DATE: September 26, 2005 PRESENT: Michael Dixon, Chair

Corrected Copy DATE: September 26, 2005 PRESENT: Michael Dixon, Chair Mary Grace Bright Jill Camnitz Betsy Leech Ralph Love, Sr. Barbara Owens TIME: 5:30 P.M. Billy Peaden Roy Peaden Marcy Romary Sidney Scott Dick Tolmie Delano Wilson PLACE: St. James United Methodist Church ABSENT:

Mr. Michael Dixon, Chair, convened the Pitt County Board of Education in session and thanked everyone for his or her attendance at this workshop on redistricting.

He opened the meeting by asking Dr. Mary Williamson to come forward and respond to the question that had been asked by the Board at the previous meeting as to what could be done to address the needs of schools serving large percentages of economically disadvantaged students.

Dr. Williamson made the following points: - The majority of teaching positions are allotted by the state. These are assigned equitably on a state allotment formula that is based primarily on the numbers of students in the schools by grade levels. - Other resources are distributed to schools using other distribution formulas. They include Title I, Remediation funds from the state, Exceptional Children’s funds, English as a Second Language funds, and Migrant program funds. In these programs, the funds follow the children. - Grant funding has been obtained to implement specific initiatives. Sam Bundy and Pactolus have received Comprehensive School Reform grants over the past several years and Belvoir and Northwest have received 21st Century Community Learning Center grants for their after school programs. Additionally, the Pitt County Educational Foundation supports after school tutorial programs at six locations and there are privately sponsored tutorial programs in churches, Boys and Girls Clubs, and many others. - An ideal plan, developed for schools with 70% or more poverty, would mirror the Robert Marzano Plan for “characteristics of effective schools,” and would “provide interventions that are designed to overcome student background characteristics that might impede learning.” Some of those characteristics would include a guaranteed and viable curriculum, instructional strategies to meet student needs, positive school climate, and strong instructional leadership. - Three elements that will be a must for Pitt County Schools (PCS) should the Board choose to assign larger numbers of economically disadvantaged students to any one particular school will be: (1) time for students to access the content, (2) communication of high expectations, and (3) increased levels of parental and community involvement. - “Time” within the 180 days may translate into after school programs, or Saturday or summer opportunities. Some of this may be accomplished by redirecting existing remediation resources. Also, schools may apply for and obtain grants for these purposes. - “Motivation or communication of high expectations” - Master teachers establish relationships with students and communicate the need for rigor in the curriculum. Attracting and retaining master teachers to these schools may require incentives, such as stipends for lead teachers or grade level chairs at identified schools. Additionally, other incentives for teachers could be increased supplements and/or reduced class sizes of 1 to 19 might be offered in the upper grades as they are in K-3. A final requirement of this element would be that administrators and the Board support the principals’ personnel decisions for these schools. - “Increasing levels of parent and community involvement” will require the collaboration of a number of partners. A recommendation to facilitate this element would be for the Board to allot student services personnel at a higher level.

In discussion, the Board questioned or commented on the following points: - What are we doing now at Bethel and Falkland and what are we going to do additionally for them, along the same lines as Sadie Saulter and South Greenville. We had to struggle to get funds for these two schools for technology and the Board had to get behind it to make it happen. Now we are going to change our thinking. We have lost millions of dollars the last three years because nobody would commit a little bit of money up front to bring in a lot more. - Should we not go ahead and look at implementing some of these things that Mary has mentioned in our high poverty schools. We had eight this year. Should this not be a separate discussion and one that we are committed to going ahead and looking at doing for the high needs schools as a way of reducing the gap, irrespective of what we are doing for redistricting? - We should obviously support these schools where the socio-economic/racial balance, is not there. It should be locked into policy or etched in stone so that down the road, we should not have to fight to maintain that support. If we are going to vote to create these kinds of schools, they should not be clearinghouses for administrators and teachers. They should have a strong program, an aggressive instructional program and should be locked down with a commitment so that we don’t end up in a situation where funding is contingent on something else. We need to have our philosophy spelled out in something like a policy. - We could envision a document similar to the high school plan that spells out the commitment to resources and the strategies to be applied; not sure how to get that commitment. Perhaps there is a group of us that can work on it or perhaps the EPS Committee. - We should already have been doing these things for the disadvantaged schools. There are some already at a higher percentage than Sadie Saulter and South Greenville. - We need more than a written statement; we need a real commitment that cannot be changed in a few years down the road. - For the strategies outlined for the 8 schools identified, it could mean 20 teachers, which would translate into $848,000 and approximately $376,000 for the additional support personnel. It would require redirection of funds to provide incentive stipends for teachers. - In the last couple of years, it has appeared that the better schools got better allotments. We need to revisit the allotment formula that was set up in 1989 and look to see if we are equitably distributing our resources. - I think it could be worthwhile to go ahead and get this group together to see if we can come up with a plan for redirecting the dollars for any of these other plans that have been talked about. It’s easy to say we will and to sign a document, but we need to know if we can actually come up with those resources. We have wanted smaller class sizes for a long time, but we still find ourselves with class averages higher than the state average. - We need the facilities; the classrooms to put these teachers in to teach, as well.

Chair: But this is a workable plan, a workable option, right?

- We need to get somebody on the job and working to provide us with some concrete information. - Classroom space has been a problem and although we added some classroom space at Creekside this year, we still have roughly 140 mobile units. But, even at Creekside the enrollment turned out to be higher than we thought. If the Board would want to instruct the Facilities Committee and Aaron to do so, we could look to see if there is a possibility of redistributing the mobile units that we have, particularly in terms of providing support for additional teachers if we need to do that. - We need to be sure we have the appropriate technology in those schools, too.

Following this discussion, Ms. Kay Weathington reviewed maps to which revisions had been requested. She began by reviewing Map K81 (Revision 2), reflecting the current D. H. Conley High School Attendance Area with three K-8 situations including Chicod, G. R. Whitfield and Wintergreen/Hope Middle. She discussed the adjustments that had been made and indicated this plan represented a clean feeder pattern for D. H. Conley. She then reviewed Map ES8, representing K-5 students that are currently attending Sadie Saulter and South Greenville that reside in the South Central Attendance Area. She explained that there would be capacity at Wintergreen for these students and that they would continue to A. G. Cox and South Central. She emphasized that this represented a temporary plan for these 374 students in hopes that a new school would be built in the future in the South Central area to accommodate them.

Map MS4, she said, reflected what A. G. Cox would look like up under this plan; that it did completely clean the attendance pattern for grades 6-8 for the South Central Attendance Area, but would put A. G. Cox over its capacity.

Ms, Weathington then reviewed Map ES 6 (Revision 1). This map, she said, would leave some of the K-5 students attending schools that would not be in their high school attendance area feeder pattern as there remained students at Belvoir, Pactolus, and Wintergreen. She noted that this map would have all the K-5 schools in the J. H. Rose Attendance Area within the Board’s policy for racial balance.

Next, Ms. Weathington reviewed the Map ES 6 (Revision 3). She said this map was more of a “proximity to facility” map and indicated that it did leave some students attending schools not in their high school feeder patterns (Pactolus, Belvoir and Wintergreen). She stated that this plan did utilize capacity as much as possible, but optimized proximity to the building.

Ms. Weathington then reviewed MS 3 (Revision 1). She noted that within this map there would remain some students attending Wellcome Middle School and Pactolus School for grades 6-8, but not Wintergreen. She stated it utilized capacity and optimized proximity to school, and loosely followed ES6 (Revision 1). She discussed how the K-5 schools in the J. H. Rose Attendance Area would be assigned under this plan and noted that the area immediately surrounding C. M. Eppes would not attend C. M. Eppes School.

The remaining middle school map, she said, was Map MS 5, and she indicated this map also had students that still would not be in their high school attendance area (Pactolus and Wellcome). She stated that racial balance was met for C. M. Eppes and E. B. Aycock in this plan and that it utilized capacity and optimized proximity and that it followed ES6 (Revision 3) as much as possible. She described how the K-5 schools in the J. H. Rose Attendance Area would be assigned under this plan. She observed that segments 333 and 353 would not be aligned in this plan, and she described those for the Board.

A discussion was held related to the organization of the two middle schools and the best way to organize the five K-5 schools in terms of feeding into those two middle schools.

Ms. Weathington reviewed a “tweak” that had been worked on by Ms. Betsy Leech to better utilize capacities. She described the segments that would be assigned to each K-5 school, the capacity information, the racial percentages, and the percent that capacity was maximized. She explained that with this plan, Sadie Saulter and Wahl Coates would go to C. M. Eppes and South Greenville, Eastern, and Elmhurst students would go to E. B. Aycock. Board members discussed this option noting that Eastern and Wahl-Coates would be significantly overcrowded in this plan.

Ms. Leech explained the adjustments she had made in devising this plan and the objectives she was attempting to achieve. The segment changes, schools affected, racial balance results and capacity numbers were reviewed. The benefits of the plan were offered as specifically assisting A. G. Cox with its over- capacity situation, returning J. H. Rose students to the J. H. Rose attendance area, and better utilization of capacities at Hope Middle and the middle schools in Greenville as well as balancing racially the two middle schools in Greenville. Other Board members reiterated concerns with this plan leaving two K-5 schools significantly over capacity.

Ms. Jill Camnitz proposed a change to ES6 (Revision 3) to swap segments 356 and 328 in order to move fewer children from their current schools and to improve the numbers slightly. As proposed, she said, 356, which is the Planter’s Trail area, would be assigned to Wahl-Coates instead of Eastern and segment 328 which is Brookgreen and Rock Spring would be moved (on the plan) from Wahl-Coats to Eastern; Eastern would then be 43% minority and Wahl-Coates would be 55% minority.

Mr. Tolmie suggested that middle school maps be devised based on ES6 (Revision 1) and ES6 (Revision 3) to follow the K-5 plans. He further suggested that such an option could assign Elmhurst and Wahl-Coates to C. M. Eppes and Eastern, Sadie Saulter, and South Greenville plus the additional Wintergreen students to E. B. Aycock resulting in the feeder pattern being tracked.

Consensus was obtained from the Board to proceed with the suggestion offered by Ms. Camnitz and the one offered by Mr. Tolmie. Ms. Weathington was asked to bring maps forward at the next map session to reflect these agreed upon adjustments. It was further agreed that two plans for the public hearings would be beneficial for the middle schools, as well as for the K-5 schools.

Ms. Mary Grace Bright requested a review of the proposed adjustments to K81 (Revision 2), specifically the adjustments of segments 287 and 288 to Chicod and 275 and 276 to Wintergreen. It was noted by Ms. Weathington that this adjustment, if made, would take Hope Middle School out of its attendance area. Membership numbers, capacity information, and racial balance information were reviewed for these adjustments.

Ms. Camnitz requested that the Board consider looking at Clark’s Neck, which is currently at Pactolus with the only map proposed showing those students going to G. R. Whitfield. This, she said, leaves Pactolus 150-200 students under capacity. She suggested looking at leaving that segment at Pactolus and freeing up that space at G. R. Whitfield, which could otherwise affect who goes to Wintergreen, Chicod, and Whitfield.

Mr. Sidney Scott suggested that the Board also look at proximity of that area to the schools. He suggested Clark’s Neck was closer to G. R. Whitfield and that he believed there were other segments closer to Pactolus that could be moved there.

Ms. Betsy Leech requested to see a new projection for A. G. Cox.

Mr. Tolmie suggested it would be worthwhile to take the plans on the table and determine how many students are staying at the same school and how many are being moved for each remaining scenario.

Ms. Camnitz noted that there had been additional information passed out with her name on it that suggested looking at the crowded conditions of Ayden Elementary and Ayden Middle to see if some adjustments would be appropriate to provide relief for those schools. She said she did not need to see a map, but asked that everybody take a look at that information.

Mr. Sidney Scott asked additionally that the projected growth at Belvoir be reviewed.

In closing, the Chair summarized the agenda for the next map session, which would be held on October 4, 2005. The two dates for the Public Hearings were adjusted to October 11 and October 17.

There being no further items for discussion, the meeting was adjourned.

Respectfully submitted,

______A. Michael Dixon, Chairman

______Michael D. Priddy, Ed.D., Superintendent