Transcript for:
LEX1 MARCH 2025 Board of Trustees Meeting Summary

hello okay there we go it is 5 PM and I call to order the March 2025 March 25th 2025 board of trustees meeting do I hear a motion to enter executive session madam Chair I move we enter executive session to discuss employment recommendations and updates receive legal advice related to the process for property acquisitions discuss a contractual matter related to orure technologies and receive a quarterly legal update thank you Miss Sheily do I have a second thank you Miss Flashnick um all those in favor any opposed and the motion carries we will now enter executive session okay good evening welcome back do I hear a motion to conclude executive session madam Chair I move we conclude executive session thank you Miss Sheily do I have a second second thank you Mr pazuti all those in favor any opposed and the motion carries i call to order the March 25th 2025 board meeting the district is in compliance with the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act am I on can you hear me okay by notifying the media of the date time and place of the meeting the district tapes the meeting for accuracy and preparing the minutes i now yield the floor to Mrs mccallen please rise and join me for the pledge of allegiance and a moment of silence i aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you may be seated thank you do I hear a motion to approve the agenda as presented madam Chair I move we approve the agenda as presented do I have a second second thank you Mr rice any discussion all those in favor i any opposed and the motion carries all right do I hear a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented madam Chair I move we approve the consent agenda as presented um do I have a second second thank you Mr rice all in favor i any opposed and the motion carries okay do I hear a motion to approve 39 certified staff recommendations for the 2025 2026 school year madam Chair I move to approve 39 certified staff employment recommendations for the 2025 2026 school year thank you Miss Sheily do I have a second second thank you Mr rice all in favor any opposed and the motion carries do I hear a motion to approve two administrative recommendations for the 2025 2026 school year madam Chair I move to approve two administrative recommendations for the 2025 2026 school year thank you Miss Sheily do I have a second second thank you Mr rice all in favor any opposed and the motion carries do I hear a motion to approve 65 administrative contract renewals for the 2025 2026 school year madam Chair I move to approve 65 administrative position contract renewals for the 2025 2026 school year these approvals include senior leadership executive directors directors and principles thank you Miss Sheila do I have a second second thank you Mr rice all in favor any opposed and the motion carries um again the board um did not receive legal advice on the Barnwill case however during executive session we received a quarterly legal update and legal advice regarding the property acquisition process and a contractual matter regarding or assure technologies and no action is required at this time all right moving on to a part that you all are a lot of you are here for tonight our honors and achievements um I think I have a copy somewhere the proof positive i don't see it oh Mr rice has one make sure you grab your copy of the proof positive newsletter that hired that highlights our honores that newsletter was on the sign-in table as you came in the door tonight once we finish we will give you a chance to leave before we resume the rest of our meeting so Dr postawa and Dr price will you please step down front honores when you hear your name come and stand with Dr posttoate and Dr price as we tell the audience all about you and your achievements for our first award of the night we are excited to honor four schools that swept the South Carolina National Archery in the school state tournament first let's invite the state winning team from Carolina Springs Elementary represented tonight by the team's fifth grade members please come forward as I call your name jacob Barnhill Wyatt Bolton Sophia Boozer Paige Chandler Aaliyah Cross oh Elijah I'm so sorry elijah hey Elijah sorry congratulations Elijah alonzo Cross Whan Davis Silus Harden SA Haj Hodgej Mackenzie Jeff Christian Miklwang Ella Nave Hunter New Melody Peters Elena Ryer Millie Typton Ba Van Covering Nico Webster team coaches are Jennifer Johnson Lynn Odum and Ryan Davis please join your team up front the Carolina Springs Elementary Archery team placed first in the Bullseye category beating 15 teams to earn an overall total of 2,932 congratulations we're gonna take a picture so we need you in two rows and our taller friends in the back two rows tall people in the All right did all the mamas and daddies get pictures too oh and principles all right thank you so much Carolina Springs Elementary Archery Team all right must be something about this Whitnull area now we invite the statewinning team from Carolina Springs Middle represented tonight by the team's eighth grade members please come forward as I call your name cameron Connorly okay oh Carmen y'all I'm so sorry carmen Connorly Max Dominic Ball Evan Ernise okay Evan that's Evan Ernesty Alyssa Gant Nadia Gregory Jacob Harold Ayanna Van Coving oh do you have a sibling recognize the last name evan White and Michaela Weinmiller the team coaches are Aaron Hehheart Todd Fulmer Mark Kaiser and John Roberts please join your team up front the Carolina Springs Huskys placed first in the Bullseye category beating 15 teams to earn a total score of 3,329 in addition Carolina Springs Middle Huskies archers set a new South Carolina NASP Middle School archery record at the Battle of the Bose at Gilbert High School in February with a remarkable score of 3355 congratulations We love you okay now let's move over to the IBO category and recognize our state winners what does Ibo stand for okay good would Liam O'Neal please come forward here's Liam liam a member of the Pion Elementary archery team swept the competition by winning first place in the state bullseye and ibo competitions he beat more than 200 competitors to win the elementary division in both categories liam is coached by Annie Clark Miranda Montgomery Bennett and Ashlin Massie please join Liam up front all right thank you okay actually coaches y'all stay on up here and Liam um we are going to invite the archers from Pion Elementary to the front the team is represented by fifth grade members please come as I call your name clara Clark Clark Mariana Ferdick Caitlyn Hudson Ana King Dylan Montgomery Liam O'Neal Railen O'Neal Kinley Ravis Ernie Steerwald Naa Townson Edward Zuniga these Panthers once again placed first in the IBO category at the state competition beating 14 teams with a score of 1,500 congratulations Principal yes Miss Gerald their principal is gonna join them congratulations again Pion i do all right now for our last category of state winners we will first invite Carly Nice to the front carly is a member carly is a member of the Pion Middle archery team which also swept the middle school girls division winning first place in both Bullseye and Ibo categories which is amazing carly is coached by Maria Bolan Corwin Cox and David Taylor would the three of you please join Carly up front okay y'all stay up here um the Pion Middle archery team also won big at the state competition the team is being represented tonight by eighth grade members so please come forward as I call your name kora Brewster Laura Clark Levi Hider Willow Ryan Bradley Cely and Bradley Taylor these Panthers placed first in the IBO category at the state competition beating 15 teams with a score of 1658 congratulations All right congratulations again Pion Middle okay now we move from the archery field to the wrestling mat as we honor two state wrestling champions first would Grace Bon from Lexington High School please come forward she is joined tonight by her coach Chase Owens chase come forward as well all right so Grace won first place in the 120 weight class at the 2025 South Carolina Wrestling State Championship back in February as a freshman at LHS this is an amazing feat in addition to winning the state competition Grace was also part of the statewinning LHS varsity cheerleading team so she has earned two state titles congratulations Next we invite Pillion High's Landon Bird as well as PHS wrestling coach Brian Hedgecock up front landon Landon won first place at the South Carolina Wrestling Championship in the 113 pound category this final win culminated in Landon's hundth career win wow that's amazing congratulations to you Landon so exciting um we'd like to take just a moment to recognize the principles and assistant principles who are in tend in attendance with us tonight would you please stand and I know there are actually a lot out in the lobby right now because we're at capacity in here so thank you all for taking the time tonight to help us recognize our amazing students staff and schools we have some very talented individuals in our district and we love sharing their achievements with you we want to make a quick plug for our annual teacher of the year celebration so get ready to celebrate our extraordinary educators on Thursday March 27th at 6:30 p.m at the LOAC at River Bluff High School we will unveil our top 10 finalists and name our new district's teacher of the year expect an inspiring night filled with well-deserved recognition and a touch of superhero flare as we honor the caped crusaders of our classrooms don't miss the chance to celebrate excellence now at this time if you need to leave we will give you a quick and quiet moment to do that right now we are going to move on with our agenda tonight to item 8.1 which is citizens participation i'll give them 10 more seconds to walk in while you were all out in the hallway because our room was packed we did thank you all for coming tonight so thank you so much to all of the principles and assistant principles who just walked into the room we are so thankful you're here all right we're moving on to item 8.1 in our agenda for the night which is citizens participation lexington County School District 1 Board of Trustees solicits advice and counsel of its citizens to encourage this participation the board provides a citizens participation period during board meetings if you're unable to attend this evening or uncomfortable addressing the board in person you may reach out to the board by email telephone or mail our contact information is available on the District 1 website as you came in tonight you received a card to fill out if you indicated you wanted to speak i will call on each speaker by name and ask you to approach the lectern we want to remind you that this meeting is being livereamed and that the recording of this meeting will be part of the public record in perpetuity you may comment on agenda items school operations policies or programs you may not speak about or name specific individuals whether students or school or district staff fail failure to follow this rule will result in immediate loss of the opportunity to speak the board will not reply to your remarks nor take action during the board meeting in response to your comments or questions you may address the board up to three minutes if you have any handouts for the board please give them to Miss Holiday in the back of the room and she will distribute them please do not clap or make any comments while either while an individual speaks or after he she finishes so Dale Sturret is coming to speak about the check register and the budget think an impressive group of kids tonight those those of us that are turkeys are a little nervous with those uh people around so I'm back before you tonight to say that $1,159 spent at a local restaurant or a check dated $120 24 in the amount of $1,618.72 it included a $241 20% tip to that same restaurant needs the supporting information that district staff uses to approve the expenditure readily accessible on the website also on the check register is $167,000 check dated January the 31st 2025 written to a regional law firm that include 30 or so exactly $5,000 invoices there are many charges to large online retailers big box chain stores fast food restaurants and a local bank likely the pecard payments the district is paying dues to multiple employees to be members of community civic clubs these charges these charges charges lack basic information on the website to understand how these support district operations and student outcomes the district's website financial information regarding expenditures is is as transparent as milk the supporting information is readily available district staff used it to authorize the payment of the ter of the items on the check register and peards why hide it as your math teachers require show your work drink Small is a South Carolina born blues artist is known as a blues doctor he's nationally awarded musician and is a South Carolina treasure one of drink songs comes to mind something a something in the milk ain't clean in the district's financial documents there's a little over $15 million lost district income annually to tax reductions and fixed millage rates for 20 to 30 years to large corporations please scrutinize and be vocal about the lost revenue in these agreements and others such as municipal tax increment finance agreements so that you can freeze and lower the millillage as the assessed taxable value grows in the area in the end it's not about the mills it's about the bills tax bills that must be paid or people's homes are sold at the courthouse tax sale or people are unable to register their cars without paying their taxes which leads to blue lights in the rearview mirror and their cars being searched and towed so these kinds of charges that are on here could have paid those people's tax bills wouldn't have we wouldn't had to tax for that possibly if we just know whether or not those are valid expenditures but without the information we don't know so it's a mystery so I wrap up as as drink says something in the milk ain't clean don't know what it is don't know why you want to hide it but something in the milk ain't clean you got the information you used it to make the approvals just put it on the website it's probably in a computer program i would hope so i hope you're not dealing with all this paper and such but you as a board need to be able to get easy access to it too and not have to go through other people and say "How about this what is this about?" Thank you very much for coming tonight we will be moving on to item 9.0 um and the first item under there is our board goals draft so um I emailed you all hang on gonna have to log back into my email i'll find it in a second because here we go okay got it um some options for board goals and so I know we talked a little bit at our last meeting and I think Miss Sheily mentioned just really having our board goals really focused in and in line and I think she said locked up with our strategic plan and so I kind of emailed some thoughts out to you guys um did anyone have a chance to look at that do you have any thoughts around those um if you look at our strategic plan um there are things in there for example about our um completing revisions of board policies so there's an option in there as a board goal um by a certain date we would review and revise at least 80% of board policies so that's an option of a way to really hone that in as a goal so any thoughts since my name was mentioned I'll go ahead and speak up a little bit um so I was a little I was a bit inspired by the book we've been reading great on their behalf behalf um and uh I almost wanted to duplicate the strategic plan goals essentially um but in conversation and kind of noodling through it um I think it makes sense to figure out what kind of uh goals that we can have to show that we're supporting those measurable strategic plan goals and so um I like Kathy where you're going on some of what you sent out i particularly like there's one specific to datadriven accountability and implementing kind of a quarterly reporting process to monitor KPIs or key performance indicators which we mentioned in these this past year's goals that we wanted to be laser focused on KPIs i really like the idea of having measurable KPIs that we're constantly talking about focused on which the district already is with our strategic plan but how does the board fit into that so I just I I like that direction but definitely want to know what other folks thoughts are on that mr uh Chair Henson around the data driven accountability um I noticed we had here by December 2025 board will implement a quarterly reporting process to monitor key performance indicators related to student achievement program effectiveness and system efficiency using data dashboards to inform governance decisions um I think that's a a good goal the only thing I was wondering is it says the board will implement this by December um do we I guess I'm I'm just wondering is it going to be sufficient time to develop the KPIs and implement them to a point we can start doing quarterly reporting at that point i I don't know how realistic the date is i guess it depends on the complexity of the KPIs that we have and that could probably be a question more for the district is that enough time for you to pull together the data to present to the board um related to student achievement and program effectiveness um yes it would be because we've been working on those key performance indicators that are part of the school renewal plans for a couple of years now at least perhaps longer so uh that will not be problematic that's an easy midyear report dr price you want to add anything to that or a correction no ma'am no correction just in addition that um later on as part of the superintendent report I'll give you an update on the activity that we did either last month or the month before about a data landscape that aligns pretty well with what you're discussing right now wonderful great and I know that we've had discussion about community engagement and so I think putting something in there about stakeholder sessions would be very valuable as well um make sure I'm on yeah that's um the two that that you sent out at the bottom the community engagement and communication this one me personally is important um because I do believe in in communication with each other and with the the people in the district and the stakeholders um because they need to know as much and we need to hear from them as well because we only we can only know what y'all tell us um and so that's that's big on my part um and then also you know not just the the four stakeholder engagements but I would hope the board would also take up to to be engaging with their stakeholders and the people that look to them to ask them questions um and then the last one the fiscal stewardship and long-term planning um I definitely think that is a goal that we need to keep just like any type of group organization business needs to move forward you need to have a plan um you know not just for the next year but for many years to come um especially in in the day and age where the growth is just outgrowing us every day so I definitely believe in in those two so um this is obviously under new business and we're talking about a draft are y'all Maybe we'll just take the comments tonight and fine-tune them a little bit and bring it back next month okay as Chair Henson is this this is not something we would take action on tonight no sir but would we as a board need to eventually say these are the goals and we take a vote on that and approve those right we we would have to set these as our goals so Madam Chair I would say we pretty much a homework assignment to look at these and bring back any changes or any extra things we may need to discuss and if you have feedback before the next meeting that'd be great yeah okay we will move on to item 9.2 which is um a draft of our board's budget priorities and so but do we have a slide not we don't okay so in your board docs you do have a slide um and these budget assumptions are basically um some assumptions that really the districts kind of made based off of conversations that we've had recently and so um the first one is the salary study commission um committee's recommendations are a key priority um and then Lexington one will maintain low class size ratios and those were presented to us I think in a workshop recently um and this is one that many if not all of us have shared is that we want a balanced budget with no or minimal millage increase um and they did put there depending on the level of state funding um any thoughts or comments on that one yeah Madam Chair I've stated this before but I am still in the favor of it needs to stop after um no millage increase okay okay um the board wants to understand accumulation of and make decisions about um the use of fund balance and I think that that's kind of been a um a priority of ours when we have this budget presented to us to um make sure we understand how our fund balance has been accumulating over the years and really allocate those funds and use them michelle do you have something to say just in addition and I was probably jumping ahead a little bit okay um I would like to see how the budget aligns with our strategic priorities and our five-year plan i'd like to see that lined up side by side thank you yes ma'am maybe you're already on um one thing that we were presented by um another I believe she was a deputy superintendent or a CFO in a workshop from the I'll get the district wrong upstate thank you um she said that their board was able to see the school level priorities that were submitted to the district that the district then uses to make their decisions i really liked being able to kind of drill down at least at the school level to see what each school is asking for to make sure that we can support our administrator requests alongside kind of a highle review of the budget got that Dr postal White is meticulously taking notes over here if I'm not mistaken don't we normally get kind of a wish list clark I feel like you have mentioned like gone through our wish list sorry my voice um before with you know each school kind of what what they want somewhere in the in the budget uh yes ma'am and what you're referring to there is um the the meetings and the input we get for developing the capital projects bud budget uh rather than the the general fund budget that's for those capital projects okay cool and um we in the past have kind of had a mustdo category and the cost of those things because there one year we had to start implementing in paid parental leave and so that was a mustdo category and so things like that and um then there's the Lex1 standards category and costs you know things that aren't necessarily mandated but standards that we've set for ourselves and then there's the would like to do so um that's a goal for the district when they bring us this budget to have those um are there any other budget um priorities or thoughts as the district is getting ready to bring this to us very soon i mean Madam Chair I just thought about one other thing us i think maybe Miss Macau mentioned that we had a list previously that said must do would like to do that kind of thing i don't know whether when we go into the next year we take a look back at the items that didn't make the mustd do or would like to do i would think there was still some priority we wanted to do on them the previous year but might be good to look at those in addition to the current request and maybe we rep prioritize across the ones we weren't able to do the previous fiscal year great feedback thank you um one question I have and you may not know the answer um right now but I believe in the past that the district has budgeted based on a particular percentage of positions being funded like at 100% or at 80% or whatever that might be um I I think I would like to see a budget based on a realistic fill rate opposed to a 100% fill rate just because I'm not sure that 100% fill is ever realistic right yes good okay dr poste Dr price do you all feel that that gives you some direction any questions for us okay all right we will move on to item 9.3 which is the first reading of our 2027 academic calendar so I will turn this over to Miss Gaskins thank you um on behalf of the districtwide calendar committee I do bring forward the um calendar for the 2627 school year for first reading this is a modified year-long calendar which simply means we can begin school before the th the third Monday in August this calendar includes the required 190 days for staff 180 days for students and the three required weather makeup days as well as some things that we've heard from the committee over time that are very important to our community first that we have a balanced calendar with 90 days in each semester with a break at winter break so a clean break for those two semesters um we like to avoid a Monday start when possible and that just is easier for our youngest learners as they're adjusting to school understanding that we also have the opportunity in South Carolina now to do a three-day staggered start for our kindergarten and first grade students for those readiness assessments um will that be the plan this year yes so I guess this year and next year yes the state has not released yet the application that we must complete and get approved to do that but it is codified in the new read to succeed legislation and so that should be coming out soon um we've also heard the need for frequent breaks throughout the year to help with both staff and student attendance our community in the calendar for 2526 felt strongly that we have a week for Thanksgiving so we'll do that for the first time um next year and this calendar committee wanted to do the same that spring break be connected to Easter and the committee based on feedback they got from their school communities did not want to make the Friday before spring break a weather makeup day but instead a holiday because they wanted to ensure that we have that day off and we also like getting out of school before Memorial Day so you'll see that the calendar reflects all of those things um also election day off which is required in evennumbered years um there was some discussion and some feedback from the calendar committee um really reflecting that they'd like to go into some deeper discussion moving forward and and really look at different calendar models and so I've already had some volunteers to um commit to a study group to maybe do a little deeper work with that next year but for now these are the recommendations for the 26 27 school year what do you mean by different calendar models they wanted to look at different starts longer breaks um really study it in more depth than we did this year so so some surrounding districts are doing interesting things and I think just as to um survey stakeholders to see what folks might be interested in doing in this community thank you so much board do you have any thoughts or questions for Miss Gaskins miss Gassins I have one quick question and then maybe a deeper question um as far as graduation dates can you explain for the community how those dates are put on the calendar and when i'm happy to so as soon as we conclude graduations each year um the following week we let the Colonial Life Arena know our top three choices for the following year they get those same things from surrounding districts in the Midlands and then we find out several months later when our graduation dates are thank you my second question is about um collaborative planning i see that there are six dates uh for 2627 um and I know we've talked about this before um has the calendar committee had any conversations about uh putting those dates on a different day of the week and if so um why still a recommendation of Wednesday so based on what we've learned from surrounding districts who have tried a Monday or a Friday attendance is very low when those early release days are on a Monday or a Friday which really impacts both student learning and the ability to use those days as they are intended for teacher collaboration um we did get a good bit of feedback on both collaborative planning and e-learning from the calendar committee that we'd like to strengthen both of those systems for next school year just as sorry just as a point of personal prevalence when do you know when the graduation dates for 26 are going to be at or when will we find out so it will be early fall this year yes okay we hound them mr calhoun where is he in the room he he contacts the Colonial Life Arena almost weekly begging for those dates and we like to get them as quickly as as possible thank you so much you're welcome all right well but don't go far we're going to move on to 9.4 which is the first reading of policy IHBG and IHBGR homeschooling so Miss Gaskins that's you too absolutely so um a couple of years ago we had a courtesy transcript audit that was implemented by the state department of education and got a good bit of feedback from that audit and since then have been updating some policies that they recommended we give attention to the updates you see on the homeschooling policy mainly um add language around how we assign credit to high school students who return to school from homeschool as well as just some other clarifying language throughout both the policy and the administrative rule board do you have any questions or comments regarding the first reading of this policy we're not voting on it tonight it's just a first reading okay um hearing nothing we will move on to 9.3 which is the first reading of policy BAA which is board self evaluation so this policy right here um funny enough was actually revised by the ad hoc committee in 2022 and um at the time we said that our board self-ealuation should be in July because we were like oh there's not a whole lot going on in that month well because there's not a whole lot going on in that month we have not been able to get the full board together in July for a board self-evaluation so the revision of this policy is simply to change the sentence that says the results of the self-evaluation will be reviewed instead of each year in July to say in the fall of each year and used to establish board goals for the following school year do y'all have any questions thoughts or concerns about the change okay good stuff all right let's keep on plowing through we are going to move to item 10.0 which is our superintendence report so Dr posttoate I'll turn that over to you thank you Mrs hansen and good evening everyone um Dr price and I together have five minutes of the 25 that are allotted for the superintendent report so I am immediately turning the remaining time over to Dr price since most of these items have to do with the coming school year gave the clicker to me so I guess I better use it okay all right so these are the topics that we're going to cover in this evening's uh superintendent update and we'll jump right into the first which is our budget timeline calendar update and so throughout the month of March senior leadership team members have been receiving requests for needed items and desirable additions to help meet the variety of needs throughout our district departments and principles have presented these items while Mrs miller and her financial team have worked diligently to plan the financial impacts these items would have and how much additional funding we may see from state and local resources so looking ahead to April we will have a budget workshop on April 1st where we will share the results of this work and our attempt to prioritize the requirements with the additions that were mentioned tonight um so that we can give you an update on what our first proposal is at our budget um we would like to do uh we until then use the feedback we receive at the workshop to bring back our proposal of the 2526 budget for first reading so at April 1 workshop you're going to see all of the things that have been brought to our attention by the departments in the district the principles have had an opportunity to um weigh in and give their requests for what they would like to see added we will have them broken down by category as to mustd dos district standards and then would like to do uh Miss Mill and her team have also worked very diligently to get a forecast of what our state and our local revenues are going to look like up to this point based off of feedback we've already received from the House Ways and Means Committee the um the Senate Education uh Senate Finance Committee is uh going to be going into discussions here soon we will get updated numbers from them again it's just a projection until we receive the final budget as you know the the state typically doesn't approve their budget until June and gives us very a very small window to turn around and nail down specifics for ours but the first overview will be provided for you at an April 1 um budget workshop coming up next week so a couple of months ago or maybe it was last month it all kind of runs together now but I had you all um take a look at a list of a variety of different data points that we use throughout the school year to inform our decisions to inform instructional decisions as well as planning decisions you all were asked to take that list and circle your or star your top three items that were of the most interest to you things that you would like to see reported to the board periodically in addition to that you were also invited to circle things that were of interest to you maybe not a top priority but of interest and what we did in uh that worksheet is provided for you in your um board docs is every item that was listed as a priority along with every item that was an item of interest by four or more board members now appears before you on what we call our data landscape calendar so we've taken those items and we've spread them out over the course of an entire school year some of the items that were referenced earlier tonight you can see on this landscape calendar in addition to that we can tweak this as we go if there are additional items that uh from the results of one uh presentation may lead to more questions we can dive deeper into that so as we go through this this is our first attempt to give you an inside look at the data that we use that impact student outcomes as well as district operations and so this is the result of that activity and based on some of the goals that you were discussing earlier tonight if any goals are added and solidified we can take those and um integrate those into the calendar that exists before you and this is scheduled to begin August of 25 and we'll sustain throughout the school year and then finally this is a quick review of the program evaluations that the board um has committed to going through throughout the course of a year the ones that are highlighted are the ones that were selected to be evaluated this school year you've already received reports on two of those programs and the remaining three will be coming in the final months of the school year what I ask you to do at this time but not make a decision is to begin looking at the remaining programs that have been identified and at the next board meeting um we'll be asking you to identify the ones you would like for us to focus on next school year so that we can start planning that work ahead so nothing to do tonight but if you would take a look at those and be ready to discuss and maybe give us a recommendation of the programs you'd like for us to address next year And then finally I believe this was already highlighted earlier and we're really excited about the teacher of the year ceremony that's coming up this Thursday evening at River Bluff and at that with that I'll answer any questions you may have for do you'all have any questions for Dr price not a question but just one comment i do want to say with the data landscape deliverables I do completely appreciate that because as a board and well speaking for me personally but even as a board we can't make decisions without the information and so having that information that you know we feel is valuable to us is very important so I appreciate y'all working with us to to get us that information well we we love data and we love numbers we really do use it to make decisions and we're excited that that you all are interested in uh taking a look at the numbers behind the scenes of what we used in order to determine decisions for moving forward so thank you for your interest in that all right wow that was way less than 25 minutes right well you still have two sections to go they just have five oh so it you're putting pressure on me wait is the mission and action included in your 25 minutes because on mine it says 10 so all right well Mr calhoun I believe you're here to talk about our postsecondary pathways is that correct okay there we go sorry all right so I'm I'm here to do the postsecondary academic feature tonight and normally we as we've done these throughout the year we've tried to do one um per level um at each board meeting along the way um and as we considered this one so just so while you're getting me instead of a principal or a director is we just talked about uh the college center um when with an evaluation and then we just uh Brian Barno uh at AES was just here or at AES adult ed um was here recently as well so we didn't want to bring them back so I'm I'm here to talk about some real I hope the easiest thing we talk about tonight and two really cool pathways that our students are going to have access to um the first one is Alex one med start i want to give you I want to give kudos where it should go here uh where this started with some conversation with Dr price and I think Dr powers at LMC and we it has come out to be an incredible opportunity a partnership between Lexon one Lexon Medical Center and Milan's Technical College so what this is starting um possibly as a sophomore really for our juniors and seniors is an opportunity for an incredible experience to get if they're interested in the medical field and so as we begin this process we we ask LMC like what do you need we ask Midlands Tech how do you how can you help us and then how can we get you students and who then become employees for you pretty quickly out of high school and so from those conversations came this one med start that kids are going to get a chance to really dig in and and get a lot of um dual credits early on they're going to get some real world apprenticeship so I'm g tell you a little bit more about that but that is a really cool thing that we have we really tried to model this um many of you have heard of our our Michelin Scholars program as well we tried to model that this program to some degree around that model so that we're really able to take kids to be um employees pretty quickly um it's also coming our students who get into this tuition it's tuition free i mean they they can go through three years get out and one year after they're going to be able and they don't owe anything they haven't paid anything the dual credit obviously is um through the lottery funds is is was free to them there um textbooks along the way will be will be some things that'll be some cost um and then there at the end there there's a guaranteed career so what do you mean by this well the first pathway they can do is they LMC helped us identify the surgical tech pathway and in that surgical tech they said here's their pathway so the surgical tech is these are the classes see so this is part of our partnership with Midlands Tech um so Milan Tech was able then to really like readjust they did some work um to really create this pathway specific for us and for LMC to this is this is the dual this is the dual enrollment classes that kids will uh our students will take early on can start your sophomore year the surgical tech's a little bit deeper than the uh radiology tech uh so it can start as a sophomore certainly can or it can start as a junior the other pathway that they identified for us was the radiology tech um that is a very these are very much needs for LMC and so this is where they'll start as a junior and they'll do that so what does this look like got to be fast tonight i got to be fast so um as an 11th grader let's say we get in as an 11th grader um students are going to start taking their dual enrollment they're going to start job shadowing and doing an internship an unpaid internship as a junior inside LMC come their 12th grade year they're doing they're taking care of business they're doing what they should do at 12th graders they're going to get a paid internship up to 20 hours at LMC while continuing on their their classwork both at a high school and at LMC or at MTC um and so then that really is when this becomes real now they're getting this experience as a paid apprenticeship inside LM LMC after high school they they basically got in either way one of these pathways surgical tech or radiology tech basically one year left could be about a year and a half of credits worth that they they have to finish to go ahead and finish that associates degree when they do that they'll they go right to work and so cool thing is too they get out of high school i'm gonna I'm going to keep going to I'm going to go to MTC well LMC is this is where LMC has jumped in and said "Well we're going to help take care of that cost." So this is where that tuition free comes in lmc you're you want to you'll keep and agree to work with us for a certain amount of time they're going to have they'll work on that that they were working on the language and that um but they're going to they're going to be able to finish that year get the degree and then have a guaranteed job afterwards really cool experience we feel feel for our kids we've we've got uh I checked today we we've got the application ends sometime in the next week or two we've got 25 to 30 applicants already we had a we had a big kickoff night had about a hundred uh uh people there that night so it's a really cool collaboration i'm excited for our community for what's to come of that the second pathway I want to talk about is um one that's near and dear to our hearts and that's the Lex one nextgen educator pathway um it it's a it's the education pathway students interested in education and really we want to really grow this u for those students who have that aptitude and really want to um become a part of the Lexington one family down the road um so as we began to craft this there were a couple things in mind as we created this pathway number one we have thriving teacher cadet programs inside of our schools so what we didn't want to do is like we don't want to rob Peter to pay Paul here like we have great educators in those teacher cadet programs leading those programs so we wanted to create this pathway while also letting these uh at Lexington High at Whitenol at Gilbert High and all they have their own teacher cadet program so we wanted to integrate those together so the Lex one uh nextgen education pathway um is a two-year thing it starts as a junior there i I outline it here um where you see they're they're really getting into those dual enrollment classes as a junior and senior the thing I want to highlight here is what we are trying to do is we try to create interest and that excitement is what I know about educators and students who want to be education is they want to work with children they want to see what it's like and so what I'm excited about this pathway and this two-year thing is what we've we've laid out here is the opportunity for students who go down this way to really be inside of classrooms with Lexington one teachers for two years so you're getting a couple you're getting different experiences with different teachers mentor teachers and so real excited about where this one's going as well um numbers are we're somewhere between 12 and 15 for this one as of the um today when I checked so excited to really lift this one off the ground as well both of these pathways initially the classwork the MTC work is going to be housed at LTC um we worked closely with Midlands Tech there to make sure that we can our professors can be there and so housing at one place um allows for transportation from any school in the district and also gives us that um that inerson those classes we need all right questions for me mr calhoun yes so it sounds like these would be the inaugural years of this program next year how many students do you anticipate would be in the program you mentioned the applicants but how many would you anticipate are in each program so that's a little bit of a fluid question okay but I want to say this this is what LMC tells us they believe they can hold about 12 to 15 per pathway each year okay so that's our goal we'll see where they go he's uh Brian Smith who is HR at LMC really spoke to say hey if we get more we'll see where that goes but um they're it really their excitement level they're we we're going to really feel this out but 12 to 15 was our goal there um don't do we already have programs with LTC and LMC or No so we've got some Yes we've got um gas since you can help me uh with nursing medical assistant medical assistant there's several different pieces there this the piece that is different here is them coming out um close to that degree and um I think the uniqueness here is us the conversation among what do you need how can we help provide that and get provide a pathway for them that apprenticeship that paid apprenticeship is pretty cool too and are there any requirements of the students as far as like you know certain medical requirements nothing because I know in some of the programs that we are currently in with Lexon Medical they're required to have certain vaccinations and things like that is that a thing that would be that would be a LMC thing i do not I can't answer that what I can tell you is that it's would be for the coursework it will be they have to be have a 3.0 um and there is an application process for the LMC because they're going to select people that they're investing in and so there's there's an application they're going to do an interviews in April um for that and then they'll select their their candidates from there mr calhoun quick question you started to allude to this a little bit with the teaching program so today there's like a track at LTC for teachers that go into teacher cadet will that remain and continue and this is another option how does that work this is really going to be this is really combining that option as well okay and so there is that track this is we're going to use some of that LC LTC their teacher who is in that program part of that is we're going to integrate that together yes that we're the part that we're we're trying to aim here is a really um those classes aren't necessarily dual credit and so this this is we're trying to add that layer to that is there thought of extending this into the college realm or to a higher level education wise so I think the vision for this is to expand um we got to get it off the ground and then let's go from there because I think as we expand and go forward there would be some there would be some implications for maybe budget type things that we we want to get it off the ground and then maybe bring a recommendation to go forward after that can I add one note to that so when we started planning this last year and began conversations with IIChes about the after high school element um what we heard from our students was they wanted to choose where they went to college after that associates degree and so really wanted to leave those options open um and so we'll continue to do that future planning but for now we're trying to listen to the kids and what they're telling us mr calhoun yes sir for the nextG educator pathway that's probably fluid too but how many students you anticipate participating in that pathway i'm I'm really I'm hoping to get about a 12 to 14 this first this first go around okay thank you sir thank you Mr calhoun all right we are changing up our agenda a little tonight and we are moving our financial report up so Miss Miller I'll now turn it over to you sure we're gonna get the logistics going here real quick all right so good evening Mrs henson Superintendent Dr postal Weight Superintendent Elect Dr price and board members as you said we're changing it up tonight so I am excited to present to you the dashboard that I have um worked on with my team you can see this is the exact information that you do receive every month i've just summarized it so your packets still have the detailed information but this just summarized it and I do have to say I do like the color scheme um with the teal in there if anyone's seen my office um so exciting to look at this hopefully you find it helpful just a quick overview it's got your local state and what we categorize as transfers please know that transfers really is state revenue it's just transferred from another fund that we're required to recorded in and so it's really just state and local revenue you can see that there is approximately um $257 million of revenue so far year to date that's as of February 28th 2025 and approximately 45% of our revenue is from our local revenue um I do know that our leadership team has worked very hard with projections uh not only for fiscal year 25 but also working into fiscal year 26 um it's a little easier to see the crystal ball as I get closer to June 30th to see where we're going to shake out with the revenue amounts so we're at the point now where we think we have a good handle on where we're going to it is still going to change the state department amount will change our state revenue after the 135th day count um but what we've done is we've updated our projections based on what we have available at this moment in time based on collections that we're actually receiving from the county and what we're projected to receive from the state um we are looking at while we're never going to get it 100% accurate we are much closer than we were last year i do still anticipate that we'll probably receive 9 million more than what we had budgeted but to put that in perspective think about a $200 budget if you were to go grocery shopping that's about a $4 difference in that budget so I know 9 million seems like a lot but from a financial perspective it is a about a 2% variance so I think we've done done a lot of good work getting that closer and the good news is we are already building this into the fiscal year 26 projection i'm trying to use my mouse to change this so now this slide is again the same exact information i've just summarized it um a little less than the slide before but not as much um detail as you have in your packet i'm not going to read those um numbers to you but you have that there for information i did add a little disclaimer at the bottom um these numbers are rounded so when you look at your report that has pennies you're going to see some variances it's not that we can't do math it is just rounding so I wanted to make sure everybody was aware of that moving on to another dashboard this is just the expenditure side so looking at our year-to-ate expenditures there are approximately $223 million of expenditures i do have that broken out for you by the main categories that um are typically reported by school districts i'm not going to go into all the details on it um but I will tell you that 87% of our budget is in salaries and benefits so again the largest part of our budget is our most valuable um assets which are employees um we have worked very very hard this year and I just cannot thank um human resources and my team in payroll for the work they have done this year with looking at payroll and looking at projections um we have really focused in on that area when looking at the budget as I said it's typically about 90% of a budget and so we knew if we had some variance in actual to budget um figures that's probably where we needed to focus our energy and I'm excited to say that the we have taken a really good look at that and we have determined why we're having the variance i know we've sat here for several years saying we're going to use fund balance and we're budgeting to use fund balance and what do you know we didn't use fund balance um so we have really took those numbers and really did a good analysis on that um the director of payroll did a fabulous job with that and there's really two main pieces that play into that variance the first one is when you um start your budget you take your current salaries that you have that you're paying employees hoping they all come back right so we have those budgets and what do you know september rolls around and you have an employee retire well they just so happen to be somebody that's worked for the district for 40 years and they are at the top of the salary scale and we have to replace them we weren't planning on it we find a teacher that's still available and guess what they are right out of college with one year of experience so there is going to be a large variance in their salaries and what we projected in our budget because we thought that employee was not retiring in September versus what we're actually going to pay for the year because we have a new teacher that is fresh out of college so that number is the one part of the puzzle the second part um is vacant positions again there's the combination of budgeting at a 100% fill rate which again we got to look at that and then also you have a vacant position we have to use a dollar amount for that position so we do the best we can looking at trends looking at averages picking somebody on the scale as a dollar amount and using that well what do you know you hired the person and maybe they're fresh out of college again and so again you're not spending nearly as much and you also didn't hire them on July 1st right maybe they didn't get hired until December so not only do you have a half a year of salary you also have a much lower salary so when you take those two um key components and look at our budget we can account for about $16 million that we think we can tighten our budget up with and so when you take that combined with where I think we're going to come in higher with our revenue that's your 24 million that we budgeted to use out of fund balance and that's why we're not going to use fund balance this year and I think right now based on the information that is available we're going to come very close to a break even year assuming everybody spends their um regular operating budget as budgeted um I think we've tied down the salary component and have um extrapolated that out and feel comfortable in um discussing these numbers tonight it's a lot thrown at you um real quick going on to this slide again I'm not going to go into the detail but it's just summarized a little more than your detailed report that you have and then let's talk about general fund balance i'm not going to read the formal definition up there um but what I'm going to do is try to put it in terms that probably make more sense than my accounting words that I could use um so when you're looking at a fund balance you're going to take how much money is sitting in an account at the end of a month or a year so you're going to look at that money and say "Okay I have a $100 here." And then you're going to earn money and money coming in that you're collecting so as you collect that money you have your $100 and let's just say you collected another hundred now you have $200 but you also have to pay things right so you are paying your bills and let's say we spend $150 well now we're down to $50 in our account correct but guess what we also have bills that are coming that we haven't yet paid so just because I give you the number $50 I really know I've got a $100 electric bill to pay and so you can't just take a fund balance at one time and just say "Yep that's our number and that's what we have and we can budget off of this." It's a fluid number it changes all the time just like a simple simple example of an account like that so hopefully that explains a little bit um but you really got to be mindful of what's coming up you can't just say "Oh well I have $50 according to my check register so let's go ahead and plan for that." It's not always the case of what you truly have here's where our fund balance is as of February 28th um I think I made it pretty clear with the big red line that everything to the right of that is a projection um so hopefully everyone understands that now when you look at this you could sit there and say "Wow we've gotundred and what is that a two I can't see that part $43 million." Because you know what this month we had in February we collected $50 million of operating taxes we were so excited that email goes out yay we got our tax money we're so excited but guess what I'm going to get next year for or next month probably a million dollars but guess what my expenses are still going to be 20 to30 million but I'm not going to have that revenue so yes at one given moment in time at February 28th 2025 that was the number it's already different it's changed we've paid bills we've had money come in i think the line depicts pretty closely where I think we're going to shake out which is going to be a pretty much same as we were at June 30th i don't anticipate needing to utilize fund balance but I also don't anticipate adding to it unless um additional information is received so you're saying you think we'll shake out around 114 yes ma'am okay my line isn't exact but you know I just tried to get the trend there and then lastly just talking about procurement you have this report just put it in a bar graph for you shows the teal color of all our transactions for the month and then that little tiny um purple part at the top is our unauthorized again those can be as simple as somebody failed to sign an internal form we have um not using the FOB discount at Lowe's you get the discount on your receipt but it didn't actually scan and so nothing alarming here nothing to be concerned about just reporting the routine monthly information that you already have and with that I hope I didn't take more than my 10 minutes and I'll turn it over for questions board Miss Flushing thank you so much the business owner in me is like in a candy shop with being able to see it all this way so I know we've been asking you and I really really appreciate because I know putting those reports together is not an easy task i do have one clarifying question for you yes ma'am i believe that I heard you say correct me if I'm wrong um that you think that this year we'll be at a break even meaning we will make about as much as we will spend is that correct yes ma'am okay um and then with fund balance um when you were describing that uh example when we pay money out of fund balance we only pay it if we have a cash flow issue in the general fund correct that's a simplistic statement but it it's not necessarily a cash flow it's you have an operating budget and you have revenue in that budget and you have expenses and the timing of when your revenue comes in does not align to when you have to pay expenses out so technically cash flow yes not a problem it's very normal um so that is the amount that we we do go into the fund balance when we have not collected enough revenue we're now at the point of the year we have collected enough revenue so um you you notice on your monthly general fund report that that amount is back up and so when we're looking at the slide seven where the money's come out throughout the the months over the course of a fiscal year yes that's some of that is inclusive of um items that the board has approved to pay out of fund balance like a facility study as an example it's not all necessarily just to operating cost is that correct that is correct okay thank you Miss Miller is January 1st typically the day that we hit our trough every year as far as fund balance that is a good trend of where it really is it's timing of that if taxpayers want to pay that money and we collect it earlier it could change but typically January is the going to be your lowest spot there right at year end so I guess as far as when we have our policy our board policy about what percentage that we want to maintain do we normally compare that to that trough that bottomed out dollar figure yes and you have that monthly report where you do have the fund balance and you should see the amount that stabilized staying at your mandatory required amount about $67 million you'll notice there were several months that that number did get to that lowest point and that's why we started using fund balance allocation because you could not go lower than that per board policy okay thank you Miss Miller looking at the the fund the excuse me the reports is showing with revenues we're about 70% of budget and then with expenditures we're about 57% of budget have we taken or like are we over revenues and under under um expenditures right now or because you're saying we're break going to break even by the end of the year so I'm trying to figure out where is so it's really it's a great question and it is really hard with the cyclical nature of how we collect our revenue you can't just say every month we're going to get one 12th of what we have for the year so we are at the point now where we just had our largest collection month and our revenue is going to dra drastically drop off yet our expenditures are going to stay pretty stable they will go up slightly in the summer because you have summer workers um you have annual leave payout so there are a few things that do increase expenditures at the end but you are correct i did say I project it's going to be a pretty much break even but you can't tell that from looking at these reports because of the nature of a school district thank you anyone else thank you so much Miss Miller you are welcome all right we are going to move on to item 11.1 do I hear a motion to approve the recommendations of the district instructional materials adoption committee for K12 mathematics madam Chair I move to approve the recommendations of the district instructional materials adoption committee for K to2 mathematics thank you do I have a second second thank you Mr rice all right um let's see Miss Gaskins correct thank you so you have before you the recommendations from the instructional materials adoption committees all on math this year but I wanted to give just a little bit of background about the process so after uh a stringent vetting process and some community input the state board of um education at the state level approves the selections from which we can choose as a district at which point we form district adoption committees to study those publishers that are available and make recommendations for adoption that typically happens alongside a new set of academic standards for a subject area so every six or so years there have been times when the state did not have the funding to support new materials alongside a standards adoption i say that to say that has not been an issue in recent years but it is incredibly important that we're thoughtful about the materials that we select each time because we're never sure how long we're going to be using those materials and so um this particular year with this adoption it's been a little bit of a whirlwind uh we didn't get the list until January and then there was a cure period where some additional publishers were added and here we are tonight already voting and did a really intensive study of these materials so I want to thank the um adoption committee members who have done this work and a few of them are here tonight so we developed a district rubric that was aligned to the state's rubric really wanting to align based on the um recommendations from our curriculum audit that we look closely at the alignment between our curriculum our instructional materials our assessments and so our district rubric allowed us to do that we also thought about the professional learning that we've been investing in um in Lexington one and so tonight I have with us uh elementary math coach Heather Barahona uh middle school math teacher Melissa Hooker and our coordinator of math um Hillary Morgan they're just going to share just a couple of notes about their experience in the selection process and and why we're making the recommendations we're making good evening my name's Heather Barona and I'm the math coach at Gilbert Elementary School at GES we began we began the process of reviewing the math instructional materials by sending our three building representatives to the math and structural materials review committee meeting at that meeting we began by reviewing the elementary math and structural framework this was followed by a jigsaw of the grade level standards finally we discussed calibration of the district's rubric so that we would all be on the same page when we completed the math and structural materials review in our schools next our GES committee members worked together to prepare for leading our school through a meaningful review process we put together a presentation for our teachers where we looked at the MA math elementary instructional framework and the grade level standards we did this together as a whole group but with each grade level team working at separate at a separate table so the conversations could be grade level specific yet we could also discuss vertical alignment piece pieces with other grade levels our interventionists resource teachers full-time ML teacher and even our administrators were present so that we had all stakeholders within the building involved in the process we met several times like this in order to complete our review of all three curriculums we encouraged our teachers to dig deep into the curriculums available and to also view the different videos and webinars provided from each curriculum so that we could see how each curriculum aligned to the standards compared to our Lexington one math instructional framework and the different math professional learning we have received at the end of our review process it was evidence that Great Mind's Eureka Math Squared was the best fit its four-part lesson structure correlated very closely to our math workshop model it strongly promotes the use of concrete representational abstract model that is best practice as well as a major component in our math instructional framework in addition it closely aligns to the researchbased OGAP learning progressions we have been learning about through district professional learning this year i've had the privilege of taking the additive multiplicative and fractions 4-day courses this year and great mind Eureka math squared is closely aligned to the progressions I learned about in all three courses an added benefit is that the curriculum also incorporates counting collections which our district received a grant to help us implement in 5K through third grade classrooms in addition the equip premodule assessments and math catalyst small groups and intervention platform will help our teachers interventionists and resource teachers work together to build all of our students math knowledge in a cohesive manner in my time as an educator in South Carolina I've had the opportunity to to be part of the last three math curriculum reviews the process that was used for this math instructional materials review allowed us to dig deeper into the content than either of the two previous reviews in which I participated allowing me to feel we that we got to know the different publisher what the different publishers were offering on a deeper level the evidence from this deep dive showed us that Great Mind Eureka Math Squared will provide our teachers with the tools they need to help all our students acquire the math skills that they need thank you good evening my name is Melissa Hooker i am the lead interventionist in the math chair at Gilbert Middle School um so I was the teacher representative uh for Gilbert Middle School for the sixth through eight middle schools also had a representative for the geometry course since geometry will be the honors 8th grade course next year so I was the sixth through 8th uh representative for the instructional materials committee this year um we started in January we met with um in fact I think we had all the geometry and the sixth through eight teachers together the middle school people and we looked through the the the very um uh I'm going to say massive it was a massive rubric it was big it had a lot but it covered our instructional framework very well um you can see the intentionality there um it matched what we are about as a district and a math department here in Lexington one um we talked about what the require the requirements were taking this back to our teachers and the big takeaway was please make sure that all teachers have a voice please make sure all teachers have access to all these materials and are able to have a voice in the selection process um so after we met in person we had shortly after that we had our CP day in our collaborative planning day in February and we used that afternoon at Gilbert Middle School as a math department and we divided up that rubric as um in one room with all of the curriculum materials we had four four companies um for middle school math and um we went through it uh very deliberately we had teachers looking for very specific standards and how those standards progressed through the units um sorry I'm a little nervous i'd rather talk to students than adults you are doing a wonderful job and I don't like reading so I'm trying to make sure I hit all the right things um okay so then what do we do so what did we like about Envision um so Envision Savas Envision is a curriculum that I've taught with as an algebra one teacher um with the eighth grade honors kids and so we see some of those common things that are that are still a part of that and the company has also made some great updates um the teachers at Gilbert really enjoyed seeing that it was a a textbook that went back to having some worked examples and so having worked examples for parents to be able to see how do we actually use the strategies we're learning in class is a benefit um having those worked examples for students who are absent so there's a resource so they can look at that you know remind them what did we learn in class i lost my notes where should I look i can look back in my in my book um there's also an a depth of knowledge level up throughout each lesson so each lesson starts with a try it it gives a a you know kids chance to grapple and then it moves up there's a low floor you know kids in of all levels have access to the curriculum right from the beginning and throughout each lesson there's a level up and so um the materials are very very clear for teachers it gives really great guiding questions things that are developmental for the conceptual understanding as well as being able to select strategies and problem solve um and then my favorite part is the digital practice so the digital platform of uh the SAS curriculum uh teachers the the curriculum company um has a little chart for each lesson and it tells you the do level the the depth of knowledge level and so you can very um intentionally choose the level of questions for specific students or for a whole class um so there's some differentiation that's available to to automatically you know very easily select um the questions on the digital platform match the book that the kids have in hand um but the digital platform offers different numbers so the structure and um I'm going give an example in my classroom in my classroom the kids they would have an assignment if they were using the digital platform that day um their questions may look similar but the answers were different and so the convers conversation was not about hey what did you get for number two i'm going to type that in my computer the question turned into more of what strategy did did you use or you know what it says I got this wrong but you got yours right can you help me and look at my work and help me see where my errors are um so it really elevates the conversation in the classroom from um what is the answer to what is your thinking and what are your strategies which is what us math teachers really really want we want them thinking mathematically we don't want them just seeking answers um okay so that's that that's the highlights of what what we liked at Gilbert Middle School um by the end of February um all math teachers at Gilbert had had a chance to take this curriculum and put it to use in their classrooms some of them that literally all four bags we we got back tote bags where they were pilfering through all the pieces and looking for their favorite parts and trying it out in their classrooms um so every every teacher was able to respond to their preference and every teacher at Gilbert Middle School either selected uh the SAS envision for either their first option or their second option so it definitely was the most favor favorable option at our school um then beginning of March we had a virtual meeting as a district as the committee met again um and there was very little discussion it was very clear from the results that um Hillary collected and she presented to us that um SAS envision was the most favorable curriculum out of the four options that we chose or that we had to choose from um another exciting little part is the from what I understand the high school recommendation also includes some of the courses um using the same uh curriculum so I think that offering coherence from sixth grade into high school is a big benefit for our students as well and so at the high school level we did have 11 courses to um make selections for um and so my colleagues here did a fantastic job explaining our process uh the high school teachers had an additional um day where they were able to gather during the February collaborative planning uh day at Whitenill High School in course alike groups to um do that review because for some courses there might be singletons at the high school so they might be doing a review of the course um by themselves but that provided an opportunity to work with their colleagues across the district so um we'd like to take any uh questions you might have at this time thank you so much so Miss Hooker made a comment about the textbook having worked examples and so from a practical standpoint when we're talking about textbooks here um digital versions of these is that what you're talking about or actual physical textbooks so we will select the bundle that comes with the hardback print edition as well as the digital access for our educators or for our students both and this is for K through 12 so K5 um has consumable workbooks um about six per grade level there is a digital platform that can be pushed out um through Google Classroom or um our learning management system but they do have consumable books um as well as the high school courses when you get it's like six per student or okay perh six modules per grade level at the elementary level so that would be six per student and actually with this uh program Eureka math squared there is a um learn book that would stay at the classroom and there's an apply book that would um be appropriate to be at home and perhaps travel back and forth with the student and how does that apply to secondary and so a lot of the um I would say sixth grade through algebra 2 have consumable uh workbooks that accompany a hardback book but once you get past algebra 2 or AP stats AP calculus there are just hardback books with digital access so this would be a new practice for our district not something we currently do we currently have consumables K through algebra 2 really personally that's not been the experience for my children i've never seen anything consumable at all or a textbook or anything so that would be really great um yeah okay the parents who completed the survey did let us know how important it is that they have those resources at home so is that something a parent could request we're aware of that and as we roll out the new textbook materials are going to make it a priority okay so I'm confused so we do have textbooks current student it comes with the state adoption right but we currently have in our possession physical textbooks and workbooks for say algebra 2 where where are where are they where are they in classrooms is that where they just stay in the classroom and do this the students just share them or um that is kind of school specific um some teachers tear out the consumables and put them in maybe binders um Miss Gaskins though don't don't we have to request the hardback books for our children at the high schools i mean it's not automatic for every student well and every school attempts it a little different way in terms of their ordering of the materials that are available and and how they're distributed so some teachers may say "At your request we'll make sure a hardback comes home." Okay i was just going to say because my experience with my son was I requested the book and he got it and I was not on the board at that time right yes but duly noted tonight that we need to give some attention to those processes so I guess the only other question I have is as far as the committees that we have it seems like we've got administrators teachers i've heard about a lot of feedback roughly what is the sample size of our adoption committee like how how many people are actually involved with this process and arriving at these recommendations every elementary school had a K2 rep and a 35 rep and our immersion schools also had a K5 immersion rep every middle school had one rep for grades six through eight and then one for the geometry course so also two reps for middle schools high schools it depended on the number of courses available but two or three maybe more we had one per high school and then we also included the college center in the courses that they teach they were uh members of those committees okay math is near and dear to my heart so it's I'm just bubbling on the inside right now thank you so much all right thank you board any other questions or comments all right so we have a motion on the table to approve the recommendations of the district instructional materials adoption committee for K through2 mathematics all those in favor please say I i any opposed and the motion carries moving on do I hear a motion to approve policy IKA IKA grading assessment systems madam Chair I move to approve policy IKA IKA R grading assessment systems do I have a second second thank you Mr rice all right Miss Gaskins I'll turn this over to you thank you so I do want to take just a second to recap how we got to the point we're at tonight um back in January we brought forward some recommendations for both elementary and secondary grading practices and I think since then we've had the most discussion around um the recommended revisions to the elementary practices and so uh at the beginning of this year we did assemble a workg group who spent some time and that workg group was comprised of at least one person from each school um including parents teachers counselors and administrators and we did have a couple of um middle school counselors in the group as well because we'd heard that transition to middle school was especially tricky um given the way we were doing standardsbased grading in elementary school um and so that group spent some time really thinking about the research and giving lots of feedback about our current practices we do have two members of that original working group here tonight um Allison Garnish Lee thank you Allison and Melissa Mixon who were teachers who served on that group but also are parents of students in Lexington one so kind of serve dual roles they're here tonight um after that we received feedback from our advisory council so our parent advisory council which included 36 elementary parents 34 secondary parents not all attended the meeting of course where they gave the feedback but it was very well attended um as well as our teacher advisory council we got feedback from on two different occasions 33 elementary teachers and 33 secondary teachers as well as our principal group and I think all of our elementary principles are here tonight thank you so much um and have shared kind of their position on how we move forward with grading as well and so we wanted both members of the working group and our principal group to be here tonight to answer any questions you may have i don't have a question but I do have a comment so the feedbackdriven progress reports that you all supplied to the board were golden because I don't have elementary age children anymore but by looking at that all I was thinking the last several months was met partially met you know needs improve that may not be exactly it but when I looked at the teacher comments at the end that was the thing to me i said "Okay you're not just telling me my child met you're not just telling me they partially met you're giving me specific comments of my child's strengths and weaknesses and what we can work on at home to undergard what is happening." So that was very clear i appreciate you all sharing that and the only question I have about that is does every student in elementary school underneath the standardsbased grading get that same level of detail on their comments on those report cards that's the expectation but I can say no so the the feedback we got from parents was a couple of things so that we needed to do that more consistently across the district and I think our principles know that and and continue to work on that that and the P itself is confusing and so that's why we separated that P from just um partially met to also approaching to to give some distinction in terms of exactly how close students were to mastering the standard miss Gaskins can I ask a follow-up question i did pass out a report card as an elementary parent i think I was the only one who's probably had like hands-on experience with this recently um can you help us understand on page two of what I handed out in related arts so things like physical education art music world language i feel like it's really helpful for parents on the English language arts the mathematics the science the social studies um but those have a lot less standards obviously than some of the others so can you help us understand what that process looks like for those teachers to grade compared to like a home room teacher for lack of a better definition who has about a page and a half right so one thing to consider with that too is the amount of time the related arts teacher spends with a student versus the home room teacher so I may see a student every five days and I also see many many more students um in a given week than that home room teacher would see so we do assess fewer standards but they still are based on the state standards but we have fewer that they assess because they have less time with kids and so are those assessment or subassessment categories like under English language arts there's at least a dozen do we have a decision at the district level of how those are determined by grade level or is that a requirement of the standardbased grading because one piece of feedback that the board has heard from teachers is that this is time consuming for grading for them compared to a regular grade right so the actual feedbackdriven progress report and the standards that are reported on are determined at the district level um we have gotten the feedback that teachers want to be more involved in which of those standards are on the feedbackdriven progress report and then assessments that are developed at the district level are aligned to those standards so you know when I'm assessing number three on this particular assessment it's aligned with how I'm going to report it on the feedbackdriven progress report i just have a comment not a question um first of all I want to say thank you to all the principles and teachers and parents who are here tonight and the feedback that you provided throughout this process it is very much appreciated you are the experts um I think one thing that has come out of our conversations is that parents want information they want to understand they want to understand how to support and um so I think the perfect marrying of all of that is um this proposal to implement grading to a lower grade level but I think also the takeaway that I believe most of us are are having which is we want to figure out how to make that communication with our parents maybe a little more clear um and it doesn't mean we have to make grades look a certain way but maybe the conversation needs to be a certain way so um just appreciate all your work and appreciate all the conversation we've had up here i think it's been very it's been a good process to kind of talk it through so um appreciate the recommendation again thanks anybody else or I'm gonna go if anybody else real quick all right so I promise I'm not getting ready to filibuster here but I do have a few things to say um this topic has probably been weighing on me more than anything we've looked at um since I've been on the board which isn't that long but it's still I've had some sleepless nights um and first thing how did we get to this point um you know first the the the district office brought us recommendation and I want to say thank you not taking anything away from the work y'all did because y'all did what y'all were asked to do um so I think that's begins with us the board that we need to do a better job of communicating how we feel um the the way we want things to kind of look and get feedback um for that second thing is is I've heard from a lot and lot of people on this topic um it's not something I've taken lightly i have done a lot of research i have talked to many many many many people um some I've reached out to personally some have reached out to me um I see all the principles sitting here tonight and I appreciate y'all for being here um I know y'all care to the ones that I've talked to that I've put my trust in um to kind of give feedback and bounce up off thank you i'm very very appreciative of that um and don't forget that that highly I think of y'all for that to the teachers that have reached out to me um I appreciate the feedback um I can one thing from everyone I have talked to is there a consensus on this subject absolutely not um and I think that's the the hard part where we're at is where do we need to you know draw the line what what is the correct way that we need to do this um I look at it from two perspectives one is yes we listen to the parents we listen to the teachers and we listen to the administrators they all have valid points they all have valid issues they want to touch and reasons why they support one thing or the other um I think we all up here are doing this for the benefit of the the children to make sure they perform at their very best um but I will say the thing I've heard the most is from the teachers and I I appreciate Miss Hooker saying this earlier is all teachers have a voice and what they have told me unanimously for the most part from the teachers that they may not have been on these committees but one is they wish they had more input on some of this stuff some of them even didn't even know we were even looking at the grading policy um and so saying stuff like that gets me that we've got to do as a district the board the the admin the district office of communicating these things to teachers and to the parents um I think we're at this point because of that i think the roll out of this thing during COVID was thrown out very quickly without much instruction to anyone they just said "Here let's do it we got to get this going." So hopefully tonight we can kind of do something to correct that get everybody back on the same page there's probably going to be a vote on two different options um to be honest I will be happy with with either one um so I'm not saying that one's better than the other but there is one that I actually think more highly of because of the impact I've gotten from certain people um and those certain people are the teachers that work handinhand with with those students and what they have asked and what they would prefer so with that being said I am done with my comments and look forward to anybody else's comments mr anderson I just want to say to our educators in the room I I think that you can see and and as we have kicked this can down the road how seriously this board takes this matter um like everyone else here I mean we've heard from a lot of teachers we've heard from administrators as recently as yesterday or day before yesterday an administrator sent us a lengthy letter with with their thoughts about it and this is not easy not something that we take lightly and I just hope that we as a board can land on something that everybody's happy with so we have a motion on the table to approve policy IKA and in our board packets we have a second reading listed for policy IKA um and just clarifying here is that the policy we're voting on um the one that's listed under public content is the one where it has numerical grades beginning in grade three however there is in administrative content a second option of it grade beginning in second grade um yes ma'am the recommendation that we are making is the one that's under public comment so that everyone excuse me who's a member of the public could see what we're recommending at a board member's request last week uh we added the second grade option under the administrative content but we put it under administrative content to make it clear that that is not our recommendation okay so Miss Sheileley's motion that Mr i seconded a vote in favor of it would be voting in favor of beginning numerical grades in grade three um and keeping the standards based grading in grades K through two correct and um clarifying let me just look back at the policy that's a clearcut all numerical grades beginning in grade three not math and ELA and then standards based in the other Okay board do you understand what we're voting on right now okay so all those in favor of the motion to approve policy IKA I k grading and assessment systems please say I i i so Mr rice Miss Sheileley and Miss Henson madam Chair let's do a show of hands on that one please raise your hand if you're in favor of policy IKA with the grading beginning in grade three all opposed okay so the motion fails so we don't have an adoption of a policy right now um so anyone want to break so then there's a second policy in our packet madam Chair I'd like to make a motion that we take the recommendation of the second grade option in our packet okay i K A R correct do we Well it's IKA um okay mr pazuti do I have a second second any discussion well I'll go um the board the previous board heard from our community and people in our community specifically middle school parents brought forth the concern that their children leaving elementary school um were not prepared to receive grades in middle school so we tasked the district with hey let's look at the grading policy and they did and they came back to us with the recommendation of fourth and fifth grade and as a district as a board the majority of the board wanted to send that back and so they came to us with another recommendation of grades three through five and we've received feedback from every single elementary school principal in our district the leaders of the schools for our youngest learners who have specifically said to us grades three through five would be the recommendation actually just math and ELA in grade three and um and while I know Mr pazuti said he's heard from people I've also heard from people as well and um I um I I would not support us going against our educational leaders and the experts in this area i guess I would just say that I haven't heard from anyone any teachers in support of you know the the first motion you haven't heard from a single teacher that's supportive of third grade everyone I've heard of heard from has only said we would really like to for it to go back the way that it was and it worked really well to have a um a gradual release if you will in second grade into third grade because third grade is such a a lot of change going on in third grade um it's a pivotal year um Madame Chair I think the hard balance up here is that we talked about this before there's not a consensus and I very much appreciate all of the elementary school principles but at the end of the day our emails have been flooded by teachers so who are the ones that ultimately are physically doing the job every day so it's not that I don't agree with the administrators but we've heard ad nauseium from hundreds of teachers who's heard from hundreds of teachers that we do second grade I have received sever sever several emails and the board as a whole has received several emails the board as a whole have you received several Mr rice i've not received hundred we've received a couple but they may not be copying all of the board on their correspondence that could be part of the issue i received a lot on my personal email not even the school email because a lot of them didn't even want to be named or to be known that they were having issues so are we calling out that there's a disconnect between our elementary principles and teachers is that what we're saying there is a disconnect there's clearly a disconnect with how teachers feel versus how the principles feel I would say because the principles have written us a a letter stating that this is how they feel and then the teachers were hearing something different so I don't know if it's a disconnect between the teachers or principles or if it's a disconnect with the committees that we've put in place i don't know but Madam Chair we we have these are the people that know these are the people with the knowledge if you're a teacher an elementary teacher in the audience can you just raise your hand okay all right lord would you be willing to entertain hearing from these three educators i don't need to drag i mean sure i don't I'd also like to hear from the administrators the only thing that we're asking of right now of this board is to make a decision on whether you think ELA and math should be graded in second grade i don't think that's such a massive ask it is a way for teachers and parents and students to know where their their student is when they reach third grade it's a very important year and if you get to the end of second grade or and you don't know if your kid is where they are and they go into third grade and then they get held back because of reading or they're not ready it's you don't know i'm telling you you don't understand as a parent where your child is with this partially met met the standardsbased grading it was rolled out as a temporary thing and it's still sticking around and I think it needs to go back to the way it was it was was working well so So this is this is what I keep hearing from well in a point of procedure I I want to be careful about just allowing anybody in the public to speak that's that's not our our policy um so if the superintendants are or senior leadership are calling up people to speak I think that's one thing but I think it opens up a door that we could get in trouble with miss Miss I did invite um two teachers here tonight specifically because I know that you'd had questions about the recommendations from the working group and the process they had used to reach those recommendations so they are here for the purpose tonight if you'd like to hear what the conversation was in that working group that made the recommendations so I just wanted to walk back for just a second a point of order so the motion that was on the table motion about the IK so the motion but the administrative rule was not included in that motion so if we do take this vote are we voting just on IK and leaving the administrative rule out or do we need to amend that motion to include the revised IK and the administrative rule the original motion said to approve policy IKA IKA R both of them was both were included in the original motion um the original motion failed there's a new motion out there to take the um recommend well not the recommendation of the district but the second version that's in our um board docs to move it to grades in second grade in math and ELA only for IK not policy IKA which was in that original you had two in the original motion madam chair I'd like could amend yes madam chair I'd like to amend my motion to uh accept policy IKA and administrator IKR second grade version he made the motion mr anderson you seconded okay um Madam Chair may I make one comment real quick um I'm reminded a little bit of our book study and a section that uh Mr price shared with us the stop sign story if y'all remember the stop sign story there was a character who was very insistent she had concerns about traffic in her neighborhood and she was insistent that stop sign is the only answer to this problem and what I'd like to try to get us to entertain is I think we all agree on the problem the problem being we want to make sure our kids get the best education possible and the and the communication with our parents is the best it can be and there are multiple ways to skin that cat which I love cats so I hate to say that out loud um and I I think either of these options would skin that cat different ways to get potentially the same outcome okay i think for me the most important question to be answered tonight is do I value the voice and the time that our principles our teachers our parents have put into making a recommendation and we haven't even accepted the original recommendation we've already made changes to it but are we gonna stand up here and show that we support and value your feedback your professional feedback at the same time set that expectation that communication with parents has got to be better under the standardsbased grading so I just want to just toss that out there it's very easy to get entrenched on this is the only way but y'all it's not there are two different ways and probably either one of them could work that's true but there's a message that is relayed depending on which direction we take to the people who work in our district madam Chair in in response to that I wholeheartedly agree with what Mishidi says um that we do value and look forward to the communication with our principles our teachers and our parents i think where the disconnect is or to me at least is I can only go by information that I receive so I've received their recommendation i've talked to people i've gotten the letters but I've also talked to people that were not part of that letter not part of the the working groups so where do we draw the line is the problem do we listen to just those people on those working groups or do we listen to the other people that were hearing the same thing or something totally different from the same amount of teachers or parents or even assistant principles that I've talked to on the other side so I mean there's I I get the problem is is you can't pick one or the other you got to look at both sides and make your decision based on only the information that you receive and that's how I base my opinions on it you can tell everyone here can tell we are all passionate about this we we are all passionate about making sure that our students are getting what they want what the parents want and what the teachers want and so don't take that away from anything that we're doing up here is we're not passionate about what that we want our students to to go out and and excel in their life because that's what we're debating up here um but it's I've pre I've hate to say I preach but I've kind of been on a theme all night about communication and I think that's the main thing that brings us to issues like this is we all need to do a better job with communication madam um Dr post I just wanted to we we had a motion we voted we have another motion i want to be cognizant of our time mrs gaskins offered to have somebody speak if we want to do that i think we've all talked a lot so I think we should move things forward if we need to miss Gastens so may I invite forward the teachers who served on the working group just to tell a little bit about their experience and why the group made the recommendations that they made hello um I'm Allison Grannishley i am the lead interventionist at Gilbert Elementary and I have a first grader at Gilbert Elementary i spent I came to the district two years ago and I absolutely love it but I spent the bulk of my time working in a district in first grade that did traditional grading so I went into this with the assumption that I'm going to try to steer the conversation that way because it's what I was used to but I left with a different mindset because I was able to have conversations with parents other administrators colleagues who got me to understand that it's not necessarily about what I am comfortable with but thinking about our young learners on a progression of where they are at the beginning of the year to where we want them to be at the end of the year and I think especially with our young learners and I would throw third grade in there and I'll explain why in a minute but I know that's not the motion but with our K2 students we are not only teaching them the foundation they need to be successful for their whole career we are also teaching them how to be a learner how to recognize what kind of learner they are and how to improve in that learning and I worry that if you give like if my first grader came home and he had a 60 on his paper and he says I'm just not good at that what am I teaching him on the continuum of being a continuous learner and figuring out well why are you there and where you can go which is why when we kind of expanded that not yet met or that partially met because that that was very broad and as a mom I didn't really understand it and I work in the district so I got that but kind of stretching that out and really splitting it up between are you partially met but kind of lower towards not yet met or partially met going towards you're almost there kind of helped me have those conversations with him that I think gets lost when you give a grade for an assignment that assesses multiple skills you don't get to talk to them about those specific skills on that specific assignment and the reason why I kind of want to touch on the third grade is for the same reasons that you had talked about it is a very big transition year there is a lot put on third grade students and a lot put on third grade parents and third grade teachers because of Read to Succeed and we recognize that but it's also the year that our students kind of move that scaffold from the teachers doing a lot of heavy lifting to get you to be an analytical and critical thinker where now you have those skills and you have to do the bulk of it on your own and that's a lot for a child and I primarily work with third grade and so they struggle especially at the beginning of the year which is why when we kind of came up with originally we said fifth grade because we do recognize there needs to be a easier transition to middle school that's kind of like the big thing why when we originally brought it down to fourth grade I thought this is this is great they should know who they are by a as a learner by that point they've had the opportunities to spend a year taking that foundation and actually applying it um and so that's kind of where my head was at so I left with a very different view than what I went in with which I appreciated good evening i'm Melissa Mixon i'm the lead interventionist at Midway Elementary i have been in this district 17 years when I started here we were grading in second grade um I taught second grade i've taught third grade i've taught fourth grade i've done literacy coaching i'm now an interventionist i've worn a lot of hats and now I'm the mom of a sixth grader that hat's not pretty i left she and her dad doing math at home um we did give the recommendation that the transition be in fifth grade i felt like it being in sixth grade was fine because elementary school is supposed to be a place where they feel success where they learn to fail and they learn to learn from their mistakes and when we put grades on a paper and put those in front of a child the anxiety that it creates for a lot of our children is big we're seeing I'm seeing that with my sixth grader she's not a straight A student so we're having to navigate that and my fear of bringing that down to our little ones where we are we're teaching them it's okay to make mistakes it's okay for you to try this if you do it wrong it's all right but when I say that and then I give them a paper that says 56 you got half of them right but you failed that to me is heartbreaking with my kid now and so imagining doing that to a third grader even a fourth grader like it's hard and I know that where we are with our kids we started this process of feedback driven progress reports before COVID we started rolling it out in schools and grade level by grade level and it was it was a conversation before COVID and so when COVID hit and we rolled it out really quickly we didn't view it as a quick fix we viewed it as okay we have to do this really fast but we didn't think it was going away and so it's not perfect we know that we know that our teachers need training we know that our parents need training on how to receive the feedback we know that our students need training and that's what we're doing and at the elementary level that's a safe place for them to do that and it's a safe place for parents and for kids and I just want elementary school we kind of it feels like we're sucking the fun out and it's still supposed to be a place where they come and want to come every day and love to learn and want to learn and putting grades on papers for them is that's not it may I ask you a question yes so I'm going to go back to that example of the student getting the 56 on the assignment so as people who have received grades we know what a 56 is we're like "Okay we got that." um what would it look like from a parent's perspective for a student who has a 56% understanding of the content as far as standards base goes so would a parent expect to see a bunch of PMS or would are teachers give feedback to parents with concerns that or would it be not yet met what would it look like practically from that if a student has 50% of the con content ideally it's partially met with feedback as to here's how you can grow to become a MET because 50% you're halfway there you've got half of you're you're getting there you're partially there here's how you're going to work to get there and how we're going to do that so it would be a partially met and this is as my putting my teacher hat on but with feedback to the student and with the parents may I ask a clarifying question for you and um I'm sorry I didn't catch all of your names off the top of my head melissa Mixon okay um I am reading the policy and our policy says that we are talking about regular regularly issued report cards so what the policy we have in front of us is talking about is what the grading would look like on the report card what I heard both of you say was that there's concern about putting grades of numerical number in front of young learners does how does that change within the classroom because our policy doesn't speak to grading in the classroom it speaks to report card so I'm just I'm trying to follow your dayto-day that we don't live yeah can I um add to that so in the district that I came from we did something similar to like the four rating scale we didn't have not yet like they called it something different so while I gave grades to my first graders and they went in the system the the computer changed the final grade to that partially met what the equivalent of that would be so my first grade students I never gave like they didn't see that their parents and I had those conversations but the formal report card it kind of changed that and if we're thinking about that and how we can help our parents understand what that not yet met or partially met it and if it makes it easier for our teachers to understand then you can kind of have like an equival equivalence but I think the important part of that identifying the standard that they're really struggling with and what part of that standard is where with more clarity and explaining that to our parents that feedback based on those specific standards comes in but you wouldn't like be able to give uh 100% for this standard if that makes sense because those would be converted as like a whole grade um and I just think if you try to muddy those two things you then kind of still lose out on why that standards driven part is important by trying to assign a standard a grade but I think in answer to your question if we're giving grades on the report card what that translates to a teacher's dayto-day is they're grading assignments and they're putting grades at the top of the assignments as opposed to I'm on the report card I'm giving them a number grade but in my dayto-day I'm still I'm doing met partially met not yet met so our currently our elementary students in class are coming home with grades on work with PM they come PM yes they would come home with a met not yet met on the actual cor like on let's say it's a writing example yes not sure that that's happening in practice or what that's I've never seen okay i h I have for my own child but I can't definitely can't speak to everybody's children i I mean I I've seen it on my my kids i had one that kind of got through it without the standards base and then one that went through it um one question I have is did you and just correct me if I'm wrong i could have misunderstood you they asked about a 56 that would be a partially met yes i Okay so well you're asking me to equate here on the spot but if in my mind if a student gets 50 56% they've gotten half of it right 56% so if I'm looking at the content of something that I've graded I'm looking did they get half of the answer correct so I'm thinking with an ELA hat on like they're almost there they didn't quite get the answer right but they got half of it right that would be partially met so how wide is the partially met it's wide and that's and that's where I do feel like we need that's I don't like I said it's not perfect we need still teachers need work at it because the partially met is big right now and we do need more work in that area and that was one of the recommendations of the team was to split the partially met into two categories so we haven't done any training on that none of that work has been done yet but that would be one of the changes made for next year was that we would have approaching met and partially met so I'm assuming a student in that situation may be on some of those standards closer to met yes but farther away on others madam Chair could we ask a couple of other people to get up and speak are we able to do that miss Pinkney Reese could you weigh in on that hello um the board could there is the risk that Miss Lashnik mentioned but the board could agree to do that okay if you're if you're asking the superintendent to call on a couple of elementary principles is that what you're thinking um yeah yeah I think that would be good um um I I think one but they're they're in agreement so perhaps one of them would be willing to speak y'all want to draw straws or briefly Miss Mitchell absolutely perfect as she heads to the mic um I'm Margaret Mitchum principal at Pleasant Hill Elementary School and a few years ago I started my career in Lexington County School District One as a second grade teacher at Oakrove Elementary School um and this is my opinion um your kindergarten first and second grade years are those early childhood years those are five six and sevenyear-old children they are learning these are their foundational years they're going to build all the rest of their learning on what they have started in K1 and two i feel like it is developmentally inappropriate to grade five six and seveny old children um I don't think the grades tell the children anything i don't think they tell the parents anything let me pretend that all of you um have a second grade child in say the second nine weeks in second grade in math they are adding to a 100 they are telling time in five minute intervals they are counting mixed coins your child comes home with a report card you pick the grade ABCDF in math tell me what your child knows on telling time to five minute intervals tell me what your child knows about adding to a 100 you don't know the child doesn't know um let me give you another example you kind of said it if I'm teaching telling time I'm a second grade teacher loved it um if I'm teaching telling time to five minute intervals and I teach it and I give students 10 problems 10 o'clock say "Tell me the time." and a child misses four what has the child made a 60 i teach the child again say "You don't have it all we're going to we're going to you're going to learn this." I give them 10 more problems they make a 70 okay i'm working with them in a small group i'm going to determine that they're going to get this skill and I give them 10 problems and they miss one they make a 90 we're celebrating they made a 90 add that up real quickly and what grade am I putting on the report card it's a 73 that's not right but I will also tell you that my teachers know that if I was asked tonight to speak on their behalf about grading in K1 and two they support me 100% to say no that's just what I have to say thank you board we have a motion ahead in front of us yeah that's really what we need to do at this point we need to call for the question are you The motion's on the table we've gotten lots of feedback but I I think at this point we can beat this to death all night but we need to call for the vote and see where we are oh okay sorry sorry Madam Chair okay board we have a motion in front of us um for policy IKR um grading beginning in second grade um please raise your hand if you're in favor of that i I'm sorry i'm a little bit confused here back up just a moment what are we actually voting on now so the motion to begin grades in third grade failed and we have a new motion to begin grades in second grade starting with math and ELA and so now we're voting on um beginning in second grade for math and ELA a motion that's not supported by all of our elementary principles at this point madam Chair point of order we have called the question no more time for um any comments all those in favor please raise your hand we have three in favor any opposed four opposed this motion fails would anyone like to bring another motion to the table madame Chair can we go back and let's start at the very beginning again with the second reading of policy IKA and IKA R grading assessment systems so are you making a motion i will make a motion that we vote a second time on the second reading of policy IKA I grading assessment systems beginning with grading in third grade is that the one you're the original one beginning with grading in third grade do I have a second second thank you um all those in favor please raise your hand or all those opposed and the motion carries Miss Ree sorry just one thing can we vote twice on the same motion i just want to make sure we're not out of order that's all yes ma'am okay thank you all right moving on to item 11.3 which Okay so um this is do I hear a motion to approve policy IKAB report cards and progress reports madam Chair I move to approve policy IKAB report cards progress reports do I hear a second second thank you Mr rice any discussion um Miss Gaskins I'll turn this over to you this simply brings into alignment the reporting policy with the Grady policy so that there was some contradiction um prior to these revisions miss Gaskins um in light of the previous motion is there a way to ensure and perhaps we don't do it during the policy process perhaps it's just in daytoday that we take a hard look at these report cards for progressbased reporting and ensure that our teachers who did reach out and felt that they are cumbersome and parents who felt that they are hard to understand that we're making a concerted effort as a board and a district to ensure those folks that their feedback did not go unheard absolutely we'll need to do a lot of work anyway because we're adding the rating category and so we will commit to to doing that work thank you any other discussion i guess the only other thing that that I would like to touch on from the previous discussions we had on the previous motion I really want to encourage I mean we've got all of our elementary school principles here and they are the educational leaders in their building but they may differ with opinions at times with with with each other and with teachers and so forth but I want to encourage our teachers if you have some kind of a concern with how your school is being run please talk to the educational leader in your building hash it out with them because every school is not 100% identical i I hear too many times I've been on the board a couple years but I hear so many times I want to stay anonymous i don't want to say anything i don't want to talk to my principal i want to talk to the board but I don't want to talk to the principal well if I go to Chipotle and I get a bad meal I do not call the Chipotle board of directors to complain about that i talk to the person closest to that restaurant that can affect that change and so I'm just encouraging the folks that are out there we love to hear from you as board members but I'm telling you if I've heard it once I've heard it a thousand times when I ask did you talk to your principal about this issue the answer nine times out of 10 is no and I have to and I've had to try and discipline myself to send them back to the principal and at least work through those channels i mean I know it's a slippery slope but I mean I do this with the folks that work for I said "You're not going to agree with all my decisions but I want to hear your disagreement and let's talk through it and we may decide to go with your way we may decide to go with mine but at least we agree to disagree." And I know where you're coming from i just I hope we don't have a lot of teachers out there that are not talking to their principles and stewing over all of the decisions we make without talking to them and I hope that we have principles that are actually listening and soliciting that feedback and and making the right decision and not making just an authoritarian this is this is what we're going to do that's it period so I'm encouraging that tell each other something good tell me something good tell each other something good tell them what you tell them where you are and um we as a board want to hear from you but please don't use the board as a pawn to try and just get your agenda through without talking at least to your principal so I don't know that's just my my 50 cents worth but I want us to communicate and talk to each other and not just fight about stuff amongst each other and talk about talk behind each other's back and undermine each other and Mr rice with that said I I want to commend our superintendent superintendent- elect our senior leadership our building administrators for the culture that we now enjoy because I tell you you're talking about people employees contacting the board some of you sitting in this room know that it hasn't been long ago that you could not do that or you better not do that i've been sitting in the hot seat before because I contacted the board the night before they voted on the budget one year and didn't include support staff in any of the payraises and I said you know do something if it's not but 1% you know show show everyone that you know you that you care about us u just like everybody else we had bills to pay too and I was told that I would never do that again that by what right did I think I had to contact a board member and I am so happy that we don't live in that environment today I'm glad that we all encourage that open communication all right board there any discussion for IKAB um all those in favor please say I any opposed and the motion carries um we are now moving on to 11.4 and 11.4 is the building 2018 building construction audit decision um so we need to determine the scope of the work for this potential audit um so Madam Chair Macau madam Chair I move that the administration post an RFP for an external audit for the 2018 bond referendum specifically including the following line items the new White Elementary School now South Lake Elementary New Lexon Middle New Lexington Middle School now Lakeside Middle School the transportation facility at Gilbert Primary new GES additionally the audit should include any incomplete projects at the time the RFP is awarded a committee to include three board members and an appropriate district personnel should be informed to evaluate RFPs okay so just for clarification I was writing quickly you want this audit to include South Lake Elementary Lakeside Middle School the transportation facility and then I stopped writing then can you keep going gilbert Primary or the new GES okay and then additionally the audit should include any incomplete projects at the time the RFP is awarded a committee to include three board members and appropriate district personnel should be formed to evaluate RFPs okay um we I'm sorry tracy and I are trying to capture that motion mr pazuti do you have it yes you wanted to You want Well I have it i have it on you want to email it to you all right so I think we'll need to get a second and then we can have discussion second all right Miss Flashnik seconds um so discussion first of all um so let's talk about the cost of something like this we we do not have costs but I can you know what one thing that we could do is develop the RFP as recommended um put it out for bid and then the board can see the cost and you have another decision point at that at that point in time the and the only question I have um um regarding that motion is whether um the committee I know the committee could develop the RFP there's a procurement review panel that has that that the board has already appointed that must review the RFPs when they come in and I don't know that this is something we've discussed with new board members yet so I don't think that the board can take a vote on who would serve on the procurement review committee when when after the bids come in but we could have three board members and two administrators serving on a committee to develop the RFP if you're if you're willing to amend your motion in that way Mr pazuti otherwise I don't believe that you can um you've the board's already appointed a procurement review panel for this year and it would be after July 1 when you have an opportunity to reappoint a procurement review panel um Mr pudi could you just kind of share with us your thoughts on why you chose those um projects yeah um and first um let me amend my motion to remove a committee to include three board members in appropriate district personnel should be formed to evaluate RFPs and and change that to I guess we can say write or develop the RF develop the RFP and I'll put that when I get this copied and pasted um the reason that these four were chosen was is of course the South Lake is is fairly new so it's a complete project that's that's new it got completed um same with Lakeside Middle we didn't want to do a full audit but we want to look at some of the bigger schools that got done um the transportation i'm just curious who's we You say we don't want to do this we don't do that i'm just speaking as generally as So I Yeah I Sorry okay yeah sorry um the transportation facility I believe we've we've heard a lot of stuff on that one project itself and then with Gilbert Primary the new GS there's been a lot of talk about what was in the original bond referendum and what was not done and what was done and where it is now so that's how I came up with with those four mr just to clarify um so in the audit the intent is to evaluate what for each of those facilities what question are we answering for each of those is the concern that we had a budget a but it spent a different amount is it the timeline of the project just to try to understand the questions we're trying to answer with each of these I mean I think if you look at what was sent in our board docs it kind of I'm looking at to scope of services 2.1 2.2 I mean kind of you mean you financially I think that the administration defined that as a starting point I believe but I don't want to speak for them yeah i mean that's kind of where what I was was was looking at i mean I think there's tons of things we could look at um if anybody wants to join in but I mean definitely a financial review you know our original bid price or our original internal estimate compared to what the bid price was what we actually spent on it did all the procurement aspects were they completed in compliance with you know all rules and regulations um you know what what what did we do good what did we do bad what did we come under budget did we overbudget i mean stuff like that what risk is the district got i mean there's tons of stuff to look at i mean like what the you know we were sent from the district i'm I'm sorry let me clarify my question i didn't ask that very well so um we're requesting an audit i think I remember last time because you mentioned there was concerns so I'm asking specifically what are the concerns that were identified with these locations that rose them up to the level of we want to look at these because I think that's the point of the audit is you want to see what what what worked what didn't work okay so there's not a specific concern with these particular projects just we want to check it out and see what went well and what didn't go well okay well and I think too that these were in the last bond referendum and so I think that's the ones that we're uh hearing concerns about madam Chair I I I think I think what is being stated is that some more work needs to be done on what what that RFP is doing i mean I think we're talking about certain projects but as far as you defining the the scope of what you want to ask someone to do I think that's something we wouldn't necessarily do right here but I think what they want to do is form that committee to say what does this RFP intend to accomplish and to put that together i think that's what we're trying to do and at that point then you can go back and you know you work through your procurement committee and you can find out roughly what your costs are and then you come back to the board and say here's the scope of work here's the RFP here's the rough cost now do we want to move forward i think that's where we are so Miss Holidayiday I hate to throw you on the spot but can you read to us what you have written in the record as the motion because I know that there were some changes that were made i just sent it because it said I got to install some virtue and I'm like going crazy up here so yeah I think the and I just emailed it to you to see if it came through it may not have i did email it to you to see if it came through but so really we're wanting we really want to form a committee to write the RFP for an audit for those four items right is that correct that's what I understood and then the board will choose to vote on the proposal yeah I would agree that's probably the the the the first step um so we probably need to change the motion together because right now I was saying the motion is to administer to do the audit to do the audit but we really need So yes and I don't mind changing it because I definitely think we need to I mean I'm in favor of getting this audit done so I would change that we move that the administration or I move that a committee is formed to include three board members and appropriate administrators and I think that might have been missing Miss Halliday from Yes it was all right miss Holiday once you have that typed in if you don't mind just repeating it back just so we're clear on what we're voting on tonight miss Freeman could you grab that mic for her and hand it to her thank you i think at the moment I've got that the audit would in Are you including all of those the scope of the the schools locations okay i still think that needs to be that's what Okay motion that the administration post an RFP for an external audit for the 2018 bond referendum specifically including the following line items um the new Whiteol Elementary School which is now South Lake Elementary the new Lexington Middle School now Lakeside Middle School the transportation facility Gilbert Primary the new GES um the and um that a committee would be formed to include three board members and appropriate district personnel to formulate the RFP oh and in the incomplete projects okay yes additionally the audit should include any incomplete projects um yeah and I think you're posting you know committee to include because your original sentence says the motion would be to post an RFP yeah it needs to move that that committee is formed to I think you can committ trying to think on the fly here to develop an RFP yeah I move that yeah I move that the however y'all want to word it here somebody word press it for me or submit it i think the main gist is we want to make sure that the committee is put together to develop an RFP with these four and any products with at least three board members on board and district personnel that's needed yeah I think you're forming a committee with board members and appropriate administrators to develop the scope of work so an RFP can be correct issued okay yes okay all those in favor bring that let's wait just a moment let's let the word smith might you display it on the screen sure display it on the screen and Mr pudut you read it again thank Yes one moment yeah thanks because I will need to read it again see the board can work together this is what you call a board meeting with teeth god I gotta read it all right so I move that a committee is formed to develop an RFP for an external audit for the 2018 bond referendum specifically including the following line items the new White No Elementary School now South Lake Elementary New Lakes Middle School now Lakeside Middle School the transportation facility Gilbert Primary new GES additionally the audit should include any incomplete projects at the time the RFP is awarded a committee to include three board members and appropriate district personnel should be formed to formulate RFP all right and Miss Flashnik you second that all right all those in favor please say I i any opposed and the motion carries oh yes we can do that um who so just so that we can move forward and not wait another month um is there anyone who would like to serve on the committee anderson Miss Lashnick and Mr anybody else oh and Mr rice so we can't have four there is a meeting okay to serve on the committee we have four no to serve on the committee four people miss Henson madam Chair I'd like to make a motion to include myself Chris Rice and Mackenzie Flashnick on the audit committee i'm sorry Miss Henson yes I don't believe we voted yet on this motion before we get to We did we have Thank you um second okay all those in favor of Mr bazuti Mr rice and Miss Flashnik um being the three board representatives on the committee for the RFP for the building construction audit decision please say I i any opposed and the motion carries i was going to be busy that day anyway okay moving on to item 11.5 do I hear a motion to approve the 2025 district and school renewal plan submissions madame Chair sorry madam Chair I move to approve the 2025 district strategic plan and school renewal plans as presented by administration thank you Miss Sheily do I have a second second thank you Mr anderson um Miss Gaskins do you have anything to share with us tonight i'll just briefly say in accordance with state laws and regulations it is a requirement that the district annually um update the district's um strategic plan as well as the school renewal plans and submit them to the Department of Education by April 30th um as you studied the plans you probably noted that both the um progress towards the performance goals as well as the executive summaries which were a narrative analysis of how schools were performing both had been updated and also include some midyear data at the school level thank you all those in favor any opposed and the motion carries do I hear a motion to approve the 2025 20226 academic calendar as amended madam Chair I move to approve the 2025 2026 academic calendar as amended do I hear a second second thank you Mr rice miss Gaskins last one tonight um so the amendments include the addition of six collaborative planning days for teacher collaboration next school year in 2526 and also scenarios around how we will make up for missed school days which prioritize in-person learning and also um balancing being able to make up the days within the semester they're missed whenever possible happy to answer any questions board Madam Chair yes ma'am um in an effort not to belabor this may I ask a commitment from administration on collaborative planning when we bring back the 2627 calendar could we look at the policies i I can email you which ones they are i don't remember off the top of my head and one thing that I have heard a lot from um staff teachers is that sometimes those days are not protected especially for some of our teachers that were requiring them to do other professional development and so I would like us to define what those collaborative planning days are so that there's a little bit more direction and I would also like us to look at I heard you earlier say that Um Mondays and Fridays probably weren't the best days but middle of the week for families especially full-time working families who have both parents working from home is very difficult especially when after school programs follow the district calendar so I'd like us to look at a way to just make it easier on our families because that is something we've heard a lot of feedback for it is very difficult for those days for families um sure i do want to note that there are some required trainings that we don't want to have teachers stay after school on other days to have to do so for example right now we have literacy training that is a requirement in the state of South Carolina and it is very time consuming and so could we not use four collaborative planning days for that next year teachers would have to stay after after hours to complete that instead would we Would we have to pay them for that extra time they get a stipen for completing the modules but it does not compare to the amount of time they are committing to that learning yeah I saw someone share the number of hours they spent recently that was a lot thank you Miss Cass for saying that because I've heard that from many many teachers that have brought that up so I appreciate you acknowledging that okay um all those in favor of approving the 2025 2026 academic calendar as amended please say I i any opposed and the motion carries out where's everybody going now everyone's got to come back for March 5th if they didn't I did not hear the bell ring all right item 11.7 is um a discussion of March 5th so as you guys know um March 5th was a collaborative planning day so it was already a half day for our students however there was um significant wind that day and um we did not have school for our students but our teachers did work that day and so This agenda item is um for discussion or a motion um regarding whether to extend instructional time on a half day to make up the time the students miss March 5th or we could take mad or we have to we would need to excuse that instructional day okay madam Chair I make a motion that we excuse the instructional day as the second boardwaved day of the academic year thank you Miss Blashnik thank you Mr anderson um any discussion i will just say that you know as we stated earlier that the teachers did work that day so if we were to have to make this day up those teachers would actually come back and work an unpaid day or the half day would be like the last day of school and which is also a graduation day which I think would be very difficult for people i yeah I think if nothing else in the uh interest of morale we excuse that all those in favor I any opposed and the motion carries moving on to item 11.8 do I hear a motion to approve policy JLCC communicable infectious diseases madam Chair I might do something to speed this up go for it madam Chair would it be appropriate to make a motion to ex um um vote unanimously for 11.8 11.9 11.10 111 112 and 1113 and 1114 in the spirit of saving time second um so basically let's get someone to make a motion to approve policies JLCC JLCCR JLCD JL I mean J C LDR JLCDA do you see where I'm going with that so moved madam Chair I make a motion to approve policy JLCC JLCC-R deletion jlcd JLCD-R JLCD AA JLCDA-R JLC DB JLCE and JLCG thank you Miss Flashnik Mr anderson Mr pizuti thank you for the second um Mr cooper do you have any I will say thank you to everyone up there for making that motion and second it and we'll uh just also state that these policies are being brought forward for second reading and approval and there have been no changes since first reading okay i wanted to hear Mr cooper read through all these policies um board we heard about these at our last meeting there have been no changes all those in favor of the motion please say I i i any opposed and the motion carries we'll jump down to item 11.15 um do I hear a motion regarding the allocation of funds for warranties on new computers madam Chair I move to reassign $1,47,92526 in the 8% bond funds from IT device purchases to deferred maintenance projects and to reassign 1,47925 $47,92526 of assigned general fund balance from deferred material maintenance projects to be assigned for IT device warranties thank you Missile Lee thank you for the second Miss Flashnik um is there any discussion on this um just to explain to the public um we the district the IT department and our finance team work together to be able to save the district a lot of money by using expiring federal funds to purchase the computers on the tax-free weekend we can't use those federal funds to purchase the warranties um and so we just need to three transfers in order to make ourselves whole um and and that this would not be something we'd have to worry about in the future correct because I think I read something about that i just wanted to put that out there it will not this is a one-time okay situation because of the expiration of the CO funds all those in favor i any opposed and the motion carries back in January when we began the book study we had a well-laid plan to hold discussions at each meeting going forward and concluding the study in May since then we have only been able to fit in two sections of study and while this book lays out some thoughtprovoking concepts and applications that we can take away from it we still want to wrap it up by May so after discussion with board members we've decided to take a more abbreviated approach to finish the study mrs lashnik and Miss Macau will give a brief summary of their section considering the following two questions what concept or quote in the section stood out to you and in your opinion were there any important implications for our district and then next month Mr anderson and Miss Pazuti Mr pazuti will give a summary of their two sections and I will wrap it up in May so I will now turn it over to Miss Flashnik um to answer her two questions should have prepared better get back to here um so step two was on clarifying priorities so that would have been chapters I believe seven through 10 um the community's vision the community's values board work versus superintendent work and understanding the assessments um I will say that for me the one that stood out for me the be the most was a quote um of are we providing owner service or are we providing customer service um and Mr rice actually I didn't pay him to make that introduction with Chipotle um but as a business owner this one was very easy for me to kind of wrap my head around when you think about school districts because as an owner you find yourself in a similar situation um and I think what stood out for me for our district is that um when it comes to a situation where we hear something one time or two times that's probably more of the customer service which needs to be happening at the school levels or the district levels but once we start to hear that the Chipotle meals are bad at a particular location every time a customer goes there and we're overwhelmingly hearing the exact same feedback over and over again that's where I see the owner service coming in um so I thought that was really interesting as a board role our job is to sit at the owner level not necessarily at the customer service level but sometimes you're going to be hearing customer service feedback and you have to know when it has risen to the owner level so I believe I answered your two questions if I didn't I'll be happy to take any thank you so much Miss Macau the um I guess two things that stood out to me on page 170 um talking talking about well we've been talking about this for the last couple years but leading by example um obviously we don't always agree up here but we um we are effective in in the way that we disagree and the way we with respect and and that's how we want to um echo you know to our students so um I'm proud of that and our board and then um I think communicating expectations um is something that we're doing really well um now with this new board i'm proud to say that you know our new board members have come on and really been really clear on you know what they want to see and um what they expect from district staff and and each other and so um those two things I think um I'm excited thank you so much so next month Mr anderson and Mr pazuti you're up sections as our meeting concludes tonight we'd like to encourage everyone to come support your favorite teachers at the teacher of the year celebration this Thursday at 6:30 p.m at Riverluff High School congratulations to this year's slate of school level teachers who have received this honor we look forward to finding out who our district level teacher will be march is athletic training month and we want to recognize our hardworking athletic trainers who take such great care of our student athletes as Miss Miller mentioned at the last meeting this is National Procurement Month then we want to recognize the hardworking team of individuals who make sure the district's purchases follow all of the legal and accounting requirements and lastly you'll see in front of us this delicious looking artwork created by Centerville Elementary School students as we recognize National Arts in Our Schools Month we thank all of our fine arts and visual arts teachers and staff for providing the highest quality of programs and opportunities of art and culture for our students we will hold a budget workshop on April 1st at 5:00 pm and that's the last time we will meet prior to spring break do I hear a motion to adjourn the meeting madam Chair before we adjourn I'd like to take a point of privilege to say that I've uh accepted an invitation for tomorrow morning uh to accompany one of our students from Pleasant Hill Middle School who will be uh recognized on the floor of the House of Representatives by our representative Paul Shayla Bowers which you all may know from from emails uh the family invited me to be with them tomorrow and that's just such a great honor so that's where I will be if you need me with that I move that we adjourn do I have a second second thank you Mr rice all those in favor any opposed and the meeting is adjourned