001okay i'd like to call the prince william county school board to order um the purpose of the meeting the meeting of the prince william county school board is being conducted electronically under the virginia code 37082 of in the authority granted by the general assembly on april 22 2020 through amendment 28 to house bill 29 which permits the school board to meet electronically during the dependency of the current state of emergency for the purpose of transacting such business as is statutorily required or necessary to continued operations the prince william county public schools and the discharge of his lawful purposes duties and responsibilities emotions in order mr argenport mr chairman i move that the prince william county school board approved the closed session agenda as recommended second second missed wall seconds any discussion seeing no discussion please
002vote uh miss ralston how do you vote uh uh yes mr ralston votes yes okay miss jesse how do you vote the vote is seven yes one not president vote williams motion passed okay moving on to the motion and or closed session emotions in order mr chairman i move that whoops i'm so sorry i moved that the principal we're on sec on number two right yeah i'm sorry i mean um i'm so sorry it's one of those days emotion is in order to approve the closed session agenda um i move that the principal no i'm so sorry we're on two right yeah okay i'm so sorry um mr chairman i move that we move into closed session motion disorder um number one to discuss the staff performance appointment transfer release assignment and promotion of specific
003officers employees or appointees under virginia code sections 2.2-3711a1 and to dispense with the attendance of the superintendent as needed under virginia code section 2.2 22.1-69 two to discuss the legal with legal counsel and take action on the placement and disciplinary appeals of specific students under the virginia code sections 2.2-3711a 2 and 8. three to receive information and discuss with division council and staff actual and probable litigation and legal matters involving specific employees and students under virginia code sections 2.2-3711a 7 and 8 and 4 to discuss the investment of public funds for the acquisition of goods and services relating to the security of pwcs automated data processing systems information technology systems and software programs subject to the exclusions provided in virginia virginia code sections 2.2-2705.2 numbers 2 and 14 where discussion in open session would jeopardize
004the security of such systems and programs and where competition or bargaining is involved and if made public initially the financial interest of the school board would be adversely affected under virginia code sections 2.2-27116 and and five to receive advice and information from legal counsel and staff regarding the acquisition of real property for school sites where discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position or negotiating strategy of the school board and to discuss the investment of public funds where competition or bargaining is involved where if made public initially the financial interest of the school board would adversely would be adversely affected under virginia code sections 2.2-3711a 3 6 seven and eight have a second second miss wall seconds any discussion please vote uh miss ralston how do you vote yes miss jesse how
005do you vote okay you got it great okay the vote is seven yes one not president vote williams motion passed okay at this point the prince william county school board will now enter closed session return open session approximately one hour [Music] the prince william county school board is now returning to open session from closed session um emotion we're moving on to closed session certification emotion is in order miss williams yes all right closed session certification i move that pursuant to virginia code 2.2-3712 the closed session of the prince william county school board meeting of march 3rd be certified by adopting the following resolution now therefore be it resolved that the princeton county school board hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge one only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements
006were discussed in the closed meeting to which the certification resolution applies and two only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed session meeting were heard and or discussed or considered by the school board do i have a second second thank you miss wall seconds um any discussion can we vote miss ralston how do you vote yes miss boston miss ralston votes yes the vote is seven yes one not president vote dr latif motion passed moving on to closed section closed session action items a motion is in order madam chair that's what i'm going to read i moved that i moved that pursuant to virginia code 2.2 3.3712b the school board met in closed session at an undisclosed location for the purpose of interviewing candidates for the position of division
007superintendent and accordingly the school board hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge one only that personnel matter which is exempted from open meeting requirements under virginia code 2.2-3711 a 1 was discussed in the closed meeting to which the certification resolution applies and for which public notice was given during the school board meeting of february 4th 2021. we have a second i second this was seconds mrs ralston how do you vote yes ms ralston votes yes the vote is 7 yes one not president vote dr latif motion passed all right so we are on oh okay um so moving on to closed section closed session action items a motion is in order madam vice chair wound excuse me last time i'm sorry yeah you gonna yeah oh i am so sorry miss williams
008i moved that the prince william county school board approved the appointments and releases of specific employees as it presented in closed session i second thank you miss wall seconds mrs ralston how do you vote yes ms ralston votes yes so we are now on so the vote is seven yes one not president vote dr latif motion passed 9.02 madam chair vice chair hold on hold on hold on hold on so miss williams emotion is in order thank you uh i moved that the princeton county school board authorized the chairman at large to execute and provide the superintendent and the associate superintendent for human resources the board's march 3rd 2020 letter requesting immediate identification of key administrative personnel vacancies to be filled on an interim or permanent basis as needed as discussed in closed session key
009administrative personnel as described in the school board's february 15 2021 motion do not include school-based personnel with the exception of principles do you have a second a second miss wall seconds um ms ralston how do you vote yes ms ralston votes yes we are on 9.03 the vote is seven yes one not president vote dr latif motion passed all right awesome now you're online vice chairwoman uh ms williams i move that the prince william county school board remand the appeal of student sr 21-043 to the office of student management and alternative programs to offer the student an opportunity to remain enrolled as a virtual student at garfield senior high school under an agreement by whereby the student must remain off school property and may not return to in-person learning until further review by osmap of
010the outcome of the proceedings against the student in the juvenile domestic juvenile and domestic relations court do we have a second a second as well seconds any discussion see no discussion let's vote ms ralston how do you vote yes ms ms ralston votes yes and the vote is seven yes one not president vote dr latif motion passed i would like to call the meeting of the prince william county school board to order this is the purpose of the meeting the meeting of the prince william county school board is being conducted electronically under virginia code section 2.2-3708.2 and the authority granted by the general assembly on april 2020 through the amendment 28 to the house bill to house bill 29 which permits the school board to meet electronically during the pendency of the current state of
011emergency for the purpose of transacting such business as a statutorily required or necessary to continue operations of the prince william county's public schools and the discharge of its lawful purposes duties and responsibilities all right we yeah we have the pledge do we have any students here tonight who would like to lead the pledge are there any all right please rise facing the flag our pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god individual with liberty and justice for all oh i'm sorry would you where would you please tell us your name and where you are from because i'm sorry thank you my name is juwan hill and i'm a 17 year old senior at charles j cogan high school all
012right thank you thank you for doing the pledge for us this evening um moving on we have approval of a public meeting agenda um an emotion is in order miss williams thank you madam vice chair i move that the prince william county school board approved the public meeting agenda as recommended have a second second turn your mic on what happened any discussion no can we vote uh miss ralston how do you vote yes miss miss ralston votes yes and the vote is seven yes one not president vote dr latif motion passed we are at 12. 13 sorry 13 adoption of the consent agenda emotion is in order miss williams thank you madam vice chair i moved at the prince william county school board approved the public meeting consent agenda as recommended wait a second yes
013yes miss ralston miss charleston seconds any discussion seeing no discussion let's vote ms ralston how do you vote yes the vote is seven yes one not president vote dr latif motion passed and we move on to citizen comments um due to the covet 19 state of emergency and legal restrictions on the school board's authority to conduct its meetings through electronic means unlike other public bodies meeting electronically under more expansive legal authority all discussion at this meeting by board members staff and citizens must be limited to agenda items citizens may speak on an agenda item for two minutes when the board is able to resume regular meetings without the virtual participation permitted during the state emergency expanded citizen comment will be resumed as provided by policy 134. in the interim citizen comment time has been reinstated
014on a limited basis in order to allow public comment both in person and through electronic means during the state of emergency citizens are encouraged to submit their comments by email to the clerk who will share them with the school board those citizens who have signed up in advance with the school board clerk via email no later than 4 pm wednesday march 3rd 2021 may address the school board in person or virtually electronically about matters relating to march 3rd 2021 agenda items only there is one speaker signed up to speak in person and four have signed up to speak virtually when you speak please use proper decorum and manners while at the podium and or speaking virtually if you do not you do so you will be asked to step aside please state your name and
015address for the record so let's start with our in person i have is it amali amelie ikus family i guess yes oh terrific um good evening madam vice chairs are poor members of the board dr waltz my name is emily ikes and my husband and i are both high school teachers in the county we also have two elementary age children who attend in-person learning in pwcs i thank you for the opportunity to speak to you tonight about the impact caused by the last minute notification to cancel many before and after school-aged child care programs across our county many families have been left to figure it out on their own here is how we have been impacted as well as possible solutions for you to consider on wednesday february 17th the decision passed to phase in
016all remaining grade levels into the hybrid model with an earlier start time for high school which our family was prepared for but then on friday february 19th families in and around our county received emails from alphabet around 6 15 pm informing them that due to low interest the decision was made to cancel sac at most elementary locations where it was being offered until interest reached the minimum of 30 students this notification came three days before teachers were to report to their buildings to begin hybrid instruction on saturday february 20th mr wilk responded to my plea for help and i greatly appreciate his willingness to assist in seeking out available options on monday february 22nd mr wilke and i were in communication the entire day to see what options were available for sac but no alternative
017solutions to the sudden cancellation were available this left me and other families scrambling on thursday february 25th the day the freshman returned to our school our only option was to hire a prince william county high school student who was attending virtually to watch our children she is now balancing her own classes to babysit our children until it's time to walk them to their bus stop i do not believe that this is a sustainable solution if sat cannot be established at all the elementary schools where there is even one family indicating the need for care then please consider these other options please provide bus transportation for any student attending one of the 21 schools where alphabet is offering full-time daycare with virtual learning for students to their base school if transportation from the full-day alphabet locations
018cannot be provided then please consider combining neighboring elementary schools and establish one of them as the sac location with transportation to their base school thank you we have three virtual speakers this evening yes we actually have four virtual speakers the first one is derek barcelona you can unmute yourself hello my name is derek barcelona i'm a new resident of the prince william county school district living in gainesville virginia the three steps to opening our schools should be vaccinate educate and don't indoctrinate i'm a new resident of the prince william county school system i've read over your agenda item what is very concerning to me is a student being placed on suspension for disciplinary action for 10 days 10 days without instruction will be very detrimental to the student instructionally wise when they get back to
019the classroom this is exclusion in society not inclusion i would rather have the school board discipline the student with in-school suspension letting the student work on class work while in suspension if it if this is the first offense i feel that this rule of 10-day suspension could especially hurt children with disabilities as a special education student needs full-time attention and engaged in the classroom therefore the 10-day two-week suspension should be appraised reviewed as a final decision when all else fails must be starting tonight at this school board meeting thank you for your time and remember vaccinate educate don't indoctrinate okay thank you our next speaker is maggie hansford you can mute yourself and you have the floor hi thank you everyone my name is maggie hansford and my address is on file with the clerk
020i want to first start off with thanking all of our staff they've moved mountains uh not only this whole school year but specifically these past couple weeks and i think we can all agree on um how strong our staff has been for our students and our community i would like to acknowledge the hybrid model and how difficult this is for all for everyone involved and i think that we need to start building a plan for next year with regards to this and i hope that the division and the school board acknowledge how important it is to have staff included in that decision-making process i want to thank the chair and vice chair for working with me during the budget season i continue to advocate for hazard pay or in the form of a bonus for
021our employees for all that they've done this school year i want to thank lori williams for advocating on behalf of the school division at last night's board of county supervisors meeting and i continue to ask the board and division to work with me in addressing staff concerns to ensure a safe and successful school year i appreciate everyone's time tonight thank you thank you our next speaker is nathan hale you can meet yourself hello school board my name is nathan hailey i'm a ninth grader at patriot high school i believe that ninth graders should not have to do standardized testing this year i can speak from my class when i say we are tired stressed depressed and anxious class of 24 has lost nearly everything we cared about even before the pandemic we're struggling mentally and
022that struggle has been multiplied by the lack of social interaction we have we as a class cannot handle the unbearable pressure of sol and standardized testing this year we are not ready if the sol happens this will destroy the little bit of enthusiasm we have left their school most of us don't even remember we learn in class after two weeks because we can only learn so much over a screen how we supposed to remember things from the beginning of the school year this is not a standard school year and you guys know it at this point you guys need to decide what is more important students physical and mental well-being or standardized tests because both of these cannot coexist i don't know what you guys can do for us but you guys need to do
023something to cancel these standardized testing and fast class of 2024 is sinking and you guys need to help us before we drown thank you our last um speaker is sandra kern you can unmute yourself up actually [Music] miss kern i'm having an issue with your version of zoom it's out of date it's not going to allow me to allow you to speak tonight and you must be using a different device um she's going to have to use a different device and come back later perhaps um vice chair i don't know how you want to go forward with this ah what would be i'm getting a shaking her head yeah um or does the is the board oh um an agreement that we can maybe hear from her as soon as her zoom is back at
024the end of the meeting perhaps i'd love to hear from my concern hold on hold on one second looks like she's she's coming on another device let me just see here it's been one of those days okay ah you can hear me yes we can yes fantastic first off my name is sandra kern i live in the potomac district my address is on file and madam chair vice chair i so and appreciate you being the stand-up woman for um women leadership in this meeting and all of the wonderful ladies that are serving to help our children technology is a little difficult so we'll just have to move on from there i want to stop and say that this new page that we've turned is a word revelation revolutionizing as mr wilk had shared at the
025last long board meeting hopefully we won't have to have too many more of those but i would like to see that the community steps forward to support our schools during the budget season and make sure that we have our voice heard over at the board of supervisors and yes miss williams i appreciate you speaking for us last night also the program presentation tonight on the equity lens a perfect opportunity to be listeners and i believe that the budget will also help with that position in our future i can say last week my fifth grade grandson i thought was going to be typing with his toes but now he's in person thriving and i've seen so many other students posting that they are thrilled with their opportunities and i appreciate from the bottom of my heart
026the board members that were at the welcoming of the open classes again i know you have our children's heart you are our eyes and ears like our wonderful teachers and i hope that their cola increase comes through as well thank you so much enjoy your evening and be blessed all right thank you moving on to our student representative miss caroline silvera is our student representative from hilton high school and she will be joining us virtually this evening is caroline ready to go yeah thank you so much um so first i would like to say thank you to all the students for coming out today i really do love when students come and speak at the board meetings regardless of what they're speaking on because it shows increased student involvement so that really does make me
027happy and that was a nice surprise um but like i was saying hi everybody i can't believe that it's march already it feels like it was just august uh some pwcs students returned to the building this week and i have to say i was so impressed and proud to see the amount of effort that was put back into this return schools had amazing science for their students and some student leaders such as those from colgan high school and osborne park high school had programs in place in order to raise the spirits of those coming back the osborne park student council even offered a senior buddies program where seniors could show freshmen around the building i would like to thank everyone who went into planning and planning return to in-person learning for students as it really
028was an outstanding effort i recently had the pleasure of attending both the black student union coalition and cultural clubs coalition meetings the black student union coalition is comprised of students from hilton and battlefield high schools although they are always open to new members and they had a great discussion about being black in pwcs with school board member mrs jesse the diversity and inclusion committee of the student senate hosted our second cultural club's coalition meeting a few weeks ago as well we discussed the county's new social and racial justice coalition with our guests mrs jesse and miss williams i would like to thank you guys again for coming and connecting with our student leaders we honestly had a really great conversation i'm so glad that both of these organizations allow students to have an outlet where
029they can express themselves and collaborate with other student leaders finally i would like to address a concern that many students have brought to me i sent a letter to the school board regarding ap exams so i know that they are already aware of the issue but i would like to address it publicly currently the ap exam schedule 3 chosen for pwcs students directly conflicts with graduation with some exams falling on or after graduation in addition the tests during that period are high-level stem classes such as ap calculus and physics c which are usually senior majority classes additionally there are not in-person options for most exams this year my current recommendation is that we offer in-person options for those scheduled three ap examinations if not all ap examinations which would still be under testing schedules two
030and three this would address the issue of seniors since in-person versions of conflicting exams are available earlier and any internet connectivity issues ap students may have some exams are as long as three hours so students do not have a stable internet connection they could miss out on receiving college credit we offered in-person sat exams this fall so this is certainly doable the full version of my letter is on my twitter at carolinepwcs if anybody in the public is interested and please feel free to reach out to me at silvercf silversaf21 pwcs edu.org with any questions comments or concerns thank you all so much for your time you miss silvera we are moving on to superintendent's time dr waltz thank you very much vice chairwoman zagapoor members of the board good evening if you read last
031week's edition of the scoop you would have noticed even during a pandemic that schools across the division recognized black history month with a variety of learning activities this video from kerrydale elementary school on what you're reading wednesdays is one of my favorites please roll the video what's up cardinals welcome to what's your reading wednesday my name is tasha johnson i'm the new reading specialist at carydell this is my first year being a reading specialist i wanted to provide a way to connect with the kids and then to get them reading and engaged in reading so i did the whatchu reading wednesday thank you for joining me today with a black history moment with miss johnson today i'm going to read may among the stars and it is about a astronaut called dr mae jameson every
032wednesday i do a different diverse books just to get them involved in reading i felt that it was important to focus on those unsung heroes of black history um those black history figures so we did the gordon parks we've done may jamison we've done chick webb and then we have done lauren's journal so i did interactive read alouds for internet active read-alouds and then at the end of that read-aloud i want the kids to show me what they know and so they provide a flip grid of three interesting facts or just how the um historical figure has inspired them she inspired me to do anything i want if i can believe it i work hard for it and someday i want to be as great as her students are posting pictures they're posting videos they
033are um when i'm going into the classroom they're like ms johnson this is what you're reading wednesday and so they put up their book of you know what they're reading drop your pictures drop your videos i want to know what you're reading wednesday take care cardinals [Music] very cute and you know during a pandemic it's critical to be kind to one another and i brought that up at several meetings patriot high school recently celebrated kindness matters week with their smiles for miles campaign learn more in this video please roll the video [Music] all right i recognize some of those characters there at the end that was really great as we move into the first few days of this month i would like to acknowledge that march is the virginia school board's association equity and education
034month the promise of public education is for every child to be successful in school and in life especially during a pandemic as we continue our important work to look at everything we do through an equity lens and as we work through the fiscal 22 budget process i encourage everyone to be aware of the importance of equity in resources including educational settings supplies technology staffing and buildings i also look forward to seeing how our schools will be acknowledging equity and education months in the next few weeks since our last meeting i had the opportunity to visit dumfries elementary school woodbridge middle school gainesville middle school and hilton high school dumfries elementary was welcoming back in person 4th and 5th grade students and i observed a physical education class learning how to juggle and talk to the
035teachers and staff i also read aloud the book exclamation mark by amy rouse rosenthal which we videotape to share with our schools in case they want to share with their students across the school division when visiting woodbridge middle school i checked in on the school food and nutrition services staff who are mourning the loss of their friend and colleague floor cervantes also at gainesville middle school i discovered a teacher there who has been following me for years on all the code red calls he's the go-to person over there at gainesville middle school for the most predicted dates of certain code red calls it was really interesting i received an email from marcy abel who teaches substitute or teaches students with special needs at vaughn elementary school i wanted to show her signature line which reminds
036us to wear a mask and you can see that at the that's the end of every email that appears i appreciate miss abel's assistance in reminding everyone about our important mitigation procedures during the pandemic i also want to congratulate her and wish her well as she is retiring this year i also want to provide a thank you to our staff for working so hard to ensure a smooth return to in-person learning for all grade levels for those students who have chosen to do so it has been an incredible collaborative effort of teachers administrators and support staff due to the many staff that received their second covet 19 vaccines last week and many who will do do so this week as well our schools had the extra challenge of increased teacher and administrator absences as well
037as support staff caused by staff impacted by side effects i would like to thank all those who substituted for our teachers and administrators and support staff workers including over 100 central office staff who volunteered to pitch in and serve in schools during this time before closing i also want to mention that march is much more than the one year anniversary of the worldwide pandemic it is also middle level education month music in our schools month national nutrition month social work month and youth art month this month our schools will also be recognizing women's history month i want to express my appreciation to our middle school staff members all of our food service employees many of which have been working since last march providing free food for our community and the important role of our social
038workers and the well-being of our students i would also like to honor our music and art teachers who have been working very hard to teach in diff difficult and different unique ways during this pandemic i appreciate each and every one of you thank you dr waltz we are moving on to item number 17 board matters 17.1 is uh superintendent's update on the pandemic yes and thank you again and good evening following my brief remarks i will turn it over to miss jersey and heart who will facilitate a panel of principals who will provide an update on the return of students to the in-person learning option this panel is at the request of school board members who ask to hear directly from principals please note that at our next regular school board meeting we will have
039an additional principal panel focused on providing an academic progress update this provides time for principals to focus on the in-person return that is going on now following ms hart denise hebner associate superintendent for special education and student services who along with her team will provide further details on the latest health information the numbers of covid19 cases in pwcs are dynamic and as of monday march 1 from february 21st to february 27th we had 51 confirmed cases of students and staff equal to the previous week of february 14th through 20th for the month of february we had 299 cases compared to 899 in january pwcs continues to work as rapidly as possible to vaccinate all staff who want the vaccine with their second dose primarily through our outstanding partners at novant uva health additionally inova health
040has been supporting vaccinating our employees as well this past monday completed the use of unity read high school for vaccinations as we return more students to in-person learning i want to give a tremendous thank you to principal nichols and the amazing staff of unity read for hosting this important work for the past few weeks we are working with novant uva health the county and the prince william health district to move the vaccination clinic to the kelly leadership center also known as the klc the exact timeline for the use of the klc is still being finalized but is likely to be a host site until this summer in order to accommodate the use of the klc we will phase back staff to the klc on a limited basis with an emphasis on use of the building
041only for the staff that provide in-person services please know that our employees are working extremely hard to serve our students to our fullest ability as we work to implement the school board plan for return to in-person learning with all the appropriate mitigations to make it as safe as possible as a reminder if staff see something of concern when returning to their building we encourage them to speak with their administrator if they don't feel that they can do that you can email health and safety at pwcs.edu or call the anonymous tip line at any time at 703 791 we take all concerns seriously and will follow up to ensure the safety of all i would now like to turn things over to mrs hart thank you dr waltz i'm going to go ahead and do a
042brief introduction if i if i made please before we get to uh to miss hart um introducing everyone so uh so thank you so thank you dr waltz good evening madam chair and school board tonight we will be hearing from three outstanding principals to share out on their experiences with their efforts to support our most recent phase of in-person learning we will start off by hearing from dr richard nichols principal of unity read high school followed by giovanni mitchell principal of hampton middle school and finally dr dari grover principal of featherstone elementary so right now we're going to turn it over to dr richard nichols thank you good evening dr latif dr waltz in school board and all the members president this evening i would like to thank you for the opportunity this evening to
043speak about our update on the pandemic and our return to in-person learning as of last thursday and i would like to specifically thank denise huebner and her staff for all the support that she provided during the vaccination clinics at unity read it was a pleasure to host that event and we're grateful that for all the flexibility that she provided so it was a pleasure to week to work with them um and i'm looking forward to um glad that we were able to support the effort so unity read is in its first year and i say that due to the name change so we're excited at unity read but we're also during this pandemic we've had a challenging journey to get to this point i'd like to commend all of the work of my staff and
044community uh for all of their hard work throughout this school year to support our students in a virtual in-person and now a hybrid learning environment so we started this school year this journey with 30 in-person learners as well as providing in-person ongoing support for testing so we have had students coming into the building throughout the school year for testing as well as starting in december with athletics we welcome back 9th graders last thursday february 26 and 27th in house a and b um approximately 90 students attended each day so we have 2 600 students at unity read for our incoming 9th grade class we had 180 students who were freshmen who chose to do in-person learning um actually we had more we had 100 300 180 of them attended either on thursday or friday that
045evening we had a virtual ptso meeting attended well by families uh offered in english and spanish uh and we provided support to those students and families with an update on how things were going and what to expect and what we witnessed the first day very well attended as well as a lot of great information great questions from our families and that has been ongoing throughout the pandemic also reached out to student leaders with focus groups throughout the pandemic ben kim our student representative on the school board i met with and provided him updates uh as to what to expect when students did return to in-person learning so on tuesday uh yesterday we welcome back all grades 9 through 12. so this week we had approximately 250 students per day so in house a and b
046so we had 500 learners on two days of 2660 students so about uh 18 of our learners uh chose to participate in in-person learning um presently we have 780 students who have opted for in-person student selection and we have eight 1880 who have opted for virtual and we do recognize that fourth quarter is open until march 12th for students to switch to in person but right now we have um approximately 70 of our students are virtual learners and 30 are in-person learners um so we've been working diligently throughout the school year since uh really a year ago uh designing mitigation and ppe strategies to maintain social distancing um now that we're back with more students the procedures we've had in place are seem deemed effective seem to be effective for social distancing uh in all
047of our classrooms have more than six feet uh social distancing mask as well as the hand sanitizers throughout the building so students at unity read have been provided breakfast and lunch daily at no charge we have individual desks in the cafeteria and right now we're able to maintain that approximately 50 students per cafeteria we have two one on the first and one on the second floor so we have four lunch shifts so we are able to maintain that 50 student cap and we have had successful feeding of students both in the morning and during lunch all of our teachers returned and are providing concurrent instruction um they have experienced a small number of in-person students approximately three to four per classroom uh but our technology uh t-spec as well as our touch instructional technology coach
048in the administration uh worked fairly diligently to make sure that we had the six feet uh uh social distance in the classrooms set up the cameras the headset so we appreciate all the support from uh technology office to get those uh technology learning devices in place and we are in the process of you know really trying out the concurrent learning model uh which we know is likely um you know here to stay and well it's it's a good it's a good way to get into it uh for this year so that when we transition to next year uh teachers will be comfortable with the model um so as far as staffing when we returned we were able to our tier one teachers many of them returned due to the vaccine last week because they had
049had both of the vaccinations next week on march 9th many will return as well but due to the vaccination of staff and teacher absences our staffing has been relatively smooth we have not really had any uh need to have any we've had substitutes uh provide instruction in the library for those teachers that are not in the building and provide instruction while they are still continuing uh to either work from home or asynchronous instruction uh due to getting the vaccine uh in the net in the last couple of weeks um i mentioned technology um there's been a lot of work by rt spec i want to thank him uh the one-to-one initiative i want to say one thing that has been very noticeable is that 95 of students i think we had 13 students today did
050not bring their device out of 250 students so students are bringing their devices to school i can't say they're always fully charged but we do have power strips and things to charge them but one of the things we worried about at unity read and i think in high school was will kids bring their device to school and they are bringing them to school so that has been very uh uh helpful um because i know down the road that's something that we're looking to we every student has been afforded the opportunity to get a device and if they do not get have a device then we have been able to provide them one we have 13 students as i said today and they all get a device to utilize during the school day so if you
051add staff and students we have approximately 500 students and staff in the building on any of the day from tuesday to friday in a normal school year that number would be closer to 3 000 people so it's you're looking at about uh 20 percent of our of our normal capacity as far as visitors and parents and students etc which assists with the mitigation of ppe strategies so we've had a gradual transition to support in-person learning safely and handle the logistics of arrival breakfast lunch restaurants student transitions and dismissal so we continue to provide extracurricular athletics uh opportunities testing which is a big component of that additional remediation support for in-person and virtual students monday to friday we have started a credit recovery program for students seniors specifically and tutoring to support struggling learners both in
052person and virtually and i know we had many students that arrived on monday who are seniors that needed credits for graduation uh so at unity read we're looking forward to a positive end of the 2020-21 school year supporting our students in a hybrid format and i would just like to thank uh unity reid would like to thank the school board uh and the superintendent of staff for their support with our name change when you are able to visit we have done a lot of rebranding is still ongoing but our facility looks great fantastic and we're very excited about the upgrades they're still in progress i want to thank you for the opportunity this evening and i appreciate all the support during the pandemic um and we are very excited that we have kids back in
053the building and we're moving forward thank you good evening chairman latif school board members and dr waltz my name is jeremy mitchell principal of george hampton middle school first i would like to thank mr bixby who has been with all middle school excuse me who has been meeting with all middle school principals each week throughout the pandemic as we share and knowing best practices within the middle school level none of us have ever done this before and it is great to be able to collaborate with our peers to find the best possible solutions for our students families and staff this has not been easy for any of us but it is good to be able to work through it together last week we opened our doors for our incoming sixth grade students our custodians food
054service employees administrative support staff instructional technology coach and technology specialist did an amazing job to prepare and welcome returning students and staff on thursday february 25th our first group of sixth grade students arrived we were expecting 70 students 40 reported to in-person learning on friday february 26 we were expecting 68 students and 38 students were in attendance this in-person attendance was a surprise for my administrative team and i because we had done lots of planning and preparation to prepare for return to learn in the school building we had several town hall meetings and we have several town hall meetings for our parents and school community we sent numerous messages to our parents via school messenger as well as newspaper newsletters to our families since the return to the building on february 25th we noticed a
055daily trend where parents were changing their decision from in-person to virtual learning i'm proud to say that this week we successfully immersed our seventh and eighth grade students to in-person learning currently we have 220 students attending in-person learning on tuesdays and thursdays and 185 students attending on wednesdays and fridays since september 8th we've had 24 of our most vulnerable learners attending in-person learning four days a week the remainder 673 students are attending school virtually our students who are in the building are happy to be there school is nothing like they're remembered but it is good to see their smiling faces under their mask even if we can only see their eyes our teachers were excited about seeing the students but there were anxious moments because they did not know what to expect i am proud
056to share with you that our students did an amazing job following the key mitigation strategies recommended by the cdc and adopted by pwcs students consistently and correctly wore masks maintained six feet physical distancing and they use hand sanitizers and wash their hands frequently in addition our custodians continue to clean and disinfect throughout the day using the recommended guidelines administrators worked with teachers to ensure we kept good record of where students were sitting we faced some staffing challenges due to the second vaccine 12 substitute teachers were needed each day with the support of human resources office of professional learning and the middle school office we were able to fill the gaps as of today we are facing eight unfilled substitute positions for friday march 5th we are currently working on a plan to provide ample coverage
057for the unfilled substitute positions it's february 17th we've had two teachers retire indicating that due to the return to building time and their health concerns they found this option to be necessary also we have been notified that two teachers submitted their request for fmla indicating the same reason this continues to be a major challenge for the administrative team at hampton middle school we continue to collaborate with the office of human resources and mr bixby for solutions to this ongoing problem as i conclude i would like to take this opportunity to thank the central office staff who came to hampton middle school to support our return to in-person instruction some were able to serve as substitute teachers as well as assist in other areas of supervision i want to thank members of the school board especially
058chairman latif also associate superintendent for special education and student services denise hebner and all other personnels who were instrumental in providing our school staff access to the program 19 vaccine the process was fluid and i believe this will make a major difference as we approach the fourth quarter of the school year thank you good evening chairman dr waltz members of the school board my name is daria gruver proud principal of featherstone elementary school a title one school in the woodbridge district we have welcomed back 189 pre-k through 5th grade students out of 500 since the beginning of the school year 38 of our students have returned to in-person learning while 62 percent continue to learn in the virtual setting we must remember that data comes in two forms quantitative the numbers and qualitative the stories
059behind the numbers in our area code the tutu excuse me in our area the 22191 zip code covid 19 has impacted many residents as the numbers show some of the highest transmission rates in prince william county since the beginning of the pandemic this could be the story behind why so many of our students remain virtual thanks to dr walt's phased-in return to learning we have navigated how to welcome more students to in-person learning this required planning for schedules classroom teacher changes coverage for bus duty car riders arrival dismissal lunch duty walkers and transitions in the hallways we've been very successful each time we've had students return which translated into nine first days of school staff who returned in person have learned how to successfully implement mitigation strategies proper mask wearing hand washing use of hand
060sanitizers and social distancing thanks to prince william county schools all ppe is plentiful and for that we are thankful classrooms look very different now with the new guidelines but our students and staff are happy to be back in school even for two days per week mrs hart has walked the halls with me and observed strong instruction in student learning this last transition for fourth and fifth grade return was a bit more challenging due to the number of staff who received their second dose of the vaccine but we meet we made it work by re allocating staff to support our in-person students i do understand that central office worked with schools to provide support when teachers were absent however we did not need to request that support throughout the school year teachers meet on mondays and
061collaborative learning teams to plan instruction by using data from formative and summative assessments they use the data quantitative to determine how students are performing our on-grade level reading percentage increased from fall to mid-year by 12 from 54 to 66 currently our average pass rate on math unit assessments is 70 these numbers tell a story good tier one instruction is always the first step if students struggle with tier one we provide the following tier two and tier three strategies for students who are not achieving at the highest levels small groups with the classroom teacher small groups with pals tutors with the esau teachers with special education teachers and or reading teachers last week we started our after-school tutoring program for support in reading and math where parents got to choose either in-person or virtual teachers have
062prepared hands-on materials for students including pals packets take-home books art supplies library books packets of work that parents pick up in front of the school each week and some teachers are meeting with students before and after school to provide additional support recently we have been provided funding to hire temporary teacher assistants to support our students which is greatly appreciated we are providing enrichment opportunities as well we're doing a third grade pink space theory program and a fifth grade science in a bag program each one of my teachers has stories qualitative on how they've met the needs of our very diverse student body during these challenging times thanks to prince william county schools our students have the technology they need to access online instruction we have given out 381 laptops and 21 hotspots to our families
063and we have more available should anyone need them given that the featherstone population is primarily hispanic we know that we must communicate clearly with parents to help them understand what they need to do to help us help their students this includes having tech support daily our itc and t-spec meet parents every day at the school to troubleshoot any issues that arise as we've navigated bringing more students back to in-person learning our bilingual staff have been instrumental in answering the host of questions that our parents have we use class dojo as another means of communication this has been a key to our successful partnership just last week we hosted a lexi a parent night where 85 families learned how to work with their children on this excellent literacy program provided by pwcs representatives from lexia were
064very impressed with our level of bilingual collaboration with our community additionally we communicate through a monthly s'mores newsletter for the community to keep families up to date i'm very proud that the featherstone school community has risen to the challenges of this unique year and parents have become more active in their children's education by collaborating with the teachers although the challenges are great the entire staff at featherstone has worked extremely hard to provide a world-class education for our students during the 21 school year thank you so much for your time thank you very much team for sharing your journey with us tonight really appreciate that we're going to now turn it over to miss jarcelyn hart associate superintendent for western schools western elementary schools for an interactive panel discussion with these outstanding school leaders thank you
065mr provencio good evening chairman latif to the school board and to dr waltz as your moderator i am excited about the opportunity to share from this representation of world-class principles they are honored to share their experiences of leading through the challenges and the rewards of the covet 19 pandemic these three principles represent the realities and the answers in the room they are our boots on the ground principles it is my understanding that you our school board has questions and maybe comments with this ever-ready willing and capable principal group dr routine absolutely i will follow your lead well ms hart thank you so much um that was a very comprehensive uh review of the first few weeks and in the year from your fantastic principles we might have a couple short questions here well if the
066board members have just please ask one question um and then we'll go through a cycle or two of that and then i think we can move on to the rest of the pandemic report i think i'll start with miss jackson i um that was a wonderful comprehensive as uh dr latif said presentation that actually answered a lot of my questions so um i think my question for right now is about the sol test a lot of students are anxious about it so if we could just speak to the sol tests and the mandates from the federal government to kind of take this opportunity to explain the assessments and how they're going to be done in a high school level thank you dr nichols please uh so miss jackson and the board uh so sols are
067certainly a challenge during this pandemic and hybrid learning we have been testing students in person since december so we've been bringing students in to a test one of the challenges that we do have is that the virtual students which is about 70 percent of our student population is getting them into the building but they you know they are coming in students do have the opportunity to test opt out but it is a graduation requirement as well so there is that uh you know caveat that you know you have to you know you can't opt out but you have to understand that it is something that you do need if you do wish to graduate so we're working with the other principals uh you know mr mulgrew we've had a number of meetings um uh to
068discuss all of the various issues and i want to thank his leadership and all the high school principals for their support uh during this pandemic but the challenge is real uh especially when we get to full testing right now we're dealing with predominantly students who needed like a makeup test or someone who did not pass last year as well as seniors but getting students into the building and transportation and other things are things that we're working on to try to address the testing window will be in may but like i said there is the the ability for students who are virtual to choose not to test for the sol but it is still a graduation requirement and i don't know if um you know additional information will be provided by the state for that okay
069thank you miss williams thank you mr chairman um i think that this panel presentation was as stated before very informative and comprehensive i really extremely appreciate hearing from someone in my district this time and what a great representative dr gruver i appreciate you coming to speak on behalf i think we don't acknowledge title 1 schools at all levels as much as we should they have been a shining star during the pandemic and extremely well prepared and well suited to pivot due to their ongoing close nature relationships with the community and parents to simply because of the nature of the student body that they serve my question at this time is at the high school level and i have a few other questions but we'll just do one at a time are high schools referring anyone
070from their base schools to independence non-traditional to assist with credit recovery is that something that is actively being done and i'm dr nichols i don't expect you to know for every single high school principal i know you're a representative but i know that um teachers right now are overburdened with concurrent teaching we do have a loss of instructional time and i was wondering if we were utilizing independence to sort of assist those students with credit recovery let's hear from dr nichols and then he'll we'll follow with um mr mulgrew uh so we have had uh not obviously but we have had less students that we've referred to um independence um you know being a neighbor of new directions independence for many years i can highlight that is it's been a great relationship and they do
071an outstanding job i mean it's certainly something that we will look to um in the beginning of the year we had probably more students that opted to transfer but it is an ongoing process one of the challenges obviously is getting students in a virtual environment to transfer to a different building so it's something we'll certainly explore and one of the things that i think will be very supportive and helpful is during the summer when we have seniors that do not graduate we traditionally have them finish up through their programs through credit recovery and we will certainly utilize mr icorn and independence through that process but it's it's definitely less but it's uh still something that we do provide as an option to families please mr mugler miss williams we also allow high schools to run
072at mentum programs in their own buildings so if you have students that need almost every high school has the ability where they all have the ability to run the momentum right there to pick up the credits at their local high school either after the hours or something along those lines and they can pick them up inside their buildings as well but are we encouraging them because you know the teachers are doing double duty so i'm sorry if my question wasn't phrased sort of um in that direction we are encouraging teachers to to who are willing to take on this extra responsibility and um we're trying to provide them incentives to be able to do that and uh yeah we've had throughout the years we've had a tremendous amount of schools high schools regular high schools
073using it but we always do realize that bob or independence is waiting for us right there when we need them mrs goss would you like to add to this particular question and answer so mrs harts school board members uh i would just echo what was already said that you know ins is is serving students um now and they are always willing to have other students come to them as they're referred or as students and their families select to have a non-traditional program so the ins staff as has already been said are outstanding at individualizing plans for students and providing flexible ways in which students can earn those credits and most importantly learn what they need to learn to be successful after they graduate from high school so ins is is there and we're continuing to
074promote what that offers and and their colleagues in the high schools are referring students it may be a little less because of the the pandemic and the other options that are available but i anticipate that that partnership will continue to be strong and the ins staff is ready to support students and families and in our schools in any way possible thank you wonderful miss wall thank you mr chairman um my question is um i don't remember who who said this but they said that um extracurricular activities or athletics have already begun and i know that's happening across the district but my question is can you tell me what other kinds of activities are beginning to be offered in person that are extracurricular because obviously sports has moved forward but can you give me some insight
075into maybe robotics or um like chamber orchestras or um you know other key club any anything else that we have going on and what are the plans for um some of those other extracurriculars you know that would arguably arguably be easier to mitigate than than sports dr gruber please thank you for for us right now we're focused more on the academic piece that's why we started our after school tutoring program last week our students do have their encore classes so they are receiving opportunities in music art library and physical education at this point in the year we have not started to offer the additional opportunities for our students simply because we've been navigating how to get the kids back in the building for for instruction that that definitely can be a next step though mrs
076mitchell please you wanna unmute thank you i'm sorry about that okay thank you mrs hart and mrs wall at hampton middle school we currently have several clubs and academic uh programs in place as of right now they are all virtual we have students who participate in drama latin dance literary magazine uh the yearbook club books are fun as well as the after-school remediation in mathematics and language arts since september teachers have dedicated their time to having extracurricular activities for students as we know that during this time things are difficult so we try to make each day fun for each and every one of them as far as in school programs we're in the process of getting that uh together as of today all of our students who are now in person have attended um either
077one or two days so we haven't had a chance to get those groups to participate in the in-person clubs and activities okay thank you mr wilk oh thank you did you want to have did anyone from high school want to answer that sorry uh so just share that you know we had a um you know the athletic uh piece uh our salc our student activities leadership council has been very active uh with a various orientation they do come in and provide support for our one of us videos as well as we've had a virtual law club as well as um scholastic bowl so some of the clubs are able to maintain uh their status virtually the salc also did a very good job with our black history month with the virtual presentation but as we
078you know transition and i think some of the other levels indicated you know as you get more students into the building having some more additional opportunities for extracurricular activities beyond sports our band is certainly starting to get get ready for our first football game on march 13th and i went to the patriot unity raid football game and the patriot band was able to be in the stands and that we're able to have spectators and cheerleaders in the dance team so i know that we're gearing up to get back into more offerings for students beyond athletics okay thank you sorry about that mr wilk thank you mr chairman i appreciate the three of you being here tonight uh and for your time um question uh do any of the three of you now i noticed online
079i've been to two year buildings and i apologize dr gruber i've never been to featherstone so i did a quick google of what the building looks like so they're the three of your buildings are relatively older buildings um and so my question is do any of you have concerns with with your building's hvac systems and if you have concerned staff about this have you helped to swage those concerns so this answer may be a short um yes or no answer and let's go ahead and start with dr gruver again the elementary level i thank you for the question mr wilk um honestly we do not have any concerns with our hvac system anytime that if there's a day that it's cold in a classroom we just put in a work order and someone comes out
080immediately so that is not a concern for us mrs mitchell we do not have a concern with our hvac system either throughout the fall facilities came through our building and uh checked on this checked on the system each day and made any necessary repairs so we're in a good place with the hvac system and last dr nichols any concerns were addressed through the interactive process um and i would i would um not being an hvac expert i would say you know that it's one thing that we did work with facilities to try to provide answers to any individual staff that had concerns about our hvac in our filtration system thank you wonderful miss jesse good evening as i listen to the high schools and middle and elementary i'm not sure it's a problem at elementary
081but i don't see it as a problem first of all i want to thank you for being here and sharing with us tonight the class sizes i think i heard at stonewall you had a smaller return for in person and at the middle i think i heard mrs mitchell say the same thing i'm not sure is true at elementary i've talked to some principals and many of them are kind of surprised at the small turnout and have class sizes in some instances of one to a class so could you address that each one of you what do you if that is an issue an issue what do you account what do you what do you see as the reason for the smaller return of students because it's a small number of students in in many
082instances dr nichols please um so just to give you uh you know a rough idea our our numbers have kind of flipped from last year uh we had roughly [Music] i can't remember exactly but essentially we had about 40 percent of our students that were electing to come in person and now it's gone down to about you know 30 although only 20 are showing up um i think there's a number of factors the lateness of the year um some of the successes of virtual learning have been certainly attributed to the fact that students feel that you know they're getting their needs met in a virtual environment um as you transition throughout the school year um the lateness of the year i think there are certain students that are reluctant to return during the pandemic the
083unknown uh of what school will be like not having the opportunity to um it's it's it's not normal it's it's certainly something that we've never experienced um you know you go to the cafeteria and you have assigned seating at a high school level which is not something that they've been accustomed to so that's that's certainly an issue um you know i think the students that one thing i've heard the students that are returning is they like the structure and there's no distractions from home um so i think there's just a variety of factors i don't think you can pinpoint any one reason why kids are electing to stay virtual but i do think that it's a positive thing that we're back in the buildings that we're getting teachers back in the buildings students back in
084the buildings and we're giving kids and teachers an opportunity to navigate this new new learning environment for the end of the year and moving forward it will be something that we can build upon lower than numbers than expected but i think you know families have their various reasons uh for why not to come back to in-person learning so it's hard to pinpoint there's no one answer is mitchell okay as you are aware hampton is a majority minority school and our zip code has been hit or one of the zip codes that has been hit the hardest with covid19 uh cases in prince william county our african-american and latinos have been hit the hardest also with covet as a result our parents are extra careful about sending their students to school we've had several incidents where
085family members of students have um suffered from covet and in some cases there they experienced that so our community they're really very careful about sending students to school because of those concerns well thank you dr brunner what miss mitchell said it's it's a very similar situation at featherstone um our in-person classes right now go anywhere from we have a couple classes where it's two students in person up to the most we have in the classroom right now is nine and um it's going to be a challenge if we have a lot more because the the rooms are small in these older schools those the pods have those high-shaped classrooms and with the upper grade students who are bigger kids that could be a challenge depending on how many more students come in but as of
086right now everything is is fine but i think that's why the parents are keeping their children at home could i get a class size from middle and high school on average for the high school it's three to four for middle school the average class size is four to five students it's just a follow-up to that are are we looking at ways to increase the in-school learning have you guys thought of some ways to do that i mean the survey is open not survey but the option for parents to contact us we've been accommodating students and parents for fourth quarter obviously it's an individual family choice but we certainly have are not we're receptive to students who wish to return in person i really think the other thing i would say is just the you know
087that the time change was certainly an impact as far as starting school at seventh day at 7 30 for high school um and then just the you know as students and get comfortable with uh you know three quarters of the year almost being over it's i think next year obviously we'll be in a very different position but we're almost to the fourth quarter and students have made their decision and parents and it's not much different from what was in january we had about a thousand students that selected uh in person and now we're about 800 so you know i i don't i don't know how to get more kids to come back into the building at this point in time of the year at hampton we are reaching out to parents whose students are struggling
088academically in the virtual setting our counselors are making phone calls to parents requesting that those kids be brought back into the building it has worked for some parents but not all but we've not gone through every single parent yet we're still in the process so we're we're hoping to increase those numbers thank you thank you miss ralston do you have any questions miss ralston jason can i see the um screen mister also from youtube yourself okay is that there is that okay very good well let me let me just say simply and keep moving fast hopefully um i think we've i think you've done a real humans kind of job and it wasn't an everyday kind of thing that you came up with you know you walked up one more woke up one morning and
089all of all of these things were facing you so thank you very much and so that's all great um i guess at this point um anyone have any questions from oh yeah i miss sargopod i'm sorry yeah just one thank you dr latif um so i i know that the the the we have had more technology issues going on and some of you have mentioned that your t specs and your itc's have been working constantly do we need more of those positions across the division to help support what's going on do you is is it work that has been constantly increasing over time or has it just sort of been steady or what have you seen is dr gruver that is a a great question um as i said in my comments um our community
090really needs a lot of support with technology and um so between our itc and our t spec um they have to be there every day to provide that support now the t-spec position is split between two schools so that person is not there every day and someone asked earlier about sol testing and as testing comes around um that is going to become a challenge because those folks are setting up computers for testing and getting rooms ready for that and getting the devices ready so um if that were available we could certainly use it uh to have the t spec full-time as well as have we do have the itc full-time but with the addition of the technology in the classrooms um the cameras and the laptops and the teachers are using their smart boards it
091it's a lot and the rt specs and itcs have been working non-stop so moving forward we're going to keep technology so this sounds like something that we need to be thinking about in terms of it sounds like the elementary schools need their own dedicated people but i'm also interested in middle and high school is one enough in your building now that we have virtual learning i would have to say that one is not enough i have a full-time t spec and also a full-time instructional technology coach both are spread thin throughout the building they are running around helping teachers who may have technology issues also working with students repairing devices checking devices and so forth they are definitely spread thin and if we are continuing with virtual learning we will definitely need additional staff dr
092latif um yeah let me i was i think some of them had their hands up over here um hold on one sec miss jesse um well did he want to mr nichols did dr nichols did you need answer on that um there are certainly uh challenges um we've had one-to-one in various phases um at stonewall now unity read um you know i i i think it's a broader discussion uh that needs to be you know be considered so i don't really want to weigh in to my individual situation but they do work very hard and obviously the pandemic has stretched everyone so i'll just leave it at that mr um jackson um i just want to thank everybody for coming tonight i don't actually have any additional questions but i hope there was a very
093helpful presentation and addressed a lot of my concerns thank you thank you miss jackson miss williams thank you mr chairman um and uh just again thank you to the principals who are on this panel discussion i'd like to thank dr gruber and mrs mitchell for pointing out the needs of you know students who reside in covid hot zones and how different it is especially with african-american community and latino community i know in my community it is a it's a privilege if you see a child in a store with their parents shopping at times because the children aren't out it's a privilege to um you know see them out at a playground in the community because they're not out you may see them playing in their own yard in their own backyard but they're not out
094in public they're not going to the stores they're not going shopping with their parents they're not out a lot of people in my communities are single household earners it's not worth the risk to their family no matter what the school division or anybody else does it's just not worth the risk i leave my house as a sole owner my child does not leave unless necessary and not because i'm forcing him but he also understands the risk involved and chooses not to go out as well so i think that that when we talk about bias and privilege i think that's something to recognize for some of our covet hot zones and we have to be very careful about asking parents to ask have their students come back into a building because that it could be a
095life or death a sustained family sustainability issue for those family members which does trump their students education because that's something they can make up later if somebody dies you can't make that up so my question is how are our teachers handling the stress of in-person learning when it comes to timing and schedules is there really enough time is it additionally stressful for them now that they have to do concurrent learning and be janitors during the day and be hall monitors and bus monitors and run after school programs and do credit recovery and you know fill in for tech people and also have time to enter grades and talk to parents and run additional supports within the school i think this has been an extremely draining year and i was wondering if we have surveyed our
096staff members on how they are adjusting to this in-person learning struggle because i think that they have now have had to undertake even further additional responsibilities throughout their day so ms williams we'll start with the three principles and then we'll follow with um dr quesada because you mentioned the possibility of a survey but just um from day-to-day interactions dr nichols would you like to talk about how your teachers are sustaining and maintaining um so there were a number of concerns about coming back to the building after you know a long hiatus i do think that there are certainly challenges presented by that as far as child care and not only child care but also just you know we're looking at any individual who has worked virtually for an entire year now you're bringing them back
097into the building or you know a work environment and there's certainly pros and cons to both situations the relatively few students that we have in the buildings right now in their classrooms present challenges but also i do see that you know our staff are responding in a professional manner um and i you know i i can't we've only been back for you know my staff came back last week uh ninth grade teachers came back thursday friday all teachers came back tuesday wednesday um certainly you see smiling faces i mean they haven't seen each other in some cases for a year so i think it's too early to make a determination on the long-term impact or short-term impact of their workload but i i do understand i think the biggest thing to recognize that i've tried
098to share with my staff because it's an adjustment and uh you know we're all adjusting to a new normal the new normal right now is that we've uh been vaccinated hopefully as a staff and that we are in the middle of the pandemic that is not over um and that you know we're finishing a school year so i've tried to keep the eyes on the focus of the students that are in the building in the sense that we do have a number of students that have been out of school for a year and we want to make sure that they have the best possible experience but yes it is an adjustment for staff at the middle level mrs mitchell our teachers and staff are overwhelmed and overworked uh doing the virtual teaching and now the
099concurrent learning um it is twice the work or maybe triple the work that they're used to um they're definitely feeling stress and anxiety and in addition to that they're worried about their health and contracting covid so um there's a lot of stress and anxiety and worry over the entire situation especially when you're in a school like mine and you know that within the community there are many cases and where the hot spot it just brings a lot more anxiety onto the staff thank you our staff at featherstone it it's a wide variety of how people feel right now um you have to remember we've had some staff and some teachers who have been there since the very beginning with our most vulnerable learners those folks are tired because they've been doing this you know for
100month after month and our staff has not been taking days off they they work not that they can't but they understand that you know the challenge of trying to find folks who can do all of this that they have learned how to do um i'll also say that as miss mitchell said that they're overwhelmed and overworked um but they keep going the extra mile right now we're in the middle of wida testing and when you have a school where 70 of your students are english learners and those children are being asked to be tested in person my esau team is going above and beyond trying to test on mondays because they don't want to take away from the instruction on tuesday through friday so um it is exhausting and the the esau team is coming
101in on monday and they're testing kids until five and six o'clock at night because the weeda test is in four parts and we don't want the kids to take all four parts in one sitting so the parents are having to bring them back and take them back and we just recently did coget testing and naglieri so um my assistant principal mrs leguit and i try our very best to keep very upbeat with our staff um we tell them every time we see them how much we appreciate them they are heroes and they they just deserve so much recognition for what they're doing their herculean efforts are truly amazing so um as far as their their um health and well-being and mental state um it's it's difficult for sure it really is and i know that
102they're counting down till spring break because they need a rest great thank you miss wall um i echo the thanks of everybody you know that everybody has said for coming here tonight and speaking to us on on this evening i have a question um i've had a lot of conversations with music students and teachers in my district and i know a lot of kids who are involved in the fine and performing arts um and there are some particularly significant challenges that are being faced by music programs in our division um you know imagine a basketball team practicing you know getting ready for their games without actually having a ball to practice with and for a lot of our music students that's kind of the situation that they're facing right now and for our teachers as
103well it's a great challenge and we all know you know the reasons etc but i was wondering if we you could please address the challenges that our music teachers are facing in your various levels and what recommendations you would have moving forward for our music um teachers and programs um as restrictions ease in the coming weeks and months so how can we you know give them their ball basically so that they can you know move forward with their music education in a really meaningful way well while we're getting ready to uh have the principals respond to that miss well i just want to make a clarification you said imagine the basketball team playing without a ball uh you're not suggesting that students don't have instruments are you i know that orchestra can play although i
104don't know how much i know choir students aren't singing and band students aren't playing so they aren't playing their instruments that's what i'm saying okay we we can have the principles respond to that but we may have to look at that centrally because months and months ago i authorized the ordering of ppe and uh at least i know where my daughter's going to school she's an orchestra they're they're playing um the band rehearses outside and have their uh coverings their mitigation coverings uh that are designed for specific uh instruments i'm not sure about the choir but we can follow up centrally but we'll in fairness let the principles respond i thought the nipples is ready uh so our first uh home football game is not until march 13th um as i mentioned in my remarks
105uh i did attend the patriot unity read um game last friday night and we played battlefield this friday night uh the band was performing at uh the the home team uh patriot was performing at the a game they had the away bleachers because that's just the arrangement we worked out and said there were i don't know how many students performing but they were they were performing so our band is pep band is getting ready it's not the traditional marching band although i would like to thank dr waltz and the school board because we did get our new unity read marching band uniforms in so thank you um it was something that's taken about a year to get but uh i don't say a year but it just takes a while to produce marching band uniforms
106um and then you know the orchestra obviously can perform um so the teachers are in class now i don't know what the end of the year will look like as far as any performances in person and then certainly the choir will have some different challenges um but um yeah the band was great at patriot high school and we'll we'll be ready when we get a opportunity to perform at home game okay mr wilke i think miss mitchell wanted to respond chairman i just wanted to say that at hampton all of our students in orchestra guitar and um band have instruments uh those who are home have the instruments at home those who are now in person have the instrument at school um the biggest challenge for music teachers is synchronizing the music as students are
107playing as a result our music teachers have been very creative uh students have been doing lots of uh solo performances or partner performances um but overall our students are engaging in music they are playing the instruments and they're just enjoying um their time in music class can i ask a clarifying question um are your students playing their band instruments in school um or and are they um singing in school i'm assuming with masks on um are they you know if they're playing their band instruments in school are they playing them with the special ppe that we've heard about for band instruments or are kids coming to school i know it's only been a week but are they coming to school to a band class and just sitting their instrument you know maybe just i don't
108know what they're doing actually if you could speak to that okay students have not started playing their instruments yet um this week is day two for our sixth grade students and day one for seventh and eighth grade students so pretty much our music teachers are going over protocols and expectations um they have a slew of expectations that they need to go over and review with students before they can start actually playing instruments we want to hear from elementary principal dr gruver about the music program um at the elementary level um classroom music is um you know it really has to be modified because a majority of elementary music involves singing and dancing and moving and playing instrument classroom instruments and so forth so we have had to make a lot of modifications to that um
109but similarly with the strings um our strings teacher has been teaching his students virtually and since the fifth grade students just came back i'm not quite sure what that is going to look like in the classroom i don't know how many of his students are actually in person and um so we're working that out but we're doing the best that we can given the situation and the protocols we have to follow so i i would like to share my i just asked my uh son who's in fifth grade at bristol in elementary and he's uh has started playing the violin and he said that he did play the violin today for the first time in class in person [Music] you know at the high school level we've had a small number of in-person students so
110i mean they that's the part of the challenge with the instructors having but and i think we're obviously doing our best and you know looking at uh opportunities for students to perform um in person and get the best experience they can so if i could maybe book in this by saying that again we'll look into it centrally you know i've had a lot of interaction at the high schools with high school students and there may be differences in the load in other words the enrollment the numbers of students that are in uh certain choirs and there are pretty strict requirements for vocal music um i i have i don't want to quote them but i know it's at least 10 foot distance and for example i've been in a number of those uh classes and
111uh miss wall if you're referring to battlefield there there's a huge vocal music program out there with with uh enormous numbers of students um and that's that's not the only school uh that has large numbers of vocal students but we'll look into that from a central uh standpoint and again um just so you know there are pretty strict requirements from vdh on the re on the uh distance with vocal music and with band it's is vdh the guiding entity that's giving out guidelines of what can be done in a music class or with a band you know for instance a band class acquire class and orchestra classes at vdh that we're looking to for guidance on that pdh they work in tandem with the virginia health department and also the cdc so what they do
112is whenever new guidance comes out they try to align themselves so everything is on the same page but we'll look into that excellent thank you uh mr wilk okay last question right okay um thank you thank you all again thank you all again you know and i understand i give our division major credit for launching a brand new lms this year and everything on a short run one of the frustrations i hear is with the lti which is the learning tools interoperability system for those of you listening it's basically like a common ecosystem for a bunch of different platforms to interact with one another kind of cohesion and from a high school level it appears a lot of times i'm hearing from teachers that when kids move to different sections in canvas it creates a
113whole new gradebook and some teachers have 30 different grade books as a result of some of the changes that are happening with the schedules and such like that so my question i know that's particularly high school but my question for the three principles would be what are some of the common complaints with kind of some of the systems or the technology that we as a school system could use moving forward because this all this equipment's not going away we didn't just buy all these cameras and all this stuff just to waste a bunch of taxpayer money so moving forward i imagine we're going to leverage a lot of this stuff so just curious what uh what are some of the common concerns you are hearing thank you dr nichols um so i think the various
114platforms communicating with one another um and i you know i don't wanna i i think every time you make a house change whether it's a virtual student going from in person to virtual or from house a to b um there's a number of steps that have to be followed to make sure that the grades are accurate and i don't know who the actor who the person um that's on this uh zoom meeting or webinar this evening could answer that but there's a lot of frustrations from teachers that um you know we're constantly flipping students from house a to house b or in person to virtual or virtual and it's not syncing so it definitely is a challenge is mitchell you want to add to that um i would say one of the frustration with teachers
115is that canvas and the gradebook are not in sync you will find parents when they go into parent view may find grades in canvas and then grades in the gradebook and in some cases parents will look at the grades and say well when i looked in canvas my child's average was an a and now it's a c and they don't see the connection that basically it's two separate gradebook when you think about it and um until the teachers move all the grades over into the gradebook it can create some confusion um with parents and overall as far as using the technological tools teachers have received so much training our students have been using technology since september at the beginning of the year if you ask this question i would say that there was quite a
116struggle with both both teachers and students now they're all familiar with the tools they're all familiar with technology so you hear very little complaint um you see very little frustration when it comes to working with technology and many of my teachers have told me the good that has come out of the pandemic is that they've learned so much with technology and now they will not go back to some of the ways that they taught because of all of these new tools that they see as a benefit to learning that's exciting dr gruver i i agree with um the the comments that miss mitchell made um at the elementary level i just believe that the teachers have um they're trying their hardest to embrace every thing that comes along but it's again it's a lot so
117they've mastered how to use canvas they you know they had mastered the hub last year and grade book now we're trying to ease into using mastery connect which is an assessment system to help us look at our data so it all i'll say is that they just need time to digest everything they still have not had an opportunity to digest all of the technology um but i don't feel that there's anything different than the other levels have said thank you miss jesse excuse me um this has been very interesting because um there there's an elephant in the room in the room the elephant in the room is that our teachers are exhausted and i talked to principals today and i heard the following and maybe some of you have heard this and i don't know
118if you'll be willing to share but one of the things that i heard today was that in some instances school open brand new kids were coming in and they had 25 subs that these new kids walked into a classroom and did not have a teacher there because they needed subs because many of the teachers were out i think i want to you know i think we've done a tremendous job with the vaccine but the elephant to me is that i've been a principal and i can't imagine what it must be like to have to call for 25 subs and cover classes because you have to cover classes i'm told on a positive note that and maybe you guys can address this that they don't have um mitigation problems because there's so few kids that they
119don't have to mitigate you know they don't have the these uh situations uh principles i want to compliment you i was a principal and i can't imagine what it must be like but the thing i know about principles and i know about teachers is that you'll come in this room and say we'll do anything you want and i heard that tonight that teachers are willing to do anything we want i don't know how we go back to fix that because i think sometimes we're patting ourselves on the back as a school division because we're the first and i have to ask at what cost i don't know how we go back to fix that so i'm asking the associate superintendents and the superintendents to i don't know if you need to have a teacher town
120hall or something but there are teachers and the other thing i heard from a principal and maybe you guys can address is that teachers felt that they worked before they didn't have a summer they they've worked before summer they've worked before school start they they they asked for a couple of weeks and we didn't give that to them and now they're looking at all these after school programs and they're looking at are we going to have another summary because we're going to be working them through the summer i guess maybe i'm just venting for people who are not venting or who are venting to me and to other people but i i just think that this whole empathy piece is something that we really need to look at and i think we're going to have
121to go back and fix it because i just think that people and i've seen i mean all of us as principals have overworked people and i know when my people are overworked and i need to pull back but as a division i think we've done a wonderful job of bringing kids in and we're patting ourselves on the back uh for bringing all these people in but i just think that our teachers and administrators if you're like me you're not going to complain too much but substitutes having to call up 25 subs and watching all this happen in your schools i want to thank you for sharing some of the challenges tonight and i guess i'm just talking and maybe some principals want to comment on it i uh appreciate the fact that those kids in
122those uh high coveted areas were discussed tonight why are they not coming back and how do we get them in so if anyone wants to comment i just i i congratulate all of you because i think honestly we put a lot on you so thank you very much and if you want to comment on this substitute situation and trying to get the vaccines and these teachers who were ill and were out of school could somebody just comment on that for me and again i just thank you i just think we've overworked you miss jesse thank you for acknowledging the the very um challenging work that our principals and teachers have have accepted and have worked worked really hard to to do for the good of our school division i wouldn't dare challenge that it's been
123extremely um laborious yet rewarding work but the folks who are here tonight they they look in the face and eyes of the teachers every day and they have conversations with the teachers and um we recognized that the the days following the covet 19 vaccinations were challenging days and let's talk about how we met that challenge and dr griff are you ready this is jesse thank you for acknowledging how difficult this work is it it truly is but i want to point out something that i haven't heard said tonight i do believe that even though the teachers are exhausted um and they're working harder than they ever have before i think it's brought us all closer together because we have to work together to make things happen and i'm very happy that this year um i
124have less teachers who have indicated that they're leaving at the end of the year um they want to stay so the the teamwork aspect that has come out of this exhaustion and how we're holding one another up there's something to be said for that as well um but uh as far as the substitute situation we were able because we're not a huge school like a middle school or a high school we were able to some of the esau teachers stepped in and covered and we were able if they were small enough numbers we could put kids together um in in bigger spaces and so forth so even though that was a challenge in my mind i kept thinking this is temporary because we've got to get these folks vaccinated this is a one-day two-day three-day
125situation and then we're going to move on and we're going to have more people who are fully vaccinated so i just kept that message in mind and we made it work and i think we're through the roughest part of that situation thank you okay great um i think we have miss zargaport did you have a question okay miss williams has one final question thank you mr chairman i know you love third round so much um so i just again wanna express to all of you how much i appreciate you being here and for um giving us your perspective this evening i know it you have other work to do i just wanted to ask a question and i'm sorry because i know it can be uncomfortable to be put on the spot but there are
126so many things that board members and just the members of the public we don't think about because we're not sitting in your seats and i wanted to provide you all the opportunity to discuss the known unknowns to us you know what are some of the things that we don't talk about or we should talk about um that we wouldn't it wouldn't occur right for a board member or someone who doesn't sit in your seat as we um continue on this path of having students return into the building where maybe from the perspective of where you are now or in preparation from the fall that would be very helpful to us who make these decisions and members of the public things that they should be considering when they come to petition us board members to make
127decisions um we often don't get the opportunity to hear directly from you and i think that that's a critical question to ask and i know it can be a little nerve-wracking because it does put you on the spot so i appreciate that and i just really again appreciate you being here oh and i'm sorry dr casada you could just follow up with me with the teacher survey because somehow we we skipped you but i remember okay that's uh um that's an awesome amazing question and um i feel like transparency is essential and the main reason we have principles here is because we want reality and we want to hear from boots on the ground and so what is it that we may not be aware of that you think the public and the school board
128need to hear that's happening or not happening through this pandemic let's start with mrs mitchell thank you i believe um one of the things that the school board and our supreme staff superintendent and staff need to be aware of it it comes from what mrs jesse mentioned earlier about students walking into the building expecting to see their teachers but instead they have a substitute in the classroom you can see the disappointment on the students face because they were really excited about meeting that specific teacher in person so that's a difficult um situation for a student especially when you have a student who may be experiencing social emotional issues issues at home and school is always their safe place and having a relationship with teachers is also a safe haven for them so um for students
129a sub is a stranger you see them once in a while here and there but a teacher is there and for many for life they build that relationship they have that communication they can open up and talk about just about anything so that's definitely a key piece as mrs jesse mentioned um working in prince william county and you all are aware our teachers are very vocal so we're all aware of some of their concerns struggles and so forth so for the most part i think overall teachers have shared with all of us um their feelings and how this experience is going for for them and what they expect us to change in the future and and basically all i can say is to listen to the voices of the teachers they're in the schools they're
130doing the job um they know what's going on and they can tell us about their experiences and the experience of the students in the building um i think one of the biggest challenges that we've had is you know teachers have been very understanding and you know understanding the situations of individual students this year as we move forward next year to whatever you know five days a week or hybrid learning etc what is going to be the expectation for students in terms of in-person student attendance because one of the challenges and frustrations of teachers you know is just like do i mark a kid present if they're you know on zoom or do i mark the maps and if they said they were in person so i think just creating clear guidelines for what we expect
131of students obviously we've all been flexible i've asked my teachers to be flexible and i think they have been you know but as we go to next year uh i think we need to look at where are the expectations uh not only for students but for teachers um in this hybrid learning environment and you know providing the additional training support for concurrent learning because we have relatively small number of students right now we are getting some practice with concurrent instruction um but i think that you know as we go into next year we don't know what it will look like but i just think we need to be clear with all stakeholders of our expectations for what instruction will look like and try to manage that in a flexible and consistent manner across the school
132division and i you know we as a cohesive high school group that worked very diligently um to get guidelines and i think mr mulgrew and all of our staff um my colleagues um but i think that's something that needs to be answered and last dr gruber i think that the biggest challenge from where i sit um throughout the year has just been the uncertainty and the changes um that's part of the world we're living in right now and we know that but that has been very difficult on the teachers um because they've just had to change so much you know the parents being given the option each quarter to decide if they wanted to be in person or virtual at the elementary level there were times that that meant um children had to change their
133classroom teacher depending if the teacher was tier one and the parent wanted in person and we couldn't provide that with that teacher so that has been the most challenging part i feel like we do things and then we do them over and we do them over again and over again so um but we've become good at it and we do it with the best attitude that we can well outstanding i think that's a great note to finish on so thank you so much we truly appreciate that that discussion this evening um you know i didn't ask any questions just a comment on how incredible a job you all have done what you guys as principals our teachers our staff have done i have heard nothing but incredibly positive comments from our students our families who've
134gone in this week and how excited they've been seen a lot of first day pictures today was the last first day and so it was um fantastic so thank you all for for making the adjustments and adapting to constant change it's an incredible incredible challenge as you all laid out very nicely for us tonight thank you all very much i think we can move on to the pandemic update um thank you thank you chairman latif uh again i'd like to echo my thanks to dr groover miss mitchell dr nichols i know you have an early morning tomorrow great job so far you did an amazing job responding to the board's questions and i deeply appreciate what you and everyone who works with you in your schools is doing uh to welcome our students back also
135would like to thank our facilitator ms joselyn hart and mr provencio who did the coordination and prep work for tonight so thank you and with that i will now turn it over to miss hebner good evening chairman latif madam vice chair members of the school board dr walt tonight's been mentioned that we are closing in on almost a year since our initial shutdown during the past year there's been a great amount of uncertainty numerous challenges a little bit of stress and some constant changes at times the roadblock seemed insurmountable but our teams at the division and school level have remained focused on the possibilities and worked at solving the problems rather than admiring them we're thrilled to have more students at every level back in our buildings and we're grateful for our school teams and
136their work to prepare for additional learners our school leaders have never worked harder they have impressed us at every single turn i'd like to give them a little virtual high five throughout this time we have all kept our students education and our school family safety and well-being at the forefront of our decision making during our presentation tonight a team for mismanagement will showcase a few of the ways that we are working to implement mitigation strategies in our schools to allow for safe return of our family next slide please additionally we'll look at community transmission as well as a review of the school impact data we'll look at socially responsible behavior and provide an update on vaccines at this time i'll turn the presentation over to mr crowe director of risk management and security services for
137an update on our ppe and school support teams next slide please thank you and good evening i'll be reporting on the ppe monitoring team's efforts since last meeting schools continue to do an excellent job at implementing the cdc's five mitigation strategies we've been moderating school since december but i've cleaned up the slide a little bit and have included the last two reviews risk management has done in early and mid-february and that's noted by the february and the february 2 number beside it for the second the second review all strategies so far have ranked in our lowest risk category you'll notice that the two most important strategies as identified by the cdc which are the correct and consistent use of mass and the physical distancing have been highlighted although all five of the mitigation strategies are
138important next slide please for our scoring rubric we have taken into account the two more important strategies masks and physical distancing and weighted them more heavily against the other areas those two strategies as you can see at the bottom have been noted with a a scoring of eight and with the other three strategies being scored uh through four for the high for the lowest risk excuse me scoring for the second review in february puts us in the lowest risk category well once again next slide as promised we've included a few slides for mitigation efforts in our schools these slides come from battlefield high school so as we welcome our uh you know staff extra staff and middle and high school students back i also want to welcome back our sros i know they are excited
139to get back in the schools and work with our students and staff there so a few slides from battlefield next slide pretty basic slides you'll see at the schools they've incorporated their school colors and their logos into some of their signs which is nice to see next slide and just some hallway directional signs that you'll see next slide and some of the other ones with their school logos that they put down for one-way stairs and again directional signs in the hallways and six-foot distancing stickers next slide and we have limits in the elevators and also in the restrooms posted so people aware of what they should be doing there next slide and finally some directional signs for doorways one way in and one way out and i think you can see miss mills over there
140hiding in the corner behind her uh plexiglass while she's working over there and you can see some of the yellow or i'm sorry green striping around the spacing to create some spacing up there at the front of the office or a front of the classroom and that's all the slides we have for you tonight i will turn it back over to miss hebner last minute we reviewed that the cdc has released new guidance that replaces the cdc's indicators for dynamic school decision making one of the first steps in the guidance is to encourage us to look at the community data this slide shows the community transmission data according to the cvc coded data that's hard to say cdc covet data tracker it's important to remember that this changes from a two week time frame to
141a seven day time frame you'll see that the metrics are moving in a positive direction actually positive in that they are lower the number of new cases has dropped from 304 per 100 000 to 139 as of february 28th additionally the percent of positivity has dropped from 12.13 to 8.14 next slide please you'll recall that the number of categories has changed the former indicators had five levels of transmission lowest lower moderate higher and highest that's been updated to new thresholds which have four levels of community transmission which is low moderate substantial and high on this slide you'll see where those metrics fall according to the new threshold placing our positivity in the orange or the substantial level and high for the number of new cases next slide please according to the covet data tracker we
142fall in the red or the highest transmission as when the two indicators are not aligned you go with the highest indicator the recommendations in the k-12 operational strategy are not intended to require schools to close or to restrict in-person learning for these schools that are already opened but it's just a guide or a measure to help us look at our mitigation strategies and put in effective integration and implementation of additional supports in place as you saw from the presentation by risk management our schools are utilizing layered mitigation strategies and working to ensure the safety and well-being of our students we do require universal masking and we have planned for the use of space to allow and strive for six feet as the gold standard additionally we've offered our staff vaccines we acknowledge that vaccines are
143not a prerequisite but we are grateful that they provide the additional layer of mitigation it's important to remember that while in-person instruction is successfully occurring we maintain a virtual option for students if that is the best choice for that student next slide please and as you will recall again during the last meeting i shared that the vdoe and the vdh were working with the secretary of health and education and the governor's office to compare the new cdc guidance with the virginia interim january guidance that was released well today the virginia department of health um published a new update to the cdc metrics dashboard as seen on this slide while the dashboard has been updated to reflect the seven day time frame the vdoe and the vdh guidance the interim guidance that was published in january
144remains the same this slide shows the core indicators using the seven-day measure you'll note that there's a slight discrepancy from the kova tracker on with the vdh dashboard slide this is due to the difference in the date range the vda met vdh metrics end on 227 and the coded data tracker metrics ended on 2 28. next slide please this reflects our secondary indicators which are local and regional data regional as in hospital beds are always shared throughout the region rather just a locality next slide please the overall level of community transmission is shown on this slide the graph shows the trend since the previous february of 2020. while community transmission is an important consideration the most important data we monitor is related to the impact of coveted in our schools so at this time i'll
145ask mrs schlater to review our school impact data wonderful thank you so much mrs heebner good evening chairman latif members of the board and dr waltz as mrs heebner said my name is becca slater and i'm proud to serve as the director of student services this evening i will share some division pandemic data with the board spanning the time period of february 14th to february 28th it is important to note that this time period for the most part included only those staff members and students who are present for in-person learning for our vulnerable learners and our hybrid students in grades k to three as you will see we have noted decreases in both the number of cases and the number of staff members and students needing to quarantine this is aligned with the improving metrics
146that mrs heedner just shared that we are seeing in the community at large on this slide you'll see a summary of some of the measures that we analyze frequently to determine the level of school impact the positive cases for both virtual and in-person students continue to decrease and account for a very small percentage of the entire student population for that learning environment when looking at our surveillance form data it's important to understand that surveillance forms are submitted for a variety of reasons not just illness you will see here that over one half of the forms submitted during this time period are for those who are close contacts and not necessarily those who are ill finally we closely monitor any situations that may be classified as a school outbreak a school outbreak is defined as a
147situation where two or more individuals receive a positive test result on a molecular test not the rapid test with the length of the school setting to date we have had four school outbreaks reported to the virginia department of health dashboard we have recently put new processes in place to support schools when we find a situation wherein there may be a cluster of cases this support includes a visit by our school support team led by mr crow and ongoing collaboration with one of our two pandemic coordinators next slide please this slide you will see data regarding those situations in which students had to quarantine during the period of february 14 to 28. you will note that most of our close contacts are not ill and are being quarantined for cdc guidelines as a precaution during this
148time period it has been reported to us that 180 students have been quarantined next slide please here you see our student positive case data broken out by student learning environment we continue to see the majority of our positive cases are for those students learning virtually in all situations the number of positive cases account for two-tenths of a percent of the student population or less next slide please on this slide you will see data regarding those situations in which staff members had to quarantine during the period of february 14 to 28. again you will see most of our close contacts are not ill and are being quarantined for cdc guidelines as a precaution during this time period it has been reported to us that 67 staff members have been quarantined next slide please finally you will
149see our staff member positive case data broken out by work environment you will see that our in-person staff members are affected by positive cases at a higher rate than our virtual staff members in all situations the number of positive cases account for less than four tenths of a percent of the staff member population i will now turn the presentation over to our supervisor of student health services the wonderful mrs teresa polk who will talk about our vaccine so if we could go to the next slide for mrs polk thank you thank you very much mrs slater good evening chairman latif members of the school board and dr waltz i am happy to provide the information on the update on vaccinations on this slide you can see that over seven thousand second doses have been completed
150all prince william county school staff members have been offered the opportunity to receive the first dose of the vaccine second those clinics were held during the month of february from the 19th through the 28th and on march the 1st additional second dose clinics for prince william county school employees will take place on march 7th 8th 14th and 15th after the clinic that was held on march the first the novant clinic has been moved now from unity reed high school to the kelly leadership center prince william county schools has partnered with novant uva to provide clinics for manassas city and manassas park schools as well as thousands of eligible community members and i must take this opportunity to give a shout out and kudos to the prince william county school nurses who have consistently worked the
151vaccine clinics since the first day they began they have been working tirelessly to ensure that they are able to support not only our staff but the community members as well next slide please this slide shares information about the vsaf smartphone device tool and this is an after vaccination health checker it is a a smart phone-based tool that uses text messaging and web surveys to provide personalized health check-ins after you receive a covet-19 vaccine so if you have already received your first vaccine you pro and have downloaded this you probably have received these messages and basically they're just checking in to find out if what side effects that you may have had and you'll get reminders as well about your second dose so it is a very uh nice thing that is occurring and i know
152i have personally provided information after receiving my first and second vaccine and so all you have to do is go through the registration process to vsafe.cdc.gov to register and get this particular health checker next slide please and what through collaboration with the prince william health district you can also download covet-wise and this is an app that you can download through the app store or google play and it is virginia's official exposure notification that lets you know if you've likely been exposed to another covet-wide user with a positive covet 19 test result it is a free download to your smartphone and is designed to completely protect your privacy of course it says the more virginians that use cobit wise the better you can be informed of potential exposure which helps reduce your risk while protecting your
153family friends and community covet wise is now connected to the national key server which lets covet wise anonymously share data with exposure notifications apps from other states this concludes my part of the presentation and we will now turn it back over to mrs heathner thank you we'd just like to take one more opportunity to thank the staff at uni read for the use of their building and the support from their team the custodians the pe staff their dsa the teachers who allowed us to use their space we're very grateful dr nichols and his staff including these two amazing gentlemen mr barton and mr bouchard went above and beyond at all times i'm grateful for the work that they've done and for the new friendships that we've formed i feel we are now bonded for life
154through these vaccine clinics so yeah as we've heard during our meetings and through our conversations with stakeholders it's clear to me that there is much healing to be done while the vaccine is not the only answer it is one step toward a brighter future next slide please in my personal my professional life i strive to see the good in each day and sometimes during covet that has been a challenge the teamwork and the collaboration of all during this time has definitely been a bright and shining spot i look forward to the day when the pandemic is over i mean i really look forward to the day the pandemic is over but i encourage us all to continue to find the joy in each day i ask that we give each other's grace and those who
155need the grace and also engage in some self-care so that we can all continue to do the important work that we need to do we can't get back the experiences in the time that covet has altered so we can work to see the possibilities of the future and maintain our commitment to place in education as a priority our team continues to work to refine their processes and to create additional supports for our staff and our students i know that many of you feel the effects of these unusual times so i encourage you if you need assistance please reach out to a teacher a counselor a colleague a trusted individual reach out to me i'll help you we have numerous resources available on our website and our counselors and our social workers stand ready to help
156you thank you to my colleagues for their support our health leadership team for their dedication and hard work and to our in person and to our virtual educators for making great things happen for our kids it's important that we remain vigilant in honoring the recommendations of the health district that is the only way that covet is going to end please follow the guidelines in order to reduce the covet spread inside and outside of our school buildings and this concludes our presentation tonight thank you so thank you very much miss hebner also want to thank your entire team and specifically those who helped you tonight mr crowe ms schlater miss polk uh you folks do a great job of analyzing all this data and trying to present it in a way that people can understand it
157and behind the scenes and sometimes presenting as well miss bellamy um miss wines miss sharma mr wallingford everyone who contributes to this it's very much appreciated and thank you so much and with that i will turn it back to chairman latifah and the board thank you so much thank you so much and and miss hebner i don't i think the entire county the entire school division the entire staff owes you a great event a debt of gratitude for the incredible work you your team have led and and it can't be said too much so thank you very much um okay we'll move on next to the adoption of resolutions dr latif yes i do have one question for dr waltz yes miss jessica uh a couple of questions on i know that we always present
158things in a positive light and slide 17 it seems that there's always this point two is only point seven uh 52 percent of the surveillance forms they were not ill but 48 percent were if when you're presenting um i'm just asking you to consider uh not using the decimals because these are people and i'd ask you to present also the fact that we did have people who were ill and dr waltz we had a cafeteria worker who passed away and the last time we had the custodian pass away we had a picture of her and we talked about her can you provide us with more insights into that individual or if not now maybe at a later date yes so um at the last meeting but i'm i'm happy to do so again and as
159i mentioned earlier i went out um we got a two blood bridge middle family so okay so i could meet with the entire food service group and the principal and also the custodians because as you know from being a principal that's a tight-knit group especially in an elementary school and flora cervantes was kind of the uh the the center the heartbeat of that group she had a very vivacious and outgoing personality and i felt uh i felt the need to go out there and visit with them personally this week and uh that was very difficult there was a lot of weeping [Music] but we talked about it and i learned some things about her and kovid ravaged that several members of that family but she was a strong influence out there and she came about
160the same time as the principal so she she had been there almost five years and uh she was also well known to students and faculty members and i had a couple of faculty members reach out to me and talk about that they interacted with floor almost on a daily basis and again a great personality and you are absolutely right these these numbers all represent people and we can certainly look at the way we present the data i don't put that data together i think the health department does but we can see what we can do about making uh making some of that into just whole numbers and uh and see if we can make that happen for the for next time okay i'm just asking you to adjust the presentation our presentation mode thank you
161very much you're welcome ms jackson and and thank you dr waltz for listening the hotline number today and the email for reporting concerns i just had a follow-up question i actually have two one is when they go to schools to inspect the schools for you know the mitigation strategies do they talk to the teachers to gather anecdotal data i i would like to ask um mr crow if he could respond please i think you stepped out do you want me to ask the other question mr crow stepped out so we'll have her ask you the next question sure i just want to i um thank you again for answering the questions before the meetings it does help streamline i have a follow-up on my question about the alphabet and um that this the response was
162no update has been provided because pennsylvania county schools is unfortunately unable to provide additional offerings through alphabets i know a number of teachers that are still struggling with daycare is it possible and i know there's a waitlist is it if the waitlists were to continue is it possible to open more alphabets or like what other opportunities are we looking into yes and we have a person on staff uh miss glennis taylor who works directly with them i think the teacher who spoke earlier and again i try to be very careful because when people come up before the board at citizens time we we want to make sure that that they feel you know comfortable and saying whatever they want to say but i think what she was referring to i only know this because we've
163been researching this since since she spoke when kovid first hit there were a number of reductions in the programs like schools that had to close we had difficulty and as you know we've partnered with the county and the money has flowed through the county to help subsidize and provide scholarships so we are still working closely with the county and we're trying to look at some of our numbers and see what we can do to perhaps expand and and expand this scholarship program which we still have money in it we're still offering the scholarships but to the teacher's point if if you don't have room in the school where you're hoping to have it we need to see if we can do a satellite school nearby and it's my understanding again between the time she's spoken
164now that those talks are continuing with some sense of urgency around seeing what we can do to reopen some additional sites are to expand uh perhaps into another classroom next door or something like that to take in some additional students so we are aware of it we are working with it and we are working directly with the county on doing it and hopefully there will be a public announcement a joint announcement within the next week or so about expanding okay thank you that sounds like an update to what i was provided and that there will be more information coming yes i appreciate that thank you and okay miss wall i have a clarifying question on that mr williams thank you could we also look into alphabet what policies or procedures that they have or what
165what i know we don't have authority over them because we contract with them um regarding like the sudden closures that are outside of um you know weather inclement weather just just to help our staff who do utilize them and the public who do utilize them maybe they need a um an update on that because it sounded like from the teacher who spoke this evening that it was a sudden closure at a site and um i know as a as a parent that could be very challenging and i think that was more the issue than not necessarily having enough seats but i know that that is also a very important issue so um i was just wondering if we could get a little update on that or maybe have sent to our parents make sure that
166we send some information out to the board thank you and then mr crow is back um dr waltz did you want to direct mr crow on the question or what was the question jackson if you wouldn't mind repeating that question please and mr crowe will be happy to answer it thank you mr crow um my question was just a follow-up when you attend the schools to you know review mitigation strategies and the rubric that was listed do you speak with individual teachers separately to gather anecdotal data we do when we walk around a lot of times it's with the administrators in the school building when we go into classrooms we we do the best we can not to interrupt instruction but we do seek out to talk to them and see if they have everything
167that they need great thank you you're welcome great miss wall thank you mr chairman i just wanted to commend um dr huebner and dr eagle and mr crowe and nurse polk and unity read team the nurses team the pwcs volunteer team i've been to many of these clinics to kind of step in and i just want to say thank you i think what you have pulled off is amazing what you're going to continue to do is going to be amazing you're partnering with our neighboring school divisions is really commendable we've done a great job in pwcs and now we're going to spread that love and i really think that's tremendous and also extending to the community as well that's going to make a big difference that has made a big difference and i know a
168lot of people have told me how thankful they are and how impressed they were by what we were able to do with that partnership with novant health uva so i just wanted to say thank you and in my um visits to the schools in my district i can attest to what i have seen to what mr crowe has said you know the mitigation strategies that there is at least from what i can tell and what i've found is there's consistent compliance and i want to commend the students we've talked a lot about about teachers tonight but i want to commend the students on their cooperation with all of the many differences and new ways of doing things that we've asked them to do and to kind of cooperate with they've done a really great job
169of being flexible and being understanding of what we've asked them to do and this health report i know you know putting together these charts collecting this data you know putting in these details for us takes a lot of time and i really appreciate the effort that has gone into you know giving us these health updates and and everything else you guys have your team has just been amazing and i just wanted to say thank you it gives us a good level of transparency um for the community to see and to understand you know how many people are we quarantining how many people are sick you know the point the two-tenths of percent is a significant number the seven hundredths of a percent is a significant number that's really good for our community to see and
170i think it helps us all be on the same page as far as understanding the impact of covid in our schools and that hopefully will generate confidence and um a level of commonality in our understanding of where we go from here so i just wanted to say thank you okay great i i think we should just add that you know a number of our school board members volunteered in the unity reed clinics uh jan wall was there um almost like a pillar in the building most of the time miss zargapor mr wilke i think it should be noted that spent a lot of time there and i'd also like to personally thank the ceo of novant hospital al pailon who during the snow days came in himself and volunteered at different aspects of the clinic
171so it was really all hands on deck operation and it continues as dr waltz pointed out here in the kelly building so we got still some more clinics to go and some more folks to vaccinate to finish up thank you all we'll move on next to the um um next item on the agenda the adoption the resolution supporting a vaccine for all prince william county staff um i dude does anybody want to read this or do you want me to make this motion it has my name okay so i'll um how about miss wall miss wall why don't you read that i will volunteer to read it resolution urging all pwcs employees to receive the covid19 vaccine whereas on january 6 2021 the prince william county school board adopted a resolution to request that the
172governor of the commonwealth of virginia prioritize the vaccination of school personnel in order to ensure that students and staff of the prince william county public schools are able to return to our school buildings as soon as feasible and with minimal risk during the covet 19 pandemic and whereas as of january 11 2021 pwcs teachers became eligible to receive vaccinations which have proven effective in combating covet 19 and which began to be administered at no cost on january 17 2021 and which continued to be made available to pwcs employees and whereas as of february 14 2021 over 10 400 teachers and other pwcs employees have received the vaccine and additional vaccine opportunities are expected to be available over the upcoming weeks and months and whereas on february 5th 2021 the governor issued a letter to all
173virginia school boards and superintendents concerning his expectation that to prevent irreparable learning loss and psychological damage to all students to students all school divisions in the commonwealth should make in-person learning options available by march 15 2021 in accordance with the virginia department of education's january 14 2021 updated interim guidance for reopening pre-k through 12 schools and whereas the prince william county school board has already provided in-person learning to pre-k and first through third grade students and approved an updated plan on february 2021 to return additional students to in-person learning beginning february 25 2021 which plan will require an increasing number of pwcs teachers administrators and support staff to return to work in pwcs schools offices and other facilities and whose physical presence is essential to the operations of the division and delivery of instruction and
174whereas the education of students and the safety of students and staff as a paramount importance to the school board be it hereby resolved that prince william county school board encourages all pwcs employees who are able to do so to promptly receive the covid19 vaccine as it is made available to them in order to facilitate the provision of in-person learning to pwcs students whose education continues to be adversely impacted by the covet 19 pandemic and resultant closure of schools so mr chairman i move to adopt this resolution as just read do you have a second mr chairman miss williams for a second we have a second any discussion miss williams so i second this motion because i think it is important to discuss this resolution i personally will not be supporting this resolution i feel that
175this is the school board um it it tells our staff um it's it's like a bully move we have bent over backwards to provide access to the vaccination for our staff at this point or at least at our last meeting at least ten thousand four hundred of our staff members have been provided with a covet 19 vaccination i don't like the section and the resolution where it talks about february 5th the governors issued a letter it sort of frames it in a way to say that this was pertinent to us offering in-person learning when prince william county schools had been offering in-person learning and we were one of the only school divisions in northern virginia to do so since day one i also don't like the last section where it says employees are who are
176able to do so it doesn't give any credence to people's own personal opinions how they feel about a vaccine in the medical community their cultures and respect with respect to that and vaccines aren't required for us to even open so at this point it's it's sort of sort of a technical option i mean we would like our employees to get vaccinated because it benefits us as a school division when it comes to quarantining and things of that nature but it's not a requirement i know that there's still chatter among the legal community whether employees are required to manage their employer employers are required to mandate their employees to get a vaccine or not but that discussion hasn't been finalized and i just feel as a division we've offered it and to add a resolution to
177that i think is offensive to those who don't feel comfortable getting a vaccine for whatever reason whether it's personal scientific cultural whatever reason and um i do like the acknowledgement part for those who are able to do so because there's some that may want to but just can't right now for whatever reason but i just can't support it for that reasons okay please vote mr chairman miss williams or i'm i'm sorry miss jesse did you call on me miss jessica um i'm not sure why we need the resolution i i i personally just don't like the last part because it implies to me that uh if you're able to do so some people are not taking the vaccine for religious reasons it just seems that we're saying to employees that uh we're kind of gently
178reminding them that we work we want them to take the vaccine and those people who don't uh we're having problems with that and so for that reason i cannot support this resolution i do like where we've outlined what we've done as a division because i think the 10 000 vaccines that were given and the effort put into that was tremendous but i'm not sure why do we need a resolution to outline what we've done and to prompt people to take the vaccine i would think that by now most people know that they need to take the vaccine and i honestly don't know the legal ramifications for individuals who choose not to take the vaccine will those people those individuals have to justify why they're not i just think that this resolution is something that is
179not necessarily needed and the here by our resolved portion of the resolution i do not agree with thank you okay thank you miss jackson um i would like to echo the sentiments of the previous board members but while i do agree with contents of this resolution and i do believe that encouraging staff is you know an important part of this but i i do understand that people should have a choice and um i support um what they have said and i'm not gonna be supporting this resolution thank you okay please vote miss ralston how do you vote no on the computer didn't you the vote is three yes dr latif mrs wall mrs zargapoor five no mrs jackson mrs jesse miss ralston mr wilke and ms williams motion failed moving on to leading with an
180equity lens we have a presentation dr waltz my understanding uh i'll defer to the deputy but it was my understanding this was uh something that miss williams was presenting the the presentation we're doing is at a future meeting if i'm not mistaken uh thank you dr waltz that is correct uh this presentation is in response to miss williams request and miss burgos is with us tonight uh to make that presentation ms williams do you have any introductory comments um thank you mr emon i appreciate the um division putting together this presentation i think we did need a little bit more clarification on what it meant to look through our practices and policies and values through a lens of equity instead of just looking at that term generically i also while i have the opportunity i
181would like to thank maria burgos for making this presentation tonight and formally say our goodbye to her from the board because she has left us and will be starting a new position with prince william county government as an equity officer there and i want to offer her congratulations and thank you again for bearing with us for one more night it is our loss but the county's gain and i'm sure we will continue to collaborate in the future so thank you miss burgos thank you i just need the um shared screen i guess so i can let's see oh i'm sorry i don't need to share a screen it's it's up here please forgive me um let's see let me escape from here my apologies good evening chairman at large dr latif and members of the
182board and dr walls i am maria burgos and serve as the new prince william county equity and inclusion officer in the office of executive management as of monday march 1st this evening i will provide an overview of the division's educational equity framework entitled leading with an equity lens upholding equitable policies practices programs and democratic values as a division multicultural education was established in the mid 90s and all schools participated in multicultural education and year-end division conferences professional learning in the areas of multicultural competency and culturally responsive instruction was introduced in 2013. many schools and individual employees participated in recursive professional learning in 2017 the prince william county board and superintendent of schools adopted a systemic approach and mandated recursive cultural competency training for all schools and central office employees supporting learning to grow leadership capacity
183culturally aware and responsive educator leads from each school were trained to provide ongoing turnkey professional learning to all schools as next steps this educational framework was adopted by the superintendent's staff in august of 2020 to center equitable practice systemically in all functions of the division as an essential next steps to ensure safe responsive and inclusive working and learning environments centering an equity lens oh next thank you century and equity lenses and education at heart is at the heart of prince william county schools and the virginia department of educational equity is a collaborative commitment to action through the process of distributing access and opportunity next slide in june 18 on june 18 2020 the virginia board of education voted unanimously to address systemic racism and racial justice and education for the entire statement from the virginia
184board of education you can visit visit the video eve website next indian introduction to navigating at equity virginia roadmap dr james lane wrote a dear virginia educator letter noting that education leaders now more than ever are called upon to affirm our commitment to advancing equity in virginia public schools and facilitating courageous conversations on social justice systemic inequity despair student outcomes and racism in our school communities is absolutely our responsibility and professional obligation next slide please to be culturally competent is to understand the dynamics of cultural identity as a lived experience to be culturally competent is to understand the importance of reflection and self-awareness of who we are and the dimensions of our identities as an ongoing practice to be culturally competent is to be continuously seeking to understand perspectives and worldviews of others to be
185culturally competent is to understand the systems of oppression recognize respond to and readdress any subtle forms of bias discrimination and inequity to sustain a bias-free and discrimination-free working and learning environment next slide equity is not a program and cannot happen in a vacuum it really must be moving into everyday practice at every level of the division um in every level of the county really cultural competency in action centers equity practices and all aspects of the division equity accountability targets provide continuous improvement perspective and strengthen programs policy for and procedures to ensure equity and inclusivity and all that we do for that there are a few areas of recommendation and do your uh um superintendent advisory council on equity will collaborate with vdoe and other educational resources to review and make recommendations on accountability targets and
186indicators to the division equity lens some of these targets include as examples funding allocations that are both flexible and transparent and are based on needs of its students with additional financial resources that are allocated to school to the department to support students with higher needs learning facilities are structurally sound have access to resources technology effective equipment to support academic achievement and social development the third target is inclusive climates which are physically and emotionally safe environments with the diverse workforce as visual representations of success and leadership croatia's leadership enacts a continued process of learning disaggregating data questioning assumptions about equity relevance and its effectiveness of practice with a focus that is intentional and strategic within the vision families and external partners courageous teachers practices are rigorous engaging culturally relevant standards align with the virginia five key
187skills and the last of the targets would be culturally responsive instruction the department of education is currently building these targets um and in alignment with with the um with vdoe this will build the capacity of prince william county staff to maximize student achievement social development and eliminate opportunity gaps and exclusionary practices next slide leading with an equity lens calls for collaboration ongoing analysis and input from all its stakeholders on a continuum it utilizes metris to ensure equitable policies metrics that have not been introduced really across the board in the commonwealth but will really help us look at our equitable policies practices programs and ideologies and how they're interrelated and inform one another it assures equity of financial human and instructional resources resulting in a world-class education that prepares every child as stewards of self stewards
188of community and stewards of this world next slide to enact the systemic change there are five dimensions of consideration and educational equity to consider in this journey and know that um we're talking about changing culture that's been existent since we open our doors in education so to build that systemic change we must be very transparent about what we do and how we report it to the public to all of our stakeholders and to our division employees we must go through the theory of change which we'll look at in a minute collaborate collaborate continuously lead with an equity lens of leadership and accountabilities where goals are identified anticipated outcomes are identified means of data gathering are identified evaluation plans include system office and school level analysis next slide how transparency is addressed is by consistently addressing
189objectives the understandings around those objectives and providing enriching and engaging content with anticipated outcomes knowing your audience and using solid research and theory applications next slide the theory of change is uh really an essential process and looking at a practice that we have not had in the commonwealth and that is the understanding around these structures we must really engage um and build a community a community of trust a community of understanding and to do that we must engender awareness and this is done in process called leveling while you're doing that you're also constructing knowledge uh with practitioners with students with parents within departments and then as you proceed within these levels you apply advanced applications next next slide please of course this work has to be done with partnerships as best practices and to this
190day many many folks have been part of really engaging and um and building this framework that includes culturally responsive curriculum special specialists from the office of professional learning care leads and they are representatives from every school parent and community leaders the virginia department of education equity consultants and region for equity chiefs supervisors and coordinators our consultant partnerships include leah walker she is the virginia director of virginia department of education director of equity and community engagement dr lisa um williams who's the founder of emcs uh and she's still collaborating uh with the division dr micah pollock she is the director for the center of research and educational equity assessment and teaching excellent called create at the university of san diego and dr paul gorski the founder of equity literacy institute and edit change next slide please
191this work of changing culture and bringing in equity and inclusivity with a new lens and approach is aligned to the state that means that what we are doing is across the commonwealth is setting the presidents in the nation of how school systems perform how school systems conduct and it really works with lots of collaboration so just to thank all the folks that are listed here for the work that they are doing and will continue to work and those are school administrators and care leads who have been at the heart of this work since the very beginning the department of accountability the department of special education and student services the department of student and professional learning the department of human resources the superintendent's advisory council on equity equity and compliance and risk management so what does
192it look like this continuum of school equity it first looks at leveling engagement that allows continuous growth to engage in learning and practice it does support the theory of change it blends with the following bodies of research internal consistency with research related to cultural proficiency and internal consistency with research related to anti-racist schooling practices and all of these again are aligned with the virginia department of education level one is onboarding and it builds an understanding of equity literacy it instills transformative equity approach to dismantle all forms of inequity level two is pre-confidence and has a growing understanding and commitment to dismantling institutional racism level three competency focuses on cultural knowledge and to the extent in which schools examine and address institutional racism and level four proficiency examines equity focused schools and departments as models of
193inclusivity who recognize value and empower contributions from all stakeholders and have addressed systems of oppression i know that at the state level one of the things that they're considering is um the school of excellence award that will be centered around equity schools and schools of model the other is um and actually is in in the midst of being created now and it was legit legislation that was passed is um criteria of cultural competency for all school educators every two years to keep current in these matters as well as the evaluation process for educators and educational leaders we are currently training um and have trained over 145 culturally aware and responsive care educators who will facilitate professional training training of this level requires thoughtful application to ensure we make space and opportunity to access experience through
194multiple identity perspectives racial perspectives being one important identity in a manner that is more likely to increase our ability to interrupt discourse which derails full participation level one begins with online pace uh self-paced coursework with the equity literacy institute in it it has an understanding of equity and in inequity participants will examine common equity literacy definitions and explore the transformative approach this is online once again at their pace is one of the first things that we'll be embarking on this will build a foundation on foundation of knowledge and common vocabularies the next will be learning to be a threat to in uh to inequity this is an introduction to the equity literacy component and here they will explore core aspects um framing the equity literacy framework and what is called the 11 dimensions of school
195functions around abilities and principles that are all related to equity in schools the last is racial equity and equity literacy and forming ourselves transforming our schools this builds the skills and capacities to explore racial equity concepts practice racial equity skills examine racial equity principles and apply racial equity to 11 aspects of school culture for all school and central office administrator this is essential because one of the things that is being discussed at the virginia department of education is that when complaints of racism are filed that those who are handling those complaints and making decisions should be well informed and what racism is um next next slide please here's a quick look at level one this is the suggested pacing guide this has been in conversation with all the care leads and that includes principals as
196well these are um the modules that are being trained in terms of facilitation they will roll out in the fall with all of our staff it is very critical to build the capacities of care leaves because these conversations have not been had and we want to make sure that they are prepared knowledgeable and confident about the work that they are doing as trainers this work has been done in collaboration with consultant dr lisa williams as well as joint collaboration with the care leads who provide excellent feedback the the models that you see here uh we're in the process of training module one and two those have been done and upcoming in the next month will be module one and three and that is so that they'll be ready to roll these out in the fall
197and um continued continued development in the areas these have been developed but continued development of training and module 1.5 and 1.6 this will be in collaboration with the consultant uh we have created as part of the transition plan uh with rita goss and christy taylor uh myself and um what we now have care lee chairs and these are um folks who have been doing this for quite a while with us and are excellent leaders and facilitators and they will be they have been empowered and i tell you i can't speak enough about them but they will be providing training for our care lease and these existing modules 1.3 through 1.6 so that the division is ready to go here's a little look at the equity literacy institute self-paced guideline on courses the amount of hours
198that each of them take the completion suggestion dates as you can see we're mindful of covid and we're mindful of the many things as we spoke about tonight the schools are um [Music] balancing and equity being one of them so in identification of the pace we included lots of feedback and the dates that you see here for participants uh all teachers should complete the first part by october 1 of the fall of 2021 and the care leads of course because they are preparing should be to have them completed the month before of september 1st the second portion of that to be completed by teachers march 1 of 2022 and our care leads to have that completed before november 1 of 2021. and because of the compliance and understanding of understanding racism september 1 is the
199date of completion for all care lease school administ school administrators and identify centrologist employees this concludes a review of the framework thank you for your time okay great questions miss jackson thank you for the presentation that was very informative thank you i just have a quick question how are the response care lead educators selected at schools do you know yes i do actually there's a protocol criteria we'll chrissy taylor will be happy to share that with you but there is a criteria that was set out ahead of time they reviewed the criteria they committed that they were um willing wanting to and able to take on uh this charge and um so that criteria is really based around best practices as facilitators in the in the area of of conversations around race and equity thank
200you and i would like to note also that many of the schools are now working in teams especially the high schools they're working in teams where while one care lead may come or principal or administrator may come they have a turnkey and work with department chairs so um i i think that is just excellent progress in in in the right direction uh this work is intensive and it requires its focus and um definitely kudos to the schools who have been doing phenomenal work and um receiving the training asking excellent questions and then later this spring they will be practicing the sessions before they rule them out in the fall thank you ms bargos um i really appreciate again you taking the time to come back to us to make this presentation to the board um
201again our loss that we no longer have you with us but i'm wondering where where in your opinion would you say prince william county schools is on this continuum of school equity versus other divisions within the state because i know that you've also worked at the state level um how do we sort of compare if you can with some other divisions are we on pace are we behind do we have tremendous amount of work to do prince william is definitely not behind um as a matter of fact um we're in a good place right now because we have had prior um uh prior trainings prior awareness and prior practices so um since 2017 systemically the division participated in modules where concepts around understanding microaggressions implicit biases stereotype framing that occurs in the classroom um have
202all taken place and which each one of these they come with informed strategies to implement when you when we're thinking about the these next phases we're talking about that the first part when we look at the culture of centering equity is really educating um your staff so that whether they are working in the department of budget the department of transportation or in schools that they understand why and they're building an equity-minded lens so as we implement tools like equity impact tools and put those things in place as we look at relative risk ratio as another metric for analyzing data and as we center conversations with common vocabularies i can honestly say that prince william county has a lot to be proud of because we're right there and in many cases leading the commonwealth thank you
203mr fargos um i have a follow-up question on that um so one of the things that the general public i don't i don't think is very as familiar and knowledgeable about this topic could you explain sort of in um very layman's terms why it's important to have care leads and the type of work that this is and it's not and it's more than just um you know watch a powerpoint and sign off but why this is important in our schools and the effect it has on our students education and you said in simple layman's terms well as best as you can do i know you're it's hard when when you live and breathing and this is your life's work but um no no but we hey it doesn't do any good if we can't break
204it down right right so the the two concepts that i always come across is really um where education is so powerful because it clears up an understanding of what racism is because ideally most people believe uh see and understand racism through a interpersonal lens of racism in other words they feel well i don't enact personal racial beliefs towards others i treat everybody fairly i treat everyone in kind and therefore this is the most common understanding of racism in our country it is it's actually a symptom of more fundamental system of racism so because you don't participate in direct acts um then most people say therefore why are we spending our time doing this but the the the work really is around under understanding ourselves but then moving shifting towards institution how it manifests in institution
205and structurally in schools and this is not only prince william but across the united states this is globally and so when we look at that we look at the cumulative effects of biases and the compounding effects of societal factors including the history the culture the ideologies of institutions that has systemically played a role of advantage and disadvantages and disadvantages for people of color and to be able to look at that more systemically i encourage folks to look at an article but they new york times that physically puts the faces of power and all aspects of living so that you could see um it by gender and race um and that's really what we're going into understanding is understanding these structures and education why uh to your question is because when a child does not feel
206100 inclusive whether he or she recognizes it or not it impacts centers of the brain that delay optimal states of learning in some cases where a child feels disengaged disfranchised and excluded it will start playing a role in those executive functions in the brain and the brain loves pattern so it can create a um a dynamics of thinking i'm under a threat and operate under a threat subconsciously on a continuum so when you add that up over years and years and years of being in this auto response it could have detrimental effects that have been documented in many many research studies and so for us as we are building these conscious states of mind and higher practices of learning one of the things that we have in prince william county that we have uh are
207leading the pack in is that we spent quite a bit of time looking at what creates optimal states of learning and so today at the school board you heard many principles you've seen commercials on people on representations of mindful practice because when you are infusing mindful practice you are thinking about your thinking and you're thinking do i have enough data to enact what i'm about to enact that's an equity tool it you are thinking about your emotional states of mind and you're putting practices in place to reduce re-center and re-engage in learning so that's part of our framework and the division it's also about building the social and emotional skill sets because to be civically minded you have to have a social smarts and one thing that we know about science is if you don't
208purposely build it there's only six to seven that occur on their own when there is a spectrum of about 25 emotions in the human experience that actually give way to deeper learning and to social consciousness and so at the state level those are must do's that they're really centering on the skills of social and emotional growth mindful practice for civic engagement and also to reduce those states of um fear and to re-center and then of course cultural competency and none of this can be done without constantly including our stakeholders our communities and our parents in the process and so i hope i answered uh your question uh i would um um march 9th at the department of education i will be doing a webinar on that framework and really speaking more intently and giving examples
209of how teachers can take these practices and put them in place right away and i will be speaking to all the spokes on that culturally responsive wheel thank you miss burgos um and i really appreciate you tying this work into what is required by by state what is coming the expectation that's coming down from the state of virginia um and you know just highlighting where we are as a division and really explaining um how this is not work that exists in a vacuum or a silo but it's all of our responsibilities at every level so i appreciate that and the last thing that i have to ask is not a question you can answer but i would just like continuous update from the division like where we stand in this what our progress is um
210if we could just every so often get an update on um the you know the progress of this as for our staff where we stand um and a little bit more about the institutional knowledge and the transfer um now that we have this vacancy uh left by miss vargos and knowing how important this work is and the mandates and requirements that are coming down at the state level for us i just um would like to keep this at the one of the topics of the forefront of importance for this board especially considering we did resolve to have equity as one of our focuses so thank you again and i appreciate your time board member williams if i may add i will continue to be working at the state level on these issues because i'm a
211member of the cultural competency culturally responsive uh committee and also one of the things in this new role is really supporting schools on these initiatives and us uniting as one prince william so um you know i'm only down the road and um my passion uh is education and i saw this as a as an opportunity to be cohesive right in the work so that the prince william county schools has been very intentional about creating the systemic approach and prince william county government is intentional too and so bringing the two together that's good stuff for our residents in prison william county so thank you for today talk to the chief mayor miss jesse first of all maria you know i've followed your work and we've worked together i hope you guys can hear me my mask
212is kind of uh muddling everything over here but um [Music] and i've been around for a while so um is is this whole lens of equity seems to be the new buzzword it's not just prince william it's nationwide everywhere i look equity is in my concern is that how does what is the outcome uh so i asked dr mr iman a couple of days ago when we look at our equity report card are we looking at outcomes for student learning for example the equity report card talks about student and staff demographics assessment college readiness program participation and learning climate you know i've been around enough to know that you can go through all these workshops and nothing changes in terms of student learning so is an outcome from all the training as we become more
213equity-minded are you looking at a some type of metric or rubric or an outcome that improves student student learning yes to your questions so um the purpose of professional build development is to build an equity lens the equity lens is then part of it's part one so you then have to activate it right into uh metrics accountability and strategies and so to be able to drive equity you must understand it fundamentally examine um explore effective protocol engaging learning about race and racism to support equity and inclusive learning environment so as you apply it there will be metric tools that are put in place they're called equity impact tools there will be ways in which we um promote and continue to look at equity through the evaluative process the continuum of the cont the strategic plan
214and what we call the continuous improvement the continuous improvement right now is looking at what conversations we will have um around the area of equity as we look at student populations as we um look at how we report data how we discuss data so the accountability isn't always isn't just at the school level it is how each department will function through that equity impact tool and lens every aspect of the division to include hiring practices promotional practices how we train leadership in the county how we allocate our resources with an equity lens how we look at distribution of funding with an equity lens with each one of those um what we call targets there are tools there are applications so the first part is engendering awareness building the cultural competency lens and understanding of the
215individual the second part is putting it in place and that is where continuous transformation transparency and accountability is essential thank you and congratulations thank you okay wonderful thank you very much uh next the update on the governor's school miss williams um thank you mr chairman at the last governor's school board meeting i believe um we talked about the fact that students were meaning virtual for the remainder of the year the budget and the calendar year were discussed and we also began the process of being updated on early acceptance for our graduating seniors the expansion of additional curriculum offerings next year and um the math testing so i'll have further updates as we move along in the year by our next meeting but i will say that overall um our students mental health was being monitored
216we have additional services and one-on-ones being provided what our counselor at the governor's school we have had success with our students having being accepted for early admission and on scholarship i know that's important to dr latifio who's monitors that pretty heavily but i will say that i am proud to sit on that board i'm proud of all of the work that they do out there with all of our students and how mindful they are of not only the seniors who are graduating and their mental health and and how that this pandemic and this year has affected them but on top of that the particular needs like students who are first in their families to go to college um that just i mean to talk a little bit about one of the things that the council
217out there is doing is she's instituting virtual donut breaks so students have the opportunity to to speak and and to sort of socialize with each other virtually there's mentoring going on with students from senior level to junior level there's just so many things and again i'd like to thank george mason university for partnering with us and for agreeing to work with us on the expansion of course offerings next year and we'll have more updates at the uh next after our next meeting thank you okay next we'll go to board matters um we'll start with miss jesse uh dr latifa i did ask for a little bit more time so i have something special tonight uh tonight uh i would like to honor women's history month and the ending of black history month and our presentation
218on equity and access so this presentation is it's not a long presentation but there are two parts um miss denise macphail would you please stand and come forth please my tribute is to this phenomenal woman and contributor to prince william county community in our school community mr denise mcphail good evening mrs macphail i'm sorry but uh there's another part to this okay thank you i have had the pleasure of knowing miss denise mcphail for quite some time uh i got to know denise because she was i received a letter from her and she asked for a hundred individuals to help her with the naming of fanny fitzgerald many people think that i had much to do with it but it was miss denise macphail who had the idea and as you might know and i
219have this i'm not sure the audience could see this but fanny fitzgerald women of history bennett fitzgerald was one of four women who desegregated prince william county public schools and those women were fannie fitzgerald zella brown maxine coleman and mary porter and denise mcfell had that vision so i got to know her that way then in 2008 denise macphail founded the creative performing arts center called kpac it is a performing arts center she developed relationships and collaborated with very various people in the county including kogan high school the courageous four was a play that she produced at cogan high school they had a collaborative relationship there and tonight i would like to before you do your part which is to honor a student this is the culmination of her work tonight she's going to honor
220a student and it is big it's very big but but miss mcfeel you know as a principal i always gave these teachers these cups for i always said this cup is for you people who do things behind the scenes so when we were talking today you did not know that i plan to also honor you so my husband who is always with me this cup is for you to denise macphail for your work in the name of fanny fitzgerald for all your work with kpac the plays that you produce and so this cup is for you thank you so much and finally i will say to you that i've seen many of your plays uh the nativity scene the black nativity courageous four and various plays and tonight i think you want to honor one
221of your students and mentor mentees thank you thank you so much mrs jesse and mr jesse for delivering um good evening dr latif school board members student school board member representatives my name again is denise mcphail i reside in the nyamsco district and the amazing juwan t hill resides in the potomac district while i wear many hats within this community tonight i am speaking on behalf of k-pac as the co-founder and executive director k-pac was established in prince william county march 2002 incorporated february 2004 we developed a partnership with hogan high school february 2016. shortly thereafter is when we partnered with kogan to produce the courageous four in regards to the four women who were instrumental in integrating the prince william county public schools that we call them the courageous four k-pack became a founding
222resident arts partner at the hilton performing arts center may 2010. kpec is an acronym for the creative and performing arts center and on behalf of capec i wish to thank mrs jesse for this opportunity uh to for this opportunity to recognize mr jawan t hill and i come before you tonight kpec is a non-profit organization we exist to bridge art opportunity gaps for children teens and adults over the past 19 years k-pac has transformed diverse lives through acting singing dancing and creative writing workshops that culminate with a high quality performance we illuminate african-american life history culture and that that validates our shared humanity we're also thankful tonight too dr waltz who has written many letters of support for our playbills over the years but tonight i've come to share good news with you good news
223about the extraordinary accomplishments of mr juan t hill who is with me this evening juwan joined k-pac at the tender age of nine with a role in amazing grace a play by shea youngblood and the book by mary hoffman we presented this play to the public april 2012 at the hilton performing arts center since that time he has participated in several kpec performances at the hilton performing arts center dancing in the wings by the legendary debbie allen and the book by miss allen and khadir nelson the wiz the play by charlie smalls the book by william f brown and k-pack's annual christmas play black nativity by langston hughes in 2015 juwan earned the lead role as lonnie collins in the play locomotion by playwright jacqueline woodson in 2019 juwan served as the stage manager for
224capex production of a raisin in the sun by lorraine hansberry he was slated to direct august wilson's play but prove it 19 had other plans kpac has cultivated jawan over the years but we're not alone there is a village who has supported javon like his church star of bethlehem missionary baptist church the duke ellington school of the arts hogan high school where he will graduate from in june the omega sci-fi fraternity the pi lambda lambda chapter and the entire divine nine of the churches and organizations who attended so many of our performances to see him on stage and directors like tyrell lashley who we got from ellington and disney and crystal artful adele katrina strowman and professor professional actor doc and director and playwright excuse me albert williams we have all watched this young man
225this triple threat flourish to be extremely talented this is why we have come to share with you that jawan's dedication to the arts and his extraordinary work has been recognized beyond the local area jawan has been accepted to the juilliard school performing arts conservatory in new york new york jawan was selected as one of 19 students from approximately 1500 applicants worldwide so i invite you tonight to join me to congratulate mr juan t hill on his fantastic accomplishments and so i know he has some words that he would like to share as well good evening i will not be long i promise dr latif school board members dr waltz and my fellow student school board members and representatives i would like to thank mrs jesse for affording me the opportunity to speak with you all
226tonight my name is juwan t hill i'm a 17 year old senior at charles j hogan high school in the center for fine and performing arts and i've just been accepted into my dream school the juilliard school of drama in new york city new york i've been immersed in the art since the age of nine when i joined you know the kpac of the creative and performing arts center and kpac has taught me a lot about the fundamentals of what theater is to the community and really what to the world is um kpec also introduced me to duke ellington school for the arts where i auditioned my eighth grade year and was accepted into the theater and vocal program but i was faced with a choice theater or vocal and i did not know at
227that time that that choice would be the launch pad for what i would want to do for the rest of my life at i was eventually accepted and um thrived and had some of the best experiences of my life at the duke allison school for the arts but i was faced with my first roadblock i had to transition back from dc to school in virginia and it was devastating but with luck i landed at charles j hogan high school when i auditioned for the theater program i'm sorry in the theater program at both ellenton and cogan i performed in numerous productions on stage as well as behind the scenes and i truly fell in love with the craft of acting i've been blessed with the opportunity to study abroad at the british american drama academy
228as well as accepted into the summer residential governor's school for virginia arts program for theater one of the most important things for me throughout my high school career was preparing for college the moment that i heard about the juilliard school i knew that i was trying to attend to attend that school i made a choice if i'm going to dream i might as well dream big and it's worked for me so far then came my second roadblock in april my meemaw was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer at the height of the covet 19 pandemic my family immediately went to south carolina to take care of her and we did until her recent death on january 21st 2021 just two weeks before my juilliard callback audition her death has taken her one moment her death
229is taking a huge toll on me and my family but one thing i do know is that my mima believed in me and she claimed that i would be accepted and i know that right now she is smiling down on me saying my baby did it my current goal is to attend juilliard but juilliard is prestigious and expensive as well as you know so however i have a village of supporters that want to see me be successful and attend juilliard i've applied for various scholarships and i'm uh excited to reach my goal the task before me seems impossible however i believed in myself to audition and god saw fit for me to allow me this opportunity so i'm so appreciative to the teachers and staff at um hogan high school at kpac the cfpa program
230as well as duke ellington school for the arts the omega u mentoring program as well as my church family star bethlehem and i hope that i can continue to be a positive light in the prince william county arts world for you thank you for your time wonderful wonderful thank you very much that was fantastic all right mr wilk i'll just put my three minutes towards that presentation i yield my time miss wall thank you mr chairman i wanted to mention that on february 4th the social media sorry the safe schools advisory council sponsored a social media and internet safety webinar um and it featured mr billy watts the itc at colgan high school and more than 150 participants across the division joined in with that webinar that consisted of parents students and employees and the
231committee or the council sorry the advisory council partnered with the police department and human trafficking experts for q a afterwards and so in this online environment we we must be more aware and more vigilant there's a greater need for understanding the threats that our kids face online and this was a good start and we hope to sponsor additional webinars so i wanted to thank everybody involved in that in pulling off that webinar also this time over the last few weeks i've been able to visit battlefield high school reagan middle school bull run middle school and unity braxton middle school to welcome students to their first day of classes for all of our secondary returning students and to go around the school see how things are going talk with students and staff and it's just been
232a really great experience to understand greater uh have a greater understanding of what's going on in the schools in the gainesville district um today i was able to go into battlefield high school and assist with their lunch um with the cafeteria focusing on the lunch and that was really great fun great fun besides welcoming kids at seven o'clock in the morning that was also great fun um i was able to visit with the battlefield representative abdullah yusuf psy from battlefield and he gave me some great feedback from the student perspective and the family perspective and i really appreciate the work that he is doing to try to connect with additional folks in the gainesville district from me and for the student senate i also had the opportunity to go to the opening football game at
233battlefield high school because i have a daughter in the band and so therefore i could be a legitimate spectator and even though it was it started to snow halfway through the event it was really exciting battlefield was victorious 17-7 over john champ our one of our loud and county rivals i'm hoping to be able to attend more events like this in the future because of our increase in the number of spectators obviously as a parent i was able to get into that event but it's very difficult still to get into some of the events but i really do commend all the activities that are starting and the cooperation of our athletes and students um as they cooperate with the rules and that they are patient with things that they're asked to do i appreciate so
234very much teachers and staff and students and families for their patients and their hard work in making all of the divisions goals come to pass and i really just want to say you know thank you to everybody for all their hard work thank you miss paul miss white thank you mr chairman um just like to start off by saying happy uh women's history month as we um end black history month the shortest month of the year i think it's important that we turn our attention to women's history month but in the framework of equity that we remember these all year long because they are important to all of us in one way or the other i also want to bring attention to i think it's read across america week if i'm saying it correctly um
235all of our schools i know are doing something in celebration i will be honored again to read virtually at one of my elementary schools and i'm still very excited about that i know that some of the schools are also participating each night and having different teachers read to students virtually on zoom which is exciting we have definitely been doing that at my house and i have seen my student my child's love of learning increased just from seeing a different variety of teachers read and um actually his principal read on the very first night we missed it but i heard about it so i had i got it um so i i just um can't emphasize how important reading is for all of us at all stages of our lives and i just i love i
236love read across america week um i also want to update folks then remind them that the next meeting for the racial and social justice committee will be on march 18th at 6 30 pm we also next week have an upcoming budget final work session and over the next two weeks the county will also be addressing their budget and i think that when we talk about priorities and what we care about and what's important budget is just another way of saying our priorities so i would encourage members of the public to get involved and stay involved as we have your intention now from all of our return to learn meetings let us not lose your intention as we go your attention as we go into budget season and i just want to thank miss jesse and
237miss denise mcphail for your presentation tonight and thank you again for bringing a student and recognizing remind me your last name again it just left hill thank you mr hill um i just think it's important and that we are able to highlight you because so often we talk about the students who go off into yale and we talk about students who go into trades and we don't often talk about the arts and i know all of us up here have a deep love for the arts in one way or the other and i just think it is fantastic that you're coming from our school division you spoke to us tonight you've you put a physical face something that other students can see that is a reality that you a dream that you've made a reality
238and i wish you all the best success in the future and um you know when we look at spark and other non-profit organizations that donate to students for scholarships i hope that this is another reminder that the arts need donations and scholarships too thank you for um being willing to come up here and speak i know it's nerve-wracking but you did a fantastic job miss jackson thank you i wanted to send a continued thank you to prince william county staff especially those who have been in the building since last march this week ms wahl and i held a working group to discuss the budget as that we can't meet for office hours due to covid please email me with any questions on the budget i've enjoyed watching the many different schools in my district celebrate
239black history month and i also want to extend my sincere gratitude to dr nichols and the staff at unity read for hosting the vaccination clinics and of course the pandemic team for everything they do and to novant tonight i really appreciated the candor with which the principal spoke and i look forward to further dialogue as we continue to phase in students well as we continue the transition after phasing in students thank you to staff for helping making to make this meeting accessible for me as i've mentioned before it's difficult for me to navigate this mass world and i really appreciate the um the help and the grace and understanding during this time and congratulations please continue to prioritize student staff safety by following cdc guidelines and after schools as well and what we do as
240a community directly impacts our schools um i want to offer my sincere condolences to the woodbridge middle school community in the family of miss cervantes she was an amazing and kind person who went out of her way to show love and grace to all students thank you miss jackson miss ralston thank you good night miss zargapor thank you dr latif i will keep this short because i am covered covered weary covered tired i know our teachers and our staff are too so as we are moving through the rest of this school year please extend kindness to one another be mindful of how everyone's situation is is unique to themselves how they're feeling what they're going through thank you to all the students who've reached out this week with your various excitement about going back into
241the building for some of you some of you have reached out with concerns about what it's like to be a virtual student and some ideas that you have for change i want to also remind people that i think it's been mentioned here we have had staff who've been working through this pandemic since schools closed in march last year we don't want to lose sight of the fact that we've had food service we've had people working in the buildings we've had administrators who have had to re-configure everything from top to bottom we've had special ed teachers in since day one we added our kindergarten our first second third now we've got more students in and now we need to be thinking about what we can do better and make this even better as we move through
242the year last thing i'll say is make sure you wear your mask wash your hands keep your distances and please if you are not feeling well stay home have a good night everyone thank you all right miss aria poor we cannot have a meeting without that it is so critical that our vice chair remind everyone how important it is to mask wash your hands keep your distance stay home if you're sick since she has been doing that we have now reached 7.89 on the seven day cdc metrics technically i think in the orange or the yellow now in their new color coding that they so desired but we're getting there we're getting there and thank you very much our metrics are improving our vaccination numbers are continuing to go up all good news lots of
243good news over the weekend from folks whose students have attended in person a lot of great pictures a lot of great stories a lot of great teachers and principals reaching out saying how happy they are to be back a lot of students thrilled to be back and that is just the fantastic news over the last week and we are thrilled for them i want to thank um you know i mentioned denise hebner and the pandemic team and we've heard a lot about the efforts they did and dr nichols here this evening um there were parent volunteers i see one here in the room i don't embarrass her but i will rana call has been at all the clinics or as many of them as at least i have and she's been there volunteering making sure
244folks are fed and has brought food picked up coffee and donuts and her and her family have done a terrific job her two children have started school at benton and cogan have sent nice letters to the board and so we're excited to move the division forward to in-person learning today is the last first day as everyone recalls i guess am i out of time jason i don't know i don't know if the time went on but anyways thank you all it was uh um another long meeting but we hope to um i think our next meeting will all see you all as a work session next wednesday for the budget so have a great night everyone meeting [Music] adjourned