School Board Meeting - 9/8/2022 - 5:00 PM

001foreign it I know it's it's weird [Music] I just tapped it yeah all about that good evening everyone I'd like to call the regular meeting for the Bedford County school board for September the 8th 2022 to order um unfortunately Dr Bergen is ill and he will not be joining us and in his place um or seating in his seat as Mr Randy Hagler our Chief Financial Officer um 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 ma'am do I have a motion to approve the agenda so moved have a motion by Mr Hill do I have a second second second by her Dr mealy first all any

002discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed approval carries do I have a motion to go into closed session Madam chair make a motion that we go into closed session pursuant Dakota Virginia 2.2-3711a1 to discuss the assignment appointment performance disciplining and release of contract for specific School Board employees including the evaluation of the superintendent as provided in his contract of employment and any other contracted employees I have a motion by Mr Hill do I have a second second by Ms Hairston any discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I opposed we're in closed session it just goes back so far I'm afraid I'm gonna fall off hopefully that did it push it in and then twist it the push in or push it okay well know which way though Ms

003Johnson we certified the closed meeting please that helped chair you need a vote to come out of closed session I'm sorry you need to vote I'm sorry what's not on here that's not on my paper okay well we are now out of closed session now Ms Johnson will you certify the meeting another closed session where's 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 we're in 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 the Bedford County School Board hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge only public

004business 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 as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes thank you very much moving on to staff report 3.01 sbar data Dr dewas foreign the student behaviors and administrative responses data set is one that um is required by the State Department of Education to be made each year to report student Behavior this report replaces the disciplined crime and violence report which we have been doing annually for a long long time um and the change was made at the state level over a period of years and finally kicked in last year so that um to

005really emphasize the impact that student Behavior has on the school environment to raise awareness of you know both the behavior its impact on others and also the needs the students have um both you know victims and if there are victims and also the the students responsible and it really um because most incidents at school are not crimes and I think the the state just kind of rebranded that as an effort to to rethink how that's reported so um the the system requires that any discipline incident that happens at school that we report is categorized into one of six categories um those that impede academic progress those that affect School operations those that related to relationships between students or students and staff then they ratchet up a little bit to those of a safety concern and

006then those that endanger yourself or others and then the very highest level are those persistently dangerous behaviors um for and so for example those behaviors that impede academic progress might include things like disrupting class whereas School operations might include dress code violations or a vandalism relationship behaviors might be things like name calling or using a slur or maybe even some levels of bullying behaviors that present a safety concern might include things like tobacco or alcohol use fighting at a certain level a bus distractions that you know might might make it dangerous for the driver to pay attention some weapons offenses go in this category and then behaviors that endanger self or others would include really serious things like assault um drug offenses other weapon offenses and then the persistently dangerous are those that are required

007by federal law to be reported out and those would include things like sexual assault or highest level weapons offenses or homicide robbery drug distribution those things that are both violent and have a big impact on others so for us last year this is what we reported um to the state we had this number of incidents in each of those categories and that involved that number of kids for for those incidents one of the things I'll say here is that these are these are Big Numbers you know anytime you're getting into the hundreds and thousands of behaviors that you don't want to see um you know it's substantial and one of the ways that one of the things we discovered as we were pulling all this information together at the end of the year is that

008we think some of these incidents were double reported in that the way a fight is supposed to be reported is as one incident but there there might be two or three students involved in that the discipline crime and violent report required us to put three different entries in and I think some schools were still in the habit of doing that we pulled we caught some of that and we we think we addressed it and certainly that's part of our ongoing training so this is a baseline number for us we don't really have anything to compare this to in previous years this is the first year of the report but I will say when you do the numbers of about 8 900 kids times 180 school days this this works out to an average of like

009less than a quarter of a percent of our students involved in an incident on a given day so the numbers are big but when you kind of look at it that way um it kind of plays out in in that manner so in total and because some incidents are also covered different categories so you know for example a fight might also involve a a threat and so those are two different codes that go into that that incident when you boil it all down these incidents about 7 500 of them involved 1600 students so there were 1600 of our kids who were involved in at least one incident through the course of the year that could range from a class disruption to a bus referral to a fight or something more serious um and in all

010of those cases students are meeting with an administrator they're being held accountable they're having to answer for themselves and explain themselves parents are contacted in each of those incidents um and and in many of them 17 um suspension was used an out-of-school suspension was used as a consequence so um and what when you look at that in total 4.3 percent of our students had one suspension or more during the school year 45 percent of the time our schools were using in school suspension or an alternative to suspension program so what that means is they were assigned um to come to school but to be in a much more locked down environment where they didn't have privileges they didn't have their cell phone available they were still held accountable restricted movement somebody monitoring them closely making

011sure they're doing their work because many times on out of school suspensions those things aren't happening I think in some families an out of school suspension is a wake-up call and it happens once and that's the last time it happens but then there are other times where students are finding themselves getting suspended on multiple occasions and it's really not working and so having them more accountable at school and to answer to people every day through the day we're hoping allows for um you know more accountability on their part and in all other incidents so about another third of them there were some other strategy used by an administrator to hold them accountable that might mean just taking away a privilege um Talk calling home or to having a you know changing a schedule you know

012something like that that um keep keeping kids from coming to extracurricular activities things like that that would be a consequence appropriate to what what they did so looking at all those numbers um just some takeaways that we've had in in analyzing all this is that you know over almost 96 percent of our students didn't have a suspension last year they stayed in school and only missed you know when they were sick or had some other some other reason to be out but they were they weren't because we asked them not to come um we've had we had regular use of our alternative to suspension programs and about three times more often than we did out of school suspension programs and again I think that was School staff feeling as though they could hold kids even

013more accountable for their work and for their behavior when they're monitoring them and on them you know throughout throughout a day we've also seen those those alternative to suspension programs and having students at school also highlights the fact that our intervention design Specialists and on-site outpatient counselors who work for Horizon can work directly with kids in those settings and so um there's a ready place for kids who need that work um and and um and they and they did a lot of that work over the course of the year um we've also seen that there's really an importance of regular school level tracking of incidents so in the school analyzing well what kind of offenses are happening here what kind of incidents are happening how often where are they happening what can we do about

014them is what we're doing effective and really analyzing that and studying that through the year so we're looking at it at a big level at you know at an annual basis but really on a school level on a regular basis that's really important to do um we're working with our principals for training um we did that this summer with them so that they talk to one another and it can be consistent in how they apply the code of student conduct and how they code different incidents that happen so that they can be consistent and we know that we need to continue that training it's always ongoing for the both the administrators and the administrative assistants who are helping do that coding and so I wanted to just to make sure you had all that information

015as we reported it to the state this year and certainly can answer any questions that you may have thank you Dr Douglas um first let me just make a comment um and for some of you I'm sure you're probably going to say well we knew you were going to say this Georgia but I have to really applaud the intervention specialist program and those individuals who work and to support our students everybody knows that I certainly am a strong advocate for that program I know that it works and I think we have some evidence here to see that it has been very beneficial so kudos to everyone who has supported the program and who work in that role I do have a question regarding our middle in our high schools so do we have an in-school

016suspension program at all of our middle schools and all of our high schools we do and in some instances that's in addition to an alternative to suspension program okay that they've also set up that yep in every one of them it's in addition to yeah okay okay fantastic uh I'd like to ask if I could have a breakdown in each zone of this data I'd like to see you know the breakdown in each zone so our Liberty Zone our four Zone and the Stanton River Zone in terms of the discipline information here I'd like to just kind of see those different areas there I'll see how that's reported I um that may be that may be readily available and I'll if it's not and I'll certainly let you know and we can we can figure

017out a way to answer any questions you have but okay and can I interject for just a second sure would you be fine if Dr dewas just sent us all an email with the updated information absolutely absolutely I'll check and see how it's reported and whether whether you know how we can pull it that way so thank you that's all I have do you have any further questions okay Miss real um in addition to that report Dr dewas if you could add breaking it down by primary secondary and really I'd like it by Elementary Middle High just to see how that data breaks out and when I look at this data I want to make sure I understand it because you said there's 1636 students so when I look at your column on page four

018of seven there's a lot more than 1636 students so does that mean that each student could possibly have multiple categories so there's 600 individual students who had at least one referral and as you can see from that number some of them had more than one so that's why that column adds up to more than that okay um sorry um and you said that parents were notified of 100 of these that's the standard protocol in in any instance is to involve the parent when there's any kind of behavior that needs improving okay and then when sent to the alternative program whether it's in school or here at this site do we have a percentage of those that had additional issues reported so I know multiple students multiple issues but I'm interested to know out of the

019ones that worked with the ones at the school right did we have another issue where it eventually turned into having to come here so how did it so how did those work in other words what were those effective in yeah and I'm not questioning the effectiveness because I've seen it I mean I absolutely think the ones that are in school and we can keep students in school in school that's great I'm just trying to understand the data okay so if we've got those I'll certainly look at that and see if that's something we can pull out I I'm not sure but I'll look more carefully all right and then I asked you about elementary middle and high my last question is around what are we so we've made a commitment to our teachers to make

020sure that any issues can be taken out of the classroom and their focus should be on educating our kids so would we say that after the first issue are we putting them right back in the classroom or are we truly using the in-house alternative to say not acceptable won't be tolerated and if we do give that message you know I'm interested and if you don't have the data this year it's something that's going to interest me to know what are we fixing so we made a commitment to teachers to make sure we took that out of the classroom and so I just want to make sure they're not sending them to the office and they're coming right back for them to have to deal with the issue all over again right so yeah and and

021certainly responding to behavior is a responsibility of everybody in that building so teachers have a crucial role in setting those expectations and nipping those things before they get they they absolutely agree but on the third fourth fifth sixth time and then of course their Progressive consequences that happen so yep um Mrs Hairston and Mr Hill stole some of my questions but that's that's good we got a mass we got them answered um I guess the only thing I would just add to that is you know just operating on a guess here but I would I would I would reason that we would see an improvement in the numbers this year only because every student and every teacher can see each other's face and there's something to be said about the how it humanizes each other

022humanizes you and be able to be able to uh interact with someone like that so I'm just wondering coming out of you know the two years that we've dealt with and having a normal year if that's going to have a more positive impact being in the school so far it seems like that's something that I've seen I've noticed that well when we all are in schools seems to be an airiness a lightness about it so anyway that was just a just a comment it's a good one and I think anecdotally we could all say that um with the number of students we had who were out of school for one reason or another both when schools were shut down for that spring and then many were virtual for the next year and there was a

023little forgetting about school routines and expectations and how to work together in a in a classroom and and we may see some of that reflected here so this will be a good Baseline year to really to hold those numbers and compare them going forward so we we certainly hope to see improvements anyone else hey doctor doing something I'm sorry to keep putting you on the spot but I do have a couple of questions myself um you mentioned something because I'm looking at the data um you mentioned something about the double report that's kind of concerning to me because when you if you have double reporting when you shouldn't have it this is faulty data right so this isn't reliable or and you said you're doing training for this how soon will that become effective and

024how soon can we have a guideline for everyone county-wide to keep it even in every Zone on how to do this properly yeah and I don't know that we'd say it's faulty I think there are some some because some many incidents are one kid doing something they shouldn't and and going in so I I think there's some degree of it in there and that's what I was at the point I was trying to make the double coding also includes the fact that some incidents you know were categorized in more than one of those offense categories and so um some schools routinely with label of behavior is covering three different codes and others would pick the main one you know and kind of stick with that we that's the kind of thing that we did training

025on to try to say let's don't go overboard but let's be thorough you know let's let's try to find that way of just of doing that consistently and so we did we did a pretty extensive training of that in the summer going into this year for our administrators and we also continue to work with our secretarial staff who many of whom do a lot of that entry so that they know the right questions to ask and and can catch things if if they don't appear right before they go in so well I guess then one thing I would you know ever the ones I've spoken have said something they would like to say I would like to know like which ones of these do fall in a number of incidents that do fall into multiple

026categories because to me I'm looking at okay so we have a number of incidents period that's it not the fact that it could be operations safety concern and potentially dangerous one event being logged into three different categories so if there's some way in the future and I know this is a this is our pilot program as well I would like to try to iron up things before um if like in parentheses after you have the academic progress line somehow designate which ones how many were reported in multiple categories does that make sense to everyone because to me if I'm looking at this and you're seeing number of incidents well if you add these numbers up that that's a pretty high number but if you like I said if you have one incident in three different

027categories that cuts the number by a third right so if we could have some type of designation there okay and um again I I worked criminal law too so so if you excuse my reference here for a lack of better words I would also like to see a column for the number of repeat offenders the number of students who have done this more than if it's a one-time offense okay yeah you made a mistake um but I like to know how many have been in multiple incidents multiple meaning three or more so by Zone by level repeat offenders and then trying to clean up um true number of incidents versus the multiple coating so we can see both yeah and and if we have some indication because again like I said looking it could be

028three different categories from one incident yes it could so that to me the then this is kind of you know you have one fight break out sounds a lot better than you have three different offenses I understand okay any more questions for Dr do us I would just like to say that having served as principal I certainly think one of the points that you made Dr do is in terms of the training and helping the principals uh understand the coding aspect of it because oftentimes you know we do kind of double cold so that training that professional development is is very crucial it's important I was happy to hear that um yeah doctor do is because I think there are many times as a principal when you might have a fight break out that's also

029becomes a disruption to the learning environment so it becomes a decision of you know which one do I choose which you really don't want to choose because you want to say there was a fight that and that the consequence was it also impacted the learning environment and that's important to to know now I don't know if there's still a text box there that that can be the incident can really be reported well ways to designate primary offense and others so we'll we'll continue to look at that and and because I think as your questions indicate the more specific we can get with with showing that information the more it helps us get better so and I think you'll be looking more true data anything else thank you very much Dr doolis and wanji while you're

030there let's go ahead and do the enrollment update all right we um we're in a year that follows some strange years regarding School enrollment and the impact of uh you know the coveted State policies and and and and and the availability of virtual school and all of those things so we were very interested to see how we'd start this year uh with our enrollment and and and then just in context what we've seen over the last five years is a decline in our enrollment of about 7 000 students excuse me um 700 students I'm sorry um from about 9 500 in 1718 to 8804 reported last fall and that had been a pretty steady decline and you can see between in the year 2020 in the between the spring and fall of that year that

031was our largest drop and that was when when school looked the most different from how it had been before our projected enrollment for this year was to have based on that Trend and birth rates and other factors was to have 88 787 kids 87 87 and we reported that last November Mr Blankenship does that each year to kind of help us plan uh moving forward what we have seen as of the sixth earlier this week is that we had 8909 [Music] so you can see that's a increase of about 120 kids or so from what we projected and an increase from where we ended last year as well breaking that down a little bit more there are those who worry I think that when the overall School population goes up or down that affects class

032sizes in some way so we just we just wanted to report to you what we were seeing this year in as far as class sizes go in the first couple of weeks our Elementary classes are averaging 19. to a class our Middle School core classes those core subject areas are averaging 23 and our high school classes are averaging 21 um that compares to the standards of quality Mac you know State requirements uh the maximum class sizes are are listed here kindergarten can't be bigger than 29. um they want you to have an aid in the classroom when you're at 24. so you can see we're well below that on average in grades one to three the highest is thirty four to six the highest is 35 we're well under that and even under that average

033that the state asks you to have and second the only secondary requirement that's there is that English classes be average across the district at 24 and as you can see all our classes average under that and and we work to make sure we're meeting that requirement so just some takeaways from that information you know we have 120 or so more kids than we projected and that um that has some Revenue implications because there's State funding associated with each kid we have so if that number stays steady there'll be some additional state revenue that we didn't plan for coming in and of course some of that is used to hire teachers in areas where there are more students than we forecast sometimes those students are spread out across schools and grade levels and um and and

034so it doesn't necessarily require a teacher but in some instances it has our kindergarten enrollment is less than projected and um you know it's not it's not unlike what the grades one two three numbers are it's in that range but it is lower than what what we projected but the the kids who are coming in are in grades eight to twelve those grade levels are higher than we projected um and so um the other thing I'll note just as a takeaway is that about a third of our students who left us who went to homeschooling as an option from March 2020 when the shutdown happened through La the end of last school year so anytime during that year and a half or so period of pandemic education about a third of them have returned and

035so we're seeing them as active enrolled students right now so they came back at some point some of them came back last year but some have you know returned this year as well so I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have and again if I can't answer them or or we don't have answers so we'll can certainly get back to you no chairman yeah um for that presentation Dr dewis do we still have the reduction in class size I can't exactly remember the name of it Grant for kids those funds come in every year that incentivize us in our schools that um are basically our Title One qualifying schools to meet a certain class size level and we pay attention we get those funds and we pay attention to that and meet that

036and report on that every year um the Elementary classes you're saying that the average class size is 19. how many classes do we have above that average we never want to shoot for the soq because it's so large usually compared to what we're used to so how many actual classes do we have that are above what we're saying here Elementary 19 middle 23 and high 21. I I don't know that I have that number tonight I didn't count count exactly the number we just went went through an average and but they do range there are some 13 and 14 there are some you know into the 20s I'm mostly concerned about ones that might have 23 and 24 especially in your lower grade levels like K one and two um can you can you get

037us information yeah I think we have been looking at that and can okay in secondary English you say the average is 24. I mean this is going way back in my educational career but isn't there some sort of code or regulation that says we can't go over 24 in a high school English class yeah I think the soq says an average um and the average has to be 24 okay I can remember um okay if you can get us that information and share with the other board members that would be great thank you would if I could add our staffing standards right now our K3 is 21. to 1. um fourth four fourth and fifth is 22 to 1. so it's actually coming in below that which is what you would expect because of averaging

038and we round up so we're coming below those numbers despite that but those are our current Staffing standards that the class sizes um so you that's that's where it breaks down on that so Randy I need to understand that on that number you're saying our average for K3 is 21 and 4 and 5 is 22. we staff we staff that way there could be a class higher than that but we take the total enrollment and then we calculate how much staff to give to a school and we'll look at those uh grade levels and what we project and then we do the calculation on how much staff to give to schools and then we like look at what's actually coming in and then we'll adjust if they have more coming in so like for example

039if I've got a third grade class with 26 in it doesn't mean I'm going to get an additional teacher but we set the standard at 21. that's how we staff the whole school it's up to the principal to maneuver there kids don't come in nice even packages that means you could have a class so some of these classes have 13 and 14 in them because the principal decided to put that put two teachers in at a grade level that had 26 and it breaks down so there's no guarantee that all classes will be low that's not how the Staffing standards are written that can be changed in the budget but it will have uh implications on how much staff we hire those Staffing standards is an allocation allocation methodology and those can be looked at

040it when we go through the budget but we do a calculation how many students do a calculation then we assign teachers out so if we have Grant funds that Dr mealy asked about for K through two and I understand they have to be at Title One schools but are we taking advantage of those funds to make sure I mean I know we have certain grades that have 26 and 27 kids in there and if I'm looking at this do we are we going and asking for that grant money that that money is State money it's not federal money and it's called the k-3 class size reduction kindergarten through third and you have to certify in your enrollment uh when we do our fall enrollment that classes within those schools are not above a certain level

041that means they're smaller so if you look at the soq levels that the state has prescribed there a lot of these schools say that they have to be 23 or less instead of 29 or less we're meeting that across the board so we're qualified to get that money and HR and also the principals are aware of that so if there had to be a class that was a little bit heavier it's probably going to happen in fourth and fifth and probably K through three so we meet that obligate meet that requirement the per pupil um allotment per school and all of that has to be posted it's a mandatory reporting category so it is posted on the website if you go to students and family and you go down to required reporting by school there's

042the tab for every class is posted and the averages per School are posted so it's on there there's something I'll get you Mr Daniels um do we have any elementary schools that have students in their class 30 or more 30 maybe 31. Dr Calvert has this to my knowledge we do not have authority we have a 29 we actually have seven classes that Elementary classes that are above 26. no the data that you're looking at um is that within the last week or how recent is it yeah second third week of school the principals notify us when it goes higher than this to my knowledge no one you haven't been notified not of 30 yet I have been notified it's a possibility okay and so if if a principal or a class gets to 30

043then once steps are taken there is well we would meet as Dr Woodford myself and Mr Hagler meet we look at the number what's allocated to that school what should be at that school but depending on the grade level it would necessarily mean that another staff member would be given we would look at the overall number for the school and we did that all summer long weekly um I would really like to have um our most current data regarding the number of students our class sizes and our elementary school if I heard you correctly you said the data what you were sharing with us was first two it wasn't as of today I have been notified by a principle that it's a possibility to get another student but to my knowledge that student has not

044enrolled yet and so if you could update I don't know if other board members would like the information or not but I certainly would like to or to have it you say it was on the website broken down it is on the website okay families and students tab then you go to mandatory reporting or reporting and that's current data that's well we don't change it every we don't change it every day it was I put it up there Monday okay so it could be a week yes but the data will change by numbers every single day um I mean the numbers change so I give you you know I'd like to have the number the I actually would like to have an update of the number of students and if we have any Elementary classes

045K through five with 30 students or more in the class that's what I would like to have that information I will check with that one principal tomorrow and see if that student has enrolled okay thank you for the questions Miss Harrison no no Mr Daniels I understand that we're doing better than the state standards here but 26 and 27 first graders can be pretty tough I've been reached out to a couple times already about parents that have some concerns about that um in these schools I know it's up to the principals but maybe Dr Woodford can can answer as well but what is the procedure for if there's a full-time you know Aid in the in the classroom how would they work that with are they splitting off into smaller groups During certain portions of

046the class I'm concerned with learning loss or a kid falling behind because they're not getting as much attention as a classroom with a smaller size and before she starts I think if you look at the the tab that's out there you'll have an understanding because a lot of times what happens is it's a Singleton class and other classes have been split into like 15 and 15 and 15 and 16 and then you'll have a Singleton where you just you can't split everything sure yeah so you'll make those decisions that particular class I've actually been in and they do have a full-time Aid all day yeah and so that's what they are working towards is splitting and you know the teacher you know working with smaller groups perfect um it because we did give some additional

047Staffing to that small school because we were asked not to do combination classes um they do have the ability because their class sizes are so small and the other grade levels to be able to put an aid in there all day long so um you know we definitely have been looking at that when when we look at the numbers it's about a half a million dollars if we were to add teachers to all of our classes that are kind of in that area and the other issue I'll just be quite Frank is it's really hard to find certified teachers right now so even if we were to go out and try to find seven certified teachers um you know in what we are seeing available I think an aid with a really good head teacher

048may be a better scenario than what we're seeing because they're just not out there we have a teacher shortage and you know and I think it's important for the parents um to if they have a concern about their child to make sure that they're communicating with their teacher and saying I'm seeing this at home and I just wanted to bring it to your attention I mean that's the collaborative effort that you would you would want and if you're very proactive with that the teachers can can pick up on that especially in the younger grades right thanks thank you um Mr Hagler shared with us that if we as a board wanted to review the soqs again that we could certainly take a look at those again I would really like to encourage the board as

049a whole to consider that that we we take another look at our soqs and certainly get a better understanding and maybe if we need to make some adjustments we can and that can certainly be something in the near future that we can look at for the upcoming school year um I can certainly say that having 25 or more students at the elementary level in one classroom is very very difficult it's very challenging and I don't think we do our students despite the fact that the teachers are working extra hard we're not really doing our students Justice and and having a large classroom like that and I certainly understand you know all the parameters how difficult it is for us to find teachers I get that I certainly do but I do think that it's important

050for us to take another look at as a board as a board we owe that to our community to revisit our so cubes I could add that the Staffing standards which you're referring to um is in our budget binder it's online and so if the board would like to look at that um that will that will feed into my budget projections next year as we go through the budget process so if there's going to be any major changes in that then when that would flow into what I'm doing on calculations and then we'd have to budget that money into the future year that wasn't in this year which no those stat those those standards have changed over the years they've gone up and down um you know if you look all the way back to

0512009 when the recession hit they went up and it was drastic we had to cut a lot of personnel to get through that um so hopefully hopefully things continue to get better here and we can keep on improving on that so those are in the budget finder and when um when do you have drawn a complete blank when do you give us those projects projections um projections for our but Mr Blankenship will do a once we do our fall following with the state on our enrollment numbers these are preliminary he'll do a presentation usually November I think maybe December on what we're projecting on our enrollment I take those numbers plug them into our model and then we say how much staff goes to each school and then I can make adjustments to the budget

052so simultaneously we can look at those Staffing standards and do some calculations on how how much that's going to change an average cost of a teacher and kind of extrapolate how much that's going to cost if you make changes to the Staffing standards I I'm thinking of course I think on us doing the month delay and and working out in our meeting schedule um I would like to see this on the agenda to review our staff our standards of quality again next month because that will put us into October and have us a month to talk about them is everybody okay with that Ms Johnson will you make sure that's on the agenda for next month please Dr Maley yes I just want to say that um I just want to make a comment and

053I and having been a principal for a long time when you look at these averages um and and I understand what Mr Hagler is saying because I lived under it that you have X amount of students and you therefore do simple division and you are assigned this many teaching positions and but you can very frequently end up with say a class that is too large maybe you have 31 or 32 so you have to split that class which makes them then very small which is going to impact another grade level because you've got to take the teachers and put them where the classes are are larger but I think in light of our learning loss experienced by our students and I think in light of the depressed Sol scores that we're seeing I just don't

054think it's a an issue of if we should do this but that we have to do it um I think when you get classes and you say well you know you're only allowed 22 teachers based on the total amount in the school that that really doesn't help that kindergarten teacher or that fifth grade teacher that has an overloaded class so I think as we look at our staffing standards we need to to keep that in mind because ultimately their it would surprise me if there are not classes out there with more than the the average that you see here because of that I only get so many positions I got to use my best judgment about where to put them and therefore you know one class or even more can be can be larger and

055that's when we really went to the combo class idea but that really was such a disaster that we said we really just don't want to do that anymore so I just think in light of what our teachers and our students have been through in the last excuse me two years that we really need to to think about that and make sure that classes are very close at least to those average sizes that's how we're going to fix learning loss and and and help students achieve not by saying you know well it's an average yeah this class does have 30 kids in it Madam chair based on that I would like to ask the budget committee to come back with us on where to find five hundred thousand dollars in to cut it from our current

056budget and what the recommendation is to be able to supply those um teachers if the board should decide to do that but I think the first step should be at the budget committee for them to find five hundred thousand dollars in our current budget to cut well I think um we don't necessarily need to jump the bandwagon look for five hundred thousand dollars I didn't hear any dollar figures um but what I was going to suggest and ask if we could possibly do um and I understand that we are in the middle of a teacher shortage a national crisis I understand that we have saqs um I ran six years ago and two years ago on the platform of lowering class sizes which I want to see done because I know that that is what's

057most beneficial to our children however I understand our extreme circumstances I understand that we're hitting the um reversion cut off coming up soon I understand that we're having difficulty hiring teachers um what I would like to see also too if we do look at this when it's presented next month if we could have a potential dollar figure a projected dollar figure with that but also at the possibility of lowering the soqs for the number of AIDS in a classroom to help with the larger classrooms I read in here that the AIDS for a class sizes were like one and two per class size let's choose um bump those up a little bit or lower I should say and have two or three AIDS in there to help that teacher and see do a comparative cost

058there we can come up with several options for the board to consider I will say in managing the budget that there are still coveted dollars available that could be used to do some of this for this current year the caution there is that's not always going to be available so if you make a change to the Staffing standard long term that is going to be local and State dollars not coveted dollars but in the immediate year you do have some flexibility to use those Esser funds if the board so chose but we're we've got to be cautious about that as well too because that money is going to run out at the same time um that we that we're going to have a lot of stuff hit that's going to really shake our budget yes

059Mitch Albert so if we were to hire the teachers extra teachers their age would we have the room to separate these classes I think maybe in some scenarios in many buildings there there's room um in in you know we just have to have to look Case by case right and see right because space is used but will that space also be freed up too as we move further with the redistricting possibility all of that's interrelated down the road well and I guess what I'm saying too is is with with the redistricting that we're going that we're still looking at too how would that possibly affect it I mean because that's going to come into what we're going to have to consider as far as our standards of quality as it's a temporary situation or will

060this be fixed by the reversion or by the redistricting well I think this I think staff would still be allocated by the number of students in a school so so if more students came to a school they'd get more staff if fewer students came to school they'd get less so um you know theoretically that would that would work out but you know each year you look at that number and and and apply that you know apply that standard class sizes shouldn't change a lot based on that shift of population but I will say in larger schools you see a much uh more even distribution of kids it's in the smaller ones where sometimes there are the spikes because they just have you know fewer fewer rooms to kind of average average that class size out

061[Music] if those covid funds are there and that's what they're there to do and we're concerned about learning loss in these bigger classes and we could get the AIDS to help to help get these kids caught up I think in in the short term that's what you want to do is get them caught up so when they advance to the next level they're caught up to their peers I think it's something we really need to consider is using those funds now and with the understanding they're not always going to be there we get that but our goal is to try to get these kids caught up now [Music] comments thank you Dr Lewis thank you Sol data Dr Woodford Dr Trosper Mr Blankenship foreign good evening Madam chair members of the board Mr Blankenship Dr

062Trosper and I are looking forward to sharing some of the data they have been compiling related to the standards of learning tests but more importantly what are we doing with that data we acknowledge as a team that we have experienced some areas of decline that need to be addressed but we also celebrate the hard work of our staff for the progress that has been made during this Global pandemic we've tried to provide an overview of the data in simple terms you may know that there are two accountability processes one that is State accountability and the second that is federal accountability calculations for each system are a little bit different one system looks at aspects of teaching for instance performance by subgroups the other system looks at growth data from one year of testing to the

063next year of testing for individual students and groups of students um so for the purposes of this presentation we're going to be using raw data scores with no adjustments for growth we believe the raw data reflects a best the areas we need to focus on for continued Improvement tonight Mr Blankenship will be sharing information regarding our Sol scores from the spring of 2022 compared to the state of Virginia scores for 2022 and also our spring 2022 scores compared to our own scores from 2021 and 2019 2019 obviously pre-pandemic as just a reminder there was no Sol data No Sol test given in the spring of 2020 and so the scores for 2021 were not used for accreditation rankings so we had two years of scores not used after Mr Blankenship presents the data Dr trisper

064is going to describe all of the supports put in place at the division and school levels to improve instructional outcomes for this year and into the future so as Dr Woodford mentioned uh on August 18th I guess I'm driving the slide huh there we go on August 18th the state released a news release which I have here and the title was 2021-22 Sol results show continuing impact of school closures so that is kind of what we modeled some of this data after is the report that came out from the state first of all reading we went by subject so this is the first one is reading and as you can see there We Are The Gap is four points for Bedford County five points for the state we are uh actually last school year was

065a pretty good year in terms of if you compare to the state with three points higher than the state average in Reading um still below where we were before the pandemic writing is a is an area that is a struggle not only in Virginia but here as well and if you if you look there where you're 11 points both Virginia and Bedford below where we were pre-pandemic ours stayed pretty consistent over the 2021-2022 still not where we want to be but uh we are addressing that and that'll come later on the presentation for math that is probably one of the the hardest ones to look at uh we were at 83 percent before the pandemic and 70 now which is 15 percentage points higher than we were last in 2021 so but we're still 13

066points lower than we were and as you look there we are below the state for 2022 by three points science that one is also low as you see pre-pandemic or 2019 both the state and Virginia were 81 percent Pass rates both dipped quite a bit in 2021 and and have recovered some we're about at where the state is in terms of our 2022 Pass rates but it's still well below where we were in 2019 and history pretty much the same thing we we were below the state average in 2019 both dropped pretty much to very low 54 52 percent there and then we rebounded about 10 percentage points to 13 percent age points lower what I would say in history in particular is that there's a lot less students taking history Sol's than than years

067ago because the state has put in some some they've discontinued some sol test and they've also at the high school level said that if you have already met your verified credit requirements you do not have to take the Sol test so some of that if you look and this is not broken down by a level in terms of elementary middle high but some of that is a lot less students taking the test and the ones taking the test are sometimes the ones that have struggled and still need to take it for for graduation purposes so some of that history and science I think is skewed a little bit in terms of you've got a lot less students taking those tests so uh just wanted to throw that in there in terms of that data it

068is basic Pass rates that's what was released by the state there is a timeline that the release scores for different things like for graduation rates and Dropout rates it's released at a certain time this was this was on the uh the next thing on the list preliminary accreditation and is is what's out there now it's going to be publicly released on September 22nd but looking at what's there preliminarily we see that all our schools would be accredited and don't think that's going to change before the 22nd um having said that there's still some areas looking at those reports and they are preliminary but as we're looking at the reports they calculated on either the current year or three year average and based on what I've said earlier about our Pass rates being lower than what

069they used to be we're we're moving along adding in years of lower Pass rates and getting rid of the 2018-19 scores that were pretty pretty high so our three-year averages if we don't improve and and have some strong scores this coming year there's some areas where we are potentially uh in trouble if we don't have a strong year this year also Dr Woodford said something about recovery and growth and that is added into accreditation just simply recovery is a student who failed the previous year who we work with remediate in our schools and who pass the test the following year I can report on that that just looking at those we've had about a 12 to 14 percent increase in the number of students who are passing as recovery students so that's a good thing

070we did have some more failures to work with but as those kids are doing better in terms of passing the following year and on growth we had a really large increase in the number of students showing growth there's debate on that but our our growth numbers in math we had 147 students that showed growth over the 2021 year and the 2021-22 year we had 627 students so that's like a 320 percent increase in in the number of students showing growth and in Reading the number of students showing growth in 2021 20 2021 was 137 and that increased to 404. so we've got kids not only going from a failing score to a passing score with remediation help but also students who even though they still failed in 2022 they showed growth throughout the year and

071that's based on the growth assessments that are given which we've already given our first round for this fall or we're finishing up right now so good things in terms of overall Pass rates and those accreditation scores will be coming out soon so I'm going to turn it over to Dr Trosper at this time or Dr Woodford I don't know one of the two so Dr Trosper is going to spend some time really talking about a lot of the supports in any subject area I don't know do you want him to start with just four minutes till dinner or do you want to break here and us start with all of the supports when we it's not solely up to me I'm fine with breaking and coming back he won't be able to get through it

072in 4 yeah I mean I don't want anybody this this is too important to be rushed through thank you very much for mentioning that Dr Woodford is everybody in agreement with that okay then we will pick up with the remainder of the 3.03 at um during number eight one or yeah when we reconvene let's break for dinner thank you right after the legend thank you okay thank you yes do without a dose indeed I'm about to damn foreign good evening everybody I'd like to reconvene the September 9th of September 8th regular called school board meeting for Bedford County Public Schools I stated earlier that um unfortunately Dr Bergen could not be with us tonight due to illness Mr Hagler is up here um in case we need guidance and um I'm going to ask that

073everyone in in the audience please silent your cell phones if you have not already and if you would please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you very much Mr Edwards [Music] tonight we recognize two individuals for their Stellar careers coaching our student athletes Mr Chris Watts for his time at Liberty High School and Mr Jed zehring for his time at Jefferson Forest High School at this time I'll turn it over to you madam chair and Mr Vice chair a portion of his life shaping and guiding young men in the classroom and on the football field at Liberty High School Chris Watts had

074spent the past 21 years as the head football coach and his first year as head coach he led the Minutemen to win the Region 3 championship an unbelie unbelievably to the state championship tournament for those of us who lived in Bedford during that time will remember the excitement generated for the Minutemen as they kept winning and advancing the community to support the community support for the team grew Liberty not only made it to the finals they pulled off an unbelievable upset and came out the state champs bringing home the trophy and the title I can vividly remember the community rallying together supporting the team coach Watson all of his assistants it was a very proud time for Liberty in the Bedford community after that fairy tale season coach Watts further led the Minutemen to the

075Region 3 Champs in 2005. Regional winners up in 2003 2009 2010 and 2018. District winners in 2004 2005. in 2010 and made the playoffs in 2007. 2008 2012. in 2017. coach Watts was not only instrumental in guiding young men on the football field he was an excellent role model on and off the field and has touched and impacted many lives he leaves behind a legacy of respect and admiration from his players and fellow coaches his longtime assistant coach Andrew Kelso said that Chris is not leaving big shoes to fill that his shoes will be impossible to fill but he's leaving a great example to follow coach Watts now moves on to coach the safeties at David's College a division one college football program I would like to say Chris and Shelley thank you so much

076for all your time dedication and sacrifice you have made to Bedford County Public Schools Liberty High School and the entire Bedford community over the years your impact is greatly appreciated we wish you and your family nothing but the best in all your future endeavors thank you coach Watts thank you [Applause] would you like to say anything oh I didn't know if I was there yeah you're more welcome if you want to yeah well I just want to say how you know much the the community of bedford's meant to me for for my career the time that I was there even before being a head coach and also as a wrestling coach I made tons of friends um met a lot of wonderful people and I think that the the Bedford Community is one of the

077best ones in the state by far and it was a Bittersweet thing to leave uh it just you know the timing was right for that but I I couldn't have picked a better place to spend my career and those days I'll definitely share starting with with your brother Ricky Falls right at the very beginning I I thank him for giving me my my chance at a start at you know taking the leadership role and uh just went on from there so it's been it's been a great time and I look forward to the future thank you so much for all your all your all you have done for Liberty and for the community and we truly do appreciate you and I hate seeing you wear well I like seeing you wear red but I hate

078the fact that it has Davidson on it now and not LHS but you know yes I understand perfect but thank you tough transition well thank you for everything you've done we do appreciate you all [Applause] next we're going to recognize coach Jed zaring following the 2017 season Jefferson Forest High School boys soccer coach Jed Zarin stepped down from the position after 25 Seasons developing the program into a soccer Powerhouse in the state of Virginia but a little about that program first to develop this program into what it is today was no small task the JF program was in its early stages and soccer wasn't a major sport in America in 1993. those two facts made it so much harder to get kids interested in playing but coach zering never quit and when the dust settled

079his career was nothing short of remarkable coach zaring helped start a Youth Rec program in Bedford which eventually fed in the varsity ranks and still pays dividends at the high school coach Zarin also started the Blue Ridge Soccer Academy and served as the program's director from 1993 until 2013. the Cavs routinely had big success under his airing but in 2011 everything came together perfectly and zarin's team won the state championship including time spent coaching boys soccer at other area schools coach zarin's record is 412 wins 75 losses and 24 ties an incredible winning career following his stepping down he handed the reins over to another person he had mentored his son Scott the calves have already been to States twice in Scott's short tenure coach Zarin retired from BCPS this year as the JF athletic

080director his contributions have been immeasurable and we can't thank him enough he will be missed congratulations coach zaring [Applause] [Music] [Applause] thank you [Applause] [Music] thank you very much yes it is [Laughter] thank you thank you so much [Applause] do we have anything else we're done okay so with that being said let's move on to the public comment time for tonight's meeting the public comment portion of tonight's agenda is limited to 40 minutes speaker 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 the 40-minute period please remember that this is a public meeting and we expect all speakers to refrain from any foul profade abusive or hateful language during the comments or any time while

081in attendance during this meeting we also ask that speakers keep their remarks objective and about the school in nature and refrain from personal references to board members or staff or about their families this is a public meeting for public matters Mr Edwards will serve as timekeeper for individual speakers with a ring a bell indicating the person has 30 seconds remaining and a second bill will ring indicating a person's four minutes have expired Mr Edward you also serve as the timekeeper for our cumulative 40-minute period when 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 we also ask that you

082please do not adjust the microphone at the podium as it has been positioned for Optimum audio quality or if our speaker tonight is Christina Childers thank you hello I'm Christina Childress I'm the president of the bcea and tonight we just want to say thank you thank you for implementing as many facets of last year's salary study as you were able to do we know you wanted to do even more and we will hold you to your promise we look forward to next year being able to give step increases to office staff and administrators but we're also realistic I know your funds were limited so we just want to say thank you for what you did do for many Educators this month's paycheck that's coming will include the largest single year increase that many of us

083have ever seen forward to it for those employees who were loyal and dedicated during the tough times for those who stayed during the recession and had their salary steps Frozen for multiple years you restored those steps and added percent increases in salary in order to level the playing field with other divisions thank you we know that budgets reflect priorities and this year's budget prioritized trying to keep and reward dedicated workers who remained with us through the Great Recession we also thank you for other considerations you've recently granted employees including acknowledging that bereavement days were long overdue that ensured that staff are to be paid if they lose their planning time for duties beyond what should be required and we thank you for working to hire more site-based substitutes to help ease the burden on teachers

084and parents who have to cover classes we appreciate your efforts um you know we have many more needs to address but and we will certainly bring those forward but tonight we just want to say thank you we're pretty exhausted and overwhelmed at the moment but we are grateful that you're at least trying to do what's right by the people who stuck with you so thank you [Music] Cindy Gillespie Dave Dietrich I'm Dave Dietrich the fourth ladies and gentlemen education has evolved profoundly since the dawn of the Progressive Era which began in the late 19th century educational Evolution has impacted culture the age in which we live is now said to be post-modern post-nation State post-nuclear family and post-christian Truth is now relative to whatever one claims truth to be new standards of behavior and social

085mores are promoted often without critical thinking dispassionate discussion and scholarly debate sadly the current educational administrative complex seems to facilitate this new era of learning if not enthusiastically embracing it CRT and other controversialisms subsidized through certain approved and promoted books ideas and pedagogy confirmed that activists seem to view descending parents and other concerned citizens as controversial non-factors who must remain silent for teachers and administrators who also understand what has occurred they too must remain silent today many politicians educational theorists and unelected bureaucrats appear to dictate what to teach and how to teach in Virginia some believe this is called standards of learning or Sol under Sol are today's teachers allowed to be traditional educators must they may mainly teach the standardized tests tragically had they been forced to become talking dogs to borrow upon an

086unofficial U.S army of race under these pressures a school board can also become the rubber stamp of Conformity and hidden agendas and many have as we have witnessed in other areas of the state and Country yet this prevailing Collective voice on the current Bedford County school board has been doing its job and doing it extremely well most on our school board understand it sets educational priority in concert with proper laws and regulations and with the best interest of the students parents concerned citizens and overall community in mind the board does not exist to promote trendy Educational Theory nor does it serve to protect administrative interests moving forward the board would be wise to consider alternative approaches to education an alternative approach to consider is the K-12 educational curricula developed by Hillsdale College Hillsdale directs education

087away from critical theory the latter's so destructive in its various manifestations K-12 also redirects education towards truth and Discovery these are the foundations of the classical education and the overall Western tradition of educational Excellence thank you thank you very much Mr Dieter Beth Hein Leslie Loucks hi my name is Leslie Loucks and I live in District Five I wanted to speak tonight about a concern I have with some recent incidents that have occurred in Bedford County Public Schools and more importantly how some are responding to them in the last month and a half we have witnessed public bullying of Staff members and most troublingly students and former students by certain members of our community these incidents are beginning to follow a distinct pattern somebody typically an adult doesn't like a fundraiser being offered by a

088former student the pronouns a teacher chooses to use an inclusive Icebreaker assignment offered by a teacher or what a student chooses to wear to school sometimes and I can't even believe I'm saying it it is a ridiculous rumors about things as absurd as kitty litter boxes being offered in our school bathrooms these same adults then turn to social media in private and public groups that are in some cases making very targeted efforts to make our schools less inclusive and more restrictive they gather allies in their cause with total disregard regard for the impact they're often nasty and dehumanizing comments have on the staff members students and former students directly impacted by them these are not concerned parents trying to make our schools more safe inclusive or welcoming they simply want their own point of view

089enforced on others all of that is concerning enough what is also concerning as a parent is the amount of time and resources our administrators school board members and other staff are having to spend on responding to these incidents I am asking tonight that you please put in place policies and procedures to prevent giving giving this bullying oxygen on the subject of policies and procedures I also have concerns with the way in which BCPS policies are being written and with the content of some of our most recently passed policies urge caution and future with presenting and worse passing policies that contain language that violates the U.S Constitution and state law if I correctly heard at the August 11 meeting your lawyer essentially expressed that they would not have used some of the wording written into the

090policies proposed by the committee when a lawyer says that they're typically saying that you're exposing yourselves to a costly lawsuit potentially I personally would rather keep the spirit and content of those policies while removing the likely illegal Superfluous language that can ultimately invalidate them again doing so would save our resources for better uses finally I want to thank the board for at least attempting to find common ground with regard to giving parents an option to be notified when their children check out a book I still have some remaining concerns with the IE policies that I've expressed to all of you and I also appreciated that at the last meeting moms for Liberty took a step toward expanding our library circulation rather than attempting to restrict it by donating a book to our libraries while it

091is not a book I personally would choose to read I support giving students options from which to choose in that same vein I would like to donate to books as well both of these are New York Times best-selling books the first is by author Robin D'Angelo it's called White fragility the second book is by ibram X kindy called how to be an anti-racist thank you Ms logs Dawn Roberts Donna Sinclair Cindy sheldrake good evening my name is Cindy sheldrake and I live in District Seven in the Foxwood neighborhood in dude I'm here tonight to talk to you about my son Caden sheldrake um he's an 11th grade student at Jefferson Forest High School one of you knows Kaden very well Miss Harrison was his principal at Otto River the entire time he was there from

092kindergarten through fifth grade and I feel very confident that Miss Harrison would agree that he's a very kind compassionate and intelligent young man over the last several years in talking to Kate about his future he made it very clear that he he did not foresee himself having a career behind a desk he rolled out becoming a teacher pretty quickly as he had a front row seat at home my husband Kate's dad has been a teacher and coach for 30 years and I've been a teacher for over 25 years many of these years here with Bedford County for both of us Caden is a very well-read and informed young man he knows the value of the trades and decided to apply for and was accepted into the electrical program right here at Susie B Gibson Science

093and Technology Center a week or two before the school year started we received a call that the instructor for the electrical program had left the county and this position was unable to be fulfilled which we understood as this is a very difficult position to fill we are pleased to learn that the county was going to pay for the seniors to us to attend cvcc so they could finish their certifications in the electrical program learning quickly this was not an option for our son because he is a junior left us with very limited and not very great options Cade could have set aside these next two years and just attended JF he could have transferred to Heritage High School and attended cvcc for free or we would pay out of pocket 5 367 dollars for him

094to attend the program at cbcc Bedford County told us they would pay for his books which are about two hundred dollars Kaden really wanted to pursue this program so he applied and was accepted at cvcc leaving us to figure out the financing as stated before we are both teachers and not planned on this expense of over five thousand dollars I know that this position has not been filled yet here at Susie B Gibson so I'm here to ask that you look into and consider doing for one more student what you've already done for these seven seniors from my perspective the county has paid over thirty five thousand dollars for these seniors to attend cvcc which is great and I'm so glad that happened for them I figure there's still some of this teacher's salary sitting

095there from this unfilled position that was already budgeted for so I'm asking you to consider to do for one more for my son what you've already done for several and what I'm about to say is not to get your sympathy at all it's just the unfortunate reality of our particular situation at home we are going to be incurring some significant medical expenses this next year I was diagnosed with breast cancer two months ago I had surgery three weeks ago and chemo starts in 12 days so these bills are coming in and um so the last option that I sort of already mentioned is that we are considering having Kaden transfer to Heritage High School as they pay a hundred percent for their students Lynchburg City pays for 20 students to attend in only 10 of

096these spots are being used currently so if Kaden were to attend Heritage where his dad works it would be paid for in fact all of the area school districts pay for their students to attend this program at cvcc Lynchburg City Campbell County and Amherst County of course we would love for him and he would love to stay at JF and graduate with his friends next year those friends he started off in kindergarten with At Otter River lastly we are working with cvcc to see about any scholarship money that may be available I actually emailed Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs and asked him for help but we missed the deadline by a few months he has a scholarship program and if everything I've said doesn't help our situation if there's an electrical company listening and would

097like to sponsor our son that would be awesome please contact me but I just thank you for considering this and for your time thank you Michelle Drake Sue more Madam chairman and the rest of the school board thank you for allowing me to speak tonight I was on a wait list but I was lucky enough to get to speak I am a former teacher of 27 years 18 in Bedford County 17 were at um Thomas Jefferson Elementary what I'm speaking about tonight is the class size At Otter River in first grade they currently have 26 students in the class I have spoken with Mrs Moore which is no relation to me and she's doing a fantastic job there by the way but she is able to put two pairs in there but there are not

098two teachers and the thing that really concerns me is as my grandson moves up from first grade second third fourth fifth he's going to have several years where he may have one classroom teacher and have a class size of 27 28 29. that used to be unheard of when my kids were in school um what there was over 24 that this the school board and the central office awarded another teacher it becomes very personal when it's your child or your grandchild and he's already suffered through preschool and kindergarten with mask wearing when they're trying to learn how to read and covet has caused a lot of problems for a lot of kids but I think you would agree with me it's really tough on kids that are that age kindergarten first grade because they couldn't

099see their teachers mouths when they were talking in kindergarten and preschool they didn't get to learn how to sound out words and so all those kids are probably slightly behind and I know the teacher there is doing a great job trying to get them caught up but it's very personal when it's somebody that you know and love and I've had are there there this a young man's dad and mom were valedictorian salutatorian at Liberty High School so they're doing everything they can to help him but I just wanted to bring it to your attention so that you can look at this issue because it's not an issue for 2022-23 for him it's going to be an issue all the way through fifth grade and Otto River's awesome school my children went there it's kind of

100like a private school they never had any issue with these large numbers thank goodness but what ends up happening I know you'd have a number system and I'm not very familiar with it but I think you have a system that each School depending on their enrollment gets so many teachers and you can't answer me but I'm just going to guess that I might know what I'm talking about I don't know for certain but when you have a small school those numbers are hard to work in to something like a first grade having 26 kids now if you're at Thomas Jefferson Elementary those numbers can be worked around and it's easier for it to work out but in a small school it's tough I just don't want us to be mechanical and like an engineer thinking

101about the numbers I want you to think about the kids and I'm not just speaking for my grandson there's 26 kids in there that need your help and I would really like it if you would consider putting a teacher second teacher in that classroom one of the things I wanted to point out is a study just came out which I'm sure you're aware of that nine-year-olds fell dramatically during the pandemic the reading scores were the largest in 30 years and the first decrease in ever in math the reading scores dropped five percent and the math scores dropped seven percent now this is all over the country but you know it also had to affect Bedford County thank you thank you Ms Moore foreign speaker on our list has informed me that they do not wish

102to speak tonight so with that being said I have openings for one two three four five speakers would anybody like to speak okay seeing no volunteers I'll close public comment portion of tonight's meeting moving on to item seven do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda chairman I make a motion that we approve the consent agenda as proposed I have a motion by Dr mealy do I have a second by Ms Hairston any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed the agenda is accepted okay now we're going to pick up with staff reports and informational items not addressed at five o'clock so we're picking up with the Sol presentation I believe Dr Trosper was your turn foreign good evening so previously Mr Blankenship and Dr wordford Woodford gave an

103update on our student achievement scores from the previous school year and so tonight I'm going to continue that presentation and provide an overview of the work the instruction team has done and will do to support schools during the school year so we are proud of our students and we're proud of our teachers and the work that has been accomplished but the instruction team does recognize there's much work to be done and the worker preparing for the school year did begin long before these scores were released in the spring the instruction Department administrators and teachers started analyzing specific data points to further Advance the division Pass rates the strategies we will use to improve the student outcomes include a continued focus on aligned and data-driven instruction implementation of new resources in English and science professional development

104for school leaders and teachers and new teachers support I want to start by talking about Universal supports that we're offering to all schools and so these are the supports that would impact each classroom and each student the instruction Team Works on to to try to as I said supportive schools and improve student outcomes we do have a division assessment schedule which provides a timeline for giving division supported assessments the purpose of the schedule is to have common data points across the division to help the team know where supports are needed we will work with principals to address issues based on what the data tells us after reviewing assessment data content supervisors have also created pacing guides for each grades level and subject so while they were available last year all subject areas have been updated

105with teacher feedback they've also been updated to align with the new science and English curriculum that were implemented starting at the beginning of the school year we have curriculum guides that are available for teachers as well and these guides support rigorous and aligned instruction by providing a variety of resources for unpacking the standards so that students gain a deeper understanding of the content some of the examples embedded are online activities meaning activities that can be used with our Chromebooks and technology and offline activities that we can use and we do not have that technology or choose not to use that during class activities we also provide Department of Education provided lesson plans and they even have co-taught lesson plans in math which are exceptionally high quality and we're appreciative of the doe for creating those

106lesson plans the curriculum guides also identify key vocabulary from curriculum Frameworks and they identify similar standards from other grades so teachers can vertically align their instruction the team will be involved in new teacher support for example during teacher work week the instruction in special education teams collaborated with professional learning team on training topics like unpacking the standards objective writing co-teaching and basics for getting started as a new teacher during the year the team will continue to check on new teachers and conduct informal walkthroughs and coaching visits and just want to note this is done in support of the work of the professional learning team they certainly have a great system in place but we want to support their efforts and really help those new teachers as they get started as they continue throughout the school

107year each Supervisor has connected with departments and grade level chairs they will attend leadership Department grade level meetings throughout the year and then finally the team will plan on conducting walkthroughs in schools to assist principals in developing their instructional plans and help them make adjustments as the year progresses during the summer the division instruction and special education teams were involved in training principles topics included setting expectations for instruction during these trainings we encouraged and we challenge principals to clearly communicate expectations for what they want to see in their classrooms and we challenge them to reflect on how they're going to monitor implementation of these expectations the focus was on building their capacity as instructional leaders by training them on components of high quality instruction essential practices for improved student outcomes components of quality lesson planning

108effective feedback designed to improve instruction best co-teaching practices objective writing and using division resources available to them another topic was on creating and sustaining a data culture in their building this was a continuation of discussions that started last year and this time they received additional training on using our assessment platform masterconnect and reflected on setting a vision for growing a data culture in their school continuing the theme of instructional leadership principles were trained on how to improve the quality of feedback to improve teacher Effectiveness and ultimately student achievement the team provided trainings on the new science and secondary English resources and the message was that we expect implementation with fidelity as the year started we are supporting principals and teachers and implementing these programs Dr Eisenhower Miss kapler are communicating regularly with administrators Department chairs

109teachers to continually support them and finally the team shared resources for developing comprehensive School Improvement plans which all schools are required to do on an annual basis and just as we would expect our teachers to differentiate instruction to meet individual needs of students we also offer additional supports to schools where the data shows it is needed our team has prioritized schools based on student performance data from the spring and from last year and as we as we develop and gather data throughout the year we'll adjust those plans the team will be checking in with principals and teachers frequently especially for schools who will show a need for additional support we will partner with schools that conduct walkthroughs in classrooms these will be done with principals to determine what to look for and what recommendations for

110improvement will be discussed once final School quality profiles are available we will engage in monitoring with guidance from the Department of Education this will involve reviewing goals and action steps from our school Improvement plans monitoring implementation of these plans and reflecting on the effectiveness of plants once these steps are implemented some schools have academic reviews plans and this will require division team to thoroughly review instructional practices in these schools these will be conducted in the fall semester and recommendations will be adopted as part of the school Improvement plan depending on the subject area need each core content supervisor is working with principals leadership teams departments and or grade level chairs to support through coaching assisting with writing plans and through professional development and finally I want to talk about some of our content specific supports

111each content supervisor knows their data very well and they know where the supports are needed and they've already begun that work of supporting our teachers and schools so in math our data shows that number and number sense is an area of concern particularly in our grades K through five so Mrs Boyer has embedded daily routines in our pacing guides and she's also purchased additional resources using Title 1 funds to address these areas of concern during intervention time for the schools that have shown they need this extra support she's partnered with IXL this is a frequently used instructional platform to train teachers on using reports from Fall growth assessments to provide individualized instruction for students and for middle school she has met with all three middle school principals to discuss algebra Readiness plans as they develop

112their school specific plans to address needs as the data shows are needed in English Dr Eisenhower's updated secondary curriculum guides to align with the service units which is the new curriculum we adopted this year she's providing support for David lesson planning she's arranged training on using digital and print resources from this curriculum and we'll be working with principals to monitor implementation of this new curriculum hegarty materials and professional development has been purchased for all Title 1 reading Specialists and reading teachers to support phonemic awareness and finally she will be conducting regular data meetings with reading Specialists to monitor all reading data points at elementary schools for science and social studies as as you all saw we are concerned about this course from last year and we have a lot of room to grow and so

113Mrs Kepler and Mrs Delon morefield have worked really hard to create plans to support schools and increase our rates of student achievement so first of all is elementary and master schedules were developed we've worked with principals to provide that dedicated science and social studies time in an effort to improve those achievement scores both supervisors are continuing to focus on content-specific reading experiences using Newsela which is a platform that provides leveled reading passages focused on content related to science and social studies they will also be conducting frequent walkthroughs and subject areas where scores are the lowest they have revised our pacing guides to provide cross-curricular support for Science and History in the Elementary grades division assessments have been revised to gather more data points in these subjects to better inform our instruction and Remediation and history

114and science and overall especially in these two subject areas but in all subject areas our focus is on alignment of curriculum instruction and assessment so overall as I said our performance data from last year is a reflection of our hard work of the previous three years of our teachers in Bedford County we are in a good place but we recognize there's a lot of work to be done so with a focus on aligning our instructional practices aligning our division resources we hope to see continued growth for our students during the upcoming school year so at this time I'd be happy to answer any questions from the board Dr Miller thank you all for this presentation first I want to say that any questions I have are not reflection on teacher performance or our students or

115our parents I think everybody's working really really hard to under really extenuating in extreme circumstances and have been for the last two years and I realized that there are factors that impact some of the questions I'm going to ask but again clearly this is not a a evaluation of anyone um the the information that you all have presented and thank you for that is kind of a 30 000 foot view of of this and several times during both of your presentations you mentioned that there's a lot of work to be done and certain things that you know that you need to work on is it possible for for you you may not be able to do that tonight and that's fine but what specifically in grade levels attached to these Sol scores what trends are

116you seeing you know for example the last sols we had third grade reading was an issue fourth grade math was an issue we had an issue with history world history one and two so what are you seeing right now where you say there's a lot of work to be done and you know we want to improve I think I can answer your question and I'll say the middle schools essentially across the subjects are the biggest concern for us um we while we did see some improvement there's certainly some areas to celebrate we we're particularly concerned about writing at the middle school level we do think this new curriculum is going to help with that but but we've we've got some work to do particularly when you look at our achievement groups for that the math

117it's it's not quite as as concerning but we're still concerned there but I certainly would say Middle School is our biggest area of concern and then you kind of break it down by Zone we math for for K-5 over in Stanton River Zone we're concerned with so we've definitely done some extra work there we've used our Title One funds to help with that and then as far as social studies and science it's it's kind of more subject specific and science our biology students did really well we're really pleased with them but the other science areas were concerning and what we're doing is we're looking at those subjects to really think about what's what's where the deficits are and as I said with math it's that numbers and number sense that is that's something that our

118students as you know it's foundational and if they don't get that they're going to struggle as they develop and go through their careers their academic careers in English as I said it's it's it's the writing um but also we're just continuing to focus on on um the writing skills that they need we're offering additional opportunities in their classroom and so on so I can certainly talk specifically about that with science it's the scientific investigation and that's one of those standards that they can use frequently and again our new curriculum with the elementary schools has has provided lots of opportunity it's been really exciting to go in science classrooms and just see some of the the labs and the Hands-On that they're doing and then in history it tends to be the geography that gets us

119and so those are those are skills that we've embedded in our pacing guides where they can practice daily to try to support it so I hope that answers your question I mean we've even broken it down more with reporting categories and so on but that's kind of the trends high schools what are you seeing we're really proud of our high schools quite honestly and and once the the final scores come out we're going to have some real areas to celebrate um and and so it's not to say we don't have Works to do but in terms of of English in the high schools they did very well math was phenomenal particularly one of our schools that we're celebrating and did you want to add to that no yeah all I wanted to say was that

120there are there's a lot of information out on school quality profiles that really dig into subgroups and as we were preparing tonight we just want to offer for any board member who would like to come sit down with us we are happy to sit down and dig really deep into the data um because there's just so much and and you know with all of the accountability systems so we're also willing to take some time just to meet with you individually if you'd like to meet to go a little bit deeper I definitely would be interested in that um in in our subgroup area can you just tell me what your major concerns would be our students with disabilities is definitely an area of concern and our students are disadvantaged students are our two areas that

121I would say are probably across the board concerning um you talked about a spring data that you looked at and you said you analyzed specific data points can you can you expand on that at all what you've actually looked at it's okay if you can if you can't I'll call you well I know that our um so at the beginning we don't get the overall School broken down by category um so our supervisors spent a lot of time digging into individual teacher you know student data to kind of put some things together but they're really looking at the student question you know student performance by question reports school performance by question reports and that's really how they have developed all of the support they put inside the pacing guides with resources um I think we

122also found in science and history because teachers were really trying to make up for the reading and math laws they were cutting those subjects really short at the elementary level and we feel pretty certain that's why we saw such a sudden dip at the elementary level in in those scores so we've worked with the principals to make sure they've got enough time in their Master's schedules that they're really focused back on those skills and so it's been a variety of data as we've gotten it it's been just raw scores and then we started getting growth scores I'm still trying to kind of figure all of what the doe is looking at they've given us preliminary reports but not final reports so we've looked at accreditation we've looked at growth rates but the probably the most

123helpful are the student performance by question and the category reports that we've looked what what specific um in in this analysis you've done what what and you again probably don't know them all just uh one or two what specific um professional development have you targeted like you spoke of number and number sense I'm also assuming that going with that would be computation and estimation um they go hand in hand so what kind of professional development are you looking at providing or you have provided well one thing I'll say is as as we go through kind of what we have gone through the last few years typically the first thing to go is that alignment and you hear that a lot is is that we need to make sure that our instruction is aligned with the

124curriculum and our assessments so a lot of it's just really back to the basics you know it's and we think that's going to take standards absolutely and so that's one of the things that we're really focusing with our new teachers is is the unpacking the standards writing good quality objectives just really defining what a good solid lesson plan looks like um and and so I I do believe that's going to probably give us our biggest biggest score leads just in terms just teaching what we're supposed to the way we're supposed to um and then as we get into it as I said you know Miss Boeing for example has met with principals where some of the the math concerns are starting to show up and so we've used Title 1 funds to provide daily routines

125then there's essential or other curriculum called math matters that just gives basic foundational skills that they can work through every day because what we're finding is in the middle schools is those foundational reading and math skills are are what's what's been weakest and so if we can start them early we think that's going to help us as we progress one of the things that Dr Calvert and I have been talking about is the re-implementation of our professional development courses that we offered from the University of Virginia for beginning reading and for building math skills and so we discussed partnering with the universities once again to possibly bring those back in a little bit with the reading the Virginia literacy act we've gotten some information updates that they're going to be providing and paying for reading

126classes and reading specialist certifications and that's coming in the next two years so we're kind of looking to see what they're going to offer first because we don't want to do anything contradictory to that but we are looking at starting to offer especially our new teachers you know we have 80 brand new teachers this year that's a lot of just basic support but how do we also give them the professional development they need for their grade levels that are just very specific to to beginning reading beginning Math middle school math skills Middle School reading skills and how they change and so our focus is what do we need to do right now like the Quick Fix and professional development for the new series the new curriculum professional development on how to use our new pacing

127guides but also long-term professional development which really builds our teacher skill sets that'll be more give us more longevity you also spoke of implementation Fidelity which I think is absolutely important and that you would you're going to be doing a lot of monitoring in reality I I haven't done your job I've kind of done some of yours and I understand the complexity of what you do so how are we actually going to do that so that it makes a difference because there's time in people you know well a big part of our summer training with principals is really growing that capacity as instructional leaders and we've really tried to emphasize that message that principles are instructional leaders in their building and and you're right we we can't be in in all schools and so what

128we can do is is be a support and so as best as we can train them provide the resources they need we've had a lot of discussions at the instruction Team level about prioritizing where we spend our time and the way we spend our time and so we're starting with the schools where the data shows they need it and that and that involves meeting with with administrators meeting with Department chairs leadership teams trying to really be responsive to what they need and again help whatever we can do to support those principles as they Implement those plans and help them Monitor and hold accountable for that um that that has been a big message that implementation with Fidelity just has to be what happens because essentially what we think is it kind of levels the playing

129field kids can go to any classroom and receive good quality instruction if they just use the curriculum that they have um you also mentioned a in development of a data culture and and I applaud that I think data is the key to to a lot in education um it's easy to collect data it's easy to organize data what's harder is trying to analyze what the data is indicating and then even harder how are you going to make a difference so how are you helping our our principles I guess mostly learn how to do that it's it's a difficult skill and you're right it's we're really good at collecting data but are we using it to really inform our instruction and and that's been the message with once we've rolled out our new assessment platform is

130are you data collector are you a data user and so we've really challenged our schools to think about taking those next steps and and as we make decisions about what's best for students we don't base it on perceptions or feelings or hope but we base it on what the reality says in front of us and that way we can we can really support where the support is needed and so and again I'd be happy to meet with anyone just to kind of show some of the tools that we've had but we've tried to give tools to principals so they can set expectations with their departments um and and we've given them tools to kind of ask guiding questions and uh there's just been I mean it's this is essentially two years of training and challenging

131how do you involve your staff and how do you set that Vision that again not only are we collecting but we're using it to make decisions from day to day in the classroom and I would like to just say sure something I think is is very important and you talked about that time um so when we first started looking at the raw data we prioritized schools just like teachers do they prioritize you know the students who need the most support um and that's that's a criticism of the school it may be things that they're dealing with they may have a large group of brand new teachers so they just need a little extra support and so everyone on the executive team and all of our directors have taken one of those top priority schools they

132visit at least once a week they're doing we are doing I should say that we are doing walk-throughs we're trying to attend leadership meeting things and faculty meetings but we are connected to one school because we realized we were trying to spread ourselves too thin so I have a focus that's in my specialty which is reading and so I'm working with one school on that so that I can be the consistent I can hear I know what's coming from us at the division level but also hear what the teacher's questions are I'm seeing the implementation and we're all doing that we all have our our priority schools um and we feel like that will will give some connection we're also we've already scheduled academic reviews and that's just a priority so we've cleared our calendars

133schools that are going to get academic reviews who have tier two tier three concerns and subgroups we are spending a full day they are looking in classrooms observing teachers looking at their data looking at their continuous School Improvement plan looking at the data we already know helping them with professional development so we're really working hard to just be a part of that school for the last two years unfortunately our Focus has been pulled off a lot to just managing the the crisis and so now we're excited to be back in the schools and in the classrooms just the instruction team has been able to do that and they've done a great job but the executive team is also part of that effort in on a day-to-day basis you know part of the reason um I

134think you all understand but part of the reason I'm asking so many questions is because it it's important for us as a division to to understand where our weakness is it's not enough to say well all our schools accredited if you're doing that you're scratching just maybe top surface of of what you do to educate children it's important that we understand who who needs what when and and what grade levels across the division aren't being successful as successful as we'd like it's like the the three-year average coming up and you know we're going to lose those high scores and that's going to impact us negatively if we don't get those scores up or the the you know I think Mark Blankenship said 627 kids had an increase and believe me I am all about growth

135because I had lots of kids that worked their behinds off and still failed so I'm glad that we're recognizing children for growth but those 627 are still failures that that we need to work on and that's part of it's it's not enough just to you know check off school and say Well they're accredited because you're high kids you know if you have one child two class uh two people in class on a 90 and a 50 then you got an average of 70 but you've got a kid who's failing so which is definitely why we wanted to show the raw data and we kind of said yeah we're probably going to be okay all we're going to be accredited we're really proud of that we are absolutely but we wanted to show the raw data

136because that's the reality of where our kids our kids are and so we want to be transparent about that we don't have anything to hide because if if it's out there we all know what the goal is we're working towards exactly and I think that's important for our community too so thank you so much for this and your patience with my questions I do have one question again thank you all for the report um I want if you would just uh expand upon the data culture that you had talked about building with the principles and I'm so happy to hear that because I know as a former principal how important that is and also how difficult that can be for a principal to convey to a brand new teacher and we've got a lot of

137new teachers out there so my question also extends to how you how are you helping our new teachers understand the data and to be able to um to use that with more effective instructional practices yeah so yeah that's there's there's so many resources I'm trying to think how to summarize them again I'm happy to meet with you or anyone I will be happy to meet with you so if you could just maybe give me one or two little points absolutely it start one of the things we challenge our principles and we just talked about what do you see in a good quality lesson is you know when you have your post observation conferences every observation ends with a meeting with the principal and the teacher and we just asked the question did your students learn

138the material today and if so how do you know let's let's talk about what that data shows not not I think or I feel it's what is the data show and I think that leads to or should lead to good discussions about so now that you know how they did did you assess every child every day now now what did you do about it the next day in the next few days and so that could be a quick whole group remediation it could be we're going to form a group and we're going to try to Target a skill that this this group probably didn't get and so that's where that differentiation comes in is how did it impact tomorrow's instruction based on the data you collected today and so there's there's just that kind of

139daily the other thing that we've done is we've spent a lot of time with that division assessment schedule and so that is going to give us division data points so we can look at a date and say this assessment was given by this time our team can sit down and we can look at that and we can we can break that down and analyze and say this school needs some help or this is the area as a division we're struggling in and so that kind of gives us a strategic framework so we can move and help those schools and we can go to principals and say Here's what we're seeing here's what you're seeing um and and I guess the other thing I'll give you is as we are looking at school Improvement plans we

140are really encouraging principals to ask very strategic guided pointed questions and asking them to hold departments and grade levels whatever that looks like accountable for that as what are your discussions about make sure it's about student achievement make sure it's about student learning and of course there's many other things to talk about but at the end of the day it's got to go back to that and so if the data is what we're discussing then that's going to be more likely to lead to that so I hope that helps and again there's plenty more that we'd love to share absolutely and and I will meet with you because I certainly would like to I have a few more questions now in terms of The Specialist and um how their role in helping these new teachers

141I'm really fixated with our new teachers I just think that you know I know how hard it's been for you guys to get to fill those positions and so with that um there's a lot that these new teachers are having to learn and that support is just very very crucial so I'm wondering the roles that the specialist will play in helping these new teachers so so they worked with a professional learning team at Swiss and Miss Simmons and again they're doing really good work and I certainly don't want to suggest that we're doing anything in place of them they're doing phenomenal work but but it's really important that we support them so it's part of the the teacher work week we did our team did help lead trainings like unpacking the standards and objective writing

142and you know just what do you do as a new teacher how do you get through that and they're going to be every month they have new teacher meetings and they're going to leave trainings on select topics okay it could be classroom management there's a lot of different topics okay um we've also if I mean we'll use solicit from these new teachers topics that they feel that they would like to okay sure all right yeah and I've met with principals I'm almost finished meeting with them and I'm actually asking what teachers need some additional supports and so every week I'm bringing that back to my team and saying as you go into buildings check on these teachers we know who the new teachers are they share that list with us and so we try to

143make it a point just to stop in and say hi just just be available and and so that is a priority for us as well we they need extra help for sure any more questions Miss Harrison no no more Mr Daniels yeah it's a statement and then I guess a question um thanks for putting all this together um I appreciate that you've understood the reality of what happened over the last two years with covid but didn't use that really is making any excuses saying this is the reality on the ground and this is how we need to get better one of the things I'm doing a school tour earlier this this year with uh Mr Hale and Dr Bergen we were at JF with with principal Wilson and he had mentioned that there was a

144program that they had started where they had seen some of these kids coming in I guess from from middle school and they were behind in reading and by doing that he said that they were increasing like two grade levels you know pretty quickly um so I guess my question is that hey that's obviously great and that's a best practice but what are we doing as a as a as a county as a division to encourage best practices how were they sharing this and are we encouraging teachers and calling others and saying hey what's working for you this is working for me so um one thing that is very important with our principles that they have really missed our our face-to-face collaborative meetings and so Dr Cornett and Dr Calvert lead our monthly principal meetings and

145in each of those meetings we try to have collaborative time so the high school principals talk the Middle School principles talk and the elementary principles talk so they can share ideas because there are boots on the ground and they kind of know it as it's happening and they just really have a good collegial relationship we spent a week with them this Summer just sharing ideas how are we going to recover this is a reality in in my school what are you doing in your school so they kind of automatically share ideas that's another nice thing about us trying to focus on a school we also can share ideas and sometimes I'll hear something and I'll say you know to Dr Calvert I think we need to to get teachers from this school to come over

146to this school so we're trying really hard to make those connections and I'll just be honest with you we are back in school we're doing school as normal and I expect we're going to see some increases just because we're doing our small group remediation we're looking really closely at data we are trying to regain the last two years with just very focused targeted remediation at the elementary level they're creating reading plans for students who are below Benchmark and Pals we don't have as much data at the high school which is a little bit unfortunate so we're hoping to really get a lot of data from our benchmark assessments and things that we're putting out at the division level so and maybe that's because you know they've they've they knew what school was like and so

147they they had some of those skills already and it also again it goes back to the same thing that I brought up with the behavior issue that we'll see Improvement there just simply because we can to each other's faces and I think that especially at the lower grade level that's really going to help them especially with all the extra stuff we're doing to get them caught up I think that's going to make a very big impact thank you nope that's it first of all I want to say thank you to the staff you guys have done an exceptional job putting this together an exceptional job working with your teams team teams lots of teachers lots of input and I really appreciate that what I will say is that these results should be no surprise to

148anyone in this room these results should be no surprise to anyone watching this streaming what happens when you have a majority board who were retired Educators and a post-secondary employee who has the majority of the board and they force our kids into mask they force our kids out of our schools they force our teachers into masks we're going to see these results and that's what we're paying for and so I want to say kudos to our teachers and to our team for these results they're not the best but they certainly are not the worst and so you were handed a bad deck of cards and you played it and I thank you for playing it well um think and I've heard you guys say it and I would really like you to add it to

149these slides when they're put out for public view I mean I know the public can see them now but for for future I think one of the keys that we're doing or that we're is going to help us and you guys mentioned it we're back to normalcy we're back to a normal schedule we're back to activities for our kids we're going to see a difference because it makes a difference and so again I don't want this to be Doom and Gloom I've had conversations with several of you I think we've done a great job compared to what other counties around us and the things that you did Implement to make sure our students were able to achieve the results that they did so I just want to say thank you any further questions or comments

150thank you guys so much it's greatly appreciated moving on to item 3.04 regulation klb r ah sorry my glasses on at the July board meeting there was a discussion during the approval of policy klb public complaints about learning resources regarding the formation of the division level Review Committee which we refer to in that policy as dlrc and the selection of its various members at that time I told the board that I would work with the executive team to discuss this further and provide some specifics about the selection of committee members just as a reminder the division level Review Committee is formed at step four when you're looking at the regulation for policy klb which is entitled requests for reconsider reconsideration of learning resources um step four says that the committee will consist of three teachers

151three parents three high school students if it's at a challenge at a high school one from each of our three zones we'll also have one principal one library media specialist one Community member and one School Board member um so to ensure selection for the dlrc is not biased we are going to use a random selection generator application um for the Parent-Teacher student and Community member selection there will be an announcement made on social media on our website and on the school's websites that a book or Learning Resource has been challenged and that that has been submitted and that a committee is being formed to review that material all parents students remember just High School only if it's a high school challenge teachers and community members wishing to participate on the committee will submit their name

152and the school zone they live in for consideration the names will then be entered into the random selection generator application to be chosen for the committee and I practiced with this just putting in random names and it really is just a random I put in all the names and it just randomly selects who's chosen um for anyone not selected for the committee I also feel it's really important to gather their feedback so anyone that's not selected through the random generator we are going to be offering a special online form that will gather input concerns comments and suggestions from anybody that was not selected from for uh for the committee and those will be given to the parent who represents the zone so all of the comments from parents and community members in the Liberty Zone

153will be given to the Liberty Zone parent to present that information to the committee um the principal and the library media specialist um for that we will Select Staff that were not involved in the original Challenge and we've talked about it that we will use the random selection generator for that too we'll look at all of our principles and all of our library media Specialists excluding the one where the challenge occurred and then that's how they'll be selected for the committee and then the school board chair will determine the school board representative that will serve on the committee I'm happy to answer any questions about that information uh yes um since this was this policy was brought up I have had several phone calls from parents and um I think it's probably necessary for us

154their complaint or their concern is that this happens at step four in this policy and parents are concerned about me being notified of an individual challenge to any resource anywhere in the county or any book anything that's used in the educational programs of their children in step one so can we add something so that we have a process so that parents can file a counter challenge if they want to they they are concerned about waiting to step four when it's already been through several committees they would like to to be to have their voices heard at step one um we can definitely take that back to the IGA committee for more discussion um well this is a rule though it is a rule and I the reason I would suggest either the board make a

155decision on how they want to you know move forward or the IGA committee is because we did bring that regulation with several run-throughs to the entire board because it is such a topic that everyone wants to have input in um you know if the board wishes we can add something I I do want to say the reason that we have that first step is if a resource um so we're talking about Library resources we're not really talking about curriculum resources because any any parent could say I'm not comfortable with my child having that resource and then the teacher would find an alternative assignment or an alternative you know reading material so we're trying really hard to be sure about all of those curriculum pieces this is really for library books where it's much more open

156and I've spent a lot of time with the library media specialist and just really trying to understand that they are trying to offer diverse options they are looking at suggested readings from teachers who might say these are books we'd like to see at the high school level they ask students or there's some particular books you'd like to have in our libraries the only time we would pull something is if we we just totally got it wrong like if there is a book in an elementary library that got by the librarian and once the librarian sees it and looks at it from a different perspective or the principle and they say oh that might not be age appropriate so it's not in essence Banning it's just we're saying we probably need to just reevaluate that resource

157and so so many of those things it rarely happens but there is some we we also want to give our professionals the ability to make those decisions and work those things out with parents before we removed a resource from the entire School Division it would have to go before a division level Review Committee we would never say this is challenged at you know Woodford Elementary and now we're going to take it out of every Library you know so well I think the parents though just want to be I have a process for being notified that a challenge has been made way before step four so I think I think it's in language because um The Challenge the official I am challenging this material doesn't really come until later on the first is I have a

158concern and can we talk about this and can we really is this really a good resource for our school our community but the official challenge where a parent says this is something I won't remove from all the shelves comes a little bit later um I would just say as we've kind of looked at lots of different scenarios I don't have a problem with any of it I mean I can easily put something on the division website and say there's been a concern with a resource if that's what the board wishes to do that that's easy for me to do I I just want to be careful that we don't make the regulation so cumbersome that we can't manage it I mean even just finding people to do the division level Review Committee each time if

159there are a lot of challenges I don't want to slow the process down and people think that we're we're trying to slow it down so that we're not answering their concerns because we have put some deadlines in here with times so again if the if the board wishes to put a notification in at the beginning I would suggest it be just at that school because that's the only place the resource would be looked at not a division wide concern but this is a concern that's been brought to the librarian of the school and the principal of the school rather than division wide I think that's what they want just to be notified how do we want to proceed do we want to work with them rewriting regulation then presenting it to IGA rewriting a doing

160a revision and presenting it to us next month for all of us to pass the regulation how do we want to do this I would say to do a revision to have them come back next month okay Dr mealy yeah that's fine I just want to be sure that I don't have the the policy in front of me right now but I thought there was something in there that said that the librarian could remove something if you know she found that it was inappropriate but I think parents even want to say you know you might find it inappropriate I don't yeah that's what I think that's what the complaint is and they they are seeking a process or procedure by which they will know what's going on so this notification would do that yeah what

161you're asking I'm just looking at the regulation in essence if the decision was so I want to be clear so if a decision is made that something's going to be removed everyone's notified so they can have input or if somebody challenges because I mean if I come in and I just talk to the librarian because that's what it says I'll speak to the school librarian about the concern as a parent I don't know that we we need to notify everybody unless the librarian and the principal say perhaps we should remove it from the the Shelf I would agree with that work now would you prefer to go straight to IGA or would you prefer staff work on it and represent it again next month well I think it's a rule so just work on it

162and present it next month would be I don't think it needs to go and if that's what's up policy was passed last week they've done exactly what we've asked them to do and brought it to us I'm fine with the way it is I'm not sure what we need to revise something we just voted on yeah but these parents you know we just passed a parent resolution saying in several different paragraphs that they had a right to know so these parents are now saying I'd like to know and we're going to tell them no we're not going to do that but we've also passed a resolution for teachers and staff that say we're going to let you be professionals we wrote the policy it was approved and that's what we need to go for right

163but this is an address in that policy here it is it says the parents going to take it to the librarian first right and we're and I'm agreeing they take it to the librarian first if the librarian decides okay this needs to be removed these parents now want to be notified but that was never part of the policy that's right they're saying they're asking now how do we know how will we know as parents because we have a right to be notified under your parent resolution how do we know as parents when a challenge is made we don't want to get to step four when all of these things have already been done and we don't know anything about it right but the professional is going to decide it shouldn't be on the shelf and

164so therefore the kid can't check it out because it's not on the Shelf that's not their issue their issue is they want to be notified if something is challenged and we've said that they have the right to be involved in their child's education and make decisions regarding their education any resources in our library are could potentially be part of that and they have a right to say you know I want to fire a counter challenge to this before we get to the point where we're talking about a formal committee they want to be involved at the beginning I don't I don't see why we would not allow them to do that I mean that's taking to me that's taking away their rights you're saying these parents have a right to make a challenge but you

165don't have a right to counter the challenge I think they do counter the challenge though when they're able to then submit their their counter challenge to the parent that's really going to represent that side right well they don't what they're saying is if you suppose you submit a challenge tomorrow about a particular book okay I how do I even know that you did that well no that's not an answer that's what they're for they want to know when you've made that challenge they don't want to know who you are it's they're just saying they just want to know a challenge was has been made to book a the parent thinks it's inappropriate and they would like to be notified that that challenge has occurred they will be notified at step four but they're asking before

166that because step four it's really gone a long way already they're asking to be notified so I guess what we're trying what we're saying is you don't have that right parents so I'm saying that we're going to let our Professionals in the media center or Library make that decision because they may not have wanted to put that book in there anyway based on conversations with staff they don't always have time to read them before they put them out and once they read it they go you're right it's not age appropriate that's our professional making the decision not to have it on the Shelf hold on just a second Dr Woodford wanted to add something well I was just going to say I mean it would not be difficult if at step one or step two

167the librarian or the principal decided that a resource was not appropriate to notify parents in that school I don't know that we need to notify parents if there's a challenge but only if the book would be considered for pulling exactly the other thing we could do is before any book is pulled we could go to a division level Review Committee I mean there are options to get so that everyone is satisfied it I just think that's what I'm trying to do we have parents who say I want to be able to make a challenge and we have a group of parents saying I want to be able to see what the challenge is because I may wish to Chow to make a counter challenge I don't think that's an unreasonable request personally I think what

168Dr Whitford just suggested the last part of notifying within the school was a good compromise if it's being pulled oh only if it's being pulled um I think that's a good compromise for both sides I personally would like to see this reworked and brought back because we have put so much time into it thus far I want to make sure it's done right and we can compromise and come up something that will appease both sides of the argument that being said are we are we okay with having it come back next month with a potential revision our question to ask um I mentioned this at our last board meeting regarding having a school board member serve on the committee I still stand very firm on the fact that I think it is a conflict for

169a school board member to be a part of this committee we all know that if the process is played out throughout the steps that eventually if we can't reach a resolution at the committee level it will come before the board to make a decision and if a board member is serving on this committee during this process that's a conflict and I'd like for the board to seriously remove that remove a board member off of the committee to free each of us up to carry out the process if there is if it's brought before us if there's no resolution at the committee level then we as a board collectively will have to make that decision and so I I just don't think that we should be a part of this process I think it's very similar

170to some degree to matters that we deal with as a board as a whole when it comes to attendance and other Personnel matters I really don't see a difference here it's gonna if it comes to the board as a whole then we each of us need to be at the table to discuss it without any prior participation at the committee level I'd asked if I could ask a question if you don't mind Doug Woodford in this policy here um and when what you have presented with what Miss Harrison just said was our attorney consulted to see if that would create a conflict no but I'd be happy to to look into it I think our honestly our thinking was that there would be a board member who would hear everything everything from parents everything from

171students without having to recreate that so that board member would really represent all of the thoughts throughout the process that was our thinking um I I think our thinking was that that person would have the most information and could represent all the viewpoints rather than rehashing that for the entire board later on but honestly that I can check with the attorney happily and I I would like for the attorney to be checked with Mr Daniels had was getting ready to speak then you can speak Mr Holbrook yeah I was just going to kind of bring that up like if if a board member served on that then they would be able to offer perspective and we would be able to call that that board member individually and say what did you think had to go

172and and then they would come to us for a vote um if it got that far but um I mean I guess the board member that was that was in that meeting could also abstain if they felt felt that too that that would be something that you could then say because if it's 3-3 it doesn't get removed and if it's 4-2 then then it does and so that could be something to to consider um in you know Educators as your career as a principal have you were you ever in a situation where parents brought this up to you and you guys made a decision to say yes that this book is not appropriate and it was removed it was yeah and as a professional I'm sure that was that was respected and I think that's

173why it's it's in the librarian's hands at that point as well so I think that's why that was the case but just throwing that out there we're not opposing the librarian I just think as a board member we should recluse ourselves from it we should not be a part of that and I would like to see the board as whole all seven of us participate in the discussion um that may be presented to us about a book because the committee didn't reach the resolution or resolve it that's a board member's responsibility as a whole Miss Hobert well all I was going to say was that I don't see where it would be any kind of conflict it's not like somebody getting you know going to be privy to evidence or or information that no one

174else has I mean we're just reviewing a book so there's really no conflict of interest you know what I'm saying I don't I don't understand like you're we're going to be going to look at a book you have the book I have the book you got the book we all have the book there's no secrets no conflict of interest so I would save some lawyer fees okay so I personally think that we still need to have some work done on this okay and come back next month but how do you want to proceed Mr Daniels do are you still with going ahead going forward with it as is or do you want for the review I didn't I didn't have a problem but that's up for the whole board but I did not have a

175problem with the way that it was it's been crafted around I would like to see it come back so you're saying yes go come back or no go with it now I wanted to go with it the way that it is but okay go with it the way that it is you know what the way it is is it also um able for the board members to be selected randomly as well I don't know well again there's a question that we need work on to to figure this out this is not in final form it's not clear so again board members are still on here that's that's what I'm getting yeah but but the way the policy is written is that the chair selects the board member is that if we're if we're going to

176accept it as is then that's how we're going to accept it okay so you're going with his chair decides here's the sides okay Mr Hill I'm good with it okay Ms chill's good with it okay and I know where YouTube okay I personally like to see it worked on and brought back but we have 43 decision so we'll go with it as is thank you Dr Woodford you're welcome 9.01 approval of policy updates presented at the August 11 board meeting Dr Woodford any further thing to present I don't I was just standing here in case anyone had any questions about do I have a motion to approve the policies presented I have a motion by Mr Hill do I have a second by Mr Nelms any discussion call for vote all those in favor signify

177by saying aye aye opposed motion passes 9.02 approval to the update to the school board bylaws policies and procedures that was presented at the August 11 meeting do I have a motion to approve I have a motion by Mr Hill do I have a second second by Dr mealy any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed motion passes sale of the Edmond street park property do I have a motion to approve I have a motion by Ms Harrison do I have a second second by Mr Holbrook any discussion actually Dr do us I did have a question if I may or actually it's more of a comment um than a question I understand and what is being presented here um for the resolution for us to move forward um I am

178assuming that the town and Town Council voted on or however it came to be that everyone had approved the conditions that we presented there was no problem with that would you please ask that when their attorney prepares the deed that we have those conditions specifically written out within the deed so that way it can be of record and we can we can make sure that those are enforced absolutely Mr Hill chair can we hear those conditions since it's not on here the conditions were that they were going to maintain the entire field for 20 years correct so there were two there were two specific conditions one that the that the property be maintained as a park for the community for 25 years and that certainly was that they've been there in 10 all along so

179there was no issue with that the second condition was that um because the properties being split there is a remaining portion that would stay under the school board ownership um that still would need to be mowed because it's a playing field and um they would agree to um to do that mowing as they're currently doing um under a lease agreement but they would continue to do that for 25 years as well any objection okay I have a motion and a second call for a boat all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed motion passes can I get a motion for the approval of the HVAC bids because I would like to have the numbers read out within the motion could somebody make the motion I can make the motion but I want clarification

180that it's just is it TJ in good view the other ones have been done correct well we'll hit that during the discussion part if also I'm reading all of these numbers yes please oh you got me on that one all right why should you be surprised I always get you so Madam chair I make a motion that we accept the HVAC bid results as presented uh company is Waco Force middle 3 million 580 000 Moors Boonsboro Elementary one million four hundred ninety seven thousand Waco for Montville Elementary one million eight hundred three thousand Bedford Elementary 2 million four hundred eleven thousand Thomas Jefferson Elementary two million five hundred ninety six thousand Goodview Elementary 2 million five hundred and twelve thousand yeah I have a motion by Mr Hill do I have a second second by

181Mr Daniels time for discussion so yeah my discussion I thought we had already put these in except for TJ and Goodview yes sir um when when this was an action item several months ago um initially we had put all six of those schools out to bed with the intent of doing all of those projects when the numbers came back and we looked at the available Esser funds and y'all did you know had that whole discussion um only four of them were able to go forward so farce middle Boonsboro Montvale Bedford Elementary are all nearing completion they most of the work was done over the summer and because of some supply chain issues and other factors they're going to be finished up this fall um the remaining two Thomas Jefferson and good View Elementary were not

182able to be funded at that time in the meantime additional funds have come our way from the state we've had further time to analyze the need for Esser funds the facilities committee and the budget and finance committee have met to discuss both the funding and the need for the projects there was a big need for these to get done last time and the need is only worse now we've had a very humid start to school we've seen air moisture issues and air quality issues in both schools and in order to provide enough lead time to get this work done next summer that's why we felt like we could revisit those initial bids with a with a couple of of tweaks here Waco has agreed and they were the low bidder on on both those two

183remaining projects to honor those prices they gave us for their labor and for the you know for the that portion of the contract because we were doing the owner direct purchase anyway of the equipment um we would they just hadn't gone back to check the prices on those whether they were low or higher or the same um we would be doing that separately anyway and so that could be removed from the the bid and the roof can be bid separately as well so really they're they're agreeing to honor their their overhead and labor costs and all of those costs in the project and if the board approves a bid that's what you're really approving we'll go after the owner direct purchase save that sales tax money and purchase the equipment ourselves and then bid that

184roof out they don't need to be quite the lead time on that as it does for that big mechanical equipment so you're asking for approval up to these dollar amounts I don't know what the overall dollar amounts will be I do what we what your approval will allow is for us to go into the you know to deal with the contract with them um we certainly know that we don't have unlimited funds here and we're going to approach that figure overall if we can we're just uncertain of that and we certainly will keep our facilities committee updated on the progress there and of course if we do that roof bid separately that'll have to be approved by the board anyway and those big purchases as well so they're going to be some other steps here

185this just gets us moving forward so we can get equipment ordered and so that we don't run into these running to going into next fall and next winter without this work haven't been done one last question the two units that we're approving for Thomas Jefferson in good view they will not be the same as what we have at Manita Elementary correct they don't have those in-room units they have um it's a water source heat pump unit so they have lots of they have a big Chiller outside and lots of little ones in the roof but no it's not the same I just want to make sure because I knew Moneta had shared some noise issues and they have I know you guys are still working on that but I just want to make sure we're

186not approving for those units going forward so that's all I had Madam chair any further discussion okay and I'm assuming the motion and the second still stand okay with that being said I'll call for a vote all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries let's move on to oh goodness I took my glasses off the school board school resource officer State Grant agreement Mr Hill I'm going to put you on the spot again please sir and if you would read the grant outline read the numbers that for the matching part it was stated in the memo all right girl I'm just going to start with the grant the grant outlines the following matching requirements over the next several years it is important to note these Grant funds only cover salaries and

187benefits and not the equipment needed for an SRO to fully function year one fiscal year 23 zero dollar local match state pays 100 percent year two fiscal year 24 up to 326 480 dollar local match year three fiscal year 25 up to 326 000 480 local match year four physical year 26 up to 326 480 dollars local match year five physical year 27 and thereafter one million forty two thousand three hundred and fifty six which is a hundred percent locally funded and you're making a motion that we approve this yes ma'am okay I have a motion by Mr Hill do I have a second second by Mr Nelms any discussion yes ma'am um so Mr Hagler with this um since the Board of Supervisors said that uh they would they believe we should pay 75

188percent so that 75 percent of the 326 480 which would be approximately 244 860 each year yes ma'am okay um is that something for the next three years we won't even talk about year uh five uh there um is that something that we can I'm going to use this word Loosely absorb in our budget without too much um fret if if the um Sheriff accepts this and the school board and also the Board of Supervisors Ms Ford and said moves forward with this if they hire all 14 officers then that will be something we'll have to deal with in the budget this would be on the sheriff's budget not ours so that would mean that probably the way this would function is our funding would get cut and shifted over to the Sheriff's Office for

189this is that something that we do you think we could handle hard to feel at this point uh state budget still decide ADM there's a lot that can happen between now we haven't started next year's budget but once you go forward with this then we'll have to um once again it will depend on whether all 14 are hired at one time if they can find them all so it may not be this this would be the highest amount right he's concerned about being able to feel because they've got to find them just like we find teachers they can find officers so it may trickle in a little bit slower so that would have to be worked out with the county but uh per their discussion and from what I've heard since the resource officers would

190be in the schools part of the year and then they would use them during the summer 75 percent of the cost would be ours they would pick up the rest and the sheriff office said that they pick it would pick up uniforms the the cost of outfitting the officer so it is a significant cost for the county the Sheriff's Office and us um to do this and we'll have to all build it into our budgets in the future if you don't mind I'll just add on to what Mr hagler's uh just said I think this also is planned to be a large part of the discussion at a joint meeting in October between the two boards which is of course prior to the next budget cycle so I think there's certainly an opportunity for the

191school board to talk with the Board of Supervisors about that funding level what where it should come from how it should be worked out along with CIP and other you know and other needs that need to be discussed well Madam chairman A very wise educator I'm one of my teachers once told me that nothing trumps the Safety and Security of our children nothing I I've always lived by that I think I know it's kind of cliche but I think we have to find a way to make this work so that there is an SRO in every school Dr mili we agree on something all right um I just have one question just for my own for clarification please um Mr Hagler this one million 42 356. for the hundred percent match this is based on

192the uh or 100 locally funded um this is based on full sros correct so if we got the ssos the retired deputies coming in the potential for that to be less is there could be less than that I mean that would be for the sheriff's office and I don't know if there's a differentiation in what they pay there um I think what was to explain to me that in SSO would be only employed during the school year so that 75-25 split is really non-void at that point we'd pick up the entire cost because they're only going to be employed while school's in session I don't know the difference in what the two can do I think that's further discussion that this board and the Board of Supervisors and Sheriff's Office can have the the hundred

193the cost to us when it's 100 was based upon current salaries salaries going to change but about 780 000 we'd have to look at and that would come in the 26-27 budget year we're potentially looking at a lot more than this probably escalate as you know salaries go up and you don't know what year or how much experience somebody's going to come in with just like with our teachers you could hire a first year teacher a 15-year teacher it can vary so this is an estimate um so you know roughly an 800 000 a thing that we're going to plan out for you you know four years out in our budget um and I and I know part of the discussion with the Board of Supervisors will also be reversions staring us down to about

194the same time which is a significant amount of money so there's a lot of things that we've got to deal with coming up pretty quickly and and I understand that you know our children's safety is price Priceless um we don't need another Sandy Hook we don't need another we don't need another Uvalde in Bedford County we need to do the very best we can to protect our kids at all cost um and I do hope that somewhere along the lines yeah we can come up with some help with this money later on down the road because if I not mistaken won't this hit about the same time that we lose the reversion money probably a year or two before yeah so it's it's we're looking our projections are kind of Bleak ahead but like I

195said this is priceless and invaluable so we have to move forward um I have a motion and a second on the floor any further discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye [Music] opposed motion carries um it was brought to my attention that I skipped item 4.01 Dr Woodford I thought maybe you got tired of me [Laughter] um the intergovernmental Affairs committee recently met on August the 23rd to review proposed revisions to non-policies I would like to highlight just a few just to make you aware of some more significant changes the rest are just updates to code of Virginia and updates to new laws um the gbeh staff dress code we're recommending that this policy be deleted since the dress code for staff has now been incorporated into the employee handbook that all

196staff are required to annually verify receipt of and that they've reviewed so our recommendation is to delete that policy gcbdc sick leave donation we've added some changes to the policy language to allow for donation of leave to a specific designated employee additional language was added to expand eligibility outlined by the family medical Evac to include maternity leave um igae slash igaf health education and physical education there's a new requirement that any physical education class offered to students in grades seven and eight include at least one hour of personal safety training per school year so we'll update our curriculum guides to match that policy also IGA for drivers education we've added policy language to include a new parent component to classroom driver education and it requires that the driver's education program include an additional minimum of

197a 90-minute parent student training to our driver's education curriculum um and then the last one I'd like to bring your attention to is jfcj extra slash co-curricular participation we added Middle School sports because we had added Middle School sports to our County we just need to update the policy and the second is an update to medical release requirements for participation in extracurricular co-curricular activities when a student is out on homebound these days will be the ones that are coming back up these are information and they'll come back for Action next month and Mr Daniels and Mr Hill as long and as well as staff if you have any questions for us we're happy to try to answer them or any questions for Dr Woodford I just have one for policy uh is it IG yeah

198I G A J of the 90-minute parent student training curriculum what's all involved in that um yeah so we did learn because Dr Trosper called the state department it is 90 minute required parent student If the parents choose not to attend the student still has to have it I think it's distracted driving a lot of what the judge goes over examples of what could happen if students are driving distracted what parents have the authority to do as far as removing a driver's license from a child and that they also have the right to remove the keys from the child so again helping parents understand what their rights are and also the laws around how many passengers you can have when you're a first year driver if those passengers can be family so all of those

199laws that parents may not be aware of so that's part of that education so Dr Trosper said we're going to send a letter home to parents so they're aware of what's being added to that any further questions looks like you're off the hook right now next the superintendent's report yes ma'am I have several things to celebrate um I want to say congratulations to Jefferson Forest High School on their 50th Anniversary the school had a celebration of the past present and future to sell to celebrate this Milestone the celebration last week included an Arts night special events at the home football game a color run an open house Carnival a Gala silent auction and a golf tournament to wrap up the Extravaganza congratulations to the school for 50 years of serving our students as you know

200the first day of school was last what school was Monday August 15th we've had an excellent start to the school year Dr Bergen was able to visit each school during the first week we are truly excited about the work of our staff and the and the learning that is occurring in our schools all of us certainly look forward to the great things that will happen in Bedford County public schools throughout this year Patriot Day also called 911 is an annual observation to commemorate those who were injured or lost their lives during the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks it is also a time to give thanks to all the brave First Responders who risk their own lives to save others as we look ahead to Sunday we want to recognize those who lost their lives and

201all the families impacted we also want to recognize and send our sincere appreciation to all of our First Responders who serve our country and strongly contribute in making Bedford a wonderful place to live here are these months three things to know interim reports for the first four weeks of school were sent home with students today is that correct yes sir okay I'm reading the script we are glad to know we are very excited number two we are very excited that we can come together for little feet meet on September 29th from 10 a.m to 1 pm at Liberty High School we haven't held this event for the past two years feet meats are a way for preschool and elementary schools to engage students with and without intellectual disabilities during a training session and culminating in

202feed me the little feet meet is for preschool and Elementary children to help help them Reach critical developmental Milestones through weekly sports training there are skill stations for preschool students lead up track events for students in grades K through second and competitive track events for students in grades three through five offered to accommodate all ages and skill levels and finally we are very excited to say that our new HVAC program at Susie G Gibson right here at Science and Technology Center is up and running we currently have 12 students enrolled and are looking forward to seeing the program grow in the future a ribbon cutting ceremony will be held on October 11th and we will also highlight our other CTE programs offered at Susie G Gibson Science and Technology Center with that Madam chair that

203concludes our celebrations and recognitions thank you very much Miss haggle we sure do appreciate it okay moving on to 11.01 committee reports let's start with Miss Harrison please thank you madam chairman so on let me find my notes sorry the Laurel School Board held a meeting on August the 31st at 10 o'clock at the Lowell School and the primary focus of the meeting centered really around providing us with updates on personnel and enrollment reports and also the calendar for this school year the board also approved the reorganization of the Lowell School by voting in a new chairman Dr Scott Miller will now be the chairman and I passed that baton to him for the 22 through 2024 school year and also Dr Robert Johnson is the superintendent in charge now Dr Sharon Carter will serve

204as our vice chair and Dr Donna Lewis will continue as a clerk of the board and Susan Landis will also be the deputy clerk in our next meeting it will be held on December the 7th at 10 o'clock at the Lowell school and they got off to a really great start um understanding so the facility committee met on August the 26th Mr Hagler shared with us um the finance committee had met and talked about the HVAC systems at Thomas Jefferson and a good view though that was discussed today of course and so he just kind of gave us an update on it and the facility committee after listening to Dr do Us and other members of his committee share with us their concerns we had I think a very in-depth conversation and regarding it but

205the facility committee we did agree that we needed to support that particular funding for the HVAC systems um we also received updates on various projects um and of course there's been some delays with uh parts and things like that we also toured the school administration building and I can say that each of us as board members we can be really really proud of the decision that we made to address the problems of of the Asian building and providing all of the new safety and and just the upgrades that we have made to that building it's a it's a safe environment for our staff and employees to work in now and I have to admit it's it's really beautiful it is just so beautiful I think my favorite part is the restoration of the wooden floors

206in some of the offices just to see that uh you know I got sort of emotion and all just kind of thinking about the other students years ago many years ago those students who attended there they walked on that particular floor that actual surface so for me it was uh very emotional I can get that way at times I do have a little bit of a soft heart when it comes to those things I just think that our community as a whole can be really proud of this building it's a significant historical building and to take care of it for years to come and for it to be such a pride in our community I just want to I applaud all the board members who voted in support of it and for the committee and

207the team that's working to achieve those goals thank you so much I also attended both public information sessions that were held at JF high school and also otter River Elementary School regarding our rezoning proposal that the facility committee has for some time been that we've brought to you all we've discussed about the rezoning I've spoken to each of you regarding it on our proposal I'd like to thank the parents who attended I thought we had a good turnout um particularly just knowing that it was open house it was a very busy time but we had a good turnout particularly At Otter River we had quite a few parents who showed up and I just want to applaud them for just the the candid conversation that we had the open communication the really expressing their concerns

208and and also providing us with suggestions we had a really good discussion and of course the facility committee when we met on August the 26th we did discuss our next step what should we what are we going to do next and so that next step is going to be a public hearing and we want to Target this public hearing to be conducted sometime in December so we're looking at the at decem number as the potential date for the public hearing I would encourage all board members if you haven't already to review the Wednesday memo dated August the 31st if you take a look at that if you haven't already you're going to be able to see and read the parent comments we've had a number of parents who have expressed their concerns who have written

209us notes and letters and and so I think it's important that each board member take the time to read those comments as we move forward in our decision making for the rezoning um and also reach out to Mr Holbrook and myself if you have any questions so Madam chairman that's all that I have thank you Miss Harrison Dr Maley yes I would like to start by uh thanking um everyone involved I guess I'm going to piggyback on Miss Harrison's comments earlier in our meeting about the S Bar I think I just want is this for your committee oh sorry no these are your committed reports yeah we don't have any committee reports it's already been reported okay thank you you have no comments for facilities present just not right now okay that's how it works

210if you have any committee report Mr Hill uh gov school we met yesterday we did review the physical year 22 audit it is not finalized everything looks good tuition and enrollment report we currently pay 4 700 per student at that gov school and um the director gave us a notice yesterday that not next year but the following year so a two-year notice that it does look like they will be going up for those so did not give an amount but just FYI that that dollar amount will be going up uh STEM Academy we had uh our meeting last week um or the week before excuse me we had one seat that was not filled by another County and so we were able to get that seat and one of our Bedford County public school learners

211was able to take that slot and be at the STEM Academy so glad we were able to feel that IGA next meeting is September 26th you guys correct me if I'm wrong on that but I had it for Monday September 26th is all right okay and we will bring another eight to ten policies to review that's my committee Mr Gill Mr Nelms do you have anything Mr Daniel is he having a committee reports uh we uh met at the seaac um on August 18th Kelly Jennings was there with me we discussed some marketing and some community events that we'll be putting on throughout the throughout the year had a nice nice one at the end of last year had a lot of vendors there good resources for parents and and for and for um and

212for kids we also reviewed the results of a survey that they did towards the end of last year just seeing how we can get better things that we're doing well they surveyed teachers and and and staff and also parents with that and also discussed some ideas about some fundraising and Any Grant ideas to try to develop more special needs playgrounds throughout the county we meet again I think September 22nd and that's the report okay so now we'll start off with you for um comments and concerns pretty long-winded so um you know again I appreciate um when we were talking about all the the test scores today and and the emphasis that I feel was put in to not just get to a certain level of proficiency but also like just striving for excellence I think

213that we don't want to be in the middle we want to be at the top that's what our expectation is and it's good to see that that's what the expectation of staff is as well um I just kind of talked about it with seaac but you know with the sale of the of the park up the road I would hope that the town would look to do some sort of upgrades and I think that based on comments from members of the seaac and throughout the community them looking into maybe some sort of you know special needs access and Equipment would would probably be a good thing for them to take a look at Park centrally located it makes sense for a lot of people in the county um you know I think that the public

214may see certain times that up here things may get a little heated and that we're not always all smiles I think that I I could speak for everybody by saying we're all passionate about our districts and what the public doesn't see is a lot of the private sessions and the kind of behind the scenes stuff where you know we do get along we do work together and we work independently um you know we work well together I think I'm pretty sure that the Continental Congress when they were debating issues I'm pretty sure it got it got heated there as well but we're a better country for that and I think that will be a better County for it as well I think iron sharpens iron um it's you know we all have different experiences and

215we definitely want to just make a positive impact for the community um a lot of people you you've heard and you've seen that there's a I think a lot of people in the community have a lot of good ideas we always encourage these these fresh ideas however when certain ideas come up and and you know people ask if we read things on Facebook and and different comments I for one don't really read them or engage in them we have to remember that when it comes to our kids we want to model our behaviors for them both in person and online so if you have feedback questions or concerns just reach out to us I think we're all we're all here to serve but let's let's do it respectfully um you know we have to understand

216are we trying to stir up a problem or are we trying to solve the problem um after all after these board meetings and and elections and everything like that we have to work together as a community uh I think I've said it many times and other board members have said I think we agree more than we disagree um I guess sometimes the disagreements get the ratings finally I'm I'm happy to say that um along with other board members and and Dr Bergen we've fulfilled part of our teacher resolution with um the on under the on-site visitation section and we visited some schools I was at Liberty High School Liberty Middle School Otto River Jefferson forest and Manita it was several days filled with tasty treats teacher conversations and great feedback it was great to see

217the kids firsthand after last year I think we took for granted seeing the student smiles each school as the kids these days say we're a VOD it felt lighter in them the Halls were filled with optimism I was most impressed by how organized and prepared the teachers were I know there are many late nights with your friends and family helping pitch in to get your classrooms ready we see you and we see the difference that you can make in creating a great start to the year for the students thank you for taking the time to prepare and have a successful entry for our children a big shout out it's got to go to the principals in these schools I'm sure that what I witnessed is happening elsewhere in the county as well what I witnessed

218was a ton of high fives Smiles pounds and hugs given out the principals knew their T their students names uh to principals Wilson Tucker Lee Moore and Graham thank you for that I know that we preached that we hold kids accountable but sharing in their victories and letting them know that you care is just amazing I think that's all what they really need to learn have how to interact socially understanding that people genuinely care about them the kids that came up to these principals and teachers they care they want to show that they'll be successful and they will take it to heart if they ever let them down overall it was amazing to see is the reason that I wanted to get involved here to have a positive impact and because of that I will

219never take this position for granted thank you thank you Mr Daniels Mr short and sweet um as a product of uh this beautiful school and trades my heart goes out to miss sheldrake who spoke earlier about her kid not being able to attend the new electric program well the existing electric program because of tuition issues I think as a boy we need to do what we can do to try to help them out as much as possible with funding because I mean we need we need those trades to stick around and kids like that they have they're passionate about it so with him you know having that opportunity we need to see what we can do to make sure he gets that chance at this program here um also prayers for her because she's going

220through breast cancer and so I understand uh the cancer stuff and then I'm gonna piggyback off of Miss Harrison that was the first thing I noticed in the administration building was the floors um I really like that gray and white that contrast there it was it was beautiful and then of course the refinishing of the old hardwood that was one of the things that caught my eye as soon as I walked in I said I like that floor so thank you for that comment as well so that's all I have thank you Mr Nelms Mr Holbrook yeah I'm gonna Echo Mr Nails on on the uh on the vocational school you know I think we need to look into that see you know she met a very good Mr sheldrake made a very good point

221that you know they've spent 35 000 which is a little less so right at half of what the teacher would have gotten paid so why not you know some of these students that were signed up and because I've heard from several students or parents of students that were very disappointed that it got canceled you know some of them went to HVAC but you know some of that's not for everybody so I think we definitely need to need to look into that and see see what we can do um and yeah I would have to say I did not vote for the administration building but it does look good so I would have to say that that's it thank you Mr Dr Mealy uh yes so now that we're talking about comments and concerns and I

222just want to make sure I'm in the right place um I just wanted to thank you know piggy off piggyback off of Mrs Hairston earlier in our meeting about that um and give a shout out and lots of thanks to our Interventional design Specialists our staff and our principals um Miss Harrison and I from day one when we got on board wanted some mental health supports I think this program allows and we we asked for forever and and and it finally happened and this program allows for Meaningful accountability while keeping our children in school and I want to thank Miss Robertson again I know I've thanked you once but I think all of your champion and developing developing this program and the ID specialist has just been outstanding I think it's a unique program and

223certainly is helpful to our students and and our staff so I can't say enough about it and all the people who participate in it every month I say that I appreciate the teachers and staff and I but I don't think it can be said enough thanks to all of you for making sure that our school year got off to a good start you have had mountains to climb in the last couple of years and you have done a it so well please know that you are very very appreciated and that I think of you often I pray for you all because you have a mountain to climb and I know you can do it we keep asking a little bit more and and you keep giving even more so just thank you so much for

224all of your your work I too just want to say a quick congratulations to JF for their 50th anniversary of 50 years of serving the community I think that's great and I mean I have to say the floors too I'm in the administration building it's really if you haven't been in there just like what everybody else said it's really pretty it's just so welcoming it's one of those buildings having worked over there it was kind of really dark and dank and not a really inviting place and when you went in I never really understood how much a place could impact how you felt about your job until I worked in those buildings and you just you just didn't always want to be there so it's just beautiful now and I agree it's it has historical

225value to this community so I'm so glad we we went ahead and and did that that's all I have so again I just want to applaud all of the teachers and the staff and everyone here you know our executive staff members um thank you for a great start to this new school year and I know like Dr mili has said it isn't easy and so I applaud you each and every one of you for all of your efforts and your hard work and also our teachers and our our students I'm just super excited about this school year I'm looking forward to hearing all about the wonderful things that our students and our teachers and all will participate in and the continued academic success that I believe our students will receive also congratulations to the JF

226High School when your 50th Anniversary that is really just fantastic so congrats to you all as well um again I want to just simply say that I um I'm concerned regarding some of our Elementary class sizes um I think that it is very important that we address this matter I've talked about it already I'm not going to go over that again but it's so very important that those formative years those foundational years are crucial to our students future success and so class size it matters it matters greatly we've heard from many parents I've heard from lots of people in the community and we had a parent here tonight our grandparent to address that with us and so I would just ask every single board member to strongly strongly consider and support what your constituents are

227saying regarding these Elementary School size classrooms and for Mrs sheldrake I've known Cindy oh we go way back long before you were even a parent you were a teacher at Stanton River Middle School and uh and I was an administrator there and I've always held nothing but the highest esteemed and respect for you and your family and for Caden there is a special place in my heart for Him and I've got a pretty big heart because there's lots of spaces for lots of students over the years but I would ask that the board that we at our next board meeting that we bring this as an informational item or an action item I don't care where we need to put it but we need to strongly strongly bring this before the board discuss it and

228we need to Grant this young man and future students the tuition cost to cover this electrician class we need electricians we need them it's a very important and viable occupation and so if other divisions that are smaller than our division if they are funding and providing this then why can't we do that we should be able to do that so I don't know Madam chairman you tell me what I need to do or what we should do in terms of moving this forward for the board to consider it and prayerfully we will approve it that's all that I have and I'm going to address your question if um several months ago we had Mr krompacker come and present to us about potential scholarships for the CTE at cvcc what I can't remember what was said

229then while we didn't provide those or do we provide scholarships we have not um we have some of the largest groups in our early college program our governor schools and we've never put it in our budget we have talked about offering some scholarships but it has to be a budget item there were several students who we had to ask because our teacher quit and we couldn't find a teacher to consider a HVAC program we are funding our seniors because without us funding our seniors they'd had their junior year they wouldn't get their certifications so we did fund them in the CTE Academy it's not a one-year commitment it's a two-year commitment and I think it would be a commitment we would make to multiple students and I would also like to say I think you

230also have 104 Early College parents who might have the same concern because because we don't pay that tuition I mean I think all of those things are big budget items that we would have to discuss and and look at all of our programs that um you know we we can and can't fund just because of um restrictions like our early college we don't do that tuition but we have 104 students in that program other districts don't have as many students so with that being said and I know you already have a lot on your plate and and I understand I ask a lot of you and I really do appreciate everything that you do um could you and Mr Hagler work together on potentially letting us know how much this would cost can you be

231more specific about what this uh give us a rough idea we're talking about one student possibly offering scholarships um for because if again if we do for one we have to do for the other um so find out let us know what the cost would be and then possibly develop some parameters are we talking about for future for future okay because I think we had already talked about that for the budget from the instruction team considering some things like that um I think if there's something you want to do specifically for a program that's already started um it's kind of hard to make it retroactive I get that at this point but do we have scholarship guidelines and is there any way that we can potentially establish a need-based especially scholarship program I think for

232both programs if the board wants us to look at that in the budget then we would look at what we have as far as budget what do we cut what do we move what do we um I can say it's on our list of of things to consider because we we have heard the need um but we can I mean we can do it for the budget coming up and I hate to I know we've we've approved spending spending spending and spending and we don't have any income income income but could we at least be presented with numbers Mr Hagler just just kind of a ballpark idea I think this has been discussed by the board in the past as you know with the gov School dual enrollment also Early College STEM Academy there's some

233some things that we're charging fees for and students and parents barely bear the cost of that I think it'd be a good time to look at all that and you know and what are those fees that parents are having to pay and then how much would that be for the board to pick up um I believe this is an instance where it's really it's almost like early college where for this one class or what have you going there it's similar to our early college students that we really help with the books but we don't help with any of the cost on that with dual enrollment I think they pay about 25 percent of the cost we paid 75 percent of that and I think that one of the things that we kind of know looking

234at budget for these programs we try to offer a lot of variety and with that variety comes less of ability to pay and I think that's why some school divisions they don't offer as many opportunities such as the dual enrollment at the school level and so you know they have some additional funds and we can compare ourselves to other school divisions and and report back to you um but we'll work together we'll work together so we can definitely do something and when you're talking to other divisions um especially see if they have um a need-based scholarship and that's and if we could develop something like that especially for for emergencies as opposed to a whole process is that about right what we're looking at Madam chairman if I may just clarify what I um what

235my request is I certainly know that we're looking at the bigger picture and we're looking at what we're doing for other students and other programs but I'm speaking specifically for one student and the electrician program that he's in he is a junior he's a junior this program I believe is correct me if I'm wrong is it a two-year program it is and he is a junior again I asked the board to allow us to bring this back and take action on it and allow this student who is a junior to continue to participate in this program with the county our district funding the cost at five thousand dollars can can say it it's not a continuance of the program that's why we didn't offer funding to the Juniors because they hadn't started the electricity program

236so that that was for kids who were entering the electricity program we offered them spots in HVAC other programs that we had but the teacher left did she you couldn't the teacher the teacher left yes unexpectedly and we and we searched and couldn't find someone um uh if if the board is asking us to bring that back I I would say I would like to bring back the cost for all the students who couldn't be in that I mean I I think it's I mean I I wish we could support all of them and um but the program has started so and I need some direction from the board because if you wait another month and I mean are we I'm trying to get some good well because I mean I I I understand and

237I can honestly sympathize with Michelle sheldrake in in her dilemma and I get that um but also too I'm sure that there are other students and the county that need the same opportunity and and ones that you know luckily Michelle Drake was was brave enough to come here and speak to us and ask us for help but there are some that don't know how to come here and ask us for help how while and again with all due respect to Ms sheldrick and her family but why does that family have priority over the other ones no I haven't yeah seven or eight students in that electric program that were coming let's go ahead and pay for all them to come because I mean they're interested in taking that program they were signed up if they

238were signed up we should we should we should help them out to I mean they're pursuing a career at least this one year and hopefully by the way if you have a teacher here exactly well it's good could you get us could could somebody get us numbers and at least provide it to us in a Wednesday memo within two weeks is that feasible I we can try there's there's a lot to think about and I I mean it is a it's a two-year commitment it's not a one-year commitment even if we got a a an instructor we would be moving them out of a program I mean I just I think it's a lot to think about and a lot of those students did take the option of going into HVAC so we'd kind of

239have to go back and see and do you I mean please jump in thank you back well we've had lots of conversations with cvcc and their CTE Academy and really talked about programs they do offer and that we offer and so we are trying to work together on that but there's a lot to consider are we presenting next month with CTE updates I don't know if there's we can certainly present that too and there's just I think there's a lot to consider um for example for the juniors if this year if they go through that program I'm not sure they're even going to need I don't know that we can meet their needs here because that's a dual enrollment course we don't offer that here so you know I just I need to meet with

240Mr Haas and cbcc and we'll kind of work through that so then we're only talking five thousand dollars then I don't know if that's what we're talking because it would be a two-year commitment because if we pay for the first year we would need to pay for the second year as seniors and I don't know how many students there are in this situation um if they went on over to HVAC or you know I I certainly understand and I think Madam Turner makes a good point that there are other students you all make a really good point concerning that and I believe me get that however we have a parent who came here bravely stood before us and requested what I feel is a doable and reasonable request that we as a board should honor

241and I think moving forward we need to gather the data that we need we need to look at potentially funding this in the future and that's all that I'm going to say but I think we need to take move forward on this and Grant this this request Madam chair if we can work as a staff we'll get something out please let us look we're trying to think off the top of our heads of any hurdles or potential downfalls or other parents getting upset so we're trying to think very quickly here but let us explore that and get something out to the board in a Wednesday memo and then place then the board can make a decision on that if you could if you'd like us to do that okay thank you can you explain exactly

242what you're going to get out to us because I'm not fully understanding what I think construction staff is is there any other potential kids that might have wanted to go into this it's a two-year commitment so some estimates on cost so I can't even estimate that and also that there are other things to consider um that we don't we don't pay for everything we charge fees for other things but there are other kids in programs at cvcc that we are not funding either and so we're kind of putting you on spot here but we're actually picking one program that we're so we're going to pay for but we don't pay for others so that's something the board can do but we're gonna have to write that and make sure we do that correctly so that

243that's that's the research and things I want to put together so I protect the board because there could be pushback on that I just think of all I think of things that could come back and a good doing and all sudden other things happen and then all sudden everybody's up I just I don't want that to happen I want to try to do something here so give us time and see what we can come up with and found that okay thank you Miss Harrison Mr Hill oh am I going to get the comment on the previous thing first before I go to if this is your comment time you can comment however you please I had asked to comment on the cvcc from my understanding it's a one-year program at cvcc for electrical so it's

244a one-time fee of 5 000. just sharing that information so do with it what you want comments from the board congratulations to JF in their 50 years it was great to see Mr Nelms and Mr Daniels there um Thursday it was a Thursday through Sunday activity Thursday was about the Arts in improv Friday football and fireworks Saturday was Color Run Carnival and taking tour of the school and then Sunday was followed up with a golf tournament so thank you to our community in Forest it was a great turnout lots of celebrating and lots of events um since the last meeting in an effort to meet my commitment of visiting our schools as promised for the 40 hours per year I do this anyway but just wanted to mention Forest Elementary Jefferson Forest Thomas Jefferson Elementary

245and Manita Elementary and I'm making a commitment to make sure I get out to all of those before the end of this year so that's all my comments thank you Mr Hill I'd like to start off by wishing a happy belated birthday to Ms Harrison thank you um and I'm so glad that we were finally able to coordinate times that were compatible with both coach watts and coach zaring um when you're active in that role you don't realize the impact you have made and both of them have made huge huge impacts on the young men and young people they have coached and I truly truly appreciate what they have sacrificed for our schools and for our our athletes the first day of school for 22 2022 2023 is behind us of course there were a

246few glitches but they seem to have worked things through now and they're moving along pretty well but I understand there's still ongoing issues with bus routes and having enough drivers so I'm going to put in another one of those Shameless please we need bus drivers please if you're interested call Transportation we'll get you hooked up we'll get you on the road I sure do appreciate it [Music] um I have been advocating for several years now for a full-time maintenance crew for outside for the different zones if for those of us who have been here a while um there was an efficiency review several years ago um that efficiency review had standing enough and um was thought of enough to be able to close two of our schools but within that review also it said that

247um we needed a out outdoor maintenance crew for each Zone and we need to get this happening this happened eight years ago that this review came out and this has been long overdue I understand that we are getting um we have contracted someone to mow say weed eat the basics um but it's not near enough um there's painting to be done weeds in the flower beds gets grass out of the cracks of the sidewalks that's the first the first impression people get of our schools is from the outside and my mother used to tell me you never get a chance to make another first impression there's plenty of work to be done to keep the crews busy all year long and it's not just seasonal I would say that personally I'm very grateful that my

248children are getting wonderful public education to quote the original teacher resolution presented the existence and continuation of a strong and effective system of public education to for all of our children is essential to a democratic system of government end quote and Bedford County Public Schools quote understands that a high performance that high performing schools are necessary to the continuing growth and the quality of life in Bedford County both today and in the future end quote my husband and I could have chosen to send our children to private school but we wanted a public public education for them we wanted them exposed to to the diversity and education received outside the classroom that public schools offer sure I want to protect my children as much as possible like everyone but as my wise 15 year old

249son tells me I can't protect him forever and I'm grateful they are exposed to different things now while they are with me so I can offer guides to them to process their ideas and feelings I trust the strong ethical Foundation that my husband and I have instilled in them and I look forward to them walking across the stage in a few years and receiving their Bedford County public education Bedford County Public Schools diploma and lastly I debated for a long time but whether or not to say anything but I feel something needs to be addressed when doctors first start practicing the tape it take a Hippocratic Oath first Do no harm I wish we as adults would have to take a similar oath I have seen the comments on social media I have heard about

250things that were said in emails and phone calls regarding the latest furry situation and I'm utterly appalled these SNY comments about putting the students on leashes getting them their rabies shots keeping them in cages like animals or having litter boxes in the classroom is absolutely disgraceful these are kids you're talking about you're talking about Someone's Child and I thought the premise behind the work that is being done is to protect the children while I admire the work and the determination for Fighting For What people believe I strongly disagree with the latest methodology and I strongly suggest that instead of being critical keyboard Warriors volunteer at the schools join the PTA get involved be a part of the solution and quit adding fuel to the problems we are the adults we are the caregivers we are

251the role models and I ask you to ponder what kind of behavior are you truly modeling with that being said do I have a motion to adjourn so moved have a motion by Mr Daniels do I have a second second by Dr Millie motion is adjourned I mean meeting is adjourned we know we all vote Yes