School Board Meeting - 11/10/2022 - 5:00 PM

001yeah no I mean I'm in the right place oh [Laughter] that's funny better can stand it questions and do not touch the microphones right okay [Music] it's extremely sensitive you guys I can even hear your Whispers it's extremely sensitive we can hear even the smallest whisper we are live good evening everybody I'd like to call this November 10th regular meeting of the Bedford County School Board to order Ms Johnson will you please call the roll Mrs Kirby here Mr Hill here Mr Daniels here Mrs Hairston here Mr Holbrook here Dr mealy here Mr Nelms here Madam chair you have a quorum thank you Miss Johnson do I have a motion to approve the agenda Madam chairman I approve the agenda as presented I think a motion to approve the agenda as presented thank you Dr

002Millie first to have a second second by Mr Nelms any discussion all those in favor signal Papa saying aye aye opposed agenda approved do I have a motion to go in closed session Madam chair I make a motion that we go into closed session pursuant Dakota Virginia 2.2-3711a18-1 to discuss the assignment appointment performance discipline and release of contract for specific School Board employees including the evaluation of the superintendent as provided in his contract of employment eight for consultation with legal counsel retained by the school board for advice on specific legal matters requiring the provision of legal advice by such counsel including School Board policy I have a motion by Mr Hill do I have a second second by Mr Nelms any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed we're in closed

003session thank you foreign oh God it's cold [Music] okay do I have a motion to come out of closed session here I'm going to make a motion that we come out of closed session I have a motion by Dr mealy do I have a second second second by Mr Holbrook any discussion all those in favor signify was saying aye aye aye opposed motion carries Ms Johnson will you certify the closed meeting where's better 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 where section 2.2-3712d of the code of Virginia requires a certification by this school board that such closed meeting was conducted in Conformity with Virginia law now therefore be it resolved at

004the Bedford County School Board hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempt it from 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 closed meeting were heard discussed or considered yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes thank you Miss Johnson um we just want to make everyone aware also that we are going to amend the agenda a little bit after item 11.03 we're going to go back into closed session but at this time given the fact of the late hour or the hour that it is we're going to go ahead and break for dinner now and then we'll come back at

005seven o'clock foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign good evening everyone I'd like to reconvene this regular meeting of the Bedford County public school board for November the 10th 2022 if you would please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty tonight would like to remember the families of Walker Graham and Elena Simpson two lives that were taken from us way too early if you would please join me in a moment of silence thank you very much on behalf of Bedford County public school board I would like to extend our sympathies to the families Dr Berg and we have recognition of staff and students uh yes ma'am we have several administrators

006who are new to us this year but we've not yet had a chance to publicly introduce them to the board and recognize them so three individuals in the room today will begin with Heather Boyles is Heather able to join us here tonight hey Heather so you all know Heather she is currently through your actions now the principal at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School Dr Boyles has 17 years in education the last two here in Bedford County as the assistant principal at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School and she was also before that at Forest Middle School she began her teaching career in Augusta County as well as taught in Lunenburg County and in Lynchburg City Schools she held several leadership roles in Lynchburg City including coordinator of gifted and elementary math and served as an instructional supervisor before

007coming and joining us at BCPS Dr Boyles earned her bachelor's degree in philosophy and religion and her masters of arts and teaching both from Mary Baldwin College she completed gifted certification from the University of Virginia she has a master's in educational leadership from the University of Lynchburg and just recently completed her doctorate and curriculum instruction from Liberty University congratulations Dr Heather Boyles [Applause] Kathy brisantine hey Kathy I see you back there this is uh Kathy brisantine through your actions is now serving as the assistant principal at Stanton River Middle she has 14 years in education the last 10 serving in various roles here in Bedford County including seventh grade English teacher Civics and economics teacher at Forest Middle instructional technology resource teacher at JF high school and Lead Teacher for off-site learning when we had

008Bedford connects in the first year of the pandemic prior to joining BCPS Mrs brisantine started her teaching career in Prince Edward County as a middle school history teacher she earned her bachelor's degree in liberal studies from Longwood University her master's degree is in history from Lynchburg college and she just recently completed her Administration and supervision certification program from Longwood University congratulations to Mrs brisantine [Applause] and lastly Mrs Kim cherry Mrs Cherry through your actions was previously named assistant principal at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School to when the vacancy was created by Heather Boyles being named principal Mrs Cherry has spent her entire 28-year teaching career right here in Bedford County she's taught at the elementary middle and high school levels in both the Liberty Zone and in the four Zone during the past 10 years she

009served as a reading teacher and dean of students at Forest Middle School Mrs Cherry began her career at JF as an 8th grade language arts teacher I'm sorry at Forest Middle School as an eighth grade language arts teacher where she also served as an assistant coach in basketball softball and Trek she then moved to Forest Elementary where she taught fourth and fifth grade Mrs Cherry has her bachelor's degree in Psychology as well as a master's degree in teaching both from the University of Virginia she also holds a master's degree in administration and supervision from the University of Lynchburg congratulations to Mrs Cherry on your appointment as assistant principal at DJ I believe that's all the recognitions we have tonight hey Dr Bergen congratulations welcome aboard okay we're gonna move on to the public comment portion

010of tonight's meeting the public comment portion of tonight's agenda is limited to 40 minutes speech speakers are asked to State their name and voting district the 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 at the we expect all speakers to refrain from any foul profane abusive or hateful language during their comments or anytime while in attendance during this meeting we also ask that the speakers keep their remarks objective and about the school in nature please keep all comments limited to matters related to 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

011delay or disruption to this meeting are prohibited this is a public meeting for public matters Mr Edwards will serve as the timekeeper for individual speakers with a ringing Bell indicating that a person has 30 seconds remaining and a second bill will ring indicating a person's four minutes have expired Mr Edwards will also serve as timekeeper for our cumulative 40-minute period well Mr Edwards four minute timer bell rings please discontinue speaking and allow the next person in line to come to the podium should you be unable to finish your comments please send or give them to Ms Johnson and she will give them to board members please do not adjust the microphone at the podium as it has been positioned for all for Optimum for Optimum audio quality okay our first Speaker tonight Cindy Young House

012good evening board Madam chair I'm Cindy Young House of the recently adjusted District Seven thank you for this opportunity to address you and when addressing you based on a new rule no one is allowed to speak your names so if I were to address each of you specifically by name that would be disrespectful of your preference it would be rude agitating and harmful likewise when gender diverse students or staff declare how they want or do not want to be addressed when that important preference is not upheld it's harmful the yonkin model policy also your current draft policy on gender diversity in public schools violates the Virginia Human Rights Act titles 7 and 9 civil liberties and is incongruous with The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights first the Virginia Human

013Rights Act in code 2.2 states that the Commonwealth must Safeguard all individuals within the Commonwealth from unlawful discrimination because of sex sexual orientation and gender identity with or without regard to the individual sex at Birth in places of public accommodation including educational institutions secondly in June 2020 the U.S Supreme Court ruled six to three with a majority opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch that discrimination on the basis of sex includes sexual orientation and gender identity for Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. subsequently in June 2021 the U.S department of education's office for civil rights declared it does enforce Title IX prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sex also including sexual orientation and gender identity of course The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment recognized and lauded by all true Christian Patriots does

014not provide for imposition of religious beliefs onto students harming others in the name of a religion is not Liberty it's wrong religion must not be established at the expense of another person's well-being currently the BCPS draft policy does not provide protections against misgendering misgendering students creates unsafe spaces causes anxiety and low self-esteem additionally this discriminatory practice disrupts educational goals BCPS draft policy POC section D number three fails to provide any protections for non-binary students then section D number six completely undermines potential policy protections by permitting willful misnaming and misgendering by staff and other students from equalityva.org quote Virginia laws also protect trans and non-binary students from discrimination in schools and universities including misgendering using the wrong name denying access to a restroom that best aligns with gender identity or otherwise creating an unequal educational experience

015end quote in conclusion predicating support of discriminatory policy on patently false assumptions that the existence of gender diverse students or staff is somehow threatening will in itself cause great harm all good Christians know that fear especially non-evidence-based misguided fear of the other drives out love when this type of fear informs policy development that policy will be malformed and misapplied please revise the current draft policy for inclusivity of all students only then will privacy dignity and respect be truly honored thank you for your time thank you Mr Young cows next we have Stephen Hill hey good evening my name is Stephen Hill I'm a constituent of District three I'm here today to discuss uh concerns from the English teachers of Bedford County um I'm here speaking on behalf of several of them that asked me to

016come to speak because their administrators communicated to them that they are not allowed to bring this to you themselves um so I'm here to speak on their behalf teachers at the secondary level have been told that they must only use the new Savas textbook as their soul curriculum and must not use any other sources activities novels Etc in their classrooms this information has not been made clear to parents as the county is not being upfront to the parents calling the textbook the new curriculum but a textbook in itself is not curriculum many teachers have raised concerns and questions over the Mandate with no answers to their questions and met with refusals to meet with their concerns teachers when questions were asked about who made the decision to use a textbook as a resource and not

017just as an aide in the classroom the it was told to them the school board spent seven hundred thousand dollars and they expected to be used every day but they're also told that they could not come to the board for their concerns the teachers would like the English supervisor to answer their questions and to hear their concerns I'm going to read some of the concerns from the secondary English teachers that asked me to come tonight in hopes that maybe you can convince the English supervisor to respond to their emails um the textbook is repetitive and for each passage there's the same activities and responses the expectations for students are often over the grade level's ability to comprehend and does not allow for student engagement variety differentiation or teacher discretion the textbook is centered around an

018essential question model which is not teaching with the Virginia Sol standard as the textbook was written with a common core standard in not Virginia standards some of these questions borderline or pushing political agendas without teaching novels students are missing so much that are used to spiral the standards while reading students are also missing out on engaging current techs that they are interested in novels to teach life's lessons following the moral thread and in the students enjoying the graphic novel to become lifelong readers when they're exposed to techs that they enjoy the textbook is lacking any type of instruction it sets the student up it sets up for students that have already mastered that skill and the textbook being referred to as curriculum and it's more of a daily script for teachers and excuse any other

019sources this removes the aspect of differentiation not only to just a student but also between core and advanced classes there would be no need for advanced classes when they're exactly the same as the core apparently all the English teachers sign tag plans for gifted students they're offering Services through advanced classes this is not the case if they're not allowed to make their own choices with the curriculum the daily script requires teacher to follow standards and order the textbook lays down which is not aligned directly with the Sol standards there are many standards that are not in the sols that are taught in the textbook give an autonomy teacher would focus on the standards that apply to Virginia sols and remove the ones that are solely for the Common Core in summary teachers are not refusing

020to use the textbook they would like to be treated as professionals and allowed to implement materials activities and resources from the textbook to best meet the needs of their students there are wonderful stories in the textbook that align perfectly with the sols they would just like to have the opportunity to make those choices also the rationale for the change from the Administration has not been shared with the teachers they feel like it's important for them to be able to receive that as well when the textbook was chosen last year through multiple presentations the salespeople were emphasize the flexibility of the curriculum and the use of novels to teach standards the textbook was a reference to teachers to use as much or as little as they would need in their individual classroom at no point during

021the selection process was there a decision to only use the textbook as the sole resource as a parent I don't want my children to only read from the textbook every day I have a first grader so he's just now starting to read and he's enjoying all types of books and uh really starting to pick up on it we don't want him just to have to follow the the textbook every day the teachers that I'm speaking on half behalf of have already asked all these questions to the administrator the central stat the central staff and civically Dr Eisenhower but to failed to receive any answers these managers refuse to meet or discuss with their own employees I should not have to spend time this evening discussing secondary English textbooks at a school board meeting when the

022central office could alleviated all these concerns by having the common decency to answer the questions of their staff thank you thank you Mr Hill Dave Dietrich I'm Dave Dietrich of the fourth ladies and gentlemen during previous school board meetings we addressed disparate philosophies of Education in Bedford County we consider differing views of proper school curricula and pedagogy we addressed also the impact of books such as white fragility and how to be an anti-racist critical race Theory or culturally responsive teaching still looms large among some vocal voices in Bedford County whether they're um whether through premeditated commitment or through intellectual ignorance let us quickly review what has transpired CRT was developed in higher Academia about 30 years ago it has since grown and metastasized within the broader culture government many public institutions a large part of

023the private sector and throughout education the academy in education CRT has specifically impacted school systems curricula pedagogy teaching training programs and student learning from higher education through K-12 what is a crt's basic ideology cultural Marxism is its basic ideology CRT is based on the premise that the history of America indeed the whole Western world is a history of racism sexism and economic exploitation some insist that premise be accepted without scientifically based proof the underlying assumption in this premise is that some have succeeded only because others have not been allowed to succeed with CRT those who succeed have always become the exploitative and hated new bourgeoisie that is also one of crt's absurd conclusions of course all of crt's pseudo-intellectual basis can be easily discredited both logically and empirically for CRT Advocates the remedy for unjust

024disparity is always forced Equity essentially Marxist base the quality of outcome all denizens of George Orwell's Animal Farm must be equal the quad Equity is hence the complete rejection of the idea of equality of opportunity the very basis upon which this great nation was founded those who dissent who had the courage to speak out against CRT are often branded as racist sexist and or judgmental many are also accused of banning books even though it is CRT Advocates who are really Banning the Western tradition and its books with CRT there is also no room for dispassionate discussion and debate why why engage intellectually when a shutdown Smackdown will work just fine the left never debates there is no room for honest critique including proper analysis and discussion of crt's assumptions premises and conclusion the conclusions there

025is no room for empirically and based knowledge there is no room for discovery of Truth there is room only for Conformity and group thing teachers administrators parents other concerned citizens and the students may be unaware of the full implications of CRT perhaps the foremost implication is that some have become unintentional CRT facilitators thank you thank you Mr Dietrich [Applause] Janet hussall Jenna just saw Kelsey mabes hello my name is Kelsey maves and I'm the parent of two students who attend otter River Elementary School in District 7. I have also been licensed to teach elementary and special education in the state of Virginia for the past 10 years before I begin I would like to start by saying that we have loved our time at ores the teachers and staff are amazing what I'm about to

026discuss should in no way reflect negatively on the principal teachers or staff at this truly incredible School I come to you today to share my concerns publicly about my son's first grade class size of 27 students after being misinformed by someone in executive leadership for Bedford County Public Schools I did further research and discovered that my son's class is the largest kindergarten or first grade in the district these numbers are unacceptable to say the least I have taught predominantly upper elementary school during my 10 years of teaching and I have experienced classes of this size I know from experience that while these numbers are inconvenient in the Upper Elementary grades they are doable as an upper elementary school teacher I have also seen firsthand the true detriment that these class sizes in the long run

027will cause I cannot tell you how many times I've been sent to student who should be at the fourth or fifth grade level yet is reading on a first or second grade level due to the lack of support during their foundational years I wholeheartedly believe that this will be the fate of some of the our first graders at otter River Elementary if we do not step up to solve this problem I have reached out to someone on this board and was given the response stating that the positions for ores have been put up but that is hard to hire after the beginning of the year first I have looked at the hiring page and as of last night there are no positions for Otto River Elementary School currently up second this response is concerning because

028it insinuates that this board was unaware of this issue prior to the beginning of the school year my son's kindergarten class last year was 24 students which grew to 27 over the summer this is the second year that he has had a ridiculous size class even with phenomenal teachers it's not acceptable if this board was unaware of these numbers then I fear you have missed the mark I not only want to approach this issue with concerns for the students but also with concerns for our teachers otter river is currently moving teachers around each year this is taxing tiring and truly unsustainable my son's teacher Hannah speak is absolutely amazing this board should be proud to have her as a teacher she's young vivacious and can connect with our students in a way that not many

029can she is giving this her this year her absolute all but I fear that our lack of support will burn her out are we going to pay her more because she's essentially teaching two classes how do you justify one teacher prepping for a class of 14 while the other has a class of 27. thanks to Miss Moore the principal she has the assistance of two aides who split their time in this classroom unfortunately adding more bodies to the situation is not the answer this class needs to be split among two teachers even with the extra coverages emergencies arise and teachers get sick so sometimes there are no AIDS in this classroom a 20 to 27 ratio in first grade at any time is not only an academic concern but a safety concern I have heard

030the response of many on this board I understand we are still trending with State Standards however I have also heard some of you campaign on the terms that parents and teachers voices matter I can say that I have not felt heard and I don't think my teacher has felt hurt either we need to stop looking at these students as if there are numbers on a paper to be averaged out we need to see that they are flesh and blood and it is clear that the path we have chosen is not working we need answers our teachers and students are relying on you thank you Miss maves [Applause] Teresa pregnell my name is Teresa pregnell I'm a resident in District 5. I would like to comment on the 2022 model policy on the Privacy dignity and

031respect for all students and parents in Virginia's public schools as concerned women for America of Virginia state director I am commenting on behalf of thousands of women and families many here in Bedford County that we represent in support of the Virginia Department of education's 2022 model policies CWA strongly agrees that the 2021 medal policy must be repealed those policies were predicated on social experimentation that promoted a distracting and controversial ideological Viewpoint of human identity in Virginia schools the 2021 model policy Advanced destructive gender ideology disregarded the fundamental rights of parents and undermined legal and constitutional principles that are the foundation of Education school districts across the Commonwealth of Virginia have become enablers and promoters of an invasive social contagion that is seductively seducing students a sailing parental rights unconstitutionally silencing dissent and distracting the essential

032responsibility of public schools and of public education Bedford County Schools should not be social Engineers accommodating adolescent identity crises or the latest trends they should be respecting the abilities of students and teaching them the subjects and skills that are required to equip them as Learners workers and citizens the proposed 2022 model policies seek to remedy many of these concerns they are fundamentally sound based on scientific truth about male and female sex biological Child Development and maturation and the inherent rights of parents in raising their children Virginia students do not belong to the government they are not owned by the school system and they should not be pawns for an aggressive activism promoting a destructive view of humankind that disassociates biological reality from a person's identity no child should be lied to or expected to believe

033a lie about the scientific reality of male or female sex the science of the human binary can never be erased it is built into our DNA by our creator forcing a student to acknowledge that another student or educator is not their true sex violates their rights no one a student parent teacher or School administrator asserting a claim or trans identification has the right to dictate that the world around them accommodate their subjective perception of self and claim a superior right over others it's just not right no student should be subject to denying their own privacy and protection on the basis of sex nor lose equal access to their educational benefits and opportunities now we've seen firsthand in Loudoun County what Virginia has wrought imposing an ideological Viewpoint an education that upends the truth about the

034sexes I'm going to skip on down Virginia schools are required under federal law to comply with Title IX civil rights law that prohibits discrimination and education programs and activities on the basis of sex the Biden administration's unconstitutional reinterpretation of the meaning of sex under Title IX is gender identity rightly has been enjoined by federal district court as executive overreach and legislative rulemaking Biden's guidance from the U.S Department of Education and EEOC CWA supports the requirements under the model policy of 2022. thank you so much and I have sent each one of you a copy of my comments with links so please be sure and take a look thank you Miss pregnant David Beauregard interesting good evening members of the board David Beauregard Seventh District congratulations Chris good glad to have you back aboard um I

035really only contrary to what you normally would hear from me I really have two words tonight and but one concern and that is the event coming in February the satanic temple event and movie night with the Fern Gully movie I'm not going to go into any of those details as I said I really really don't have any other words to say I would just like to um as a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ Our Lord savior Messiah I'm just gonna say a word of Prayer for the members in regard to this situation and in their decisions in every situation my Lord I just thank you for who you are I thank you for every single one of these board members I know that you know every single one every single hair that is

036on their head you knew each of them as they were being formed in the womb you know each one who is yours you know each one who has uh that whose heart you have touched and who has responded to your love in Repentance recognizing our sinful nature and naming you as Lord and savior of their life I thank you for that father Lord Jesus and I pray that you would fill these men and women with the courage that comes from knowing you that they would have no fear of man of men that they would have the fear of God in their heart and in their spirit and that you would raise their spirit filled with the Holy Spirit to a place that stands against the normalcy that has come to our communities I ask you

037father to give them the courage to stand no matter what a federal law might be no matter what the state law might be no matter what a local law or School Board policy may be their first Allegiance is to the kingdom of heaven for those who name the name of Yeshua Messiah they are ambassadors of the ministry of reconciliation and I thank you for those who fulfill that call I ask that you would bless them and keep them and make your face shine upon them and give them peace k the Lord Jesus amen thank you Miss Beauregard we have a couple of slots available would anyone here like to speak yeah at this point I will close the public comment portion of tonight's meeting do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda the

038consent agenda as presented I have a motion by Dr Miley do I have a second by Mr Nelms any discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I opposed consent agenda is approved uh we're going to address items that we didn't get to earlier which is basically everything so let's start off with item 3.01 Athletics update Dr Cornett please all right good evening members of the board tonight I will present an update on BCPS Athletics specifically on the recent request to add additional Middle School sports and recommendations from the BCPS Athletics team comprised of all middle school and high school principals and athletic directors things okay in June of 2022 Forest Middle School had a request to add middle school competition cheer as the Athletics team met to discuss the request we used policy

039DBA to guide us through this process some highlights of this policy state that all recommendations regarding new sports or activities shall address these factors student interest facility availability Staffing capability impact on existing sports or activities and the cost of course the division superintendent will review the principal's recommendation and if the superintendent concurs with the principal's recommendation in this case the BCPS athletic team then he would forward that recommendation to you as part of his annual budget proposal the policy goes on to say if the school board elects to add a new sport or activity the opportunity for the sport or activity shall be made available to all other middle or high schools in the district your division the BCPS athletic team met on July 28 to initially discuss this request and plan for data collection

040each middle and high school principal and athletic director then work collaboratively with both the high school and middle school cheerleading coaches to gather some of the data the team reconvened on August 25th to analyze and discuss the data and the team recommendations so the first factor in adding a middle school competition cheer team that was discussed was athlete safety the VHS cell does not oversee or govern Middle School sports so BCPS policy states jfcj states that rules of the vhsl shall also apply to BCPS Middle School sports there are very specific rules at the high school level for cheer that address which tosses and stunts are allowed and which are prohibited the vhsl follows the national Federation of State High School associations or nfhs guidelines for a High School cheer but those guidelines do not

041cover Middle School sports air vhsl contact recommended researching USA cheer who jointly worked with the nfhs to develop the high school spirit rules and after doing so the BCPS Athletics team unanimously recommended adopting USA cheer safety guidelines to oversee middle school competition cheer if it is added as a sport basically USA cheer states that they would recommend following nfhs guidelines with one additional restriction which would be all tosses other than switch-ups are prohibited so as the team continued to collect data for policy DBA we found that out of 21 local school divisions two have middle school competition cheer teams um Roanoke County and Franklin County do have school sponsored competition cheer at the middle school level and both indicated that they operate under restricted safety guidelines so there was unanimous agreement that there is interest

042and a need for middle school competition cheer in BCPS the addition would have a positive impact on the cheer programs at the high school level and we did not project any negative impact on existing programs if the sport is added an additional Middle School coach and coaching stipended would be needed as far as the structure of the team the Middle School sideline cheer team would compete in competitions with the addition of any 8th grade sideline cheerleaders on the JV team additional uniforms would not be needed and if any sideline cheerleaders do not feel comfortable competing or do not want to participate in competitions they would not be required to do so and they would still be able to be on the sideline cheer team teams could compete in up to three competitions per year currently

043our varsity teams are allowed to compete in up to five competitions per year the middle school team would utilize Transportation with the varsity team attending the same competition so there would be no additional Transportation costs so this slide basically outlines the estimate for the cost to add Middle School comp cheer in all three middle schools you can see that um additional middle three additional Middle School coaches would cost approximately four thousand dollars tournament entrance fees um approximately six hundred dollars per school so eighteen hundred dollars um the the biggest cost would be cheer mats they're strongly preferred by the coaches obviously so each school could have the high school would have a cheer mat and the middle school would have a cheer mat but all the schools are willing to work together between the middle

044and high school to share those mats so that that cost would not be um impact as impactful but it with the mats it would cost approximately nine thousand dollars per school so total estimated cost without the mats would be about six thousand dollars with mats about thirty three thousand dollars for initial startup cost and then a total estimated annual cost of six thousand but again I'll I'll emphasize the coaches were very willing to the High School Middle School coaches were willing to share the mats to get the program up and running in December of 2021 the request to add Middle School cross country and track was presented and recommended by the BCPS Athletics team both had been previously requested in Prior years the total combined projected cost to add both cross-country and track at all

045three middle schools was approximately forty thousand dollars the athletic team believes that the addition of all three Middle School sports cross-country track and comp cheer would be extremely beneficial to the students in the existing programs we would recommend as funding is available that the sports be added in the order of request unless all three Sports can be added at one time which would be approximately forty five thousand dollars per year there is a significant continued concern that one athletic trainer cannot adequately serve all existing high school and middle school sports teams being that many competitions are at different venues at home this slide shows the total number of athletes broken down by each season and the corresponding number of injuries that the athletic trainers who are based at each High School treat both high school

046and middle school injury data is shown you can see the ratio of the number of high school athletes to the number of injuries treated by the trainer is .42 and the ratio of the number of middle school athletes to the number of injuries treated by the trainer is .1996 although there is a significant lower number of middle school athletes compared to the high school the data indicates that the trainers due to the demands and the number of injuries at the high schools are unable to provide the same level of service to middle school athletes another way of thinking about this data is for every 100 athletes at the high school the trainers are treating 84 for injuries for every 100 athletes at the middle school the trainer is treating 20 athletes for injuries her current

047three trainers do an outstanding job um they're vital to the success of the BCPS Athletics this data coupled with the fact that our trainers are covering multiple High School events at the same time often at venues that are not in close proximity just suggests that extra trainer support is needed especially prior to adding any additional Sports and BCPS as Dr Calvert presented last month in the Staffing standards presentation an additional 10-month trainer to split between each High School Middle School would cost approximately two hundred and seven thousand dollars Contracting with a company for three Trainers for approximately 20 to 25 hours per week would cost approximately a hundred and five thousand dollars this slide illustrates the total cost of additional trainer support and the addition of the three new Middle School sports the left column

048estimates or the left column estimate of 252 thousand dollars includes the cost of three additional 200-day trainers the right column estimate of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars includes the cost of Contracting with a company for extra trainer support please note that the cost of adding cross country does not include uniforms as that cost was included in the track estimate as teams would utilize the same uniforms in closing the team believes that adding cross-country track and competition cheer at the middle school level is very beneficial but strongly believes that additional trainer support for student safety is needed prior to adding any additional Sports this time I can take any questions these these mats you're talking about how exactly would they share them I mean are they they would have practice at the at the high

049school and just schedule their time around each other each team and the 207 000 is for three trainers did I hear you correct three 10-month trainers um 0.5 at the high school 0.5 at the middle school questions I always try to bring up the rear and you know I gotta have some um with the competition cheer you said that they would compete against two schools Franklin County and Roanoke County I can explain there there's more teams out there than those those are the two counties in in that around in our region that have school-based middle school competition cheer my understanding and I've learned a lot about Middle School competitions here in the last few months um my understanding is travel teams also compete in in these competitions so there there are competitions that have multiple

050teams there other than just the two counties now Roanoke County does have multiple middle schools several Middle Schools Franklin County just has the one I believe so their schedule would consist of more than two competitions yes ma'am because that's a pretty high number for two competitions right it's like a the competitions are like tournaments um I understand so much multiple schools from Regional you know areas um is there much of a desire for the competitions here at Liberty and Stanton River as well yes ma'am all three schools were were very excited about the possibility um and you know the way my mind works but now because you and I have had many discussions what's the difference between a chair mat and a wrestling map I mean just use the wrestling mats I probably would get

051it wrong if I tried to talk about the tech they're just um different games no man I don't believe so yeah and how much did you say I don't know the exact answer to that but I don't believe so I could check on it if you could let me know because I'm just curious that's just one of my curiosity things and what what did you say would be the coach's stipend for the cheer I believe it was four thousand dollars between the two so about 1300 each between two of the bl3 correct four thousand would be all three okay and um I understand and track of course you have to have your officials do you have that many officials in cross country was was I didn't know you even had officials in Cross Country but

052what's the coach's stipend for cross country um at the middle school level where our stipends are around 1300 for for those Sports so what so we have officials for cross country there are officials for cross country I believe it says who will be and now that um and the for the um Middle School athletic trainer what are we doing for them now oh is there what are they dividing up another I know at Liberty my daughters had to go to the high school right that's typically the high school would would serve those middle school students to the greatest capacity that they could especially in emergency situations so right now then as it is without having a Middle School athletic trainer if anything happened at Forest Middle School then they'd have to wait for the trainer

053to come down the road and go across the street and get over there and help it puts a lot of um responsibility in that realm on our coaches as well to make it you know the call of 9-1-1 or wait for the trainer that's kind of dangerous and there's three sites that enforce there's three sites in the spring I know of well distance that's dangerous um and and I saw your numbers here too with the um your sports injury data now am I correcting the assumption that the numbers for Middle School are relatively less because you only have three grades in the middle school as opposed to four in the high school and you don't have as many sports offerings is that correct all of that yes ma'am okay so so if we had ratio

054wise we're about the same ratio wise as far as the number of athletes to the number of injuries treated middle schools are significantly less because the the number of games at the high school and the number of hours required at the high school the Middle School trainers are less at the less at the middle schools is that answering your question yeah kinda um yeah Mrs Kirby I think there's there's injuries that are occurring at middle school that are not being treated by the trainer because they're not physically present to treat it so these numbers shouldn't lead you to believe that there's fewer kids get hurt at Middle School it's just fewer kids get treated because the trainers at the high school and can't get to the middle school so those are calls to 9-1-1 or

055calls to parents or the coaches having to take that responsibility in that additional liability with the injury that fairly accurate Josh yeah and that's yeah that's kind of what I thought and so if the parent has to call 9-1-1 go to the hospital then they're taking on a hospital expense at possibly the trainer could have taken care of um our trainers do really try to serve everyone they're just pulling in so many directions Dr Cornett as far as the safety I see that you're trying to add the USA cheer rule about no tulses where did that come from who recommended that usaid so vhsl does not oversee Middle School sports so the nfhs they they write the rules for vhsl those nfhs rules do not apply to Middle Schools USA cheer also they work with

056nfhs on the spirit rules so those are the ones that that do have recommendations for middle schools so when I called bhsl they they encouraged me to reach out and look at the ush here so that's where that came from so they didn't make any recommendations as far as what we should Implement for Middle School vhsl they recommend me looking at USA cheer they they couldn't because they don't oversee Middle School they would not give me a recommendation so the USA cheer if we were to implement that as part of our safety does that remove anything that our current cheer teams are doing it should not at the middle school level no the ads did now the ads talked to the coaches about these rules specifically and they reported to me that the Middle School

057coaches were on board with that pop-tier coaches at the middle schools have no concerns about not being able to do tosses that's what you're telling me other than switch-ups that's what was relayed to me that because I didn't meet with all the middle school so let me make sure I'm clear our Middle School comp cheer coaches have told you or your athletic directors that they are okay with not doing tulses I can't say that for certain I can say I want that answer that's fine but I can say and I can get that but I can say the athletic directors reported back that they were on board with with this recommendation so Mr Hill we hold on a second sure athletic director I want to hear from the coaches because it's competitive they met they

058met with the coaches I understand but I'm getting two sides of the story and so that's why I want clarification I want to understand if our coaches who are over competitive cheer if we were to have that that they're okay with the stipulation of no tosses does that take it other than switchovers I got you yep so just for clarity we currently don't have middle school competition chairs sponsored by the school division we have travel teams and travel teams are not they don't fall under our umbrella so Mr Hill I think the travel teams probably do more than we would be comfortable allowing them to do because we're going to follow we are the ones that get to make that decision and if it's a competitive team if we're going to do competition cheer we

059need to be able to compete otherwise we're wasting money and so we want our kids to be able to compete and that's why I'm asking the question and I'd like you to answer yeah I can get that I remember my other question um where you have on your total estimated costs a full-time 200-day trainer versus a 20 to 25 hours per week 20 to 25 hours per week is that is sufficient honestly it would certainly be more sufficient than no additional trainer support I think I think the the pros on the other one would be a full-time trainer would really get to know our community and really get to know our athletes and have a lot more flexibility with the hours than than obviously a contracted uh trainer if that's what you're asking okay and

060then if they would they have time to be able to help out at the high school too because I know when I've had to take my children in there Mr Senate's got people lined up coming in I would say if we were able to go that option and have 20 to 25 hours of a contracted uh trainer the current trainer would really lead that that schedule and they would work jointly collaboratively to get you know schedule and cover as many things as they could and you know that I'm a full advocate for the full-time trainer I'm just trying to make sure we're on the same page um the middle schools schools do they have facilities for a training room I mean we would have to buy like the training table and and I would say

061they were they would probably work out of um the high schools as much as possible but that they can still travel to those venues um and and be based at the high schools but we could look into that okay because again like I said we're looking at a distance of he had happened to bring a student from Forest Middle School all the way over here to get to the training room to ice and Ankle right so you know I was just wondering if we had enough Provisions at the middle school to have adequate first aid if we needed it I'm not aware that we have the equipment at any of the middle schools now the other two the other two middle schools and high schools are very close so that would be easy easier to

062to schedule and work out of the one training room but that would certainly have to be discussed and work through thank you it seems like there are no more questions thank you for putting up with me Dr Cornett appreciate it 3.02 first quarter financial analysis Mr Hagler yes good evening um before you tonight is uh data that uh as of September the first three months of the year and um projecting out how the whole year will come out so this is early in the year there's old one-fourth their way through so I do the best I can in in projecting what the expenses and also the revenues are going to be on the first page hey I clicked it Forward on the first page is the revenue projections um too early to tell really with

063that Top Line on other um as uh to make any projections a lot of that revenues hasn't even come in yet um for the state funds uh it's mostly driven by what our membership's going to be so I believe at the next board meeting Mark Blankenship will be presented on our numbers but we've already reported those to the state and our membership is up so we do see additional money coming in four state funds we also see sales tax really coming in strong so far this year so I did project additional sales tax um the way sales tax work the more the more you get in sales tax you actually lose some in basic Aid that's how the formula works so you don't get all of it so that is a fraction of what um

064we the sales tax is up more than that but you lose some on the basic Aid side that's how the state formula works there and I did make a reduction on the federal side I do you know we set aside a little bit over two million dollars for sr3 or covert related expenditures this year in the operating fund but um I only see us probably spending about a million of that so I did reduce that but I also made a reduction on the expenditure side for that too so that Nets out both on expenditures and on the revenue so overall um I do see the revenues coming in um about 1.5 million above projection once again that's pretty early on so there are some things that are going to change over the year but that's

065a first glance at uh where we stand on our budget so I'd be happy to answer any questions on the revenue side if you have any of those and I will say we did present this to the finance committee and they did review it and um so I'm bringing this after I've already uh presented it to the finance committee okay on the expenditure side uh we're in good shape a couple categories that I want to talk to here um first of all transportation we do see that we're ahead um projected incoming over budget there the biggest uh impact there is we're struggling to fill routes and so we're bringing in substitutes as much as we can there's overtime there's overshift and they're doing everything they can to get all the kids to school every day

066and it's it's a thing it's an issue that we're just going to have to deal with and and continue to come up with ideas on how we can get more bus drivers it's just a problem right now I don't think we're the only district with that problem but um going forward we're going to be looking at different ideas on how we can get more drivers to come in and fill those spots but we do see that what is not in this forecast and I'll speak a little bit to that tonight is a fuel escalation and we'll probably be hit we'll probably be realizing um transportation will come in even more over budget in the second half um I did not factor that in yet but um our fuel bit is going to be expiring on

067February 13th our contracted price for fuel diesel fuel right now is three is two dollars and 68 cents as of February once that contract expires it's probably going to be 475. so you're we could expect another 150 or so thousand dollars over budget on Transportation just because of fuel as we get closer uh just let you know we are monitoring what's happening out there um stories about shortages and also about the fuel price and as we get closer to that expiring uh we'll let the board know and you can give me feedback of whether we go out for a bit at that time but going out for beta at an all-time high might not be the best thing at this point so but we'll give feedback to the board and we are monitoring all that

068situation um in maintenance we will have fuel heating fuel harder to predict that one as we haven't really hit the winter months yet but on the maintenance the pressure's coming really from the repair and replace line um electrical is projected coming over right now and as I said heating oil will probably come in a little bit higher so we're seeing some pressures there hard to tell because repair and replace and things braking can actually this could come in higher or it could come in lower as the year goes on depends on how many units or things break that don't really go into the CIP fund they're eight ten thousand dollar units it doesn't go into the CIP it actually comes out of the operating budget as we repair those and it's too hard to tell

069but I do see pressure right now that that's going to come in over budget we'll brief the board as we go on in the year but overall not too concerned with our revenues coming in stronger and you can see if everything played out just like it is our Indie bounce would be right around 1.6 1.5 million so if transportation and maintenance continue to see those pressures towards the end of the year we'll have to do supplemental Appropriations to take some of that additional State money and allocate them to maintenance and transportation so that'll be later in the year as we've got a better look at that probably after the third quarter is when I'll bring those to the board but we'll continue to monitor these so on an overall expenditure I'll see if you have

070any questions about where I'm seeing the projections on this okay and a few pages here give a little bit more detail about each of those major categories if you turned sorry did you help me out with that thank you Barry um go to the final slide we'll go to the final page that's on board docs but I'll go Slide by slide here the nutrition fund as always at the beginning of the year we have expenditures during the summer months when there's no Revenue coming in so we are at a loss in the first quarter usually that's made up in the second third and fourth so too hard to tell how that will end this year but we'll monitor that but we usually go into a negative situation because we're paying out employees contracts in July

071and August and there's no Revenue coming in so not too big of a surprise there and that number is not as big as that doesn't give me too much concern right now textbook fun um you can see that uh current Bounce About 587 actually the 500 000 there is still reserved for the textbook adoption that we didn't do because we didn't have the state list and as I understand from the instruction Department that list still is not completed so we're not proceeding forward and we don't expect to have that list until next summer so there's still some of the adoption that we were going to go forward with last summer and that's postponed until the state gives us some guidance on what are approved uh approved list of that curriculum is that correct doctor that's

072correct thank you maintenance Reserve fund the maintenance committee overlooks this with the CIP this is just an accounting of that there were a lot of receivables so I'll be updating this for that maintenance committee as a lot of this changes over but a bounce of about 1.8 million there and as some of these projects get completed and spent down it's local there's some local money going in there there's State money going there and there's also sr3 and sr2 coveted relief money going in there so there's a lot of moving Revenue items coming into this account so we'll keep you briefed on that but we do have some for HVAC projects that are pretty close to completion still waiting on parts on those and we also have we're also gearing up for um good view in

073TJ for next summer so those projects really haven't started in essence the parks will start coming in and they'll be done in Earnest next summer and then the last one is our self-insured fund when you start a new year everybody's deductible start over so you would expect in the first quarter um employees are bearing a lot of that until deductibles are hit so we did see from the beginning of the year our bounce was 5.3 million and as of September it was 5.8 so we did see an increase that usually erodes as the year goes on uh through the budget process we did go up five percent on our rates so there is more money flowing into the count so we'll have to continue to monitor that through the year but a good start so

074far no deterioration there which I'm happy to report in the first quarter so it's still in very good good health at this point um so those are the other four uh funds and if you have any questions on those I'd be happy to answer so overall we look in good shape for the year um with with a healthy uh projected any bounce that can absorb some of these uh fluctuations and full fuel prices and also items breaking in in that we have to repair so I feel pretty good questions for Mr Hagler regarding the first quarter financial analysis I'm good okay moving on to item 3.03 cafr fiscal year 2021-2022 Mr Hagler again yes and correction on that title um it is actually in the CFA cffr it stands for comprehensive annual financial report that's

075that's developed and put together by the county we're a subunit of the county so we're included in that and I've referenced some pages in The kafir as we refer to it in the financial world for you to look at that's where the our sections are broken out this was actually uh what I referenced here is the 2021 audit that was completed by the county it was delayed from last year so it was just recently come out but usually I present that to our school board so you can take a look at that and look at those sections um the current uh last year 21-22 year audit is ongoing hope to have that and I think the County's open to have that completed by December so hopefully in January February I can present that in a

076little bit more timely manner than this one so I'll be happy to report we've got a clean audit opinion on the entire audit there were you know some controls and some findings but those are all on the counting side and they're working through those one one actually referenced almost like schools and I called up about that and I didn't but it was really on the county in a delay in reporting on that um I think reporting to this board on this before there was a finding control finding that I had too much control um over the payroll system nhr system and by working with the Auditors on an audit Trail where I do not go into the HR module to make any changes or ads they're able to monitor my activity on the HR side

077but there has to be one system administrator that's me so but I'm able to give them an audit report and so that has come off the internal control concern for the Auditors I'm happy to report but that was on there two years ago um I did put a little bit of explanation here when you look at the kaffir it's very complicated we take our cash basis budget that you work with and that I'm reporting on in the first quarter and then you add in fixed assets uh Actuarial studies on our other post retirement benefits and so a lot flows in there but the data is there and I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have on the financial statements comprehensive annual financial statements okay thank you straggle moving on to 3.04 data update

078Dr Woodford good evening members of the board tonight I would like to share with you some first quarter division data and support being provided to schools during the first nine weeks of our school year as a reminder each school does have some individual data that principals and teachers monitor that is contained in each school's continuous School Improvement plan all schools now have their csip available on the individual schools websites if you're interested in a little bit more detail um I will say that each of those School Improvement plans are read by doctors Trosper Cornett and myself to ensure adequate data is being analyzed reviewed quarterly with leadership teams and used to guide the goals of the schools the data that I'm going to share and that is contained and not only our division frame or

079strategic framework but also in individual School Improvement plans is used as indicators for goal one and our strategic framework which is maintaining High academic expectations for students all of the data being shared tonight provides initial levels of guidance for teachers to Target specific learning needs of their classes and individual students strengths and weaknesses while I am just going to be sharing the overview for division data schools do have the ability to break down the data into much more individualized categories to focus on tiered interventions remediation and individualized daily instruction for students in addition Dr Trosper and the instruction team look at individual School data to identify Trends and additional supports that his office can offer tonight we're going to look specifically at the following assessments the Virginia kindergarten Readiness program which is we refer to

080as vkrp Pals which we give in kindergarten through fifth grade and that's a phonological awareness literacy screening we're also going to look at IXL math data for grades one and two and then some secondary reading performance and a few AP scores that we received over the summer elementary schools do have more common assessment data points than the secondary schools however in the second quarter we will have more information about division benchmarks and at the end of this presentation I'm going to share more about what we know about the new grades three through eight Sol growth assessments from the Virginia Department of Education in addition to this data we also have screening tools for our three and four-year-old pre school programs these tools are all individually scored and the information helps Preschool teachers focus on scores

081and skills for individual students so there's no way to give you an overall class score for how students are doing because it's all individualized so with vkrp this is a screener that we give our youngest students we give it to them in preschool and we give it to our kindergarteners our kindergarten scores do come so that we can see them at a division level this test measures a student's Readiness and math self-regulation and social skills for our preschool students again as I said they're assessed on a rubric indicating a band of skills so students are marked as beginning growing or strong in these skills since most of our preschool students are receiving Services based on qualifying by need many of these students are in the growing and beginning stages and so it's really helpful for

082us when they get to kindergarten to see did our preschool programs really help to prepare them for the vkrp that we give in kindergarten so looking at our kindergarten vkrp data it indicates that 80 percent of our kindergarten students met the fall math benchmark which is the same as it was last fall in 2021 it was 80 percent last year too um the fall 20 22 percentage of students meeting self-regulation and social skill benchmarks were lower than in 2021 my speculation and our team speculation is that there were fewer students probably attending preschools in the last two years and that may be why we're seeing some differences however 83 percent of kindergarteners did meet The self-regulation Benchmark and 80 percent met the social skill indicators we did see about a five percent decrease in both

083of those areas compared to fall of last year in our fall 2021 data I think what's more important is what will vkrp say to us in the spring how did our students who were just coming to kindergarten grow from this fall to the spring and that's what we'll be looking at while these screening scores are lower than last year this is truly just a floor for our students who may be entering school with no prior preschool experience audience what we do know is that 80 or more of our students are ready to begin their Learning Journey and all of these skills are a focus in every kindergarten classroom in addition to reading skills which we'll talk about in a minute for the vkr p screen or the math section is divided into four core areas

084geometry numeracy patterning and computation the strongest math area was computation with 87 percent of students meeting the fall Benchmark and the weakest math area was patterning with 65 percent of students meeting the fall Benchmark patterning has been an identity has been identified as an area for all kindergarten teachers to focus on in every school this year and Mrs Bowyer has been sharing some ideas our kindergarten teachers do a tremendous amount of patterning activities though that's written into their pacing guides so I would expect that we would see a large increase in that score at the end of the year um the IXL diagnostic assessment is given to students in first and second grades quarterly the beginning of the year data that is shared reflects students prerequisite knowledge at the beginning of the school year since

085kindergarten students are assessed in math using the vkrp screener and students in grades three through eight were required to take the Virginia Department of Education Sol growth assessment we only ask for our first and second grade teachers to give this assessment in IXL overall 62 of students in first and second grade are at or above grade level according to IXL beginning of the year Diagnostic in the first grade 60 percent of those students are on or above grade level and in second grade 65 or on or above grade level we did have eight schools that had over 40 percent of their first and second graders below grade level which is concerning in first and second grade therefore we have implemented a number since routines and K5 classrooms as a priority since this is consistently the

086weakest area identified through spring Sol data in third grade our vkrp data and our IXL data over the years Mrs Bowyer our math supervisor is doing walk-throughs in all math classrooms and providing teachers and principals with a list of glows and grows obviously the glows are what they're doing well um and the growth section she offers some support for stronger routines and instruction so some examples of that may be that she's created a math question stem to help increase math discussions and discourse in the classroom she also has created co-teaching lesson plans and activities and lesson plans that teachers can use to just grow in their instruction in those math classes the special education supervisors and the general education supervisors are scheduling joint co-teaching walkthroughs at schools identified as having these weaknesses for students with

087weaknesses in math for our students with disabilities Mrs Bowyer has done some very specific professional development this year with teachers improving number sense routines using the Savas and envision textbooks to support instruction I excel training on how to use growth assessment data how to analyze growth assessment data with the student detail by question reports she's also given information there's a lot of Department of Education professional development training on video that she's made available to our teachers each of our supervisors has a canvas course with training tools lesson plans activities lesson ideas pasting guides available to all teachers in that content we've also worked to implement a math curriculum training for a new math intervention that's being piloted at Bedford Elementary and Goodview Elementary and it's called moving with math and I actually sat in on

088the PD and it's a very Hands-On remediation tool for students and if it's successful at Bedford Elementary in Goodview we will offer it to our other schools um our reading screening assessment is called Pals it's given to preschool and our K-5 grade students it is a screening test for language and literacy skills that provide the foundation for for performing at grade level in Reading before leaving the elementary school which is very important Pals data provides the division schools and teachers with specific areas of strengths and weaknesses as seen as this chart 73 percent of our kindergartners met the Benchmark 71 percent of our first graders met the fall Benchmark 66 percent of our second graders and 67 percent of our third graders as you can see we're still trying to recoup learning laws for our

089current second and third graders there's a specific Focus for our elementary schools to provide solid consistent tier one instruction to students and then additional time in reading skills with a specialist or a teacher that is specifically trained for tier two and tier 3 intervention Pals is given twice a year for all students and three times a year for students that did not meet the fall Benchmark so as the year progresses the expected Benchmark increases as students skills increases but it also offers us the ability to monitor students throughout the school year to see if the interventions we are using are working for students this chart shows the comparison of scores in the fall of last year to this year if data Trends related to growth for students from the fall of last year to the

090spring stay in place we will probably see about a six to ten points of gain on the end of the year screening which is pretty consistent for each year in kindergarten alphabet recognition was identified as the weakest area assessed with letter sounds and spelling also presenting as weak areas alphabet recognition obviously is the foundation on which literacy literacy skills are developed so students who are not able to identify letters and sounds will have difficulty learning to read therefore this is the primary focus for our kindergarten teachers at word recognition and isolation was identified as the weakest area assessed for first second and fifth graders performance on the word recognition and isolation subtask impacts performance on the instructional oral reading level or how quickly or how fluently students can read the more fluently they can read

091the better they comprehend text words presented in word recognition task or high frequency words that students should encounter in grade level text again these scores may be impacted by students ability to identify words automatically and we would suggest that students spend a lot more time actually in text during the day in school students in grades four through five also take a Pals assessment that's called Pals plus and this chart shows the fall percentage of students meeting the benchmarks 81 percent of our fourth graders met the Benchmark while only 71 percent of our fifth graders did notice that our fifth graders were at an 82 percent meeting Benchmark rate before the summer this drop may be contributed to a lack of independent reading over the summer or the fact that more complex skills are assessed at

092the beginning of the fifth grade Pals um our Focus will be to continue with solid and consistent small group tiered instruction reading Specialists and principals are looking at this data during leadership meetings and the division team is looking for strong reading instruction as we go and do walk-throughs and observations in classrooms consistently across the division in third grade and fourth grade spelling has been identified as the weakest area assessed this task requires students to spell words that represent phonics features necessary to be successful at grade level these scores may be impacted by a student's lack of time and grade level texts and possible gaps in phonemic Awareness from prior instruction this would correlate with the lack of automatic word recognition noted in the performance of our first and second graders we are hoping that a

093purchase of a good reading textbook will give us some consistency in that tier one instruction and we've also purchased a phonics program called Hagerty phonics and all of our schools K5 are implementing that and that will give explicit phonics instruction which connects directly to spelling as you know we did purchase a new reading textbook for grade 6 through 12 this summer to be implemented this fall as part of that series there were pre-tests available to teachers again we did not require a pre-test for grades six through eight because they're taking Virginia Department of Education growth assessments but we did for grades 9 through 12. this pre-test data was concerning and indicated that 58 of our students in Grade 9 through 12 were below expected grade level skills at the time of this pre-test traditionally I

094will have to say we've seen strong scores in English and writing at the high school and of course Sol test since this is the first year we've been using this series and we've had some concerns about Fidelity to a secondary curriculum we'll need to look a little bit more carefully at the correlation of this data to actual performance on the sols and performance in English classrooms there's been a lot of professional development in reading for all grade levels as I mentioned Hagerty phonics using the new Savas textbook to support reading and writing instruction comprehensive literacy instruction that was offered through the Department of Education there's also lots of free literacy instruction offered from the Department of Education in Orton Gillingham how to use Pals assessment data to guide instruction and our teachers have gone through

095under understanding scoring training which helps them understand how the writing Sol test is scored so that they can mimic that in the classroom using rubrics we've had lots of new teacher training to help new teachers understand that tier one instruction is very important for providing the solid foundations again we are doing walk-throughs and classrooms providing feedback to teachers a lot of looking at co-teaching that's where our general education and special education teachers are working together with students in the classroom because we do see a gap with our students with disabilities again we have writing sample collections we have lots of training for our elementary Reading Specialists they meet monthly to do professional development and they look at data by Zone and particularly they look at what interventions at tier 2 and tier three are working

096so that they can share that information with one another I'm also going to tell you just a little bit more about the Virginia literacy act in just a minute so one last data point and that is our high school students who are taking Advanced coursework through advanced placement we also have a lot of them taking dual enrollment courses so this is just AP is where we see a test that we can get scores for for all of our AP courses students have the option but they're not required to take the AP test to score high enough to receive college credit depending on the college a student chooses to attend a score of three to five may earn them transfer college credit as a freshman so we offer 27 different advanced placement courses last year six

097in science three World Language two computer science two English three math eight social studies and two AP Capstone courses and one music theory course of the 785 students that were enrolled in these 27 courses only 570 of them chose to take the AP exam of those choosing to take the exam 81 percent of them earned a score of three or better we also had an outstanding number of AP Scholars this year with a total of 56 AP Scholars recognized from Bedford County school and they had an average score of 3.47 out of five so we're really proud of our AP Scholars um just a quick update Science and History common benchmarks will be given at the end of the first semester to provide teachers and the division with information to prepare for Remediation in those

098two subjects for the second semester currently we do have required alternate assessments given for Science and History for grade levels that do not have an end of year Sol test the these are rubrically graded and available to teachers to use for grading implementation and they do submit them to the supervisors for a review we've also had a major focus in the first nine weeks of assisting teachers with supporting the new science textbooks that were bought all of our teachers we've talked to have been super excited about the resources with those textbooks it's been a while since we've had some good solid science textbooks um just a few little important things I think you might want to know we are excited to announce the addition of three-year-olds to our preschool programs we currently have 43 three-year-olds

099being served in our schools we also have 203 four-year-olds being served in preschool for a total of 246. our preschool programs make a significant difference for our students entering kindergarten our state officials continue to discuss Universal preschool for all students which would be a wonderful advancement in Virginia the Virginia Department of Education released the first growth assessment in reading and math last year in the fall they gave us vertical scale scores that were later used to identify student growth on the spring 2022 Sol test um this year students will have to take three of these tests in reading and math one in the fall one mid-year and one in the spring and that is the final full Sol test scores were released but unfortunately we were expecting to get some data that would help guide

100us a little bit but we did not really receive anything that we could use at the division level to really help us look at data for grades three through five however teachers have been given something that's very beneficial which is a student detail by question which allows them to identify the specific question student students missed on the growth assessment and specific skills that need to be targeted in strengths and weaknesses if we receive more information from doe which we have been expecting I will make sure to let you know in the future I will let you know that Mr Blankenship and I have provided some feedback to the assessment office that more information is really neat with these growth assessment scores to allow schools and division level analysis the reason we did not do a

101common Benchmark in Reading in math grades three through eight was because we didn't want to over test our students however the data that we received back isn't really helping guide our supports for schools also the supervisors have been focused on the creation of benchmarks for subjects and grade levels that do not have growth assessments we're also encouraging teachers in science to use the resources and test in the new textbooks there will be a second quarter Benchmark and I will let you know how those scores go when we finish those in December um also last week Dr Bergen and I were able to attend a session at the vast conference on the Virginia literacy act currently the Department of Education is working in partnership with the University of Virginia and Virginia literacy Partnerships to create teams

102from across Virginia to vet textbook resources for the components that Target the science of reading they hope to release I'm sorry release a list of textbooks for purchase no later than the end of the summer we're hoping a little bit earlier than that so we can get these in our teachers hands and get training as part of the literacy act there will be an Advisory Group that will help determine professional development requirements for teachers specific training for reading Specialists guidelines for reading plans for individual students that will be required guidelines for division literacy plans and they'll also be offering micro credentialing for Teacher seeking reading specialist endorsements and they will be paying for regional literacy coaches that will be hired to support our region and our local schools so we'll continue to update you as

103we get more information so just as our teachers identify students that need tiered intervention the instruction team has identified schools grade levels and content that require tiered intervention as you can see on this chart areas falling in tier 3 require more time and more intensive support five schools have been identified through the school improvement process for tier three support and monitoring these five schools have already had intense academic reviews the instruction team went into these schools we had a team of eight to ten supervisors directors and Dr Calvert and myself and we spent about one to two days in each of those five schools the primary focuses were on the instructional leadership of the principal and classroom lesson evaluation we looked at data trackers grade level minutes faculty handbooks faculty training expectations in the school

104lesson plans we did classroom observations we talked to staff we talk to students and we have a report of our findings with action steps for improvement those action steps would be alignment of curriculum looking at lesson plans I am looking at observations that principles are due doing on the feedback they're offering teachers and I'm giving suggestions each of us as directors supervisors and executive level Mentor one school and we're responsible for the support of those schools and the the highest level Dr Calvert myself Dr Trosper Mrs Robertson Ms Jennings we are working with those five schools we also have identified six schools that would fall into what we consider tier two and they're being monitored to due to a variety of academic concerns that include some subgroup achievement data graduation rates and so we're monitoring

105them so that we hope that they don't move into tier three and part of that monitoring these principles came to our team the directors we call it the learner support team LST and they presented their csip and they presented the goals that they have for their school and their data to our team right there on the spot we offered suggestions we offered you know some ideas for how they can provide feedback to teachers and we'll continue to follow up with them in their school Improvement plans and with support eight schools are currently considered tier one so they receive the universal support from the instruction team what everyone receives so this this includes the basic supports but not at the same level of intensity because you know we are trying to really focus on our tier

106three and tier two schools our team will continue to bring quarterly data to the board as we monitor School progress and growth tonight I was able to share just a fraction of the information regarding data and support that our team does I would invite anyone that would like to have a more in-depth view of the data to reach out to me and Dr Trosper and I would be happy to schedule a time to meet for you to meet with the entire instruction team to discuss exactly what they see in each of our schools so that'll give you a deeper level of detail than could be provided tonight so please if you're interested reach out and at this time I welcome any questions you might have um I I absolutely do want to uh get a

107deeper look um just a couple questions because I'll ask I think most of them later do we still do anything when you spoke about math and the fact that the students if I'm understanding you correctly had trouble with you know math talk and and getting through problems like that that's such an important skill do we still do math talk or something like that we do do something like that now I will say that Mrs Bowyer is really working with a lot of our newer teachers on how to do that and how to do that well at the elementary level we're also still using AMC in the schools that purchased that originally and Mrs Bowyer has gone back to do retraining of that to make sure our new teachers understand how to use that as an

108intervention have something like a math talk there's a there's a program out there math talk I don't know yeah I I can't say that every school everybody's using it but it's definitely one of the focuses that Mrs Bowyer is using as a support I could get well if you want to come in for a follow-up Miss Bowyer will be there and we can actually talk about what I'm interested in is not maybe so much that program is just that that's such an important part of a math class probably something that most of us sitting here never had and it it the research on that is just so compelling I think it's an important part of a math class but it is it does take training and it does take practice and and I do know

109for a fact she has created some tools that are easy for teachers to use to help with how do you ask questions that make students think critically how do we talk about math how do we talk about how we're working problems it's not just sit and do so that's definitely a focus then in math class um you said that Mrs Boyer was creating like for example coalescence I didn't write down everything you said and that's wonderful I think that's a great thing how do we keep any data at all or do we have any way of tracking to know that these these really valuable resources are actually being accessed and used um we know more specifically at our tier three and tier two schools because we actually wrote those in some of our action steps

110to use a co-teaching lesson plan we are also doing walk-throughs in co-teaching classrooms in connection with our special education department and sending that data our walk through data goes automatically into a program that our supervisors have created and that data goes to the principal so we are monitoring we recognize co-teaching as a weakness that we need more professional development in and Mrs Jennings team is going through a federal monitoring and last year they did an assessment of where do we stand with co-teaching and where do we stand with inclusion and so she definitely has some data points for professional development moving forward we did send the supervisors to a team training this summer on co-teaching so that they could provide really good supports and tools to teachers I just do an internet search for the

111Virginia literacy act I mean it is will that are you looking at a special document or um I I just use my notes from the session but there is a special site and I can send it to you okay thank you thank you manager okay thank you um Dr Woodford I first of all thank you for such a thorough report here that you've given us and I do want to visit with you later okay um so to look at some other data that you had mentioned um this is just a comment regarding the vkrp data that you shared with us yes ma'am um I'm gonna be honest with you um I think that's pretty impressive from these kindergarten or Pre-K kids that's that's really quite impressive and um I was really thrilled to see the

11280 percentile in their self-regulations so what do you contribute that to what are we doing is it Beth Robertson and her some of her strategies and techniques well I will say I do think that our our primary teachers have definitely needed a lot of support with self-regulation it's um our students have been somewhat dysregulated I definitely know that when we are asking principals and teachers what they want we did a listening event recently and we could not hear enough about the appreciation of support of IDs and I just think it's really I will say Mrs Robertson does a lot of training with teachers and just so you know she's been a good view for weeks now in one kindergarten class helping to get some kids regulated and so they're lucky to get the the expert

113there but I think our teachers have some really good strategies I think now they are feeling more comfortable getting back into the swing of things I think having our preschoolers in person face to face is getting them prepared for kindergarten I think we're seeing a little bit more dysregulation at first and second but we're getting there but we definitely have a lot of needs that are instructional design Specialists are trying to feel speaking of third graders while certainly we all understand that those children certainly lost a lot in those past couple of years but when I look at the third graders and their data their Pals data it is a little concerning to me um I think because what we do know is they have to be able to read before they leave Elementary School

114really by third grade that's exactly you just took the words right out of my mouth is that in third grade you know we need these children reading on grade level because it's nearly impossible for them to catch up after that so when I meet with you I would love to just know more about what you guys are doing to help those students um and also I'd like to just also have more information too just giving you a heads up as to what to expect from me um your tier monitoring that you're doing so I would want to know a little bit more about that but thank you for the report yeah Dr Winford on this pyramid tier one tier two tier three have you compared the amount of dollars that we're spending at each of

115those schools um and what I'm interested in is how that relates to the tier I can definitely do I've never done that but I could work with Mr Hagler I think he has a like a do you have per pupil by school yeah um when we submit the annual school report to the state um they come out later in the year and they put and they put data out um per School expenditures it breaks it out by federal state local state and locals always combine and then Federal so we can correlate that to what your request is and I'll assist Dr Redford per student right because that include Title One um it includes all federal so you would expect that at Title One schools the federal money would be there I'm interested to know what

116we're spending and where they fit into those tiers we'll look at the annual school report and correlate that back to that okay and then Dr the only other question I have is for tier three I hear you have action plans for them what is the accountability plan so in those action plans from the academic review there is action steps then there is who is supposed to monitor that and then it says what's the evidence that they have to submit for monitoring and I will say what we tried to do for that was was support but also very specific tangible things that could be done to improve instruction so as part of the monitoring they will come at mid-year and bring any data any artifacts that they've gathered we'll look at are those action steps helping

117to improve performance we'll be looking at you know mid-year Pals we'll be looking at benchmarks and we can always adjust those action steps but there is a monitoring portion that's required and at the division level we're required to Monitor and sign off that we are monitoring all year and maybe I need to go a little bit deeper but from a supervisor your team down to the principal there is an accountability plan correct correct okay so I will be interested in how that goes and having discussion on those as we continue to focus on these tier three schools okay okay thank you any more questions for Dr Woodford okay thank you George okay we're gonna move on to item 4.01 program of studies Dr Trosper got a letting spread out at my mic [Music] good evening

118tonight I'll be discussing the program of studies for the 23-24 school year for your consideration as we developed a program of studies our goal was to create a program that was more user-friendly and as we created it we wanted to make something that was informative as it always has been if not more informative as we have moving forward but also just understandable and as we developed this we were thinking about our families and community members who maybe don't have that background education and so we hope that these goals have been reflected as you look at the document that's been provided to you just a quick overview of the timeline developing the program of studies began this summer in July the instruction team met with our counselors and we basically took their feedback we took their

119input we gave them opportunity to ask questions and really helped shape our work in September we met with our principals Elementary and secondary met with the instruction team members of the executive team and at that time there was requests for new courses we discussed recommendations for each subject area and changes that needed to be made and so in between those meetings and tonight myself and the instruction team have worked diligently to create the product that you have in front of you at the draft document and then in December we'll bring it back to you as an action item to vote so we can begin that process of enrolling students and courses for next year and then developing our Master schedules I do want to share some revisions tonight so we do have a number of

120changes to this year's program of studies and the first you'll notice is just a redesign of the format the appearance is totally different from previous versions and I want to especially recognize Miss Allison kapler she's our supervisor of science and computer science and she was responsible for the design of this program she went above and beyond her typical responsibility she's already working very hard with her job and so I just really appreciate her time and all the supervisors time they put into that just to show you some of the redesign first of all the vision and Mission was redone to reflect the Strategic framework that that you have voted on previously and we also have a table of contents that was simplified to allow for quick reference and easy access to some of the relevant

121sections our course descriptions in previous versions there's a lot of information and and someone who read it had to search considerably to find the information they needed so we created a consistent format that clearly specifies prerequisites what grade levels the course is offered in the grade scale in other words the weight whether it's 4.0 5.0 and then the credits the course is worth we also put stickers or labels on courses and so if a course is an advanced placement a dual enrollment course a Susie Gibson course or an Sol tested course there's a sticker right there beside the course description again just for easy access just for clarity for anyone who would like to know some other revisions that were included was a standard of learning testing schedule so a table was added to give

122a visual representation of what subjects are SOL tested in each grade there's a new section about the transfer of Virginia and passport programs so this is under the advanced placement and dual enrollment courses and so the transfer Virginia website allows families to have consistent and current information and it comes from 39 of our two and four-year colleges and universities in Virginia what families can do is they can look at the dual enrollment courses that their child has attained in high school and see which of those courses would transfer into which institution so they can make better informed decisions about school once they leave High School the dual enrollment past program is similar to the transfer program and this is designed to help students select appropriate program of studies at four-year institutions to ensure that courses

123they do transfer are relevant to their course of studies there's a career planning section and we've added an update or a description of major Clarity so in seventh grade students complete an academic and career plan through major Clarity this is something that's available to all of our students in grades 6 through 12. this program provides academic advising for these students and helps them explore opportunities and select Pathways of studies that will address their specific career goals there's also a description of career clusters and these are a group of occupations in Broad Industries and within each cluster there's a common set of skills and knowledge so all of our CTE courses are aligned with those 17 career clusters so we want our families just to know what they were so they can research further every year

124the Department of Education and our school board provides changes updates to policies particularly this past school year so any policy update has been implemented in the program of studies and one I did want to call your attention to is the public complaints about learning resources we've had a few conversations about that policy and so I've provided a summary of what that policy is and then a link to the actual policy so anyone who is interested in how to go about that process can access that through our program and then the final one would be science description so this year is the first year we fully implemented 2018 science standards and so all of the levels at elementary middle and high school were updated to reflect what is in those standards again that were fully implemented

125during the school year talk a few minutes about our sequencing charts so all of our subjects had a sequence redesign and these this redesign emphasized course Pathways that students can take these are meant to be a quick reference for families administrators counselors teachers and they essentially outline what courses may be taken within each course subject sequence and outlines what an advanced and standard diploma path would look like I do want to call your attention to some changes in our science in our history sequencing for Middle School students so in science we have made some adjustments to the core sequences in an effort to provide students necessary opportunities to learn science through number one through doing and through Hands-On experiences in science in order to master and show Proficiency in these new science standards students are

126going to have to spend lots of time in these scientific engineering practices again through the doing through Hands-On lab activities and we want to provide an application or a focus on application of science instead of just recall specific facts so the sequencing has changed so what we're proposing is that in grade six students will take science six instead of life science that they've had in the previous few school years starting in the 24-25 school year they will take science six and sixth grade life science in seventh grade physical science in eighth grade and then we would move earth science to the high school so this is part of a three-year crosswalk which we think is going to better prepare middle school students for high school programs of study and also give students some options as

127they go into high school after they take that biology which all will have to take then they can make the choice to go into Earth science or another field of science based on their career goals or their interests in social studies students are going to take U.S history in sixth grade civics and economics in seventh grade and World Geography in eighth grade instead of world history one as they have in previous school years during the 24-25 school year we would anticipate moving world one world history one to the ninth grade and this change was made after Consulting all of our social studies teachers not only last year but in the previous school years and the sequence that we are proposing represents the preference of the majority of social studies teachers when they were surveyed this

128decision to move World Geography to eighth grade was made primarily because geography has been shown as a consistent weakness for students across grade levels and understanding geography is a skill needed to be successful in all history courses in world history One World History 2 U.S history and so we want to help them develop this foundational skill in a course prior to moving to the high school the other justification is that this actually aligns with the sequence of studies for most of our surrounding School divisions and so as we have students transferring to Bedford County doing this will allow us to work with them help them to get the credits they need to graduate on time this has been a challenge previously I want to discuss the new courses that we're going to offer or that

129we're proposing to offer for next year so we're actually proposing 18 new courses to the program 14 of which are CTE courses and I want to be really clear with the board that to offer a CTE course it's a process where we start an application with the Department of Education it has to be submitted and approved some of the requests for CTE courses have come from Individual schools some are potentially going to be offered at Susie Gibson and so the first step to offering these is we need approval from the board through the program of studies once we receive your approval then we will submit our applications to the state But please understand that just approving the course does not necessarily mean we're going to have the Staffing or the student interest this is the

130first step if we don't take this step then obviously we cannot offer them so we're going to begin exploring those upon your approval and so there's a lot of logistics to work through but this is a an ambitious list of course requests for CTE and it really reflects our desire to offer more opportunities for students that are relevant to them and to our local Workforce I'm just going to go through them quickly before I do that I just want to say a word of commendation to our forest schools Force metal and Jefferson Forest High School really collaborated on these course offerings so I'll explain how they did that as I go through these but really commend those two administrators for their teamwork on that and so the first first CTE courses career strategies and this

131is one where we have a lot of our students take early release and they go work in jobs through our marketing program and as we've researched that we realized that really if you're not in a marketing career that's not an appropriate course so we're going to enroll these kids in career studies so if they go work and they go get internship opportunities it's going to be called Career studies and not marketing doesn't change teacher certifications doesn't change really course descriptions it just makes sure they're in an appropriate course the next would be criminal justice one and two early last year we were approached by the Bedford Sheriff's Department just asking us to explore offering some courses in this field to help address some of their job shortage issues they'd ask us to consider a partnership

132and so we're going to explore this again a lot of details to work out but we do think that there's a chance we're going to have student interest and potentially able to find some instructors in this field after our conversations with them the next CTE would be our cyber security and this represents a four-year sequence and so the first one would be a cyber security fundamentals this course will be available to any student in grades 9 through 12. and what this does is becomes the prerequisite for any future cyber security courses we've had again a lot of interest had businesses specifically approach us saying we need employees we need kids that are skilled and so we think we're going to get a lot of Community Support as we start this the next three cyber Security

133Systems Technology would be taken in 10th Grade cyber Security Systems Technology Advance would be in 11th grade and cyber security network systems would be in 12th grade none of those three could be taken next year just because you need the fundamentals as a prerequisite but we wanted you to see this is our vision as a four-year sequence of cyber security so we want to go ahead and get it all in the program now just to just to give you again an idea of what our vision would be for CTE and cyber security the next course is emergency medical technician so again we were approached by the Bedford County Center for economic development and the Bedford fire department and essentially said there's a severe job shortage for this field not only in Bedford but in surrounding

134areas and so they've offered some ideas for Partnerships this is actually a course that we took out of the program of studies last year where we didn't think we could find an instructor and we had not for years but again after talking to them we felt like there's a good chance that we could find some instructors and and so our next step would be to get student interest and try to get some kids enrolled in that next course is game design and development so this is one where some students have expressed interest at Forest Middle and it would be accessible to anyone in Bedford County but this specifically where the request came from and what is interesting is this is a course that would ultimately complete with programming which is another course that we're recommending

135and students would take at the high school so programming is really it's a new CTE course but it's a name change this is a a computer science class is what it is is the name and what we found is the course description of the computer science that we're currently teaching is actually consistent with programming so we're we're calling it a different name but not changing what is being taught or the description note that while we are changing um computer science to programming and advanced programming we are not replacing AP Computer Science courses and this is absolutely done with consultation with our teachers but what this does is it allows programming and computer science to now be a CTE completer sequence so students can get CTE Credit in addition if they want to get math elective

136credit or even science credits so it's it's a flexible option that we think benefits our students so that's programming and advanced programming production systems was was a course that was again recommended by force metal and it completes with a number of courses already offered at Jefferson Forest High School and so for example this one would complete with construction technology which is a relatively new course at JF technology of robotic design completes with technical drawing and design which is at a few of our schools but again just an example of the collaboration with Forest metal and JF High School where kids can take those classes and go on to JF and then the last one we're excited about is Virginia teachers for tomorrow part two this really reflects a change in the sequence at University of

137Lynchburg which is who we offer due enrollment in a partnership with so previously students that were in teachers for tomorrow would take one year of this class and then get four college credits well University of Lynchburg has restructured it to now to where you can take teachers for tomorrow one first semester get four college credits and then take part two second semester and get four more credits so our students can enroll in this and actually get eight college credits before they graduate and so I think that's a good opportunity and that's we're trying to be responsive to University of Lynchburg but again excited for our students to have that opportunity and then moving outside of CTE we're adding American Sign Language three we've actually had some requests over the years and this would be virtual

138Virginia course but we wanted to make sure it was in our program so students could take that Applied Mathematics this actually used to be pre-college Concepts what we found is again after Consulting with our teachers the course description for Applied Mathematics is actually more appropriate to what we have always been doing as opposed to pre-college Concepts and so the name reflects what we've been doing and some of the updates that we think would be more appropriate data science was actually a Pilot Course across Virginia last year and this course was created based on expressed interest of businesses that were looking for employees that could actually use and analyze and help guide them and decisions based on a lot of data kind of like we tell our schools we do a lot of collecting of data

139but what do we do with it and so this is a opportunity to get students interested in how to use data for local businesses and so we're going to offer that this would typically be used as a fourth math class for seniors a math elective so you know we're going to offer that and see what kind of Interest we get and then finally AP pre-calculus this is just a new AP class that's been created so we want to offer that as well and make it available to our students and then finally this chart just shows course name changes these are not new courses this is not changing any course descriptions but occasionally the state does change their names they make tweaks to that Verso which is our CTE program that we look at has made

140some changes and so we simply wanted to make those changes to stay consistent with those updates so I won't go through those course by course but you certainly can reference that and be happy to answer questions for you so as I said the program of studies will be an action item in December so upon the board's approval schools will use the program to create course registration they will start to generate student interest get them enrolled in courses by the end of February and then at that time schools will begin to build their Master schedules in preparation for the 23-24 school year so at this time I'd be happy to answer any questions it's real Dr Trosper on the CTE slide 10 where all of the CTE classes are listed and that you covered yes well

141all of these offer like a certification or some type of something tangible the student can take with them to go to the next level correct I appreciate you asking that we've had a lot of conversations with the instruction team Mr Hudson actually discussed this today we really need to take a look at our CTE courses not with the well let me answer your question yes the answer is yes beyond that at each of our base schools that is an area we need to improve we want to make sure that as students start CTE courses that there's a clear path to a completer and that there's a certification at the end and as we shared last month our students are already doing well but we we think we can do a lot better A lot of

142those completers have come through our Susie Gibson programs and we need to get them in the base school so that is something that Mr Haas and I are working on we're going to be meeting with administrators CT departments very soon just to share that and what we want to avoid is Islands or courses that are kind of on their own in isolation that don't connect with any completer so we do need to look at that and and phase those out and make sure that they're more relevant and have a completer sequence on these classes is there a cost to the student to the student I don't believe so um that is not something that was discussed I will follow up and make sure that's correct but I don't believe there is a cost and here's

143why I asked that question and you're going to start hearing this Dr Wilford and I have talked about this Dr Bergen and I have talked about this we need to make sure all of our students have options not just the ones that can write a check and and sure but we want to make sure everyone and so what do we do what do we need to do to find the funding so if we have one or five thousand students who are interested in a path how do we make sure it happens sure and as you were saying that Mr so teachers for tomorrow that is a dual enrollment so they are going to have to pay some tuition so um I I didn't think about that but that is something that again we talked about

144last month and so we could provide more information you know if we want to look into providing more tuition support yeah I'm even interested in what are the opportunities that we can partner with either cvcc the universities I mean we are in a rich environment of educational opportunities and so we need to start thinking outside of the box of how do we offer these classes us paying for it because it's our student and I want to make sure we're looking at those options and so if it's a teacher that we employ great but if it's CVC Professor or Liberty University or Lynchburg University how do we make that happen on our campuses and so I just I love these new courses cyber security is Awesome Everything listed here when I saw game design development how

145do we get our students involved to create things that our other students can learn with that they can relate to you know we all anybody that has kids grandkids whatever they know that these our kids are into gaming and if we can have our other kids develop it into something that our other kids will enjoy I just I love the the opportunities there but um I am interested to know how do we make sure everyone knows about these classes how do we make sure that there's not a a limitation based on funding let's get creative we've got businesses universities who are willing to partner with us let's figure out how to make sure if there's 5 000 interested there's 5 000 to get it thank you uh yes I just have a couple comments I

146I love the look of the new uh um program of studies thank you I don't know went right out of my head I think the design is really pleasing to look at it flows the spacing is is much improves the look of it the stickers the color coding on the tabs it's really good I'm really anxious and I'm not sure I've ever said this to to go home and really look at the program of studies um I'm assuming this at some point will be online it is now it's attached to the agenda I'm sorry I've hit this like three times um the only thing I would I would say and I'm just making a suggestion here is there any way to hyperlink the the table of contents so that you're not like scrolling through like

14775 actually I think it is it is try and if it doesn't work I can certainly fix that yeah it didn't hear so okay yeah it should be so we'll go back and look at that that was a goal of ours um I love the changes to the science and social studies course Pathways I think those those courses moved into the high school are much more suited in the high school I also loved the ambitiousness ambitious courses of the CTE and I looked at the gaming and designed said yeah I would take that so really good job on this I think it's going to be a real it I'm not going to be it is a really nice document so thank everyone for all their work on that and everyone has said everything that I

148wanted to say sure yeah I I agree I actually think that this is this is very well done and I think that all these CTE courses it's just put pulling us more forward into the future I think it's great for for our students to be able to have these options so um definitely think that you're going to get some really good interest in a lot of these programs so nice job anything else I did have one question okay are we still going to keep the electrical that is still in the program yes sir and so we're going to post that and we're hopefully going to be able to hire for that so that is that is still going to be an option also thank you Dr Strasburg appreciate it okay moving on to 4.02 fiscal

149year 2023 2024 budget calendar Mr Hagler ready for another budget cycle um in front of you tonight is a proposed budget calendar to develop the budget for the 23 24 year this will be brought back in for December for the board to vote on there is activity already going on to gather data as uh Dr Woodford mentioned uh central office staff went out to each school and stayed there all day long to listen to any employee with ideas related to anything not just budget but a lot of different things and we're going through that data and we'll present some of that to the board as items of suggestion for the budgets um PTA Council surveys to the principals principals meeting next week so we're that's ongoing where we're Gathering data um slight change to what

150we've done in the past um working with the finance committee um we're going to solicit all this data put it all into a list we're also going to bring in data from last year unfunded needs from last year combined on that and the finance committee I think Dr mealy who chairs that we'll send that out to all the board members to provide feedback so you have a little bit of homework over Christmas break um we'll get that back in early January tallied up put it into something and then that will all be presented to the full board you've already seen it individually kind of put your ranking on it but then the finance committee will present that to the full board at the January 12th meeting doesn't mean you're locked in for that but just

151the ideas and priorities going forward and so everybody's thinking about that so we're Gathering all as much data as we can input for that I'll put cost estimates on that and we'll get that to you as soon as possible so this is a draft of the recommendations for the budget calendar for next year for your consideration we'll be bringing it back in December for a vote any questions that you might have on this one question um will and maybe Dr Milton can answer will the finance committee be bringing to us options or recommendations on things to cut in order to add yeah we're I think the there's not going to be as a ton of money there and last year um we I sent out a an email to everybody saying list your your wants

152and then I collated them all sent them back out to you said here's the like top five pick your top two or three and uh so we're going to do that again because I think that worked well that way at least we had import we weren't taking board time to do that so yeah if we get requests where we say you know this is number one we've got to do this then we're going to have to look for ways suggestions to say how we might pay for that but I will caution you that when I send this out that January third date is a pretty hard date okay so I will you know be pretty good about sending reminders to you but that January third date is is hard because we everything kind of got

153moved up or back since this year so so we need that but um yes I think we we need to do that if we have to if we can't fund what we need to fund I think probably you know one of the things we were carrying over from last year is finishing out the uh the pay uh steps and everything that we could in all the groups we couldn't do so that's probably going to be a priority in there so to add on to that yes sir um when we present this in early January we won't have a full picture of the revenue we'll have the governors and I will brief on that recommendation for the budget then we wait for the general assembly House and Senate we usually wait for that before Dr Bergen

154will present you know a revised budget but the committee will meet um to look at the revenues um a lot of the this list is I'll put it as wantos or desires the technical adjustments that are have to's fuel electrical those will be built in as technical those got to go forward so we'll build and I'll build in the technicals look at the revenue and see and then we'll start adding the priorities and rankings and see what we can do if we have to go into other areas because we think some of those things are more important there may be cuts that have to be made in other areas to achieve some of those so all that will be worked through and via the board with the committee given instructions and back and forth so

155that that would be the goal over January February March questions anyone okay thank you Mr Hagler moving on to 4.03 policy updates Dr Bergen yes ma'am the intergovernmental Affairs committee met on October 25th to review proposed revisions brought forward by staff for seven policies as always for the viewing public all of the information is linked in the agenda you can see all of the red line versions I'll just give a very quick overview of the seven policies and what's being suggested for revision beginning with policy BFC policy adoption languages being Incorporated to our current procedures that require that all policies are first reviewed by the intergovernmental Affairs committee or IGA before being presented to the entire board for consideration as well as specifying that regulations are subject to revision by the superintendent policy dgc school

156activity funds it suggested that we add some language recommended by our outside Auditors which would prevent any employee from signing on a check for which they would be reimbursing themselves that's just good sound fiscal policy so that's been recommended into our policy policy eead special use of school buses is being proposed that we update to allow that our school buses could be used by third-party entities as long as they follow all of our district regulations currently we couldn't allow a third party but this revision would allow us to consider that should the opportunity ever rise policy GBC staff compensation procedures the policy has been updated to specify that employees receive their annual compensate compensation amount monthly over a 12-month period of time and to remove reference to a form that is no longer used I

157think two of the more significant ones that you're certainly going to want to review prior to Bringing these we'll review them all but I'm going to draw a particular Focus to IIA instructional materials this policy has been updated to reflect enactment and state code and Senate Bill 656 which requires parental notification of any sexually explicit content in curriculum materials that same Senate Bill 656 required that the Virginia Department of Education develop model policies for all local school boards to consider we have received that model policy we reviewed it with the committee we are on a clock that we must update those model policies by January 1st so we're presenting for information tonight and adoption next month so they'll go into effect on the first of January relatedly policy iiab was previously retired by the school

158board in 2011 and language was incorporated into IIA but we just believe it's too cumbersome to have both in core instructional materials IIA and supplemental materials iiab in the same one policy so we're recommending we unretire iiab and specify again supplemental materials also require parental notification for sexual explicit content um I'd like to note that the committee members did have additional questions about IIA and iiab other than this this new requirement of Parental notification for sexual explicit content so we are likely to continue to discuss this policy in January and could potentially be bringing it back for further revisions after the committee's review and their questions have been answered and then lastly we have policy jba for Section 504 non-discrimination and complaint procedures this policy has been updated with language added simply to conform with

159recommendations that Define the specific procedures parents would file on a complaint alleging any action that's prohibited by Section 504 of The Rehabilitation Act of 1973. again the full detail is linked within the agenda item and either myself or two committee members would be happy to answer any questions at this time thank you Joshua okay now let's take care of that let's move on down to action item 9.01 approval of calendar choice for 20 23 2024 Dr Woodford So based on feedback uh from a staff survey that I shared with you last month the staff would recommend the adoption of calendar B for the 2023-24 school year questions okay do I have a motion regarding the calendar choice for 20 20 23 2024 option calendar B approve calendar B for okay have a motion do I

160have a second okay I saw you okay Mr Daniels I saw her mouth but I heard your voice that was kind of odd same page okay I have a motion and a first to accept option b as the calendar Choice any discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I opposed motion carries do I have a motion for approval policy updates presented at the October 13 2022 board meeting Madam chairman I propose that we accept the policy updates as presented thank you Dr Maley have a motion by Dr Miley do I have a second by Mr Daniels any discussion yes my wife said one note to add we presented nine policies last month for your consideration but I did caution the board that the ninth policy Joc privacy dignity and respect for all students

161and parents and the schools might not be returning pending any potential possible legal matters that did transpire the policy triggered another automatic 30-day wait period for those legal issues to be resolved it could extend even further so the public did hear the and you all were presented with a a draft it's still sitting there in draft and we'll wait for further direction from the state so it's nine represented but we're bringing eight back for action thank you for the clarification so I have a motion and a second any any further discussion do we need to remove the Joc since that was presented so do we need to change the motion it wasn't listed in the action item yes yes I just want to make sure because I just wanted to let you all know that

162it wasn't in the action okay perfect okay any further discussion yeah all those in favor signify by saying I I opposed motion carries moving on to item 10 superintendent's report Dr Bergen well would you like to celebrate some kids tonight please oh yeah so slide one uh five Jefferson Forest High School students were selected by audition for the all South Central Regional Orchestra they included Leo Chang on violin Angelina I'm sorry Angeline I'm going to mispronounce your last name I'm afraid guo on violin as well Courtney trahant on the English horn Jack waters on trombone and Brianna Yates on flute the South Central seasonal Regional Orchestra event will take place on November 11 and 12 in Richmond so congratulations to those students and best wishes on your competitions congratulations to these 13 students pictured on

163the slide these students come from Liberty Middle School and Liberty High School and they were selected by their principals to serve on the mayor's student advisory Council and were recognized at the Bedford Town council meeting on October 25th I know we had board members that were able to attend as well as Central staff and we appreciate the town council's support and the mayor's support of eliciting comments from our students about what they love about their school systems and how we can make improvements Liberty High School hosted the Seminole District cheerleading competition on Wednesday October 12th battling against Fierce competition the Jefferson Forest High School cheerleaders placed first and the Liberty High School cheerleaders placed second Jefferson Force then went on to reign as the Champions at the region 40 competition and placed fourth in state

164competition so congratulations to all of our cheerleaders and to JF on their placement of fourth on October 15th the Jefferson Forest High School Marching Cavaliers took first place in group four and won all the caption awards at the Virginia marching band Cooperative Tidewater Regional competition their band posted the high score of all 22 bands in the competition which was for five size classifications then on the 22nd of October at the drums along the Blue Ridge marching band competition they went on to post the highest score of the day and their highest score of the Season then blew it out of the stadium in the finals that night the marching Cavaliers were named Grand Champion winning all Captain Awards and posting the highest score for the second week in a row in the Virginia marching band

165Cooperative competition for this season and then on November 5th I had the pleasure of watching them perform at the Virginia marching band Cooperative state championships which were held at Liberty University we had an army of JF parents who organized and hosted the event and neither The Early Morning Rain nor the power outages could deter our marching Cavaliers who took second place in group four winning best General effect and best percussion in the preliminary competition before advancing to the Commonwealth Cup finals where they achieved their highest placement ever in that competition with a fourth place overall congratulations to our marching Cavaliers foreign congratulations also to our JF Cavalier thespians who recently took the runner-up trophy for their one-act play called the Beggars Opera at the Virginia Theater Association Convention JF and Stafford High School will now

166represent Virginia and compete at the Southeastern theater conference which is going to be held in Lexington Kentucky next month JF received special judges awards for best costumes best Ensemble and Technical Merit and three students Carter rice Anna Miller and Blake McGregor were named to the all-star cast and Eliza Hayes and Annelise Schultz will received best performer Awards also on November 5th the Cavalier thespians competed at and won the theater Festival for vhsl Section 4d2 with individual recognitions for Carter rice Sarah Lynn loux and Eliza Hayes were outstanding actor the group will now compete at the region 4D championships in Pulaski on November 19th moving down to Stanton River High School congratulations to Sam Weddle Sam recently won the Blue Ridge District cross country championship in doing so Sam was named the 2022 Blue Ridge District

167Runner of the year last week at the vhsl region 3D 3D cross country championships Sam along with Jack Weddle and Megan Hawley were named to the all-region cross-country team and Sam and Jack qualified for the state cross-country meet which will be held this Saturday the Jefferson Force boys and girls cross-country teams were recently crowned Seminole District Champions with both teams achieving a perfect score of 15. Junior Zoe lamanna and Alex Jordan each won their respective race at the region 40 championship in Blacksburg both teams placed third earning spots in the vhsl state championship Zoe was named the region 3D girls Champion along with four other girls I'm sorry four other students being named to their respective All Region team including Alexis plaster Alex Jordan Luke Gaylor and Megan Smith both teams will now compete in

168the class 4 state championship on November 12th at Oakland's Plantation this will be the 27th state championship appearance for the boys team and the 29th consecutive year for the girls team in qualifying for States Bedford County public schools in partnership with the Bedford area Education Foundation has been recognizing outstanding BC employees we were able to do so and recognize the two individuals who are on the screen here in the month of October congratulations to Forrest middle school algebra 1 and geometry teacher Jim Fitch and Huddleston Elementary School Bus Driver Glenn Hancock I visited each of their schools and was able to present them with a gift of appreciation courtesy of the baef if any of you would like to nominate a staff member who goes above and beyond to make a difference for our students

169please visit our School Division website and click on the link for bedford's best which you will find on the drop down menu under District news back in October and the week of October 17 to 21 was nationally recognized as national school bus safety week an excellent reminder for all of us to remember the importance of school bus safety the theme for this year was one bus plus one driver equals a big impact on education we'd like to pause and thank at this time all of our bus drivers and all of the members of our transportation team for ensuring that our students make it to school and back home again safely every day thank you for always going that extra mile for our students we are preparing now to Showcase some of our best elementary students

170artwork and we want to make sure that you know you're invited to come see it the Fall Elementary art exhibition is being held next week at the Bauer Center for the Arts there will be artwork from six elementary schools Big Island Forest good view Montvale New London and Stewartsville on display the viewing times if you can make it by the Bauer Center next week will be every day Tuesday through Saturday from 11 in the morning to three in the afternoon and on Friday that time is being extended into the evening to include a reception from 5 to 6 30 PM encourage you all to come by and look at the outstanding art contributions of our Elementary School students next in honor of Veterans Day which is of course tomorrow November 11th we'd like again to

171express our gratitude to All Veterans for your courage and your dedication with special thanks to all of our military families for your support resilience and sacrifice and so now if you want to give me a little drum roll no I'm kidding three things you need to know number one our top three candidates for teacher of the year will be announced soon most of you know that or you may have noticed that each individual school has a teacher of the year and we've been recognizing them with individual posts on our Facebook page we're proud of each and every one of them and all of our teachers but we do need to pick three from all of those teachers of the Year from our Collective schools that announcement will be made on November 17th number two progress

172reports for the second quarter will go home with students on November 17th and November 30th so be on the lookout parents for interim reports for your students in the month of November and lastly just a reminder school is closed for students and staff on November 23rd 4th and 25th for our Thanksgiving holiday break and that concludes the superintendent's comments of this talk very much Dr Brian and congratulations to everyone that got an achievement this month um living on to 11.1 appointment of school board member to CTE advisory committee I'm going to try to make this quick and easy do I have a volunteer Mr Nelms okay there we go do we have to take a formal motion for that or is that good enough tenses does this do you have congratulations you okay with it

173it's yours okay so we have a consensus now okay committee reports Mr Daniels all right so we at the seaac Met on October 20th um we just we had a presentation and Analysis um for uh special needs playgrounds in the county uh we are evaluating what those needs are and and hope to present to uh either town of Bedford or um or the Board of Supervisors we will meet again on December 1st I would also say that at the Darden School of Business in Charlottesville on December 3rd from 9 A.M to 5 p.m there's the Virginia autism Hope Summit and if you would go to whova.com you can register for that event if you are interested and that's it uh I was not the last finance committee meeting so I'm going to pass that to

174Dr meal do you have any committee reports um we did not have a meeting for the Central Virginia gov school for November so we will meet again in December the IGA meeting Dr Bergen covered the policies that was from October 25th and our next meeting is on November 29th I have a facility meeting this month I believe that Mr Hagler and I covered everything that was in the meeting during his presentation today wow I like how fast this is going it was Harrison well I have to Echo what um Mr Holbrook said so the facility has uh committee has no updates and as far as the Laurel School is concerned our next meeting is in December so I'll report to the board then that was we always do start with you for your comments well

175I want to certainly Echo the same sentiments that Dr Bergen has echoed to our community regarding uh Veterans Day I want to extend to all of our veterans in our community in our school division as well just my heartfelt gratitude for your service and your dedication and your commitment to our nation just a very special thank you to you and also I want to extend a thank you to Matt Holbrook one of our school board members is also formerly in the military so thank you Mr Holbrook for your service as well um I also want to say to our teachers and our our staff that I wish you a blessed Thanksgiving break I know we have you have another week or so to go but uh please just enjoy your your time with your family

176and friends and and just have a wonderful Thanksgiving break um Dr Bergen I would ask um if you would please follow up with a concern that one of our members of our community brought to us tonight Mr Hill I believe it was he had commented that he was speaking on the behalf of teachers on some of their concerns regarding not feeling comfortable or to come and express their concerns I I can't speak for every board member but I can certainly say that it is very important for us to establish and build a community and an environment where all of our staff members anyone can come and speak and share their concerns before this boards so I'd like to know after you have investigated all of this just who what was it that they wanted to

177talk about what was said to them why they felt the way that they did uncomfortable in which to come here and speak we just cannot have an environment like that for our staff members they should feel free and open to come and stand here in front of us and share what their concerns are so I would appreciate look forward to some feedback from you um we also had a parent tonight and I may really ruin her name so please forgive me um Miss Kelsey Mapes I think was her name she's a otter River parent um she talked about and she made a very valid point and I know that we all in health and agree that class size is so important and it's extremely important at the elementary level I've said it time and time

178again that it's so important that we lower those numbers in our K3 those are the formative years and it's so very crucial that we have those numbers at such a level that our teachers can actually do the job that they need to do to prepare these children for their middle school years I'm I would be curious to know just how many other classes is the classroom At Otter river is it the only classroom or is it the largest let me put it this way is it the largest class first grade class in our division so if someone could give me an answer to that question I would really appreciate it um I know that we have Paras in in the classroom I know how difficult it's been to feel teaching positions but we've we just

179have to do better I hope the board as a whole that we will really seriously seriously take a look at the our class sizes and our Elementary grades and let's make a difference and again I want to extend to Mr Daniels a congratulations thank you thank you Miss Harrison Dr Maley uh yes I'm going to repeat some of what Mrs Harrison said I'm sure by time we get to the end you're all going to be doing that but um I just want to always reach out and thank say thanks to the teachers and staff and our students for all that you're doing students for you know working every day trying your best and our staff and our teachers for always being there and the dedication they show to Bedford County Public Schools I also want

180to congratulate our new administrators and thank them for their service to Bedford County Public Schools I also had the same concerns on so I just want to piggyback on Miss Harrison from Mr Hill um I I would like to have I would like to know he said that these English teachers if I understood him correctly were told that they were not permitted to come to the board so and certainly I don't want this public but I'd like to know how who who said that to them and and make sure that they are able to access the English supervisor I mean they should you know if I understood him correctly uh I understood him to say that the English Supervisor was not meeting with him now I don't know whether that's true or not but I

181also had those same uh concerns and I think I also want to know are the teachers able to use resources of their choice emphasizing that they will use the boss but you know can we clear all that up that that was really disturbing to me tonight to hear that from our English teachers um I want to also offer a Happy Thanksgiving to everybody I know for several years we've not been able to gather or some families haven't started you are able to gather with your family if not I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving wherever you might be I have to give a shout out is is the officer Bishop still here are you back there okay see that gentleman stand up David okay well I just want to say that was one of my

182fifth grade students he was very young but I was very young too so you know but I I was so glad to see him tonight and it's just amazing when you run into one of your students that isn't this tall anymore they're big and they have a gun and all that sort of stuff so thank you David for taking for for reminding me and um for saying hello um and for your service too to our community as a officer um that was really amazing to see him so Veterans Day I you know my years here you know it's been very important to me as it is I'm sure to other people so I just want to talk a little bit about that you know Harry Truman said our debt to our heroic men and Valiant

183women in the service of our country can never be repaid they have earned our undying gratitude I know some of us weren't alive at the time but Dwight Eisenhower was the one who signed a bill proclaiming November 11th as Veterans Day and he did that in 1954. and since the signing of that bill Veterans Day has been a day that we acknowledge our veterans and all of all wars and all who served in the United States military it's our chance as American as the American public to publicly thank and commemorate the contributions of living veterans to show them an appreciation for placing their lives at risk and serving our country and our way of life it's a time for all of us who did not serve to reflect upon and honor the sacrifices made by

184the men and women of the armed services at one time in the life of every veteran they raised their right hand and they solemnly swore to both support and defend the Constitution of the United States every one of them has a story to tell and each story is different some of them will speak of pride some of heart-pounding fear some of loneliness of Love of anger of Desperately being scared of Brotherhood of grief and some even of Shame amazingly only about one to two percent of our population have ever served in the military and for those who served in combat many veterans carry with them the horrors of War buried deep within them because that's the only way they can bear the burden of their combat service Beyond just the veteran their families also sacrificed

185supporting their loved ones for long stretches of time without seeing them some knowing whether not knowing whether they were dead or alive so please remember to thank veterans when you see them take a moment if you will to ask where did you serve what unit were you in how long did you serve because each one of them has that story many of you know that my husband served during the Vietnam era as a helicopter pilot and it still makes me stop when anyone says to him thank you for his service because he always responds in the same way thank you it was my honor and privilege to serve our country our veterans no matter how they served where they served or for how long they served are the very best of us and tonight I'd

186like to personally thank every veteran who took the oath and served our country we all owe you a debt that can never ever be repaid in the words of John Kennedy as we express our gratitude we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not just to utter words but to live by them or those of Winston Churchill never was so much owed by so many to so few we don't know them all but we owe them all they are the best of America and the best of us and I want to thank each of them for their service and God bless each of them thank you very much Dr Miley well I'd also like to thank our veterans and say happy birthday to the Marine Corps which is today uh I actually graduated boot

187camp 22 years ago today so I could be retired now but uh it's neither here nor there and um just want to thank everybody you know I was not a combat veteran you know uh for whatever reason I just never made it there you know which God always has a plan but a lot of people did go to combat and didn't come back and uh I want to thank you and thank you for what you said because it is a it is an honor and a privilege to serve so I just want to really really thank everybody we wouldn't we wouldn't have what we have now if it wasn't for that even though in today's time it may seem like it's slipping away sometimes but thank you that's it thank you very much so work

188Mr Nelms I'm gonna make it quick and simple uh I want to thank Mr Holbert for his service Dr Miley's husband and the rest of the veterans um and then also want to send a congratulations to Mr Daniels as well thank you Mr Nims Mr Daniels we're in the month of November and we've got a lot to be thankful for first and foremost I want to say that I'm thankful for my wife and my kids for putting up with how busy I've been recently I'm thankful to the friends and supporters you've been there and prayed for for me over the last couple months and would not be here without your support I'm thankful for all the teachers and staff that come to school every day and do their very best and work tirelessly to teach

189our kids I'm thankful for the service of our veterans including my dad and my grandfather who've had such an impact on my life next Friday is National substitute teachers day and we are thankful for all those that take their time to come fill in for one of our teachers or staff members who are not feeling well who are taking care of others thankful to live in such a great Community it's it's a fantastic part of the country that we have here in Bedford County and I'm continuing to be struck by its beauty and the sense of family that we have here I've lived in a lot of places and I have not felt that in a lot of the places I've left I've lived I'm just thankful for the health that we have and and

190thankful for the people that we have around us so in closing I would just like to ask that you take some time to think about what you're thankful for or who you're thankful for just make sure that you let them know whether it's a teacher a coach a principal a husband or wife son or daughter mom or dad or all of the above we don't say thank you enough or sometimes we don't feel like that's enough but just know that if it comes from the heart then it is enough Happy Thanksgiving Mr Hill um first of all thank you to the executive team for the presentations and being very specific and detailed I do appreciate that nice work and and getting that to us November is take your legislature to school month this week Dr

191Bergen Mr Daniels and myself have visited yesterday Forest Elementary School along with Charlotte bansley and the legal aid from U.S senator Mark Warner's office and then also we've got scheduled for tomorrow and next week and Edgar tuck Bob Davis delegate Wendell Walker and Senator Steve Newman have agreed to come to our schools so lots going on with that and we do appreciate our Board of Supervisors and the others for agreeing to come take a tour with us um two things that I want to make sure are on the books for this year and so I'm mentioned it in November teacher of the year recognitions that needs to be an event that we bring back it's very important and so we need to make sure we're doing that and then retiree recognitions we've got away from

192doing that the last couple years and so I want to make sure um we're we're doing that hell I can confirm that we've already established a venue and a date and time for the teacher of the year in March and we are moving forward with the others as well Perfect music to my ears um I do want to Echo what Miss Harrison and Dr mealy said regarding the English teacher updates that's not a new subject for me that's certainly something that we've talked about and so definitely disappointed that it come up tonight that the teachers feel like we have not reached a resolution and so I do want to hear more about that and find out again accountability plan for what we're doing to make sure we're addressing that um let's see here I keep

193moving this paper back down on this curve oh I'll put our glasses right here in the middle so you can grab them if you need to um thank you to the staff I know you guys have been working very little diligently trying to find teachers based on our feedback to add and to reduce those class sizes we do agree we we need to you know make some attention to some of the classrooms but I didn't want it to go unnoticed that you guys are trying and that you have been seeking those teachers so yes we do need to fix it we're trying but I did want to commend you guys on your efforts so in addition I wanted to give a shout out to my dad um his name is William Earl Hill Jr but

194we call him Billy and if you're into hunting field we call him hillbilly but he was a Vietnam veteran and um you know it took me a long time to understand the sacrifices that he made for us when he was there he doesn't talk a lot about it but I do want to recognize him uh and then um last but certainly not least I wanted to congratulate our districts our elected district 7 School Board member Chris Daniels I really appreciate that I've been reading something about I need a bobble head up here now and so I don't know what that means but we'll see as we go and then also there's some kind of folder going around with my name on it so if anybody finds it I'd love to have it I'd love to

195see what's in there so but anyway congratulations Mr Daniels so I'm done Miss Kirby at the rear um first thing I would like to wish a belated happy birthday to Ms Johnson we appreciate all you do hope you had a special day um on behalf of the Liberty High School principal Justin Tucker thank you to the PTSA athletic boosters volunteers and division maintenance team for all the much needed improvements to the Liberty High School campus time for my monthly Shameless plug for bus drivers um I hate getting the text in the morning the bus routes are canceled it's leaving families struggling for kids to go to school or they might not get to go to school because we don't have bus drivers if there's any way that you are willing to help us out please

196contact transportation we sure could use you I want to say thank you to our Board of Supervisors for our recent joint meeting it was nice for all of us to get together again sit down the same table and get on the same page um I appreciate you taking your time and listening to our needs and how can you top what Dr mealy just said with regards to our veterans um my father was a Marine in World War II um so we were taught with the pride to have um for family veterans so thank you to all the Veterans for your service we do appreciate you and for those that do not know kind of a public service announcement here um due to the 100 chance of rain tomorrow the Veterans Day celebration at D-Day has

197moved to the Moose Lodge I believe that they're also going to have a virtual option um if you want to see it and how do you top with Mr Daniel said about Thanksgiving um but Happy Thanksgiving doll please don't forget to count your blessings and God bless everyone and normally I would ask for a motion to adjourn unfortunately we need to go back into closed session so do I have a motion to go into closed session Adam's here I'm sorry I'm sorry can can I squeeze in one other announcement yes established texting me um ours that I didn't include in the update there is a thousand dollar bonus going to all of our employees in the November paycheck um Yay good news yes much of that funding came from the state for soq funded positions

198but uh with you know your discussion we're paying that thousand dollar bonus to all of our employees including our substitute teachers who have been with us and and putting in at least 45 days so staff is going to see a thousand dollars in their gross depending on what their tax rate is they're going to see something less than a thousand dollars but I wanted to make sure that we shared with all staff that they can look forward to that in their check and we'll also send out amendment to them and may I just make one or two comments about a couple of things here tonight I agree it's concerning to me when I ever hear somebody say we're there they can't approach or they they feel concerned I want to repeat that our executive team

199has been sitting in every school for an entire day entire day to hear anyone who wants to speak on any issue and we've been to every school and we have collected a lot of data it's anecdotal data we're going to reflect on that together as a team and we'll make reports back out to the community and to the board about what are we hearing from our teachers because we are approachable We believe We Are we want people to come and speak to us and if they don't feel comfortable we want to know why but we'll go back and we'll I heard your questions we'll be very specific about what is it about the secondary English language arts curriculum of which people have some concerns and on class sizes we've now talked about this many months

200there was a memo to the board on 9 14. I can resend it for you if you'd like we have seven classes that are above 25 kids out of all of our elementary schools seven and they are you know 26 27 28 the largest is 30 in a fourth grade class at Big Island that's where we had all that discussion and we are advertising for Teacher assistance to be in every one of those classrooms certainly we would we'd prefer to split all those classes but and have classes of 13 or 14 it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars we do not have uh but I'm not negating the need or the concern I'm just saying we have heard it we are addressing it and uh I didn't want that to go on without some

201comment here tonight so thank you for letting me sneak those in I'm so sorry and back to reading into closed chair for the second time tonight I make a motion pursuant Dakota Virginia 2.2-3711a18-1 to discuss the assignment appointment performance discipline and release of contract for specific School Board employees including the evaluation of the superintendent as provided in his contract of employment eight for consultation with legal counsel retained by the school board for advice on specific legal matters requiring the provision of legal advice by such Council including School Board policy motion by Mr Hill do I have a second second again second by Dr Miley again any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed we're back in closed session okay do I have a motion to come at a closed session Madam

202chairman I make a motion that we come out of closed session I have a motion but Dr Maley do I have a second five second second by materials any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries finally do I have a motion to adjourn Madam chair I have a motion by Mr Hill Madam chair yes I need to certify I was trying and I thought of it too where's the Bedford 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 where section 2.2-3712d of the code of Virginia requires a certification by this school board that such closed meeting was conducted in Conformity with Virginia law now therefore excuse me

203be it resolved that the Bedford County School Board hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully Exempted from open meeting requirements by Virginia law were discussed in the closed meeting to which the certification applies and only such public business matters that were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered yes yes yes yes ma'am yes yes yes yeah now do I have a motion to adjourn have a motion about Mr Hill do I have a second second by Mr Nelms any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries we are adjourned okay Susan here I go looking for my keys yes