001[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay [Music] yeah i think that's all the calendar year gets approved and it's based on funny [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] not right [Music] okay [Music] okay [Music] what kind of is the water good bad not too good up here what is it it's good it's excellent excellent it's cold [Music] do [Music] do [Music] or who experienced the tragedy in texas at robb elementary during our moment of silence tonight you i need approval for tonight's agenda motion to approve tonight second all right all in favor aye aye on any post all right agenda has been approved um want to take a minute for uh some recognitions tonight thank you madam chair we're going to start tonight with a group
002that i mentioned at our last meeting they are they are back from the national tournament and we would like to ask the central elementary archery team to come join me along with their coach mr mr thompson if y'all come up here please [Music] okay [Music] so we would like to recognize the central elementary school archery team the 2022 virginia national archery and school program state champions with austin henley taking the elementary male state champion title this group of fourth and fifth graders are led by their coach mr jeremy thompson who will join me in one second and several other volunteers last month this team participated in the national competition which was while they weren't here last month that was held in louisville kentucky and they placed 44th in eastern nationals and ranked 46 out of
003137 teams nationally this is the highest rate that cbs has ever achieved at the national level we're very proud of them to be representatives of amherst county we want to thank mr thompson and the volunteers that spent many many hours helping these folks be as successful as they have been so um after mr thompson speaks guys mr orozzi has a few things that he would like to present to you uh and so you guys just stay up here for a little bit because i know your parents would want to take some pictures of you as well but i would like to offer all of you congratulations on our great great accomplishment [Music] and this is 21 out of the 25 students a much better turnout than i thought we might have for the first day
004of the summer break for them uh madam chair members of the school award i wanted to say how blessed i have been to be able to coach such a wonderful group of children for the past five months in a year that desperately needed some normalcy in our lives we were able to restart this wonderful program i've seen it changed lives in the past and this year was certainly no exception the work that these kids put into the year along with the support from their parents and administration seemed to renew energy into all of our lives and i couldn't have done it without the help of everyone involved coach joe was not not able to make it tonight we do have miss erica maddox and ashley burdette in the back who were there right along with
005me helping the kids encouraging them and building relationships which saw the biggest change i couldn't have asked for a better group of students to represent our school this program and the great sport of archery and i'm excited to see what the next several years hold for all of us thank you [Applause] yes while we're getting in line for pictures uh congratulations students you're being recognized here tonight and also some local business has recognized you also quality archery design is a member of the community business here they manufacture locally and they're watching you guys and we're going to keep the program going with possible sponsorship coming up in the future from quality archery design thank you congratulations uh actually there 15-minute yes so i have one more recognition i would like to make as as is
006our custom when we hire a new principal at a school i'd like to bring them forward to to introduce them to you so where did she go there she is this is uh the dr amanda cassisi she is the new principal at amherst elementary school she earned both a bachelor's degree in psychology master's in elementary education from the university of virginia and she earned her doctorate degree in educational leadership from the university of lynchburg in 2020 dr cassisi has spent the entirety of her career with amherst county public schools and has served in several different capacities during her tenure dr cassisi served as a teacher from 2002 to 2020 at pleasant view elementary school benellis middle school and amalon elementary she had the opportunity to serve as interim assistant principal at amalon from january uh
007of 2020 to june and as an elementary administrative leave for the school during the 2021 school year dr cassisi currently serves as the virtual learning specialist for the division and has been in that role since august of 21 i'd like to welcome and introduce dr manik assisi [Music] i just wanted to say it's truly an honor to continue to serve in amherst county um as dr arnold had mentioned i've had many different roles and i consider myself blessed to be able to continue to continue to serve our students and families so thank you [Applause] i would like to just uh continue the celebrations um and i want to take a moment we have some folks that are going to be leaving us um natalia can you come up with an and stand with me please
008you have served us so faithfully here on the school board and you know you're going to be leaving us and going to bigger and better things and serving our students one-on-one and really getting in and where the rubber meets the road so thank you for the service you've provided here you've always been so kind and gracious and just right there you're like you know the energizer bunny even when i do it like at 11 o'clock at night so anyway thank you for that and i appreciate the things that you're going to be doing for us in the future so the board is going to miss you and we greatly appreciate you and just want to give you just [Applause] i we want to continue um we are here tonight to uh honor uh dr arnold
009um and the time and the service that he has provided us here as superintendent of amherst county dr arnold has dedicated his entire adult life to the education of students he graduated from the university of virginia in 1993 with a bachelor's degree in foreign affairs started his educational journey that same year i believe and that was with campbell county schools his experience reached every aspect of public education except maybe bus driver but i'm sure if i ask you there's a story there as well i figured okay but dr arnold has touched countless lives of students throughout his work as a teacher and a coach an administrative assistant an assistant principal a principal an assistant superintendent and finally in 2019 you are named superintendent of amherst county schools and you have been here for the past
010four years with us dr arnold you have worked tyler's tirelessly for our division i remember the winterfest that was held at amherst medical center and it brought over 600 of our families in our community together that night i remember the the music the students that we're playing the booths that were set up the community just communicating with the staff from the school the small children having some fun activities and it was sort of late at night but it was just such a it was cold but it was such a warm warm event inside and i had not been ever been part of something like that that was a great way to just start and get our schools and our community connected was a rewarding night it was definitely a moment that allowed our schools to
011connect in a new way with our community um dr arnold you've been essential in bringing early childhood providers across our region together building that program so that the students come to us much more ready and and well prepared and supported one of the goals i remember that the board gave you when you came was to build a better program for communicating with our families and the public and dr arnold you responded immediately by broadening the social media presence our digital forms of communication and today i think we have almost instantaneous communication something happens messages the emails come so i think there has just been a great stride in that here while you have been working with us you know you've brought a broad array of social media venues and there was our communities responding to
012them so i just thank you for that through your tenure here with us in amherst county schools dr arnold you have always made the most of every opportunity under your leadership your dedicated staff you helped us navigate through the tumultuous pandemic and used innovative learning platforms and schedules to keep students learning while others in virginia didn't have that privilege you also helped lead your staff to meet our division needs you fed us and you gave us distribution for vaccines in so many ways you brought technology and extended that and broadened that in our communities there are many other things that i can say about dr arnold's work here with us in amherst county schools but time is short i do want to take this opportunity to thank you dr arnold for the positive things you've
013contributed to our educational community and to wish you the very best as you seek new adventures in your years of retirement i know you and i know you will continue to serve students everywhere and communities everywhere because i know you're passionate for learning and i know you're passionate for kids we thank you for your service here and we wish you well in your endeavors thank you [Music] i believe the board members would like to just say a few words and then i guess dr arnold um i would like to say thank you especially for our wonderful time during covet i mean you had you had a plan for covet before covet existed um i listened to my wife talk about preparations at elon and she was asking why is this happening and why what's going
014on there's something going on and i said they're preparing for something don't know what it is but they're preparing for something and and it was spot on it it occurred just like we we were afraid it would but we weren't behind the eight ball a lot of other school systems were looking to average to see what we were doing and that came from from you guiding the ship thank you very much um and you made a way for a lot of things to happen with with covid so all we can do is wish you best in your your next endeavors and good luck to you thank you yes well so many great things have been said and i just want to echo those um doctor i want to thank you for letting me be chairperson
015under your regime it was my first time and i hope i didn't do too bad we helped each other and then i tried it another year and we helped each other so um one thing i learned i learned something from every superintendent that stays with me and you kept saying this to me all the time you said i am here for the kids every conversation we had you said i'm here for the kids and i will never forget that when i was on the committee to choose you as superintendent i knew that you brought great ideas to amherst uh you told us all the innovative things you wanted to do you kind of turned the world in amherst upside down real quick to positiveness and so my having children in the system grandchildren's system i
016want to thank you for that innovative touch that you had when you said you wanted to retire i wouldn't listen to you you kept calling and i said i don't want to hear it and he said we're going to have to have this conversation one day and i said no we're not but when i was in the car with you coming from williamsburg i couldn't jump out of the car on 29th so so i had to he said we're going to have this conversation i said well i looked at the door lock and i thought okay but anyway after you said what you needed to do and what your future had to be for you i said okay whatever but we we came through some storms together and all of us did but you you
017at the helm and me as your chair we we took on some things and i would always call you on thursday night and say i would text him and i said you okay didn't i and you say i am fine and i said well i'm not i'm going to bed but anyway um some of the the greatest memories uh you came down to my church to help give out food on the buses when it first started with that you and dr wells came to a picnic there met my community there my pastor sends his love to you and my family my children knew you before i knew you my son was at rusberg so they too send me love to you i never forget we sit here over there somewhere when we were here to
018meet with the board of supervisors and i remember saying to our college and i said what are we going to do everybody's mad at us i said i have 25 questions here that you're supposed to answer you're supposed to answer and he said ms liggin we're just going to tell the truth and i said beside you and we people were yelling and screaming but you were calm and you helped me to become so i learned how to deal with conflict through you uh then when the equity situation come up we're just telling the truth i said dr arnold what are we going to do and he said ms liggin we're just going to tell the truth so thank you for teaching me that and i'm not going to get emotional but just thank you um
019yes i just wanted to thank you for putting up with me for my first term in my big learning curve and also when i look back um on being on the board and having you here i think the biggest highlight was how you handled covid how you kept our schools open kept our kids moving forward educated being fed while other schools were failing at that and you made it on fox news i was excited um so just your whole copic plan second to none you put amherst county on the map and we'll always be grateful for that thank you so much dr arnold our experience has been very limited but i have appreciated that even though we might have been on different perspectives sometimes that you really tried to dialogue with me and i felt
020like you tried to give me the benefit of the doubt and i appreciated that you were doing what you believed completely was best for the kids and that is a true value to respect thank you dr arm i'm new to the board i wish i would have uh been here a little bit sooner to get to know you uh we had a conversation before and and you were right i don't know you very well and i haven't had that opportunity but the time i have had here on the school board much respect absolutely the the stories that i've heard i don't have great stories to tell because i haven't been here long enough but the stories i have heard from the veterans that have been here been in the trenches with you you've always been
021there to lead and you've always put the kids first and yes kobet was a very very challenging time and you took that challenge head-on you didn't run away from it you were there and that's what amherst needs and i hope that we continue to move forward in that shadow and i want to thank you thank you for who you are and move forward thank um well you arnold i want to just say one more time thank you and wish you the best in your retirement and thank you for your time here in your service now i do think that um there's been something prepared for you do you want him to sit back down before we but when we go out there to recess and you look at that picture on the table that was
022just four years ago i want y'all to realize what y'all have done to me [Applause] [Music] person who likes working with kids dr smarter has a lot um a team play a team player or something wrong he's he kind of kind he's a good music man he's a good he's a good guy he said no matter he said no matter what for students best for students making decisions always making remarkable prudent remarkable prudence [Music] moving forward he spearheaded a comprehensive presented presented [Music] we [Music] on someone um and we were gonna have students at home for an extended period of time the one of the the status is just adoption was as a school division out trying to figure out you were going to to them uh teach them from a distance see if you
023don't have the ability to count the ability those students you know be faced with those space the the next best option the next best is online all right so all right the morning management system management for zoo zoo those kinds of things but uh but overall much of our uh our internet capability is and so and so we we actually have about thirty but we have about or five percent of our students that high speed not have high speed internet you know you might not have internet but tv what we're what we're thinking now is that we're now able to fill some space in the summer when uh school is technically over it did not stop there he said our students must have connectivity at what hot spots white hot buses so many things led
024by his creativity eager to have students back he began the road map to return a map to retentive where the students would learn a resonator communicator and not afraid to make tough decisions videos podcasts and a million interviews were the norms it was always important to teach important teaching community thank you dr honor for all that you've created for our youth renewed success [Music] remember kids always if they thank you for super nintendo always remember smile be happy and let your friends grow grow [Music] [Applause] do you want a picture yeah well she's like that okay um we wanted to just take a short recess i believe we have some refreshments in the hall there's many of you here here tonight that want to just say congratulations to dr arnold and wish him the best
025so um i just need a motion board madam chair i'd like to make a motion that we recess for 15 minutes okay we uh i need a second second all right all in favor all right and i guess uh at 6 45 all right we'll be back at 6 45. [Music] hi i'm anthony whitehead with nextgen aviators by dynamic aviation nextgen aviators is a three-hour interactive immersive experience designed to introduce kids to aviation and the career technical fields that are associated with it it's designed to be inspirational to give many of these these students their first opportunity to explore aviation to take flight we introduce kids not just to the pilot which is obviously what most people think of first but also to the mechanic to the engineer to the electronics avionics technician and we
026do this by giving them this varied or broad experience in that three and a half hours we're hoping that these kids learn something about themselves about their own strengths or skills or interests and from that they are inspired to pursue those dreams somehow another associated with aviation is fantastic but even if it's not that's still a win a win for us and a win for them [Music] hi i'm craig maddox i'm the supervisor for career and technical education at amherst county public schools today we're over at the airport in lynchburg going through a next-gen aviation event for our students it was sponsored by a local business montague miller and we're grateful for their sponsor in this lamb bowling and uh to make this event he's up right now and playing with some of our kids
027getting ready to come back down so just a great event and we're excited for our kids and excited to give them uh we're going to be doing some pre-flight in the the simulator first all right and then after that you guys will be able to fly how many first-time flyers today how many first-time sky divers today you guys are aware that the blue group is a skydiving group i'm just kidding i'm just kidding [Music] so it was like you have to drive with your feet and it was really hard and not trying to be easy with it because if you like pull one you're gonna go straight that way if you pull like you're right when you pull it straight that way and with this way it's kind of hard and you have to like
028pull up it was it was easy once you got the hang of it but it was also hard you don't know what you're doing um i wrecked all the time um yeah not the best pilot so don't want me at your pilot i'll be the good what's the person that walks i wouldn't say i'm a pilot i crashed and burned about five times i get up in the air and i think it go down who's just i'm not made for a pilot but it's a cool experience my plane caught on fire several times and i wrecked several times and uh i ain't a pilot so that's it i felt professional doing what i was doing i even uh these planes 95 miles an hour when you're pulling off the ground it'll be at 95 miles
029an hour going that fast so at this station we just talked briefly about what the pilot would want to look for before he takes an airplane off the fly so unlike driving a car when you're flying an airplane if something goes wrong you can't just pull off to the side of the road right so i'm going to start off by asking you guys what do you think a pilot wants to look for before he takes an airplane up to fly yeah that's good feel we definitely want to check for fuel all right so there's two things that we check for and fuel one we dip the fuel tanks to make sure that we have enough heal secondly we drain fuel from about five or six different spots on the aircraft and we look at it
030and we're looking for contamination or water inside the fuel all right what are some other things we want to want to look for [Music] check out the engine safety what about safety seat belts yeah so we want to check the weather so at this station we're going to talk about more what we're going to be looking for on the airplane we're going to make sure that this airplane is safe to go up into the air you guys can get close to the airplane all right so when we're looking at our landing gear there's a couple things that we want to check for we want to make sure that we have clearance in our strut here that tells us that the strut is actually supporting the aircraft and it's not just sitting on metal we want
031to check all the attaching hardware and make sure there's no abnormal wear or corrosion on it that tells us it's going to fail early and then we want to check out this tire we want to make sure there's no wire sticking out of the tire or any flat spots on it that says that that tire is near the end of its light all right and and lastly we want to make sure that the landing gear is actually attached to the airplane now that sounds like it should be a given but like everything else in aviation the reason it's an item to check is because sometimes that is not a given all right so we're going to walk around towards the side and we'll look at some other things as we're walking around i want to
032point out this safety feature right here right does anybody know what this does when you take a guess now so what this does is as the airplane continues to pitch up this is going to start lifting up and when it reaches up near the top there you're going to start hearing a whistling sound inside the cockpit and you'll hear that when you're in the simulator i'm certain that you're here quite a bit what that's telling you is that when you reach a certain angle of attack there's no longer wind with going with the wings it's no longer start walking around the back here we'll start talking about our moving flight surfaces this is our first one right here this is going to be our aileron does anybody know what our aileron does for us no
033that would be your collapse all right our aileron actually does the majority of the turning for us in the airplane so when we're up in the sky we the majority of our turning is done by rolling the airplane left and right so this ailer on this knee is going to go up or down and when this one goes off the opposing aileron goes down and fights very well think about this for a second if you're going to be making a left-hand tank lift all right now on the back of a lot of the moving surfaces here you'll see on the back of the aileron here at the back of the broader and on the back of the elevator we have these guys right here okay i want you guys to take your best educated guess
034and i'll give you a big hit it's not an antenna all right what questions do you have about airplanes aviation in general flying what questions can i answer vacation you can do that in as little as a month just 40 hours of experience that's all you need and then you need to take your written exams is transport we need 1200 hours and most uh airlines will have you fly over two thousand dollars on the side all right so we're just about finished up here do i have any other last-minute questions i can answer you guys are about to go into the flight simulator all right so you guys are gonna go wait at the base of those stairs and once the group comes out the front here you guys will go up inside there [Music]
035so [Music] so [Music] madam chair make a motion that we come out of break have a second all in favor aye aye okay we will resume our meeting um we are at the place of public comment and um before we do i just want to make a really quick announcement just want to remind everyone that we have a special called meeting um next thursday june 16th at five o'clock am i correct with that natalia thank you and the purpose for that meeting is for a signing ceremony and another reception for dr wells as the new superintendent of amherst county public schools so we have a lot that we're celebrating tonight and we will continue that celebration next thursday night so hope that you will be able to join us at five o'clock um so now
036we're going to move into public comments the first one that we have tonight is um glenn burley oops i just saw you would you like to postpone for a minute i saw your note that said you wanted it that's fine thank you okay we're going to move on to ona mckenna good evening madam chair board my name is ona mclennan um i'm a school bus driver for special ed services in the school system i've been driving a bus especially advice other buses for over 10 years now for amherst county and i i care for the well-being of our students as much as anyone in this room this next school year august september october sometime during the year a transgender student will make himself or herself to you and will ask for your help this student
037who is forty percent more likely to attempt suicide will ask for your protection against bullying and discrimination based on gender identity additionally this student and his or her family may ask for special consideration regarding the use of a restroom the student in his or her family may ask you to use personal pronouns different from the ones you have used earlier for this student a person cannot be indoctrinated into being transgender is a seed planted by god whether acknowledged by others or not the seed is there and it's kind of like having a rock in your shoe the problem won't go away until you do something about it while respecting differences of opinion and belief i'm asking you to make compassionately reasonable accommodations for this student whoever that person may be this student's well-being may depend
038on how you react to him or her as well as the reactions of those in the student's school for the transgender student these things i'm asking you are the best path to reaching the goal that you and i share for this student and for all our students you and i want this student to survive and to succeed and to eventually contribute in positive ways to our community this is our goal to some in our community a transgender family and a transgender person is a target for criticism or bullying or even shunning i have experienced that and i may be opening myself up to further criticism and bullying and shunning in the future i know from personal experience that a transgender family and a transgender person have important gifts to share with our community and i
039know from personal experience that transgender families and transgender persons are as loved by god and valued by god as every person in this room thank you next we have aaron tomlin erin tomlin 181 woods edge amherst i've also been teaching in the county for 14 years now board members discipline seems to be the main source of frustration for many of us this past year disciplinary measures in our schools and the behavior matrix used by the county for many of us seems to be broken and ineffective we were told at the beginning of the year that behavior issues were going to be caused by stress and anxiety from covid students not knowing how to act because of missing nearly 18 months of school and because of this our approach to handling behavior this year would have
040to be different instead of holding students accountable for their own personal actions the behavior procedures this year instead gave them a crutch justification just justification for their bad behaviors and poor choices and took their personal accountability and placed it somewhere else when behavior issues escalated after the first nine weeks teachers were told to just be patient and consistent with the parameters outlined in the county-wide disciplinary procedures and this seemed to become a response every time concerns were raised it was a classic case of insanity doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results these procedures were supposed to bring consistency and discipline across the county but it didn't instead it allows students to rack up referrals in a multitude of categories before having to face any real serious consequences when teachers and staff
041brought up their concerns or voiced their opinions over behavior some of us were told we need to brush up on our classroom management skills reprimanded for speaking up or led to believe that the issues were being caused by inconsistencies in dealing with the discipline from the actual school principles never was it never was the actual district-wide procedures ever called into question or acknowledged as being a possible root of this problem the blame was always diverted somewhere else teachers and staff are frustrated parents of good kids are frustrated building principles had to unfairly carry the brunt of this frustration from their faculty and parents because their hands are tied as far as what they can and can't do in regards to discipline the county-wide discipline procedure is not working my hope for next year is that
042everyone in this room will stop diverting teacher concerns stop making excuses for poor student behavior stop reprimanding faculty and staff for speaking up about frustrations with behavior and start looking at how the district discipline procedures can hold students accountable for their ill behavior you all are hearing teachers but are you actually listening to us the ones who spend every day seven hours for the whole school year in the classroom with them our motto is every child every day not some children some days thank you mr tomlin kathy stone hi i am a resident in amherst county but tonight i am speaking to you as an employee of the school division i teach at amherst county high school in the autism program um i think it's truly important to know the people who work in this
043division the people that have been hired to provide leadership the people that serve as role models and examples not only for our students but for our staff as well last march i was diagnosed with cancer one day it was fine and the next day wasn't it was a shocking diagnosis if you've ever been in that position you know it it's it if it happens very quickly you don't have time to think you don't have time to process you don't know me but my teaching is very important to me after 23 years of teaching i still have a passion and an enthusiasm for special education my job in amherst county continues to be a tremendous source of joy i was determined that i was not going to allow my cancer to interfere with my teaching unfortunately
044cancer doesn't follow any of the rules from the very beginning of my diagnosis i had members of this division that went out of their way to help me um when time was of the essence dr wells was able to locate and help me to receive a covet vaccine before i started chemotherapy uh josh neighbors met with me multiple times actually to provide support and encouragement on how i could work while i was receiving treatments and then when i couldn't anymore that it was okay not to julia burst was with me from day one and she provided personal support that i didn't really know i needed she remains an amazing source of encouragement and friendship for me shortly after my diagnosis somebody told me that people would surprise you and people that you thought would be
045there wouldn't and people that you didn't know would be there would three years ago i got an email from a new administrator and then an email included a tagline on the bottom that said people don't care who you know until you know that they care and i really never took that seriously because i thought you know it it looks good on your email here's the thing though that administrator means it that administrator from the very beginning has been beyond supportive to me he met with me shortly after finding out i had cancer not really knowing anything listened and offered to help in any way he could i didn't want anyone at work to know and so what what he did is he went ahead and he told staff for me because i could not he
046checked in regularly with me when i had treatments i was out of work for some time and never did more than two or three weeks go by that i didn't hear from him and he didn't ask how i was doing and how he could help i've been back to school now for a few weeks and and every day um he continues to check in and see if i need anything to see how i feel over the course of the past year um a lot of things have changed and i've come to appreciate a lot of things and i think sometimes that we quite often don't always recognize the good and the things it's easier to complain about things and not say the good things and not recognize the good things i was very much impacted
047by his intentional display of just of of caring and kindness um i know now what dr brown means when he says that you don't know you don't care what somebody knows unless you know they care thank you i'm very fortunate to be proud of immersed schools thank you thank you [Applause] um are there any other speakers that people that wish to speak tonight mr burley madam chair madam vice chair members of the school board i'm glenwood burleigh from richmond thank you for the privilege to give me to come up and make some comments when history is written in the 21st century of that moment in time on this earth it should be an asterisk for 19 20 20 21 22. astrid should represent the uniqueness the impressiveness and the leadership and the commitment and the
048focus and the vision of rob arnold i'm going to go further than him tonight because i'm miles away in a city capital of a state and you ought to be extraordinarily proud and appreciative of what you have in this county that other counties and some of the cities in the state do not have you don't have the pandemonium the blood in the hallways leaking roofs and buckets and budgets 20 000 chrome laptops was just discovered 1700 are missing in one school district so i'm not here to talk about richmond i'm here to talk about how when bob arnold robin walks out of these doors he's not history he's left an impressiveness that you all can attest to maybe a couple of you and you that i haven't met but this is beyond bob arnold i
049keep saying bob and i know i'm supposed to say rob is he's leaving a concept of teamwork in a legacy that every one of you administrative people that have worked with him and under him and around him and indirectly of him in district schools he's leaving his template of professionalism and his template of vision and accomplishment and if i have one word to describe this individual that who's come into this county from nowhere that none of you knew he leaves excellence and that excellence is going to continue here and each one of your school board member should tap what he's brought to this county as a superintendent and dr wells he'll do fine dr wells is not dr arnold and dr arnold is not otherwise mrs liggins is not miss thompson vice versa you all
050have your individualities of leadership but this man here the legacy that he's left and the contributions he's made in four years and which you've tapped from him from learning incorporating your team concept is priceless it's priceless and this guy's a kid to me i'm i'm over eight i'll be eight in a couple months he has inspired me from miles away and he has inspired these students who've graduated look this is a template tonight of what came in here and who was recognized for their archery because they're not on the street they're out shooting and getting national awards and he's as proud of them as their parents are and as their teachers are so continue that so this is not all about my comments are not all about this individual who's about to leave you it's
051about you that's who's still going to remain it's about dr wells and tomorrow and his tapping of his style of leadership and you should be so proud why does this impact me so much because i see i see where i live so much inept and disgusting failure to be leaders and teamwork people and you have most of that it's like miss lincoln said there's been some thunderstorms maybe some hail a couple and maybe some wins with some issues and i'm not impressed that i'm not interested in that but i'm just saying collectively that when you walk in this building tonight you have a proud administrative staff from whoever to whoever to whoever to whatever their position are keep them tap their knowledge and support them the school of school board officials and this county will
052do fine thank you thank you mr burley we appreciate your comments is there anyone else wishing to speak tonight okay we will close public session um public comment we will move on to administrative no yes you're correct yes so listed is to discuss and consider approval of changes to citizens addressing the board during public comment that was a a thing that you guys wanted to to to determine in april i believe we brought you a proposed statement uh to be read at the beginning of the board meetings uh it was the the decision of the board to kind of work collaboratively through email and so i guess my my question tonight is where are we in that in that place because i also know that there are some questions about what people need to say
053in terms of where they're from that kind of thing as well so this is this is really a request to say how are we doing with a statement well i i will say that i believe uh mr terry and i said that we would work on that and we have not um we have you know we've been busy with working on on hiring superintendent but at this point we do need to do that and i appreciate you reminding us one of the reasons that i brought this up and wanted to talk with us about it tonight is because the second thing that you mentioned we had uh our board of supervisors who um require our citizens when they have public comment to give their name and their voting district as opposed to their address for
054no reason other than just for more anonymity and i know that we had a situation that some of you expressed concern with that so we mentioned it but we never did look at that to take a vote so i thought it would be good to bring that back up and see if that was your pleasure and is there any comments or thoughts that you might like to share madam chair mr terry so um we have not had chance to you know formally discuss it you and i kind of shared a few little thoughts but um personally my opinion on it is to allow the person speaking to decide whether they want to give their address give their voting district or just give their name um leave it up to the the person that that's my
055opinion so miss lakin do you have any thoughts not really um i'm kind of like mr terry you know i don't see where the voting district is of essence of necessity uh here um did we have a reason for that i don't think it was a necessity i think it was that if a person wasn't comfortable with giving their address that they could give their voting district in lieu of that oh in lieu of yes okay so i mean i'm like mr terry i mean i think it'd be up to the individual you know i think i shared with you on my comments that if a parent is coming to talk to us as they should about their child or their school their child could very well be in a different school than they voted
056kids out of zone so i i really didn't see a reason to say what district you're in unless you choose i don't see any political necessity there um you know if we're going to do that we will say all kinds of things you know where you work the kind of car you drive these things insignificant to the comments that would be made about their child's education that's my phone thank you miss berg yes madam chair um i agree with mr terry i know during some issues we had going on in the school i had parents reach out to me that were concerned about giving their address and having its live stream through facebook and youtube so again with mr terry i believe it should be up to the parents okay thank you ma'am miss justice
057madam chair i agree with mr terry and the rest of the board that leaving it up to the speaker's preference is agreeable to me okay mr rossi uh the way i interpret it is that if the speaker is at the podium and wishes to address the board i would like to know if that speaker is at least from within the county just tonight we've uh we've heard from somebody outside the county and also if they address the board and with a concern with just a name how does the board contact that person you know if they have an issue that needs our attention how do we contact that person and say okay we've looked at this this is what we found this is what we're doing about it how do we communicate that if we
058don't have a way to communicate it if they don't offer it is my only concern so would optional work for you oh optional would definitely work i would at least like to know if they're in the county or not in the county that would be my only request so a voting district would identify them as a county resident yeah but i don't think the voting district is really necessary i just i'm an amherst county resident okay does it does it matter what district they're from i don't know i just threw that out i believe that's what the board of supervisors did right no other rationale other than that mountain chair mr terry um i i would like to see whenever we do wherever whichever direction we go if a parent or a speaker would like
059to be contacted but not speak publicly their address that they have the option of leaving it with someone in the administration's office to get to us if they need a resolution or something it's a way to get in touch with us without having it broadcast across facebook live so i believe that was in that proposed language in the statement how to make sure that we can connect administration or whoever needs to connect back with them i think that was written in that original i'm not saying that the original needs to be used i'm just saying it's in the there's language in there so if y'all can tap back into that i think you can answer okay so if we were to pull that out and and make sure that everyone's on board with that just
060send that in okay that sounds great thank you i appreciate you very much um okay um i think we're at 4.02 yes uh so as as we have come to the end of our school board calendar year it is necessary for you guys to approve the regular july meeting and once you do that then you will at that july meeting you will approve a calendar for the entire year that calendar is that proposed calendar is attached to your board docs but all we need from you tonight is to consider approval of july 14 as the regular july school board meeting madam chair make a motion that we accept um july 14th is our next school board meeting okay second second have a second all in favor aye aye any opposed okay motion carries thank you
061now we are down to our consent agenda um madam chair for it's small tonight it's hard for me to see it for um zero two two um i just had a special request for that if we can pull out numbers 11 17 18 21 and 22 from that please okay i have a motion um can i ask this yes pull it out to discuss where oh that's right i'm sorry in executive session yes um so i have a motion that before we look and approve the consent agenda that we pull out of 5.02 um items number 11 17 18 21 and 22 for further discussion in closed session for personnel yes ma'am um i still have a second i have a second from mr arasi um all in favor aye all right any opposed okay
062motion carries so madam chair now you can vote on the entirety of the uh consent agenda okay now we need a motion for the consent agenda so movement here um priscilla uh mrs legan i'm sorry uh mrs leggin um has made a motion half a second second second by mrs burke all in favor any opposed okay consent agenda agenda has been approved uh now we're down to 6.01 all right madam chair pleasure on the board tonight we uh administrative updates so we have mr josh bauer from uh crabtree robot associates he's going to present to you the plan for the auditorium edition cafeteria renovation cte expansion and renovation as well as the uh field renovations and field house for baseball and softball he's gonna go over that with you at this time yes all right
063well the good news technology works so that's a great start um so good evening everybody i am josh bauer with crabtree orban associates architects um we're going to be going through the uh the four phases that have been established for the uh for the renovations projects at the high school um dr arnold asked me to keep this under two hours and i do promise to do it through that okay so 15 minutes so we'll do our best to get through this um and uh so we'll go through this so there's there's four specific phases um so we're going to talk about the phases and the and the probable cost that we are anticipating for each one of those phases so phase one uh from a simplicity standpoint is looking at the um the auditorium and
064commons edition i mean we'll go through these more in detail so that is phase one the dining space to renovate i'm sorry uh phase three is to renovate the cte in classroom spaces um and then phase four is we're looking at renovating this doing some limited renovations of the stadium and then creating the new softball baseball field house so we're looking at the um at the phases so again the addition you can see it there in red is the we're looking to construct the new 1100 seat auditorium um addition along with the the dining commons space and uh and then that walkway as part of phase one and that essentially is going over top of what is the old driver's ed course we're also looking as part of phase one is to um increase the
065amount of parking um on the stadium side so you can see there um it's in the top right hand corner that we're looking to expand the parking um to create additional spaces not only for uh for your school day but then also for the athletic stadium uh so we're we're looking at that um as as of right now we're planning on going out to bid sometime in the october time frame of this of this year and what that means is the drawings and the design will be complete uh we're going to be permitting the contractors publicly to bid on the project to give us numbers back um and we're anticipating that phase one that auditorium and and uh dining commons edition along with the parking lot is going to start right away so that would
066be part of phase one the good news about that is that this is going to have as much of a as limited of a impact on the the students daily life uh that uh we're gonna this edition is happening away from the classrooms and this will be a contiguous timeline so once we start in the october november time frame for construction that will go about 16 to 18 months to completion so that will happen all during the school year we will have a clear separation between the contractors and the construction activity and the students uh as we go to phase two i say which the cafeteria the the uh the kitchen and the uh the food court uh renovations we're looking to to focus that work on summer of 23 and 24. um and the
067idea is is that and we'll get a little more depth about this but the idea is that we do not want to have your kitchen down during the school year so the idea is that we're going to be doing the kitchen and probably in summer of 23 and most likely the food court in summer of 24 but the idea is that we will always have the ability to serve students food during during the school year um looking at phase three which is to then take your existing auditorium and some of the spaces that we're going to be vacating to move into the edition uh those cte labs again this is we're proposing this to be summer work uh so summer 23 and 24 uh because especially with the cte labs which by the way you
068guys do a fantastic job with your cte program you're really doing and and i applaud you for the for the fantastic strides that every that the school division has made to make such a great cte program and this this project will only enhance that um so again we're looking to renovate those spaces in summer 23 and 24 because we're looking at those spaces the welding labs and the culinary they're not really conducive to move them to another space and have them in just a academic environment we want to make sure those labs are always operational for the students and then finally phase four so which is the renovations to the uh to lancer stadium um and also the softball field house we're trying to focus those on in the summer time of 23 and 24
069with the efforts to try to minimize the impact on on athletics on graduation all those other pieces that could happen in the in the stadium um and also in your softball baseball okay so that's kind of the time frame that we're proposing for for the contractors to do the work uh so now let's let's kind of do a little bit deeper dive into the into the phases so we're looking at phase one and phase one from the simplicity standpoint is we're looking at the addition um and in that edition is going to happen is going to be the 1100 student auditorium along with some concessions your your toilet rooms become the dining commons and also that's going to become the lobby for uh for both your your gymnasium and your and your auditorium is all
070going to be part of this phase and again we're proposing that that work to start in the october uh november timeframe of 2022. um and i said that will be a primarily focused on the addition um and not really working on the on the end on the renovations uh so as we kind of do a little bit deeper dive into this uh looking at the auditorium uh so let's go from the top down as we're looking at putting a stage so your current stage is about 1500 square feet we're proposing to roughly double the size of the stage um and really really uh enhance your performing arts ability um and also the ability for outside events you know that's what's one thing that's great about this about this specific uh part of the the project
071is that this will really allow the community to safely use this space um after hours on the weekends um and really start to engage engage those folks and have a safe separation from the the auditorium and that and that uh have a secondary entrance and the auditorium and that lobby is going to be able to use without any access to the remainder of the building um so it really it just becomes a community friendly space uh so we're looking at the um this is the stage uh your prop storage your dressing rooms um and and the auditorium itself the the gallery which is the space where you sit to watch an event um is going to have the ability to have a a separation and a partition that will that is movable that will separate
072that into two different spaces uh not only will that allow you to during the day to have multiple events so that you can have a classroom a a a event happening on the stage you can also have an event in that in that initial row seating in the auditorium but then the back of the auditorium can also be separated so you can have three different events happening at the same time in your auditorium um the so those partitions will fold back to allow them to be opened into one big space and then we'll talk about the classrooms here in a moment so this is a section kind of kind of cutting through the auditorium itself and going from left to right uh you which which you would have there is your is your quarter that's
073going to be able to access the classrooms in this particular shot we would have a section cutting through the uh through the coral room you know your uh your vocal space um then as we move into the auditorium you kind of see those steps down so the back of the auditorium is going to have more of a step seating what that does for you is it allows us to have more seating in that area um and also a better line of sight the further you go back if you've been to an auditorium and you kind of sit in the back and for those of us are a little vertically challenged you may have a challenge of being able to see in front of the person the person in front of you having to step seating
074in the back really does allow us to have the best line of sight um and also you know to be able to view the stage and from you know the ability to do testing and other other things that are happening um you know and that allows us to have storage for each of those classrooms so your band your vocal and your coral can have storage built underneath those so it really kind of maximizes the use of that space the difference between the top and the bottom is that folding partition that goes in the middle of the auditorium they said one that that is a huge benefit for the school division and for after hours to be able to separate that into two separate spaces so if you want to have i said a a testing
075or some teaching that's happening in that step seating that floating partition will go across and it's a sound partition so that way in the front of the auditorium if you want to have an event going on an assembly that can happen in that space without interrupting that that class is happening you know in the stepped area um and then you can see that as the the low slope that goes down in the front and then your stage which would recommend between three and four feet between the the seating area and the stage uh so as part of this what we're really trying to do is maximize the amount of of uh uses that you could happen at any one time but also giving you going from 450 seats which you currently have to 1100 seats
076in your auditorium really maximizing the amount of student use that you have to be able for assemblies and other events so as we look at the the classrooms um you know when we uh we started looking this and meeting with the with the teachers one of the things that we heard is well josh this is great that we're able to put this auditorium in but now we're going to have your your coral and your band classrooms are going to be on the other side this is where the current in the spaces they are so without increasing the square footage what we were able to do is adjacent to this space is create a band room a new band room a new core room and a new theater arts i'm sorry am i not loud enough
077sorry is that better yeah okay um so uh this will allow you to create you knows to have these spaces that are directly adjacent that have the most impact on the on the on the theater arts um so going from left to right we have your uh your theater classroom which could also double as a black box uh your coral classroom and then your band classroom on the far right hand side um right now what we're showing is access from the from the dining commons to be able to get to those spaces try to to keep the amount of travel distance between the the classrooms and where these these classes are at any one time um so i said this is right now where where we are in design um so we're gonna be working
078through this for the summer and instead of looking to go out to bid in in um in the october time frame for this this is just an image of a of a similar auditorium we've had a fortunate ability to do a lot of high school auditoriums and what you see here is the um you're you're standing on the stage and you have that low slope seating which we talked about in the front the folding partitions which will allow you to separate the front you know that low slope uh seating from your back which has that step seating what you can see is a really great line of sight in that back seating um you know i said and then we so we have that folding partition which will allow you to separate this and two
079completely separate spaces so this is just a picture of an example of a similar auditorium that we're proposing so some exterior shots some things that are important is is again to create that secondary entrance a um a very visible entrance that that the wall will have we will have accessible parking in the in the same area um where your your current driver's ed uh courses um but across the street is where the majority of the parking is going to be happening for uh for events so when you're parking there we want to be very visible and very evident of where that and where that secondary entrance is um and then also on the left-hand side which you can see is is the um is the uh uh the dining commons um some things are allowed
080you know that this now is a shot looking from the across the street you can see the uh the glass looking in the dining commons and the very evident front entrance for this um this will continue to evolve um as we go through the design of what this uh what this elevation is going to look like um you know as we look at the amount of glass what is appropriate of how to control that glass because the dining com as well is a great function for dining but also we want to make sure this is a very technology friendly environment uh for a lot of ability for collaborative uh learning labs so that's phase one so phase one is focusing on the addition phase two is the um is focusing on the kitchen uh so
081one of the things that we're going to be asking the contractor to do is try to wrap up the the dining commons area as part of phase one as quickly as possible uh so in summer of 23 what proposing is to is is to have them finish up the the dining commons and to take your existing portion of dining commons and create the new kitchen there so the area in gray is where we're supposed to put the new kitchen and once that new kitchen is operational then then what we can do is take your existing kitchen and make that your food court uh so so the goal is that by the end of summer of 24 when the students come back for the fall is to have the the to have all of this area
082complete your food court your kitchen your dining commons is all going to be complete by the time the students come back in fall of 24 uh so that way all of this is completely done and i said the goal is to never have a time where we don't have the ability to serve hot food yes in in in april and may it is super awesome to have bag lunches but that's really not what you know that's not what our goal is um it's also awesome to be having you know teaching outside but that's you know but again that's not what our goals are um so as part of this we're trying to think about phasing not just what what the building essex are going to look like in functionality uh so here's a new cheer
083rendering of what that food court could look like um you know again not only is this going to serve as a food court you know during the dining period but also we want to have the ability for technology that large groups of students are able to meet in the space to be able to have to do a collaborative learning you can have multiple english classrooms or math or a combination of science and math coming together and this also would serve as the lobby you know for after-hours events so the the the dining space you know imagine you're coming in there for you know for an event on the weekends and you have the ability to have this as your as your dining commons or your space and your lobby to be able to go to
084a to a basketball game or go to a an auditorium event uh so as we as we look at um phase two we do want to take a quick brief moment here um to talk about talk about potties um this is truly one of my favorite topics to talk about uh because i spent the last year of my life talking about them and i think i've gotten really good about talking about potties um so so here's the challenge and and and i know you have limited challenges but every school division right now in virginia is experiencing the challenge with that wonderful thing called tick tock and i'm being facetious when i say tik tok is a wonderful thing um so so what's happening is that we're seeing everything from toilet paper spencer's being torn off
085to all the other inappropriate behavior of the bullying which is not something that's new um so so what we're seeing is that the damage and the misbehavior and the bullying that's happening inside the bathroom so what can we do to and yes we can we can put that on the shoulders of our administrators and say guys fix this but what can we do as as as we're designing this to make it easier for administrators and teachers to be able to see what what is what nonsense going on and and can we do better um so this design that we're posing is something that we're doing in in many many school divisions in hanover and montgomery county um and and and brunswick and other school divisions are trying to fix the problems of of that we
086have the big three the misbehavior the the damages being done and the bullying that's going on what can we do to improve that uh so here's what we're proposing is to is to uh pull the and not have a behind the wall type event so to pull the sinks out you know and have the sinks out in the open air um and what you can see oh you can't see uh but what you can see on the top of your screen is that what we're doing is is a set of having your toilet rooms where you're going behind the wall and now most of the events are happening behind you behind that wall in that secluded area pulling the sinks out and make that more of a public space so not only can that allow
087you to to wash your hands um you know before you go into the restroom or just wash your hands um but also you know the so the events that are happening the most private events in your life are still going to be private so what we're showing here is individual toilet rooms for every single stall and you're saying wow that wouldn't that be awesome even if you go to sheets right now go to sheets and and we are terrible in the united states about having this huge gap between the floor and and the wall and you can see and be like oh hey fred how are you because you can see in between the stalls and the doors what can we do to do a better job of that so so what we're showing here
088is that these toilet partitions are going to be individual stalls for for every single toilet uh they go floor to ceiling and there is no gap in between the doors and the walls uh so what this does is during your most private activity in your life is your you're the most private that's happening while you're doing your event but once you're done you come out and said that that events that are happening behind the wall of the toilets can are are limited because the the sinks and the rest of that event is happening you know is happening out in the corner so what could that look like so here's a couple images of what that could look like so as you're going down the corner you know what you're going to see is you're going
089to see open air sinks um but it said the those partitions those individual toilet rooms for every single person are going to be completely private there's no gaps between the walls and the doors and the partitions go from floor to ceiling so you're going to have during your most private event you're going to have complete privacy behind that door um here's another shot as you as you're going down further and so what you can see here is that this is while you're having you know what you said while you're doing your business it is the most private there and yes i am we're having this conversation with every school division because everyone um regardless of whether it's virginia whether it's maryland or pennsylvania everybody's having the same challenges with the misbehavior so what can we
090do in our designs to make this better and make this make it easier for administrators to not have to have those those behind the wall events to where student behavior could happen um and and if you've been bullied you know hopefully you've never been bullied in your life again those of us are vertically challenged you know may have been a little bit more so i i appreciate the opportunities to not have those events behind the wall that could happen so i just want to take a small pause and talk about potties um and i won't talk about it again for the rest of the night um so now as we look at phase three um almost 15 minutes dr dr arnold we're almost there um so phase three uh which is super exciting because now
091what we're doing is we're looking to create the remainder of the portion of the dining commons into four um in into four uh world language classrooms we're taking your existing auditorium we're converting that into classrooms and a couple office space um along with with the nursing la with creating a brand new nursing lab and having a nursing lab that has an individual classroom with a great line of sight uh so we're so we're creating a new nursing lab that is going to be part of the stage and the and then the seating in the auditorium um we're also taking the existing band room and we're going to convert that into into the um if i could spit it out um oh my goodness it's been a long day cosmetology thank you in the cosmetology lab
092um and uh so so the cosmetology will have a brand new lab along with the classroom as we continue to move down we're going to make some renovations to culinary arts to have better line of sight between the classroom and the and the lab space we're going to increase the size of the welding lab you can have a fantastic welding program a lot of students would love to do it right now you only have 15 15 stations we're going to increase that to 20 stations have better line of sight and with the with the stations around the perimeter of the welding um and then create a new ag lab with an adjacent classroom so this will give you an opportunity for doing wonderful things including small farm animals um in that ag lab do some
093more horticulture and really kind of enhance the program that you already have that you already have finally phase four uh so phase four is to improve accessibility i'm in your stadium again you have a beautiful beautiful stadium you guys have done such a great job with it uh so what can we do to make it more friendly for uh for accessibility and that's both on the upper side um and on the lower side uh creating additional uh accessible parking um and also creating a better environment to be able to get from the lower side up to the toilet rooms and also the concessions if you know not just sports but also senior nights you know and other athletic events and graduation when you have things going on let's not just limit the accessibility to the
094upper portion of the stadium let's make sure your steam is friendly for uh for all for all folks in all different areas um and then finally um is the as the field house um at the at the softball some things that we're gonna be able to do is provide toilet rooms actual toilet rooms and porta potties uh for both softball and baseball um also some some great accessible seating and we'll have a couple spaces there for um for accessible parking spaces so so folks that that have the tags can be able to park you know in the area adjacent uh go use toilet rooms and also have much better visibility for your softball again you have some beautiful facilities so these are just enhancements of those facilities okay just a little bit more than 15
095minutes um so lastly um is right now um we we really sincerely appreciate the amount that the uh supervisors have given us for this project um here's each one of the phases and the dollars that we're posing this is the total project cost not the construction cost because we don't want we want we don't want surprises uh so this includes your furniture and your and your permitting fees and your design fees and all those pieces are included in these numbers this is your total project cost uh because we said what we don't want is we don't want surprises like oh well this is the construction cost guys but you need three more three million dollars more to cover the balance of it that's not what we're posing uh so we we broke up you know
096each one of these phases um and this is what the proposed cost is for each one of those phases as we go forward we will continue to monitor those um with the challenging construction cost environment that we've had um and uh you know but what we're hoping as the as a industry is that as we get further into the year the things are going to calm down a little bit um and i said but we will keep a tune on this and make sure that that we're as we're putting this out to bid that the construction drawings are appropriate based on the cost market that we're seeing okay um so that's that's the presentation will there be any type of technology drop down screens or you know the plug-ins in the walls and things that
097teachers can use that they popped in there and did a classroom yes ma'am so not only would we have the ability to um to darken the room so that way you don't have the daylight coming in um but also we're proposing to put screens down and projectors that are going to be fixed um to allow the ability for and also would have its own audio system so that way you can have you can have projections down you can have a large group of students in there um or a single class but we want to make sure that that space and all spaces are very technology friendly as much as possible so that's that's a fantastic question thank you board members you have any questions i had a couple questions um for the auditorium um my
098one of my kids is at tech right now and i was asking him and all his buddies you know what did anne or what could have been has done to make your transition easier and they said their biggest thing was having classes in the auditorium is our auditorium going to be set up where we could have classes set in there for our students to get used to before they go out to college that's a wonderful question and as a matter of fact um the when we go back to the back of the auditorium um that the the step seating is very is very conducive to what you see in a university environment um with that stuff seating in those and those type and each chair is going to have the ability for a for an
099actual uh platform for the students to work on um so so and that's why we're dividing it into a front and a back section so that way if you you know if coral is practicing for their event that the back of the auditorium can have a sound partition and they can still remain still have class in the back section of the auditorium with three or four hundred students at any one time uh so the the back of the auditorium is going to be very complimentary towards a university-style um a large format which i'm sorry if they you know that's great they went to tech but i went to temple university but yes that is absolutely if you go to if you go to you know to your your science classes there's 300 kids in the
100class um so th this would be very similar to what they would experience in college in in the back of the auditorium that's a great question [Music] yes so that we're trying to go with the individual stalls for everywhere um and again it just creates the most amount of privacy and really starts to eliminate some of the nonsense that can happen so that's a great question thank you thank you so much mr rossi i i have a question about the um the design i understand it's just a design concept right now the the glass on the lower portion do you happen to know what type of glass we're going to be using and all that beautiful window you have there i i do and we would be happy to talk uh with when so we
101have to be very careful on what we talk about security um in a public environment so we would be very happy to discuss the in-depth um nature of what the glass specifically would be or would not be um i would prefer not to speak about it in a public environment only because we don't want to share assess information like that with that so but one thing that we do want to share is that we we primarily do schools and we do schools all throughout the all throughout the east coast um and we are very sensitive to security and making sure that we understand where we're trying to provide the best environment for the students uh without creating a non-educational environment if that if that makes sense yes so i would absolutely um in in a
102closed session love to talk about because you are allowed to talk about security um in closed session we'd be more than happy to talk with you about that any time of your leisure great thank you very much anyone else okay madame chair oh yeah sometimes justice um the sound divider can you give a little bit more of a picture of what that's like all i have in my image is like the corrugated folding doors and it's like walls that are supposed to be walls but they're not walls yes ma'am unfortunately when we went to school that was kind of the that was kind of what we saw is that they were a little corrugated thing and you might as well not have them there they're only a visual divider not a sound divider the great
103news is that now with the sound partitions they're actually a panel um and so they have an sdc rating of all the way up to 60 right now which is basically the same amount as a eight inch concrete block um so that would again that would go floor to ceiling you know in your auditorium and be able to close down what's really awesome is that they not only have paired panels so you're only pulling two panels at one time it's not the entire wall um you know but we can also do an automated one an electronic one that would actually close down uh but yes the we hear that that constant concern is okay well great you what's the point of having it but yes the the new tech newer technology allows it to be
104insulated and it has a great stc rating from one uh from one space to another thank you anyone else thank you mr power we sincerely appreciate you thank you thank you thank you so madam chair here never seen a presentation we just asked for consensus to move forward with the process you've seen what the what this the concept looks like and we just need to be able to move forward they can get to design actual more detailed designs done so there's any consensus to move forward board members oh mr rossi yeah i'm motion that we move forward with the design yes do you mean emotion sure or just a consent just a concern yes okay good yeah good job miss justice yes i give my consent thank you yes ma'am that's like okay all right
105sounds good thank you thank you mr bauer appreciate that so uh next on imagined is the zoning information so we were made aware that um there's been a proposal to put in 1100 unit housing development kind of between manelson middle school and seminole shopping center it's been put brought to the planning commission gonna their design is for multiple phases of this which will end up being like around 1100 um housing units from apartments to houses to a park and so forth um it's not going to happen tomorrow but you know it is that is proposed and they are going through that process i think what i want to make you aware of they're requesting access to part of the property from the loop in front of an elston middle school so as you come into
106manelson and go around the traffic circle the big circle in front we own that edge but we own about a 20 foot right away and it goes into where the woods are and the other property starts there so the the group that is proposing this is probably going to come to us at some point and ask us for right away in so they can put an entryway into their property from that point because they're going to need to have multiple egress points for a development of that size so that's one area the other question comes up is you know is it going to be centered for young families older families combination of families and then how may they impact the schools the county is estimating you know it had increased back about 12 to 18
107students per grade level you know that's based off the general their analysis of it so if that's the case it probably would not impact any one school the problem is that right where that house developments being proposed is right where the line we separate mass and heights from amalon so you could have on one side of the street could be madison heights the friends across the street could be going to ambulance due to howard zone just something we need to consider is not there yet it may not happen but i want you to be aware of the proposal so if you start reading things in a paper or articles and stuff like that that you know where it is this runs behind temple baptists behind 84 lumber all the way up behind that main corridor
108on 29 up to the seminole shopping center area is where that development is proposed to be put in so i won't be aware of that and then the other aspect of zoning would be uh the training center property you know the debt was removed and retired the debt so that there it could be developed i think it's going more uh commercial developments more than residential development but we aren't really sure that yet that's going to be something else the board needs to keep an eye on over the next few years as that gets developed and how that may impact the school division thank you dr wells are there any questions regarding that okay so again right now it's early stages to just talk but we need to be aware of it be able to put
109a plan in place 6.02 deals with the meals and uh so this year uh miss klein is is petitioned and then have done a request that all of our schools receive cep meals next year so cep status which means they all get the free meals for breakfast lunch snack and so forth no student will have to pay for meals that request is at the state level we feel it'll probably be approved one of our schools is not we only have two schools that aren't getting it they're all qualified now one of those is one tenth of a point from qualifying for it and the other one's like a point and a half from qualifying for it so we we went ahead and applied for that because it's kind of hard to explain to parents why
110students at eight schools get free meals but students at two schools may not so we went ahead and applied for that and we'll know for that here pretty in the near future that's what i think is approved enough but we are we have applied for that and field will probably end up getting that for the for the school year questions okay all right 6.03 school safety i just wanted to do a brief again i'm not going to go into much detail in public on school safety but i do want just to make it aware that we have a crisis intervention plan in place we review that annually you get a copy of it every year in august to a review it gets reported to the state our local law enforcement agencies and public safety agencies
111get copies of this plan and we do review this plan with them they helped review it with us every year and they do uh interventions we we talk through it also we have law enforcement uh into our schools on a regular basis doing training after hours where they come in tactical teams and things of that nature and actually train in our buildings to get a feel for the layout of our buildings so if an event did occur they would have a really good understanding of where to be and the situation and how to navigate down the hallways and things of that nature so i want people to be assured that i can't say nothing's ever going to happen because i can't say that but we do have things in place we have procedures in place
112that we practice we're going to do more training this summer because we've had the last time we did active shooter training with staff was probably pre-pandemic and you know people have changed you know we haven't we've had new staff higher since then and people seem to be reminded of what we need to be doing on a regular basis so we'll be doing some uh active shooter training with our staff before as when during teacher weeks this year um so there make sure they are fully aware of the expectations of that and and what to do in case of a catastrophic event of that nature so i want you to be aware of that and i'll be glad to discuss offline with you any questions you may have i don't want to discuss certain things in
113a public setting again you are all given copies of this earlier in the year and if you don't have a copy i can give you a flash drive with these schools playing on it the basic first 90 pages are all the same and then the last 20 pages are specific to that school based on that school layout and things of that nature but um the first 29 pages are open to the public they're on our website and the rest of it is is considered uh off limits to the public but if you'd like to discuss that i'd be glad to discuss that with you i'm dr wells i'd also like to thank you for all the things that you and the school division have done in the past for new board members um it's been
114quite extensive hello mr crisis sort of surprised there but um they have done a lot of extensive work um and i do appreciate some of you reaching out and talking with dr wells to just make sure and to get caught up on what we are so it's always good that we can improve and keep moving forward but just appreciate your your work and assuring our public thank you yes ma'am thank you madam chair yes ma'am i was wondering if i could make a suggestion and maybe a request is maybe in the middle of the summer if we could have a closed-door session with the members to go over the safety in the schools is that something we can do dr wells i believe we could do a closed session for safety and security purposes okay
115so you could check on that for us and see if that's allowed and possibly a law enforcement involved in the conversation too so y'all aware that would be one response okay i'll double check with uh our attorney to make sure okay thank you very much thank you so again i just want to go through that you know we we update annually we do training of law enforcement we do the drills at school we do lock down drills we do our other drills at schools we do tabletop drills with our staff we do training with staff so i just want to make sure people are aware that we we do take this seriously and it is things we we focus on there are things we focus on uh depending on other questions on that 6.04 i
116want to give you some covet numbers and uh you know i know it's been some concern throughout the year and we got we were in a pretty good place prior to spring break and i came in last month i said numbers are coming up so since may 1st this is just since may 1st so what 30 what 39 days whatever it is we've had 48 staff tests positive for covet and 102 students report they've been positive for covet the school hardest hit percentage-wise was elan elementary school in fact we were almost ready to close england down this week for three days because they had so many last weekend this week they had first and second grade staff out last week and fifth fourth and fifth grade staff out this week um i know y'all mentioned
117to me concerns about you know having to cover classes and and pears and other people having to cover classes things of that nature central office staff has had to cover classes administrators have had to cover classes we've been all hands on deck to make sure school stayed open because i know that's what we needed to do for our students however when we do that it does cause us to have to pull from other areas in order to stay open so just just be aware that yes we did answer to keep that school open this week because we thought it was really with sol testing and in the year events we thought it'd be very good for that school to keep it open but um if hadn't been for the staff up there willingness to jump
118in and cover uh it probably wouldn't have happened so i just want to thank them for what they did but make you aware that you know hopefully we're at the end of this and moving in the next year into the fall we won't have to have these conversations about covet again but um just know that we're doing everything we can to keep the schools open and part of that means people have to do be pulled from their regular duties to make sure we can keep the doors open so any questions on the covet thank you for sharing those numbers it does help to make sure that we're aware of staffing thank you yes ma'am i believe the last thing on my list is the student suspension report and i'll be glad to answer any questions
119if you have any board any questions okay thank you dr wells thank you uh 8.01 instruction 7.01 finance sorry that's okay good evening madam chair members of the school board before you tonight are your may financial reports from the revenue side we are receiving our revenue as anticipated and both are operating in child nutrition budgets we've been monitoring our state applications and they have been consistent with the tools that have progressed throughout the year while we are awaiting the final state calc tool that does come in june after the general assembly special session the state did provide an overall distribution last week that is in line with our projected budget while we still have one more month you'll have your normal june state allocations we will also be recognizing the july and august sales tax
120because that's in arrears and that will be recognized in this in this fiscal year on the expenditure side it's pretty much the same report i feel like i've given the same one every month we're in line with those few exceptions overall if you look at the utilities and totality as with the heat electric and water when you put those together the utility budget we will be within the budget for those three areas one might be over will be excess and the others the two areas we continue to see the overages are the legal services and the fuel costs but we have been able to absorb those with some of the other existing lines and both of those areas we address in the budget for next year of course with some of the rising costs we
121still would have to keep that on our radar for next year and we had discussed some contingency plans if those costs do not go down on the object code summary report i just wanted to bring to your attention on page four that under the cares funding the available balance was only 3821 as of the end of may so that supplemental appropriation that that was presented earlier tonight that was giving that additional funding to carry us out throughout the year um overall even with the challenges we have faced with those higher costs we are finishing the year off fiscally sound in a good situation do you have any questions questions um no i can see what our projections are at this point on the sheet do you have any thoughts about end of the year projections
122by the time we get to the end of june yes we've been doing carryover funds i guess yeah we've been doing some calculations and again we're you know you have to factor in that you will be we'll be recognizing as expenditures that'll be paid in july that are actually from the prior year so putting those it's definitely not a definite and then we're projecting what their sales tax are going to be in july and august but we're looking around the 1.5 million thank you um one more question um how's enrollment looking ending up the year with where we started i have a report on that too i apologize i have a spreadsheet on that it is coming in in line with what was on the revised the latest scalp tool and if you can't find
123it you can send it to me okay i can do that i have it it's just in here certainly yeah okay thank you i just want wondering how it was when how we ended up okay um board members any questions for finance okay thank you mrs laconic um i believe that's me and now the report that i have is 37.83 for adm and 37.92 for enrollment yes that's what was provided in that may i thought you were asking about comparisons yes yeah okay okay all right um we're down to 8.01 grading yes ma'am thank you very much madam chair and members of the board um it was requested in april that we bring to the board information regarding the grading policy and the grading regulation um just as a reminder the the school board's responsibility
124is in regards to the policy and then based on that policy the superintendent approves and forms a committee to develop the regulations and then that committee provides that information to the superintendent and the superintendent provides approval of that so the based on the policy that we currently have for our grading regulation that was first approved by the board in april 7 1994 and that has not changed that policy remains as is on its first approval the regulation that again was reviewed and with the board at that first initial on april 7 1994 and the first change of the regulation that initial change that was made was done october 8th of 2015 and that was based on the recommendations of a committee to move to a 10-point grading scale so from 1994 until 2015 our grading
125regulation actually stayed the same it wasn't until 2020 march 2020 when we closed the schools due to covet 19 and the pandemic that the grading guidelines from vdoe required us to be able to adapt our our grading procedures and regulations for seniors graduating that year and that was due to the school closure so we updated the regula the regulations at that time after the first nine weeks of 2020 2021 the school year we pulled the committee back together again after that first nine weeks to make sure that we were in line with what was needed in the classrooms is what they were seeing based on covid so we revised at that time and um after the first nine weeks and then the board was actually updated december 10th of 2020 on those initial guidelines from
126the state and those we had two goals that the state provided to us that we were required to do the first one was to ensure equitable grading procedures for our students across the division and then to provide continuity between face-to-face instruction and remote learning and so the committee developed that brought it to the superintendent which was approved and the board was updated on december 10th the next time that the grading committee actually met was to update based on the regulations and requirements from vdoe guidelines and guidance on the return to learn requirements which came out the committee met on july 21st the changes were made and updated on july 23rd again the process that we had used in the past was after the first nine weeks when the teachers were able to go through those
127grading changes we met with the committee again the board those changes were made and the board was updated at the november 5th 2021 board meeting on that the board actually at that meeting asked for clarification on the grading changes in regards to that and that was brought back to the board december of 2021 and that was specific to um how the 50 nothing at the end of each nine weeks uh was counted in as a 50 that was brought back and how was that either detrimental or supportive to students and how are teachers responding to that and so that information was brought to the board december i believe it was six i think of 2021. in april the board requested information on our current regulation and then the options available to ensure high expectations for
128all students so we reconvened the committee again selected three specific options that the committee pulled together and we're presenting that to you tonight on june 9. once that's presented to you those new regulations and the discussion that you have tonight that will be brought to the superintendent in july and those regulations will have changed for implementation to be ready august 20th 22nd that's the timeline for the policy and the grading regulations that we currently have i'm going to turn it over to mr maddox who is our committee chair for our grading committee in the division mr maddox hey thank you dr norman madam chair members of the board at your place you have a memo to the superintendent from a 2021-22 grading committee with suggested changes to the grading regulations located in section i code
129ikc-r are the amherst county public school policy manual before i get started one i just want to thank publicly all of the folks on on the grading committee some of which are are here they just did a remarkable job meeting and having a discussion so that we could bring these suggestions to the superintendent so we did meet on may 13 and we reviewed the grading regulation document you should have a copy of that document at your place the suggested changes to the regulations are in bold print and then if it was if a committee requested for something to be deleted uh it is designated with a strikethrough be glad to give you time if you want to go through that now or if you want me to go through each individual change it's to what
130you would like for me to do gorge you can tell me your pleasure but i've had peace i don't think i looked at it too no i think we're ready okay so what we did is we came up with three options option number one is approving the grading regulations suggested from the grading committee as written so the document that you have at your place that's option one the changes that are in that document okay option two when you look at the memo is approve the grading regulations suggested by the grading committee as written with the exception of the final lowest grade policy on option two we would change the final lowest grade policy papers sticking together from the process where we have a 50 at the end of the first semester for each nine weeks
131and a 40 because that's what's in the original document of 40 for the second semester that would change in option two to the lowest final grade earned by a student at the end of the nine-week grading period would be first nine weeks lowest grade would be a 50 the second nine weeks the lowest grade would be a 40 and then third and fourth nine weeks the student will earn the grade that they receive that's option two option three it's approved the grading regulation suggestions from the grading committee as written with the exception again of the final grade section to lower to put the lowest final grade earned by a student at the end of the nine-week grading period for the first nine weeks would be a 50 and then for the lowest uh for the
132second third and fourth nine weeks the student would receive the grade as they received or the great they earned so your first option is the the document that you have with the changes the second option is changing the um final grade from a 50 to first semester and a 40 to second okay to uh to a 50 for the first nine weeks of 40 for the second nine weeks and then third and fourth again would be the grade the student earned and then option three follows along that same lines but the student would only the final grade would only be a 50 in that first nine weeks is that it mr max yes ma'am we also just to let you know ms smith created a survey with the above document that was sent out to
133each school administration's administrator and to get the faculty feedback so this same document was sent out in a survey to the teachers and you should have those results at your place as well and and i know that's quite extensive and i appreciate that but i'm going to be honest that wasn't sent to us ahead of time so i don't know that any of the board members have reviewed that yet okay board members i think at this time i'd like to hear some of your thoughts um you're welcome to make motions but maybe we need to do some discussion first um madam chair that's bert um i would like to see our students get the grades that they earn and i also you know would agree with lee and for the teachers maybe throw out their
134lowest grade at the end of the marking period you know if a child is having issues at home or is struggling you know helping that student working with that student but i think it's time we need to move forward get past covet and start having our students earn their actual grade thank you anyone else i'm chair so if if the student doesn't do any assignments at all like that first nine i mean uh there's no zeros it's all it would be just a fifty i mean is it they yeah they would get the zeros but the end of the nine weeks the lowest grade would be a fifty and when we discussed this back in that december meeting and i gave you the examples it just shows you how detrimental even if a student gets
135a 30 or 35 and and then trying to come back over the next three nine weeks you know grades are supposed to be what that student knows at the end what's that knowledge what's what's that mastery content at the end sure and so you know that's kind of what we want to get to but if it that's the only hiccup i have is like if you had somebody that didn't put up any effort i get like the learning laws piece trying to start off and you know but if you had a child that just i'm not gonna do this i'm not gonna do that and zero zero didn't turn any assignment we would still just give them the and i get that they're in a hole but like at some point it's like and it's
136still a failure yeah well 50 still yeah absolutely absolutely and that's you know i think you have to think about the idea that we have a hundred point system 10 points for an a 10 for b 10 for c 10 for d and 60 for an f right so it the math has always doesn't make sense like it i don't understand what i'm saying yes yeah so the idea behind it was to if they did not have a good nine weeks to give them a fighting chance to pass that course if they came back and did what they were supposed to because if they don't come back and do what they're supposed to they're not going to they're going to fail anymore and the idea that grades for some of these kids are their motivators
137is is is not true right you give kids zeros they keep getting zeros right that's not what motivates these kids that are failing anyway right what what motivates kids that are failing is having something that is relevant and meaningful to them that they're doing in their classroom so um i think you've been given three options here and three things to look at i think you've been given a lot of data as to what the the teachers are thinking um i think it's worth if y'all want to have the discussion that's that's good uh but i think we need to be able to give dr wells uh some some direction uh come july so certainly i know that i had wanted to this on our agenda so that we could have some clarification and start school
138on a certain page um mr gryzer did you have anything else no no i'd like to just make a comment off of yours um i understand there are extenuating circumstances and some students do have a nine weeks that maybe isn't the best sometimes things happen in their life sometimes they just sort of go off the deep end themselves and have to pull pull it back together i get that at the bottom of this grading sheet where we have three options there is a paragraph at the very end i'm going to read it amherst county public schools will continue to work with students on an individual basis if extenuating circumstances exist causing a fluctuation in a student's grade that is not reflective of their ability level and previous performance i believe that says it all i
139don't believe that we need to say i'm going to give a student who doesn't do any work of 50. i have looked at the grading regulation and there is a section in here under xeros parents will be notified when student work is not completed using the following modes of communication first notification email second notification a phone call i'll be the first to say if i try to call a parent it usually takes three or four times to make sure i reach them that's a lot of phone calls third notification parent conference so i am putting you are we are putting a requirement on our teachers for every single student that says i'm not going to do my work and i'm going to turn in a zero that teacher has to make email contact the next
140day they come in and they make a zero because they didn't put forth any effort i have to call home third time the kid walks through the door and he doesn't do any work and i put a zero down in my grade book i now have to call me a parent conference that's for one child elementary teachers have what 20 students some 25 high school students where they have 80 150. so the onus on a teacher to do all of this i mean this is new i can't imagine a teacher doing that knowing that a student brought in nothing but yet they're required to do that and then they have to put a 50 on that kid's report card i have all sympathy in the world when a student has extenuating circumstances as a teacher
141myself i would work double heart i would bring them in i would tutor them i would let them retake exams as long as they wanted to put in the effort as long as they wanted to learn they always had a second chance and as you said mastery we work towards mastery i think our teachers work towards mastery if we look at some of these options and you say okay if they had a beginning of the nine weeks poor and they're going to get a 50 but the last grading period it's going to be their grade what's the difference they could have a parent die at the end so why am i going to select one that says okay if you screwed up the first part of the year but the end of the year you
142messed up i'm not going to do anything for those kids there's no consistency here well i think when they come excuse me just a moment okay and when i look at this there's more to it than just the zero i see some strikeouts in here that takes away things i'm going to give you an example there's a strikeout if a teacher chooses to drop the lowest grade it cannot include the nine weeks assessment or semester exam so previously we're saying that a teacher can drop the lowest grade but they're just not going to drop those big exams so if you strike that out the committee's decided to strike that out the the result of that is saying to teachers you may drop a nine weeks assessment you may drop a semester exam but there is
143nothing in this regulation that provides consistency so as a teacher i could drop your final exam but i might not drop yours there's no consistency there's no expectation for consistency across grade levels or content area so i think some of the strikeouts that i'm seeing in here is just opening it up for interpretation so i think there could be more work done to shore it up okay but and i'm sorry i'm passionate about this i just it mr terry you said that you support students receiving grades they have earned i've heard that from mrs burke i support students receiving grades that they've earned i do not support telling teachers that they have to do an interim they have to have a conference every nine weeks and then every time a student doesn't do their work
144they have to be held to that regulation i believe teachers are professionals they're going to call they need to call they need to contact they can do that weekly if they see a problem they can call the parents they can contact the parents i just don't understand why we have to put something so strenuous just right there for teachers i can't imagine how they would respond when to me amherst county public schools will continue to work with students on an individual basis if extenuating circumstances exist causing a fluctuation in a student's grade that is not reflective of their ability in previous performance we have a heart we care about our kids and we can do that without straining and our our teachers and without telling our kids they don't have to work i'm sorry i'm
145i'm done i apologize any anybody else yes ma'am madam chair miss justice okay so um when i you know the first question you know that i ask when when we consider education is what are we preparing are we we're imparting knowledge yes but we're giving growth opportunities for them to apply that knowledge develop life skills that they then take into the work environment what do grades matter beyond high school well some of the things that that tells our workers and our employers is that this student has achieved progress they've engaged with their environment in the educational situation they have a work ethic to overcome the obstacles they are going to face because life is full of obstacles and they don't get a break for it not usually and it helps to evaluate their prior knowledge
146so the purpose of a grade is to provide feedback on academic academic um progress student engagement work ethic and knowledge without accurate grades for each quarter we can't measure the level of success or progress now let's say as a student i was one of those students that was sick all the time i would miss three weeks of school every fall every spring and i had to make up that work i had to meet with my teachers i had teachers that would meet with me and it was hard work but it developed in me that work ethic and that confidence to know i can overcome the difficulties that come my way that are out of my control but i have control to approach those and overcome them so i agree with many of the things that
147have been said here so if a student has a zero um we'll assume from uh um outside influences maybe um a parent died i talked with a parent this week um where that was a situation and so they had zeros for that first quarter and we can offer them i believe and i believe our teachers are doing this offer them an opportunity to say get together i have a nine-week assessment here here's a study guide i'll work with you if you're available let's then take this test in nine weeks so giving students an opportunity to overcome that situation i see is very helpful for preparing them for the world and for showing them a growth model and a growth system so that is one of the things that i had to say this so i
148see zeros is very detrimental it's setting our kids up for failure that's not how our world operates um and then i agree with the overburdening of teachers oh gosh i have a lot here i i had an issue with um due to the continuation of learning loss associated with coven 19 the lowest final grade earned by student at the end of the nine weeks grading period will be as follows um i don't want our kids to be defined by covet that each year they're like okay yeah i'm behind from coming yes they are but it's what we do with it now and the resources we give them um i yeah so those are some of the things so lots of discussion so i am disturbed um by this regulation that we have before us is
149there anyone else well i mean i'm just i was trying to listen to what you said and but here's my own thing i i i would not want to get rid of interims oh i thought you said that oh no i just said teachers already have to give interest yeah yeah okay good i was thinking no that's it that's necessary that's a given and parent-teacher confidence is a necessity yes and really anything that the teacher can do to help the student get those grades up as a necessity yes i very well i have to do it most it might be a burden we know are different circumstances and reasons why kids get bailing grades but i think we're trying to address them as best we can i wouldn't say we're putting a burden on anybody
150because that's the teacher's burden it lies on them to get that student's uh success to be successful at the bottom at the end of the day not necessarily that the student is not putting forth an effort you know just don't want to do anything and then back to the post copic conversation that wasn't just in amherst county we we realized that learning suffered a deficit during this situation and it's going to take a couple years great years to come out of it or not i think teachers are doing all they can but we can't just say that that didn't exist and that did not put people behind it put the smartest of kids behind people came here and told us about it so that's that's a reality that we're all living with we i understand
151we want to get past it i'm good with that i'm passing but you you have to understand that those who got trapped in it and suffered great situations it's going to take them a minute to get out of it so we don't have to keep instead we don't have to keep saying because of cover because of kobe but let me tell you because of kobe um anyone else um i'd like to just look at for a moment our grading policy i believe i have the right one teachers shall be responsible for the grading and evaluation of student achievement our policy anybody else i'm good but you know what were you saying our policy i was just reading the first line of it teachers shall be responsible for the grading and evaluation of student achievement miss
152justice madam chair i believe that it's fairly explicit that um it it appears to give the freedom and discretion for our teachers to perform this and um that seems good okay can i say something real quick because i think we don't want to just give heart blanche to say this is you can give grades any way you want to i don't think that's what that means no that's what she just said though that's what our policy says right but what i'm saying is to interpret it to mean that any teacher can decide ever how they want to give grades is okay right i don't think that's the right interpretation that's not that's what you said you said it should be up to the teacher to decide how you give grades that's not that's if you
153do that you are going to have 40 different teachers giving 40 different types of grades and y'all are going to have a mess on your hands dr arnold our policy states that that's why it was read right no and i understand your comment and i understand consistency you heard me say that earlier however if we are telling teachers what kind of grade to put in that grade book when a student isn't bringing any work in that teacher's autonomy has disappeared i understand what you just said i was responding to what i was saying okay what that was the point i was trying to make so i appreciate you acknowledging that thank you um so i think madam chair miss justice may i respond certainly okay thank you um i believe there's a misunderstanding of what
154i was trying to communicate so in our regulation i see some already existing lots of steps but that regulation is as you've said is imposing extra it's it's defining how a teacher can accomplish that and taking away their discretion for their class i think we can give guidelines which we have in our regulation and that fulfills our policy here but when we step behind beyond and we say you've got this square this square this square this square and if they miss all four squares here they're still going to get this we are interfering with the teacher's discretion and so that is so i think i understood you i think i understood what you were saying if you said i had a misunderstanding i understood what you said i don't feel understood but that's okay thank
155you we're big kids okay um if there's no other comments i think we need to give some guidance so that um superintendent will know how to move forward we've been presented with three options option one two and three is there a motion ms thompson i don't there's it i think what you want to be able to do is to give dr wells a idea as to what direction he needs to go because if you don't like any of the options he needs to know should we start looking at a different set of options as opposed to voting on something because that's something that dr wells is going to have to determine later board is there a consensus that you would like to accept either option one two or three madam chair i would like um
156david to be able to have a another option that's more cohesive on what our board is saying today where students you know get their grades that they earn we work with students that are struggling case-by-case basis you know if a child has you know a parent that's sick or the child is sick or going through issues we work with that child but not just passing out 50s like candy we need something that's more consistent on how the board feels i also agree with mrs liggin to her point um which was my point as well so that that she knows is that use of interims and that use of conferencing that use of contacting parents is vital so to be able to include that to where it's not overly cumbersome but it is a high expectation
157for our teachers i think would be beneficial to our kids as well as the extenuating circumstances mr terry haven't heard from you so um of the three options we do have if we chose one of those i would be leaning toward option three i respect the opinion of the rest of the board so i'm open for other options if they exist okay mr rossi we didn't get here overnight um obviously kobe did change a lot of things as we started to progress out of cobit i i find it hard to think that we're going to make things better by instantly changing things back to the way they need to be i don't know if if all students are prepared to do what we're ready to ask them to do coming back and not have some
158difficulty i as a person that had challenges a zero or a big goose egg is something that will affect you and it discourages you and and i wasn't the one though to wait till it got that power luckily i had teachers and counselors and said hey you're starting to slip what what's going on at home what can we do to make this better and that was important to have that backing however there was a grade or two that may have been changed and it's not that i deserved it but i earned it if you know what i'm saying i put in the work even though i didn't get all the way i was putting forth the effort and i don't want some of these kids that are so far back to be so discouraged if
159we just said you get what you get and that's it and i like the option of teachers that have that bond with that child to be able to make that decision with the parents maybe with a counselor but to just say you get what you get and that's it i don't think that's going to be the right way to move forward out of code now i'm i'm not sure on a b or c is the right answer i don't know i don't know where our kids are i haven't seen any of the grades i don't know our teacher but what the teachers are challenging i don't know what they're facing this year what they're going to face this year but i don't want to say right now that we have to pick a b or
160c because there is a lot of good advice up here there's a lot of good advice out there and i think i i don't want to make a hasty decision without knowing where our students are today where they're going to be tomorrow and next year some kids are going to need help and are we going to take them down because we're not offering them every possibility to move forward i just i don't want to do that i don't want to make that decision and that's one of my biggest concerns coming out of copen we're there but we need to get out of there and if i can ask just for clarification um i'm right there with you and knowing that we need to work with our students and we don't want uh you know the
161zero hanging over their head we want them to have an opportunity to make it up yes i would agree with you um i even think there's opportunities when you drop some zeros because everybody has a bad day but if you've got some work that goes around that as a skeleton and you drop some of your lowest grades then that one's not hurting you correct and what you have done shines where i'm struggling and where i don't feel i can support is giving a student 50 for not doing anything and having no intentions of working on it and at the high school level especially if you are in a sequential course and you have four semesters and you have two zeros and then you have good grades the second two you really only know half the
162course work so you know just assuming that they they finish fine doesn't mean that they've mastered the course they're going to be going to the next class with only half the knowledge so i think giving them incentives to bring up their zero to bring up their low grade to give them the supports they need give them the extra time the opportunity is to me what's most beneficial for them as well as their future and other classes you know if they've missed assignments if they've missed work and they move on they're going to be just as lost the next year as well my focus would be on the education not on the grade so i know we still need to give direction so i am going to ask is there any board member that wants to
163give directions for options one two or three or do you wish um for the superintendent to bring something else back madam chair i move that we adopt option one but we modify the language to omit the zeros and include this struck out sentence if a teacher chooses to drop the lowest grade it cannot include the nine weeks assessment or semester exam what what was the recommendation of the committee i think i've gotten caught up here um which one of these just a moment we have a motion on the floor and we're not in discussion yes um all right miss justice i'm going to make sure that i understand what you're saying you're saying adopt option one which is the regulations yes but you want to remove can you show me where yes is it on
164page two where it says zeros yes we would um we would omit zeros on page two that entire paragraph that entire folded that entire paragraph and the struck out part in the second paragraph on page two would remain in the policy and not be struck out and on under homework assignments should be meaningful to change immediate to timely i don't see where that is so if we go to page two where it says zeros the only new part is what's in bold that was the teacher requirements um do you want to strike out all of it students are expected to complete all assigned work when not completed by the deadline established assigned work must be completed in another assigned time or outside the school day you want to strike all of that yes i believe
165that's already reflected in the top paragraph where it says gradebook requirements okay um does option one okay i'm in the middle of a motion okay so if we struck out this can i cancel my motion i think you can suggest that you shouldn't be making an emotion on that you're trying to give guidance directions okay so just just just kind of thing okay okay all right good so i can yeah so you don't don't get caught up in the technicality of motions you're trying to give guidance okay madam chair i suggest that we take some more time to work on this and bring it back next meeting okay and i i sort of agree with you mrs berg and that i think we've already given guidance based on our comments i think yes i think
166so so i have taken some notes and i'll i'll get the transcript i can work with the grading committee and in july we can bring something back to you for discussion i mean because we've had a lot of discussion but i believe we're pretty much on the same page okay thank you that makes it easier thank you madam chair that's all i had mr neighbors good evening madam chair members of the board um have a couple items for you tonight the first is at your place is our ffy 2020 special education performance report this is our special education report card from the state for lack of a better phrase there i wanted you all to be able to take a look at that and specifically what this is is a data reporting from 14 indicators
167that we are required to collect data on report to the state each and every year the data you're looking at in this packet depending upon the indicator we're talking about is either from 1920 or 2021 it says data cycles that different parts of this and different indicators are on the overview of this is we are very pleased with our report card at this point we're not straight a which is what we want to be but we are are getting there we're doing doing a good job all in all um i want to call attention to a couple of key pieces uh the first page there indicator one and two and just giving a lot of kudos to our secondary staff working with students this numbers that we have here for graduation and dropouts are not
168just favorable from a state standpoint but also looking at our sister divisions in the immediate area really doing a fantastic job of getting our students through and out as i said before we want those numbers to be a hundred percent and zero percent those are our goals um but always like to see that we're meeting state targets and showing improvement year over year the rest of the report as it goes through it hits on a lot of different areas we talk quite a bit about participation and performance as it relates to standards of learning assessments proficiency in those particular areas it also includes students who are participating in alternative assessment structures for this particular data set because of the number of students that participated in this given year uh which again was impacted by some
169of that uh coveted piece that we we've been talking about um we didn't have quite as quite enough to be able to represent that as a data point but ultimately a lot of good things happening there not 100 percent not exactly where we want to be but certainly moving in a very positive direction our preschool outcomes or preschool environments different components that we look at to assess where students are when they come into our early childhood programs and come out again we are meeting and exceeding state standards across the board with that but we always have that room to continue to grow we're doing incredible things with early childhood programs ms julie albert has worked with that staff to put in a lot of wonderful things a lot of wonderful supports not just for our
170students but also for our teachers in those programs the last several years and ultimately we're feeling good about our direction there and continue to be strong indicator eight is one that here at amherst we are extremely proud of you'll notice as you look at other report cards in our immediate area there are very few divisions that reach state expectation levels on parent involvement we are consistently exceeding the state threshold for that so not just getting feedback from our parents but getting positive feedback from our parents this is information that doesn't come directly to us they actually receive a piece of paper from us that goes directly to the state where they provide that feedback without us really knowing what it is they're they're reporting but always great to see not only we have involvement but
171also a very positive feedback in general from our families a couple other pieces in there are more regulatory in nature in regards to timelines how we identify students whether or not there are concerns related to discipline providing transition services one piece i do want to call the attention is actually the very back of the packet or indicator 14 post-secondary outcomes this is something consistently where we have been meeting or exceeding state standards for the last several years we are really seeing a big hit from what's been going on the last couple of years where this data really lives with that impact and covet on this particular indicator we are expecting this to come back to levels that we're used to and meeting and exceeding those state targets but ultimately an area that we are going
172to redouble our efforts in for next year ensuring that we're doing everything we can to ensure students are successfully transitioning onto whatever their goals might be so all in all certainly work left to be done but very very proud of our staff and our students the work they've been putting in even despite the fact that this data is being pulled from the last couple of school years we know quite a bit's going on there we're still getting uh what we would expect too in regards to how the state views us and what they want us to be doing in special education i'd be happy to answer any questions you might have but all i said they are very very pleased with where we are at this point and being able to move forward from here
173mr neighbors quick question on indicator 14. i know you said that we are not doing as well as we had in the past and we haven't met the state targets how are folks around the state doing this is the area around the state where our income i guess are we aligned with where other folks are around us we are very comparable and ultimately what hits us here if a student hasn't enrolled in a university or community college if a student hasn't initiated a job placement somewhere if they haven't moved on to what would typically be available we have a lot of students who participate in support programs in a typical year where they weren't the last couple of years but a lot of folks around the state especially in our immediate area saw a pretty
174big downturn with this one particular indicator do you have any rationale as to why so ultimately i know i'm sorry i tried to talk to myself ultimately for this i think we did have an impact from like i'm gonna move again uh students not either having opportunities so we did have students that were moving into other fields as opposed to going to college we noticed that this is actually a survey where mrs begley is one of our teachers at the high school picks the phone and calls each of our graduates from the previous year and interviews them basically about what they're doing and where they are of the feedback she was getting from that as a lot of students were kind of waiting and see what would happen they didn't feel either safe going out
175and thinking about this really just coming out of covet they either were going out to college campuses and things along those lines were decided to wait a little bit before making some of those changes so fully expect as we have been in years past for this number to to rebound in the future and in this report while it does talk about post-secondary outcomes does it include jobs or the workforce or the military as well it does absolutely and it breaks out a couple of those categories separately and then they have one at the end that kind of brings it all together with what that looks like any other questions board okay thank you mr neighbors thank you all right i think i have the next bullet as well i wanted to give the board an
176update on where we stand with medicaid reimbursement miss berg i see you um so unfortunately miss burke we are still working with dmas we love our contacts at dms they're very nice people uh but they keep telling us no not quite yet we're still in the same boat as a lot of others in the state i think that a lot has been put on hold until we get to some of the expansion components that i'm going to talk about here in just a moment um everything is up to date we have verified about a million times in the last three weeks and they don't require anything else from us uh miss lebanon who works in my office has gotten on a first name basis with most of the people that answer the phone at dms
177um just to see where we are in process they assure us we're still there we're in line they just haven't given us that go ahead just yet um i do want to note for the board there and why we've been so pushy about it if we aren't approved by july 1st we have to wait another quarter cycle in regards to what that looks like and wouldn't be able to initiate this plan until november we wouldn't be approved until that point to start reimbursement for medicaid so we are continuing to be very very pushy to try to get that go ahead before we hit july 1st how do our chances look for that really quick so we've been promised that we are high on the list i've been pushing to figure out where we are in
178line with that i think we're still behind the visions that actually have been approved previously and we're waiting on i can forget what the exact word is but being approved again essentially to be able to do it once they finish those out they're going to go through new applications i think the fact that we start with a is going to help us in that regard i think there's some logic to that but ultimately we've been told we're high on the list and as soon as they can get through some of those other divisions we'll be we'll be next with that so crossing fingers but i'm confident that we're going to hear before that july first date um so laying out what this would look like regardless of when that comes through we want to have
179a plan in place we want to be ready to go we have procured everything we need from an administrative system standpoint so the system we utilize to track our documents for 504 plans and ieps has an add-on for that where we can actually track all of our data related to medicaid and then that company pcg actually works with us to produce the reports they get sent to dmas so that we can get that reimbursement so they really do help us with a lot of those administrative components but as a part of this i've outlined there as a in a bulleted list what we are going to target for reimbursable expenses in this first year there's very little that we've left off the list i'm kind of getting to what we have left off at this
180point but ultimately as we've gone through and analyzed each of these areas we feel like we can build this in within existing structures we're not putting more on staff than they are able to incorporate into what they already do an example of that is for occupational therapists we're actually transitioning from what they traditionally do with tracking data monitoring student progress and they're migrating that onto this system so they're not duplicating work and we really did try to look at that for each individual disciplinarian as we were going through and for all of these we felt like we could accomplish that without adding significant burden to any of these one particular groups of staff the one where that was not the case and i wanted to make special mention of this for our speech language pathologists
181ultimately the reality with medicaid reimbursement in schools has traditionally been speech-language pathology is where you make a lot of the money for lack of a better phrase that's where a lot of the services occur for a lot of time is spent and most of those students a good chunk of those students i should say are typically eligible under medicaid the concern we have there for every student i add in regards to collecting data and reporting and doing all those different pieces that represent a certain amount of time each week which takes away their ability to provide services during that time and as we were roughing out what we felt like was a relatively conservative estimate of what that would look like for our speech language pathologist we reached a tipping point where it would be
182impossible not to look at an additional speech language pathology position those are few and far between nowadays they have been historically they certainly are now more than likely would require us to contract from the speech language pathology position which would all but eliminate whatever benefit we would get monetarily on the back end with that i've outlined some of that there on the second page of the memo ultimately kind of coming to a place where we're not spending money just to be able to reimburse the same amount of money okay quick question if we do have to outsource for the speech path can't we just have the speech path bill that students medicaid or their famous program directly so we're not out any out of pocket so ultimately we can contract or have them bill for
183the amount of time they're spending with students depending upon how many of those students are eligible we wouldn't be able to reimburse the full expense for that so we wouldn't be able to put in it cost us this much to contract and we'd get that much money back in reimbursement so there would still be kind of that arithmetic to it that balance to it i mean we did try to take that into account as we were going through that is really the one area as we've been going through with it that the amount of time because of the caseload sizes with speech pathologists that's really where it became overly burdensome from staff and we'd had to look at really singling out really really bringing down some of those caseloads that they're working with for right
184now obviously there's domino effects there as we add new staff in we have to divide up schools in a different way coordinating services that can create more travel it's kind of a lot of things that follow with that in some of those circumstances ultimately i think what helps mitigate the effect of not going down that particular road is what i've explained at the very end of the memo there uh the potential expansion for 2223. this is something that they are hoping comes online july 1st there's still some approval process that they're going through the state level to verify this but the big piece of this and what's important for everyone to understand is the requirement has always been for reimbursement the school setting student has to be identified with a disability receive services through an
185iep this expansion moves away from that so students that meet medicaid criteria regardless of identification as it relates to a disability or having an iep can be billed we can bill for services provided to them so it really does open this up considerably for a lot of more students a to receive services but then also for us to be able to bill and collect reimbursement for those services provided another important component of the expansion is including school counselors as approved providers so when they're spending time with students having sessions with students working with them those then become opportunities for us to be able to build medicaid for that and be able to pull down some reimbursement along those lines ultimately what we hope that means is that we'll be able to procure additional resources to
186bring into schools to work with students and there's even a scenario and talking through with miss laconic and others where we might be able to add positions such as licensed counselors that could be in the school and literally everything they do is reimbursable where they are essentially paying for themselves as we go through year over year so we're really hopeful that this expansion goes through the way that they hope it will i feel like this is going to be a big piece for us as a division to bring more resources in and be able to have minimal effect on the overall budget to be able to do that anytime we can use money like this to be able to add services for students obviously that's what we want to be doing we feel like the
187expansion is going to give us a great pathway to be able to do that please okay sorry did you see recently one of our schools over in nova i believe they're actually bringing in counselors through the kids laptops now so they can receive services online and i actually spoke with somebody locally who works for a company that does that and they're working on bringing that and accepting medicaid right now yeah yeah and that was one piece and that's kind of something that's unfolded it's if there are any silver linings with cobra there are a couple of things like this where telehealth has kind of gone into that realm previously that wasn't something that medicaid would touch they didn't feel like that was appropriate obviously with kova they had to rethink that and that's kind of
188been something that's lingered and we expect that to continue to be a part of the expansion as well all right well i hope i made medicaid a little bit interesting and exciting for everybody but if there are any questions whatsoever uh please let me know again once we have uh officially accepted this we know the expansion is coming once we know for sure that we've been accepted as a provider i'll have a more full update for the board in regards to what exactly that expansion would be and also map out some options in regards to staffing and resources that we could pull in at that time but happy to answer any questions you might have at this point board members i don't have any questions but when i heard expansion of services for students that
189are not on medicaid it was like wonderful yes if i had to say that that made my ears perk when i was on the webinar okay let's talk about that so wonderful thank you all madam chair i just like to say thank you for everybody's hard work and helping my little dream fruition here thank you yes i've heard other things not necessarily mentioned tonight that are good outtakes from that so good partnership thank you uh human resources okay all right madam chair mr vice chair members of the board uh the first item you have before you from hr is our current vacancy memo excuse me for the 22-23 school year represents all the vacancies that we currently have that we're working toward filling many of these we have interviews scheduled for already been working very
190actively to date we have hired 22 teachers so we have been very active in the process but this represents a snapshot of where it's pretty typical where we are during the year but we are in june so it gives me that that desire to keep working even harder because that might go quickly so we're working very hard to fill these vacancies but i'll take any questions if you have any regarding that information any questions uh madam chair i don't see any bus drivers on that list did we get all our bus drivers no we have not maybe i just left that off the list this year maybe i was just holding out on us i am getting me all excited here i know that's that's some positive thinking but no um that that would remain
191where it was which i believe we were at five at that point and that has not changed wishful things my apologies for that oh well medicaid to bus drivers but thank you all right let me move forward the second memo that you have in front of you is our summary of professional staff exit data that's something we talked about being provided at the end of the year so thus far this data represents 15 respondents out of 29 exiting employees which everyone has sent the survey they're either send it to their current email if they're still with us or is sent to their personal email if we have that once they leave us so again roughly half roughly 50 percent of those we send it to have responded i just wanted to summarize some of the
192key uh indicators that we we've noted here in some of the reasons the primary reasons why people have left i was pleased with the first indicator with 100 of the respondents indicating that they would recommend acps is a good place to work despite the challenges that we all do face hopefully that reflects that we are uh supportive in attempting to make sure that teachers have what they need while they're here the three most prominent primary reasons you can see there for for individuals leaving personal and family considerations health or otherwise has continued to to be there at the top and again this is a summary of the data that we have provided retirement at 27 commute and distance 13 so those are the top areas that we have for individuals deciding to leave some prominent
193data however we do collect additional contributing factors in our exit survey and some of the the highest rated contributing factors at least this year and i've noted that with the percentage of respondents who have indicated that being a student discipline and behavior we have had those discussions and how that has felt this year uh lack of support from parents and community noted uh correct or incorrect that's one that was noted by 40 uh salary continues to always typically be noted though 27 percent i feel so good about the efforts we've been making that that's not a significantly high number uh relatively compared to the region uh poor communication between uh administrators and teachers at 27 percent um though uh the the percentage from last year in that area and a few of these areas has
194reduced um so to make some comparisons you know the data in itself gives you gives you some information about uh the indicators that we see the prominence i wanted to give a breakdown of some comparisons over last year's data i'm not going to walk through all these because i did provide them to you but just to note a couple key areas the increase from 83 to 100 percent of individuals who would recommend acps i felt good about that seven percent seven percent decrease in teachers indicating covet or pandemic reasons as a contributing factor as the reason for leaving um that's promising i mean i know last year we probably were harder hit with what was happening and having to go to a remote academy and individuals who struggled we did have a relatively high percent
195indicate that that has reduced this in this current year flip over to a 20 decrease in teachers indicating they're leaving to teach in other school divisions in virginia that just makes me happy because i want to make sure that people that are here aren't leaving to go to our competitors and we do our very best to support teachers to make them want to stay here definitely again you see the increase in in the student discipline behavior as a contributing factor above last year's and also um a 10 decrease in teachers indicating inadequate materials and resources and the reason i noted that even though it's a 10 decreases that was one that i think you all uh and i think miss thompson in particular had noticed we want to make sure that's not an issue and
196we're providing teachers all the resources that they need to be successful um and and they flow from there 10 decrease in indication of lack of support from supervisors or for communication between administration and teachers still you saw that that was roughly at a 27 rate but that does represent a decrease this year over last year which i think is interesting um lack of recognition as a contributing factor 17 decrease um i'm kind of pointing out ones that that that i feel like are relevant and important because we want to try to make sure that we do recognize individuals and that is always one of the factors that is noted but we want that to not be a significant factor in all that we do and lastly just noting one um again the increase that i
197had already noted which was the the you know parental and community support you know why that is i don't know but that just some of the contributing factors that they show as increases in there um but having said that i'll take any questions regarding at least the summary data that i provided tonight regarding this year's exit you very much for providing it yes ma'am quite a lot of data there board members have any questions thank you mr gallagher i'll just end that piece by saying that you know we do use that information so that will be shared with administration you know principles and so forth so we have a good reflection of what individuals feel like when they are leaving us to help us get better because like all surveys like that the reason is
198for continuous improvement lastly for me tonight i just wanted to make you all aware that our emergency uh sick leave benefits for cobia 19 those will expire at the end of june you all were gracious in approving those this year and we approved an extended 20 days of emergency paid sick leave that individuals have used maybe more so at different times throughout the pandemic this current school year those those go away they were only for two specific reasons essentially at this point which was to be demonstrating symptoms and being tested for covet or to have tested positive and so it was during a quarantine period because of those factors i don't necessarily recommend that we consider adopting a new policy immediately what i would probably suggest is that we monitor the trends in the community
199monitor health in the cases and how that's impacting us and early in the fall if we feel like something is ramping back up and we're in a place to need to do that i think we can quickly come back before the board to consider additional supports to provide in those areas and be pretty responsive to that but that's just my thought but i did my i did want to make sure you're aware that that does end uh at the end of june so thank you okay board do you have any other thoughts i feel like that's a good recommendation to wait and see and monitor and be responsive when we need to yeah yeah okay and lastly and it's not even on my agenda and i'll say it anyway i just wanted to take time
200because i share the same background as mr navers and i just wanted to commend you know mr neighbors his team his teachers and all the work they're doing uh with with our students across the division and in collaborating with all of our gen ed teachers as well those indicators are fantastic and despite the challenges we've faced i just wanted to share that because i really appreciate what they do for students each and every day and that shows in that data because that's not easy to achieve in light of our circumstances though so thank you thank you dr arnold uh yes ma'am so i have two items one is a budget update and so you might might have seen that the general assembly they agreed on a compromise for a budget you also might have seen
201today in the paper that the it has landed on the governor's desk and i wanted to so basically i want to let you know how that works so it's landed on the governor's desk he has now seven days to determine if there are any changes to be made if that if changes are to be made then it goes back to the general assembly for a special session and the way the paper made it sound was that there would be changes and so that would put the timeline probably out to about the 17th would be the quickest we could get a special session in place now that's that's just the caveat the agreed upon the compromised budget that was given to the governor uh is pretty much in line with what we presented to you guys
202uh there are a few tweaks and i'll go over them we did receive less construction money so what they had initially the governor said was 2.4 million dollars we're receiving 2 million but that doesn't hurt our operational budget because that construction money was a separate one-time money if you'll recall so yeah we wish we would have gotten 2.4 million but it doesn't impact our operational budget we also received outside of our operational budget money through arpa to give one thousand dollar bonuses to all of our employees next year so for the 2022-2023 school year we're not positive when we're to pay that but we believe in some of the language that maybe december 1 is when they're going to release that money to us so you know a little less than that but we're giving
203more to our staff which uh is a good thing so we are at the point right now where we don't believe that there needs to be any uh update to our local budget we can continue with the 6.5 raise and no increase to any health care uh speaking of health care though want to bring this to you we've been working with anthem and our consultants because the whole goal of what we started two years ago was to get to self-funding by getting to self-funding we can control costs for our employees and for the county as a matter and so as we've discussed these options with them they believe that it is in our favor right now to try to move towards self-funding sooner rather than later we're still working on some numbers and what that
204might need to look like dr wells will have a good fortune of bringing you guys a plan in july on how that might occur because the quicker we can get there the better it's going to be for us because that we can automatically drive down the cost uh to us and our and our employees so those are my budget updates any any questions just one for clarification um you're talking about going to self funding sooner the better are you looking at possibly considering that for this year for next budget year and the reason yeah the reason we would do that is because it it doesn't impact the plan right so the the employees who take the insurance are getting the same product what is impacted is whether or not we got to give our money
205to anthem or we keep you know we keep the money so that's a that's an internal issue for us and so it's more it's more i'm trying to think what the right word is administrative issue as opposed to the impact that it has on what their insurance product is and how much our employees are paying so that's a i think that's a positive thing so any other questions about the actual what's going on in richmond um just since you mentioned insurance just for if i could just say something to um mr gallagher um if you could please when we start putting the package together for the insurance if you could include maybe a little spot to see what it would look like having those benefit cards we discussed right that particular benefit option we'll certainly
206consider that as we put the plan together because it would just be another plan option provided to them and we'll look at the impact of that as we as we make this move hopefully you know coming forward into self-funded all right thank you so much okay and my last item is what i've titled policy discussion but i kind of want to i think i'm trying to to assist the new superintendent moving forward because i think that policy has become a struggle and um one because there's so much policy that lands in front of you um and so just just to recap main function of the school board is is through policy and right now we're paying virginia school board association a fee to keep up with changes in virginia code to make sure that appropriate
207revisions are made to the policy we then bring those to you to either approve or not approve but what's happened recently is that when those policies are brought some are pulled and that's kind of an in between kind of gray area and we don't know exactly what to do with them so like for example the ones that were pulled last time we don't have any direction as to what we need to do with those moving forward so i think my request for dr wells is is that we need to have some direction on how to better deal with policy um i think it's just bogged down and what's happening now is that we have policies that are now spread out across several months and some of them we need to have in place to keep
208ourselves in line with code um and so it's just becoming more and more problematic and we have to have a better way of handling it and so i'm my my plea is to is there a way that you guys would rather see policy handled or would you like some some options given uh from dr wells asked how to move forward with it um just because you know all of the policies that y'all dealt with last time how many more are out there yeah there's 30 more that we've just received and so that that starts to back up and you're going to have a backlog of these and so um there there are obviously ways that we can we can move that forward but i'm open to suggestions well i'll start off um i do appreciate
209wanting to move them along and get them accomplished since it is something that is one of the most responsible things that we have to do and take care of i do think they deserve our due diligence and i do appreciate the board looking at them and not just rubber stamping them but making sure that we are doing our due diligence with that said moving them along is important i know i've heard several of you say are there any on here that are vital that we need to accomplish and we've tried to knock those out um i do know the last group that we had we had a list that we pulled and we were going to receive some additional dates that we would meet to discuss those and in lieu of not receiving those dates
210and they were on tonight's agenda i assumed that we would either discuss them tonight or that we would set that date since we hadn't done that our intention was to right you guys discussed those tonight correct but i was speaking more just right so my suggestion recently i don't know how other board members feel about it but my suggestion is that if we have a group if we have 30 more coming to us to have a work session you know we had talked about having a second meeting during the month anyway to have a work session pull them out have an opportunity to talk about them i think that there's benefit that i receive when i'm reading it and i'm looking at the nuance of a change and i question and i'm looking at it
211by myself you know and someone next to me can can shed some light on that hey i checked that off my list i'm ready to roll um so that that would be my suggestion if you have others or board members have others of how we can process these more expeditiously i'm open to that madam chair i believe we really do need a work session we get bogged down with so many changes coming from richmond and they really need to be looked over and not just rubber stamp like you said so i suggest that we actually start holding meetings maybe either during the week or on a saturday where we can sit down and go through all the policies any other suggestions thoughts all right looks like do you have other suggestions for us to consider
212or is the work session going to be our solution [Laughter] yes it depends on when you do want to do the first work session whether it's in june or july it'll determine who has answered that question wow well well that's why i've put the ones for june here tonight then after that you can figure it out right i hear y'all going to be back here on the 16th we are going to be back here on the 16th i'm not quite sure that the man of the hour is going to want to discuss policy but if we you know for these tonight do you want to discuss these tonight and get as many as we can cleared out or do you want to just move these i'm going to say to july madam chair i would
213in general move them to july of the many policies that had language differences i have some emails out to vsba and they're legal to help us understand how the tenses impact if our policy goes to court will shall be seen as definitive or is it ambiguous so i'd like to be able to um hear back from them on that um and once we hear back and then we'll have a better since many of these changes have to do with that language that would be helpful i think one of the things that i look at is it says in the memo it says most of these changes um are in language and do not affect the school division so um with that in mind i i think waiting until july is probably okay if it's not
214if it's just language and it doesn't affect the school division according to the memo that i think waiting till july works okay if that's the board's pleasure i i would be in agreement with that because i do appreciate you reaching out to vsba to ask them about these changes because we got a lot of them that they just changed them from future tense to just present tense and to your point that you've been making i have been trying to do some research to educate myself and i think there's two thoughts out there in the legal world and one is that lawyers always use the word shell but now maybe they're trying to become more definitive in the present so that shall isn't misinterpreted in court well that's way beyond me so reaching out to the
215person who wrote it as to why they changed it and what that rationale is could be a simple solution for us but there are some policies that i thought did not incorporate those that i felt like we may be able to vote on tonight um one of them was bb get there yeah madam chair um i was interested in bb gbma which was omitting the option for an external review and bddf and then i g b b i g d a and i g b a those three were changing um pardon oh somebody oh okay god bless you um we're changing um the verbiage from parents to parent and i i do not think that's wise i think both parents should have the access to the information regarding their students so board would you all
216be okay if we pulled out those six and we talked about those and dealt with them tonight and the rest of them that are just semantics of shall move them to the next meeting is that okay all right so let's go with that um so let's look at policy bb if you've had time to look at it we can vote or we can make motion bb is presented second okay i have a second to approve policy bb as presented i'll be open for discussion madam chair um my problem with policy vb is it changes it has significant challenges as it is generalizing the authority by which a school board operates in the policy as presented it is it's changing it from the school board derives its authority from the constitution of virginia the code of
217virginia and the regulations of the state board of education of virginia and the state laws of virginia so it's removing it's changing it from that to the school board derives its authority from the constitution and the state laws of virginia um i believe it's that is ambiguous and um in general when it comes to the law ambiguity is not in the best favor of the complainant or the defendant so that would be my concern with that i'm assuming you mean the term constitution is ambiguous because it doesn't clarify which constitution correct okay and it omits the code of virginia okay it's the constitution of virginia i mean no they struck up virginia and lawyers would tell you your policy needs to be broader rather than yes and paint yourself into a corner and so when
218because we did call the sba and ask about that and that was their explanation is that the constitution and laws of virginia encompass all of that and i think it's probably good for you guys to recognize too that regulations at the state board of education are not laws that govern the school board does that mean yes yeah so that was the explanation okay any other discussion and thank you for that because we've been reaching out we haven't heard back like you have thank you any other discussion madam chair yes what if we just um struck out the regulations of the state board of education so we kept it as um the school board derives its authority from the constitution of virginia no that's it right no and the code of virginia but i think when
219you say the laws of virginia the code of virginia is the law are the laws of virginia so they mean the same thing i think you could say from the authority of the constitution of virginia and the laws of virginia if you wanted more clarity just you know the constitution and laws of virginia you assume that the constitution of virginia is being referenced but if there's ambiguity there in your mind you could say the constitution of virginia and the laws of virginia and just be excited the way it was explained is that these two cover the entire gamut of laws that are that you have to uphold all right can i have him uh i think we had a motion on the floor that we would approve it we had a second we um is
220there any further discussion to approve the changes as they are here okay so you know more discussion um how are you mental block [Laughter] all in favor say aye aye any opposed me so we have mr rossi mrs justice mrs thompson right and the other four yes okay motion passes all right uh let's look at policy bddf while we're looking did you get a response from vsba about the shows i did not okay no i think that was you had sought that answer you haven't gotten anything back i think she reached out again this week as as we look at this one before we have a motion there was something that i noticed in it um let's see in the sentence upon even though all members are not be present let's see talking about the
221tiebreaker okay it was in the third line so just consider it quickly um and i'm going to read all three all three lines in any case in which there is a thai vote of the school board when all members are not present the question shall be passed by until the next meeting when it will again be voted upon even though all members are not present i felt like it should say even though all members may not be present as opposed to just making the assumption that at the next meeting all the members won't be present now maybe i'm reading that one wrong yeah i agree with that madam chair me too now this one does have the word shell in it and it does change the tenses um so i don't know what kind of
222motion you want to make but i just wanted to bring the may piece to your attention because i thought it was just a little awkward the way it made the assumption that so if we change that to me that becomes an amherst county public schools policy and not a vsba policy therefore if there were litigation we're not covering the okay good reminder and what and what you had just suggested um said this was this currently is our policy as well so that statement has been in in place i don't know how long has it been in place so i guess what you're saying is if we're going to change it there could be repercussions down the road sure so we can either accept it or not and it may not be worth taking that risk
223over the word may i don't think i don't think so but you know and you'll and you're still waiting on the will and the shallow and all that stuff anyway so that's probably one that comes up are you okay if we just sort of push that one aside since it's a shallow okay we're gonna add that to the group that moves on all right gbmac madam chair in policy gbma under support staff grievances um the complainant's right to an external hearing officer is being suggested to be changed to an impartial hearing administrator um i personally think that the external part of that is is critical for assuring the complainant that they're going to be able to have an outside perspective that is not related it's kind of like um if you're having a trial in
224your hometown and it's a small town asking can we have a judge from outside to look at it okay um any other discussion i mean i i'm going to say i agree with you i like that having an external person to hear grievances i don't know how the rest of the board feels didn't we approve we approved that list at the last meeting didn't we with the you approve the list of external hearing officers we're in compliance with the current policy if you changed it to this one will still be in compliance if you don't change it will still be in compliance so because they're external they're also impartial i was going to say they they're kind of dual right that's the way i looked at them right well i mean obviously they have to
225be impartial the ones we have selected and you approved are external which we're comfortable with either way you indicate this we can maintain that list if that's our comfort and we'll be in compliance is there a motion to approve emotion that we keep our current policy okay i have a motion on the floor that we keep current bgbma do i have a second second i have a second any discussion before we vote okay hearing none all in favor say aye aye any opposed okay we keep our current policy all right the last one is ig can we love these together of course do we need to vote separately since they're the same rationale for them it was igbb i-g-d-a-i-g-b-a and the concern was that it removed the plural parents to a singular parent not giving
226the policy not giving authority for like an iep team to notify both parents there would only be one parent all right seeing that there's no discussion i'm going to recommend that we put all three together in our vote at least since they have the same rationale madam chair i move that i g b b igda and igba be remain unchanged okay do you have a second second i have a second on the floor any discussion is there any impact on that yeah ultimately the parent component there i know the plural versus singular parent is an idea term so anyone who has legal status as a parent is recognized separately so even though so for example if we're dealing with student who has both mother and father at home we still treat them as individual entities
227in regards to how the law recognizes them they come to the meeting together they talk together all those decisions are made together but anyone who has that legal status we are required to treat as a parent under idea i think that's kind of the root of what that was the paragraph there that's underlined ultimately that's a part of every practice that we have it's in our handbooks it's what we do we're talking about diploma status and how it might impact a student so ultimately are you talking about an igba and igba yes ma'am because that would be in addition to the current policy so if you don't if you save the current policy this would not be included are you comfortable with the explanation about the singular versus plural amongst the legal guardian i'm a
228legal parent i have one question madam chair can you help me understand why they're changing it from the plural to the singular it's actually more consistent with the actual federal law itself so looking at idea generally speaking parents doesn't apply it doesn't occur it's not plural in the law of verbiage i can't honestly tell you why and i certainly don't want to go into giving legal advice because that's not what i do but ultimately parent is that defining word and it's anyone that meets that status so regardless of what the guardianship structure looks like for a student anyone who meets that legal threshold is considered to be a parent and is eligible and we're required to communicate with to make decisions madam chair i i move that we approve the changes as presented okay thank
229you jeff a second you gotta take care of the questions i'll have a motion on the floor to not to not yeah and we were in discussion so thank you okay you need to vote on the first one right and then make a second motion yeah move to question okay we can move to question let's make sure that we get it right the motion on the floor is to not approve those three so second call question okay second call the question all in favor say aye to call the question question oh to call the question you gotta vote on that okay okay now the motion's on the floor um all in favor say aye opposed motion does not carry do we have a new motion map jeremy we presume approve igba as presented do you
230want to put all three together or just oh all three no okay yeah i'm all do you want me to give you the the numbers the letters i mean no i'll just the three is presented the three is presented okay um so the motion on the floor is to approve all three igba i g d a i g b b as presented is there a second second have a second um any discussion all in favor say aye aye are you opposed okay motion carries all right i think that's all we had for the night and then the others once we get a response from the uh the word shall all right so i guess if we're talking july then we need to determine if we want to bring these to you at july 14th meeting
231or if you want to have a schedule a second meeting in july to discuss policy my recommendation would bring these back in july now if you're going to bring 30 more to us let's set up a work session for those 30 or something that would be my recommendation to you guys i agree okay i think you're all in favor with doing that okay okay thank you okay madam cherry can we make sure we have them well enough at advance to go over them at home first yes and i believe if we do a work session that would be you'll have it would that be a work session or considered first read i don't think it has to be a first read okay so it's just a work session then we would go to a first
232read at a regular meeting so what i'd presented back when we tried to start this before was at the first meeting in the month so july they do get dropped in your lap as a first read then you come back at the second meeting in the month to work on them and then your first regular meeting the following month becomes whether you approve it or not so you have that space in between there and you also have all of the stuff that's on the website you get feedback all of those kinds of things and just just so you all know none of the ones we've put out have received any feedback in the last i can understand three or four months so okay that makes good sense thank you so we would go ahead and
233think of july 14th as our initial i'll give you first read july 14th and then two weeks later july 28 that thursday we could schedule a session to uh go through that and discuss policy at that point and then bring it back to you in the august meeting for approval okay that's good thank you okay so madam chair that is all i have other than to say i'd like to thank this school board for giving me the opportunity to impact the lives of children in amherst county that is as you said the thing that i'm most passionate about and i believe i was able to do that i want to just thank you as a group for providing me that opportunity thank you thank you now we come down to committee reports and items from
234individual board members i guess we could do that together mr rossi i'm going to start off with you if you have report you know it's getting late madam chair uh i don't serve on a committee i don't think i have a report to give um i would like to uh say good luck dr arnold um moving forward with retirement i hope to get there someday hopefully your impact will be felt around the county i know you had your last graduating class but your last class hasn't graduated so um you know the the positive impact you've had on those students it it's incredible to to be a part of that you know i know that the teachers all impact and your staff here and everybody's worked so hard to make things happen year after year after
235year the challenges we've been through and and like i said i'm new to this and just to see how you guys go over those bridges and cross them those waters it it's it's really impressive and it's inspiring um you know the the school keeps moving forward you know the lights go on every day you know and there will be teachers that come and go you know and and even you know as a as i was a student there are still some teachers that i remember and and i think all students have those teachers you know and and i think your name is going to be coming up a lot in their lives and you should be very proud of that and uh i wanted to thank you for that miss justice thank you madam chair
236i just want to say thank you to those who spoke tonight shared their heart um mr tomlin owner mcclellan ms stone and mr burley dr berlin thank you for coming and participating i really am excited to see in the plans for our expansion in the new auditorium um i i am particularly blessed by the toilet accommodations i believe the single occupancy and the the openness of the design will help meet safety concerns for all our students and help reduce bullying opportunities and help provide a safer more open environment for our students thank you ms burke yes i'd like to say thank you to everybody that took the time out to speak tonight um we had some great speakers and also congratulations to our archery team always proud of our students when they go out and
237do well and a special thank you to dr arnold for his years spent with us here we learned a lot underneath you and hopefully we keep growing underneath dr wells and hopefully everybody has a good summer thank you mr greiser madam sheriff guff school didn't meet uh but the the up and coming juniors uh been having their orientation this past week so uh that was kind of exciting to follow them on facebook if you don't so uh um not that i facebook i stalk on my wife's account but anyways she likes guff school so anyways that's that's what's going on with guff school as i was traversing the state i missed the initial part of this but i sincerely sincerely wanted to thank you dr arnold i've used the analogy several times about having to
238dance with seven different partners and up honestly the song stunk sometimes and it was hard to dance to right uh but i will you've been a champ i actually double took when i was walking by the table and there was like who's that young guy's picture on there yeah age like a president i already made that comment yeah well and i missed that but i it did it's like wow he was young when he came here but i i wish you the best in retirement and i can't wait to get that vrs milestone myself and uh thank you for everything i mean i i you know to deal what you've dealt with in four years who would have thought it i never would have thought it coming on the board myself so but i'm glad
239i got to walk it with you and i appreciate that yeah i'll be quick uh just laurel we attended laura's graduation since we were here last we had one graduate from amherst uh unfortunately that particular night the graduate wasn't able to be there and had a death in the family but we still had the ceremony mr gallagher was the speaker did an awesome job representing amherst at laurel that night and then of course our own graduation i always enjoy being there seeing all the young people going across the stage uh 200 and some right 284 something like that so that was a good night and i've enjoyed all the end of the year programs here in amherst pre-k graduated to kindergarten and my kindergartner graduated to first grade and my eighth grader graduated to ninth
240grade so i just had a good time but uh more important than me i enjoyed the camaraderie with all the teachers and administrators so we're off the years over and we made it uh i'm excited i guess summer school is kicking in buses will roll again is that right we didn't hear about it but they'll roll again on monday wednesday i'm good i can speed up the road one two more days four buses get back out there again and i want to thank uh the high school for the yearbook i can't wait to get home whenever i get home and look at this uh so thank you dr brown you know i tell you bring those yearbooks out and uh so we thank miss burley for remembering us again this year i can't wait to
241read that drama i already told you everything i had to tell you but i know where you live yeah well the internet is a great thing you know uh but all jokes aside congratulations on retirement that word retirement is it means a lot i guess i don't know everybody around me is retired said me mister dr wells will get you hooked up here and hitched up before you know it so that's all i have thank you so much mr t yes ma'am uh so stem academy we did have a meeting uh i don't know a couple weeks ago um i think the biggest thing to note is that the superintendent of lynchburg city is no longer sitting on the uh stem board uh it'll be dr wells this time so if you hadn't heard yet
242so just let you know they said they'd break in right so um and that's really it from uh my uh my uh uh committee committee meeting yeah um thank everybody for speaking tonight um like i said we need to hear from all sides of the community the mr burley's speech for about dr arnold couldn't have been any more spot on thank you for all that you've done we uh uh we all greatly appreciate you stepping up and taking on all the challenges that you had over the last couple years uh taking them taking the bull by the horns and just leaving it anywhere need to be it was not easy for anybody it wasn't easy for you to make the decisions it wasn't easy people to keep up with you but he did a fabulous
243job so like i said the archery group i don't think there's been a year since we started having archery in amherst county schools that we haven't been represented at least at the state level um so those kids are um they're phenomenal at what they're doing the teachers who take the time to instruct them and give them that extra encouragement is is an awesome thing so uh amen to all of them that's it's just a great thing um and thanks for all the reports um you guys always bring you guys bring plenty of data to us so and and bear with us when it comes to the policy let us just give us a little bit of time we'll get it all straight um i think that's about it looking forward to the changing of the
244guard dr wells congratulations dr arnold good luck to you sir thank you um and again graduation was just such a wonderful experience to be able to be inside in the midst of all those storms um and have you know no masks on and we were just uh back to normal it felt good and the kids were just beaming and shining um the team did a great job i want to thank kathy stone for sharing with us tonight her heart because i think she really relayed the heart of amherst county you know we always hear how you know we we are a family and you know families can disagree sometimes but we come back together and she took it and just shared and and made us shine so we just need to remember that that we
245all need to encourage one another i picked up the phone the other day and i just said i just need to hear you laugh and it was just so rewarding to just sit and do nothing on the phone but just hear each other laugh so just remember that we do have good hearts here in amherst i also thank mr tomlin for speaking i thought he did an eloquent job he asked the question about discipline and asked board if we were listening and i just want to say that we are listening and we're hearing that and i know that that's going to be a concerted effort this coming year i also want to remind everyone on the 16th next week next thursday we will meet i'm assuming i think in the administrative conference room just on
246the other side of this building and we will have a reception and ceremony signing of contract for dr wells so to end out i want to say natalia thank you again for your service and working with us we'll still see you around but you know we will miss you and you've done a great job thanks for always helping there to help and dr arnold i just want to say congratulations on your retirement again you know i really cherish how much you value public education and how much you care for kids and um just thank you for your leadership that you've had here um and all the positive things that you are leaving you know i think mr burley hit on the head there will be a legacy there so thank you we wish you the
247best and dr wells looking forward to um turning over the new leaf and working with you and thank you for accepting our invitation and the challenge that we have in front of us so with that said i think that board i appreciate you and i appreciate all of you entertaining my phone calls and working with me and sharing with me on the journey so we will do this together with that said um we need to a motion to go into closed session last one yes pursuant to section 2.2-370 a1 and a2 of the code of virginia it is recommended the board convened a closed meeting for the following a one to review and discuss contract for the position of superintendent discuss structure and the items removed from the personnel report and a2 student matters 1
248and 2. i have a motion to go into closed session seconds have a second all in favor we are now in closed session a leader is a person that is kind to everyone a leader is someone who encourages them to do their best a good leader lets everyone play what they want to play make your hearts grow big and home big and later when you have somebody to help you do stuff a little does things make everyone feel included well a leader is someone that like tells people to do a leader does their best everyday it's something that makes all the other people follow that superintendent is the person who looks up for all the students in the county doctor a superintendent is a person who likes working with kids and adults dr arnold is
249smart has a lot of answers um a team player who takes charge on something wrong he's kind caring he's a good man he's my friend and i've known him for a long time and he's he's a good guy [Music] the man came for cameron county he was here to lead the division he got a great mission mission straight to the administration office he went they called him dr arnold the new superintendent what is he about what will he do he said no matter what let's do what's best for students always making decisions with remarkable prudence his ideas are big and his expectation is high he always wanted stakeholders to understand the why always moving forward he spearheaded a comprehensive plan presented it to the community just right before covert began advocate helping students be like
250and then of course came the journey of transgender when we lose all things academic he did not waste a second everyone would agree as he decided we will air on wsct so once all this started um and we were going to have students at home for an extended period of time one of the the charges that we had as a school division was trying to figure out how we were going to teach them from a distance and obviously if you don't have the ability to contact those students you know be face to face with those students the the next best option is online right so whether it's through a learning management system or zoom or google me those kinds of things but like much of rural america our internet capability is is limited and so
251we we estimate that we probably have about 35 percent of our students that do not have high-speed reliable internet so it made me start rethinking about well why don't we marshal the power of television you know you might not have internet but most people have tv what we're what we're thinking now is is that we're going to be able to fill some space in the summer when uh school is technically over it did not stop there he said our students must have connectivity at when hot spots wi-fi on buses so many things led by his creativity eager to have students back he began the roadmap to return it was imperative that the students would learn a resonator communicator and not afraid to make tough decisions always for thinking with remarkable positions videos podcasts and a
252million interviews were the norm [Music] it was always important to keep them community informed thank you dr honor for all that you've created for our continued success good luck on your retirement we wish you the very best [Music] remember kids always if they thank you for super nintendo always remember smile be happy and let your friends grow [Music] so [Music] bye [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] you