School Board Meeting 2/10/2022 - 5:00 PM

001hmm so [Music] uh good evening i'd like to call this february 10th 2022 regular school regular meeting of the bedford county school board to order ms johnson would you please read the world mrs kirby here mr hill here mrs harrison here mr holbrook here dr miley here mr nelms here madam chair you have a quorum thank you do i have a motion to allow board members to participate remotely madam chairman i make a motion to allow board members to participate remotely in the february the 10th 2022 regular meeting in accordance with bedford county public school policy bdd okay i have a motion do i have a second second any discussion all those in favor signify and say i opposed motion passes welcome to the meeting dr maylie thank you and um in accordance with the

002president that was said at the previous meeting could you please state for the record the reason why you are not here uh medical reasons thank you do i have a motion to approve the agenda for february 10 2020. yeah actually i heard mr hill first i have a motion about mr hill second by dr maylie any discussion all those in favor signify to say ni all that's posed agenda approved do i have a motion to go into closed session madam chair a move that we go into closed session pursuant dakota virginia 2.2-3711a 178-1 to discuss the assignment appointment performance discipline and release of contract for specific school board employees seven consultation with legal counsel pertaining to actual and probable litigation involving student matters eight for consultation with legal counsel retained by the school board for

003advice on specific legal matters regarding the provision of legal advice by such counsel including school board policies and personnel matters okay i have a motion by mr hill do i have a second second second by ms harrison any discussion all those in favor signify saying aye opposed we're now in closed session yes yes yes yes yes thank you where's my liar i'll wait for dr mealy oh dr maylie yes i just want some christmas too hold on a second okay i just thought i was gonna have to use my phone once i reach brandon can you hear me oh yeah yes ma'am okay do you certify a closed session oh you've already done it no we're waiting for you to say yes yes okay thank you thank you all right due to the late hour

004um and closed session taking a little bit longer than what we thought we're going to move staff reports and informational items to item eight on the agenda and right now we will break for dinner that's terrible [Music] yes and then you see next week [Music] is [Music] this time just make her stay in town [Music] just making sure you're ready [Music] good evening i'd like to reconvene the february 10th regular meeting of beth county public school board please rise for the pledge of allegiance [Music] i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god and indivisible with liberty and justice for i would like to take a moment of silence in memory of claire overstreet daughter of tim overstreet um tim

005has been a dedicated employee of before county public schools for many many years um and also too if there's anyone else that you need to feel the need to lift up in prayer please do so at this time thank you mr edwards you're up recognition of students and staff um tonight we take time to recognize one of our high school programs that's on a pretty amazing run the vhsl theater competition brings high school theater programs from across virginia to compete every year each school performs a play which must be 35 minutes or less based on enrollment size competitions are divided into several different classes of similar sized schools jf competes with a handful of class four schools and this year won their third straight state championship tonight and tonight we get the privilege of honoring

006not one but two of those teams and we will begin with last year's group who we present their state championship rings to tonight so before we officially get started madam chair mr vice chair dr bergen could you all please come forward here so excellent students uh and with this group former students as well when you come up receive your ring please come off to the side and remain here as a group so we can get a picture before we dismiss you the 2020 play was pirates theodore thud and the quest for weird beard by joshua michael not present tonight from the backstage crew sarah artman logan miller and georgia wilson also not present tonight from the cast aaliyah carver connor champney addison chido caroline connor jalen dues samantha elam cam quails thomas smith who was

007recognized as a state outstanding actor zamarito lily van bergen olivia webb brett womack and madame chair the certificates uh for later on we'll talk about there's one student in the second group that is not here just the rings for this group and we will begin with miss julia diehl [Applause] [Music] sophie dodge [Applause] hope dyer [Applause] skye evans [Applause] k.j jessup [Applause] tory mcdonald [Applause] actually murphy cannot be here with us tonight ms sexton if you'll please uh make sure that that ring if it's there is removed paul reed [Applause] i'll listen as again [Applause] angel oh neil [Applause] outstanding actor recognition princess patrick carter [Applause] shay robertson [Applause] even tyree [Applause] and finally directors the husband and wife duo spence and nicki white [Applause] she's telling me um if we could kind of uh

008bring you guys in for like a double row of two i think that would work there you go [Applause] the 2020 dhsa one act play class 4 state champion cavalier theater [Applause] after two straight championships the team decided to take on something entirely different last year and that was converting a five-act shakespeare play into one single act the result a championship repeat again when i call your name please come forward to receive a certificate in your honor and again please remain standing to the side for a group picture when we're finished and now the cast and crew of the comedy of errors non-present tonight savannah davis and carter rice also not able to make it tonight from the cast ryan newman and those that are here wyatt bryant [Applause] julia deal [Applause] sophie dodge [Applause]

009it's important to note before we move forward that for the first time and at least uh the memory of people who count all four outstanding actor awards for individual performers were bestowed upon four actors from jf and again that's the first time that anybody can remember that happening the first state outstanding actor recognition sky evans [Applause] the second state outstanding actor recognition sarah lynn rouse [Applause] everybody played a role in this championship tory mcdonald [Applause] blake mcgregor [Applause] once again angel o'neal [Applause] the third state outstanding actor recognition princess patrick carter [Applause] paul reed [Applause] shay robertson [Applause] jack snow [Applause] bridget spangenberg [Applause] even tyree [Applause] william wallace [Applause] the third and michael willis micah with the fourth and final state outstanding actor recognition [Applause] on to the crew backstage anna miller [Applause] blue

010wise [Applause] and once again your cavalier theater directors spence and nicki white [Applause] [Music] thursday the 2021 vhsl one-act play class 4 state champion cavalier theater you bet you've been yes ma'am thank you um [Music] thank you um um and february is school board appreciation month across virginia tonight we take time to recognize bedford county school board members who exemplify local citizen control and decision making in education they put forth large amounts of their time and an immeasurable amount of energy each year to assure that our schools are providing the best education possible to our students the staff of our school division is taking this moment to tell our board members thank you for caring and hope that members of the public will do this as well a certificate from the vsba honoring you has

011been placed at your seat and thank you again for all that you do on behalf of the staff and finally february is also school board clerk appreciation month across the commonwealth tonight we recognize mrs diana johnson for all that she does throughout the year for the board mrs kirby and mr hill have a token of appreciation for mrs johnson on behalf of the board bedford county school board clerk mrs diana johnson [Applause] and board members if you will as we proceed on without mr leamy we would love to have a group photo uh backed by the flags if you could assemble there so we could snap your photo for appreciation month that would be appreciated [Music] okay [Applause] um okay now we're going to move on to public comment the public comment portion of tonight's

012agenda 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 engage or respond to speakers during this 40-minute period please remember that this is a public meeting and we expect all speakers to refrain from any foul abusive or hateful language mr edwards will serve as 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 our cumulative 40-minute period mr edwards edward's four-minute timer 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

013them to ms johnson and she will disburse them to us board members please do not adjust the microphone on the podium as it as it has been positioned for optimum quality mr edwards madam chair we have a full slate for the public comment portion of tonight's meeting aaron farrell david beauregard miranda ray david dietrich laurie dooley lacy johnson heather pippen rachel cooper claire mcneely and jen losowski thank you ms farrell lead us off please hello my name is erin farrell i live in district 3. good evening school board members mr superintendent staff and community school board members congratulations happy school board appreciation month we do appreciate you and i want to take a few minutes to thank you for a lot of things so firstly thank you for increasing the public comment time from 25

014minutes to 40 minutes and for increasing the individual speaking time to four minutes we all really appreciate your decision secondly thank you for holding these meetings in this larger venue and for moving the special meeting on february 28th to an even larger venue chairwoman kirby i think that that decision falls under your leadership or jurisdiction so i just want to say thank you for that and also sheriff miller deputy staff we appreciate all your flexibility too those two decisions though also practical symbolically demonstrate to us that everyone is welcome with enough seats at the table for the community these decisions demonstrate how your school board reflects our community teachers bus drivers janitorial staff paraprofessionals food service employees and administrators as a parent of two children in bedford county i'm indebted to you our community sees

015you on the front line still after 23 months in march's meeting community members other parents and myself are eager to share other steps that we in the community are taking to provide some extra support for you guys this includes some hopeful information from younkin's team and the department of labor and industry regarding how to show you the respect you deserve to make your own masking choices among other things school board members you led the way in virginia acknowledging parents rights to choose what is best for their children other counties are following your lead even now some blue states are announcing that they're going to do the same including maybe even giving teachers that same choice as students new jersey rhode island connecticut maryland california to name a few so thank you for leading the way

016lastly school board members please allow me to share some quotes from our teachers parents and children celebrating the parents choice regarding masking an elementary school teacher said quote i'm happy that i get to see the their faces i'm happy that they get to make the choice to cover them or not to cover them it is easier for me to hear the kids a middle school student fellow france said i'm so happy that i have a choice about the mask i'm happy to be able to breathe in deeply and exhale when i need to a high school teacher said quote i'm absolutely thrilled to see my students smiling faces it is also nice to regularly regularly see all classes have sorry excuse me to see full classes and not have my students have to rely on

017videos while they are at home margaret and steve smith grandparents reason their granddaughter said our granddaughter is so much happier now seeing faces uncovered and we appreciate our voices were heard at the school board and that science is being followed she loves the attention and affirmation from her classmates faces a parent said another parent said she is quote thankful that the physical dividers amongst children have been lifted and that the numbers haven't imploded i'm looking forward to focusing more energy on the purpose of school education unquote and lastly another parent said the decision to restore parent choice in regards to masking our children has primarily exemplified the school board's intent to work with parents to educate our children again school board and staff teachers everyone thank you for representing the bedford community thank you good

018evening i'm appreciative too of several things but some of the things i'm not appreciative of is the continued disregard for complying with the oath that you swore to uphold the constitution to be amenable at all times again i wonder if you spoke about the public comment time that i mentioned about last week or last month and to be we want dialogue this isn't the way it was done but i'm not going to continue to go into the amenable you being amenable at all times because you have rejected that but i want to speak to those of you who name the name that is above all names whoever you might be whether you're in the audience or on the board for eight months i have been trying to help this board of servants understand why they're

019elected and who they must give an account to at all times that the people are by rights granted by the constitution of virginia the ones to whom you must give an account at all times in addition i have reminded the board that each of you agreed to take this position by a sworn oath to god so i want to ask you what god is that that you swore to your rejection of that oath that you swore to uphold that is a rejection of god himself i only know of one god that is the creator god almighty in fact a great definition of who that is is found in isaiah 9 6. and it is written for a child will be born to us the son will be given to us and the government will rest

020on his shoulders and his name will be called wonderful counselor mighty god eternal father prince of peace there will be no end to the increase of his government or of peace on the throne of david and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on forevermore in this verses we see the godhead the father son and the holy spirit that's the god i know i'm asking you is that the god that you swore to also in regard to an oath the scripture still speaks to us in psalm 15 it says o lord who may abide in your tent who may dwell on your holy hill he who walks with integrity and works righteousness and speaks truth in his heart and a couple verses down it says and

021he who swears to his own hurt and does not change that means if you took an oath to do something you do it even if it costs you money time your life those of us who believe are one and those of you who believe that are appear with those of us here that are believers we're one we're supposed to act as one especially when it involves a community that we live in i wonder what changes when we're standing out there in a hallway praying with some of you what changes when you step over here and you sit in those seats what changes in your faith that you do not honor that oath yeshua wrote what i tell you when the darkness speak in the light and what you hear whispered in your ear proclaim upon

022the housetops do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell therefore everyone who confesses me before men my father who is in heaven but whoever denies me before men i will also deny him before my father who is in heaven do not think that i came to bring peace i came to bring a sword what he means is that he is the light of the world and that everyone doesn't like the light i understand that but due to your disobeying the law to be amenable at all times i'm going to stay within my right to speak to you at any time he's saying that he is the way the tremendous and the life and

023that people who are not of the light and the truth will vehemently disagree with us and hate us and brothers and sisters if we are not hated in this world today there's something wrong with the way we're living mr four minutes are up are we serving the god called the state of virginia i will ask one of the deputies to come up for you sir well in that case i can ask the deputies since you have broken the law it is my right to ask the deputy to dismiss you from this meeting tonight so we can go that way if you want or i can take two more minutes to finish what i have to say your four minutes are up mr are you serving the god of the bedford county school board are you

024serving the god of the code of virginia which are not gods at all we need to remember that all of us are listening we just extended this from three to four minutes wait wait we ask for your respect for our rules right now abba i beseech you by the mercy and sacrifice of your son and savior let us not be found wanting denying it please do not touch me we're failing in our responsibility to tell the truth and to rescue may you be glorified in every word we speak every action we take and every thought we have that's right good evening everyone good evening thanks for giving me a moment of your time in honor of black history month and my ancestors that fought for us to have the freedom and equality that we have

025today i would like to discuss the treatment and mishandling of minority students the last few months there have been a few incidents that have triggered the discomfort and disrespect that my ancestors experienced by being called a and it needs to be addressed i know it's a tough subject but it needs to be addressed relationally i had a parent that informed me of the hate crime that was committed against her two children they weren't heard or taken seriously regarding the racial slurs that happened at practices during school and even on social media because this school district and their employees dropped the ball with these students they decided to take themselves and go to their take have education elsewhere another county um because of this of dropping of the ball the two students don't seem like they

026were heard nothing happened and it continuously occurred in medford county now my own child was stepping off the school bus and he experienced the same exact thing however i decided to stay in bedford county and help make a difference as a school board you are to assist represent and do what's best for all children having equitable educational and equal opportunities for all children in bedford county that should be your goal because honestly all of our kids every one of our kids they matter all of them that goes for caucasian that goes for african that goes for asian hispanic native americans and also the lgbtq well we all matter i would like bedford county to have strong consequences for any adult or child that feels the right to use a racial slur because it's disrespectful and

027it shouldn't be happening it's just like any other uh name calling or anything else it should be treated as such it's a form of bullying harassment and also hate therefore there should be like i said strong consequences in all of the schools of this county taking away the literature that my children can relate to in our libraries is wrong my child should be able to read a book that talks about their culture how can you sit here and feel like it's okay to remove those opportunities out of any library in this county being a part of this board you're not equally fighting for everybody if you're okay with doing that it's wrong teaching selective topics in subjects that my children cannot relate to that's not the answer either and that's also wrong removing history that

028my children can relate to that my children can experience what their ancestors went through and not be like feel uncomfortable about it they should be able to sit in a classroom and all students should be able to listen and understand those history uh things that happen with my ancestors as well not just the caucasians or any other race it should also be as well as african americans bedford county is 2022 and you must be supportive to all people that god has brought here all people not one group of people his scripture does say in mark 12 and 31 love your neighbor as yourself there's no commandment greater than these thank you for your time thank you miss ray mr dietrich [Applause] mr dietrich forest um ladies and gentlemen we have a new governor we have

029a new school board with new leadership governor yonkin has through executive order ended the teaching of critical race theory in schools in the commonwealth of virginia these are good developments but let's put these developments into proper cautionary perspective and let's be vigilant first the concept of culturally responsive teaching remains in bedford county virginia second recall we were told that culturally responsive teaching is different than culture critical race theory yet we were not told how and why it is different culturally responsive teaching was also never adequately defined for us nor explained in any detail the best of my knowledge there has been no discussion regarding what crt and state success looks like there has been no evidence put forward that scientifically based empirical discovery has ever shown any significant academic success resulting from culturally responsive teaching

030now is the time for both the current school board and the public to seek clarification on these issues we should also respectfully insist on answers and hold educational administrators responsible for those answers we should insist also on clear and specific details concerning how educational administrators plan to comply with with and implement the governor's executive order we should consider how also how compliance can best be monitored by interested parties especially the current school board parents and general public overall we should consider what it means to be educated how one determines that will impact on what is taught how it is taught and why until recently education meant the discovery or the illumination of truth that idea traces back to the ancient greeks to the days of plato aristotle and many others yet since the advent of

031post-modernism moral relativism and critical theory in more recent times the education has evolved into something quite different group grievances collectivist redress and so-called equality of outcome or equity are now at the forefront educators have developed these new theories and methods and they have become widely known as critical race theory culturally responsive teaching and the like in the process the centuries-old idea concerning education and truth had become discarded image education is also no longer about the quest for truth because there is no absolute truth in the minds of many today truth becomes whatever one wants it to be yet new ideas become subtly new truths arguably designed to proselytize while going unchallenged the time is now to change these initiatives but of course with reason compassion dispassion and civility always guiding the effort thank you thank

032you very much mr dietrich lori dooley laurie dooley okay she's not here lacey johnson good evening my name is lacey johnson and i live in district six i'm here to request that the board discuss and develop a clear and consistent plan for parents entering bedford county public schools at one of my children's schools i can enter the office without a mask at a different school i cannot come in past the breezeway without a mask on long enough to even sign out my child these inconsistencies may have an impact on parents willingness to volunteer and be seen at schools thank you miss john ms johnson [Applause] heather pippen evening my name is heather pippen i'm a dis resident in district 3. i want to thank you for taking a stand and making a decision to end

033the mask mandates in the bedford county public schools thousands of parents and students thank you in most schools it is being reported that 80 of the parents are choosing for their children to not wear a mask thank you for your wisdom regarding parents freedom to choose understanding that we know what is best for our children while my thanks is heartfelt and sincere i am sure the biggest thank you that you will receive is from the smiles of the children themselves i'm sure like i you also saw photos and heard recounts being shared on january 25th of happy smiling masculist children smiling the smile of freedom the following are quotes i'm sharing from parents of children in bedford county public schools who i've reached out to and have graciously and enthusiastically allowed me to share josie

034davis reported i'm over here crying happy tears for all those precious kids loving seeing all these happy faces olivia madison stated she was so thrilled to send my boys to school mask list this morning it was awesome to see the smiling kiddos headed into school charity howell shared my girls were so excited when i told them this morning today is the first day my first grader has ever been to school without a mask tiffany foley commented i love seeing the smiles this is how kids connect to people it gave me chill bumps to see all the kids without masks what a great day for our kids kaylee whitaker noted this was the first day ever my two little ones have been to school without a mask and while the kids are still required to wear

035masks on their bus beth lawrence a local bus driver took note of what the kids had to say about not having to wear a mask once inside the school children in their own words were saying i can't wait to be able to breathe fresh air all day now my face won't get hot all day and my ears won't hurt all day i can't wait to see my friends talk and smile miss lawrence states i have noticed a big difference in the kids overall enthusiasm about school since they lifted the mandate they look forward to going into school more now and even the kids have said they like it better because they enjoy being in class without the math they can talk to other kids easier and their biggest thing they have said is they can

036smile at their teachers i must say that i am proud to live in bedford county with a school board who in january took a stand to end the mass mandates on our children not all virginia county school boards share the same wisdom as the bedford county school board these other counties should feel confident however in making the same changes bedford county has made by taking a look at our numbers on january 25th the first day our bedford children went back to school with their last mandate there were 63 coveted cases reported on the bedford county public school website from january 26 through february 9th the last day published on the bedford county public school website all days have had fewer cases with 7 being the lowest and 28 being the average number of cases in

037this time frame the impact of children taking off their mask has not increased the spread of coven during this same time frame bedford county at large ranged from 104 new covered cases on january 25th highs of 192 and 172 with an average of 94. as predicted school coveted numbers will rise and fall as the community cases rise and fall and so the rest of virginia should feel confident as the winds of freedom move across our commonwealth confident that in the words of governor yunkan as quoted recently in the washington post we can keep our kids in school provide a parental opt-out to mass mandates and protect lives and livelihoods freedom wins are indeed moving yesterday the virginia senate passed sb 739 and as it is anticipated the house will follow suit what wonderful news the

038few counties in virginia that are still mandating mass will soon end the mass tyranny just as bedford county has done so while there is still work to be done both locally and nationally to restore christian values and freedom today i thank you and thank you school board for leading the way to end the mass mandates on our children we have seen the smiles of freedom and it is a beautiful sight thank you rachel cooper claire mcneely jen i apologize jen lazzowski good evening my name is jen leske and i'm in district three i first came um became interested in the school system after the covet 19 mass controversy i'm a grandmother and i spent 15 years in the clinical side of a large city hospital and at no time were we allowed in the airborne

039virus room with a paper surgical mask so things were not making sense to me i started attending school board meetings and i started noticing some other things primarily the school district was swimming in coven 19 stimulus money i also attended a meeting where they described receiving grant money for two electric buses it was explained that bedford really did not know whether the buses would be appropriate for our rural district but the money was there we applied we got it the two buses cost eight hundred thousand dollars twice what a standard bus would cost we actually have a full-time employee whose job it is to seek out grants whether we need them or not this sounds good and but one has to understand monetary policy to understand that this is not good our county citizens are

040struggling to fill their tanks feed their families because of inflation bedford scott county school district is sitting on over three million dollars in a maintenance account over two million dollars in a textbook account my immediate response was why don't we issue a rebate to our taxpayers the problem with accepting so much federal money is that you're only permitted to spend it the way they want you to spend it we have to start thinking about the ramifications these policies hold for in the entire country rather than taking money because we can the other thing i am passionate about is the role of our teachers in our classroom i noticed in the school budget the growth of the administration expenses from 2021 to 2122 is 19.79 percent whereas the growth in instruction is just a little over

041two percent i'm going to look at one administrative department that just happens to be the human resource department and for example there's an executive director of human resources there's a director of human resources there's a supervisor of human resources there's a supervisor of new teacher support there's a supervisor of professional learning these all were pay grades above 40. benefits clerk and two secretaries the pay scale diagram on the website stopped at 30. so i do not know the salaries of the executives i am not making assumptions about whether this is an efficient use of manpower and resources but i do think it is incumbent for the school board to find out i for one think our teachers should be making very competitive salaries and along with that salary give them back the responsibility of evaluating

042our children's progress rather than subjecting our children to increasing number of tests the bedford school district spends according to public school review thirteen thousand three hundred seventy four dollars per student when the state average is twelve thousand three hundred and three dollars per student if we were to reduce spending to more in line with the state average we would not have to seek federal money at all thank you [Applause] due to the fact that we had three speakers sign up that did not show up would anyone else like to speak we have some time okay no volunteers so close public comment for that portion now we're going into the budget public hearing for fiscal year 2022-23 the budget public comment portion of tonight's agenda is limited to 40 minutes speakers are asked to state their

043name address and voting district the school board is here to listen to your comments but will not engage or respond to speakers during this 40-minute period this portion of the meeting is designed for public comments regarding the budget only please remember that this is a public meeting and we expect all speakers to refrain from any foul abusive or hateful language mr edwards will serve as time keeper 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 time people for a cumulative 40 minute period well mr edward's 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

044finish your comments please send them to ms johnson and she will give them to the board and as with the prior meeting please do not adjust the microphone at the podium as it has been positioned for optimum audio quality mr edwards madam chair four individuals have scheduled for budget public comment william krumpacker aaron farrell christina childress mary bennett thank you mr edwards mr cronbacher good evening my name is william krumpacker i'm a town of bedford resident and parent of three children two of which attend liberty high school i'm appearing before you tonight to request that you consider budget appropriations to fully fund bedford county public school students who wish to attend the regional career and technical education academy at cdcc this funding should include tuition books and any associated calls for items needed for these

045classes you may not realize that the regional cte academy at cvcc was created in 2020 as a result of a four hundred thousand dollar grant to cvcc from the regional growth and opportunity board the regional academy was developed to meet a need to train skilled workers in the region 2000 workforce a november 2016 comprehensive economic development strategy study conducted by the region 2000 called for the establishment of a regional workforce center to deliver necessary workforce training employer needs assessments also validated how critical the need was the regional cte academy was also designed to work with regional public school systems to develop new and expanded dual enrollment opportunities for high school students that would allow them to obtain the necessary employment credentials in fields such as manufacturing health care information technology and the automation segments of

046the food and beverage sector my wife and i became aware of the regional cte academy last year when our oldest son caleb who was a sophomore was considering his school schedule for this year his junior year he had taken a shop class at lhs and one of the areas of study was welding he has always had an interest in fixing things and was immediately drawn to welding and the satisfaction he got from a pair from repairing and fabricating things using his hands and his mind together we had recognized that a four-year college education was probably not in his future when he learned of the welding career study certificate program at cvcc through the regional ct academy we began to work with taylor flynn who was the cte program liaison for bedford county schools our son

047was accepted into the program and thoroughly enjoyed the practical learning environment we learned after he had applied and been accepted into the program that there was a cost of over fifteen hundred dollars for the five eight week courses during his semester this cost did not include his books or other items such as a welding helmet gloves and welding supplies when we met with mr jason clark who is the coordinator of the regional cte academy he stated that bedford county only played only paid for the books for the classes and our had our son been a student from amherst or campbell county he would have been able to attend the courses and receive all necessary books and supplies at no cost we spoke to the financial aid office at cbcc and they informed us that since

048he was a high school student we were not eligible for student grants or federal aid programs such as fafsa because of legislation that had been passed on the state level that limited access to those programs away from high school students had our son been a high school graduate he could have attended the same classes through the state's g3 initiative which would have fully covered tuition and fees as well as a book allowance g3 being get skilled get a job get ahead after that i spoke with dr sean trosper who at the time was the cte and secondary education supervisor for bedford county public schools he shared with me that bedford county and cvcc had agreed to a discounted cost to the program i'm not sure what the discounted cost was because what we paid per

049credit hour was similar to what the state's in person rate was advertised on the cbcc website i also contacted the cte coordinators for campbell county amherst county and appomattox county campbell and amherst both have a set number of available spots for students and the programs are no cost to the students or their families mathematics gives 800 per students and is limited because of funding controlled by their board of supervisors my concern here is that there is a need in our community for skilled workers to help supplement the workforce and there are high school students like my son who want this kind of training and education and to be able to fill that need right out of high school however the associated cost of the program is preventing them from doing so our local economic development

050professionals pam bailey of bedford county and mary circle of the town of bedford along with our economic development authority boards work hard thank you sorry can i give this to ms johnson yes please aaron farrell hello hello again school board members staff mr superintendent and community my name is aaron farrell and i live in district 3. thank you for allowing another 40 minutes for public comments regarding the school budget i'm a dave ramsey nerd and as he says often while the rest of us have to spend less than we make and in this case the board of supervisors and the school board we know only congress just prints extra money when it wants to so while i'm not asking you to print more money i am asking for you to consider the following priorities that

051some teachers and staff have mentioned to me privately number one the susan b gibson an alternative education campus does not have a nurse assigned to their campus and hasn't had one all year there are three nursing positions for other schools posted on the job board but none is posted for the susan b gibson campus if not already a priority in the budget would you please ensure that that campus with all of its dangerous machines rtc and also the students at the alternative education center would you please make sure that's a priority to have a nurse on each campus in bedford county number two when a previous program involving contracting outside health ended eventually a pilot program of the intervention design specialist was launched these ids's are highly trained to serve our children with special needs

052and support our teachers in the classrooms the program is a wild success according to teachers and families though the id ids is travel between schools now and are in fewer number because it's just pilot program so i just ask you to please prioritize fully funding that and turning it into a permanent program where the ids's don't need to travel between schools but can fully support each school number three regarding employee compensation as you know i'm sure already in 2009 teachers and staff had their steps frozen this inhibits their ability to be compensated for each year of experience they have gradually been replacing the steps little by little over time and from what i hear the teachers are very thankful for that but even now a for example 19-year teacher or 19-year bus driver could make

053less money than a new employee with the same 19 years experience and they're aware of this and this is kind of lowering morale a little bit so i want to ask you to please reinstate all their steps as a budget priority for everyone whose steps were frozen one teacher mentioned to me that i think about nine of hers were frozen also i just want to um thank dr mealy and dr hairston in the last meeting you mentioned that you thought it would be a good idea to have a survey for teachers to show them the respect of seeing what they would like so i want to thank you for that i know they're very thankful many teachers and staff have said that they will be able to provide a more helpful or provide more helpful

054feedback if you provide an anonymous survey through a third party maybe including that in the budget if needed and every year ideally including open-ended questions that cannot be traced back to their email or to their school please include questions asking if they'd like to choose to unmask for example and regarding this other medical topic that also has to do with the budget please ask them about their satisfaction with the current insurance plans we understand it is a great insurance plan for the healthy one person in particular told me that when their family had some higher medical needs it turned out not to be a very good plan and they have been paying thousands and thousands out of pocket many have reported to dissatisfaction with some of those um elevated needs and expenses so lastly another

055thank you at the january 24th board of supervisor meeting the chief financial financial officer of mr hagler requested a 2 million dollar allocation of funds to be able to purchase textbooks thank you i know i like to read a book in my hand rather than on advice i know many teachers and students feel the same way he assured the board of supervisors that teacher and community members were invited to provide feedback to be considered prior to the purchasing of the textbooks this is a great example of how successful partnership with bedford county public schools and the community work together so thanks for your consideration thank you [Applause] hi my name is christina childress i live in district one but i'm also the president of the bedford county education association tonight you will be presented with

056results of the salary study recently funded by the board and the bca would ask that you give special consideration to three different areas of compensation as you consider next year's budget first of all we ask that you would fully implement the results of the salary study where there is discrepancy and compensation we ask that you would address this aggressively if not now then when we as a division cannot afford one more year we will lose some of our best staff and other divisions will be lucky to snatch them up at higher pay our employees deserve to be compensated at the same rate or better than surrounding school divisions secondly we ask that you compensate our classified staff at a fair living wage this cannot wait they have earned and endured the worst of this pandemic

057the worst of the labor shortage the worst of the pay scales they have covered classes for teachers when there were no subs picked up extra bus routes when they were sick drivers they have done the work of two or more in the cafeteria or on the custodian role because of a lack of staff they deserve higher wages and it is shameful what these individuals are paid our classified staff deserve a living wage and i would add immediately to that statement but honestly it's past due we cannot function without them in any facet of public education and it's time we compensated them accordingly thirdly we would ask that you reward loyalty in order to do this you must fully decompress frozen steps for all salary scales so that veteran staff get what was promised to them

058when they signed on for employment but restoring all steps is not enough a substantial cost of living adjustment that matches or exceeds the inflation rate is necessary for all veteran staff we didn't hear the salary study earlier today but i'm pretty sure it's going to show that the most experienced employees rank much lower when compared to surrounding school divisions i hate to be an alarmist but i can tell you that those of us who fall into that top third of the salary scale are having an incredibly hard time justifying to our spouses to our financial advisors and to ourselves why we should stay in a school division whose top pay is comparatively near the bottom as my financial advisor last week told me you need to get three good years in another school division and

059i said i don't want to we need to reward those employees who stuck out with us through the leanest years and who give us and our students a measurable benefit of their experience personally i've worked in bcps for 20 years and before that both my parents taught here too employees in this division have always worked within the lean budgetary confines allotted by the state and by the board of supervisors we accomplish impressive things with this leanness bedford county gets an incredible bang for its buck with regard to staff we just ask that you make fair compensation for all staff a high priority in this year's budget thanks thank you miss childress ms bennett [Applause] hey y'all let's marry katherine just let y'all know it's not mary okay that's what i said ms bennett i know

060okay my name is mary katherine bennett and i am a mom of six in bedford county best job in the whole world and i'm looking at the best school board best county i'm come from texas that's high praise y'all um i'm also a dave ramsey fan however i'm not good at i'm good at following dave ramsey my husband can also attest to that so um i was talking to a bunch of her parents and teachers and administrators because i want it to be a unity and a partnership because i know things i lack that they're much better at so i asked a bunch of different people and there were some things as well that um being a special needs parent i've noticed and talking with other special needs um parents one of the things is

061my son receives ot pt and speech through bedford county and for that i am so incredibly grateful but i have spoken with other parents whose children maybe receive one service but didn't qualify or what i'm hearing is maybe they don't have enough special needs teachers in order to give the services um to the kids and as you all know bedford county is growing by leaps and bounds and so one of the concerns i have as a special needs parents and talking with other is maybe we don't have the special needs resources and the special needs teachers that we do have i think that as ms christina has said they're putting all um all of their efforts and everything into these children and so if there is room in the budget considering more special needs education

062but also making sure that our special needs educators and aids we've got some fantastic ronin has miss abby and miss lisa lee and miss pam and very grateful for every single one of them so it's a special needs parent who is so insanely grateful that's what i would like to be seen another thing that i was noticing is the biting bugs that's what we call them but the care is fun money we i'm noticing and i talked to a school board member in canberra county and she said when they hired teachers to hire one teacher with the understanding that when the care's money ran out so did that teacher's job and they'd have to try to find some other way now when i was talking to people they said and i believe the gentleman from

063last meeting said it there's 23 new teachers with the cares fund money and so for someone like myself i'm thinking what happens we need more teachers and that money goes so where are the teachers we're going to lose teachers as well as well as are we having enough money to compensate the teachers because i need those teachers and i really really love them so the other one is the textbook allocation money um from what i've seen and based on people i've talked to it has been neglected as a budget item since the 2008 recession so i'm curious why did that fall off the radar i know a lot of it went into chromebooks which as a 21st person myself century person i understand the beauty of chromebooks and that we all need technology especially going

064into the world but i have two kids in virtual virginia and um i am seeing that textbooks i know i'm old school are also a good way and i would love the way we can use textbooks as well as chromebooks in order to you know learn how to study using books they don't even know where the library is these days so those are some of the things that i wanted to talk about and i thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to talk thank you as well my son ronan is back in school and it's been a wonderful wonderful few weeks so thank you again thank you [Applause] we have some a lot of time left over would anyone else like to speak regarding the budget not seeing any volunteers i'm going to

065close public hearing for the budget for fiscal year 2022-2023 moving on to item seven do i have a motion to approve the consent agenda i seriously heard both of you at the same time okay so ms harrison made the motion to approve the consent agenda with mr hill's second again and any discussion all those in favor signify with saying aye aye anyone opposed consent consent agenda is approved now we're going to pick up with item three compensation study thank you so much for waiting around sorry for the delay um we'll pick up with the compensation study ms dr calvert dr good evening it's my pleasure to introduce russell campbell the senior vice president for management advisory international to present the classification and compensation study for bedford county good evening uh madam chair uh superintendent uh

066fellow board members my name is russell campbell senior vice president with management advisory group we were the company that was selected about five and a half months ago to conduct the compensation classification study for the district and so tonight i want to show you uh the results of what we've been working on for the past five and a half months uh i'd like to give you an overview of the process methodology talk a little bit about where the district currently stands in the marketplace uh talk about the recommendations and then the cost impact to implement the study based on where it currently stands as i go through if you have any questions i'll be happy to entertain those in terms of objectives and goals of the study we wanted to make sure that we included

067all positions within the district or division the study included the support positions as well as the teachers we also wanted to make sure that we defined a labor market in conjunction with the district so we developed a list of organizations which included other school systems as well as municipal and county government as well as regional private sector data that we collected information from the district signed off on the list uh that we mutually came up with we wanted to make sure that we identified those jobs that had comparable responsibility in terms of duties responsibilities and similar qualifications we wanted to make sure that they were paid at the same level on the same pay grade and salary scale one of the things that we found that and this is not unique to the bedford school

068system over time the internal relationships among the jobs does tend to uh change and shift uh perhaps it's a case where you've got one department head or one leader who advocates for reclassifying positions in his or her department but those other positions that are of similar value to the district maybe their department head or leaders not advocating for those positions and so they get left behind and so over time this becomes uh issued throughout the organization where we have jobs that really should be paid on the same level but somehow they've gotten out of kilter because there hasn't been a comprehensive salary study or examination to to look at those and so this process restores the internal relationship first and foremost uh within the organization and then competitively uh you want to look at the

069marketplace which we did as i talked about identifying other peers and i'm going to show you the list of peers and organizations that we compared you to when we look at the peers we're not collecting information on what the employees are actually making in those organizations we're collecting information to see what the value of the positions are from their pay scales and we use that information to create the new compensation on salary schedules and then we want to make sure we have good administrative policies to support the new compensation system policies that address uh things like hiring rates to make sure there's consistency when you bring in new employees also make sure that there's policies that address demotions transfers promotions as well as temporary assignments and then to prepare new job descriptions for all the

070positions in the district because it has been sometimes since they've been updated and so those were the major goals and objectives of the study the approach is is twofold when you do a compensation study this is not necessarily unique to a management advisory group or me as a consultant you want to do two things the first is to establish that internal value uh that i talked about and then secondly you want to identify what the market value externally is for a given position and then you've got to take some type of statistical modeling process or technique to merge the data together we use a 14-point criteria to actually rank the jobs internally showing which job based on our process is defined as the most complex position in the organization and all and down descending order

071to the least complex job in the organization and we take that market data and we use linear regression through a computer program that we've developed to create the new salary schedules and then we calculate the cost of transitioning current staff from the old schedules over to the new schedules in order to get the information with respect to what the people were actually doing in their current job capacity excluding teachers we had all employees other than teachers complete a job questionnaire that provided us information what their duties responsibilities and tasks were any type of certifications licensing licensure or education experience that were needed for the positions we also uh looked at the flsa designations to make sure we properly categorize the positions with respect to which ones were eligible for overtime under the federal labor standards

072act and for some positions we did make recommendations to change some job titles so that the position uh classification or title was better represented based on the current duties and we would benchmark that against best practices to make sure that's generally what you're going to find in other districts within the state of virginia and so just in summary to develop the study we had the internal relationship where we established to value the jobs based on information in the questionnaire looking at policies turnover and attrition information from human resources and then externally we identified about 15 organizations that we collected information from we use a statistical modeling technique linear regression to bring about the two sets of data to create the new salary schedules and then determine what adjustments are needed per individual within the different

073departments and locations within the district and so in terms of peer organizations or targeted employers that we looked at we contacted collected information from you see those listed there [Music] campbell county schools lynchburg city schools amherst county schools nelson county schools hyper modern county roanoke county schools broken court county schools city of salem schools franklin county schools and then we had general government campbell county city of lynchburg amherst county city of roanoke alpine county general governor and roanoke county as well as roanoke city schools and then for the private sector information we use the federal department of labor bureau of labor statistics to collect information within the region for comparable private jobs such as mechanics administrative staff i.t staff minimal management and a few upper management positions and so what did the market data show

074us on the support side this excludes the teachers and we'll start with the support side at minimum are at the entry level the district is currently about 4.5 percent above the market average at the midpoint or at the market average the district is about 1.9 uh above the market and at the top end the district is less than uh one percent uh above the market with respect to support positions so overall in pretty decent shape uh with respect to support positions now when i say uh average i mean obviously there's some that are not at or above the market averages there are some that are below but as a composite the district is in pretty good shape with the support positions with most of them above the market averages with respect to the support positions

075there are some positions that were we found that had [Music] major deficiencies as it relates to competitive pay ranges special education adaptive aids they're about 26 behind the market uh school guidance counselors were about 18 behind attendance clerks 8 [Music] and i t techs about 9 and this is just a sample of some of the positions that we found that were behind the eight ball as relates to competitive pay another group that certainly belongs up there would be the skill craft positions the electricians the hvac techs plumbers those positions were double digits uh in about 23 24 behind the marketplace as far as teachers are concerned uh for this example we're going to talk about a bachelor degree teacher and what we've done is we've looked at the most significant service intervals when you're comparing

076teacher salary schedules we start with a bachelor degree teacher with five years of experience uh what you're paying is about 2.6 percent above the market at the 10-year point for a bachelor degree teacher you're about 2.3 above but it is the longer 10-year teachers where there's some deficiency as it relates to competitive pay at the 15-year mark uh you're about 6.1 percent behind the market for a 15-year teacher with a bachelor's degree uh for a bachelor degree teacher with 20 years of experience or more or you're behind about 4.1 percent in order to implement the study uh based on how we've designed it uh which will really put the district in a competitive position across the board not only for support positions but for teachers as well for support positions it's going to take 1.6

077million dollars to bring the district into a competitive position within the marketplace that 1.6 does include salary adjustments plus the fringe benefit costs associated with that on the teacher's side to restore those steps that had to be frozen over the past few years as well as to address compression among the teacher ranks we're looking at about 3.1 million uh which includes the french benefits costs as well so to totally implement the study for the support positions and the teaching positions we're looking at about 4.7 million dollars we've provided some policy guidelines in the areas of reclassification promotion transfers motion temporary assignments and hiring as well as some guidance on how to handle employees who actually top out of their respective salary ranges one of the things that we noticed when we looked at the current

078salary schedules is the bands themselves uh in some cases were a little narrow and so we found some people were getting toward the top end in a relatively short period of time because the bands were rather narrow and so we realigned them to make sure that they reflect more of what you find in the marketplace today and to make sure those employees have salary growth potential uh going forward uh as long as they remain employed with the district all the policy uh recommendations that we provided are consistent with best practices and compensation in the field of human resources in terms of next steps i know hr and finance will be bringing more detailed information with respect to implementing the study the entire report is probably close to 300 pages so make for some interesting bedtime

079reading if you want to take a look at it we suggest and highly recommend that the district adopt the classification levels and assignments for the individuals with respect to their pay and put the new structure in place the beginning of the next fiscal year which we hope to be july 1st of when we came into this process i would say on the support side the district probably in terms of percentile in the market uh the district was probably somewhere around the 65th percentile on the support side this moves the district up to around the 75th percentile for the support positions uh when we came into this on the teacher side uh you were just under 70 to 70 percent down this moves you over over the 80th percentile with respect uh for the teacher salary

080schedule assuming you adopted as we we've prepared um i got to say thanks to the hr staff did a wonderful job of supporting us on the project making sure we got information on a timely basis i've been here since 4 30 or so today and so uh i got caught up in all the momentum of the recognition and the rewards so where's my rain where's my room that in a nutshell is what i had just give you a brief overview of the process the methodology how you looked in the marketplace what the cost impact if you have an opportunity to digest the report in greater detail i think it's it's it's laid out pretty well pretty simple read we'll continue to work with the district over the coming weeks to see if there's anything that

081needs to be cleaned up we're still writing the new position descriptions we will have those within the next two weeks uh and if there's any additional guidance or support that the district needs mag will certainly stand ready to assist are there any questions that you may have at this point mr hill yes sir mr campbell when i look at the 4.7 million i want to make sure i understand the percentages that you used this 4.7 million does that get us to a midpoint for all salaries or is that a min mid max well you have a step system and so what we've done is uh to transition folks from the old plan to the new uh we're assigning them to a step within a new structure obviously on the teacher side their steps line up

082with their years of experience that's not necessarily the case with the support staff we're placing them anyone below step one we identified them and the cost to get them up to step one those that were above step one on the support side we round them up to the next high step so it's not necessarily tied to years of experience on the support side but it is on the teachers side is there a reason why we didn't do it for both uh generally we don't do that for the support side we don't for example if a mechanic had 10 years of experience we don't automatically put him or her on step 10. that's typically not how it's done on the support zone okay and the percentages i i'm assuming that's a comp ratio based on like

083a mid-range pay yeah we come up with an open range minimum a midpoint and a max and then we convert that into steps we converted that into uh 30 steps i believe and if we spend or if we do this 4.7 million dollars to get it to where you're recommending what's the overall average comp ratio that we would end up as a system well we're going to have people all along the spectrums some are going to be toward the low end and some are going to be at the midpoint uh market average and something will be above that but as a whole it moves you to about the uh the 80th percentile relative to the mark okay any more questions for mr kim dr maylie you have any questions i just got this today so

084i read okay thank you if if at a later time mr campbell is going to be available to the finance committee by zoom so if there are additional questions that the board has that will be another opportunity once you have more time to digest the information okay that'd be wonderful anyone thank you so much mr campbell thank you okay moving on to item 4.01 policy updates mrs sexton hello this evening we are presenting 13 policies and regulations for information these policies will be brought back to the board for action at the march 10th board meeting nine policies have minor legal or technical changes these may be viewed within board docs the remaining policies have more substantial changes and we will review those now i will pause momentarily after each of these policies in case there

085are questions about the suggested revisions bbvh public participation at school board meetings policy language added and wording changes to incorporate recommendations from vspa as well as to reflect the school board's decision in regard to the number of minutes per speaker and the total number of minutes for public comment bddh public participation at school board meetings the regulation has been recommended for deletion by vcps staff because the majority of the language was incorporated into policy bddh j o r video recordings this is a suggested new regulation to supplement policy j.o the purpose of the regulation is to address legal considerations for access to video footage including when it is considered a student record and there is a lot there but that's the gist of what it's about so if you have any questions i can direct

086you to dr dewis okay and lastly we have lea student teaching and internships policy recommended for deletion by vsva but bcps staff feel it should remain a policy therefore the policy language has been added by vcps staff regarding interns being placed with teachers with less than three years of experience if necessary as well as the addition of student teachers and interns completing a criminal background check through bcps but the ability to obtain background checks programs approved by an mou with colleges or universities and bcps for student teachers and interns who participate in a school for eight or more eight hours or more the minimum number of years of teaching experience that a teacher who serves as a supervising teacher has been changed from two to three years one of which needs to be in the

087school to which the student teacher is assigned other language has been removed by vcps staff to give flexibility with placement of student teachers and interns chairman yes sir um i have a question for you either um probably uh dr calver the irishman concerned when i read this that we're replacing interns with teachers with two to three years experience um it has that has that been something that dr power we've always been doing we we wanted the flexibility to be able to place more interns um many times we get several interns and with art with the amount of teachers that we have and we need to place interns we feel if we get them into bedford county and we have a relationship with them there's possibility of them wanting to come back to bedford county so

088we wanted the flexibility to be able to place an intern which is normally just an observation period where they come in um with teachers with two or three years experience rather than just three years and above okay so this is not their actual student teaching experience no we actually right we actually raised we actually raised the year on student teaching experience because it did allow you to be placed with two or three years and above and we have raised that to three years and above so we have raised at this point is it five years three it's back to three so so i've been a student that we would always be working for placing a student who is actually doing their student teaching experience with someone who at least is not a continuing contract yes

089that's what that says all right thank you miss sexton were you done yeah did you complete it yes ma'am unless you have questions mr so this is not directed at you miss sexton so i want to make that clear all right so my question is is we always hear the term these are minor changes if they're minor changes why are we making them and my concern is and i've seen this in the past on both sides minor changes lead to assumptions of what that word now means or what that verbiage now means and so i just ask the staff or whoever is making these recommendations vsba whoever if there are such minor changes why are we making them and i know you dr bergen and several staff members have asked in the past couple months

090why do i vote no why vote yes i don't understand the minor word changes and how it affects us in five years or ten years um and i just want it's a statement and again when i say it's not toward miss sexton i just i want to be clear of minor word changes mean big differences six months from now five months or five years from now et cetera and so i i just look at it as a as a concern when we start making minor changes that i don't know how it affects us down the road so just to comment thank you any other questions or comments thank you mr sexton appreciate it so ms sexton they'll probably just tell you to stop saying these are minor changes [Music] strategic framework goals dr bergen yes

091ma'am good evening madam chair board members tonight i'm going to be joined by dr calvert and dr woodford to update you on our ongoing strategic uh the strategic planning process that is underway and what we've done since we were last together in january at the january board meeting the board approved updated versions of our vision mission and core value statements as they're displayed up on the screen behind the board members or in front of the board members here at the front of the room these would be effective july 1st to be implemented for the next school year and the vision statement will be bcps building citizens promoting success and the new mission statement will be bedford county public schools will provide equal opportunities to enable all students to think critically collaborate create communicate and become

092productive citizens and finally the core value statements will remain largely the same with the exception of a minor word change mr hill from focus and focus on learners to focus on students uh but on to the main topic of tonight's presentation which is uh the development of some some draft goals for the board's consideration so at this time i'd like to invite dr calvert to share with you a summary of the data that has been collected uh over the past number of weeks as we have conducted 22 focus groups the students 20 23 sorry 23. the strategic framework leadership team focused in january on hosting focus group meetings together input on how the school division can prioritize to address the five focus areas identified by dr bergen during his listening events since his arrival the

093these focus groups included community partners high school students teachers support personnel seac members parents and school administration as you recall we categorized data that emerged from dr bergen's discussions with students parents employees and the community into five focus areas the five focus areas are invest in our people accelerate unfinished learning expand college and career opportunities social emotional wellness boost equitable educational opportunities the strategic framework planning team took dr bergen's five focus areas and generated four goal statements his five focus areas are listed as pink bulleted items on the slide the leadership team at the school board office examined those five focused areas and compiled them into overarching goals for example dr bergen discussed the idea that bcps should work towards expanding college career ready and workplace development opportunities we should work to remedy unfinished learning

094and ensure that students in all three zones had equitable learning opportunities those three focus areas have all been categorized under a larger umbrella preparing all students for their future once we explored the five focus areas we had three goal statements but felt that a gap still existed therefore we crafted the fourth goal to address the desire to partner with families and community members to ensure the success of beverage county and more importantly our students each of the 23 focus groups superintendents advisory and principals provided input on how these goals would be edited and amended we asked each focus group to brainstorm what would make the goal a living breathing reality in beverly honey participants determined what the goal would look like and sound like in our bcps schools with and within our broader community we

095asked the groups to think about how the goal would be measured and what would be evidence to demonstrate that we have met the goal the activity allowed us to collect a wide variety of input on what our goals should be and how we should endeavor to accomplish them at the completion of our focus group meetings we had documents from every group that had gathered together to offer input those documents were then taken by the amazing sherry wiess and she completed a qualitative analysis of the data for the strategic planning leadership team to review the team has spent some time together going through those suggested strategies to make gold the goals a reality in our schools as you can see just on the clip that we have on the slide what we did was every time

096something was mentioned we made a note of it and if it was mentioned in more than one group sherry added a checkmark beside it so you'll see that things like in the second column job shadowing and internships increased access multiple groups mentioned that that was an important strategy that we needed to focus on in our strategic plan we'll take all of this data which is pages and pages and pages for each of our goals and our design teams will then use this information to create strategies under our goals based on this feedback from the strategic planning team after we refined our four broad goals we decided then we needed to make them student-centered and much more specific to reflect the ideas and priorities represented in the data of course not everything can be reflected in

097the overarching goals that you'll see here but each goal will eventually have a variety of strategies underneath which detail the specific actions that bcps will take to satisfy the larger goals for high academic expectations goal one we we would want to change that goal to say bedford county public schools will maintain high academic expectations and support all students in attaining foundational knowledge transferable skills and postgraduate plans for our goal too for safe and supportive learning environments bedford county public schools will provide safe and supportive learning environments both physically and emotionally which enable all students to think critically collaborate create communicate and become productive citizens goal three for our high quality workforce bedford county public schools will create an exemplary workforce by recruiting supporting compensating and retaining high quality employees and our fourth goal of a

098mutually supportive partnerships bedford county public schools will develop mutually supportive partnerships with families and community organizations to enhance student well-being and broaden opportunities for workforce development we are asking that the school board approve these four goals tonight as priorities to provide the structure for continued work on our strategic framework once the goals are approved our team will begin to form design teams facilitated by the strategic leadership team members the teams will include diverse stakeholders representative of each school zone varied grade bands and will include teacher support staff and our students at the high school level each design team will work to gather additional data from community partners larger groups of students larger groups of teachers and parents as we work through our work to develop our strategies this work will be the most in depth

099and will allow us to focus on measurable targets that can be monitored throughout the next five years of our plan so thank you dr woodford i uh i'd just like to pause and thank dr woodford and dr calvert for their leadership along with the other members of our strategic planning team which uh they're seated there in the front row dr drossberg mr jennings vincent robertson 23 community conversations synthesizing that data and then coming up with what i think are four pretty solid goals for your consideration so we have it on our action agenda tonight we will represent those four goals and ask you to take action that provides the framework for the strategic plan and then over the coming two months these design teams will be very inclusive of many dozens of people classified staff

100teachers administrators parents students we'll flush out the strategies the resources needed how we will measure these goals and create a complete framework that will bring back to the board for your review and consideration and public comment in may and adoption in june to go into effect july 1st and will be our guiding light for the next five years so at this time if you have questions about the process or about the four proposed goals that we brought to you tonight this would be the time that we'd like to entertain those questions mr hill uh yeah dr bergen i see where you've got formation of design teams yes sir i would like to clarify or have confirmation that that's going to include members of the community which will include like for example someone from the office

101of economic development yes or executive staff from major businesses within our county um so leaders within the community giving feedback someone from before county social services someone from our you know sheriff's department some you know from the major hospital etc that's giving feedback for us to create these design teams and make sure we're giving them what they're asking for absolutely okay and then in addition to that that helps us will will we be seeking funds from the county to help build so for example we heard from a parent tonight about cte and the need for those those degrees and jobs and trade skills are we going to create a community and partnership with the office of economic development to go after those dollars to exactly do what that parent mentioned of providing more opportunities yes

102sir certainly my intention tonight our fourth goal of deepening our partnerships to your point particularly for workforce development is a shared goal with our friends in the board of supervisors that is one of their key goals and so i've talked with mrs kirby about this board's chair and vice chair meeting board of supervisors chair and vice chair with the county administrator and i'd have more deeper conversation to your very point there about our shared interest in workforce development and pulling in all of the community partners that we need to because we have hundreds of thousands of jobs available right here folks don't need to move to have a well-paying job and we can provide additional certifications for our students so they can go right into the workforce and live local and make good wages okay

103anyone else have any questions dr miele okay thank you dr berg so that puts us back down to number nine is that correct yes ma'am hey additional action items appointment resolution let's see fingerprint doesn't want to work right on the screen you can't get to it okay i technically can't read it so because we're ready yeah so do we have a motion i have a motion for a resolution whereas and i want to try to read without going back and forth whereas the county school board of medford virginia hereafter school board is comprised of seven members representing each of the seven electoral districts in bedford county and whereas mr martin lamey was a successful candidate for the district 7 seat on the school board in the general election held on november 5th 2019 and assumed

104office for the term january 1st 2020 through december 31st 2023 and whereas mr lemy announced his resignation by letter dated january 25th effective january 31st 2022 leaving a vacancy on the school board and whereas the board pursuant to virginia code 24.2-226 is required to petition the circuit court of the county of bedford to issue a right writ of election now therefore be it resolved that the school board attorney is authorized to file with the circuit court of the county of bedford a timely petition for writ of election in substantially the same form as the petition for writ of election attached here too okay i have a motion by mr hill good job by the way [Laughter] do i have a second second second by ms harrison any discussion okay we'll call for a vote all

105those in favor signify by saying hi all right any opposed okay the appointment resolution has passed okay item 9.02 we discussed during closed session is that correct and we're going to work on that wording a little bit further correct is that correct yes that's wrong okay so there is no action to be taken on that tonight dr dewis do you have an update on us for board look at board meeting locations yes ma'am um at previous board meetings the school board had expressed an interest in moving meetings to a larger venue especially emphasizing a desire to use our own school buildings especially our high school auditorium specifically and so i checked schedules and calendars at all of those facilities from march through june so to cover the next several board meetings and see which of

106those locations were available based on availability we're recommending that the meeting sites included in board docs be used over the next several months those include the march meeting to be at jefferson forest high school's auditorium the april 7th meeting will be at stanton river high school's auditorium the may 12th meeting to be at the susie g gibson auditorium and the june 9th meeting to be at liberty high school's auditorium just as a note with existing equipment that we have in those facilities as well as portable equipment all of those locations i think have good microphone systems ability for presentations to be done live streaming to be done we're still working on making sure the screen size and video quality for those larger rooms to be adequate you know to be seen from a distance mr

107sexton and others in the technology department are ordering a few pieces of additional equipment to supplement what we already have in order to make that happen more effectively so we're very hopeful that that will be that'll be satisfactory and allow participation board and staff participation live streaming to take place and um you know some of some of the equipment we have would be better suited towards i guess medium venues like a school cafeteria or that size room however we think with the addition of some of these few extra pieces that the larger auditoriums will will be satisfactory i think doing this in in all four of these venues over the next several months will give us an idea of how that goes and what more we might need to do to make more permanent improvements

108to the sound system video systems in all those areas and what i would like to suggest is that our facilities committee once it meets can discuss cost of that the feasibility of that the timing of that and how that fits with other needs you know that we might have in other areas in our school system so with that suggestion if the board would like to just go ahead and make a decision about setting those locations over the next several months we'll go to work and make sure that that works and then the public will know and we'll be able to plan effectively through june okay do i have a motion then to approve these the meeting locations once we'll do the motions and the second then we'll discuss i'm going to say some movements oh

109okay first but dr bailey second by mr field you were starting early that's why you confused me so i thought i was saying susan right any discussion i'll just say thank you it took us a little while to get here but i'm glad we arrived okay oh call for a vote all those in favor signify the same eye all right opposed motion passes okay we're going back um to the strategic framework goals do i have a question regarding this don't move a motion by ms harrison do i have a second second by mr nelms any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries do you have a motion regarding the policy updates from the january 13th meeting chairman i make motion of the food updates as presented at the january

110got tv motion by dr mealy do i have a second okay second by ms harrison any discussion all those in favor signify this ain't on high opposed no it's johnson will you pull the board mr yes mr hill no mr holbrook yes mrs kirby yes dr mealy yes mr nells yeah the eyes out with five thank you emotional passes that's bergen now some fun time for you superintendent's comments yes ma'am we have much to celebrate i'm excited to provide a number of updates for the school board and community on the successes of our students and staff since we were last together leaving off with two jefferson forest high school students who won awards at the 2022 scholastic heart u.s region at large east competition senior alyssa massigan won a silver key in the ceramics in

111glass category while fellow jf senior hannah wright won a gold key in the photography category the gold key winning artwork now moves on to a national competition in new york city to compete for gold and silver medals including other special achievement awards and scholarships so congratulations to alyssa and hannah and good luck hannah at the national competition congratulations to stanton river high school senior jenny levine for reaching the 1 000th career point scored mark earlier this season while leading the golden eagles to a win over william fleming high school the team remains undefeated this year at 20 and up under coach kim jones and i just had an opportunity to visit with coach jones yesterday when i was at the high school doing a learning walk with the principal and i just had to stop

112and tell how proud we all are how proud we all are of her and looking forward to some more victories for the golden eagles congratulations to liberty high school junior grace steele on her performance as the first chair tuba and the virginia band and orchestra directors association district 6 all-district concert band at cave spring high school just this last week this young man looks familiar too we saw him here tonight and we're excited to announce that the harry f byrd leadership award has been bestowed upon jefferson force high school's prentice lamont patrick carter only 11 of these are handed out these are 20 000 scholarships give it to students one for each congressional district and we are just so very very proud of apprentice the 2022 stanton river middle school sixth grade living museum was

113a huge success sixth grade teachers flipped the gymnasium into a living museum history for students and families the students each researched historical figures of their choice dressed the part and then transformed themselves into those historical figures for the day i just love the valley part the stanton river high school boys and girls swim teams recently competed in the blue ridge district championship with coach seth chow flinch being voted the boys coach of the year landon grizzo the boys swimmer of the year and faith sprinkled the girls swimmer of the year regional competition was held tuesday evening and we are proud to announce that sophomore luke grizzo qualified for state swim competition in the 200 meter freestyle and the 100 meter breaststroke it doesn't matter which swim team you run into at jefferson forest high school

114because they're both outstanding congratulations to the boys and the girls teams who were both recently crowned seminole district champions congratulations to our building and construction 2 class members that susie gibson for receiving their skills usa carpentry credentials they're now in the process of completing their pre-contractor course before taking their contractor examination and they have really gelled as a team while completing some off-campus work-based learning projects over this past school year if you weren't already aware board members this week is national school counseling week this is a time for us to focus our attention on the unique contributions of our school counselors and the tremendous impact that they have in helping our students to achieve success in school and beyond the theme this year is school counseling better together so a big thank you to all

115of our school counselors for the amazing work that they do every day since 1976 every u.s president has designated the month of february as black history month and so tonight we'd like to take time to pay our tribute as well our classrooms across the county during homeroom and learning coach time have been learning about the achievements of african americans and their important role in our history as an example pictured here are some first graders at bloomsburg elementary school who have been learning about african american artists authors and illustrators whose work promotes diversity community and inclusiveness and speaking of important contributions of african americans susie g gibson the building bears the name of susie g gibson the person bedford county's supervisor of african-american education for 22 years ms gibson was the daughter of parents born into

116slavery and then freed his children and she was a leader in the campaign to establish a high school for black students in bedford what you may or may not know i don't know how much we played this up earlier this year but i thought this was an appropriate time to mention that susie g gibson the building originally built in 1954 as a segregated school for african americans is now a national on the national register of historic places and a marker was installed earlier this year this is the first such marker in bedford county recognizing a person or place of our african-american community here in bedford county so many thanks to the susie g gibson alumni legacy group who spearheaded this movement to preserve misgiving miss gibson's legacy and to our board members february is also

117designated as school board appreciation month in virginia and this year's theme is building the future of public education which reflects the important role that our school board members serve as advocates for public educators so on behalf of all of our students and staff thank you board members for all of your service to bedford county public schools and finally we would like to pay tribute tonight to mr martin leamy district 7 representative of the school board who the community is aware has recently announced his resignation from the board after six years of faithful service some of you may already be familiar that mr leamy grew up right here in bedford he was a graduate of liberty high school as well as a parent of a graduate of liberty high school mr leamy proudly served his country

118in the u.s army with multiple overseas diplomats and deployments and also proudly served this community as the director of facilities and risk management for the national d-day memorial foundation on behalf of the entire school division thank you mr leamy for your service to our country to our community and to our school board over these past six years we wish you all the best in your future endeavors [Applause] thank you so much matters from the board okay we miss harrison has so generously offered to step up um to fill mr leaney's role on the facilities committee absolutely we so greatly appreciate that thank you um with that being said he um he said he resigned for reasons of overextending himself and i believe he did when he volunteered for committees too um he was also on

119the intergovernmental affairs committee would anyone else would anyone like to step up and fill that or hold it till we have a designated appointment see they'd be willing well you're already there i was gonna say i would but that would require twins yeah i can't clone you can we do one just for now and just till we appoint have the appointee we wouldn't do that i just thought i'd take a stand in the dark somebody would graciously volunteer um and we established those committees and it seems like the finance committee has been pretty busy dr maylie any reports from the finance committee yes said yes ma'am thank you um mr owns and i are already um at work um and we had met with the community once on january 27th we felt that that was

120very productive meeting um he and i had a short conversation about really people need to start our work so we're currently in the process of helping to guide and develop a more comprehensive budget book that i have wanted for years and years to help all of our stakeholders better understand the bcps budget how it's formed and more specifically how the top taxpayer dollars are used in a much more user-friendly format yeah as you all know my husband's a cpa and so i can appreciate what mr hagrid does but for those of us who are not cpas it's it can be very daunting so mr nails are looking forward to trying to make it a user-friendly document that no matter what your skill level with regards to budgets um you will have a better understanding of

121our budget um so and he and i are both looking forward to taking a deep dive into the compensation study that we received today um and uh thanks to again to dr calvert and mr back on his team and other people who were involved in this uh project so um he and i are going to be busy um and i just want to say i i sent him the sos yesterday that i got as an sos and he was great i would like to apologize mr now because it was like i need this now and he was like right there so thank you so much um for your help and uh did you have any other thing what's um um i think that was it i think we uh we're just waiting on some numbers

122to come back from mr hagler that we had talked about um so we'll go over those at a later date um after we have our next meeting okay any other committee reports mr hill um so intergovernmental affairs committee with you and you me with uh dr bergen we spent a day and a half in richmond uh we met with uh well first we had some meetings with vsba to talk about a little state and federal things that are coming this year things that are being talked about important topics to take to our legislatures and after that meeting we proceeded to um meet with uh wendell walker steve newman kathy byron spent some time one-on-one time with them that i thought was beneficial very positive i felt from all three of those that they strongly support

123public education and the things that you know won facilities understanding the issues and the needs there to internet connection uh and funding overall so and if i missed anything you'll fill in but again i thought it was very good one-on-one time with each of them so um i know this is outside of the committees that we formed but this is committee updates from central virginia gov school oh perfect there was no february meeting so our next meeting is actually march 2nd so i will bring back information on that when we have the meeting and then third is seac there was a meeting in february unfortunately it was a special call meeting for us so i was not able to attend that but there is a march scheduled seat meeting at before county library at 5

12445 p.m so and i'm sorry i want to go back to the intergovernmental affairs committee one thing that i wanted to bring up is the hb 89 sheriff mike miller spent some time with dr bergen but what hb89 allows is for the sheriff department or police agencies or agencies to get involved if we should meet them within the schools it does not include elementary through eighth grade but it does include our high schools again keep me honest on that if there's additional information the the law used to allow for school administration to coordinate with law enforcement there was a misdemeanor that had occurred and that came out of code several years ago and wonder walker would like to reintroduce it to code you know sheriff miller made a compelling case for why he and all

125law enforcement agencies would like to have his packing code we've had some instances just here recently and they're in a letter we're happy to share with you where we've had some students make some really poor choices and the sheriff was a bit compromised as to what he could do in the investigation because the law didn't allow for a further conversation on a misdemeanor so wendell's introduced delegate walker's introduced the bill and he and sheriff miller have asked for our support and so i shared that with mr hill in his capacity as being your representative to the intergovernmental agency legislative affairs committee if you all have consensus that you'd be in agreement support elliot walker and sheriff miller then they're anxious to hear that so that they can continue to lobby as we wrap up crossover

126in richmond this week so i would like to ask for the board's consensus for us to be able to say we do support that uh with sheriff mike miller to be able to take back to um wendell walker absolutely absolutely yep yes okay so it sounds like we have consensus great unanimous consensus yeah how about that all right um that's all from my committee reports so do you have anything from laurel school i do i was going to save it for my comments but if you would like to share with me let's do those through through committees yes sounds great so on february the 2nd we had a meeting it was it was through zoom with the laurel school i chaired that meeting and dr lewis who of course is the director of law school

127she gave us an update on their mitigation also budget information as well in previous reports i shared with you all that the law school was undergoing an efficiency study by dr asep and he has completed that particular efficiency study which is really going to take a look at the school and the potential perhaps maybe growth of that school or making some adjustments to the programs there at the school now the the report was shared with the superintendents of the local school systems and we are in preparation hopefully soon to meet again the board will to go over the efficiency study and to hear what the recommendations are apparently we have one student who attends the program there there's a total of 31 students so as soon as we gather back together again and talk about

128the report and make a recommendation then i will report back to the board thank you very much and is that all of our committees perfect comments and concerns from school board members mr nelms why don't you lay this off i don't really have any um i just want to give recognition to miss johnson for doing an awesome job that she does and is always there when i have a question um she helped me earlier fill out some stuff but um just want to give her recognition and uh other than that uh everything's going a positive direction which we like to like to know um so i just continue to work with uh dr mealy on this finance committee and uh everything on that is going in a positive direction as well so uh i just

129thank everybody for their support and continued uh prayers thank you mr work um i'm good okay seriously i'm going to take up some of mr holtworth's time okay well mr nelson's kind of short too you know just when dr bergen i thought your presentations couldn't get any better in terms of highlighting the students accomplishments and the various work um going on in our county voila there you go with another awesome presentation there um can i just enter jack thank you for that and i want to give kudos to melissa and ryan and josh who put those presentations together i just get to read what they present with absolutely then um i i just applaud mrs sexton and ryan as well thank you all it was just beautifully done and i was just just super thrilled

130to see the students accomplishments uh just just fantastic and of course with suzy g gibson being a school that's near and dear to me having worked with the alumni there and just doing so many things there it's just i was just so pleased to see um that being part of your presentation for black history month um and of course the children and the studies that they are doing uh you know i often say that um black history is really american history and i look forward to that day when we all together can see that black history simply is american history but i certainly thank you dr bergen for that beautiful presentation and your team as well um i want to thank the susie g gibson culinary students for a dinner this evening so thank you

131so very much it was very yummy i'm going to share my cookies with my husband but just delicious so thank you thank you so very much um i share the loyal school let's see um i also just want to thank our my fellow board members thank you all for just your service and working alongside of each of you um sometimes it can be a thankless job but you know i think it's important to stay focused as to why we chose to serve and we are in a position to serve and so i just want to say to each of you thank you so very very much for the work that you do as well um i do have a question um in regards to sol testing that's going to be coming up before we know

132it in may i hate to even mention that word but i'm just curious if schools um dr bergen or any members of your team if they have begun uh working and developing their calendar their schedules for sol testing yes i i can answer that um actually the testing will really really has has ended for fall testing uh for the spring and certainly writing testing will be here just next month and then of course in may the bulk of the end-of-year spring testing schools are working on that um that scheduling and they'll get more information soon because mr blankenship has just is just now recently getting doe updates on any changes and highlights for the springs testing and he'll be sharing that with school test coordinators and administrators so as he's sharing that he'll be asking

133them for their schedules and all that'll be lined up you know over the next few weeks okay and and may i know is the month in which they're going to be doing a lot of their end of the year and i believe we actually have um a day scheduled in there for teacher planning do we not from may i think it was a recent change that we made when we were adding additional days may 9th may the 9th absolutely and just thinking about the scheduling um just everything that is involved in scheduling for the sol testing every single day is gonna matter here so what i'd like to ask um dr berg and you and your team if you all would consider and i would hope that you would strongly consider um maybe changing that

134date and maybe moving it to a day in april um maybe sometime after the easter break to allow our schools to have the entire month for the sol testing and there'll be no um restraints or hindrance there that it that may has just opened up for them to test so if you could look at that as a possibility i would really appreciate it yeah what i made a note this hairstyle first i want to review the schedule and the window of the time that is provided by vdoe lay that over our calendar and then take all that into consideration and we'll come back with an update for the work you know and a suggestion for moving that particular planning day i think could be sometime after the easter break i believe that monday could be

135a day that could maybe be used thank you that's all i have thank you miss harrison dr maylie uh yes thank you madam chairman meet some of the um that just harrison said so i apologize but i also want to congratulate dr berg and i have this a really great presentation and listen ryan whatever input they had it's just wonderful i think the whole idea is great it just says all of us from forgetting someone um but yet providing recognition that our schools and our students should be getting so thank you so much for that um and congratulations to all our students for those accomplishments i mean it's just amazing how many of our students are recognized for so many different things it's just really wonderful um and i'd like to give a special shout

136out to mr edwards um every time we have to recognize somebody um i think you just have an app for making them feel incredibly special and again we did that this evening but this time you got to do for us too so thank you always i don't know that i could um do that kind of thing i have once in a while but i have to do it and it takes me a lot so you just need to have a natural nap for congratulating people and making them feel special so thank you for all your your work on that and and to everyone who um sends us little things with the lord thank you for your words of appreciation um i i too think that this is a you know difficult job as mrs harrison

137said and you know it's a pleasure and an honor to serve um with my colleagues and um i just appreciate all of what they do and and of course the words from people people are having some kind um i also just want to say an extra congratulations to ms johnson uh thank you for all that you do especially for those of us who don't need that um so i want to also thank our staff i continue to appreciate the efforts and work of all staff to support our school division during this time i'd like to just give a special shout out because i hope the end of the tunnel is very near to our nurses and mrs knox and ms robertson for all of their assistance as we address your health the mental health of

138our students and staff during this uh during this kentucky time it's been no easy task but you know there's it really does appear to be right at the end of the tunnel of this very long time finally and so thank you for all of that um all of your hard work with that um i did attend the valley over school uh first board meeting it was mostly a organizational meeting they did extend a huge thank you and a lot of gratitude to mr johnson for his service over the past years and wanted me to pass along um i i did call him and extend that those kind words to him um we should have some more information in april they are currently even doing their bylaws as well and looking into making some changes to

139how schools are brought in as a member um but none of that is uh finalized yet again it was mostly an organizational meeting um i do have one question um for our chairman excuse me and i have had several people asking if um according to our timeline uh they we had them on february 24th a finalist and people are asking i'm not a chairman if that notification will also it says it will go to the school division website and social channels on that day is what they're asking is it will be what time is the deadline for the like i don't have the schedule in front of me was there a deadline several days before several days so once it's to me i'd actually plan on getting it to you guys the very next day

140and getting it out there so there'll be plenty of notice okay all right thank you so much and that is all i have uh thank you all for allowing me to uh participate remotely and that's a physical pain um it just was unbelievable i'm sorry to say okay thank you very much mr hill all right let's see here um teacher staffs uh teacher and staff um i want you to know i'm asking questions on how to make mask optional for you i don't have an answer yet but i am searching for that um mask on buses i want our students to know i'm asking questions about how to make a mask optional on buses i don't have answers but i'm asking i commented on the budget from the county about workforce training i actually had

141that in my notes but it went well with what you guys were presenting i want to make sure we're working very closely with the county and the office of business development or economic development excuse me um i cannot remember if i said this last month so i apologize i did attend alice in wonderland at cavalier theater it was fantastic as you saw tonight we have state champions for three years in a row and that alice in wonderland didn't disappoint either so great job to them i wanted to make sure i just remind parents you are welcome parents are welcome parents are welcome parents are welcome in our schools there still seems to be a miscommunication we want you there we want you there anytime you want to be there i think the sport has made

142it very clear that we welcome you there dr bergen has made it known repeatedly and so i just want to make sure publicly we are saying it over and over again parents are welcome inside our schools um last thing i'll say is i will be here afterwards for anybody that has questions comments and would like to talk i will be here afterwards so that's all thank you it looks like a lot of pages but all right big so um first thing i'd like to talk about um during this process of mr lee me stepping down mr hill dr bergen and i met with our attorney and came up with the process that we have advertised um and i'm understanding that from the community um [Music] that they would prefer that we conducted the interviews in

143open session um i have i personally feel i would like to i still would like to see the interviews in closed session but i understand that we should have them i understand we have set the president um our previous appointments um as being public so i would like to come up with a compromise that we will live stream interviews from what we'll meet will help conduct interviews over in the school board conference room we'll live stream the interviews but not let anyone in the gallery and if there's any way possible i'd like to go ahead and get that change advertised and out if there would be a consensus to this [Music] dr mealy yes is it yes yes yeah consensus i got it now you got it i would say no but you've got your

144consensus okay thank you thank you very much um we as a board are going to actually work on updating our bylaws something that got um or bylaws policies and procedures and how we're going to proceed with that something that um kind of got lost in the shuffle during the beginning of the pandemic so we never we started it we never got back to it um and i know miss harrison and i have talked about we we we hear you loud clear y'all may think we don't hear but we hear you loud and clear um that you would like for us to be able to talk back our standard or procedure has been for years that we listen to you speak we do not reply that is something we may be working on fine details about

145and in our work with policies and procedures in the meantime i personally would like to see us conduct a couple of town halls if board members are available to be there great if not great um you know it's time availability we're volunteering to do this um and to set the first one and it's just if anybody else would be interested i'm just throwing us out there to see the interest level of this um we're not saying we're doing this yet we'll see what happens um but we have three school zones so if we do one every four months first one be maybe the first saturday in april and since we're having our first meeting in jefferson forest meeting at liberty let's have a possible first meet first town hall meeting in stanton river would anyone

146be interested in doing that mr nelms mr hill mitch holbrook certainly i may be i i can't yeah i understand i understand it's a volunteer voluntarily thing so we'll say could we possibly do the first saturday in april we'll have state river open to us to cafeteria library yeah we'll certainly check with the school to see if they have anything already scheduled and we'll work we'll see what we can do to accommodate that absolutely okay that would be absolutely wonderful if we could do that so it's our first one for saturday at nine o'clock at stanton river will there be an agenda for town hall okay um i'm going to echo miss harrison um and thank the susie gibson culinary arts program they did a great job i think any time that we can give

147our students experience and what they're learning the better off we are because that's what we're trying to teach them i want to thank everyone once again for your continued patience as we work through the bus driver shortage i know how discouraging it is to get that phone call and all of a sudden you find out you're about sitting running and you're like oh my gosh what am i gonna do um and i felt really bad i had one parent begging me to somehow send a bus to her house so she could get her child back in school and i i feel for you um but please know that we are doing the very best we can and we ask for your continued patience um i know earlier tonight we recognize ms johnson for school board

148appreciation but i want to make sure she knows how i definitely appreciate everything she does um ever since she's come on the board i've admired her diligence but in the last couple of months since she's been helping carry me i've come to realize how much she does how she goes above and beyond and as my kids will say she does it with a good heart attitude mrs johnson i truly thank you everybody knows i support sports spring sports are getting underway um this week will be the spring sport meetings with parents that or next week will be the supreme court meetings with parents at liberty high school um if you have any questions feel free to reach out to mr tucker or ms matson um let's get those ball fields feel we got the kids

149out there playing and lastly i promise as you all know martin lee resigned from the school board effective january 31st mr lemi and i ran our first campaigns together every six years ago and have served together ever since he served on the design committee for the liberty middle school prior to taking his seat on board he was instrumental in getting the connector road from liberty high school to liberty middle advocated for a quality gym at liberty high school and sheriff's baseball team had their own field until the new one was complete at the middle school followed hard to put our student athletes last far hard for our student athletes last year and on top of that served as chairman during the beginning of a pandemic and let us swell into uncharted waters that everybody refer

150to it as it has he tells me all the time that that's overused and i'm cheesy and i don't mean it but it truly has been an honor and a privilege to serve with him martin if you're watching thank you for everything now do i have a motion to adjourn so moved emotions on the shield you have a second mr nelms head second any discussion oh it's i you