School Board Meeting 3/10/2022 - 5:00 PM

001good evening everyone i'd like to call this regular call meeting of the bedford county school board for march the 10th 2022 to order ms johnson will you please read the role mrs 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 dr mealy do i have a second mr nelson is that you okay second by mr nelms any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries do i have a motion going to close session madam chair make a motion we go in close session pursuant for consideration i have a motion by mr hill do i have a second

002second second by miss harrison sorry i can't see down there any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed we're now in closed session oh do i have a motion to come at a closed meeting motion by ms harrison do i have a second second by dr mealy any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye we're at a closed session ms johnson will you certify whereas the bedford county school board has convened a closed meeting on this state pursuant to an affirmative recorded vote 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

003bedford county school board hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements by virginia law were discussed in the closed meeting to which the certification applies and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered yes yes yes yes do i have a motion regarding student number nine for school year 2017 to 2018. madam chair i make a recommendation that we accept the superintendent's recommendation i have a motion by mr hilda we'll have a second second by dr mealey any discussion all those in favor signify saying aye aye opposed motion carries tonight we have a um presentation from mr davis of job corps mr davis thank you for coming good evening first of

004all to open up say i'm very humbled and excited at the exact same time so um it's been like 41 years since i was here on the stage in a a play and so i came in and looked and says man the stage is just as big now as it was when i was that young so um i'm really excited and i want to thank you i'm humbly i want to thank you for allowing me to be here tonight this evening a couple of things i'm going to tell you from i'm very brief very brief um i'll put the brochure on your table there and i'm allow you to read over that you know when i'm gone and so but let me tell you a little bit about job corps and what we do we're

005trade school we're located in monroe virginia we've been in the job corps been around about 50 some 57 years being a trade school meaning this is that our primary goal is to do wrap-around services with school systems in other words for that actress youth or that young person that you know that's pale eligible that wants to trade and don't want to go to college now if they want to go to college i got another brochure on the table i'll explain that in a minute also but our primary goal is just just as simple is do whatever we can do to get our young our virginia back to work the young people in this area to work in those necessary trades like carpentry and plumbing you know uh painting cna cmas those type of trades guess

006what we need those we need those skills but the reason i'm so excited about this program here being in bethel county we have one goal here tonight you know i have one goal is as we train those young people for them to be retained here in this area and so the way we do that is this we also wrap around and create partnerships with your um businesses here in the area in other words we promote those businesses back to that young person say look this person is paying x amount of money let me give you an example if you look at this brochure right here this brochure right here was created in partnership with bwx and cvcc it talks primarily what bwx needed at the time and still needs like welding machine shops you know

007people like the hvac people they said look can you help us promote this program well those that know about bwx a very stringent process of getting in there and so i told nat and marshall i said nat maybe i might get you one or two students a year just because of background checks and stuff like that his exact words were hey if i get one or two is more than what i normally would have and so one two more than what he would have so my goal tonight is this is that you realize that old dominion all the willow ways away but we also have put together a game plan pick up and drop off here in the county in other words it's in you know we have we're working on different locations because it

008would be a bust so we got to make sure we can turn the bus around pick up and drop off a properly and safely but our primary goal is doing that making sure that a young person they want to go into a trade then we can allow them to go into the trade one thing i have not said is this our program is free it's registered to the department of labor so therefore a young person that's pale eligible or a certain income bracket guess what we can help them get into that program one of the things i want to close with is this notice i'm pretty quick so if any answers question you have is this one thing i want to close with this i'm very excited about working with before county i work with

009i've been with ms mcneely already at the bridges school phenomenal program i mean absolutely phenomenal staff i've seen trevor at several meetings already so uh you have some great people here in the county and my primary focus is how can we as old dominion do more to support and um so therefore if there's any questions i'm willing to answer any questions but i'm not going to read to you what's on there um but there's any questions while i'm here i'd much rather spend that time there yes sir as far as transportation i heard you say a bus yes sir does that include all three of our high schools so no matter where we are that's a very good question more than likely we have to find one location that's going to be able to cater

010to i know you have stanton river out there so we would have to look at one location and we're still falling on a couple of covet guidelines because of dol like here we're unmasked on center where mass because they're federal guidelines we still have to follow but we have a couple ideas of where we want to do the location but with it's on the table for discussion what will be centrally okay to make sense because this is new to us i thank you for that question any other questions is it possible that we could do a site visit just to check out the weekly we can do a virtual visit let me tell you a couple of quick things we're offering the non-rest program right now in other words we would pick them up drop

011them off they go to school during the day go to trade during the day where um we don't have a start and stop date in other words we don't follow typical calendar year because we're a trade school as a young person come in they can complete the program at their own pace now they have a two year window you know but still you know in that two years they can complete the program you know at their own pace so therefore with that being said is that the non-res program is what we're highlighting for the next two years we have a lot of construction about seven million dollars of construction buildings that we did not even use during covet now it's required to do some construction deal or approve them and so therefore what's going to

012happen is this as far as a tour we can do virtual tours and if you look at that on as a qr code on the back of that it'll also take you to the site where you go to job4.org and you can actually see the facility and i can email you an actual virtual tool if you my telephone number and everything contact information is on that flyer i can send you a virtual tool but at one point we were actually doing breakfasts part of the tour we call them community relationship breakfasts and so therefore then you could get the tour but those days are coming as soon as we get the green light like public schools will be we'll definitely have them for sure thank you thank you yes sir so this is for students

013really can't hear me all right yes sir most of the time they don't want to hear me i want to hear you um so this is for students after after high school correct yes so this does not compete with our susie g gibson programs this is an added bonus yes after high school so it does require high school diploma or ged now if they let's that's a very good question leading question let's say they don't have that item we can help them get that item it could be a ged or high school diploma thank you for that that quest that's a very good question i like this part better than reading this to you he opened up more discussion yes man um yeah i just want to follow up with mr what mr hill said

014so because it says who's eligible yes you that you must have that ged so is there the college program over the course yeah see here's the thing this is a college program okay but for job corps itself you do not okay and so what what is there a point at which if i don't have a diploma suppose i only have 10 credits toward a uh is is there any point in high school or a college high school high school we help them okay yes absolutely we'll help them get that and our classroom size is a little bit smaller and it's self-paced and you have her tape scores you know takes we'll take them to a tape score process first to see where they are and then we can specialize that need for that young person

015and it might take them a lot longer than normal to get that high school diploma or ged but that's okay any other questions well look i appreciate the opportunity of being here and if you need anything my contact information is right there one of the things i will close with if you notice on your table there's an old dominion job for tumblr we give these out for a reason we want you to really think about old dominion as being the first choice as far as trade schools in our area if you think about it you know why you're having your cup of coffee and says hey look i think this kid might be qualified for job quote please give me a call i'm also going to be bringing some water bottles on tuesday of next

016week a lot of water bottles enough who has a question about the high schools you will have enough for for seniors every senior literally every single year and some other extras if you want to send them somewhere else and so but we do want to cater to that group that's that's out there that want to trade and if they want to go to college we're willing to help them too if they they're paying eligible but there's no other questions thank you appreciate the opportunity yes ma'am no no go ahead auto auto auto huge auto is uh the largest and now i think what's going to take place is that the auto industry is changing and our auto program has always had the most students i mean at one point would be prior to covert 35

017and we had to have two instructors and we have a full automotive bay you know just like the snap-on you know you know with several bays actually and we had another one added on prior to cover and didn't get to use it he said but otto is the biggest one that's a and we're a co-ed facility you know so therefore there's no one trait for one gender or not it's all across the board uh thank you any more questions for mr davis thank you so much for coming i appreciate it good evening thank you dr maylie i don't think your mic is on if you push your button to get the group there you go thank you well i can hear it because i'm already here can you all hear me hello okay thank you

018moving on to item 4 4.01 i guess um we have discussed briefly that well back before covet actually we were discussing updating our bylaws because they are very much so out of date and covet hit and we were meeting by zoom and it kind of got pushed to the wayside and i'd like to bring these back up um we have in your folders that you got last month that were at your desk we had the current bylaws that we're standing on um we had some that dr mealy had updated for us that was in there and we have the um norms and protocols that we did in our work session just a few months ago and after talking to our attorney and i think we've all kind of agreed to this i'm just trying to

019get everybody on the same page that we don't have to have bylaws and policies and or and procedures policies and procedures that we can combine them into one and i think we're all in agreement of combining them into one policy and procedure as opposed to bylaws is that correct for me yeah i would support that okay how looking at this to create one document we have these documents here we have um in our policies and procedures you have section b which is policies and procedures that we have to follow by to combine all those into one document how would y'all suggest we go about getting everyone's suggestion um well we could do it like maybe i'm just picking a number here because i don't remember how many pages but you know 10 pages at a

020time or um so many sections at a time okay or uh i'll tell you what my idea was too if because this is this is going to be a work in progress this isn't going to happen in next couple of weeks um if everybody could have time to go through them this month then next month give me cross out what you don't want circle what you want to keep if you have any suggestions write them in the margins give them to me i'll accumulate them and we'll try to get i'll get a draft out would that work that certainly is an option um i guess for me um i was thinking at some point getting together and as a group as a whole and perhaps maybe talking about um having discussion perhaps further on it

021i i certainly think having the opportunity to go through them and dividing them the way you said madam chairman is a great ideal i'm just wondering also if we couldn't have another step in there where we are all together maybe discussing um certain documents or discussing it taking questions that we may have needing further clarification maybe particularly with some of our new board members coming together as a group might be beneficial we combine the two options and take 10 pages at a time per meeting cross out circle have discussion publicly what we want to add and remove that'll be fine with you so you want to start next month and start with so do we start with the old bylaws do we want to start with the new ones do um and figure out how

022we're going to add everything in there together yes ma'am um i would tell you that when i redid them i went by the old bylaws so i think and it's been a long time since i've actually gotten into those documents again so you might look as you're going through because it i tried to go off of the old ones in creating the new ones so you might see a lot of repetition there and you know it might be easier to to um to check the new document because that that's been updated versus the old one but they should be kind of the same there should be a lot of things that are the same just that's just information for everyone then the new ones see we're looking at a 21-page document so you want to

023do but the cover is also counting as one and citations is counting as two table contents is three and four five so the actual document is six through twenty one do you wanna say we'll talk through pages 6 through 13 next month johnson will you make a note of that for our agenda for next month okay 6 through 13 madam chairman 6 through 13 of the proposed draft that you did um back was that two years ago and everybody should have had a you guys got a copy of it madam chairman yes ma'am so after we take those steps and we are looking at those pages just help walk me through what our next step would be we would come together as a group to go over it or are we simply going to i'm

024sorry i didn't mean to interrupt no no i was just wondering will we just forward to you the corrections or additions that we want what changes that we're recommending um or do we come together as a group to discuss what our recommendations and changes are we're going to put it on the agenda and we'll discuss it at the next meeting okay and then we'll go from there and then i'll try to get a draft done from what we discuss and then the next month's april then the may meeting will do through 14-21 and then after that one then i'll do a rough draft to get to everyone and we'll review it again i'm just wondering and i don't mean to labor this discussion but i guess i'm just um i know the benefits of us

025working together as a group and certainly i don't want to add any more to our tables we have had a number of meetings but i'm just wondering if we could potentially carve out another date where we all could come together and as a group and discuss it just an ideal that i i had i think it's just kind of great having uh that dialogue among each other what do you what what does everyone think i mean this is a time to discuss what we think do we want to have a work session for this or do we want to talk about it in two sections of the next two meetings i'm chairman would we be able to limit our agenda in any way to allow a large block of time to have that discussion when

026we're looking at april i guess and may now do you have a working copy of the agenda already ms johnson not put it together yet although i do we do have a list the executive executive team has a list of what is planned to be on the agendas for future months and i can send that out to the board what's on the agendas or what's planned to be on the agendas for the future months again it's not complete because that's a working document also as we get closer to the meeting dates but i can send that out to the board tomorrow okay what what does anyone else think what do you think mr hill i can go either way i do not want vsba involved again i can go for a day where we knock

027it out my pro i mean i like the idea of putting it on the agenda we have discussions around it i mean so i mean you can do it either way i mean if we're ready to get it done we have one session knock it out vote on it the next month is complete but you know now you're looking at june the way we're proposing to do it you're looking at june before we even have a draft and then it would be a july meeting before we vote on it so if we're looking to get this thing solidified and and voted on i say let's look at the calendar get a date well everybody look at your calendars then let's see what we can come up with or we do we want to do early

028april and look through them the end of this month mid april let's see i know we have spring break week so let's leave that open madam chairman i think that's a great idea um giving us time to look over them and then and coming together um certainly spring break is april the 11th i believe would you want to do i'm just kind of glancing at my calendar um and i know spring break is the week of the 11th through the 15th correct yes how about the 20th that's what i was looking at the 20th how does that work we're on the same page that's awesome april 20th work for everyone i don't know if it does for me madam chairman okay and i've got um i can i can go check one other thing and

029let you know i can't do it right here but um okay how about if we pencil in april the 20th for the first date and then april the 27th for the second date and then once we get confirmation from everyone's calendar will that work and then we'll advertise accordingly yeah i know i'm not available on the 27th for sure you know you're not available in 24 for sure okay so what would be your next date my next date would be um the first time i would be free would be may the sixth free could y'all be free may the sixth is a backup date okay april 20th is the first date may 6th is the second date that'll be a fun friday night oh is that a friday oh let's not do that um i'm

030trying to read my son's attendance schedule too so um may the 11th that's right before a board meeting okay then we won't do that how about we how about if we go with april the 20th and see what happens and then we'll change if need be april 20th and anything else or just april yeah well if if it does not work um then we'll adjust okay at this point let's set it for april 20th okay madam chair yes sir would you like staff present would you like that meeting to be there's no need for it's just for us for the bylaws do you have that first of all a preferred location that we can prepare for the board you want to say our regular meeting room just for a work session [Music] moving on to

031staff reports item 5.01 sol testing update mr dewis thank you at a previous meeting there was some discussion about the spring sol testing schedule and so mr blankenship largely pulled together a lot of information that i'll share with you tonight just to as an update on what that process will look like this spring and then he and i both are here for questions if needed let me get there so uh the sol testing begins with writing tests in uh grades eight and end of course eoc that's in 11th grade uh for um the uh in english classes where writing is really focused on those are two checkpoints for actual writing tests in our testing schedule the window has has opened already and will close april 8th and so our schools i'm not sure they started

032yet but they will will soon there it's a two day test the writing test one day for a multiple choice section and one day for a direct writing section the non-writing tests are are more numerous grades three through eight and also end of course high school tests are included in in that category the window that the state sets is april 11th to june 24th to enable schools that in before memorial day and those who go on after all to fit within that that time frame our window will will be april 18th after spring break through the end of the school year sol tests are being rethought and and now 400 remains as it has all along a passing scaled score if scores are lower than that however uh students can still earn credit and schools

033then earn credit for that sol test if because their vertical scaled score will be compared to spring 2021 scores so growth can be measured so if a student scaled score in one year is lower and then the next year is higher if the growth is enough that also can count as a as a good thing for schools just as a passing score can um in in high school end of course and that's that's largely in grades three to eight uh where you compare one grade level and there is annual testing in high school end of course tests uh their course testers course specific and students who have already earned a verified credit which means passing the class and passing the test in a required subject area do not take an end-of-course test so for example

034when students pass a biology sol test and course they may take chemistry but they wouldn't necessarily need to take a chemistry sol test same same in math and other areas the testing in especially in uh in the element in grades three to eight um is computer adaptive testing um there that means tests of course are administered online um tests can be shorter in length when they're in this format because questions are based on previous responses and are randomly assigned so the student has shown mastery in an area the test just moves on automatically so the test can be shorter doesn't need to test the same skills over and over and over again also just to note to in order to make the testing a little more streamlined or age appropriate grades three to five reading

035and math test may be given in one day but they also may be given in two days so that they can be given in shorter segments another thing that speeds up our testing a little bit is the fact that we're not anymore cycling students through computer labs or laptops set up in a library or another location students are all taking can all take their tests on their chromebooks so we can administer hundreds of tests at the same time so we don't have to take as long of a testing window as we used to do expedited retakes is something is a concept that's also important to know with sol testing um if a student fails a test by a narrow margin in other words doesn't quite get that 400 but gets a 375 to 399 they're

036eligible to take what's called an expedited retake take it again with some intervention and studying and new instruction in between or the student who failed a test with a score below 375 but had an extenuating circumstance that just occurred that um can be documented or um a student who's shown great academic performance and then gets a lower test score and it doesn't make sense the school can decide um to give that expedited retake and of course parents give their consent for that to happen they're you know they want to make sure parents are aware and give permission for a second testing that might occur um in addition to sol testing there are other tests we administer um especially getting into this time of year we have the virginia alternative assessment program or vap which it

037covers the areas of reading math science and are now in a multiple choice format rather than in a portfolio format history and writing areas are assessed locally by local procedures and these are this test is is called for for individual students by their iep the window for that's february 28 to june 24th access for english language learners is another area of testing to be aware of this spring it measures social and instructional english use and academic english in subject areas and the window similarly well a little earlier than the sol testing window we're we're getting closer to the end of that window now so mr blankenship and i are here um and members of the teaching and learning part of our organization may be more appropriately able to answer questions too if you have any

038be happy to to answer any questions you have drama um dr dewis uh and i'm sorry for asking this question i should know this answer but so much has occurred in the last year uh are are the tests the tests are counting this year toward accreditation correct yes okay right there were waivers and right due to covet extenuating circumstances but we're back to back to that um normal accreditation process for the expedited uh retake is that next day or is that a couple days afterwards well it can be quickly or it can take a little bit of time the idea though is not just to jump right in and take another test but to really look at that score which many times comes that day or the next day figure out what a student didn't

039know do some reteaching some some more study and then be able to take it again we have known it to be done quickly especially as graduation is getting closer for students who may need that verified credit at the very end of their time however many times there is some time in between just just to give time for more learning doctor so so i understand where where does this information come from what you're presenting is this information coming from i mean this is all from the department of education testing uh office um i think mark i think mark pulled it from from from materials where he gets trained as division director of testing yeah i mean as far as the dates and everything he comes from yeah the state sets these windows for us and we

040just basically in some cases we are asked to narrow them down to say a four week window so um most of that's all just written into some of the requirements for expedited retakes that kind of thing or it's directly from standards of accreditation so it's all procedure and we have a big long manual we have to look through so is this vdoe yes sir okay so this comes from the virginia department of education so i want to make sure i'm understanding this right i can take the test and make a 400 i've passed that's correct or i can fail miserably the spring before and do just slightly better when i take the test the following spring and that's the same as making a 400. no that is still a fail on the score report however

041when they do the accreditation calculations for each school if the student has shown growth and when you say failed miserably that could have been a low score it could have been a little you know if they haven't heard right right um but if they show growth from one year to the next and there's a whole table that shows the scores then how many percent how many points you have to improve over the years and if they show growth on that table then that student would count in as a pass on your accreditation calculations however it's still a failing score the score report that sent home would still say fail on it but in the accreditation calculation then that student would count in as a pass schools are schools are getting credit for significant growth for

042students because they may or may not be able to control what those initial scores were when kids take the first one and i'm sorry to go into detail but is there a certain percentage that you have to get in order to show growth or can it be one point above what you had they have set up a a table that will show you all the scores across the board and in each subject in each grade level and that table will show you say if a student had a 350 on a third grade reading and they scored a 380 on a fourth grade reading then that student would most likely show growth because they showed the improvement over that course of time but um it won't be i don't haven't seen anything where it's just one

043point difference but that's how they measure it in in terms of year-to-year clarification right and i'll add another thing that there is growth assessments that we tested in the fall and that is our backup in terms of showing growth if the student did not show growth say from last fall or last spring to this spring that is a second measure they can look at if they showed growth from the fall to the spring then that would also count in as growth and there's another table with scores for that so the whole accreditation calculation is very in-depth and i'm glad the state does it but we try to follow that as much as we can so there would be certain audits done the state would be looking if they saw a significant amount of lower scores

044and then just the state does desk audits where they would look at our scores sometimes it's just to make sure that like you said there's no discrepancies but also um the coding and make sure that we're not coding uh a normal amount of students as a say a recovery or re-test and in that case say if we coded a bunch of kids retest and they got pulled out of calculations red flag goes off and they ask us what's going on so they do that the the office of information management i think is at this the oe and they do those desk audits it and so we'll get that report after all the testing's done and i just want to understand so compared to last year where we you know were at home and i shouldn't

045say at home but a different education experience versus this year that will be broken out for us to to see past versus improvements and not cons what i'm trying to get at is i understand it's going to count as a pass but does it does it separate past 400 plus and pass growth no not on the score report that a parent would see or even you know something that that growth measurement is done behind the scenes at doe for accreditation calculations only your past report or your child's uh student report would just show the basic uh scaled score like 400 350 600 and and it would also have a narrative there of how your child did on the test and it would say for these students who are growth students quote growth students that is

046going to show that they failed the test however when those calculations are done at doe that's when they would give a school division and schools credit for those teaching those kids and showing growth over the course of the year one one more question you did say this was from vdoe yes sir there's a bullet on here that says access for e-l-l can you tell me what that e-l-l stands for english language learners oh so they are using the word learners yes okay thank you more questions for either dr dewis or mr blankenship thank you gentlemen item 5.02 update on reviewed library books dr woodford and dr trosper good evening members of the board in november staff were given a list of concerning books they were presented at the board meeting during public comment and staff

047ask i'm sorry the board asked the staff to please review those books looking at our own policy policy klb which is public complaints about learning resources and to review those 12 titles tonight i would like to give you an update on those reviews and proposed updates to policy klb and rule klb and we sometimes refer to a rule as a regulation in board docs you'll see it under rules sometimes we call them regulations so if i use both words you'll know i'm not sure where i'm supposed to point this you mean you have to turn it away thank you diana since the request to review books was made at the november board meeting dr trosper and i have provided the board with updates on progress in the december meeting and we also sent a wednesday

048memo on february the 9th with some updates so i'm going to just try to focus on the highlights since you've gotten more in-depth reports at those times for the sake of this presentation but we are always happy to answer any questions that you might have at the end of our presentation while there were 12 books we were asked to review one of the titles is not in any of our libraries so we did not look at that one and the title was two boys kissing the remaining 11 books were reviewed based on the process described in our current policy and rule klb in december the committee reviewed one book beloved that was the first book that was challenged and so we looked at that book and the decision of the committee at that time was

049to keep the book in all of our libraries and continue to use it for ap course work at the high school level the committee felt it had instructional value and was on the list of ap recommended books for the course since there were no other individual challenges to text dr trosper formed committees based on the location of the books in schools so in january four books were reviewed that were in all three high school libraries these books included the bluest eye kite runner glass castle and murder trending the committee consisted of the school principals the school's library media specialists and teachers from all of the high schools the committee decided that all of these books should remain in the libraries for student choice not all of those texts are used in the classroom so i

050just want to make that clear these are for the library on february the 8th one additional title was reviewed that appeared in the liberty high school and jefferson forest high school libraries but not at the stanton river high school library this title was freak boy and again it was decided by that committee that it would remain in the library on february the 16th the rest of the titles were reviewed with a committee from jefferson forest high school only since those titles are only in that library these books included all boys aren't blue love drugged what my mother doesn't know beautiful music for ugly children and rick many of these texts were added to the library to fill deficiencies and selections available for the diverse population of students at jefferson forest high school and were actually

051recommended and reviewed by the equity and inclusion task force at jefferson forest high school which is comprised of teachers parents and students the recommendation was to keep all of these titles in their library i would like to remind everyone that most of these books are available in the library for enjoyment reading and again not always used for instruction in the classroom if parents have concerns about books once they see a class syllabus for specific classroom instructional materials they would work directly with the classroom teacher as described in our policy iia to find an alternative text for their their child we've only had that occur once in the last 10 years or so that dr trosper and i could find and at that time the teacher worked with the parent to find an alternative text as

052a reminder should any parent or guardian wish for their child not to read these books or check them out from the library then our librarians wanted you to know that they will honor that choice and not allow the student to check out that book parents and guardians should make that request known to the school librarian and they'll make sure they don't check them out um in december dr trosper and i shared that policy klb and its rule or regulation needed an update the forms were outdated some of the cross reference links were no longer working and the process for challenging a resource was very unclear so we used the current vsba suggested policy as a foundation for the suggested policy and rule updates tonight policy klb and rule or regulation klb are in the policies

053that will be introduced later on for review and approval at your april board meeting the proposed policy klb would remove any wording on procedures for challenging resources that are duplicated in the rule and just for some clarification when dr trosper and i started to look at policy klb to start the process of reviewing the books there were some things in the policy that were different than the regulation and some things in the regulation that weren't in the policy so to make sure that it was very clear we really took policy klb and minimized it and we followed really what the code of virginia says it states that objections can be raised by a parent guardian or student and that the superintendent will develop written policies to address these concerns those written policies would be in

054rules or regulations and so the specific procedures for challenging material would actually come in the rule or regulation update for klb so the policy klb is just a simple paragraph saying that the superintendent or his designees will create that policy or rule you're going to see the very in-depth pieces of the procedures actually in the regulation klb and again both of these are on board docs in the policy list tonight the regulation does a few of the following things first it lays out exact procedures for complaints and appeal processes it clearly defines timelines for committee review how the complainant would be notified and how to go through an appeals process we also updated the complaint form so it was more user-friendly and up-to-date asking for things like email addresses and things like that it was

055a little bit outdated and the regulation also allows for community notification if an appeal reaches the division level review committee to ensure we have a variety of parent student participation on the committee from all three school zones so for some very specifics of that regulation when you look at it the first step would be if you have a concern with something in the library you would first reach out to the library media specialist if it can't be worked out at that level then a committee would be formed and the principal would of that school would work with the library media specialist the parent or student whoever has the complaint and they would review the text they would do much like dr trosper did with the committees that he formed over the last few months look

056at reviews look at the national library association information look at specific concerns that were stated for that book and then as a group the teachers the complaint and the library and and the um the uh if if we had high school we would add students would then make a recommendation to the school principal and then the school principal would let the complaint know what the decision is again there is an appeal if they if the person doesn't like what the school level committee has decided they can appeal to a division level review committee that would be led by the director of curriculum and instruction dr trosper as he led most of the reviews that were done and again it would bring together a larger group of people it wouldn't be just that school it would

057be all three school zones teachers from all three school zones parents from all three school zones and this would be when we would do the notification to the community so if parents wanted to voice their concerns or if they had concerns about a certain text being removed then they would be notified so we would have input from multiple people and again i want to say we would like also to to try always at the high school level to have students on those committees we just feel like that's really appropriate they're older and can give us great insight if the complainant does not agree with the decision of the division level review committee they would then make an appeal in writing to the superintendent and to the chief learning officer and then the superintendent would inform

058the board chair and the school board that there is a request for an appeal and that appeal would come to the school board so that's the specifics of the policy and i know you'll need some time to look through the regulation and policy and you you'll have this whole month um i want you know that dr trosper and i are both available for any questions throughout the month if you have any about the regulation or rule and we're happy to answer any questions you might have tonight about any of these materials are our process for dr woodford mr hill dr woodford i see that the recommendation is that no books be removed so i appreciate the staff looking at the recommend or looking at them and coming back with the recommendation couple questions for you

059can you restate who was on that committee for that review please i'm going to ask dr trosper since he led those committees because i want to make sure i get it exactly right and so he can so it involved principals myself any teachers that were using as part of their curriculum so some of the books like beloved for example had a teacher using it and library media specialists a teacher or multiple teachers yeah it depend on the book in some cases multiple teachers in some cases there were no teachers because it was just in the library so just it depends so as far as the and i'm out i can call and ask these questions specifically this week but i'm interested in the total outcome for each book was it a unanimous vote to keep

060these or was it a separate vote where some favored one way and some favored the other i can i can say comfortably it was unanimous there was there was very little disagreement i think there was a strong belief that we should leave them in those libraries okay and for those that voted unanimously um so those again are the librarians school school administrators and teachers who taught the who used that book so the teachers were already using the book right yes sir so they wouldn't want to remove it if they're already using it correct okay so the librarians are they also the ones that who chooses to put the books in the libraries the librarians do and so they have a vested interest to keep the book as well and that was discussed as part of

061of the the process was how are these books selected and librarians did share that they use professional resources colleagues they use a variety of sources to choose and and they try to use discretion as far as what they believe would be acceptable by the community so that that explains the diversity of selection among our schools even so as far as funding for certain library books are we aware of any funding that may be coming from a particular media company that supports or recommends books to go on our shelves i'm not aware of any we could get that answer and get back to you i do know that there is fundraising done at the school so they'll do book fairs and things like that through scholastic and we have had the conversation that we want to

062be really careful with scholastic because they do lots of incentives for our elementary teachers too if parents buy books they get points and then they ship free books to the teacher and so there have been cases at the elementary level where a book may have come in and gone on a shelf and a parent not feel like that's appropriate and that book has been pulled off the shelf because the teacher and principal agree with that so we can double check the only thing i could think would be if they're doing a book fair through a certain company then that book fair company may give them certain incentives to use their materials for the book fair most of the library book material that comes the money comes from our local funding just thinking through this so

063if i'm a student at any of our schools do i have to check those books out in order to read them or can i sit in the library and read those books i i'd say either you can sit and read it or we can check it out so if i'm not checking it out then my parent has no say if i'm reading it or not right well our librarians there's always staff in there and if a parent has indicated that they don't want their child to read that the librarians are very open there's very few parents that have called and expressed that so they would know who that child is and i would i think we could say that they would intervene and notify the parents or the child that it was expressed they could

064not read that as far as the committee review i'm interested in the previous policy being a 30 day and how many days is the new policy that you're recommending uh do you mean like for the first review so when the complaint is made the principal has fi so first you would work with a librarian and that would be immediate if the librarian's decision is you know the parent or student or guardian is still concerned about that the principal has five days to put a committee together and 10 days 10 business days to meet with that committee and then inform the parent or the student or guardian of the decision so it actually it was actually something that dr trosper and i talked about trying to get everybody together and everything we we felt like it

065was sometimes taking us a long time so i actually feel like the policy firms that up a little bit because it puts very specific ten business days five business days to reach a decision and then they have so many days to appeal that and then we have to answer within 10 days so i guess my concern is is the previous policy it was 30 days so now have we extended that 30 days into a longer duration well i think we just added to the the possibility of an appeal process um i mean 30 days to get everything done or versus the 10 i think the 30 days for what because our prior policy was so confusing so it was 30 days for do we just have 30 days to get the first committee together or

066is that 30 days for the whole process that's part of what dr trosper and i wanted to clear up with this new rule giving very specific deadlines because principals didn't know am i the one responding to the complaint and is dr trosper the one so that's why we laid it out who was responsible for what okay and and i'll be honest with you to pull that many people together and have time to review the resource um you do need some time we were trying to read all of the books as they were going through the review we were trying to make sure that we looked at reviews from multiple sources and so it does take a little bit of time to do a really thorough job and i think the committees did and dr trosper

067led those but it was hours and hours of working with people so um the policy uses the term educationally suitable what does that mean so i think there are books that if you're using them in the classroom are valuable for instruction because they have um good characterization you can they have really deep conflict resolution and then there are some books that are just more enjoyment reading now the state of virginia has recently come out to define you know not putting out sexually explicit materials and they were trying to define exactly what that means we need a little bit of clarification it's still a little vague but i think for us it is suitable for the age level and based on recommendations from the library association and other resources that the librarians use the the teachers

068use is that what you would correct yeah i don't know that i answered that question but you know part of the issue here is who decides what's appropriate not appropriate and that's my question yeah and that's and that's what we're really struggling with too there's no you know there there's no rubric out there for us to use and so we we trust that um that our experts in that our librarians the teachers who are using that our parents our students you know are making those recommendations and sometimes teachers make recommendations to the librarian for what books they would like in there so you're saying basically there's no baseline to start with as far as what to compare the books to or what is right what is wrong with what you're saying like i think the

069best we can do is think about what community the local community standards would be and that's obviously vague as well so so certainly what might be allowable in another division or area of the state would be maybe something bedford would not and i can tell you the librarians did they spent a lot of time talking about how they tried to think through what would and will not be acceptable and at the end of the day they make the best decisions they can and then if it still is not acceptable that's why we have a process in place to right to address it well just i know it's not really a question but i think it's kind of ironic that i would i would say that the baseline would be the bible and that's been thrown

070out of the schools yet we're allowing these kind of books in the schools kind of i believe that's also in the library as well well it might be yeah you know before you know it also has a little bit of racing yeah right for sure question you said you did not want to you know basically have sexually explicit material in the there in the book um the bluest eye there was a rape scene between two characters can you clarify what you mean by sexually explicit because what i was saying was recently the state of virginia has put out some information about um for us to be monitoring sexually explicit but they gave no definition of what that is so rape is okay um i'm not saying that i'm just saying that this just recently came

071out so we have probably tons of books that you know at different times may not you know we'd have to go back and review those and what policy did y'all use or procedure did you use uh to to do this the new policy or the old policy the old policy klb and even though um we only had a challenge necessarily on one book which is what's addressed in policy klb we tried to follow the same procedure and thought process for the other 11 books so that we could have a a consistent process that we were using for the the ones that we were asked to review okay more questions yeah i just want to say but i just want to make sure i understand too but according to one of the executive orders um parents

072will be notified if there's anything in a book parents can always come by and say i don't want my child to read that book and they can be given another title that's correct for classroom materials absolutely and dr trosper is working this summer with our english teachers to create resources and list of books that can be used for instruction the difference between instruction and library is in instruction you have a captive audience in the library you have choice and so they're going to put together a list of books that would be appropriate for sol testing ap testing dual enrollment that teachers can choose from but at any time if when on that syllabus parents see a book that they're concerned about then they can reach out to the teacher for an alternate book that we

073would hope would still meet the rigor of what they were reading but maybe not the exact same content and i have another question i just haven't been in in high schools in a long time but um do our high school students a silly question check out books or are they doing most of that online i think so yeah they a little bit of both i think so um if you don't mind to follow up with that question we've had one person has identified some of these texts as sexually explicit one individual um the committees did not necessarily concede that they agreed with that and i just want to be clear there was disagreement on even the the uh level of offensiveness of the text and so i just i don't i don't want to say

074that the committee agreed that they were sexually explicit because i would i would say they actually did not agree with that but any more questions dr amelie oh no thank you madam chairman okay mr hill i just i have a problem with the committee being the ones who chose the books who decided to use the books and it was the complaint complainant even in the meeting when there was a formal challenge yes the formal challenge but then when you decided it was going to stay the it wasn't there it was just when we were reviewed at your request correct okay so we're not this is not an action item tonight correct this is just uh yeah um you know dr berg and i would tell you this is certainly not what you and i discussed

075as far as the books being behind a counter and having to have requests from a parent and the child permission so i would like to discuss that further and mr hill i will say that dr bergen did bring that up to dr trosper and i and we did a little research and so there is some supreme case law basically the question is who decides what books go behind the counter so if i choose that all books about transgender students go behind the counter am i now discriminating against transgender if i decide that all books that you know have spanish students in them go behind the counter then i've discriminated so that's our caution about behind the uh a place behind the shelf because at some place we have to make a decision about what's appropriate

076and not appropriate and i think what we've read through law and when we've talked to mr king about that our attorney he wants us to be very careful about us making those judgments because then it could lead to well now you're discriminating against a certain group of people or certain content so that's the only caution and when dr bergen asked us about that and we researched it we were just cautioned that it would be better for parents to say this is what i'm concerned about and then we deal with that individual student rather than choosing that all certain titles be behind the counter so this is not towards you sure not dr wilford but so it sounds like it's okay to discriminate against my child but we can't discriminate against someone else's child to meet

077my expectations of what i want from my child i'll just leave it at that and that is not towards you but i have a problem with you know it's okay for one group but it's not okay for the other when i as a parent if i'm asking for the school to give me the right to decide what my child if i check it out or no if you call the librarian and say i i have concerns about my child checking out this material then again the librarian would make sure that they would be very aware of what your child is checking out or not checking out yeah well why couldn't it be the other way around i think because ahead if if a parent has to are you saying like an opt-in so parents would

078have to say what they want their child to check out i mean that's hundreds and hundreds of titles now i think we would be asking our librarians to do more than they're capable of doing i mean pretty much then it would be do we only allow you know our kids to go to public libraries where they can be with their parent i mean i think that would be the question if i have to say call the librarian and say my child can check out any of these 1 000 or 2 000 titles that would be really difficult pam sherman yes dr emily yeah i um i think between the executive order and and the change in the policy i think everyone has an opportunity here to to to find some common ground because we're saying

079that as i understand this that as a parent i can contact that librarian i can say don't want my child looking at that checking those books out that the school is going to say yes that's fine we'll we'll not allow your child to do that and then you have a parent who says but i want my child to have access to that and they have free access to that book um so i think there's common ground here if we just kind of look for it a little bit because um it's not a question of of um one child's right is is ways more than the other i mean if if you say well we're going to put it behind the counter or we're just going to take it out then you violated somebody else you

080know the parents the rights of the parents who want their children to read the book if you say well you have to read this book then you violated the rights of the parent who doesn't want that so i think we have common ground here um if you don't want your child to read it it's they will not they won't get it from us now you know if you want if you want your child to have access to whatever title is in there you also have that right anything further thank you dr woodford thank you dr trosper okay given the fact that it's 6 32 we'll go ahead and break for dinner and pick up with the informational items where appropriate let's go ahead and go to dinner i'd like to reconvene this march 10 2022

081regular meeting on the school board please join me in the pledge of allegiance flag is over here at the lower stage i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands mr edwards madam chair mr vice chair and dr bergen would you please come forward in front of the tables [Music] as i call your name please come forward to be recognized and then please remain standing off to the side until all members of each group are called for a group photo op at the end at this point it's safe to say that the jefferson forest high school swimming program is a powerhouse in in 2017 and 2018 the boys program turned in back to back 4a state championships and this year they came in third

082in the team standings but produced new school records and state champion race winners in the process they're on hand tonight with home field advantage to be recognized before the board the state champion 400 meter freestyle relay team evan shopbell [Applause] back to back evans evan schoenfelder [Music] [Applause] jack mills [Applause] and brendan whitfield [Applause] once again the state champion 400 meter freestyle relay team [Applause] and there's no shortage of state runners-up on this team either the state runner-up 200 medley relay team brendan whitfield [Applause] ben yes [Applause] max schoenfelder [Applause] and jack mills [Applause] once again the state runner-up 200 medley relay team [Applause] jack you're still up here he's the state runner-up in the 200-meter freestyle and also sporting a new team record [Applause] and brendan you're still up here as well state runner-up

083in the 50-meter freestyle and a new team record plus state runner-up in the 100 meter backstroke brendan whitfield [Applause] please one final round of applause for the jefferson forest high school boys swim team good photos guys turn your turn your to your cert turn your cert upside down turn turn turn turn turn turn no no you're you're certified you're sort of your certificate he can swim and making it to the state championship match in any weight class in high school wrestling is a pretty amazing feat and jf has one of those this year as well in the 160 pound weight clash this year state runner-up matt worth get your photo here [Applause] it's also unquestioned that the stanton river high school wrestling program is that of greatness and they didn't let anyone down again this

084year sending a remarkable 10 wrestlers to the state tournament and earning a third place finish in class 3. the river has been in existence for nearly 60 years but this year something happened that has never happened before in school history and then it happened twice it's an amazing feat to come in as a freshman and win a state championship against others who have had up to three additional years of development and experience it had never happened before in the history of the river but it's happened a couple of times now the virginia class three 106 pound state champion freshman colin martin [Applause] and in the very next weight class to hit the mat the virginia class iii 113 pound state champion freshman noah nininger [Applause] and if we could let's get a round of applause

085for these freshmen state champions [Applause] [Music] on their way to their third place overall finish the team also had not one but two state runners up in the 145 pound weight class senior logan arnold [Applause] and what a group of ninth graders in the 170 pound weight class freshman josh kelly [Music] the stanton river high school wrestling team state champions and runners up and as dr cornett always said and i'm sure mrs parker says now go get them eagles [Applause] congratulations everyone what an accomplishment okay and thank you mr edwards now we're going to move on to public comment the public comment portion of tonight's agenda is limited to 40 minutes speakers are asked to state their name address and voting district the school board is here to listen to your comments but will not

086engage or respond to speakers during this 40-minute period please remember that this is a public meeting and that we expect all speakers to refrain from any foul abusive or hateful language mr edwards will serve as timekeeper for individual speakers with a ringing bell indicating that a person has 30 seconds remaining and a second bell will ring indicating a person's four minutes have expired mr edwards will also serve as timekeeper for a cumulative 40-minute period well mr edwards four-minute timer bell rings please discontinue speaking and allow the next person in line to come to the podium should you be unable to finish your comments please send or give them to ms johnson as she and she will forward them to the board members please do not adjust the microphone at the podium as it has been

087positioned for optimum audio quality okay our first speaker tonight is rachel cooper cooper out there claire mcneely mr bergaard good evening board members well i had prepared remarks uh however after listening to the last few items the klb and some of those things i have questions but not that i would like you to ultimately answer but and as far as the books are concerned we're having all this trouble because there isn't a standard and a board member did mention a biblical standard and it's a question directed toward mrs woodard who was not on the board do you really think throwing the bible in and comparing it to the books that are sexually explicit is a comparison and a right comparison and a fair comparison since it is the most popular and most selling book for

088thousands of years it is a moral standard and a compass by which society can be governed and healthy and happy and for you to compare it to the books that are being brought to our children is inconsiderate and uneducated secondly we don't need an executive order dr melly there's already code that the parents have a fundamental right to the upbringing the education of their children we don't need any other law we just need the board and the public school system to honor that that's all we need i want to ask you sir i can't remember your name who oversaw the committee's how many parents did you have how many people were on a total of committees that committee that you had to review the books robert i'm going to you you're here to address the

089board no i'm here to address the public meeting i'm addressing this man did you have any parents on that committee and to have teachers that are using the books this is illogical also inconsiderate and unfair to the parental rights of these of parents to view these things the lack of making books known before a semester begins or term begins whatever it is is unfathomable to me why doesn't the board or the school system whatever publish all the books that are going to be used in a semester publish it 30 days prior to the semester beginning and then it doesn't have to be a committee reviewing these books 80 000 residents can review these books doesn't that seem like a better idea and not so much burden on the few individuals that are going to make

090arbitrary decisions this gentleman said he's going with the feel of the community he doesn't know my community because we don't want some of these books in there granted everybody's not a christian that's that's fine but those of us who are we have an obligation board members and and citizens to uphold god's law no matter where we are our values don't change because we sit on the board or because we go to school or we take another job we're supposed to be light in salt no matter what and it's not that we don't love those who don't know the lord our responsibility is to be kind and to love them to have compassion on them and hopefully lead them by our acts of kindness into ways that would make for a better and healthy community thank

091you [Applause] mary catherine bennett you're on here i will always take advantage to speak y'all know me okay my name is mary catherine i did not know i'd be speaking but i do want to share some things um again i'm here a lot so you all know that i have a special needs son um ronin and i was actually went to the special education association committee last monday night i think it was monday or thursday night and um got to sit in and see how the committee was run and i had a bunch of different questions i was told or they actually mentioned in the meeting that there is a desperate lack of special needs parents um representing um the in this in this committee and so you know i'm i'm looking forward to putting

092forth my name as possibly a liaison as a special needs mom who just needs to know more what's going on and ieps that are happening and as well as you know when i went into the process i didn't know anything i just knew that my son needed help and i know there's so many special needs parents out there and children that need ieps so i am hoping that as a community we can get more people to be involved in this special education i know i've asked some board members to accompany me as well on the next monthly meeting because it's really important that we are all in agreement and we're all working together again our whole priority is our children and i know all of us have maybe different ideas or different opinions on how

093it should be but at the end of the day we're all here to protect and to raise our children and to give them values um and so that is what i'm saying is if y'all are special needs want to join me in the special needs committee or give more understanding to what it's about i think that would be fantastic so again did not think i was going to speak so obviously i have nothing prepared but thank you for what you're doing and good night thank you ms bennett lisa mansell mr dietrich ladies and gentlemen i want to summarize and discuss further culturally responsive teaching its historical origins and ideological roots my intent is not to it my intent is to inform not to criticize any of you as individuals the origins will ultimately lay with

094marxism and later with the group of german marxist intellectuals known as the frankfurt school of critical theory marxism claims that capitalism has created inequalities which have created class struggle between the haves and the have-nots the frankfurt school originating in post-world war one germany took the underlying theme of class struggle and applied it to culture the resulting body of ideas became known as critical theory critical theory was later adopted to focus primarily on race becoming critical race theory or crt class struggle was transformed to a racial struggle between the oppressor privileged race and the racially oppressed in reaction to widespread unpopularity with crt less radical appearing concepts and terms were created these included culturally responsive teaching which seems to have originated in the year 2000 the underlying premise is an underachieving of african asian latino and

095now native american students have been academically disadvantaged unfairly because they have been culturally disadvantaged yet how can this be when the most successful academic cohort out there is found in the asian community thus on empirical data seems to scientifically falsify pedagogical theory in its implied dogma yet dogma persists as alienation is believed to inhibit the full academic blossoming of students from non-european backgrounds to address this perceived disadvantage culturally responsive teaching proponents employ various initiatives teaching becomes focused on alleged current new cultural nuances not on discovery of universal truths including common understanding of knowledge vice and virtue institutional hubris emerges as individual educators seek to determine often without any accountability what constitutes a culture successful learning becomes predicated on something other than traditional academic performance these measures strike at the very heart of what it means

096to be educated since the time of the ancient greeks education has meant the pursuit and discovery of truth yet much of education today seems illiberal in its design based instead on group grievances collectivist redress and like as all peoples throughout human history americans have been thought to be capable of both vice and virtue yet america has been an exceptional nation because it has been based on an exceptional ideal that sublime ideal upon which the nation was founded holds that all people have been created equally recipients of divinely given natural rights yet sadly this is the very culture that is now under assault the american ideal in the western tradition will our children of all backgrounds be denied a good education as activists pursue ill-defined unsubstantiated and widely unpopular collectivist dogma this is a question that

097parents school board members and other concerned citizens should ponder thank you thank you mr dietrich amy snead good evening my name is amy sneed i'm in district 7. i have a couple things i want to cover tonight but one thing i think is important there was an update given to some book reviews that i was the complainant on back in november when i addressed the board i was not a part of any of the following meetings other than the very first book of beloved at the time of that review i had spoken with dr trosper and let him know that because our organization moms for liberty stands for parental rights i would like to see how the policy was going to be revised before we continued with the other 11 books so tonight is the

098first i learned that any of those books had been discussed with a committee that i was not a part of nor was the other resource that i brought with me to the first meeting so this comes as a surprise to me that they've already been reviewed i want to let you know also that i'm very aware of the rules of this meeting as miss kirby explains the beginning that foul abusive or hateful language cannot be used i cannot read to you one of the books that has been decided to stay in these libraries because it would violate all of those rules and i respect the board and i will follow the rules of these meetings for example if i were to read that from the um the text it would have a trigger warning of

099sexual content rape molestation incest and pedophilia as dr woodford said some books are for education and other for enjoyment i'm not sure which category that falls in i'll leave that to your own decision i know many of you carry the opinion like most of our parents at school libraries should not be a source of providing access to explicit materials we all know the magic of reading a book transports the reader to a different place there are adventures to be had and mysteries to solve and often placing yourself in the shoes of the narrator the hero or the antagonist we are a product of the people we spend time with and the books that we read based on the current selection criteria and the broad virginia state standards explicit and vulgar content is not really a

100factor for consideration on what content is available to students in our school libraries we have a code of conduct for expected for students i've cited this in previous talks we have a technology code of conduct we have a behavior code of conduct but we have nothing regarding books in our libraries and it is not censorship because we already censor what a student can look up in their chromebook what movie they can watch in a classroom setting and what words they can use on school property the term literary value has been used in these conversations to cover a multitude of graphic sexual content there's no argument that there may be value to these books in a different setting but providing access to that content within our school libraries deserves considerable reconsideration the books that contain graphic

101rape bestiality hetero and homosexual sex among other things made their way into the libraries and curriculum already based off of someone's determination as the current policy uses the words educationally suitable i am requesting ever after having spoken with counties all over the country that two things be adopted one just as i mentioned there's a code of conduct that has to be signed by each student and parent in power school at the beginning of the year saying that you will agree to the the terms outlined in the code of conduct for technology and behavior i would ask that there would be one in there that provides parents the option to select what level of books their child is permitted to check out so rather than putting so much work on the librarians to keep track of

102individual titles the book classifications can be made by parents with a simple drop down screen i'm also asking that we consider amending our library selection criteria as it was discussed earlier tonight to limit mature content it's no different than placing restrictions on the chromebooks that are in the hands of every single student we all know that experiencing a good book leaves its readers with a lot of emotions you can feel inspired motivated educated entertained we all agree on that as we've heard tonight that's the beauty of reading let's work towards ensuring that our students have the best possible resources available to them and filling their growing minds and imaginations with quality content not things that you wouldn't read out loud to your grandmother thank you scarlett morgan i am currently a bus driver for bedford

103county schools i drive for huddleston elementary and stanton river middle and high school i'd like to thank y'all for the opportunity to speak and extra thanks for unmasking our children the reason i'm here tonight is fuel shortage we run out of fuel at various locations twice monthly sometimes more than that that in turn causes a driver to have to go from stanton river maybe to stuartsville maybe to bedford to get fuel these bus drivers some have second jobs they don't have time an extra hour to do this um our buses average nine to ten miles in a gallon so driving 20 miles out of out of the way to get fuel kinda is ridiculous um the current system in my opinion is antiquated beyond the way it was explained to me because custodians have a

104stick a wooden stick that they drop down inside the tank to measure the level of fuel that's in the tanks at the fueling locations this is reported to the transportation department an order is placed delivery sometimes has to be prioritized this school's been without it seven days this one's been without it three days send it to the seven day school um delivery is based on i mean the contracts are issued to fuel company a uh they're locked in a price i'm sure they're not real thrilled to spend their time to come to deliver fuel to the schools at two dollars a gallon when they're paying five um in saying all that pat smith my direct supervisor is the first person to catch the blame all us drivers stand around you know it's ridiculous how can

105she not order fuel it's that simple all you got to do is pick up a phone after after thinking this over pat smith has a lot on her plate um if you compared her job to say a principal's job the principal has one school pat has nine fueling locations the principal has their staff of teachers cafe para para legals custodians she has the entire bedford county school system to look after so before we place blame you know a one certain individual i place blame on the higher-ups who have to know this is going on and do nothing about it if it was an internet problem it would happen one time and it would be resolved this has been going on i've been driving since 2013 and this has been an ongoing issue since then and

106i'm sure it has been before all i'm here to do is ask for somebody don't know who that is to look into this problem and come up with a solution because our internet is fuel and we can't we can't get kids to school without fuel that's all i got to say thank you thank you morgan we have some open slots with anybody who hasn't spoken like to speak thank you for the chance to talk to all of you my name is esther graham um i live in bedford county i'm not sure what district i'm in sorry i'd have to look at my voter's card but i want to thank you guys all for also when you voted and you took upon yourselves to protect the health of our students here and thank you all for

107serving them and being educated to do what you do up here and i know there's a lot of grief you receive and i don't want to do that for you tonight what i'd like to do is provide you with some statistics and i would like to also provide you with some information i've got handouts if you would like to see me afterwards i can give you a handout i even have a copy of three three different copies of the book it's about irreversible damage and it's damaged that's being done to our transgender children and i just wanted to share with you that these are kids that are really confused and really need us to love them and to encourage them to be sure of themselves and to seek some help if they need to a

108lot of these children are going into psychologists and doctors offices and they are you know self-diagnosing they're saying that they have transgender dysphoria and that's what they get and and they're encouraged to oh okay well then go ahead and start binding or go ahead and have your top removed or go ahead and have the testosterone you'll just love it and where they're getting this information from is social media a lot of these kids are confused and they need us as adults to direct them and to guide them and to love them through this and to help them maybe they truly do want to be transgender maybe they're just experimenting these are kids these are young children even that are being allowed to do this and teenagers people going into college and the parents are told

109not to know anything about what they're doing they can be them or he or she or all the different pronouns that they're choosing now too and parents don't have to be informed and i think that's highly wrong i mean you're breaking the family apart the family needs to be there to help these children and to be there to support them and to guide them and even the school district has had a doctor from uva come out to the junior high back when my kids were in school and even brought to the attention that you got to monitor how much kids are on the social media and that's not being done and these people are are almost like a cult loving on them just so much you know oh yeah yeah come on and then if

110they choose to go back which 70 percent of them do choose to go back to their original sex that they were born with 50 of them already have a self-harming you know they're they're self-harming themselves already issue and that's not even being addressed they're not being treated psychologically they're not being treated emotionally they're not being treated at all they're being what medical field do you know where you can go in and say hey i got this problem i need this kind of medication you can self-diagnose yourself you can't do that so i would just like to provide you guys information to help you to keep you voting for the health of our children and to protect them and and to love on them and um they're given lupron which is actually a medication that is

111a puberty blocker and it's to help the children um they it's actually impairs their neurological development in their brain iq and their function and it also makes them infertile it's irreversible and if they take their top off that's not they can't put that back either it's not the same and it's just we need to help these kids it's pitiful what they're going through and they're removing parents from that as well who more to love on their kids and to help their kids and and seek medical help for their kids you know not to say hey you're wrong and this is what you shouldn't be doing but not to help them mutilate themselves and that's basically what it is and when they do these testosterone girls grow the facial hair and the body hair you become

112like a man in that regard and it's irreversible that that will never go away once they stop if they choose to go back it but you know to go off the testosterone as well as if if they choose um it's irreversible if they choose to remove any other parts and men if they want to change they still have their manly features were just made differently and it's i would like to just talk to you guys or help you or give you the handout or a book if you'd like to read it for yourself she is actually she is actually a freelance writer for the wall street journal and she's a um a liberal writer and her name is abigail schreier is the the author of the book if you want to give your handouts to

113ms johnson then we can get them after the meeting appointment okay i'll do that okay okay thank you very much [Applause] ma'am i apologize what was your name again mr graham would anyone else like to speak this evening yes sir good evening school board i'm jason bender i'm a bedford county resident um i really wasn't prepared to speak tonight i didn't have an agenda um but as i listened to some of the action items the book reviews just really were startling to me you know i've heard about the book reviews in the public schools but to sit here and see those books the the books listed there the 11 books the first book that was reviewed right was was beloved and we have a motto here that says empowering learners for future success i'm not

114familiar with those books verbatim i haven't read them but from what i understand beloved has a scene in there where slaves are waiting for women the women don't come so they feel the need to fornicate with cows how are we and i want to address our school board here how are we empowering learners for future success by having them read that filth and like you said miss kirby we can't come up here with foul language and uh flagrant language but why is it that we can't do that and i wouldn't do that because that's not proper but why is it okay to have our children read foul and flagrant and immoral and sinful and wicked language and scenes it's just not right so i gotta ask all of us what are we doing here really

115what are we doing here do we care about the well-being of our kids if we're allowing just one book in the school system like that in the library in the curriculum it's disgusting and i sit here behind there waiting to speak and my heart is broken and i hope each and every one of our hearts are broken because they should be my daughter is not in the public school system but i care about everyone's child here in this community and i don't care about the policies i don't care about the rules we need to say let's get these books out of there because it's filth and what we're looking to do is we're looking to indoctrinate our children and what's going to happen is little johnny and little susie are going to read that book

116beloved and they're going to grow up and they're going to be the next person that wants to indoctrinate our kids in the public school system that little johnny little susie is going to be sitting up here on this stage and saying it's okay to have those books in here so school board members what are we going to do mr hill i appreciate i i heard your comments and it seems like you care about getting those books removed but we got to do something and there's so many issues but but i just feel the need tonight to address these books and just that one book see the bible which i believe in which is the only source of truth speaks about how how god's children are his beloved see this world wants to pervert god's word

117the holy scriptures the only source of truth and we do need a standard like mr beauregard said like mr holbrook said we need to figure out a standard because right now it seems like it's your subjective standard it's my subjective standard it's my opinion where is it that's not good enough for our kids and we need to come to an agreement to say look this is the standard and until we reach that agreement we're going to be sitting here spinning our wheels and just mad and angry and i don't even know what the word is but i'm at a loss for words right now that we're allowing this garbage in our schools letting kids in our community read this filth we got to do better guys and i know there's several of you up there

118that do care but we got to let the vdoe or whoever is implementing these books and and the the review board we got to tell them enough is enough this can't stand thank you thank you okay we've got time for one more speaker yes ma'am hello i'm kristin honeycutt i'm a bedford county educator i was not going to speak up until the last moment i would just like to bring to everybody's attention the shortage of teachers and substitutes and while i have lots of opinions about everything else that has been said i would like to just reiterate none of that can be done without teachers or proper substitutes or proper bus drivers or cafeteria workers or nurses or all the people that make this well-oiled machine run so can we please try to find a

119way as a community to support our teachers a little more and find a way to get more teachers to come to our community thank you very much [Applause] do we have any more time um i don't know have time for one more if anyone else i'm seeing no one i'll close public comment you'll have a motion to approve the consent agenda is presented have a motion but dr mealy do i have a second i saw mr daniels and i heard miss harrison so we'll give it to mr daniels have a motion and a second any discussion okay i'll call for a vote all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed the consent agenda has been approved now we're going to pick up with item 6.01 policy updates ms sexton this evening we have

12013 policies and two regulations up for your review these policies will be brought back to the board for action at the april 7th board meeting these policies are posted online for the public and may be viewed within board docs there are five policies and two regulations with substantial changes and we will review those now i will pause momentarily after each of these policies or regulations in case there are questions about the suggested revisions also so that i do not repeat this at the end of each policy all five policies have legal and cross references updated based on vsba recommendation djg vendor relations policy wording changes and language added as recommended by vsba regarding prohibition or solicitation or acceptance of gifts and disclosure of subsequent employment to prevent any conflict of interest between decision makers and

121vendors while employed with bedford county public schools or after employment okay um madam chairman with that policy it speaks to minimum minimal value unless consideration of a substantially equal or greater value is exchanged for vendors and um so i'm just wondering if we should define minimum minimal value is that going to be a hundred dollars or less or what it's in the it's uh one two three fourth paragraph under that i just think minimal value is very broad and could be interpreted a a host of different ways are you taking these as presented to you by the vsba or are we doing the actual wording of the changes if we're doing wording changes i'll say bcps staff within mine so this is vsba okay then um we're going to vote on them next month this

122is just for informational so we will look at that change and change it next month when we go to vote during the discussion thank you for bringing that to our attention okay do you do you want uh do you just want to discuss this then next month any questions i have yeah we'll vote on accepting them next month so we can just read it in how we think because i think there is there is a parameter of isn't it of what the monetary value of any gift received can be isn't that on the statement of economic interest the monetary value of any gift received isn't that listed on the statement of economic energy this is for this would fall under you know my department this is not speaking necessary to board members but to any

123employee i think on the economic interest that's directly towards board members this with regards to any decision makers that are employees superintendent g financial office or even a principal at a school making sure they do they don't receive anything like that in lieu of making decisions so that there's protection here so there's no conflict of interest or even after they leave so the it the policy has been there there's just been additional language added to this and to you to your point dr mealy there is no minimal value uh it is not defined so if the board would like to do that then we would make sure to disseminate that out to all staff um as far as my department's concerned we don't accept anything you know but out in the schools we give that

124you know the direction and stuff um we try to be as careful we can and overseeing that but at the central office i don't know if anybody receiving even a cup we just don't really do that but if the board wants to well we can add that in but this speaks to all employees not just board members mr hill had a comment too yeah i would just want to be careful setting a limit so for example we have teachers who are also coaches and i want to be very careful setting a limit because there are times where vendors will come in and say hey i want you to try this sweatshirt i want you to try this t-shirt i want you to try xyz i don't want to remove that from there's coaches that receive

125things what i try to protect and give guidance to the principals when there's a contract with a vendor those coaches shouldn't be receiving things and swaying their decisions once a decision is made and stuff sometimes but you don't want promises like that to sway decisions you do the best you can i don't oversee i can't be there for all of that but i i do speak to that but yeah sometimes vendors can come in and give that and it'd be setting it too low would be very hard to please probably even hard to police right now even with the terms that are in there but we try to get that information out to make sure that that's not happening um and i have to count on my principles to make sure that they're overseeing that

126and the bookkeepers out there but understand that point but how do i define what is acceptable or not 150 nice jacket to make a decision i'm like um i question that and i'll push back and make sure that that's not happening but a t-shirt or something like that so that's kind of how the way i'm applying it right now and if there is a question usually a bookkeeper or principal will contact me and say is this acceptable or not no i don't i just want to make sure as we go through these do you want me to bring up my questions that i have on them or wait until next month um why don't we wait till the end of going through the policies and we'll bring them all up at one time okay and

127bring them up with the end of miss sexton's presentation now okay thank you gcbe family and medical leave policy language added and wording changes to incorporate recommendations from vsba as well as the code of federal regulations these changes include more clarification on the meaning of active duty covered service member next of kin serious injury or illness and spouse under notice to employees of their rights under the family and medical leave act the specific ways in which bcps provides employee notification were incorporated additional language added to provide the processes by which an employee should furnish certification when the employee gives notice of the need for a leave request because of a serious health condition of the employee in the case of a child or spouse or parent of the employee a covered service member or leave

128related to a qualifying existency arising from active duty or a call to covered active duty jba section 504 nondiscrimination policy and complaint procedures policy title updated and policy language has been added to conform to vsba recommendations to define the specific procedures for filing a complaint alleging any action prohibited by section 504 of the rehabilitation act of 1973. jhcd administering medicine to students removal of some language regarding medication safety and security prescription medications and non-prescription medications as well as epinephrine from the policy to place the supporting regulation into the supporting regulation to add procedural clarification policy language added and wording changes as recommended by vsba to reflect virginia code section 22.1-274.011 and 22.1-274.2 as amended additional language added to address administration of albuterol inhalers as well as cbd thca products in accordance with coda virginia jhcd

129administering medicine to students regulation code has been updated to decipher it as a regulation incorporation of language removed from policy jhcd more appropriately included in the regulation additions to support virginia code as amended specific guidance for diabetic self-care and use of stock albuterol and now klb public complaints about learning resources this policy is being updated by bcps staff to clarify procedures for complaints or concerns about learning materials also there was a removal of a form which has been moved to the corresponding regulation klb and then lastly we have klbr which is request for reconsideration of learning resources this is a suggested new regulation to supplement policy klb the purpose of the regulation is to provide specific guidance on the process and forms used for complaints and concerns with learning materials that that's all i have

130so if anybody wants to ask any questions dr mele did you have questions yes actually i have a couple of comments for the board um on policy gcbe um then that's about family medical leave first i would ask like dr calvert or someone do we have any idea how many veterans are working for us by any chance okay i didn't yeah i didn't expect that you would there it's kind of off the um cuff um in this policy and i understand this is the law okay and um we are required to at least meet the law we can go beyond the law but we're required to at least meet it it says that um it's talking about family medical leave for any service member and it says that it includes a member of the national

131guard or reserves and of course you know any of the other armed forces to get family medical leave at any time during the period of five years preceding the date on which the veteran undergoes medical treatment recuperation or therapy i would just like the board to think about the fact that five years is a very very short period of time when you've been in the service and i'll give you a couple of examples um agent orange did not become a pers a prescriptive condition excuse me a presumptive condition um because it took it 10 to 20 years to manifest in our soldiers so they went to vietnam they came back they lived a pretty normal life for a long time and then they began to get sick because of agent orange i say they were

132really killed in vietnam they just didn't die there um so i'm not sure five years is fair to someone who served the country especially in combat the same thing has happened in iraq and in afghanistan we have issues related to breast cancer we have issues related to cardiovascular issues neuro issues and they don't know what those burn pits have done at this point in time to the people who have served so i would just like our board to take some time during this next month and think about can we again i understand the code says five years and we have to meet the code but we can exceed it i would propose that we for our veterans who have served our country in war and are sick because of that that we raise that to

133at least 10 years that they that they can claim family medical leave within 10 years of going off of active duty because their illness may not show up for that long period of time um the other one i had was um miss sexton did you do eea the student transportation did i miss that you hadn't done it yet is that it doesn't have substantial changes okay um with that one i would just like again the board to think about during this next month um often as a principal when i had foster children they were not coming to school on a regular basis because we did not provide transportation in a timely manner and i would right now we're saying in this this policy that they they will receive transportation to the school of origin origin

134promptly in a cost-effective manner and i would just like us to think about putting some sort of time on that and i realize this is very difficult for transportation i do but it's also very important to this to the students and many times you know i was told we just don't have a driver we don't have a car to go get this child um and they do have a right to go to their school of origin um if they're a foster child so i would just like us to also think about that in the next month and and maybe come back with some sort of timeline that that we could we could insert into that policy dr mainly excuse me for interrupting sure um but with that with what you just said as far as

135foster children um a lot of foster children and i know this from being a foster parent myself um they are requests to requested to go to another school zone so we won't need the transportation going back to the school of origin because they're not to go there if there's especially if they are being protected by the parents they were removed from yeah i i do realize that it's just um sometimes that does happen and you know i had several students with that for whatever reason they came back to the school of origin but i do understand what you're saying because i've had quite a few do that you'd be at a different school as well you have anything else uh no thank you anyone is having questions yes madam chair yes ma'am um i have

136a question regarding um i believe it is non-discrimination policy and complaint procedures um in the policy there is a mentioning of the compliance officer my question is is that someone in our hr department that's considered our compliance officer so all of our compliance officers are listed on our website in particular for that would fall to miss jennings in the special education department so typically it kind of goes with the specialty if there's a complaint in under special education discrimination it would go to mrs jennings 504 would go to mrs jennings employee discrimination would go to hr student discrimination would go to scott simmons and then our team would help with that investigation so it's a little bit specific to the need and it's on our website it is on our website okay yes thank you

137any more questions thank you okay um so these changes that are coming down from i don't do it question sorry uh with the changes that you're recommending from vsba do you know if they have taken into consideration changes that are coming down from or recommendations that are coming down from the new state superintendent's office and then also the changes that will be coming from the new board of for the vdoe these specific policies i don't know but i know that i have a policy workshop to attend in may may 25th and they usually go in great detail about things that are in the law coming down what may be incorporated a later date when that might happen i don't have that right now though no mr hill i can tell you though that the bulk

138of substantive information that espa incorporates comes from the general assembly anyone else thank you mr sexton fiscal year 2022 2023 budget dr bergen and mr hagler good evening chairwoman kirby vice chair hill school board members staff and parents and community members who are gathered with us here tonight and those that are watching online it is indeed my pleasure to share with you tonight my proposed budget for the 2022-23 school year during my first year here as your superintendent board members i have prioritized my time to be out in the community to listen and learn and connect with community members by participating in dozens of community engagement events i've also been very active in our schools and visible at extracurricular activities because my priority over these first 10 months with you has been to build connections

139with our employees with our parents with our community members with you as board members with other elected officials so that i can gain a deeper understanding of the strengths of the school division as well as our opportunities for improvement as i've reflected on these numerous conversations and the data collected there have been several key themes that have surfaced and i've shared these with you and with the community in my post entry reflections report which is linked on our school division website those those key uh themes would include we need to invest more in our employees particularly financially we need to have a focus on accelerating unfinished learning as a result of lost opportunities over these last two years for some of our students [Music] the community's been very clear this board's been clear we need

140to expand on our college career and workforce development opportunities so that we can meet the needs of both our students and those of the local economy we have the continued need to support the social emotional wellness of our students and our staff and to boost equitable educational opportunities for our students across all three high school zones particularly with access to ap and dual enrollment courses so as we continue to look forward and prepare for the future together i'm very pleased with the extensive work that this board has accomplished this school year on updating the goals for our division strategic plan our central support leaders have worked closely with you and with all of our community stakeholders through surveys and numerous focus groups to gather additional information and ideas about the community's shared aspirations for our

141school division other than those that i just explained once adopted at the end of this school year the new strategic plan will serve as the foundation for our decision making or at least my recommendations to this school board with all of our future budgets to ensure that our students and our staff are receiving the necessary resources needed to accomplish those strategic goals in front of you you have each received tonight a booklet with the details of the proposed budget for next school year i'd like to commend mr hagler and his staff for their work in preparing this document and i'd like the public to know that following this meeting the document in its entirety will be available on our website following my comments here i'm going to ask mr hagler if he would spend some

142time tonight reviewing the contents of this budget booklet with you to orient you to this new resource i'd also this time like to thank dr mealy and mr nelms as your representatives for the board to our newly established budget and finance committee for all of their time in working with me and with mr hagler in the development of this proposed budget as outlined in the details of this budget i'm recommending that any increase in funding be tied to those key strategic priorities to include the continuation of additional staff to address learning loss from the past two years to increase the number of preschool classrooms available throughout the county to purchase additional instructional resources including a refresh on technology devices as needed and online content is appropriate to further extend our already outstanding availability and opportunities

143in cte and workforce development but to expand on those opportunities to provide for continued job embedded professional development and to designate funds to address a backlog of school maintenance projects however the top priority of this proposed budget is to increase compensation for all of our employees for every employee to receive at a minimum a four percent increase in salary but for our most experienced teachers to receive substantially larger increases as shared with the board through the recently completed salary study we simply are not competitive in this region with our most experienced teachers this is something we must rectify if we're to honor their service and to retain them we also must remain competitive in the local job market for the support staff who keep our students fed who drive them from place to place and

144who keep our learning environments clean and safe given the resilience and dedication of our staff over these past two years i believe these increases in salary are both appropriate and warranted as a follow-up to those recommendations from the compensation study mr hagler dr calvert and members of their teams have spent countless hundreds of hours reviewing all of our personnel records to identify which of our teachers who have been employed with us for some time now particularly those who were employed with us during the years of the recession who are overdue in receiving restoration steps for those years that they went with little or no cost of living adjustment or a step increase additional state and local funding is targeted to increase compensation for these teachers also in consultation with your representatives to the budget and

145finance committee this proposed budget also prioritizes restoration steps for our lowest paid employees specifically for our most experienced bus drivers nutrition workers and custodians in future budgets or if we're fortunate enough to receive a higher level of funding for next school year from the state once this the senate and the house reconcile their their competing budgets which at this point stand over a million dollars apart from one another once we have a clear picture on our finances for next year particularly from the state i'm going to recommend that we prioritize that funding to provide restoration steps for all of our employees for the other classified instructional and administrative employees that i have not outlined already until all of our experienced staff members have received their earned restoration steps i want to thank you for taking

146the time to read and understand this proposed budget and at this time as i alluded to earlier i'd like to ask mr hagler to come to the podium and walk you through the content of the budget booklet i look forward to meeting with you again next week on the 17th of march where i can receive your feedback about my proposed budget and address your questions at that time mr hagler yes good evening i want to just make sure i thank all the instructional staff i calculate the numbers they have to guide the money where it goes and where they think it works best i tell them if it's enough not enough so there's a lot of work in the numbers behind this but the hard work is really where do you where do you direct

147the money and that's really the instructional staff from the executive staff on down to directors and on down to the school so i want to say a special thank you to them for our committee uh mr nelms dr miele thank you um and also you know i wanted to give a special call out we had to replace one of my team members which was a financial analyst who left in december a new member joined two weeks ago and that member was uh will perot and he was instrumental in getting this document ready so i want to just give a shout out to him came on board and in two weeks kind of jumped in and helped me put this together so i want to thank thank him for that this is a different presentation than

148we've presented before to board members that have been on the board if you're brand new this is the first time you're seeing it so i'll walk the board members through this i'm not going to get into a lot of discussion on the numbers that's really for the work session next week this is your first look at the budget so i encourage you to look through it please i encourage you to send emails to me and i'll disseminate those to who can answer those very quickly and we'll turn questions around throughout this week starting tomorrow and we'll send uh questions and answers about um answers back to all the board members as the we go through that that way we can be better prepared for next thursday as we go into that so let me talk

149a little bit about this documentation the other document that will be posted tonight by the end of the board meeting is this big thing which gives every single line item it'll be a second document on our website if you want to look at that that gives every single line item detailed on the expenditure side that would have made this book a lot larger but we summarize it in this in this book here um call your attention i want to call your attention to several pages here as you review this book there's information about bedford county on there there's information about how the budget's built how our account structure is aligned and then it kind of gets into what is the board really going to pick up and approve on page 14 special attention to that

150that's really what the board will be voting on as they work through if there's any amendments we'll change up the numbers but you're voting on a budget of 132 million 629 436 if you look there at the bottom of that chart so that gives the overall summary for the entire budget all of our funds that we need to budget operating textbook nutrition and school maintenance reserve so that's page 14. i'd pay special attention to that on page 15 and 16 we gave highlights what what's changed you know some highlights of what's changing in the budget so instead of going to this big document at every single line item all the adjustments in the budget including technical adjustments are on that page 15. i list those down below in major categories and also we have some

151narrative there on page 16 not everything made it into the budget there were some needs that were identified and requests that came up to the executive staff these items on page 16 are not in the proposal on the budget in future budgets we'd like to address these so that's just giving information to the board of things that will we want to address in the future behind that is a lot of details on grants more details on revenue to support all those all that information on page 27 is the textbook fund typically we don't pick that one up and do a lot of discussion on that as we're passing a budget but i've laid out some direction there that we do need to start putting some local money in there to make sure that when we

152ready we're ready to do adoptions every five to seven years there's enough money in there there's not enough money just coming in from the state to sustain all these adoptions so there's there's a plan to increase that over the next few years and two hundred thousand dollars going into that locally this year and then stepping up until we can get to that point and the appendixes behind this there are three that i really want to call your attention to the salary scales the health premiums and the staffing standards all three of those documents when the board approves the budget they're really approving all three of those too because those are critical to all the numbers that are in the budget the staffing standards is how we calculate what staff goes to the schools the health

153premiums is what is built into the budget as far as what the board's going to contribute to that and also the salary scales as dr burgin was alluding to with the salary study those are the scales that would be approved by the board and the hr department would apply to next year there's additional appendixes there average daily membership that is just really a little snippet of mark blankenship's presentation i think was back in november december took a little bit of that out of there not his entire one just so the public's aware of that cobit that was a screenshot really of what i presented on our second quarter forecast of how the money is being spent and what still what money is still out there and then a brand new document that i came up

154with to keep everybody's eye on that is the reversion and what's going to happen in 2829 and so we need to make sure we pay attention that it's not critical for this budget but as we go forward we need to know what that shortfall is going to be when reversion ends and uh the state funding goes back to where our lci has determined that it should be so i wanted to provide that just let the board and the community know that we're keeping our eye on that and we have to pay attention that's the layout of the document as dr bergen said i will be posting this once i get back to my seat so the public can access that and if you have any questions tonight once i once again i'm not going into

155a lot of the details of the numbers we'll get into that next week but if you have any questions i'll be happy to answer them questions just want to make sure i understand so the recommendation is to increase the budget year over year by 14 million yes sir a lot of that i'll just say probably nine eight nine million of that israeli karezak funding that we're going to spend down next year mainly in our maintenance department for hvac uh there's another two million set aside and learning loss uh in the operations department to maintain staffing so a lot of the a lot of the money from the cares act that we designated for hvac we're building into the budget next year and accounting for that whether it all gets actually spent next year if it

156doesn't it'll carry over to the next year but i've accounted for all the remaining funds for that so that'll be an influx you'll see a large drop off in the following year is there a page in here that shows me what was removed from the budget if you look at page if you go to page you'll see a revenue side and you'll see an expenditure side so there are adjustments to the budget based upon technical adjustments turnover um health health participation and other things decreases due to lower adm those are adjustments i make to the budget that are really technical in nature uh year over year as far as pro programs being removed there there was no recommendation to remove any programs in the budget this year the the vast really the major the only

157ad really to the budget is other than the cares act is for the board to pick up 80 percent of the increase of the health premiums and the salary study those were really the only ads just for clarification on page 16 i know it says unfunded needs the none of those were truly these are not included in the budget none of those are included in the budget at this point i wanted to make that clear because if somebody reads that and goes oh those are in there those are not in there right now fte change to the right what is that that means if if somebody if it came forward that we wanted to add a position that i'm relating to the board how many fte positions we're adding so you'll see the money there

158but also full-time equivalent is what the ft for the acronym there but full-time equivalent of what that equals that's an actual position and i and i would say those are not necessarily listed in exact order um though as dr bergen had related i think the restoration at the top would be the priority of dr bergen and staff if we did receive additional funding below that there's no specific order question these needs that were presented did those come just from our staff or where did these requests come we gather information from quite a few places um superintendent's advisory certain things we hear about and we ask questions but a lot of it flows up through the executive staff from other staff below and so then we bring it to the executive staff and start discussing so

159there were other needs that maybe didn't weren't prioritized here we didn't think should even be on this list at this time we're really looking at the strategic plan and what are what are our focus so these are the ones that kind of the executive staff said these are things that we should look at in the future and that um whether they stay on there long term or not but these are the ones that made that cut more questions for mr hagler i'd just like to say something if i may miss chairman um yes mr nelms and i attended several meetings with mr hagler and dr calvert and dr bergen and mr pero and we really looked at requests made by the members of the board they they were sent an email saying you know in

160a perfect world what would you like to see and it ranged from getting outdoor maintenance crews to take care of our schools and remove snow and general appearance to just to relieve some of what the custodians have to do to decompression of the step increases and extending it beyond 30 years following the salary study addition of more intervention design specialists and elementary school counselors and discussing the potential for funding high school students to participate in cvcc so in the order of importance when we sent the email back to the board said here's the the things that have been proposed so far what would what would our order be everyone that responded said following the salaries study for the all staff and decompressing the steps and following the salary for the staff custodians uh paraprofessionals clerical

161food service nurses things of that nature um so that's kind of where we went and and thursday we'll hear more about um how those how we're going to actually support those groups and we talked to a lot about the increases that we were facing that were way out of line for example fuel and and increased health care was you know just shy of a million dollars it was 900 000 for those to take care of those so um i want everybody to think too that um our enrollment may be down and certainly um i would always look to to to get more people back into our schools but the number of students we have now is costing us more than the students then the combined total of the students we lost because the fuel costs

162are higher because nutrition costs are higher because material costs are higher everything is higher so i'm just going to pick this number it's not the number if you had 9 000 students last year but you only have 8 500 students this year then it's still costing us very close to educating the 9 000 because of the costs of of everything rising today as i'm sure all of you are experiencing with gas and food and things like that so um i i would like everybody who's listening to to keep in mind that our enrollment might be lower but it's not costing us any less to educate those same children i also just wanted to thank everybody here who helped with this booklet mr hagler and dr calvert and mr pero and um this is just i

163think such a a good thing for all of us to have um so thank you so much for your work this is way beyond kind of their job description but i think as we progress through this and we add to it it's just it's a narrative to help other people who aren't accountants and cpas understand our budget a little bit better and certainly we would welcome any suggestions you might have if there's something that you feel um i don't really understand this that's our goal is to to have it so that everyone can pick it up and and basically understand it i don't think we can fire mr hagler or anything you know we're going to need him to explain those numbers but hopefully we'll be able to understand what we're doing a little bit

164better and where money's going and um and how it's being used by the county did you want to add anything mr nelson just when i had the fact that uh it was great experience working with all of you on the budget committee and um dr mealy and taking our suggestions and everything so uh i think it was a great team effort i was not expecting something this nice um but it was great i just want to thank the whole team um i cannot remember the guy's name who it's uh will perron he was awesome in implementing some new things being so new to everything so i just want to give a shout out to him as well um i want to clarify just one comment i mean there's a lot there for salaries um but

165there's a lot of state money for salaries if you don't give salaries you're not going to get the state money so there's a caveat there so when when people say well don't do that do something else well then we're going to leave quite a bit of money on the table with the state and i'll get into more details on that if you have questions on that um and as dr bergen said um there's quite a difference between the house and the senate right now when he spoke there's over a million dollar difference that's a million dollars for us not the entire state so i i think it's roughly about i would just want to clarify because when you said a milling difference uh it there's there about about 1.8 million difference between what the senate

166recommended and what the house this budget's based upon the least favorable it's on the house so if we get any kind of uptick on that we'll realize some more uh revenue from the state so we're hopeful for that as they're negotiating that in conference and we'll see what comes from that and then we would be able to revise this at a later date yes sir so thursday night will the funds that are going for learning loss be very specific as to what those funds are being used for and how there's some of them already designated but what we have built in there is about two million dollars are they very specific that's really designated for the hr department as schools are building their staff and as we see kids come in where we see the

167greatest need in schools for instance i think it was a consensus of the board a majority of the board didn't want to see you know split classrooms two and you know second and third grade together so if there's a configuration issue in an elementary school we're going to give additional staff using that cares money we don't know where there's where those are going to materialize yet so as we get in the summer and we see those numbers um the hr staff under dr calvert will be allocating those resources out whether we use the entire 2 million or not it's there if they need it if we don't have to use it eventually that money's going away so we have to kind of wean ourselves off of that so our goal is to if we don't

168have to use it all next year we'll have a little bit less for the following year to deal with some of those but eventually after 24 that money's gone and so it would be my guidance to the board and also our staff that you get used to having an additional 25 staff and you take 25 away in one year that's harder than if you say we had 20 this year maybe 10 next year maybe five the next year it's a softer landing and not a cliff and so but that money's available for the board if they want to use it in different areas but that would be my guidance to try to land land it a little bit softer did that answer your question mister okay question if we are to get the higher amount

169can we then take those uh funds and go to the unfunded needs and then also put a little bit into the revision fund yes sir um and that also is contingent on we are asking the board of supervisors for about one one million two hundred seventy thousand dollars more to do this plan okay so it this whole thing's contingent on what the state does and also what the border state philosophy does also so those two will have to go together for the final um adoption of the budget questions for mr hagler well this is almost a work session so thank you very much now you're really being hot seat next week and thank you dr berkin textbook of doctrine dr trosper good evening got the clicker okay in september members of the instruction team provided

170updates to the board on the work that had been completed over the summer and and set our goals for the upcoming school year one of the information items that we did share was that we would be undergoing a textbook adoption process so this evening i'm going to share information with the board about that process that has taken place over the last few months so what i will be sharing is which way am i pointing here oh that helps doesn't it sorry about that there we go okay so i'm going to talk about what the virginia department of education's review process looks like because that was the starting place for our process then the bedford county adoption process an overview of what resources we considered a summary of input that was given by our faculty staff

171families and others and finally i'll present the recommendations to the board so first of all i want to share an overview of the process that the department of education uses to create an approved textbook list these lists were our starting point for identifying resources to consider throughout this process all doe recommended texts go through a very rigorous process to evaluate materials while giving school boards the authority to purchase textbooks in the form of their choosing and that would be print electronic or a combination of both on the slide there is a link if you want to review this in greater detail but i'm just going to summarize what those steps are so when the process is initiated the board of education approves textbooks for the four core subject areas evaluation procedures are implemented prior to

172submission of text to the board of education on that first review and during this process the doe invites publishers to submit textbooks for review as part of that process they must submit verification of accuracy and then a committee is formed to review those submitted texts the textbook criteria used by the review committees has two sections the first is does it correlate with the standards of learning and this is where committee members determine the degree to which the content found in the book is correlated in thoroughness and inaccuracy to the standards of learning the next section is about instructional support and so committee members offer insight into how well the textbook is designed for instructional planning and support for teachers and those that implement the criteria the next stage is a public examination of materials during

173public review the doe seeks public comment on all textbooks that are recommended for approval the committee consists of educators and content experts there's others who are considered to have expertise on this content area and the standards are selected and some examples of these might be representatives from community college institutions of higher education and other sources of subject matter expertise with graduate degrees in the field after the recommendations are made by the committee and accepted by the board of education there's a 30-day public examination period so again the public is again invited to provide feedback on these texts and after final approval by the board of education a list of recommended texts are placed on the does website so those books are posted and that's something anyone can look at now and the public can actually

174continue to provide ongoing feedback to the doe regarding those inaccuracies if they perceive there are inaccuracies found in those textbooks so i just want to be clear that's the process that the books went through before bedford county reviewed those and that's how the list was formed because you'll hear me reference that doe approved list tonight so the next part i want to share a brief overview of the work that was done and it was primarily done by our supervisor of literacy and title one dr diane eisenhower she is here tonight uh and also by our supervisor of science and computer science mrs allison kaplan she cannot be here tonight but the task of selecting reviewing and adopting textbooks involved getting input from key stakeholders in and outside of our schools their work has paralleled each

175other throughout the school year the slide that i have projected shows specific grades and subjects that will be adopting textbooks that we will be proposing please note we are not purchasing ap textbooks or any other special course textbooks for english and science with this adoption so the bedford county textbook review process started in september in that time a list of potential resources was created this list again was generated from the list that was based on the department of education approved resources based on research that identified the most effective resources for student achievement in october the team contacted vendors to obtain initial information that could be used to generate a list of potential resources a survey was sent to teachers and other staff members that sought input on developing priorities for the textbook selection in november

176survey results were analyzed by the instructional team and by december committees were formed for both ela which is english language arts and science during the initial survey individuals were asked if they wish to be a part of this textbook selection committee and then final selection of the committee consisted of among others reading specialists teachers from each zone including input from administrators and special education teachers we tried to have a wide variety from zones in different positions and other factors once the committee was formed they had the opportunity to review recorded presentations and had a chance to look at digital resources provided they gave feedback which allowed us to narrow down the list of resources to the top three for each grade band in addition to the work of the committee a process was created so

177that teachers could ask questions during the recorded presentation exploration process these questions were revisited during live publisher presentations that took place in january so in january the committee members participated in these live presentations by each publisher prior to these meetings publishers were given a rubric and a survey results that were given back in september and october the publishers were asked to focus their presentations on satisfying the top five priorities identified by bedford county staff so teachers understood how each resources accomplished this goal after presentations committee members were given the opportunity to look at print materials and they could also ask follow-up questions of publishers in february and march committee members continue to review and use materials as it was available to them to provide one final opportunity for input an open house was held on

178march the first for teachers just to give them one more chance and finally bedford county families were invited also to review these resources on february 28th march the 1st and march the 2nd in open house at the school board office in april our recommendations will be brought back to the board as an action item and in may upon approval our goal will be that teachers receive access to online materials and receive initial trainings so they can then begin preparing for implementation the fall of 2022 also over the summer we would like to train our administrators on how to use these resources and how to utilize data that these resources provide so we can plan our instructional agendas through the school year now i've already explained the department of education process and i've specified the extent

179to which public input is really sought repeatedly from the doe our team believe even still that the bedford county family should have an opportunity to review and provide input fire prior to making this final decision so what we want to say is that we really do appreciate those that did come to the open house and we appreciate all the staff families and everyone who contributed they were reviewed they were considered prior to making these final recommendations so results of the survey indicated we had top five priorities so the top five were first of all clear alignment to the virginia standards of learning the second was inclusion of print and digital resources and that was a consistent theme from the community and from our staff we want print in addition to digital resources the ease of

180use ideas for tiered instruction and differentiation and supports for intervention and remediation in science an additional layer of feedback was that teachers wanted more inclusion of labs and hands-on activities there were also comments on the survey they indicated that individuals valued in science higher student engagement activities hands-on activities and real world application of scientific comments and ela additional comments again said printed textbooks tools to monitor plagiarism and then a common curriculum across grade levels and across the division so based on that feedback ela and science committees narrowed down our final selections to the following resources in elementary ela benchmark advance hooton mifflin hardcore in mcgraw-hill for secondary hooten mifflin hardcore mcgraw-hill study sink and sabbas my perspectives in science it came down to five pawns press foss k-5 and stem scopes for secondary it was

181discovery education and saw this again and then mcgraw-hill so the ela and science committees have submitted their final recommendations what i do want you to know is that we believe each of these resources can best support our schools in implementing our action steps from the strategic framework in future school years each of these texts will serve as the primary curriculum for students in bedford county schools for the next seven years and they all share the following characteristics first they are aligned to the virginia standards of learning they do provide print and digital resources there are two exceptions which i will explain in for future slides they have offline syncing capabilities for the digital resources and what this means is that text can be downloaded they can be used offline and then when a student does

182an assignment at home offline they can bring it back to school and it would sync with our internet and they would still get credit for the work so essentially not having internet would not inhibit students from completing work on their on their assignments at home these books do fully integrate with our canvas which is a learning management system and they integrate cross-curricular concepts like for example in ela they incorporate elements of science and social studies into our reading curriculum and before sharing the final recommendations i do want to be clear we're not just adopting textbooks physical textbooks with these texts we get a variety of resources that support teacher planning and instruction once these resources are adopted our expectation is that schools utilize the curriculum available to them to the fullest extent possible our students

183will be better served when there is implementation with fidelity consistently across our division so in ela we're recommending benchmark advance for our k5 students and solve us my perspectives for grades 6 through 12. we're recommending benchmark advance for k5 because number one it aligns with the science of reading research and so instructional plans and resources or sources do include the five essential components of effective reading instruction phonemic awareness phonics fluency vocabulary and comprehension there's explicit phonic instruction with meaningful practice and spiral review there's built-in benchmark assessment so there's pre-assessments after every three units we have benchmark assessments then an end of the year assessment so we can monitor student progress there's a knowledge-based framework within and across all grade levels to allow students to expand their topic knowledge and vocabulary throughout the year and finally

184this does integrate science and social studies content topics in addition to integrating reading and writing skills we recommended sabas for secondary because they're high quality diagnostic formative summative and benchmark assessments their strategies suggestions and learning activities for whole groups small group and independent learning activities it encourages student collaboration and ownership of learning by encouraging them to set goals to have choice and have reflection activities this provides resources for fiction non-fiction writing and language mechanics throughout various text types and also has intervention and enrichment activities to meet student learning needs so our science final recommendations we're recommending five ponds press for our k-5 students and saavis again for students in grades six through twelve five pounds press we're recommending because again the curriculum alliance with the standards of learning the print editions have engaging visuals uh

185activities um and hands-on activities that are suggested throughout the presence of grade level reading passages so that's that's critical that students are able to engage in the content at their instructional level ideas for hands-on activities using common materials and then access to digital e-text should they desire to have that we're recommending sabas and middle and high schools because the curriculum focuses on learning by doing in science there are digital and print workbooks available there are class copies of printed student text but also the digital text has annotating features read aloud capabilities and digital note-taking features also hands-on lab activities with commonly used materials meaning they're they're materials that could be commonly found in a classroom easily found in our local stores not something that would need to be specially ordered it's more of everyday materials

186quality assessments embedded in videos embedded virtual labs and finally built-in resources by mosaic which is an act company i did mention we have two exceptions so i did want to call your attention to our earth science and physics recommendations we are recommending that discovery education be used in these two courses only because they are department of education approved and the soviets resources were not so we did ask why why was salvas not approved in that and and the answer was very simply salvas didn't present their text for approval and that was that was the reason it wasn't rejected it just wasn't submitted so that's why it wasn't on the list now the reason i call this to your attention is because discovery ed only has digital resources and so while the print resources are not

187available keep in mind these are elective courses and so students would have the choice of taking that or another science and while print features are not available we do believe they are some robust instructional activities embedded so for example stem activities which is science technology engineering and math concepts those are embedded as project starters learning activities are built around the virginia standards of learning and they also utilize the 5e model of instruction which is engage explore explain elaborate and evaluate text accessibility features were positive also again there's level reading passages so we can take a student's reading level and we can give them passages on that so they can better comprehend and engage in the text there are assistive technology features like an immersive reader so that allows students to change font sizes spacing colors

188font types and to read text aloud this is a feature that will be especially helpful for students who might need accommodations who might have disabilities that would require this and then finally there's a language translation so for those esl or ell students they could also benefit from that and so because of these features we do feel comfortable recommending discovery ed again for only earth science and physics and the final comment about that we do have the ability to print should that be an accommodation that that is necessary now would not advise printing for every student that would probably not be the best use of our resources but there is the ability to print should should that be required for an individual student so i just want to conclude just want to thank dr eisenhower mrs

189kepler for their efforts this was largely the results of their efforts they've worked very hard they facilitated the committees they've coordinated with publishers committee members they generated surveys they've analyzed results they plan the open house reviews and it just took a tremendous amount of time and energy so i do want to thank them i appreciate their hard work and so at this time be happy to answer any questions from the board drama i can hear you fine yeah and that's actually embedded in that dr eisner please feel free to come up and answer questions but that was part of the discussions for the committee that all the texts we looked at had phonics and word study instruction this just seemed to do it better and it was based on a lot of the research that

190that is out there that we felt like applied that more often than not do you want to add to that no i think you covered that yeah and um one thing about benchmark 2 it was developed by wiley blevins who is a well-known um author and and reading some signs of reading guru so um his input was imperative to that whole process of developing that program so that was another thing that drew us to that okay that's the name i couldn't remember what yeah right that's right um let me just ask a couple other questions too um the benchmark assessments you're talking about in both uh the elementary level and the high school level do you even at this stage are you all looking toward um collectively looking at scores across the county to to

191use that data or absolutely going to be in school so right now we are using master connects and so we are able to look at scores as a division but but another feature of benchmark that stood out was it does have division assessments so we're able to look not only at individual schools but division so so if somebody were to say how what's third grade looking like in bedford county then i could easily say that based on the results and that was something the other features just didn't really provide as well as benchmark did so i'm actually really excited about the assessment that come with it there's a lot of features and that is one is a division wide assessment great feature to have and i just want to say i really appreciate the fact

192that they're integrating science and social studies um in with the reading and the science you know the learn by doing is also another another great uh feature thank you madam channel yes mrs harrison you hear me dr trump i can hear you well first of all i want to thank you and your team uh this is a great presentation and so thank you for the hard work and efforts here quick question regarding the benchmark series here for k5 do we have elementary schools using this particular program or some components of it currently no not at this time dr eisenhower correct yeah not at this time and so so it is something new um again it just stood out to the point where as as the committee continued to look at it just really rose to

193the top as as one of the most robust and again that included reading specialists special education teachers we and we even tried to include teachers who not only from around the division but those that are implementing different reading curriculums right now just to make sure we had a diverse perspective on it hi how are you hi how are you um so all these books and resources have been approved and recommended by the department of education correct with the new leadership that we have in the state is there any threat to any of these books and these resources changing and does that affect decision making on whether we should make the change or not that's a good question what we found is typically when new standards are adopted by subject there's there's the textbook adoption by

194the state and so that happens about every seven years and so in 2019 and 2020 is when ela and science were adopted so if they continue the way they have done that process it's going to be a while before they were to come back and provide new recommendations so i would not anticipate any changes unless there's something unforeseen thank you is there a reason why the response uh was so low the response as far as um it's only 79 responses and then 70 responses for the ela i just i just thought that number would be a little higher i was just curious if there was a reason behind that you know i would have to agree with you we we probably would have liked to have seen the responses early on a little bit more

195than what they were and what we did was that was one of the reasons we opened back up for open house and we did have a pretty good response rate at that point where teachers did come out and look so we tried to give multiple opportunities we wanted to be transparent with with our committee members um once the initial survey came the committee members were very much involved and we hope we're involved with with members of their staff that they work with in other schools so but yeah it's once we saw that we did want to try just a few more times to get more response absolutely okay that was my only question questions for dr krauser okay thanks next item 6.04 2022 2023 annual special education plan and funding applications ms jennings good evening

196board um so in accordance with the individuals with disability education improvement act idea the regulations governing special education programs for children with disabilities in virginia and school board policy igba local school divisions must submit an annual plan and applications for the provision of special education and related services to eligible students with disabilities who reside in the jurisdiction as an agreement for implementing federal and state laws so that annual plan has been provided for you guys to review for your information the special education advisory committee ciac reviewed the plan at their march 3rd 2022 meeting when you review the plan you'll see that the majority of funding does go towards salaries and benefits of other special education staff we know it takes many people to support our students with disabilities other funding is used for materials

197for students with disabilities which can include curriculum equipment assistive technology testing materials and more we are required to set aside funds for students with disabilities that are homeschooled or friendly placed in private placements um you will see that mount has increased from 2021 and the 21 22 school years there have been more students who are opting for that placement um just as a reminder that 611 and 619 funds that are through this annual plan are only to be used for students with disabilities do you guys have any questions questions for mrs jennings okay thank you very much now we're going to move down to item 11 11.01 approval for policy updates do i have a motion to approve the policy updates presented at the february 10th board meeting i have a motion by dr mealy

198do i have a second second by ms harrison any discussion call for a vote all those in favor signify by saying aye hi hi opposed ms johnson will you pull the board daniels i'm sorry miss harrison mr hill mr holbrook mrs kirby yes dr miley yes mr nelms nick not pass do i have a motion for the approval of the bids for the touchless water dispensers madam chairman i'd like to make a motion for the approval of the bids for the touchless water dispensers i have a motion by ms harrison do i have a second second second by dr miley any discussion i have a question okay this correctly my mic's on um wait for someone to answer it okay in my understanding this 40 units meaning 40 water coolers water coolers are gonna cost

199two hundred and twelve thousand dollars that's the bid so if i'm doing my math right that's five thousand three hundred six dollars and seventeen cent per water fountain is that really as cheap as we can get it for uh and that includes full installation as well so that's the you know parts and labor um we advertise these bids and that is the bid we received from from southern air who also had assisted us with a lot of the um you know the homework on this and i figured you were going to say that would include installation etc but if i go out and look and just pull up commercial water i mean cheap in 4.99 i get it we're you know probably want a nicer end but some thousand does it really cost 4 000

200or 3 500 dollars that's just a concern for me to pay five thousand dollars for a water fountain i understood um i know that uh several years ago just as a frame of reference um some of these were installed in our community for between 3 500 and 4 thousand dollars to see an increased price including installation in this economy at this level didn't yes it's high and yes it's concerning it it did not seem surprising based on those uh that research and just i mean not that it matters because it's money but where is this budget coming from where is this money coming what budget mr hagler did a great job of soliciting some public feedback uh when we first received the covid relief funds and and so this money has been out you know

201kind of set aside earmarked within those federal funds uh since since receiving that input and you know it's just taken us a little while to to do the research and to get the bid documents together and and receive this i'm sure it seems like that would be the price if we got one not if we were getting 40 of them um in my opinion that just business my background would would indicate that the second question i would have is if we don't spend the money on this can we re-allocate those coveted funds to something else yes i think so we have a number of items already written into that um esser plan and and that plan can be amended as i understand thank you is there something wrong with the water fountains that we have

202now um nothing's wrong with them um they do get lips mighty close to them um when folks use them and so for a period of time we we didn't even have those open these dispensers have a water fountain feature as well as a water bottle filler that nothing needs to touch there's a sensor in the back and just for encouraging hydration and it was a it was an item that was mentioned by several groups that mr hagler talked to early on students parents as well as staff we've begun to see them you've seen them around in different facilities we've begun to see them in our newer schools and it's just a feature that has um is attractive not just not just because they help us hydrate and and and they work well just but just

203because they're more sanitary well don't they still open all the doors with their hands and you know what i mean i mean we don't know how many of you guys with their hands we're sitting there looking over budget stuff and understood you know pinching pennies and we're touching those water fountains just don't seem much of a priority to me i guess my my own concern madam chair is if it costs that much to get these installed what's the maintenance going to be if they break no sensors can't be cheap i can imagine right i mean sure the sensors might be 3 000 alone and yeah we've not had um to my knowledge we've not had big problems with the ones that have been installed in recent years however you know there are filters in them

204and other upkeep that you know that is required so is there something does it cost less to maintain the current ones that we have that aren't broken versus the newer ones i i haven't done that homework to to be able to answer you with certainty sorry what schools are going to be getting these all all of them um each school would get at least two our larger schools would have three among the 40. except for the of course the ones who already have them like liberty middle where they were built in from the beginning did forrest middle have them all right does have them in the new portion yes questions i just want to make a comment i mean i love the concept the cost is what concerns me and so my question is is

205there anything that we have going on at suzy g that would allow them to install if we were to purchase the units at a much cheaper rate that allows them to do the work part of their class i'm just throwing ideas so i i don't want this to sound as i know but i truly think 5 300 for a water fountain is a little steep so we we also can re-bid i don't know that we would receive a different response but we might we may madam chair yes sir in my camp we have at least four four board members who are concerned about just not the concept but the cost um you know our water just went out on our farm and i hired a plumber to come do some work and and my eyes

206got big at the cost um super guy super work he was passing the cost on to me because there's a choke off in supply and i think some of this may be related to what we're all experiencing on our farms and our homes um we're fine to withdraw this i mean it was your question chris you know did the funds have to be allocated to this one of yes they can go to anything so if the board is we're just the timing's wrong because uh where we are in the economy we can pull this back that's this is your lane uh the budget and how we how we spend our funds is yours so if if uh i'm not gonna speak from you if you wanna make a motion that we just pull this off

207the agenda and that we not consider at this time i have no qualms with that whatsoever if you want to go forward the costs are what they are we're being transparent with you this is we we did a public bid and this was the cost so we accept the bid we accept the consequences of where we are in this economy so that we install these or we we move on i'm good either way it's entirely up to this board thank you madam chairman yes ma'am i believe that we do have a motion on the floor we have a motion and we have a second um hearing everything and reading that we only had one bid um instead of the motion dying to where we cannot bring it back i would like to possibly have it

208re-bidded to see if we could get more options at a lower price i don't know what everyone would think that um would that be feasible i want to make sure yeah so there's a substitute motion to well we can withdraw if we get to okay let's make sure that's what miss harrison i think miss harrison was trying to drive a point you have well my my point is is that we have a motion on the floor i would assume that we would go ahead and go through those procedures and take them yeah we were doing the discussion on the motion in the second now and if we want to move forward with with voting or if we want to pull it off the floor to see if we want to get more bids my opinion

209would be that we move forward and we can certainly discuss the next option one more piece of information that i'll give if i may is that because of the federal funds being used there are stipulations about how you know how those funds are used one requirement for any labor work done um in you know if it's paid for under these funds is that we follow a federal wage requirement called the davis bacon act and and so um it may be that the labor costs are somewhat higher than they might be uh otherwise if we were using local funds um and and that is a that is a cost it's also part of these hvac projects that we're doing and anything else we're paying for with with coveted relief money dr dewis while we have a

210motion in a second on the floor call for a vote all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed ms johnson will you pull the board please mr daniels no mrs harrison yes mr hill hello mr holbrook hello mrs kirby yes dr miley yes mr nelms no motion does not pass four to three thank you ms johnson madam chair i'm sorry i didn't get up fast enough when you were doing the action on the um policies can i state question okay um i've never had a where it was just voted that none of the policies go through i think we need to go through each one and say why and like what needs to be changed to bring back to the board if you have a problem with them madam chair yes sir yeah

211i appreciate um you know melissa bring that to our attention so when we get to superintendent comments maybe i can deal with it at that time melissa i appreciate the question but i think i have a way we can we can okay we can address that thank you dr burton it's time for your report well that was good timing okay yeah yeah um so you know you're accustomed to uh some celebratory comments and you can see the first one's coming up on the screen but we're going to just give that a pause for just a minute i'm going to speak uh off the cuff on just a couple things from from tonight um first of all i uh appreciate and and uh honor that policy belongs to this board not to the administration we consult

212with our attorney we consult with the virginia school board association we consult with vast we consult with the organizations that are available to us we discuss them amongst ourselves and we bring you our best thinking when i interviewed with the board a year ago we talked about forming some new standing committees and we have made great headway this year so the budget and finance committee worked very closely with the administration on the development of this budget the facilities committee has met and we have made uh we've had our first meeting to create a 10-year capital improvement plan currently has no funding in it but we know our priorities and we'll be discussing that in a future meeting with with the board and we have a legislative affairs committee or an intergovernmental affairs committee and mr

213hill is the loan number at this time and he and i had an opportunity to go to richmond together and talk with our other local delegates about issues that are important to public education but we do not have a policy committee and i would welcome that the policy belongs to this board so i i was not prepared for and that's fine that the that the majority of the board rejected in whole uh all of the policies that were brought for information a month ago and were up for adoption tonight it's absolutely fine i don't know off the top of my head most i don't know if there's any urgency to any of them that are triggered by a change in legislation that you know there's some time essence to them so i'll go back and

214review them and if i feel like any of them are really timely you know i'll speak with the board leadership about how we might handle that at the next board meeting but in the meantime i'd i'd like for the board to consider and reflect upon forming a policy committee and as we as we identify policies that need to be reviewed they belong to the board so i would rather we develop those revisions with you and then bring them here rather than we guess you know what what we think the board wants us to bring forward because we're bringing you our best thinking and if we're off the mark that's fine they belong to you so uh madam chair maybe if we could consider that uh for further discussion about forming a policy committee i'm well

215experienced in this other school divisions where i've worked before have always had a policy committee and i feel confident that i can i can help lead the board forward in that way so that's just some comments off the cuff also from my heart tonight to those who spoke tonight to our board members i we we agree on more things i believe what we seek for our children um i certainly do i i believe a child's first and best teacher is their parent my two boys i was their first and best teacher you those of you who are parents you're your child's first and best teacher and our parents should know what we are teaching their children and they should have input in those decisions i believe we're completely transparent about that all of our content

216is online all of the resources we use are clickable and linkable online our policy has always said if a parent has a concern about an instructional resource that a teacher is using or that a library media specialist has selected for the student body that the parent can and should advocate for themselves and their child what their concerns are and we honor that so uh i know you appreciate and i just want our teachers who are here tonight and who are listening and one of them spoke tonight and i'm really prompted by those comments we love our teachers we love our library media specialists we value the service they provide for us they have committed themselves to teaching i've committed 30 years of my life to loving children and we would never intentionally harm kids or

217or corrupt our children we we might have some differences about some of the materials that have been selected and we can talk about that so the policy that we brought forward tonight dr woodford on a challenge of materials i think we're not ready for for that i think we need more discussion with the board i'd like to bring that to a policy if we form a policy committee i'd like to just have more conversation about that and marcus she raised a good point we have a new governor we have new leadership in the vdoe we had lots of legislation that uh they're still reconciling and there's more to come this is a very fluid conversation so we don't need to rush this uh on on library books and on on i i none of my

218comments pertain to the adoption of the of the resources that dr trosper uh brought with us tonight i think our thinking is sound on the recommendations that we've made for for uh for our elementary and secondary english language arts and for our science adoption uh but again that belongs to your board members so it was it was for information tonight we have a month to think about it ask questions i would appreciate that as you're thinking about those things we we maintain open communication and dialogue between now and the next board meeting so i'm prepared for any concerns you may have and we can address them and work together so those are my off the off the cuff comments but let me get on to uh celebrating our teachers and our students uh as we've

219been doing strap in it's it's this is an 18 slide celebration because our kids and our staff have really been uh really been rocking it since we were last together so this first slide up there if you're not aware that is uh in reference to the raider challenge i had the opportunity to go out and attend that raider challenge at the national d-day memorial there were 18 teams of jrotc cadets from across virginia and north carolina who competed in this meet it consisted of six events none of which i could do let me tell you uh that tested the mental and physical fitness as well as the problem solving and teamwork abilities of the 150 cadets that were there at the memorial on a saturday morning the bedford cadets spent weeks planning for the competition

220which provided our students opportunity to practice their own organizational and leadership skills which are of course integral parts of the jrotc mission so many thanks to our jrotc leaders and our gazette cadets for hosting the event and representing bedford county so well it has been is someone advancing the slides for us we have clicker challenges tonight thank you dr trosper it has been an awesome season for the jefferson forest high school indoor track teams if you weren't aware the girls were the seminal district champions and finished second in region 4-d and second in the state for vhsl4a hannah petty john and zoe lamanna were both crowned state champions hannah set a state meet record with her pole vault of ready for this 12 feet 6 inches that's like two of me zoe was the top

221runner as well in the 1 000 meter run and state runner up in the 1600 meter run and on the boys side congratulations to addison hilton who was crowned state champion in the 300 meter run lastly congratulations to coach ryan morano who was named seminole district coach of the year and we have another accomplished poll voter paul paul valter at liberty high school congratulations to susannah allen who was the region 3c indoor track pole vault champion and completing the trifecta for indoor track congratulations to the stanton river high school boys indoor track team on being the 2022 blue ridge district champions and region 3d runner-up the team also had a number of individual region champions congratulations to the 4 by 400 meter relay squad of alfred finney malachi gregory spencer kearns and kayden ryder and

222cayden was also the regional champion in the 500 meter run and spencer was the top pole vaulter for the region now we're going to shift gears over to wrestling these next several slides you met these these young men and women who had the opportunity to be with us here tonight but i also would like to again congratulate the amazing dedication and effort that took these these young men all the way to the state championship match jf's matt worth the state runner-up and 160 weight class the jf wrestling team had three champions and two runner-ups in all recently at the 4d region 4d tournament and all nine wrestlers placed in the top three which means they've qualified for the vhsl class iv state tournament congratulations also to the stanton river high school wrestling team for their

223third place finish in the group 3a state championship the golden eagles had two state champions in colin martin in the 106 pound weight class and noah nine injure in the 113 pound weight class logan arnold and josh kelly were also state runner-ups in the 145 and 170 weight class respectively and the team brought home the school's first ever region 3d team title so most deservingly coach scott is it fike thank you josh coach fike congratulations to you on being named region 3d coach of the year we saw these uh young people on the stage here tonight in swimming competition congratulations once again to the jf high school swim program for their accomplishments in district region and state competition the boys team was the regional runner-up with brendan whitfield being named seminole district swimmer of the

224year and in state competition the team had a number of runners up including the squad of brendan whitfield max sean felder jack mills and ben hiss in the 200 medley relay brendan was also the state runner-up in the 40 free and 100 back jack was state runner-up in the 200 free and congratulations to the squad of brendan whitfield evan schoenfelder jack mills and evan shot bowl for being crowned state champions and the 400 free relay all right let's take it indoors now on the basketball court the stanton river girls basketball team finished the regular season with a school record 21-0 perfect season they finished their season as the blue ridge district champions and were the region 3d runner-up congratulations kim jones on being named blue ridge district coach of the year and jenny levine who

225was named blue ridge district and region 3d player of the year i'm sure we're gonna see that young lady in the wnba if she wants to play she is a talent now it's not just our high school athletes racking up those honors on the basketball court a big congratulations to three these three young boys bedford county students tayden rhodes from boonesboro elementary eli stevens from liberty middle and kinsley winterfeldt from tj these three won the state elks hoop chute that was held in waynesboro all three of them now advance to a regional hoop shoot this coming saturday in frederick maryland we wish him nothing but net off the athletic field we also have many students accomplishments we want to celebrate beginning with this young lady liberty high school's marissa parr reek who was crowned the

226vhsl region 3c forensics champion marissa then went on to win first place in the super region competition in the category of original oratory and speaking of forensic champions congratulations also to stanton river high school forensics team who placed two who had two first place regional placements yahim leftwich for prose and cole price for impromptu yahim also took home first place at the super region competition in the category of pros so he'll be joining marissa in representing bedford county at the state competition we also have as you're well aware board members outstanding performance arts programs throughout the county we'd like to congratulate four jefferson forest high school students rachel d's bayless huckabee brookly and taylor lowry who were selected by virtual audition for the allstate band and orchestra for their musical talents playing the bassoon trombone

227violin and trumpet respectively the allstate band and orchestra will convene in mid-april at christopher newport university for two days of intensive rehearsal with world-renowned conductors followed by a live concert performance on the 23rd of april and in case you missed it it was a battle of the champion several weeks ago at liberty high school with the spelling bee winners from each of our elementary and middle schools coming together for the annual bedford county spelling bee i'd like to offer my super tall congratulations to forest middle school's graham woodruff as he edged out forest elementary schools nafimi atatona for the honor of being the 2022 bcps spelling bee champion graham now moves on to the regional competition so graham we are rooting for you that you will wind up at the national finals in washington d.c

228later this year board members you know it's no secret that we have one of the best career and technical education centers in the state and our susie g gibson science and technology students proved that once again and the annual skills usa competition which was held several weeks ago in franklin county i had an awesome time down there with the franklin superintendent we had a chance to see all of our kids compete throughout the day congratulations to six students who finished in first place taylor weske and carpentry william wood in maintenance and light repair kendrick anwar jimenez cervantes in refinishing jacob bowden electrical and both anthony utley and aiden wertman in building maintenance these students will now advance to the state skills usa competition which is being held in virginia beach in april and if they

229win there they will go on to national competition so congratulations to our cte instructors and our students for their accomplishments it's never too early for our students to begin learning about working with their hands and going into workforce development so we'd like to thank our susie g gibson students for going out and sharing with the students at stewartsville elementary school as pictured here our students in the early childhood teachers for tomorrow program the building construction program students who are studying to be an lpn and those in cosmetology took time out to visit with the students at stewartsville to show them the ropes and the building construction seniors also paid a visit to the students at forest middle school so they could share their experiences and knowledge and encourage more students to follow in their footsteps

230our elementary school students have been learning about coding over the last several weeks and months i had a nice visit last week to huddleston elementary school to interact with the students during their hour of code activities all of the students there in grades kindergarten through fifth grade took part in both unplugged and plugged in coding activities and we're so very appreciative of a generous donation from the stanton baptist church as well as the pta county council who helped with the purchase of those coding and robotic resources for the children to help them learn more about problem solving critical thinking perseverance and collaboration last week for us elementary nerds uh you know we we love march 2 which is national read across america day otherwise known as dr seuss day and i had a chance to

231get out and read in several classrooms our schools throughout the county helped our students to celebrate a love of reading in various ways for instance the stanton river high school national honor society students traveled to each of the elementary schools in the river zone so they could read with students students at boonesboro and monita and tj came dressed to school as their favorite book character and students at bedford primary spent part of their day with an author miranda middlemen who gave them all a signed copy of her pause and think books that's pause p-a-w-s because the main character in her books is weaver a rescue dog who through his stories teaches children about the importance of gratitude and other life lessons and last but not least i want to welcome sitting here on my right

232mr chris daniels who's been appointed to fill the vacant seat for district 7 until a special election is held this november i had the opportunity to attend his swearing-in this morning at the bedford county circuit courtroom and then we spent a number of hours today so that he could acclimate himself to meeting our senior leadership and drink from a fire hose for about four hours so as uh chris as you shared with the board in your application when you were seeking this position you're a proud parent of twin boys at jf and part of your motivation to serve on this school board is that you've stated and you believe and i know that you believe that there is much more that unites us than divides us i look forward to working with you and forming

233a strong working relationship with you and all of our board members as we move forward so congratulations chris on your appointment madam chair that concludes my superintendent comments thank you dr morgan okay moving on to 13.01 um when we were asking for the liaison to go to school and all that we realized that it's come to our attention that we do not have a representative representing the governor's school stem academy i was wondering if we could so kindly have a volunteer for that madam chair yes mr hill um as i shared with you i'm kind of overbooked on things normally as i've been explaining this board liaison for gov stem academy goes along with whoever is sitting on the gov school board i'm willing to do that i did speak um well let me say

234if mr daniels would be willing to take the seac special education advisory committee spot that i had been sitting on while i've only been able to attend one meeting because of our schedule um if if mr daniels is willing to do that then i would uh accept the board liaison for gov stem academy are you willing to do that mr daniels yes okay well problem solved 13.02 the location for the march 17 2022 budget work session i'm fine with us going to our regular meeting room madam chairman i just need to let you know that something has come up with me and i will be out of state so i can participate by zoom but that would be the only way you've already done year two for the year uh well one was medical so

235that doesn't count um so let's get back to the location where are you found the regular meeting room okay and then we'll okay 13.03 committee reports who wants to start okay well i don't have any updates from the last board meeting regarding the laurel school i do anticipate that we will be having a meeting soon and in which we'll talk about the efficiency study and i'll come back and share that information with you all i recently attended the facility committee meeting on february the 24th i was graciously asked and without any hesitation from anyone to serve as the chairman on this committee and so i am serving as the chairman for the facility committee and we met dr bergen dr dewis and mark blankenship as well as matt hobrock we were all present and we

236reviewed a number of documents so we discussed the cip document looked at just a powerpoint presentation regarding capacity concerns the auditorium study just a number of different areas there and so our next meeting is going to be held at otter river elementary school on march the 15th we are going to the whole ideal for that is to get out there as a committee and take a look at the schools that are on our list where we have some concerns so being present in those buildings i think would be beneficial for us i would encourage board members to please go on board docs take a look at the documents that we have regarding the facility committee and if you have any questions there's areas that you want to talk about concerns that you may have please

237reach out to either myself or to mr hobrok with any of your questions or concerns fellow board members that's all i have regarding committee meetings you think mrs harrison did you have anything no i don't think so since we talked about the budget okay thank you the only thing we did have gov school central virginia governor school met march 2nd reviewed the budget last year's budget in the go forward budget and i was volunteered that i would be the vice chair of that board as well so uh i did accept that and uh we'll be uh filling that role as well so like i'll just make a really good swap yeah okay any more committee reports okay comments and concerns from the school board ms harrison well i want to thank all of the committee

238members for your reports and the time that you put in to share the information with us this evening so thank you so very much for those reports i also just want to say to dr dr bergen and the committee and mr hagler for this document here this i am super excited about this and i know that it took a lot of uh time and effort and hard work but to have um this document here for us to look at and to review and for our community to even have access to it i think is very very valuable so thank you all for all of your hard work just want to pretty much echo everything that dr bergen has said in terms of recognizing the students and all of their accomplishments again another shout out to

239stanton river high school kim jones and her girls and their wonderful season just so very proud of them also i'd like to make a request that we be provided i'd like to be provided with some data regarding our percentage of staff members teachers who have resigned those who are retiring and also just potential openings i think it's important as we look on in our budget season and for further discussion that we take a close look at what our staffing is going to look like so i certainly would like to have that information provided to me and perhaps maybe other board members would like it as well that's all that i have thank you miss hairston dr miley yes i once again want to thank um mr hagler and dr calvert and and their team and

240mr per is it perrault or pero pero okay um for all your work on that uh on the budget document i just think it's fantastic and i think it'll only be better as as we move forward as we we refine what we've been working on so truly thank you so much for the all that hard work um i wanted to also thank dr eisenhower and dr trosper and i'm sorry i didn't get the third person miss kapler kaplan miss kaplan okay thank you so much for all that work um on the adoption of the books um thank you for the just the the detailed explanation of how the bdoe gets there and how you got to where you are i know that's a lot of work i've been on those committees so thank you so

241much for that i also want to thank our our staff last month i specifically reached out to our nurses to say thank you and and this month i'd just like to say thank you to our clerical staff and our secretaries and our bookkeepers all of our staff especially because what you do matters every single day and it makes a difference your presence in our schools makes a difference every day to each child and i know that many many people in the community um are very grateful for every single person that's in this community and and the dedication you have to our students so so please know there are many of us who appreciate you and and are are grateful um i also wanted to just say that and this can be to dr dewis the

242concerns about running out of fuel if you could just get some information to us i i am still getting our texts and um it is concerning that we have bus drivers who are saying they're out of fuel and i i just i know that there were there were problems during covid with people being out and then not having drivers but um the company we're using now i hope that that they can be more regular but if you would just you know help me understand what's what's happening there and you don't have to answer that tonight just if you get with me i would appreciate excuse me appreciate that and thank you um again to mr edwards you always make people feel special we were talking at dinner about your voice i don't know maybe you

243should sell it or something but everybody just loves your voice so thank you so much for doing that every week i think you just make the people feel super special you have a knack for that um but that was all i had madam chairman thank you dr maylie mr nelms um again just want to uh say what they said thank you to everybody to for working on this budget report um it was a great experience um i know it's not done yet and we'll get we'll get it finished up and get it completed but uh i just want to thank dr mealy as well for being patient with me in those late night emails i had to shoot back and in a timely manner [Applause] i recently took a ride along on a school bus

244uh which was very eye-opening uh and this was just dude i just wanted to do it just because i want to see what was really going on with our bus drivers and what they what they saw day to day and and what i saw was a lot of respect for our bus drivers uh basically from the students which was really awesome to see um the students were really really pumped up asked me a ton of questions i hope i answered all of them but uh they actually messaged me later on that evening what the school bus driver did and said they want me to come back and ride again so i do plan on doing that um i also plan on going over to uh susie g gibson and uh taking a look at the

245programs and seeing what can be done to to add some more programs you know uh that have been falling away you know just just in that nature um uh let's see i'm trying to think was there anything else i need to say i think that was it uh and also just wanted to say welcome mr daniels uh thank you for stepping up thank you mr nims mr harbour comment okay i'm tired well um i just want to echo all the sentiments of of everybody for all the hard work that that everybody's been putting in um i want to thank everyone that supported me to help me uh get here and i'm i'm gonna not let you guys down and i'm gonna work hard for people that you know maybe thought it should went some a

246different way i'm gonna work just as hard for those people as well um thank you for the to the board for being so inviting and accommodating for me and friendly i really appreciate that thanks to everybody at the central office and thank you dr bergen special thank you to dianna johnson she's uh been inundating me with uh emails and a lot of information but i appreciate that and then mr hagler we had a great meeting yesterday and it was great very eye-opening so thank you for that um i look forward to working with everyone's special education committee and if i can help in any way with with budgeting and facilities i'm i'm kind of wide open i like to stay busy so that that helps but yes i'd be willing to do anything to to

247help everybody here and in the county uh finally south side customers if you're a customer of south side you can apply your student can apply for a thousand dollar college or trade scholarship by april 18th it's awarded in the spring and um they've they're a big big company but they've given since 2016 um 130 000 out in grants so 114 grand so if you're a customer you can go on their website and apply so a thousand dollars can go a long way so thank you thank you mr daniels mr hill all right uh welcome mr daniels you've heard that 100 times i wanted to say it again uh i do echo the concern about the bus fuel it's not the first time we've heard it i know we've had some tank issues whatever but i

248would like to understand more about what we can do to make sure we're not driving across town or across the mountain to get fuel to staff karen looks up and says oh lord i want you guys to know i mean i do really appreciate everything you do i know it appears when i'm up here asking questions that you know i'm trying to prove you wrong or i'm just trying to dig and understand so the public who's listening they understand that we're asking questions and what those responses are i know i speak with each of you individually probably too much but i do appreciate the work that's being done by our staff so i do not want it to come across as i disrespect you or i don't appreciate you that is furthest from the truth

249but i am going to ask the questions sometimes they're easy sometimes they're hard sometimes you're not going to like them sometimes i don't like them but they need to be asked so i want to make that public that you know i do appreciate our staff i appreciate everything you guys do i'm not going to stop asking questions but i did want you to know that so thank you cnn 10. i want to know i've asked this question multiple times and i've always been told it's not shown in our schools i am getting mixed reports and so i want confirmation if it is or if it isn't being shown in our schools cnn 10. um dr bergen i wanted to i i know you made the comment you know you guys never intentionally plan on harming

250children um that was never the intention for it to come across as we were accusing you of that um so that was never said that i heard so i just want to be very clear that was not the intention i i like facts versus emotions and so i'm not sure how that come across that we were accusing anyone of intentionally hurting children but again i think it goes back to the questions that we need to understand what are we doing in our schools so those questions are going to continue and so you know never come across as you know intentionally trying to say that anybody in our division is intentionally harming children so i wanted to make sure i cleared that up letter from vass and for those that don't know virginia association of school

251superintendent there was a letter sent today which several received copies of that are some concerns that the letter was written directly to the new state superintendent basically condemning some of the things that the new state superintendent is doing i would recommend you go find that letter and read it so you understand what our new state superintendent is up against and some of the changes that are going to be taking place at the vdoe and just you need to educate yourself so you understand what's taking place in the background um i usually don't like to call out a separate group but i have to give kim jones and that stanton river high school girls group a shout out those girls are special to me to my family we love kim and greg and i just you

252know you have to give credit where credit is due and they have poured into those girls and those girls are special i don't know if anybody if you did not get a chance to go watch them play you missed out but i have to say congratulations to that group very special didn't get the outcome that they wanted this year but they certainly worked their butts off and i'm proud of every one of them so last thing and i promise mr holcomb i'll be quiet i know you're tired i want to give a shout out to forest middle school we are going to have an open house our 15 days um to curve the whatever is over and so we're actually going to have people come in and see our new facility a renovation edition whatever

253you want to call it that is mark thursday march 24th from 4 30 to 6 30 p.m so i want to encourage anybody and everybody from bedford county to come see that facility it's a nice place and uh it's exciting things happening i was actually there last friday went by to see some smiling faces which by the way based on what our teachers told me the morale went up about a hundred percent uh within a 24-hour time period so that was awesome so anyway forest middle school open house thursday march 24th from 4 30 to 6 30. that's all madam chair thank you i'm putting it on my calendar now actually okay um we had said something about doing town halls and we talked about possibly starting them april the first saturday in april which

254will put us at april the second and this will be our last meeting prior to that um is this something we want to do still so i'm gonna need we can have two board members can we still use a facility at stanton river we're gonna if it works too is or there ain't one two people that would want to go mr nelms and i'll go with you okay those dates work um madam chair can i'll just speak i think diana was sending me a message by osmosis so as long as it's just two board members then it it's a town hall and it's a conversation and that's it if a third wants to wander and then we're going to have to post and advertise and treat it as a school board meeting so i appreciate

255this the two attendees that's what i'm saying mr numbs and i'll be there thank you man it's stanton river if you can just figure out a little place where we can meet by the cafeteria library or a really large broom closet you know um welcome mr daniels i'm the last one to tell you but um i really enjoyed hearing the job core presentation tonight it's always good to hear um that there is training out there for for the kids to carry on and to be able to make a lucrative career no matter what the circumstances are and lastly i want to extend my sympathies to the family of judith byrd woolcott ms wolcott was a beloved guidance counselor at liberty high school for 32 years whenever you saw her in the hallways she always had

256a smile on your face and she always just it lifted you up being in her presence um and i was honored and privileged to know her um and i wanted to stimulate extend my sympathies to her family during this hard time guess if a court with mr numbs will do a moment of silence for miss wilcock thank you all very much i know that would mean a lot to her family and with that being the last thing i have to say um do i have a motion to adjourn the meeting have a motion by mr hillard we'll have a second second by mr holbrook any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed we're adjourned you