School Board Meeting - 7/14/2022 - 5:00 PM

001she's late okay hmm hey girl good evening i like to call the regular monthly meeting of the bedford county school board for july 14 2022 to order ms johnson will you please call the roll kirby here mr hill here mr daniels here mrs harrison here mr holbrook here dr meely here mr nelms here madam chair you have a quorum thank you ma'am do you have a motion to approve the agenda removed i have a motion by mr holbrook do i have a second second by mr nelms any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries do i have a motion to go into closed session madam chair make a motion to go into closed session pursuant to code of virginia 2.2-3711a13-1 to discuss the assignment appointment performance discipline and release

002of contract for specific school board three for discussion or consideration of the acquisition of real property for a public purpose or the disposition of publicly held property where discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position or negotiating strategy of the public body i have a motion by mr hill do i have a second second mr daniels all those in favor signify by saying i i opposed we're in closed session understanding [Music] motion to come out of closed session chairman i have a motion by dr mealy do i have a second second by mr nelms all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries ms johnson will you certify the meeting where's the bedford county school board has convened a closed meeting on this date pursuant to an affirmative recorded

003vote and in accordance with the provisions of the virginia freedom of information act and where section 2.2-3712-d if the code of virginia requires a certification by this school board that such closed meeting was conducted in conformity with virginia law now therefore be it resolved that the bedford county school board here by certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements by virginia law were discussed in the closed meeting to which this certification applies and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered yes yes yes yes and considering there is no action to be taken out of that we're going to move past item 2.03 and we'll move right on to item 3.01 board

004meeting location step bergen yes ma'am we are happy to come back and talk with the board some more about where you'd like to conduct your meetings dr hoisington has a presentation to lead the discussion tonight but i just wanted to make a couple of remarks before i introduce dr hoysington we've been talking of course as a board for the better part of a year about where you'd like to hold your meetings this began from my perspective as a concern that we weren't able to host as many people into the meeting room uh as we would have liked back in a year ago you know summertime leading up into the elections we had people spill over in the parking lot so one of the issues driving the concern of having a different location was to have

005a larger venue where you know we could have everybody come in that wanted to along the way we've also then expressed some concern that we want to be more convenient for people and meet in various parts of the county so that folks who live on the southern end might not drive up into the town so we'll you know go down to the high school on a rotational basis so folks have closer access so that's what's gotten us to this point and i have from my position advising the board no concerns about where we've landed which is having meetings in the high schools i just want to repeat some of my concerns to frame this conversation my first concern is that school board meetings are unlike virtually any other meeting that we conduct in the school

006division because they're streamed live and because we have video conferencing capability if a board member wants to participate remotely so that technology setup requires a lot of equipment the cameras the microphones the monitors the the technology you have to have drop points you have to have sufficient number of outlets you have to have all the cabling that runs all of those things um there's a lot of setup to that we're spending it's two to one the number of minutes or hours to set up and break down the meeting is twice as long as the meeting itself which is fine because we're facilitating at the request the board but that setup and that technology is going to be much easier because through the facilities committee we've approved significant spending to upgrade all of our auditoriums so

007we're going to have built-in sound boards and lights and cameras and cabling and outlets that we can almost plug and play the amount of setup is greatly diminished meeting in a high school that doesn't exist in any other school and dr houshington is going to give some examples of where those challenges are outside of a high school if we weren't streaming the meetings and we weren't going to set up for video conferencing we could meet anywhere we need tables and chairs you know it's the technology that is is the leading concern that i have for conducting a school board meeting um the next is the next concern i have and and we've we've discussed this is the impact on students and the instructional program to do the setup we have to set up hours in

008advance so to be ready for five o'clock you got to roll back many hours the tables have to be set so that the microphones can be laid out so the cable can be laid out whatever that space is whatever time of day that has to begin that room is essentially not available to students and staff at that moment forward so i'm just cognizant of wherever we meet whether that's an elementary middle or high what is the impact on the instructional program and on students their movement the dismissal procedures for that school etc etc and then my my last concern is just the amount of time that that's taking the setup and the breakdown of our technology team the school staff is associated with it but all of those concerns are mitigated should we meet in

009high schools we have a proposed schedule that takes us through december we've checked with the high schools about what their programming is when their musicals are and when they have special events and we've been scheduling to work around letting them have first dibs on what they want to schedule and then we've been backfilling with some dates for the board that would take us to all of the high school locations in the county so but nonetheless you know i did want to come back and i wanted to have a presentation from our technology uh team so dr hoisington has met with his team and he has some some notes that he'd like to share with you about what are some of the challenges and concerns they have as a team and how they can help facilitate

010meetings in any location that the board would like to meet dr washington thank you dr bergen and good evening madam chair and board members as dr bergen has already mentioned mr barry sexton mr stewart may myself we went out to middle schools started with middle schools first just to look for feasible spaces within those middle schools for future board meetings when we looked at future board or when we looked at these spaces we evaluated the cafeteria the library media centers and the gym for feasible spaces as we evaluated these spaces we looked at the impact to students in schools the space itself was there enough electric available for what we needed to do from a technology standpoint was there a network drop that was available for streaming video where would we put a camera should

011we when we'd have to set up a camera what cabling would have to run and then where would we locate the school board and how would the audience be configured when we look at spaces that were not feasible first of all we have the gyms the gym art at all three middle schools are not feasible because of lighting and sound issues so we kind of ruled out those spaces as feasible spaces there's also network issues within gyms to run a network line to the location within a gym would would be a very long run when looking at library media centers we evaluated all three of those at the three middle schools forest middle and liberty middle have spaces that are just too small to host a school board meeting stanton river middle school on the

012other hand has a space that is large enough for a meeting currently it does have a computer lab within that space and that lab is set to be decommissioned over the summer once that lab comes out that space becomes more of a feasible space for future meetings all right looking at the feasible space then so that just left cafeterias as far as where our feasible spaces were um as far as all those spaces they are adequate for a future meeting there is sufficient electricity in every of our all of the cafeterias that we looked at and network drops are easily accessible we did look to see where we would place the camera and all camera locations would be in an area that would be accessible to stream to youtube uh when we looked at the

013issue of cabling we will have to run cabling much like you see cabling here however in those spaces we would probably or we would need to tape them down since they will be run across larger spaces where people would be walking as far as the school board is concerned uh at liberty middle and forest middle we would position the school board on a stage in those cafeterias since they do have stages in stanton river that school board position would be up against where the the serving lines are just because that is easily accessible to the most electric and to the network drop and the camera in that instance would have to be on the small stage that they have in the back corner uh so that we could access youtube and streaming when we look

014at the audience set up we do have to have tables removed we have to have chairs set up at liberty middle if the bleachers are to be used then those have to be deployed and set chairs up in those and in that instance the uh the tables have to be removed completely when we look at setup time for technology it's anywhere from three to four hours with regards to forest middle school or liberty middle and then it's a little bit more for stanton river middle and that could be upwards to five hours for set up just for technology if the bleachers at liberty middle have to be deployed or are to be deployed and talking to mr graham that's an additional hour of custodial staff time all right so when we look at the impact

015of students in schools what is it that we are seeing as far as impact is concerned students for the most part the later lunches would have to eat in their classroom because we would just need that time for custodial services they will take about 45 minutes to an hour for custodials at every school to set up lunches at all three middle schools this next year will go to one o'clock technology would need custodial services to complete their task before we get in and so if you remember those this times anywhere three to five hours for technology in those facilities so we would have to or we would ask that uh students in the later lunches eat in their classrooms after school's activity would have to be canceled on night of board meetings is this it

016would affect primarily stanton river middle school they're the one school that does use the cafeteria for fall and winter sports for cheerleading practice the live the excuse me the cafeteria at all three schools would be closed to students during setup time again this impacts stanton river middle school as they use their cafeteria as a hallway cut through during the day to cut from one hallway to the next we would have to close that off and then that would cause some overcrowding into the hallways as students then go all the way around to get to their classes custodial services as i've mentioned they need about an hour in talking to all three principals 45 minutes to an hour in the middle schools to clean up remove tables and set up chairs at liberty middle that is

017an additional time for the bleachers should they be deployed we would think that the custodial staff may need to work overtime in order to do their duties that would be postponed due to set up time for board meetings and that's all i have so welcome your questions so we found with the future meeting locations as they're here now yeah it doesn't seem feasible to do it at the middle schools due to the interruptions especially and when you think about true as far as middle schools right across the road liberty and stanton river in the same parking lot basically too so you're basically in the same location anyway so are we fine with going ahead with these so they can be advertised okay moving on to the update on library services dr woodford good evening members

018of the board over the last few months we have shared information related to concerns about books that are available in the library for checkout and text being used in classroom instruction tonight i would like to update you on the work being done to keep parents informed about the curriculum resources being used in classrooms and the materials that are available in our libraries based on concerns expressed by parents and some board members the open availability for their children to check out books without their approval has been a concern therefore i want to share some of the solutions we have developed to hopefully address those concerns beginning in the fall the parent email that is submitted during student registration will be uploaded into our library cataloging system which is destiny when students check out books from the

019library an email will be generated at the end of the day by destiny letting parents know the titles of any books checked out by their child this will allow parents the opportunity to see what their children are reading from the school library as always if there are books that parents do not want their children to check out they should contact the librarian and the librarian will make sure that they go on a list and that they're alerted that those books cannot be checked out for parents that do not wish to receive an email every time their children check out a book they can complete an opt-out form that will be available and send that into the librarian and then the librarian will be able to remove their email from the library system so they don't

020get those automatic updates in addition each school librarian will create a library page on the school webpage which most of them already have this page will have a link to provide guest access to destiny so parents can see what particular books are specifically in their school library not just in general in an effort to help parents find information about book content we will also provide a list of sites that offer information and blurbs about the books and possible concerning topics that parents may be interested in i want to emphasize that this will not be bedford county public schools created or endorsed information site we are simply going to list sites from a variety of sources such as ratedbooks.org the youth advisory rating system common sense media just to name a few in which parents can

021find information to help them make informed choices about what their children may be reading when they're checking it out from the library library media specialist division level curriculum content supervisors and classroom teachers are all uniquely suited and qualified for selecting instructional materials and they too do take great care in selecting suitable resources to use with students nonetheless it is recognized that occasional objections to instructional materials may arise and be challenged by a student a parent or a legal guardian there is currently a list of books that have been used for many years in our classrooms that have been identified by teachers that teach the sol reading content and that have been deemed of educational value for instruction teachers in grades 6 through 12 only use materials that's located on this list if they wish to

022use a book that's not on the list going forward they will have to submit an approval request form and the book would have to be reviewed by a committee before it is added to the list of approved text that can be used during reading or english class in the fall all secondary reading teachers will list any books they are using for the year on their class syllabus in addition a letter will go home to parents advising them of the books that will be used for supplemental instruction and we will ask parents just to sign this notification to indicate to be sure that we know that they've seen it as always if a parent has a concern about any learning resources they should contact the teacher directly to discuss an alternative assignment or text later in

023tonight's board meeting actually the next agenda item you will see a revised policy and regulation for klb which is public complaints about learning resources the intergovernmental affairs committee has reviewed these and dr bergen will go into a much more detailed explanation of the policy changes there and some of our suggested updates as we go through any of the draft policies that we're presenting this evening i am happy to take any questions that you might have um on some of the things that we're doing just to make parents feel more comfortable with our transparency and hopefully help them be more comfortable i don't have i'll go ahead george i'm sorry dr woodford thank you for this presentation i do have a question regarding the committee i assume this is going to be a school-based committee if

024a teacher has a material a book or a resource that she or he wants to use so i'm curious about the makeup of the committee i will say that we're still kind of ironing out all of the details about that but i would envision that we would have not just a teacher who wants to use the book definitely but also other teachers of that curriculum from other schools because it would go on a list that anyone could use and i would say we will have our supervisor of reading dr eisenhower on that committee possibly a reading specialist so we would look at definitely the educational value of that book we would do our own research into what's the content of the book how can it be used to be sure i mean we know that

025there are some texts that are just enjoyable to read and some that have definite educational values so we would put a committee together but i certainly can take any suggestions for makeup of that committee but it would definitely be teachers from all three zones since it would go on a county-wide approved list make a comment about that i thought we had agreed that parents or someone from the community would also be included in on that committees i think that's correct that's in the policy on challenge learning materials i'm talking about just approving new texts to go on the approved reading list and if you would like to us as parents we're happy to do that too i would like to recommend that i don't know if the board agrees with that but i would certainly

026anywhere we can include parents and the community members i think that's what we need to be doing and i would also say we try really hard to also invite our students to be part of any of those you know discussions so we'll give you more details like i said we cereal thank goodness for mr sexton he's working with destiny to try to iron out how to get everything loaded over so we're still kind of making sure everything's going to work when we turn it on in a few weeks so i'm happy to send out probably a wednesday memo if that's okay with you and i'll give you a little bit more detail about whatever we come to as far as make up committees and things like that i don't have any questions further questions karen

027or dr woodford but i want to say thank you i think this is a big step in the right direction we heard loud and clear from our parents and community they want to know and so i think this uh it's it's a win-win for both both worlds so exactly absolutely and you know our parents are our best allies so we want to work with everyone thank you um dr woodford in terms of the makeup of the committee um i would like to suggest that we consider our pta president as we're i think that will certainly be more of a consistency in terms of representing the parent community if we had um the president of the pta serving on those committees and if um you know if the president can't do it maybe any member of

028the executive committee of the pta that is a good way to get lots of parents input and pta presidents do that often i mean they're always soliciting and getting information from the community and fellow parents absolutely good suggestion or if the pta president can't do it they're designee exactly let them be able to designate someone okay that would go on the board is that i think that's the agreement i don't give that consensus i mean if there's other parents that are interested in participating why would we say it has to be a pta president i welcome the pta president as part of the committee but if there's other parents who want to be involved why would we do that why would we limit i certainly understand your point as well i'm thinking that as a

029pta president they are representing parents as a whole and so they are soliciting and wanting they get input from their parents who are members or who are non-members all the time so my point is that i just think that it would be suitable to have the pta president serve on the committee i would have to agree with dr mealey i think certainly if we need to move this to a vote or put it to a vote that we should do so but um i feel that the our pta presidents i think they would welcome that opportunity and would certainly reach out to the community as a whole and want input from the parents would you like for me to talk to the instructional team just about their ideas about that process and bring back some

030ideas that may um maybe we can work through that in a way to satisfy everyone we're happy to do that because i don't know that we've thought deeply about it and we can definitely do that and come back with a suggestion i personally think that that would be a good route before we start discussing options to see what our options could be so let's let dr woodford come up with those and then come back to us next month with different options and if you go ahead mr hill we're not going to do what the last board did and limit opportunity for our parents we are not going to do that and so i understand allow the pta presidents to be part of that they do not represent all parents period we cannot start limiting parents

031again it cannot be it's not an option we have to give parents an option that's what we made a commitment to and we cannot back down from that yes dr maylie um i i would just be a little concerned because it's going we're going to have to have a limited number on this committee you can't have a committee that fills up an auditorium or or 25 people on a committee so i think realistically um parents may want an option but there are only going to be x amount of spaces i mean 10 parents can't come to a meeting with 10 you know staff members it's not going to be i think something that's feasible to work um so i i i do think the pta is as great or whoever it is that's chosen that

032that's advertised and then parents can provide input but i think as dr woodford as you all form that there it just like any other committee there needs to be a reasonable number of people not just the you know anybody can come to this meeting nothing will get accomplished at that point i will say i'm totally speaking off the cuff and probably shouldn't but in my mind i'm trying to hear what all of you are saying and um one of the things that is really important for us is that when someone wants us to review a book that it doesn't take months and months and months whether that's a parent who's concerned about books or a teacher who would like to use a resource so maybe perhaps what we need to do is have some type

033of standing group of parents that we can reach out to who would want to if we advertise and they want to volunteer to be a part of these committees that we know when we call them that they are willing to read the materials and and work with us because it is a time commitment rather than us trying to just find people so i i i let me mull around a little bit with that with dr trosper and i definitely hear everything you're saying and i'll try to kind of come back with a good solution that works for everybody yeah if i could just provide a couple clarifying uh comments we're talking about committees in the plural so uh well before i start that let me thank the the two members of the interval intergovernmental affairs

034committee the iga policy review we've talked extensively about this process dr woodford in her presentation was referring to providing assistance to our teachers when they're making selections for books that are going to be used by all students there is a balance with academic freedom and our teachers have an expertise in their curriculum content and their knowledge up to now they've been making decisions and then sometimes their decisions have been called into question and we've had lots of public conversation about what we're proposing here tonight is to have teachers help one another in helping one another vet the materials that they're selecting for use in let's say an ap classroom or a a um what something that's you know offered in in all of our high schools or several of our high schools and i've heard

035the comments tonight and that's what dr woodford wants to go back and reflect on some more is how can we include students and parents in making those selections and materials that we're going to use with all kids because that would really follow our textbook process now you know before we choose a textbook we take a lot of public input on things but we don't want to have a process that's so bogged down that we can't start a school year because we don't have any materials selected so there's going to be some balance on the front end of how we select materials the other committee which we'll get to in more detail is when something has been selected and been assigned and a member of the community finds it objectionable and by school board policy wants

036to challenge that and we do have an extensive rewrite on the policy and i'll save my comments for when we get to that but i want to end on the positive of i really do appreciate the conversation i've said many times and it's appropriate here that i say again a child's first and best teacher is their parent and they should be aware of what their child is reading i always knew what my kids were reading because i had to drive them to the library you know when went to the public library and i always got a little slip of paper that said what they had checked out because i had to know what i had to go look for in their room two weeks later so i didn't get a late fee so i knew

037what they were reading and we read those books together and i would encourage parents to always know what your kid is reading and read it with them and talk about it at home not all parents know to do that or think to do that and so what we have designed here in respect for parents always being informed and being included in what is their child is learning is we're going to let you know parents when your child has gone to the library and checked the book out i would think the first thing a parent is going to think is thank god they're checking out a book and they're going to the library you know and that they're bringing something home and they're going to read but we hope then that they'll ask their child about

038that book they'll read that book with their child if they have any questions or concerns we're going to put some resources available online they can do their own research about that particular book and if after they've analyzed it and they have concerns they can contact the librarian and say i prefer my child not check that book out or if it's a material that's been assigned by their classroom teacher our policy has always been and will continue to be talk to your child's teacher about your concerns and have a discussion with your child's teacher about that particular resource so thank you for all the good thinking that's gone in from our board members and from our staff and we'll give that some more thought about how we find the balance between academic freedom for our teachers

039and respecting their expertise and their knowledge and getting some community input as we choose materials that are going to be required of students i actually had a question not on this topic um your opt-out forms it has to be done by paper form only there won't be a link at the bottom like to unsubscribe from this email click here or does it have to be paper form with parent signature on it we haven't gotten that far part of i didn't want to get too technical but part of the issue with powerschool and destiny is if we hook it to powerschool then the librarian you might opt out and the library removes your email and every night powerschool reloads and it reloads that email back in so what mr sexton is going to have to do

040is do a manual upload one time at the beginning of the year and then unhook those systems talking to each other so that's why we're we're trying to kind of figure out how to make that as smooth as possible so we'll try our best we want to move away from paper as much as possible but we also want to make sure our parents are getting the information one way or the other so we'll have some options for that you can just call me and i'll handle move on to item 4.01 policy updates dr bergen uh yes ma'am so tonight for information there are eight policies and one regulation for the board's consideration these were reviewed by the intergovernmental affairs committee at their last meeting on june 28th so lots of discussion at the committee level

041and so what you're being presented tonight is been vetted through that committee for the full board's consideration so there's i'll just summarize quickly an overview of all of them and then i want to spend a little more time on a couple of them so dgc school activity funds the languages policy language has been added regarding the duties and insurance coverage for school personnel who serve as school finance officers and legal updates have occurred djg vendor relations there's been policy warding changes regarding a prohibition on solicit solicitation or acceptance of gifts and then subsequent disclosure uh of any subsequent employment that would prevent any conflict of interest gcbb professional staff supplementary pay plans has gone through an extensive uh rewrite of this policy language with this revisions mainly applies to secondary teachers who are assigned additional

042teaching sections or course loads in excess of 150 students and would then be eligible for additional compensation i'll skip down to k well so then the others that i want to have some more extensive conversation about so we've had several board meeting cycles where there was a request to consider unretiring uh two policies um i gave that a lot of thought and then i believe it was mr daniels in a sidebar conversation uh suggested uh i took the challenge that we think a little more deeply other than simply posting documents that we teach documents so i did some research i shared my thinking with the committee the committee and i had extensive conversation i'm really really pleased with the collaborative work that we came up with on a rewrite of policy i e a so

043whoever is controlling what we're seeing at home if you scroll down to iea i just want to spend a little more time than we normally would on information item because of the significance of this policy so if you look for ia in our policy manual today you'll see that it is we're going to be able to do that or no yeah okay i'll i'll i'll keep talking while you scroll iea is currently coded as pledge allegiance so uh through the committee what we're suggesting is that we re-title this entire policy and call it promotion of patriotism the uh policy as it currently uh reads talks about the significance of the pledge of allegiance and a student's reciting the pledge every day what we've added to the policy then is an entirely new section on flags

044as well as civics education and on patriotic holidays the overarching purpose of this policy with this with this new language is as follows the school board believes the appreciation of our country is promoted by the ceremonies and observances held in the schools it's the belief of the school board that students must be taught good citizenship skills that include respect for our country our flag and the sacrifices of our service members and their families and so we would teach children the significance of of patriotism first by making sure that the united states flag is flown in every classroom every auditorium every sports complex as we see it here to your right that the flag is in all the places that our students and our visitors gather and the children learn about the flag and learn about

045its significance and that we are not uh we're very clear about which flags are appropriate to be flown in our instructional setting so there's a list of all of the flags that would be appropriate including the united states flag the flag of our county the flag of our of our state and others then the next section is keeps the pledge of allegiance intact that every day students would say the pledge of allegiance if they're philosophically opposed to saying the pledge of allegiance is communicated through the parents and we would ask if they stand respectfully uh that they not be compelled to recite the pledge although we certainly would hope everyone would and if they're physically unable to stand that we would make accommodations for them based on their their disability then to address the uh

046concerns that have been raised about about uh having the national motto posted not having it in our active policies it's always been required by law whether it's the policy of the school board or not that the national model and god we trust be posted and that the bill of rights also be posted in the building but what we would add to the school board's policy is and i'll just read to you for the significance of this paragraph for those who are watching at home as required by law the bill of rights and the constitution of the united states as well as the statement and god we trust the national motto enacted by congress in 1956 shall be posted in a conspicuous place in each school for all students to read and learn about their importance

047in addition the 17th day of september shall annually be recognized as constitution and citizenship day to be referred to as constitution day and the third week of september will be observed as civics education week to ensure that all students reflect upon the importance of active citizenship recognize the enduring strength of the united states constitution and reaffirm commitment to the rights and obligations of citizenship the united states of america the superintendent shall ensure that appropriate observations and teachings are conducted in all schools to that end throughout each school year and designated grade levels at elementary middle and high school embedded into the division curriculum age appropriate assemblies and field trips such as visits from veterans and veteran groups programs that promote patriotism constitutional scholars and field trips to places such as the national d-day memorial and

048appomattox courthouse will be conducted to promote and celebrate our nation's history and then the final section of this this rewarded policy as patriot patriotic holidays that we would pause and we would remember the significance of days such as memorial day and veterans day and of course we just celebrated july 4 and that we pause and understand the significance of that day so again i'm i'm really just super pleased that this addresses the uh concern that was raised that we had some policies that had been retired and that those references weren't an active policy although they're certainly in law it captures that thinking and expands upon it and really leads us in a place that i'm very proud of that our children will learn about the significance and importance of the country i can't think of

049another county more perfectly situated for that than the home of the national d-day memorial that we not have a policy on teaching children uh patriotism so that's that's uh up for information tonight we'll ask the board to take action on that in your next meeting uh any questions on that particular policy before i go on to the next policy that has some significance so we alluded to this in the last presentation from dr woodford with the with the iga intergovernmental affairs committee we looked long and hard for several months now at klb public complaints about learning resources some of the concerns that i heard in the discussion from the board were too many steps when i have a concern so you know a a particular librarian has selected a book that goes on the shelf

050in my child's school library and i have a concern about that so there's going to be a school-level committee where the librarian is basically going to defend his or her choice and if i'm not happy with that committee and i go on to another committee and i go on to another committee and it drags on so so we've consulted we've done a couple things first thing as we mentioned in the last presentation is we want to support our librarian media specialists and our ap teachers we we want to bring them together and we want them as a group to be able to talk about resources that they're thinking about purchasing and putting on the in circulation talk they already do but we want to provide even more support for them inevitably though there may be

051a parent come along that has a concern about a particular book and doesn't think that it's appropriate for library circulation the first thing we'd ask them to do in this rewrite of this policy is ensure that they've talked to the librarian about their concern have a conversation with a librarian who chose that particular resource about why they chose it and and have them have the opportunity with the person who has a concern to verbally engage about the concern and for the librarian media specialist to defend their choice if the individual continues to have a concern after that conversation just like we would when a parent has a concern about anything else in the school the next person they should talk to is it principal of the school who supervises that that librarian have that verbal

052conversation with the principal and let the principal talk with the media specialist and determine if the principle's supportive of that decision if that individual is still carrying that concern then we would start a written formal process where they would write out a concern that would be elevated to our director of curriculum instruction who supervises all of our library media specialists and there would be a committee would be formed the committee would be a division level committee it would include parents from all three high school zones it would include at least one library media specialist but not the library media specialist where the book was housed so they're not having to defend their own decision but a different library media specialist teachers from all three zones students from all three zones a community member who's not

053connected to any school but just represents our community and a school board member one committee and truly a community committee and that committee with the person who raised the concern would read the book together like a book club they would read the book and they would identify you know what are the merits of this book why was it picked by a library media specialist and then defended by that library media specialist and by that principal and buyer director of curriculum instruction why is it so good that we're going to stand by our decision talk about its merits talk about the concerns that the complaint has raised talk about other resources that might be available and might be appropriate just have a very you know honest conversation with one another and then as a committee make

054a recommendation to me and i'm either going to accept the thinking of that community-based committee which i hope i would if they may come back as a committee and say we think that book should come out of circulation i'm going to support that decision if that committee says we think that we've had an honest conversation and we think it has some controversy but it's worthy of other people's children having the opportunity to read it because remember the complaint if their parent always has the right for their child not to read that book we're talking about no one else's child being able to read that book and that's why we want that to be a very public and community-wide discussion if the committee says they think that book should stay and i affirm the thinking of

055that committee and the complaint is still resolved that that particular resource does not belong in our libraries then i'm turning it over to the board and you are the buck stops with you so then the board will make a decision to uphold my recommendation or to reject my thinking and to direct me to have that book removed from the library so that's the process as we've rewritten it i'm not reading it to you from the policy itself but anyone uh who's viewing the meeting or independence tonight anytime we bring policies to the board they're publicly displayed linked into the agenda you can read it word for word and have an understanding for yourself what this policy says we have a month to think about it we're not asking for any action tonight on this we'll

056come back a month from now and ask for action from the board so any questions about that particular policy which is again i want to thank the iga committee for their challenging our work and our thinking we've had several months now at the committee level of discussing this staff has worked very hard dr woodford and dr trosper and others have spent countless hours researching how other school divisions are handling this i'm really personally very proud of the work that has come out of this the collaborative work and i feel really good about this recommendation so i wanted to personally thank them as well for working on that i certainly think i want to thank everyone who's worked on it certainly you guys have given a lot of thought and very thorough i'm wondering if they're

057in your research if there are other school divisions that's using a similar model um i've been sharing my thinking with with my colleagues i'm connected with many superintendents and and they're asking for our work uh this is this is not a lot of people are trying to crack so no i'm not familiar with another school division that uses this process as i've described it this has been work thinking that has evolved from myself dr woodford dr trosper we've been we've been dialoguing about this for months and we've been talking with our colleagues i'm sure that they've been talking with folks they know around the commonwealth i certainly have given the time i think we should hold off on 4.02 until we reconvene at 7. do we have time for 4.03 real quick dr woodford how

058many minutes would you say do we have time for more than well then we're fine what time are we going to break ma'am 6 30 is what's on the agenda as close to it is i'm not sure if six minutes is going to be i think it will be okay yes ma'am six minutes um so division school boards are required to approve changes or updates to the comprehensive local plan for the education of gifted students every five years the doe conducts a technical review of local gifted plans and our next five-year review will be in however we have updated our plan and the updated plan is attached for your review this month for action in august in addition uh mrs bowyer has given a list of specific changes made to the plan this year most

059of these changes were recommended from the virginia department of education gifted supervisor and we've done some updates to our mission and vision statements updates to policies really just very simple updates just to keep the document current so we're just asking you to approve those changes next month in august fairly simple and we're happy to answer any questions if you have them mrs bowier is here questions for dr woodford for your list of changes it'll be easy to review thank you for that did all of that for us agler do we have time for the 4.04 the title grants it should not take long uh the title three grant that's in front of you it was not presented with the other grants back in may and june this is a small grant that is with a

060consortium out of virginia tech for um english learners we use this money for substitutes to come in or tutors to come in so our english learner full-time staff bring these people in to actually help tutor these students that are english learners so it's about a six six seven thousand dollar grant um it's never needed board required uh signature before they're requiring it this year so i'm bringing it before the board for consideration this month i'll be back before the board for approval next month break for dinner and then reconvene at seven o'clock all right i'm gonna go see jimmy now good evening everyone i'd like to reconvene the regular monthly meeting for the bedford county public school board for january 14 2022. if you'd please join us in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance

061to 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 and if you would please join me i would like to take a moment to honor the memory of two individuals the golden eagle community was hit hard with the passing of mr glen ayers mr ayers devoted many years of his life as a teacher at stanton river and also is the voice of the golden eagles announcing many many ball games and anyone who had shirley keister as a teacher i'm sure you remember her well miss keester spent 45 years of her life educating students 35 years of winch of which were spent in bedford county schools please join me for a moment please thank you very much and

062on behalf of the bedford county school board i would like to offer our sincere sympathies to the families and also i'm going to step out a little bit and i hope no one minds but i also would like to offer our sympathies to the family of sheriff carl wells i learned of his passing today as well [Music] let's move on to 6.03 recognition of students and staff mr edwards thank you madam chair we've had a few no-shows so i've had to make some adjustments but i think we're ready if you mr vice chair and dr bergen would please all come forward to center stage to say it's been an amazing run the past two seasons for the jefferson forest high school boys soccer program is still an understatement coach scott zaring's club has appeared in

063the state championship game not once but in both seasons and they've lost both of those state championship games in absolute heartbreaking overtime penalty kick fashion it's the first time a jf boys soccer team has appeared in back-to-back state championship games and that's saying something because the program has been a powerhouse in virginia for most of the past quarter century tonight we recognize the players from this year's state runner-up team who finished the season with a record of twenty three and one jonah towels [Music] [Applause] joshua webb [Applause] justin chido [Applause] ethan greene [Applause] no lynn hill [Applause] max reed [Applause] when he's not running with the football he's playing soccer alex marsteller [Applause] aidan arthur [Applause] bryce wood [Applause] christian kavanaugh [Applause] ben roders [Applause] brandon cheryls [Applause] cameron sexton [Applause] colin mason [Applause] this

064one's way too good to pass up jacob banger gong [Applause] and tyler hinton [Applause] the 2022 state runner-up boys soccer team the jefferson forest high school cavaliers [Applause] all right [Applause] good job guys congratulations as we continue vhsl film is an all-in event meaning classes one through six are all competing together for best film and audience choice awards in each category there's no separating schools because of size you gotta compete with the biggest schools no matter what jefferson forest high school did that just this year and for the second time this year they've come away winners films are limited to eight minutes and are required to be original student works students manage their own screenwriting casting post production editing copyright compliance and shooting schedules in the category of animation the film clay boy was awarded

065state best animated film and state audience choice animated film written and directed by bridget spangenberg [Applause] team member jake george [Applause] and that is your clay boy state championship team [Applause] also the first jf film to ever win both awards which is equally impressive [Applause] in the category of experimental the film sightseeing was awarded state audience choice experimental film written and directed by sam laniv [Applause] and that is your sightseeing team right there [Applause] jf is the first vhsl school to win state championships in theater and film in the same year and with that we give major props to spence and nikki white [Applause] congratulations to everyone who was recognized tonight and thank you mr edwards i appreciate that we should have had uh spence and nicki come up front but if you will stand

066and let us give you a round of applause [Applause] moving on to the public comment portion of tonight's meeting the public comment portion of tonight's agenda is limited to 40 minutes speakers are asked to state their name and voting district the school board is here to listen to your comments but will not engage or respond to speakers during this 40-minute period please remember that this is a public meeting and we expect all speakers to refrain from any foul abusive or hateful language mr edwards will serve as the time keeper for individual speakers with a ring of a bell indicating that a person has 30 seconds remaining and a second bell will ring indicating a person's three minutes have expired mr edwards will also serve as time keeper for a cumulative 40-minute period mr edwards three-minute

067timer 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 or send them please send or give them to mrs johnson she's right up front and she will give them to board members we also ask that you please do not adjust the microphone at the podium as it has been positioned for optimum audio quality and according to my list dave dietrich and that's what i thought but it's that's why it's just yeah it's four and it is four minutes not three i was reading it wrong i'm dave dietrich from the fourth uh district ladies and gentlemen over past three sessions we have discussed the origin of critical race theory tracing it back to the cultural marxist frankfurt school we

068have addressed what it means to be educated comparing what it used to mean to what it seems to mean today we have also shown how formal education has changed significantly if not fundamentally we will now address the evolving political climate which greatly influences education particularly in the areas of administration curricula and pedagogy understanding how politics has changed is absolutely essential to understanding how and why our schools have changed when the founders created the united states of america they did they were moved by the great thinkers throughout history who left a legacy of shared wisdom the founders also accepted the concept of natural rights these rights came from god divinely granted to all people in all places and in all times we see that's concept in the preamble to the declaration of independence all people are

069created equal endowed by their creator with a certain inalienable rights among these life liberty and the pursuit of happiness happiness was understood as based on moral for moral virtue and intellectual flourishing both were absolutely critical to liberty this happiness and liberty were predicated on education the founders also believed a human nature could never achieve perfection as humanity would always be capable of great good but also great evil for sure the founders believe that education might improve humanity perhaps substantially but never to the point of utopian perfection by the way it is marxism that assumes utopian perfection of course history shows us it always results in the opposite it delivers hell given these insights the founders had definitive views of government and its role in education government should be limited in scope but also a protector

070of individual god-given natural rights government should also facilitate education since the dawn of the progressive era which began at at the end of the 19th century progressive government has taken on responsibilities that far exceed all previous duties many political progressives see themselves as intellectually and morally superior many insist they are the true experts they also determine individual rights not god federal progressive government today also no longer facilitates education it administrates progressive education proactively even demanding favorable political politically correct outcomes reflecting progressive politics many educators today are deeply committed to progressivism not all embracing the ideas of francis willard john dewey and many others many believe they know what is best for the society overall and for our children and grandchildren moral virtue and intellectual growth so central to classical liberal education and to liberty itself

071have been under constant assault this is now the recurrent theme in many progressive actions especially in education the other recurrent theme is indoctrination 30 seconds thank you thank you mr dietrich raymond smith good evening i'm raymond smith i live in new kent drive in good in district 7. thank you for letting me speak here tonight i want to talk about something that was 50 percent good and then 50 percent bad from my perspective and that was at the previous meeting we passed the uh parental rights resolution which is something that to me was a no-brainer because over the past year we've heard constantly about how parents want to be more involved and they deserve to be more involved in education and in the classroom the 50 percent that i don't see as good is that

072the resolution and support of teachers and staff did not pass now the reason behind me saying that is because just at equal measure as we've heard that parents wish to have more voice and more input teachers have expressed that they feel a lack of support threat that's been shown by surveys taken of teachers by comments made by teachers and staff at all levels elementary middle and high and to the point of central office staff as well and so to me it seems that a resolution which would put forward on the record that the board supports these individuals at all levels would be in the best interest of the board and as the division as a whole a resolution offers a chance for the board to state their support for both parents and teachers with the

073passage of both i coach student congress and so part of my job is i look at resolutions i teach people how to interpret them what to argue what not to argue a resolution is a statement of beliefs and i tell my kids if you have an issue with a belief in it in the resolution then you state that and that's what you go after i don't personally see how people can take issue with any of the statements in the resolution nor do i think that that's any any point of any member for up there that that is an issue so then i move on to things i've heard from certain board members and one of them is that they find that the resolution lacks teeth to do anything and that is very valid that it

074does not have any teeth to it but a resolution is not required to have teeth a resolution is a statement of the beliefs and the belief in the support of teachers faculty and staff should be a cornerstone of any school division right along with support for parents and for the community other things that have been spoken is it doesn't go far enough and we need to do more to support teachers more to support staff at all levels and i don't think you're going to find anyone who disagrees with that but the fact of the matter is that the resolution does not have to have that in it the resolution is a statement of beliefs and therefore you act upon those beliefs then the most common one that i've heard is it doesn't fix a problem

075i say it does because you have the data to support that teacher morale and staff morale is at an all-time low not seen since the recession in 2008 9. that's of concern if your teachers do not feel that they are supported from the top all the way down that is the detriment to the job that they do they cannot do their job unless they feel that what they are doing is being supported even if you say we don't support this specific thing that you're doing please change that that's fine but stand behind the fact that for the majority bedford county public schools teachers do an exceptional job and deserve the support of those who hire them actions speak louder than words that's the common phrase that i hear with resolutions all the time and that

076is very true except in your situation your words have power and your words initiate action i urge you to pass the resolution and then just as you are doing in guiding parents guide teachers too thank you thank you mr smith cindy gillespie thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak tonight my name is cindy gillespie and i live in franklin county but i've been teaching at state river high school for the past 23 years i'm also a parent of bedford county students my daughter graduated in may from state river high school and sorry my son is a rising 9th grader at stanwood high school this past may i turned down a job and a neighboring county because my husband and i determined we wanted our son to continue his education at state river and

077i couldn't bring myself to leave the state river family growing up my dad was on the school board of my high school for 10 years so i know firsthand how many hours he spent each month talking and listening to his constituents he would listen to all of their thoughts and opinions and then ultimately make a vote based on the people's voice and his personal convictions i wanted to personally and publicly thank you for the time that that you put in as an elected official for the people of bedford county your decisions affect the students parents and teachers of bedford county public schools now and in the future last month's thai vote on the teacher staff support resolution was baffling to me coming at the end of the toughest year in my career every single day

078i had to make multiple preparations for students in my classes students that were working at home while on quarantine students coming back after two weeks off of corn after two weeks being away on quarantined doing nothing due to lack of internet or lack of motivation students that didn't get to school because of busing issues students that had vacations or sporting events and had to ask for their work ahead of time not to mention the countless extra duties i was asked to perform because of teachers being out at the start of a summer i am planning for geometry algebra 2 honors math analysis dual enrollment pre-calculus dual enrollment calculus and advanced placement calculus next year i was planning to use my summer vacation to help plan for all of these content areas as well as spend

079time with my own children since i spend most of the school year focusing on other people's children after last month's vote i've never felt so unsupported by the very people that i'm supposed to be partnering with to educate our children i'm sorry i know this is not a time for you to respond but i just have one question for those of you that voted against this resolution i'm sorry why did you vote against this support resolution it was such a small thing to piggyback off of the parent support resolution it's helped to solidify that we are on the same team and have each other's back a contract is not a sign of support it is a sign of you needing staff the lack of support might be one reason that we struggle to find staff

080do you understand that your vote of no made all teachers and staff feel unsupported why did you not publicly support us in why do you not support us as the teachers of your children i hope that this lack of public support does not mean i will be covering classes all next year too when we are struggling to find qualified staff thank you miss gillespie leanne ellis hello my name is leanne ellis i live in district 2 and my son's attend benita and state river high school i'm the former librarian at stanton river high school where i also taught journalism one through four coached forensics was a member of the athletic hall of fame committee the superintendent advisory council and our school's leadership team among other duties i'd like to discuss the mass exodus of teachers

081and staff from bedford county and the reasons why many of us are leaving first let me say it's not always about pay pay certainly helps but it's not always about that bedford county schools has built a culture that pinpoints employees who get the job done and then adds more jobs to their list until they break it starts early on in their career because these are the teachers who want to please who want to help their students in their school and if coaching this or advising that or heading up some committee will help then they'll gladly do it but then 20 years later they find themselves too drained to enjoy time with their families there's no time for self-care because the only place to pull that time from is family time and that's in short supply

082already if you do somehow choose to practice self-care then you definitely shouldn't spend it watching a school board meeting certain members of this board have worked to ensure that teachers and staff know their place it's dead last first come the voters then the loudest parents followed by the students and finally the faculty and staff this was proven at the june meeting when half of you decided there was no need to approve a resolution in support of teachers and staff yet patted yourselves on the back for voting in the resolution on parents rights due to the possibility of grooming an indoctrination do you realize the distorted picture your words and votes paint for your employees these meetings have become so anti-teacher that a lot of us can't even watch from home because it affects our mental

083and even physical health you speak of facts over emotions but we're not chromebooks we're people you can't ask us to combine two and three high school classes together in one room or make us teach both in person and remotely at the same time or have us take on extra coaching extra duties and then act as though we're the bad guys whose students need shielding from please consider the damage your words and votes in these meetings have on your very human employees consider the olive branch you'd be extending if you approve the resolution in support of teachers and staff finally i'd like to add this one of the reasons i resigned is because i know i'll be a better advocate for my sons if i'm not teaching in this school system i look forward to exercising

084my freshly recognized parental rights and working with you all quite a bit in the future thank you ms ellis cindy younghouse good evening i'm cindy younghouse district four thank you madam chair and board for this opportunity to address you at the regularly scheduled meeting on june 9th my representative mr hill denied ever demanding a book ban he stated at time marker 447 52 quote i would encourage people to have facts over emotions books were never asked to be banned end quote the american library association defines book banning as removal of materials based on the objection of a person or group and of course we're all permitted to have our emotional responses to facts and facts are as follows during the november 11 school board meeting time marker 456.00 mr hill stated quote remove all these

085books immediately and have it reviewed by staff with a recommendation or reason why they would want to put it back on the shelf to come back through us the school board end quote further demands for immediate removals of the books were made at time markers 456.50 457 26 501.35 50604 506 13 506 30 507 14. and the ninth and final time was at 507 25 quote i've asked for a consensus vote i want a public record that i've asked for these books to be removed immediately a call for removing books is a call for banning books banning books is a form of censorship and threat to first amendment rights banning books limiting and restricting ideas endangered critical thinking and perpetuate fear of the other all contributing to the problem of intolerance a problem we already

086see at times in bedford county for example mr hill declared at the july 29 2021 meeting time marker 14413 quote let me make it clear in today's world i have children and they are not intermingling with transgender students in the restrooms then mr hill's statement was sadly met with applause let me be clear there is no evidence linking gender affirming bathroom policies and increased safety risks perhaps this culture of intolerance and hate stoked by elected representatives that evening is related to the homophobic slurs experienced by former jf students who bravely shared their stories last meeting i also wonder if a whitewashed teaching of history effectively banning truth could further impact intolerance and incidents of racial slurs in our secondary schools but i digress as i stated last meeting banning books does not represent my family's

087values what would indeed represent my family's values is passing the resolution and support of teachers and staff bcps teachers and staff have been put through the proverbial ringer the last few years affirming your respect for their professional autonomy skills and hard work is not stated in contracts please again read aloud the resolution please recognize the wonders worked for our students and community by passing the resolution tonight also please add the 25 consideration proposed by the bcea president to the next agenda in order to initiate adoption into policy and to ease the unjust burden of uncompensated time finally please obtain funding for improvements to staten river and liberty high school's auditoriums it doesn't seem ethical to keep families dangling with the prospect of closures as reason to withhold needed funds for needed improvements thank you for

088your time thank you ms younghouse shannon thomas good evening i am shannon thomas a resident of district 1 and a 27-year veteran a teacher at stanton river high school tonight i want to address a topic that arose during the june board meeting that concerns me both as a taxpayer and as an employee but first i want to publicly thank the entire board as well as the bcps administration staff for crafting and approving a budget that restored steps on the teacher pay scale and included significant raises for those of us at the top of the scale i'm beyond grateful for your recognition that bringing staff compensation more in line with that of surrounding school divisions was prioritized and approved these pay increases are a huge step in the right direction but if bcps is to retain

089excellent educators you must continue to make fair competitive compensation a priority i also want to specifically thank dr mealey mrs hairston and mrs kirby for your votes last month in favor of the resolution and support of teachers and staff i'm also thankful that this resolution will be voted on again tonight to give the rest of the board an opportunity to fix the situation that you perhaps unknowingly created in refusing to approve it if your no votes were due to the belief that all of the information that's in the resolution is also in teacher contracts let me correct that misunderstanding it is not employee contracts are exactly that legal finding contracts they are written in formal language and factual and they spell out exactly what employees are expected to do in return for the paychecks that

090we earn my recently issued contract for the upcoming school year does not contain affirming and supportive language that's reflected in the teacher support resolution and it does not state that our board members support us i'm a proud parent and as a parent who is also an educator i know that anyone i know as much as anyone about how important the role of a parent is in the education of children but when you approved a parental resolution and then refused to pass a similar resolution for teachers and staff you sent a powerful message to your employees whether you intended to or not your staff members need to hear and know that we have your full unequivocal support of every board member and in the absence of that affirmation and support experienced competent staff members will leave

091and find employment in a place where they feel appreciated and supported that's exactly what i've seen many of my colleagues do and others in our school division and that will and i'm not talking here about the normal attrition that occurs at the end of a school year where we lose staff members to retirement or to relocation or to parenthood i'm talking about big numbers and i don't have the exact numbers but we'll eventually know that and if if if you don't realize that teachers are not the enemy i need for you to realize that recent board meetings have certainly made us feel as if we are so in refusing to support that resolution you were trying to run off even more competent and professional educators that's exactly what you've managed to do we're entering year

092four of educating and chaos teachers and staff members have had to adapt be flexible continue to do our jobs during a worldwide disruption we're tired of all the uncertainty the change and quite frankly harassment from the rest of the world who think that they know what it means to educate children just because they went to school themselves no one can know for sure what the new school year holds but what we could know for sure as summer marches on and we draw closer to returning to our classrooms prepared to face whatever anticipated or unexpected challenges the new school year brings we could know that we have the full support of every board member and you have an opportunity tonight to restore the faith and trust of your staff you've already acted to provide financial compensation

093that was long overdue you were willing to approve a resolution to fix a problem that existed for parents i urge you to also step up and approve the resolution to support teachers and staff fix the newer problem of how poorly regarded your employees perceive themselves to be in this school division thank you thank you ms thomas robert asheville i'm robert asheville and i have lived in huddleston for a long time i uh used to be in district three but with pre-district and i believe it's district four now at any rate uh is my intention to go through the spiel about the uh employee rights resolution but that uh i think y'all have heard a lot about that already well let's talk about why you've heard a lot about it already the three folks that voted

094against it mr hill mr nelms and mr davis uh i think made a mistake now i would like to think that both mr davis and mr nelms were operating off of information that they got from mr hill who said that and this is a direct quote i believe all that is in the resolution is in the teacher contract well i've got to teach you contracts right here i was in public education for 48 years i saw a bunch of teacher contracts and i have yet to see one that says anything about according high public esteem or affirms a commitment to teachers and staff that's that's not what the contracts say they do say things like uh how an employee can be dismissed how an employee can be furloughed or how unemployment an employee can lose

095his or her license i'm not criticizing the contracts as ms thomas pointed out there is a need to have a contract in a certain legal fashion but if i remember correctly one of the things that mr hill said in that meeting was that he dealt in fact not emotion well what i'm suggesting to you is fact it's in the contract not the fiction that mr hill used in part to defend what i believe is a very bad decision the irony of mr hill's argument is that the very people he professes to support the employees know what the contracts say hill statements damage the school board's credibility to the very employees we're trying to keep these folks recognize hill's arguments as cheap fiction the school board's timing and failing to support the employee rights resolution could

096not have been worse when the school system was scrambling to fill an increasing number of vacancies the publicity of the negative vote cost the school system additional teachers who decided to leave and capable applicants in addition mr hill stated that he voted for the parents right resolution because the school system was losing parents and something needed to be done to get them back well i congratulate him for realizing that and i also congratulate the board for a unanimous vote to support that but what is uncredit increasingly unreasonable is mr hill's refusal to acknowledge let alone deal with the fact that bedford county is hemorrhaging teachers and staff if mr hill were half is interested in supporting the people who deter that would be the employees who determine the success of our educational system as he

097is in pandering to the mama bears and the papa bears many of whom don't even have their children enrolled in public schools all of their children be of would be afforded a much better education board members nelms and daniel campaigned on a promise to support teachers yet they both voted against the employee rights resolution tonight they have an opportunity to correct that era additionally i encourage mr holmroom to support the resolution thank you for your time thank you mr asheville valerie staton i think what i have to say you've heard a lot about already but i spent time writing this so i'm going to read it my name is valerie staton i'm from district 3 a parent of students in bedford county schools and a teacher at stanton river for going on my 18th year

098um let me start can you hear me okay let me start by thanking everyone that was involved in reinstating steps to the teacher pay scale um it is very much appreciated especially by those of us who have been hanging around since the early 2000s and had our steps frozen early on in our career for teachers who feel appreciated by actions this does a lot in terms of making them feel appreciated and supported for some people feeling appreciated and supported is very important to their sense of self and is what keeps them in relationships personally and professionally but we all feel appreciated and supported in different ways for myself i feel appreciated and supported by actions so the step restoration was a big deal to me to give you another example i had a school year

099where i was hanging on by a thread and this was pre-covered in case you're wondering the administrative staff worked out some solutions and i was able to get the classroom support i needed to provide the kind of instruction that i was accustomed to providing that made me feel appreciated and supported something like the resolution and support of parents and employees is not something that beforehand i would have felt was necessarily needed to be said i'm well aware that i have rights as a parent like i've never questioned that before this year that's never been a question in my mind and that i have rights as an employee so i'd you know beforehand wouldn't have needed or wouldn't have seen a need in either document neither document is harmful and their existence and approval do not

100hurt anything but i personally do not feel that either one was necessary but that's how i feel there are many people who take to heart what is listed in these documents and feel that they are important because they feel appreciated and supported through these positive affirmations and the fact that you would approve one for parents and then not approve one for teachers doesn't sit well with us and with them these same people believe that it's important for you to show your support publicly by voting in favor of the teacher and staff resolution just like you did with the parental rights resolution let me illustrate this further with an example i'm going to use weddings are they necessary not really you can get married at a courthouse or in your living room some people value the

101act of getting married but not the fanfare of it they don't see the need to perform the ceremony out in front of a large crowd of people but in the end they'll get a license to make it legal many people take it up a notch though they rent a venue they spend a ton of money on food invitations decorations and they make a big deal of it they spend hours writing wedding vows specific to their significant other and recite them to each other for all to hear this couple will get the same license that the other couple did and you know the endings for both will be the same but for the second couple it's important for them to make their declaration of love for one another publicly is either couple wrong no they just

102see the value in different modes of expressing their love the same is true for many of our staff members in bedford county voting in favor of the teacher and staff resolution would be an extremely easy way for you to publicly express not maybe your love for teachers but your support for them and the staff of bedford county schools not to mention looking at surrounding universities and the decreasing number of people enrolling in teacher preparation programs this is not an issue that's going to go away so anything that we can do to show teachers and staff that we support them will be beneficial and helpful in the end on another completely unrelated note several of my co-workers have mentioned how helpful it would be if the thousand dollar bonus that is going to be paid in

103december would be paid in november to help pay for costs associated with the christmas season it's just something that i've been hearing a lot about with co-workers of mine maybe it's been thought of already i just wanted to bring it to your attention because it's something i've been hearing thank you you mistaken [Applause] jeannie craig madam chairman members of the board dr bergen thank you for letting me speak tonight my name is jean craig i am a resident of district 4 and i'm also a teacher at forest middle school i'm not only a teacher in the school system but the parent of three jefferson forest graduates for 18 years as a parent and nine years as a teacher i can personally bear witness to the willingness of parents and teachers to work together to achieve

104the best outcome for every student as a board you have the ability to publicly state that you have confidence and trust in both parts of that team in the june 9 school board meeting i was stunned and disappointed i've always had great confidence in the integrity of those who oversee our children's education and some of your votes have shaken that i have never spoken before at a school board meeting in my 30 years in bedford county but tonight i feel i must three members voted against the resolution supporting teachers and staff because as mr hill stated to wset quote that language is in the contracts end quote so i decided to reread my 2022 contract there was no language in there remotely similar to the proposed resolution when by 2023 contract was issued i read

105it really carefully to see if there were any changes it was the same as usual it's a litany of what employees are expected to do and what can happen to them if they don't it states our salary it states we are to work a minimum of seven and a half hour days as well as any extra hours that are considered necessary by our principals the contract does not however even grant teachers the courtesy of putting in writing the name of the school to which we are assigned nor what courses we will teach or how many class periods on top of that our contracts also leave employees feeling vulnerable by stating that the superintendent can reassign any of us to any school in the division in case mr hill has not read a teacher contract as

106closely as i have let me share a list of 14 important words in the proposed resolution that don't exist at all in my contract value recognize quality essential esteem community inspiring involvement relationships student centered highly trained extraordinary efforts and dedication all school board members voted in june to pass the resolution for parental support even though parental rights are already part of the virginia code therefore using the argument that the same statements are quote in our contracts which they are not is indefensible one might argue that this proposed resolution means nothing because we signed yearly contracts but the contracts written as they are do not do much to make employees feel particularly valued a negative vote on this matter would be a slap in the face to every educator in this county who has dedicated their

107lives to serving your children i would specifically like to remind mr nelms that his own campaign literature this past fall contained the phrase for the teachers now is your chance to live up to that promise and all of you to reinforce your belief that we're all on the same team i respectfully ask that in light of the evidence i and others have presented here today that you all vote yes on the proposed resolution to support teachers and staff thank you thank you ms craig heather morello not here okay moving on since we have room for one more with a no-show lisa bray stephen hill jared since don roberts beth hein oh don okay i'm sorry so hi my name is dawn roberts you've seen me before um i just wanted to i'm scheduled to speak

108at the august meeting because i was waitlisted tonight so i just wanted to come tonight and talk about the book issue um i um have two kids well one left in the high school in town in liberty and we talk about books we talk about the books they read it's my job to monitor the books that they read and i do not agree with removing any of the books from the library i have two kids from trauma and my ap english daughter had to read the a book that had to deal with a lot of issues that were triggering to her and so we had a conversation about the book before she read it it was the glass castle it's a really good book i read it when they were in elementary school so we

109had a conversation before she read it i asked her told her about some of the themes in the book and said is this going to be a problem do you think and she said i said we can ask for a different book and she said no i think we're going to be okay i said all right well if there's any issues come to me i'll read it with you if you want no i think i'll be all right so as she read the book we had conversations about that book that's what parents do [Music] so getting rid of the books is not what you need to do you need to talk to your kids find out what they're reading but taking them away because there may be a triggering subject or something that you don't

110want them to read about is ridiculous they're learning it in the bathrooms at school they're learning it on their phones they say if your kid has an instagram or a tick tock or whatever within 30 minutes they've gotten nudity from strangers you're not protecting them by taking books away from them it also teaches empathy we traveled to china when my kids were little the whole time i'm showing them these horrific things that we've seen and i'm like look at how other people live how are you going to learn empathy if you don't view other people's experiences through books you can't do it these are important things that our kids have to learn otherwise they're not going to grow up to be great people and if you don't agree with it it goes against your religion

111then okay don't have them read that book but you don't get to parent everybody else's kids because that's not your belief so this book issue i feel has been beat like a dead horse that needs to stop you guys have made i'm so proud of the board for the compromises that you have made i love everything about it karen fantastic job i've emailed you i love the librarians good job the teachers and librarians but that's enough and there's a large community of us that have just had enough hearing about the books the books are fine thank you mr roberts okay and our 40 minutes for public comment have expired so we will close public comment at this time do i have a motion to approve the consent agenda gentlemen i made commission that we approve

112the consent agenda have a motion for ms harrison do i have a second second second by dr miley any discussion all those in favor signify saying aye aye opposed approval passes okay item number eight we're going to um go back to staff reports that weren't covered before dinner and also the hot topic of the night item 4.02 school attendance zones dr dewis and mr blankenship you thank you um it's no secret that the housing growth bedford county is experiencing in the eastern part of the county requires all service providers to examine our practice and infrastructure to meet the need fire and rescue water and sewer and schools are all challenged to adjust and keep up with new residential demand the school board's facilities committee has been discussing this issue particularly focusing on its impact on

113our school facilities the committee has examined current school capacities and needs discuss costs for maintaining the buildings we have as well as potential future construction costs and develop the following information and recommendations bedford is growing and you see the headline here this is from a few years ago and i don't always believe everything i read in the headlines or see on tv so i got my camera and i went out and took some pictures and these are the pictures that i took and it is of the development that's happening throughout forest and new london we've been tracking this development for years along with the county they provided us lots of good information on when the developments are happening and what's proposed and sometimes the growth is rapid and right now it seems to be coming

114at a really strong pace the housing market has been strong and the appeal of living in bedford county has spurred a lot of new apartment and townhome complexes that are close in close proximity to lynchburg city and our schools our 20 schools were built in locations that were near population centers when they were built however they're no longer all conveniently located for the current growth patterns this map shows census data of population changes from 2010 to 2020 in our county as you already know the growth in forest boonsboro and new london and the declines in in many parts of the rest of the county have had an impact on school enrollments and pressure on school capacities while we were working with the bedford county staff in 2017 i developed this table that was provides multipliers

115used to project school-age children based on types of housing we recently had a chance to test this multiplier with a few new developments in some existing developments in bedford county and what we found was that these multipliers were pretty accurate and in some cases they were very conservative so in future use of these multipliers we should consider this to be the low end of what to expect in terms of the impact of capacity so here's an abbreviated list of the new developments in forest in new london some are proposed some have already been approved some are being built as we sit here so using these multipliers from the previous slide we can project the number of public school students these estimates are concerning because they show that we are that we will have substantial growth

116in k through five for schools that are already near capacity you may have recognized this table we uh this table is part of our enrollment projections that we do every year this is actually the page that projects next years this coming years membership or enrollment and it also includes school capacities in one column and then the percent capacity uh the schools that are highlighted boonesboro forest and new london are ones that have been closed to zone transfers and non-resident students for this coming school year and as you may have seen in the previous slide there's quite a few developments that are going to send kids into these schools in the near future based on these housing developments in close proximity to the schools so while these overall bedford county projections are decreasing from year to

117year the development of new housing will keep the capacity issues relevant in the forest zone elementaries and i did the math this afternoon jf zone has five schools in the elementary schools that capacity of those five schools total is 85 percent the liberty zone's four schools have a capacity of 67 percent and stanton river four schools has a capacity of 68 percent so you can see that the elementaries in forest are quite a bit more full than the other two zones so the facilities committee studied all the data mark just shared and determined that a proposal was needed to meet three main purposes one to relieve the overcrowding at forest zone elementary schools two to make better use of existing capacity at otta river and thomas jefferson elementary schools and to accommodate new development in

118close proximity to forest elementary school and new london academy so we worked with the bedford county gis staff to develop this map which shows areas in which we have proposed redistricting and i just kind of wanted to go through the map and explain some of the changes we are looking at the forest elementary and new london zones as being two that are going to be affected by a lot of growth and so we are proposing that the forest elementary school zone is is shrunk um by sending some students to thomas jefferson and a very few to boonesboro and big island and otter river those are the primary things in the forest elementary school zone the new london zone we would send some students to thomas jefferson and some to otter river and then to make

119room in otter river we would have to send some students to a very few to big island and the majority of those would be going into bedford primary bedford elementary there is this map is seen on board docks and also we have an interactive feature on this map that we we can share if we if the board desires that will allow people to go in and type in their address or see these uh lines proposed lines and they would be able to predict uh you know or see where they would be in terms of redistricting we would predict that these changes would prevent the need for immediate expansion at any school facility uh in the forest zone and kind of in summary this would affect 165 students about 2 percent of the total student population

120about 5 percent of the students in the forest zone and it would also affect 63 students in terms of their graduation zone meaning they would be moved from the graduating from jefferson forest high school to graduating from liberty high school all the elementary students will still have the option if they were rezoned to attend on a zone transfer the school that they are currently attending and also they could request that zone transfer for middle school and high school as you know we've expanded middle schools to accommodate more students so we could those are currently open to zone transfers as well as the high schools so if the board agrees we can make this map available to on the bcps website after the presentation tonight so this is a big undertaking and the facilities committee discussed

121ways of of making this undertaking manageable so to make it most effective the committee discussed a few steps to allow time for affected families to plan and changes to be implemented first of all i don't i don't think any of us would recommend making any changes any sooner than the 23-24 school year we would recommend continuing to close selected schools to zone transfers and these would include boonesboro forest elementary and otter river and add thomas jefferson perhaps to that list as well because its usage with with these proposed changes would be over 90 percent of capacity we use existing policy as mark just explained to grandfather existing students and even their siblings into their current elementary schools if families provided transportation and allow those students whose homes were moved to a different middle school or

122high school zone to apply for a zone transfer if desired so if if the board has consensus to move forward with the consideration of this plan um it will it will need to be approved at a future meeting so between now and then we would recommend that bcps widely communicate the proposed plan to a variety of sources we could host information sessions to share details and answer questions and schedule a public hearing at that point any adjustments to the plan could be made if the board would wish and the board could include a vote of approval of the plan at a future meeting agenda so at this point we would be happy to try to address any questions or certainly uh record those questions and follow up with you if we if we don't have

123those answers tonight and um we appreciate the time to run through this important matter questions just a statement i definitely agree that we should have several opportunities for parents community members to come and ask questions and look at the the map i do think we should post that map that they can go look at tonight but i think it needs to be conversations that staff and some of us are having with them so they understand what's taking place and why um but i definitely think there's there's more information and more questions that we need to answer to parents and community members about i mean i understand the reason for it we've got to do it uh in some shape or form um and i appreciate what you guys have come up with so far um

124thank you to the facilities committee for doing that um but i definitely it's definitely not something we need to decide on next month until we have several sessions for for questions to be asked and answered is it possible for us to send out a survey to the community members that may be impacted by this what questions would you recommend including on a survey um what issues they may have far as transportation that's going to be that's going to be a huge issue especially with rising gas prices that's that's going to come into play um i mean we just have to sit down and come up with a list of questions that we need to put on there but that's definitely going to be one of them miss i had miss harrison first i just wanted

125to say first of all um thank you to the facility committee members dr dewis and mr blankenship for your hard work and putting together i think a very thorough presentation so thank you um very much uh to mr nelms's question i think it's certainly a very important question we want our parents to have the input and the committee certainly discussed that and we felt the way that we could do that would be what dr dewis has said is to have those opportunities where we had community gatherings and where they parents and members of the community could come and share what their concerns are ask the necessary questions so we certainly saw that as a need and one that we wanted very much to involve the community in so i certainly think by having these open

126house formats and inviting all members of the community we would want to have it in different zones and certainly giving them that opportunity to share their concerns absolutely and to have any questions and we would certainly do our best to answer those um and when in the previous effort of tweaking school zones uh we also set up um an email address that we made widely available for anyone to send comments questions um concerns too we compiled those shared those with board members between the introduction of the idea and the eventual vote just as a way to give feedback and so it was fairly open-ended it wasn't a survey with specific questions but it did allow folks the chance if they couldn't make it to a meeting or they just wanted to underscore something they'd shared

127publicly the opportunity to put it in writing and that's certainly something we can do very easily we already have that email address set up the interactive map i would agree with mr hill that making that available to our community to our parents is a must it's really important daniels yeah thank you guys for putting this together it's a massive undertaking and um i know it's been on everybody's mind for a while um it's not optimal i would guess you know but as a county we just have to you know we have to play the cards that were dealt um i appreciate the uh the grandfathering aspect of that i think that's that's good i still think we may get a little bit of push back there especially with mr nom saying about transportation it's not

128just about gas parents may have a preference to have their child attend a certain school but the reality is they may also have to leave earlier to get to work or make other arrangements or you know other things like that so i'm glad we're talking about i'm glad we're not rushing anything but um this is from the emails that i've received i can tell you it's it's at the forefront of a lot of people's minds and rightfully so so thank you and i'm looking forward to even more conversation um dr dewis how long and mr blankenship how long do you think if when when we go through this and i know mr blankenship for years you have been almost spot on in in your projections how long do you think this will hold how long

129before we have to do this again just in your best guess i mean if if you don't know that's fine i understand i just i don't mean to put you on the spot i i think that you're looking at five to ten years best case scenario you buy 10 years and maybe things change i think it depends on the housing market i think it depends on what happens over the next year or so if we go into a recession it may slow down but this is going to help by the time all this development is finished most of these kids that we grandfather in will be gone on to middle school i think it does we've learned from the last time we did the redistricting that it does when you grandfather them in and allow

130them to stay at the school a lot of people choose that to take up take you up on that option and they drive their students to school so the draw down is going to be slow it's going to over four years or so you'll see those numbers come down but what we're thinking is that all this new development is going to replace all those kids they're going to just keep coming in in those two zones in new london and forest so i would think that it could fix it it could be five years and you're looking at overwhelming numbers and you have to make another choice in terms of what to do for classroom space yeah and one thing i'll just add is i think this is a really good faith effort to try to

131avoid the cost and expense of finding trying to add classroom space trying to use the classroom space we already have instead of adding on to a building building a new school you know we hope that that this can at least delay uh the need to do that uh if not prevent it thank you and and i totally understand the purpose of doing this and anyone who knows me knows i've been fighting for zone transfers for or redistricting for a long time um now when you said something about the zone transfer students and closing off the three schools for zone transfers how many zone transfers do we already have in those schools and will they still be allowed to stay there if we're going close to zone transfers um i can get you those numbers we

132do have a spreadsheet that we've been keeping in terms of the numbers i would say that the past practice has been to allow those students to stay until you know the the approval for a zone transfer states that they could stay through the sequence of grades offered at that school so if we were to change that you know that would be kind of a change in our practice and probably policy as well so that if we didn't want those students to stay we would have to change that but as it currently stands they are allowed to stay through that sequence of grades so it'd be through fifth grade at our elementaries and i'll just add that three of the schools we mentioned to close to zone transfers are currently closed to zone transfers and have

133been for the past few years and so really the numbers of students who've been enrolling from outside the district really are limited to the exceptions that the policy allows children of staff members for example and so there really are many fewer than there used to be because those practices haven't been in place for a number of years in most of the schools we mentioned um and i just want to make one comment um as i touched on just a second ago in fact when mr leamy was on the board we've been fighting for this redistricting for a long time we have been hoping to see it more beneficial toward the liberty zone and um to only get 50 students there is pretty disappointing to me um and i don't believe that this is going to

134go deep enough i believe forest is growing by leaps and bounds that we we can calculate all of our formulas that we want but i don't think this is going to hold long and we're going to be revisiting this again in just a matter of a few years and i think this really needs to go a lot deeper any more questions i do have just not a question but just to comment uh the fact that i do serve on the facility committee and the numerous conversations and the thorough work that the team has done i know in the community there has been questions posed to me comments that have been made regarding school closure i want the community to know that the facility committee never discussed any school closures what we wanted to address is

135capacity issues not closing of any schools but addressing the capacity i feel the need to share that with you because i know there's a lot of discussion that's being had in the community regarding a comment that was made about closing one particular school bedford primary school i want you to know the bedford primary school community that that discussion was never held among the members of the facility committee at all thank you give ms harrison anything else before we move on kirby if i might just just to clarify so in the upcoming days is it the board's wish to go ahead and make this plan widely distributed distribute perhaps the email address to solicit comments make the interactive tool available and to begin to work to schedule some information sessions we don't have any dates proposed

136tonight but um is is that is that something we should go as far as to do in the before the next meeting there's you agree with that i i certainly do i think it's time for us to move forward on this plan um and so i would ask that the fellow board members that you would really approve and say yes to us moving forward with the in the direction that dr dewis has shared dr maylie i agree mr work miss hill i want to use the word proposed plan and we're moving forward to educate parents and community we haven't made a commitment of what we're doing but i am in agreement that we should move forward in making sure it's information that is shared widespread um and that we commit to having those meetings mr

137daniels and i agree as well we need to get information out as widely and as quickly as possible okay there being nothing further with that let's move on to item nine action items item 9.01 resolution and support of teachers and staff do i have a motion to approve the resolution chairman i make a motion that we approve the resolution and support of teachers and staff as presented i have a motion by dr miley dual the second second by ms hairston any discussion i have some discussions um i'll say a couple months ago when we uh presented the the parental resolution and the and the teachers resolution that we were asked to vote that day uh i really i i said i really appreciated the thought behind that but i felt it was important that we

138uh gave the public a chance to comment on on that uh we did that um during that time i received comments you know for the parental resolution and during that entire month i didn't receive any comments um in in full support of the teacher one uh i've heard things from teachers like it like it's like some comments that have been said here that they didn't go far enough and that they wish that it did more so with that being said i voted no last month i'm prepared to vote no as it is written tonight i do have some amendments to it that i would like to present to the board and read out loud for everybody if that's okay madam chairman there's a motion on the floor so we have to vote on that amendment

139where we're going to be it doesn't matter that's an amendment to this it's we have a motion to accept it as presented well i'm not a parliamentarian but if it's phrased as a substitute motion then you can have discussion on a substitute motion it wasn't you would have to take action it was phrased as presented exactly so we have to vote on that first then we can move to any amendments you may wish to do let's move it to a vote i mean i think madam chairman yeah i think we need to move it for a vote but i think you know i just want to say that we we've heard from quite a few people tonight and i think it's important just to review what some of those people have said um mr smith

140um said this is the in the best interest of everyone the division everyone cindy gillespie this could help solidify us as a team leanne ellis teachers are dead last in this county shannon thomas teachers are not the enemy valerie staton values and hearing the school board that supports teachers and staff gene craig parents and teachers working together confidence and trust in both parts of the team you know i have to agree with so many people who spoke tonight and and use the words fact over emotion um the fact is that these words were not in the contract as so many people pointed out the fact is that the parent rights are in the code of virginia so if and and we you know it was alleged that that the previous board voted against parent rights

141we don't even have the authority to do that the only one who has the authority to do that under article 1 section 7 of the constitution of the commonwealth of virginia and the laws of virginia would be the general assembly and so we really this is not going to harm anyone but it is going to take teachers and staff and let them know just what some of these comments were tonight that we value and we support them and i would urge us to do that i mean we got so much negative publicity this does no one any good chair ever mr hill i'll just say well played uh it's exactly what i think was planned is to water down the parent resolution and so parent resolution passed unanimous so i'm proud of that i continue

142to hear that this verbiage is not in contracts so let's go through that because the contract that i was provided states now therefore and in consideration of the mutual promise and covenants here and after set forth the parties agree as follows and if you'll go down to number two it says employees shall comply with all school laws board of education regulations and all rules and regulation made by the school board in accordance with law and board of education regulations and shall make promptly and accurately all reports required by the superintendent and so some of the things that you had in your verbiage was around free public education high performing schools value of teachers community involvement robust selection of classes and after school established curriculum training all of that is very important but if you'll refer

143to our policies and regulations all of that verbiage which you were trying to put into a resolution is in the contract because of policies and regulations and if you'll go and look at those some of those include policies g a l a l e b l i l g b g b a g b gcbb gcbc kc and i'm sure someone will go back at whatever time and repeat those but all of that is in the contract and so what what we were trying to say is that there needs to be something that is being given as a statement to our teachers and staff and so if you're willing to to do the amendment and listen to what that amendment is i think it it behooves all of us to say we want to support

144our teachers and staff but we want to give them something that shows that we are listening to them and we've heard them loud and clear and support them in that way but this resolution is not giving them anything and what i will go back and say you clearly did take away parental rights last year i asked that very specific question before we voted i asked it multiple times and one of the members of the board clearly says if that's the way you want to put it yes we are removing parental rights so that is a fact that board at the time voted to remove parental rights that statement of parental rights resolution was to give that back to our parents and to make sure they understood we supported them in that that was the point

145of that resolution so when you say it's not in the contract i disagree it clearly states that it's policies and regulations if you go and read what we've set forth the majority of those resolutions and policies cover our teachers our staff our students following the law all of it's in there i believe we have a motion on the floor to vote on the resolution i have a question about the chair i hope one person speaking at a time please we're not going to get out of control with this yes miss harrison um as i said we have a motion on the floor um we need to move forward on that motion phil you said one more thing so if we vote i want to make sure that we are able as a board to go

146back and make an amendment so we can make another recommendation on what's stated here as what's written correct it's considered an amendment are you asking me to respond whoever can respond because i want to make sure we have the right to do an amendment as it's written and then take a vote the motion that was made was was ms harrison is right motion's on the floor motion's been made seconds been given that needs to be voted on unless miss harrison wishes to was it miss hair dr miley i'm sorry unless dr milly wishes to withdraw her motion that is an option um if that's not how how the board wishes to proceed this is voted on um somebody else can make another motion for the proposed revised resolution yes sir perfect that's what i just

147want to make sure we could okay perfect do you want to amend your emotions so we can at least look at what what is there and then we can go back to the original one i think we should carry out this motion i don't want us getting into a practice of of going back and um not carrying out emotion i think it's important as i've said numerous of times that would be consistent with our practices and our policies and this is a practice of our so we have a motion on the floor i have a motion on the floor in a second regarding the parental resolution as presented originally and a second so oh we've had the discussion i'll call for vote all those in favor signify saying i i all those opposed ms johnson

148will you pull the board please daniels no mrs harrison yes mr hill no mr holbrook i'm sorry sir no thank you mrs kirby yes dr meely mr nelms i'm sorry no thank you motion does not pass four to three thank you oh it's your amendment so i make a motion that we um read and then vote on the amended uh resolution support of teachers and staff you're making a motion to read it first read it and then vote because you have a person second yes that you can do that absolutely it is a different it is a separate document from the original document presented well it's amended but it is not the original document so it is not as it is there okay so i will i got second by mr knopes can i begin

149yes a resolution in support of the teachers and staff of bedford county public schools a resolution to affirm the commitment of the bedford county school board to the support of bedford county public school teachers and staff bringing solutions that are both tangible and sustainable medical autonomy whereas bedford county school board believes the teachers and staff of bedford county public schools have a fundamental right to medical autonomy with respect to new vaccines new vaccine technology and masking decisions involving health and well-being reside to the individual and are left to make those decisions between them and their doctors and administration protection whereas bedford county school board believes that the teachers and staff have a fundamental right to respectfully voice their opinion of policies procedures and issues they will not be subjected to disciplinary actions or unfair treatment

150based on their rights to speak out and voice concern directly related to the treatment or work conditions cases of mistreatment will be presented to the board to ensure fair treatment teacher and staff assessments will be based on evaluations prior to vocalizing concerns severe workload changes expectations and other reprimands will be reviewed to safeguard teachers and staff proper chain of command must be followed initially however the ruling will not discourage nor limit the teachers and staff appeal process by bringing concerns directly to the board by the teacher after the proper steps have been taken and work-life balance whereas the bedford county school board recognizes the physical and mental health demands teachers and support staff experience while providing the best school experience to our students our goal is to create work environments that honor and respect the

151whole health of our teachers and staff inside and outside of the classroom teachers and staff are at their best when they are well rested respected perform self-care bedford county public schools recognizes the burden of teaching and believes that a minimum of two days of non-instructional work days or 16 hours be given as an option of remote time virtual per school year the bedford county school board also believes that paid days are transferable among teachers and staff to help aid co-workers and earning protection whereas bedford county school board believes that economic conditions beyond teachers and staff's control can harm household financing finances including but not limited to cost of living adjustments and rising benefits costs salary benefits and insurance will be reviewed each year to consider the rising costs that negatively affect negatively impact compensation levels

152and competitive pay the bedford county school board recognizes the importance of appropriate compensation in a competitive marketplace teacher and staff compensation benefits and insurance will be reviewed each year against local inflation as well as other surrounding counties to remain competitive to support and garner the best teacher and staff workforce available to make sure that bedford county public schools offer the best compensation for their teachers and staff and placement selection whereas bedford county school board recognizes the importance of financially supporting teachers and staff based on their years of service and academic achievement within bedford county bedford county public schools are committed to retain the best teachers and staff affirming positions will be filled based on qualifications and professional history not any other outside indicators hiring decisions will not be made based on personal political diversity or

153any other influences hiring decisions will be based on academic merit and classroom credentials for the best candidate choices application windows will remain open for the full term regardless of application quantity to um to provide enough time for all interested applicants to apply and safety and security whereas the bedford county school board recognizes the need for our teachers and staff to feel safe and secure in their work environment we resolve to protect teachers physical safety in the classroom and staff in the workplace when working with students by supporting disciplinary action that fosters a safe and positive atmosphere bedford county public school will provide teachers and staff involved with access to the disciplinary decisions and the ability to appeal rulings if corrective actions interfere with the teachers staff teachers and staff safety and well-being additionally this applies

154to the actions of students that impede the teaching the teachers and staff ability to do their job effectively or create a hostile work learning environment all concerns are to follow through proper chains of command before being brought before the board if the teachers and staff are not satisfied or feel safe bedford county public schools agree to have local law enforcement engaged if necessary for teacher and staff safety and teacher communication whereas the bedford county school board believes teachers need support for students outside of their class bedford county public school parents should be made aware of all incidents arising from their child's behavior at bedford county public schools teachers and staff should expect parents to be notified when their child is involved with disciplinary concerns to help facilitate the most desired outcome to be the most

155productive to con and contributing student and coverage support the bedford county school board understands the burden of teachers and staff absences rest solely on their colleagues ability to provide coverage and substitution availability bedford county public schools will contract to provide full-time substitute pool extended to all teachers contract labor force uh workforce will support teachers requests for time off around testing holidays and workshop days without placing burden on co-workers substitution workforce prioritizes retired teachers offering a higher wage as expressed as a dilemma by teachers similar support systems are also being considered for bus drivers and other habitually short staff positions within bedford county public schools to alleviate the burden of our employees and on-site visitation whereas bedford county school board agrees on-site visitation to the schools are the most engaging way to provide insight to the

156teachers staff children and school conditions bedford county school board members agree to visit schools and their district for no less than 40 hours per calendar year while in office meeting with teachers administrators and staff and now they're bor now therefore be it resolved that the bedford county school board affirms our fundamental commitment to the support of our teachers and staff and their invaluable contribution to the education of all students in bedford county public schools and be it further resolved that the bedford county school board acknowledges that without the dedication of our teachers and staff and broad support of their extraordinary efforts the high quality education currently afforded to our students would not be possible [Applause] we have a motion in a second correct any discussion yes i i do have some discussion um to mr

157daniels and the other board members who certainly spent the time to create this resolution i i say to you thank you for your time and effort that you put in to this document here um i would say as i read it and of course i wasn't able to read it thoroughly and as i listen to you i really feel that a lot of the areas that you have addressed here fall under the umbrella of policy if you were to look in our policy regarding staffing and teachers you're going to find a lot of these topics and areas here are addressed there and a resolution to me is the very contrast of that and so i would have concerns about some of the language here i i think it's it's already addressed in many of our

158policies i just wanted to say that that's i think it's important to to keep in mind the difference between a resolution as so many of our speakers have shared with us today and i know you all know that but i think it's important to recognize that a resolution uh versus contract and policies are are vastly different we want to just acknowledge and give just admiration to the work and that the teachers and staff members have done and all that's all i i have to say i would ask that we that fellow board members this is our first time tonight receiving this i i need time additional time to read over this further so i would ask that we delay any movement on on this until we have time to review it and to look over

159it i know other fellow board members have said that in the past that we they needed time to look over the documents and i'd like to ask for that to be given i i would agree with that i think a lot of like i'm just looking at the safety security part is in the code of conduct we already have a lot of this in the crisis plans um you know a lot of this to me looks like policy if we want to do this then and when you want to fix something um you can fix it through policy in a division but still in here um i i don't see where we're talking to the teachers and and and recognizing the expertise they bring to our table what we're doing teachers and parents who spoke

160tonight were very clear they just wanted to hear what we had presented last month and um you know it just i guess we're not going to do that so that's that's just up to the board but this seems to be more policy related it reads like policy it it um it's in a lot of our policy like i said just look at the code of conduct and the the uh crisis plans and uh some of the other administrative protections how how you go about doing anything they don't want to hear that they you know uh that they have a way to do something they what they want to hear is that you know use those words we support you so that's up to you know that's up to the board um i heard specifically from

161teachers that these were concerns of theirs whether it's in policy mentioned somewhere in policy or not that's what we that's what we've been hearing so it's been said a resolution to try to solve a problem and and you know it's not true either but okay i'm sorry not true in your words but some of us the other thing that i'd like to say is that just doing something for the sake of doing it in my business we don't do ready fire aim we do ready aim fire we want to make sure it's important to recognize what's the importance of the teachers but it's important to get the policies and and and the effort right and that's what i'm thinking that we're trying to do i do not doubt anybody's heart in saying that they wanted

162to present something to let the teachers know what what they felt i can tell you that i had no comments again positive for for that saying that they really felt like we should do it however after i voted no i got a many comments saying that how dare you and i understand that i've had several conversations actually pleasant conversations with teachers and we at least came to an understanding of even though we disagreed we at least disagreed respectfully and we uh came to a level of understanding i understand wanting to be recognized and and having a pat on the back but if we can do that in a way that also addresses the other concerns they have i think we put together a better bill and or a better statement and i sincerely hope that

163we would pass this unanimously because i think it does what you're saying that we should do in an effort to then also go further for our teachers and staff and if it's in policy and if it's not in policy we'll address that and we'll work together to make sure that we make a spread a stronger bedford county public school system for everybody [Music] yes dr um i think your idea of looking into policy to see if this is in policy is a is a really good idea um that's where a lot of this in my opinion should be is in the policy um but you know you say you want to fix something well the parent resolution fix nothing because we didn't have the power to do that they had the rights guaranteed under the

164law to them and i think it's one two four zero and uh two two one uh you can there there's plenty of places in the law that guarantee the rights so even if we had a motion which we never had a motion that said we are going to remove parent rights we never had that what was conflated was a vote on the health plan saying we're going to remove parent rights there was never a motion somebody look it up and show me where we had a motion that said we are going to remove parent rights but all of that is in the law everything is guaranteed in the law to them so if you're saying you want to make it better you want to make it right i applaud that but the parent right was

165already in the law we didn't need to redo because we can't do anything to take away those rights the parents lost nothing because we never had the power to take it away so this to me just is i just don't think this is a you know a a good document in in my my opinion i'm entitled to my opinion i just don't think it's i mean in all the emails i've gotten administration administration protection uh work life balance competitive pay earning protection safety and security have been all the emails i've been getting so to me that's what the teachers are wanting us to pass a resolution on not just words they want action right but a resolution in all you know is is not a super binding document so therefore that's why we immediately if

166we want that then let's put it in policy not a resolution put it in positive because that has teeth in it exactly so does this resolution is also something that we're saying that we stand behind so that means that the additional action would be for us to then take control in policy and then for us as a board to most likely unanimously approve any of those other changes that we feel are necessary this is putting action behind not just saying we support you which is absolutely important but showing them that we support them that's what we're doing so then we should we should vote i was going to say the resolution would do just that it will do just that we have policy that covers so many of these areas mr daniels that you've included

167here we we actually do have that so we do not disagree that these are important things to put out there right i don't disagree that they're important things but what i'm saying is you what i think i just heard you said un or understood you to say was that um you know we're putting it in here and then we put it you know we'll work on policy but that's backwards we should be working on policy if we have if our teachers have grievances about the administration or about work-life balance or about medical autonomy then we should put that in policy because that's what we fall back on if i was a teacher now and and i you passed this resolution and i wanted something that was medically you know auto medical autonomy this board could

168turn around very easily the administration could turn around very easily and say it's not a policy it's not our policy we don't have a policy for that and then we'd be coming back to you to say let's make policy so the first step should be making policy for these sorts of things this is just this to me is is is is not where this should be we when when you fix something in a division you fix it through policy one moment please mr holbrook has asked to be recognized well i missed the last meeting so i kind of caused all this not caused it but we wouldn't be here had i been here last time or we wouldn't have this in front of us you know and i'll say one side's arguing saying that the

169first resolution that was said and these things were set in the contract y'all are saying these things are setting the policy and i mean i think that's all that's kind of irrelevant you know and i know you know and i agree with some points that mr daniels has that you know this is just kind of an atta boy a pat on the back but you know even though your wife or husband knows you love them they still want you to say that i hope my wife's watching this [Laughter] you know and i thought about this a lot and and what you're saying i get what you're saying but i don't think adding these things takes away from saying we support the teachers i mean i support the teachers you know i can't speak for everybody

170up here i think we all do and like you had said that one of the teachers come up here and said that the teachers aren't the enemy and and all of this this whole problem has stemmed from a lack of communication between parents between teachers all you know across the board whatever it is you know that that's what's the cause of all failing relationships no matter what it is is a lack of communications and i i hate to say this but i think a lot of it was a lack of communication from the parents more so than the teachers and it's on both sides but you know i think we should pass this i think we should vote on this this is just like say my opinion but whether it be policy or not you're

171hearing it from us from from me from my words from my mouth straight from the horse's mouth not you know policy or or contracts or whatever you know um that's my two cents you know i don't see a problem with this and i mean and the reason i voted no was not because of i don't support teachers by any means at all i mean i would there's no way i could do what y'all do absolutely positively no way and it and i greatly appreciate what you do yeah i'm sure there's some bad teachers there's some bad parents that's how it is but the vast majority of everybody involved in this are good people and have good intentions and with all that being said we really really need to communicate with each other better whether it

172be through the pta or whatever stuff's got to happen i mean because it's just a bunch of bickering back and forth you know like you say doing something just for the sake of doing it you know that that's i don't think we should do that either regardless of what side you're on or what you're saying uh what you're bringing to the table this does put some action you know kind of you know puts action behind what we're saying that we support the teachers so that's all i got to say when mr daniels presented this or when we talked during the discussion period of the previous motion you made a statement that dr milley's resolution was presented to you just a couple of days before you didn't have time to review it and i know last

173last month month before i said we need to present and then go for another month which i really do firmly believe we need to do however i allowed it tonight due to the public outcry that we've been getting to do something i personally would like to have another month i would like to have the month to review this and bring it back as an action item next month and to allow us to look at it and possibly make some suggested revisions to it but again you all have a motion and a second on the floor just as dr mealy and miss harrison did and demanded a vote um you could do the same thing however as a board as a fellow board member i am asking that you withdraw it to give us time to

174review it but the choice is yours sure i would like to vote on it it's an amendment hold on yes ma'am i i certainly think that what you just stated is a very reasonable approach and um i would certainly support your statement thank you miss harrison however we are being called for a vote and we have the original first and second on the floor am i doing this according to proper protocol okay i'm gonna close the discussion on this all those in favor signify by saying aye all those opposed say name nay ms johnson will you please pull the board yes mrs harrison mr hill yes mr holbrook yes mrs kirby no dr maylie no mr nelms yes motion passes 403 thank you okay we will move on then to the resolution for tax credits

175do i have a motion chairman i uh make a motion that we accept the resolution for the tax credits as presented have a motion by dr mealey you'll have a second second by mr nilms all any discussion so this is a resolution this is a yes oh and we're taking action on is there it was presented last month okay but it's a resolution yes mr hill all right any further discussion all those in favor signify saying i i opposed motion carries do i have a motion for the approval policy updates presented at the june 9 2022 meeting i have a motion by mr hill do i have a second second by ms harrison any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries item 10 superintendent's report dr bergen yes ma'am

176well let's take a moment and celebrate our students and our staff's accomplishments since we were last together because towards the end of the school year we had some amazing accomplishments from our students i just want to take a moment to highlight some of those so the first five recognitions tonight all have to do with the outstanding accomplishments of our girls and boys outdoor track teams starting with the school we're in what a year it was for jefferson forest girls outdoor track team they finished the season as region champs and state runners-up and brought home many individual accolades as well so i know they're listening so they can hear their name congratulations to you hannah petty john the region champ and state runner-up in the pole vault and zoe lamanna region champ and state runner-up in

177the 800 meter and 1600 meter and there are many other individual region champs and runners-ups including sean esco candice mciver and alexis plaster not to be outdone by the girls but the jf boys outdoor track team also had an outstanding season as well congratulations to them on being region champs brandon adams and addison hilton in their events and region runner-up finishes for alex jordan brian avison landon epperson jacob white jonah packer and keegan venable the liberty high school girls outdoor track athletes also proved dedication pays off susannah allen finished second in pole vault in her regional championship while the team of hayley clark brianna adams mary malcolm and natalie powers finished second in the district in the 4 by 800 meter relay now down to the river stanton river boys outdoor track team recently found

178plenty of success in their regional competition finishing in first place with spencer kearns in the pole vault along with first place finishes in the 4x400 relay team of alfred finney malachi gregory spencer kearns and kayden ryder as well as first place in the 4 by 800 relay team of spencer kearns caden rider jack weddle and sam weddle malachi gregory was also the region runner-up in the long jump and the triple jump well here's a familiar golden eagle athlete you recognize her jenny levine probably recognize her from her many accomplishments on the basketball court however in the springtime in outdoor track competition jenny finished first in her region and state runner-up for girls outdoor track in the high jump awesome job jenny outside of sports each year high schools have the opportunity to compete for the

179national guard cup they do this by earning points for the school's performance in not only the vhsl sanctioned sports events but also the academic events including scholastic bowl creative writing theater forensics debate broadcast newspaper yearbook magazine and as we learned tonight film congratulations to jefferson forest cavaliers on winning this year's class 4 national guard cup earlier in our public recognitions of students we had a chance to recognize the jf boys soccer program and as we stated then and it's worthy of repeating nothing short of phenomenal these past two years coming so so close to a state championship not once but twice this team has been a force to be reckoned with and remains a soccer powerhouse in the commonwealth we'd like to provide individual recognition to kyle butcher walker stabbings and wilson hetrick who were

180all selected to this year's vhsl class 4 all-state first team as well as to kyle butcher who was named the seminal district player of the year and of course to the coach scott zaring seminole district coach of the year other than soccer here at jf it was a spectacular year to be a player coach parent or fan of jf baseball hard work paid off this year and translated into mutt's success with the team being district co-champions winning the region and making it all the way to the state semifinals special congratulations to brecken nace who has been named to this year's vhsl class 4 all-state first team peyton smith region player of the year and head coach ryan gilland region coach of the year hats off to the jf baseball team on their accomplishments the stanton

181river high school girls softball team won their blue ridge district title finishing with a strong 19-4 record including 9-1 in league play in addition varsity softball coach scott cisco was named the 2022 blue ridge district coach of the year congratulations to you coach and all of your golden eagles also earlier in public recognition we had a chance to pause and recognize the students from the vhsl film festival for their production of clay boy that film festival included 103 films submitted by the filmmakers from 24 different high schools and as we mentioned that and we'll repeat now it was jefferson forest who took first place in the animation category for clayboy and was the audience's choice for winner if you haven't seen it we learned tonight it's on youtube other than sports i'm just so pleased

182with the accomplishments in bedford county with our ffa students i had the chance recently to attend the 96th annual virginia ffa convention with our students held at virginia tech liberty ffa chapter was recognized there in front of all of their colleagues as the southridge area star chapter and gold rated national chapter and there were a number of accomplishments including a first place finish by the liberty high school vet science team consisting of kaylee lindsey megan cash anna gross and natalie corbin that team is now going to compete at the national level at the national ffa convention in indianapolis in october congratulations also to liberty students mckenna garrett charlie moser and kevin paynechild for their state proficiency awards as well as to haley carhort perry dooley mckenna garrett alexis hensley and brooke hodges for being state

183degree recipients and lastly we're just so proud and pleased to share that mckenna garrett last year's liberty ffa president was nominated and conferred as the new virginia ffa state secretary this is two years in a row bedford county has had one of our students conferred as an as an officer for the entire commonwealth congratulations to you mckenna and now on to those golden eagles the smith mountain ffa chapter had two state winners beth gillespie for the outdoor recreation proficiency award and emma jackson for the swine production placement proficiency award state degree recipients included emily creasy cody burnett beth gillespie jacob nichols and michelle winand as a chapter the smith mountain ffa earned the national chapter award for the southridge area for strengthening agriculture as well as being named a superior chapter and a gold rated

184national chapter congratulations again to all of our liberty and our stanton river students and their faculty sponsors for their achievements as recognized at the virginia ffa convention and finally we all of course i hope had a chance to celebrate independence day to commemorate the passage of the declaration of independence by the continental congress on the 4th of july in 1776. i'd like to take this moment to thank all of those who have served our country or whose loved ones have served our country to protect and preserve the rights and the freedoms for which we are also very blessed we are after all the home of the free because of the brave madam chair that concludes my remarks for the evening thank you dr bergen move on to item 11. matters from the board um [Music]

185when we at the organizational meeting when we appointed the liaisons to the to the different boards it was just on a temporary basis until the beginning of the year so it's time for those to come up for review again and put it on a full calendar basis um now i know all these are already covered laura board you're on that will you continue to serve for the year okay roanoke governor school thank you central virginia governor's school yes okay thank you stem academy that's me will you continue that for another year i will continue and i have to be honest i haven't been to but one meeting because everything's been virtual and then changing meetings but yes i will stay on that and and be able to attend but from what i understand cb's the

186central virginia gov school and that is normally the same seat so yes i will take it okay thank you very much mr hill special occasion special education advisory committee okay mr daniels so everyone who was on there before has agreed to do it for another year and thank you very much for your dedication and your commitment okay committee reports let's start let's see last time i think we started with mr daniels for committee reports so we'll start with ms harrison hey well i have nothing to report regarding the laurel school um since the last meeting that we had and i shared with you all there hasn't been any additional meetings as far as for the facility committee basically dr dewis and mr blankenship has shared that report with you all so i have nothing additional

187to share with you harrison dr maylie uh i don't have anything you do not have on being um before uh ronald valley governor school until october and we don't have a finance committee meeting yet support anything okay miss chill uh no updates for stem academy our next meeting for central virginia gov school is next month and then as far as the iga we continue to go through policies that have not been reviewed recently so we're going through that process i would encourage any board member that has a policy that you want reviewed to let me or mr daniels know so we can bring it up during that committee meeting and bring it back to the board thank you mr mr nelms mr daniels okay we'll start with the comments and concerns from school board members

188mr daniels let's start with you um regarding the the the policy that we uh had discussed tonight for the for the freedom policy uh i love that we're turning um words into action here i think it's uh it's tremendously important for us to show our children um and that they should be proud of the country that they live in a country where their opinions can be heard and ideas can be debated i think we it's it's important to understand that the reason that we can do that is because of the people that have come before us that have fought for this country and have died for this country um and i think it's important that we show respect and gratefulness and i i i think it's a great policy and i'm excited that uh we

189work together on the iga to do it and i will say this about our committee the last meeting that we had we discussed a lot of different things and i felt it was just such a cohesive meeting it kind of flew by but everybody was was chiming in and helping each other and we worked really hard over the last couple months to to get to where we are with some of these and we hope that it will be received um very well um i want to go back to graduation and um you know i i was not in attendance at graduation um last september in 2021 but this this position was not available i always um i family is incredibly important to me and um i had a trip that was planned and it was

190it was important that i go 19 of my family members and and we do it each year so so i was there so i apologize for not being there um if if i was in this position previously i would have made arrangements um i did take a lot of time to thank uh and to congratulate the graduates i i was at the um i was at the graduation parade in downtown bedford um on that family trip i did get engaged so it was it was a pretty important trip that that i that i took but i can tell you that moving into next year i have already moved the week that we that we go so that i'll be able to attend graduation next year that's all i have thank you mr daniels mr nims

191um i don't really have much to report um i do want to thank uh stanton river cheerleading team for inviting me to their june 25th car wash they actually made me wash a few cars so it doesn't matter behind that invite but that was that was a cool event and while we were we're all up here we have different views i really just think we need to start working together more and stop letting social media stuff like that divide us even more we need to start working together to make this division better um and to the lady who bought up my campaign promise earlier we're gonna go ahead and check that one off the list because the parent resolution and the teacher resolution is now passed so um that's all i got holbrook dr maylie

192um i just have a couple of things um i know that you had talked about the twenty-five percent consequences okay just wanted to find out where that was and then we did have a a person so i guess i would ask mr um hagler and and dr bergen um is there any possibility of moving that thousand dollar bonus from um november from december to november for our employees i have to look at the language um from the state um it states it was you know the initial things just the summary was that it was uh to be paid in december um so i'll bring in i'll bring that back to the board at the next meeting we could possibly look at a a totally separate payroll in early december i'll check with my payroll department

193but we'll bring an option back to the board at the next meeting and see what we can do i think if we can do that i certainly agree with the lady who spoke that it would be very helpful for us to have that um i want to thank the staff too for all their presentations and and tech always for setting up and all the work you do for this um this is not easy i mean we talk about the hours you spend but it doesn't even include the time it takes you to pack a truck car whatever it is and bring it over here and unload it and then load it back up again so thank you so much for all of your effort here um i know it's a lot i i hope everybody

194realizes how much it takes for you to do that so thank you for that and thank you to um also our staff and our teachers because i've heard from lots of teachers already working for the new school year that's what teachers do and we really appreciate that because if you haven't been a teacher then you know you don't know how difficult it is to be prepared for that year you have a quote work week that just disappears so i used to tell new teachers don't count on the work week because it's going to be all taken away and you'll have things to do so you have to really do all that stuff before and i think our teachers are already going to be back in the buildings very soon putting their classrooms together organizing books

195they've done planning over the summer so thank you all so much for all of that work oh no ma'am i'm sorry thank you i also would like to just thank everyone who came out tonight um to recognize our students and their accomplishments so just congratulations to all of our students jf students for their their hard work and efforts i also want to just thank everyone who came out um that spoke during public comments thank you so very much each and every one of you your voices are important your what what concerns you is very important to each of us each board member so thank you so much for coming out i hope we continue to see these large groups of community members coming out and voicing their concerns and asking the necessary questions so thank

196you for coming out we really appreciate that and your comments too and i also have to just give a big shout out to the teacher representation tonight the stanton river zone um this is their summer break and they've come out to voice their concerns and i want you to know that so many of you your comments really moved me maybe it's because i'm an educator a former educator teacher myself and so i certainly understand how you feel and i just wanted you to know that um i know all the board members we all appreciate all of your hard work and all of your efforts which each of us have spoken to that tonight but i just want you to know that you really touched my heart tonight so thank you again for coming out and

197continue to come out don't let this be your last time continue to come and voice your concerns and um and just praises too if there's some good things we're doing which there's lots of good things we're doing come and share those things with us too um i also want the community know that i stand by my support and my vote for the staff and teacher resolution that was presented in june i stand back by that i i believe that i'm and i'm very sorry that we've had to go through this once again when it could have been resolved and settled in june i would encourage our community our parents to please visit the website that dr dewis and his team will be putting on on the website regarding the interactive map for the capacity report

198that we've brought before you so just encouraging you to please take a look at that i also want to take the time to acknowledge the work of the intergovernmental committee as it relates to some of the revision of the policies the bill of rights that was mentioned tonight as well and i also want to thank community members who have come out and they have spoken at previous board meetings regarding the bill of rights and also i want to acknowledge dr sheree whitehurst she brought this before the the school board before our community regarding the bill of rights and so i i do want to thank the members of the community and also dr whitehurst for bringing this to the board's attention and i just hope that all of our staff our students our teachers and

199everyone is just enjoying their summer break just continue to have fun relax and enjoy yourself and just the best summer that you can possibly have and thank you again everyone thank you thank you miss harrison mr hill yeah i just want to say uh congratulations to the jf athletes soccer team that we showed appreciation to and congratulations to tonight i may be a little partial to one of those guys he doesn't live in my house but i've watched those boys uh grow up and learn to love the game of soccer and it's been a privilege from my point of view to watch the accomplishments and i certainly think we've got a lot of big things coming next year and the year after for jf soccer team not only did we recognize jf's soccer but also

200the cavalier theater tonight spence and nicki continued to do just an awesome job and so um state champions in two different categories um i think you said it was the first time ever which is just another huge accomplishment uh i'm going to bring up this topic one last time and i i won't mention it again because we we've done the work and and we're at a good place it's amazing to me that part of the conversation continues to be left out around banning books um you are correct that i asked for it to be removed and reviewed that's the word that was left out and i think that's a very important part of what was asked um and thanks to ms harriston uh on that night she did ask if we have a policy that

201covers that uh and the response was yes we do have a policy and so once that was revealed we follow that policy it's come to tonight where dr woodford presented what we are doing moving forward i think it's a a win-win we've provided options for parents which is what we wanted and we have a plan in place going forward for any books that may be a concern to parents students community so and i want to publicly thank moms for liberty for bringing those books to our attention just to let us know what's out there so i think it's important that our community is able to come in and speak sometimes we're going to like it sometimes we're not and that's okay we're here to serve our communities is dr calvert still over there she had

202okay i knew she was thinking about having to leave uh staffing is there anybody that can um give me a rundown on staffing because the report that i got from hr tonight matter of fact i think it was we're in pretty decent shape is that right yeah we're in pretty decent shape we're not 100 staff but we're in a good place for this time of summer yeah when i heard the word hemorrhaging i thought i was on an episode of grey's anatomy based off of different information so and then the last thing i would say bedford primary i don't remember that recently as far as any discussion other than the fact of what was presented tonight that we're actually moving students to that school so just come across as a maybe a campaign topic but

203we can certainly squish that and make sure there's there's no topic to discuss about a closing of bethel primary so that's all i had thank you one of the beauties about going lab is i get to hear everyone and i get to piggyback an echo off of everybody um first of all congratulations to liberty high school ffa um i know a lot of those kids personally i've known a lot of them personally over the years and to me what is the true definition of the success of a program is the excitement of those involved these kids get so excited over these programs and there's a light in their eye when they talk about it and that is a truly successful program and i can't wait to see what it has to offer in the future

204um the freedom policy phenomenal job guys you went above and beyond and i think it's going to be wonderful and one as a parent which of course i've said i live in my little bubble so that's what i make all my references to um but as a parent um i'm excited for what my kids will learn outside of what we are trying to teach them at home um [Music] i want to echo all for mr nelms what something you said earlier is something i have been wanting to address for a while when you said that we need to work together we do this is getting we need to start working together being willing to compromise more and realize that we are working together as one and it's not us versus them all the time we

205work collectively as a board for bedford county public schools students teachers administrators parents staff everyone there it's not us versus them it's not some pro over another we care for everyone and we need to unite in that effort i want to echo something that miss harrison said when you thank the teachers for coming out i've been on this board for quite a while now and when i started i started during an era where teachers were afraid to come to the podium for fear of their job and i am very glad that we have moved well beyond that era and i want to be to keep encouraging teachers to come out and make them realize that they do not lose their voters rights by working for bedford county public schools and please come out and talk

206to us at any given point in time earlier in the month i attended the administrator's breakfast and um i was actually asked to speak but before i spoke i had i looked around the room and i saw all the people there that had been here so long and just for fun i thought it was kind of cool i asked everyone in the room that had been there for five years to stand up i was amazed how many people stood up but i said okay if you've been here ten years remain standing almost just as many i mean it kept going and i kept getting people to set down in five year increments and the amount of 15 20 25 just it floored me um we have two records one of our own mr hoisington 38

207years was that correct just started 38 and laurie manley with 32 was that correct is that what i saw that that's amazing um i know we're always recognizing new teachers um but those who have been here for many many years you have devoted your life to us and we truly truly appreciate it and you bring something to the table that will never ever be able to be replaced i would like to thank all the all of our paraprofessionals who persistently encouraged us to examine their pay scale stepping out of your comfort zone and standing up for what you knew it was right helped pioneer to implement a new pay scale more in line with today's competitive market while the new scale is not without its flaws it's still a huge step in the right direction

208i also want to assure those who have been with us for several years though it may not be reflected because you moved on a new scale we greatly appreciate your years of service and dedication and we know that this is not perfect but we want to assure that this is a step in the right direction and we will continue to improve each year or work each year to improve everyone's salaries earlier this week mr hill dr bergen mr hagler and i met with board supervisors chairman sharp vice chair mr tuck county administrator robert hiss in a meeting and we discussed the cip the enrollment issues safety concerns broadband and one positive that came out of that to me we didn't have a lot of time to delve deep into all the different topics but one

209positive that came out of it for me is that everyone is excited to start scheduling joint meetings for the entire boards to get together and to discuss everything we haven't had that in years i'm looking forward to getting that going again and we should be in touch within the month to come up with some available dates for one coming up really soon so i'm excited that they are actually willing to listen to us again and thank you for indulging me for being long-winded tonight i appreciate it um and do i have a motion to adjourn okay that was a tie who wants credit mrs harrison i have a motion for miss harrison a second from dr milly any discussion all those in favor signify by saying i i opposed motion carries meetings adjourned thank you

210all for your time you