Orange County NC Website
• Listen attentively to the speaker. <br />• Share the floor. <br />Update on School Boards' most recent collaboration: <br />Brief overview of process planning <br />Chair Jacobs said that the first meeting was on January 27th. They met two times as three <br />boards and then the school boards met by themselves. Then everyone came back to plan this <br />meeting. The thrust was to establish a framework of what to accomplish with the discussions of <br />collaboration between the two school systems. There was a fair amount of time expressing <br />opinions. There is a lot of baggage and they talked about those things. They agreed that they <br />would all pay for the services of Andy Sachs, regardless of whether the County Commissioners <br />were at the meetings in particular. They agreed that it was better far the school boards to have <br />the opportunity to have a facilitated meeting without the County Commissioners there. <br />2. Process and Result (Elizabeth Carter and Keith Cook}. <br />Elizabeth Carter, Chair of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Board of Education, thanked the Board of <br />County Commissioners for supporting them and allowing them a platform and to the Orange <br />County schools for joining them. She thanked Andy Sachs far tolerating them. <br />Elizabeth Carter said that the three leaders of the three boards came up with a definition for <br />collaboration, which is: "In good faith, communicating, working together, and generating results <br />across the school districts to enhance opportunities for students in each district andlor to <br />improve efficiencies within operations." <br />The leadership also came up with an initial set of 18cross-district collaboration items. They <br />were trying to develop a shared sense of what collaboration was in order to ensure mutual <br />accountability. The two school boards met twice -March 3`d and 22"d, and they shared a meal <br />and participated in activities to get to know each other as people. They agreed to a set of <br />ground rules. In the end, they had consensus to collaborate on 15 areas and commitment to <br />meet again and consider additional areas of collaboration and to set a timeline far <br />implementation. <br />Keith Cook, Chair of the Orange County Board of Education, said that at the second meeting on <br />March 22"d, they prioritized the areas of collaboration to see if there were any additional items. <br />Ten additional items were considered, and the two boards decided on 21 areas of cross-district <br />collaboration. They agreed on an implementation period of five years or lesson ten of the <br />prioritized items. They categorized the items as follows (handout incorporated as reference): <br />Category A (relatively easy to do} - 1, 6, 8 <br />Category B (things they control with a lot of planning} - 2 and 3 <br />Category C (big ticket items) - 4, 5, and 10 <br />Category D (huge payoffs down the road} - 7 and 9 <br />He said that they agreed that all 21 items are important and should be included in the long term <br />planning. In the near future, they need to discuss 4, 5, 7, 9, and 10 as it relates to possible <br />funding. <br />