Amherst County Public Schools School Board Meeting 10/13/22

001foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] thank you foreign [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] thank you foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] 2022 the time is at 6 PM we will um take just a moment for a moment of silence followed by the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all like to welcome everybody here tonight and board we need to start off with an approval of tonight's agenda yeah madam somebody somebody Miss Justice second I have a motion by Mrs Justice the second by Mr Rossi

002all in favor say aye aye any post okay we have an agenda um we're going to start the evening off with uh recognition of uh a donation for our Central Elementary School archery team yes ma'am Madam chair members of the board we have a Jennison nation made to the Central Elementary School archery team tonight Mr Burley is here this evening and he's going to present a check to the archery team and I'm not going to steal his Thunder but I will ask him to come forward and make his presentation if you would please Mr Burley two years ago Madam chair Thompson Animal School Board superintendent males and administration I'm Glenwood Burley and I thank you for this courtesy there is no higher investment in your students it's been providing them an opportunity to excel provide

003an opportunity to compete and an opportunity to accomplish that's exactly exactly what you're doing with the Central Elementary School archery program in June when I was here and the team was here I was astonished to learn that the Wildcats existed in Amherst and that you all actually ranked nationally in the 2022 Kentucky finals my astonishment and pride for their team effort and achievement is confirmed tonight as I present to them I will in a second a gift of five thousand dollars Dr Wells this archery program is also an investment and these students quality of life were about providing them productive and rewarding experiences rather than possibly running the streets and sadly sabotaging their future if the team competes next spring and ranks higher than last year we will have a pizza celebration party my treat

004so to the Wildcats to coach Jeremy Thompson I wish you each and all another successful Year be safe have fun go get them Amherst proud [Applause] of you please accept my check foreign [Applause] we do appreciate this generous donation and we're grateful for your support of Evans County Public Schools so again thank you for being here tonight and have a safe trip back to Richmond our privilege and all thank you sir what a a wonderful moment to celebrate again with our archery team as well as Mr burley's donation so I'm looking forward to what they're going to be doing this coming year um all right next we will have public comment and could I just ask a really quick question is certainly he and Amherst resident you going back to Richmond [Music] oh all right

005thank you so much okay moving on to public comment um we have two people that have signed up tonight and then we'll see if there's any others um the first one that we will hear from is Sean Phillips hahaha good evening I had a brief moment to speak with your name in your address sure Sean Phillips 151 Daniels Drive Madison Heights Virginia I had a brief moment to speak with Sam Patel just a few minutes ago about this easement um I can speak from 21 years of experience living on Daniel's drive that there is already a traffic issue on Daniel's drive it happens every morning when the school is called in at the end of the day when the school is out and especially when there are baseball and football games this Sunday was a

006good example I wish I had known of this meeting I would have taken photographs but as the different games were closing out for the day throughout the day waves upon waves of traffic would come up Daniel's drive and it would stop of course at 29 and run all the way back clear to the school so I'm not sure the easement at that location is a good idea I understand that is a starting point for Sam and I understand he wants to develop that I'm not against the progress that he wants to put in that area in the development but I believe an easement should come from some other location I've looked at other surrounding areas around his property and directly behind where the Panda House used to be down below there the BP gas station

007and Dollar General are also locations where there would be a great spot for us to come right off of 29 into that property I know it would cause him to create maybe a half mile of pavement to get over the church but I just do not agree that Daniel's Drive is the right location or Trojan Road for that easement thank you [Music] uh Novella Thomas Daniel Thomas I live in 120 Daniels drive right beside the school my question is I came to the zoning meeting when I had the very first one I have no problem with the whatever they're going to do down behind my house uh the issue about the easement I was told that the evening was going to come right beside my house now part of the laying is on the end

008of my house even belongs to the school where it belongs to the county and they have the part of the county I understand that are they going to take any of the ease if they come on my property I live right beside the school well typically I don't respond during public comments but but I I will say this I don't know that any of us know the answer to your question so we don't have the ability to Grant an easement to you on your property right okay all right because that was still when it first did this that uh they may take part in my property it's like a second the school comes up on my property when they have um fire drills and stuff like that I don't have no problem with that at

009all but it's not that much profiting right there that the school has the rest of it is my property my husband's property and I'm just trying to figure out you know how they're going to make the easement and where it's going to come from and another thing I asked and I'm gonna ask again we need to stop light at Daniel's drive from 29th to Danish drive like Mr Phillips the people drive dangerous drive like they on 29. I watched Saturday at the front door people coming down Daniel's drive it's like it's no stop sign there they just speed on through the stop sign between them and the guys on the road with the mopeds they act like they own Daniel's Drive and he'll write he's right other certain you couldn't get out of Daniel's drive

010for the property for the traffic that's from coming down that is then the church that's going to be on there in there they come down on Sunday morning it's no problem because when I go to church they are down there and when I come home they're gone it's all the excess traffic that's when we come down there between all the newest development that's going to be built that's the only concern that I have thank y'all thank you thank you and and I know that Dr Wells we're gonna um we have someone here that can help answer some of the questions and that's a little bit later and you can there'll be under Section Five and you could relay these questions to them at that time okay thank you is there anyone else that is wants

011to speak during public comment okay seeing none we will close um public comment we will be moving to action items for our consent agenda I need a motion Madam chair I moved that we uh approved the items on the consent agenda is presented I have a motion and a second to approve consent agendas all in favor uh hi hi any opposed okay let's move on to information items for administration uh Madison Heights Town Eastman yes ma'am Madam chair members of the board so as you heard in public comment um there that we we did send out uh notice to the residents on Daniel's drive that we will have public comment tonight to take it because as the board requested that you wanted to hear from those individuals personally so we did invite them to individuals

012on Daniel's travel they chose to speak to speak tonight um again as you've heard there are some concerns so I guess right now we we have Mr Patel and Mr Warner here to be able to answer your questions I don't think they prepared a presentation again because you had that two months ago but if you have questions for them regarding anything you have heard since the meeting or any questions you may have they're here to answer those questions at this time well thanks for coming back um board members do have any questions that you'd like to ask Mr Geiser Madam chair uh Mr Patel has there been any discussion um this may be outside your boundary there but it kind of the at the end of Daniel's drive with VDOT has there been any discussion

013about a potential uh traffic study for that or re-design of that intersection with 29 because of this development Trent Warner with hurt and profit that was one of the intersections that we've done counts for and typically you do your counts at your peak hours which are seven to nine a.m and then four to six but for that particular intersection we did it at the school hours and so that we could analyze that as well the the through fair that we've talked about to connect to uh Trojan there's nothing in that that would say that we would have a worse impact and in fact we actually have a better impact for you in the fact that for your cue at your time we are lengthening that distance around the roundabout if you will so you'll have

014actually a better way of getting in and out the other thing is you have another way of getting 229 so it's it's actually an additional emergency way out if you will to get to 29. so it's it's actually a win for the school regard yeah Madam chair and I think the CL the first gentleman's uh statement the church is essentially this easement is going to benefit that church to begin their process but as far as any development of residences everything's gonna your your focus is the front part of 29 right there around the old uh old Oreo uh motel at that entrance planning to work my way back so there was a picture up just a moment ago of the master plan and yeah this this front part that's labeled 14 I'm sorry you can't

015see that screen um you don't have any screens that is in fact um well there's nothing do you have it okay perfect thanks Trent yeah I'm starting over here Madam chair um question um Mr Phillips uh mentioned that there were easements down near the Panda House BP station no I think what he said was that those would be other locations for roads to get back to the back and they are in fact locations I mean there are I mean that's that is um something that Amherst County actually asked us to incorporate into the design when we had all of our meetings with the planning department here um to have a development of that size its ability to disperse traffic in many different locations in many different ways is something that the planners require so how

016I think some you mentioned that it would increase emergency access did I essentially what I'm saying is at monellison you have you have the direction to your North and to the West really with Daniel's Drive in Trojan this actually gives you another way out 229 if you will how long will it take before the residence on Daniel's Street might see the benefit of that probably five years there is one other connection I wanted to to let you guys know we I had a meeting with the church after the last meeting that we had with you guys and we talked about the problem of parking uh what was just mentioned about that there is no other Avenue there is no other place for anyone to go so on football days and baseball days those days that

017you have on Saturdays where they're stacked up there's a great parking lot right here nearby and what they've actually done if you will two times ago we had the parking lot to the South we've actually mirrored that so the one that we'll probably submit for our site plan flip the parking lot so that it's actually closer to those events so people could walk right to that driveway if you will so that was on their half hearing what had happened at the last meeting thinking about how did they accommodate so they want to be good neighbors as well so that that's going to address one of those issues we just heard tonight final question Madam chair um Mrs Thomas her property at 120 Daniels can you kind of show me where that is yes okay but

018your property it wouldn't be she would not be conveying anything from her property it's the same with in fact we thought it was a right-of-way when we first did the layout it just on the gis it showed us 60 foot right away which made sense because that's where stormy or Trojan came through so that's where we had our connection because we had to show interconnectivity all the way around the development and that was the perfect choice then we found out that you guys owned it it wasn't a VDOT right away which is what it showed up as so that's why I think to answer your question another way um no this is we're building within your easement we're not we can't and wouldn't be able to just go take her property or do whatever we

019want I mean that's that's her property so is our easement on her it does it no no it's our problem our property goes across the the four lanes the the median and across the road into the other side of the road does it go to that dotted line is that dotted line her property line our property line that's your common property line you're on the right side and she would be on the left side that you're referring gotcha yeah property line thank you so I'm just wondering um with Mrs Thomas's question um the piece of our property that's easement is that like connected to hers to where it looks like one because I'm sure there's no dotted line on her yard and so that's why maybe there's a misperception that it could be hers but

020she just wants to make sure we're not taking hers that is strictly just ours for her understanding the perfect way to address it yes and did you get a chance to talk with her about that last meeting the Planning Commission meeting she was at we talked about it but okay we will substantiate that with her after this meeting too Madam chair Mr Rossi the um let's say the easement gets approved and you get approved to build construction how long would it take for possibly Daniel's drive to benefit from having this extra Road there how long would that take from construction obviously is is going to impede traffic but after the from start to when it's going to benefit those on Daniel Drive slowed down the process just a little bit because of this but they've

021already started the process we've done a survey for example we had the Topo so we've done the layout they're tinkering a little bit with the building sizes but if we can get that to go we will go to full design plans and we've already talked to Tyler Creasy here about approving the site plans if you will so the goal is to have this constructed next spring if you will late winter early spring and then the summer connection so that construction is going to take a good seven eight months so we would time and sequence the connections for Trojan at the summertime after school right right so I think I understand your question and if I could take a stab at it so at the beginning of the next if the question is when will they

022get the benefit of the road that comes down through probably about five years right so with it so basically within a year they should see some relief on Daniel's drive with not having cars stacked up on the road correct that's what I'm saying Madam chair and you know I don't think I answered you answered my question about you said you conducted the traffic study there but was anything identified or is VDOT identified anything that would any kind of identified anything that would trigger that something needs to be done at that intersection okay the counts are too small during the day your peak hours it's the surges that when we have to address it is usually for that business traffic morning traffic that we run into unless there was something prohibitive of them all the way

023out to 29 something like that but then VDOT would address that themselves because that's their right away issue thank you and based on your studies the busiest time it's just the beginning and ending of school that that's what we found when we did the count if we were there during the day or the other times it just isn't much there to but we did see it stacking the day that we counted it was uh five cars was the most we saw stacked on Daniels we did not see it go all the way 29 but we were there just one day so maybe it does happen the day we were there which you have to do a count on Tuesday Wednesdays or Thursdays because of the way the requirements are but you have to be there

024on a day that's logical so it was a day that the school was in and we went the time that school was in so we could see how long the queue was and the longest we saw a cube was five cars on Daniels questions Madam chair I know Mr Adams had conveyed some concerns with um you know traffic construction traffic during baseball and things of that nature so I don't know if I'd be willing to yeah actually we just had a conversation beforehand I don't know if you want to jump in and talk or if you want me to kind of tell them what the nature of our conversation was but I just so I think Mr Adams traffic during baseball season during the summer time so this connects the current connection right here there's

025no need to do anything with the current connection until such time as all of this other stuff is done so it really will have no impact as far as how it's currently used and then of course going forward hopefully it'll improve things for him as well yeah um I'm Riley Adams president of the mass nice baseball and um I've went from don't put no church beside me to okay the church is coming let's make it the best we can make so I go all the way back to 19 92. with this same issue on Daniel's Drive I I was involved with a study of VDOT back then because we didn't want to dump our traffic only folks on Daniel's Drive there's two things that could maybe happen here to improve this situation one being directing

026this traffic now that Woody's Lake Road is wider the curve is gone and it exits into 29 at a stoplight would be if VDOT would even consider either a cul-de-sac at the end of Daniel's Drive and all traffic funnel to Woody's Lake or if they would consider making Daniel's Drive a one-way Street where you exit in front of the school to the left to the traffic light and go out I learned a lot in 15 minutes when I got here from Mr Patel and Dr Wells my concern at first was in this utilities right here there is the electric power that runs my my facility there is the Verizon the underground telephone that runs my facility there is the cable that runs the internet system for mon Ellison School and there is this sewer that

027comes across up here from Trojan Lane and all of that but now there is a there is a stub right here and Miss Thomas's yard and from what I understand that this utilities and this is where I learned tonight is going to be moved over to here and still be on school property if that's the case that's beautiful I've asked the school board for 25 years to make it two-way right here and somehow tonight it became two-way going in and out of here which is another great thing so my problem at the start and Mr patella tell you was in the future was this church going to be tied in in any way with a school a private school and he's assured me that it's not that was my main concern with the traffic was

028if there was a school because the school and I'm basically speaking of was in my church at one time and I know how much traffic they have and there's no way I don't care what you do from the school to 29 that it could handle a school now we got to think it's a church it's on Sundays maybe Wednesday nights okay now the traffic at this church is not as bad as it scared me to be um if it had been tied in with the school so that's going to help does it still help these people on Daniel's Drive whether they put a church there or not something needs to be done with the traffic that goes out of Daniel's Drive somehow we need to do a study get VDOT involved and do something now

029especially since Woody's Lake Road is there's not that big curve at the foot of the Hill anymore there's not that big ditch at the foot of the Hill anymore at the exits to 29 on a traffic light and the worst thing you can do and I tell my parents at the parents meeting every day the worst thing you can do is exit Daniel's drive because you're going into 29 into a blind curve so the only problem as far as I'm involved with now with the baseball because I I can't speak for the folks on Daniel's drive with the exception of I've never wanted my traffic on that but I can't stop it um is a congestion area right here by you is a congestion area right here thank you and I understand somebody from VDOT

030that can solve that problem whether it's a roundabout whether it's uh cul-de-sac whether it's one way in there is a resolve to that problem and I understand what he's saying by this accident and safety but we're still throwing that traffic on Daniel's Drive when they exit here and it's safety and they're going to go here they're going to still exit that I do know that working with one Allison when we have the um Rescue Squad and stuff come down if we have a childhood or anything they exit what is Lake Road even though it throws them just about a mile out of their way they still exit what is Lake Road because it's so dangerous going out of the end of Daniel's drive so that becomes my only issue now and I mean if he

031puts his parking lot I mean it benefits us it benefits us greatly because we don't play ball on Sunday football don't play ball on Sunday and I've seen the traffic East people were talking about on Daniel's drive on Saturday and so yes there is a problem there with or without the church I don't know how we solve it but um with knowing that the utilities are now going to be over here and not take any of and I my I came here tonight going okay you got a plan going into church how are you going to get out of there because the school board meetings that I've been to in the past have never considered making that two-way in front of Mount Ellison Middle School well Mr Adams I appreciate your input and your your

032knowledge and information board do you have any questions uh further for Mr Patel or I have one question please Madam chair um is more I think maybe for Dr Wells and Mr Patel with the changes at Woody's Lake how has that impacted traffic are we directing more people that way well we encourage people all our buses go down through Woody's Lake and into 29 if they're going 29 we don't use the annual strap for any of our transportation just because that intersection of 29 is not safe for our buses so all our all our school Vehicles exit uh Woody's Lake Road down Trojan road we encourage our parents to do the same but again that's I can't sit there with a roadblocks and make them go the other direction thank you Madam chair so looking

033at the the drawing the dark gray would extend the amount of capacity I guess for cars waiting to go into monellison what is the length roughly from where that oval curve is down to that traffic circle 600 down so you're adding about 1200 up and back what's the length of Daniel's Drive roughly it's probably it's a little it's less than a quarter by that so we're potentially adding enough capacity to take traffic off of Daniels from backing up I'm just asking okay there is a factor to throw the wrong direction but we will also have students from to our development going to menelausen as well so you've got some of that quirkiness in there too right okay the only other um thing I would would recommend to Mr Patel is if if you could meet

034Miss Thomas to show her the line exactly where the line is so that she sees if there's things planted there that are not going to survive the the move that we know she knows ahead of time what's going on we wanted to do but we haven't started the survey is there's some Line work that we have to do we have to pick up some utilities that Ronnie just mentioned and what we'll do is we'll mark that line when we're there and we'll have a conversation with her about it okay thank you um a question or maybe comment it sounds like based on Mr Adam's comments and things that I had even thought about before about like you know if there was a lot of congestion to do some one-way kind of things or some creative

035things as far as directing traffic so I think there could be things that could eliminate during some busy hours if we had to right anyone anyone else okay thank you very much appreciate you coming again okay Dr Wells so that being said um I need a consensus from the board to how you want me to handle the easement other if you want to make a decision tonight or if you want to wait but if we can make it tonight I know it would speed their process up so if you're so inclined you could give consensus tonight and we can take care of that tomorrow if you're not inclined then we can continue discussion you talk with us about the the deed of easement so that's that's attached and board docs and so I've had Mr

036Wright Mr Patel been uh back and forth on that and Mr Wright our school attorney has given his approval of the easement document board was your pleasure Madam chair I move that we go ahead and approve the easement as presented in the agenda a motion on the floor is there a second yeah of a second from Mrs Burke is there any discussion Madam chair this is Justice I believe in the long term it it looks to me like it will benefit Daniels quite a bit and so I I support that flexibility that's being added in there anyone else all right saying none um all in favor say aye aye any opposed okay motion carries so tomorrow we will uh sign it needs my signature to be notarized and we'll get to notarized tomorrow and get

037it processed okay thank you all right so I'm going to turn over Mr Hutton 5.02 administrative services Madam chair uh members of the board do you have been the you have been viewing uh the blueprints for the new cafeteria Auditorium for some time we uh they have prepared a short video walk through Miss McNerney is going to put that up there for you this gives you a much better visual of the project there we so the a there would be the auditorium and then as you see Amherst High School that is the would be the main entrance going into the cafeteria as you make the right on the left side of the hall would be the restroom and then up further is the gymnasium and on the right side will be the entrance to the

038auditorium you'll see trophy cases on the left as well to procure some of the many trophies that are currently at the school this is actually the entrance into the stage area looking out into the audience again that gives you a better view of how it's sectioned off into two different areas where the petition can actually be pulled across for a smaller like a black box type of event where you just have the front seats and you could actually use the back as as something different so that's the quick walk through questions on that very nice it gives you a better View and then we have uh already been to the town for the zoning and uh Town Council so we're moving forward with rezoning we felt this gives you a good kind of visual of

039what the blueprints look like we love technology they can do that now versus you know having actually walk through it but it gives you a good insight into kind of what it's going to look like and again that that middle section will have a retractable wall will come across and it will just separate the two sections so Dr Houghton thank you and that's phase one right yes also just a reminder that in the next few weeks we'll be doing lockdown drills a message will go out tomorrow to remind parents that those will happen so if you have any calls in the next few weeks we'll be doing lockdown drills also we'll participate in What's called the Great American ShakeOut on the 20th where our students will do earthquake drills I know some think that that's

040really rare in this world but if you remember Louisa a few years ago they actually had one so we do want to prepare our students for for any such things happening in addition I have some figures on our fuel Bill Mrs Advantage helped me prepare those and currently our fuel is running between 145 and 155 percent over what it was last year our current it's down to about 360 a gallon it was about 380. we budgeted about four dollars a gallon and with the OPEC shutting down production here shortly we're not sure where that goes but we're keeping a close eye on it but I just wanted to let you know that where where that's headed do you want to speak on yes as far as the SRO Grant as you know we had six

041positions right now the sheriff's office has two that are hired in in their training one will actually be released next week the other in about two weeks and they are working on a third doing the background check which leaves three additional spots that they're still working on and I'm not sure if Mr Gallagher is going to touch us but on the on the matters of bus drivers we are still looking for full four full-time and two part-time bus drivers student suspension oh we can move on to that okay I don't know if you had anything else on the end 5.03 student suspensions for September you have the report at your at your uh desk okay board any comments questions Madam chair Mr Rossi I know it's early in the school year but um have we

042got any correlation on electric buses and efficiency and cost for charging buses versus fuel have we done any of that yet still working on it that that you know we haven't really been working on that enough but I know the drivers we looked at uh some information and they've been taking some good information we haven't got enough electric bills yet to really justify that so but we're still doing that cost analysis all right look forward to seeing that yeah but we do understand that the DEF fluid and things like that we're not having to purchase all that for the luxury buses so if it's fuel cost d uh follows all the other maintenance costs that are there with it we hope to we hope to see a benefit there absolutely um so amenity chair s

043um quick question on our school buses what approximately what percentage of our students ride school buses we're actually getting ready to do ridership in the next couple weeks um I think it's around 70 percent but I can double check that when I look at the Riders we're around 3 000 students a day right so with that many students approximately how full are our buses most are full that's great thank you sir and that depends on the area you know some of your farther out routes that travel a long ways but you know certainly the in town Madison High trouts are they're full because we're you know we're fairly short on drivers so more student that means more students on the buses in order to get them to school all right thank you uh now we're

044down to 6.01 Financial reports yes ma'am Mr Cottage good evening Madam chair members of the school board tonight we are discussing the September Financial reports before you or your standard reports as always just some of the things I wanted to point out we had discussed the Child Nutrition Revenue last month as far as it being a reimbursable model I did want to point out because it surprised me as well was that the revenue that we received in September was extremely it was a lot lower than it was in September of the prior year so in inquiring with the school nutrition staff the doe reimbursement system was down and so that reimbursement did not come in and it'll be coming in in October so we should start seeing that catch up so I did want to

045point that out because it was still lower than I had anticipated on the object code summary we still have the same items from last month some of the supplemental appropriation will take care of some of those there were two new areas that we're on page one and those two are being corrected with that budget transfer that was approved earlier this evening and that was for the stipends and the leave payouts some of the areas we are closely monitoring again is the fuel um in the utilities we are seeing that we didn't think we increase the budget for the fuel last year we didn't increase the budget for utilities because even though we look at the electricity the Heat and the water overall we were still operating within budget but we are starting to see the

046increase and then we know that we've been told that the electric will be going up and we should start seeing that in November so we are monitoring that we are also looking at options on where we would find other funding that would cover that so I just wanted wanted to let you know we were looking at that as well as the ADM um I have some other items but first do you have any questions on the finance reports Madam chair okay um just so I understand correctly so it sounds like the revenue reimbursement was low or than expected because of a software issue at the state level correct okay thank you so and those will be coming in the fast in in October so we should start seeing it start coming in great thank you

047okay um and I have a quick question um the supplemental the the transfer of funds that we've asked for do we anticipate seeing that as something that's going to be necessary throughout the year this was actually um my Tran my translation of that budget book when the budget book was coming out so that I have to own that own that on me because items that were in the line of the 1121 some of that should have been allocated so it's things that you had approved in the budget I had placed them in the wrong optic code so that was correcting that can I say you're not going to have any additional I liked that if we start seeing that the fuel is over and we have an idea I mean that's my preference but it's

048up to you that if when we identify areas where we may have funding we could transfer it so that we could share up those accounts but again that's your preference well it sounds like this is like a one-time yes yes week and it's not something that's going to be ongoing okay great thank you any anyone else all right so my next item is for the Student Activity audits so in July of this year they were audited for the prior year and we have provided the various audit reports for your review so we had nine funds that were audited non-locations please report that four of the locations continued their streak of zero findings zero comments two showed improvement over the prior year and they now were showing zero comments so that's six of nine that had

049no findings um so that was you had the other three there were some some violations of some procedural best practices but it wasn't something that was happening ongoing it was like one out of the 12 samples not minimizing it but yeah it to me you know I don't know what happened during those um those that one sample there were two transactional violations and again that was one out of the 11 they tested at that school so the schools received their reports but we did go over with all the principles all the locations not saying the names but going over everything because it's always a good reminder to keep it on the Forefront um that you need to be vigilant with your financials and I think overall I mean having six out of the nine to

050have no finding is it's positive I'd love to come back next year and have nine out of nine so you know we're working towards that I will say that we've had a lot of turnover and we're doing a lot of training and we're not we're still not going to give up on that goal do you have any questions thank you very much all right so our my last item is referencing the federal monitoring so between April and July of this year we had several federal grants that were monitored on April 29th we had the title for monitoring on May 4th we had the title II monitoring and on July 13th we had the Esser and the gears monitoring so with the title II the S are in the gears we met all program requirements which

051is spectacular the title IV did have one finding and it's a little unfortunate because in this instance the School Division has been doing it properly we just couldn't show where it was written into policy or regulation something that was in writing to say that we had to do it so we were doing it but we did not we could not provide that written documentation so on the 29th we did provide that corrective action plan to the state and in that plan we stated that we would be bringing a regulation to the board in November so we just wanted to make you aware of the finding and what we are planning to do to resolve it do you have any questions very well done okay I think we're ready to move on to uh accountability yes

052ma'am that I'm sure the board as we get into instruction I just want to spend a few minutes to sit some the background and set the stage a little bit before give over Dr Norman but you know we look at our data from last year I think it's important to reflect on where we've been as a division over the past three years prior to the pandemic all our schools were fully accredited and we were moving in a very good direction you know March of 2020 uh we all know that we were all schools and across the Commonwealth were ordered to shut down and uh so we were shut down uh 2020 2021 uh that 1 800 students uh were on Virtual or remote instruction in elementary schools due to the size limit restrictions in classrooms

053and transportation we were running elementary schools four days a week uh half the kids were doing math in English and half the kids in the gym doing social studies and Science and then they would switch halfway through the day the secondary schools they're in school two days a week and they were doing remote instruction three days a week as we moved into the 21-22 school year we started school year off a very limited contact we were we wouldn't let student teachers do small group instruction we we had we couldn't do labs and we were trying to keep people separate as possible if you remember in the first two weeks of school we shut down for a week week and a half and had to test everybody because the health department said we had an outbreak

054and we had to you know take care of those issues we dealt with deal with covid as we moved into the the middle of the year January February March time frame you know we kept schools open and we you know we had these conversations but schools were kept open but can I sit here and tell you we had good quality instruction going every day when I had half my teachers out of a general of a school or half the students out of a school or a grade you know any given time you know obviously we didn't so I I just want to just remind you of that um but what I do want to also say is that you know as we move forward and regardless of what data you're going to see we can't

055go back and change anything all we can do is use this data and how is our Baseline data and move forward so we need to just you know we need to take the time to look at this data and our team Dr Norman staff and this our staff here in our schools have been working tirelessly to analyze the data to look at the data and figure and develop plans to move forward and that's that's what our goal is to move us forward to get to where we were before the pandemic and and return and turn back to those levels so I just want to set the stage a little bit first so just remember where we've been over the past few years and we know where we need to be and we're going to do

056a thing about power to get us there so now I'm going to turn over Dr Norman and she's going to go her staff we're going to review the the data and our corrected plans moving forward so Dr Norman I don't think so okay let's start first of all I'd like to thank my staff Miss Jill gwill Ruth Matheny Robin wheeler and Wanda Smith who pulled together all of our data who have worked tirelessly to put the presentation together who have given you your books if you'll notice in front of you you have a big gray binder we're going to go through parts of that information for you tonight and just give you the Highlight then you can take that binder home you can review everything imaginable in it provide questions to us and then we'll

057be able to answer some very specific detailed questions for you if you have any after you review the information that's been given to you so thank you very much um also Mr neighbors he's going to join me tonight in presenting to you so the very first part of your book is the presentation so you can go through the pages if you can't read up on the screen because it's pretty tiny so the first thing I'd like to talk to you about on that very first slide is the um what you as a board actually set aside for instruction which is 67 percent of your budget you devote directly to students and their well-being and their instruction and performance in the school Division and that is awesome you you rank right up with the where even

058with what the state does and so we appreciate that because that goes directly to our students the next piece of it really is all about um the type of accountability we're talking about we have two different accountability systems in our state the first is mandated by our federal government it's every student succeeds act and that's through our Congress and then the second is what we are actually going to talk about tonight and that is the standards of accreditation and that is where the state provides us information and requirements that we must meet in order to be able to have an educational system in Amherst County Public Schools and to provide students with high school graduate a high school diploma when they graduate so we're going to talk about the state accreditation specifically tonight in the

059next slide it just I want to point out the different levels of accreditation that we actually have in the state and there's three different levels the first one is a level one and we're going to be showing you where each school is tonight in regards to this so level one is that that school is at the state requirements or they're above that the level two is that they are near the standards that they are very close to performing at standard or they are improving on that standard and then level three is there below the standard that the state has set and there needs to be some corrective action in place that takes that deals with that the accreditation ratings that go along with that is that depending on how many level ones level twos and

060level threes you have you are either fully accredited you are accredited with conditions or you are accreditation denied um so the next slide I just want to congratulate our teachers our families our students our administrators because right now Amherst County public schools has all of its schools accredited for the 22-23 school year so congratulations to and and I will say I didn't think that that was going to happen it was a very difficult year last year for our teachers and our students and our families and we thank them for just hanging in there with us and for doing what they did at the end of the year so congratulations to our schools on that the next several slides nine of them actually go through each of our schools and I'm just going to briefly go

061through this because you'll go into detail in this when you look at it specifically but one of the things I want to point out is that in regards to this these are all the indicators that actually the state grades us on and based on those there are 20 specific indicators if you see those little stars next to each next to some of the numbers that means that that particular area that's been indicated it did not meet it in the current year but over a three-year average it made the standard and it was that highest score was used so of course amalon Al Green met all the indicators they were level one through Mo through all of it Amherst Elementary of course all green we have um too small or of groups and some of those

062areas so they were not counted that's why you see the nuns there Central Elementary we have one area where we are at a level three and that is in science and this is a school that is accredited with conditions and is being monitored under academic review for the state we also have that as a level two in English and we'll kind of talk about that what that specifically means for them Elon Elementary again all green in regards to level one meeting all of the main areas they are at a level two specifically for English achievement in our subgroup of black students and so we're working specifically with that school in regards to our subgroups Madison Heights Madison Heights is also a school that is accredited with conditions it is has a level three in the

063area of science we'll talk about that in a minute in regards to that area for for elementary they also have a level two in the area of English because they were below the 75 percent rate in the area of black students and students with disabilities if you'll notice and through all of these they're chronic absenteeism that it shows on these actual Sheets if they were a level one a level two or a level three free but the state did not take those into consideration when ranking them this year so chronic absenteeism did not count this year on state accreditation even though we're tracking it the next Temperance Elementary School of course all green in regards but they have a small population so there are areas that they did not have any test takers in those

064specific areas Amherst Middle School Amherst Middle School Green in air all areas except for a level two in the area of English specifically with our students with disabilities who tagged in as a level three below standard and so we're working as well with that particular School minnellison Middle School Manila Middle School had a level two in the area of science across all areas a level two in English very specific in regards to our students with disabilities at a level three and then of course black and economically disadvantaged students our English language Learners in the area of math it was too small to count but those kids that did test in there came out at a level two so they were near standard but did not meet standard and then Amherst County High School Amherst County

065high school I'll explain where they are on their accreditation piece right now but they are at a level three in the area of math they are um at a level three specifically with our black students our economically disadvantaged students and our students with disabilities they also are at a level three with chronic absenteeism at a 28 percent rate in regards to that but again that did not count specifically in this year and so we're looking towards what we're doing in regards to that in the near future I'm going to turn it over to Mr Nabors and he's going to give you some overall division data good evening Madam chair members of the board Madam chair could I just ask one quick question before we move on um I'm just curious why the numbers with this

066the Stars was the highest number over the past three years yes so in the back of your book you actually have a report that gives you it's from the state and it gives you your current your number your previous year number and then a three-year cumulative number if that three-year cumulative number is higher than your current year that's the number that's used so that's what we put on the chart okay but we do have to yes ma'am you have all that information in there all right thank you so much you're welcome sorry Mrs chair all right good evening Madam chair members of the board uh the slide in front of you there we wanted to give a little bit of historical context so looking at our last year prior to the pandemic enclosure what those

067performance levels look like across academic domains last year and then this year so kind of putting all that together in a visual for the board we'll know looking at last year into this year we did see gains in several of those areas in two areas we saw either a market or a slight reduction in our pass rate but overall especially those first three areas we did see some growth from last year to this year of our next slide we wanted to provide and we've done this in previous years a little bit of a comparison with our local area some of our sister divisions here very close to us and how they perform and how we stacked up with that we also provided at the very end of that slide the state rates so kind of

068seeing across the board how we measured up with our divisions here in the local area as well as the overall State numbers I'm not going to go into Super specifics with those individual numbers obviously letting the board look at that but if there are questions as we're going through please stop me and let me know what we did further so moving on the next several slides we wanted to break it down by subgroup and ensure that the board was also seeing how we're performing compared to our other local divisions as well as the state with students with disabilities we actually compared a little more favorably than our overall student numbers on the previous slide and are very close to what we're seeing across the state as well with this subgroup as with others we always

069want to ensure that we're not seeing a disproportionate impact on these groups and there's additional data we looked at it's not a part of this presentation tonight but additional data that we have showing how our individual subgroups trended from last year to this year and we didn't want those subgroups to be disproportionately impact has impacted more so than all students and that was something that we did see they were not disproportionately impacted and that made me especially with this particular subgroup feel good about what we've been able to do to maintain some of that progress from last year to this year here moving on to our black students again seeing that comparison across what some of our sister divisions in the areas as well as the state all in all is we're looking at all

070students as well as these subgroups they think it's important to note that we're following falling generally in that same range we typically do so usually we are middle to low of the pack so kind of third fourth position we've seen that in previous years and certainly playing out in this year as well again our next slide looking at economically disadvantaged and how we stack up against some of our other divisions here in the area as well as the state overall and again the same for multiple races and then finally with our white students so again wanted to provide a little bit of context of our performing in our area and also showing those State graphs as well how our students are stacking up as I said before a lot of consistency with what we've seen

071in past years in regards to where we rank maybe is the right word to use as we're looking at the other divisions in our area but areas that we know we need to be focusing on and continuing to provide support to our teachers students and families to achieve I'm going to hand it back over to Dr Norman at this point but I will certainly entertain any questions the board might have at this point I don't believe there is any okay one of the areas that we concentrate on and then is a requirement through the state is our on-time graduation rate so Virginia's on-time graduation rate is a comparison the goal for that is a hundred percent of students in the state of Virginia actually graduate with the high school diploma this is an on-time graduate

072who they earn a diploma within the four years of first entering the ninth grade and then they stay in that cohort and move through the cohort and if they graduate within those four years of course we include at this time our graduate on time graduation rate is above the state average at 93.31 percent that is a little down from where we were the previous year which was at a 94 but it is above what we were before the pandemic which was at a 85 percent so we have made some good gains in regards to our on-time graduation rate the next slide is the actual Federal graduation in Decatur so we have three different types of graduation rates that we deal with on-time graduation Federal graduation and then our graduation completion index so the federal graduation

073that actual Benchmark that we strive for is an 80 percent we're required under the federal government to have 80 percent of our students graduate from high school it is any student who has an advanced studies diploma a standard diploma an IB diploma and those are the ones who come in first test time first at ninth grade and then they follow that cohort out this one actually pulls out any student who had a student with disabilities or someone who is in a outplace program and if they they don't count towards the federal graduation so that's why that 80 percent is a lower rate than the 100 percent that the state requires right now we're at a 90.07 on our fgi which is very good the next one is our graduation completion index and this is dealing

074with the state accreditation the requirement here is we must meet 85 percent of all of our students graduating from high school within their cohort and this is a weighted calculation that the state averages out over the course of a five a four a five and a six year Trend so you have kids that come in at the eight at the ninth grade but they may not grad they may not graduate or they may not move from a ninth grade to a tenth grade and so they're doing a five-year it takes them five years to graduate they stay within that cohort but it's counted as a a calculation that the that over a six-year period they actually we must meet every six years 85 percent of our students who go through our school system should graduate

075right now our GCI for 2022 was 94.22 so we're doing really great when it comes to our GCI this is justice Dr Norman can you explain to me the concept of weighted yes I'll try I'm going to read from the state okay so a formula it is a Formula that calculates a weighted percent of the students within a given cohort who graduate who complete or who stay in school each year this actually is calculated with our dropout rate as well and so that calculation that weight changes every year so we don't know our new calculation or the way that the formula is created until after kids graduate if that mean and I know that probably doesn't help explain it in detail but I this is what the state gives me Dr Norman I don't know

076if this is correct or not but does each type of diploma have the weight not the student yes ma'am the type of diploma so if we have an advanced studies diploma that diploma that that diploma that we've awarded is a percentage towards our GCI if it is a um a standard diploma that is a percentage if it is a completion of um I can't even think of what the name is called where they attend school but they don't take any tests so they don't actually get a verified diploma certificate of completion we get actually a percentage on that and we have some students who actually refuse to take the state test and so they go all the way through school and they get a certificate of completion found you correctly [Music] this graduation rate is

077based upon the weight is by the different types but that completed one means doesn't mean they didn't do any work it means they didn't participate in the standardized tests correct well it means that they've either completed getting a diploma completed getting a certificate or um attended school I mean it is you get a percentage of any school who any kid who's in your school for six years and I think it also weighs about did you graduate on time to five years six years so that's also part of the equation and then how does it drop out fit in there if they drop out we it depends on what grade they drop out and that is a percentage that goes towards us so if they drop out as a senior they turn 18 in February they

078don't want to go to school and they don't hang on until May when they can graduate we get more of a percentage like a 0.89 or something like that rather than if they grab if they drop out at 10th grade it's prorated yes ma'am thank you the next part is that dropout rate and so we range anywhere from a seven percent drop out all the way down to one year we had it at two percent this year last year we had a 4.09 percent which was lower than the previous year which was a 4.30 for dropout rate the next is chronic absenteeism And in regards to Chronic absenteeism again this did not count against accreditation this year and we are working diligently I will say Miss Patron has done an awesome job in having everybody

079participate in what we know is a really difficult struggle for kids to re-engage back in school this past year we had a 26.1 percent of our students who missed more than 10 percent of school more than 17 days um that they would have missed that went against us in our chronic absenteeism this did not count against us this year but it will go into our three-year average in the next three years and it will count for us next year Miss Patron has done a lot in the last um four or five months in regards to show up Amherst where I know she and Dr Wells are going to talk about that as well as the atss which is at the division level as well as our school levels which is Amherst tiered systems of support

080and our schools have been doing incentive programs to help with our chronic absenteeism it's a great program and she's done a great job on it okay and I'm going to turn it back over do I turn it back over to you no I get to keep talking okay so where are we and what do we need to do okay I'm gonna just give you the nuts and bolts of it we have nine schools and when I was talking to you about those little stars next to the three-year cumulative average of our school nine schools right now the ones who were accredited on a three-year cumulative average that means we use their highest score six of the six of our schools were are now accredited under that Amherst Middle School menelausen amalon Central Elin and Madison

081Heights of those six two of them are accredited under conditions Central Elementary men Ellison Middle School I mean Madison Heights Elementary and both of them are in overall science in regards to meeting below standard in regards to science then we have a category called triennial accreditation and we have three schools currently right now under triennial accreditation meaning that it did not matter what scores they received over the last three years because previously in the previous three years they met above standard in all the areas and all the 20 indicators and because of that they were fully accredited for three years and it did not matter what scores that they made that was Amherst County High School Amherst Elementary and Temperance Elementary so they received full triennial accreditation for the last three years one of the

082concerns that we have is Amherst County High School it is under triennial accreditation right now however if it had not been under triennial accreditation it would be denied accreditation because it has too many areas or too many indicators that did not meet at standard and did not meet near standard so it was not a level two or a level one so we have too many level threes going on at Amherst County High School and then if we used only current year information then we would not have any schools accredited right now okay so I need I first need to say again how proud I am of our instructors and our students because it was a difficult year last year and how proud I am of them right now for what they're already doing with our

083students to make up the learning loss and to put into place the things that need to happen for each individual child that we have and that's important that's important to Target each individual child and give them what they need so we're not in this alone this is actually across the entire state there are 132 divisions in our state and only five divisions had all schools accredited on current year only five and those were small meaning that they only had two or three schools within their division no one with more than three schools had schools that were fully all schools that were accredited in current year that means out of 1 755 schools across the state only 553 met the overall Pass rates on current year so we are struggling just like everybody else that's and

084we have a lot of work and we're working to to meet the needs of the kids the next thing I want to talk to you about specifically is where does that put us with the state of Virginia so we have what is known as the vdoe watch list and Amherst County is on the video watch list um and you have a place in your book and you can this is really small up there so I'm going to try to go through we have six schools right now that are currently on the video watch list and they're ranked by different areas so if it is a white across the name of the school and the area that means that that area received a level two meaning it was near standard but it did not meet standard

085and it is in year one of that really easy to work our way out of that one if it is blue that means that they are in a level three that they did not meet uh near standard that they are below the standard and that they are in year one of that that means we got a little bit more work to do right there and but that is tangible and that is something that we can easily move out of then we have the two other areas which are yellow and red and this means that we have seen a trend or the state has seen a trend in those areas at a level two that year two they only have one more year to kind of get their act together and move on out of that

086and then of course if you are red that means that you are already in year three and you are at a level two or a level three which means that you are probably right now being in a monitored situation or accredited with conditions and will be monitored or under an academic review so now I'm going to turn it over to Mr neighbors so he can talk about what those expectations are and what we're doing moving forward yes thank you Norman so obviously that's the data that's where we are and what we want to talk about from here on out is what we are doing and what we're going to do to address some of those things that we have discussed thus far so what we have here for you is a nice little visual about

087some key areas we're looking at when we're talking about oversight we're talking about direct support engaging our students and addressing some of these concerns that have been brought forward with the data the two first pieces there on the left you'll note the video we require next to those we actually had a meeting here recently with video we I believe Dr Wells is going to talk to you a little bit about that later on this evening but thinking about what video is looking for when they're talking to us so they want to see what data we're using to plan for instruction and then how those plans are developed and implemented with the plans themselves actually look like those are those two key data points that they are looking for they say what's Amherst doing that's what

088they're pointing to that's what they want to see from us in addition when we're talking about support that we're providing looking at division liaison so each individual school has a liaison here at the school board office it's working with Administration working with teachers in leadership meetings in plc's in department meetings at the schools to be that direct line to understand what's going on with the needs of the teachers and students are and how we can best support them deploy resources to ensure they're getting what they need also looking at those individual needs and ensuring high quality tier one instruction you all have approved cares money to be spent on instructional Specialists 100 of their time is spent with teachers in classrooms working on those things we know are going to assist them in reaching those

089students and getting our students to a different place from a performance standpoint developing resources and making sure they're working with them on co-teaching strategies if there are multiple teachers multiple staff in the room Ensure wondering that there's an alignment with what they are planning the curriculum that they're pulling from and delivering to the students we're also and again mentioned this before working with them in those various meetings to ensure they're looking at the right data they're talking about the right data we're supporting them and analyzing that data and bringing that forward so that we have the plans we have that delivered instruction that we need for our students to be successful so a lot of ways we are trying to push in resources from the division level or working with schools individually not each school

090is going to operate the same way each school is not going to have the same needs we need to make sure we're there we're listening to the teachers listening to the administrators and providing the resources they need to be able to move forward so what does move instruction forward I'm sorry new teachers this year we do so and I'll let Dr Norman jump in as well but ultimately when we have these instructional Specialists involved there's a lot that they're providing in regards to not just recommended or example lesson plans but really digging into what should a lesson plan involve what are the key aspects there they're going to ensure that we have everything we need to reach the student to get that student to Mastery of the content thinking about a new teacher coming in

091there's a lot that goes into the delivery of instruction as well so we might have a beautifully written lesson plan that's perfectly aligned and everything's like it needs to be but the delivery might not be where it needs to be there might be some support that's needed for that whether we're talking about classroom management whether we're talking about a co-teaching model if there's other staff in the room a lot of different ways to be able to address that but those instructional Specialists physically being in there with those teachers to figure out where some of those concerns might be and how we might be able to support them but Dr I'm going to let you add to them well a couple of the things that we actually have just spoke to bdoe in regards to we

092have a great mentoring program too so if a new teacher is coming in and they're working with a mentor or mentee about pulling together lessons and what that looks like we have a pacing guide that we provide our teachers that matches the vdoe curriculum mounts the curriculum framework for the state we also have professional learning communities at each grade level in each school that's a little bit harder to do it's secondary but for our middle schools and our high schools I know that they've planned well in regards to that so they're actually working with a team of teachers that teach common things with them so a history teacher that teaches world history one those history teachers get together and they talk about what that looks like and how they want to structure their plans we

093have had several of our teachers reach out to us our instructional specialist as well as our supervisors getting very specific like I need help with this concept can you come in and help me write this lesson plan and they've been able to do that we have a division liaison at each school who works in the leadership team and works with our plcs and then at the elementary we have a gift we have our reading specialist that sit at each of our elementary schools and work specifically on our reading lesson plans and our math leads at each of the schools too so we have a lot of things in place to help support teachers with their lesson plans just knowing which ones need our help that's where we rely on the administrators or them emailing us

094and giving us information about that I was speaking with some teachers um the other week and they mentioned that they were going to be able to get together in groups and work on their plans together is that working out okay yes so we have plc's that's basically what that is at the secondary level what we've already provided to the administrators and they're just working out the logistics is if they don't have common planning if teachers aren't able to get together and work on plans we're giving them professional leave days to where that they may have the half of the morning where they have a substitute in the classroom or a co-lab teacher in the classroom and they're able to come out work with their Co work with their teacher another teacher and kind of develop

095those plans so we're trying to give them some time to be able to do that administrators have asked for that and you know unless Jim tells me I can't have substitutes we're going we're going to give them that you wouldn't dare do that foreign you also um mentioned the mentors who are the mentors how are they chosen is that our veteran teachers I will turn that over to Mr Gallagher okay okay he handles that program I think this is on absolutely those are veteran teachers they have to have at least three years of experience I think there's been only a couple of exceptions to that we've had some exceptional teachers that we've realized after year two and they are all nominated by their principals due to their performance and their capacity to relate to other

096early career teachers and helping them along so they are vetted that way so you have a lot of very experienced mentors in our division we have roughly 50 qualified across the division along with our division level mentors we also have a group that probably within five to ten years of experience that have been absolutely exceptional as well coming into the program but it is a very structured process it's very evidence-based process they all receive training from our division leads and how to go about that we do provide training for our principals regarding that process and all the tools and instruments that are used so they can oversee the mentor programs well and I think we have you know one of the best metro programs probably in the state we have a really good program programs

097all right thank you I would also say that we have a great group of teachers that 100 percent if someone reaches out they are willing to walk across the hall and to help that other teacher it really is an amazing family environment that I would have to say that I have not never once approached a teacher who is not willing to help another teacher in their building and that is nice thank you you're welcome um one of the things that Dr Wells will probably go into a little bit later on is a video he has when we were meeting with them yesterday they've actually offered to come in and work with our teachers in regards to lesson planning what those elements are how to do that quickly as well as logistically and make sure that

098we're all on the same page with what video is expectations are and so that will help us tremendously would they just be like spending the day with us or are like a week with us we don't know yet I think um it'll probably be a day but they they do have training that's virtual that we're allowed to tap into that we've already my staff's already kind of been through that just a suggestion is this is something of Interest maybe that's something you can bring back with in more detail once you find out and give more information that would be wonderful that'd be great absolutely that was Justice yes um Dr Norman with our third through fifth graders in the elementary approximately how much time are our reading Specialists spending in the classroom with the students

099so we have multiple areas where we're required to so I'm going to actually ask Miss wheeler so we have reading Specialists and we have to all of our elementary schools are Title One schools doesn't she love when I do this to her a child who is receiving Services is required to get I believe two and two two and a half hours per day week thank you they have a 120 minute block and then on top of that they get two and a half hours with a reading specialist specific I don't know if you want to add anything else yep so I will just say our priority is given to our K3 students is that's what our eiri funding goes towards I mean as Dr Norman said they're required to get two and a half hours

100of supplemental support and we choose at the division to do that through our reading specialist it can be other programs support from the classroom teacher our fourth and fifth grade students specifically also qualify for that support we use our Pals assessment to identify which students need that supplemental support and that's views you know whether the specialist pushes into the classroom and works with the teacher to provide instruction or pulls that student out as well anything thank you are we are we going to be able to see data on how those reading Specialists has helped out and helped improve our grading okay yes ma'am um Miss wheeler does a report for me every year in regards to Pal's instruction as well as the students that the reading specialist has identified and where they land if they're

101id'd or not and so we'll provide that information to you all right thank you all right well continuing on a short slide here but ultimately what moves instruction forward is thinking about what makes a good curriculum guaranteed and viable this idea that we have effective planning and effective delivery that's what it comes down to right we have an effective lesson plan and effective delivery of that lesson plan bdoe gives us a framework here on the next slide of what curriculum is so ultimately different levels have been identified obviously it's all research based but breaking things out we have what and how students are taught so the Sol is provided from vdoe and the pacing guides developed here at acps that's our written curriculum But ultimately those two pieces go into what and how students are

102taught the talk curriculum as you might expect is what's taught what the students get how the students interact with material and the assigned work what is that planning delivery that key component look like in all of our classrooms we then of course assess that tested curriculum our growth assessments our Sol's leading us to what is in fact learned so what have our students got and how they're able to apply that knowledge how they share that Mastery and moving on into passing courses and graduating with that diploma so vda kind of gives us that framework again it's all research based but having that idea of what curriculum is what goes into it that middle component which of course is the most important about the planning and delivery of instruction and then the outcome of that on

103the other side so how do we ensure delivery equality curriculum we want to make sure that we equip our teachers to be well prepared to ensure that they are delivering instruction well and that what they are delivering is interesting and relevant to all of their students that student engagement component obviously significant in how a student is able to progress through the curriculum and master the content that they are provided so looking at the pieces that we've identified there and what we want to make sure we continue to come back to we want to make sure instructional time is utilized effectively ultimately regardless of grade level regardless of content area we need to be working through content and we need to be utilizing every moment we have with our students in those classes for instruction to

104make sure they're getting what they need just a quick example and we see this in a lot of areas if I was a teacher in my classroom and I gave my students five minutes when they came in to kind of get themselves together get materials out whatever the case might be over the course of the year and 50 minute blocks that would actually represent 36 class periods that I've given them to be able to pull things out get organized and get moving there's a lot to be said for having that downtime to allow students to regroup and to have those things going on but being cognizant that if that's a consistent routine that can have a big impact on the amount of time our students are spending in the content and what we looks like

105alignment is obviously something that we are always looking for in the video is certainly keenly aware of that's why we're moving into the lesson plan reviews and working with our teachers to understand what goes into a quality lesson plan there's so many teachers in the division that do a phenomenal job with us there's so many good examples and literally in every school right across the hallway as a master teacher that has this part figured out those are resources that we continually pull from and make sure we're leveraging especially for our newer teachers as we discussed earlier we are conducting instructional rounds so the instructional office up here at School Board office actually going into schools going in doing observations these are not things that are meant to be in any way shape or formative this

106is not going into a teacher's record we're not coming out with this list of things all we need to do this this this we want to make sure that we have that time in the class so we know what's going on how students are responding and how we can help each one of those teachers right down the road regardless of which school that we are in we've also provided professional development for administrators that's our front line we want to make sure we equip them as much as possible to know what they're looking for how to support their teachers how to work with individual students and get them to a better spot based on all this data that we've been looking at we do have access to student detail by question reports of breaking down for

107each individual student how they are working through how they are being assessed what they are actually doing and producing on those assessments and sols looking at the standards looking at what they're answering correctly and not where are we seeing those concerns specific to each student how can we target that and develop that to be able to move forward we also have access to Sol test blueprints curriculum Frameworks unpacking standards getting a map for what it is that the state is asking us to do with these Sol assessments at the end of the year are there certain aspects of that curriculum at whatever rate it may be that are going to be targeted more on the Sol assessment we don't want to teach to the test but we also want to give due to the components

108that the doe has assumed or has put forward that are most important to be focusing on we're working with teachers and plcs so those Liaisons we talked about earlier are pushing in two plc's to those department meetings to work with teachers to unpack those standards demonstrate some of the skills and framework that goes into doing that helping teachers gain a continually deeper knowledge of what those standards are and how we target the key skills within those standards identified by DOA so a lot going into making sure we're equipping our teachers as best as possible to deliver that high quality instruction to all students I believe I'm handing back over to Dr Norman yes and Miss Justice I wanted to let you know Miss wheeler had told me she texted me last year I want to

109say a shout out to our reading specialist because we um they dropped they had a red 27 reduction in students id'd meaning if your ID you're reading below grade level and they reduced that by 27 across the division which is huge gains huge gains is that compared to the previous year or it is comparable fall to Spring right so they IDM in the fall and by the spring they have no doubt Madam chair I have a couple questions what percentage of our accreditation as in a school does lesson planning way absolutely none in regards to accreditation accreditation is only on student test scores okay um our our teachers allowed to do back planning with their lesson plans um or does the state allow that I'm unsure of what your we we have something called backwards

110planning which is exactly what we would like for teachers to do that means to prepare the test that they that what is it that the child needs to know by the time the end of the unit happens and then backwards map or backwards plan how to get that across to students okay and so yes ma'am they that is something that we that we try very hard to have them do and and I will say our our teachers do a really well job of that thank you very much you're welcome the next thing is so what is required by Virginia Department of Education there's a lot that we actually have to do paperwork wise but what are the nuts and bolts of it so we are required to have a comprehensive needs assessment you as a

111board actually are required to have a comprehensive plan you do have one it's it runs out in 2024 and you're going to have to redo that plan again but that is the plan that we as a division follow your actual plan then with that all of the data that we have all of the data that's in your book that is our needs assessment that is what are we doing with that data where are we seeing the trends and where are we seeing those fixes that we have to have across the board that is building administrators research that information that is people here at the school administrative office and Leadership teams that everybody kind of pulling together to look at the data and see what it is that we need to focus on then determining non-negotiables

112and that really is a conversation between vdoe and us at the school administrative office it's where are we going to get the flexibility to do what we know needs to be done for our students in our division rather than following another just what video he says that we have to do not every school system runs the same way and we need to make sure that we're doing what's best for our students so then the next thing is writing that plan so every school in our division needs to write a school in a comprehensive School Improvement plan and they need to implement that plan that is led by our building administrators our leadership teams and actually the teachers in the building everybody needs to buy into what takes place for the students in that building and

113then monitoring the plan and that is the building administrator making sure that the things that they've placed in their plan and the action steps that they've put that they actually Implement them they monitor it and then they review that with us Dr Wells myself Miss wheeler in regards to what it is that we're looking for in that plan and if it's actually working and if it's not working we're not going to continue to do that we're going to try to figure out what it is that will work for that particular school and then reassess that and start the process all over again it should be a living document that the teachers know that the leadership team knows that the building administrator knows that you as a board can go on our website at any moment

114in time and look for any schools summary of their comprehensive School Improvement plan and you would know what was going on in that school and where the areas are that they're targeting and that's very important because we we want to make sure our parents are aware of what's going on in our schools as well timeline for that so at the we give them they get their data the building administrators get their data at the end of July so we release everything once the state releases it to them they have all summer to kind of look at their data to analyze it and then once their leadership team comes into place at the first part of August we give them the month of end of August all of September and most of October so they actually

115meet with myself and Miss wheeler starting the last week in October to review their comprehensive School Improvement plan and then it asked to be posted or a summary of it because we can't post the actual plan because it's got identifiable information in there so we post a summary of that plan and that has to be up on the website November 1st of every school Primary School thank you you're welcome the next thing is the requiring for a CPS oversight so right now we have three schools that are under academic review Amherst County High School Central Elementary School and Madison Heights Elementary School we have two schools that are being monitored under review and that is Amherst Middle School and minnellison Middle School and then we have school studies at amalon Amherst Elementary Elon Elementary and

116Temperance and that's based on their current year information so we didn't want to like leave them out of the loop and ignore them this year because we know that they're going to need supports and systems to make sure that they keep on track and so even though we have the state monitoring we also have school studies that are going on as well at the division level then on top of that Dr Wells he is joining us in this process and he is going to be conducting superintendent's quarterly reviews in regards to the actual academic review and the monitoring of each of the schools we're kind of coordinating with him and each quarter he is going to review their attendance data behavioral data academics which falls under what's required for the academic reviews and the academic

117monitoring and then actually observations in regards to new teachers and Veteran teachers and they will meet with him along with their division liaison myself and members of senior staff to go through just looking at their data what that looks like and how it is that it's working with their comprehensive Improvement plan is it actually working and what can we do at the division level to support them with kids in their building and then the next are the required actions for us from vdoe which we have already accomplished quite a bit but we are required to establish a division academic review team we have to participate in the required training for level twos and level three schools and that is not just my instructional team here but that is building administrators their assistants and their instructional

118leads at that building we have to create a corrective action plan Federal participation training which Dr Wells and I attended on that chronic absenteeism which Miss Patron is working through that system with our building administrators and then actually completing a module in um in regards to the comprehensive School Improvement plan that our instructional leaders here at the division level are participating in we have to complete a com comprehensive needs assessment which is basically your wonderful little book in front of you the comprehensive School Improvement plan that we have to have each school as well as the division create the development of smart goals and essential actions and every teacher in our bill in our in every building across the entire division creates a smart goal it is they work with their building administrator on developing

119that and what their actual personal goals are for the year as well as their student goals and that deals specifically with the academic achievement tools that video has given us as well as the achievement Gap tools and I'll say all administrators all system principals do one for their principal and all principals have one for me so it's not just teachers are required to this but they all have to do one yeah all the staff has to do and so it's not just a teacher thing everybody has to be you get to enjoy that game a little bit um we are also conducting the instructional rounds and observations and I will tell you Amherst County has been doing this as long as I've been here this is my 10th year here and we have been conducting

120instructional rounds we never called them that the state actually trained us this year and that's what they're calling them and so it's something new for the state that they're doing but we've been doing it here for quite some time we have quality time appointments with the Virginia Department of Education School quality office and that is something that we have elected to do we are not required to do that but we ask our principals if they have questions for the state rather than funnel them all through through me they need to have this opportunity to sit in front of the state and ask whatever questions they want to because they're the ones that are on the front lines so we've reached out to our building principals and they've taken us up on those offers so we

121have some of those actually set for October 20th we have sop monitoring reports we've already completed our first fall report and had our first vdoe meeting that Dr Wells will talk about and then administrative supports classroom left and a lesson evaluation and feedback that we're giving we will do the reviews of the csips the end of October as well as the middle in January and again at the end of the year when we have our data in July and then we will do a consultation with our administrative team and division team in regards to their csip conduct a vision level academic reviews that are required from the state as well as our academic monitoring we will then participate with the state when they come in and actually do the academic reviews for our three schools

122that are under academic review Amherst County High School Central Elementary and Madison Heights and then we will have over site in review of The process by the division superintendent which on the next slide tells you everything that it is that Dr Wells gets to do in regards to certifying that everything that we're telling you tonight and everything that the state is telling us that we have to do is that we will do so he has already submitted the first report and attended the first meeting then in January 31st by that time he's got to submit academic reviews and confirm that all of the academic reviews for each of the ones in our division are completed he then has to monitor um with the help of his instructional team and submit a spring report verifying that

123we have monitored all the schools and that they have met their requirements of either a level two or level three that were required to to be met in regards to our federal monitoring and then of course division certification at the end of the year for all of our school studies that's a lot that's going to be taking place over the next several months so he's got his work cut out for him and then the following slot I'm going to turn that back over to Mr neighbors yeah we've touched on a lot of these pieces as we've gone through this evening but wanted to kind of put on the slide a lot of the initiatives that that are there I want to emphasize with this this is not a list of new things that we're throwing

124out to schools and teachers these are initiatives resources framework supports that have existed in Harris County schools for quite some time and some examples some of these are relatively new but most are things that we've been doing um we'll be emphasizing certain pieces a little bit more bringing them back to teachers attention bringing them back to the Forefront with staff but kind of wanted to bring all that together what is that kind of big list of things that are going off in the schools that are supporting our teachers and working with our students and getting to where they need to be I do want to emphasize as we're looking at this particular list that we are trying to address concerns across subgroups the data that we talked about earlier on in the evening and we're

125not just focused on SOL testing grades you'll note several items in this list start focusing on some of our earliest Learners in pre-k all the way through some of those early grades and ensuring that we are continuing to build that strong foundation for those students as well Dr Norma let you add anything you'd like there but just wanted to be able to represent that to the board all the wonderful things that are going on out there in our schools a lot of information in regards to our science in here and that is because we're trying to make up ground and first of all we have new science standards this year we did the crosswalk last year they are fully implemented this year means meaning they will be tested on and so um making sure that

126we're our fourth graders that sat there in a hybrid class two years ago getting one day a week probably for science took that science test last year on fourth and fifth grade because it's given at the fifth grade level and remember fifth grade we started out last year with not doing science labs not getting small group instruction bringing them together because we had health mitigation strategies so so we're trying to really make up some ground in the area of science at our elementary and then of course we have concerns this year at the high school in regards to science as we did last year making sure we have those qualified teachers in place to teach that so we're dealing with a lot going on in science but it's not something that we cannot overcome and

127that we can't meet what needs to be done and then if you'll go to the next slide I want to tell you this is where I want to be at the end of the year fully Green in all areas and fully accredited as proposed ratings as we close the achievement Gap um in the year 23-24 and that's where we'd like to be accredited I'm going to turn it over to Dr Wells so he can kind of walk you through how we're going to answer questions from the board and take you kind of through that process so what we'd like to do I know as you review the book there's going to be lots of questions instead of each board member sending us 50 questions a piece I spoke with Ms Thompson last week and reviewed

128the other day and we would like for you to send off questions to Miss Thompson she can compile them so if they're if they're redundant questions if four people ask the same question instead of established respond we can just respond to it one time as opposed to that so if you have questions regarding the data if you could send those to Miss Thompson and Miss Thompson can then compile that list and get it to us we can work on it throughout the month get back to you as soon as possible but definitely have the mileage about that school board meeting will be our goal if you're still in agreement with that yes um I think that helps in two ways one I think it helps us not be redundant but two it also helps them

129streamline the response they get back and that will all get the same one so the question would be more what type of timeline are we looking at if we can get it to you and two weeks give you two weeks took that'd be great pull it together maybe that type of thing and if there's things that you want you know if you may have a question but if there's also an area that you would like to have um uh you know for them to go into more detail you know so so like say it's the lesson planning then get that information to me as well and we'll we'll include that so that we communicate with them well what we would like to see at the next meeting is it okay oh sure so um first

130off Dr Norman thank you and your staff um for owning it I mean this is a big this is a big undertaking there's a lot it's not all roses it's but it's where we are and we got to start somewhere so we have a plan go forth and and execute plan but I had a question about uh chronic absenteeism do we have any early numbers showing how that's going um I'm going to turn over that Patron yeah no fine I'm just you know I know where we were last year and I know that's a percentage of days and are we on track now or is that um so um presented data to the principals I'm happy to share this with the board so you can look at it and understand it but right now we

131are on track we're kind of in a middle ground we are doing better than we were last year at this point but we're not doing as good as we were in 2019 which would have been the year where we didn't even finish a school year but we had comparable data to where we're at now so we're kind of in a middle track between the two if I had my crystal ball I would say that most of our schools will will do will improve a great deal from where they're at right now and we'll be just fine the school that I'm most concerned about is Amherst County High School and um right now they're sitting at chronic absenteeism rate which for the beginning of the school year is is high but it's not as high as

132it's been in other years at the beginning of the school year so I think they're still doing good um it's better than last year but it's still not going to get us accreditation okay and the more days you have in the better your rate right Madam chair um just a question on that um for the high school are they just not coming to school or are they actually sick it's it's all of the above there is um you know it as they get older there are some students who just don't want to come to school and it becomes more of a challenge for parents to get them to come to school so there's some of that um but there's also we have had flu and strep and stomach viruses there's also uh an increase in

133anxiety and just mental Wellness issues that our kids are facing that's causing attendance issues at the high school level thank you Madam chair correct me if I'm wrong um if a parent takes the student out and gets approved um a vacation they're gonna take them on vacation but yet get schoolwork that still counts against that number is that correct it does yes okay everything is um well everything counts against that number suspensions count doctor's notes count the only time a student is not in the building and it does not count against that number is if we're providing homebound instruction so they're still counted as present in that context I didn't know that if you were suspended it counted as an absence well I think in The Chronic absenteeism right it does correct in that race

134as well as an excused absence also counts in that chronic absenteeism for the State numbers they don't care why you're out if you're out you're out and that counts in that number I guess they chalk it up to Lost no instruction Madam chair may ask a question please Justice um Miss Patron in our absenteeism at the high school if you could give a percentage where does mental Wellness hit in there um I I don't have any data on that but just anecdotally um just sitting in truancy meetings and and talking to families that are struggling with attendance when we have students who are chronically absent it's probably about half of them are are due to mental health issues we have other reasons a variety of other reasons why students are chronically absent but I would

135say that most of our truancy meetings end up being around that topic and if you were to compare that two previous years that were bad is that like comparable or is it like double or no I I would say it's pretty comparable we were we had this issue prior to covid it's just exacerbated a little bit but it's still about relatively the same thank you so I believe we are on 7.02 yes ma'am so Federal participation correction action plan um on September 27th Amherst County Public Schools received notification from the Virginia office of school quality and federal oversight that a corrective action plan was required for the 22-23 school year for Amherst County High School in the area of testing participation so it was found that Amherst County High School had a 93 percent participation

136rate in the area of our EOC our end of course reading assessment with students in the subgroup of multi-race multiple race which was required to be a 95 participation rate so we missed it by two percent for the 2021-2022 cohort of students going through we had 30 multi-racial students 28 of them participated in the EOC test reading test and of that two counted against us two students and we that did not participate in the um in the actual taking of the test one student was enrolled in a GED program and the other student received a certificate of completion and did not participate in any Sol test throughout their career so we had 30 students in that actual category that subgroup we needed all 30 or we needed 29 of them to pass or to take

137the test 28 of them did we were placed under corrective action for this current school year right now our corrective action plan identifies 37 multiracial students in the 22-23 school year that cohort as of now there are three students who are counting against Amherst County High School for participation one student took the EOC reading over the summer and so that student was pulled off one student transferred out and is now attending another school in a nearby Division and so that student came off and then one student was expelled at the end of last year we actually made arrangements for that students to come in over the summer and take the test and they chose not to do so so right now we Amherst County High School already is at a 97 percent participation rate for

138the 22-23 school year and if nothing else occurs we will remain that way and we will be out of the corrective action plan by the end of this year so we basically really fixed it over the summer if that makes sense and that is we have to provide you information on any corrective action plan and so that's where we are currently right now and Dr Norman and am I correct that if a student does not choose to take the test they don't have to take the test right correct and then it still counts against us it still counts against us it counts as a zero and accounts against us in participation so it's a team effort we need help from the students the parents yes ma'am thank you for saying that Mrs Thompson um when

139a student is choosing not to take this EOC is this like a principal thing or they don't show up or is it no no actually in order to so we have two different ways to do it a student can just not show up to school on test day and every time we schedule for the makeup test they don't show up and then the school year ends and we ask them to come in over the summer and they choose not to do so and that is without parental notification or anything like that that meaning that the parents did not tell us that their child was not supposed to take the test then we have the parent opt out where a parent can choose which one of our students did to never take any Sol test or

140to not take any history Sol test or not take a Sciences they can they can actually cherry pick which ones they take or which ones they don't and they have to give that to us in writing two weeks before the test I believe that it is we send that information out and they can give that to us but it still counts again it still counts against us yes sir now in these tests um are there like if it like if a student doesn't do well on say computer tests but they know the topic or the subject material are there alternative ways for them to take it how does that play into students not taking the EOC there are so it depends on certain circumstances for identified students those with a disability for example there are

141a number of different accommodations for alternative format location extended time a lot of things that we can bring to bear to help support some of those pieces there are some accommodations that we would typically associate with an IEP or 504 that are actually available to all students so if a student wants to be in a smaller group in certain situations and on certain alternative assessments if they want to take extended time or need some of those pieces there are some of those things that are generally available to students but it really does depend on the individual needs and the communication that occurs between that student their family and the school so the short answer is yes there's some flexibility with that but it really kind of comes down to the individual needs of the student

142thank you I appreciate that and that is all for me tonight thank you Dr Norman I know that was a lot for you and your team and we appreciate everything that you're doing everything that the teachers are doing and everything all the administrators are doing it's a team effort for sure I'm sorry um I'm a little disturbed about the the comments about opting out of taking tests um for the students and parents that may be listening or watching this broadcast later uh could we please explain the importance of the test and why just taking the test makes a difference and even though it may not be part of their plan how it helps the school and why it's important for the school yes sir I'll be more than happy to so one of the things

143that I always tell parents when they when I talk to them about opting their children out um we never like them to opt kids out because then what happens is they don't actually see the results of how well they did in school and and I hate to say it that way but that really is a a good indicator of if they've mastered that concept is what that test looks like at the end of the year and how they did on that now that's a snapshot and so we want to build on that throughout the year but allowing that child to go through that process is an extremely beneficial to the child it's it's very beneficial to us but it's it's for that child as well but when you get into credit bearing courses you do

144not get a high school diploma without verified credits and so for a high school student to opt at for a parent to opt a child out of an EOC and end of course test is detrimental to that child and whether or not they actually get a standard or Advanced high school diploma in the state of Virginia that is the state of Virginia will not let us provide a diploma to a child who has not taken a standardized test that they see fit right so a completion certificate is not this is not a high school diploma thank you and and for those children that do that we we have a great GED program that they fulfill and can walk out with the GED but it still is not the same as a high school diploma that

145is awarded by you as a board because you were the ones that award that diploma and the state of Virginia yes and if if I may Madam chair I think a part of that tune piggyback and Miss Justice and with what you just said a moment ago I think really encouraging those families to reach out to the school and have that conversation about what flexibilities may exist and what the concerns are and we may not be able to address all of those with those families that's certainly their right to make that decision and and not participate but we never want that to be because we weren't able to have the conversation with them so I think that piece making sure families feel comfortable at any point whether it's the school whether it's here at the

146school board office reach out have a conversation let's talk through what we might be able to do to make that test a little more accessible to make it a little bit different for the student to be able to come in and do that because there are significant implications with it but we want to make sure as much as possible we are open too we're having those conversations what can we do to make that accessible to get the students in to be able to do that thank you down to 8.01 Human Resources Human Resources Mr Gallagher yes sir thank you Madam chair Mr Vice chair members of the board good evening the first item I have for you this evening is this month's current vacancy report that you have before you I'm certainly happy to take

147any questions that you have regarding where we currently stand in that regard or do you have any questions uh Madam chair I was just wondering what we are doing currently to fill those positions sure um several of these positions so three of the positions you see at the high school level are filled currently by uh well two are filled by retired teachers who are licensed in those areas one's filled by a certified licensed teacher but not in that correct area but is a long-term sub and considering potentially testing to become eligible in that area one of the elementary positions we have temporarily moved a reading specialist into that position as we are attempting to fill and we have a student teacher who is finishing their student teaching placement who is going to accept a long-term

148subposition beginning October 31st who had worked and done some work in Amherst County highly recommended who hopefully will be able to consider when they graduate mid-year to fully fill that position so there are some some strong options in the way we're structurally handling those positions currently and what about our classified positions well classified positions we continue to post and promote the fact that several of those open positions still if we hire prior to November 15th I'll be able to provide significant recruiting and retention bonuses for those individuals but the best we can do now is to continue to post and promote and support those individuals who take those positions because we have had several numerous individuals take positions and then leave roughly after about a month and things didn't work out and not not on

149our part just ultimately decided to to not do that position so it's been a bit of a struggle to maintain those individuals though properly supported they have kind of ebbed and flow and that's why those numbers have also ebbed and flowed there so and for our bus drivers are we still able to operate everything okay with being down four spots we are and we hope that there's another candidate currently on the horizon so we do continue to try to promote and support a bus driver hiring as well but we are able to handle that current load as we spoke about a little bit earlier in the session thank you you're welcome all right so moving forward the next item I believe you have in front of you is the Amherst County Public Schools emergency sick

150leave benefit covid-19 that was provided to you in September 8th or at least it was during that meeting that we discussed providing that to you for your review and consideration as it stands I believe currently um the actual let me pull this up the actual numbers of individuals of employees who have tested positive and therefore been out of work for a five-day period is 43 for the year those are actuals and reported I don't know that you know everything everyone is testing necessarily and Reporting everything but that's where we stand so those numbers are not as high as they were last year however you know we are moving into the winter time and if it becomes you know something that that ramps up it probably would be nice as you had spoken about earlier to

151have a kind of a safety net and an option I believe it's a an item that's been brought up at superintendent's Council I Believe by employees hoping to have some type of support there in the event that individuals had to be out of work for five days due to testing positive and you've had that before you look at and I guess tonight certainly I'll take any questions but it would just be for your decision as to whether you would like to vote that into practice practice that is basically going to be a benefit it's not not policy but it is a procedure that we would utilize and a benefit we would offer if voted upon um yes Madam chair commotion that we passed the memorandum for emergency sick leave as presented we need to support

152our teachers motion on the floor is there second second I have a second from Mr arasi is there any discussion board okay hearing none let's go ahead and vote all in favor say aye aye any opposed thank you thank you early I didn't think any opposed so I appreciate that and teachers will appreciate that as well all employees actually will appreciate that it's not just a teacher benefit thank you thank you uh the next item in essence is a revisions to our professional staff leave of absence regulations and support staff leave of absence regulations these are not policy revisions but we did conduct a regional study a professional and support staff leave policies and regulations to make sure we are aligned with appropriate practice that we had Equitable practices that were fair for both professional

153and classified employees and provided appropriate benefit support to our employees and and again to make sure we're in line with the practices within our region and throughout the state so what we found from that is that there was a need to make some revisions that we felt were appropriate to the regulations and I provided to you the two regulations in full with they were marked I think yellow highlighted to reflect the areas that were either added or revised and I noted those areas in the memo so as you walk through most of them mirror each other both in the professional staff and support staff regulations though there are a couple of minor changes the the professional staff regulations contain and professional leave procedure and regulation that was not there before and that would not be

154included in the in the support staff regulations and within the support staff regulations there is a deletion of a of a of a regulation that we had used for a long period of time and that was a 15 20 day rule I will discuss is not in the Professional Regulation so the mainstay we did add some definitions as you'll see there we wanted to differentiate you know the difference between non-hybrid vrs employees and hybrid employees that was relevant to some of the changes that would become relevant as to why we added a definition so people understood as we discussed that language in the revisions later they'll know what we're talking about you'll see just down from that where there's a differentiation of the accumulation of sick leave between the hybrid and non-hybrid members so at

155that point so currently there is no differentiation whatsoever for accumulation of sick leave so it can be unlimited any employee that we have in the professional policy is unlimited accumulation of sick leave hybrid employees however under their plan have an opportunity open market uh actually they have a different level of opportunity to have I'm trying to find my spot up to 125 days of leave on short-term disability where they are paid 60 of their salary if they are on short-term disability and they can use their sick leave if they've accumulated to offset that the other 40 so they can extend out there sick leave so there's not a great need to accumulate unlimited sick leave it will build and build and never really be utilized they're on a different plan those that begin 2014 and

156after so what we have done here is to indicate that there be a 90-day a 90-day cap on the accumulation of sick leave for hybrid members and that is in line with the regional divisions as well and there are actually some divisions originally that cap that at 60. since our current practice is is has been 90 um I thought that was more appropriate you know we can actually you know transfer 90 days in we're going to allow them to transfer 90 days in from other divisions that we'll talk about so it seemed like an appropriate number to allow them to maintain if they're coming from another division they transfer to us and we employ them they can bring that 90 days over to start employment so employees um assume I'm sure I'm going through this

157correctly I don't want to miss anything I apologize the next thing that I'm going to actually cite is in the classified or the support staff leaves of absence and that is the elimination of the 15 20-day regulation for support staff that we've had and this has been intended in the past to ensure that we don't have employees who are you know basically used all of the sick leave and they're out of work for an extended period of time with no plan in place to return to work and then they remain under employment and there's no no capacity to replace those employees a very rare thing that can happen there have been instances in the past where individuals have have done that for a period up to a year where we couldn't replace the position and

158they were they were kind of holding on so initially that that practice was put into place to prevent that and after 15 consecutive days of absence unpaid no leave or 20 cumulative days they would be considered to be separated from employment or I felt like that was interesting is that that only applied to classified employees so we don't have a 15 20 day policy for professional staff and I think the way that that procedure is written that regulation is written is not appropriate for either so to make that Equitable and fair we eliminated that from the classified regulations all right and you can ask questions anywhere along the way or at the end next I'm going to jump back to the employees on leave section that was added to the regulations that was put in

159there also because this this is for protection to make sure that we don't have individuals who have utilized all FMLA utilize all their leave and are out on an extremely extended stay with no plan for their for their capacity to return to work so again we have an opportunity ultimately to replace that position when there is no plan again to return to work that already exists with the hybrid positions under the hybrid plan of vrs when individuals can go on short-term disability this is where it indicates they have those 125 days where they can use 60 percent of their salary and offset it with sick leave once they reach long-term disability by by vrs policy they are separated from the division so that's a given that's already in policy I don't have to actually create

160that what we did was we added for the non-hybrid what they call Legacy employees those individuals from the previous plans prior to 2014 to where also if they're I've exhausted all of their FMLA time all of their medical leave and they're out for an extended period of time with no foreseen plan to return and that is the key that the division May separate them from employment so that they can fill the position the word may is what is included in other individual other divisions regulations as well because obviously if you have a situation where someone is out on medical leave but there is a plan and they're under doctor's care but there's a time frame for their return we would never you know Implement those types of regulations but there have been situations where people

161have been out in the past for significant periods of time with no medical plan actually sometimes in you know doctors and family members you know indicating that they they should not ever return and yet they don't make that dependent decision and we're not able to replace the position so Madam chair how do you determine whether someone has a plan or not is it in writing or communicate with them it would be in writing they would have a doctor's order or something indicating this is again this is going to be a period of time it could be six months that they're not able to work but there is an end in sight and so they can be out and there are other options for them you know they can take a leave of absence for example

162there's different things that we can put into place or knowing that there's a return plan then we we provide coverage and we look forward to the time when they can come back but there have been instances where there is no plan for return doctors are not recommended at any point in time that they return to work and giving them that permission to do so and we're kind of in a limbo State and that's what that's there for and um especially in the support staff how does workman's comp work and have fit into this where someone's injured at work or yeah and obviously if they're under workers compensation that's not and there's a plan for them to return beyond that that's not going to be something that's counted against them regarding separation of employment I think

163that is addressed in this situation um you know Amherst County Employees under contract with the Amherst County may be workers compensation leave for more than five days runs concurrent with FMLA and the same rule would apply ultimately with workers compensation again there should be a plan for return and we don't want to penalize people for an injury that occurred at work ultimately there needs to be a plan for return to work in any situation and if the doctor is not ever going to give them permission to do so in terms of a disabling condition or whatever limiting their capacity to do so we'll have to make a decision so that we can move forward and replace that position and do our employees have disability insurance is that kind a part of their benefit package or

164is that something they opt into oh well for previous plans and non-hybrid employees they have options for a short term and long-term disability and through their supplemental insurance programs under vrs hybrid members they do have the short-term and long-term disability options so they were separated they would still they would not lose access to that or shouldn't no and if they were on long-term disability they would likely be receiving some level of benefit they may have other options whether they're going to retire there's different things that may come up in that regard but they would have some level of support thank you you're welcome thank you madam chair for Rossi Miss Gallagher yes sir do we have uh like a short-term contract and and I'm asking this because teachers that are out okay you know and

165they're out for an extended period of time we have a substitute teacher taking that spot billing in spilling it in almost like a permanent substitute long-term substitute right are there any short-term contracts we can give veteran teachers that are semi-retired that would be willing to work for a month or two without having to pull resources from so yes where we're already stressed there are situations we can enter into shorter term contracts and we have done that as individuals if they're retired and they have not been separated for a 12-month period are not able to return to work fully they can return up to 80 percent of a contract period so if you if you offer a contract later in the year uh and it's only going to be 80 of that year you can offer

166that contract to a teacher you can also indicate that they can work for 160 days within the course of the year and therefore we're going to provide substitute coverage for the additional 80 Days within the school year and provide them a contract and we have done that we've brought individuals out of retirement to do that we're also fortunate with some of the changes I'd indicated previously the vrs where they've really been you know relaxing some of those practices so that we can Bring Back Your retired teachers fully you know once they have that 12 months of separation and provide them a full contract without jeopardizing their retirement and in the categories that that applies or almost all of our teachers at this point so critical shortage area categories have expanded significantly as far as where

167that applies okay thank you yes sir so one of the areas that you see changed also is transfer of sick leave you know Amherst as it currently stands we can we can transfer 90 days of sick leave from another division or another vrs employer that only applies currently to professional staff and I don't know why that is necessarily but we've looked and reviewed all other policies and typically that applies to support staff or professional staff I think that that's a bit of an inequitable policy and so what we're looking to do is change the regulation to make that policy applicable to both support staff and professional staff to where if we have an individual coming over in a classifier support staff position and they're from a vrs based school then they can carry over that

16890 days of sick leave if up to 90 days that's been accumulated and I think that's fair and reasonable and making sure that we're properly supporting all of our employees um I think oh so professional leave is the only other addition under the professional staff leaves and absences we did not have a professionally regulation in there we did permit professionally for individuals that were going to conferences and so forth and taking time for professional development but we did need to make sure that yeah so yeah I'll just hold it like this feels more comfortable anyway so yeah um we wanted to make sure that there was a significant process to that in the way that was implemented we can monitor that make sure that it was implemented efficiently so if we review that practice that's

169something that we created and we outlined that a principal's meeting for all principals so they understood how that was to be applied and it needed to be added into regulations so I think that's the end of all the different additions or changes so if there are any questions I'm more than happy to take those Mr Gallagher I have one yes ma'am um what would be the financial impact on this year's budget if this was to be approved so I don't know of an exact Financial impact and yeah I don't even know that I would ask you know Mr Connors to to jump in because you know we're talking about carrying over sick leave for example um from other divisions this would be retroactive uh once it's adopted so therefore we may have had individuals who

170are support staff for example who have now taken jobs with us we've done a good job of recruiting at times and bringing in excellent employees to find that I can't bring over my sick leave so there they will be allowed to have that added back in So if that the financial impact is they'll have that sick leave Reserve that's not an intermediate and obvious impact it means that if they end up being sick they won't be out without leave um you know so they won't be unpaid they'll have that benefit there providing benefits sir interesting they're not always you know a direct and obvious Financial impact because of that safety net to prevent people from being out unpaid and not being able to to receive that income so and Kim I don't know if uh

171anything you'd like to address differently because I don't know that I could put a number and that might not be something you can answer tonight I guess my concern is you know if it were to be approved at it we're can our budget currently handle it um I guess that would be my question more so than exact dollars yeah it is hard to you have determine because one I don't know how many individuals we were looking at it's going to provide them to have sick leave that they may not you know have otherwise um you know sometimes with the classified if they are out maybe their salary is already part of the budget so that part would be already covered and a lot of times some of the classifieds do not have don't have a

172sub when they're out you know their co-workers cover the worst it may have some somebody has to work over it might have a little bit of overtime but it is really hard to determine that um on you know I always talk about at the back end because then they would have the sick leave that may possibly be paid out at a later date but I believe that policy says they have to be with the school division for five years so it wouldn't be something that would impact us this year as far as if they left the division I think that in my opinion the impact would be very minimal if any at least currently the payout piece would be the only one but actually that the benefit of that and being a recruiting you know

173tool um if we had a lot of people that had all of a sudden this accumulated sick leave right and they're gonna all retire at the end of the year and we have this huge payout so that might be something that we want to look at just to make sure that we're okay there we can certainly get together and look at Future implications potentially of the individuals who would be receiving that which would be other support staff that become could be coming into the division carrying that over um and I think that that's no I think that that's um the fact that it was differentiated between professional and and support staff I feel like that that was probably not a good regulation um and I do know there will be a maybe a potential future

174Financial impact at retirement once people have been with us at least five years um so Kim you and I can take a look at that and give you some projections making sure that we're Equitable for all of our our staff and it looks like you've given lots of good thought and it would be beneficial for recruiting as well yes ma'am I appreciate that Lord do you have any questions I do the recruiting aspect of it so if they come over to our division with 90 days they leave they won't be eligible to use that for after five years is that what I'm understanding you know the payout the page all right so they'd still be able to use so if they come over here this year 100 and and there are times when we have

175attempted to recruit individuals to support staff realm and then they they do they are concerned and rightfully so about what are my benefits and they say well I can't bring my benefit I'm losing all this sick leave and what happens if I'm sick and you know I don't have the available safety net all of a sudden it's not a good piece for recruiting in that regard they can immediately use what they bring over it's just you know it's important cumulative payout piece you know that everybody has options to um that they that it would impact and quite honestly all everybody has that option now that's not differentiated the payout it's just that individuals transfer to us get to bring what they've already earned with them and and we feel like they should be able to

176do that that's something the County's been doing for years in their policy so yeah Madam chair I think if I recall in the needs that we had in Human Resources our biggest need if you were going biracial was it our support staff we have a significant need in those that would be certainly good for recruiting 100 percent and that's that's all I have for this evening and I'm assuming that you're going to let us look at it and would maybe like us to consider this at the next meeting well I will provide that to you it's a regulations so it's not necessarily A voted option but it certainly is something we want to have your Graces on since it is a regulation that we utilize to implement benefit practices for our staff but being a

177regulation those are the modifications please do take time I won't act on it until I hear back that you all feel comfortable with that unless you're comfortable tonight for us to move forward and don't have any other direction for us and thank you for clarifying about the regulation oh yes ma'am so board how do you want to proceed do you want to move forward with this tonight or do you want to move it to the next meeting I'm comfortable to move forward Madam chair um several so I guess I just need a motion on the floor if we've got some folks that want to move forward well I don't think he needs emotions he's just looking for consensus right census yeah yeah I'll shake my head all right so they're shaking our heads all right

178we have the shaken head consensus we'll take consensus sounds good thank you very much thank you so next we have information from our student representatives for team last night with us this evening but Evan is with us tonight so I'll turn it over to Evan and he can speak about what's going on to high school hi for those listening online that's loud all right uh for those listening online my name is Evan Fink I am a student representative from Amherst County high school sadly a member of my cohort team member mommy Grace is not here today I'll be speaking in her set about some of the things she told me that she wanted to bring up today to start uh the first thing I'd like to talk about is dual enrollment I know personally it

179was a big Boon to me but being a enrolled at cvcc I get many opportunities such as the opportunity to be a cbcc Ambassador yesterday I toured around a group of 10 freshmen out of the 185 that actually came there that day and it was a great time getting to know and inform them of the opportunities that they had over there that they didn't know about I know personally whenever I first came to Amherst County High School that I was unaware of many of the opportunities that were laid out for me so I think it's important to get the word out to many people there that this is possible and that it's a great opportunity and I think it should be told to them more commonly so starting from ninth grade because it's not just

180something you decide to apply another way and you need to work hard for you need to progress you need to it's not just something that anybody who applies to get in you need to work you need to work hard you need to get the right place the right time the right mindset and on to some of the things that Fatima wanted to talk about that I actually share show up day she was one of the cheerleaders who went to Amherst Elementary and or rather Madison Heights Elementary and it was a great time they got to talk with the kids for a few hours and uh they were really encouraged and she loved and she very enjoyed it and she was excited to see if they have it again and then other event coming up up

181is a trunk or treat I I believe yes the Trunk or Treat where uh seniors are going to decorate their trunks the community is going to come around and it's going to be a great time they're going to give out candy food prizes and it's October 30th between three and five I believe before a football game and the next thing she wanted to talk about was her dance team that's going on on The A Team there are a total 12 members in total and they're very excited about performing during games like the basketball games coming up baseball other festivals and parades community events and another event that's actually going on a lot of school spirit uh is the power to Puff game that in November and yeah other than that I mean all school activities

182are going great this year I know that uh with the football team doing pretty well right now so we're looking forward to Rustburg tomorrow night hopefully we can kick him at the football game their homecoming game in fact and other than that I mean School spirit's been up a lot since last year with lockdowns with restrictions lifted I think it's coming back to pre-covered levels and that's all I have to say thank you for listening thank you Mr Fink thank you next I have superintendent matters so I want to start with the vsba award certificate so some of you have earned vsba certificates and or pins so Miss Thompson has an Excellence award Miss liggin has the Excellence award Miss Berg has the achievement award and Miss justice has a recognition Awards y'all should have

183certificates and or pins at your place regarding those so congratulations to for those Awards and uh hopefully we'll get some more of those going this year that's a good more some more meetings so I just want to recognize you for that um supervisor superintendent's advisory Council update uh Amit uh September I mean October 6 last week October 6 and we had our first meeting and it was I thought it was a very productive meeting we had representatives from all the schools here we had the aea Reps here and they just were able to share um the positives as well as share some some have some questions regarding what is what we're doing one of the things I did bring up was the uh the covet lead which I'll approve tonight so I thank you for

184doing that and then they also had questions regarding lesson plans and things of that nature which you know I was waiting before meeting with the state yesterday and I'll go into that little bit later but they had some general questions but overall the feeling was very positive um we're trying to take the energy from this and you know if they have concerns let's not just let's make it where we can move a direction and solve problems as opposed to just bringing problems forward the goal is to to if there's issues that's what's work to fix them is have committees subcommittees in this group to start working towards some some questions or some concerns they have so we had our first meeting we'll meet again in about a month and we'll continue moving that forward we

185also held our first diversity council meeting on uh October 3rd again very good discussion we reviewed the priorities and objectives of the committee from last year and then made some steps moving forward as to what our priorities will be for this year moving as we go through this year so I felt very good about that we had uh citizen reps we have school reps and central office staff on that as well so I felt that was another productive meeting last week and we're going to continue to meet and move that forward um next thing I have is the resolution of respect for Mr Edgar Fitzgerald uh Mr Fitzgerald served on the school board from July 1st 1963 to June 30th 1974. he passed on September 17th of this year I've been in contact with the

186family and one thing they told me is he was very proud of his service on the board and to the community we would recommend that we do a resolution at the November board meeting I'll be glad to communicate with the family to have them here so if you're also moved and I would I would we'll go ahead and get started on that resolution and have it so they can present to the family in November Madam chair make a motion that we approved the drafting the resolution for Mr Fitzgerald Ocean second second all in favor uh okay thank you my list are the the tailgates some of you have uh I've had a joy of serving y'all some hamburgers and hot dogs at the tailgates uh we had a middle school in elementary schools I've already

187had theirs I want to thank my staff and everybody who's been engaged in this for being there and being present for that uh Brittany has done a lot of work on it um Gary's been moving stuff back and forth after Hogan's move stuff back and forth so I do thank everybody that's been engaged in this process and uh being there I know Jim's been throwing a football a lot and I've been having some fun time there so but I do we have our next one on the 21st that is also homecoming and this will be primarily for a secondary for our high school and aec staff as well as other staff who have been able to come to any of the other events so we we are encouraging any staff member who has not been

188able to attend one of these tailgates to come on that one event but the primary focus of this one is for the high school and AUC and then other our staff there I encourage you to come to it if you can uh we'll have hamburgers hot dogs that maybe be cool enough to have some hot chocolate this time we've tried to have hot chocolate twice it's been 75 degrees both tailgates which isn't a bad thing but it's kind of hard to have hot chocolate going when it's 75. so let's see what next week brings hopefully some good weather but we do encourage you if you can to come to that and uh again our staff to come there things been very I've enjoyed it interacting with folks I've been sitting by the grill I've been

189on the grill most of the time but having conversations I've really enjoyed doing this and we look forward to doing the next one and I appreciate those of you who have been able to come to it um show up day we had our first show up day uh September 30th I was able to get to all the schools I made it to all schools at least once some schools twice um you know we had events going on at Amherst Middle School they had like a public service appreciation event going on where we had the Sheriff's Office had game wardens his State Police had to bomb checks there from the state police game warden brought the boat Sheriff's Office brought the Tactical Team with the mrap we have other Fire EMS folks there so it was

190great the kids came out and they rotated through each station for about 20 minutes a piece were able to talk to the representative who was there and kind of talk about that career for a little bit and just ask questions and then kind of get a feel for that and also give the appreciation for those folks who doing the jobs they do so it was good for that I think was a good event there um Amherst Elementary School in Temperance we had a couple administrators get some pies to the face that day and some students they had good attendance forever drawn out to do that and throw some Pastor to faces some principles and some staff there volleyball team was went to Temperance Elementary School and we were able to get the the tunnel the

191football team runs to all the kids got to go to run through the tunnel going into the gym and the volleyball team was there to interact with the students throughout the day at Madison Heights Elementary School the football team for the football team to go they had to have an ARB in all their classes and not have any attendance issues so we were able to send several of our football players and the cheerleaders down to Madison Heights and they were out there interacting with the students we have some good pictures of the of our football players swinging on the swing with the kids and stuff and climbing on the monkey bars and just throwing football back and forth with the students and with the elementary students so I thought that was another a very good

192day the kids were excited but I also feel it was a very positive event for our for our high school students because they were able to interact with those students more so I felt very that was very good event our goal is to do more of these throughout the year we're going to have one more in the spring whereas a whereas a announced day but also each school is encouraged to have some type of event every month that focuses on on showing up School attendance whatever that may be so each school's kind of been tasked with that to do an individual thing throughout the month based on their attendance data and what they think will be good you don't have to spend a lot of money we could have you know they want to have

193a one of the teams coming after their school it's nothing to put them on a bus and take them over there for half you know for a couple hours during the day as long as they're doing well in their classes and things of that nature so we're not talking about spending lots of money but we're not talking about doing things that are incentives to the students to come to school um but we felt very popular good about that let's Patrol anything you want to add I would just add that it was a fantastic day but we also awarded gift cards to teachers who were showing up so we went into several of the buildings and um whoever was there we drew names and they got an award just because they're showing up for their kids

194every day and and not just teachers but custodians and um there was a cafeteria nutrition workers so bus drivers I went to the bus garage at the end of the day and we just randomly pulled a couple names and gave out gift cards to folks who show up thank you so the the next thing on my on my list was the JRA trips we the seventh graders at Amherst Middle School and Nelson both were able to do their JRA trips we did those uh about two weeks ago two or three weeks ago and if you saw my newsletter uh some of the Amherst Middle School students had the great privilege of being there the same day the Game Commission was doing a fist shocking survey in the river and they were shocking up these 20

195to 40 pound flathead catfish and other fish and the kids got to engage in that process a little bit on the shore when they brought them in and hold them up and and see that so it was a pretty good experience for them to see that as well just a great time I mean I wish we could do that with all the groups but some of the Amherst Middle School students got were able to see that and see the environmental science being put to you know applied not just read about it in the book they got to see it actually in action which I think was a very good good for them so next I want to get into the video we monitoring so I'm just going to hit a few talking points we have

196here so I'll save the the heavy stuff for towards the end um so we met yesterday uh our staff met with the state via a zoom meeting it was myself Dr Norman Mr neighbors uh Miss Smith Mr Maddox Miss mcnearney Dr McGinnis Miss wheeler and Miss Cecil and we were there uh they gave us kind of their overview of what we needed to do from the office of school quality we told them what we were doing we've what our data indicated they've already sent it to them so they already had a chance to see it and they asked you know they asked us to provide plans for improvement implementation um we discussed the obstacle quality um it's going to do spring virtual meetings with all level three schools we're going to provide support and framing

197feedback to schools we're going to have we told them we have a liaison for each school like she talked about earlier tonight conducting division instructional rounds which we talked about earlier tonight the division review of comprehensive School Improvement plans and the monitoring quarterly with feedback so they were very much in agreement with those those those items and how we were dealing with what we're you know where we are um they didn't really say do this or do that which I would rather them come in and say kind of hey give me some direct feedback they didn't give me direct they just kind of said well that sounds like a good idea or this as opposed to y'all need to do this so we're putting we're proposing things to them they're giving us feedback on it

198and we'll move forward with that I did ask them about lesson plans and lesson review and less implementation they did state that was a division decision however they encouraged us to look at the research about uh lesson plan and review and feedback and implementation or essential parts of quality instruction so you know if we have we know our student we know some of our students had learning loss or had gaps in their knowledge however you want to phrase that so I think it's important for our teachers to really look at if they have a student that has that Gap in knowledge how are they going to make that learning loss for that to bring that Gap forward and overcome that loss of learning so the lesson plans and you really need to focus on those

199students that have those may have some deficiencies in their learning just based off the fact that they may not have learned that material so we need to really look at the planning process to identify those areas that are in need and how we're going to incorporate that into our lessons so we focus on all those kids not just the other 15 who may not have learning loss but what about those six or seven who have we know they had deficiencies some one place or another and how we're going to incorporate that so they get caught up so we can get that learning back to where it needs to be so that's a focus need to think about as we look at our lesson plan development so you know what I plan to do moving forward

200is moving on to each School and talking to each faculty about what is what the expectations are they need to hear it from me um and where what I feel we need to do moving forward to get us to where we're improving across the board and they need to know us they need to have my expectations again I told them at the earlier in the year at the convocation but I think it's important for me to go back out to schools and I haven't had a chance to talk to the state and understand exactly what the expectations are and what the requirements are going to be and they need to hear that from me so I'm going to be the one going doing that so I'm starting to schedule those meetings here in the next

201week or two it might take me three or four weeks to get to all the schools because they all tend to have faculty meetings at the same time or on the same days so I can't be more multiple places so I might be talking to some some schools about rescheduling some of their meetings to make it more accommodating for me to get there but I will be in all the schools talking to the faculties with expectations and then and then taking questions from staff and do my best to answer those questions so I just want to give you an idea there of where we are on that we have another meeting on October 20th and then we'll get more information from the state there as well moving forward but again these meetings were they were

202informative but they really weren't quite what I was hoping to get out of the meeting so to speak but anyway enough on that Bridging the Gap Bridging the Gap is another initiative we're joining we're joining in with the state we had a meeting yesterday afternoon as well so he went straight from the office School quality from 2 30 to 4 to 4 to 4 45 with the Virginia Gap meeting and this right here is talking about developing individualized learning plans for students and that's something the state is doing with this pilot program and so on the pilot they're giving us the discretion is focus on grades three through eight what we know so far is that we can pick the the grade level we can even narrow it down to a certain school if you

203want to and figure out how we're going to develop these individualized learning plans and that's something the state is going to we're in the pilot program it's less than about 15 other school divisions across the state and then I think next year you're going to see it pushed out more so across the state but we're still into into figuring out process on that we haven't seen the mou yet we haven't seen some of the other things yet but the State's starting to have these meetings so as I get more information on bridge in the Gap I'll bring it to you but the focus is on developing individualized learning plans and involving the parents and the and the decision-making process for the with the students and what their goals and objectives are which we should be

204doing to extend anyway but I think the big question is going to be the amount of work we don't know the amount of work that's going to be involved in developing these plans yet because we haven't seen it so that's going to be part of the part of the process I think and trying to figure all this out but I don't I don't have that answer yet once I do I'll let you know Town Planning Commission we were we've met with the town Planning Commission the Town Council of the past two weeks regarding the project at the high school uh presented uh Mr roach Dr Hogan myself presented with the town Planning Commission last week and the Town Council last night right last night my days are getting run together uh they've been very they

205were very appreciative us coming to them but we do need to look at the high school how it's zoned it zone is a residential and as the town took it over from the county they never changed the zoning so we need we're going we've been working with with Sarah McGuffin and the town along getting it rezoned to a B2 so we we can do more things at the school and try to get that stuff done also talking about taking over Lance for Lane and things like being under our control versus VDOT control so a few things there we don't anticipate any roadblocks they've been very uh the conversation's gone very well with them but we do there is a process so next month we will bring it to their to them for the Planning Commission

206in November and we hope that it will be approved by December for them to change the Zoning for the high school property to meet the needs now especially since uh the Burley property is now part of our property we can always enter this one one big block as opposed to multiple different different zoning blocks in there so the last thing I have is um the library media book adoption to sexually explicit content conversation so at your place you should have uh is it a there's a board docs corrector at their place is that their place they should have a policy the draft policy that Mr Madison that and Mr Grazer in the committee we formed are have been working on then you also have a vsba policy that is basically coincides with that because when

207we started the process we did not have a vsba policy so let's remember the state is going to require the state code requires us to have this in place by January 1st so we started working in September on a draft policy of the sexually explicit content last week we received the vsba uh policy which basically parallels the policy we've been working on is the same thing so what we're going to do now is take both those policies I want one for you to review but we'll take both those policies the draft policy and the BSA policy go back to the committee next week discuss that and make a decision as to where we recommend presenting the draft policy to you this in Amherst County Public Schools policy or the bsba policy a member of the

208SBA if it's if they're saying the same thing the vsb might be the way to go because then you have protections under the bsba but again that's going to be just that'll be up to the board and and so forth as we bring that forward we'll bring both forward to you the one thing I did notice is at an error policy we had a 15-day notice period and conversations with the state and some of the conferences I've been on regarding this policy the the recommendation at the state level is that it's a 30 day and uh if you read the code it says we can't we have to be we do our own policy it has to be consistent with the model policy so we can be more restrictive but we can't be less restrictive

209so I feel we're going to have to go to a our policy we'll have to have a 30-day window in there as well to be in alignment with the model policy we could go to 45 days if we wanted but we couldn't go less than 30 so we will have to adjust that 15 Day to a 30-day in our model in our draft but other than that if you read both I think you'll see they're both pretty much saying the same same thing for the most part so that being said are there any any questions if anything I've gone over tonight um I'm chair um I have policy for the instructional materials and there were a couple things um that I noticed one is they include the definition of sexually explicit content which is all

210according to code they remove social media content from instructional um instructional the the purpose is it would not cover social media yet social media is a part of our students lives and sometimes is being used by um instructors I don't see any kind of um a ratings I see notice that something's going to be taught but I don't see anything about books that are in our library I have me and Earl and the dying girl here and um you know so the first thing we did we had to address the especially explicit content policy which has to be in effect by January 1. the other part of that was the regulation that's going to go into the media books in the libraries in the media centers but our Focus initially was to focus on getting

211the policy written and now once the policy draft has been written we're going to start working on the library media books and how that regulation is going to work but we had to have a policy in place because that was the one that has to come to you to be passed and be in place by January 1 the rest of the media books and things of that nature we can we're going to start working on that now as we're moving forward from now throughout the year to come up with the regulations for that and we anticipate that being some time into December January time frame if if we only include in our policy the suggestion that we allow parents to know what sexually explicit material is being included um I know that some of the

212other districts have included a parental opt-in and I think that that should probably be a I personally think that should be a part of our policy if we're going to include sexually explicit material which any description of any picture photograph drawing Motion Picture film Digital Image or similar visual representation depicting sexual sexual bestiality a lewd exhibition of nudity as nudity is defined in section 18.2-390 sexual excitement sexual conduct or sadomasochistic abuse as also defined in section 18.2-390 co-prophilia europhilia or fetishism um if any of that is going to be in our instructional materials I think we should probably have parental opt-in rather than a notification so um we have a lot of parents as we all know who are concerned about this and right rightly so and um I certainly as a board don't remember

213don't want to have a parent come to me and say well I got a notification that it was sexually explicit and this is what my kid had you know and you guys said it was okay for instructional material and I'm not certain that sexually explicit content is it yeah by this definition of what sexually explicit content is um I'm not certain that is something we consider instructional well I think that's good feedback Mrs Justice um I will say that I know that we have a minimum that we have to do in this draft policy in our policy um if it was an opt-in then I think that would be going above and beyond and certainly within our right to what we could do as a board if we wanted to do that I would support

214that um you know at this point but I guess we just need to be talking about that and let giving some guidance I don't know how other board members feel about that or not Mr krauser you've been in the meetings do you have any um the I think with with the notification of for one the you know you're assuming that that stuff's going to be taught the definition came out of what's in the state code I mean there's no changing that whatsoever so if you don't like bestiality mentioned it's in state code talk to your general assembly as far as the opt-in I think the parents they're going to get a notification on the uh on the content um I don't I I think opt-ins always especially if a teacher's I and I don't believe

215this is even going to come up I mean I really don't just knowing our staff I don't think that we're having this policy in place because of the requirement I I think you to to sit there and put a opt-in or I think you put an extra burden on on staff to sit back and wait if if something comes along that may even cross over into this threshold I think that the staff is sitting there waiting for parents so if a parent is just as concerned about what their child is doing they're going to see that notice and op amount so if they're not concerned who's going to say they're even going to opt them in so you know I just I really do think at the end of the day that notification is absolutely

216necessary to put an opt-in into it um I just I just think that's an uh unnecessary step if it is agreed I think it's something that goes in the regulation and not necessarily a policy thing I think that's a regulatory regulation thing or procedure rather than something that needs to be in the policy but I'm open to whatever the board wants to do as a whole so you know reviewing in our instructional materials there there are very few times that you're going to see anything and the you may have something with a dual enrollment CPCC class where the CBC you know as part of that instruction but typically you're not going to see much of this happening at in the schools so um I can't say it never has happened but I think you know

217sometimes you may have a CVC dual enrollment course where a teacher has reading a certain certain book or certain text but it's very is a very small amount um this not an everyday occurrence in our schools I will say that but we'll take your we've we've noted your recommendations and we'll take it Mr maddox's sitting back there and he'll take that in his to his committee next week when we meet and we'll bring as a point of conversation um and Mr Garza just to to your point about it being in the regulation um I think I'm gonna have to disagree with you because the policy that we're looking at specifically says that it would be a letter out so it clarifies the the how to so you wouldn't want a regulation that was different than

218the policy how to so that would have to be vetted and I can see that okay determine where it would be placed I think so they're not conflicting so we'll take your your points of conversation tonight bring it through the committee next week and then we'll bring something back to you we do need to get you something um in November as a first read and then hopefully for approval in December if we can agree to that if it's something in November that you don't agree with you think we need to change we'll need to work on that throughout the month and make adjustments and we will get things through to you um throughout the month so hopefully by December we can have something for approval so we will meet the the state requirement of a

219January 1 having a policy in place taking out the social media or the online access I'm not sure why that was taken out but is there any explanation as to why maybe I could understand that in the conversation we there was um if my recollection is correct we kind of it was already covered by some existing uh the I think digital I apologize I don't have it opened up in front of me but that yeah we we already felt through the conversation and we had actually one of our members an attorney so we you know we're just having a conversation with that we felt it was already covered in encapsulated yes Madam chair does it hurt to have it mentioned in both I know in the bsba policy they have it mentioned they they list

220they don't remove it they keep social media in the bsba version um so it doesn't hurt but again I think some of the committee felt it was redundant and therefore they took it out how does the board feel about um a rating rubric being included so parents can kind of have a general idea of what the level of sexual content is in a book manager a one you would have to consider what's your Source uh because it's a very subjective process one I have confidence in the in the staff that we put in those positions to make a termination whether or not uh initially upon their review that something may meet the classification in here and we also have a process in place if someone doesn't agree with that of how to how to review

221that so A rubric from a website that has that wouldn't even be included probably as a reference and a research paper or considered peer review I don't think is a good thing I think it puts an undue burden on the staff for one and again it's very subjective a parent could obviously not agree with um what that rating is so so they can you know what's to say they couldn't appeal that I think I think trying to put that the one that you're referencing like you had submitted it was very it made it very complex to try to um do anything it's not applicable or we were trying to figure out how you could apply it to all those uh mediums uh I think um the uh just trying to encapsulate that we as a

222committee we're just reviewing that we didn't think it was a very good thing to put into place and I still stand by that I think we we have staff that we entrust that are they're educated they're put in that position uh to make that determination on this material and we also to retroactively go back and review everything in that Library um that's you know you know I just or instruction material I I I don't think that that's I don't think that's the route we need to go I really I just don't um I think we have processes in place to address these concerns and to try to put something in such as that rating system I just don't think it uh I don't think it would be fruitful um for what the what we're trying

223to do here so I would add that what we possibly could add to the letter would be so for example if if they're reading a book and then it's sexually explicit it talked about sex acts and they could put in the letter the book covers acts between a married couple or whatever or they could put some some definition in their sort of parents would know what is being discussed and how it's being discussed if there was a case to do that as opposed to just saying sexually explicit material I think we could get a little bit more specific into what that is to give the parents a little better idea of what what it is it's going to be that's discussed in that in that material I wouldn't be opposed to that but I think

224we could work through those with with the regulation of what the expectations are for our staff and how they sent that letter home absolutely so give the give the parent more information and allow them that information to be readily available if they dig in I mean I I personally don't think that that material needs to be there but my main concern is access to students at age appropriate I mean you know you can have a third grader and a librarian pick up a middle school book that's you know middle school or an apparent in a middle schooler may not think it's that big of a deal but in the hands of an elementary student so those are some of my concerns and how to address those I'm not quite sure but I'm sure the committee

225will come up with some good ideas on how to do that Madam chair um maybe if we have a list of the books that people are uncomfortable with if we hand that over to our Librarians and let them review those books and maybe they could maybe set them aside or something and they can only be available upon requests or something like that good ideas okay looking forward to see what the committee's got thanks for listening to some of our thoughts that's all I have unless you have any more questions for me any other questions all right thank you okay let's see we are for committee members uh let's see Mrs liggin you have a report from Laurel oh let me think and or vsba no law report um I'll just combine all my things for

226vsba I will be sending out the legislative positions that to be voted on I have received before the next meeting I think of have them here but they're a little unorganized right now but it's been I'll get them out to you I'm gonna break Monday too so I'll try to get that to each member uh so we can talk about uh them on the November meeting I know that there are some uh I got them right here virtual meetings that are coming up that they're going to be discussing some of those well the virtual meeting is just yeah the road for me they're just showing me how to vote which I already know how to do that but before I vote on anything I'll bring these to the whole board uh at the November meeting

227I'll get them out to you before the board meeting oh I think you missed the Legends or no Mark Madam chair do we ask questions regarding this or no at this time yes I can answer it I will okay um one question I have is is it possible to have a work session where we can talk about those in more in more depth well I don't know about a work session we never have but I'm gonna try to get them out to you a month ahead I mean the meeting is not until November what's the date in Williamsburg the middle 15th yeah 15 16 17. I just had Brittany carpet for me a couple weeks ago um I'll have to try to have them to you to look at this week I mean I said

228this week next week and if if any other board members would like to go we can still make arrangements for I believe Britney can't we oh it's not just delegates oh no we talk about two different things two different things the vspa conference in Williamsburg is in November in the middle of November and part of that is there is a session in which the delegates Mrs liggin being our delegate will go and actually vote but I will get everything to you that's going to be voted on so you can tell me what you want me to say that's what I'm saying then in November we'll look at it and we'll tell her if we want her to vote Yes or No One on that we'll have discussion then you think okay yeah I think we

229could and yes and or contact her or me or or who I mean we'll put it on the agenda we'll put it on an agenda for for November you would have had these in your possession for a minute I wouldn't call a meeting to do them uh unless you think we need to it'd probably be I've reviewed them I don't know that we have to do but but I'm going to get them to everybody anyhow and I'll try my best to have them to you next week so would you like a discussion item then in November yeah on the agenda that'd be great we can do that and see the other thing is yes ditto to all the great spirit we have in the county the tailgating the show up Amherst everything has been wonderful

230I will announce also um other than the bsba and no law meeting at this time that I am in the process of hiring a new Head Start director which we do have a lot to do with that here in the county we have a Madison Heights has a head start classrooms and they are the children are doing quite well there we hope they have a head start director in the next 25 days or so hope to have a new CEO of lincag next week so those also are part of Us and other than that just all the good news tonight I kind of been down this road before and we do come out of it good hard work so I want to thank everyone that's already beginning there's a lot we we could say there's

231a lot of work to be done but I have faith that we got good people in in charge of doing it as long as you keep us abreast we do whatever we can uh achieving I mean closing achievement gaps and and all these sort of things is easier said than done but I didn't say they couldn't be done so we're looking to help as much as we can I think that's all I have Madam chair except kudos to all people working and Lancer information and yes we're going to try to go down to Red Devil territory tomorrow thank you Mrs Lincoln Mr griser gov school board and meet in October we'll be meeting again in November and then miss Dr Wells is already briefed on the library media committee information I think Mr Burley for

232his generosity and continue to report or support of Amherst County public school programs and thank everybody for the information tonight uh Mr Terry STEM Academy so STEM Academy has not met um since our last meeting and um as far as my report for a board member I have to Echo what Mr Grisha said Mr Burley um you know he supported this County by more than just his finances if we had more citizens like him we would be in a really a great place not and not financially I'm just talking about his moral and emotional support for our entire County he's a phenomenal person um and I hope the uh the two people who came to speak about the um um the road issue that we're potentially looking at going into uh monellison it it appears

233from the drawings that I've seen that uh the actual easement will actually um you know ease some uh some of the traffic there on Daniel's Lane um I hope that's the case I mean it looks like it will be so I hope was it the the gentleman were able to rest their minds with those and um I'll reiterate Dr Norman again thanks for owning the situation uh your team has done a great job presenting the data and giving us a um a path forward um like Miss liggin said you know it's it's a lot to be done but you know we'll get through this it's going to be um when we see it come out on the other side I think we'll be uh in a much better place so thank you all for your

234your due diligence uh shout out to you know one of the things that stuck out that you were talking about teachers helping teachers and I you know I just want to make sure that they recognize that we hear that and you know we encourage it we want to know that co-workers are helping co-workers um might not be able to do everything they need but stepping up where they can just because they're there and you never know who's going to need the sport tomorrow so I'm glad to hear that that's a that's really a thing and um you know like has already been said the show up Amherst and the the uh tailgate stuff it's it's great camaraderie when you get the teachers and everybody together and social setting and administration together in a social setting

235and not dealing with the everyday work aspect of being together um that's an important thing we are a community um but we're more than a community we're we're family and uh that's that just goes a long way so uh thank everyone who's been participating I think everyone who's helped put them on and uh maybe we'll get a win next time we've got our fingers crossed but uh it's all good we love going and supporting our our football team in the evenings and uh thank you all everybody do you have anything tonight um nothing to report but I would like to say um thank you to our speakers this evening a big special thank you to Mr Burley for his donation to our Wildcats archery team um thank you two of the speakers on that actually

236came out and answered questions for those people on Daniel's drive on the monelis and easement um also thank you to Mr Gallagher for putting together another sick leave benefit package for our teachers I'm sure they all will appreciate that and our staff um Dr Wells I'd like to thank you for sharing everything and the show up Amherst it sounded like everything was wonderful and everybody had a good time and we really need to build everybody back after the whole covid couple of years and um also um thank you to Mr Fink for holding everything down over there by yourself tonight and staying with us all night and a special thank you to our teachers um we support you we appreciate you um you know let us know what we can do to help you out

237to help our students to get us through this little patch and get us back on top thank you for listen Justice um I was so blessed by Mr burley's giving to our community to me it typified um the heart for our kids and how our kids Inspire the generations that have come before if you could have been up here and seen Mr burley's eyes glow when he looked at those kids and spoke hope into their lives it was it was inspiring and he's not alone I think he represents many people that are out there that maybe don't speak it but they feel it um thank you Dr Wells for reaching out to the Daniel Street neighborhood and giving them a voice and an opportunity to be heard and have their questions answered the tailgates and

238show up Amherst have been phenomenal I have loved participating in them meeting the staff talking with the kids I am loving being in the schools and telling kids when they say who what do you do I say I work for your parents they're my boss and they go like it how do you know my parents and I get a chance to tell them I'm an elected of school official and it's your parents that tell me what to do um parents this might not be as pleasant um parents these are your kids and the library commission is needing to hear from you um do you think it's too complicated to have a rating that says a book that considers has moderate violence moderate hate inexplicit sexual nudity and sexual activities or gender ideologies or drug and

239alcohol use appropriate or not for 13 a rating of two or do you think that a court of mist and fury which is rated out of four which is explicit sexual nudity depictions of sexual organs in a state of arousal obscene references to sexual activities involving anal oral or vaginal intercourse fingering and a fungus or ejaculation is appropriate to have in your school libraries is that something that you feel you should be opting into or not I don't know if a content-based rating is something that you feel is necessary and your committee wants to know they want to hear from you their heart is to serve the kids in their community and not to um inhibit any parents preferences for their kids but they need to hear from you so the books that I have

240quoted from are books that are in our libraries a court of Miss and fury you have The Kite Runner you have me Earl and the dying girl so those are just a few we don't have many but they're there and you need to communicate what you want your board to do Justice Mr arasi all right uh first uh Mr Pink thank you for showing up uh the work that you do and and bringing the freshmen out to the school and showing them around and and talking to them the impact that you have on them is very very important I like you know your leadership skill and moving things forward I don't know which one has to check the chlorine it's a pool but you know you're a mentor without you know being graduated you're working

241your way up and taking those children and showing them what a good leader is and how important it is because they're going to be in your shoes in four years you know as they as they work their way up and you're going to leave stuff on them and I I appreciate that you're taking the time to do that I wasn't as fortunate when I was a senior to have that opportunity but you have an opportunity and I hope you use it use it well um thank you Mr Bailey Burley for the donation for the archery team I'm impartial to archery archery is one of those Sports where it doesn't matter how physically fit you are it doesn't matter if you're a boy or a girl you can compete against anybody on that field and it's

242a great sport for everyone and the discipline obviously safety and for our schools to have that opportunity because I didn't have that opportunity when I was a young child I wish I did but I didn't but to have that here in Amherst is is a good a good show of how much the community cares about our students archery is is actually growing in popularity and I think it's for those reasons because it is a competitive Sport and it doesn't matter on race gender it doesn't matter everyone can compete and be competitive at what they do so it teaches them great skills um show up Amherst wow uh Dr Wells you've taken it a long long way and I haven't had a burger that good in a long time let's say you know to take the

243extra effort to bring out the charcoal instead of turning it onto propane I mean it just shows the thought process in how you're committed to it and that's you know why you're where you're at now because of your commitment and I don't want to try to place anything against you on that you're you're committed 100 and I know that and I as a board member committed to you and to the teachers and to the students of the school um you know it was an amazing event and I hope that everybody gets an opportunity to get out there and enjoy that that is it's a very special moment and to see the pergola that were built by the students that was phenomenal work in the hardscaping everything was just wow that was very very impressed uh

244yeah and then the game didn't quite go our way but that's all right everything else was was just phenomenal out there and I'm looking forward to the next one thank you and uh everybody I I there's a lot of work in here but it's just work it's work you know uh it's got to get done you know do we have all the answers no I don't think we do we have a direction thank you for all the hard work we have a direction to go we have a goal goal in mind and with the people in the school and what I'm hearing from the community and teachers and students this momentum is still moving forward and and it's just I don't think that anything in here is going to stop us from achieving our goals

245I just don't see it happening uh we're going to move forward and I think that our best years are yet to come and I know we've been through a lot of years but I think the best years have yet to come and I think with this team we're going to get there we might get there a little bit sooner than we think but we're getting there and thank you all for everything I really see it I really see the difference and it's very much appreciated with Mr Rossi well I know it's getting late so I'll just try to keep it very very brief I just want to say thank you to the teachers and the staff for getting us through some really tough years I can't say that any of us would have ever imagined

246we would be here today where we have come from and what our children have been through and we have had a phenomenal staff teachers that have gotten us through those tough times so when I sit here and I look at the work that you guys have put together with our data yeah it's not the data we want to see but it's reality it's where we are after coming out of those tough times and so I know like Mrs Lincoln has said we've been here before the hard work has been done and she and I have seen the accomplishments that the staff has made and I know that we have the confidence that it will occur again so it does take team effort a lot of work has already gone into this and I know a

247lot of work will continue so I just want to say that we have confidence in you those that I'm looking at here in the room also say that we have confidence to every teacher and everybody that is employed in Amherst County as well as the parents and the students we can do this we are team Amherst and we've done it before so and I want to thank Dr Wells because you're taking the lead and you're getting in those schools and you're talking and setting expectations and I appreciate that very much and I know that you are already swamped with the work you have to do and you're going to be looking at every single school and every piece of data and every single Student's name and that's what it's going to take so I just

248appreciate that very much so thank you team and then I also want to say thank you Mr griser for serving on the sexually explicit material committee I know that's a a tough one but in the same vein I know you want to get it right and our staff will do the same so thank you for listening to the comments tonight and moving forward I think that we will have a good product as we come out of that so and I want to thank Mr Burley for his donation for the archery team and Mr Fink I really enjoyed your ideas but I really loved your radio voice really nice and so team uh board I want to remind you that if you have instructional things that you want to send to the board to the staff

249to send them through me and I'll summarize them and get them to there give you two weeks and I want to challenge us as a board to see if we can come up with some type of an incentive for uh that high school meeting those attendance goals so which thinking caps on maybe we can join in with the team somehow so um thank you all very much and I guess we are ready to go into closed session yes ma'am pursuant to section 2.2-3711a1 of the code of Virginia it is recommended the board can be in a closed meeting for the following a one Personnel matters coordinate emotion so moved have a motion to go [Music] thank you