The Chapel Hill – Carrboro City School Board looked to the future at Thursday’s meeting.

The board covered a lot of ground, discussing new building projects, closing the achievement gap and deciding the process for filling a school board vacancy.

Bill Mullen, Director of Facilities, presented the district’s 10 – year plan for building improvements. The greatest needs are for renovations to older facilities, like Chapel Hill High School and the Lincoln Center.

“If we go back to our plan of redirecting our funding towards our older schools, this takes off for the next few years worrying about new schools,” said Mullen.

The idea was entertained to include a food pantry run by the Inter – Faith Council and a health clinic on the Lincoln Center property. Collaboration between the local organizations and the school board interested some but board member Rani Dasi voiced concern about the potential security issues.

“I do have concerns about the food pantry and kitchen. Our number one responsibility is to safety and security for our students and we would really need to think about how this would work and we want to understand parent issues around this concerning our ability to control who is coming to campus,” said Dasi.

Bringing a food pantry and health clinic to the school property will be discussed further at later meetings.

According to Mullen, the timeline for the new projects depends on the results of the state bond referendum later this year. Approval of the bond would speed up the projects. The proposed new Lincoln Center will not be complete until 2018.

The board also heard a presentation from the Multicultural Student Achievement Network, which works to learn more about the achievement gap between white and minority students in our schools. Students like Gabby Demonte talked about what they gained from a conference the group attended last fall.

“Not only did we learn skills from this conference but we learned more about the achievement gap and the roots underneath the problem,” said Demonte.

Chapel Hill – Carrboro City Schools is one of the first schools districts to have this organization.

The discussion about the achievement gap isn’t new to the school board. During their last meeting, they heard a presentation from the Campaign for Racial Equality, which focused on ways the school system can address race.

The final item of business was an important one, how to best fill the vacancy on the school board.

Board members discussed the selection process and the qualities they are looking for in a new board member. Board Chair, James Barrett said since many of the current members are in their first publicly elected role, it might be helpful to add someone with policy experience.

“Should we tweak this criteria any to recognize that we do have a unique need at this point in time for more public service and involvement and experience in policy?”

The board expects the selection process for a new member to begin early next month and the new member to begin serving in March.

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