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30 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Page 17 Expansion Budget The expansion budget represents expenditures that would require additional funding beyond the base funding of the prior year budget and the requested Continuation costs. These requests would be recurring costs beyond their initial implementation. The Superintendent and Cabinet received many budget requests from our schools and department managers. While the budget requests identified needs, the expansion budget was prioritized to align with the strategic plan goals, Student Success, Family and Community Engagement, Employee Experience, and Organizational Effectiveness. Social and Emotional Learning and Mental Health Services Expansion $1,010,000 (Strategic Plan Goals: Student Success) Prior to the pandemic, nearly one in five North Carolina students had at least one emotional, behavioral or developmental disability(Splett, 2014). Without a doubt, the emotional and mental health concerns of our students have only been exacerbated as a result of the pandemic and social unrest they have experienced over the past year. For many of our students, our schools are the only place they receive access to social and mental health support. The closure of school buildings due to the pandemic limited student access to those supports, while adding on new and more intensive stressors from remote learning and social isolation. During the period of remote learning, a social and emotional learning(SEL)universal screener and attendance measures were used to assess student social needs and level of engagement. While we saw an increase in satisfactory attendance across all student groups in our First Semester Attendance Data Report, however; our Black and Latino students continue to experience severely chronic absenteeism at a significantly higher rate than other student groups. Attendance data also highlighted a significant increase in chronic absenteeism among middle schoolers this year from 1.6% in 2019-20 to 5.5%. The fall administration of the SEL universal screener measured student perception of the social and emotional climate of schools. Of those surveyed, results indicated that 70% of our elementary students provided favorable responses and 57% favorable responses were provided from secondary level students regarding the social and emotional climates in our schools. When we disaggregated this data by race and student groups such as students with disabilities, we saw a reduction in favorable responses from a range of 4-9 percentage points. As we plan for the return to in-person instruction next year, we must make significant investments in sustaining and advancing long-term support for the social, emotional and mental well-being for our students. Our District has adopted Second Step, Restorative Practices and Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) as three evidence-based programs for providing social and emotional learning instruction in our schools. Additionally, with the revisions to create our new CHCCS Community Code of Character, Conduct, and Support, we have invested in evidence-based practices to support operationalizing the code to eliminate disciplinary disproportional practices in our schools. Currently, all schools have different levels of implementation for every program due to limitation in providing ongoing professional development and effective implementation support. 00 Chapel Hill—Carrboro City Schools—FY 2021-22 Recommended Budget empower inspire