Safety in schools - tonight’s meeting agenda

[kari h.]

Dear Commissioners,

I am writing to you about the closely interrelated topics listed on tonight’s agenda for the Spring joint school board meeting among the OCBOCC, Orange County Schools & Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools.   I thank you and ask for you to continue along your current path of more deeply educating yourself on the breadth of issues around school safety and to policy-make accordingly.  

 

Please know that I have made parts of two school safety meetings led by the county:  the constitutional expert’s presentation on the 1st Amendment as well as the presentation by NC Center for Safer Schools.   Both very well done and informative.  

My below observations and experiences are not shared to mar past and present the OCBOCC’s longstanding support of public education in anyway (applause here) but rather a call for you to demonstrate through additional policy implementation even more protective factors in the face of modern-day education realities (e.g. safety, staffing priorities, technology protections, building upkeep, school districts’ bookkeeping practices, etc…).  In the event you may be thinking about redirecting me to school boards, my ask is for such policy action at the county level. 

Hoping my numbering helps with clarity about my perspective and suggestions:  

1.    The wave of recording of incidents of school violence for “proof” of the depth of the problem in our community’s public schools speak to the minimization culture that seems to be present and growing.  The current reporting structures for safety concerns seem siloed and ineffective too often when we know effective communication lines and timeliness are imperatives. 

Neither the media nor my bleacher mate should be my most reliable source about inadequate supervision & programming inside of the schools.  The Commissioners with your powers-of-the-purse have the ability to slow the alarming decline in school-facing staff in both total numbers and the decline of experienced school-facing staff.    Inadequate student-facing staffing is one of the major culprits and I have seen this play out poorly in other institutional settings such as detention centers and prisons.  

2.  The recording of incidents of school violence for the purpose of power & control, as well as for dysfunctional entertainment & attention, needs to be productively redressed.

The current measures being taken to protect the privacy of children in schools from being recorded during non-educational events, specifically, violence, and their images then being posted on the internet, is entirely unacceptable.  Yet, some caretakers and children are understandably wanting to have personal cell phones allowed for  “proof” and protection as our community's schools have earned the level of fear being spoken about.

3.  Allegations of school violence and inadequate supervision being made in formal settings such as in litigation and during public comment at board of education meetings by current and former school-level staff are red flags.   🚩 🚩 🚩 

4.  The communication cadence and the generalized data about school violence & discipline in OCS & CHCCS seems both truncated and oversimplified.  It is overdue by my estimation for Orange County government, as a major public school funder, to be requiring on a quarterly basis the frequency of child restraint, child seclusion and occurences of assaults in schools on child & staff, specifically.  

5.  The physical availability and presence of district executives during school days to provide feet-on-the-ground assistance and coverage inside of OCS & CHCCS schools needs to be evaluated, expectations set, and then monitored for compliance.  The permissiveness of moonlighting at the highest levels, while school services and educational programming actually reaching all children increasingly suffers, seem to be longtime occurrences and entrenched ones from what I can tell.  

An excursion to a mountain retreat for “professional development”?  An executive chef there?  Do students go on these same types of “field trips”?  Are the school lunches served to children as good as the mountain retreat’s meals?   Shouldn’t the children’s meals be as nutritious and delicious?  Are the financial books for the school nutrition enterprises in OCS & CHCCS always in order?  Why not? 

What math acceleration (catch-up & enrichment) tangibly reaches all children in months 11 & 12  while Orange County taxpayers support 11-month & 12-month paid employees?  Are OCS & CHCCS students as likely, more likely, less likely to have voice and choice in higher education experiences (e.g. dual enrollment & CTE) than school executives over the past 6 years when this untapped student-opportunity topic was discussed at the 2018 (I think that year) joint OCBOCC/OCS/CHCCS meeting?  

6.    Public accountability on a monthly basis for all of the 3rd party vendors, irrespective of any dollar amount, who are welcomed by the school executives and the school boards into OCS & CHCCS is needed.

Here are just a handful of vendors who had the Commissioners already enacted such a policy requiring monthly, public-facing vendor and “association membership” information be posted, the community would have known about their presence in a timely manner: 

- Lennix James/James Lennix Foundations;

- Shawn Joseph & Associates;

- Alternatives Unlimited;

- Panorama Education; 

- TNTP;

- The Innovation Project;

- Burns Van Fleet;

- Education Elements+.

To think that 3rd party vendors are being deemed to be  “school officials” by OCS & CHCCS district executives and the school boards, yet these same outsider “school officials” are unknown to parents/guardians and Orange County taxpayers in real time, is baffling and unsafe.  

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Finally, creating an Inspector General role at the county-level to ensure county education capital & operation dollars are being well-used for children’s education, and neither misused or wasted (or worse), seems worth the Commissioner’s consideration at this juncture in time.    

I intend to send under separate cover some output data (really about the system as currently directed rather than the children & wonderful school-facing teachers & staff) for both school districts and ask the Commissioners to reflect whether county taxpayers’ dollars supposedly going towards children’s educational prosperity seem to need to be publicly and regularly accounted for at the county-level (much) more closely and the county-staffing oversight responsibilities be better shared with the public with more specificity. 

Wishing you wisdom & health.

Regards, Kari Hamel

919-602-0263

Please excuse the typographical and grammatical errors. 

[Jamezetta Bedford]

Hi Kari,

I missed replying to your email. Letting you know that the BOCC did receive it. 

Best,

Jamezetta

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From: kari h. <karih...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2024 2:59 PM
To: ALL_BOCC_MANAGER_CLERK <OCB...@orangecountync.gov>
Subject: [EXTERNAL MAIL!] Safety in schools - tonight’s meeting agenda