ACPS School Board Meeting -11.12.2020

001[Music] [Applause] so [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Applause] so [Music] good evening and welcome to the acps news show i'm colson davis and i'm reagan barry acps news shows spotlights all the past present and future events that will be happening at acps schools on this month's edition we'd like to highlight two of our schools temperance elementary school and amherst county high school let's start by joining mr crawford at temperance elementary to see what those temperance tigers are up to thank you reagan and colson and welcome to temperance elementary school and look at that view it's amazing here i'd like to start by saying thank you to all of our students our parents and our staff our students are doing amazing work in school our parents have done an amazing job of supporting

002our students and our staff has done an amazing job of preparing our students they truly are working together and being great team players i'd like to highlight some accomplishments and some events that we've celebrated here at temperance elementary school first school lunch week it was awesome our students had awards and prizes that they won just for eating school lunch it was a great week it was a great week to celebrate them i'd like to talk about red ribbon week also from october the 26th through october the 30th here at temperance elementary school celebrating red ribbon week means that we're stamping out drugs and we've had a great time doing that i'd like to also mention that all of our students are going through map testing and pals testing this is so that we can get

003a good view of where they truly are in their educational experience and they've done an amazing job with that as well our student behavior has been phenomenal they've done everything they needed to do in order to keep everybody safe they wear their masks they wash their hands and they've just done a great job i'd like to also highlight bullying prevention month here at temperance elementary school we're stamping out bullying as well and for unity day i'd like to switch it over to miss curd thank you joey this is heidi kurd i'm the school counselor here at temperance and i wanted to tell you a little bit about what we've done it for unity day so the past couple weeks we've been talking about bullying awareness and just having great conversations during our check-ins about what

004students have experienced how it makes them feel and then what we can do as a school to unite against bullying so during unity day we filled out the little strip of paper where each student was able to write about what they're going to do to keep our school safe or write a characteristic about themselves to make them unique and that we said we're going to unite together to stand up against bullying and show kindness acceptance and inclusion [Music] thank you mrs curd i'd like to wrap up by just saying what an amazing experience the beginning of this school year has been and i can't wait to see what's next here at temperance elementary school reagan and coulson back to you wow mr crawford what great things are happening at tds from drug and bullying prevention

005to celebrating unity day in style now i know the lancers have been up to some great things at the high school let's check on let's check in on them to see how they've been doing take it away dr brown [Music] hello everybody i'm dr derek brown proud principal of amherst county high school and i'm here to talk about all the happenings that we've been have experiencing since the beginning of the school year and some of the amazing things that we are going to have coming up here in the coming weeks and months i just wanted to say that we really celebrated diversity here at amherst county high school starting this school year back and we've had a lot of great celebrations and events we've celebrated hispanic hispanic history month and we had students submit facts

006and celebrations about hispanic culture and our kids really engaged in that process and we're super proud of them for that we also celebrated indigenous peoples day um the first time that we have done that in the state of virginia on a state level and we're super proud to partner with the state of virginia to to celebrate the important heritage of our indigenous people we've also had unity day unity today is a nationwide initiative to combat bullying and our school has done a great job everybody had on orange for that day um signed bullion pledges and made sure that we were treating each other with kindness and our kids did a phenomenal job that was really really impressive to see we have so many other things that we're trying to do that we haven't been able

007to because of the pandemic but there are things that we're trying to make sure that we our kids don't lose the experience on so for example national honor society we really want to celebrate those students and the amazing academic accomplishments that they've had and so we are going to have our national honor society induction ceremony in our football stadium this year properly socially distanced and that's for families of students who are in the national honor society 5 30 in the football stadium we also are going to have our ring ceremony instead of a ring dance we're going to do a ring presentation ceremony and that's coming up in november as well so students will get their class ring who are juniors and be able to have a photo opportunity and celebrate their accomplishments with that

008our amazing award-winning theater department is having their first play of the year outside in our front lawn and it's outdoor play and it's called the spoon river anthology that's going to be on november 19th and 20th and it's from um on the front lawn of the high school please check out our website for more details about that five dollars for entry and it's going to be a great great time showcasing the talented talented amherst county theater program we've done some amazing things we're currently in the middle of spirit week which for some reason students want to throw a pie in the faces of our administrators and our teachers so we have that coming up we have had day we have character day just some really really cool opportunities and experiences for our kids here at

009the high school trying to bring the school spirit and make sure that we are doing everything that we need to do to have a good environment a good climate here at amherst county high school sports are coming back around we're looking forward to ramping up our winter sports and starting with wrestling and starting with basketball indoor track you know we have all those sports about to ramp back up and check our website out for more information about our sports program um some of our teachers ms booth has done an amazing job with something we call lunch and learn so lunch and learn is during our our lunch time we have some videos that local businesses have put together from some former high school students who graduated former lancers and now have jobs in construction and

010welding and healthcare and those students are speaking to our current students during lunch time about essential skills some people call them soft skills we call them essential skills how to be on time how to be punctual how to be a hard worker be self-starter and they're learning from their former peers about how to be successful after high school and do a great job in in the workforce we also want to we'd be remiss if we didn't celebrate veterans day and so our dean of students mr hamlin's putting together a great veterans day listing festivities for us to make sure we're celebrating our veterans for all students here at the high school we also have a cyber patriot so we have a cyber security class here at airmans county high school and we also have go

011girls cyber which is uh trying to get more female students involved in cyber security and promoting that so it's cyber patriot and this other program is geared towards helping our students become better at promoting and learning more about cyber security and in the field of stem and so that's a great opportunity and job opportunity for those students and then last but not least you can't forget about a fruit sale a food sale is a big deal here at the high school it helps a lot of our ffa programs and our ag science programs and a lot of people look forward to that so that's something we're able to still do check out our website for that so that's a little bit a glimpse into the things that we've had at amherst county high school thank

012you for listening and we have a lot more in store for the rest of this year oh we have one more thing we've actually started to work with beacon of hope and partnered with them they've been doing some amazing things in lynchburg and they are helping students have opportunity to go to college and so we're working with them to do some things to help our students for example online fafsa night for student aid and we're going to be working in the spring to help our students to do college applications and prep for sat and psats so be on the lookout for that because we definitely want to make sure our students have all types of opportunities whether it's going to college going to workforce going into the military we want our students be successful not

013just here in this building but out there in the community so that's what we have going on here at the arms county high school thank you for listening i hope you have a fantastic rest of your day and as always and go answers thanks dr brown we are so proud of what our lancers are doing at the high school now back to colston with division announcements acps has developed and released a 2020 district operations survey to give you an opportunity to provide feedback on different areas of amherst county public schools we encourage you to take the time to take the survey and so that we can identify better ways to improve amherst county public schools you can find the link to this survey available in both english and spanish on the acps website there will

014be a health clinic friday november 13th at amherst county high school from 9 a.m to 12 p.m amherst county public schools will be providing free hearing screenings and amherst county lions club will be providing free vision screenings to any student school nurses will be available for consultation about any healthcare any health questions you may have also central virginia health district will be providing flu shots to students and parents who want one if you are interested in getting a flu shot please bring identification and insurance information we hope to see you there that's all the time we have for tonight thank you for watching the acps news show we hope you enjoyed our show until next time have a story you'd like to share want your school to have a highlight in our update show contact

015your school's social media manager to submit your story [Music] wow like to say good evening to everyone and it is now time has come for us to begin our november the 12th uh school board meeting at this time we ask that you would please stand first we'll observe i want to stand tonight on the silence because i want to observe what went on yesterday for all of that veterans so we're just standing for our moment of silence tonight and congratulate all let us now do our pledging of the united states of america and into the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you so much and this time we asked for 1.02 a full of our agenda for tonight board members madam chair i um

016make a motion that we've proved tonight's agenda ms thompson do we have a second second i'm in favor of approval of tonight's agenda say aye aye opposed we have an agenda for tonight thank you so much moving into our public comments point 2.01 do we have anyone tonight that would like to come and speak before the school board on school board matters yes ma'am [Music] you would just give your name and address for us please my name is ona mclennan i live in madison heights i work for you as a bus driver and at one level or another most the people in this room supervise me as you know i'm a transgender woman and i spoke to you last month about my journey my need to transition from male to female and the variety of

017responses i received from the persons around me but this evening i want to speak to you about the journey of transgender young persons who according to the human rights campaign make up about three percent of the children in that age range so that means that yes we have transgender students in our schools human rights campaign goes on to say that although truly transgender persons can be diagnosed with gender dysphoria transgender identity is not a mental illness the disconnect transgender person's experience is a persistent and authentic disconnect between the sex assigned to them at birth and their internal sense of who they are this describes how i felt my entire life there's no way to make this feeling of disconnect go away trying to change a child's gender identity by denial punishment conversion therapy or some

018other tactic is not only ineffective but is dangerous and can do permanent damage to a child's mental health conversion therapies typically faith-based have been uniformly condemned by groups such as the american psychological association american medical association and the american psychiatric association i decided long ago that nothing can divert me from how i must live and who i must be the american college of osteopathic pediatricians and the american academy of pediatrics have together issued a report that says it's not uncommon for a child to feel pressure at home at school or elsewhere to hide their gender traits this social pressure can be intense and very painful as i know leading children to hide their true gender selves unfortunately hiding one's identity or gender traits can cause serious problems during childhood and later in life including depression

019anxiety self-harm and even suicides now knowing this please imagine what you would do or what you would say if your child or your grandchild or your niece or your nephew came to you saying i am a girl when she had been identified as male 1 or i am a boy when he had been identified as a girl at birth what you do and say can affect them for the rest of their lives as a school system we must always use the name and pronouns that align with the child's identity and don't be afraid of pronoun mistakes i make these mistakes too apologize correct it and go on making the effort shows respect not making the effort is a sure sign of disrespect and transgender children can tell the difference be the child's advocate by calling

020out transphobia when you see it and expect others to respect the child's identity and educate yourself about the concerns facing transgender young persons and adults when the time comes to approve new transgender policy please don't stop at the minimum required by the state not only approve anti-discrimination and anti-harassment texts but also approved text that requires the school system to give equal access to everyone including transgender students when it comes to sports participation academic activities and trips in any extracurricular programs we love our students and we work hard to give them what they need to survive and thrive please understand what i have said to you this evening is of equal importance to any other topic you might cover have a good evening and a good meeting and i'll see you again soon thank you are

021there any other people in the audience that would like to address the school board at this time okay seeing none we should move on to 3.01 uh discuss and consider the approval of the capital improvement plan thank you dr webster madam chair ladies and gentlemen the board will be brought to you back in march of 2020 with this microphone so i'll get yelled at here's the cargo vector and brought to you in march of 2020 a cip that we developed uh prior to the uh facility study and i have a but in that march 2020 cid project we had two main projects we had installment lighting between the baseball and softball field and we also had the inclusion of building a build house for the restrooms concession stands and uh indoor facility there for the

022baseball softball uh in that area we had enough carrier funds for the completion of the ppda project to complete the lights and the lighting between the softball baseball field was completed this fall so if you go out of high school in the evening you'll have lights between on the trail from the baseball into the softball field um the fuel house project being was placed on hold on when the pandemic hit and we had to really start worrying about funds and things like that knowing and then we refrain from placing additional projects on the 2021 cip waiting where there's also the fertility study in september of 2020 the board was presented with the findings of the facility study and proposed cip with mr josh bauer of credit three warble associates in october they recommended recommended civilians

023to the board for further review and to allow the board opportunity to ask additional questions as we presented those proposals to renovate elon and to make an additional renovation of the england we did not have a dollar amount at that time at your place you should see a proposal for the dollar amount at elon and that came out to four million two hundred and thirteen thousand five hundred eighty nine dollars uh you know detailed projection there should be at your place in the proposed cip elin is scheduled for roof and window projects for 2324. if the board chooses to add elin to the cip it will be our recommendation to add it to the 2324 project here so that we can do all the work at one time again we can add the elon project

024to the cip at your discretion tonight we're presenting the cip for approval as a reminder this is a working document and may be amended by the board at any time and i'll be glad to answer any questions you may have before making you make a decision board members will entertain questions about the will not sure i don't have um any questions because i think you presented it well i do have a couple comments if i may um when i looked at the addition for elon yes ma'am i was concerned at the price tag and we would get i think two classrooms out of that i was also concerned that the addition in the front of the school is sort of occupying any land that we may have there that you know we've got for ingress

025egress for parking so my thought board members on that is that maybe we could get a local committee to review more holistically what the needs at elon might be and some options i know that what the consulting firm gave us is probably just one and i know that we have some anticipation of some capacity issues but i know that we would be getting a new uh cafeteria and we'd be getting a new administrator area we currently have those so i'm looking for capacity for our students two classrooms and that to me was a hefty price tag you know if someone on the committee that could be looking at additional properties i know that elon has had some drainage issues the position of the gymnasium makes you know being able to get to the back of

026the building difficult so my view is that if we're going to put elon on there maybe we need to get some more input than just one proposal the second thing was at the high school i really liked those additions with the auditorium we've talked about that as a board and about getting some alumni to maybe help with that my concern was that another board member brought up is that we may not have looked at our cte from an instructional perspective and are there any additions since that's attached to that old auditorium so maybe even get a committee to look at that and push the high school auditorium and dining area and maybe the replacement down just a little bit to give a committee a little bit of time to say do we need more than

027what we're asking for in these upgrades um not that it don't not that i want to remove it but if you could push it down a a year to just give time to see if we need more than what we're asking if we're going to do it might as well do it right because you've got areas further down that since we're going to look at renovating inside the school with flooring and walls so to me our goal is to make this high school look nice for our students so let's not leave out cte that was my thought there so those are two things and then the last thought i had was the playgrounds there at the bottom and the price tag is not extreme so i even thought maybe we could move them and do

028one for a year as we go down the list because i know that playground affects every elementary school student every single day so those are my three thoughts as we're looking at prioritizing so this would be my recommendation that if you were to approve it tonight that would give us the ability to start moving forward on the the two projects that we we have to get done from a structural standpoint we're waiting to work on madison heights and amherst middle school with their grading issues and so if we were to approve the document as a whole right now we can start then of course we can we can make the changes and we've said that all along we can make the changes we can make the adjustments and a little bit further along in the

029meeting i think i might get to that point about talking about looking at our our kind of these types of construction projects in a larger kind of a more general over overarching view with the board of supervisors because we're going to have to to bring them on board for for that as well so i was going to suggest a committee later on in this meeting so um yeah we're with you we we just um i think our biggest concern right now is getting those two projects underway manager yes sir just kind of following up on ms thompson's comments i i would i would agree with uh ref especially reference to elon i i understand this is a it's a working documents it's a fluid we have a lot of ability to adapt it and change

030it as the needs present themselves but also think it's a little bit of a vision or intent of where we would like to be given the funds being available and just put putting e1 on the on the project list like that i think was it be a little premature especially his fiduciary responsibility with taxpayer money to to look at all options whether it's even revising the dreaded redistricting i think we owe it to taxpayers in the county to before something like that is put on there um but i'm not opposed to it especially if the need presents itself but i always had the sticker shock too for two classrooms like ms thompson did so i would be i would not be in favor of putting out on our cip but as far as the other

031things i would like to see some kind of committee involvement especially when we start talking about the that high school project and [Music] that's just my two cents on my observations of the cip and i don't think we'd have a problem pulling that um because that wasn't a part of the original anyway so right you know those add-on you know the questions are asked we want to bring the information so you had accurate information to make a decision absolutely so you know four million scenes yeah to approve the cip without the the yeah well i did like um you know i like the sound of being able to get it done i know elon is always uh busting at the gills there and with a number of students that they have i agree with mr

032grazer 4 million is a kind of a large pill to swallow when you're just seeing this now so um yeah if we could postpone that one for right now just to get a better grip on it i think it would be a good situation absolutely and your thoughts on this vote um i could try to sound intellectual but i'll just agree um no i i think yes it's a little too much i would be in favor of not adding healing to the proposal then moving forward but i do agree with ms thompson so i think we we do move forward or i would be in favor of moving forward with the other cip projects but also maybe add the caveat we also explore it up you know see what else we can do with the

033cte part of the emporium and blah blah right i agree with all that well we're all in agreement of agreement and uh taking this time don't look at that and sort of piggyback that so we don't need to delay any further can i get a vote of approval and we would um approve the proposed cip plan that was that we had discussed but not at this time but even uh is presented with the exclusion of the healing elementary edition second exactly all in favor [Music] um we have 4.01 4.02 and 4.03 we've all had this material and read it thoroughly there are any questions but there are not any questions i ask for a vote of approval thank you so much moving down to um administrative um 5.01 yes ma'am that's apparently jim with the

034board of great deep science of inflation administrative services we'll start with 5.01 admin services and the first point of business tonight is the current heating and ventilation operation and maintenance services contract at ambers campaign public schools which is a joint effort between us and the county will expire on june 30th 2021 the county has received an unsolicited ppea proposal to on the contra on that contract the county in consultation with the school division has agreed to accept the ppea proposal and is currently drafting the public notice of acceptance of the proposal the county is required by law to post the acceptance of the proposal and to advertise for additional proposals we want to bring this to your attention tonight because you may see information about the ppa proposal posted on the county website and other

035local media accepting this proposal does not bind the county or school division to any contractual obligations with the proposing company it only requires a county to advertise for additional proposals and go through the approved procurement process a proposal review committee will be established to review all proposals and we would like to include a school board member on that committee mountain chair i i'd like to sit on that committee if no one else is eager to that seems to be your forte of information yes ma'am but i'm happy that you have accepted that anyone else want to join him or do you need just him we need at least one okay at least so mr graz are you yes ma'am that's my niche so we'll have mr grabs or to the list and we'll start um

036there'll be information coming out about this proposal uh from the county for the next i think next two weeks for the next two weeks and then we can start moving forward from there with everything but um we can't discuss the the name of the proposing company things like that just because of the the process we're in right now so but i want to make you aware just in case you saw anything posted thank you so much keep us posting mr president yes ma'am are there any additional questions regarding the epc project i speak on that all the time all right moving on to 5.02 oh the school resource officer at manelson middle school aaron napier was recently reassigned so i was promoted within the sheriff's office uh her reassignment was effected november 1st 2020. since

037she has been reassigned the other sros in the county have been covering her position her replacement was named this past week it'll be r.j pugh he is an achs graduate and he will begin november 16th at manelson middle school and uh he will he has not gone through the sro training yet he will go through that as soon as the first class becomes available in my in my contacts with sheriff's office they've informed me so we will have a new sro in the county uh officer napier will be working some other jobs uh with sheriff's office okay ma'am chair yes sir do you know if that how that affects the dcgs grant for that position if they indicated it's going to be any kind of lapse or hiccup with that they have not indicated that

038i think as long as we get them to they get them to school within 60 days i think it makes the grant still be okay because that was when we were we wrote the grant what three years ago now i think they had that 60-day window to get it in so they have to get it done soon but i don't think they do have that time to get it to make it happen okay thank you yes sir any other questions on that all right 5.02 yeah yes sir because i think 5.01 we were going to talk a little bit about now that the cip has been approved we're going to start the rfp process for the work on those two schools with the the grading issues but while we also talk about that one of

039the things i wanted to bring to you tonight regarding the cip is that i would like to invite the joint board from the board of supervisor side and our our committee to sit down initially to to introduce our cip plan to them and then to to start the conversation with them because ultimately we're going to need to take that to the board of supervisors anyway and so that's kind of i think it would be better in a smaller group and then we moved to the to the larger group but as a part of that too miss thompson we i think we it would be uh wise of us to to start to develop uh some committee around the longer term larger projects the the um the elan and the auditorium and the cte so if

040y'all would be if you two would be um amenable to that i would i would set that up for probably prior to christmas okay that would be fine committees um would recommend maybe having one of us serve on those and be part of that and whatever experts that we might get [Music] we would do it very similar to what the the county is doing with the the hvac yep okay under 5.02 i had better use for until 4 30 today you gotta changed a little bit around 4 30 but two weeks ago it had 40 staff and 150 students on quarantine with night with six positive cases amongst our students and staff as of this evening we have 13 staff and 40 students on quarantine and one positive case we just picked up a positive

041case this afternoon at 4 30. um so looking at that number our test results and our information is showing that um you know we're moving in the right direction i do want to say that we do have one staff member or nine students that have been tested we're waiting results to come back on for them but you know we feel we're moving in the right direction um our covert trend a code of data has been trending positively over the past two weeks i also want to remind everyone again that all of our covet-related cases into schools and facilities have been a result of community spread we have yet to have a confirmed case of covet 19 that has been transmitted in one of our facilities or buses so based on this data we believe our

042mitigation strategies have been effective and are you know keeping keeping our students and staff safe so just want y'all to be aware of that where we about three weeks ago we were we were spiking a little bit but since then we've kind of come we've gotten back down on a on a good path we feel maybe a lot of progress in the past two weeks especially any questions regarding our covet numbers madam chair dr wells um i know we talked once before about um closing down a school we haven't had to do that that's a good thing to hear how many classes have we had to close completely like whole class worth say elementary we've had to close down five for a two week period in high school we've had three classrooms where we've had

043those students uh quarantined basically it's because they at the high school is because of eating lunch in the same room and when the mass go down to eating you're more likely to you know spread so that's kind of one of the reasons there at the high school and also our nursing program we had a case in our nursing program at the high school and since i did a lot of lab work close hand lab work that class was quarantined okay thank you madam chair and it's mike del over day charlotte but the contact tracing individual is that still yeah we open or we got they got help we got all good yeah yeah yeah so we we pulled somebody in from inside the division and we just and so then how are the one position

044to feel her position yeah sounds good any other questions that sounds good just want to put a little nail there i want to thank you for all the transparency that we are receiving to the school board and to the county and it's been well received and uh considering the time that we're in with this i think we're doing quite well yes we don't like to hear of any case but if we can just get it get it a hold on it and do what we need to do i feel that we've been more than proactive with that so i want to appreciate all the efforts of everyone involved thank you uh 5.03 5.03 okay on october 30th 2020 the virginia high school league released this document which uh it's included in board docs it's a

04530 40 page document so i didn't copy one for everybody but it is in your board docs and i have uh prepared a memorandum that you should have at your place about this so the vineyard high school league developed released the guidelines for return to participation for vhsl sports and activities again we have that at your place in the board docs so what i'd like to do is go through the memo with you real quick and hit the highlights of this versus the whole thing because it's you know you've done weeds a little bit but i like to hit the highlights with you and then if you have any questions i'd be glad to answer those um so the the guy the guidelines come in some general uh sports specific guidelines so if you really

046want to read about each sport you can read sport specific guidelines that are in there but some of the major overarching guidelines are as follows um there's a championship plus one format in which e4 will play 60 of the normal contests allowed regular season academic events do not have a calendar schools and teams may participate in academic events throughout the regular school year and every sport as well as theater will hold a state championship there is a maximum of 250 people at any event and this includes players coaches officials staff max's 250. venues are limited to 250 or 50 capacity whichever is smaller so if you have a smaller gym that can only hold 100 people that 50 percent you know if it's a 500 person gym they're stuck at 250 or 100 person gym

047they're stuck at 50 of that which would be 50 people so depending on the size of your venue and this is regardless of indoor or outdoor activities so even when they get into this the fall sports which we played in february football right now football will be capped at 250 people allowed in the stadium not just fans but total athletes coaches referees is capped at 250. and the high school league said that 250 limit will be enforced um if it's and there's some penalties if we don't enforce it all persons entering events should be screened prior to entry anyone experiencing symptoms should not be allowed to enter and note here for acps for our venues we we will require um they be screened and that will include coaches and players be screened prior to entering

048all persons and events must wear face coverings well in attendance fans should stay six feet away from people they do not live with participants should not be have to wear face coverings while engaged in the activity so they're on the court playing basketball they don't have to wear a face covering they can they want to but they're not required to when they're on the bench or outside of when they're not playing they are expected to have a face covering on so the only time they don't have one is when they're on the court actually playing cheerleaders are required to wear face coverings even during watch hearing [Applause] phase coverage must be worn in the sideline the dugout and by those actively involved especially in distancing cannot be maintained whenever possible we must maintain six feet

049of distance on the sideline bench area so like you're in basketball each chair on the bench has to be sit six feet apart and we may have to put student athletes into the ben into the bleachers behind the bench to maintain that agreement that the distance officials again they don't have to wear a face covering selectively engaged but when they're talking to the coaches or talking to players or talking to the clock operators they have to put a face covering on um and you must wear face covers and working or interacting with field personnel the chain crew ball boys scan supervision transportation passengers and drivers are required to wear face coverings while traveling by school transportation this includes contractor services like charter buses they must sit in the same seat going and coming and they

050must follow division health mitigation plan of one passenger per seat here's where it gets you the schools that don't adhere to this so if you had a team that wasn't following the mitigation policies the guidelines that sit the first times 300 fine second time that season is over they cancel the season so if you're not doing what you're supposed to do they'll come in and they'll just say well we're not playing in whatever sport it is or whatever group it is so this is again they have documents for every activity um all head coaches are required to attend a vhsl webinar on the school division we'll review the document requirements and expectations with all coaches prior to the december 7th that's when the winter season begins basketball begins december 7th wrestling and indoor track begins

051december 14th and the goal of us of the school division is to field teams in compliance with the virginia high school league and acps guidelines um we understand how important inner class interscholastic athletics are to our kids and our community um but we also know we have to reserve the right to suspend play if we need to based on you know the state of whatever's we're facing at the time um so we kind of would like you to you know give us some consensus on this that we are okay to move forward we also have the athletic directors and and principals have been have been signed off to develop protocols for across the whole seminole district we will play seminole district games we want every school in the in the district to have the same

052standards of athletes fans coaches everybody do the same thing because it wouldn't be fair for ambers county high school to have one set of standards and then we'll we don't let fans in but they can go to ec glass or brookville and have 250 people in the gym and and so we're all going to do the same thing so that we've uh the superintendents met last week and they've kind of signed off to the principals and ads to develop these protocols so the ads met yesterday and worked on this and they're going to present that to the principals next week then the principals will review it and they'll make recommendations to the superintendents over that and then we'll have some consensus there across the seminole district so we'll be doing the same thing and it

053could be a point where you have you know limited fans at these games because 250 is your max in the gym for any of these events so please don't be aware of that so we'd like your approval to to move forward to allow our students to participate in interscholastic athletics under the vhsl guidelines so at this time i have any questions i've been glad to try to answer them madam chair is the um collaborative effort in the seminal district does that include the screening procedures as well so that's not going to be set by individual schools okay does that look to be such things as temperature checks and all that just like we do yes yes so dr brown is the chairman of the seminole district and robert kurt our athletic director is the representative

054for the seminole district in the region on the executive committee so uh they're both working on this with their colleagues in the in the seminal district so we want everything to look we want if you think about it how the colleges did it so the acc decided this is what we're going to do the big ten decided and so it's going to look very much like that that the seminole district is going to say we're going to do this because if you've recognized some of this there are lots of school divisions across the state that have said we're not we're not doing this because as you guys know there's 50 60 some schools systems out there that aren't even in school yet and so that's a that's a tough bridge to cross if you're not

055saying it's safe enough to go back to school but you can come in the gym and play basketball we are in school and so we feel like we're doing the right things as far as mitigation is concerned and that we can we can safely do uh do these uh extracurricular activities for our students we knew it wasn't going to be ideal anyway but i think this is i mean something new i i'm just trying to figure out i feel sorry for the person trying to keep count up how many people are going to be in this football stadium well i think there's going to be like i think they'll probably end up with something like a list yeah like a guest in this in terms of streaming events oh yeah absolutely you know we're doing

056that for the classroom we might have to close the classroom down our foreign if you have a positive contact can we identify that they've been possible contact with five six ten whatever number one team we have to do that then the team will be down for two weeks and then we just have to try to reschedule or work best he can you know to make those games up but yeah we can't we have to follow the same guidelines that we have right now we've been doing that with the conditioning programs and you know student athletes and those that are have been quarantined and not allowed to come back up for conditioning they'll just continue that through everybody gets screened right now but you know before they can go to condition they get a temperature check

057as well as a screen every day and we'll continue that process dr wells do you have to um let's say we did have a team who couldn't participate because of we had enough too many cases of cove but uh did the two teams get to decide whether they're going to reschedule or does it automatically forfeit or how does that it wouldn't be a forfeit it just would count as a non-play or they try to reschedule okay clearly it's not going to look or feel like it has in the past but we're going to try to get these these students an opportunity to participate absolutely well i i'm you know i have been reading about this before we got here tonight and all the news has been out there about it so i think we're right

058in line with um the best possible way to do this and still at the same time be as safe as we can uh we on new grounds with this everyone is you know i've been watching a lot of college games now and the same thing as ms thompson was alluding to you know they had some cases and they just couldn't play two or three teams that we almost can't play so uh we will follow suit and do the best that we can to keep everybody in a good way and um you know 250 that's pretty good you know somebody's going to stay in the car and stream so it's okay coldest football might be at that time of year but anyway you need what do you need from us now this is this an action

059item or just go ahead because we don't have a plan okay that's what i said you just want us to say it's good it's all good to move forward all right is that all right is that okay let's move forward get the b balls bouncing all right thank you so much dr brown get the b-balls put our name on the list now we got to get in [Music] just kidding people out there this school board does not have preference we just back that up all right shall we move on to um student discipline yes ma'am so back into august july august september there's a lot of discussion about us having to require students to wear face coverage in the school and there's a lot of concern from the school board about the what would happen

060if a student refused and we had some some in-depth conversation here in these meetings and i'm i'm happy to tell you that as we're preparing for this you know as we went through all that and i had those conversations that we have not had any discipline reported thus far that is a result of a student refusing to wear a face covering there have been some conversations with students on the bus and other things about making sure the following procedures but we haven't got to a point where there's been any disciplinary referrals as a result of that so i feel that i think the students that are in the schools want to do whatever they can to stay in the schools and they know that's part of the requirement and they've understood that so um so

061right now there's been no discipline related we've had 22 discipline cases across the whole division thus far in the first seven weeks of school we've had 22 case uh referrals um this one referrals and but none of those have been for refusing to wear a mask in the building or on a bus so i think that's another positive positive thing we have had a couple on the suspension report that you see and i'll be glad to answer those questions if you have any questions regarding that but again the big picture i want to say was you know we're i think very positive there within with the disciplinary buildings right now phil thank you for that uh any questions on those without do we need to pull it i think last time uh right you asked

062that magical question and here we are young people are glad to be back yeah those who are back and have a pretty good sense of trying to word behave you know i'm not out there with them now but i'm hoping that's what we'll see okay thank you dr wells now we get into finance said mrs crouch is my twitter that's right she's live right there medicare members of the board you have at your place the budget monitoring forms the enrollment information the budget object code by summary i will be glad to answer any questions on tuesday the board of supervisors did approve the supplemental appropriation and those changes will be made for the november report okay so the things that you see in red will be pulled off because of those supplemental appropriations board members

063do you have any questions for ms crotch on the reports that we have received that's good okay moving on none thank you miss crouch for that how about 6.02 uh madam chair members of the board you have at your place uh information regarding the school activity reports for june 30th 2020. first of all i would like to congratulate all the schools we only had two notations which was improved from the prior year uh i will be glad to answer any questions madam chair i would like to uh thank miss crouch she she made it a goal to work specifically with the bookkeepers after last year to to get them up to speed and to to provide them some professional development and i think that paid off so we'll thank her for that thank you for

064that miss crouch yes i do remember we used to have one or two notations through the years and we're glad to see that that's kind of gone away um update on yes ma'am i'm sorry are we going to continue like annual training for the schools i i mean i'm appreciative of the improvement definitely but we need to always keep that in the forefront you know if we can have some annual reminders training i know mrs crouch you're doing an excellent job with that and i guess i just want to encourage us to continue that um and you know how are we communicating to our teachers about how they are to handle their receipts i mean being a teacher myself at the high school and doing activity funds i know the challenges your school at six

065o'clock at night and you get somebody hands your money and the office is closed what do you do so you know those type of things i remember hearing about what i should do but then there were times that maybe what i heard didn't really help me with what i needed so are we having those conversations with our teachers i know we had some something that i saw that was a little concerning with activity funds just just in the dollar amount at one of our schools and i know that that's can happen very easily so i want to make sure the teachers are comfortable with how they need to handle that so does the training go beyond administration to the teacher realm as well yeah we can do that i don't think that was done last

066year there's a um there's a document i believe miss crouch uh ms johnson we will continue visiting the schools to work with the principals and the bookkeepers to put guidelines in place on how to handle receipts after hours and i think we could probably do that a lot more efficiently now that we we handle some of these things a little bit differently anyway yeah yeah i mean i think we've done a good job at improving but just making sure that information is getting to the teachers i think because they have unique challenges yeah i i was just going second miss thompson i'm real big on internal controls in this and to what extent you can do things with personnel separation dues and stuff like that but um there was a couple things on here and

067you know they people got into teaching to teach they didn't expect to be accountings in the audience so it's just it's one of those collateral things but you know there's like miss thompson had mentioned there was one that was stood out particularly on there and i just you know want to make sure that that we're giving them the right resources to make sure that we're handling money appropriately which i feel confidently it's being handled appropriately just to document eye crossing a t kind of thing right there anything else the cares act funding we have some information here teresa madam chair members of the board at the last board meeting miss thompson asked her cares act funds so we provided a document which outlines all of the funds that we are to receive or additional cares

068act or board of supervisors and how these funds will be spent i will be glad to answer any questions i don't have any questions i'd just like to say thank you very helpful yes it is yeah having me right in front of you is extremely helpful theresa any questions from his crouch on this and i think what it should show you is that we're in a a good place because we've done a lot of the the upfront buying of ppe and and and getting staff in place and we have funds on the back end that can still help us get to to the end of the year so i think we've been very frugal very good stewards of the cares character money anything else for ms crouch board if not thank you thank you thank

069you thank you mr crowd all right let's move into another area here of uh account to build built accountability dr norma said you yes ma'am it is right mr chair and members of the board uh you have in your packet a um three pager that's the vdo estate accreditation task force update and this is just based on some information that y'all had requested on what's going on with our accreditation system and what is in upcoming for us just the background for you i put it in there just to make sure that you understand that we do have a state agreement with federal government right now that we have waived accreditation and that agreement between the state and the school systems is that we complete assessments that allow for measures of student growth amherst county public

070schools has implemented a map assessment program and we'll discuss that in a little bit we are going to be assessing students to establish the new baseline that is required for the end of this year um and even though our state accreditation system has lessened the weight of the standardized test i just want to make sure we all understand that that is still a part of the accreditation system that comes into play during 2022-2023 that's a three-year revolving accreditation guideline our goal in amherst is and always has been since the governor closed our schools in march of this past year this year is that to evaluate the impact of the pandemic on student learning and establish a new baseline for measuring the student growth and to fill those gaps so what's on the horizon for us

071vdoe is contemplating that request again to the federal government to have a waiver uh regarding um the 2020-21 school year and what we're required to do in regards to federal meeting the federal accountabilities and that is due to not all of the schools in the state being fully in person we have hybrid we have full in-person and we have those that are still 100 remote and that makes a huge difference when you're talking about instruction and student growth and measuring the progress of students across the state so they will be requesting that waiver from the federal government and we should know something closer to the end towards our testing amherst will continue to do the full meet the full requirements of the state and even for those students that are in our ara program who

072are required to come in to actually do their test for the state and be under supervision of school personnel and then their state accreditation task force which i'm a member of will is set to meet again at the end early to middle of january and i'll bring back an update in regards to all of those decisions that are made at that time i have attached to this the superintendent's memo that went out november 6th that actually gives you more of the details regarding our state assessments that will be taking place this year and the waivers that have been granted to us already and then what guidelines we have to establish for our testing this year and that i'll take any questions in regards to our accountability for this upcoming school year i i do want

073to make sure that we mention that like dr norman said she on is it's not a large group and so our voice is being heard there but as a group a lot of their efforts are to to kind of turn over this high-stakes testing mentality this is an opportunity and so they'll continue to push for uh that at the federal level but that has to come from the federal level to waive those requirements because the state's already done what they they could do any questions in regards to that madam chair have a question yes so i know this that you just talked about was overall accreditation but my question is about how um we're doing has anyone looked at ara and all these online virtual classes are we doing okay with that just don't know

074in regards to um students keeping up just daily and we are constantly in contact with um students and their parents okay um to the point where i think our parents are getting frustrated with us we make so many calls our teachers make so many calls so we do have um a committee then i'll talk about that in a minute in regards to boosting our student engagement and participation okay but we are monitoring that very closely okay any other questions on this at this time we will you touch on the synchronous piece then i don't want to step out of turn but synchronous learning yes we have several of our courses right now mainly at the high school uh that are synchronous where teachers actually remote into the classes at the high school and then we

075have some that the teachers do where they are off-site and the students are off-site and they remote in to the teacher we have google meets that are established every day with our teachers and in between teachers and students and students sign up for attending those so the teachers have office hours we have several of our teachers at the elementary level specifically who are making the recordings keeping the attention of a of a second grader for a lengthy amount of time is a challenge and so we have set up two different locations right now where we have cameras all of the equipment that a teacher would need in order to do short videos where they can do instruction they can then talk to the students about it and if a student can't remote in for that

076then they have that video that's available to them so they get that direct instruction so we have both of it going on asynchronous and synchronous instruction taking place at the elementary level i beat this one every every meeting now but i really do i mean my personal feelings of course i can't speak the rest of board members but i i think it's important to try to i think that would i understand the equity piece with the internet but i really again i i think having that especially at the the elementary or or you know you talk about keeping a second grader's attention that's a lot harder in a recording than it is to in a face-to-face i mean that's uh yes but you know i just i would like to continue to see the progress

077towards that whether it's a you know some kind of percentage report of how much of our classes are synchronous or i i just i really think that would be a because when you talk equity i you know i think i said this at the other meeting but you know an ara student not getting that face to face because they choose not to be physically face to face is just as much in my opinion inequitable as not offering it so but i apprec again it's not not a knock on what you guys are doing you're making progress but i just i'm going to continue to enstress the importance of what i would like to say i appreciate that um i cannot tell you how valuable it is for face-to-face instruction and the more that we can

078do that and the more our teachers feel comfortable and the more that our parents feel comfortable and you know because they work and so one of the biggest requests that we had starting out was that teachers adjusted to where when parents got back home they could be there especially with the little ones the kindergartners first grade second grade and so some of the videos have been really helpful for parents who are trying to watch so they can help their kids um in the evenings so but yes sir i'll bring back a report on that i mean i i don't don't i mean if that's what my fellow board members would like to see as well i would i i would agree with that i feel like i mean we've lost so much right now anyways

079that i don't want to hold back anything that anything unnecessary that we have to so i would i would absolutely agree with that all right our teachers if i can just give a shout out to our teachers and the and those that are working with ara they have stepped up to the plate they i mean these are people who have never thought about doing remote learning and they have gone above and beyond so i'm very proud of the accomplishments that we've been able to to make okay good yes ma'am yes ma'am carry on dr noah yes um i have um amherst county public schools has chosen to do map testing to align with the requirements of the state and um the best thing that we have going for us right now is we're very fortunate

080that we have an expert um here in the division um in regarding map assessment and that's dr arnold who had brought this with him and so when we were trying to figure out what was the program that we wanted to use to assess student measuring student growth this was one that he was very familiar with one that i had learned about and i've asked him to kind of lay the foundation for y'all as a board to basically understand what this program is about and then how we will use it to fill the gaps of instruction over the next several years so i think we're using the term expert very loosely [Applause] but as you know as we've talked over the years that i'm a strong proponent of measuring success based on student growth and sol

081tests do not measure growth they can't they're they're criterion-based tests and they don't have the ability to show where a student started and where they end up and so some of what's happening on that accreditation committee is that's the movement that's the movement that we're all trying to make is to to get to a place where we start learning where kids are and where they need to go as opposed to what fact they learned this this six weeks right and so we have we've put in place the the map testing and um it is given this year to all kindergarten through 11th grade students and it's in the areas of reading and math um it will this year replace benchmark tests and that is something that the benchmarks were set up to to be in

082line with the sol tests but one of the good things about map is that they've also aligned it with this the virginia standards of learning so the results from these can give us some information about how students may or may not do on the how well they may do on the sol test so the the biggest thing i think you need to understand and i don't want to get too too technical but it's the difference between norm reference testing and criterion reference testing and so the sols are criterion reference tests it's it's a type of test that we use to to show uh mastery of material taught material so the sol test teacher teaches all year a certain set of standards a certain set of information and at the end of the year the student

083has to give it back all right so it's mastery of that material that taught material during that year it doesn't extend beyond you know knowing the information it doesn't ask you to apply that information all right norm reference dot on the other hand is is used to determine a student's aptitude or proficiency their ability to learn is is a better way of saying that their ability to take that information that they've mastered and apply it to something and so the goal is to improve that ability for our students and the best way i think the real life example i can give between the difference between criteria and norm reference is in a criterion a criterion test in real life would be the written test for your driver's license right so you have to master the

084material of knowing what a stop sign looks like what a one-way looks like how far behind a car you have to to follow you know those kinds of things but it doesn't tell us anything about your ability to drive so a norm reference test in real life would be the behind the wheel test and so that's when you actually apply that information your proficiency to apply that information and so that that's kind of and we can go much deeper into this but i think i want to stay at that level just for now that it's going to show the differences between the sol tests and the benchmarks and the map test and so as you guys know we have had students that have been away from content for a long time and so it was

085important for us to figure out where our students were right where they where they were in their proficiency not did they learn certain facts in march last year it's it's do they have the ability to learn at the grade level that they're on moving forward and that's going to be really important and so what students get is a writ score and i'll i'll show you the definition of a rit score but it's it's what happens in map is that students across the country so millions of students take the the map test and what they do is they so all the first graders would be put in a in a group and they'd all take the test and you're given percentile on first grade material so if if you are highly uh proficient at the skills

086in first grade you're going to be up towards a hundred percentile so 99 98 97 percentile if you are way below you're going to be down one two three four five and then there's a a wide range in the middle and as you understand 50th percentile is the the average across the across the country so what happens is you take it at the beginning of the year and you get a baseline number and that's a risk score and it shows you in comparison to all of your age colleagues your peer age colleagues in say the first grade or the second grade where you land on your proficiency at that grade your ability to uh master skills right and so what it what will happen is they'll group students that score say i take it in

087the second grade and i'm at the 10th percentile there will be a bunch of other kids that are at the 10th percentile as well and so what the map can do is it can project where that student along with the other students at the 10th percentile should go in their mid-year test and then how much they should grow by the end of the year so so in essence they're saying okay you scored at this level and if you get the appropriate instruction you should be here the next time we test and if you get the appropriate instruction you'll be here at the next test so it gives it gives a student information about where they need to go what skills they're lacking and it actually this program gives teachers all of that information about each

088child so each child will get a report that parents will see that teachers will have that they can say okay this this child needs to work on x y and z and for us this year that's important to know what skills our students have and don't have and so that's why this type of testing is is very important for us so rit is is just a scaled score it's a it's a stable stable score so if you think about another real life example of uh when you when you have your a child and you go into the the doctor and they say you're on the 10th percentile for height and weight right that's very similar that you you should progress um through through a range and so they'll give you that range and i'm going

089to show you this little chart and it's it's important so you can you can use the data that's in your uh that's on board docs to look at so in essence a kindergarten the mean score so what a normal in the middle of the road kindergartener in the united states would score 136 i mean that doesn't mean anything other than that that puts you at the 50th percentile so when you look at the data that's in your your onboard docs you'll be able to see where students are in relation to that if that makes sense okay so what i'd like to do you have all of this data and i don't want to overwhelm the individual schools and the individual grade levels i want you to look at it from a big picture first because

090the data that you have is baseline data we we can't we can't make any determinations about growth yet because this is how they showed up to us this year right this isn't this isn't measuring what they've learned this year this this is what their proficiency was when they they came to us so but what we can do is over time we can start to make judgments about uh growth and what they've learned and what they've not learned let me give you an example of what that might look like so if we look at this if you if you look at the the the bar graph the red is uh for each grade level so i believe it's kindergarten first second third fourth and fifth so this is an elementary the top are reading scores the

091bottom are math scores so the red is the is the national average okay the blue is that particular average okay so if you look at the first grade for example the first grade scores are well below the national average okay but if you look at fifth grade the reading scores are well above national average and so if this were a a graph of that cohort of students over five years the judgment you would make is some good things are happening in that school you're taking students who are behind the national average to above the national average now we can't do that yet but we can do it we can start looking at it by student the next time they take their test and by the end of the year we can we can start to

092make those kinds of judgments about how students are progressing and what skills they still lack because then they come around to the next year and that information goes with them so their teacher in the following year already knows when they walk in the door what skills they're lacking not a did you pass the reading test the year before because that doesn't really tell our teachers anything so this is i believe a much better way to look at it i think one of the things that we can say about this data as you look at it our students showed up this year on par with their peers in this country there are some great levels that are a little bit below national average there are some grade levels at different schools that are a little bit

093above but on the whole our students line up very favorably with their peers in this country and and i think that's a good thing right i think one of the things that we're all worried about is did our our students fall way behind well they didn't fall way behind their peers that's what this data can tell us that's the only judgment i can make about this data is that when they walked in the doors they were on par with their colleagues across this country and i think that's that's a positive and that's something i think uh our teachers should feel very good about uh where their students are right now so let's see if i had that's it so are there any questions about what you have is each school's data right so every school

094in our division you have their data and so you can look at the you'll look at like the blue bar versus the red bar and then you can go into the data and and look at each grade level and you'll get a little bit more specific information it's it's pretty self-explanatory but always think of this in terms of this is how they walked in the door but this is where they were when they got to us and then looking in the future so this is an interesting so somebody asked about how the ara students were doing this is the ara as you see the blue bar is well above the red and so the students that are in ara and amherst county on average are above the national average that's how they showed up to

095us so what we'll see in when we do our mid-year or our end of the year did that stay there did it drop did it go up further and so that's how we want to look at this data can i ask something this might sound mean hell means something i would imagine some of the especially for the younger kids probably measuring some of the parents on that also we understand that right one of the things that we did this year is we um with our ara students i would say probably 90 of our students came in to take the test out of school okay so we did not this was one of the tests that um for baseline data we opened up amherst elementary school and we opened up in ellison middle school and those

096two schools we held three fridays in a row and the students were transported and picked up and took the test with teachers at each of those schools yeah so so those those students walked and walked into the school year in a good place that's what you can determine from that we're really positive about this because it really is a tool for our teachers to say this student needs this specific help on this specific skill it's so hard to look at an sol test or a benchmark test and if you got a problem wrong how do you remediate that and how do you support that other than to say well this is the answer to that problem and that's that's not what we want for our students we want our students to to be able to

097apply their learning and so this this test really helps with that and so we're very pleased uh to be able to give that this year and i and i hope i didn't [Music] run in circles uh but if you have further questions i'll be glad to answer them tonight or if you want to look at the data first and then ask questions i'll be glad to to answer them yes ma'am quick question about the standard deviation we're looking at the bar graph and you know sometimes they differ by a point or two where do we find the standard standard deviation for the overall i see a standard deviation on the individual grade levels right but do we have that i think we'd have to yes maybe yeah i have that i'll upload it to board

098docs it's an actual document that comes from the map company okay because some of them are so close it's like you know is that really is there really a difference there and then the next question is when we start looking at the individual grades and we see low low average average high average and high and we see the percentages there is that relative data to the peers that took it or is this a standard that map has and you should get this to be low because no it's a norm so it's it's normal yes okay thank you and just as i'm learning this so um i've been ingrained in standards of learning for years and years and years and so our teachers so making this switch to something that is going to be wonderful for

099our students and wonderful for our teachers we know it's going to take time to have people wrap their heads around what this actually what this data shows and what they can do with the data and that's the most exciting thing and i know you know you'll have those different benchmarks and you'll see the growth through the year does this software allow you to look at an individual student from year to year oh yes yes yeah so because my son went through it and so parents get reports and parents get reports on things that they can do at home as well to help with those those skills and most of our um i think we only have one school left that is still sending out their math reports to their families um most of them went

100out the last week in october the first week in november so if you if a child took a map test that was sent home or either mailed even our ara students the families have already received that and they received information explaining what that report says thank you very useful too but i'm kind of like i used to say if the two producers is good it's uh miss thompson's saying you know showing the overall outcome and then what are you gonna do with that you know the teacher's gonna do with this after they find them some more reasonable on it tonight but sounds very good thank you for any other questions on that first of all when i first got i had to look up where the man all right moving right on is that are

101we good look in the back yes all right um thank you um thank you dr norman what you got the next item is i'd like to talk to you about the three ad hoc committees that we established at the beginning of this school year and just to kind of give you an update of what's going on with those committees before they bring back their formal report at the end of the month and then we'll have that information for you in december the first committee was equity and grading committee and that was chaired by mr maddox and dr jennings talking about specifically how we are adjusting grading what are we doing with our students that are remote because every student is a remote student on friday and how are we doing that in the grading in

102comparison the committee actually attended a series of webinars with uh featured rick warmly who is an international expert when it comes to grading and talking about feedback and what assessments look like and instructional delivery models that engage students and that was a awesome webinar series that we were able to bring back some really good information on what it is to grade a student what is it all about grading and we've taken that information we've given that information out to our teachers and our administrators receiving some information back from them on what they what they like what they don't like the committee's reviewing all the practices that we currently have in place adapting some of them but we're looking at four key areas one on the conditions of assessment you know where are you assessing what

103are the type of assessments that you're doing the professional development that we're providing for them and communication how are we communicating that to not just the students with their feedback but parents our community and really understanding what is it about grading in amherst county and so they're bringing back to the superintendent a report to him at the end of november to kind of give him some recommendations on what that looks like for amherst county and equity and grading the second committee is program evaluation committee and that's chaired by dr arnold and mr neighbors and i'd like to turn it over to mr neighbors um to give you an update good evening chair members of the port um we obviously too in order to evaluate our programs especially we need feedback from stakeholders that are using

104those programs uh so we're working with the group handover research uh hopefully all of you received an email late last week that had a link to a survey in it that they are they put together with us they are collecting that data and the process of collecting that data will be analyzing it for us to review ultimately what we want to hear is really from all of our stakeholder groups is how they're interacting with the different processes that we put into place where are some areas we might need to improve or further evaluate and be able to move forward with the results of that data directly from them i did want to know and actually it says it right on the first page as you log into that survey uh that the method in which

105they are analyzing that and reporting it back to us allows for more candid responses we're not going to see response by response or this is a third grade teacher at england elementary school we really want to know how things are going how people feel about what we put into place and be able to evaluate that appropriately and without transparency response from them hopefully are going to be having that information provided to us for review i will be coming back to you guys at a future meeting with recommendations based on that data and of course addition to the data itself be happy to answer the questions you might have about yeah so one thing that we'll get this survey data back but we'll also be using the map data to determine whether or not our students

106are actually growing inside of the the systems that we've set up and so that's part of program evaluation we want to make sure that parents and students are accessing this but we also want to the main thing is we want to know is it working and so that's where we're going to need to use our data to kind of cross-reference with this survey data so that's going to be a little bit further on down the road when we do the mid-year testing the last committee that we have is regarding student engagement and teacher observation committee and they go hand in hand um we have done a 180 degree turn on instructional delivery and what that looks like remotely because every single one of our teachers are participating in that this year and we also um

107are diligently working with students especially those on remote days on student participation and getting engaged in the classroom just as if they would if they were face-to-face with their teacher so we have a committee and they've met several times in regards to this one of the things that they did was take the observation tool that we currently had worked with mr gallagher and the hr department and established some look key look fors on what that look like in a remote setting because what you look for in an online setting and what you look for in a classroom [Music] maybe two entirely different things and so what they did is they came up with some look for us established a new um different remote learning observation tool that they could use for student engagement the next

108meeting they actually went in and set up several observations i attended several of them myself and uh did those look fors to see are we seeing the students um communicating in a way with their teacher where they're getting that instant feedback and they're getting directions specific directions uh are they is it a synchronous or is it a a way where they're just going through the module and looking at the videos what does that look like for the students and so they will come back at the end of this month they are doing another round of observations we'll come back at the end of this month and provide some guidance on professional development for our teachers what some of the things that we need to implement in our canvas courses or google classrooms that will support

109and then what types of assessments that we can actually pull from that as well and i'll dr lyle is actually chairing that committee for us and i'll answer any questions on any of those committees if you have those and i want to remind you that these committees were set up as a result of some of those areas that we actually didn't have in the 70 page plan that you know that when we started it's like oh yeah we need to we need to work on this too so that's what that's what this part is it's it's our attempt to continue to grow as we learn more about how to handle this type of learning i think it's very informative [Music] is that accepting the teacher's practice of writing it's a combination so it is we're

110looking at how teachers go about using rubrics what their grading scale is actually the two types of grades that can be calculated now content of mastery or course progress measure of progress think of the word measure of progress those two categories um and it's basically formative and summative um tasks that are done and so how's how are those used to really tell us how a kid's doing in a classroom that's all i had thank you [Music] um the last thing that i have tonight is um just an update regarding uh mr maddox is here who is the supervisor of our social studies department and this is just an update that was requested in regards to the standards uh in the memo it outlines everything that they're doing in regards to the new standards that are

111taking place specifically what's going on with the recommendations from the board of education regarding the african-american history education the commission that developed new information to go into the courses that has been approved it was approved on october 15th by the board of education and will be implemented into the courses we have um current sol tests are not going to be revised to match those however moving forward they've asked for all divisions to implement these so we mr maddox has pulled together what that looks like for us revisions have been sent out to our teachers so they have those those went out october 30th teachers are going to begin gathering those current resources to assist with the new standards they're going to be working in partnership and provide resources with not just vdoe but our local

112colleges our museums the vsslc and what that looks like for us and then also providing some professional development so the virginia department of education is offering professional development and we will have our team of teachers go to that pd and then bring that back to us as well and then work on workshops and i'm assuming they're probably going to be virtual this summer as they were last summer on the curriculum and pacing guides the division of mr max actually applied for pilots for amherst county to participate in the first one was the pilot for the african-american history elective course um as you know amherst county i have always probably as long as i've been here for probably more years than that has offered an african-american histories course and um the state has now put that

113in as a official elective and so we presented a couple of teachers to be on the pilot for that and we did not we were not chosen for that pilot um so we're going to continue offering our class and we'll gain that information as soon as that comes out official from the state we did however he applied for another one a pilot program using state performance tasks to verify credits in history and social sciences for the 11th grade and we are chosen to participate in that which i'm very excited about because that is our performance-based learning task which we really have been on an initiative to implement that in amherst county for the last couple of years and so that will be great we are going to be supplied all the materials for this 11th

114grade history from vdoe they met the amherst county high school teachers met on october the 16th and right now we're just waiting for more information from the from the virginia department of education the last part is that even though our standards are changing we are still testing on old standards so we're going to be testing uh 2008 standards and 2015 standards in history uh this year so and mr maddox or myself will answer any questions that you have in regards to that are here at um i know that the k through 12 changes you've provided for us and they look fairly significant so how have we communicated those changes to our parents and our community before those things are taking place in our classrooms well the first thing we have to do is communicate those

115to our teachers making sure that our and they have received that information they will come back into cohort groups or grade level or departments and go through those step-by-step creating those curriculum and pacing guides and changing that and then as we go through that process there will be social media there will be a post that goes out they'll be letters that go out our history teachers will work with parents to kind of explain that i'm sure we'll do some nightly events that that really is something that the teachers will teachers and administrators will kind of take hold of them just as we do with any of the other major standards that change we did the same thing when the english standards change it's like a revolving door that happens every seven years with our standards

116well i think in the environment that we're in today that that communication to our parents is going to be vitally important so if we're going to wait to share that information with our parents until after the training and after all of this has taken place then i think we should encourage our parents to at least go online and look at those changes like you're sharing with us today i know that it's my understanding you can tell me if i'm correct or not the government the governor put a committee together to review our standards that committee has made recommendations to the vdoe yes and then the bvoe has made these changes and they're coming to us yeah and as a school system we're going to make those changes because that's what our state is telling us

117to do we are right now with the 10 years just was approved by the board board there and they're encouraging us to implement but they would like to test and everything they will not really all the standards changes will not happen until right now we are encouraged to which we are going just to implement the new changes and everything here this is not going to be on any of this and we're really waiting on the question [Music] by resources and professional development so we're waiting on that supposed to come out this month and i push all that information out to all of my teachers through my google classrooms that i've done the classroom set up for each grade level [Music] yeah i think we'll bring you we'll bring you a kind of a plan as

118to how that would be i know that the um the one that's the high school african-american history elective at this point is we've had that course but they're making a recommendation from this committee to make a whole new course and at this point that's an elective but i'm reading that that may become mandatory for graduation that the committee has recommended that to the governor yes so it's it's my understanding that it's not mandatory for graduation at this point but that's the recommendation so down the road that could be so i just feel like we need to be very transparent in these changes i understand how the cycle works academically from being in education and it's very typical of what you do but given our environment today i want to make sure our parents understand where

119this is coming from up front and we have that transparent conversation you know we were looking at a policy issue not long ago and i know some of our community felt as if that was coming from us as a board and that we were just you know trying to push something through over on them without them understanding that and i never want that to be first i don't want us as a court to be perceived directly i totally i i understand what you're saying now yes ma'am um i think it's important for us to be very transparent in this and so we will bring you back a plan on how we will present this out to the community right alongside with us informing our teachers and teaching and training on that thank you so i

120appreciate that if you could also provide us with the recommendation for the new high school course yes i know you did k-12 and i can click on that and see the edits um but i've searched for the one at the high school and haven't been able to find it so if you could provide that with that link that would be helpful thank you any other questions in regards to that okay thank you thank you very much that's all i have madam chair okay um went down in human resources all right good evening madam chair remember the board just gonna follow up tonight on a question that was asked last month at the board i think about ms liggin it was regarding our health and safety protocol for student teachers field placements and volunteers so we're

121back to coving so we've been very proactive with these groups to make sure that everybody's safe in our in our schools and our buildings anybody that enters our buildings regarding student teachers and field placements i held a meeting with all university placement coordinators on tuesday august 25th reviewed all health and safety protocol for any students that might be placed in amherst county public schools we reviewed daily symptom checking protocol and tracking communication protocol and reporting to work protocol these are some of the main things that we cover with all of our employees and we wanted to make sure that they were all following the same protocol before coming into our buildings in all university coordinators were asked to also meet with their students anyone being considered to be repeat place to review and implement these

122protocols with them in addition to that individual school principals have also met with student placements to review our health and safety protocols as well so they have a full understanding many of them have google uh like a google sheet that where they can kind of complete their checklist on the morning and our student teachers they can access those things to make sure they're on board with that school system as well at school in addition to that they all follow the daily symptom screen that anybody follows entering a building so the temperature checks the screening protocol so there's multiple layers there for those folks so i feel like that's been very effective regarding volunteers all principals have been advised to limit their acceptance of volunteers this year and it'd be a little bit limiting in that

123regard we've asked that we don't have volunteers working in close proximity uh with students when they're in the building to try to limit some of those things let's see for our volunteers and again all volunteers or anybody that enters the building they're following the same safety protocol with with the daily checks entering the building they've sent their temperatures taken they follow the checklist i believe our practices have been effective to date as dr wells had mentioned previously i don't think we've had any cases that have come from any of these groups they've all been you know obviously some community spread we have had one or two student teachers who may have been impacted with a quarantine due to an ex potential exposure in a school as a teacher would which ended up turning out just

124fine and negative but they they follow the same protocol so if something happens in a school and we suspect there may have been exposure we put anybody on quarantine they're subject to that as well we communicate with their field placement coordinators and and follow those protocols so i feel like that's been very productive we've been proactive with it and we obviously want to make sure everybody is safe in our buildings and anybody enters our buildings follows all the proper safety protocol so um i don't know if there were other aspects of that question but i'm happy to take any questions regarding these these uh protocols it's a very difficult uh you know needle to thread because we want to keep everybody safe and have as few people in there as possible but probably one of

125our best ways of of identifying and bringing on new teachers that we'll need the following year comes from our student teachers and so because we get a look at them and so we're trying to kind of kind of weigh both of those those things as we move forward but uh we will continue to do everything we can to make sure that they follow exactly what everybody else in our buildings are doing we appear to have some strong student teachers with us this year we have had we have limited to a degree our practicum and field placement students there have been some requests for some substantial numbers of those individuals in our different buildings and we've really tried to limit that substantially and if in fact they had hours to serve we would try to condense

126those hours into a few number of days rather than you know several hours over many days just to kind of again prevent exposure and many of the placement coordinators have actually come up with alternative assignments for their their practicum students we don't want to turn people away but we want to limit the numbers and kind of reduce the possibility of exposure so working strongly with student teachers and just limiting to a degree the field placements that may change we're analyzing what we're going to do in the spring upcoming and it kind of depends on where we are and what the landscape looks like at that time so any further questions in that regard very good information and i think what it stemmed from that i might have asked a question doing this little peek that

127we had um some weeks back or maybe a month back we didn't want to have it said that too many people were coming in and out we appreciate pto pta parent help for sure we didn't want to say that we didn't appreciate it we just wanted to be a limitation on how many people were coming in daily to work with the students and to work with the teachers or to be assistants in this environment but yes indeed we do not want to discourage student teaching we like you just said we're looking at these people as being prospective acpa's family but at the same time we want to be careful of the institution that they're coming from that there hasn't been an outbreak there yeah and all the i was i was basically looking at it

128from a health standpoint i can't help but do that sometimes so it wasn't meant to say everybody should lock the doors and pull down the curtains but be very discreet on the health portion of who's coming and going so thank you for that information you're welcome i think we have strong practices in place so if we can ensure everybody follows them i think we're going to be in good shape there sounds good and other questions on that ladies and gentlemen thank you if not i just i want to take it this is an opportunity to to thank you all uh for letting us uh providing us the opportunity to hire additional staff to support our teachers our students um that's been hugely beneficial you know from my perspective the instructional assistants that we've brought on

129many of these have been in one year only positions but they've been very supportive um you know custodial positions you know health assistance if necessary to help with contact tracing and the the student the teachers the licensed teachers we've brought on board to help fill our sub positions have been incredibly valuable and helpful so they have really allowed us to provide continuity of instruction have very minimal loss have very high fill rates and you know that i've been able to manage that myself and kind of being on top of it when working with the principal so i've enjoyed sending them out as need be and and having competent licensed individuals who are doing very well uh fill these positions so and i thank you all for that because that was a concern yours to to

130make sure we have we needed and and that's been a big plus so thank you thank you so much i think that's sentiment still isn't it to um keep everybody well staffed to make comfortable surroundings any other questions for doc feminists gallagher okay all right we are down at this uh dr alan wheels down at the student representatives here [Music] good afternoon good evening good evening board members faculty and parents last month we planned and did many things at the high school to raise morale first off the high school has been doing spirit week which is a long time tradition at the high school this year's spirit week will last for three weeks the themes are hat day dress for success character day superhero day and lancer day the school is also in the process

131of creating a student help desk where students will help and answer any questions about technology with the help of teachers the national honor society is a group of students who help the community and uphold the four pillars scholarship service leadership and character the induction for the national honor society will be held on friday weather permitting and it will be held at the football stadium where students and family are at a safe distance and in response to mr terry at the last board meeting colson and i have asked students about how content they are with the way they're getting school work most of the students are content with getting their schoolwork online if the student had a hard time everything schoolwork online teachers provided them with a paper copy of their schoolwork thank you thank you

132good evening i'm chair members of the board um so i'm going to give you uh really what we've been doing at the high school regarding morale boosters uh like reagan said we have spirit week and oh my goodness it's been so fun walking around the hallways and seeing people in student ties or their football jerseys it's just been really cool seeing those traditions come back along with that um at the end of uh spirit week we do have a pep rally now this isn't traditional pep rally we're not all been piled into the gym it's gonna be uh hopefully live streamed uh we're gonna have uh like i said last meeting a big gooh game uh we've already worked on that that's pretty much gonna be done and everyone's gonna be uh on there and

133whoever is placed in the top they're going to give them prizes we'll also have a tradition so if um in spirit week every single time you participate you get one your name thrown into you know this drawing to pie either administrator or a teacher and uh that's going to be on the pep rally as well secondly since the last meeting i have been elected to serve as senior class president so that's a really cool thing that i wanted to bring up and with that the first tradition we wanted to bring back as a senior class was senior class breakfast that's one thing that we that was really fun for last year's seniors and being a senior i kind of want to be part of that too now with this we're going to try to do

134this outside and in the front lawn where the old tennis courts used to be so that'll be really cool for these seniors to get a really taste of what last year seniors got speaking of that field out in front of the school something else going on there in the next week which is spoon river anthology a play that amorous theater is putting on and luckily i'm part of that which is uh we've been working really hard social distance of course and uh it's gonna be really cool and it fits well outside because the play takes place in a cemetery which is outside and it's gonna be transformed this you know really spooky cemetery so that's going to be really cool so those are the few traditions that we have brought back and are planning to

135in the future thank you when is that point i think i found something [Music] who constructed the mausoleum that would be mr pryor uh he's done a great job of really helping me out there's the air for many [Music] wonderful news great news from lancerville right yes ma'am thank you so much for all that hard work should we lift it up and lucy yes ma'am okay i'm going to add to that morale boosting at lancerville and so um this happened this week so it's not on the agenda but i think it's very important for me to announce lynchburg living magazine they do best of every year and this year they're i was informed two days ago that the top public school in the reading area was amherst county high school and so i brought dr

136brown here just to make sure that we could all give him a standing ovation but hang on i need to say what was told to me because the lady that talked to me she said the usual suspects will find this very shocking so i think the usual suspects were lynchburg centric schools i said but it has been she said but it has been noticed regionally the work being done for children in amherst county generally and at the high school specifically and another part of this too speaks to what this community feels about that school as well because this community has to feel proud to go and to vote for those guys too and so i think those things are pretty amazing and the january edition it will come out in their magazine and there's a

137reception i believe in january uh to go receive the award and we'll put some we'll put a lot of press out around it but uh just very proud of that school and this this school division in general because the things we've done in the last year uh it's it's deserved i believe so congratulations dr brown and i have to say i gotta give all the credit to my team and my administrators my teachers and the staff and their mainly students nothing special about me we just have a really awesome group of people and they have been going to sleep late to waking up early and sacrificing time from their own families to take care of our kids and i couldn't be more proud to be a leader of these amazing people and amazing students every

138single day so the privilege is all mine and i'm just so super proud of our team they've done a great job and our administrative support staff here i mean it's a big team effort from our papillions and bus drivers cafeteria ladies this is a win for our community and so i really appreciate everybody's time and support of the board thank you so much yes okay so i'm going to do my cove at 19 update and that is surrounds more about the the community three weeks ago right after uh we had our board meeting the number of cases per hundred thousand in amherst county was 28 which makes us at a very high risk uh two weeks ago it was at 26.6 i'm happy to report today it's down to 10.6 which makes us very low

139for the region um you know we're still and this is coming off the heels of a couple of events where there was probably a lot of congregating with halloween and election day so we're still monitoring that but we're doing pretty well we've we're almost to that 14 days after that so we feel pretty good about that i do want to however urge everybody in this community to be very careful uh during thanksgiving i know that people will want to congregate again and it's probably been a long time since families have gotten together uh but for from our perspective in order to continue to do and provide for our students the way we've been doing it we have to make sure that our community is part of this and continues to do the the right things

140uh to to allow us to continue on so i just wanted to kind of give that update i think uh some folks we've done a good job as a community in the last two or three weeks so those numbers were coming down and so we're we're pleased with that now that being said uh there was there was some information that um i was made aware of about us going all remote after thanksgiving there was a rumor out there and i i tried to get out some information the reason that happened was because when we were at our height there three weeks ago we realized that we may we need to be prepared if we are forced to go to all remote so just from a preparation standpoint we started asking our teachers to make sure

141you've communicated with your parents and your teachers your students about how to contact them if this happens so i think what happened was most people that even though they were told this is in preparation and we're not we're not intending to do this i think just what people in their minds they they go to that place but i do want to tell you what we have done in terms of making sure we're prepared we have gotten all of that information from our schools and we want to make sure that we know how parents will best receive information if we get there the staff dr norman's instructional staff spent about a week of this is all they did they reviewed every canvas page in the division to make sure that they all met certain criteria because

142one of the things we want to make sure is that a student on this end of the county versus a student on that in the county they're getting the same type of instruction and so we wanted to make sure that those were as consistent as possible then the instructional staff provided feedback to teachers and then teachers made updates as necessary as needed and the each school right now is developing a detailed plan on how to roll out to parents and and students if something were to occur that we could no longer be in person i do want the caveat to be out there that is not our intention we don't want to be all remote however we also think it's really important to be prepared and so probably by this time next week every school

143will have a detailed plan what we'll do we'll add it to the the back of the roadmap to return so we'll have all of that in a document but i know that amherst county high school and amazon have done some very detailed work and they're exemplars so we'll be using their their work as templates for our other schools to make sure that if we get there it's done smoothly we don't want to find ourselves where we were last march maybe that's a probably a good stopping point there if you have any questions about either covid or remote preparedness madam chair on the remote piece maybe i'm not in front of canvas or whatever to try to figure this out how is it that we can't just create a single if we're worried about continuity a

144single uh lesson per grade and just and and have that clone to roll out we're trying to do that too i'm trying to figure out my classroom teachers for once my ears to the ground i hear a lot of stories of nerves breakdowns crying that kind of stuff going on and it concerns me that what kind of you know what what's happening at that level and i know some things have to be but so i'm just trying to figure out on my own comprehension of how that can't be done through cloning you know a template so to speak that instead of putting that pressure on the teachers trying to be face to face in addition to preparing for this yes um one of the things that um i don't know i don't know how knowledgeable

145it is out there but when we took on um using virtual virginia and canvas as our platform um we went all in and so the state actually had always done virtual virginia grades 9 through 12 and it offered multiple courses like 80 some courses for our high school students however starting in the summer they started creating because they knew it was going to be needed kindergarten all the through eighth grade which had never been created before right and so we took on what um they spent the summer creating those we piloted those courses as best we could during the summer in our summer school program so we would know what to expect and how we could go about doing that and then um miss wanda smith who is our guru of canvas 24 7 yes

146began the the training of of everybody so yes you can create courses that are templates basically and and virtual virginia has done that but they have not done that at a pace where it's being utilized and teachers are kind of running through because they haven't been able to pace that out and we are right now at a point where teachers are creating parts of it themselves we at the division level are creating parts of it ourselves virtual virginia is still dropping stuff in that they're creating and it's kind of all hands on deck situation in order to make sure our kids have what they need so we can create there's two reasons i don't wanna just say this is the course and this is how you're gonna teach it first of all that takes away

147the creativity and the way that teachers know how to engage their students if i if i do that and i say this is what you have to do so i need to be able to give them this template but allow them the access to be able to provide their own creative creativity and they're experts in that content and then that grade level and then that area and i do not want to take that away from them but there's a lot of restrictions on that too though right on what they can put in what they can't because of the nature of the technology correct well what not what they can and can't put in what they have to be able to put in if i put in a youtube video i need to put a transcript

148in with it or i need to put in another alternative because i need to be able to be equitable for the kid that's got it online or the kid that doesn't so we're not saying that you can't put stuff in we're saying that if you do put it in make sure that it's accessible to both online and offline okay to to respond though to your original question though we are uh trying to develop a hundred and fifty yes sir modules from scratch and we're trying to do that so we can give them out so let's so for example like a first grade math lesson we want to create the module so all the first grade math teachers can use that we were counting on virtual virginia to roll all these things out and they just

149haven't been able to keep up so now we're having to take that on we're asking teachers we're paying teachers extra if they're willing to do uh some of the development of modules because we have some folks out there that are pretty proficient in this in that kind of environment so but we're exactly what you're saying we have a lot of teachers teaching the same thing they all shouldn't be creating there shouldn't be 20 different versions of a math one lesson there should be and i was just in a year with a lot of stressors i was trying to figure out how to navigate that that's i mean that was pretty obvious once and the canvas piece that's that's free for this year yeah this year that's and that's what my next question is do we

150have an idea if this persists into next school year what kind of cost we're looking at to continue to follow that platform yeah the state has not come out and said um they did say that if we um that they would look into subsidizing that um they just didn't know to what extent so we have gotten that information from them but it it's probably one of those things with all the work that you're putting into it this year that we've we've bought it for a while yeah yeah that's okay that's good and there is a aspect of canvas that's called commons where when you create something you dump it in there and then any teacher in our division can pull from it and access it and um that's been something that miss smith set up

151for us uh at the very beginning so we weren't so every individual teacher wasn't having to create their own course and their own modules they could share amongst grade levels and content thank you i just i just want to gain a little bit more understanding on that thank you okay so my technology update if i can move along to um we have signed a contract with scs broadband they are building five mobile units they're um it's it's basically a a small tower it's not i want to use the word tower because i know that that gets people excited i don't it's not going to change anybody's view but it's on a it's it's next to a cart the cart has um solar panels on it to to generate the power and it will create a

152internet for about a thousand feet radius around these we're going to place them in certain areas around the county so folks don't have to come into our schools right so they're we're going to try to get them out closer to where people are um and so we'll have one unit up and running november two by two more by december or two more by january and so that's that's kind of trying to get some quick um internet out to folks but the most exciting bit of news that i have regarding our internet comes from cvec and as you'll remember or recall cvec is the electric co-op that also has a company called firefly and they run fiber as well and so there let's see their president sent this email he said that cv cvec is building

153out our own project to put fiber across the same polls as the cvec power lines we are building uh the cares projects together they will bring affordable reliable broadband to a host of homes and businesses in amherst county in the next few months the substation construction and project construction totals are the colleen substation 57 homes past gladstone substation 112 passings boxwood farms 190 homes boxwood farm well they're two boxwood farms the second one was 133 piney river and temperance 250 houses and gladstone on route 60 in aep territory is 114 so all total 867 homes that are going to be done by the end of this year and maybe a little bit into january so i feel like that's some some really good movement and none of this work has been our portion yet either

154so whatever they get done we can go beyond that and keep moving across the county so i think that's that's really good uh that's really good news that's a lot of homes uh in in in places that don't have that access so we're getting there so that's the technology update bring that to you every time the next list the next thing listed is public school advocacy committee so the public school advocacy committee is a is a subcommittee of the parental and community engagement portion of the comprehensive plan and so that's a group that is working with me we had our our first meeting uh last month but basically what we're doing is that we're trying to get our community to be a part of advocating for the issues that are important to us in public

155education in amherst county uh you know you guys advocate for public schools and we do too but we're trying to bring more of a community uh to this and because i think i think if school boards and boards of supervisors and legislators here for more than just us uh it it has a lot more power and so i don't i've told this group i don't think you're lobbyist but you are advocates and you are people that uh will put together a plan to to get out kind of some of the information that we want out there that's going to support public education clearly the first the first thing they wanted to go after was broadband so we're uh we'll have a we have a group we have a group of folks that work for us

156we have parents we have community and so it was a really exciting meeting and so i'll keep you informed as to where they're going i kind of tell you because if you start getting hit up by people in the community it's because they're advocating for public education they're just coming to you guys to express their their desire to help public education in amherst county so i think that's a positive thing i'd like to let you know that american education week is next week's november 16th through the 20th they'll be receiving a pen every educator in amherst county i think every so there are many appreciation weeks for staff but i want to make sure that this year we are we are recognizing every single week that we can because our staff is working so hard

157and putting so much into this year and they are experiencing so much change that every opportunity we have to say thank you we need to do that and so if you have an opportunity next week to send a message to a school or a teacher or staff member please do that they they certainly have earned all of our appreciation that's good good starter thanks for the pin for each member okay uh this evening with edge every child every day [Music] okay two more there is a statement of economic interest that the board has to fill out every year ms crouch will distribute it distribute it to you december 1st that's when she can do it and then they're to be returned february 1st so just in the back your mind that thing's coming to you

158and the last thing i wanted to talk about and it's going to require some some conversation about this is the legislator tour or the legislator meeting every november we we bring our our local legislators our state legislators into to do something last year we toured the high school cte programs then we had lunch with them and discuss some of the things that are important to us because they're they're getting ready to go back to richmond soon and so we want them to to support some of the needs that we have so my question i'm going to tell you what my recommendation is but this that's all that is it's just i've been thinking about it maybe the best way to do it in a safe way but i really feel like it's important for our

159legislators to understand what it takes to successfully have students in the building every day and so i would like to bring them through an elementary school certainly we would keep the social distancing and that kind of thing but i would like for them to tour one of our schools uh central elementary said if we needed them they they would be glad to host us uh because i think when they go back to richmond those are the things that they have to understand because when they talk about what it takes in terms of resources and finance and those kinds of things they're going to be voting on those types of things and i want them to have some first hand knowledge of what that actually looks like and how what kind of resources are required to

160do that after that i was thinking maybe we could do something that might be a zoom oriented that way we don't all have to get in one place but if you do want to we can certainly do that but i do want to have the opportunity where all of you guys get a chance to talk to them whatever environment that is i'm fine with but i think trying to get them all at one place uh in terms of their schedule and then trying to get all of you guys in one place as in terms of your schedule might be more difficult if we're trying to get to the exact same place so that's my recommendation but i certainly am happy to hear any ideas or thoughts okay okay so i will i'll try to get

161them on the line for a date so it will be uh walker and it will be uh ben klein and it will be ronnie campbell and mark peake am i missing anybody those are our four [Music] that's correct i think all right well you going congressional yeah and amherst yeah i don't think the state senators or the the u.s senators would probably confident you've asked them yeah he has and he doesn't he always sends his um we'll reach out okay we'll reach out okay so i'll bring you that information and that is all i have for this [Music] all right we'll evening right along to committee reports from the school board uh mr terry so the stem academy had a meeting this week zoom of course and happy to say that they too had no

162transmissions of uh covet inside their buildings they're only doing uh it depends on where you fall in your group you only go one day a week whether it's monday tuesday wednesday thursday whatever they are still planning to do their internships in the spring so that's that's always a good thing for the kids to be able to get out and actually do um yeah like everybody else it's it's different this year than it's been any other year but they're trudging along the best they can so hope it continues and one of the things that stem is doing as well as they're doing mock interviews here in the next couple weeks and i get to interview a student so i'm not i don't think it's one of ours want to do your personal though are you there

163oh sure yeah so um i would like to thank miss uh mclennan for showing up we love to hear from our people throughout the community um thank you guys you guys are doing a great job i really liked hearing you know that the students seem to be getting what they need you know when they're not actually in school to getting what they need to succeed i don't we don't want to leave them out and we want to know that what we think we're doing we're truly doing and if we're not we need to hear from you so let us know um look forward to coming to see the play i'm gonna put that on the calendar uh dr brown you are way too humble i know you don't want to take the credit but you

164are an exceptional leader so thank you for all that you've done you deserve every accolade you get so thank you very much um the cpi stuff i mean i really look forward to seeing how we can proceed with you know getting those projects done i know the uh the elon project is one that is uh near and dear to everyone's heart and i would like to see that about as much as anybody but right now we gotta make sure it fits in in the right place so let's let's make sure we don't jump the gun too much and lastly i want to say you know hats off to all the students teachers everybody coming and going from the buildings when we voted on requiring masks you know not everybody was in favor of it i

165will have to admit i wasn't 100 in favor of it but um by doing it we've made sure that um we're not transmitting this this virus um glad to see we haven't seen any discipline issues nobody pitching a fit over having to do it um but just hats off to everybody and i hope everybody who sees it hears this or whatever you know knows that uh we appreciate what they're doing and we hope they keep it up we're not at the end of this and um we got a long road to go but i think we're going to get there so thank you very much thank you sir ma'am chair um no committee reports uh i would just like to first thing just like to say on this day following veterans day of course i

166always thank all the veterans for their service but specifically in this setting i'd like to thank all amherst county public school employees that are veterans and not only do they answer a national calling they they've answered their calling in their community to be a very important part of something that's very important in this community so i'd like to thank all the veterans that serve in the amherst county public schools got a phone call one of the kind of neat things that i've i've heard this about the ratio of students because of the learning environment this year gentlemen fan called me and sent me a screenshot of his kids power school grades and they're the best that they've been in a couple years and it's because i really think uh knowing this child is this the

167student-teacher ratio that's been so beneficial because it's there's it's such it's so much better this year as far as that's concerned the in first and face-to-face uh so he's he he said uh to keep on doing what you're doing i said well i don't want to do this forever but you know if i'm glad to see him paying some dividends for for some people and then finally real quick um colson and reagan if you can assure me that that's an apple pie from woodruff that pie in the face thing i am all in okay so you can put my name in the hat if you can guarantee that but thank you madam chair okay so committee update from the governor's school we did have a zoom meeting on november 4th and they are moving moving

168along smoothly um i believe he didn't give an update about having coveted in the school but they've had some quarantine due to that but one thing i would say that benefits us they did get a um year-long contract for some hot spots and three of our amherst county students benefit from that because of lack of internet so glad to know that um things are coming from all sides to help out amherst that's great and um everything else was just informational so that was good um so for my board items um i just want to say that i continue to be proud of amherst uh everybody doing what they're doing to make this boat float i know i could say that a lot but i hear from surrounding areas that were kind of the light on

169the hill and so it didn't surprise me to hear lynchburg living in lynchburg it's giving accolades stammers but definitely proud of that too um i am looking forward to that hanover survey was really long so yeah it was a lot of information so i'm looking forward to seeing what we gather from that and i want to go see the play that you guys talked about and um you guys are doing great senior reps you're doing great for the school i appreciate all that too and uh that's it i'm just still proud of the school and everything we're doing is there a limit to how many people come to that play well i i've i'm planning on being there for one of them yeah i've uh bought whatever that silver that's right if you're a patriot

170patron thing is yeah yeah so make good use of that so hey it sounds good to me i mean it sounds like you'll have a cemetery there in case i fall anyway so um well i don't have a lot but do want to say great job on all the mitigation that's going on because uh you guys have done a great job and everyone that works for amherst county and the students did a great job with uh keeping everybody safe um you know with not having anything we can't help but help what happens outside of here but we're doing great with what is within our own walls so great job to everybody on that um i'm looking forward to seeing the more of that map testing over the course of time i love that kind of

171data where it's comparing it to everyone else essentially but you're also comparing it to how you're yourself seeing how we are progressing so that's uh that's going to be exciting uh other i think that's it you got anything else okay miss thompson don't have a committee report but um just individually i come up on thanksgiving season and you started us off with anything thankful for i mean we have a list i'm thankful for the money that we've received to help us through this difficult time i couldn't have done it without that i'm thankful for the staff the parents the students board of supervisors this board for the teamwork for everybody going above and beyond i'm thankful for just the coveted report of knowing that the mitigation strategies are working and that you know we're not

172seeing any transmission in our schools and that's wonderful the technology upgrades community engagement i'm just really thankful for all of those things i want to welcome our new sro mr pugh to our to our family here in amherst um i want to echo mr terry's sentiment um about the high school in elon you know to not just not jump the gun don't want anybody to think we're leaving those off for any reason other than to do due diligence and to make sure we're doing that right and i want to thank our community for their engagement in the past tonight in the future i know that i'm sure every member on this board feels this way but i want to stay a good representative of our community and i want to continue to be transparent so

173just keep the engagement stay engaged with us um my last thing just keep safe keep smart keep our kids in school see well said right all i gotta do is say ditto but i'm gonna be quick i just wanted for committed reports we did have a loyal board meeting last week uh and things are well there dr lewis is doing an awesome job we have for amherst county we have five students in the blended program that's hybrid and and some face-to-face and then we have three students in the remote we are in the process dr lewis was telling us some new funding the way we're going to be paying our bills and law is going to be changing up and so mr neighbors is aware of that we did okay a bonus for the employees

174of law through lynchburg city and so we had a wonderful meeting there we did say goodbye as far as lord was concerned to dr shook he will be leaving before county he is the uh superintendent at this time for law so we wish him good um good tidings as he travels away uh then i also attended the regional meeting here on by zoom for our vspa and we had a nice meeting that day we have tentatively agreed to host virtually the spring meeting in march there's going to be some more discussion in december of how we're going to do that and we'll all be involved about some subjects for that uh excited to attend the vsba meeting uh virtually in williamsburg next door next week and so um but just for us to be aware

175of the priorities i quickly jotted them down and you receive this already of course the vs va supports funding and for those things that are mandated they oppose any attempt to divest local school boards and their constitutional authority they oppose collective bargaining they are all about school safety and they are all about broadband connectivity and also promoting school modernization things that we're trying to do with our seat um in our county here and they also are providing um a reassurance for the teacher shortage so i will be voting on these as a school board on monday and i would ask that if you have any suggestions of not supporting any of these uh that the vsba is for the board just to give me an email on that rather than go too deep tonight uh

176so that's my board report uh just one levi saying uh miss thompson put it just right we are in a thankful season and here in amherst county we have we've done what we said was going to do we got back into school by whichever means we had to and we're safe for this point of time and we need to continue dr owens we thank you and your staff and all the teachers and all the families of amherst county for supporting what we're doing for the young people at the high school the spirit of lancer continues and um we'll try to check this play out you know sounds kind of spooky but i might bring my grandchildren to hold my hand or something like that but uh and uh dr brown thank you for everything you're

177doing to make amaze county on the map up there at the high school i always read that magazine anyway and so now i can really get a cup of coffees and spread it around the hospital so people can know what's going on free anyway just pick up a whole dozen of them so we thank everybody for everything that's been said and done um i'm going to read all about map uh we've spoke before about growth that was a word that we used to speak about when he's talking about sols we like to see more of a determining factor for growth and i can echo mr greizer that i have talked to some children including my own grandchildren and their reports were wonderful and interim and so somebody's doing something great out there so i want

178to applaud that getting excited about sports um however we see it you know vertical screaming uh maybe we can be one see what is 250 minus seven y'all figure that out when you go home and that means that the seven of the seven or less will come minus the 250. so i don't have anything else not going to be laying anything just keep up the good work then we don't come back for a minute when do we come back is it december oh my goodness the christmas time santa claus and all that good stuff but um thanksgiving is around the corner and veterans day was yesterday and every day is a great day so let's just continue to have a good time uh stay well you know i'm a promoter of that let me just

179be real now the numbers might show some decrease and that is a wonderful thing and we can't let our guard down not just because of school but because of school but just because of us being healthy so continue to do what you're doing and stay well my daughter wants me to say she don't know what i'm saying she wants us all to eat a lot of antioxidants so blueberries and all those other things that you want to help yourself with so she's a promoter boy do we have anything else do we miss anything any final comments if not i will um entertain a vote of adjournment my question second second all in favor aye aye good night thank you so much [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] you