewis um we're we're very excited to have you here thank you Kristen okay the next item on the agenda is uh the consent agenda items move approval of the consent agenda Item B and C second okay it's been moved by Miss berer and seconded by Miss Herold go um

to approve consent agenda items B and C is there any discussion all all those in favor say I I I I and all those opposed passes unanimously the next item the on the agenda is uh conference updates hi all um uh we wanted to create space for people to share out um about the professional development that we have embarked upon as a board and as individuals uh to improve our board work and so the items included on today's PES include um the ncsba core training that most of us attended um our Collective power in San

Antonio that most of us attended and any share that Mr Tab and Miss caon might have in regards to the interlocal visit with the chamber to Minneapolis is there anybody that wants to get us started Miss Carol Co I'll jump in the water um I attended both the core training and the hour Collective power um uh the North Carolina School Board Association um core training what I really valued from that experience was which is similar to what I valued from our Collective power was being able to be in the room with other school boards from North Carolina you know and um the things that we share and to see that you know some of the things on the that we deal with as a board um in Durham you know sometimes you know

this is our community and we're protecting this community but it's it's good to be able to see where other districts are on some of those issues that we um that we deal with as um our own district and then those things that we can also share across the district so the core training was really cool um just to get my grounding as a as a newbie I guess on the board um uh to see how things you know what the status quo was but it was also really cool to to be there and to see how we can grow um Beyond other things it was good to see what the guard rails are and what we can what what buttons we can push what we can challenge um and I was able to meet some really um cool people um on school boards from around the state so that was that was a um a great opportunity the our

Collective power there was some similarity there except now um here's an opportunity to things that um when we I feel like when I think about our district the challenges that we face and um how we think about addressing those challenges and all the things that we think you know that are really it's like with your family you're thinking about it internally to then go out and sometimes when you're dealing with things with your family it's really really hard it's challenging think H you know it can feel very dysfunctional right but then when I was in that space me personally I'm speaking for my own experience when I was at our Collective power and I was able to see some of what other school districts are facing and dealing with and what they're battling I realized that you know just like they say every family has just a little bit but I was really appreciating during public schools in many of those moments and although we do have some we have our

own set of dysfunction that we have to address we have our own you know things that we need to push um it was good to put that in perspective with what is collective around the country in various districts so um I appreciated having those perspectives as well and opportunities to really um sharpen the saw with other people who've not just who've been doing this in other parts of the country so um for me that was the most valuable experience we have to remember that we're not not um isolated in so many things that there are certain things that are very connected um and it it takes us as we focus on our situation working collaboratively to really do some system change work like we have to keep those connections um so that we can move things in Greater capacity and do some real systems change work so I'll stop talking I'm G step back and let somebody else step

forward thanks Miss heral off yes Miss shis right so um I will report back on our Collective power um I um I appreciated learning about different models different examples of um of programs in different places um one the one session and I attended about um empower the empowered governance model um my takea away from that was the importance of regular um data reporting to the board and um but I also attended a session on um immigrant Refugee and undocumented students and um that was very um interesting to me um and um a few of us attended I believe so um one of the things was the importance of trauma informed policy um the presenter um cited that undocumented youth often

have nine or 10 Aces if you're familiar with um the aces um scale there are 10 Aces so that is very high um a high level of um experiences of trauma um and um we also learned about a model for a newcomer school that I think we could bring some of elements um of to our work in DS in DPS to serve newcomers um including training all staff on immigration processes and um becoming more familiar with those and how they affect our students and families another session I attended that was very impactful was on a student advisory Council model um and there was an example from California where they have a very active um student advisory Council that meets and actually brings policies um to the board they cited some examples from that so that was just absolutely inspiring and um so those were some of

my takeaways I had I enjoyed my experience always good to learn from people outside of our bubble thanks Miss Chavez Miss SP so uh thanks for um allowing this space to discuss training I um I was happy to join the ncsba training um it's been a while since I've done it and so it is always good to be refreshed on um the statutes and how they have changed um it is always good to be in community with others both to see that um in rural parts of the state um our colleagues are facing uh challenges that are very similar to the ones that we are facing here with with less resources um often and um I particularly appreciated the session that was um LED I think it was a former

Johnston County which Johnston County School Board member who was able to be just really Frank about some of the things they'd done right and some of the things they had done really wrong I appreciated her cander in that um in that session with us as we work to be board members who have lean into our values and also lean into governance um I um appreciate the scholarship and the opportunity to attend our Collective power um I appreciate the the colleagues from around the country in a smaller setting um and frankly today more than anything I'm reflecting on the finance session that several of us were in um wondering if um that consultant that led that might be someone that um might be available to us in the future um some of

the things that other districts did and other state law requires is actually multi-year budgeting and projections I thought it would be wonderful if um we could pilot that in in Durham so that our aspirations for what we can do for our folks um are maximized what we can the impact we can have on our students and that we put Equity Tools in place as as we do budgeting and plan multi-year um and and it's going to take so much of of our effort to rebuild trust it is it is easily broken and um so much respect for our our employees that um that are able to be honest with us and authentic about the harm that has been done um I also attended the the session on immigrant and refugees and um thought that the um even sessions on

that population don't even make it onto agendas nearly enough um and M Chavez I thought that there was just a meta study that came out on Aces just recently that that has just um reaffirmed our need to um deeply address the trauma that many of our students are living with there was also a really impactful um session some of y'all were in it I think on board and um superintendent relationships where the superintendent who who was the only superintendent there or maybe there were two there at that conference was able to speak really frankly in ways that that I think board me Members need to hear about how to let them do their jobs because it is a very very complicated job that that we um hire and supervise so those were um my takeaways and thanks

for uh letting us share out Miss buer Mr tab thank you very much thank you for this opportunity to reflect on the three that we all attended uh I concur with what has already been said um I do look for take takeaways that are extremely impactful um in how we can move forward and I do think that listening to what's happening in other districts and what other people are doing helps us understand also where we are but also gives us an opportunity to think outside the box of some things that we may have to do differently and uh I was encouraged by listening to some PE some colleagues and what they had been doing but then they had to change course and start doing something very different and I I would hope that in this this District that we we continue to start looking

outside the box and trying to be a little more Innovative in some of the things that that we're doing hopefully that will also bring bring about more trust in our district in communication um some of the the sessions that I I attended uh regardless of what it was still communication became a part of that session uh I don't care if we were talking about finance and we were talking about governance communication still became a huge part of that conversation and I hope that we will continue to to think about how we communicate with each other the role that the board has and the role that the superintendent has and the role that the district itself has and how we can all continue to work together um one of the things that I learned so much about being in Minneapolis um it was how so many people um took risk and I think that um being

Risk Takers um it's a good thing and we we ask teachers all the time in the classroom you know to be Innovative to be challenging to keep our students engaged and I think um it would behoove us as a board to do the same that we asking other people to do as well and so thank you for those opportunities uh I really uh enjoyed being there thank you thank you so much Mr tab I'm happy to go next I I won't repeat what a lot of my colleagues said because there were similar I think takeaways um at the our Collective power conference there in the financial session there was the multi-year budget development which I think I've talked about often in our board meetings we should be planning for years coming I think that also shows to our um Partners at the County Commission what they might also need to be planning for and I think I would love to see us adopt that this year and they also talked about a fund

balance policy which I also think is something for us to also revisit I think or not revisit but to visit there's been as long as I've been on the board this constant conversation of what should our fund balance be is it you know one month is it a per is it where and so how do we you know kind of codify that in a policy that sets us up for success I think would be a really a good move for us moving forward and I think it also could include what's clear when we're going to fund balance what are we using fund balance for right so those are some of the things that I thought was really interesting um I also attended the session with the superintendent who talked a lot about how do you set clear expectations as a board member for your superintendent how do you provide in formal and formal feedback loops which I think is vital um we don't want to have surprises right we want to be clear about what the expectations are and then be able to give feedback as things are necessary um I am there's a lot of talk about like accountability and data and I

want I'm curious I left with the question of how do we use data as a flashlight to guide us to where we need to go and not use data as a hammer um I think I've as I do a lot of equity work that conversation comes up often of we use it to highlight and not use it to um just Hammer what we want right and I think that's important for us to think about how we use that as a guide to improve outcomes for our students um at ncsba uh talking about it was good to be back with folks who are returning board members and some that are new board members I think one of the things I took away they showed a clock and talked about what is governance as the board being here I'm doing this even though y'all can't see it but the board being here and then the kind of what is the superintendent work and staff work so when the board sets a goal superintendent staff work on on that goal and then we come back to you bring us a report on what happened and I thought that was just a really clear example of the processes that we could be using to have um good communication and collaboration together they also did

a lot of work around how talked about how schools are funded in North Carolina and legislative updates and I thought that's always really helpful to know what's happening um in our state and as things shift and change as different laws are in place so was really great to connect with other colleagues across the state but also hear updates from ncsba and how they can also be a resource and support to us as a school board so those are some of my takeaways and appreciated time to learn and grow with you all thanks Miss mad all right Miss Raj um thanks everybody for sharing um I'm gonna start with uh ncsba uh core training um I really appreciate it attending and um ncsba core training uh we have to attend every time we are uh reelected and so it hadn't been that long since I had been elected only two years and attending just two years later it was a nice reminder of the way things work in North Carolina um and how we aren't the only

ones who have um legislative needs that we all have to take to the state in Raleigh to make sure that they continuing to fund public education um a nice reminder of uh how the board as a collective should be functioning and working as Visionaries and expecting superintendent and administration to carry out um those visions and expectations and for the superintendent Administration to be making a plan for that um and so it was nice to have local perspective um our Collective power was different for me this year um I attended different sessions than I've attended in the past um more related to the work of moving into leadership um

including the Parliamentary procedure sessions that I think Miss Herold goof also attended and how we as a board can use um um those procedures to help uh build consensus and give clear Direction and guidance to Administration about what we want in next steps um it was also interesting to me to see a majority of the board members show up to the conflict resolution session um and really acknowledge that we had work to do in that space and I think we started that work and um will continue to do that work and to see how full that space was it wasn't just us in the room um there were lots of board members there including our counterparts from Chicago who um are now having an elected board for the first time and they're expanding from something like 11 to 21

and having um conversations with um other board members who um are continually evaluating how they communicate with each other and um how they communicate externally with all stakeholders um the other portions that really spoke to me about the conference were uh the information about data monitoring and making sure that we are putting students at the center of all the policies um that we're producing and making sure that they're Equity centered um [Music] um and how to co-relate that to the work of um making sure that the role of the superintendent is meeting the expectations of the community as well as the board and making sure that the board's goals um are aligned with the vision of our community um so having

those conversations getting um guidance on how to do that work effectively was um incredibly powerful for me thank you um this it's been so nice to hear um from everybody and really nice to hear the alignment and what we're taking from these and what we found to be valuable um I will try not to Echo although it feels like everything that's been said is really um uh really resonates with me as well so I'll try to highlight some different things that stood out to me I also had just attended the coreboard training a year prior um but it was and wasn't it was surprisingly helpful um I it was nice to as colleagues have said be in a room with other Schoolboard members from around the state um but as um chair Rogers noted to also like think about these shared um think about how we all need to Advocate at the state level

but I think we often see ourselves in Durham and other big cities as being so different and many ways we are different from smaller or rural areas but there are so many points of alignment that I think are highlighted like aligned needs and ways that we can what always comes out in those or what has come out for me in the core board training and being around other folks from different counties in North Carolina is there's so much that we share in so many ways that if we were to come together and advocate in a robust way as I know the State School Board Association does for us but if we could even build on that what could we do at the state level to um obtain more resources for our Public Schools um I also just like the reminder about resources like they've got webinars on school Finance um that we can access they have um governance um handbooks and board Norms that were interesting to see that I think will be useful for us to reflect on as we move forward um our Collective power I also um I like the navigating board Dynamics or the conflict session

also but two things just um I took wrote down my notes and I just find find myself thinking about often lately and that is um approach all conversations with curiosity and we should be like and that means you should be willing to change your mind and I think about that frequently because and that could be with your board colleagues or with like anybody we're talking within the community or um that just feels really important if we go into all conversations with like a fixed mindset um and an unwillingness to shift or really that means we're really not hearing um uh and I also another thing that stood out was um the recommendation to practice like hearing and then integrating feedback from board colleagues so that's something I've been thinking about especially in a leadership position um not to make this too much longer but I will reflect on the inter city visit too to be honest I was like what is this what is an inter city visit why do we do

things like this um but I was um very impressed so I will say we got there and colleagues in Minneapolis and colleagues were just leaving from Kansas City who'd been visitings we got to meet folks from Kansas City who were in different um leadership roles and folks from Minneapolis had just been in Toronto so this is a whole thing and now I see how valuable it can be to get a bunch of leaders in one space from different cities and talk about crosscutting issues that impact like we think about housing for example and how that affects our students and our teachers and then those who make decisions about housing and different so we can talk to our colleagues here in Durham but to learn from folks in different cities about how they're doing things is just really um it's a pretty valuable experience um I'll also we had an opportunity to have dinner one night thanks to um uh Mr Palmer who was with us who set up a opportunity for the COO of Min Minneapolis um public schools to have dinner with us it was nice to just

chat with him and he had recently been in St Paul public school so he could share Reflections on both and how things were going and it it's always validating to hear that districts face similar challenges um as we do transportation for example and to kind of hear about ways that they're navigating these so all right um any other comments folks wanted to make about um learning experiences or trainings all right um next item on the agenda is um under academic Services we have the 2023 2024a accountability results okay Dr Giovani uh just um I apologize for um supering my colleague here Dr King but um this afternoon we received Dr Le forwarded to me multiple emails from our staff members regarding um the salary

schedules that were post posted I do want to indicate that it was a plan to get them posted yesterday so that we could have as much feedback as possible but um I was emailing Mr Cunningham at I believe 6:30 this morning once we finally got some of the edits made so that we would at least be able to get some feedback because we didn't want to hide behind not having them available for this board meeting and so that people could come and provide that feedback so um with that said we are now in the process the schedules are up we worked on them for a group of us have been working on them trying to correct some of the errors that our colleagues and board members have shared with us these were done rapidly um as U Miss price had indicated and we do want to be transparent um with regard to the salary schedule so to that end it is our plan to go back through to make sure that we got correct what the board approved on the 19th with regard to in particular the certified scales we um just I found

out about them 3 o'clock today so I have not had a chance to really go through and see what all of the Motions were but it was our understanding when we were working on the schedules that the board was approving local supplements because the salary scales for certified are done by the state but it appears that as we saw with the classified scales that there were some different numbers that were included so it is our plan and we do hear you I apologize um for this ongoing thing but we will get it right but just wanted to make sure that um you do understand that we're not not going to hide behind that we own um our mistakes and we want to make sure that as you look at these they're up now if there's something you see please email us so that we can address that but the plan is with um Dr Lewis's uh permission and the board's permission to come back on the 24th and be as transparent as possible with our colleagues around how these schedules were determined what the board approved and if necessary if it turns out that the board approved the schedules in

total for certified and not just the local supplements we would have to bring back asking the board to approve the state approved amounts plus the local supplement but I'm not I've not had a chance to look at that but I just want to take this moment to share with our colleagues um some of whom have come down here um to share that with you many of whom have emailed this board and Dr Lewis but I did just want to share that um on the 24th so again I apologize thank you Dr Giovani oh yes uh Miss Chávez I thank you for that and I just want to ask a question has it been clarified to staff that they will receive the hire of either what they were projected to receive in June or what's on the salary schedules has that been corrected because we did get some correspondence about that I'm looking at Miss Cooper I I don't believe so I think that what we will know and Dr Lin is indicating that has not been shared I know it was shared at the board meeting but but I do think

that um there is space for that to be clarified as we continue hopefully it's a living document right but um I would like it to maybe you know so once we um get in that space I do think there's some space for some additional maybe FAQs around that and on the 24th po potentially have some Exemplar of how the Retros are determined so that because I've talked to several people right and once you kind of go through it with them and we all kind of you know hash it out and they bring up good points points and they've gotten it there but that's rather inefficient potentially right and so um we consult with Dr Lewis on kind of the best way to share so that our staff it is transparent for our staff how their salaries are being determined how they can look and see you know what their salaries are and to confirm and assure them that they will receive the higher of those two amounts as the board directed yes mamad um I have a lot of question but I'll save some of them for the 24th but I

think the most urgent is Staff have concerns and questions about their pay who are they talking to to get those questions answered because you know by the 24th we're talking about coming up on another payday pretty soon afterwards and so in the meantime I think I'm concerned that people aren't hearing responses back so who are they kind of going who do they need to email is there a email address set up or phone number set up I think we probably need both cuz we also know that again I think I say this often too all of our staff don't aren't assigned laptops so how do we also have a phone number or a place that they can go and by lingual support for staff who may need that who have questions about their pay um I feel like that feels very urgent because we want to make sure that when they get their October check is correct Miss bu oh they're G to respond Dr L was going to offer some feedback I was going to say that have been spending a lot of time trying to

work on the schedules and other factors and have started a portal where we are chunking the emails because it is a lot of emails and so in chunking those emails like we have a group that is working on retro Master's pay we're actually looking at um hiring some additional staff um to help with that review and so that will help get the individual correspondents as well as general alized communication to all staff members regarding um what they can expect for October okay and then if I have a question tomorrow who do I email or who do I call by I I mean if I'm a staff member who do I talk to who's the right person so I think one thing um that we've been discussing in the background is working on some general um understanding Hood if your com if your question is regarding this this is your best contact because most of them have been coming

either directly to me directly to miss oo or um to the compensation study email that maybe the wider group of people that um can answer questions don't necessarily have access to that portal right now and so I think that based on that what the issue is for that individual providing some more direction of where that should go directly will help make that more efficient in getting those answered more quickly I think sorry this are you going to say something Dr J yeah so I think the plan would be to Dr L's point is that we would have a list that we would share out to schools like if it's about retro if it's about X Y and Z so that they would have a phone number and an email to reach out to in the interim and so we just are going to basically kind of you know pull all our resources together because our staff is entitled obviously to know what their pay is and to ensure that their pay is correct and so so that would be um my suggestion at this point is that we can of give that

call list and that we have multiple people that are available and I just want to you know maybe give it another shout out to Vicky go and Ruben um Barfield who have really been on top of it in the payroll in the budget department on responding to people you know as I indicated I've talked to a few people but I can obviously can't talk to hundreds of people as quickly as they need to be spoken to so um for this as much as it's allowable and for people that can and then share that that will be on the website um we'll talk work with Miss Cooper to have it posted on our main Banner page like if you have these questions and then again I always believe in tracking that like leave a message and send an email so that there's documentation and just holding people accountable for those responses to those salary questions I think that'd be really helpful and I think I would love to see us be proactive too like before it goes out we have this kind of up if you need a office hours or something because I could also Imagine answering the questions all day while you also have meetings and things there but how do we kind of get proactive around that so

people don't I think I understand a lot of our staff are feeling um lots of things around this because it feels like a issue that they don't know how to resolve so how do we proactively put this information out be really clear about when we can support people I think it's really helpful um uh yeah I was I was trying to get some sense of the scope of this I frankly don't want everyone's email I'm happy to read it but I'm not going to solve it right and I mean so is this you said hundreds Dr Giovani that's what I'm trying to uh do we how many of our employees are feeling like they're in limbo is that I would say the it is hundreds of email that's that is not an exaggeration um the the number of folks that are seeking to understand a number of different things we are talking

hundreds okay and then I'm concerned that the 24th might be too late because payroll is loaded and all of that I don't want us to make mistakes in another round of check so I I stand ready to meet Ur urgently if needed I just I follow y'all's lead but um it is getting harder and harder and harder to sit here and not go over there and yell at myself like I I want this is the worst thing to to do to folks we have to have to be able to show them and model that we have put every dime that the county has shared with us into our staff and so we got to prove it to them on the 24th like we should have proved it to them already um help us help us Brick by Brick with our folks they deserve it they deserve

it and they are this is past du um Mr tab thank you very much um my question is about the living document that I heard um a things being changed and people can see the change because that is probably U leading to some of the emails because if they see something and then there it goes and then you know two hours later they've seen A change is that something that we said that we wanted the the the employees to be able to see the changes as the changes are happening or or that intent was something different I think the intent was something they're not seeing in real time if someone putting a two in there and in back they're not seeing that well what they are seeing if some corrections are being made they'll see one schedule and then once the corrections are made they'll see that that new schedule corrected schedule

up I have some concerns about that we can talk on the website okay yeah we'll we'll we'll look at that that that shouldn't be thank you uh Miss travez I just wanted to follow up again about um mad's question about who to

contact when will that be released who the list is of um of contacts and if someone has a question tonight who should they contact we are getting a lot of emails and so should they contact Dr L should they who should they email right now to who should sift through those emails yeah they still contact the regular people whether it's payroll or Dr Lin if they have questions thank you Miss said I also want to say I know that we are this is really important we got to get this right and I also know that we have a lot of people who are working really hard to get this right so I just want to acknowledge that you know I know that payroll has some stuff is manually entered and and folks are working around the clock to get this so I do want to say thank you to you all um we know that we have some staffing that we need to fulfill to make sure that we can get better at some of this work but I just I would be remiss not to say thank you to the folks who are up late

at night trying to make this get it right so I just want to say thank you to those folks yeah I just want to like I feel like if we could applaud all of those folks because um we should I appreciate you you reminding us and and I I appreciate we keep asking our our employees to be patient and it it's I get why they're having trouble being patient it's their pay it's their pay it's their pay um and so as they can approach the the folks on the other end of of uh these emails and phone calls with Grace and and the values that we lean into in Durham I I am so appreciative of their ability to continue to be patient while we while we work to get this anything that's wrong right thank you Miss heral goof um also want to just lift up

everyone who is courageously speaking um and being authentic in tone um this is not easy um and we have to be mindful of all the lenses and sometimes it feels hard to hold you know sitting in this position but I remind myself um that this is also part of the process that we need in order to keep us moving at that urgent page to become to come out of the places where we're having to be more reactionary we have to respond to what is reactionary and also be working so that we can get ahead of it and and get Beyond it to a better place so acknowledging that um yes all of everything all of the emotion and the

urgency and the and the the pain that is being felt is real um and and that um all of us who are sitting here hold account we hold some responsibility and accountability for all of that um bringing that human lens into all of this and still acknowledging the responsibility that we have taken I want to so I want to say don't feel um keep that authentic um approach to expressing yourself and allow us to hold that and to work through everything that we need to work through I hope that makes sense thank you mof um Miss Rogers um thanks everybody for this discussion um and

conversation I've seen a lot of the emails and send them forward responded to as many as I could um I wonder how long if we have any information about how long people are waiting to get responses to their emails to their phone calls and how those requests are being acknowledged um as they come in I could gather that information I could work to gather that information for you um colleagues are y'all interested in that information I'd rather you get the pay right yeah [Music] um Mr tab go ahead no this is serious stuff here and

I I don't want to put any more work on on staff that needs to be until we get the salary stuff right that's where I'm sitting with that and um so you know I I wouldn't want to do that right but I understand that people want to know that they are being heard that's important but can we just get the salary stuff right I would love for the salary stuff to be right um andot though is there any information available like no nothing from my standpoint it's varied it depends on the area that people are requesting information for we have people who have been out in both departments and so we're covering and I don't offer that as an excuse I'm just saying that's the reality of the situation and so the answer really is it

depends and so in some cases it could be a quick response and others it may not and we are fighting we are having the conversations about the length of time because it is not our desire for employees to wait but the same shortages that folks are experiencing we have those in both departments okay okay I think I'm trying to and that's a fair answer and I'm okay with the I'm going to be okay with the answer um I'm just thinking about how I would feel when my pay isn't right and my pay hasn't been right at times and not even getting a response to my email doesn't make me feel valued um and so that's what I was asking about but thank you um when um this is related another thing that stood out from the um trip to

Minneapolis was someone who spoke um from University of uh uh Minnesota and he had just moved there from the Chapel Hill carboro school system and was reflecting he had young children so was reflecting on the differences between the school system and his experience there in chapol carboro schools and in um Minneapolis public schools and he was saying that um one thing that stood out to him was that now not in chap Caro but now in Apolis when he called with an issue or a problem he actually got to speak with a person each time he called as a parent to the school system now this is a school system that's roughly the same size as ours it's not like a 5,000 kids school system um I just say that to like put into the world that that is my that's something that I think could be aspirational for us that whenever somebody calls a staff person a parent that they actually reach a person that they can talk with and that can help them with their problem um

relatedly um I hear that it has been challenging to respond I know that there's it's not for lack of want to respond to the concerns by any means so what is needed by the board what do you need from us to ensure that people get the responses that they need and that the salaries are where they need to be what more can we do to provide the support that's needed to make sure that these things happen so from the standpoint of kind of chunking that out from the salary piece the board has done everything it is administration's job it is our job to bring you accurate schedules and clear schedules to approve that saaf can look at so that is what we that that part we're going to do by the 24th or before right to make sure that if we misunderstood what the board had approved on the 19th that we get that clarified on the 24th either way and so I would defer to um Dr Lin on the

resource piece so I know that um I have put forth a request um and engaged and and we're moving forward with that to get some extra staff um so we I know we're looking at some re tyres to bring in to assist with the actual like processing Master's pay yes I hear you that requires some additional um staff and so we're looking for some folks to come on board actually next week to be able to assist to help with processing with those pieces and so that is a huge resource for us from an HR standpoint I'll just add I think the don't think the board has is has been supportive uh in this and as Dr Dr R just mentioned we did have some discussion about some additional uh assistance but as we continue to come in and assess the organization there are some things that um what I would call some um forced errors that that we have

to continue to look at that um has been the system has been is currently set up you know to get some of the results that we're getting so as we continue to assess the organization and make some shifts um um we we'll see more efficiency um I know that doesn't help the current reality of of our staff and and um Vice chair c and I do I do hear you when you say to get a live person should be aspirational that shouldn't that that should be reality that should be every day you know and it's it is embarrassing but I will my promise to this community and this board we will get better thank you Dr Lewis um one additional question I had was um to follow up on uh Mr tab's concerns I wonder if someone not sure who's the best person to do this but someone could speak to why the Sal schedules are currently living documents and what we mean when we say

m. and so that way our staff can just you know it's more pages right it's not as fancy as the Excel sheet but you can really rely on that and you know that nobody is manipulating that so that is the notes that I took from that and I think that that was just kind of a we thought it would maybe be easier to kind of have the Excel sheets and just click through

um they'll be in the background so that next year as the board makes his decisions with regard to compensation or the state makes its mandates regarding compensation we'll have that information in the background so that we can use that Excel and you and put the formulas but as far as what's going to be held on the website it we were going to remove the the Excel ones that kind of fluctuate um because I couldn't even figure out what the board had approved like because I didn't you know it was changing to um Miss Clem's point of when you're going back I was like well what did they approve because you know one of the emails forwarded and I all I could see was the changes that we had made to align with the State schedule so you need to be able to have like moments in time that you can you know Mark as an exhibit right right from the lawyer standpoint like this is what this how it existed on September 25th these are the changes on October 1st Etc so that would be um my response to that I think it was you know you learn from uh things that

you try that don't work right and I think um as you uh alluded to in the beginning there it was noted folks were finding errors and so it was noted that there was going to be work done to correct the errors and that's going to continue so as there issues because we need to approve something we needed to get it approved but there were problems with it that needed to be fixed and that's why it had to not be something that was set in stone and I seem to recall also that part of the experiment was to show people the formulas so that it could provide more transparency um but if that ends up being more confusing for folks it sounds like you're exploring a PDF um yes Miss Umstead and this feels like it's getting into the administration side so I don't want to go to far but to me living means that you're seeing the edits not that it's a Google doc so you could create a Google doc that you don't edit right and

so I just that's a way to explore that a little differently I think the challenge is because the link is from Miss price and she is working in there we just shouldn't have access to those anymore or that could be a captured in a a time but there's a way to create a Google doc that you don't see it editing I think just personally I don't think salary schedules need to be living I think we approve them and they stay the same um until we approve something new I just don't want it to be in a place where things feel like they're moving and flowing and that doesn't feel like people should know what they're going to get that should be the expectation of what their pay is and they're clear about that moving forward any other discussion about this before we move on to our next agenda item yes Miss byon so I I do think one piece that I think will continue to be important for our board to Grapple with and understand and maybe that's the 24th maybe it's sooner is how many of our employees are

on these new scales and will stay on those new scales how many are on the tool that was used the carry Crutchfield and then the serious work about linning those going forward so I I know y'all are on top of all the things the other thing that I wanted to make sure that that we're aware of and working to answer and and Dr Le you may have already done this but you know we got an email with a lot of questions from Durham Association of Educators and um those questions all deserve answers um as as we have them and and can can provide those with transparency so I know our intent is to lift folks with and and and honor all commitments that we made um and so yeah I I and I trust y to to help us step forward into this with um Integrity so thank

you okay any other comments from Administration okay with that we'll move on to the next item on our agenda and I'll invite um Dr Royster up for the 2023 24 ass accountability results presentation this thing good evening board members and uh on behalf of um the uh academic Services team we uh thank you for this opportunity to bring forth the 2023 2024 Essa accountability reports um as you hear this report tonight we want to uh just name the fact that you will see some results in um in these uh in this data that suggests that there is much to celebrate you will also see some data that in all Clarity suggest that there is uh much work for us to continue to do um and so I do want to share with the board that uh tonight um Dr rer will

share this data and uh Dr U Lewis has asked us to prepare um a follow-up report for the board uh that will outline um some of uh the strategies and actions that we're taking uh to show and and uh continue to move uh in the right direction um at a at a at a board meeting uh after tonight so just wanted to kind of preface that with with that and with that uh Dr Royster please take it away thank you good evening DPS uh board members and Dr Lewis um welcome to the 20123 24 every student succeeds act or Essa DPS accountability data president presentation um I am Al Royster executive director of research and accountability and today I will review the district and schools 2023 2024 accountability data I would like to introduce my outstanding team that's here um Mr Nathan Hester he's director of Assessments and accountability and also Mr David Nelson C director of data director of data integration and

accountability um they were instrumental in assisting with completing this data and creating the presentation as Dr King mentioned uh my goal today is to present the district data and uh School data that our team collected from our students and staff within uh our district in conjunction with guidelines and structures put forth by DPI um DPS departments have received we're reflecting on un pack this data um from their departments will respond to this data by reviewing their Department Improvement plans based on these data results and adjust accordingly and as Dr King mentioned um per Dr Lewis they'll have some strategies and things brought back to the board as a result of this of the data next slide please um the next three slides will give an explanation of the components of school performance grades in addition we'll briefly explain the difference between achievement and growth next slide please um this slide represents a pie chart breaking down the school performance grade school performance grades are based 80% on each school's achievement score and 20% on academic

growth according to DPI the total school performance score is converted to 100 point scale and the final grades are based on a 15o scale which you can see in the bottom right hand corner next slide please this slide breaks down the uh school grade performance indicators for elementary middle and high school elementary and middle schools are calculated based on end of grade test scores and English English language assessments for English Learners according to DPI with elementary and middle uh grades 3 through eight and first year e students excluded and high school performance grades include indicators such as end of course test act work keys or AWA scores fouryear graduation rate and English langage assessments for English Learners according to uh DPI with high school um 10th grade and then also first Year's excluded as well specifically you can see the indicators for each level next slide please um this slide gives a brief explanation of the difference between

achievement and growth on the left side there is a brief explanation of of achievement and as you can see the achievement uh measures how students perform at one point in time level three and above and it compare students to a standard of performance at a point during the academic school year level three is grade level proficiency or glp and level four and five is College and Career ready and then on the right side you can see growth and growth measures the amount of academic progress students have uh made between two points in time usually the academic school year um and that indicated is a pro an indication of growth is progress made in the school year over the course of a year uh compar students to their own prior performance and common assessments given to other students also at the Top If you have this presentation there is a short uh video is three minutes uh that the state count of provided that explains the difference between uh achievement and growth next slide please so in the next two F slides we'll

8 or 28 schools the 2023 2024 school year is the second highest amount of ABC schools 28 over a five over five school years next

slide please this slide explains the alternative schools accountability that PLC and Lake View fall under the State Board of Education has a policy that provides public schew units with three different accountability system options for alternative schools the DPS Board of Education approved the continued use of the customized accountability systems for PLC and Lake View for this school year 2425 during the May 23rd Board of Education regular session the accountability system uses M unique to each school and their own ratings rather than a letter grade next slide please this slide gives a description of each indicator PLC used to determine their school designation as outlined by the district choosing option C so as you see participation is 10% um we use uh the accountability match summaries reported uh provided to the schools during EC testing cycle so they can monitor their progress school performance is 25% proficiency is 25%

that is proficiency data for all eocc assessments um that were administered and Evas is actually zero for PLC because there was no Evas growth for PLC so per the plan um it was Zero it's usually 15% if they had growth our cohort graduation rate that's our CGR and our persistence and what persistence that's 20% persistence is the calculation for this component of the percentage of students who enrolled in PLC and remain enrolled in any North Carolina Public School through the end of the school year including students who graduate and also we have earned credits that's 25% and for earn credits indicator power school was used as the authoritative Source um all Final store stored grades at PLC were pulled and any student who showed is having a potential credit students W count in the numerator meaning if they had yes for potential credit and some students might count more than once because they might be taking uh multiple times they might be counted multiple times in the denominator next slide so as you see this table breaks

1% next slide please and so this slide gives a description of each indicator for Lake View that you determine their school designation as outlined by that option C so similar to PLC they had their indicators so attendance was 20% that measures the cumulative attendance rate for students still enrolled at the end of the year persistence is the same as PLC again those students that are enrolled at Lake View and remain

9 proficiency

2

1 percentage points from the 2022 2023 school year next

0 or the access test under Essa El progress must be measured and reported for all Els and grades K through 12 for school performance grade or SPG the following grades are used Elementary grades 3

3 next slide please can you can you pause there for a minute I I just want to acknowledge that work there on the previous side if you can go back particular as it relates to our e Learners uh often times in in school systems uh sometimes El Learners are looked at at a from a deficit lens um many of them are bilingual I'm not bilingual so uh they have some assets and I just want to commend the work of our e department for the increases that we've seen and you can see from 2020 um to 23 24 the increases in terms of how we're comparing ourselves to to the state so I just want to uh send a huge shout out to all of our elll staff for the work that they've

done thank you Dr Lewis for lifting that up our slide uh our next next slide will cover our District's High School College and Career or CCR indicator comparisons North Carolina's College and Career Readiness indicators is a set of benchmarks that measure student Proficiency in English and math at the college level the goal is to ensure that graduates are ready to enroll and succeed in introductory college courses without needing remediation next slide please so this slide reviews our high school CCR indicator comparisons over six years beginning with 17 18 school year up until last school year 2023 2024 and again 1920 school years is not shown because of covid-19 so CCR uses five indicators four-year cohort graduate ation rate math riger act act work keys and act uh act work keys combined or AWA um and that began in the 17 18 school year so as you see the table shows our CCR indicators a four-year coh cohort

4% that was a decrease by 3/10 of a percentage point and act work keys is the number of

6 and that was an increase from last year and that's again the percentage of 12th graders who either met the benchmarks on the act or act work key so they scored a 19 or above on the act or they had a silver certificate or hire for the ACT work keys next slide please uh this slide gives information about DPS advanced placement and our AP score report um as this data is not officially part of the S accountability data we wanted to lift this up and share as it relates to the College and Career Readiness indicators advanced placement continues to grow both um with participation and performance over the past four years with the intentionality

of increasing diversity inap courses which has proven to be successful with ongoing continued work on recruitment advanced placement participation and performance have steadily increased over the past four years with intentional efforts to en to enhance diversity in AP courses with ongoing recruitment efforts contining to support this progress among the celebrations for DPS 2024 score reports there was an increase of 367 exams taken with a 5% increase in qualifying exams in addition 81% of AP courses offered in DPS have scores above State and or Global averages and 56 AP teachers had courses with scores at or above state or Global averages showing teacher commitment to our AP program next slide please in the next few slides we will review our district subgroup performance data Within These slides we'll talk about composite for all subgroups with the change from the 2022 2023 school year subgroup comparisons over time for

the last seven years uh subgroup cohort graduation rate over time from the past um from the last seven years next slide please this slide shows each subp within DPS with the total number of students tested and overall composite on the top row and then all other subgroups listed to the left the total number tested in the middle and their percent proficient to the right I'll give you a few seconds to review um the subgroup data just to look at it so the overall P proficiency for the subgroups as we mentioned before is 47% that was a decrease of 9/10 of a percentage point from the 2022 2023 school year eight out of the 10 subgroups decreased from 2022 2023 one subgroup increased that's multi-racial 710 of a percentage point one and one group stayed the same with our white subgroup and just note for the American Indian as you can see they have a small

subgroup of 55 which is the amount of tests taken and not necessarily the amount of students as a point of reference for the 2022 2023 school year the American Indian subgroup had an approximate increase of 20% points from 2021 to 2022 so that group has a drastic swing because the small amount of students and tests taken so it was a couple years ago it was flipped they were negative here but then a couple years ago they were just about that much in positive next slide please uh this slide shows the race authenticity subgroup cohort based uh graduation rate or CGR over a 7-year period beginning in 17 18 school year through last year school year 2023 2024 the subgroup listed all students um Asian black Hispanic multi-racial and white and I'll give you even though this is small I know you have it I'll give you a few seconds to review that subgroup data just to look at it if you hadn't had a

8 is the highest in seven years with the exception of 2020 uh 2021 which is considered really an outliner outliner year due to remote learning for most of that year next slide please um this slide shows other subgroup cohort graduation rate over seven years again same as the other slide beginning with 17 17 18 school

6 percentage points next slide please the next two slides will review Evas growth status for the D for DPS over a fiveyear period the education value added assessment system or Evas is a program that measures student growth in North Carolina comparing a students

8 or 42 schools for the 2023 2024 next slide please uh the next two slides will review the number of low performing

schools in DPS and a list of low performing schools in DPS a school is considered low performing in North Carolina if they receive a school performance grade of D or F and a growth status of met or not meth and that definition is according to North Carolina General statute 115 C- 8315 next slide please this slide reviews our low performing schools over seven school years beginning with the 17 18 school year up until last year 2023 24 with number of low performing schools in 1920 and 20 20 20 2021 staying the same due to covid-19 as noted we increased to 20 schools designated as low performing for the 2023 2024 school year as compared to 15 schools in 2022 2023 for the 2023 2024 school year we had 23 D schools up from 16 D schools in 2022 2023 and then one F school um down from three schools from the 20222 23 school year next slide

please um this slide reviews schools designated as low performing for the 2023 2024 school year for elementary had 13 schools designated as low performing and you can see those schools they're in dark blue for Middle we had three schools um designated low performing they're they are shown in Orange for high school we had three schools designates low perform and they're shown in light blue and then we had one school that serves all all three great levels K through 12 and that is shown in green next slide please celebrations as we begin the 2024 2025 school year we have many things to celebrate in the next two slides will highlight schools moving out of low performance status are A and B schools and schools and DPS ranked in the state based on academic growth performance next slide so we have two schools moving out low performance status you can see here two elementary schools CC spaling and Forest View and we want to celebrate our AB schools with a total of 13 schools

15 growth index which was the highest in DPS we had four other schools ranked in the top 100 mer Moore Elementary they were ranked 46 in North Carolina City School uh Academy ranked 49 nth in NC githens middle school ranked 58th in NC and then Carrington Middle School ranked and tied

for 83rd in North Carolina DPS had 17 schools ranked in the top 20% of the state's 2593 schools for academic growth we already mentioned uh the first five and then we have CC Spalding Lakewood Middle Southwest durm School of Technology Lions Farm Club Boulevard Shephard middle brogon middle Easley Mangum Oak Grove and Rogers her middle next slide I know that was a lot that was like 34 slides all right um this concludes the presentation of the essad data for the 2023 2024 school year at this time we will take questions thank you so much Dr Royster colleagues anybody have comments or questions you'd like to share Mr tab thank you um could you explain again about the drop for the ACT yes um and I have my colleagues they'll jump in as well but the score

the well the drop is we they went from 17 to 19 or yeah I said that right 19 yes SE 19 to 17 excuse me so I think that was that was other way I had to write 17 to 19 now I'm confused yeah yeah so we at initially it was it was 17 and then I think in the 2021 one of those years in the table it went up to 19 and I'm that was a while ago and so now I can kind of jump in I think we've we've kind of decreased with that act over the years since we've had that so sorry about the confusion any other comments or questions from the board Miss Chavez thank you for all of those slides

and presenting this data um so I wanted to say a few thoughts um about about test scores and then also ask a few questions um I I just wanted to um say that as we're looking at this that I hope we are keeping in mind that test scores can give us information but we should not conflate them with a student's worth creativity potential or Brilliance or any other aspect of of their identity um and also note that we we know that racism and poverty and ableism affect our students and their experiences in material ways um negatively and positively and a lot of our students have significant barriers to um to achieve academically in the ways that they are um that we are asking of them so um I want to I want to note that um and um and thank all of our Educators also just for all the work that has

clearly gone into um to uh raising the proficiency levels of our students um and working toward those um proficiency levels that we um that we are that we are trying to achieve um a few uh okay let me start with this this question and if this is um you can tell me if it's too much but to what do we attribute the low performing um the increase in low performing schools for this year this past year think that might have to be a group group answer I I looked at Dr King so I think there are a number of things that that could contribute to that and I and I want to say that as a general enal rule you know responding to a question like that does does it it can only be speculation um but there are a number of factors that I think probably

had some impact last year um specifically one of one of the things I would note is um you know student performance can be impacted um by the circumstances under which students are operating obviously as a school district last year uh we had a number um of challenges including a leadership change um uh we also missed quite a bit of instructional time um due to a number of reasons some of them in involving um the weather some of them also involving um some of some of the difficulties that we experienced um due to some some uh some labor related issues um and so I think those things is reasonable to assume that those things might very well have had some some impact the other thing that I think is important to note is when when you look at the performance of many of our schools

um the kindest way I can put it is that they they they kind of live right on the line and very often many of our schools um slip in and out of low performing status primarily focused on whether or not they exceed growth or not right because um we have not yet reached the status in many of our schools um where the on grade level performance of our students um is enough to keep them out of um low performing status and so I mean I think if you if you look at kind of the the the pattern right um of low performing schools inuring public schools over time you you see that many of our schools uh shift in and out of out of that stat status sometimes almost on a yearly basis um and that is because very often those schools are right on that line of ABC status and and they maybe don't reach AB or C status but

they make they exceed growth this year right which keeps them out of low performing status that year um the next year their their performance composite may only shift by one point or two point sometimes it may even go up um but again they don't exceed growth and so because that composite number um is below that 55 threshold um the determination is made that they that they um reach low performing status so those are just some things that I would suggest May um may have contributed to that reality um last year um what I think is important to note though is that our our work has to be about um continuing to work with our schools so that we begin to uh impact that on grade level percentage right um what we really want to see for all of our schools is that they reach a b or c status um and so that is the work that

we that we have before us thank you so much Dr King I appreciate that I we can all look at this data and make our own interpretations of it and I have my thoughts about it but I I wanted to um hear uh from the administration how you were making sense of this and and so I I appreciate those um different factors that you named um as well as the variable of growth and how that affects um going in and out of low performing status I had some specific questions about um ESL and program so um ask um Miss ryome to join us at the table to respond to some of these

questions thank you I um I'm glad to see our numbers continue to go up um that's that's great um I wanted to ask about um what curricula we use for our ESL program what is standardized across the district um in terms of curriculum and also in terms of training um for ESL teachers I'll try to keep it short we use U National Geographic El curricular they're all supplemental so students have access to whatever the district curriculum is in every content area and then add additionally we use the National Geographic series Elementary has a adoption called reach middle school has inside and high school has Edge for high school students there's also um a program called rigor which is

basically an instructional reading instruction program for older students who have um who are pre-literate or in primary literacy so those are across all of our comprehensive high schools and the others are across every middle school and high school and Elementary um in addition they have um graphic novels and those are teacher choices that they pick from those adoptions or other vendors and normally teachers you know collaborate and decide what they want to use and so forth we try to keep that much consistent because our students are fairly mobile and so we want them to be able to see the same material no matter which school they move to thank you all right that's helpful to understand and um and then um what about uh training are do are ESL teachers and do they meet as a PLC do they get regular training each year yes so we

meet as a PLC every other month with Elementary and on the district designated days for secondary um which are I think this year there'll be about four so in order to be able to not keep it too far apart we have monthly virtual meetings where they meet by level in all cases so that they can either have questions answered or we do many trainings during those times we have about 45 minutes so they get things to read or podcast to listen to and then come back and discuss um additionally this year we have the guided language acquisition design training which is we're doing this for English um ESL teachers only as a first cut it's um it's been in practice in California and originated from California several years ago so we're just bringing it into North Carolina has had it for a few years and

we're dipping our toe into it right now but our but I would like to reiterate that in order not to have English Learners in a bubble we have we are now at over 22% of English Learners in the district and some of our schools are over 50% so at that point we need to start making it into a whole school approach and we have um scop training that we offer two or three times a year in addition to El certification an add-on certification that we offer at no cost to the teachers in the district do you remind us what the scap training is scap training the expansion is sheltered instruction observation protocol and it's basically um it's got eight components 30 features and it's a bag of strategies that go in

a sequence from preparing a lesson with um the intentionality of increasing um language proficiency to students being able to function at grade level language proficiency and content so it's adapting the language but bringing them along to grade level proficiency okay thank you very much and um and I uh I appreciate understanding more about the um the curriculum I know we're right about at the state level for or um you know percentage for Access for students um exiting out of ESL um I do um I did want to ask for some uh some additional data so I would ask my board colleagues if you would be interested in this as well um I would like to see updated data on how many years um students are in the ESL program before exiting out um as well as um for the

students who are still in the ESL program how many years they have been in the program so um that is my request uh um of the board and also um of administration that would be ready for you I'll work with our esteemed colleagues in accountability to make sure that my math is they have better math than I thank you I appreciate that and I think also chair Rogers is goingon to lead us to make sure we have consensus from no Miss Carter I'm sorry chair for this evening will um well I just want to note that the um that we have CE an email with maybe some of what you're looking for while you were talking so I just want to clarify maybe if you're looking for more than that or if you um so that we know what we're considering and while you're taking a look at that Miss buyer no I just I wonder about whether there will be upcoming reports from that are going more in depth from subgroup

groups like um ESL might be a report that we receive in a calendar and an on going way AIG like students with disabilities like something with more Focus than than just us asking you questions that we think of right now I I would hope that that would be kind of a recurring calendar kind of thing that we get back to um we've done that in the past so I it's fine to have the data I just wonder like a more robust conversation where where parents could join us and um other community members as well in the near future future so suggestion thank you that's great thanks Miss berer um Miss chavas did you have a chance to look at that and determine if that was what you were looking for or not yes it looks like um then thank you Dr Pitman um it looks like part of the my question was answered about how long students have been in the program current current ESL students um so I would like to still ask

for the data about um those students who exit how many years at what point are they exiting um that has been a concern that this board has raised before so would like to monitor that so And to clarify do you mean um how many years does it take them to exit the program uh yes yeah like are they exiting when they are at their in their sixth year of ESL or their fourth year yeah does that make sense or is that what you were saying um that's helpful clarification did you miss said you had some questions or comments I just had additional clarification on what we're looking for like are we looking at like year one number of students who exit year two number of students who exit year three are you looking for like a trend over time yes I think um a trend over time would be

helpful maybe for the past three years or something like like that but students exiting this say 23 24 Elementary Middle High um how many years had they been in the program had they been in one where they exited after one year two years three years seven years we need to know that and yes um um the time context would be great as well but any students who exited in the past school year how many years they were in but just okay capturing in it in the 23 24 school year yes I think my my ask was just 23 24 but historical data would be I was I was trying to clarify before I knew we were gonna ask for consensus I was just trying to clarify what we were looking for so that's helpful okay um yes Miss Harald off I would just like to know um what that data will help what is it that you seek to learn from that data

like um how that's the simple question like what helped me understand what you're seeking also from um from that additional data um so I think that data helps us to understand um and thanks for that question um um not only how many students pass the access test but at what point how long it takes our students compared comped to um and are they and are they um somewhat isolated from their peers for an extended amount of time or are they able to um to uh integrate into the um mainstream um uh learning um yeah relatively quickly and is it different at um Elementary Middle High because a lot of our ESL students um who are

Elementary are children who were born here who um have spoken Spanish all you know all their lives and um it's a bit of a different experience that they have versus our high school students who might be um recent immigrants and or middle school students and the um acculturation process is a bit different and does that AFF also like how quickly they're able to exit the program um and sometimes I think the stakes are bit higher for our older students as well so that's some of what I'm getting at thank you for that question I miss Rogers had a question and then miss oh miss Umstead and then miss Rogers it was just like a little more clarity than as I hear you talked about Miss CH is what you're looking for because I believe some ESL students are pulling out but maybe not all of them are pulling out right in pull out uh groups so they would be be inside of

a like they would have a normal schedule within the day so I'm wondering if we're looking for something different then when it comes to the data pieces there like are we looking for students who are in who have that separate pull out setting I don't know we might need to tease around with that data a little bit more what we're looking for or is it maybe a average number of years it takes students to exit the program I'm just wondering kind of where we are yeah anyway so a little more clear just a little more clear on before we get asked what we what we want to agree to what are we getting Clarity on what data we're looking for Miss Chávez did you we have a multitude of ways that models of instruction so some of it could be co- teing some of it might be pull out during the their intervention blocks um and we do try to not disrupt instruction um from their mainstream classrooms there small group time in elementary which is ideal for ecsl AIG anybody who

needs pull out that's elementary middle and high school they get a discovery period in middle school where the long-term English Learners or the more advanced students they go to their regular classes but then they get that period to be able to do an access prep and make sure that they can exit um in and then we offer for the between newcomer and intermediate the 0 to six year student students they are offered sheltered English classes sheltered math classes um in our high schools we have several options for sheltered classes so they are always exposed to their grade level content but then they get that differentiation for language access thank you for explaining that I would just ask um that the data be represented however it makes most sense um maybe breaking out the new by program in high school or middle school um

but yeah I think and then um students who whether they're in either program how long it took them to exit the ESL program now miss Rogers um I'd like to say that i' like to see that data as well um I think it we're still doing the English language learner acmy correct the ones we were doing Saturdays I think those were done with essr funds so we're not doing those anymore interesting okay [Music] um I'd really be interested in knowing that now or you know as we are moving out of to see if that helped students to move quicker through the program um yeah um that would be my thoughts on

that um I didn't have any other elll questions um I did have a question for I guess Dr King um particularly about um CC Spalding and Forest View moving out [Music] of um low performing and you mentioned that schools are right on the line and slip in and out of low performing status can you speak to anybody speak to how long these schools were in low performing status okay we we'll look at that I think we're gonna pull it up you said you want to know how long they were C spal and was low performing and force view um that's fine while you're looking that up let me it's a sort of softball question I think go um some of these schools are low

performing what can our families and parents expect culturally and um otherwise in terms of learning for their students at low performing schools and uh should they expect their student outcomes to be any different because they're at low performing schools same thing with with Educators should Educators be be scared to go and teach at low performing schools I don't think so but can you speak to some of the wise and what you're seeing happening in those schools yeah so you know um and I invite anybody else to join me I you know I I worked in many low well what was the predecessor of low performing schools before that was um the designation very often in in years where where we don't have as many um Financial chall challenges as as we're experiencing this year it's very often the case that we are able to rush significant additional resources into um

um low performing schools to try to um address that issue and sometimes we are even able to take action to reduce class size in those schools um and and provide additional supports to students and and hopefully as we um move out of some of the challenges that we're facing now we'll be in a position to do certainly a bit more of that um from the issue of the cultural question that you asked I would certainly say no one should should be afraid to work in um schools that are low performing um our former um interim superintendent uh would often quip that schools and students neither schools are students are low performing they are schools that have been designated um as low performing and I would suggest uh just based on some work that I've done um in recent years last year I served on the state's um

committee that worked to um revise um the state accountability system um and one of the things that we learned in that work and and I I should say we we did not succeed in that work but one of the things that we learned in that um work was that a great bit of um that sometimes that designation when you look at it it is it it it has more to do with the system than the actual outcomes so for instance if you applied the Florida system right of accountability to North Carolina schools the the designations would be vastly different right um and so what what I would argue based on that and and that's the Cas for any number of states around the country um North Carolina has a very uh difficult um I would call it

accountability system um and very often our schools in North Carolina that are designated low performing that are F schools that are D schools in other states would be B schools would be C schools um and so I I would suggest that what that tells us is that that designation does not necessarily speak to the quality of learning in those schools or the quality um of students and and very often the qu the quality of teaching in those schools but it is very often uh frankly a function of the system as it exists I think one of the things that um um Dr Royer pointed out at the very beginning of his presentation um was the idea about achievement right our achievement School right remembering that the one of the primary basis of our accountability system is the achievement score Dr Dr Roy I believe 80% of of the of the

determination yes 80 80% for achievement 20% for growth that is a measure about what happened over a three-hour period of time one day in one year and I would argue um and I think there is data out there out there that tells us if you gave that same test to that same group of students on another day in that same year um those those outcomes might be drastically different um and so you know certainly no one in my opinion should should ever be concerned about um working in one of those settings um I know that I have um um you know visited many of our schools that that carry that designation they are wonderful learning environments with wonderful Educators and most definitely wonderful Scholars um who are working hard um to reach the levels of achievement that that we would hold for them thank

you yes Miss berer Mr Dr King I just wanted to thank you for your work on that um task force and not to give up on the notion that we can fix this in North Carolina this system of aing and stigmatizing schools Educators and and children is by design it is not by Design to support students It Is by Design to continue to chronically underfund our children who deserve a sound basic education in the state of North Carolina guaranteed by our state's Constitution and so I encourage us to look for something different to call these specially loved schools um support schools whatever we're calling them where and and look for ways to actually measure what is going on in those schools and the people that are represented and not to buy into a system that was designed to exactly stigmatize

children of color in this state I love so many things about North Carolina and what we used to do right and and this is not one of them um so I know we have to report this silliness but I look forward to us actually looking to how we can celebrate what's going on and and the people and the learning that are going on within each of these School communities and I don't want any of our Educators our parents our principles to feel the burden of of this status um so I think it behooves us to look forward and and um to lift up those students in those schools i' I'd be interested and I can go to the site and check but most of them probably met growth right I mean a lot of them met growth but meeting growth isn't enough in North Carolina that's another flaw that's intentional of this system so you're you're right again when you think about the fact that 80% of our

schools met growth a large portion of those students met growth which means that that the overwhelming majority of students in that school earned a Year's worth of learning for a Year's worth of instruction um and and that it's really um what we look for and the other hope that I would have is Dr Lewis as you're out listening and learning with our community looking at our strategic plan we set some audacious goals in some of these subgroups that those decisions were were made kind of quickly and if you need to revise those smart stretch goals so that they do not discourage the folks doing some of our hardest work um I think our board is here to support the folks that are that are actually working with a lot of those subgroups and and ways that those might need to be tweaked that's that's been on my heart since we took a vote that was um quickly rushed um months ago so I just um I

appreciate your team Dr Royster for bringing this there's there's some highlights here there's more like concern for how do we keep things moving forward but not with a culture of fear that intimidates our our folks doing really hard work but with a culture of joy that celebrates what is going on and and that's why the things of growing together that I'm excited about are actually bringing diversity and and inclusiveness to our schools adding Spanish to every elementary school doing qualitative things that change children's lives and and make school the joyful place that it should be for learning so thanks for sharing data other colle other comments or questions from colleagues yes Mr off I'm G to try to make this this is almost mute but it is a question so I'm going to put it out there um I I agree with everything that has

just been said combing through everything that we've just seen is a bit daunting it tells one story um uh I'm interested in hearing from you know Administration not not now or um but understanding more about what is useful because we have to share what or figuring out where our story lies within this data that we know is in my opinion is flawed um one question that I did see that arose out of the I noticed 95% of AG students graduation rate 95% Ag and so my question was I've been wanting to ask how I know that our district gets done a lot of work to diversify who's identified as academically gifted and defining that definition of academically gifted um I noticed in that same slide it showed um the other subgroups and so I'm wondering what percentage of those

subgroups account for that 95% of AG you know what does that look like and where to find that um because I'm I'm curious to know if this 95% of AG that are graduating how diverse is that population that's 95% it showed it on the same slide with these other subgroups I'm wondering how how many of those how much of those subgroups are a part of that AG uh population with that really high graduation rate does that make sense is my question clear and that's not something that we have to pull out right now that's just I'm thinking of um questions from what we saw that could raise other questions like and where we could find those things because like I said it's it was a lot of of data you know that didn't really tell the story I feel um it doesn't tell the story the way

that we know of what's going on in our buildings so but the things that are in there what do we need to pull out and what questions can we be asking from that thank you um I think um th those are really valuable questions to ask and they remind me to mention that I do think that what Miss berer um mentioned earlier about kind of returning to some of this data on an annual basis in a more focused way like having a um uh presentation dedicated to yeah have a presentation dedicated to AIG where we can dig really deep into these and know to expect that each year um to me feels helpful um and uh I'll just I appreciate all that's been um shared so far um I think what I'm holding is the tension between

um what Miss Umstead referred to earlier about the importance of data to um be a flashlight or shine a light um like a a flashlight rather than a hammer um and I think while as we've said the test scores don't Define our students worth um they do sometimes highlight challenges that need to be addressed sometimes it's challenges that can be addressed within the school system and oftentimes it's challenges that will be addressed hopefully or can be addressed through other systems right and so I think that um I don't want us while I think we can talk about the limitations of data I think that it's also not wise to ignore data um especially when it highlights some schools that ideally um we could dedicate additional support and resources towards when they need those and when those students need those because it's not the numbers that matter the numbers that come from a as was stated a single test on a single day what matters is that our kids are learning and they all deserve to learn

in our school system so if kids are not able to learn then that is our responsibility um that's all from me does anybody have Mr tab do you have something to share um Miss Miss Umstead and then miss H goof um thank y'all for this presentation I appreciate it we know we have to do it every year and it it does give us a it is a snapshot of where our students are and I think what um what excites me generally about public school schs is that there are places where all children are coming to grab get an education and receive an education and I often think about when students spend 12 13 years sometimes 14 years with us how do we make sure they graduate ready for college or career whatever is next and so when I think about this data I also think about that's one story what is the story of all of our high school graduates and are they ready for whatever is next right are they able to read at a level that

will make sure they can complete a job application or complete train different trainings or different um certification classes are they able to do the right math skills and reading skills and writing skills for what's next and so that's the other part of the story that doesn't always get captured in this data but it's something that I think about a couple of questions I have that would be actually in the next presentation so I'm grateful to hear there's a kind of you know what now and then what's next um I would love to know about how we're supporting I know we have a growing and large number of beginning teachers in our district and would love to know how our supports for those folks um helping support the end of our student outcomes would be interesting to hear and it I'll say I ask all these questions y'all decide when they come to us because they might not need to be in the same presentation I'm curious about how we're evaluating curriculum I know we made a curriculum adoption a couple years ago wanting to make sure that all of our schools kind of are having similar high quality resources and what how that's going what we're seeing is working and what maybe we're making

changes for adding supplemental materials to um I'm also curious about subgroup interventions and so we have already highlighted a couple of groups already um and so what other that uh subgroup interventions might be happening and then also just generally the process for how schools are using this data and evaluating it making plans to move forward so I know every school is looking at their students and making different plans and so I think it' be helpful for us as a board to kind of understand that process of what's the um continuous improvement process that schools are taking to make sure that they're using the data to inform their instructional practices because I also know again every school is going to have a different plan for how they're supporting the students in their schools around academic growth um and so those are a couple things that I'm thinking about that's in the part of what's next I um I know that this year too is going to be different we do not have our Sr funding um we moved around some positions that we were able to lose in

the SR funding and so I'm curious if there's any other in that presentation um ways that the board can be doing things to better support our schools or ways that we want to pull in community me members to better support our schools I often hear folks saying what can we do we want to support young people what can we do um because I know that this this year will feel different than the past couple of years with that loss of funding and shifting in positions so M her um something else that I was um considering is how are we going to share our data around our student outcomes in a way that is um engaging for Community um how can we help them to understand the story of what the data is telling us and how Community um our families our Stu you know even for our students what this means how is how are we considering how we're going to share that out as we're thinking about our community

engagement strategies any other comments or uh first of all thank you Dr orer for and your team for um this presentation Al also want to highlight Dr orer for recently winning the um special persons award by the North Carolina High School Athletic Association so congratulations there um and just to Echo some of the things that's already been said this is just one data point um it's not the end all be and but what it allows us to do is ask questions it allows us to look at the data and and and identify barriers identify resources that um students and teachers may not have uh and so for me it's about the process of ensuring that all of our classrooms are spaces of high levels of Engagement high levels of rigor and if just so happen we're given an assessment our kids are going to do well but I'm not interested in chasing test um because we know do know that

North Carolina is still looking at uh ways of revamping its uh accountability system and then we'll have to shift and Chase numbers again so it's really about looking at um each individual classroom looking at those high yield strategies what our Educators um already know Works in in classrooms and you often hear me say the number one decisive factors in terms of improving student outcomes is indeed the individual classroom teacher and so ensuring that the teachers have the resources and materials that they need to be successful and analyzing uh the resources that we're putting in in front of our students and making sure that all our environments are uh set up where there's a high level of high expectations for all of our our students those are things that that works um in in schools and there is an upcoming uh report of strategic plan Priority One um update which includes all of the subgroups and so we'll we'll share that again we're not interested in just showing data to to admire the data but we also want to look at what are we doing uh about the data in terms of providing those resources and asking

those questions our schools are drafting their um um School Improvement plans and sharing the data with their school communities and then um identifying additional supports that they may need is as well so uh more to come on on what we're doing as a result of this data and my great team back there we have the answer to that question about Forest View and uh CC spaling so Forest View they were in low performing since uh 2021 2022 so that was two years last two years and then CC Spalding uh was was in low performing since 17 18 school years so the Last 5 Years so that that's their status or how long they were in loow performing and of course they came out this last past school year thank you great work everybody thanks Dr Royster okay next item on the agenda is the opening of schools update

[Music] and I'm going to invite the team in good evening um we have a series of presenters that will highlight as a followup from our August I believe 8th work session where we gave some preliminary opening of schools information tonight we will bring uh additional updates on human resources Student Assignment uh some Transportation updates and updates on Child Nutrition or School nutrition and services so I believe we will begin with uh the next slides you can go to human resources and Dr Lin will begin the conversation thank you good evening everyone okay I was gonna say I know we've been here a minute um this is a human capital and I want to clarify right here that the information that's provided on this slide is regarding our staff vacant VES and so this information

captures the vacancies as of 103 2024 and it specifically captures classroom based um vacancies obviously we have more vacancies than this but this is focused on classroom based vacancies you will hear some information about other key areas um such as Transportation a little later on um in the presentation and so this information is cumulative so let me explain what that means so you will may see people here or vacancies here in multiple categories so say for instance the first four bullet points that are designed um to capture grade level vacancies they add up to the 110 that you see at the top however let's say if you were looking at the elementary vacancies you have EC vacancies that are in there if you're looking at middle and high you have math and science teacher vacancies in there

um related to that when you look at instructional assistance and the total we have there of the 36 vacancies those 26 eia vacancies are counted in the total of um 36 and so when you're looking at this data it only has meaning if you have something to compare it to and so so I would like to talk about where we were this um time last year and what we're find we've been through a lot in the last year and what we are finding is that the numbers are aligned and so just to give you a couple of um specifics um this very same time last year we were still tinkering about 108 um teacher vacancies total te teacher vacancies last year okay um and then at the same time last year we were looking at about 38

instructional assistant vacancies and in the other categories we had about the same EC Math and Science vacancies but one thing that is particularly notable is that this time um last year we had 38 prek vacancies and that number of two is accurate um both of those happen to be EC um prek vacancies um we have no regular um you know standard prek room vacancies but we do have the two EC prek vacancies the other thing that I would like to capture for the human capital side are just some of the strategies what are we doing we've had to retool some things you know we have traditionally where we go out we have really vetted particularly with our budget what um Career Fairs we go to who's given us the biggest bang for our buck and so really um looking at where are we able to get the best candidates where how many of them tend to stay and

so we have um a number of universities right in our own backyard but both looking in and out of state we have really zoned in on particular um recruitment sites to get our efforts the other thing that we found is that career fair may not be the best opportunity but a lot of times when you get engaged with universities and other areas those actually become better recruitment opportunities so if we have individuals of the staff that can go and um present at a university in a classroom and it's a classroom full of teacher candidates then you maximize that opportunity or if there's some type of um before we have had other interactions at nccu where maybe we provide at lunch for a group of tiure candidates and then that became our recruitment event and so thinking outside of the boxes in those ways I think um I want to really commend our

supervisors our principals our assistant principls we see different use of our tools we often talk about our systems and and different things like that but even with the use of Frontline there are a lot of tools that had not been maximized that we find our staff are maximizing that helps us make sure that we see when there's just this portal of all of these candidates how do you narrow them down to the ones that really may be ideal candidates for you um to interview and those sorts of things so using those tools to both identify and communicate with um candidates yields great great differences within our substitute pool and I would say particularly long-term substitutes actually going in in reviewing the credentials of those individuals and we've actually had a number of long-term substitutes in particular sign on as full-time permanent teachers for us so

we have um been able to get some gains there working with our partner organizations and even um looking into New Opportunities you're aware of the partnership that we have with Wake County for ccti which um offers um basically our own personal EP for alternative candidates but also working with other EPS we have some new ones on the horizon that offer great opportunities I would like to also highlight some of the new programming at darm Tech um for IAS and and different candidates to become teachers we're trying to maximize those pieces also we have our longstanding TA to TP program but we also have other things this this year we celebrate we have our first Bull City teaching um candidate who's enrolled in college now as a DPS grad so we look to see more of that over time and um our full relase

mentors I wanted to take an opportunity to lift them up because these individuals when we go out recruiting and you're talking about all of the things that darm has to offer candidates love hearing about our focus on Equity that love um just hearing about the area but when you talk about full-time positions that are dedicated to their support you get a different facial expression you get a different response and so that as well as compensation and all of those things are very important to new candidates who want to ensure that they're able to be successful the one thing that we're really focused on um some targeted um partnership with nccu right now um through our collaboration with Branch Ed is really looking at how can we develop um teacher candidacy we do not want to miss opportunities with our middle school and high school students to be able to say

for them to say while they're in our schools we want to choose education as a profession and so that work is really ramping up and a huge area of focus for us and so that's just some updates for you on the opening of schools and where we are with human capital thank you and I believe Mr Palmer is gonna take the next section thank you Dr Pitman good evening all and um it's with pleasure that I share some good information with regards to student enrollment here in Duram public schools in this section let's go to the next slide please so for the first time in a while German Public Schools Enrollment is up um we were fortunate this year to see an increase in enrollment you see that our enrollment itself is over the projection that we had had uh we had projected 31,34 we have come in as of if Dr

Royster is still in the building he can verify I believe that number is fresh off the press uh 31,1 165 U notably that enrollment in its largest in the elementary tier which is excellent a reflection of some of our work that we've been doing collectively in addition you can see our utilization and capacity in relationship to enrollment at an elementary and middle school level today we're in a healthy place at a regional and grade level configuration we want to be in that 85 to 90% window that said High School enrollment is significant right now we are seeing Rebound postco in high school our high schools are bursting particularly at Riverside and at Jordan over 2,000 students in each campus when we are over enroll traffic is hard lunch is difficult to serve and we go on from there operationally and administratively at a school level I'm naming it for the room it is a good problem to have but it

is a problem that we have next slide please this is just a review of our transfer data information as it pertains to this past year here I'm sharing this on behalf of the office of student assignment uh this demonstrates the number of student transfers received and those that were appealed to the superintendent and the board for additional consideration as a reminder transfers are considered based on board policy 4132 this is an update on the slides that were shared on August 8th at the board work session next slide please with regards to transportation next slide we are mapping out the system here for you this evening I have asked director Harris to focus on the health of his family and his staff Miss fulwood is with me this evening as to his director Keaton for school nutrition so I am going to give a high level overview of where we're at and the hard work

we've done in preparation for the opening schools this year four com EXC me five components of a transportation system and it really really does start with our students that have enrolled in power school during the enrollment process do I need a ride to school when we met on August 8th the answer to that was 177,000 students needed a ride to school and we had those routes covered Miss fulwood had routed them and we had drivers assigned we were ready to open school as we opened School 5,000 additional students and on the next slide you'll see the exact number if you could go to the next slide and we'll come back to this one this is our new student access request to the edog parent portal what it is showing in clear ways on a timeline week-by-week Horizon is the transportation received over 5,000 actually 6,000 requests in a very short amount of time and I want everyone in the room to pause for a second look up for your screens

and see the woman behind me this is Annie fulwood and she did not sleep for a month to get these students on a bus route Annie thank you for your dedication to Duram Public Schools this is hard work you are a champion of our children you care about these children you work with their parents and you do everything you can thank you for what you and your team have done for our students but the work is not done if you could go back to the previous slide thank you the challenge is this as miss fullwood our assistant director of ridership is assigning students to buses where we were with regards to our staffing and buses in August remember we were at 177,000 now we're at nearly 22,000 the challenge there with 21,6 72 students and 131 school bus drivers that's an all-time high in ridership and an all-time low in bus driver Workforce Development

we have been at the table with the board of education for two years with regards to the bus driver crisis we have initiated the first the bus 100 bus driver recruitment campaign we have received anou from the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles to train our own bus drivers however this is a long-term National crisis this is where we at we have 131 drivers of that 20 to 30 call out on a daily basis what that means is though we've done the other work we've done Bell tiers and our tier structure we'll talk about that in a second our distances are now shorter with growing together they are shorter trips that is all coming together to help us operate but when we don't have enough drivers Miss fullwood was not instructed to not assign students you'll request you recall Administration and the public and all of us said let's get those students assigned a bus what happens when we assign all of those students as a bus level if we don't have

5 miles of

m. and says we don't have enough drivers today we have to be candid and clear in early communication with our community and with our administrative and academic staff to say this is where we are today today we couldn't carry 10% of our routes we had call outs and we have a driver shortage that is the reality for us on a day-to-day basis the implications of that are profound and we're not lost on that the pathway to the schoolhouse is one of the shest ways to ensure an equitable opportunity for every child that is what drives our team on a daily basis and our work truly sun up to sun

down to sharpen the pencil and move on to the next section here from a bus route perspective we have 425 trips that are scheduled in the AM and 425 in the PM that is inclusive of our regular bus ridership as well as our ECI based ridership because you'll recall two years ago we migrated from two tiers or two Bell start times to three 7:45 for elementary 8:30 for metal and 9:15 for high school it allows us to take that 425 and divide it not by two so if we only had the old bell schedule we'd need over 200 bus drivers still this is saying in very clear terms we need 160 to pad for call outs and so forth at a minimum we need 151 and we have 131 now I want to acknowledge our drivers and our area and assistant area managers folks I have to be very candid with the board and with the public

people are working so hard and they are getting tired and they are overstretched and they are stressed and they are falling and getting hurt and it is real I have expressed this countless times to my colleagues we need help next slide please next slide we are fortunate that in North Carolina we receiv received the Department of transportations award for the first safe R to school Grant in the history of North Carolina public education we are working actively with go Durham to develop middle and high school Transit ridership guides to ensure that all of our high schools which now have easements and bus stops with them you'll not at Hillside High School we have a protected bus stop that affords the ability for us to partner with our city and county colleagues that's it

none of these options that we have within sa FR School are an alternative to ensuring that every child has an equitable bus ride allocation we do not perceive our efforts in safe rat to school as a remedy or an alternative to bust ridership much more towards providing access to education for a healthy lifestyle it also allows us to prioritize our community infrastructure needs with ncdot and the Durham Community as you may recall there's 11 $10 million sidewalk infrastructure Bond on the ballot this fall if you look at Southern High School and look at all the students that live around the high school but those that are walking in ditches and gullies to get to school this is the kind of project that can say this is where we need help but DPS needs help we really do next slide please with school nutrition we have some good stories to tell next slide the community eligibility provision or

C was effective July 1st all we had to do was what we were already doing which is allocate our federal funding to the schools and students that needed it most and we were doing that thanks to the leadership of the administration and particularly Dr King your support here was essential we had forecasted a 10% increase in participation director Keaton and his staff are vastly exceeding that I want to thank Jim as well as Dr theer and Robert Brooks are leaders in school nutrition through seeing through this migration to community eligibility providing free breakfast and lunch to all children and to our school nutrition staff we're serving more kids and they do need that food thank you for what you do next slide please in addition to needing that food we need to make that food better we have migrated our menus we have improved with local sourcing food we are tying together you'll recall with

4 million kitchen equipment deficit we have been asking for support on that for the last four years from operational leadership in the administration and the county this is a noted need and it is chronic and it is definitely impacting our ability to equitably offer the same menu at every school if an oven's down we can't offer the same food that we would that's on the

menu next slide please that here for any questions you may have thank you so much Mr Palmer um colleagues who yes Mr tab yes thank you so much um to everyone for thesee um presentations I have a lot of questions but I won't use this time to ask um so I want to start with the with Transportation those students that are arriving late um are we tracking those students academically for for opportunities for their work to be made made up or I'm asking about tracking um always it just left up to the teacher to say okay you was you were giving us a ticket to come to class a late bus ticket and that's it or is there some type of Data Tracking to make sure that

at the end we're not running into situations where the kid is is being academically scored low because of Lake bus obviously if there is a late bus obviously out of the control of the family and the student we don't Mark the student ab and we do give them opportunity to make up any missed um assignments but as far as tracking a formal way of tracking um we'll I'll have to find out from schools if they have a formalized way of um tracking whether it's in power school or another method to indicate say at the end of nine weeks how many students I had late for buses or in this class it these four students were late 50% of the time making these numbers up at 50% of the time as a result what does their academics look like we can be bring that back not piggy P absolutely um this is one of the questions that I sent earlier today um

this is not the first time that we've had a transportation problem um and we are tracking data around um our student proficiency rates and scores uh did operations or Transportation make a request um to academics ahead of time um to ask for particular courses to be taught different times of the day so that students wouldn't necessarily Miss like eighth grade math instruction where we're trying to improve scores or um things of that nature early on when we knew we were we didn't quite have enough bus drivers were those kinds of requests made any kind of request similar so no similar request was made at of of that kind but but I would note

um honestly those schedules would would have already been created before they would have known that that was the case we those are the kinds of things that we have to kind of put uh in Broad Strokes in place for instance this year we'll be doing that in February um or next next year so um unfortunately that that was not something that they would have had the opportunity to do miss can I just pick Pigg you back off of that just Dr Lewis I appreciate you talking really clearly about the tardies but I think we might need to send some reminder guidance to schools because I have heard from families that students have been marked tardy or students have absences in classes or and we remind teachers to work with them with makeup work we know we're working towards getting them into the class but I think we might need schools to get creative around that CU I I have heard frustration from parents around I'm getting these calls or I'm getting these

tardy messages when my student is late from the bus I just want to share Dr rer and I have been working on this issue this week um in you know in North Carolina we have a there are a couple of um barriers that we are are trying to figure out how to work our way around um right now um when students are absent in order to mark them um unexcused there are only a couple of codes that we can connect that to um and none of them is transportation so we we are uh working very diligently right now to identify um a way that we can adjust in order to achieve this we will however make sure that schools are aware um and and part of that work is about making sure it is clear that there should be no negative um outcome or no negative consequence for students particularly in

setting for instance we have a few scenarios where you know Transportation at this point is is pretty clear about the fact that they don't have a a driver for a route and so there should be no negative consequence for any student who has on one of those routes um but we are having to work through some kind of technical issues in order to make that that work um based on the North Carolina system um and to be clear there is a way that we could ask the board to shift policy um to make that happen um and what I would share with you is that um we are looking for a way to do that without going to that route if we can't figure it out in the next couple of days um you can expect that we will be making that request of you when we get together on the 24th did you okay go go ahead Miss uh Miss Rogers I would um follow in the footsteps of my colleague Miss Beyer and say that changes

around Transportation policy feel urgent um as I sit in carpool every day because the bus is not secured for my kid um I think through how urgent it is when when I see the emails come in I think through how urgent it is and the board I believe would Avail itself to make changes sooner if necessary um should we need to so the next thank you next part of my question or comment is about Equity even in busing there are students that are privileged that can depend on their parents or other people to get them to school whereas there may be other students that are not getting to school and they could be part of the same class and I'm concerned that sometimes with Educators because certain kids still get

to class on time or not too late but other kids especially kids of color or from different social economic groups that get to class after that class is almost over um could be treated it differently and this is why I want a tracking of those students so we're making sure that kids are being treated fairly um in those situations thank you thank you Miss Chávez I appreciate you raising that point Mr tab um thank you for this presentation thank you for all the work on Transportation um I think it we're in we're all feeling it in some kind of way the the crisis of not having enough bus drivers um thank you for all the hours and thank you for all the bus drivers who are who are um driving multiple shifts um and um and also um parents who are um

picking up this slack I'm wondering also if there are things we can do um tonight um if there um are any recommendations that you all would have um such as um uh you mentioned about the city bus not being able to um pick up all students across the county but is it possible that they could pick up all students within the city is that um or is there some kind of um is there something that we might ask of the city um that would be that would help us to get our older students to school um or or um I also want to ask about the walk zones is that something we should consider employing right now is there a way do you know this um Mr Palmer how many how many routes that would save us if we employed walk zones and I also want to ask is there a way to determine

um I live around the corner from Southern I watch those kids walk I I mean there's no sidewalk it's just you're next to the street um and um I look forward to the day that we have a sidewalk um on Clayton um and the other nearby streets but I um is there a way to determine um or have schools been determined as having safe to walk um walk zones versus not safe walk zones where what would you share on that yeah this Trav I want to make sure to repeat the question only because this is a big topic that I'm going to be very intentionally delicate with you're asking about walk zones with regards to

what are my recommendations or observations or the feasibility of it or the data behind it recommendations okay feasibility what else did you say um data data yeah all of those things um what can we do right now because I think we're I mean we're getting lots of emails continuing to get emails you all are getting calls and all of that about um parents who are who are not able to make plans because they get last minute notifications that something has to change and so then they're late to work or they you know this and that um or they have to leave work early um I'm I'm wondering if we need to make shifts that would inconvene inconvenience some um but allow people to plan um more for more consistent um transportation and so yes I'm as and it may be that walk zones we should we

should not we should not utilize those but I would like to ask the questions if I May first point the board and administration to policy 6321 and 6322 uh these are existing board policies as respect to eligibility for transportation service uh 6322 in particular outlines and stipulates guidance for administration to deploy Transportation eligibility zones walk zones might be a little bit too there's some connotations there but for example in our neighboring community of Chapel Hill they're called no trans a zones right which is saying in effect we're not providing yellow bus transportation within those areas or GE geographies before I say anything let me just give you some information and data that is again a testament to the hard work of Miss fulwood who is with me here tonight of all so we have 425 bus routes you recall that from the data slide before 171 of those or

5 miles we are providing courtesy bus service for 40% of our bus riders which equates to 171 buses out of our 425 of those the distribution does not go evenly Elementary Midland High growing together did a wonderful job of bringing our kids closer to their schools so of the 171 120 of those are Elementary Riders we want to be thoughtful intentional about that one of the benefits we had in our intergovernmental visit to Minneapolis in St Paul was they don't do a uniform transportation and they actually scale it based on grade level I'm saying that because my recommendation would need further counsel with Administration on the board on where we are as a community for appetite since I've arrived in Duram

5 mile buffer 996 at the mile buffer and about 31 and a half mile so when we start talking about a transportation out

of a half mile it does not help us that much truthfully if I'm just being CED with you a lot of those students live near the school and there's reasons they need the bus so I couldn't make a recommendation without further counsel and input but I would share the data the feasibility of it again I'm pointing back to existing board policy that we've never implemented in part because it's a complicated topic um if there's an appetite for the board and administration to go in that direction we would want to councel with you all thank you for that and um yes of course I would would want you all to bring a a thoughtful well discussed uh recommendation um I I would just want to offer a couple other thoughts I'm wondering if there can be um if this if this is um something that we might have some kind of um Unity input on problem solving kind of um

town hall is is that needed some kind of community conversation together more um more ideas are there other ways that um our partners can help our other entities can help um share transportation and is there a way we can facilitate that I know that parents are relying on other parents right now um but is there a way that we can support those efforts as well in the short term while we wait for the long term strategies to take effect is that a question for the board or is that a question for administration I think it's for administration um but those are just some thoughts I have and I don't I'd be interested if you all have other um yeah if if that resonates with anything that you are thinking about um or that might be part of what you bring back some other creative problem solving um

strategies next time yes M Rogers um I like that idea Miss Travis um Mr Palmer you presented at the Joint City County meeting is that accurate did Transportation come up at all was there any requests made um any conversations about how the city County could support this work we I I won't speak to I believe there was a it was a joint Board of Education County Commissioner meeting and I think there were some crossover interests not only in facilities but Community infrastructure uh and the funding allocation and priorities around that but our conversations are exclusively in those domains about enrollment and building funding for our capital andov program that is that is where that

conversation lied um there are Partnerships that we have with the city of dur transportation department where we're actively working to promote collaboration on the Durham youth goath which is seeing increases in ridership we have folks that are taking pathway programs in CTE that are finding it more efficient to ride the city bus to Durham station and take that onto Northern High School for the culinary program as an example I'm going further without you have a question right because they don't have to have the Go pass right now right right at this time it is still free for all writers okay so no Transportation didn't come up in that setting and that would be something we'd have to take some action on okay that's helpful thank you yes Mr tab thank you very much um a very direct question um Mr pmer thank you so much um where are we right now today for information for parents if we do if they know they do not have a

M when we make that decision based on driver call outs that we start receiving at about 4:00 amm and those call outs could be for a variety of reasons we're also deploying all of our administrative staff as you know as well so when we reach a critical threshold it's

typically about 5:30 and a final decision needs to be made that's when those calls are made let me let me rephrase the question then would there be data that would suggest that the same route has not occurred in week's time we can certainly pull that information together yes yeah I appreciate it and and if there are patterns to that we can explore further and share that okay thank you thank you um thank you so much Mr pommer um uh for this candid presentation for us and for answering our questions um I have so many I sent many today um so I think this conversation will continue but I think my overarching question after some of this back and forth is to return to um it's clear that this is a crisis you're identifying it as such you're saying that you need help the board is

saying we want to help this is urgent for us um what can we do so for me I want more and and I want to acknowledge too not only are you and your team working incredibly hard right now but you also hold so much expertise that we don't have like I am not a transportation expert I'll be the first one to say that I'm not going to with the best idea but I know that yall could come up with some really great ideas so could we request that um a recommendation or a set of recommendations um come to the board at our next board meeting that we can then discuss um and try to start making some decisions on and those could range from all sorts of different things and again I know that you all have expertise in this and would probably come up with some good ideas and conversation with other administrators in addition to that I would like Mr Palmer to address the work that has been done just this past week

uh we have heard and experienced uh issues with uh edog and um met with I'll just let you kind of share some of the work that's been done um just this past week um we were fortunate enough Dr Lewis provided an opportunity for us to meet to discuss the driver shortage issues and so I Dr this Al share I think you were thinking it would be just you and I and I brought in an entire Armada of researchers and PR practitioners and said I'm going to bring the best mins in the country edog took a red eyee from Montana we have research faculty from NC State University we have folks that are the routing trainers from ncdpi Miss fullwood director Harris assistant director leak our technology coordinator we round taed on this there are tactics that we can deploy based on other school systems in North Carolina I would not want us to get caught on just a zone of eligibility for Transportation uh and I will be candid with the board and administration and the public there's no easy buttons here we call these imp

planning these are wicked problems there's a long-term driver Workforce intentionality about our work our recruitment training and compliance coordinators just started a few weeks ago the Inc is just drying on theou with the MV we have to build our own driver training curriculum that we couldn't do until we had that so there's not a the drivers are in process for development and and we do have 32 in the queue that said they have to get through class we know that there's attrition with this job um and if I could speak it to the room for a moment the cost of living in durm is very high and the pay for drivers is not high enough right this is not an easy job and our drivers will often tell you that I encourage anyone to come with me and director Harris come talk to our drivers and see what it's like to to go through the process of trying to get kids to school it is hard um we have at least six tactics that we've reviewed with this think tank with

cabinet and with Dr Lewis we brought all the mins together but no Direction itself doesn't have consequences for other implications fiscally academically other employment positions um there's no easy button that we can simply say we we simply we'll do this one thing and that will address it it may cost some money um it probably will need to be a collaborated effort and we would want to council that with Administration on what that could look like and trade-offs what are we willing to let go of on some levels to do this thank you I appreciate that and I think we are here to solve big insurmountable problems and take risks in doing that and I think there's a willingness to um to do that here so I appreciate all of the work that you've put in and I look forward to um some recommendations again outside the box knowing that there's lots of different things we've got to do here um but please let us know what we need to do to

support this work whether it be and it's that's part of like all related to the big problem of how to get Transportation but also the problem of communicating with families like we were discussing earlier if you like what needs to be done to make sure that all families have the information that they need in order to plan for transportation as well or not having transportation and if you need something else um to make that feasible then please let us know so that we can make sure that that's in place rather than just asking you to do it and not giving you what you need uh Miss bu I hear no okay Miss umon um we I know we honed in on Transportation here but thank y'all for this overall big picture up date I'll start with Transportation then I'll go to the other pieces um I appreciate your candidness tonight I think it's helpful for us to get a big picture of what's

m. we're making a call like that kind of I think communication also lets our Community know as frustrating as it is that they may not have routes that like we're tirelessly working on this and I know that our staff are like I can't imagine y'all have to be waking up at 3:30 in the morning and then the last call has to be around 8:00 pm like that's a long day and I want to acknowledge and recognize that and I think how we communicate that out to families I think is really vital and important so they know we're working every day all day on this issue and we know it's still frustrating because it hasn't been fixed yet um and I think that'll be different for us but I think it might be an important shift for us to make

um I I wonder too you know with growing together we grandfathered in students and do we expect in a year or two that this might shift or just like after this year then one more year as some and that you don't have to answer that question now Mr Palmer unless you have one um because of the grandfathering of students which our board said we wanted it to do based on feedback from families do we see the number of routes needed drop based off that shift indeed indeed and even I will say um if I may take Liberty with your question I think there's a broader elephant in the room of is this all because of growing together I want to name it here and say please go back and review the board packet from January 19th 2023 on YouTube and it is also posted um in the slide deck you will see at that time we had 188 route packages in 145 drivers this was in January of

2023 today due to the work of Miss fullwood we have 151 route packages and 131 drivers okay so take going together aside we're just talking about a broader and he has been able to optimize and bring so much efficiency so I'm going to work with your question here for a moment in that presentation we said if we were to do no Legacy we would go from 188 routes to 130 right we also shared if we legac fourth grade fifth grade what are the implications for that we said if we were to Legacy fourth and fifth grade which we did it would be 230 routes you heard me say 51 right let me tell you how and why and the woman behind me is the work behind it bell schedule changes driver recruitment route optimization plan stop evaluation all of this work helped our

team be as efficient when we when you've heard people say turning squeezing the turnup or turning the turnup and getting everything there's nothing left for our folks to give we need people we really do and at a certain point it's not about there's there's there's no researcher that's going to come in the door as a consultant and fix a problem that is a human Workforce Development problem um and we we said then we would need a minimum of 200 drivers we're sitting at 131 and so I'm I'm naming that for you to say it wasn't 230 for GR implementing growing together it was 151 and we prepared for this what we didn't prepare for was losing about 15 or 20 drivers right before to the start of the school year and an all-time record high in ridership irrespective growing together that was not in our card and it really unored us that makes sense um I'm glad to hear about the round table conversation you had to I think

it's always sometimes helpful to have some outside perspectives um as we live and breathe a problem having some people from outside of that perspective to help think about Solutions I also wonder um again this just me brainstorming right uh you know if we have Community conversation is there a way that you know as duke Transportation Drivers or city transportation drivers are on their off days if they pick up routes for us um I know that paywise is challenging because we're not at the same rate but I'm just wondering if some of those different substitute methods or something could help us and it's you know I heard you say 15 drivers made a huge difference I durm is a vast and large community I feel like if all of us get on it can we find at least 15 or 10 that can make a huge difference for our families and so that's just another thing that's going around in my mind um and I'm glad that you all are going to send out some guidance and thinking about the power

school and how we code them I think that's really important um and I recognize we're asking you to you know bring us recommendations which I think is vital while people are all driving the bus all day every day so I just want to acknowledge and appreciate you and the transportation team um and the principes and teachers and all kinds of other folks in our district who are doing multiple jobs uh getting folks to school I talked to a teacher who rides does the route in the morning goes to teach and does a route in the afternoon um we have principles that are doing that right and so I just want to acknowledge the the work that's happening to make sure our kids get to and from school I'm G switch from Transportation now um I have questions just around the vacancy data and this this will be a followup Dr L I appreciate seeing it kind of broken down in the different High needs positions and I'm curious if we're looking at it to by school and my real question around that is like do we have any schools that don't have insert category teacher right so a whole school that might not have um an EC teacher or

this teacher and so just wondering if we could have some followup uh either the data or just here's a list of schools and kind of positions they're missing it might just be helpful to think about targeting recruitment efforts absolutely thank you and we do track that data just so you know okay great um I'd be curious to know if we have any schools that have any of those kind of gaps um and then just a kudos to again to our Child Nutrition team I've heard from lots of families who love in lunch um and breakfast and glad that they don't have to pack lunch for their kids but also appreciative of healthy and um and culturally responsive uh options I know it's also it was mentioned in our public comment that that's taking additional work we have kitchen that not working um and that again makes me wonder you know I don't know anything about how Child Nutrition I know there's a lot of federal guidelines with that work but are there other Partnerships with other kitchens in our community that could help support some of those um schools that we have

that need have those needs while we're trying to figure out how to make it all work so thank thank you thank you thank you to everyone I know it's been a challenging year a lot of the folks we're talking about are also folks who are impacted by our classified salary study um and they're still working tirelessly every day to make sure our kids have what they need so thank you thank you um Mr Palmer can you come back up I got more questions about Transportation um if that's okay or you can send somebody else um my first question um would be students from tardy buses how are they accessing breakfast and is there like information that's going out um so that those students are able to access those meals once they arrive at school I'll it's okay if that's a no well I think the question was for school

nutrition correct sure School nutrition can answer if they have the answer Whoever has the answer for for school nutrition we want every child to have the opportunity to have breakfast and we offer breakfast at every school up until the point we start serving lunch there are no federal regulations that stop us from doing that um some of the barriers we find that some principles when the kids get there they want them to go right to class they don't want them to go get a meal but we offer the meals anytime any kid wants to come in for one um but maybe part of the communication message that goes out needs to say that students are still welcome to have a meal that may be part of what we need to address colleagues are y'all interested in students continuing to get breakfast when they arrive and some language going out about that I are you recognizing me Mr tab go ahead

thank you um I would just be cautious of saying what the principles would would want at this point without having that com letting them have that conversation um because there are a lot of other factors with that with students knowing once they can go in the cafeteria at any time then they'll start getting to school at a certain time and then go to the cafeteria and then start getting the first period class late so I would just I would just kind of pause on that and give give way to how the principles or Administration would think is best for that uh yeah go ahead would love to hear what that plan is whatever it is whatever principles are doing and how students can access that some of the feedback that I've heard from Community is that um the folks that are most delayed are typically um the students that would

have been eligible for free or reduced lunch in the first place so we want to make sure that they aren't going hungry in some ways in some instances to the same point um what are we doing in the afternoons for students who are waiting for buses I know they come as late as 4:30 for middle schools that dismiss at 3:20 have we thought about any innovative ideas or creative ways um to make sure that those students are supervised if they have access to something nutritious to sustain them for maybe an hourong bus ride um and any academic support that might be available because I know when my kid gets on a 4:30 bus arrives home at 5:30 that means we're doing homework later um and that impacts student achievement student outcomes and the experiences of families um I just want to know if we've thought through some of the things could

help offset the delays in the afternoon um and then I appreciate you sharing the 10% of buses not running um I guess that's up compared to the first week of school or so I mean I guess my question is on um September 13th we got an email that 17 bus drivers had left um before traditional schools had started um and can you speak to was were there exit interviews done as to why those folks left or has there been any questioning about that we can certainly defer that question to Administration on exit interviews we have an entire team that is focusing on let me pause that for a moment um Dr Lewis I think there are exit interviews that are done by all employees but I think

it's it's optional if they survey it's yeah it's a survey but it's contingent upon if they complete the survey okay um and I know that those folks are like going out and talking to people that they know that also Drive buses so I want to make sure that we have an understanding of what those experiences are um and can kind of adjust based on that but um in terms of Outreach Avenues you spoke to some of that if you had to give a 30- second Pitch right now to come work as a DPS bus driver what would that be there is I mean we're a great place to work right we are the only pathway out of poverty goes by the schoolhouse door we have some of the finest educ aters in America we have an Administration and a board that is compassionate loves its children and we

need qualified professionals that are going to show up with a smile when they open that bus door and make it possible for that child to become whomever they may dream and there is no more rewarding work certainly in this country if not the world and it is a special person that's going to do that thank you appreciate that [Music] um yeah I appreciate that sorry to put you on the spot but um yeah I hope that messages like that are getting out in community missp so we've talked a lot about transportation and I just want to just extend gratitude to you Miss Fulmer and director Harris for the heart and professionalism and care that you all show Daily for our uh students but also for

our families um and I know sometimes our families and their frustrations have come through the phone and through the computer screen at you all as we all struggle with this wicked problem so I don't have answers but I I think like my colleagues we stand ready to help um tell us kind of quicker Solutions and longer term ways that we can help um and y'all have thought of so much already y'all have done such efficiency um I think sometimes maybe we should message the job opportunity weekly and it hurts my heart when our parents get insulted that that we're putting that in part of our reply like consider you know coming to work for us or sharing this with your network but that's where it's going to be solved is is people and continued

efficiencies and just complex kind of Durham folks coming together to wrap around our children but thank you for the ways that you continue to do that daily and um and do it with care um I do think Mr Palmer that that the messages that people receive that that are confusing on edog um there was sometimes are are not helping but hurting in in the notion of of how that's working for families so ways that we can change folks you know inform them better about their settings and ways that edog can be a more a better tool that's it um it's late but you know if if it help helps to have board members come and listen to drivers and and see what's help what's working and what's not I mean if it if it helps to have a focus group in with parents and we feed people breakfast

like let us know what ways we can help as y'all continue to prioritize what is probably the most wicked National problem yeah you have one thing we called our Workforce Development program love the bus 100 and it wasn't just about 100 people it was about a community love of the bus driver imagine being a bus driver and pulling into a neighborhood and their signs and food for you pulling into the school and the Administration has the time to come out and we're all together I say that because the bus is the extension of the schoolhouse door and the more that that position is perceived with dignity and respect that it deserves the more that people will see it for what it truly is but it starts with all of us thank you Mr Palmer um colleagues any other thoughts or [Music]

questions I did want to um even though Mr Palmer didn't mention it but the edog folks were just not here just to sit in a meeting with us they had staff that was touching just about every machine and looking to ensure that each machine was working um additionally we learned more about GPS uh concerns there and added that as a part of or will be adding that as a part of the safety inspection that bus drivers do before they get on the bus to ensure that the GPS's are um working the bigger issue is indeed Workforce and so we did talk a little bit about some um strategies or potential things that we're looking at um to recruit and retain often say the the new recruitment is retention you know so what are we doing to retain our um bus drivers um and in addition to our bus drivers sharing concerns with the staff I'm going out soon I have to look at my calendar to meet with all bus drivers just to listen and see what else we can do uh for our bus drivers but some of the things that we talked about there's a $250 fee that bus drivers have to pay for and I can't remember what

what it was for and so we had some conversations about waving that and the team shared well we don't want to wave it on the front end because they'll get the cdl and then go drive for someone else right and so thinking about ways that we can reimburse maybe after a semester after 6 months um that 2 50 uh thinking about we have some staff that drive buses and for example work in the cafeteria well they may receive one rate for driving a bus and another rate for a cafeteria so trying to see how we can pay for uh maintain that higher rate uh for the entire day and uh our HR department is looking and finance is looking at the numbers there to see so we may come back with an Ask there for um for that we talked about other barriers to um hiring bus drivers and child care came up and so um we had some conversations and and had experience in a previous District of hiring staff um where childcare was a barrier in offering free child care for for example those bus drivers so if there's a bus driver that or someone that's at home said I would love to go drive a bus but

I don't have anywhere to take my three-year-old well if we have a another classroom outfitted at with it can drop the kid off there and then go drive um Drive the Bus um sign on bonus or incentives uh I know um Joe Harris um was telling me about some vans that they purchased through McKenzie Scott uh seeing how those work do we need to purchase more um Vans as well and then identifying maybe other transportation service providers that may um um assist us as as well but those are some of the things that we are currently exploring and definitely if there's a a budget implication we will come back and I believe our board will say yes to that um depending on on the budget but we please know that we're not just um sitting around and always say hope is not a strategy we're not oping that someone um signs up to drive a bus but really thinking proactively and creatively uh and some out-of thebox ways of recruiting and retaining our us drivers uh yes Miss Harold go and the Miss Umstead just a a quick um note that

30 second Pitch that you just gave if there's a way to capture that and send that to comms no no no they can they take that take that little 30 second to coms and and do some cool visuals with it and put it out some sort of DPS Montage it was beautiful engaging would be good I can I'm I'm being very serious though I think that that would be a if that is that's something that's within our capacity for them to take that that was that was beautiful that's something that we can use all right one more or two more things maybe as you're talking about that m off and maybe just think about like we have a lot of students at nccu and at Duke who are looking at marketing and can create reals and Tik toks and all kinds of things faster than we um I shouldn't say we I could speak for y'all but I can for sure and I'm wondering how we can employ some of those to help with some of the marketing campaigns but the other thing I just haven't heard us

mention and I think it does feel immediate need as staff are in the field driving buses that means that no one is in the um in the staff room answering phone calls and that kind of thing and I just wonder if there's an immediate need there to support have some folks answering the phones taking calls doing some of that work while it's all Hands-On debt because that feels like an a more immediate one that might be something that we could solve we did have two weeks of contracted administrative support from a local temp agency that was answering phones and I miss F would help me here but resounding appreciation and a sigh of relief from our area manager staff who to your point are often emailing calling and trying to get cover this route or that route because this person's out today um that stability where these are folks that don't have CDLs right so they cannot drive for us but they can and we're quickly onboarding with um our systems which are

userfriendly but do require about a two-day onboarding window um and so to that point you know that might be something that would help in the near term yeah and I'm sure there's budgetary cons uh things that come with that and you know please bring that to us and I wonder if we also need to build that into the transportation budget in the future and so we're just planning for you know at the beginning of the year we already got some tech F temp folks who are here just because we know this might be a we might need that support um so that's just my one thought but I think that feels like another immediate need Aspire just wondering not loud for you know I know I think Miss Chávez you're serving on a Workforce housing uh local group but I wonder if we do still have availability or the the apartments that are self-help owned is that yeah um do we still have that Dr lay maybe as an option or that we could communicate to

potential drivers and current drivers yes do do as our transportation staff think that that folks are aware of that or even might be interested in in that opportunity for housing during our roundt when we were discussing the needs for child care the cost of housing we have folks that drive in from Randolph County to a fort housing or meban or or much further off the median list price of a home in Duram North Carolina is $440,000 when we were in Minnesota I compared bus drivers in Minnesota make $25 an hour we make 19 and their home values were half of what ours are so that's rent and purchase that was a huge point that we came to no I just I try I'm glad we still have that and I don't know if we pushed it out this year to all of our employees it might just be something else we need

to continue to communicate um because it is below market rate right yeah Mr tab uh just quickly Mr Palmer there's the um retirement Association for educators here in Durham uh there may be another group I want to reach out to okay other comments or questions okay um well cool thank you so much U Mr Palmer thank you all for working together on some um innov innovative solutions to really challenging problems we look forward to seeing some recommendations um uh in the coming weeks or so for solving those short-term and long-term problems okay all right thank you um yes M Rogers make a motion that we go in a close session for the reasons stated on the agenda second it's been uh

moved by Miss Rogers and seconded by Miss berer that we go into close session for the reason stated on the agenda uh is there any discussion all those in favor say I I all those opposed all right go to close session

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e e Dr Lewis thank you Vice chair Madame Vice chair I would like U board to take action on the Personnel report move approval of the Personnel report dated October 10 2024 second been moved by Miss Chavis and seconded by Miss Rogers any discussion all in favor

say I hi all opposed uh it's been approved and with that we are adjourned