Minutes 05-10-2022 Budget Public Hearing and Work Session

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17 Caroline Wang said she is an 8th grader at Smith Middle School and has been part of the CHCCS community since kindergarten. She said she and her peers remember and have been impacted by every teacher they have learned from. She asked the Board to fully fund the CHCCS budget. She said teachers impact the education of hundreds and even thousands of students, are incredibly important to the community, and encourage students. She said CHCCS are below market rate locally and nationally. She said she has seen many teachers work hard for their students in classrooms and even extracurricular activities, often without extra compensation. She said many teachers commit years of their time to cultivating minds of students despite being inadequately compensated. She said it would be unfortunate for Orange County to lose these dedicated teachers. She asked the Board to put education at the top of their priorities for current students, teachers, and school systems, as well as those who choose Orange County as their home. She said schools and teachers are nurturing the minds of the future contributors of this county, state, country, and world. She said educators pour their hearts into what they do and that should be reflected in the budget. Michael Kang said he is a sophomore at East Chapel Hill High School. He asked the Board to fully fund the CHCCS budget. He shared his experience in Spanish class this year. He said at the beginning of the year, half of his classroom peers wanted to become fluent in Spanish and over half wanted to continue their education in SIP Spanish the next year. He said his Spanish teacher left during the second week of second quarter, so much of the work for the semester was completion based with few evaluations, and was much easier than he had heard from upperclassmen. By the beginning of the third quarter, only 3 people in the class wanted to continue their education in AP Spanish and no one in the class indicated they were fluent enough to live in a Spanish speaking classroom. He said thankfully a teacher transitioned to his class in the fourth quarter. He said 3 out of 5 Spanish teachers have left this year and all Spanish 1 and 2 courses were transitioned to remote learning and they have had 8 teachers so far. He said this isn't just the Spanish classes that are experiencing a lack of teachers and turnover. He said he would be better prepared for future Spanish learning if he had a consistent teacher all year. He said securing better teachers means support for the county to the Orange County academic community, and full investment is needed to keep the quality of schools so students don't limit their dreams. Jason Kary said he has been a resident of Orange County for 18 years. He said he supports all of the educators in the room and the pay increases they are advocating for. He said he had to take his daughter out of middle school because her panic attacks were preventing her from learning. He said the issue is far deeper than teacher compensation and the whole system needs to be looked at. He encouraged the Board not to approve the 2022-23 budget due to the broadband plan. He said he lives off of Redgate Rd. and his neighborhood has been left off the NorthState service map. He said the companies are reporting that his neighborhood has broadband options, but there is only one option and it is only 4 MBPS. He said NorthState told his neighborhood they were not part of the contract with Orange County. He said he believes his neighborhood of 14 households will have to pay around $62,000 as a whole for NorthState to run fiber to their area, based on the fact the County's $40 million contract covers 9,000 households. He asked the Board not to approve the budget and to help him and his neighborhood get the broadband they need. Whitney Robinson said she has a 1st grader at Northside Elementary. She said this is her first child in the public school system and he started during the pandemic. She said she is on the School Improvement Team at Northside and it has been eye opening. She said it's hard to fill vacancies even just for maternity leave. She said she feels the effects of burnout even in higher education, including emotional burdens, student needs, and having to do catch up. She said she knows a lot of first grade teachers who are trying to do catch up for students who started kindergarten during the remote learning year. She said seeing the budget on the school