Board reviews recommended calendar for 2025-2026; honors Ben Watson
BY DEBBIE PAGE
Mooresville Graded School District officials are imploring motorists to stop for school buses when students are boarding and exiting buses.
Red flashing lights and extended stop arms indicate the bus has stopped and children are getting on or off. Drivers must stop their cars and wait until the red lights stop flashing, the extended stop-arm is withdrawn, and the bus begins moving before they can start driving again, according to N.C. law.
More than 150 violations have been reported by MGSD bus drivers so far this semester, Chief Operations Officer Scott Smith told the school board this week.
School bus cameras have captured footage of the violators, which was then turned over to the Mooresville Police Department for investigation and referral for prosecution by the District Attorney’s Office.
“This is a huge safety concern for students,” Smith said.
Board Chairman Greg Whitfield noted that violators will get five points on their license, leading to a large increase in insurance costs, as well as a possible loss of their license. Passing a stopped school bus is considered almost as serious as a DWI charge by authorities.
Board Attorney Kevin Donaldson said the DA’s Office appreciates the district’s bus cameras because convictions were easy using the district’s video evidence.
REMEMBERING BEN WATSON
Prior to the moment of silence, Chairnan Whitfield remembered Ben Watson, a beloved Mooresville High School teacher and coach, who passed in October after battling cancer for the past several years.
Watson was a dear person but “a better man and Christian,” he said.
Whitfield quoted Henri Frederic Amiel: “Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.”
Whitfield then noted that Watson showed gratitude for all those that he touched.
Through his teaching, coaching, and friendships, Watson also followed lived Charles Schwab’s advice: “The way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement,” Whitfield said.
FALL PARENT SURVEY
Chief Communications Officer Tanae McLean asked parents to take a few minutes to complete a short survey to help the district better serve students and families. The feedback is important to the district’s growth and improvement to better understand what the district is doing well and where it needs to improve. Participation in this survey is voluntary but vital to realizing the district’s vision of creating a better community by empowering every individual to grow, thrive, and succeed.
McLean asks parents and guardians to check the Parentsquare inbox for an email with the survey link, which will be open through Friday, November 15.
STUDENT OF THE MONTH
NF Woods School sophomore Taylor Roesch, who was nominated by Leanna Coonfield, was honored as the MGSD Student of the Month. She led the board meeting’s Pledge of Allegiance.
Coonfield said in the nomination that since attending the summer program at NF Woods in June, Taylor “has demonstrated exceptional growth and commitment to her academic and personal development. She has made remarkable strides in her academic journey, particularly in creative writing.”
“She has excelled in her coursework, and her work ethic is unmatched — she approaches every challenge with determination and perseverance.”
“Beyond her individual success, Taylor has emerged as a natural leader, often stepping up to guide and support her peers. Whether collaborating with her peers or offering assistance during independent work time, she fosters a positive attitude that inspires others to strive to do their best.”
“Her dedication to both her own progress, and the success of those around her, truly sets her apart as a standout student at NF Woods.”
ARTIST OF THE MONTH
Eighth-grader Peyton Poteat, who was nominated by Laura Stone, was selected as Artist of the Month.
“Peyton is a talented and dedicated eighth-grade student in the middle school program at NF Woods. He has a true passion for art, and his enthusiasm shines through in every project he takes on,” said Poteat in her nomination.
“Whether it’s a class assignment or a personal creation, Peyton consistently adds his unique flair and thoughtful details, making each piece truly his own. His attention to detail and his love for the creative process are evident in the high-quality work he produces.”
“It’s clear that Peyton has a natural artistic ability, and I have no doubt he will continue to grow and develop as an artist. I can easily envision a future where his artwork is celebrated by many.”
SPOTLIGHT ON PEOPLE
The Mooresville High School JV Volleyball Team, nominated by Athletic Director Brent Bustle, was nominated for the November Spotlight on People.
Noting that this group of athletes has played together for up to four years, attributed this season’s success “to trusting the process. It’s amazing to look back at where they all started and see how far they have all come. The more they play together, the more they succeed together.”
“The team has learned to play with confidence and control every step of the way, not only ball control but emotional control. They were given the tools needed to achieve success, but most importantly they trusted each other to reach their common goals.”
“Volleyball is an all-around team sport. We speak about never focusing on what our opponents might bring. We know that if we played how well we were capable of playing, it wouldn’t matter.”
Bustle was especially proud of overcoming its biggest challenge, rival Lake Norman, who always has a strong team. “That match could have gone either way, but with a little luck on our side and capitalizing on a few errors, we proved victorious.”
Kari Major serves as head coach for team members Addison Intoppa (Captain), Sicily DiTomas (Captain), Reagan Young (Most Valuable Teammate), Kinsley Young (Most Improved Player), Kathryn Adair (Honorary Coaches Award), Brooke Piecynski, Maddy Hamilton, Ahjae Aiken, Lyric Dulin, Macie Cline, Aubrey Carigon, Jillian McAllister, Ava Rogers, and Avery Ibach.
INSTRUCTIONAL SPOTLIGHT
In the November Instructional Spotlight, N F. Woods staff members presented the school’s individualized conferencing, curriculum and service delivery methods to the board.
NF Woods Principal Melanie Allen said students are often overwhelmed when they arrive. They may not function well in a 2,000-student environment but can succeed in a smaller, individualized classroom.
Presenting individualized conferencing success, Leanna Coonfield said she started the strategy with seniors several years ago and added it with her sophomores this year. She conducts the one-on-one conferences every few weeks to support relationship building and to promote students’ ownership and understanding of their progress.
Students mentioned the conferences in the comments on the Panorama survey, saying they liked teachers “talking with us.”
In a video of a conference, Coonfield pointed out the student’s improvements in work completion and asked what increased his motivation. The student expressed a desire to get ahead and perhaps graduate early. The student got to add stickers on completed areas of summary sheet (Trophy Tracker) and received candy as reward.
Teacher Tim Anselmo presented individualized curriculum benefits for the six classes of 7th through 12th grade students in the NF Woods program.
The flexible, self-paced curriculum helps students earn new credits, recover failed courses, or work toward early graduation. Both core subjects and electives are available through Apex platform.
Essential to NF Woods’ success is that individualization allows students to rejoin their cohort or graduate early. The courses are often used to catch up on work from previous classes.
Summer school offers focused credit recovery or advancement without regular school-year distractions and builds a good foundation for successful next school year to help students stay on track.
So far this fall, the program has served 58 students, who earned 75 new credits and recovered 37. Summer school, which served 91 students, helped students earn 53 new credits and recover 190 credits.
Anselmo said that students sometimes shut down if their classes are not going well, so one-on-one help is important.
Yvette Peveler presented information about NF Woods’ Individualized Service Delivery to meet the needs of diverse student at different achievement levels.
She said most of her students were in the individual curriculum program, working on course credit while addressing academic and post-secondary goals. Due to need and progress monitoring, several students are also working under the guidance of general education teachers to complete core courses.
Peveler addressed students’ organizational skills to help them learn the skills to complete future tasks by creating a weekly Task Sheet to help her and them focus on their unique needs and courses.
The weekly assignment sheet helps students, parents, and other teachers involved know what is expected so students can plan accordingly and develop their executive functioning capabilities.
Board member Rakeem Brawley noted that students come from diverse backgrounds and have differing behaviors, so the NF Woods program gives them what they need to achieve.
Board member Debbie Marsh said the program focuses on graduation and readiness to work. “I feel confident we are on the right track with this program,” she said.
Board member Monica Bender liked the praise and positive feedback NF Woods staff gives students for their individual achievement.
COMMUNICATIONS AUDIT
McLean presented results from the system’s recently completed communication audit. One of the four district priorities in the system’s strategic plan is to create a culture of relationships. An identified strategy related to this work is the creation a uniform communication framework.
This past summer MGSD partnered with Forthright Advising to complete a communications audit as well as to craft an incident and event communication guide for the district.
The process included a review of district and school websites and of district office communication with staff, prospective staff, family, and the community as a whole.
Interviews of MGSD leaders, a survey of MGSD principals, a review of social media (district and school level), and a media scan and online presence analysis was also conducted.
The audit focused on several guiding questions:
♦ How is MGSD representing its brand?
♦ What messages is MGSD sharing? When and how?
♦ How is MGSD’s messaging presented?
♦ Do MGSD materials speak to the right audiences?
♦ Is MGSD using clear calls to action? Can action be taken easily?
♦ Is MGSD using the right approaches to reach the right audiences?
♦ What are the overall design elements MGSD is using?
♦ What is the overall user experience with MGSD materials?
Their study reviews identified a number of strengths, including that a majority of the staff feel happy and supported, that central office communicates well with school leaders, and that staff finds the Friday Focus and proactive communications they can share are helpful.
MGSD also uses multiple communications tactics successfully, from social media to enrollment campaigns. The district can reach 99 percent of online parent/caregiver populations as needed. Audiences also report hearing from district regularly.
The district is also effectively targeting several key audiences throughout its materials, which speak to each identified target audience, including staff, prospective staff, families/caregivers, and community members. The team identifies specific values for each audience and highlights those values in its communications.
The report shared recommendations for improvement, both short and longer term.
Those that can be implemented immediately include simplifying messaging overall and eliminating jargon, making meaning and connections for parents, and highlighting the most important information in all materials.
Recommendations for next school year include creating a formal communication strategy, designing and sharing a brand deck, and allotting more support to communications.
Long-range focus areas include more proactive public relations that incorporate more storytelling and more “bragging.”
Web presence recommendations focus on creating an information hierarchy, simplifying website language, ensuring methods to eliminate broken content, building more buy-in with families/community on school websites, and ensuring more regular updating of school sites.
External Central Office communication recommendations are creating more calls to action, making more meaning of the content for families/community, having more proactive celebrations of MGSD, and allotting more resources to communication design.
Internal Central Office communication recommendations are to create and share branding guidelines, to provide additional professional development for MGSD leaders on best practices, to develop more templates/materials, and to construct a shared messaging plan (district v. schools).
District social media recommendations include ensuring all schools are well-represented, revising how board updates are shared, personalizing posts (strongest performing MGSD posts have a human face), incorporating more MGSD voices, and encouraging more sharing of posts by staff members. School level social media recommendations included eliminating “rogue” accounts and the use of twitter/X due to low engagement and instead prioritizing the more popular Facebook and Instagram.
Media scan and online presence recommendations are to incorporate more proactive media relations activities (reactive v. proactive) and to work closely with schools to identify, gather, and share news stories (proactive).
2025-2026 CALENDAR DRAFT
McLean said that over the course of the last month, district employees and the Calendar Committee have worked to craft a proposed calendar for the 2025-2026 academic year.
This year’s committee met twice and was composed of school-level and district-level employees, parent representatives from each school, and student representatives from secondary schools. The draft calendar was presented for initial review and input before expected final approval of a 2025-2025 calendar at the December meeting.
The calendar must have 215 total days in the 10-month calendar (including Instructional, Annual Leave, Holidays and Workdays), a minimum of nine teacher workdays (at least two have to be optional), a minimum of 10 annual leave days, and the state holidays for 2025-2026: 9/1/25, 11/11/25, 11/27 – 28/25, 12/24-25,1/1/26, 1/19/26, 4/3/26, and 5/25/26. At least five required workdays must start the year and start in the middle of the week.
The first semester needs a minimum of 86 days of instruction. This calendar contains 175 instructional days, or 1,067.5 instructional hours. The state requires school systems to have 1,025 instructional hours per year.
The proposed calendar has a start date for staff-required workdays starting on July 30, 2025. The student start date for students is on August 8. The first semester is 86 days and the second 89 days.
Fall break is aligned with Mitchell Community College’s calendar since many students take courses there, and a high probability exists that spring break will also align with Mitchell’s break. Graduation is scheduled for May 23, 2026.
SBMS SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT PLAN
Over the course of the past several months, the Selma Burke Middle School school improvement team, composed of staff and parents, created its annual improvement plan.
In compliance with NCDPI expectations for low-performing schools, this plan was presented at the October meeting for a first reading and shared with the community for input before bringing the final version for approval this month.
Principal Dan Miller went over a few changes before the board approved the plan unanimously.
Highlights include the following:
♦ Goal 1 – Increase school performance grade from 51% to 59% overall for Math and ELA as measured by the North Carolina End of grade test in May 2025.
♦ Goal 2 – Reduce the number of office referrals by 20% from 1,229 referrals in 2023-2024 to 983 or less for 2024-2025.
♦ Goal 3 – Increase the percent favorable response from 49% to 79% on the Panorama Survey question “How effectively do school leaders communicate important information to staff?” by May 2025.
Goal 4 – Increase the percent favorable response on the Panorama Community Survey category of Building relationships and partnerships between the school, families, and the community from 49% to 60% (district average).
POLICY CHANGES
The board also approved several updates to board policies after an initial reading last month.
Some update highlights include:
♦ Training must be provided annually for all school district stakeholders (including staff, students, parents, coaches, volunteers and community members) on how to recognize, and how and when to report, threats to the school population or community.
♦ The superintendent shall establish a multidisciplinary threat assessment team for each school within the school district to identify, assess and manage behavior of students or others who may pose a risk of violence or harm to self or others. The threat assessment teams will include, but are not limited to, individuals with expertise in counseling, instruction, school administration and law enforcement.
♦ When a student or student’s parent or guardian informs any school district employee of the student’s pregnancy or related conditions, the employee shall promptly provide that person with the Title IX coordinator’s contact information and inform that person that the Title IX coordinator can coordinate specific actions to prevent sex discrimination and ensure the student’s equal access to the school district’s education program or activity.
BUDGET AMENDMENTS
The board also approved several 2024-25 budget amendments presented by Finance Officer Angie Davis, including an increase of $1,019,909 from the state public school fund for instructional services, system-wide support services, and community services.
From federal grant funds, the budget amendment increased $3,682,662 for instructional services, support services, and non-programmed charges.
Other local current expense amendments included $15,000 for instructional services.
UPCOMING DATES
♦ Wednesday, November 20 – MGSD Escape Room Extravaganza and Pizza Community Night at MHS. Sign up on Parentsquare.
♦ Tuesday, November 26 – Early release for the Mooresville Christmas Parade: High school at 11:20 a.m.; middle schools at 11:55 a.m.; intermediate schools at 12:25 p.m.; and elementary schools at 12:40 p.m.