SCPS School Board Work Session 08/25/22

001on thursday august 25th at 4 p.m i'd like to welcome the fine folks from the central office here and we're looking forward to your presentation uh do we have a motion to approve the agenda as presented motion made by miss rutz do i hear a second second second by mr barlow all those in favor say aye all right all those opposed the agenda has been approved okay first thing strategic goal planning miss shepard sue thank you um this evening dr heingerner is going to talk about our strategic goal um strategic plan and we really have three options after this we um our strategic plan currently goes from 2018 to 2024. we can leave the plan as is we can tweak the plan or we can do major revisions to the plan if we are going

002to do major revisions to the plan it will probably take a year to do that because we want to get community input and staff input so you know whatever however we decide to move forward with our strategic plan um will determine you know the length of time that it's going to take and we can continue to have conversations about that but at this point i'm going to turn it over to dr hein garner so he can talk about our current plan all right thank you very much and really truly um you mentioned presentation and i hope this isn't a presentation i hope i put slides just to help guide conversation because this it is a work session and i hope that you do stop and ask questions and um you know clear up any misunderstanding

003or anything you know along those lines um miss shepherd's teed it up pretty well she's teeded up pretty well from the standpoint of of what we what we need to know from the board uh the direction that you want us to go and each one of those options that she mentioned um has uh has repercussions there are pros and cons there there are lots of pieces that go with each one of those things and i hope i'm going to tease that out a little bit in the information that i'm going to share with you but i want you to have that thought that at the end of the day we're hoping to find out where you all want to go with this after you hear this information i'm going to give you okay let's start

004by looking at a couple pieces of paper real quick let's look at this piece of paper thank you to jessica for putting this together for us um i really like this framework graphic um you can you if you google strategic planning you'll find millions of things out there that are lots of graphics and oftentimes what you'll see is a vertical display of a strategic planning process and i particularly don't like that because it definitely gives whether it is or isn't it gives a it gives a visual that it's a top-down process and that's not what it should be all right so i appreciate jessica being able to put this into a landscape format that works for our philosophy and that it's not top down it's it's middle out it's all of us together and what

005we do moving forward and you see we start on the left with vision and mission statements and i'll pause there and reference another piece of paper that you should have at your spot that has our vision and mission points but it also has our beliefs okay and i'm i'm come back to that uh at a couple different times but one of the points i want to make about this is nothing that i'm sharing with you is dave highgardner's baby all right this i didn't make any of this this has been made over years with groups of people talking about these things and saying i don't like that and i like that and let's change this and let's add this this isn't my work this isn't this is a group effort over many years that these

006things have been crafted so then we look at our beliefs and our vision missions of vision mission and our belief and those things then have culminated in those another page that i printed out for you and that are current goals and again those goals were crafted with lots of conversation not one particular person lots of ideas lots of input and that's where they the group landed the last time we did this now before we get too far down the road one thing that i do want to mention to you is you'll notice how many goals there are here and i think that's really important to keep in mind as we tease this out okay there's one two three four five goals and quite frankly and just my opinion which i know doesn't matter a whole

007lot but that's probably max um because you you'll see going back to this framework the real impetus or the real point of this graphic is to is to show if we have four priorities or four goals or however many we land with when when this is all said and done you'll notice that there are three action plans that come out from that that's just arbitrary there might be 13 action plans you know there might be two i'll guarantee you there will be more than one and then from those are the measures of success of which you never want to have one measure of success the world's too complicated for that we have multiple measures of success so you can imagine we might start with four priorities but by the time the work has to get

008done we've got a whole lot more here than just four goals or four priorities so i think that's important to keep that in your mind as you hear some more information about strategic planning does that make sense please stop and say hold on what are you talking about what do you mean just ask don't hesitate to ask questions let's pass these around and uh then we'll get started i think there's enough for everyone i know if you're if you're like me you'd like to um you like to be able to jot some notes down to a reference point um in information that you see if you don't have enough i okay thank you very good all right so we'll we'll kick off some information and then we'll come back to the last booklet that i

009put together the the current strategic plan so a couple quotes there that i think are important is this is one of the most powerful components of the board members duties is is this function that we're doing right this minute the the creation of the strategic plan it's the roadmap for the future of what the school system is going to prioritize and focus on that's what many of our goals will end up being formatted around or formulated to help achieve so this is an incredibly important part of this um and the best way to determine where we're going to go is this not haphazard you know we're pointing up we're going to put a destination in in the gps and and we're going to predict on this is the route we're going to take to get

010there and it's not going flying by the seat of our pants all right and so trying to invent the future that we want is all part of this it's a lot of tactile work it's a lot of printing it's a lot of stuff on the computer but it's also a lot of philosophy beliefs feelings commitment all those kind of things wrapped up in it and at the end of the day we are all working in the school system but we all know that it's not our school it's not my system it's not it's our community school system so that's a really important component to also keep in your mind as you're thinking through strategic planning so i love this graphic and some some of you are going to say well i've seen these graphics before

011and you absolutely have and that's the beauty of this is because um some things stand the test of time and these are these are some things that stand the test of time notice the mirror the rear view mirror and the size of the rear view mirror in comparison with the windshield it's important that we look behind us and know what's coming up behind us and it's important to know where we've been there's no question about that but it's even more important to know where we're going and we want to have a bigger lens and seeing where we're going and seeing where we've been where we've been is where we've been important to remember it not to forget it make sure we learn from it but where we're going is where we want to focus and

012so it's a bigger window about where we're going and so here are nine things that i think are really really important to undergird the work of a strategic plan and this is a lot of information that that's come from a lot of different sources um work that i've been involved in with lots of different people and learning from a lot of different people but then we'll start with unpacking the title strategic thinking has to guide or should guide strategic action planning it's not just our feelings and emotions and what we what we feel like it's it's using our brain and thinking about how will we get to where we want to go and thinking strategically about it and to unpack that a little bit more are those nine bullets and and i put the first

013one first for a reason and i think it's pretty obvious if if that's not what we're looking through that big picture at uh that big windshield out from that last slide then we're probably doing this for purposes that you know that's our purpose as kids and that's what we're here for so making sure that all of our decisions are made in the best interest of kids that drives our philosophy it drives what we believe is in the best interest of our school system continuous creation but consistent direction and a lot of times these things you they seem to be a conflict with one another and that's what that's why this isn't easy um if it was easy we'd just run something off so this is what we're gonna do and be over you know um

014we've we've got to continuously think about how we will improve and and we can't wait until the the seven year plan is over and then we're going to change it to improvement you know the fortune 500 companies would never be fortune 500 companies if they acted like that and they worked like that when we see something's wrong we're working to fix it tomorrow um not well our strategic plan says we're supposed to do that and you know 2028 no so it's it's continuous creation but a consistent direction of moving forward and continuous improvement is a part of that process it's a journey it's not when we finish our new strategic plan this is where we'll be now by the time we get there we'll be going someplace to the next place so i think that's

015an important thing to keep in mind one another thing about action planning and one reason why we don't like to say the comprehensive plan comprehensive planning and strategic planning oftentimes get used to to be the same i don't like comprehensive planning language that's just me personally all right um it's it's because what it's about being strategic but it's more about the action that happens and not the plan because i can guarantee you everybody's doing this work at some point in time in their life and they've got that notebook that's something right back there on the shelf that has been touched for five years and that's where this continues it's not about the plan it's about the action from a plan and we've got to keep that alive that's a that's got to be ingrained in

016what we're doing or this is just you know kind of just enough for much another important point i think is is honoring the past and we've talked about that many many times because you know there's been a lot of great people that have come before us have set the stage for wherever we've gone you know the success or the not success let's just call it what it is whatever's happened to us in the past there's been smart great people that have run school systems including ours and and to and to take an approach that we're gonna oh this is what we're doing now we're going to uproot everything that's been done is is is really not honoring the work that these people living in our community have poured their heart and soul out for the

017school system and so we've got to find a way to to blend that into the work that we do okay that's a very important piece of it another important piece is having broad participation and how that can look it can be very different and it i've worked i've done this four or five times now just in this division and um it's looked different every time and and the participation rate has been very minor to very great um and and some a little bit in between but i think the important takeaway from that is going back to the very first slide this is community school system abroad participate everybody who wants to have a say should somehow have a say that's my opinion something to think about with that but to the next point i think

018it's bullet number six and it goes back to this point in this graphic we've got to be careful because real fast a strategic plan will turn into a monster it'll it'll be huge spending time finding resources checking data you know it it can become very hard to manage very fast and when once you've created it you you can it's not you just leave it set there we don't leave it on shelf and we got to feed it all the time so it's more data collection and more meetings and more conferences and more so we got to be careful with that and layering on new initiatives is something that school divisions are are very good at and uh we've been guilty of that you know we've we're doing everything it comes down the pipe we feel

019like we've got to do and and because we want to do what's in the best interest of our kids we thought we got to do this this will be great we got to do this this will be great it's tough it's tough when we take that take that one most unsuccessful strategic action plans are a result of pursuing too many projects hands down when these things don't fly very well it's because people trying to do too much it's because we all want to do everything we can to help our kids then the next thing you know we're not really doing anything very well a good thing to keep in mind and every good idea everyone every person in this room is going to have three or four great ideas they're gonna have five or six

020pretty good ideas you know everybody's gonna have we all this would be a great thing and that's terrific and we should possibly pursue that but it doesn't necessarily have to be part of the strategic action plan okay that's an important thing to remember the philosophy is work the philosophy of the work is an important driver as well and again it's not just making stuff and buying programs or making sure we hire somebody who can do this right it's the decision-making components that are part of the strategic plan also and the best example that i can think of is one that we all know and love who makes the decision on you name the topic school-based administrators or central office based administrator somebody's got to make a decision who's who's going to do it that's that's

021a great example from a philosophical standpoint is how much where's the balance lie are we a system of schools or we a school system all of those phrases can be used in that one example right there something we can everything that i'm showing you this is like two or three day workshop that we could go into this for great detail these are just some of the high points that i think are important to keep in mind the second to the last one the sub bullet there is very important the implementers of the strategic action plan are incredibly important because you all are going to come up with your goals leadership team is going to make them look we're going to put them together and jessica's going to make them look great who are the implementers

022the implementers are those people in those 10 buildings yeah we're the overseers we're we're going to get the ball rolling support guide help but where the rubber hits the roads in those classrooms teachers and building administrators and the implementers are key and that's why i'm thinking and keeping in mind autonomy mastery and purpose drive motivation if we want them to to do you the work that you are the visionaries of seeing they need to have a role in this not just uh here go do this that doesn't that doesn't motivate a lot of me so i think it's really important to remember the implementers are our key stakeholders and then last but absolutely not least um i try to start with some you know you remember the first thing for you know the most and

023the last thing the most this is leadership this is this is a this is a task of leadership and hopefully visionary leadership um it's it's it should be courageous it should be bold it should be aspirational we're not just trying to do the same thing we've done forever if we want a true strategic plan that means something that is moving us forward as a school system in the 21st century continually moving forward it's got to be aspirational it's not we just want to leave things the way they've always been just something to think about so i'm just giving you this real fast because it's very important every organization has a life cycle and that's the represented in the in the in the belt in the bell curve that you can see in that graphic and

024you're either getting better or you're getting worse and if your status quo where that broken line is i can guarantee you that warren frederick page rockingham winchester harrisonburg stanton everybody else is getting better and if they're getting better and we're a status quo we're going to be with that red x on the bottom right corner because that's how that's how you get worse if you're not getting better and i think that's really important to remember is if we want to stay status quo other people are going to go and buy us other school divisions are going to pass us it's about aspirational goals and what we can do to get better and part of that is a very important part of that is in the upper left-hand corner is discussion and decision making around what

025are absolutes and what are artifacts what are absolute things that we're going to say this is shandor county public schools this is the way we roll here and other things we say you know what they've they've helped us and they've been good but they've run their life cycle and it's time for them going away a good graphic that represents that is is this graphic here and this is usually an early part of the strategic action planning process there's discussion with key stakeholders about what are we doing that's either unnecessary or not yielding positive results it's too costly or for some other reason we need to abandon and those and that's that refer to that we refer to that as strategic abandonment we don't just stop doing things because we don't like it i don't like

026doing some things but i know they help our schools help our kids it's not about what we don't like it's it's about strategically abandoning things that aren't helping us or we're not getting our bang for our buck and then the top part of that is equally important the momentum of the status quo is the parallel straight line and the star represents where we want to get to and our work your work and in our work is fill that gap what is that how can we fill that gap to get from where we are to where we want to be and that's our challenge um so that's that's all part of this so what goes into thinking about that and actually making those things happen it's it's everybody it involves everybody and i love this graphic

027because you know the funnel representing work were everything that goes into it our instructional resources what does it mean we would talk about increasing student achievement well that involves instruction what does that mean from an instructional resource standpoint we want to increase student achievement what's that have to do with human resources what does that mean for that our facilities what does it mean for the future of our facilities we want to increase student achievement what does that mean for our facilities not in 1970 but in 2022 and beyond and then obviously money where you know everybody knows you can you can tell what's important to people by looking at their budget you know where they spend their money and and so where are financial financial resources going so all of those are those are some

028of the big drivers that filter down into helping you decide and be part of the goal development process and so the action plan that you have that you have a copy of our current one that's the bridge this is the bridge it's the bridge between what you envision what you want to see what you declare as your goals as a board to the outcomes to the end product that's the strategic plan and the action plans are components of the strategic plan and so that's how your that's how your vision will get will get implemented into the school system through our action plans now i want to back up real fast this is what i want you to do this is just i think this is one of the greatest pictures that i've ever seen and

029i've used it i don't know how many times all i want you to do is stare at that picture for one minute all right and when i say okay write something down or you can do it whenever you want that's write one thing down that this picture makes you think all right do that in one minute 30 seconds all right stop what what's one thing you write it if you wrote it down great if not that's fine but what's one thing that picks that picture evokes so many feelings and so many comments from people it's amazing i'm just wondering what some of you may have thought about if you'd like to share it looks like to me the 2022 picture is a little more crowded for students it's more diversity on the right more technology

030on the right there's a lot of change i guess in the last couple months i heard that you know this isn't your this is and i see those differences and i sit back and i look at those differences and go okay have we improved things have we not improved things was there things that it ain't broke don't fix it um i'm sure that we open those books the what's in them are going to be completely different so there's there's definitely a broad there's a lot of questions i'd love to ask as opposed to have we improved yep well i i think that you know just my just my perspective of there's um that i mean that's real sorry it's okay okay sorry that that picture right there is real kids sitting in straight rows look

031in the back of each other's heads for the past 100 years and you go into any of our schools today and that's exactly what you want to see not in every classroom not in a lot of classrooms but in many many classrooms that's what you're going to see we're we're teaching kids in 2022 the exact same way we taught them a hundred years ago now just an observation the most powerful one of the most powerful components to making that picture look different is work that you are getting ready to do with a strategic plan because if you say you don't want to look like that and that's our job to figure out a way it doesn't look like that i'm just saying just something to think about do you remember that video us and we've

032seen other places too about the industrial revolution and how everything almost showed it almost showed us no it's a little over top that's it it maybe i'll send it out it's very it's a meaning it really it's great yeah it's great and it's it makes you stop and think you know here are the goals once again um your current current goals and just wanted to make sure those were in in front of you um that you can see them i can i can almost guarantee you if you said we want to do a whole brand new reboot of this thing you're going to come down to some of those very very similar things i almost guarantee you because they're what we want they might have different words to it but we all want these things

033and so you look any school division you want to look at and they're going to have virtually the same thing just maybe worded a little differently um but words are important they're i think they're important they have various meanings that's why i say we have administrative advance and not an administrative retreat right we don't go backwards right we go forwards and last but not least is i think is is a very good point to keep in mind this slide here because all of this kind of stuff should help support this the work of the strategic plan development so that that's i don't have another i don't have any more information i just um wanted to use that to set the stage for where you all would like to see us go and um and you

034know we've tackled this thing from an internal team a pretty small team who've gone out and just had conversations to next level up pretty broad-based with many different teams and lots of different people and taking months and months and months of time not saying it's bad i'm just saying it's it's it's and then one other time we had third party a third party do it um come in that were um kind of led um led the process and the conversations and all that so however you'd like force to proceed eight or nine years ago i was on one of those action teams i think i was on the instruction one and i know at least a couple of the top three of those belief statements came out of that instruction action team um i don't

035know that it needs to take quite as long as that i mean that was six months nine months it was it was long it but it was really good community input on that one and the school board staff did the um did the facilitating of the conversation ebby actually did a great job with the instruction group um so i i would sort of like to let some folks review it i don't necessarily think it needs any big changes it wasn't that long ago that we looked at it but that's just my opinion i think as you as you've indicated here dave oh it's hard to argue with the uh with the five key concepts or if you will enablers of of uh good education when you talk about creating a culture and the proper culture

036and equipping the student with a sense of citizenship and empowerment an emotional readiness having professional who are not only trained but enthusiastic and passionate about what they're doing and having proper facilities and if i would look at what um as a newbie i can say as what you have done in the past several years in the regard it's pretty it's pretty it's pretty uh it's pretty apparent that a lot of these have been uh accomplished are moving upward and not moving downward in your in your scheme uh and i would say especially this year a lot has been done in terms of food service in terms of facilities and so forth i think what i've seen though the greatest need in the last year is some glaring problems that we have at with academic performance

037itself and i would not ditch any of these but i would add to that a specific requirement a specific goal of improving epic academic performance we've written this into even the evaluation of the superintendent we have seen instances where we have changed the ways of comparing or measuring performance where we've actually seen organizations hide or disguise what was or was not being performed or achieved and even though it would be it's going to be a tough sled to take a look at that as a as a as a specific academic or ex excuse me as a specific goal i think we'd be remiss if we didn't if we didn't actually look at the fact that it that is degrading uh and we have to look at ways to do it it ain't going to be

038easy because actually looking at your slide up there dave i think there are all the new ways of achieving or improving academic performance some will be old school some will be new technologies and new ways of looking at it but i think we need to look at all those measures that would that would give us a way of achieving greater success uh and looking at your strategic planning framework having an action plan to actually measure the success of those things would be something that would be tough challenging but necessary so i would make a strong case for adding that that one in this in this already fine set of goals i yeah i agree you know as i look through this i think construction and academic achievement this is part of what we we want

039to see our kids being able to do and accomplish like anything else you put it on paper and you put it out there and it becomes much more important and i'm not sure how you invest our ticket because i mean at times i don't want to get enamored and beat down with what an sol test scores i think there's a whole lot more to academic instruction than teaching a kid how to pass a test there just is and while we could say we we certainly want our schools to be accredited i don't know that that's the end game in terms of are our kids truly achieved the hard part is to be able to find what is what is that that shows that our kids are successful you know you can look at graduation rates

040and you can look at the percentage of kids that go to a i know plenty of kids that were successful in high school that decided not to go that route and have been very successful so but but i do think that anything that we do the the number one thing should be uh beyond all this is is how we how we make it really make that emphasis on students year because i think all this stuff is good you know you don't know tear it apart it's all it's all important well maybe rather than adding one we look at point number two college career and citizen readiness and make academic success a part of that goal academic success success that prepares our students for whatever eventuality and we do we have that great graphic at the

041end of every school year you know how many how many scholarships have been awarded how many people are going to college how many people are going right into a job military that kind of thing that's a great sort of data piece of data that demonstrates that we are doing great things and kids are achieving great things and moving on to the next thing but adding in academic success into that category i think might work what are we doing uh for uh teaching kids real life situations where they're going to college or they're going into the military or where they're going to be electrician for a company let me give you a practical example i experienced five years ago a neighbor when he became a state trooper went to training uh in richmond and it's hard

042it's hard to to survive that school if you haven't been but you can talk to people and he came he had opportunity to buy a home and he said marty i don't know one thing about going through this process and i and then chad you can all stu all seniors have to take a tutorial on finance is that not correct economics perspective finance economics personal finance but it's online i mean it it's done like in front of computer whatever with the teacher yeah do we have an instructor to help them through that i think we need to put more priorities on that yeah i couldn't tell you the exact number they showed me how to balance a checkbook and everything but i i can see what you're saying real life skills not just skills so

043you know and i i gave him direction and he pursued it bought a home or whatever but are we really meeting the needs of our seniors to get in the real world so he's got a home does he know how to order siding enough siding for it to cover it or well anyway things of that nature i mean to me that's important right whether you're going to college you know whatever and i think about mine i don't think i had that instructor but instruction but my parents gave me that and that never changes whether it's uh 1922 or 2022. so i mean well yeah i think and that's the end that again goes under college careers most recent and he said it was a successful program i had miss gilbert her last year okay she

044showed us how to balance the checkbook but did everyone had to take that class yeah you had to take the graduate right that was about four years ago that became a requirement so yeah i think i think we are involved in that you're trying to make sure and now with uh online banking and all that i mean it's changed in bouncing a checkbook now i mean are can we improve that and and now i i got a wedding invitation and there was an app there to respond and my wife gave me one last night let me show you how to do this she called a tutorial i said okay and it's amazing how things have changed so anyway i don't know how true that is but i know that my kids were okay to have

045me make their doctor's appointments until they were after 18 if they had that i let them so i guess you know questions is do you know how to do this do you know what to say what's your phone etiquette do you know how if you're stuck in a position can you feed yourself if your mom is not available um you know do you know like i said what what the important thing if you had to figure out how much carpet you needed for this room you or it can you figure that out do you still know we don't i mean we know we don't in the world of digital money we don't count change back i mean you can walk into any any retail establishment with it with the young kid then if you throw

046a quarter or a penny in there or something that throws them off and hand them you know a dollar bill they're like uh yeah what am i supposed to do here so you know you you don't for me that that um you know i feel bad for them i i'd like for them to have the have the confidence to get him here let me give you 50 cents back you know for that or yeah i don't you know i i do i want to put a deck with my new home and i don't want to get taken advantage of i need to understand how this works and things of that nature i know we're in the past we've always been so focused on sending them to college um but though that that narrative is also

047starting to change so you know not that we don't want you to go but if you choose not to go and you choose a different path we want to make sure you're set up for success as well even if it's working at one of our factories downtown you know um that kind of deal you know i agree are we are we looking at that um because i always thought you know the graduation rates i was chuckled when that got thrown out like yeah we're so proud of them but then we have we then our quality i'm going uh how does that match up are we just passing kids or what and those are valid questions that the public is starting to ask so i see your sol scores but you have the sixth highest graduation

048rate in the state how does that work um you know when everybody else is passing you and you're right sols aren't the end all beat all um of things so yeah i would like to see that we're making sure that we that rigor that we've talked about and the quality of what we're offering is is truly what we need not not necessarily just a narrative well i think um and andrew made a good point when he indicated that that those things that you and marty were talking about could be subsumed under the career college and citizenship readiness the question of course is always how deep to go and and there are real needs for people to survive in our society and uh i mean if you get charged for if you get a free football

049game on directv and then suddenly you're charged for the next two two years this happened to me i could charge 600 bucks i didn't i was i don't know enjoy those games i did i didn't really though so but but i mean it's in every realm buying a car um all kinds of things and so how deep do we go i don't know you'd like to think a lot of that is is is taught at home and yet as we've indicated sometimes you know it's way beyond us so i think this is something we actually have to take on in terms of something that needs to be assessed i would like to think that that could be indeed folded under under this one so you don't have to rejigger everything but but i i think

050i think there is uh i think there is a a need for that and whether uh cindy we could put the academic performance together i'm going to take a look at that but i'm also thinking that could be one that's just a big enough to live it might have to stand by itself but we have time to figure this out and i applaud you guys for bringing this to our attention now rather than 2013 so we can we can be leaning forward and and actually researching this stuff as we go along or talking about subcommittees or how some somehow we're going to research it or getting the information from the staff that we need what's our goal here today as far as this is concerned just what we're doing and we're not going to dive

051into it and start yeah no we're not taking a deep dive today it's where do we want to go yes so we're doing what we want absolutely i would say and one other thing from my perspective that i think and i don't know it's again woven throughout is you know it's been an emphasis uh post-pandemic and that is i hate to use word behavior student behavior uh in accountability and those types of things needs to be addressed in a way that people see that hey this is a value to us you know that your kids come in and they do what they're supposed to do most of all all the time you know it's an expectation and you know if we're sending you know using our goals to to say um what's our aim what's

052important that's important it's important and you know as well as i do if you spend any time in the classroom that regardless how effective a teacher is they don't get a whole lot done when kids aren't following you know just simple basic rules and i'm not saying that we've got to get a pound of flesh off every kid that doesn't follow the rules but i i think that there needs to be accountability for those who don't in on that you know i want to ask how is how how has the beginning of school year gone in terms of cell phones and some of the expectations that we may ask staff to come up with yep so we've had community chats at all three of our schools we haven't had great participation but it has given

053us an opportunity to talk to our principals and um to talk to the people who did come to those community chats and one of the things that we heard from i think all three of the schools that the cell phone situation has improved greatly so kids are leaving their cell phone students are leaving their cell phones in their pockets or in their book bags and they're not out during instructional time so i think that has been very successful indeed the the meeting at mountain view reinforced what andrew was talking about just a minute ago which was accountability because the freedom that they have to still possess the phone but use it within the rules is building that sense of responsibility and accountability at the same time it seems to me that that's working fairly well

054in the county and something you know we we we should learn from uh and but uh but i'm gonna double down on what you just said in an age where everybody seems to be concerned about their rights and being taken seriously and their privileges or whatever a sense of accountability and responsibility is something we need we need to reinforce as well so i i think i think we can do that again within the structure here uh that we've set up but but uh perhaps actor adding on some particular action plans that just work you know within the context of these can do it i notice that positive school climate and culture does not include parents now we have it on the next two the family engagement and community um connections we are fully expecting parents

055to have kids ready prepared schedules people to schedule fed prepared for the day and going to what you're talking about as far as i see you've got classroom just destruct disruptions defiance and bullying that at some point is going to come back to parents participation what how they react and and really they play a key part in what goes on in the classroom because again if if they're not doing their job at home they're then they're their little angels aren't being little angels in the classroom either um and you know if i know we get we get parents that are what's the word i'm looking for um really just not you know i can't do with them at home i don't what you're all doing with you know but i don't care or you know

056they're just not really into correcting it i think we need to find something that that either says okay you know we don't want your kid to end up at a triplet in in the alternate head or anything else but if if you can't and you aren't going to participate you know you have to take them someplace else you your rights to an education doesn't you know doesn't overtake the 20 other kids that are here for an education either or the teacher's right to come into a classroom and be respected be able to be treated like a professional and to do their job you know if you're having to always talk to tommy because tommy's always being disruptive or you know we have i know we have um some youngins you know young young kids with

057with things that are going on that maybe we need to look at you know when i hear that from a standpoint of a sub that she's going well you know just know that if something happens and he melts down the class knows to evacuate when you're using those terms it's something we need to look at because we can't just take care of one at the sacrifice of everybody else so you know whether that's pairing with parents and saying look you know i know he's been here four times you can take him home when you decide to you know help us out he can come back to the classroom and i know that that's not a popular you know no kid left behind no kid you know we don't toss any anybody out but goes back

058to accountability this is a partnership um we expect certain things out of you when you when you drop your kid off or when you put him on the bus and we're gonna hold you to it because you certainly are gonna hold us to it if it doesn't come through i mean that phone's gonna ring that email is gonna ring there's gonna be a call to a board member like this so let's push back on that a little bit i don't have a problem holding you accountable either let's work together and make sure he gets he gets what he needs so you know i don't know if that's a blending of priority a in priority or or what but you know parents played a part in the culture and there was end in school climate i

059think i was going to say a minute ago i think they did watch that video because the points that you all made are brought out in that video that you're referenced um very uniquely it's a great little video i will send it to you guys but um i did want to make one point though mr helsley to your point that i think is important to to know it's it's not an answer to but it's just information to know um the authentic learning piece and the very very last two words and the of the goals of the last goal um i agree that really could live nicely up under college and career ready but that was a very uh pointed reason for todd lin's position and the recrafting of amy miller's position to get more students

060involved in in internship and co-curricular i mean co-cooping opportunities and that number has grown nicely over the over the last number of years and it's something we've already been talking about just in the past few days of increasing even more um because i think we're all on board with with uh an authentic learning experience for students um that that incorporates many of the things you're talking about i just wanted to highlight obviously you know they can find jobs you know before you know we had trouble i know uh roger wilkins that's right the fine intern you know businesses that will take them now that should not be an option i think age probably might have play a part in some of that some of those won't take anybody well it's it's it's a lot of

061it's a lot of moving parts but one of the biggest ones is making sure that they have all the classes they need to graduate from high school and sometimes that takes a little longer than others but um but that is definitely a priority and i think it's been a real good thing over the past number of years continues to improve we got the right person leading that obviously what kind of a relationship i don't specifically know about those in winchester but i do know that the armed services recruits in all the schools and most of them are on pretty much first name basis with our administrators they know who they are and as a matter of fact um i don't know which branch of the service it was but he helped out at central's back

062to school night or orientation night and he had a table set up there and he was going to have his punching bag there to do some martial arts kind of stuff just but he wasn't able i just happened to be there with miss swartzel when he came up and um was setting up and he said i wasn't able to get the punching bag tonight um jen have you gotten any follow-up calls for lily asking what she's doing now because i have from recruiters for any case they have my phone number for whatever reason saying that just got them for justice did you not for lilly oh that's funny um yeah so they're they're they're still following up the military recruiters so they're in the schools so it seems to me like tweaking our strategic plan

063is the direction in which we should go adding a academic performance goal seems to stand out to me and then maybe revising a couple of the other goals to include student behavior and and things like that so does that does that have some consensus okay all right so um we will um our group will get back together we will um come up with some plans and then we will revisit okay absolutely and if you have anything that you want us to consider before we meet again please share okay any thank you uh dr kind gardener i think you're on 2-2-12 do anything all right a lot of fun wash dishes today all right let me see how much order we want to go here all right our topic is the textbook or excuse me the

064topic is um policy revision and um i think one that we wanted to discuss specifically from the last board meeting was policy klb and so i brought some information to share with you just to give you a background on um thank you dennis has a bunch it's just one page this is just it's just a flowchart right the textbook adoption flow chart i think i'm going to start there um i'm gonna i'm gonna try to to simplify this uh and and and be as concise as possible um and so i think the best way to do that is to separate this um in two different um two different lanes they kind of run parallel because they're very similar very very similar but they're different and so um we'll start with the textbook piece because that's

065probably the the easiest and the most uh concrete and um so i'm starting with this uh flow chart and i don't it's not really a flowchart but it's a check time timeline timeline probably good but um but prior to mr hensley joining us and kind of taking the reigns of textbooks we followed the law we did the exact process we were required to do but it was but but that was about it we just met the letter of the law we involved too we needed to involve we had it open the number of days it needed to be open but when mr hensley took the reins he said you know what um because he may have been fielding some of the calls um that staff were saying you know i was a biology teacher and

066i didn't get to see the book because there had a biology teacher represented i'm just using this for an example there was a representative for the biology teachers or there was a representative for the english language arts which i believe this is an example of and so he said you know what we're going to make so that everybody gets a chance and i really appreciate that and he's done a great job in in administering this process so this is the timeline from you can see there at the beginning and this was our english language ela adoption and it does include every english language arts teacher in the division they have an opportunity to see to hear to watch to learn to ask questions to get their hands on the books not just a representative of

067their content area i'll pay a special attention to the very last um bullet under november 2019 and and at that point they go through a process of deciding okay these books make make the cut um which here's a sidebar note that's important we really like to try and stick to books that have been um approved on the state adoption list because if we do not use that list then we have a lot more leg work on on us to determine whether those books are a viable resource we're charged with making sure vetting them basically making sure that they are teaching the correct content and and all that and quite honestly we don't really have staff to be able to to do that to the depth of that that it needs to be done um not

068saying we haven't because we have ventured out a time or two i believe but they were small adoptions that didn't didn't take much so that's just a little bit of a sidebar but you'll see there in though at the end of november or around that time um the uh community can come in and look at the books and then he flip over to the back side and you see in january um is when that community window closes and and mr hensley correct me if i'm wrong but you try to leave that open about a month a month or two and a lot of times here here's it's it's so many moving parts in all this it's hard to say it's hard to go just but but another important component of it is you you got

069to backwards plan this thing because school starts in august all right whatever day it starts well we need the books then well there's they gotta be shipped you gotta order them you gotta decide what you want you gotta review you gotta you know you so you keep going back in time until you get to the point when you gotta start on this so that you can get it done and time to get them ordered time to get them here so sometimes we we get some hiccups what kind of hiccups well we might get a hiccup in um the state may throw some kind of hiccup in there where they've have something to do with a textbook that says you can't use this or we you remember five or six years ago it's probably seven or

070eight years ago now there was a history book that had wrong content in it and everybody had to cut some pages out and re-put a new page in all right if you if you happen to buy that book um so the state could throw a wrench out here's another big thing this costs money right so when when budgets aren't approved we're waiting on money we can't order until we know we have the money so we were waiting so now we get approved now we've got two weeks so the timeline is very important and all of those are just a couple of the factors that play into that a textbook adoption piece now i want to show you another piece of paper that is important to in this also i think there's enough not only has

071has mr hensley created a robust timeline and created a system by which all schools participate and all teachers get to participate but he is also he's also put together some rubrics to guide the decision-making um and so people can can show their support one way or another the level of their support for this and so the handout includes several pages you'll see the first one is kindergarten through second grade teacher review then a 3-5 teacher review and a 6-8 teacher review a 9-12 teacher review so the teachers are actually looking at these materials they're watching videos they may there there may be a a person from the vendor coming in and just and giving a presentation but nonetheless they're responding on this document i believe it's a google doc but then the next list of

072papers or a group of papers are the community reviews so people any staff i mean any community member who once can come in review those books they don't have to fill one of these out but they can and it certainly is helpful if we have their feedback in writing so he's created a process by which not just teachers review and report but the community can review and report also so i think that's important to know that there is not just open and saying hey moms and dads and community members come into central high school and look at the books that we're thinking about buying but there's a way that you can provide your feedback also all right so so that's how textbooks essentially are are purchased in a 50 000 foot view and there's a

073whole lot more moving parts than that in the process but that's how they are purchased now jumping over to the library book part that's that's a whole different process all right and and basically in a nutshell librarians are going to look at their um current um what they currently have in their um libraries and determine what they may need and they're going to do that from a lot of different pieces of data student interest drives a lot here's here's a really good example at one of our schools one of the staff members has had a has had a therapy dog at that school for many many years and it is beloved by that school and the kids worship them those dogs that school the number of kids who want to read about dogs is probably

074a lot more than another school and so they probably have a lot more books in their library about dogs because that's what kids want to read they don't want to read that so much in other schools that's just one simple example that's real life example all right so that could drive a decision point around for the librarian um obviously the age of the books they have books that are torn broken you know whatever they're going to discard those they're going to replace those those are kind of things um they want a variety of topics obviously they're gonna look at variety they'll make sure that there's hunting books for kids who like hunting and cooking books for kids who like cooking all those things um and then at some point in time it boils down to

075money um this is how much money they have to spend so this year they're going to buy 200 books this next year they might buy 250 books the next year they might buy 400 books it just depends on how much money is allocated it's usually pretty consistent but um but those are just some of the factors of what would go into the the librarian and that's the and they go through i mean they have a master's degree in that that's what they're trained to to do to manage those collection of books they make a a list that lists like everything else goes through the budget process of po purchase order from through the school and then it's signed off on it and it's purchased so that's that's in a nutshell how those two things happen

076now what you really want to know about is the policy and so one of the things that i've done to try again and and simplify things for you is looking at the policy of klb and considering the review process and i'm going to give you three pieces of paper to go along with this the first and they're they're all the same they're just different versions these three copies stapled copies that i'm going to give you are all the same they're just different versions that are formatted differently exact same content they're just formatted differently the first one that you have and you can see in the upper right hand corner it simply says file klb that's posse klb that's it no dash no nothing after it klb and from the comments that you referenced at your

077last meeting obviously we took away that you were looking for different groups of people to determine the textbook or the instructional materials concern or a library materials concern and so with the paper that i just gave you i put both of those groups of people on one in one document okay so there's policy kob and the second page number two it's it's highlighted in in gray in some of your um handouts and it's in yellow and some other handouts but the first a letter a to a would be the would be the people who would be in charge of reviewing instructional materials like textbooks and instructional materials and letter b would be the group of people who would be assembled to review library materials okay so one policy two separate groups depending upon what it

078was that was being reviewed that make sense and that's that's what that is i'll give you a minute just to look over there the only thing that has changed since the last time you saw this at the school board meeting was the addition of b 2b i know that there was some interest in from the librarians and and obviously you can see under 2b number three a librarian from the same level but a different school would be part of that committee because you know whoever whatever school it is essentially that that building administrator is going to take the hit initially if there's something that pops up i don't know if that's something that i mean i'm open for discussion is that something that um and i appreciate that you left parents in the librarians and

079classroom teachers you know you could definitely do that or you know the principal of the school could be one of those people yeah and that's and then and then the first part of that in in number one that the first thing that happens is it comes to the principle yeah that's and then if it's not resolved then it would go to this process can i ask you a question a couple questions sure about the the revisions that are being made to klb initially not not your new one okay okay okay are these revisions that we made or were sent to us no these are revisions that were made by shandor county public schools okay yes does it have anything to do with the senate bill 656 that is going to have model policies for book

080adoption it may and it may not this was started long before that became a thing um it may it may be that in january we're looking at this again because i think that's when they're supposed to be out um part of that has to do with notifying parents of what students choose to check out from from a library that's part of that senate bill not necessarily does that have to be part of our policy i don't believe but it could be um it might be and discussions around that what vdoe is doing and coming up with a model policy the i asked the question and was answered that does not include library books it includes instructional material but not library books so i personally would like to see a separate policy for library books if

081if we feel like we need to do that i don't think the same process should apply for library books which are instructional material is presented to the class to do their work library books are choices so i don't think they are the same well i'm sorry you go ahead i'm going to say um i was i was going to say the same thing but after reading it i think you've done a really good job of making one policy that will suffice for both because it does take into account if a different constituency if you will and ye and yet leaves the same trail or path is a better word to get us there so i i think you've done an admirable job of changing that constituency in here such that the committee formed is different

082and looking at different things and and i and i've looked at the antecedent policy uh school libraries media center um and and it seems it's a very general statement as you all know dave uh each school shall provide a variety of materials resources and equipment to support the instructional program and then it says before that uh you know and also general student interest as you indicated so with that is a very general kind of guideline i think it could be done very crisply in this and have one one policy document we could strip them apart but the boilerplate would be so much similar in the two that it seems that would be unnecessary to i did that you know i took this exact same document exact same document and simply pulled those apart put them

083down in each one and the only difference is this would be klb lb for library books and klb dash i am for instructional materials which would incorporate textbooks so you know it's your pleasure it doesn't matter to me i just want to do what you all prefer to be done were librarians included in any of this policy i've i've i have not had formal conversations with librarians i wanted to see where this went and see if if if that's the level that we want to to to go down i'd be happy to do that i'll get with our instructional team and we'll definitely pull those folks together and i really do feel like it's it's a different animal i feel like library books are completely different than instructional material and i have no problem with

084the school board office working on instructional material i think chad has done a tremendous job i love that report card for the for the books that was good um but i just i really feel like library books are something different they are masters level professionals and i feel like we should get their input on the library book part of it you know i guess this is where i kind of jump in because this was something that i initiated and if you haven't been following national news library books are coming a lot to the front and i personally don't want to come up here and say you know you're you're born you're pedaling because i don't believe that i don't believe in banning books either you know i i'm open to the conversation with librarians whatever

085however these are taxpayer-funded books and they should be open to review um and that's how that's how i feel about it if book you know banning books you know is is a really strong term when you look at things when i entered strasbourg high school in 85 86 there was a smoking section you could have weapons on campus you couldn't throw a rock into the parking lot without seeing it without hitting a pickup that had a that had a you know a gun in the back of it and back window we can't do that anymore you can't bring them on campus we don't want them here lol's backed us up that's banning but there are things in our in our in our libraries and i'm sure librarians after they pick you know all these things

086there's there's things that they may not understand is there not know there's there if you read an excerpt an overview it sounds like a nice story and i you know here's one i'll be happy to read it of course a court of mist and fury it is in our library at mountain view it is in our library at central and one of it says his enormous he was enormous in my hand so hard yet so silken that iran is ran a finger down and wonder he hissed twitching as i brushed my thumb over his tip and it goes on to i mean these are books that we're allowing and putting out there for 13 year olds at mountain view so my question is when we talk about our standards what's right for kids i would

087like somebody you know first of all i don't want to have what's going on here that's going on in fairfax what's going on and it got heated in virginia beach last night i don't want that i think we should be ahead of that curve i fully expect at some point you're right 656 or whatever it was only applies to curriculum but i fully expect somebody else is going to come back up because that's the hot topic right now somebody's going to come up with a bill so let's get ahead of it let's make a policy whether it be separate or not about what is what we're what we're given access to is this stuff of this nature does it have so much literary benefit that we need to keep it if we do fine then

088we should be notifying mom and dad that your child checked out either something that's got you know explicit sexual stuff because if this was in a movie there's nobody on this campus that could take them downtown and watch it without parents permission so you know is this something we want to offer and spend money on is does this book have enough literary juice about it that we need to have okay if that's the case then do they get a text your your child picked out you know checked out a library today something that had explicit content mature materials or you know a you know some topic that is you know controversial that will make them ask what's in your library book today you know i can remember when my oldest was when everybody was reading

089twilight she was like 10th grade okay so when she took off went to mary baldwin when she come back on break and what she's reading 50 shades of gray and i'm like really um you know do what i know is 50 shades of grey isn't in our isn't in our libraries anywhere because i checked but we have stuff like this that has a brief overview seems pretty harmless and and we're leaving it i mean do we want to offer this stuff is that the best choice for kids is it the best choice i think when i brought this up there was one that was just as raunchy in the middle school we're talking 11 12 and 13 year olds 10 11 12 13 year olds i would like for us to decide if that's the

090best use is there you know i don't know how much this book is it's 12.50 is there something else we can offer i don't wanna ban it you are welcome to buy it elsewhere download it borrow it you can use it for a book report you can trade it on you can bring it on campus but it's stuff here i mean this is pretty explicit um you know and i'm going do i really want to read this out loud i mean just out of respect for you all well what it comes down to is these aren't i you know master's degree you're not kids huh they are not our kids exactly every parent has the chance to limit what their kids see and they're picking them up in the library and taking them home but

091your your decision is not the same as jen's decision is the same as angie's decision i agree and also that's taken out of context just like the quote oh it's not taken out okay well let me finish please just like the quote from the bluish bluest eye was taken out of context which you shared with us before you have to take the entire work and what the work is about sure i'm i'm not going to comment on that one because i haven't read it but i do feel like the professionals the librarians need to be involved in the conversation and i don't have a problem with that before we change the policy not at all we don't have a policy we don't have a policy for review of library books and as a and i

092can read the rest of it if i can tell you that i'm not taking it out of context i don't want to hear it i'm sure you don't i'm fairly certain you don't can i um so we're under discussion right now is not the procurement of books for the library it is a review public review process correct so all we're concerned here when we're looking at this particular policy belittle is how do we how or if we allow public review of something that's in the library and so what we're allowing to have happen is a stakeholder in the county can come to the school and say they shouldn't be here and then and and the the principal will have a meeting with uh with the librarian and with the uh and with the with the

093complainant and come to a conclusion about whether that needs to be reviewed if it is reviewed then then a committee consisting of these kind of folks would come together and decide that issue and so it's so it's a member of the the chair selected by a member of the executive staff here the stakeholder who requests a review a librarian classroom teachers two parents and two subject matter experts okay now we're not voting on this tonight but today this will be decided in the future we have time to edit this it could be very well that we want to take a look at that composition of that of that committee uh but but to having a committee that would review it i think is is kind of what we're looking at in being able to accomplish

094and then and then it goes on to talk about what happens after the review committee makes its decisions and and then it lays out the responsibilities that the committee has so it kind of falls in the line so it it does not address whether something makes the first cut or not but once it's there and somebody says i don't believe that should be available then this process has followed and i would uh submit that we have time to take a look and see what that what that committee would look like okay yeah because i i do have a question about f as well where did that come from i'm sorry what is f under any of them f to subject matter for the committee two subject matter experts on the subject or issue under discussion

095usually a recognized university level business or community leader realistically are we are we going to be able to get that um and and who decides who's a community leader um i just we need to talk more about that i think we need to talk about d two scps classroom teachers not teaching in the school involved to teach the grade or course in which the materials are used i think it's a great idea but that's a burden on teachers to have to come to a committee meeting at a different school where they don't teach to take time out to be involved in this process well in response because i've responded to some of these made some input i think that i think that these are indeed important people to bring in for a good comprehensive view

096of this from from the community uh you got parents you got teachers and there are subject matter experts up and down the valley who are in various universities and colleges or businesses or who have knowledge about these subjects that have come in and should be heard and i think it would give the community and stakeholders parents a feeling of confidence that that a group that represents the community and not just you know somebody picked off the street but somebody who actually has some some credibility on the subject matter at hand so i i think i think it actually creates kind of a comprehensive view that gives everybody a feeling that it's a group that's taking a serious look at it i would think that as a former classroom teacher somebody would feel probably not empowered

097but somebody's looking to me as as as a teacher or as a subject matter expert to give some some opinion on this and have some some dialogue that would that would actually take place within this i think that uh i think that taking it out of this school for this for this level where the principal's now under the gun to try to defend one of his teachers while people are making action that's that's too much pressure on the principle and it also puts the teachers in the position of having to like back up the principal or their fellow teacher and i think i think that's i think that's bad i i just think that causes other problems so is this a little bit difficult to do yeah is it something that looks like it's going

098to be pretty fair and transparent yeah is it a review process that will probably dampen the number of reviews because of the high hurdles of bringing something forward uh yeah but but i think that kind of transparency and that kind of inclusion is is is what we need okay but but but your point to all tokens taken that we have time to discuss this and that's why we're bringing it up at a work session and we've got enough um connections i would think with lord fairfax with that with james madison to be able to find somebody with you know some expert subject matter and i think the ability for the senior staff to be able to find those folks is not that much of a burden so in the passage that you read the expert

099would be somebody that's into the literature what we're saying i don't know well i actually if i may um that that concept would be more germane to the instructional part of this not the library part okay so so so i i kind of agree with you that that that part as far as the library is concerned would have to be we have to take a look at who would be included on on that committee and it could be that that kind of subject matter expert would drop out of that one after a discussion i'm not sure all right so tell me again what it is that you your concern is well just looking back at the previous version and i i don't mind making changes at all but just looking at the previous version the

100committee was a lot simpler a lot easier to pull together it could be done quickly you know rather than trying to get the experts together and then you have a month you know well is it a teacher on hold with a book that she has already done lesson plans for for a month or a month and a half while we're gathering the people to review the book that she already has lesson plans for and and that was another question for chad i know we've talked about instructional material and textbook adoption adoption does that include class sets of books now we have a review process that we're using for i thought so but then that's fairly new yes so issues that people had in the past with classroom sets of books there's now a process before

101those books are taught in the classroom and i think that's a great change um that's my concern i would personally vote for fairer and more transparent rather than quicker and if if we if you know we're looking at having to look at this for curriculum anyway come january i mean you know it would be nice to have some process that that maybe we'll have to cut down because the vdoe has said okay you only need this this and this or you know it might be something that we're right in right in step with i don't know but it would be nice to go ahead and have that done and i'm mostly fine with that for classroom resources it's it's the library books that i have the problem with i'm okay with splendid if you want

102to do that but i you know i'm not i don't think that library books should go you know whatever goes in is not under review again it's not been going well anywhere else i would soon not have that now rather we look at it and you all you know we decide there's some standards of what we want in our libraries okay but there is going to come a time where we're going to have a parent sitting up here looking at what their kid has and we'll have to answer for it it would be nice to say we have a process here's here's the form you can fill it out we're going to look at it before it gets here well we're going to do that and i suggest that uh for for simplicity i would

103like to take a look at the combined version and see if we can have the two discrete descriptions of the two different committees under one if not possible we just disaggregate them and make and then and then discuss and vote but i i i think i i thank you for coming up with the two versions that we can use as straw man and then uh decide which way to go i don't think that's going to be that difficult for us to work out i can i can do that do you do you want me to talk with the librarians i don't want to get back here and you ask me that question and i say no you don't want me to no i mean the more the better you know again like i said you

104know everything anything we do anymore is about transparency it's about opening those up sure and i'd like to see actually what their comments are about the compensation that committee i mean they probably have some good ideas okay i'll do that sure do you want copies of these separate ones or is that just going to be more paper you don't want to deal with yes okay you've got it yes sir here we go is here's the instructional one when's the library you instructional any more no sir i don't have anything i have a direction and i'll find all right thank you dr gardner all right go going to three and we got ms stein is going to request for reappropriation of for 2022 lease revenue funds yes ma'am thank you so um back in october of

1052021 um the county went out for the lease revenue bond and closed on that and that was to fund capital projects um actually for the fy 22 fiscal year when the shepherd took her position she saw that some cares money could be used for some of those so we were able to do that revenue bond for fy 23 as well and that what we did not have to ask for capital this year the amount approved at the time was 4.2 million dollars and some change and as you are aware supply chain and delivery has put a hold on just about every project that we had on that list um of which the list is pretty restrictive um at the time the rfp went out i was in my former position down here and uh the

106banks were very specific on what we could do so the list that was attached to this is not very flexible but it does encompass all of our urgent and necessary projects from the cip and foreign at any rate as of 6 30 of this past year we have spent 799 000 um of which 619 has been requisitioned from the county and when the difference there is that i only requisition when a project gets finished um so there's a little there's some projects that are under underway that we have paid a little bit towards um but they haven't been completed yet so i am just coming to you now um a little bit early because these projects are continuing and um and i just need the funds appropriated uh in this year so we can actually

107spend them this year as opposed to last year where it was budgeted so the difference is the 3.6 million dollars it's just for discussion today if you're or information and we'll come to you next month for the vote so andrew you think for c that we can get this done uh the rest of this year or into 23. we hope you know what my fingers are crossed um because we have a it's a lot of positive work being done we've also got another um we've got a big hvac project being done with cares funding we got another 2.3 million in capital funding from the state in this year's budget so we got a lot of work that needs to be done um we're not the only school division or locality having work done so it's

108it's it's tough out there right now um but we've got staff working the best they can to to get it done we're limited too um in wanting in some of those projects needing to be done when kids aren't there you know i think we're talking about carpet i mean uh you know you mentioned our conversation when we plan the uh the agenda for next month that uh can we do anything over uh winter break we're looking into it um and we're actually having a meeting about that tomorrow so okay your day or right uh anything we can do there absolutely and you mentioned is you're going to put tile down instead of carpet so um and i reckon you know you have to send bids out i mean um we yeah we are and and

109that's the other kind of hurdle right now is when we initially put this out with the county when we were going out in 2021 prices were a lot different um so we've got a little bit of a contingency based on existing existing estimates um but we've asked that that they go back out and get some real current estimates on these projects we may have to take something off hopefully not um but it's it's inflated a lot well obviously the stress david about the carpet situation i mean and you know the day day before sandy uh single knob was cleared whatever i mean that so we need to address the worst rooms in both middle schools and go from there i think that would uh everybody will be at ease if we get that stuff out

110of there and ceiling tiles too i've noticed in a lot of the buildings and i guess there's leaks in some areas where even if you keep replacing replacing the tiles it's not going to do anything but noticed a lot of that just being in central and muhlenberg where a lot of kind of dirty looking ceiling tiles i don't know it's just i'm glad you bring that up because um you know very very soon um we'll be looking at the fy 24 budget process beginning and actually mr heinger or dr hein gardner and mr ortz and myself are going to be doing walkthroughs in the schools to see what their cip needs are um and and that's coming up next month i think that's a great idea are you guys to go out to the you're

111including the school principal yes we'll be walking with the school principals um they can take us through we can kind of feed off of each one of them and um come up with a good plan from north to south any more questions for angie uh anything else board members you want to i have something positive i'll go right ahead miss walsh i have not made a lunch for my high school child yet this year she has bought every day she had gotten lunch at school every day and it's been good she's she's already figuring out which station she likes the best my middle schooler is a little more picky middle school doesn't have quite as many options but she has actually had lunch at school a couple of times rather than packing so i'm very

112happy with the food service thank you so far it's been positive i know and the staff has helped uh they're short of health in the cafeteria yeah so if you want to volunteer i'm planning on it's i'm called i can wash dishes i'll make the floor wet there's no questions let me tell you our food service workers are working yeah they're working their hearts out and they're doing an amazing job and they're keeping smiles on their faces it's tough but they're but they are yeah and many of us in this room have volunteered so um so now i think you have another volunteer marty on monday but just tell me where to report it before me i went there wear short sleeves okay i'll join the meeting at 5 47 have a good evening and

113thank everyone foreign you