School Board Meeting - 6/9/2022 - 5:00 PM

001good evening everybody i'd like to call this june 9 2022 bedford county school board regular monthly meeting to order ms johnson will you please take the role kirby here mr hill here mr daniels here mrs harrison here mr holbrook dr miley here mr nelms here madam chair you have a quorum thank you ma'am do i have a motion to approve the agenda i have a motion by mr hill do i have a second second by mr daniels any discussion call for vote all those in favor signify by saying i i opposed motion carries do i have a motion to go into closed session madam chair pursuant i make a motion that pursuant to code of virginia 2.2-3711a13-1 to discuss the assignment appointment performance discipline and release of contract for specific school board employees including the

002evaluation of the superintendent as provided in his contract of employment three for discussion or consideration of the acquisition of real property for 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 thank you minister hill have a motion by mr hill do i have a second second second thomas harrison any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed we're in closed session do i have a motion to come out of closed session session i have a motion by dr mealy do i have a second second second by mr nelms any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye aye ms johnson will you please certify the meeting the bedford county school board

003has convened a closed meeting on this date pursuant to an affirmative recorded vote and in accordance with the provisions of the virginia freedom of information act and where section 2.2-3712-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 hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements by virginia law were discussed in the closed meeting to which this certification applies and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered yes yes yes yes yes thank you ms johnson and there was nothing to take an action on so we're

004going to skip over that part and unfortunately due to us taking so long in closed session um we'll go ahead and adjourn for dinner and then we will pick up with we'll pick up with when we can pick up we're gonna move 4.01 on down to the seven o'clock agenda is that correct okay well it's a germ for dinner then [Music] yes good evening everyone i'd like to reconvene this june 9th meeting of the bedford county school board would you please rise for the pledge of allegiance flag is here at the corner of the stage i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all if we could please i'd like to observe a

005moment of silence for all those affected by the uvalde shooting thank you very much mr edwards this is always a fun time of the evening recognition of students and staff thank you madam chair and would you and dr bergen please come forward to the center of the stage [Music] also mr vice chairman tonight we recognize the following students who have recently achieved excellence skills usa is a partnership of students teachers and industry working together to ensure america has a skilled workforce a non-profit national education association skills usa serves middle school high school and college post-secondary students preparing for careers in trade technical and skilled service occupations and our own students from susie gibson's science and technology center are a fixture at the competition each year william wood competed in the skills usa state automotive maintenance

006and light repair competition and earned his spot by winning the district level competition in franklin county a junior he competed against more experienced seniors from all across the commonwealth state runner-up in automotive maintenance and light repair william wood [Applause] mm-hmm round of applause for mr wood please and timothy nichols is a senior who placed third in the building building maintenance district competition he then upped his game and went on to play second at state level competition in virginia beach state runner-up and building maintenance timothy nichols [Applause] is a senior who placed first in the secondary division of the skills usa district competition he went on to place first in the post-secondary building maintenance division of the state level competition in virginia beach and he'll be competing in the skills usa national leadership competition in atlanta

007georgia later this month building maintenance state champion aidan wortman [Applause] [Music] anthony utley is an elevated senior who placed first in district level competition and he then went on to place first in the post-secondary building maintenance division of the skills usa state level competition anthony will be competing in the skills usa national leadership competition in atlanta georgia later this month as well building maintenance state champion anthony utley [Applause] uh and finally tonight we turn our attention to future farmers of america state competition and stanton river high school tractor driving competition requires students to demonstrate their skills in diagnosing tractor maintenance problems safety and operating skills through written and practical exams as well as operating a tractor with both a two and four wheel wagon attached cody burnett competed in the senior hub federation tractor driving

008contest in march and was named the winner he then got first in the south ridge area rally contest and moved on to get first place at the state tractor driving contest cody will represent virginia ffa at the national big e tractor driving contest in massachusetts later this fall state champion tractor driver stanton river high school's cody burnett [Applause] congratulations [Applause] students talents never cease to amaze me okay we're going to move on to the public portion public comment period of tonight's meeting the public hearing portion of tonight's meeting of tonight's agenda is limited to 180 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 180 minute period this portion of the meeting is

009designated for public comments regarding the 7k wait a minute 40 minutes no it says 180 i may have put the wrong paper in your folder madam chair oh oh okay then i'm reading from the wrong section how many minutes is it 40 minutes the rest of the okay the rest of what's on the paper should be correct thank you i'm just i'm reading my apologies madam chair i i thought it was very many but you know i was just written clicked on phonics is working for me man i was going okay so let's start this over okay you can use the same thing yeah the rest of it should be correct except just that okay the length of the minutes was the only thing that's not right okay perfect women here's another change before i

010get going okay the public comment portion of tonight's agenda is limited to 40 minutes yeah right now 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 this portion of the meeting is designated for public comments regarding oh no wait a minute another era remember that this is a public meeting that 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 ringing bell indicating that person has 30 seconds remaining a second bell will end will ring indicating a person's four minutes have expired mr edwards also serve as the time keeper for the cumulative 40-minute period when mr

011edwards four-minute timer bell rings please discontinue speaking and allow the next person in line to come to the podium should you be unable to finish your comments please send or give them to mrs johnson and she will give them to board members please do not adjust the microphone at the podium for it has been positioned for optimum audio quality okay without finally being said dr sheree whitehurst is our first speaker this evening good evening my name is sheree whitehurst i live in district 7. i saw online that several of our school board members recently viewed the documentary whose children are they i also had the opportunity to view this film this documentary features teachers parents grandparents college professors politicians plaintiffs from lawsuits lawyers and others sharing their views about education a theme of the documentary

012is that communism has gotten a stronghold into our educational system through teachers unions karl marx is quoted saying the education of all children from the moment they can get along without a mother's care shall be in the state's institutions rebecca friedrichs a plaintiff in a recent lawsuit says the communists through dewey and the teachers unions intentionally undermined our educational system karen cohen party in the above mentioned lawsuit says why are teachers administrators and unions all of a sudden thinking that they own these kids deborah flora actress and u.s senate candidate for colorado argues when we look at this radical agenda the way our children are being exploited and the way our parents are being shut out it comes down to one fundamental question whose children are they the documentary exposes a radical agenda that should

013be concerning to all americans and we should be on guard against that agenda's influences in our community but fortunately in bedford county we have a strong foundation that limits such a radical agenda first we live in a state where our state law says a parent has a fundamental right to make decisions concerning the upbringing education and care of the child of the parent's child so in virginia the answer to whose children are they is clear they are the parents children second teachers in bedford county have never been unionized there is a volunteer-based professional association called the bedford county education association this association is like the virginia school boards association to which each of our school br school board members belong the school board members dues however are paid for by the district or the taxpayers

014the budget adopted this past spring our school board members approved that 29 000 be used for division-wide association and professional dues the documentary also describes the influence of our teachers unions regarding instructional materials and curriculum used to promote a radical agenda nevertheless in bedford county it is our school board and not a teachers union who is in charge of instruction and curriculum specifically according to policy i i a our school board is responsible for the selection and use of instructional materials and according to policy i i a our school board is responsible for the adoption of printed and electronic textbooks through these policies the school board is empowered to protect our children from the incursion of a radical agenda i encourage those who have not seen the documentary whose children are they to do so

015it will be shown in the town of bedford at word of life evangelical church on july 23rd at 7 pm thank you thank you dr whitehorse dave dietrich i'm dave dietrich from the fourth district of forest ladies and gentlemen what should students read great books with great thoughts that enlighten the mind while pursuing truth should be paramount great books include both non-fiction and fiction providing comprehensive exposure to myriad of ideas and literary genre great books teach literature science mathematics art history philosophy and many other subjects great books advanced knowledge critical thinking acumen and virtue the roman historian livy wrote history illuminates for us what to imitate and what to mark for avoidance reading great books follows livy exposing students to the good and the bad today what gets read is determined more or less by

016a faceless centralized bureaucratic process that process culminates in the so-called ap list of recommended readings largely the list is based on readings favored by academics many of whom are post-modernists but not all postmodern academics recommend postmodern books think about that the ap reading list imposes the prevailing postmodern ideas of today what are some of those ideas they include critical theory group grievances social justice nihilism deconstructionism equity and cultural relativity relativeness to cite a few the ap reading list is also substantially different than traditional lists of great books of the western thought when students read postmodern books they also are not exposed to many of these great books of the western thought are emphasized by classical institutions such as hillsdale college and st john's in annapolis those scholars will include socrates plato aristotle livy thomas aquinas

017shakespeare jefferson douglas and many more in the world of postmodernism many of the great originators of the western thought are discarded replaced by writers who might be deemed more politically correct for postmodern perspectives post-modern authors also tend to emphasize themes and messages alien to the western tradition in the words of the late scholar alan allen bloom the intellectual departure away from the western tradition has marked the closing of the american mind to bloom the liberally educated person is one who is able to resist the easy and preferred answers not because he is obstinate but because he knows others worthy of consideration that is what the western tradition has taught for centuries today illumination of the mind and the molding of the virtuous spirit are often replaced with communal thinking group grievances unforgiveness and often vulgar

018images and commentary thus today's athenian youth are corrupted not by socrates but by the authoritarian visions of kurt vonnegut's diana moon clampers and our children's students community and society suffer thank you thank you mr dietrich mary catherine bennett he doesn't look like ms bennett's here aaron farrell amy snead good evening i'm amy smee district 7. i'm speaking on behalf of moms for liberty i wanted to share some suggestions for all of you as the discussions continue about the content of books and curriculum in our libraries i understand that decisions are still being made with how to notify parents and what their students will be reading in both class and in the library so i wanted to offer some resources that i thought would be helpful as you know these conversations are happening across the country

019and i'm excited to share with you what some of the sites that have been developed to help it's completely understandable that our librarians and administration and teachers cannot be expected to read every single book in the library but concerned citizens and parents have risen to the occasion to help it's a big task but this is a start organizations such as booklook.info booklooks.org and youthadvisoryratings.org have devoted countless hours to creating documents that allow us to see the content of books at a quick glance it is very important that parents take the lead on this and take the time to read the information sent home by their teachers talk to your kids about what they are reading but i'll be honest a quick google search often does not provide a lot of help in seeing what the

020true content is of the books you're often provided with a glowing review to entice you to read the book without any real substance of its content so here's where these sites step in to help let's take the book monday's not coming by tiffany jackson i chose this book because in a recent conversation with former bedford county sheriff mike brown he brought this book to my attention as an example of a grooming technique and i'll share more on that in just a minute this book is located in bedford county public schools if a parent sees that their child has chosen this book from the library they can use one of these sites to see if the book has been reviewed this one has so a short summary is provided at a quick glance a rating is

021given and page numbers and passages are cited to provide details on the ratings given there's also a quick glance synopsis of language used for example in this book the b word is used four times the f word is used 19 times and the s word is used 24 times this summary was provided by booklook.info to quote former sheriff mike brown the passages from this reading is what any investigator from any internet crimes against children task force would call a grooming technique that child sexual predators or human traffickers use that is subtle gradual and eventually an escalating process for example a groomer might say see the school even has material that indicates what i need you to do is okay he was referencing a particular passage from monday's not coming these types of scenarios are what

022parents need to be aware of and what their children are reading and to have a say as to whether or not they can read it the other side i mentioned ratedbooks.org provides a similar style of review so for example one of the books i requested be reviewed back in november was the glass castle by jeanette walls it was required reading for 10th grade english at liberty high school this provides a similar summary with passages that are sexually explicit and a list of summary of profanity as well as a category of quote red flags for parents in this book those included masturbation molestation sexual assault physical abuse extreme violence bigotry alcohol and drug use extreme profanity condemnation of christianity mental health issues extreme poverty child abuse abandonment neglect solicitation of prostitutes and adult situations the conclusion

023that they recommended is that this book is not recommended for k-12 schools another site created a zero to five rating system which is very similar to a movie system a zero would be like a g rated movie four or five would be an nc-17 movie these ratings help us all be informed of the content in a way that protects the student from graphic materials just the same as movies or music is rated a reader cannot make a choice to not read offensive content if they aren't made aware of its presence sheriff brown said he would hazard a guess based on his 22 years experience in this dark arena that predators have or will have copies of these books as reference sources for their grooming techniques and i want you to know i'm happy to provide

024any further information on these sites or how they could be implemented and each of you will have a copy of all this information in your email tonight so i really appreciate all the time and effort you've put into this thank you thank you miss knee christian snead christian sneed district 7. last month i spoke about how i had appreciation for the teachers nurses and staff i just want to reiterate that to the teachers that the community sees the good that you're doing that you are noticed that you are respected and you are loved i have a special place for teachers i think it comes from the fact that when i moved to bedford over 15 years ago i aspired to be a teacher i actually attended a job fair at bedford elementary back in 2007.

025i sought to be a teacher much the same reason the teachers are in school today to make a difference to make a positive change to impact the kids that they make the best version of themselves possible while adding value to the community they live in i myself am a product of public education local community college and eventually obtained a psychology degree from james madison in 2002. while i was born in virginia i have been a learner in the states as far south as louisiana and as far north as new jersey furthermore public education means a lot see it's what put food on the table for my family for many generations growing up i thought you could be three things you could be a soldier a teacher or a truck driver on my mother's side my

026grandfather taught english and french in virginia and maryland his entire career both in public and private schools in addition he was the vice principal for a number of years he was also a member of the nea the vea the acea and the brtca eventually retired from augusta county school system and became the president of the virginia retired teachers association in 93-94 my grandmother spent her life teaching at the same time raising seven children she taught english and home economics in both maryland and virginia my mother had a degree in early childhood education she taught first and fourth grades in kansas and virginia and then she also spent her late nights at the dinner table with my brothers and myself so that's just on my mom's side there are 12 other members of our family that

027i haven't mentioned here tonight for the purpose of time so last month it pained me to see teachers and staff last month mentioned that teachers don't feel validated or supported isn't there someone that can help address these concerns so last month i did speak with christina childress the president of the bca after last month's meeting and i was surprised to find out that only 200 people are part of a group that have has a qualified pool of over a thousand people as potential people for their their pool trying to figure out why the participation was show low i asked myself is it the cost is it the benefits is it the views of the values mathematically that's two out of ten teachers that enroll in this program are there other organizations or associations that might

028offer a different voice or benefit or align with more of a majority of bedford county's teachers views so just like bethany hughes mentioned last month the loudest voices you hear aren't the only ones to consider so please listen to them all christy honeycutt also said last month our voices are still not hurt and our opinions don't feel like they matter this is why i got involved with two non-educational school board members because they had children in school systems they graduated from bedford county school system and they wanted to speak for the silenced our focus should always be remaining on the children the teachers tools and measurements of success to attract the best teaching talent and provide the best roi for every single taxpayer every single taxpayer that affirms these schools so the label that some

029of us have been given that are unprofessional anti-public education extremists that want to utterly dismantle the public education built on cscrt conspiracy theories anti-mass propaganda that are well funded by the gop extremists whatever that is is simply not true we're the same ones that performed in organized teacher appreciation week we're the same ones that were part of the pta support underprivileged families families without recognition coach recreational sports and serve on local school boards even run copies and assist teachers see i'm pro-parent i'm pro-teacher and i'm pro-education and believe it or not all three of those things can exist at the exact same time just because we have different views it doesn't mean that we don't want the same thing and that's what's best for our children so i hope the teachers of bedford county can

030find a support system to advance their voice and their concerns they sure could use the help thank you mr snead cindy younghouse good evening i'm cindy younghouse thank you for this opportunity to address you i have students at forest middle and jf pretty sure that makes us district 4 and marcus hill our representative mr hill according to the bylaws of the school board you are responsible to the people of your division for the education of their youth unfortunately your views recorded in school board meetings and related policy proposals are not representative of my family for example we do not support banning books or classroom censorship we want our students to have access to age-appropriate quality literature some of which might happen to have sexual or lgbtq content or other possibly controversial ideas related to banning

031books we do not support misusing and weaponizing critical race theory in order to ban or sanitize important truths of history or social studies so that white christian folks won't be offended awareness of our faults in an age-appropriate context help us create a more perfect union for everyone in the future so then we want our students in public schools to compete globally within this global society and not stuck in a limiting theocratically induced bubble which would put bcps students at a disadvantage even as a christian family we do not want the bible to be the source and standard for policy and educational content in our public schools as suggested by certain members here the bible is too easily repurposed for punitive agendas inevitably discriminating against lgbtq individuals or students with differing belief systems who simply need

032safety and acceptance the bible and public school policy promotes pietism rather than the peace of the gospel and christ's love for all people absolutely we do support our amazing teachers and staff who need wage increases rather quickly approved by the board of supervisors and strict limits on the uncompensated time expectations revisions to the board policy staff time schedules are needed the 25 consideration proposal as presented by the bcea president needs your approval and subsequent implementation prior to then due to the student and community benefits provided by the impressive jf auditorium it is only fair the students and communities of liberty and staten river high schools have updated auditoriums as well we support appropriation of needed funds from the county it will be worth it for the arts and everyone involved and while we do support

033the role a parent plays and the upbringing and education of their own children we also support the idea that teachers are professionals and need freedom to teach a variety of subject matter some of which may be difficult and necessarily controversial at age appropriate levels consequently concepts of personal political bias grooming and indoctrination is found in a section of the parents rights resolution need clarification preferably before tonight's vote please these concepts ironically are intrinsically politically biased already since they are being frivolously thrown about by conservatives to ban anything deemed remotely progressive or liberal rather than apply to actual student safety learning about true history science of gender about complex controversial concepts and about acceptance of others all within an age-appropriate context are not grooming or indoctrination finally we support the school board also affirming their commitment

034to the rights of staffs and teachers by passing the resolution and support of teachers and staff proposed by dr emily at the last meeting so mr hill these are some examples how your views are not ours please find a way to represent my family too also congratulations to the grads and happy pride month thank you thank you miss young house amanda dean good evening madam chair and members of the board my name is amanda dean and while i live on the outskirts of bedford county in the city of lynchburg my parents reside in district four i graduated from jefferson forest high school and i just completed my eighth year as a teacher at forest middle school growing up i found my passion and love in the dance studio i spent my evenings growing in technique

035weekends and the competitive dance circuit and i grew to love the arts the stage and any opportunity i had to perform in 1994 i met shayna cruz the current director of liberty high school performing arts in the dressing room at the dance studio although i did not know her well our paths crossed many times since our first encounter at the studio in 2019 i remember sitting at the teacher of the year recognition dinner as we both represented our schools thinking i really wish i could see her in action someday in the classroom well 2022 arrived and that someday became a reality when she asked if my dog chip would play toto in liberty high school's production of the wizard boss now that is something i never thought i'd say yet there i was hesitant to

036commit as i was terrified that my five and a half pound dog might ruin her show but shayna was persistent confident and i eventually caved and agreed chip or should i say toto had just started attending rehearsals when emily came out to film for the living in the heart of virginia segment given that the start time of this filming overlapped with my dismissal time at fms my parents brought chip out here that afternoon when i arrived my dad was sitting right here in the front row engaged in a group text with all of his high school friends what were they discussing the fact that his granddog was performing in this auditorium that looked the exact same as it did when they graduated from here in 1974. as a teacher in the forest zone it is

037so incredibly easy for me to love and support the students in that zone because i shared at least one year of growth and learning with so many of them and their families i am not really sure what i expected coming out here to liberty for their show but i do want to share my experience with you this evening while my dog thought he was living his best theater life complete with his own personal makeshift dressing room right backstage on or on the stage itself where at any given moment he could find slices of turkey cheese or hamburger that perhaps he missed picking up during a scene here or seen there the reality is that his perception and luxurious stage life didn't quite match that of his director or newfound friends and cast members in between

038luring chip on stage to be picked up by dorothy or grabbing him from the basket as he exited the stage on the back of a bicycle there was plenty of time for me to just observe during both rehearsals and shows during the friday night show i watched as the cast gathered in the hall during intermission after we had just lost power there they verbally reblocked much of act two to accommodate for the fact that the downpour of rain would keep them from being able to enter from various locations in the auditorium as rehearsed during the saturday night show i watched as cast members constantly stood on guard backstage to open and close the curtains as scenes ended and transitions occurred all the while running from the classrooms or bathrooms that served as their dressing rooms

039during the last show on sunday afternoon i found myself struggling to keep toto occupied during extended intermission time as neither bathroom in the lobby was functioning and audience members had to exit to a different building here on campus just to use the restroom as i reflected on this experience at the conclusion of the show i found myself truly grateful grateful for the opportunity to be a part of their show grateful for the opportunity to see mrs cruz in action and most importantly grateful for the opportunity to fall in love with more incredible young people in our county these same young people whom i credit with keeping my dog from ruining their show because they are nothing shy of true professionals on stage my reflections also left me wanting more for this cast and ultimately led

040me to review the auditorium feasibility study presented december 9th 2021. from my experience i couldn't agree more with the findings presented in that study as we focus more on equity in our county i ask that you as you are able with funding please consider updating the auditorium facilities here at liberty high school and also at stanton river high school mrs cruz has built an exceptional program that is currently limited by the facilities or lack thereof after observing this firsthand and always trying to advocate for what is best for all students i believe we can do better thank you for your time for all that you do for our school system and for all the hard student-centered decisions that you make thank you miss dean kylie maupin [Music] sorry hello um my name is kylie maupin

041i live in district 4. i'm an 18 year old high school graduate but not long ago i was a sophomore at jf i was a runner for jfxc our cross country team which was my home for three straight years my team was comprised of my closest friends as well as others who were basically my family every day we would go out in the agonizing sun and we would run and talk and laugh and just be happy but of course that happiness couldn't be unadulterated on bus rides over to our home course every single day there was an onslaught of homophobic slurs thrown around with ease the kind of ease only a child with no challengers to their parents bigotry could ever possess it's not easily spotted but that kind of environment makes for a really

042easy way to internalize homophobia i always felt a little out of place on that team even though there was seemingly no reason for me to i finished what i didn't know was my last season of cross country right before the pandemic began i was in salem very strict about covid restrictions so in march of 2020 i started my quarantine and i did not see anyone for any reason other than school until well into 2021 this being the case i was also isolated from this echo chamber of hate speech and bigotry that my teammates have provided to me for several years in that time not only did i realize how much i hated the behavior of my teammates but also that i had always felt so out of place because that homophobia was striking at me

043i realized only when i was 17 years old that i was gay for reference i had started applying to colleges by then i had been accepted to the university of virginia before i even realized that i hadn't had my first kiss because i didn't want it to be with a boy i lost all of my friends all of the people i loved most got farther and farther away and all i could do was watch all of the other people in my life left and it was only gay students who found me and gave me a new family because they knew what it was to lose one homophobia stole a large portion of my childhood and compared to others in my community i am lucky because lord knows others have lost far worse a distinguished comedian

044who i love and a prominent member of the lgbtq activism movement hannah gatsby once said when you soak a child in shame they cannot develop the neurological pathways needed to carry thoughts of self-worth the spaces in which gay kids grow heavily influence whether they accept themselves and it was and still is very clear that in my space and in yours i am not allowed to be gay it's inappropriate it's disgusting it's wrong i'm wrong i was a child learning day in and day out that everything i felt was wrong to you but i've grown and now understand that anyone's views on who i am cannot change me please stop trying to talk over the voices of lgbtq students and instead talk to us allow me to be one of the first voices to invite you

045to a seat at the table where we can give and take work together and make this county a safe place for all students especially those whose voices have been drown out thank you for listening have a good day and happy pride month thank you miss muffin [Applause] lilly van bergen hello my name is lilian bergen i recently graduated from jefferson forest high school i'm 18 years old and i'm here today on my own accord without any direct instruction from any parent teacher administrator or other adult i'm here because i feel that i need to speak on an issue that seems to leave a sour taste in your mouth every time is discussed i am here to support and to speak for the members of the lgbtq plus community who fear to speak for themselves unlike

046kylie here did an excellent job if you hear nothing else today please hear this there are people in this community who support those who identify as lgbtq plus and you need to pay attention to them whether or not you understand them earlier this year there are some challenges made to some books in our county relating to lgbtq plus topics essentially limiting how accessible some books and authors should be you attempt to censor what you allowed us to read in fear of what it would teach us what it would expose us to i'm sure you thought that this decision was one that would reduce tensions between parents and that protecting students but in fact it did the opposite by making the decision to attempt to ban certain lgbtq plus books you showed us that you don't

047believe that anyone should be able to learn about empathize with or explore what it means to be a part of the lgbtq plus community you dismiss them your own students it has become clear that the opinions and beliefs of a few parents have infiltrated our governing board and that they have muddied the perceptions that you have of your own student body these books are meant to offer a diversity of opinion and to sh and shelter kids who are still exploring their sexuality and it is so crucial to give these kids a place where they can go to feel safe especially when they're not even accepted in their own homes make no mistake they are accepted and we will continue to do our best to make them feel accepted and we will not stop until we

048stop seeing data that tells us that some kids are too afraid to go talk to a teacher to use the bathroom because in fear of what someone might do to them in the hallways parents voices are heard more often than any on this board and it's not hard to figure out why if a student is too scared to even go to school in fear of getting tormented by slurs and offensive words by their peers how do you expect them to speak in front of you to ask for help if you cannot offer your students unwavering support and set your own prejudices aside there is no way for you to really be representative of all voices because you would be too far away to hear any one of them in all honesty it's sad that i

049have to be here today and it's sad that i have to take time out of my own summer vacation to conference with you all to explain how you were crushing the ideals of equity and inclusivity in our community based on what you think that our students want or believe parent voices have dominated this issue for too long and they've begun a platform without pushback allowing them to try to suppress an identity and convince you to strip students of their freedoms to openly express themselves just because it's not what they think a relationship should look like as a recently graduate graduated student myself i will continue to expect better from our school board members and their decisions until change is enacted and until each and every one of my fellow students is treated with the fairness

050and the respect that they deserve all this being said i do not place the burden solely on your shoulders but today i among many other students will be holding you accountable for the promises that you've made to maintain and uphold the student voices that deserve to be at the forefront of your decision-making process in parting i hope that the board members can recognize that they have a lot of work to do moving forward as the motions that have transpired over the past school year did not champion the student ideals in our community so if you seek consolation for the behaviors that you've tolerated in this past year find solace in some of the same words that many of you have offered to my struggling peers in situations like these hate the sin love the sinner

051thank you and i hope that next time we print one of these public uh breachings and in the back of the cover it says we do not discriminate on race age color or anything like that next time i would like to add sexual orientation that's the least i can ask thank you so much thank you miss van bergen um as you know we had two that did not show so i have space for two more speakers ms cruz you're next on the list you can do it got faith in you good evening my name is shayna cruz and i live in the city of lynchburg i am the director of performing arts here at liberty high school the 2021-22 school year marks my 10th year of teaching in secondary education before i started teaching at

052liberty high school no theater or dance electives existed i have developed a culture and appreciation for the arts and instilled a sense of humanity at liberty high school and in our community i am constantly looking forward to new ways to present the material in theater and dance because the art form is always evolving my primary focus of my educational vision is to develop my students skills and techniques necessary to perform design and produce dance and drama in school played a very important role for me this is why i have the desire to pass on the passion in 2012 i was hired on as a part-time theater teacher and taught two theater one classes in 2013 i became a full-time teacher and began teaching theater 2 as well and in 2015 i implemented our dance electives

053which are currently the only dance electives offered in bedford county today i am fortunate to teach theater one two three and four tech theater one and two dance one and two advanced dance and dance company in the past 10 years the liberty high school performing arts program has thrived serving over 650 students but our facilities have limitations insufficient practice space and storage limited use of rooms and the current course black box has antiquated lighting and sound technology and equipment there is no actual space in this building to support the set construction that serves our tech theater students this past season we use the hallway out there to cut design and assemble new sets the overall comfort of the auditorium has always been a concern when patrons attend our productions it is distinctly brought to my

054attention that the temperature was either too hot or too cold the seats were very uncomfortable to sit in for two hours our auditorium aisles are not lit in the dark and is the slope ada compliant we also recently experienced during the wizard of oz the plumbing issues in the building that caused our lobby restrooms to close having patrons to use the restrooms in c building the performing arts are an important and necessary part of a well-rounded education having impacts on students academic social and emotional outcomes no student in this county deserves to have the make due mentality truly it's the job of our school board to ensure that the students are never forced to adapt to a lesser circumstance they should have the care for their students of their county to provide for them best

055materials to support their education their passions their extracurriculars and their careers now it's time to talk about the fabulous opportunities for our students in the proposed new auditorium building in classroom studios we would see improved acoustics soundproof practice and rehearsal spaces that don't interrupt other classes sufficient and secure storage and connected practice spaces in a fine arts wing all of this with easier access to our performance stage and for transporting instruments building drama sets dance studio space and equipment beyond the classroom the benefits of a new state-of-the-art auditorium are many there would finally be appropriate backstage costume and scenery spaces proper dressing and makeup rooms and modern lighting and sound equipment that would greatly enhance our students performances safe stage rigging and design would also benefit our students and a climate controlled setting would provide

056consistency between performance and rehearsal space this protects the districts and the family's investments liberty high school performing arts students as well as bedford county community have much to gain from a new auditorium and our students deserve a comfortable safe space in which they can learn and thrive thank you miss cruz time for one more glenn smith [Music] my name is glenn smith i'm from district 7 and i am a former teacher here in the county i'm here to advocate for full-time resource officers in each bedford county school which is apparently not the case there are several reasons for this first of all there have been killings in multiple and diverse schools across the country some of them have rocked the headlines here of late second safety of our kids and grandkids should be our highest

057priority sometimes the argument is made that there is only so much money to go around and while this is true it seems to me that there is nothing that should be allocated before the security and well-being of the students third lockdowns and practicing drills security cameras secured doors etc are great but only an armed officer can neutralize a shooter who has breached the other defenses some funds for school security are apparently coming from our state so this will help defray the cost and that of course is going to be i'm sure something that is brought up if this is taken to the board of supervisors here in the county so for these and other reasons please ask the bedford board of supervisors for additional funds as needed if needed for a full-time security officer school

058resource officer in every school in this county thank you very much mr smith and that fills our 40-minute period so close public comment portion of the meeting move on to item 8 approval of the consent agenda do i have a motion to approve the consent agenda madam chairman i move that we approve the consent agenda as presented i have a motion by dr miley do i have a second second by mr daniels now call for discussion and i'm going to actually be the oddball out i have a miss tagler i don't mean to put you on hot seat but i have a few questions if you don't mind please sir yes ma'am as i was looking through the bills for this month a few of them kind of stuck out with me and i just

059wanted to ask you what they were for okay um talent assessment incorporated for practical assessments um can you tell me which bill this that was from oh goodness i didn't make a note of that um sorry about that um because i have all the bill list there but there's several presented there and i will have to call on other staff members that might have approved that invoice and had budgetary authority on that if anybody can answer i would be most appreciative what was the name of the firm again um talent assessment inc okay how much is that for yeah i thought you all usually have all the answers it was from practical assessments i think it was to the tune of 60 000 maybe a couple of these were 60 000 range okay i'm looking

060at the bill this year real quick at the several that we submitted and well i'll go ahead and tell you the ones that i want to know what they're for if at all possible okay thank you talent assessment alc schools llc discover education klk education services and those are the four if any of you recognize those the alc is um for the transportation department where we outsource uh transportation of certain students that we don't have car drivers for and so that's for the alc i knew that which one that was okay did you recognize okay thank you so much so that was the discovery one that had curriculum uh for instruction so that's discovery alc what were the others talent assessment incorporated and klk education services talent let me log into the system and look

061that one up real quick having trouble finding on the bills 5'4 thank you i don't know what to make note of next time thank you for your patience that the one for sixty three thousand talent allowed me talent assessment okay i'm gonna have to look that vendor up real quick and pull that invoice up so give me a second here already connected that was 31 000 correct okay and kl was the other one klk education services klk is dr kathy kennedy we used her as a consultant for strategic planning and there i noticed so far that there have been three five thousand dollar payments to her how much what's going to be the total bill for that i'm i'm not sure i just i recognize the company but i don't know that i i didn't

062sign the contract so um okay account assessment let me look at the details of that invoice okay um it's used by our special ed department and kelly okay but i've gotta look at the detail invoice here real quick what's that okay um okay there's details um that was that payment was made through um additional um grant through the covid what's that we ordered helps homeless foreign skills and we did do that through the erp funds for them to practice the facial skills for our students with special education thank you i like that for some reason they they they just stuck out with me some of these that are recurring monthly payments um i'm assuming especially like with the klk where i know what like i know this is the the third five thousand dollar would

063we possibly get a discount if we made one payment or do we have to make five thousand dollar payments i know um i believe for that one it's ongoing services as rendered so you wait for the services to be rendered before you would make payment um i'm looking up the vendor um i'm showing two payments uh there might have been another build list um i'll have to check on that but i'm looking at our accounting system and pulling up the vendor and history of it i'm showing two payments one for 54 and one for 5200. okay great thank you so much um and i can pull up any of these invoices online with our system they're digitized hey i may call you that um so i hope i answered those questions and the rest of

064the staff um sorry for the delay that's fun i appreciate you taking the time to look it up okay thank you i'm so good you said did you say part of that was for strategic planning yes um the consultant for the strategic plan was the klk education services is what dr woodford told us did we need someone to help us with strategic planning we have such competent people that was your specialty coming from yeah i asked for her services throughout the school year she assisted me with my entry plan with my post reflection report and with the strategic planning so she was a thought partner with our strategic team throughout the entire school year the contract i had to look it up was for ten thousand dollars we made two payments to her what services

065did she bring to us for ten thousand dollars she facilitated several meetings with us she was present in the county on a number of occasions and she was in constant communication with me and the central leadership team in our strategic thinking just i'm just a little surprised that we need to pay ten thousand dollars for someone to help us figure out a strategic plan we have really really competent people thank you madam chairman that's fine um and i have one more question if if you will indulge me please are we coming up how what kind of progress are we making with um being able to track homeschool children while they're going to homeschool um we said something about that and following up with the private the children leaving us going to private school are we

066making any progress on getting that done we do track all home school notifications and keep those in a database so we understand which families are electing to do that and we remove them from the list as they you know they elect to return are we tracking the reasons why and then especially the ones because i know we talked about this earlier on correct and i was just wondering the progress of of how we're getting along with this well we have we do have that database we we keep their reason we differentiate which ones are religious exemptions and which ones are um you know for other reasons are we able to track the ones that are leaving us safe for private schools well have we progressed to that level yet we we um yes we understand

067when students withdraw from school um our secretaries in the schools code um if they are going to a you know a private school and so we do know those numbers as you know whenever we would query that or tally there yes can we ask for a database to be created for that for anyone who is leaving i was thinking that we did and kind of like an exit interview process to see if we could figure out documents yeah that's what i was wondering if we were moving on with that or if we're still using if we've progressed in here if we're still using the same methods i have not been part of developing any other method we do track those numbers and we have those those reasons um you know both in the homeschool database

068request and in the withdrawals for for private schools or for any other withdrawal for that matter this way so if i asked you tomorrow how many kids were homeschooled and what their reasons were you could produce a document for me or would you have to go into power school and figure all that out power school would have those reports and we can run them sure so is the answer to my question yes i would be able to say could you send us the document with whoever is homeschooled and their reasons for doing so that's uh what we expected and that's what we have like last year just to to start this year that we would have that document but i'm thinking your answer is no i can run reports from power school and i can

069run them from our home school database um if there's a more intricate process we'll and that's the board's direction to to create i i remember and and correct me if i'm wrong i remember at some point in time and and y'all feel free to jump in correct me too um we we discussed on a way of almost like an exit interview with the kids so we can track and see what's going on so we can see what we need to do as a division to bring them back and we also ask that that was going to be reported right to us you guys have an action item that hasn't been fulfilled so when can we expect reports showing us that data i'll work with the staff this coming week to see what information we have

070available and we'll put a memoir to the board okay and see what we can do to to create a good tracking system so we can see what we can do okay thank you all for indulging me i appreciate that okay we have a motion and a first and a second motion to approve the consent agenda any further discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed agenda approved item nine we're gonna pick back up from the five o'clock which was basically everything except for the closed session so let's move on to item 3.01 when we decided that we're going to go we're going to go on the road um we set several places and this is the last one of the locations that we had preset so we need to figure out we

071need to figure out where we're going next month um did we want to i had spoken to dr bergen about this and somewhere along the lines i believe that there will be more difficulty now that we have the high school set up would be difficulty to set up the middle schools or could we use the middle schools well in conversation with facilities committee and under the action of the board we're going to install new cameras sound boards so that you know we can we can do board meetings in our three high schools and limit the amount of setup time it's currently taking for our technology staff to come in and bring all of this equipment in plus it'll be to the benefit of the students and the staff the administration and the community and the

072schools on the days we're not conducting board meetings in these auditoriums but we don't have that same setup in the other 18 schools i mean we can but we we have focused on making sure that the three high school auditoriums could be prepared i was talking to our tech staff today they spent the better part of three hours to prepare for this meeting yesterday to get these tables set to do all this cabling to get these microphones in place when we have cameras that are stationary and positioned in the school we hope that that setup time will be lesser but what we have attached to this agenda item is a proposed meeting location for your consideration sticking with the high schools we asked the administration at each of the high schools what their planned use

073of their auditoriums was between july and december and then just created a rotation where the board could continue to conduct its meetings in the three high schools in the four schools the three comprehensive high schools and susie gibson and you'll notice that liberty is missing from this list not that we wouldn't love to have included liberty and been back here but each month that the board has a scheduled board meeting there was a conflict with the use of this space that would have impeded the work of the many programs that that occur here in the high school oh go ahead no you go ahead no um i know that we've had numerous of conversations regarding us having our meetings at the various high schools and certainly the facility committee uh and mr hobrok isn't here

074with us tonight but we all agreed that certainly we needed to continue that pattern and allowing our meetings to be held at the various high schools i would also like the board to consider in their role in our rotation i'm totally in favor of us continuing at the high schools i think certainly it's our community members coming out they have demonstrated that going to them is very important and so i'd like to see us do that but i also think that it's important for us to put in our rotation and consider the school board office conference room that that area where we certainly have held meetings in a lot of renovations has taken place over the years regarding that room and in absence of liberty high school perhaps maybe we could consider going back there

075um so that that's my suggestion to the board is for us to at least consider doing some of the rotation to go back to the school board office conference room as well the whole purpose of recommending us go to different schools and i appreciate the fact that we're adding cameras and sound to high schools that's great we should we we need to do that that's a benefit not only to to the high schools to us but also to the community but the original request was for us as a board to visit each school and i hear the technical team say i spent three hours but in every other discussion we push technology but yet we don't want to spend three hours for us to be able to go into all of our schools i mean

076from a facility standpoint okay yeah george and matt know what's going on in those schools but for those of us that don't go in every single elementary school we don't know what's going on in those schools and it gives us an opportunity to understand the difference we're always hearing about the differences of these schools and that was the point of us meeting for one for us as a board to see what each facility is is like but also for parents who can't or don't want to drive to bedford to a school board meeting if we're in mottvel or manita for them to have the opportunity to come to a local meeting where they can be a part of what we're trying to accomplish as a board so i hear the request to do it in

077high schools and that's fine but i don't want to take away from the mission of us going to these different facilities to see what they are like it's important for us to go and have that communication with the principals as we're coming in to take those tours and walk around and understand what's going on in each of those facilities that was my original request but if the board says we're only going to do it at high schools that's fine but i i think we're missing out on seeing the middle schools what are the differences what does each community have to offer what have they been doing looking at what's in the buildings look at what's hanging on the boards look at what's in the classrooms there's a difference and we all need to understand what

078those are elementary schools we hear georgia talk about boons for all the time i know boonesboro but has everybody on this board been to boonesboro and walked through the halls to see what that's what i'm trying to make sure the board as a whole understands so i i think we should rotate them you know not every month for the technical team to have to go set up if we want to do the high schools once everything is every other month but we talk about technology and we talk about we send our our students home with chromebooks technology i mean why are we not wanting to do that yeah it's three hours i get it but it's important for us to see it it's important for our community to be able to come to us i

079won't repeat but i think it's very important for us to be in and out of each facility so the board understands what's going on don't think that the facility committee members that we were trying to exclude the elementary schools because i do agree with you that it is very valuable for us to see each of the schools and each board member certainly has that that right and that opportunity should they choose to to go and visit these various schools the high schools of course are i feel a large percentage of the community view them as the hub or the key to that that community and so having our our meetings at the various high schools where we have said we want to invest in a good sound system um certainly to me just makes it

080i feel more feasible i'm not opposed to the visiting the elementary schools i just have concerns about what that pa system would be like for those the various schools particularly some of our smaller schools you know i'm not quite sure if they are up to par to be able to do that but we have focused on the pa systems for our high schools we've heard what our tech team what they have shared with us we want to make things feasible for them and easy for them to be able to set up for the meetings and so it was the committee's consensus that we felt that having the meetings at the high school would be the best for now the best route to go i just like to ask the technical crew it took you three

081hours here um is that a standard time or is it just because you've been here before so you kind of knew what to do and it only took you three hours is would that also apply to our elementary schools or is that like starting from scratch again so in a lot of our elementary schools you're talking about a meeting in the cafeteria because there just is no other place it would be the cafeteria or the the gymnasium um you know it could be the library but i'm not sure how we set up a lot you know that would take a lot of setting up and tearing down and rearranging of the libraries they're not really that user friendly to a meeting such as this so um you know just your your best educational guest do

082you do you believe that our elementary schools in those places that would be a cafeteria or a gymnasium would have the power necessary to do what we need to do here reasonably um it might be better for for us to allow the technical team to visit the schools and and get an idea of what they could possibly do because i'm glad that you are getting better at this and it's it's come down from a whole day to three or four hours for some place like this but i remain concerned about the fact that as we do this if it's a day we're pulling them away from the very people that they need to be helping which is our students and staff but then secondarily it would also be the power issue so i think we

083need some more information before we some of the schools will probably be fine others may not i mean maybe we could set next months and then give them time to assess that and see what works and maybe we can add more of those schools to the rotation that was actually going to be my suggestion um because we've jumped from talking about high schools to elementary schools and we've never talked about them we didn't throw the middle schools in the mix either um i know liberty middle school has got a nice place forest middle school has got a nice place um so what what are y'all's thoughts about okay july 14 jefferson forest has already been cleared start back over go back to jefferson forest high school have this reworked coming back next month letting us

084know the feasibility of possibly doing elementary schools and working the middle schools in in this rotation so i'll say two things yes we do work for the board and we'll meet wherever you'd like to it would not be my recommendation to go to the elementary schools there isn't an auditorium we're talking about setting up all the chairs and taking all the chairs down on a thursday when the children are in that building so we're going to stress out our custodial staff and our central maintenance staff they're going to come and have to set a room after dismissal to be prepared for a meeting to then break the room down now we can do it and we will do it but you know i i'll echo mr hill's comments of it's important that the board members

085be in schools and see the differences between the schools conducting meetings in schools is not necessarily seeing the schools and walking the building i would welcome the board to visit all 21 schools as regularly as your time allows and i can facilitate that i've offered many times throughout this school year and i'll continue to offer again for the board to walk with me and walk our schools and see them for yourselves we don't have to conduct a meeting to do that that would be my recommendation that we the middle schools do have some pull-out stadium seating so it would be very easy i know at liberty they have the bleachers that come out in that one large room and the sound the there's probably a cis i don't know there isn't a sound board in

086the middle schools for us to tie into though is there guys like there's a sound board there's a sound board in each of the high schools that we can tie into for all of these microphones we bring all this cabling in and then we tie into a sound system where it's built in i don't know that we have that in our middle schools but i can make an assessment for the board if you'd like to see where that's going to be feasible and then we could come back and we can have further discussion about it i would like to have figure out what we can do with the middle schools do you think that they would be feasible to do easier than the elementary schools so we don't have pta meetings at elementary schools we

087do do yes we do in the cafeteria in the library meetings at the elementary school but it's spacing yeah let's go my opinion and see what everybody thinks of this go for us next week or next month come back with us to us to how we can work our middle schools in and we'll go from there we'll talk about it further and with the feasibility figure out like here we have susie gibson twice see if we can take susie gibson off once put liberty middle school in stanton river high school twice take that off once work in forest middle school and then at that point have a feasibility of being able to go into the elementary schools i would add one more thing to that chairman i think when we do the feasibility for the

088elementary school i think one thing that's going to be a challenge for y'all is that the kids don't get don't leave your final child isn't pulling out until about a quarter till three plus then you you can have after school programs that utilize these spaces so would you in fact i think you need to consider when you're doing it would you speaking to the principal would you have the time you need like at stuartsville you wouldn't because everything's coming through that gym area to the front door so you would not be able to work in there until that last child left and and you know we could maybe vent children to some other rooms but that would be a quarter till three before you had access to that space and would you be able to

089do it so consider that when you're you know checking on feasibility not just power but time for you to do what you need to do but does that sound yeah feasible to everybody go go a farce next month and then get a new schedule possibly some middle schools worked in there for now and then figure out which elementary schools we could go to if possible but at least get the middle schools in this rotation all three of the middle schools in this rotation yep yes ma'am we certainly can do an assessment of all the schools and let you know where it's going to be feasible to stream the meeting set up this this bias for all of you with cabling and microphones happy to do so sounds great so next month i'll see we'll see

090everybody at jefferson forest high school auditorium item 3.02 mitigation strategies dr bergen do what are our current mitigation strategies i know when we voted to eliminate mask we voted to keep the mitigation strategies in place but are we still having to enforce those well school school years out and as we prepare for next school year as i've shared with the board leadership unless directed by state or federal law or this school board i will not have a mitigation plan for next school year for the last several years we've had a very detailed mitigation plan that required physical distancing limitation on numbers of peoples in rooms masking health and wellness checks the current state code that required us to submit a plan i checked online it times out august 1st of 2022. so unless it's reauthorized

091if there's some other state or federal action taken then we won't be required to submit a mitigation plan and i have no intent of creating one unless the board hits the will of the board that i do create one so with the elimination of the mitigation strategies then will the kids be allowed to take field trips next year yes have assemblies have pep rallies yes are you allowed to eat with their kids we the cafeterias are being were being used this year anyway we started the school year out where they were not and many schools were able to go full back without much trouble at all other schools for various reasons needed to phase back but by the end of the school year all the cafeterias were being used by the students so what i'm

092hearing you say is 2022-2023 school year will be back to pre-covet conditions it's my intent unless this board wants to direct otherwise or where we need to respond to state or federal legislation that would require something else any other questions yeah staff reports dr woodford 4.01 end-of-year academic reporting good evening members of the board as you know the past two years have been very difficult for our students teachers and staff however i am proud that bedford county public schools had an innovative return to school plan in the fall of 2020 that kept our students in grades k through 6 in school every day and our students in grades seven through 12 in school at least two and possibly even three days a week when many others were 100 virtual and i think over the next

093few months as we begin to share some of our data you're going to see the fruits of that hard work that our teachers and students did at this point we only have a few finalized test data points that we can fully report most of the completed data that i'm going to share with you tonight is from the elementary level while we look at many indicators throughout the year and teachers monitor their class data closely we wanted to be sure that what we shared was comparable throughout the division and provided some overall generalizations regarding student performance we will continue to receive data regarding sol scores cte and workplace readiness skills ap scores and alternative sol test scores for students with disabilities throughout the summer as summer school begins soon students will be retaking some courses or

094attending summer school and maybe retaking sol test for some updated scores so once we have that complete and accurate picture of that data mr blankenship will share that with the board i would like to share tonight just a few data points and first i'd like to share data from our phonological literacy screening test or as many people call it our teachers know it as pals or pals plus these scores are for kindergarten through fifth grade this is a screening tool that identifies areas of strength and weaknesses on multiple age-appropriate reading skills and is a strong indicator of reading success this screening is required for all students in virginia schools and is meant to screen students for skill deficits at their grade level when looking at the percentages think about these as benchmarks of students meeting

095the current expected reading skills and not necessarily passing scores so what we're looking at when we're using a screening tool we're really looking to see which students are at level in reading and then which students need tier 2 and tier 3 interventions in reading in this first set of data we're looking at pals kindergarten through third grade scores and specifically the percentage of students meeting the benchmark for the test at different time periods in all four grade levels kindergarten through third we saw increases in the percentages of students meeting the benchmark from the fall to the spring you will notice that some of them have rather significant gains some have smaller gains one thing that i would like to point out is that the benchmarks also change so a beginning kindergarten benchmark they're looking to

096screen where students are at the start of skills for kindergarten and then the benchmark rises as they get to the end of kindergarten so as the year goes on the benchmark also rises um we also are looking as an instructional team at pals data for students from the spring of 2021 to the spring of 2022 and so i've marked that here you'll see that our kindergartners in the spring of 21 which is highlighted in green had a 78 percent meeting benchmark rate and as they move to first grade this school year we see that their spring 2020 score has slightly dropped by about two percentage points again that helps us looking at cohort data to say are there skills that possibly we need to go back and teach students are they meeting some overall missing

097some overall reading skills or it is a different test so um you know as they progress onto second and third we'll continue to watch those scores our cohort groups in first second and third grade all show increases between four and six percent and so based on the fact that um you know it's been a very difficult year with quarantines and isolation and kids in and out we feel really good about our scores and actually i appreciate mr daniels asking me some questions today that pushed me to look a little bit closer at some data compared to virginia spring scores third graders in virginia only met the benchmark at 50 percent so our third graders are doing much better than at the state average second graders across virginia at 65 percent our students are much higher

098than that first grade at 69 percent and kindergarteners at 78 so if we are comparing our students to students across virginia we are doing very very well and so i'm really happy with what our teachers and students have been able to do um our pals plus fourth and fifth grade data is also noted in this chart looking specifically again if we look at our fall 21 scores over to the spring 22 scores we did see a slight decrease in fourth grade but an increase in fifth grade and again those are looking at very specific skills for comprehension i will say that just in speaking to principals and our instruction team even though we don't have final data we feel that our sol reading scores are going to reflect some really good work at the school

099level so i'm excited to see what those final numbers are and for us as a team to be able to share that with you again just looking at some cohort data when we look at our third graders last year in the spring to their scores uh this spring and fourth grade we see improvements there 78 to 82 percent and the same for our cohort of fourth grade students to our fifth graders this spring so our pals data we feel is very good we also have vkrp which is an assessment it's called the virginia kindergarten readiness program this is another state required assessment screening for math and social skills for kindergarten only you'll see that i'm sharing specifically the math skills because that is a very specific test the social skills or checklist that teachers prepare

100so that's a little bit harder data to kind of put together it really is individualized to the student so when we're looking at our math data overall math performance of our kindergarten students from fall to spring had just a slight increase but i want you to note that we do have some significant gains in the subcategories of geometry and patterning while there are areas of focus next year with numeracy and computation skills and dr trosper and mrs bowyer are already looking at supports for our primary teachers on those two particular areas for math skills those are typically the areas that students struggle with a little bit more in math but dr trosper's team has already looked at some lesson plans some training some professional development we do have ixl data which is math data too

101for our first and second graders this is a division assessment used by all of our schools because we wanted to be able to have some type of math assessment that we were all using this assessment is not only used to screen students three times a year on grade level skills but it also provides some interactive online practice and remedial support for students it is one of our most used digital tools in math by our teachers overall for the division we can see a very small increase in on grade level performance with the most variance in first grade again mrs bowyer is keeping this in mind as she builds supports for teachers of the primary grades in math in the areas of numeracy and computation i did just want to say this is not a state

102assessment so there is i can't compare it to other scores for students in the state of virginia it's just one that we had asked our teachers to use and finally tonight i didn't want to leave you tonight without something from the secondary level i do want to say as we wait on our finalized sol scores we are going to be getting lots of secondary data over the next few months we'll have final on-time graduation numbers we'll have our number of cte completers we'll have our advanced placement scores we'll have possibly some sat scores for students who took that so a lot of our secondary data is going to be coming over the next few months but i do want to say we are really proud of our 680 graduate graduates that we celebrated on may

103the 28th at the vine center we did have six students that schools are still continuing to work with to complete some of their graduation requirements and we hope that they're mostly going to finish those in the summer and be summer graduates in our summer school program we're also really proud of our 19 is aep students those are individual student alternative education plan students those are students who for various reasons who have not turned 18 have decided that instead of dropping out they want to go ahead and get their ged before they turn and so we have 19 students who went that route and got their ged before leaving school this spring and we also are very proud that we had three adult ged completers and all of those programs occur at our alternative education center

104and are supported by our teachers in school system so i'm happy to answer any questions that you may have one of the questions that mr hill and i were talking earlier about some of the data and he just asked me you know what are we kind of focused on what programs are we looking at and i did ask dr trosper if he'd just be able to come up and just share some of what his team is already thinking about for next year some of the work they're already doing so if he wants to come up and then he and i both can answer any questions good evening so while we're still waiting on official sol data and we have already started analyzing it internally looking at preliminary data and developing action plans over the summer

105for how we can support schools and so the first area i would point you to is the strategic framework and some of the work we're doing with that team we've just we're going to put together a numeracy and a literacy team and we're going to look at best practices in both subject areas we're specifically looking at the science of reading that's going to be required by the virginia literacy act two years down the road but we want to get started early by looking at that data with our reading specialist we're going to have a division literacy and a numeracy plan which we will implement and communicate with our teachers over the next few months as they return back to school of course a big part of our plan is the adoption of the the resources

106for ela and so our secondary schools will be adopting that curriculum and our expectation is going to be faithful to that curriculum consistency fidelity so that way we can really have a common data set that we can recognize and decide what those action plans would be and we're going to continue to work with our elementary schools as you know that's that's been challenging adopting that curriculum but we'll continue to implement those those good strategies from the science of reading we're talking to our principals about using data we spent a lot of time collecting data but how are you using it to really inform your instructional practices in the classroom and so that work actually begins next week at the admin conference that which we're looking forward to and then of course with our pre-k programs

107we've expanded access we're actually adopting a curriculum for the pre-k also that's we're excited about we think that's going to really benefit our students and then just just a few other examples we already have division pacing guides those patient guys we've gotten feedback from teachers we've looked at our data and we're going to make sure we're spending the appropriate amount of time on the areas where students are showing that they need additional time and assistance we have an assessment calendar so we have common data sets that we can look at regularly and again adjust to make sure we're supporting schools as needed we'll be meeting with our principals to make sure that we're supporting them and just to seeing how how we can we can work with them to improve their uh their scores and

108in any way they need and then finally as part of the school improvement process the doe does has academic reviews and so as schools do start to show weaknesses on their school quality profile we are have have already attended some trainings we will continue to go to those trainings and essentially we will go into schools and take a very specific targeted look at them and see how we can make recommendations and action steps to get those schools back where they need to be so any questions yes i do have a question regarding the pals assessment dr woodford um as you mentioned uh it certainly is a strong indicator for our students reading success and i'm just curious in terms of any common threads that you all found in looking at your data in regards to

109skill deficits well i think as always concept of word is continues to be something we focus on at the kindergarten level we have noticed deficits in explicit phonics instruction and last year we adopted the hagerty phonemic program and so we spent time this year training and getting teachers familiar with it we're going to focus on that again that is also a big part of the science of reading and part of what we were hoping to adopt in our new k-5 curriculum but we still have the hagerty program and we'll use that for explicit phonics k you know k-5 until we adopt that new reading curriculum and then we'll still use hagerty as a remedial tool if we need to so i would say those are our two biggest places um concept of word in kindergarten

110and then the the phonics skills in your visits at the various schools and and dr chosper please feel free to chime in too as well your visits um at the elementary schools and discussion things with the principals and teachers what are you hearing from them in terms of concerns that they may have with the results here their pals results yeah i haven't i know that dr trosper has set up times he's going to be talking to principals honestly i think the biggest thing that i heard just as far as reading in general was that teachers were very happy that they were able to have a little bit more flexibility in moving in reading groups again that first year of the pandemic we were in cohort groups and so teachers were unable to move students flexibly

111and so that's all you know was really resolved really this year but really in the spring and so i think our teachers feel much more comfortable they can group students the way they need to and get back to just really good reading instruction so i think they honestly they felt really good about scores and the fact that they they were very thankful they had their kids these two years face to face five days a week so um i think they're feeling pretty good i'm not sure that they see anything different than what patterns they've seen over the years so i think i was just thinking with covet and some of the loss of learning that unfortunately our children have had to face i was just curious as to what you all have heard from teachers

112and principals yeah regarding some of those specific skill losses yeah i think um our k-6 from just my conversations with principals they they feel fairly good i think they're more concerned about some of the um maybe some more issues with students being able to self-regulate being in school longer working with some of our preschoolers who and and early kindergartners who've not been in daycare preschool facilities so they're coming to kindergarten not really with some of those skills that sometimes we see kids who've been in preschool are which is we're very excited that our bpi local well i'm sorry state funding was increased so we can add to three-year-old vpi programs next year so we're hoping maybe we can get them earlier and catch up on some of that so yeah i can get you some

113more specifics but that's just in general what i've heard talking to principals okay all right thank any you questions for either dr charles or dr woodford mr daniels couple uh more um with the pals data um are we able to get that and when we get more of the information more finalized are we able to get that broken down by school yes we have it broken down by school and we keep that and i'm happy i can send that out in a wednesday memo if you guys are interested if all of you would like to see school specific data that's and then internally um you know do we set goals for the year um you know prior to getting the results and saying we want to be at 90 like is there do you guys

114set internal goals for where we want to get to so we're always trying to pull people up higher well every school has a comprehensive school improvement plan and so as part of that process we do require a goal setting and then they meet with their leadership teams sometimes over the summer very early in the year that's that is due to the division in october and they develop strategies that are school specific and so one of the things we're going to be talking to our schools about as we implement the strategic framework is how can they align those goals with our goal and you know the first goal is high high expectations and high achievements so uh so to answer your question yes we we certainly have goals with the instruction team but every school will

115look at their data and set goals based on where they are and what the data shows they need to to try to achieve throughout the year okay and and just one more thing i'd add is obviously we have the state goals as well so there are benchmarks that we have to meet at the state level and so um that is obviously our baseline and we want to go push beyond those in many cases but blow them out of the water that's really great that's right thank you questions thank you so much you're welcome appreciate it moving on to 5.01 policy updates dr bergen uh yes ma'am so we have we're on 5.01 is that correct correct yeah on this item we have six policies and two regulations up for review which have already been vetted

116by the intergovernmental affairs committee the full information is available to the board members and the public through the link that is available on the agenda this time we would ask if you have any questions there's staff in the room that could answer any questions you may have about these six policies and two regulations as well as the members of the committee who were there for for the review questions just have one for the committee the small purchasing what was the thought behind making small purchasing [Music] i was looking at dr djr the regulation language added to include a responsibility the budget and finance or facilities committee to review uh of informal and formal bids for the purchase of goods and services over a hundred thousand dollars why are we going that high we just wondering

117going that high meaning you think it should be lower like 50 000 yeah that it needs to come to the to the committees yeah well i think it was at 200 000 and so we split it in half to see what would actually come to you guys for approval if the board you know once we get into that and you start reviewing and you don't see an increase of those coming to to both of the committees then we can certainly reduce it but there's going to be items that are at that hundred thousand dollars that i don't think we won't come to us every single time if we've already approved that budget um but we felt like over a hundred thousand dollars we want to take a look at it so chris did you have

118anything additional no you nailed it okay further questions okay so these will be on the agenda next month for approval correct yes ma'am thank you sir moving on to 5.02 resolution for tax credits dr dewis please thank you our staff and the facilities committee have reviewed the attached resolution that would allow staff to take the necessary legal steps to apply for virginia historic tax credits these credits as we have discussed in previous meetings or can be a considerable funding source in buildings in qualifying buildings including the former bedford training school building which houses many school districts functions which is currently being worked on so this we ask for you to consider that this resolution this month and approve it next month so that we can move forward with all the necessary legal steps to enter

119into a corporation work with an investor you know qualify for those tax credits the way the state runs that program i'll be happy to answer any questions now or follow up with those if i can't answer them now any questions for dr dewis i don't know we'll go ahead and then i'll follow you okay actually i have several i don't i really don't mean to be putting you on a hot seat i really don't i'll do my best why is this done by a resolution is is it is it required because i i actually pulled the code um [Music] 58.1-339.2 for historic rehabilitation tax and does not say it has to pass through us by resolution so why is this going through a resolution this is at the advice of the attorney we're working with

120who has done lots of these projects it's a formal way to get the board's authorization to enter into a limited liability corporation which actually would take ownership of that building for you know the duration of the project and then therefore be able to apply and qualify for those those tax credits um it's at that attorney's advice that we're doing this what attorney is that the woods woods rogers that prepared the operating agreement yes and you will be the sole managing member of the corporation it had you listed as being the sole managing member of the of the llc is that correct in the operating agreement is that what you're yes sir referring to um that's the way he drafted it to have a representative of the school district because the school district even though this

121is a separate entity the school district retains 99.9 percent control of it so um that .01 is the way to get the investor involved well and i understand i understand all this um but i would think one i'm gonna be straight up i'm not comfortable taking the deed taking possession of the property out into an llc um are we absolutely required by this to do to get take advantage of the tax credits or can we leave it why can't we leave it in our name do you know is that something we need to consult with an attorney about to get further explanation well i've had lengthy consultations with the attorney on the process and and this is his direction um the investors money who um this is the way the state process works um a

122entity like a school board or a county government um can't do that alone and so um you know in order to have that partnership with the with the outside investor who needs to take part in the process this is this is the process that you know the town has used and other entities have used when they apply and successfully get these tax credits well and i noticed reading the operating agreement that it said specifically that the certificate of organization has already been issued but it has not i checked on the sec website today when will that i mean do they need our approval before they go ahead and form this llc he he has done some preliminary work with those state organizations on some of the documentation but yes your approval is you know is

123needed to move forward with this um then i'm reading in here that this is going to be good through june of next year 2023 is that correct i think that was listed as an outside date to make sure that all any any lingering uh last bills to the contractor have been resolved and paid um i i don't we are certainly hoping that this is wrapped up well before then that's the plan but i think that's why that's listed that way then is it the intent then at that date that this llc will dissolve and this property will be deeded back into our name absolutely then i noticed also on this deed that there is um and i'm assuming well you know what they say about assuming but it's coming from the school board which would

124exempt us from grand tourist tax but there's no exemption for tax taxes on here and if we are going to be the main people on bts restoration llc there needs to be an exemption code on here so we're not paying recreation taxes because if we if you have to base that on the amount of money you're going to say you save from this you're talking about thousands of dollars of recreation taxes potentially okay i can certainly follow up with the attorney on that okay and i've if if we have to take it into this llc which again i'm not fond of um i would think as a safe and i'm not saying anything about you i'm thinking protection-wise um i think we need to um designate two managing members both of whom must act not

125either one of them but both of you must act together that way you're witnessing for each other does that sound i i can i can certainly ask the attorney about that and if there are any reasons not to do that i'll let you know okay any more questions this is kirby yes you you have a lot of expertise in this area in your i'm sorry it's quite a right and if if you would like we can arrange for you and staff to meet with the attorney and go through this document to answer these very specific questions uh so representing the board i think your other board members would be fine with that we don't have do you have any problems with that i would definitely feel more comfortable with susan great that's a great idea

126can we call me and we'll figure out something absolutely okay thank you for suggesting that dr bergen you're welcome okay let's see well that's no place i got sidetracked okay so now we get to come back down to action items item 10.01 resolution in support of parental rights do we want to do another reading of the resolution no we're good do i have a motion regarding the resolution of parental rights i have a motion by mr hill do i have a second second by ms harrison any discussion yes ma'am chairman i just have one question the eighth item down there says whereas the bedford county school board believes that any parent has the right to see and evaluate all surveys data collection and psychological profiling before they adm are administered to bedford county's students isn't

127it more appropriate to say their student i mean i wouldn't want you looking at my child's whatever's being given to my child you know the way i read it they have the opportunity to pull the data to make a decision for their student but before it's rolled out to bedford county students i don't read it that way but if that's how it's you intended it okay that was my only question any more questions okay i have a motion i have a motion on the floor with a second no further discussion call for a vote all those in favor signify by saying i opposed resolution passes 10.02 resolution in support of teachers and staff dr mealey did you want to do a final reading or just unless anybody wants a final reading okay do i have

128a motion on the resolution so moved i have a motion by dr mealy to have a second second second by ms harrison any discussion yes i i do have some discussion um i wanted to um just talk a bit about um our meeting last month because tim griffith spoke to us last month and i'd like to just go over a little bit of what he said because when i reflected on what he said i came to agree with him he spoke really good words and words that made sense to me so what i'm going to share are some direct quotes from his public comment time during the may 12th meeting and they're not necessarily totally in order but when he came to the pro podium he introduced himself he said i'm tim griffith and i

129get to serve on the bedford cam and to serve bedford county as the gop unit chair for the republican party here then he went on to discuss during his time to say and i quote i want to talk to you with you tonight about the resolution coming before you end of quote he then spoke a little more and he said quote i was looking over this resolution and all the great things that are in there end quote and then he went on to explain that many um including himself are concerned that radical ideology is being brought into the classrooms all over the country and that there are teachers trying to groom children so he said and i quote if you want to make sure that this is not happening in bedford county and make sure

130they're notified before it does happen he was referring to the parents then i would ask you to vote for this resolution end quote but here's the part that i thought was most sensible upon reflection and i thought it made sense for all of us to consider he said and i quote if you believe that it doesn't happen in bedford county and it's not really a concern in bedford county i want to ask you to still vote for it because people like me are worried that it is and i think it would put a lot of our minds at rest to make this public statement put it in writing that we stand by our parents and i just want to think about that a minute i think it would put a lot of our minds at

131rest to make this public statement so when you're looking at the teacher and staff resolution i would ask my colleagues to apply the same sensible train of thought to this resolution some of our teachers and staff are worried just like our parents are worried passing this resolution i believe would put their minds at rest to make a public statement put it in writing as tim suggested we as the board would reaffirm our commitment to teachers and staff that we stand by our our teachers and staff just as we stand by our parents these were good and sensible words that made sense to me for all stakeholders in bedford county another thing i thought about was most many or many parts of the parent resolution is already in the code of virginia or been established through

132executive order i tried to find some similar things for teachers and staff now i'm not an attorney i did not perform an exhaustive search but i couldn't find anything about teachers and staff in in this regard the rights so if we believe that it's necessary to con to construct a resolution for parents even though their rights are guaranteed within the code of virginia is it also not reasonable and sensible to provide our teachers and staff with the same support because they have nothing to fall back on in the code of virginia so i just want to ask my colleagues to reflect on tim griffith's words because they were good words and they made sense for all of us miss harrison reminded us last month that we were a team and to provide the quality of

133education necessary for our children to be successful and compete within the global community of the 21st century we needed to work as a team the teacher and staff resolution will put a lot of our staff members minds at ease resting knowing that the teachers and staff are important enough to the board to construct a resolution to publicly acknowledge that we stand by our teachers and staff thank you tim griffith for giving us those good words to consider and thank you mr sneed tonight for your words about teachers specifically that teachers sure could use some help this resolution could be the start it's not let's not squander this opportunity but listen to mr griffith to publicly state our support and put it in writing so that the minds of our teachers and staff can also rest

134okay i have motion in the first first and second call for a vote all those in favor of the teacher staff resolution signify by saying aye aye opposed no miss johnson will you pull the board please daniels nick harrison yes mr hill no kirby yes dr amelie yes mr nelms you have a thai vote madam chair thank you miss johnson and actually i had i had this handy it's um coat of agent normally if it's a tie vote it's dead in the water right it doesn't pass right but according to virginia code section two point i'm sorry 22.1-75 in any case in which there's a tie vote of the school board of any school division when all members are not present the question shall be passed until the next meeting when it shall again be

135voted upon even though all members were not present so we will put it back on the agenda for next month okay item 10.03 resolution regarding workers compensation for school board members do i have a motion 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 i i opposed motion carries approval for the code of student conduct do you have a motion so moved that we approved the code of student conduct as presented i have a motion by dr mealy do i have a second second by mr nilms any discussion call for vote all those in favor signify saying aye aye opposed motion carries item 10.05 do i have a motion for the approval of title grants chairman i make a

136motion that we approve the title grant i have a motion by ms harrison do i have a second second i was kind of a tie so i'm gonna give it to mr hill second to mr hill any discussion all those in favor signify saying aye aye motion carries 10.06 approval of superintendent designees for the 2223 school year do i have a motion airman i make a motion that we approve the superintendent's destinies for 2022-23 have a motion by ms harrison do i have a second second by mr daniels any discussion call for a vote all those in favor signify by saying aye aye aye anyone opposed motion carries 10.07 do i have a motion for the approval policy updates presented at the may 12 board meeting have a motion by mr hill do i have

137a second second second by ms harrison any discussion call for vote all those in favor signify by saying i i opposed approval carries item 10.08 the strategic plan do i have a motion chairman i make a motion that we approve the strategic plan i have a motion by ms harrison do i have a second second second by dr mealy any discussion all those in favor signify by saying i i opposed motion carries wow let's move on to item 11 superintendent's report dr bergen thank you madam chair as has been our custom we have lots to celebrate with accomplishments of students and staff since we were last together we'll begin with the gentleman on the screen wade wickline the 2022 central virginia welding wars competition was recently held at central virginia community college this competition included

13840 individuals competing in a long day of hands-on welding tasks 10 individuals were selected by the judges as the top welders for their respective categories and we offer up our congratulations to wade wickline from stanton river high school for placing third in level two welding competition over this past school year forest middle school had three teams that were participating in a very unique challenge called plant the moon challenge there were a total of 248 teams in this competition that represented not only the united states but 10 countries with students ranging from elementary through college the forest middle school students worked in teams five days a week for 10 weeks to grow green beans lettuce and kale that have been planted in moon regolith which is essentially lunar dust along with some varying amounts of soil

139additives the teams then presented their work virtually to representatives from nassau and the virginia department of education and while all three teams were certainly amazing in their accomplishments the best in show award for plant growth was awarded to the green bean team of forest middle school congratulations to all of our forest middle school students and to their teachers for providing this very unique hands-on opportunity for our kids jefferson forest high school's justin kim a student at the central virginia governor school for science and technology recently won fourth place grand award in biomedical and health sciences at the regeneron international science and engineering engineering fair his presentation was on the title of his presentation was the effect of bruceless serious on the central nervous system of iowa tigran congratulations to me for getting all of those

140words correct and really congratulations to justin kim for his amazing work at this international science and engineering fair staying in the science lane we had many students recently participate in the central virginia regional middle school science fair we'd like to congratulate forest middle school students avery pisac and olivia delepena who took first place in chemistry and will now represent along with sophie and nicholas bellinger the region at the 2022 international science fair congratulations also to forest middle school student owen evans who took second place in physics and to monita elementary school student hanson hager who took second place in the rube goldberg competition we'd like to once again congratulate katrina grooms of new london academy being named teacher of the year we'd also at this time like to take a moment to thank the businesses

141and the organizations throughout the county for their donations in support of katrina and all of our teacher of the year nominees the following businesses contributed their goods and services so our thanks to fostech corporation london's salt spa sam moore furniture simply vanilla gourmet virginia furniture market emerson creek pottery jm freebird monita farm and home center and the bedford area educational foundation mrs grooms has submitted her application to represent in the region we're very hopeful that she will emerge from the 22 school divisions in region 5 to become the region's representative for the state finalists and if she's so chosen it would be the seventh time in the past 13 years that bedford county has had a regional teacher so fingers crossed for katrina for those of you who are not able to attend or view

142our graduation ceremonies that were held on may 28th at liberty university as previously shared by dr woodford we're so proud to have had 680 students received their diplomas that day congratulations to all of our graduates as they embark on this next adventure in life we certainly hope they take pride in how far they've come how to have faith and how far they can go and to never forget to enjoy the journey if you've been monitoring our social media channels lately you'll know that our students have had some awesome spring sports and other vhsl activities season of accomplishments first congratulations to all three of our high schools they were all represented at the state track meet that was held this past saturday at liberty university jf's girls track team was crowned the regional champs and the

143group 4a state runner-up congratulations also to the jefferson forest teams who recently competed in the vhsl film festival competition with the school's animation team being selected as the audience choice for best feature in the state competition jf's baseball team has now won the region and the soccer team is regional runner-up both teams are now pursuing a state title and play tomorrow in the state semifinals we wish our student athletes competing tomorrow the best of luck we look forward to recognizing them and all of our students for their spring sports and other vhsl activity accomplishments at the july school board meeting sorry and the last slide this past monday june 6 as part of the global freedom rings event church bells all across bedford county chimed out 20 times to honor the 20 individuals who gave

144their lives on the d-day invasion of normandy france in 1944 so we would be remiss if we didn't take this moment to honor and say thank you to all the members of our armed services both present and past for their bravery and their service the memory of those who have fought and sacrificed their lives for our freedoms will never be forgotten madame concludes the superintendent's comments thank you dr bergen item 12.01 committee reports serious i believe we started with you last month so mr daniels do you have any committee reports uh we had the uh the last ciac committee meeting of the year which happened in a couple weeks ago um it was great it was a lot of thank yous going across to all the members and for their participation um and their um

145and all the efforts that they put in for the year um one of the things moving into next year that was discussed was um trying to hold more events um for the special needs students and their families so uh that was well received and uh it looks like we're going to move forward i believe with probably at least three more events throughout the throughout the year so online was really good perfect any any others the iga committee that was it yeah budget committee we had some numbers but they were still too fresh to to update um i think we do have some worksheets now so i don't know if uh mr hagler wants to go over anything or give any numbers or anything or or have anything you might want to say um i'll take

146that that's all right randy um uh if if it's all right with you not tonight we'd like to meet with the committee we have an email out to the two committee members we're going to review that in detail with you and then we have a special called budget work session to brief the full board and the community on the developments of the budget hill any committee reports central virginia gov school we met we looked at the budget proposed budget for next year we did approve that tentatively waiting for state results so we will not meet again until august but we have given permission for a range of that approval for central virginia gov school and then the iga which is what i think i heard from last meeting is what we're now calling it reminds

147me of a grocery store but it used to be it didn't go with it we we went over several of the policies which were presented tonight for informational i think the biggest one was the fmla and that was a big thick packet that we had had to go through but i think we're making progress with the policies as they're being presented i think things are speeding up as we go through as we set that criteria for what we want it to look like so i think we're making good progress for those yes i just have the same information that mr hill just shared with the renault valley governor school we are doing the same thing but we don't meet until october so we did give tentative consensus to approving that budget as well harrison the

148facility committee met on may the 20th and of course a lot of things dr dewis has already shared with us tonight um but i will just kind of highlight a couple of things that we did talk about and got some updates on regarding our hvac um that work has begun in four schools maybe we've reached more by now i don't know that that was at that meeting at the time it's the information i'm sharing with you water fountains have been installed at 20 plus schools i think we have 40 total that will be installed but we're moving right along with that as well we also talked a little bit and discussed the resolution for the historic tax credit and i'm certainly pleased that um mrs kirby is going to take a look and join us

149on that and look closer at that so i think that's that's really good that we will allow you to do that with your expertise [Music] also we did discuss having community meetings regarding stanton river high school and liberty high school's auditorium we really feel like it's time to begin that discussion and to get input from our community regarding their needs and we know that these two schools have great needs and so we do want to begin generating some discussion in our community regarding the needs as well as funding too we talked a little bit about our tentative schedule for future meetings we scheduled up until six months from now so we've got all that squared away i took a field trip with mr blankenship and i am so appreciative for his driving skills as he

150took me across some very winding roads as we were looking at some of the routes of our new london school students and our students in ottawa river as well as forest elementary school we're looking at those schools and took a look at those routes because as i've shared with you all we have concerns about the capacity numbers particularly at our school in new london so we wanted i wanted to take a closer look as to where those lines are and the students and families certainly that live along those various routes in the future in the near future we are certainly going to be presenting to the board a proposed plan on how we would like to address the capacity issues that we are facing this is a topic that must be had along with solutions

151are needed and so i look forward to having this discussion with fellow board members as we reach a plan as well our laurel school board we haven't met since the may the 4th so we haven't had a meeting since then but i'm excited about the expansion of the program at laurel school and the needs that these programs will meet our students pop that particular student population so madam chairman that's all i have in terms of reports well thank you all for all those reports okay let's start with on this end now ms harrison okay i'll just keep talking keep keep going just keep going you did such a good job keep on going all right comments and concerns for board members please okay so i too want to extend uh congratulations and well wishes to

152all of our bedford county public school retirees i went through the list and certainly know that there's a lot of familiar faces and individuals that i've worked with that have decided to retire and so i wanted to just take a moment and just recognize those individuals but also to extend to all of our bedford county retirees my well wishes for you and i know you're going to just enjoy retirement because it's it's pretty awesome that's for sure i want to recognize martha nolan a reading specialist at big allen school martha and i work together at bedford primary school and she's just a phenomenal reading specialist we're going to really miss her and also to claire mooney who is a special ed teacher at otter river she and i work closely together at otter river and

153and claire just enjoy your retirement and also i want to just take a moment to say to patricia knox [Music] what a phenomenal lady she is and such hard work and her dedication to our students our schools patricia was really i feel the individual that uh really helped to build our nursing program she was a voice and and and certainly a force to be reckoned with as well but she was determined and so patricia i wish you the very very best and i'm i am just very uh happy with all of the work that you've done in establishing our nursing program so congratulations to you um [Music] also oh i do i do have a question um that i wanted to ask regarding um our safety uh in terms of safety drills and and our

154lockdowns and our walkthroughs that are conducted by our safety manager team i don't know dr dewis that may be under your umbrella there if you could provide me with just the number of safety drills and walkthroughs that have been conducted this year i would really appreciate that i don't know if other fellow board members would like to know any of that information but i do would like very much to have that that information i think the individuals who spoke tonight particularly the um the gentleman who spoke regarding the resource officers in light of everything that's going on in our our nation regarding school shootings i certainly support the resource officers and i think it's very important that we provide every level of safety and i know that our school division is doing just that i

155know that those individuals who are in charge are working hard and that we've got a lot of safety measures in place already and so um i do want to commend our county for that but i would like to just have that information please um that's all that i have thank you really uh yes i'm just going to follow up on what [Music] miss harrison just started with because in light of vivaldi and the other mass shootings in this country i know mr simmons isn't really in charge of this is that correct yeah and so um i would like to know you know is he visiting our schools regularly yes do we have a log of his visits to show that he has done this check to see how how we account for his time is

156he in light of the the shootings that have occurred um is he reviewing crisis plans with principles so mr kirby do you want to take the lead on this yeah i was actually going to hit on some of this in in my comments okay yeah all right if we can follow up okay um so uh i'll ask another ques i have another couple of questions if you're going to answer it just or yeah let's hold on if we can we can i'll talk okay um okay because i think glenn smith i believe was the gentleman who got up and spoken and you know he said nothing trump safety nothing does trump safety and i don't think we can do too much at all to be safe so i want to make sure that we are

157it's very easy i mean i did those plans you did those plans but it's always great to have more eyes on those plans so going back two months ago um i had asked for the iga committee to review ieb and iec and i know mr holbrook spoke about that last month as well so when can we expect that that will come forward for the board is is it the will of the board to bring those two policies back yes we we reached consensus about that last month as far as i know last month yeah okay it's fine with you to bring it back okay so do we need to take a consensus tonight on that i think are y'all meeting y'all are meeting this month correct yes okay i would just go ahead and throw

158it on your agenda to review it i don't i'm finally i i think it needs to come back to the board i say it's okay they're the god we trust and the so do you want me to speak on that now or do you want me to hold off because the policy is going to come back as written so why don't you wait until your comments because this is what this is supposed to be for actually is comments not not the q and a perfect okay so what what would i be able to get an answer to my question when it comes this time and then would we be able to respond i mean i'll give you an answer right now um it's going to come i mean we'll bring it back but it's going

159to be the exact same policy and then we'll vote on it okay i have a i have a question to that it we've already established that we're talking about something that's in the state law is there is a possibility for us to expand on it expand on on what the policy says see why not okay i also want to consult with the attorney though for right if you're talking about the state code yeah so we can kind of go above and beyond to john just recognize what it is but also to encourage in our curriculum um you know maybe some more things that we can explain what what the meaning behind everything and really get after it's not just recognizing it it's also it's also honoring and teaching what everything what we're saying all this

160is about well a lot of that is in curriculum already so you may want to check like especially in the lower grades and that's fine and i i do think when it when it comes to that um you know there's there's other parts in history that i'm sure that we probably should should recognize such as the bedford boys which was was was brought up and and you know i understand that that happens at at lower school levels but the level of understanding when you're in second grade is different than when you're in seventh grade and it's different when you're a junior so i think it's important that maybe we um we take that and we just kind of expand on a little bit if if we can i just think it needs to come back

161yes also last month i asked for a report dr bergen on the mid-year and third quarter and the end of the year student performance and i haven't seen anything yet so i was wondering when we might be able to get those numbers because we didn't we didn't get any mid-year grades as far as i recall maybe i'm mistaken but i know third third quarter and the end of the year i haven't seen anything we should have all that data can we get that before the next meeting and we had consensus from the board last month to get that board would like just want to make sure i understand what we're requesting the board would like grade distribution by division yeah like we did we did that last year so just follow the same thing we

162did last year or i mean i mean dr woodford did so she has that information i'm sure you said that was the will of the board last month yes we i asked you do you think it's important that we see this data everyone agreed yes they thought it was important that we needed to look at this data once the data is official correct no this data should be it's not the sol data it's the uh it's the end of the year i mean the year's over so all of the data they have should be current up-to-date data i don't think anybody's taking an end you know a teacher-made end-of-the-year test anymore um so we're still okay with that i see people shaking their heads okay the other thing and we are going to work on

163that database for home school and private school students so that we have that the other thing i want to ask too is last august i asked about common benchmarks and i was told that they they would take place but when i was with dr bergen at stewartsville [Music] we were told that they did have the first benchmark they created their own second second benchmarks and then actually teachers at stewartsville were complaining uh concerned i should say that they had a combination third fourth quarter that was not very helpful because the students hadn't completed the fourth quarter so i'm just trying help me understand why we didn't have completed benchmarks since i asked for that in august and i was told we would have it okay and last august i just asked i had asked the

164instructional team are we going to have common benchmarks because you had a new program i believe and were we going to have common benchmarks where we could look at common data across the different levels elementary middle high school and i was told yes we would what i'm being told is that we had a first one that people created their own second one and that the last one was three and four together and okay okay thank you very much for that um [Music] okay where are we also with the um we last month we also i made a request for information about how to get going on the auditorium renovations that miss uh harrison referred to so where are we with that remember i said i'm not exactly sure how we go about that and i

165think dr dewish you were going to look into how we do that so where are we with that so you know dr mealy all the board members we've had several reports on what we could do with auditorium so we're crystal clear about what the potentials are but we have to have a funding source so where we are is we need to be advocating for additional funding so one of the things i've talked to the board leadership about and i've talked with my counterpart and i've talked with members of the board of supervisors is an opportunity for this board and that board to come together and talk about long-range facility needs including the auditoriums and many other 150 million dollars in needs to determine when and how we might fund all of these many projects through

166local state and federal funding sources so will will with at the will of the board and through the leadership i would like to plan for an opportunity for this board and the board of supervisors to come together and have this conversation about long-range facility needs and this is certainly a key part of that conversation does that address your question yes i just want to make sure we're we're moving forward and not just really kind of talking about it but not taking some action to move forward even if we're told no i i just think it's important for the public to know that we are uh that we we consider this to be important um we're sitting in kennedy era you know auditorium so they they need to be upgraded and especially in light of uh

167what mr johnson had said last month about equity for the the different um fine arts uh programs and also what we've heard tonight from some of our um public comments as well but dr mealy in my report i had mentioned that we do want to go and have community discussion at stanton river high school and liberty high school with the community in which to let them know you know what our plans are hear from them regarding their concerns ways in which we could go about funding so we want to take a discussion to them regarding it okay um i also want to thank two people especially who are retiring patricia knox i don't know if i can add anything else to what you said about patricia she certainly was a force to be reckoned with

168when it came to the the health and and when it came to her nurses and i just want to thank her publicly because she did a great job she hired some fantastic nurses and she held them accountable for really good health care and for our students in school so thank you to her another person i really just want to thank because i just don't even know how she did it was karen arthur i know she's not retiring but she's leaving the position and she also did a really great job so i want to thank her for that um so best wishes for those people i agree who are retiring you will love retirement i also want to just speak just for a moment to the two young ladies kylie and lilly who spoke about the

169lgbt community i can't speak for anyone or else but i think your words tonight were very brave i'm sorry they're not here to hear this but i think your words are very brave um and you know i am talking to you you know you're not wrong and you are always welcome in my space um and i and i think that um you know i certainly don't dismiss you i don't dismiss anybody who is different than than i am and uh the idea of inclusivity and and um you know equity is very important to me no matter what your particular affiliation is so they you were very brave tonight to speak and and i appreciate that um uh one other thing is i think i don't know how the board feels about the sites that mrs

170sneed spoke about is that something we want to make available on our web page so that parents can access those sites from our webpage is that something we're not supposed to do or can we get that information out to parents so that they can access those sites and make appropriate decisions for their children i think that's something that we would need to look into further to see how we could implement it it's hard to to make it just for to be brought up instantaneous decision i will tell you we are currently working on um around books and how to communicate with our parents about what books are being selected by their students or being required for their students so i absolutely think the iga can go back and look at those sites but as a

171board if we want to advertise it otherwise i think that's a great idea once we check it but i did want you to know we are looking at options to be included on emails mandatory emails that go out to parents to notify them and then provide resources of how like you said the parent can choose to look at the rating not us giving the rating thank you dr maylie mr gnomes um i was actually one of those board members who saw that movie um whose children are they it was a great movie um highly recommend it um dr bergen correct me if i'm wrong next year we are doing away with all mitigation and it's going to go back to pre-covet status yeah just you know like before covet and during cove at an after

172cove if you're sick stay home you know sneezing your elbow wash your hands you know do common sense things but we're not going to uh we're not going to have a quarantine code we're not going to talk about masking although people are certainly welcome to wear a mask if whatever their medical reasons may be we're not going to limit numbers all of those things have been in place that helped us to keep school open and have kids in school to the extent that we could will will be a reset unless this board tells me otherwise or i'll bring to you if there's state or federal requirements of which i am unaware at this time the only thing is um just congratulations to all the graduates um hopefully god will watch over you in this next

173chapter of your life because once adulthood hits that's that's a whole different life story there get gray hairs really fast and then also huge congratulations to the uprising eighth graders going to ninth grade fifth graders and first graders going to second grade congratulations to all of them as well and then of course i want to talk a little bit more about the safety what are we going to do far as our new safety strategy is that something that you're going to speak on okay all right um and then the auditorium thing i'm all for this renovation at auditorium i'm not sure why it's such a big deal now and it should have been done a long time ago when we you know we had a board that was you know all about performing arts that

174should have been taken care of a long time ago when funding was available but for now we're taking the heat for it and we'll let that be that anything else nope daniels um thank you uh last meeting we had discussion on moving items that were presented for informational to action items and understand the normal course of business is that we present the items first and then we discuss and then we vote on it at the next public meeting i completely understand and respect that the passion uh to do that and to move quickly although i feel it was very important that we do pause and the only reason why i really felt that is because when it's presented for an informational item even if our minds are completely made up we still owe it to

175the public to to give them the information let them digest it and then give them an opportunity to reach out to us and and give us their input so we we did allow that process to take place and i'm thankful for that i'm very happy that we passed the resolution to support parents rights given the events of the last two years and all the information in the news and of other counties and states regarding curriculum indoctrination grooming i did feel it was important to show that all of us together as bedford county schools would stand with the parents um there was there was an issue and there's a problem and i think that we're able to put our foot down and resolve that and that's what i have school safety i know we're going to

176talk about just i know that that that our team kind of got together and was willing to discuss uh everything and and look at ways to potentially strengthen our plan i i'm assuming that uh every board member like me got quite a bit of uh emails and phone calls from concerned parents and of course we are all very concerned as well they've offered a lot of good suggestions as those suggestions come up i'm going to continue that anything that i get to to forward those and pass those along um it was said here tonight but it's it's it bears repeating that um we up here on this board i don't want to speak for the board but i i know the hearts of everybody up here and we you know um we don't want to

177hear that we can't afford to do any recommendations that get made i think that it's important to understand that we can't afford not to do them these are these are our kids so i think it's important that we we work together to find a resolution to to try to solve this problem and make our defenses as strong as they can be there's also going to be two fundraisers for jefferson forest cavalier cheer one on saturday june 11th from 11 to 3 p.m at the kroger on on forest road they're also going to have another one on june 25th at the same location they're raising money for uniforms palms and to go to a cheer camp i'm going to be making a donation for for that to help them raise money for that cheer camp every

178dollar certainly helps miss hairston and dr mealy thank you for giving a shout out to all our retirees it was definitely it was wonderful to hear and it was very heartfelt so thank you guys for that and then congratulations to all our students and graduates as well best of luck and continue to make bedford county proud all right well first of all congratulations to the jf boys soccer and jf baseball teams they are currently in fredericksburg virginia tonight to begin their state play-off tomorrow morning at 11 a.m and then 1 p.m tomorrow afternoon for baseball so i have to give shout out to the two bus drivers that were there to carry those students i can only imagine what they heard or saw or experienced but i have to give a shout out to deanne

179angus she's one of our bus drivers at jf i think she was more excited than the team and so i really appreciate her and her enthusiasm and just having fun with the the guys there so i did attend two of the three great graduations i attended jf and stanton river i do apologize for not being able to attend liberty but i had family in town to celebrate my son nolan who graduated from jf uh that saturday and i have to give him a shout out he also graduated the two weeks before from central virginia community college which is very exciting so i'll have to give a shout out to that program three of my four have graduated from cvcc and i won't embarrass bella but she's got one more year and she'll be the four

180or four so congratulations to cvcc for an exceptional program one of the things that i wanted to mention that we've heard a lot this week is around fms competitive cheer it's a club sport they're being told that they can't do it because of the budget and from what i understand if it's a club sport we have nothing to do with the budget so i'm not asking for an answer tonight but i do want the staff to take a look at that and i think the only thing they're asking us to do is provide transportation which we're already doing for the jf team so i don't understand why we can't combine the two and support both jf and fms and i'm not saying just support the forest area but if liberty and stanton have those same

181teams we would certainly want to do that one of the things that you know i know we listen to comments and we're not supposed to respond back which i didn't but i would encourage people to have facts over emotions books were never asked to be banned we wanted to look at the process and understand what the role of the parent was around those books we'll continue to look at that i'm not going to apologize for asking for it but books were never even asked to be banned we wanted to understand the process so again facts over emotions i was not here last month for cip but i want to be very clear of my stance on spending money when it comes to cip i've shared this with ms harrison and matt i want to be

182very careful that we spend dollars on buildings that we may not have in five years and i know we don't have a crystal ball to say what schools are we going to have but we need to get we need to be very clear with the community and parents our numbers are declining that's a known fact our board of supervisors has a bedford county comprehensive plan that does not plan to grow liberty and stanton river zone now i'm not saying that won't change next next week next year whatever but we are the education system we're prepared to provide facilities and education to our students we do not recruit students so the only way that we can get more students in those areas is for the the board of supervisors to start recruiting businesses and families and

183so what we do have a responsibility of is where we're spending money and if we're spend spending money on schools that are at 50 or 60 percent capacity and we have room to move those learners to other areas then we need to be looking at possibility of closure and i'm not saying we're closing anything but it's our responsibility to take a look at that so when i look at the cip and i see 289 000 for a new roof in an area where we continue to decline in students i want to make sure we're very careful before we approve it and i know it will come to the board to approve those dollars but i want to publicly say we owe that to our community not to spend dollars on buildings we won't have so

184um so my phone my email why did you not vote for this resolution for teachers and staff well it's very clear all of that information that was in that resolution is in our teacher contracts and our staff i mean all of that information we make a commitment and support our teachers and our staff and so we absolutely stand behind you there's no question the reason why it was important to support a resolution around parental rights is because the previous board made a conscious vote a 4-3 to remove parental rights i questioned it the response was yes and four board members voted to remove parental rights and so the resolution about parental rights was to restore that faith back to our parents and so i want to make it very clear that's why i was willing

185to approve the resolution because we had something to fix we had to fix the parental rights and their trust several members asked a question of why are they leaving how do we get them back that's step one is making sure we've restored that fate back in our parents so i don't want there to be any concern that we don't support teachers and staff we do we absolutely support you your contracts state that supporting what you want to do around your curriculum i think you have that flexibility based on what staff is telling us so i wanted to make sure that there's no emotion versus fact of marcus hill or any other board member does not support our teachers and staff i'm out there i i'm in classrooms i go to i'm looking at shayna because

186i apologize to her for not coming to wizard of oz this year but you know you can't do it all um but there is support um we're out there we we are supporting our teachers so i want to make that very clear that there's no comments of you know split board not that's that's not true so the reason for the resolution for the parental rights is because we needed to take that action on a positive note after tonight cupcakes at school live again so one of those policies that were written a long time ago got rid of parents being able to come in and celebrate a simple birthday with their kids and so we changed that policy and so bring your cupcakes communicate with your teacher let them know what the plan is but again

187we're giving that right back to the parent and of course work with your teacher and let's move forward on that a couple things that i want to make sure that i pose as questions publicly not looking for staff to answer these tonight but i want to make sure you know i'm going to be calling you and asking you but i want to make them public because i've heard from my constituents which by the way supported me 94 so i i do stand for my constituents schedule changes in middle schools and high schools there's been a lot of con you know conversation around that what are the benefits of those schedule changes and again i'm not looking for answers tonight but i think it's important for us to be able to get it back to our

188community to say you're absolutely right we did change this and here's why um what are the benefits and then how many new electives are being offered by this change what's what are we getting out of changing this because it's affecting all all three zones either at high school or middle school um exploratory curriculum that i've heard about at fms is this the same curriculum being offered at stanton river in liberty middle if not why not if it is great just need to understand the differences um who is involved in the exploratory curriculum and what will it look like and poor karen and josh they're going to think i'm a brokered broken record on this one but why is yearbook being offered at liberty middle school in stanton river middle school but not at fms i

189want an answer i want to understand why um parents want to know why we have extended the school day but the instructional time remains the same and i think that's primarily at the middle school and so we need to understand what does that get us and why why did we decide to do that um and then the last one is um again just around communication and and letting people know why we're changing and i'm not saying all change is bad we just need to understand it why did we remove connections learners used to use this time for homework and getting other work completed and from what i'm understanding we've pulled that away and so again just trying to understand and maybe that's a faq for why we're changing the schedule and how all of that

190benefits and what changes all right miss kirby i'm done i was able to attend all three bedford county high school graduations for those of you who are not there you missed a great time i got to see a son a father hand his son his diploma young man walking across to get his diploma and all of a sudden he did a backflip that was but i saw proud parents and even prouder grandparents and most of all the proudest were the graduates but most of all i saw greatness i'd like to extend a final graduation congratulations to the class of 2022 keep doing great things i also want to give kudos to mr hill his son graduated from jf during the first graduation so it was a day of celebration for his family he of course

191left to spend time with his family but surprisingly he sent me a text and said tell them to have a chair ready for me for sand river i'm coming back so that that was really noticing it was really appreciated thank you for doing that speaking of graduations i have received a lot of negative feedback about um not having the fifth grade graduations anymore and having them as celebrations um there was i think we need to do what we can to make sure we bring back the earlier graduations column graduations make sure we have parents in there we don't have mitigation strategies anymore we have no reason to keep anyone out from having a graduation so i think we should go back to our traditional ways i want to echo everyone here congratulations to the retirees

192i hope you enjoy your time you've earned it go forth and live and don't worry about your time clock anymore last week mr hill dr bergen our safety director scott simmons and i met with sheriff miller and three of his deputies i was both pleased and surprised at the number of safety measures that both entities have in place to protect our schools as a parent i'm much more at ease sending my children to school i'm even more pleased with progress at the meeting and the continued commitment from the sheriff's office and the schools to form additional collaborative teams to further improve school safety so we're going to keep it's going to be an ongoing process but we do have a lot of good good solid safety measures in check i also attended the parent listening

193event for lhs athletics the number of parents that showed up was outstanding listening to them have made up listening to them have made the opportunity to voice their concerns was very unfortunate was very informative mr tucker assured all the parents that he was there for them and encourage parents to reach out to him directly to voice their concerns what he doesn't know about he can't fix i would encourage all with concerns to reach out to him i would encourage anyone who can afford a solution to any of the concerns to reach out also several years ago i'm sure um and this is one i would like for us to seriously consider because it would not be very expensive at all and i'm sure you remember i was talking about this several years ago when we

194moved the baseball field from here from liberty up to liberty middle school we installed the press box and the bathrooms up there we went above and beyond and put those in and honestly i'm surprised no one has filed a title not ensued against us but it would not cost hardly anything to put in a press box and a um and some bathrooms up at the softball field here we talked about how easy it would be tap into the water line at the shop and just running straight up could we possibly miss could we possibly get a an of estimate of how much that would cost and maybe do some of that with carryover funds calculate for the inflation which is through the roof okay thank you very much on another liberty note be on the

195lookout for for announcements from mr tucker regarding the need for volunteers for a campus spruce up he was looking for anyone who can help out help clean out the flower beds do some pressure washing and help get the campus looking its best also if anyone could help get donations of mulch or landscaping rocks it would be most appreciative please feel free to contact mr tucker for any further information congratulations to liberty graduate mellie thompson she had an amazing freshman season with clemson softball she broke a clemson softball record for pitching a no-hitter in her first ever post-season game and the first hosted by clemson to help them advance to the super regionals additional congratulations to jf graduate isaac simmons isaac was on the lu golf team with an amazing record as they advanced the ncaa

196national championship for the fourth year in a row but in addition to that phenomenal season simmons also had the opportunity to compete at the local level to qualify for the u.s open he had the third best finish with an amateur of an amateur at three over par for 36 holes i even read that his dad scott simmons was his caddy last month ms harrison made comments um about her motion to amend the agenda and have the resolutions to an action item she made reference to the waving of the rule of of information on one month and voting for the second she made the name change for two of bstc to susie gibson she then challenged the board to consistency i'd like to take a moment to touch on this about six and a half years

197on the board the standard and i believe best practice has always been to present the item as informational one month in action the second this is designed this is designed for the public to also be made aware of what's going on and give them the opportunity to be able to reach out to us and weigh in on their thoughts and concerns also the months time research time between the information on the action affords this time to do additional research and ask additional questions which is nothing but advantageous to the final vote the constant waving of this practice in essence is robbing the stakeholders of their opportunity to be involved and informed as well as having as well as us having time to make sound decisions while i understand that for deadlines and extenuating circumstances sometimes

198a month waiver is necessary however i will continue to stand behind the practice of presentation one month in action for the next finally i ask that you please continue to pray for uvalde texas and hope that they continue to heal okay do i have a motion to adjourn mrs madden chairman i have a motion by dr miley second by mr nelms any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye is anyone opposed meeting adjourned you