School Board Meeting - 5/9/2024 - 5:00 PM

001e e e [Applause] I haven't heard anything specific but on County School Board uh regular meeting to order if you would miss Johnson please call the RO Mr Hill here Mr Daniels here Mr H Brook here drot here Mr Knight Mr Nels here Mrs FIS here Mr chairman you have a quum thank you and just uh Mr not let me know that he may not be here tonight okay um do I have a motion to approve the agenda as presented Mr chair um can I make a motion that we um amend um the agenda to um to remove policy Jo from 4.04 policy updates so the IGA can uh review that further J so we have an amended uh agenda do we have a second second so we have a motion by Mr Daniels and

002a second by Mr NS any discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I any opposed amended agenda is approved if you will please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance I PL to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic stand indivisible andice all we'll now have a moment of silence thank you right first up is Staff reports 2.01 school presentations uh Dr Burgen yes sir so I know the board's been enjoying updates from all of our schools and tonight we have one more very uh happy to welcome Dr Heather Bo principal of Thomas Jefferson Elementary School she's going to review the accomplishments and the celebrations and the Strategic plan work at her school welcome thank you uh Mr chairman and members of the board thank you for the

003opportunity to speak with you tonight um to share the successes and goals of Thomas Jefferson Elementary I'm Dr Heather Bo the proud principal of Thomas Jefferson I came to TJ in the 2021 school year as the assistant principal and I'm now in my second year as the head principal um Miss Kim cheeri who is actually in the audience tonight is the assistant principal and she came on board in October of 2022 um Thomas Jefferson is the largest Elementary School in Bedford County with a current enrollment of 534 students and 65 full-time staff we house an early childhood special education class two VPI prek classes two adaptive special education classes and 24 K through 5 classes our mission in partnership with our families and Community is to educate our children in a way that encourages Independence

004responsibility and good citizenship in a safe and supportive environment as you'll see in my presentation uh we live this Mission each day at Thomas Jefferson through the development of the whole child collaboration with our community and fostering relationships with our families so just like Bedford County Public Schools uh is building citizens so is Thomas Jefferson Elementary at TJ we want our students to have an excellent educational experience including the development of Interest positive relationships self-awareness confidence and a sense of community belonging this year we made a commitment to bring back some of the school community's favorite preco traditions and to also start some new ones so we started all strong this year uh in August I had a group of fifth grade girls that came to me with an idea to raise money for Alex's

005Lemonade Stand after the loss of a former TJ student that was near and dear to our hearts in our school Community the girls came to me with not just the idea to do it they already had a goal they wanted to raise $1,000 they had incentives for the class that raised the most money all planned out and also a draft of a flyer how can I say no when our life work is to create citizens that are willing to give back to their community and here these girls were at 10 years old willing to do that so as a school we raised over $1,300 uh for Alex's limonade stand against the for the fight against Childhood Cancer other notable events at TJ and the fall include a touch a truck event that was um a

006fundraiser for our stage lighting project it was open to the public and included vehicles from our forest fire department the Bedford County Sheriff's Office the Virginia State Police and Sun Belt Rentals visitors were able to climb in on and over the vehicles and the kids honked every horn in every vehicle um we also hosted a Veterans Day assembly to honor our staff parents and grandparents who have served one of our teachers um who is the child of a veteran gave a speech about her experience and the sacrifice and bravery to all the men and women that serve students sing patriotic songs and they also presented the meaning of the missing man table um our second grade musical which is pictured at the top had all of our second graders dressed as a variety of Woodland

007creatures uh which was a lot of fun our library and stem teacher collaborated uh and provided all of their classes this fall with the history of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and then the kids had to design their own float and then code the robots to follow the parade path that was created in December we held breakfast with Santa where U Miss Judy our cafeteria manager served over 330 breakfasts we also had a visit from the brinch courtesy of the Bedford County Sheriff's Office and we also hosted our first stem night so families were invited to participate in various station activ activities where they use creative thinking coding and Engineering skills um together as a family we also held our D graduation ceremony in December and I have to tell you I cannot express enough

008how valuable it has been to our Thomas Jefferson Community to have Deputy long serve as both our SRO and our dare instructor because the relationships that he is able to build with students and set those expectations through D have just been very very positive for us we were also fortunate to have an outpouring of support from our Jefferson Forest student athletes we forged this relationship with our PTA Mr Wilson the JF principal and Mr sink the JF athletic director both of whom are TJ parents uh what started out as the JF wrestling team showing up one Friday morning to welcome the kids say hi give them high Fes have a good day turned into nearly every fall and winter sport showing up one Friday to do the same um for our kids and it brought

009so many smiles to all the kids faces the big kids and the little kids um Mr Newman the JF girl soccer coach also came over and brought the team to our PE classes to host a soccer Clinic his hope is that he's going to inspire more girls to continue to participate in sports throughout High School additionally these same student athletes volunteered at a lot of our school events including our fall festival and our glow dance and our hope is that this collab cation between our youngest people and our oldest young people in Bedford County um inspires them to work hard stay active and also find the value in giving back to their community so in the spring Mr Gillis our Music Teacher and our fourth graders put on a brilliant performance of pirates the musical

010his work has led to some of our students finding their passion for Theater which is also growing and developing future FMS and JF theater students in March our students completed a month-long reading challenge to win a chance to pie the principles um Miss Cherry and I each took about 30 pies it felt like a lot more at the end of that day um we also celebrated the 100th day of school and had a couple little elderly guests that day uh pictured at the very top are our fifth graders Cam lesnak and Izzy Johnson who were our spelling be winner and runner up for TJ the Easter Bunny also came for a visit during lunch the week before spring break and for kindness week our students created high fives that were posted all around the school

011and um you know that focused on just bringing kindness to our school and you know being there for each other in addition to keeping our school safe again defy long went on a reading tour and shared a book with several of our classes and then just a few weeks ago we brought back um our portfolio night which has been a long-standing tradition at TJ teachers had our students collect pieces of work across the curriculum throughout the year and then that night they invited their families in and the students presented their own work to their parents so they could see how much they had grown and developed throughout the year and that night we had over 50% of our families attend which in competition with spring Sports I think was a pretty good attendance in March

012we also had the Lu football team visit us they welcome students in the morning um at car riders and buses and then small groups of two to three players were assigned to each classroom where they would read to the class work with two or three students on a small group task or present to the class about what it's like to be a student athlete they then assembled in the gym or in the cafeteria we split the entire student body up and they hosted a short Q&A session for the kids and of course they signed all the autographs that's to the kids their celebrities uh teachers and students were very thrilled with the success of this event and we are looking forward to forging more relationships with them so new this year were our club days

013they've been doing this at the secondary level for a while but we wanted to bring it to TJ so once per per quarter the entire School PRK through five all programs all students participated in our club days so each teacher at the very beginning of the year had to choose a club that they wanted to sponsor which was age appropriate so we banded the kids um um and then when the kids went that one Friday each quarter it was just 30 minutes at the close to the end of the day um people felt like that was safe if it was a flop then it wasn't that big um which gave them the kids an opportunity to interact with other kids who have the same interests as they do um to challenge their minds and bodies

014and to have fun um as you can see from the photos we had lots of different clubs um puzzles yoga Club Lego Club we had a math club that did the 24 game we also this is the time that we had our SCA gather and our yearbook Club work together to collect pictures and um work on ideas for our yearbook this year um parent volunteers also came in to support our club days and they would co-host a club with our teachers and after our very first Club day I will never forget the email that I got from a parent that says thank you so much for not just focusing on the academic piece but also helping my child develop as a whole student with other interests outside of school so it was incredible to to

015introduce this this year and we are looking forward to not only continuing this but to expand our offer offerings and number of Club days next year Thomas Jefferson is home to some of the most dedicated staff in Bedford County this year's Thomas Jefferson teacher of the year was Linda muncher who was one of my fifth grade math and science teachers our support person of the year was Susan Nicholas who works with our second and third grades as an instructional parah we also have a bedford's best recipient Lee Frasier who's a kindergarten special education perah and then recently Barbara augen rri who is a kindergarten teacher at TJ was named top teacher by Lynchberg Living magazine um each of these ladies just pours into the kids our school the community to make sure that we nurture

016all of our students and our staff these people give back to the staff too they are amazing ladies um to make sure that we're all living up to our fullest potential we would not be TJ without our PTA um they are incredibly supportive and this year they've hosted a variety of events events including the Fall Festival which was a free event to the entire Forest Community um it had hay rods face painting balloon animals games prizes um they also held a Fall fundraiser A readathon and students who participated in that were given tickets and they could put them in different drawings for different prizes and the little guy that's pictured with me there he won principal for the day so uh that was a lot of fun um our PTA continues to support our Watchdog

017program which we revived last year um and are continuing to grow and um increase our participation in that program on leak day they sponsored a schoolwide find the frog game they hid 600 teeny tiny frogs all over the school and so they gave an incentive for the class that found the most they've got a popcorn party and extra recess um they also hosted a glow dance in February right after Valentine's Day there was lots of loud and singing but we had lots of families attend that and it was a lot of fun for everybody parents and kids were all dancing and then a couple weeks ago we had our Fun Run and foam party to kick off their playground up upgrade fundraiser their hope is to raise enough money to not only add equipment but

018also include pieces of adaptive play equipment which would better meet the needs of our current student population they also purchased a rock not to copy New London but um this gives our families a chance to celebrate our students and our staff um and we've had some beautiful artwork out there this year already and always they feed us very well they provide us with two dinners several lunches and various snacks and treats throughout the year so I've talked about how we build citizens now we're going to talk about how we promote success at Thomas Jefferson we are a fully accredited school with all overall School quality indicators at level one when you look at those achievement Gap groups we do have a level two indicator in English with our students with disabilities which is where we

019focused our school Improvement goals for this year so our first goal oh sorry this is our mission statement again I want to focus on that our first priority is to educate our children so as we thought about our school Improvement plan it wasn't just about okay how can we make our scores better it's really how can we hone in on that students with disability subgroup to make sure that all of our students are improving so our goals focus on improving literacy achievement School culture and reducing our chronic absenteeism rate so our first goal was to reduce the failure rate of our students with disabilities in grades three through five on the spring reading so by 10% so as you can see the blue represents the pass rate and red is the failure rate of the

020past three years and then the final one is our goal for this year so we're hoping to return to at least that prepandemic level of achievement this year you can't improve grades three through five over time without improving grades K through2 so this is where our second goal was deriv from um we wanted our K through2 students to meet or exceed our Springs bench Benchmark in Pals but also to be reading on grade level um so that we are hoping that 65% of our students with disabilities in kindergarten through 2 grade will it meet or exceed that um which would be a 38% increase from our spring 23 um some strategies that we have employed to get at goals one and two include we have implemented the new reading curriculum Benchmark Advance with Fidelity and

021I'm excited to share a little bit later about some of our preliminary so scores and how that's come out for us um our student our students would disabilities receive the Sunday system direct instruction which really focuses on Phonics and phic awareness in that small group setting we have implemented time for our reading intervention and Remediation which also includes that high-intensity high-intensity tutoring in grades three through 5 with the lexio program um we also religiously use hegerty phonological and phic awareness resources in grades K through 2 to help build those skills so that they are then able to decode and encode which those foundational skills to make sure that they are able to read and comprehend on grade level and then we also have our flexible small group reading skills instruction so if you know student's

022not getting context clues or main idea then they're pulled to a small group so the teacher can reinforce and retach those skills in a way that is hopefully going to help them get that and both goals one and two align with the Bedford County strategic framework goal of high academic expectations so goal three is that we wanted to improve our outcomes on the working conditions and school climate survey um really focusing in on that managing student behavior and teacher burnout so the first prong of that is about um student behavior and making sure that we have all our students and our adults really understanding the behavior expectations giving consistent consequences whether it's a classroom consequence or school administrative consequence um and being fair with that and then everybody understanding what are the consequences for breaking

023school rules so to improve this we focused our strategies on um implementing a schoolwide behavior expectation plan which we are still working through making getting everybody on board with that um and then also we've worked through professional development and you know small group conversations with our grade levels on developing teacher agency um in classroom management strategies then the second prong is to increase the percentage of teachers who are not experiencing symptoms of burnout and thus are experiencing teacher satisfaction and job satisfaction uh by 46% the strategies that we've implemented to do that or our spirit days our club days we also have staff mental health and wellness activities our counselor was able to get the students in the massage school to come out and give our teachers 10-minute massages if they wanted them um we

024also take you know have had walks together as a staff we also have special staff events especially during our holidays um my leadership team and I also took the working genius assessment which helped us to understand our natural gifts and also the things about our work that kind of drain us that you know I may need somebody else to help me with that piece because that's not a strength of mine but that has helped us work more cohesively as a team because we recognize each other's strengths and weaknesses and this is uh aligned with the Strategic framework goal two safe and supportive learning environments and goal three a high quality Workforce and lastly uh by the end of this year we would like to decrease the percentage of students who are chronically absent by 30%

025and that seems like a lot but if you look at our Trend there we've trended it up for the past several years um as a result of you know Co the pandemic and getting back into that routine so our hope is that we will return to prepandemic um expectations and what some of the things that we have done to intervene I think there have been more consistent practices across the division about notifying families when students are reaching that 3 five 7 Day um absent rate and then just informing them that chronic absenteeism is any absence it's not just an unexcused um and that has really helped but for the kids the special events the spirit days the club days all of our special events they don't want to miss that that so that's an incentive

026for them to get to school um as I said before I when I was talking about Benchmark we are really excited for our final Pals and so scores to come in um so that we can kind of look at where we are with these goals and look forward to next year and what we need to improve or change um I will say that we are seeing really positive results right now preliminarily so we are super excited about that so that concludes my presentation and so what questions do would you have for me questions keep up to great work thank you I do have one question around your absenteeism your goal was below 10% where are you currently current like this school year currently we are tracking somewhere between six and 8% um you know it

027just depends on when you pull the report and who is enrolled and then then we've had some disenroll so we're tracking so that we are going to meet that goal and we've been pushing since we ran the report last month at the end of the month we've sent out messages called those parents who were on that cusp of if they miss two or three more days they're going to be over that and said you know we know it's the end of the school year but can you please make sure they get here um so that we don't cross over that 10% um back on your reading graph that you have foros yes um can you explain because you said something about trying to get better than pre pandemic and but 22 looked like it was

028a better year so can you explain was there testing difference or what happened there do you know so our goal is to reduce about 10% so we're hoping to at least get back to that pre pandemic if we exceed it that's amazing and you know but we when you're looking at accreditation for the state you either have to meet a certain Benchmark or reduce your failure rate by 10% so we I wasn't we weren't really sure if we would meet that high level Benchmark compared to where we were last year um but we feel felt like that we could very easily and it was an attainable goal and realistic for us to reduce that failure rate by 10% well I'm looking at 22 it looks like you had a better year there than you had

029in 23 and then even better than your goal yes so what so what my question again was what happened that changed from 22 to 23 I think worse instead of better um you know there's a lot of factors that go into you know our students performance on Theos I can tell you that um our current fifth grade cohort for two years so third grade and fourth grade though it was a very it's like one of those cusp groups like they had about 78 kids and they had typically been split into three classes this year as fifth graders we split them into four classes so that those cohorts of kids as they come through you know if it's a heavier you know group with students with disabilities sometimes that can impact that um but this year

030you know I shared a little bit about the Benchmark my fourth grade reading group 100% pass rate students with disabilities first try that's awesome thank you any other questions Dr well I just want to say uh you know thank you um I just the events and just the the other things that you have going on the Veterans Day event the Dare program the jff that that's really cool the soccer Clinic watch there's just so much great stuff that you're doing I i' sound I would have perfect attendance if I was going to that school I tell you that so thank you it is a very much a team effort I have a very wonderful staff who a lot of my teachers have been there since Thomas Jefferson opened and so you know I'm I'm kind

031of new on the Block at TJ so they're the ones who say hey we used to do this really great we want to bring that back and so we've really worked hard to bring some of those great things back and to start some new things yeah and when there's always fun exciting stuff happen happening it it makes it for a Rel you're always trying to challenge the kids and every but you you make it a relaxed environment that you know the brain can function very fast and I just um I'm appreciative of that like I said if it's fun they're going to they're going to want to get their work done so that they can go enjoy a lot of the other fun stuff that they're doing so do the teachers that's exactly right that's

032exactly right so thank you all right thank you sorry um the uh slide about goal three and uh talking about um teacher satisfaction is that data from your school or is that Virginia wide that's data from my school so they give that survey about every two years and so this is last year um and so we are looking to improve that over this year next year so if I'm reading this right the satisfaction of the teachers is about 40% so that what yeah so if you think you got to think about it like that's the number of people who responded positively that they were experiencing burnout that they're experiencing burnout yes and the followup question is do you have your hand on the pulse in terms of what are the things that are that are

033driving those teachers that are feeling burned out um I would say some of it is you know the the stressors of just teaching um the lesson planning the grading all the things that kind of go into teaching so one of the ways that Miss Cherry and I tried to reduce that this year is you know if you're using Benchmark Advance it's it's very well scripted and laid out for you so don't recreate the wheel like just put I'm doing Benchmark unit three day whatever and I should be able to I can pull up all the Benchmark materials on my laptop when I go in for an observation I can see exactly where they are exactly what they're supposed to be doing um I try to give them you know some flexibility and what kind of

034templates they use and things like that you know there are pieces about teaching that are just hard but it's just a part of the work we do so I think helping our teachers you know understand that give yourself Grace it's okay you don't have to be perfect every single day give it your best shot and then doing those staff events and having the fun activities it kind of it makes them feel good um one of my teachers when I presented this to the leadership team goes wow when you see it all together we've done so much it makes me want to stay here not that she's leaving but you know it just makes you feel like I want to be a part of this team so I think increasing those things too helps with the

035teacher Burnell I guess from from our perspective as a board I I'm looking for what is there that we can change to drive your satisfaction rates up because 40% that's that's a lot of people well that's also including slightly agree you know that's all any kind of yeah so you know if I just looked at the people who were incredi experiencing a lot of burnout it would have been a much higher teacher satisfaction um you know percentage but I wanted to be really honest about that and you know make sure that I was digging in deep enough from a board perspective just keep supporting them keep rallying around them telling them how much you appreciate them I don't think that there's anything as a board to change that's going to decrease teacher burnout other than

036continue to say we got your back and we appreciate you great thank you anybody else Prett good thank you all right 2.2 budget update yes sir board members you know we don't have state budget yet but the governor's called a special session it starts next week so the legislator's back on Monday they have some compromises they're trying to reach on and we anticipate by next Wednesday we'll have a state budget uh but you're aware we've already like every other School Division made a proposed budget based upon the information we had available to us at the time I still feel very confident that the budget we built we're going to have at least that level of funding from the state because a lot of the money from the state was in a 3% stth and cola

037and everyone's in agreement on that enrichment it's beyond that that they're still debating so uh Mr Haggler is going to provide u a repeat of some of the information from the budget that we've already adopted it is a preliminary budget once we get actual budget numbers uh we'll see what our funding looks like and we'll bring the budget finance committee back together to see if there additional if there's additional funding what priorities uh would the board like to Target that money for we also need to talk about issuing contracts because they're coming towards the end of the school year and our our staff needs to know that we expect them to be back next year by extending those contracts Mr hag yes um a little bit of update Dr Bergen spoke to most of it

038I will be at a conference uh next week so hopefully um with other Finance directors and CFOs from all over the state so hopefully we can celebrate on Wednesday if they've got a compromise we can all digest what they're going to be doing with that um if they do come up with a compromise and pass a budget it'll take about a week week and a half for me to get those uh support sheets from um budget office at the state so I've reached out to the committee m members the finance committee members uh in anticipation of that so we can schedule a committee meeting and come back and rebalance the budget that we can present hopefully to the full board in June um so uh anticipating that um as Dr Bergen said both the governor

039and the general assembly agreed on the the compensation for employees uh with that on average you know not everybody gets the exact same amount there's different amounts in the steps and if you're at the the top of the scale but on average uh employees could expect about a 3% increase in their compensation this year uh we do have I've worked with the HR department the last three or four days going through all the data making sure we did all the calculations correctly we have the contracts pretty much ready to go we anticipate to issue those next week um so the Board of Supervisors will be voting on their budget as we've presented um I think we presented them with a conservative budget we're hoping for more money but I think with what we can expect

040from the Ric we've heard from the state that we have a good budget as it stands hopefully some more we can allocate to some other things so with that um the HR staff and myself have been working on that and it's our intent to go ahead and issue the contracts before we have a final state budget uh there is language in the budget in in their contracts it says subject to appropriation so it's not appropriated by the state they don't come to a compromise and they don't send us money those contracts are not on void they're not void until that appropriation happens from the state so there is protection there just to let the board know that um other counties and districts uh Dr Cal's been talking to them uh some are going ahead and

041they're issuing their contracts in the next week or two and so we just want to be diligent on that so we can uh stay competitive and not leave people uh subject to where they can go to other divisions and try to get them locked down for next year um with that being said um that's about all I have right now until we get a final state budget and hopefully come back and have more money to allocate have it answer any questions you might have so I want to make sure I understand we we' given you an approval to to move forward with the contracts no more than what we've approved correct and if it's different we will review it in the finance correct meeting at the end of the month we've got to choose one

042of two dates and then we'll bring it back in June if there's an overage or or something that's under correct um if there was a big disagreement over compensation between the governor and the general assembly then I'd probably be saying wait right wait till we have something because that could be drastically different but the governor came out and he gave some concessions on the budget um on some of his tax rebates and things like that and he came out and said I'll support the compensation increase so I think they've got agreement there there's some other areas that they've got to hammer out so I think it's a I think we're pretty safe in doing that once again the fail safe there is if it's not appropriated and they were to come back on that then

043the board has an opportunity to come back and revise things reissue the contract and not that we should have to do this but we have checked the Checker from the state saying what amount of money we're getting you've reviewed that to make sure they haven't miscalculated yes sir okay uh they did Issue after they did a little bit different this year they did not issue um worksheets for the Senate and House versions there was a Governor's proposed version in December the house and the Senate came together and worked out something they didn't do any sheets from that they waited till they had the general assembly come up with a compromise budget of which the governor had like over 200 amendments to so that's what they're coming back in session next week to work on I

044did have a support sheet on that that the general assembly passed what we did as a board is I took that worksheet and back down a million dollars from that just saying just in case let's take a million dollars out let's not go ahead and say we're going to spend it so the two sides can compromise and if and if they're somewhere in between then we've got a pretty close budget to what we're expecting to get any questions from Mr agle okay so um our employees are listening probably by next Thursday uh we'll hit the button transmit 1,400 contracts or so electronically and they'll start signing away so and get our employes kind of uh committed to next year all right uh 3.01 teacher presentation Miss Cindy Watson you're welcome to come up there's a

045open spot here I'll sit hello my name is Cindy Watson I'm a teacher at Forest Middle School and um Marcus Hill and I had talked about me coming in and just kind of talking about some of the things I do I teach a little different than some of the other teachers do but I wanted to share what it is because I think it's been pretty awesome for the kids all right so this is an example of what my canvas dashboard looks like right now I have three Preps my first prep is CTE 8420 Tech of robotic Design This is a semester class with my students I also teach an exploratory on the exploratory wheel for sixth grade I was asked to do exploratory this year for the first time and Kelly O'Neal said could you

046please focus on science well I'm a Math and Science trained teacher so I'm like yes and I also did 15 years as a pharmaceutical rep and I said well why don't we make it Mack medical school and it is just like Blossom since then it's amazing how much these little six graders love it and then my third one is I teach a math six section because I still have my sincere love for math so for my um we're going to focus first on my technology of robotic design class I one of my side jobs is I worked for nine years with NASA I work with the Virginia space Grant Consortium NASA group and I've worked with the vast program which focuses on getting everybody to getting us to Mars so my entire program with my

047technology robotic design Revol vves around um space and my big event with that is going to Mars I focus on Mars Steve Hammer kind of focuses on the moon and Karen Quintana focuses on uh on Earth so we just get we get everything covered but so my Mars topography Maps I cross over with some of the e8th grade uh s sols where they have to do topography and my students create 28 by 72 inch topography maps of Mars we focus on 21 major landmarks and they have to do the research on 21 ma major landmarks and then they have to draw these topography Maps because down the road they're going to be navigating Lego Mindstorm robots on these Maps so the first mission that my students do is it's called plant the American flag they

048have to build the robot they have to create a capsule at the top and then they have to carry their astronaut and it's I found out that you can buy little mini astronauts that look like the old army men the little 99 cent or $125 store now um the little astronauts and they have to create that capsule because we have to protect them from radiation we have to protect them from lack of oxygen we have to protect them from temperature and different factors that are going to be you issues that we're going to have to go to Mars and they're going to have to navigate from the base they have to go around helis Basin helis Basin is the big problem because it's five miles deep and if the robot touches helis Basin everybody's dead

049so can't do that so they navigate to Olympus Mons which is the highest point which they learn that when they do their topography um 21 Landmark research and then they have to back the robot up so they do Muk block coding the entire time and what's great about this is these are kids who come to my class for a semester and a lot of them haven't really coded before and let's just say I have an interesting group of all Behavior levels we'll put it that way but once you put something in their hand that's not a computer that's not a pencil it's not a notebook it is unbelievable what these kids can do some of my most successful kids are some of the kids who spend more time in ISS and lunch detention and in

050trouble than any the other ones their skill levels are amazing and what it does to build our confidence is phenomenal so the second mission they have to do and this is what's great is when you walk in my classroom I should have put a picture on here there's 100,000 Legos waiting for the students I have this entire wall of nothing but Legos so mission number two is they have to create a habitat so they're creating a habitat where they have to figure out how are we going to get oxygen so they have to build Moxy machines and they have to research different parts of how to survive and on the top they have a uh helicopter pad because we're going to have to land our drone on it in one of the next ones and

051so they have to navigate from base they always start at base they go over to where the helipad is they have to be able to park their robot Rover inside the garage back it back out take it back to base and so getting them to build with the Legos this is an example of one from um a couple semesters ago it's phenomenal the creativity is through the roof and the kids love it like you know they talked about or Dr BS talked about having Legos for the elementary kids they love it as much as they do in middle school and I'm pretty sure they still like him in high school and I think I may have caught my husband a couple times playing Legos with my son so adults like him too third one is

052navigating and Landing drones this is where I sort of introduce the Drone program to the students and this is just with little hs210 drones these are $35 drones and what they do is they have to start at base they have to follow a particular particular route on their topography map of Mars parked their uh robot and on top of their robot they built a carrier platform to put their drone they have to fly the Drone land it on the helicopter pad fly it back land it back on their robot and then take the robot back to base and so there's a lot of moving Parts on that and the kids they love it absolutely love it the batteries on these little hs210 drones only last for about 5 minutes which is kind of a good

053thing but we have I have an entire wall that all we do is keep charging all of our robots and our um drones so I had the amazing opportunity last summer to participate in a CTE accelerator program and they were looking for Middle School CTE teachers and it was two weeks that I spent at ODU learning all different ways of bringing space to the middle school classroom was phenomenal and Karen Quintana as Steve hammer and I went we were through representatives from Bedford County Karen and I roomed together we stayed at the dorms at ODU we all of our students that were College roommates they just don't realize it was last summer college roommates but that's okay that you know just middle schoolers they think that's exciting but what I love about this is it

054took my program of doing topography maps of Mars and navigating on Mars and say let's delve into it a little bit deeper and gave me all these great ideas so one of the first things the kids do is the lunar thermos lab because they realize how cold it is on Mars and how are we going to be able to protect our astronauts and protect everything so do these different projects and one of the first ones they do is with the lunar thermos lab where I get ice cold water from the cafeteria they have to maintain for 15 minutes the temperature of that water and it cannot vary any more than 5 degrees and I give them a variety of different materials to build their lunar thermos but they can only use one of each of

055the different materials they have to do a math teacher and me they have to create spreadsheets they have to do the um median mean mode so they're doing all of the measures of center I just have all of this math thrown in there with them they have to graph it they have to do independent variables dependent variables I just cross curriculum the fire out of it and they're just not even realizing at first they're like wait a minute we just did this in another class I'm like I know guys it's all one thing second one is caliber Precision lab oh again put something in these kids hands that's not a pencil that's not a computer not a notebook and they go crazy so these are digital caliper Labs unfortunate that my little brother is a

056uh mechanical engineer and has a CNC machine and at his house so I just have to pick up the phone and say little brother Randy I need some help here and so he created for me 18 different letter H's and on these letter H's the diff there's 12 or 13 different measurements that they can get off of that letter H and each of those 18 different hes are totally different measurements so they have to carefully to three decimal points figure out what those measurements are and then they have to graph it and then we do comparisons and do an analysis to see how close they are and the reason why this is important is because when they're doing their navigating on the Mars topography sometimes that little bit of a difference changes how they have

057to code so it teaches them the importance of the Precision next one is vacuum and space lab this one was pretty fun um I learned that you have to make sure you have smaller marshmallows so the kids put marshmallows in a syringe and they have to pull back the syringe holding the end and not holding the end and they learn what happens with vacuum in space I did learn that you actually can um have a plastic syringe explode broke into a bunch of pieces and I'm like okay this is great didn't know that could happen but we did learn that but the kids again it's bringing the space into the classroom for the kids this one is awesome it's my gravity limitations by Planet lab as everyone knows at Forest Middle School we have a

058wonderful wonderful um Courtyard area and I like to get the kids out there as much as I can plus my classroom's on the second floor so we have to be really careful about how loud we are because the downstairs classrooms don't appreciate if I get a little too crazy upstairs with my kids so gravitation limitations by um Planet lab and I put planet in parenthesis because I had a student this semester who was very upset with me that I did not include Pluto and she feels that Pluto is a planet and Pluto deserves some recognition I said sweetheart if you want Pluto we're going to put Pluto in there so now Pluto is added to it we have the ISS we have the sun we have all kinds of things that we've added to it

059so what they do is we have them jump and figure out what their um how far they can jump on Earth and then we do conversions on how does that change based on the gravity of the different planets and so this is an example of where we go outside with a 33 foot tape measure and they have started the starting point and they have to show me on that tape measure what the difference is at one point when they're jumping the kids are like Mrs Watson if I could jump on the moon what I could do on Earth I might be in the NFL I'm like you would be in the NFL if you could move that or jump that far but it's not a reality but you know gives them a little bit of

060perspective and I make them point out exactly what it is again get them outside get them doing things and they love it they absolutely love it next thing is Drop Tower lab so the reason why I'm wearing what I'm wearing is because I was fortunate I was selected as one of eight teachers in the United States to participate in a zero gravity flight and so to get my students ready for that one of the first things we want to do is talk about microgravity and how do how are things affected by microgravity so the first lab that I have my students do is called the drop tower lab this is an example of my students who are in the front foyer right inside of Forest Middle School up on the balcony so we have our

061tape measure there it's 18t from the top of that railing down to the bottom um yes those are my air mattresses I pulled out of my garage cuz you know who else brings twins siize air mattresses to school and everybody just kind of shakes their head and go what's Watson doing now so they've kind of learned to accept the fact that I'm thinking outside the box a little bit but it's great because we you know we drop magnets we drop heavy things and light things and just talk about how does you know gravity affect how things are moving so the next thing this is another one I love this project this is my robotic laparoscopic surgery product or project and this is a joint uh project that I did with a Virginia Tech School of

062Engineering I saw a grant that had come available and I really really wanted to do this with the kids because one of my summery Virginia Tech had done this and I thought this would be a great thing to bring to Bedford County Schools so when I saw the Grant come open I contacted did uh Virginia Tech and said would you write this grant with me and Dr Lou is like absolutely so he has to be careful and I tell people be careful when you say if you ever need anything just let me know because I picked up the phone I said remember me and remember how you said and so he and I worked together and we wrote a grant to get four laparoscopy surgery stimulators this is the exact same machine that any medical

063student that wants to become a surgeon and they do their residency this is the laparoscopy surgery machine that they use the medical innovis devices and it teaches them the difference so they're looking at a screen but they have to maneuver things with I call them like the pincher tongs and move things around it's different challenges it's an amazing program with the kids because if you you know I tie it to space going if you're going to be working on the ISS you're not always right outside sometimes you do stuff robotically and robots are going to be our future so this is just one way of applying it to the medical side my kids as you'll notice in here we all have lab jackets and of course I got my NASA patches had some on any

064time they can possibly put that lab jacket on they are all about it even when they're doing this on Friday watch can I wear the lab jacket I'm like of course you can wear the lab jacket that's what they're for they think they are just it I'm like you know what if this helps build their confidence I am all for it so this is a picture of some of my little sixth graders in line waiting to do that the grants I wrote for gave us four of these laparoscopy surgery simulators I wrote another Grant through fratone was accepted and I have four more that are being made so my brother who's the CNC Guru I went to him and said this is what I need and he's like all right we figured out what it

065would cost I wrote the grant so he's in the process of making me four more of these because it really works to just have maybe two or three people working at a time and I've got 32 kids in one class I got eight kids waiting to use a machine it's too much so we figured out how to work around that this next one oh this is so cool so I got a phone call from Virginia space Grant it was the Wednesday before we got out for Christmas break and it was quarter to 5 I'm sitting at my desk getting ready to leave and the Virginia space Grant rudo calls me she goes Cindy Watson I have a deal for you I'm like I'm listening she goes it's a quick turnaround time on M she goes

066when do you get out of school I said Friday she goes okay this is what I need she goes we have opportunity to participate in an ISS downlink with astronaut Laurel Ohara we get to ask questions to her but we I'm asking people from all over the state and even I think Puerto Rico was included in this too that you had to submit questions but they had to be video questions so we found out on Wednesday night we had this opportunity and we had till Friday to have this done and that included picking the kids getting the parents' permission and recording the you know kind of like vetting the questions and getting the questions recorded more than once but we did it we got it uploaded and out of 18 questions six of fource middle

067school students were chosen so these are our six students that were chosen to participate in it and it was amazing so they recorded their questions we sent them in into NASA NASA chose their questions and then they sent them up to the ISS to astronaut Laurel O'Hara and then we had a big down link where we kind of sat together in the room and then they would pull up the questions the video and then Laurel O'Hara would answer the question live to the students what was amazing about this is one of our young ladies in this picture her grandparents are in Nigeria and when she was chosen her dad contacted the grandparents and while the ISS down link was going on her grandparents in Nigeria were watching with the force middle school kids were doing

068so it's kind of cool because I feel like we got a world impact with that what's cool with the top right picture that I like is that's Laurel oara upside down because of microgravity of the ISS and I have in my classroom words written around the ceiling and I have the zero g there so I thought it was kind of cool that she was upside down in front of the zero g it's kind of a oh looking for the picture up photo up there so let's talk about Zer G this was so cool I had the opportunity a couple summers ago to what's called liftoff which is a program out of Houston down at um space it was through space center Houston it was through Texas space Grant they chose teachers throughout the United States

069so there were 65 of us in the nation I was the one chosen to represent the state of Virginia I went down for this and they did something called teacher feature where we stood up in front of the group and we shared something that we did that we thought was cool cool with this group of four teachers stood up and said we got to do a zerog flight I'm like hm I want to hear about this so they're telling me about what you do is you get your students together you come up with four experiments and you get to do the experiments on a zero gravity flight at 34,000 feet and it is a parabola where you're going up and down so you have 20 seconds where you are at zero gravity where your feet

070are literally as you can see at the same height as your head that is me on my very first zero g hanging on to that rope going oh my God what am I doing but it was amazing it was absolutely amazing I would do it again in a heartbeat so um I had the opportunity to do the zero gravity flight on the right hand side that is a fabulous student named Isa gioto so once we realized that we're that I was selected and could represent Bedford County schools and with my Forest kids every Mission has to have a mission patch so we created a schoolwide mission patch competition and this is ISA gioto and that is her she was chosen as the finalist with that patch and I'm going show it to you a little

071bit in a little bit more detail but it was the artistic ability was incredible we had students from all different classes art classes Career Tech classes science classes tons and tons of students everybody submitted and then this was the patch that was chosen so what exactly did that mean so when I went up there with the zerog I took four experiments for my students the very first experiment we did was the effect of water absorption rate on sodium poly po acrylate sodium polyacrylate is just a fancy word for diaper gel baby diapers so that is why on this you see the baby on her picture because the baby diaper gel was something that we used for that so we wanted to know if the water absorption rates any different in microgravity because when we did

072plant the moon which we're going to talk about um we noticed that when you add sodium polyacrylate to soil we actually had a 40% reduction in the amount of water we needed because the water retention was so much better so we're like well how would that translate into the into space into the moon into Mars so we did that first one we also did one the second one we wanted to look at frequency of lunar regulus um on the movement of it because if you're thinking about solar panels up on the moon you get the dust on it as we all know or you may know with solar panels if you start clouding solar panels your efficacy is gone so would a frequency vibrations make that solar or the moonar regolith move so we did

073different thing at different levels to see how it would move on Earth and how it would move in microgravity we also wanted to know how does water move so we kind of mimic that machine so I I had some help making these machines for the with the kids because you couldn't have anything plugged in it all had to be battery operated so this is a 9volt battery that runs these and then the bottom one on the right is looking at what is different types of fabric what is the water absorption rate on different types of fabric because you figure if astronauts are wearing their flight suits or you know astronaut suits and underneath they've got my clothes how is the absorption rate different because the last thing you want to do is to have any

074extra absorption or be you know your clothes be any wetter than they need to be because as we know when you're wet you're cold and it's already cold and you know just to see how that would be affected up there um just a little disclaimer when I did this I thought I would use colored water because I thought colored water you'd be able to see how it'll absorb into the fabric better I did should have thought twice about using yellow because I did this in the kitchen like oh no it's no it's not what you think it's just colored water but you know sometimes you learn along with the students hey hey Cindy just real quick I you've got about five more minutes and I know you were saying 30 seconds per slide I'm not

075all right I'll speed it up okay and I know you're on slide 11 so oh I better R okay so two other things we do we do tomato sphere tomato sphere is uh tomato plants that the seeds have been spent up have been sent up to the ISS for five weeks and sent back down and then we planted plant we planted tomato seeds that part of them had been on the ISS part of them not and we just monitor the difference next one is plant the moon challenge where we literally did a grant where we were um sent Moon regular simulant did a growth competition I can say over the we've done it for three years we've been an International Champion and a state champion over the last two years so Mission patch analysis this

076is another wonderful cross-curriculum project that we can do and it just ties into the different Mission patches and you analyze what they do tying Auto enhancements to space exploration one thing I try to do in my classes is bring in speakers either I'm bringing them in on a zoom call or I'm bringing them in on in person and this is interesting because with all of the changes in cars and I put the Cyber truck there because apparently cyber trucks are now seen in Lindberg so just kind of talk about what's going on with all of that another great thing we did we had an opportunity for those of you who are a little bit older May understand this my students didn't and their parents didn't I said ask your grandparents um we had a live

077Zoom call with Fred Hayes from Apollo 13 where our kids got to ask live questions to him and live answers and he I said he's like everybody's Grandpa he's the nicest man in the world CTE or critical thinking skills Fridays the last 10 minutes of my class on Fridays I have my kids just put the books down and they don't do anything with and we just do thinking skills on thinking outside the box how are we doing tangrams how are we doing tarao how are they doing canoodles just to get their brain to think a little bit differently all right this is coming back to Forest Middle School we actually bring an uh airplane to Forest Middle School school it's an icon 5 from Virginia Department of Aviation the kids get to sit in the

078cockpit and actually get to learn a little bit about basic flights it's a wonderful program drones um I'm this is we bring in speakers for drones and this is just some examples where we brought in some different speakers the bottom left is when I had the opportunity to go to Houston this is an mq9 Reaper which is a 66 foot wing span of a drone an unmanned aircraft and then we also tied in of what's going on and how the forest fires in Virginia history how they use drones for that my second class I have um is my medical school class the first thing we do is genotyping phenotyping kids learn about the chromosomes and we drop chromosomes and combine characteristics to create cute baby faces and we do 21 different characteristics we also do

079doctor for a day where the do the students become doctors and we go through a patient profile and figure out what is wrong with the patient and why the first guess was wrong and why we have to just keep more investigating this is a huge hit this is physical exam parameters our students practice looking at otoscopes using stethoscopes using blood pressure cuffs using the Snell and eye chart using pulse soxes using reflex hammers using spherometer so this just lets them kind of be the doctor for the day which ties right into Medical School uh one of the projects they also do and mine are working on right now are body system mapping we split them into groups and they have to uh take the 28 by 72 piece of paper I traced the smallest kid

080in the class and they have to draw out what the different body systems are then we pretend it's Grand rounds and they have to present to the entire class something about that body system this is a huge hit at our school um this is Dr Norman he is our grand person at Mach Medical School Graduation and he presents each of the students an honorary doctor of medicine degree from Forest Middle School and they get a big kick out of that um drone competition team I'm sure you're probably aware Forest Middle School has eight drone competition teams two of our teams placed top at NASA Langley and we are headed to the National Championship in Chattanooga next week so we're going to be taking kids the top right picture the reason I put that on there

081is we did a Showcase Event and we brought in over 200 family members to see what the Drone teams are about and that is Holden Campbell teaching his grasu how to fly a drone so we say drone flying is for all ages and these are just pictures from the competition we are going to do our second annual Robotics and drone Academy last year we had 128 students from 18 different elementary and middle schools from the area this year we have 116 kids signed up and pretty much the same number so we open it up to everyone it's a 4-day Academy where we're going to fly drones we're going to program robots we're going to launch rockets we're going to get them certified for FAA for drones it's just it's a stem great start with the

082stem one reason I get to do a lot of this is because for nine years I've been a master teacher part-time with uh Virginia space Grant Consortium and they have been very great on providing opportunities that I've been able to tie into for our school so these are some of the different programs these are all free programs that are offered to our students from ninth grade through high school and some of them are dual enrollment it's a grant that covers the cost of everything one thing I also believe in is I think you should share your voice I think that uh we need to let other teachers know what we're doing I can come up with great ideas but I can't I need to mimic something someone else has done so if you we what

083I do is I try to get out to different places and share what I do because I think when teachers share ideas every everybody can come out a winner from that so these are just some different ideas the bottom one is the seat conference that's the biggest space exploration educators conference in the nation it's down at um Houston I had the opportunity to be on a panel presentation where I was at the IMAX theater and I have five story screen behind me with all of these slides which was pretty cool I always say find your tribe there are lots of teachers everywhere that love to do what I do and in your school in your District in your state throughout the nation and these are just some pictures of some different groups of teachers that

084I'm working with here and so how do I do this this isn't cheap but there's support up there this is a list of 54 different organizations that have helped me fund what I do for my class and it's amazing when you write grants and you tell them what you want to do that the support is there so I just wanted to kind of share how widespread this is It's local it's Statewide it's National it's all here so what do I want to do next I want to repeat everything I did this year pretty much I want to add some more speak to it but I also want to try to start a National Junior Honor Society you know when Dr Bo was talking about you know we're building citizens I think that we have some

085wonderful leaders in the communities and I think we need to continue to build that so I think that's something that I'd really like to try to start um these are just an example of some more Labs that I would like to do I've got the ideas on doing it and I just need the time to do that so I just want to say thank you sorry Marcus Hill told me I had 15 minutes I'm like I'm a middle child of five I can't talk fast but apparently I don't talk that fast she does talk fast I I tried I'm sorry no you thank you very much uh for doing that had a presentation you all so I'm sorry um one of the things that we did when I went on the Zero Gravity flight is

086we wanted to represent where we're from so I had a forest um Banner made with Bedford County Public Schools and I flew this on the Zero Gravity flight and I wanted to present this to the school board and to the executive staff and also I brought back for everybody our head made I've got stickers of the patches that were done for the teachers that flew patches for the um that my eoto made that represented our feder County schools and then I also have for you in the bag a duck because whenever you fly the zero g flight it's called The Lucky Duck because they have a duck that sits on the cockpit and as they goes through the parabolas they follow the movement of the duck and when the duck hits a certain point they

087know they got to pull out of the parabola and go back up and down so I got every one of you a duck that I flew on the gravity flight also that's thank you right here yeah we can you want to go by the FL thank you thank you we need more teachers like you we need to clone you yeah so that started off um something that we would like to continue to do so we've got hundreds uh of teachers uh that have that same passion and so uh if you're out there and you want to come share the amazing things that you're doing in your classroom uh here in beffer County please reach out to me it's marcus. Hill beer. k12.ca.us uh and we're going to uh set those up and let me know

088um how we can get you in here to share uh what amazing things you're doing in your classroom so really appreciate that all right um I'll turn it over yep okay um I know space is a little crammed in here so Dora and Dwayne you might got you might might have to spread a little bit but okay so Mr chairman chair and Dr Bergen will you please come forward to greet our students and staff early childhood education and teacher for tomorrow students are rising to the educational Challenge in a thrilling competition that showcases Innovation dedication and a passion for teaching from lesson plans administrative careers and creative classroom strategies these future Educators were vying for top honors in the most recent Educators Rising state competition these young men and women are here tonight these young

089young men and women here tonight have shown they are a new generation of exceptional Future Leaders please hold your applause until all the students are up front but first we have James broad he was first place in stem lesson and planning and delivery congratulations we have Avery Campbell and Alexis Spangler they were first place in children's literature prek and they also have brought their book that they would like for you guys to take a look at that they wrote and Illustrated themselves congratulations we have Michelle Corbin second place in exploring education Administration careers congratulations Caitlyn Bennett second place an educator Rising leadership award Ava Kirby third place in public speaking and we have Miss Allison Burns so please join me and congratulating all of them I might need you can you guys come this way

090just to smidge we might have to fill some in in the front here a little bit uh you guys the two students you g to come in the front and then yeah that'll work all right three two one more do out a little bit sure I don't cop anybody all right thank you guys conratulations [Applause] thank you all for coming and Alison I'll email you this picture to you can send it to your you're welcome call a comment all right public the public comment portion of tonight's agenda is limited to 40 minutes speakers are asked to State their name and voting district school board is here to listen to your comments but will not engage or respond to speakers during this 40-minute period please remember that this is a public meeting and that we expect

091all speakers to refrain refrain from any foul profane abusive or hateful language during their comments or any time while in attendance during this meeting we also ask that speakers keep their remarks objective and about the school in nature please keep all comments limited to matters related to the public schools and any comments that are harassing or amount to a personal attack against any identifiable individual whether board member or staff or student are having the potential to cause unnecessary delay or disruption to this meeting are prohibit this is a public meeting for public matters if a speaker is not present when their name is called we will proceed with the next name on the list an individual who has not signed up to speak may not substitute for that time sline individuals will have four minutes

092to address the board an alarm will sound when an individual has 30 seconds remaining and a second alarm will sound when the a lot 4 minutes have expired when this second alarm sounds please discontinue speaking and allow the next person in line to come to the podium should you be able to finish your comments please send or give them to Miss Johnson and she will give them to board members please do not adjust the microphone at the podium as it has been positioned for Optimum audio quality Kell bigford K Bickford Cindy Young [Applause] House good evening my name is Cindy young house I have two students in Bedford County Public Schools we're district 7 and thank you for this opportunity to speak to you parents rights that is an important issue which a few if

093not all of you included as a vital aspect of your campaign platforms it is a high priority issue for many in our community parental rights and education are embedded in Virginia code Supreme Court cases uphold the tradition of parental rights and cases going back to 1923 more recently in our community parental rights were deemed more important than Mass mandates meant to protect others during a pandemic then parents rights to decide their students reading materials was deemed so extremely necessary that certain groups of parents were nearly permitted to ban books without a due process for all students and not just their own so this fervent support for parents' rights raises the question do you really care and support care about and support parental rights for all parents what about parents wanting affirming pronouns and names used

094for their non-binary and transgender students respectfully address in others in their preferred manner is completely consistent with your Christian values and hardly against any law of the land to change a name in legal records takes anywhere from a few weeks to 6 months or more a legal change of name may not be feasible prior to certain important events such as graduation ceremonies I urge consistency in parental rights by granting parents in bever in beer County Public Schools the right to stipulate by which names and pronouns their students need to be addressed especially at commencement dead naming and disrespecting pronoun preferences is proven harmful so against your Christian values of loving your neighbor you ran for election on and esteem parents' rights let's please apply that care and respect to all parents and I do realize

095that the official word is that only the power school name is called at graduation and that there have been no exceptions made but that isn't true because there have been in 2019 2022 and 2023 there have been exceptions made so thank you for your time Allison Johnson hello can everybody hear me cool um so I wanted to share about an issue that I see pretty prevalently in the public schools um and that comes from my own experience um and so I'm going to share a little bit of my story with you that pertains to the problem um so I was born in a Christian home and I was raised in the church um when I was at a young age I began being sexually abused um and it was so traumatic that I didn't really

096remember what had happened until I was 13 and when I was 13 um instead of clinging to Christ I began to look onto the internet and other influences to find comfort and uh find identity um and so I began accessing things on the internet uh which I see so prevalently in youth today um sites such as watpad and um YouTube that really glorified um homosexual and transgenderism um and the lgbtq plus community so by the time I was 13 I was cutting myself I was Bic I was in a homosexual relationship and confused about who I was um I had completely walked away from the Lord and my life was just a mess uh I was in 9th grade I was at rberg M uh high school and I was allowed to practice tarot um

097I was allowed I went by the name that I had chosen the pronouns that I had Chosen and it had proven to be much more harmful than beneficial um my mom knew that I needed help um so she she could see all of the influence that I was um getting uh a lot of it was from YouTube and just access things that are accessible in school um as well as at home and uh she ended up sending me to a residential program because at this point I was um very suicidal and very unhappy with the identity that I was pursuing um and so I went to a program called Eastern Appalachian Teen Challenge and it was a residential program and it was Christian um and at first I didn't want to go cuz I was

098like well like they're going to dead name me and they're going to I'm not going to be able to continue these things things that I'm doing these addictions that I had fallen into um and I was met with love I wasn't met with judgment I was called by my birth name which ended up being very um helpful to me um in regaining who God had made me to be which is a woman um and so I had begun going through this process of rededicating my life to Christ and that was ultimately what had Set Me Free what had shown me my identity that I had joy in fulfillment in and still due to this day um because it was found in Jesus Christ um so I want to just encourage you um if you do

099not have a relationship with Christ it's really the best thing and it's the most important choice of your life um pertaining to the public schools um this was something that was not glorified or very um encouraged in public school in fact more damage was encouraged by um just things that were immoral um that I was allowed to do in school um um so yeah I that's what I wanted to share with you guys and I hope that you will take into consideration um from a personal experience in the public schools of how damaging it can be to push um immoral agendas and just things that could harm a student more so than benefit them even though it may look better so yes thank you for your time art lip Mr chairman members of the board

100my name is Art liin I reside in farest Virginia I am also an employee of B County Schools as a lead drive into farone um I'm here to ask you all since youve made the commitment to start air conditioning the new buses to consider extending that commitment to retrofitting some of the buses that we already have as you all know we went from Winter Straight Into Summer it's when it's 85 and 90 outside it's 110 to 120 on those buses um when I thought about coming I started looking for data to bring with me unfortunately there's not a lot of data out there there were a lot of articles for in the media all over the country about the harm of being exposed to high heat on the buses and how localities that committed air

101conditioning the buses but as far as a study I could only find one and the methodology was a little weak so I'm hesitant to cite it even though it was accepted by the National Institute of Health uh there have been extensive studies and other occupations though about exposure to high heat and that repeated exposures is cumulative and it takes longer each time to recover from that heat and on a 90° day or 85 degree day when you get home you just don't feel like doing anything trying to recover and for the safety and the benefit of your aging dve pool I would hope that you all would maybe commit to retrofitting some of the buses that we have not all of them but maybe go back five or six years because it's no use in

102going back 10 years on a bus that's only good for 15 but I hope you all will look at that and continue your commitment to the air conditioners and I like to thank you for your time and everything that you do it doesn't go unnoticed greatly appreciate it thank you right that is the last uh person who was signed up do we have anyone else who would like to speak I will close tonight's portion of public comment thank you all right so we will go back to 3.02 cyber security Captain Anders he just walk out the door he just stepped out we'll be right back good evening how's everybody uh is this still sorry I had to step out for a second is this still part of the public comment section or okay so I

103have a little bit more than four minutes awesome thank you'all for inviting me this evening uh member pervis for asking me to come and speak a little bit about Internet safety uh security my name is Steve Anders I'm a captain with the Bedford County Sheriff's Office and uh I've been assigned to the internet crimes against children task force since 2006 currently serving as the commander uh over 178 agencies with over 330 investigators uh forensic examiners and support staff that are investigating crimes against children that involved technology uh and this is a problem all over the state all over the country uh all over the world uh we wore cases right here in Bedford County that end up having International reach uh and and what you see on the news and in the big cities is

104happening to students here uh in our school system in our community so just some some quick numbers to give a summary of some of the the work that's been done in our task force area uh here in Southern Virginia 356 that's the number of proactive investigations that our investigators initiated last year that's where they would go out posing as a minor online or posing as a trafficker or someone looking to buy a minor uh for sexual purposes uh looking for people that are producing Distributing and possessing uh explicit content pictures and videos uh depicting the abuse of children 2,975 that's the number of reactive cases those are cases that come to a local agency on the task force through a member of the public a parent a victim themselves a child or someone they go

105to an srf they go to a teacher someone brings the case or the complaint to that local agency or the task force and then that's investigated 10,493 that's the number of cyber tips that we received from our to our task force from the national Center for missing exploited children a cyber tip is a report made by a member of the public who contacts neck Meck directly or a service provider it could be Google could be Facebook Instagram Tik Tok Snapchat Dropbox any sort of online service provider if they become aware of suspected child exploitation activity they're required to report that to the National Center which then goes through it determines where uh they believe the offender and or victims might be and then forward those to the respective iak task force the one here in

106Virginia that's run by this B County Sheriff's Office is one of 61 iaks across the country so we received 10,4 93 reports uh from NE of suspected child exploitation last year uh 236 that's the number of individuals that were arrested as a result of Investigations uh into child exploitation 1443 the number of children that were identified and rescued from ongoing child sexual abuse 492 the number of hard drives that We forensically examined in a digital lab to find evidence of this exploitation 1 ,110 mobile phones smartphones that were examined 204 the number of CDs and DVDs or Blu-Rays that were seized and examined 3,240 the number of USB thumb drives or micro SD cards or other storage devices the total amount of data that was examined from those devices was 632 terabytes to put that

107perspective if we printed all that data out and say a PDF or a document a standard uh 8x11 page that would be 4.1 billion printed pages that would fill 1300 full-size filing cabinets packed full that's how much data our investigators and examiners went through looking for evidence of child exploitation again this is just that's a small snapshot of some of the work that our investigators have done and that's just our task force there's a second task force in Northern Virginia the 12 Northern counties in DC their numbers are almost identical to s and that is a problem that our society here in the Commonwealth our children and our families are facing uh due to technology now I'm not saying that technology is wrong I'm not saying the internet is wrong but just like anything else

108it can be abused and it can be used by Bad actors to commit crimes now I'm old enough it looks like some people in here are also old enough some of you maybe not old enough to remember AOL and you got your free internet through that 3 and 1/2 inch floppy disc that you would get in the mail or the post office to grocery store maybe your front one CU your neighbors were throwing all their extra ones out the window as they were driving by uh it was cool but it also really wasn't that much fore internet because it took three days for your modem to actually dial up and connect so by the time you got to your mail you had to start pay it for it now however we can connect to other

109people in the in the internet through an unlimited number means whether it's a SmartPhone a tablet a laptop a video game system a music player your appliances there are now refrigerators that have built-in connectivity and displays that you can access the internet on uh and I wasn't able to bring it tonight but I've got a picture of a refrigerator that was on Home Depot floor in a display that someone went to a well-known adult pornography website uh right there in the store uh so again anywhere any way people can communicate weable devices how many young people how many of us wear a smartwatch you can connect to almost anything anyway at the push of a Bine this current generation our our young people will be the first generation uh that has grown up truly plugged

110in from birth this is exciting and scary at the same time our young people are going to have tremendous opportunities and tremendous discoveries and advancements in society because of their access to this new technology but the unknown dangers that we can't even think about that are going to be coming because of this technology uh literally scare me and keep me up at night my primary experience obviously with online exploitation to Children involves the sexual exploitation of kids this is a problem we're never going to get rid of it's not going to go away we can't arrest our way out of it it's also not a problem because technology is here we can't close that box we can't P put Pandora back kids are going to get access to technology somewhere somehow uh whether it's at

111home school library friend's house wherever can't take their devices away they'll get it from a friend friend gets new phone they hand old phone to a classmate and now the classmate's using that device uh unknown to the parents all they need is Wi-Fi uh they they could make phone calls using that Wi-Fi so the answer is not complete removal of devices from children but teaching them how to use it safely the types of exploitation I mentioned we can do uh the investigation of images and videos being produced depicting use of children uh the online solicitation of children for various acts as well as recruiting for trafficking um and I know human trafficking is sort of the big buzzword and topic we think it's a big city problem it's not we've had trafficking cases here in

112Bedford County it happens everywhere and anywhere uh it could be a third party trafficking someone that they've recruited it could be familial it could be an exchange for redit or narcotics uh someone makes one of their children available if something of value is exchanged for that child it is trafficking and it is happening here in Bedford County and in every County and city in the state of Virginia as well as the United States one of the dangers is because of this widespread access that children have to the internet is exposure to adult content in general I remember the first time that I was exposed to adult content I was 6 years old back in 1981 I was at a friend's house her older brother had a magazine on his nightstand for Easy Rider cool motorcycle

113I was exposed to something much more Beyond motorcycles and I can remember that I can tell you the exact victorial that I saw 42 years ago kids now are faced with content on a device that shows Sound and Motion and the age is getting excuse me younger and younger average age for exposure to that content because of the access unfettered access to these devices uh various studies 8 to 10 years old when we talk with parents we ask them how many of you have had discussions with your 8-year-old about content like that that they may be exposed to online it's an unfortunate fact that we as parents and I have four children of my own we need to talk with our kids as young as possible at age appropriate levels about things they may be

114exposed to you may control what they see at home but you can't control what their friends see or do and one of my children was exposed through a friend at a friend's house um unbeknownst to us and that that's a struggle that we've walked beside him with with uh because of what he was exposed to what makes this even more dangerous there are numerous studies that have shown the dangers of pornography in general uh one from 2010 put out by uh researchers by the name of was Sister sherar son and liberman they randomly selected 50 popular adult selling legal DVDs in 2010 they found that 90% of the content in those videos depicted violence and aggression towards one of the people in that content a follow-up study in 2020 by Fritz Malik Paul andz found

115that in adult content 90% of the targets of that aggressive behavior were female and 76% of the perpetrators were male so if our young people are being exposed to this content and parents are not aware that they might be exposed exposed at such a young age how many years of exposure before parents start having the talk with their children are kids learning and being subconsciously programmed that this type of behavior is normal healthy activity in a relationship and then in society we start to wonder why we have such a high rate of abuse in Intimate Relationships our young men are learning it's okay to be violent and aggressive our young ladies are learning to be victims because it's normalizing that activity and that behavior in addition early exposure lowers inhibitions how do young people learn

116how do infants and toddlers learn they mic what they see M around them do I remember when I was a kid I wanted to be an adult I wanted to do adult things I wanted to be grown up now that I'm adult I wish I'd slowed down and been a kid a little bit longer right kids are exposed to explicit content on online they see adults doing these things they want to be adults so what do they start doing they start mimicking what they see online they are normalized to the idea that you take your clothes off you do things to yourself with your clothes off document it and you put it online for people to see we're currently working a case here in Bedford County involving seven and eighty olds in one of the

117schools that were making images and videos of themselves and sharing them among their classmates seven and 8 years old This Is Happening Here for 10 one of the fastest growing crimes we're seeing with the exploitation of children is financial extortion when I started in 2008 as an investigator with the task force the vast majority of the blackmail cases we saw were female victims that were being blackmailed for additional content that is now switched especially with the uh on this side of the pandemic the vast majority 93% of the victims now of financial sextortion are high school age males they're being catfished by professional criminal groups mostly out of foreign countries that will pose as a young female communicate with them in an attempt to get explicit photos of that young male as soon as they

118have an image they immediately start demanding money we've seen upward 150 bucks to $5,000 demands most youths now have access to online payment system like cash out VMO PayPal that their parents have set up for them so they pay one of my counterparts with one of the California iaks was telling me about a case they worked 17-year-old man was financially sextorted he ended up paying $150 he was so he panicked so much over it that within a few hours of the initial extortion and paying $150 he took his own life that money goes to what is called a money mule here in the US so that they have access to the US banking system they receive that money they then wire that back to their home country to the uh the prime Group after they

119take their cut in that particular case when they were able to identify and arrest the money mule they found that he was sending $10,000 a day back to the group uh in his home country how many victims are they getting on a daily basis this one group never mind all the groups that are out there this is one of the biggest threats that our young people are fac [Applause] pacing another emerging threat is AI especially generative AI they would seen the recent news where uh I believe it was a school principal or administrator uh had a disgruntled employee that created uh material that depicted that that person is uh using some extremely graphic racial language and then found out it was completely generated and created by AI by this disr employee to put this person

120in a bad light you imagine how this is going to be used in politics regardless of what side of the aisle you're on how do you how do you defend against something that looks like you that sounds like you saying or doing something that you've never done but how is that impacting our kids we're already seeing cases thankfully not here in Bedford County yet but it's coming but we've got cases here in Virginia where middle e school boys are taking the high their class photo their yearbooks they're putting that into generative Ai and they're taking their female classmates faces and using the AI to put it on adult content to create pornography of their classmates what is that going to do to our young women and even our young men when it happens to them

121as well they're being victimized through no fault of their own nothing that they've done they didn't take the picture what happens when their parents don't believe that they didn't take those photos or videos because are you going to believe your your eyes or what your child's saying trying to get out of trouble this is something that scares us as well we we're not we are not yet our society is not ready to deal with this besides the exploitation there are other negative effects to excessive screen time in phone use phones and tals now are the TV babysitter that my mom used put me in front of was the TV growing up when she didn't want to be bothered I was in front of the TV playing Super Mario Brothers now it's the phone everywhere you

122go this is a problem the the especially social media the algorithms are designed to keep pushing specific content whatever you're looking at it's going to send more of it to you so if a child gets exposed to explicit content they're going to keep getting more of that if that's what they're looking at um the the uh the short form content the Tik Tok videos the Instagram reals the stuff like that that a lot of the kids are into and constantly looking at scrolling all the time those short bursts actually stimulate the brain to deliver a lot of dopamine so it's a constant dopamine drip so they feel good and that's how they develop addiction to social media or they can develop addiction to anything because of that dopamine hit and the social media companies know

123this that's why they push that because they want to keep people viewing they also have issues with doom scrolling infinite scrolling you just keep going and going I you know 2 3 4 5 hours later you're in bed uh and it's it's 2:00 in the morning you've done nothing but look at videos on on your social media other studies in in uh articles programs have looked at uh the physiological effects on both children and adults a quick search of the internet will show many studies showing decreased attention spans in in people especially kids as they're developing their brains are developing increased rates of depression and anxiety uh in young women especially body image issues and selfworth disrupted sleep patterns again from the scrolling also from the blue light uh from the screens that disrupts the

124Circadian rhythm communication problems aggressive behavior increased bullying and being bullied uh eye issues posture issues inability to regulate emotions as well as decrease movement greater risk of OB obesity the question is what can we do like I said removal of all devices is impracticable impossible kids are going to find a way they could take their their birthday money they get from Grandy and Grandpa they could go down to Kroger Walmart and buy throw throwaway phone for 20 to 30 bucks and connect to Wi-Fi that they can get anywhere and still get online so complete removal and obstination is not the answer as parents as Educators we need to focus on educating our children at age appropriate levels starting as young as possible about the dangers and the negative effects of too much screen time of

125the type of content you'll be exposed to as my children started being able to talk we talked to them my wife and I about appropriate touch about hey there are people that will sometime ask you to take your clothes off and look for pictures that's not appropriate we don't force our kids to hug anybody including relatives I don't force my kids to hug me I ask them because we want to teach them bodily autonomy and the right to say no these are things that unfortunately because of society we need to teach our children we as parents as Educators as responsible adults we need to get on the front lines because if we wait the negative aspect of society that's pushing this stuff will already have a foundation through the constant exposure uh through the media

126that they're seeing on TV and through their devices so being proactive about shaping our children's understanding of what healthy relationships are and that most of what they see online well sometimes can be fun and enjoyable is not real it's manipulated it's edited it's designed to keep you looking as long as possible we also have to realize as parents and I'm guilty of this myself sometimes the momentary convenience of allowing the kids be on the screen because we want to get something else done we have to make sure that we understand that that can have more negative far-reaching effects on their lives than that convenience that we're getting in that moment this can include self-image depression anxiety issues their ability to build and maintain relationships with people here in the real world their ability to focus

127uh and keep attention on a given task and I've talked with Educators and I know that that's an issue in the classroom sometimes kids just can't focus because uh they've wired themselves to be uh just focused at something shortterm uh so as I've seen as soon the average attention fan has dropped to 88.3 seconds in most kids before they get bored and need to go to something else and also that too much screen time can actually desensitize them to uh engage in Risky Andor criminal Behavior themselves so in closing I would just say that our kids are worth the effort of protecting them in here and now so that they can thrive in the future any questions thank you all we'll go back to 4.01 GI to plan Dr Bergen did you want to set

128that up yes sir all School divisions are required to review and update on an annual basis their comprehensive local plan for gifted education so attached to your agenda item is both our updated plan as well as a summary of changes of the implementations that are planned for next year Please be aware that the information you're receiving tonight has been reviewed by the division's guest advisory committee this time I'd like to invite Dr Trosper and Mrs a Boer supervisor of mathematics and education to address any questions Dr trer Who's going to be uh who's available to answer any questions you may have from the attachments to our point so it looks like you're adding the middle school and where is the funding for that coming from yeah that's a good question this is actually in the

129budget last year so this doesn't add funding or add anything to the budget this year uh we weren't able to do it because of some staffing issues replacing teachers who were already current teachers so uh this doesn't add anything to the budget it's it was already there so what's what is that going to be one for each Middle School we're going to have two dedicated to the middle school and they'll rotate between the three middle schools great any other question questions you've got the changes highlighted so okay all right we're good 4.02 literacy plan yes so you may have heard of the Virginia literacy act it was enacted through legislation in the 2022 general assembly and it's otherwise known as the VA so the vaa places A Renewed emphasis on improving literacy instruction and outcomes

130for students beginning next year every school division in the Commonwealth is going to be required to update their literacy plan to ensure that they are using evidence-based literacy curriculum and providing ongoing professional development for teachers reading Specialists and principles for its implementation the literacy plan that is being presented here tonight has been developed in collaboration between our reading Specialists and other teachers across the school division with our division curriculum team the draft of the plan which is attached to this agenda item is being presented tonight as an information item and we will return next month to ask for the board's action and approving the plan once that plan is approved again every school division is going through this process as required by law all of these plans will be uploaded through the link on the

131virin Department of Education website as well as on our own website again Dr Trosper our director of cck instruction is here to address any questions you may have about our post literacy plan did I understand correctly you said the curriculum committee reviewed this as well I'm going to defer to Dr Woodford as the curriculum committee looked at the literacy plan no okay certainly can and will okay the um for clarity the literacy plan there's a template that was developed by the vdoe so I've been attending training with every other superintendent and a team of individuals from our Central support team there was a template that was provided by the vdoe which we are then using to submit our plan um we're in a very good position in Bedford County compared to some of our counterparts

132that we've already adopted evidence-based literacy materials we did that last year at my urging um I was just concerned that we hadn't updated our literacy materials in quite some time so we're well ahead of where other school divisions are just at this time trying to figure out what will they be adopting for their materials to scramble and purchase and get them in over the summer to implement next year we already have our materials in place so we're focusing on a professional development plan so this this includes the professional development plan our ly plan yeah so the the professional development is being offered through the vdoe uh again I reference that I've been attending training along with other superintendent and other Central support uh team members reading Specialists have been receiving training again offered through the

133vdoe on a regional basis and then there'll be ongoing training offer to the B for next year this is an alignment to bring everyone in the state in compliance with the bla the Virginia literacy Act of 2022 any other questions this is going to be a line between all three Z zes right so are they going to all be doing the same same thing yes yes as far as Core Curriculum and then we'll be looking at intervention and supplemental curriculums those haven't been released by the state they're still being reviewed um and so right now we're using what we have what we've always had instead of putting money into new curriculums and for remediation and supplemental programs um and then actually Mr Haggler and I talked about it today how we would set aside some

134money to provide the same intervention plans uh materials for every school next year and I will say we can bring it to the curriculum committee it's been a little bit of a tight turnaround we've had two meetings with reading Specialists the plan was just finalized actually yeah just in time to get it on the agenda uh but we still have a month so um we can meet is that a meeting or we have meeting coming up that we can look at it together as a team yes okay any other questions on 4.02 all right 4.03 title grants yes this uh annual item about this time of year uh we bring forward to you and share with the board our Draft plans for the use of our federal title funds for next week each title fund

135has its own specific objective for those who are not aware Title One Part A provides resources for eight of our qualifying elementary schools that have larger disadvantaged populations title two funds are used primarily to provide tuition assistance and professional development for teachers and administrators title three funds support academic achievement uh supports for English Learners and title four part a grant provides funds for programs and activities for academic enrichment the title grants that are being presented tonight for information we'll come back next month to ask for the board's action and Dr Woodford and Dr Calbert and members of their team are here to answer any questions you may have about our proposed use of our federal title Grant funds any questions tonight so do they do these have any strings attached just some of these well

136they're federal dollars so of course they have strengths you know like tit Title One requires a certain percentage to be used for Parental engagement as a for instance so is there a a committee that rev is that part of the policies I guess my question would be if if these are any different than they have been in years past if there are any significant changes I I'll defer I don't believe so um I did the title for Grant and um there really aren't any significant changes um um we've been using that Grant to fund intervention design specialist um because that Grant specifically focuses on mental health support and Technology support um the one thing we did add to the title for is materials money for a campaign that actually the CPO committee talked about about

137putting technology down awareness for parents about social media so we added a materials um allotment there in technology so that we could have some funding for those materials so um I know in our Title One Grant um we typically try to fund additional staff members in the school and that's pretty much the same as we've done in years past so additional reading specialist add uh additional classroom teachers to lower class size and the and those are our Title One schools that are highly disadvantage schools um and I title three are there any significant changes Mr Ma I didn't think so and then Dr whis does title two which is the and we primarily use that funding as you all know with the teacher shortage they're hiring more more teachers who are on provisional provisional licenses

138and aren't properly licensed and endorsed what their teaching so we use that money to provide a lot of tuition assistance and so those courses are sent to us we approve them take the course on they approve that they have you pass then we reimburse them for those tuition costs so that's primarily we do that we also PL their attendance professional conferences okay so I'll just ask I think we've seen something in the news about federal dollars potentially being tied to us being forced to use pronouns uh and that being um part of federal dollars so none of that is tied to this money correct there are assurances in the back of each of the title grants that say um what we do what the grants provide and there's nothing in there about that okay so

139I want to say if we were to see federal dollars come into our budget Mr Haggler that have that requirement or any change you know based on what we're doing differently today we want to be made aware of that immediately so um and if that is the case then the finance committee will have to figure out how do we not accept federal dollars if that's part of um what's required so one question on Title One Grant on page 42 uh DCPS provides professional development and Equity training through Virginia Center of inclusive communities for all staff including Title One staff we are still doing that actually Dr Eisenhower is not here but we aren't doing that we are not no yeah I'll have her take that out I'm not that was a good catch and I

140read it and didn't catch it any other questions yeah we've got additional time because we don't take action until next meeting a mon we have a month information definitely answer any questions that you get more into them all right policy updates 4.04 yes sir um was advertised that we had eight policies up for review but with the um adoption of the agenda we are not going to be taking uh any information tonight on policy Jo so that leaves seven policies up for review tonight and as always there's a link within this um agenda item that you can follow and it will show the redline version of what are the changes that are being proposed to each of these policies so I'll just touch on a highlight of each of them as they have already been

141reviewed by the IGA committee starting with policy CBE Severance benefits this policy uh has not been reviewed since 2007 there are no proposed changes except for the removal of the purpose statement which is to be consistent with the changes we've made to all of our policies policy DLC expense reimbursements the proposed revisions include an emphasis on professional development to improve employee work skills and morale as well as clarification regarding budgetary Authority for approval proposed revisions to corresponding regulation dlcr are mainly formatting other than clarification regarding the use of rental cars versus the use of private Vehicles policy EAD special use of school buses the proposed revisions include the addition of a bus license agreement and there's some wording changes uh to make this policy consistent with all of our policies policy GC Bea leave without

142pay proposed revisions include extending the number of days an employee may take unpaid leave during their first year of employment due to a debilitating or life-threatening illness from 5 days to days policy jcj classroom assignments for twins the revisions are limited to changes in wording again just to provide consistency with how we word all of our other policies policy JG DB discipline of students with disabilities for infliction of serious bodily injury this is another policy that's not been reviewed in quite some time was last looked at by a school board in 2006 the proposed revisions being presented tonight are limited to specifying the names of the other policies referenced within the second paragraph and the seventh and final policy for information tonight is jhc student health services this entire policy which has not been revised

143since 2011 has been completely Rewritten to remove redundant language from other policies and to more plainly specify who the school board May employed to provide Health Services again if you want to read the specific changes you'll see the strikethrough of language being removed you'll see underlined for new languages being added all of the policy changes were reviewed in their entirety with the two members of the IG committee and so we're presenting these for information on behalf of the committee I ready to answer any questions or your committee members are if you haven't at this time questions all right that uh 8.01 advertise stand rasco wastewater treatment plant bid yes sir we're bringing this item forward on behalf of the facilities committee the administration uh through that committee is recommending that the school board approved for

144advertisement for bids for the replacement of the water treatment plant at Stanton River High School as well as Dem repairs to the domestic water system construction is not expected to be completed until the summer of 2025 the bid documents which are attached were reviewed and approved by the facility committee members prior to seeking I'm sorry uh the bid documents of our tached were reviewed and approved by the facility committee and the bids when they come in will be received up until June 27 we'll review them with the facility committee members prior to bringing them forward and seeking approval uh of the entire school board at the July meeting for the lowest bder Mr Haggler and the members of the the facilities committee are here tonight or at least one of our members of the facilities

145committee to answer any questions you may have about putting the Stant River High School wastewater treatment plant out for bid Mr hagle anything more to add so it'll be out for a bid in in June until June until June June so will that be something that they can finish before school starts in September they won't start until 202 uh oh the summer the summer so I got it okay you know these bids going out the same way we did the roofing jobs and things on social media and other so we're get I can add to that it'll be posted on our website social media uh CHR we'll go ahead and get that out on social media with a link to our website so uh anybody can look at that it also goes on the Eva

146State website so when I load it up on there anybody that put water treatment construction piping anything that's in there all keywords so it'll probably go out to over a thousand vendors um instantaneously once you post it on the State website because it has all the search words that people want to receive it regardless all over the state or all over the country great so um yeah it gets wide distribution and so we've it's been a while we've been working on this one it's taken a lot to get this one ready uh we estimated probably around a million doll for the water treatment plant $300,000 for the domestic so we'll see how those come in compared to what we're we've estimated it's been a while since we've been putting this one together but long overdue

147it's not the uh it's not the flashy uh repair uh but a much needed one so so the the thing says completed during the summer of 2025 is it started as well as completed all in the summer that's the plan yeah so the current plan um very good question it is in desperate need of repairs um Mr um committee knows about this and so the the fail safe place is that if that plant were to fail during the school year we can pump and continue to keep school open but uh we're hoping that all the equipment and everything's ready to go as soon as school's out so we can get on that and get it back up and running as soon as school is back in um but if they're not if there's any kind

148of delays there is a way to pump until we can get it back up and running so so do we need a vote is this an action item where we need a motion and a vote correct okay all right so do I have a motion to advertise the s River High School wastewater treatment plant all right we have a motion by Mr NS do I have a second second by Mr Daniels any discussion all right all those in favor signify by saying I I any opposed all right do we have a motion to go into Clos session Cher I make a motion that pursuant toota Virginia 22371 A123 to discuss the assignment appointment performance disciplining and release of contract for specific Schoolboard employees two for the discussion or consideration of admission or disciplinary matters or

149any other matters that would involve the disclosure of information contained in the Scholastic record concerning any student of any public institution or higher education in the Commonwealth for any or any state school system three for the discussion and or consideration of the acquisition of real property for a public purpose or for the dis uh disposition of of publicly held real property where discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position or negotiating strategy of the public body all right I have a motion by Mr Daniels do I have a second second second by miss pervis any discussion all those I'm sorry all the any discussion all right all those in favor signify by saying I I any opposed we are now in Clos session e e e ago looking at us I do

150have a motion to come out close session move have a motion by Mr Daniels to have a second second second by Mr keep your any discussion all right all those in favor please signify by saying I I any opposed all right we are out of closed session Miss Johnson the bfer County school board has convened a closed meeting on this date pursuant to an affirmative recorded vote and in accordance with the provisions of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and we're section 2.2 3712 D if the code of Virginia requires a certification by this school board that such closed meeting was conducted in Conformity with Virginia law now therefore or be it resolved that the bford County School Board hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully Exempted

151from open meeting requirements by Virginia law were discussed in the closed meeting to which this certification applies and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the close meeting were heard discussed or considered yes yes yes yes yes I do have a motion for the approval of the consent agenda move I have a motion by Mr Nils do I have a second second second by Mr Daniels any discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I any opposed all right you approve of the consent agenda passes superintendent report yes sir we're uploading the presentation for you so while that's coming up on the screen I I will start with uh on this first slide a couple of reminders for you all we we've emailed you and I just want to

152verbally emphasize again celebrating a couple of military connected events in the next couple of weeks so if if a a week from this Friday you're available at 4 o'clock in the afternoon we are hosting a military Signing Day for the school divisions in this region it was an idea that uh We've not done this before but vdoe is doing a military signing in Richmond that's a long drive for our kids so we're hosting one here we are the home of the national D-Day Memorial and uh William Wells superintendent of Amherst County is active uh military he's in the guard he's going to come in his his his dress uniform and he's going to provide remarks to the students uh we've invited our delegates and our Senators we've invited you we invited our Board of Supervisors

153um stud students are still rsvping I think we have at least a dozen kids and uh local BFW is going to be there b boy tribute Center of course the memorials hosting it's free they're opening the doors at 4:00 to anybody wants to come so if you're available to come please join us uh Friday the 17th at the memorial 4 o' it'll be a brief ceremony will be done by five okay and then the following week on the 23rd which is a Thursday is the annual uh Run for the wall and if you've not been to one of these it's a real treat come on out to Montville Elementary School there's like seemingly a thousand bikers pull into the parking lot um they take over the the school parking lot and the school the kids

154put on a wonderful patriotic program it's really uh Feelgood so if you're available Thursday 5:23 that's between 11:00 a.m. and 1 p.m. at Montville Elementary School all right let's jump into some celebrations it's been a busy month for our students and staff especially art teachers and students recently the elementary and secondary art teachers were guests at the bower Center for the Arts podcasts behind the bower to share their love for educating youth about art and how the community can continue their positive involvement also pictured are the award ceremony from both secondary art shows as well as the winners from the Scholastic art us east region at large we have tremendously talented artists in our schools and many thanks to all of our staff we support them art students weren't the only ones achieving greatness this

155past month The Odyssey of the Mind state competition was held at Jefferson was held and Jefferson Force High School's team took second place this qualifies them for the World Finals in Iowa for which they are actively fundraising Bedford County students also showed off at the Virginia FFA South rdge area rally recently taking home a variety of trophies and awards and lastly in addition the STEM Academy seniors finished their internship projects and have gained a larger insight into the career past for a brighter future and our last student celebration for this evening is Drake Stafford Drake won first place in the building maintenance category at the skills USA state championship congratulations to this first year CTE student we also on the screen would like to recognize and congratulate our PTA scholarship winners they were celebrated at

156the end of the year PTA banquet along with all of our PTA Volunteers Of The Year thank you to all of our PTA School chapters for all your hard work and your support for our students and our schools and our families the big feat meet is an annual event sponsored by Special Olympics it was once again held at Liberty High School and included students with disabilities and their peers from all three middle and high schools students competed at a variety of track events with local law enforcement and other Public Safety officials supporting our athletes student staff parents Spectators and community volunteers all enjoyed another amazing event thank you to all of our wonderful sponsors as well for making the day possible as uh I'm sure you've seen on the news social media and even uh

157broadcast over radio BCPS we had a BCPS teacher chosen as the region five teacher of the year superintendent of Public Instruction Dr Coons and other members of the vdoe came to Jefferson Forest to celebrate with Mrs Weaver along with her students and their families as well as staff and friends from the school and then Mr Wilson and I had the pleasure of joining Mrs Weaver uh in Richmond at the governor's mansion this past Monday to celebrate her amazing accomplishment congratulations to you geneveve well deserved we've also been celebrating our classified support staff of the year over this past month whether it's ensuring that our schools run smoothly providing helping hand or offering a friendly smile their efforts do not go unnoticed thank you to all of our support staff for all you do for our

158student staff and families and we hope that you will enjoy your delicious lunch and the love that we're sprinkling on you it's always a pleasure for me to uh recognize our bedford's best staff uh pictured here are Sher SS a youth and family specialist out of Stant River High School and Gina Hogan a kindergarten teacher at otter River Elementary School and again many thanks to area Education Foundation for their continued support that allows us to recognize our amazing teachers and staff and of course this week is Teacher Appreciation Week the community has had the opportunity to send their favorite teachers a card through our social media to thank our teachers for their hard work we hope you've had a chance to spoil your students teachers this week and also a big congratulations to Force Elementary

159School who is once again the recipient of the highest achievement Exemplar award for the 2324 school year as recognized by the Virginia Department of Education teachers aren't the only staff that we've been recognizing since we were last together we've celebrated national Administrative Professional Day School Bus Driver Appreciation Day National Nurse Appreciation Day and school lunch hero day thank you to all of these important individuals that make sure that our School Division runs effectively and efficiently every day Liberty High School hosted our very first first ever reverse career fair uh back in April the event had seniors who were interested in entering the workforce after graduation set up Booth where they could display their talents and their marketable skills so that employers could come in and interview them right there in the gymnasium at the high

160school and also as pictured on the right just this past Tuesday we held our annual Signing Day for our graduating seniors who have chosen to pursue their employment pursue employ employment or further education related to their career focused education while in high school many thanks to all of our community and business partners who were there in support of our CT students that day month of May is recognized nationally as mental health awareness month and May 9th is designated as childhood mental health awareness day with a goal of helping to break the stigma and Foster a culture of empathy and resilience to all those who suffer from mental health illnesses also May 7 is National fentanyl awareness day this serves as a sobering reminder of the devastating impact of this lethal substance on communities worldwide through

161awareness support and education we can stand United and save lives promoting a healthier drug-free Community lastly the three things I'd like you to know school is coming to an end if uh when it when summer begins if parents would like uh some summer camp opportunities for their students you can go to our homepage and on our website we've listed a variety of options to keep students engaged throughout the summer months secondly the final day of the school year will be Friday the 24th of May thank you everyone for another wonderful year and we certainly hope our students and our teachers have a fantastic summer and that course will lead into graduation on Saturday May 25th we start in the morning at 9:30 for our Jefferson Forest graduates then 1:30 celebrating our Liberty graduates and Stanton

162River brings up the evening celebration at 5:00 p.m. yeah Mr chairman that concludes my remarks all right lots of good things happening thank you for sharing all right uh next will be committee reports Mr H Brook we have not had a facility meeting I we're have one later um had a governor school meeting uh April the 15th uh we scheduled another one for June um I don't have a date set on that one yet um then we also uh had a CTE committee uh meeting um I had scheduling conflict and was unable to attend but um I think Dr Bergen were you in attendance on that one uh uh by phone I was driving to another phone and I was because it was it was virtual so um I know I next one is scheduled

163for uh the end of May okay purp um we had a governor School uh meeting we approved the budget there was no increase in cost this year um we did purchase we approved with funding the purchase of some new equipment for gov School uh there is a possible increase of about $300 per student um but not it's tentative for the year 2526 school year um so that is something we probably need to make sure we prepare for also stem is 3% increase in tuition um next year at cvcc which um they're going to have some ramifications for that as well um and then the curriculum progress and outcomes committee met uh we I am working on familiarizing myself with a math and science um and Dr Trosper is helping me with that and so with

164some of the schools providing the books so that I can look through them I'm also going to be working on um looking through the new language art ccul curriculum as well as the social social studies um we discussed at our meeting uh a little bit more about the reading and social studies curriculums and um Dr Woodford and um M Dr H hubach and I also discussed how we can better improve the special needs Department of um our schools and we still have a A continuing conversation we'd like to have regarding that um how we can make sure that we're taking care of all of our special needs students the way they're supposed to be taken care of um so that's that's it for the three I was uh CPO the Lal board also met and

165uh approved this year's budget they're buying a new uh bus for activities that was uh approved and um they actually built up quite a surplus in in a uh in their group fund that uh we're going to be getting back uh a significant amount of money from from Laurel board I think on the order of like $53,000 because they don't want to be a bank basically but uh otherwise we got another year going their enrollment is up uh 50 students which is kind of their target um with uh targets set higher for even next year by three or four more students they're doing good um IG had uh met late uh April um we presented um those updates tonight um we meet again tomorrow morning um and then Finance um we are discussing a meeting

166later in the month um to get some updates for finance all right and that was Finance so that's covered so we will go back to you Mr Daniels for comments and concerns from Schoolboard members yeah just um you know thank you to the speakers that came out tonight I'm you know I I will say that um there was a lot of passion certainly um from uh our our two presenters here tonight um you know I mean just a lot of great stuff going on I I think that if we could bottle up that passion we could be millionaires that's for sure so I mean it's definitely contagious and I I think that's a great representation of what um of what beever County Public Schools can be and and and is for a lot of our

167students so I I think that's a great reflection and I think that uh I'm I'm super proud of those ladies for speaking tonight um you know graduation is coming up in a couple weeks I have two seniors that are graduating um my son and my daughter both graduating two kids um super proud of both of them both are on different path um next year my other son um who has special needs he'll be graduating again another child with a different path so I just think it's important for parents to um understand that you may have several kids um they all may be on different paths and the path they're on now may not be the path that they're on necessarily in their future so my recommendation is just to continue to love your kids and

168to continue to encourage them and um and see where they go but uh super proud of all of the graduates um this year and every year but um you know everyone's going to tell you that now now the hard work begins and and that's and that's the truth but one thing's for sure is that if you put the effort in um nobody can ever second guess that so just always give your all no matter what you you end up doing as employers recognize that other people recognize that and as you can see from Passion that we had here tonight it's certainly contagious so uh just just congratulations to everyone that's it so I've been busy I um attended two stem Academy um events one was the presentations where the where the students presented their experience

169as internships and I think Dr Bergen mentioned that as interns um and then we also had a they also had a symposium where they presented their uh experiments and their uh what they found in their um and they they actually had to do a presentation for that and the one that I had a judge was onsy ology was very interesting um so that was a very um enjoyable event with stem the gov school also had a recognition reception that I attended where a lot of the students received honors and scholarships um it was very well attended and um the students did a great job there a lot of them actually did a lot of their public speaking which was awesome um the CTE had a signing day this past Tuesday which I attended and it

170was also very encouraging to see these students who are graduating from high school going right into the workforce um with jobs already waiting for them so that I think that is one of my biggest passions is to make sure these students aren't just getting a a piece of paper that says they graduated from high school but they have some kind of trajectory of where they're going next and um and that they become integrated in society and and a self self-sufficient um I've also been at Boonsboro Elementary and um and I plan to go again H with uh we I did some reading at the Boonsboro Elementary School and we're also I'm going to be doing a math drills starting with math drills of um addition subtraction multiplication division um so that I can you know

171get those kids to to to actually um do the uh the drills quickly and in their heads and I'd like to start seeing a math um B is as post you know as along with the spelling bees um and I plan to do that at Big Island as well Big Island Elementary and finally um one of the things I would like to request for a vote if if I can uh doctor or Sorry Brad Heston spoke last school board meeting and um present Ed some information on Blue Light uh toxicity and how it affects the brain and uh I did not ask for reimbursement for him at that time um but I'd like to at least pay for his travel reimbursement so if we could have a vote to um approve that it's approximately $103

172to cover his cost um he did travel quite a ways to get here and um just to give us that 15minute presentation so I wanted to be able to at least reimburse him for the cost cost of his of his travels so it would not be a vote it would be a consensus um you and I've had this conversation and I'll just say it publicly um I am not going to give consensus to that but there's five other board members here um that was not something that the board requested that was something that you recommended uh we did not discuss you know reimbursement or travel expense uh and you know I want to be very careful of starting that and that a requirement for anyone who comes to share anything with us that's Marcus's feedback

173on that so um you know as long as you can get consensus of majority then that's the board's will but I I want to make sure that is not something we start uh and if if we're going to invite people and expect reimbursement it needs to be a board decision not an individual request I I understand that I did not know the right um I I agree with Mr Hill that with stuff moving forward that being said this this did happen I understand that i' I'd be okay with reimbursing him for this one I also agree with that I I appreciate Mr hudon coming and uh I know that that was at his own expense and I agree we don't want to set precedent um but you know I don't even I don't even care

174if it comes out of school funds I would personally contribute to reimburse him for that travel okay me too I'm I'm have to ditto what uh Dr CU said I yeah I mean I'll pay for it okay so rather than doing school funds or using School Board funds that you know he was somebody that we wanted to come that I think that personally reimburse him I would be willing to do that but I'm not willing for come out of school that way we're not setting precedent but we're honoring uh Mr hudleston efforts to it should be discussed ahead of time let's just do that moving forward okay thank you so there's no consensus of it coming out of school board's budget correct but you have six members that are willing to contribute to cover the

175$100 thank you yeah anything else okay yes sir um I kind of want to Echo what uh um Miss per said about the CTE signing day it was a great event um I do know there was nearly double the amount of students from the previous year so I just want to say congratulations to the people involved in that CTE um advisory committee who who makes this happen you know every year and hopefully next year we'll have another you know double the amount that uh kids going straight into the work for so um just kudos to the kids who who put forth the effort in doing that no comment all right and I apologize I want to go back to make sure every everybody was good you said you were okay to pay out of pocket

176I'm good to pay out of pocket I did not mean to speak for everybody so I know you said you would yeah yeah okay all right good deal sorry about that okay uh for my comments uh Randy I just want a quick update because I want the community know we got approval uh I'm gonna use 28.6 million is that correct yep um and so I just want a quick update on where we are with yep uh Renovations updates at uh both Liberty High School St River High School and Bedford primary all right uh Board of Supervisors approved the uh borrow for the littery loan so we can move forward with the projects um um did disclose to them that what the board wanted was a little bit more than a literary loan that we'd use

177our maintenance Reserve if if it came if we didn't have savings on that so there was a lot of discussion Mr H back you were there and and um while there was that discussion so they did want H they did request that our PPA committee include their facility committee as they go forward in the design so right now um just let everybody know um probably six months of design work ahead of us here probably until December uh a lot of work as they go through a PPA process you design you go back you just it's a back and forth it's not it's not all designed right now so hopefully construction going on next year next summer on on these projects um the committee will start meeting right now just negotiating the the agreement so we've

178met one time with uh Jamerson um I'm getting all the legal ease and all that document signed then we'll have a timeline set and then I'll start bringing that to the committee as we have the timeline to say how often are we going to meet uh when are we going to have 35 50 60% of the drawings done in and updates on that so hopefully by December we've got all the drawings done and then they'll start procuring bids and uh the process moving forward for next summer so I would like to request some type of social media or some type of advertisement that we are moving forward you know just to make sure the community understands we are moving forward there's no more votes or anything required um so once we have the drawings done

179we'll submit that to the state and then we can start drawing down funds on that and I was present um yes I'm sorry you yeah at the previous one yeah the first one what I wanted to clarify was that we did agree that for them to sit in on our committee meetings but we as a board School Board we have full authority to move forward on what we decide to move forward on so they will participate in the as uh committee meetings yeah and I would say this overall I mean um I think sh said it that the committee really doesn't have really the power the power rests with this body right here so it's like as we go forward and that committee might push back on what you want to do you guys voted

180on what you wanted so I'm following your direction on that so if there's any of that but we've got two committee members that are going to be fighting for what what what we want to do and moving forward so and we have a Community member that we agreed to for they asked for a Community member to be on there also y so just want to make sure all that was out there and everybody understood what we were doing um but we have full authority to make the decision of what we want make sure is is going on so thank you for that update sorry about getting two of you confused two different meetings on we were both there so yeah it's all good uh next thing I want to uh give a uh huge shout

181out uh to Jefferson forest and uh Forest Middle School yearbooks uh the 2023 yearbooks at Forest Middle School and Jefferson Forest High School were selected for inclusion in the presti Varsity yearbooks portfolio a total of 612 schools represented the chosen yearbooks are characterized by their consistency and both verbal and visual elements exemplary coverage and topnotch photography uh portfolio represents the 1% of books printed by Varsity yearbook reflecting the dedication and hard work of each Year's of each school's yearbook staff both Jefferson Forest High School and Forest Middle School were selected for their cover designs additionally the high school was featured once in coverage while the middle school was featured three times in coverage and two times in design congratulations to Amanda Dean and Carrie Dodge 2023 yearbook advisers as well as their yearbook staff members

182all right um school board meeting locations uh the last couple have been here we've got one more scheduled next month and I know we've got it scheduled for Stanton River High School we've talked individually uh I wanted to see if there's consensus to change uh the location for next month back to this location versus Stanton River High School or is there you know if you guys want to have it at the high school that's fine um this is simple location you know I look out you know we had some some people here tonight all the chairs were not full um you know again want to say it publicly if there is ever a point where we need a bigger location we are certainly open and welcome to do that uh and I don't think it

183hurts you know if there's opportunities for us to meet in the communities um we're going to be doing Town Hall meetings um but is there a consensus that we move it back here next month and just have it here versus having to do setup for our team uh at Stanton River High School yeah I'm I'm honestly in my opinion I'm good with the next two times being here just just to let wear and tear on you know our staffy Miss Johnson is it scheduled Stanton River next month and then is it Liberty the following month I believe believe it is I have to pull it up and look and then if I remember right we had we had a couple that were TBD because we did not have the high schools didn't have their production

184schedules yet but I know we were back here in December yeah you have it up so July so Liberty was July was so do I have consensus for the remainder of the um 24 year 2024 year to have it here unless otherwise not notified yeah fine with that yeah through through December through December of 2024 yeah I'm good with it okay all right let's move forward with that Miss Johnson if you run into anything please let me know so I can absolutely and I will get um we will get the website of board do updated with the uh calendar that has some locations on it we'll get that updated posted tomorrow perfect um Dr Bergen uh you mentioned teacher um Teacher Appreciation Week we've celebrated a lot of uh appreciations and so I just want

185to make sure our our staff our team everyone that's part of Beford County Public Schools you are appreciated uh we support you um you know we know your jobs are not easy uh but you have one of the most important jobs uh in this County in this state and that's to educate beer County uh public school students and we do appreciate everything you do so I wanted to make sure we say that publicly uh I know it's teacher appreciation week but everybody needs to be celebrated so um even you guys sitting at this table uh appreciate what you do uh day in and day out so thank you um you also mentioned Forest Elementary School so kudos to them uh doesn't surprise me awesome team over there uh so congratulations to miss Manley and her

186team um wanted to recognize the Jefferson Forest PTA uh they put on one one heck of a after prom it had a County Fair theme um and for you you guys that don't know after the prom students go they check in uh and it is an allnighter uh where teams of parents and community members donate prizes uh they play games all night it's a safe place for our uh kids to be uh and again County Fair theme this year it was really uh pretty cool turnout uh and uh the PTA puts that together so I just want to give a shout out to uh PTA for for making that happen uh and then last but not least is congratulations to the class of 2024 uh you have worked hard uh and uh you've made it

187so congratulations uh finish the next couple weeks strong uh the majority of us will meet you at graduation uh during those three times and we look forward to celebrating all three High Schools Jefferson Forest Liberty and stand so all right that's all for me do I have a motion to adjourn move a motion by Mr Nels do I have a second second second by Mr Daniels any need discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I any opposed we are [Music]