School Board Meeting 1/13/2022 - 5:00 PM

001oh [Music] there you go there's one of these i mean yeah promotions oh who am i yeah [Music] oh i could do that hmm good evening i'd like to call this regularly scheduled january 13 2022 organizational meeting of the bedford county school board to order mrs johnson would you please call the roll mrs harrison here mr hill here mr holbrook here mrs kirby here mr leamy here dr maylie here mr nels here mr superintendent there is a quorum present thank you is there a motion to approve the agenda absolutely thank you a motion by mr leamy is there a second second thank you mr hill any discussion hearing none i'll now call for a vote all those in favor of the agenda as presented please signify by saying aye aye any opposed thank you the

002agenda is approved it's now my distinct honor to open the floor up for nominations for chair of the school board i weigh a reminder a second is not required who would like to make a nomination i nominate susan curry to serve as chair calendar year thank you mr leamy any other nominations hearing none all those in favor of mrs kirby serving as your next chair please say aye aye any post congratulations mrs kirby on your election as chair of the school board thank you i am now delighted to turn this gamble on following suit i would like to call for nominations for vice chair for the calendar year 2022. vice chair for calendar year 2022. thank you mr leamy any other nominations okay can we call for a vote all those in favor sigma5 is

003saying aye aye any opposed congratulations mr hill thank you [Applause] do you have a motion to go into closed session madam chair pursuant to code of virginia 2.2 dash 3711a 1 to discuss the assignment appointment performance discipline and release of contract for specific school board employees including the evaluation of the superintendent as provided in his contract of employment and eight for consultation with legal counsel retained by the school board for legal advice concerning health and safety mitigation strategies and school board policy klb hey have a motion do i have a second second any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye we are now in closed session parade okay [Music] do i have a motion to come out of closed session mr madam chairman i make a motion that we come out of

004closed session do i have a second second all those in favor signing applause ms johnson will you certify that we're at the bedford county school board has convened a closed meeting on this date pursuant to an affirmative reported vote and in accordance with the provisions of the virginia freedom of information act and where section 2.2-371 2-d of the code of virginia requires a certification by this school board that such closed meetings were conducted in conformity with virginia law now therefore be it resolved that the bedford county school board hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements by virginia law were discussed in the closed meeting to which the certification applies and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening

005the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered yes yes yes yes yes yes thank you okay and just so just to clarify while we were in closed session we had time to also address item 12.01 so that is eliminated from the agenda moving on to staff reports mr hagler second quarter financial projection good evening um in front of you on the documents but also a powerpoint is the second quarter financial projections for the year so i'll walk you through the data that we had as of december 31st and projecting out the rest of the year on the first slide is the revenue projections um you can see what was uh the actual for the previous year the budget for the current year then supplemental or projected appropriations or supplemental appropriations that would be later in

006the meeting that i'm bringing forward to the board tonight the revised budget and then the projection um not much change with the other category that's local money that we collect um the state was a pretty big change in the state the way the formula works with the state is that the sales tax increases or decreases it has a direct correlation to the basic age so you can see sales tax going up in the basic age going down so really on the most part they offset each other on that on the federal side um projecting a little bit more more than uh the adjusted budget so overall projecting about 400 504 000 more than the adjusted budget by the end of the year the supplemental appropriations and some of the things that are listed down below

007from the other we had an insurance claim that we received some funds in and then on the federal you had a title one carryover that we were spending down this year 21st century federal security grant and the biggest part of that is the cares act we're going to spend more money in that category this year for learning loss um then there were two other things state security grant we were just awarded um just the last two or three weeks so i included that on here and then we were granted um two electric buses grants that we went after one of those is we're going to receive the funding and then we have to pay the vendor for that so it's going to flow through so i'm going to show that as a supplemental so we

008can bring that money in and just pay that right back out to the member so i'm so sorry i just want to make sure i'm following you when you're talking about like the title one budget and that what line were you referring to there um not on this but it's on a sheet of paper okay if you look at the a little bit more detail on the pdf that i sent out that's in board docs this is a powerpoint presentation showing the same numbers but not all those details and footnotes but that is on the pdf documentation okay was that just put on because i i that did not hit my account did you do anybody else did you all have that you didn't i'm looking right at it yeah thank you well make sure

009that gets if that's not there we'll make sure i usually put a little bit more details on that but i want a presentation of the numbers so people in the audience and watching can look at that but it is on board docs and anybody can pull that up and those supplementals will be later in the meeting as action items for the board and i can go into details on any one of those later on as we go through that any other questions on the revenue side so we're looking pretty good there sales tax is really strong continues to be strong so for us and for the state or county so that's good news so very very pleased with that on the instruction on the expenditure side this is on the operating account plugged in the

010same adjustments to the budget expenditures and revenues on supplementals as of right now halfway through the year some of these things you know you're doing the best projection you can but looking at about 750 000 below budget on that and if you combine those two numbers pending amounts projected at about 1.2 million or so and the operating account at the end of the end of the year so we're looking good shape halfway through the year i'm not seeing any issues in any of the categories right now i think we were running behind in my first quarter maintenance was getting hit pretty hard some of our run rates on the electrical and water were pretty steep in that first quarter those have come back a little bit so we look a lot stronger in the maintenance

011category than we did in the first quarter so at this point i don't see any issues categorically or overall in the budget for the operating any i should have forwarded that to the expenditure side mr high where can i say i have neglected to put that on the board report or on board docs i have there now if you just want to refresh for docs it is there so thank you thank you and so that's the expenditure side up there uh for the public that they can look at on that power plant going to go into some of the other accounts other funds that was the operating that's the main one we're watching where most of our expenditures come out of on the nutrition side i'm happy to report if you look at that usually

012at mid-year we're running behind because we have a lot of expenses at the beginning of the year and it takes time for the revenues to catch up with any child coming through the line getting a free lunch right now through the federal government we have a lot more people coming through a lot more participation we're receiving a lot more revenue so year-to-date and i did not have the number for the december revenue number that is that will come in in january so this does not even include the revenue for december but it does include the expenses where fourteen thousand dollars for the good in the nutrition fund so we're we're looking a lot better this year than we have we've been having slight losses over the last two or three years we had a very

013good reserve so that's not an issue but long term we'll have to watch that and so in future years when we get back to a normal sales and federal level we'll have to continue to watch that but this year it looks very strong the textbook fund uh i have some numbers there um one number i'll point out there is a reappropriation number of two million dollars that's going to come before this board tonight as reappropriating leftover money from last year if supporter approves it i'll take it to the board of supervisors and they'll have to approve that but you know if that if that all goes well that two million dollars if you look further down will be used it's an estimated amount for adoption uh textbook adoption dr whitford i think it's science and

014reading and reading is what they're looking at right now and there's a big process to go through before you adopt in your textbooks so at the end of the year about 1.1 left in the textbook fund maintenance reserve sorry the maintenance reserve you can see we started with about 1.1 million budget appropriations some of that is karazhak money some of that is local money supplemental appropriations is mostly karezak money there that we're spending now and then our year-to-date expenditures as of december 31st and then we have ongoing projects if you look at the pdf document you can see some of the projects that are slotted that are ongoing that haven't been fully paid out yet so there's a lot more detail on that pdf document than on the screen so any bouts around 2.7 million

015we have quite a few cip projects still in queue we've got more hvac projects that are in queue and so a lot of that money is in the cip plan which i'm not presenting on tonight that's under dr dewis a lot of that money is going to be used next year and it's already kind of we've got a year mark we just haven't put it out for bid or anything but the maintenance reserve fund is looking very strong here one bit of uh bad news tonight i wouldn't say bad but our self-funded health insurance fund started the year with about 6.2 million in the bank we're down about 5.7 as of the end of summer december we got hit pretty hard and so we saw a little bit of eroding of our reserves there we'll

016have to continue to watch that but um typically in a self-insured health fund one out of eight years you did hit pretty hard this might be our year where it gets it hard the other years we've kind of increased our reserves and we are ahead of the game by december this time we're a little bit behind just to make sure the board members feel secure about this are run run-out claims for both dental and health would be in the neighborhood of 2.5 million estimated that means if you stop being self-insured and you went fully insured you'd have to pay out all the claims that are lagging behind so you can see where we've got quite a bit more on that so we can sustain a bad year without having to make drastic changes to our

017premiums but if this trend continues we may have a premium increase for the first time in probably three or four years when we go to budget so we're watching this and we'll bring more data back to the board on that question for you mr haglin yes on the 1.2 million under pharmacy yes sir do we know how that breaks out and what i'm asking is specifically around coveted testing is that included in that number it would be um testing it would be but that's self-test testing i would say i can get some more data on that we we do have quarterly updates from both our medical and our pharmaceutical providers in pharmaceutical the big driver i'll be honest with you is the specialty drugs that are very expensive okay um one script for one month

018could be 15 to 20 000 there's some coming that are hundreds of thousands of dollars for one script for one month those are the big driving factors the routine and some of the testing it might seem like a lot that we do but it doesn't it's not the big dollars and so i can i can get some of that data my health committee i'll be presenting that to them i believe we're having a meeting on 19th barring hopefully we can get in and do that and presenting to them some of the data from anthem and also optum our pharmaceutical provider and it'll show the top 10 drugs that are driving the cost and we could also break it down to what percentage of employees is driving that and again if it's i'm not questioning no

019no the need of it i just want to understand you say it's 100k for maybe one medicine is that one employee driving that cost or is that typically 200 employees driving that calls if our 200 would probably destroy our plan um so we're going to watch someone yeah some of those drugs coming out and concerns and that's the pharmaceutical has been rising quicker than the medical as far as the cost and so that's that's going to drive some premium increases in the future so we're really keeping our eyes on that i will say overall when you look at a medical plan we're not we're not out of balance on this but sometimes five or ten five to eight percent of your population is driving sixty percent of the costs okay thank you but that's what

020really assurance is for it's there for people that are going through hardship you pull together hopefully you don't need it but if you do there it's there for you so that's typical we'll plan that very few drive the overall cost but we're still in healthy condition we'll continue to watch this but i wanted to brief the board that that has eroded a little bit there's a slide i added it wasn't in the pdf document but um i added this yesterday so if you can see the pdf file or the powerpoint presentation if more numbers can pull that out i added something on federal cares excellent we've received a lot of money over the last two years and i wanted to bring that to the board so you had an overall accounting of that and how

021it's been spent and so going all the way back uh when this when cobit first started march 2000 thereabouts the county had received quite a bit of money and decided to share some with us 1.5 million we received a federal cares act 1.2 million we went after a competitive grant where we had to apply 266 000. the crf was corona relief funds we received that in december of two that one we received and we had like two months to spend it i mean that was real quick turn around so2 sr3 and then the last one was the american recovery plan hvac for hvac so kind of broke it out into broad categories of where it's been spent the items that are in yellow have not fully been expended yet those will be expended over they're

022being expended now they will continue to be expended over the 23 budget year and 24 budget year so when you see learning loss that large money it's not always spent this year it's being spread over three years and um down at the bottom of the hvac project estimates come in some of those estimates were high if we could shift any more money in here we will try to pick up one of the other projects we couldn't fund at this time so this is very fluid and moving money around and trying to keep track of it and getting the right bucket and meet all the qualifications and the regulations behind all this this funding so i just wanted to make sure the board had this the public had this and knows how we've been spending all

023this money jim question yes mr owen mr adler cares act uh funding is and i'm sure it's going to be a finite thing it's not going to be a forever thing have we expended any of these funds on any uh anything that we will have to eat figuratively internally once that money goes away and the existing year budget when we went through the budget process last year we budgeted some of the cares act money into this existing budget um and as i was talking to the board and leading you all through that it's quite a bit of money and a lot of money was there for learning loss and so we we recommended in the budget that we our our enrollment had gone down a little bit so normally we would lose teachers and staffing

024and we said well let's keep the staffing at the same level as we had last year and use kirazak money to fund that for this year um it was my guidance to the board that you can do this but you uh i'll give the analogy of land in a plane you want to come in for a smooth landing so once you do this you want to start pulling back in 23 you want to pull back more in 24 so when you get to 25 you're not on a cliff you don't want a 2 cliff and so as we go through this budget my recommendation is to pull back probably it'll be the board's decision but to pull back on how much we spent this year whittle that back in 23 little back that from 24

025so it's less so when you get to 25 and it's all gone you're not trying to find two million you might be trying to find 500 000 so we're going to try to reduce that and that would be my recommendation if the board wants to spin a lot more they can but i i'd like to try to bring it into land that's a little bit smoother but yes we are spending money that is on positions that would long term not be sustainable without playing all right well my concern is the potential becoming reliant on a funding source that is going to go away eventually that's something we just we need to be very mindful of that some of these positions were look forward yes some of these positions were to get through the code pandemic

026and uh probably could go away afterwards they were kind of there for short term um the staffing of the teachers was up and above beyond our staffing standards so it will go back when the money's gone it goes back to our normal staffing standards that we have before the pandemic so it'll go back to what everybody was used to but as you know people get used to having extra help it's hard to take it away so we'll have to deal with that in future budgets whether we want to continue to do that extra help or do we get the money to do that new revenue or cutting other programs but yes we are spending money that we will have to uh ratchet back down in the future all right thank you and probably in position

027wise i think probably around 20 26 or 27 positions this year 20 26 27 positions in which department um the majority i think is 21 it's about 21 in teachers there's intervention design specialists there is a little bit help for nursing there was also we added a position to help deal with all this money and this grant and all the regulations behind it and then also additional help for special education all right thank you ms harrison thank you um mr hankler just a question going back to this the slide with the self-insured health fund just a quick question uh regarding the biometric screening that employees in the past i believe have had to um participate in yes ma'am is that included under any of this particular cost here and i think you're referring to our

028wellness program our wellness program uh for those of you board members we have a wellness program if you participate in our wellness program you get a you get a premium uh preferred rate on your premium if you don't you have to pay a higher rate individually so with that two things are required several things are required to be in our health program saying we're all in the same insurance bill we're all in here together to do as best we can for this one is that you do a health risk assessment you earn points and one of it is a required health physical in the past we had some nurses come in and do that we're requiring people to go see their doctor now for two reasons the biggest impact to an insurance plan is people

029getting to their doctor and identifying constructive events before they happen that's what really saves so knowing who your doctor is is probably one of the single biggest impacts from our uh our insurance career saying is a big impact with people knowing who that doctor is so all you have to do is go to the doctor they'll draw a blog they'll do the biometric screening and they send it into the health wellness provider and you get the points for that so you can qualify for the premium rate so yes that we discontinued that when cobit hit because people couldn't get into the doctor and complete that we have we have started that up again this year so you do have to qualify for that what does that do for them uh you have to have it

030done dr connor is not here tonight um i think it's due by april yeah because we need to know before the new rates go into place each year okay all right is it april i think it's april april so they can start in october i think we start up september october and they have to april yeah so so our nurses if i understood you correctly you said that we have done the screening in the schools for the staff it wasn't with our nurses though okay it wasn't with our nurses it was an outside provider that would come in and do that and so we discontinued that but now we went to a model that said you get a free physical that's part of the affordable care act you get a free physical each year and

031you should go do that and get a checkup and see your doctor go to your physical and that qualifies you for the plan yeah i'm just thinking of some employees and you know just some difficulties that they may have in terms of being able to get this done and having it accessible and available for them within the school like we've done before or having that provided i certainly would like to see us consider maybe bringing that back the overall concern i had with that model was the individual will get that they'd get a piece of paper from that company and they said here's your here's your numbers it but it didn't say hey you've got it you got an issue we need to get you on medication or you need to do this and this

032whereas a doctor looking at those numbers would say come back in i need to talk to you and it's i'm just going based upon what others have done with wellness programs my health insurance carrier even our pharmaceutical and the provider that's the vendor that's working with us the biggest thing that can happen is preventing catastrophic events that are very costly if you can and the best thing to do that is get these wellness visits but do it with your doctor and so that's why we moved in that direction because if you get data that you have you've got serious numbers and you don't pay attention to it because you got it in the mail and you just discarded it your doctor hopefully is paying much more attention that would get you back in the house

033and that calls for individual um is generally covered under their health insurance if they yeah there's no cost to an annual physical yes ma'am okay all that's covered all right thank you any other questions about the second quarter forecast yes ma'am chairman uh yes um and i apologize because uh i'm just looking at this for the first time but on the pdf um i know we talked about this several times and i do believe we had board consensus for um breaking out the other category on under revenues other is one point or 1.1 million and um i don't know what that is how we get to that number um overall when you look at our overall budget of 111 nine dollars in operating it's under a million dollars for other that's money we collect for

034dual enrollment driver's ed nursing program um you know they're all very small but i mean i can please make a notation i mean i think we as board members need to know exactly where money is coming from and i i didn't know that the other thing was that we talked about was getting a line in here that indicated with a date when that six million reversion was going to run out so i assume that's in the 48 million that's down there the reversion money we talked about we we're not always aware of what that date is uh you know what year that is i still don't know i think it was 20 29 yeah um to have it in there and as a reminder to us and to future board members that that money is

035running out and and that 48 million would be reduced by 6 million um again i'm i i don't do what you do so it's hard for me to sometimes follow what these numbers are and i think it's incumbent upon the division to provide us with information that we know what makes up every number simply because i don't know what you know in the consent agenda i believe each month we load up details on all the expenditures and all the revenues so you can see what's actually happening in each line item year to date it doesn't take that and project it forward um so this is just a snapshot and then i take it and i say what's going to happen over the next six months you know so i have to you know applying some

036analytical things to that um i can put a notation on here about the reversion and the timing of that this is really a snapshot of the current year the reversion is like each and every year for the next because the 48 million contains the sixth part of that six million does it not um well see again it depends on what the state budget is at a time what our moment is at the time of what our lci there's a lot of fluctuation in that but it has been traditionally the differential is about six million that will go away from the state at that time yes ma'am any further questions thank you okay item 4.01 strategic planning process dr bargin thank you madam chair strategic planning is a vital process for all organizations this work allows

037us to define our future direction determine the appropriate allocation of resources and designate specific actions which will allow us to come to accomplish our long-term ambitions as bedford county public schools designs a new strategic framework over the course of this school year we are inviting input from all of our stakeholders in a variety of formats regarding what our strategic priorities should be over the next five years this process is being managed by a core planning team that includes members of our executive team and other key leaders of our central support team so during tonight's presentation i'll be joined by two of those core planning team members dr leanne calvert our executive director for human resources and child development and dr karen woodford our chief learning officer as a first step in this process we've already

038received input in a variety of formats regarding the vision mission and core values for the school division this evening dr calvert will be providing a summary of the data that we've collected on the development of a vision statement should be followed by dr woodford who will summarize the data collected regarding the development of a mission statement and then i'll conclude this presentation with a review of our core values and the summary of the next steps in the process dr calvin when determining whether we bcps would continue with the current established vision statement or moved forward with a newly crafted vision we considered multiple data points and garnered input from a variety of sources when pausing just a moment to consider what a vision statement is supposed to capture it's important to note that a vision

039statement should vividly paint a picture of the future and where the school system would like to be stakeholder input was gathered in three distinct ways first we distributed a survey to all stakeholders in mid-november which remained open for a two-week period a total of 972 participants provided input on a sampling of vision statements where we provided were provided within the survey secondly the superintendent's advisory met on december 6th and this group is made up of a wide variety of stakeholders including students and parents from all three high school from all three zones as well as teachers paraprofessionals and classified staff from across the division this group not only considered the data from the survey but also provided additional feedback as they identified what words would resonate with them discussed if there was anything missing in

040the sample vision statements and identified any areas that they disagreed with lastly all of our principals reviewed vision statements at their december 14th principals meeting and worked to collaborate collaboratively groups to thoroughly review the provided statements and determine which vision statements they believe best captured where they wanted before county public schools to be in five years projected on the screen you can see the top three vision statements that emerge from those three data points in rank order the second vision statement listed is what we have historically used empowering learners for future success the other two statements were sample visions provided within the survey and for our superintendent's advisory group and building principles to consider as the raw data and input provided during small group discussion was triangular and synthesized building citizens promoting success resonated with

041most of our stakeholders they like the use of bcps acronym and the action that the term building suggested when determining whether bcps should continue with the currently established mission statement or move forward with a newly crafted mission we once again considered multiple data points and garnered input from a variety of sources when determining whether bcps should continue with the currently established mission statement or move forward with a newly crafted mission we once again use multiple data points and decided that we would talk to those stakeholders and think about what a mission statement really is a mission statement is for an organization focuses on the present and is influenced by the vision statement that's chosen the vision captured a picture of the future and the mission is the roadmap that will help you obtain that vision

042the mission and vision statements really should complement one another and work in tandem the same stakeholder input was gathered for our mission statement that was gathered for our vision first we distributed a survey to all stakeholders then we met in superintendent's advisory and finally we consulted with our principals projected on the screen you can see the top three mission statements that emerge from those three data points in rank order the second mission statement listed is what we have historically used the other two statements were sample missions provided within the survey and for our superintendent's advisory group and our building principles to consider as all three data points were considered the mission statement that emerged as the number one in rank order was bedford county public schools will provide equitable opportunities to enable all students to

043think critically collaborate create communicate and become productive citizens moving forward we are proposing tonight that the school board endorsed these current currently proposed vision and mission statements so then that leaves the core values the last piece of data that was gathered during this initial collection again from all three of those groups it was the consensus of all three groups the results of the community survey the discussion with the superintendent's advisory council and with all of our principals it was overwhelming that all three groups felt that we should continue to use the core values as they are currently stated these core values put a central focus on students as we ensure that we act with integrity we engage in meaningful collaboration with a variety of stakeholders and we work to guarantee a safe and dynamic learning

044environment and of course we remain committed to helping our students achieve their own unique personal and academic goals so given the feedback from our stakeholders our recommendation would be that we continue to use these core values as written to define our work moving forward next steps later in this meeting as part of the action agenda i'll be asking the board to formally approve the proposed vision mission and core value statements as they've been presented this evening the next step in the process then will be to garner input from all of our stakeholders through 23 planned focus group meetings some of them have already occurred many more of them are going to be occurring in the coming weeks the purpose of these focus group meetings is to get feedback on the goals and strategies that would

045be a part of the new strategic framework the feedback that we gather from the focus groups will then be shared with you at your next meeting on february 10th and the board will be asked to take action on the goal statements with the adoption of the goal statements the next step in the process will be to create design teams these design teams will be composed of school building staff teachers and administrators as well as central support leaders there would be one design team per goal and these design teams would meet throughout the months of march and april to generate proposed strategies identify needed resources and determine measurable outcomes the work of the design teams will be shared with the superintendent's advisory for a third loop of feedback and after receiving that feedback from the superintendent's

046advisory we would formally present the completed strategic framework to the school board at your may 12 school board meeting we would have one month of public comment open town hall and the board would be asked to adopt the strategic framework in your june meeting so that as we entered into the summer our principals our parents our students would know what the strategic direction was of the school board for next school year and the five years to come but this time we would welcome your questions about the process that we have undertaken and any of the information that has been shared with you here tonight dr mili i just want to say i think the new vision statement is fantastic i think that anytime you have a vision statement having created these four different buildings i

047was in both here and in other divisions it has to be something that our community and our teachers can wrap their heads around and communicate you know if you can't say what it is then it's just a bunch of words on paper and this is really uh i think very effective building citizens and promoting success and something that you know can easily be remembered um and thank you for the the discussion about vision and mission and the mission being the road map um that was kind of turned around um i would just ask too that we consider um as we move forward i i love the mission statement as well it brings in all the five c's from the for virginia department of education and certainly does uh support the division statement that we continue

048to look at the word student because that is what's used in everything that we touch um the vdoe uses it um so i think it to constantly hop back and forth between learner and student we need to pick one and and stick with that um just for clarity but very very good job thank you this is i think a wonderful beginning to that new framework anyone else yeah my chair okay real quick can you help me understand the in the mission statement we'll provide equitable opportunities i need details on that what does that mean why not just opportunities so in my uh close entry plan that i shared with the board a couple months ago it's on our webpage one of the things that i've heard consistently mr hill the perception of the community is

049your zip code determines your availability to course offerings so equitable means everyone having equal equitable opportunities to workplace workforce development advanced placement coursework dual enrollment access to our partnerships with central virginia community college so that that is in direct answer your question that's what is intended as equitable opportunities in terms of access to coursework and our partnership with our friends in the county administration for having equitable access to internet connectivity which is the homework gap so you know we have a number of kids who they can learn very effectively with technology while in school but when they go home there's they're in a dead zone so keeping a continued focus on making sure that we have active opportunity for connectivity for um i don't know i think you and i are speaking different languages here

050i see i think equal opportunity is more appropriate than equitable i see equitable more as a predetermined outcome versus the equality of opportunity to achieve an outcome i i'm with mr illinois i'm not i'm not a fan of that word perfectly pliable on the word uh equal opportunities as opposed to madam chairman yes misters um i'd like to dr bourbon first of all thank you for the vision statement um and the whole process that you and your team have gone through i think we all know those of us who have been in the county for a length of time that um each of our areas our zones the stanton river zone the liberty zone and the four zone for many many years there's been lots and lots of discussion about the equity and the fact

051that things were not quite equal a certain program you couldn't find at stanton river but it would be found at force elementary school so i think your choosing of that word is very much appropriate as we work towards trying to make sure that all of our students in each of our zones are receiving the same programs and opportunities any more comments the only thing i would say is i like dr maylie in the fact of i would like to see students throughout the documents and not learners and i would also echo um mr lingi's comment about it being equal instead equitable sure but again i'm perfectly liable to to the uh to the will of the board on this one and the reorganization of our central office team there was one title that we just

052changed without any you know a lot of attention to it learner support services we changed to student support services so we can certainly keep in line with that and we can we can substitute the word students where you see learners in the core values and envision mission statements if that's the world of the board and that's the feedback i'm hearing unless there's any objection we'll go ahead and move forward in that way yeah yes i can do that thank you anything further let's see sorry i want to make sure i understand you're changing both of those is that what you're saying instead so uh that would be where would be a specific example maybe core value it's the core values um the reason we didn't just go ahead and change learners is because it had

053been voted on by the board and in a prior board and we figured that was probably something you were going to want so now if that's the board's consensus when we get to the um voting on the items we can definitely do that and i think from what i'm hearing um i guess when we get to the vote you're asking that we change equitable to equal opportunities so yes yeah okay thank you yeah and i'm just noticing i'm laughing at myself when we present this for action we've already changed the focus on learnings to focus on students yeah so that uh that's already captured our only change will be we'll use equal and blue equivalent when we get to the action and miss chairman just one more thing dr bergen i i just think you

054know i would like to see it move forward throughout everything i mean our title documents our documents that go back and forth because that's what's used in everything we touch as educators we'll make sure we're consistent well i wouldn't say it's used in everything it's used in everything if you can point something out that's not that comes from either the department the us department of education or the virginia department okay i'll take that challenge dr man okay that'd be true that comes to us from the department of education the u.s department of education evaluation forms that sort of thing can you find something out there from another author that says student yes you can that's not what i'm talking about okay let's get back on course um so is there any other questions regarding this

055presentation okay well in light of the time of 634 i move that we go to move 4.02 to under number eight to pick up later after after the dinner break second yes okay then we need to cut this section of break at some point move her up this is like an ongoing thing let's move her up informational [Laughter] [Music] thank you sir i like to reconvene the school board meeting for january the 13th 2022 please rise for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all mr edwards we have some recognition of students madam chair we have couldn't have done it without the students and tonight we have the

056staff present to be recognized for their honor as well and would you and dr bergen please come forward the national association of elementary and secondary education act state program administrators recently designated big island elementary school as one of only two national esea distinguished schools in the entire state of virginia big island was selected for exceptional student performance and academic growth over two consecutive years the school will be recognized during this year's national esea conference in february in new orleans and tonight big island elementary administrators and instructional staff members are on hand to be recognized for this amazing achievement staff members when i call your name will you please come forward kindergarten teacher haley lawson [Applause] first grade teacher olivia um in the second grade classroom methamphetamine [Music] also heading up second grade kristen honeycutt on

057hand the two represent fourth grade tonight ellen angus and showing up for the fifth grade angela arrington [Applause] a pair of reading specialists had their hand in this award too melissa [Applause] and terry gallagher [Applause] special education teacher leslie pfeiffer [Applause] art and music leslie pfeiffer [Applause] leslie also does special education [Music] and pam wiggles with art and music [Applause] a pair of instructional aids rebecca powell [Applause] and tina milton and finally the principal at big island elementary andy bliss [Applause] once again ladies and gentlemen the staff for the nationally distinguished esea big island bulldogs if we could we'd like to do a photo op we've got approximately 15 of you up here so if we could do tallest uh in the back of seven or eight and shortest in the front [Music] thank you

058[Music] okay now we get to move on to item 6.03 public comment the public comment portion of tonight's agenda is limited to 25 minutes individual speakers are limited to three minutes while anyone representing an organized group will be allowed five minutes provided they are the sole speaker from that group or organization speakers are asked to state their name address voting district an organization or group if applicable the school board is here to listen to your comments but will not engage or respond to speakers during this 25 minute period please remember that this is a public meeting and that we expect all speakers to refrain from any foul abusive or hateful language mr edwards will serve as timekeeper for individual speakers with a ringing bell indicating that a person has 30 seconds remaining and a second

059bell will ring indicating a person's three minutes have expired mr edwards will also serve as timekeeper for a cumulative 25-minute period while mr edwards three-minute timer bell rings please discontinue speaking and allow the next person in line to come to the podium should you be unable to finish your comments please sit or give them to ms johnson as she will give them to board members please do not adjust the microphone at the podium it has been positioned for premium audio quality mr edwards madam chair the individuals scheduled for tonight include mary bennett on behalf of bedford county patriots christian sneed david beauregard on behalf of the root of david julie wyatt trevor cooper rachel cooper and veronica schakowsky has been hi everyone how are y'all tonight my name is mary catherine and i am a

060very proud and very busy mama of six children five of them boys many people say my gosh your hands are full and i'll say yes but so is my heart i am very excited to be here and i've got a just a few things to say so excuse me if i'm all over the board the moment okay first off i'm excited to welcome the two new board members i'm sure many of y'all know this but these are dads that have stepped up in the community because they recognized that maybe the past board was not really listening to the bedford county community and the parents um i had seen the community rally amazingly hours of volunteer time going in and i'm sure you all know what happened there was a david and goliath moment and these

061two boys excuse me these two men are on the board and we are so grateful so thank you very much i'm excited that you're joining these amazing board members as well so um one of the things that i want to state is in the virginia code i'm sure it's been said before but that is the right of a parent that says a parent has a fundamental right to make decisions concerning the upbringing the education and care of that parent's child now again i have six children and i understand that each of them have different needs and they have so i have same expectations but i understand it takes different ways to get them to where they need to be um one of the things that dr bergen did was set up the focus groups and

062they've mentioned that before and i had the opportunities today earlier to join one of the zoom meetings and it was very eye-opening for me and i'm glad i had i was able to participate in it one of the things that was said was they do not a person on the call said i do not want too much parental involvement i want an educator educating my child and i'm going to agree with that i do want educators educating my children but i want them educating in reading and in writing and arithmetic i do not want educators talking to them about social issues i do not want educators talking to them about emotional issues because in my opinion that's where the parents responsibility is so i will agree that i am very grateful for these educators and

063i know that they have done such wonderful jobs so again i want to just reiterate that that's really important to me that as a parent i believe i should have the choices on what they read if i believe it's something that's too mature for them in fact i know lots of people that have been reading books and again this is just the books but if we could do an opt-in program for books instead of an opt-out that is something that i think is really important um another thing i want to talk about is the masks and the code of mitigations i can give you all of the details regarding the cdc's and how cloth masks no longer work and that well they do but not as much because obviously code still happens it's everywhere um

064and you need n95 masks um or they've gone from 14 day quarantine now it's a five-day quarantine i know people whose entire classes are completely shut so we could work on coded mitigations horn and team practices as well as when junkin says and i know he said it because he's ran on this was the mask will be overturned when that happens i would love it if the school board could say okay if young has done the mass mandate make a parental choice because i understand that parents out there are concerned and they have you know they they want their children wearing masks and i respect that i don't want mine wearing masks so i just want mutual respect within our community so we can work together to make sure that every parent's needs and every

065child's needs are being met the second thing is look at this crowd this is pretty awesome so thank you for having a larger venue one of the things i'd like to ask is i know we have high school auditoriums out there and maybe we can work and hopefully we'll continue to have more community involvement i think it's important we can't just be sitting on the sidelines complaining about things we need to be involved we need to take a take apart in our community so i'd love to have maybe a larger auditorium hopefully we'll continue to grow into the space the other thing that i would like to talk about is perhaps if we could y'all could model your meetings based on the board of supervisors they do public comments first and then they have private

066comments afterwards and they also have more opportunities for the for the public comments so again i don't have lots to say that hasn't been said before but i want to come up here and say thank you i look forward to a wonderful year thank you to the teachers and the educators um and again we're all want the same thing and that is the best for each of our children i know everyone has different ideas of doing it but just remember we're all on the same side and we all want to work together so thank you very much snead [Music] yeah okay great thanks my name is christian snead 113 snooty fox in good virginia district 7. we have a saint in our home that facts are our friends in the last school board meeting i

067was confused on how previous requests to review the explicit content of books not subject material was misconstrued the request was surrounding repeated vile language sexual content and not slavery a request had nothing to do with slavery if you watch the five-hour december meeting you'd not be left with that impression sometimes facts are conveniently left out of conversations which is what i'm passing out now this was the case when dr trosper unfortunately left out that there were eight books as alternative suggestions all to do with slavery and they all demonstrate the horrors and struggles of slavery unfortunately without this information ms harrison spoke at the 3 hour and 35 minute mark and was left with the impression that the request in some way deprived our children of the opportunity and these are your words and the

068opportunity to learn our history it's american history and it should be taught and it's an injustice when you don't want to learn and understand and i agree slavery was never in question nor the of slavery but the inaccurate acknowledgement for the alternatives not being mentioned or provided would have cleared up this misconception from the start which is why i passed out those those things ms harrison our household couldn't agree more that slavery was dreadfully awful and one of the worst things in our country's past but teaching it from mixing facts and fiction inside of a book is very dangerous it jeopardizes making a real impact the watered-down accounts are less soluble because most readers don't know what aspects are real and what aren't so they go under their own assumptions i'd also agree with mr

069jason johnson who's not here tonight that three hour and fifty minute mark in the last meeting slavery is something that happened in our county maybe even in close proximity to where we're sitting we want our kids to accurately understand history we must teach it not a sanitized version a real depiction and that's what we're asking for speaking of proximity two of the suggestions on that boat number one and number two were both from individuals that were born into slavery you'll know was frederick douglass who lived in d.c and maryland and booker t washington go to franklin county ms miele you mentioned where do we draw a line in censoring books it's a slippery slope and i would agree with you that's a hard subject but it's just as slippery to allow any material into the

070school without being challenged or have errors of concerns i'm glad that our kids do enjoy reading books as you guys reported out in the classroom however they also enjoy adult movies enjoy enjoy adult internet content and social media apps and this is why we as the adults are the leaders of the school system in our households and they also 30 seconds gotta thank you yeah we also must agree that they're 18 years old to engage on this or a phone contract there's a code of conduct in bedford county school systems that says what's acceptable coming in and out of the mouths of our kids this is no different than what goes into their mind so we have to stand in my home that says garbage in garbage out so we watch what we consume booker

071t washington said excellence is doing a common thing in an uncommon way and frederick douglass said character not circumstances make a man so i take that approach when we start having our books to be reviewed on different topics i do want to say thank you to our two new members uh glad that you're here and hope things can proceed in a people's matter i'm going to continue with my mantra of constitutional law and direct again that the people are the source of power and this galley gavel courtroom type setup is not the type of setup that was in the common days of the continental setting up of the constitution of meetings they were met people met in school boards i mean in school houses and tires taverns taverns but the main thing is that this

072it wasn't this way everybody was on the same level the representatives that the people chose sat on the same level and there was dialogue this 25 minute no comment or people's comment time is is not it's it hasn't been approved by the people we want dialogue we want to ask questions and we want to hear you answer that's what you're accountable for the constitution the virginia constitution which all of you swore to says that you will be amenable at all times so the code of virginia's that you actually use to dismiss yourself for a closed meeting is unconstitutional according to the virginia constitution i've said this time and again but you you continue to follow laws that are opposed to the virginia constitution and your oath to be amenable at all times fine if you're

073going to still have closed meetings then you provide a transcript so that we can see what you talked about because you're accountable to us everything that you say and do you are public servants that also is written in article 1 section 2. you are trustees and servants but we want a dialogue we don't want to treat you like a servant we just want and we don't want you to just listen to us we want you to follow what our directives are for our children for our school board and for our county that's our right it's written black and white and so i'm going to continue on this path i'll just set forth an agenda of what i think most of the people want at least one or two that agree but we want to get

074back to the open dialogue get rid of these microphones and let's sit down and talk back and forth cut these meetings down there's so much fluff and so much things that are in here that waste our time especially when we don't don't get to lead you or tell you what we actually would like or desire for you to do directives is what the people are supposed to be given to you this voting system isn't constitutional either it overrules the people if one of you goes to your district and and your district says yes we want masked then that's what you vote or that's what you go to but if you go to a meeting and sit in this and then you agree not to have masks one way or the other that's not what your

075district told you to do you don't have that right to change the people's voice get back to obeying the law the commonwealth and the constitution open dialogue meetings get rid of the closed meetings or provide full transcripts and available immediately without censorship also as far as the school board we can save a lot of money if we start looking into alternative energy sources electromagnetics hydroelectric solar battery windmill now windmill might sound archaic but you know what it saves a lot of money and we could reduce a lot of cost in energy if we look to alternative energy sources and we could also reduce the taxpayer ante up host the agenda we get the agenda on monday we have no time to investigate things post the agenda at least a week in advance and i actually

076would like more but also don't vote on the agenda the night of the agenda the night of your presentation give us time to look and read and determine what we would like to recommend for our board to do instead of passing a vote on that night the vision of the school should include the parents not just 972 people and could you please define for me what a stakeholder is see you can't even answer that but by law and the oath that you signed right now any of us standing here we shouldn't have to grovel before you or ask you to do something if i ask you a question by the constitution and the oath that you have taken you are required to answer this is the truth this is what's written you know it we

077all know it thank you mr okay see you next month thank you julie wyatt i live in district six i'm here to address the request to have a selection of books removed from our school libraries i've reported these challenges to the american library association's office of intellectual freedom virginia library association and the virginia association of school librarians the virginia aclu was also aware of book challenges throughout the state i'm pleased to see that so far the school system is following policy and reviewing the requests for removal the stated reason for these bans is inappropriate content but based on the chosen titles it seems like a political play to quash imagine threats like crt and the gay agenda and to prevent marginalized groups from telling stories about their life experiences rather than a good faith effort

078to protect children the board of education versus pico decisions stated that there is no right of school boards to ban books because they don't agree with the ideas in them there is the right to take community standards into account but the loudest community members aren't the whole community often the members of the community that are directly impacted by these attacks are intimidated and don't feel safe speaking up parents do have the right to be involved in their children's education they can do this in so many constructive ways talking to their children about what they've learned asking for extra assistance when appropriate joining the pta teachers are there to guide children in their parents absence instead of assuming the worst of teachers work with them and acknowledge their professionalism and dedication in fact the library already

079offers parental involvement you can tell your children what you don't want them to read if they disobey you that's not the fault of the book or the librarian or the school but it's also important to trust our children my own children have stopped reading books they weren't enjoying or weren't comfortable with without trying to prevent other kids from being able to make their own decisions and that's the real point you don't have a right to stop other parents step on other parents rights i'm teaching my children that all people have human rights i'm teaching my children that all people can write books they don't have to look and act exactly like us for their words to ring true or to be of value libraries are a community service and that parents don't have the right

080to take away access to materials from my kids or others in the community students have a right to a variety of stories stories about themselves their friends people they will meet someday stories that challenge them and make them think they have a right to a world where all voices are valued good evening everyone my name is trevor cooper and i'm for the mask they got to go and i don't know who is y'all the right to tell our children what they can't or cannot wear on their face equal opportunity if my son wants where i'm at school if he doesn't he shouldn't be forced to and i want an answer tonight what are you going to do about telling my child that he has to wear a mask i i want an answer if it's

081constitutional you need to answer because that's just a respectful thing to do but you want to sit up there on a podium like this like you're above everybody do something about it and trust me you won't you won't like it rachel cooper good evening ladies and gentlemen congratulations mr nelms and mr holbrook on your first dine at your board meeting i will say the mask have to go you all have trampled over our apparent rights on choosing what we feel is right for our children there are parents out there who feel their child should wear a mask their children their parents out there build their children should not my son has a medical document saying he cannot wear a mask but yet is forced to wear a mask that is very unfair that is actually

082illegal to trample over a medical stated document you do not have a doctor degree in medical science or anything medical you are a doctor of education i have tried to come and speak to you on multiplication mr superintendent but you have failed us as parents on failure to speak to us i have known many parents have been to you since the beginning of school year even before the school year started and you have refused to speak to us you have sent multiple of your other staff members to speak to us and was not in private either you put us on a display as we were some model on tv that is very disrespectful on your behalf i have noticed you also been in several different school districts i wonder why maybe because you trampled over

083their parents right as well not fair i am a parent and i will choose what is best for my child another thing we need to address is our school as our school bus drivers it's very unfair for parents to have to drive their children to and from school because you cannot provide transportation a lot of reasons you can't provide for transportation was because some are school bus drivers health care and pay was cut and i feel you as a superintendent just take the first pay cut quit taking stuff out of our schools to raise your pay or his pay or her pay or anyone else's pay on the school board or in the school board office our teachers and our school bus drivers deserve the utmost respect i myself who work in the public each

084and every day i see more and i have talked to several teachers and other people who work for the school district itself and they feel the same way i do they feel our parents are have every right to stand up against y'all as a school board and they also feel like they should have more benefits given back to them not taken from them y'all have caught several programs from our children but you are not creating an equal right of opportunity of learning our children need more equal rights of opportunity as to does our school bus drivers our school bus drivers are not getting the equal rights opportunity within the school district i do believe each one of them deserves a pay raise and their benefits given back to them at this point that will help

085give us more school bus drivers instead of them stepping down because they're not able to pay the next bill because of their pay getting cut thank you miss cooper veronica schakowsky hi my name is veronica cuskey i reside in boris virginia and i live in district 4. i would like to address two items tonight first to the new members of the school board matt and dwayne i'd like to give a warm congratulations and welcome i'm excited for this next chapter of the bedford county school board i want to encourage you and challenge you to never forget the reason you decided to step up and run for school board you saw a crisis unfolding before us and our god-given rights and liberties under attack there will no doubt be difficult decisions ahead but just remember that

086i and more than likely many others will be praying for you to make the right decisions that best protect our individual liberties and remember that you are parents before you are elected officials my second point of concern tonight is in regard to the issue of the current challenging of certain books in our school libraries at the december meeting it was very disheartening that certain school board members injected distracting emotion into the conversation to deflect from the issue of concern which was that of the amount and level of graphic sexual content on certain reading materials and they tried to turn the conversation into one about whether we are going to teach about slavery in our schools those of us parents and citizens who are concerned are not trying to ban books or ban teaching of the

087evil of slavery but we are rather wanting to protect our children from hurtful harmful sexual content as we know and studies prove that over exposure to graph geographic sexual content is harmful to young minds and also the over-sexualization of a society is one of the tenets of ideological communists to help implement communist ideals on that society so i will finish with saying that we will not let you define us we will not let you say that we are against teaching slavery or in favor of banning books and i respectfully ask that any topics of discussion going forward stay on course and don't get sabotaged by irrelevant matters to distract from the topic being discussed thank you do i have a motion to approve the consent agenda madam chairman i make a motion that we approve

088the consent agenda as presented i have a motion from dr mealy do i have a second second second by mr nelms all those all those in favor signify by saying i i opposed consent agenda is approved okay go back to miss sexton policy updates [Music] just so you know you're lucky that i was so busy that i didn't get to get that many done good okay so this evening we are presenting five policies for information these policies will be brought back to the board for action at the february board meeting three policies have minor legal and 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 are questions about the suggested

089revisions gcda effect of criminal conviction or founded complaint of child abuse or neglect removal of language in section 1a of the policy regarding the ability to hire individuals convicted of a felony to follow virginia code section 22.1-296.1 replacement of language previously added by vcps staff regarding the cost of conducting criminal history record checks to applicants and school boards based on previous vsba updates that were not adopted by bcps in the past edition of section b founded complaints of child abuse and neglect as recommended by the sba removal of language in section 2b of the policy stating that medford county school board and or any employee contractor or agent of a local school board will not assist an employee contractor or agent of such school board and finding a new job that is believed to be

090engaged in sexual misconduct regarding a minor or student in violation of the law because this is not included in the vsba recommendations and may have been previously added by bcps staffed or not removed during past vsb updates kl minor wording changes and the addition of a second paragraph regarding the ability of a parent custodian or legal guardian to petition the local circuit court if agreed by an action of the school board as recommended by the sba does anybody have any questions thank you mr sexton let's move on to item 9.01 organizational items i can get down there do we need to take individual motions on these or just all of one the ones that are listed i'm sorry the ones that are numbered um you can certainly link it to a sexy uh you can

091certainly do a encompass all approve the organizational items the ones that are bulleted some may require discussion for the ones listed one through five they can be done as a whole okay so do i have a motion to approve items one through five so good i have a motion by mr leamy do i have a second second by ms harrison all those in favor saying oh i'm sorry i'm sorry is there any discussion yes i have a question um for mr uh excuse me dr dewis the fuel bids um have we ironed out the issues we've had with prior delivery of fuels this is for the appointment of designees for the for the committees there's no it's not nothing in there this is for the department of superintendents despite the agent of the board clerk

092of the board deputy clerk and meeting california okay sorry sorry do you so do you still want to ask your questions i have a question thank you okay so i have a motion on the floor in a second all those in favor signify with saying i hi all right opposed okay that the appointees a pass standing committees for the additional organizational items we've talked about three standing committees which were finance legislative and facilities facilities first of all i reckon is this something that we would want to do yes yes okay second i'm gonna be nice and does anyone volunteer for any of these before you're appointed yes ma'am i volunteer for the um finance committee okay i'm open to either and or legislative facilities i think you'd be perfect in facilities anyone then we've got

093somebody else uh that would probably be appropriate yeah that's someone else it would be too yeah okay so we have two there we have one finance volunteer do we have another one mr nelms sure okay great this is running very smoothly and for the legislative uh ms harrison do you know anyone that would volunteer i really do not i'll do it i'll do it okay you'll do it yeah mr hill will you do legislative sure cool thank you so much that would we needed two on each correct yes that's recommended okay now so i'm confused two on each joint each committee finance who's the two on finance that's me dr emily and dwayne okay and then two um i'm just trying to understand the facilities mr holbrook mr leamy gonna do two yeah he's gonna

094do two all right he is the man energizer bunny sweet without the pink shoe all right thank claire are we good okay um dr hicks and mr johnson were representatives for the central virginia governor's school roanoke valley governor's school as liaisons that would report back to the board now that they are no longer here we have a void for those until the new school year correct run through the summer into the new school year do we have any volunteers i'll do the roanoke valley governor's school thank you dr mealy do i have one for lynchburg and central virginia governor school i'll do that one okay thank you mr hill man y'all are easy i appreciate this okay we um wondering what we want to do for the meetings in the month of february march and

095april i know that um and i'm not sure how the feed is coming through tonight of course because i'm not watching it i'm part of it um but i've heard the feed and audio were pretty bad here do we want to continue to stay here or would we want to use susie gibbs at gibson temporarily or another facility temporarily and then possibly go to the different high schools during the summer months when the kids aren't there so make it easier to go in and set everything up well i mean going forward i think i think we need to work towards now getting the high schools set up to host a meeting such as this we need to be moving forward with that now not when we run out of six months here oh by the

096way what's next so i think we need that's something we need to take through we need to so start working on that getting it ready to go okay i'm on that but what about what are you gonna do for february ma'am chairman yes yes ma'am um are we able would the the county be able dr bergen to prepare um suzy g gibson and i understand there's there's facility issues with access and is there anything we can do we have like for example a technology available to put up there we can host a meeting wherever the board would like to have it if i could just address the audio issues in this room uh there was some equipment we didn't have access to last month and i apologize for the terrible audio it's been corrected i

097understand so the audio feed should be just as clear as the bell for folk side as it would have been in any previous meeting uh susie g you know we can meet at gibson anytime you want we we don't have to make any improvements to the building if we start to make improvements to the building by code we would have to bring it up to code for it for ada so as long as we don't invest uh dollars in the auditorium you could hold a meeting in there tomorrow there is some some concern uh that we might have with accessibility but we can remediate that by having people come in on the side entrance uh the greatest concern is there isn't access for handicapped individuals to a restroom inside the building there is a video

098outside the building and up the sidewalk so i see no reason why you couldn't meet susie gibson if that's the world is it ms harrison i was just listening of course to dr bergen's state that the audio here has been looked into and has been hopefully corrected and it's better then i would suggest that we continue to meet here in february okay that would be great okay same to me we're here in february yeah do we want to go ahead and figure out march or just take march and february here we're going to stay here until i think sorry or or is it implied we're going to go until school is out and then mr of we need our three auditoriums ready okay so that actually needs to take place and get started now and

099then as soon as that becomes available then we can shift to a different location okay so we'll plan on meeting back here in february get an update on the sound system from the auditoriums to see what we can do in march yeah yeah and uh does that sound that sound i received confirmation as well that tonight's feed and sound are great okay just get a text too okay okay so but we'll we'll address it on a month-to-month basis is that what we want to do yeah that works for me mr nelson and also uh when we do do the school auditoriums can we do an alternative like a rotation yeah that's i mean right now it's it's kind of difficult on the on our i.t guys folks because they're you know having to scrabble around

100right the objective being let's get the capabilities permanently installed in the high school auditorium so that we can we can do that rotation of meetings among different high schools yes ma'am um i i don't necessarily disagree that what our concern is is that we do have high schools that use their auditoriums as classrooms and in the evening um you know getting toward the time we would meet um and i guess i would want to know too is our i.t team it is just getting the equipment in place the only thing or are we going to be pulling them away from the schools and the students again to set up um if it's if it's established in the building permanently there would be minimal setup required well that's what i'm asking i would assume that but

101i i'd like to hear from mr sexton or somebody with mr dr hoisin 10 regarding you know i don't want to pull them away from their job to do that don't be shy folks and you don't have to answer that now you can get with us next month why don't we do that have them let them do some assessment and see what's feasible to do well and have that part of the auditorium update that we'll get yeah for next month all right figure it out i will just say that a year ago when we investigated this we purchased a travel and sound system that can be set up fairly easily anyway okay but that's that's that's portable let's set something up permanently in each of these auditoriums that that the schools can use when we're

102not using them and do we have the funding for that because i'm wondering what is that going to entail at the various high schools i'm sure that again i go to the um sometimes the difference is at each of the high schools um would we be able to meet the needs at each of the high schools using that would be a mr agler question mr pogba where are you there you are um from my earlier projection uh we are projected to have an indian bounce of about 1.2 so spending some money i don't think this would cost that much so i think if there is additional money to get whatever from the auditorium study was there a breakdown of sound system only we did get some information from from the architects regarding specific questions i

103don't have that information right in front of me but certainly would you give it to us please absolutely i think i think any equipment we set up will all partly need to be mobile because those stages are used for dramatic productions and other class class construction speakers you know all those sorts of things can be mounted and permanent if they're not already in place so those are all the things that we okay well if you can get us several options we'll appreciate it yeah i want to make sure we take advantage to use this as an opportunity to provide our theater you know students sound equipment speakers video i mean let's spend money wisely and we're going to use it for us but also give them state of the art technology to offer their programs

104not only to in-house but to televise it why not if we're going to spend the money on the equipment we at least need to know what that option is to be able to help our products and that's the objective we use it one night a month they can use it you know the rest of them i mean it's just a no-brainer to me any more comments okay so right now we're going to look for an update next month to see what we can do as far as sound and traveling next month we're going to meet here then we'll decide february what we're going to do from watch is that correct we'll be prepared about it too um general right now the practice is um for the agendas every month that i get the agenda on

105wednesday the chair and the vice chair get the agenda on wednesday we have of course that's one day notice um then we have a phone call conference with ms johnson and dr bergen to discuss what's going to be on the agenda in what order and how it's going to be there dr bergen actually suggested that instead of just the chair in the vice chair looking at it make the agenda let you all see a draft agenda prior to to give you time to get back in touch with us um right now mr hill and i would be the committee um and then get in touch with us with any concerns that you might have for the agenda but gives you time ahead of time to have input before so we don't have to make changes

106once it goes live is that something y'all would be interested in i would appreciate that great is that something good okay so that will be our practice and then miss johnson just to get us into the habit of it because it's tough to teach new tricks sometimes um if you just send us a reminder email to let us know i will appreciate an email like i normally do on friday when the agenda goes live the wednesday that it's shared prior to um actually if you can make it to give everybody else time to call us before we meet with dr bergen could you would it be too much to ask to have it ready on monday or tuesday the deadline for staff to get items to me is not until that tuesday so i could

107do it at the end of the day tuesday um as long as there's some understanding that the items will all be there but maybe not necessarily all of the blurbs documentation info that goes along with it but and then that's fine if we just have if we can have a rough outline i think would be fine with rough outline and then understand that the reports will be coming absolutely thank you and this didn't make it on here something that actually miss johnson and i have discussed we talked about the extension of public comment time instead of 25 minutes take it to 40 minutes but instead of three minutes for an individual speaker and five minutes for a group four minutes across the board that way it's easily divisible by the 40 to allow for 10

108speakers is that something that you all would want to implement yeah i've never understood the arithmetic behind that let's be like new math or something you know 25 8 people okay is this something we need to vote on or can we do this by consent um it is a policy i think the details is actually a reg um maybe you could offer some assistance answering that the details that talk about the 25 minute time limit and the individual time limit is a reg it's not a policy i know regs don't require board approval whereas policies do if you could just make if you make a motion uh then they'll that'll authorize changing the wreck to match whatever it is you approve okay so do i have a motion then to change public comment time to

10940 minutes with four minutes um for individual and group there will be no differentiation between [Music] it's actually in the policy and so that would have to be going through the process so guide me we'll do our mistakes there's a motion uh that this is the will of the board so we'll we'll check policy and reg to see if it's permissible without additional steps and if it is we'll bring it back to the board for some more action if it's in policy in your normal processes do a first reading and come bring it back then i would follow that process okay okay i mean so you can expedite it if you want madam jeremiah you could you could wave the first reading and bring it back at the next meeting for approval if the board

110votes to waive the first reading what do you want to do can we suspend the rules and take it for action tonight if you make a motion to adopt the policy i would include the miss sexton if you can tell us the policy number i mean i went back and looked at it because i wasn't positive it actually in the policy does not save the time a reasonable period okay mr hill any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed okay passes next month our public comment time will be 40 minutes okay item 9.02 esba code of conduct for school board members it's already started going around the table it's uh is this accessible to the public on board it's on board okay you can access that on board docs but

111we have an annual code of conduct that we agree to issued by the virginia state bar state board it's the school board association i will get this correct i'll quit getting my legal terms and my school terms confused um do i have a motion to approve motion by miss heresy do i have a second second second by dr mealy any discussion all those in favor signify saying aye all right any opposed emotion passes we'll pass this down the line uh madam chair have a question yes in 9.01 the school board meeting calendar oh we didn't hit that did we yeah what's up it was part of number five okay i didn't know if we had to review it but it just because it says attached we're good okay so we're good on that because it

112was number five mr hagler back on stage supplemental appropriations all righty um you got quite a few supplemental appropriations before you tonight just for explanation um whenever we do a supplemental appropriation that requires the board of supervisors to approve it it's appropriation act so it goes to the government body within our budget the board has the school board has the ability to move money around within each fund but if we move money between funds that would be an action that had to be approved by the board of supervisors so i just wanted to pass that on to you you have supplemental appropriations in front of you tonight uh that went along with my second quarter forecast um in addition to that there is one re-appropriation um this this is the last one that was on

113there that's 22-12 our ending bounce last year was three point one million three million one hundred twelve thousand two dollars and twenty nine cents the request is to reappropriate that money two million dollars to the textbook fund for the adoption of the science and reading and the remaining 1.1 million to go to the school maintenance reserve fund this is typically what we've done we've not usually taken it the textbook in the past we usually put most of it just in the med maintenance reserve this year we're kind of splitting that up and so i wanted to draw attention to that one that is a reappropriation that doesn't go into the operating it's usually the agreement with the board supervisors you use it on one time type of expenditure if you don't put it into the

114operating and create a reoccurring expenditure that has to be supported each and every year in the operating budget but to go over each of the supplementals the first one was 22-3 this is uh cares at esser 2 money and i'll accept 150 000 going into the operating fund really for custodial services and cleaning supplies the bulk of the rest of that money will be in next year's budget so there's a lot of money there i'm only budgeting 150 in this year because i didn't need the rest a lot of that money is going to be used for hvac and we'll budget that into uh for the next year budget so that's 22.3 any questions on that one okay after 3 which was the biggest of the cares act funding that we received over 12 million

11512 million um [Music] moving about 1.8 million into the existing operating fund to cover all those positions i talked about earlier in the budget and the projection and the remaining that money will be budgeted in future years so some of it will go into the 23 to some of the 24 some of it will be operating some of it will be in the maintenance reserve for hvac projects but we don't have to do a supplement on the entire amount tonight it's just really what we need to get through this year and then the rest will be budgeted out in future years this was the last one that came through and the governor uh allocated out to schools and really to deal with hvac systems um these these monies will go and the four projects we

116did over the summer qualify for this so this money would go to recoup the money that we had committed other funds to do and we can apply this fund for that so this is uh this is a a supplemental appropriation for that last funding stream and all these projects were done over the summer and we'd apply this towards that and get reimbursed for that and bring that money down all those projects were done i believe out of the uh state school maintenance reserve fund not in the operating fund so the money would flow into there after we uh get reversed and that would be the entirety of this this this grant 22-6 title one i think i spoke about title one in the first quarter forecast we had large um carryover bounces in title one

117um you're only allowed to carry over 15 percent and so we had to show a plan that we were going to spend down that money and so really each of the title one schools has additional positions in title one this year to spend that bounce down but it's a one-time spin down that was not put into the budget um so we had to do a supplemental spend that money down to comply with the title one regulation and get our and get our um ending balance down below that fifteen percent mr hagler so i just wanna make sure i understand i think you do so that money went to the title one schools yes ma'am yep and each in each principal instructional part department went and talked to the principals and asked how they wanted to

118use that but we and we allocated it based upon the allocation methodology percentage-wise within the grant and then they were able to hire additional staff just for this year 21st century we applied for a competitive grant 21st century for liberty middle school we didn't know if we were going to be awarded that until after the budget was passed we were awarded that budget so um we were awarded about 194 thousand dollars because the award came out later in the year we didn't get the program up and running right away got it up and running about september october so i estimate we'll spend about 86 000 of that grant this year and then we'll budget the rest for the following year so this is a 21st century grant and very happy and pleased that we were

119awarded that for liberty middle school 22-8 we had an incident have a high school or some flooding and uh so we've spent the money uh fixing that this is the reimbursement uh from our insurance company so we're going to recognize that revenue coming in to pay and offset those costs for the flood damage that we have at jefferson forest 22-9 this was in regards to the bus that i mentioned earlier electric bus we are waiting for delivery we placed this order when we were awarded the grant i think back in august delivery is expected in march so hope it comes in this year and so we can finish this transaction and move forward and hopefully have some electric buses for the board and for others to see how they work and for next year we

120are expecting two of them and we expect those in march and this would be to receive money from the eq under this grant and then turn around and pay the vendor for the increased cost of the bus and also the charging stations so it's really all paid for the additional cost above a diesel bus is all paid for the charging station and the additional cost charging stations will be located at each school and i think the intent is to set up the charging stations at the central bus garage and to run these buses within um the liberty zone to see how they operate how long and for us to get a gauge of what we can do with them and how well they operate there are other grants and stuff that we'll pursue in the

121future and push it out to other schools but this is really kind of our first jump into electric buses okay what's the range spec on on an electric bus for you know they tell you what it is but until you get it out there and see it that's why we want to do it where it's in the short term holes what's that 110 miles okay um i mean i i think we're rolling a dice to mr hill's point if we just have one charging station i think we need to have additional charging stations if it's going to be you know running a loop um hooking up the buses to a charging stations there's multiple ways to do that there's pretty big plants that you can hook up 10 buses to very costly to do those

122but these are these will be single charging stations from what i know and each each bus will have a charging station so we'll have two charging stations and two buses is the long-term plan to eventually migrate away from dinosaur burning buses to electric buses or what's as the technology gets there i think some of our longer routes it would be a push to have a bus do uh two runs or even four runs in the day and get by with the charge but they're getting a lot more than they used to five years ago so as technology gets better but from what we're hearing from our vendor people are migrating to the electric buses very quickly so more to follow again yeah more to follow we'll have to see how they're performing and actually this

123is us looking at them and evaluating what's the savings what's the additional cost and and and and how do you go forward and what's what's the delta between uh diesel bus and uh electric spots if you look at the the supplemental is the differential it's 247 000 okay gotcha we're getting a diesel bus for about 100 000 and you're getting uh electric costs about 350. you know the people that we're comparing this to do they live in like rural areas like we have where we have a lot of hills and stuff like that or is it all flat i think it's you get the maximum amount of that battery i think it's first started in bigger um more cities and things like that it's pushing out to more a role but i don't i don't

124know many doing you know some of our runs that we might have down in houston i don't hear anybody doing that yet um but as the technology gets here we'll have to look into that there is a differential there's a large cost for these two the grants paid for but long term is the fuel savings and the maintenance savings going to help pay for the differential there's a lot of looking into that that has to be done well there's an increased power consumption too the car has been discovered as well so all that has to be looked at and obviously we'll be analyzing that but that's a lot of analysis that still has to be done do not say we're committed to moving to this yet these are our first two that we can take

125do we know the life span of the electric motions versus the our current buses that we have we run buses for 15 years and they do quite well and then we rotate them off they might stay another two or three years for just emergency we're expecting the same from these the battery life we'll see on that because the battery is the biggest cost on this and so if the battery dies before eight years you got to replace that and that's probably a hundred thousand dollars well you're probably gonna have to you probably have to replace them all at the same time if they're all installed at the same time so all that has this is us taking a look at a grant where we got two that way we could say when did these batteries

126die and where are they gonna be replaced you know sales person can tell you how long it's gonna last but in actuality i wanna see what's happening before you really move in that commitment so we need to look at this ourselves instead of just taking what they're telling us all right fair enough good questions same that i have i'm not totally convinced but we can look at it with the grants and have to take a look um 22-10 um this is a federal security grant this was a grant we awarded last year but we have three years to spend it um we're estimating we're going to spend another 60 000 on that grant this year and then we'll spend the remainder of it next year so we'll budget the remainder in next year but this

127was a three-year grant which is spending down dr deus is heading that up in adding extra security into each of our schools and the one i mentioned earlier is that probably two weeks ago we were awarded a security grant from the state uh so that was not in our budget that's 166 thousand dollars and so this would allow us to go ahead and spend that money in this current year on the projects that we applied for for the state i think we were quite surprised that they awarded us that much we went after as much as we could a lot of times you get forty thousand dollars this time we got quite a bit of it so i don't know if less people apply or our applications just look better than others but uh yeah

128i think that there's more money what's that i believe they just printed more money [Music] and um that's the supplementals and then also the one i mentioned earlier was the reappropriation of the remaining balance from last year and all these will go to the board of supervisors i'll be at that meeting on the 24th and the board of approved zombies any more questions on any of those do we need to take motion to allow you to do that or are you just i think we've allowed a motion to pass all the resolutions as presented i don't know if you need to read each one at the very bottom i've kind of talked through each one here so it's on the record and so i think you can pass those uh the one i think the

129one i would really prefer that you may be passed separately to read is the the reappropriation one a little bit different than the supplemental because you're asking whether the board of supervisors to re-appropriate the money from the last year that was left over do i have a nation uh matt chairman if i understand it correctly where uh i make a motion that we asked the board of supervisors to reappropriate funds from last year and you you want those two separate emotions correct yes i think that's what i understood do i have a second second by mr nelms of any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed motion carries what's your name madam chairman i make a motion that we adopt the rest of the resolutions as presented i have a

130motion by dr miele do i have a second second but ms harrison any discussion all those in favor signify saying hi any opposed motion carries and then chairman i just spoke there they are supplemental appropriations not resolutions miss uh johnson may want to correct that as we discussed earlier we were talking about the core values yeah hey no i just wanted to skip that dr dillas i don't want to talk about gases it costs too much right you may want to skip that one um each year over the last many years we have made a practice of soliciting bids for fuel prices so we can lock in on a competitively bid price it can be a constant bin in the budget planned around and helped make our practice better we found a lot of success

131with that this year we added propane to that list we've always used some propane in the upcoming year we will use more because many of our new hvac systems are running on propane rather than fuel oil just as a cleaner more efficient system so um we added so we so we have unleaded gasoline and diesel fuel heating oil and propane in this um that we solicited bids on turbulent times in this in this sector and so we didn't really know what to expect and uh however we did get proposals today from two companies uh when we open we open these bids about three o'clock this afternoon so we can get the most current pricing from the vendors um blenwood oil and gas bid on propane only james river solutions that were working with them in

132the current year bid on the other items the heating oil and diesel fuel and gasoline only did not bid on propane their beds are listed in board docks i've highlighted in yellow of course the below bids although in this case they are the only bids and just and so we ask for you to approve to approve these these bids and allow us to enter into this agreement with these two companies for a calendar year starting february 1st just as a some context to this the price we've been paying for the last year has been 1.67 per gallon for diesel fuel and if this is approved it will be 2.68 about a dollar increase by 60 percent increase i don't think that's a surprise to anyone it's a big number but it's not surprising based on

133what we've seen we've had an extremely good price for a number of months the 268 is very close to what is currently the rack price because i checked on that today just to see we if we didn't adopt this and just went with what the market price was it's very close to this and there's no guarantee in the future it wouldn't go up or down you know but but this would give us something to plan around the propane price quoted is also slightly higher than the current propane rank rack price but it's not substantially higher it's fairly close so we recommend approving this just as a so that we can lock into this price work with these companies and have that you know have that budgeted number for starting february 1st and be happy to

134answer any questions if there are some before a motion miss joe yeah so mac based on new prices run rate and old prices what kind of impact to the budget are we looking at go forward i'll have that for the board when we get in the budget time we just got these prices in the day but i think we have our fuel consumption and i'll plug these new prices in compare what i have in budget okay and we'll have to it will have an impact on the budget i just have nothing it doesn't change the price i'm just trying to understand what it is it will have an impact as well it's going to have a huge transportation we'll have two buses who won't use it that's right so any reason why we only have

135two bidders i mean any feedback from other companies of why they're not participating that is disappointing anytime you put out bids that have have limited submissions i think this has to do with the volatility of the market i think it has to do with demand the ability to to to what these companies do is lock in a price also so you know it's very difficult for them to do that and be particularly competitive so i think i just think there's it's an uncomfortable place for companies to be in at this point and um you know we're pleased to have gotten one company we've been working with and another local business who are interested in doing this for us so but you're right and we of course wanted more you always want to compare those numbers

136i'm adam chairman yes judgement um dr dewis since we're going with the same company if i understood you correctly how are we going to address the lack of deliveries that we've had and the empty tanks that we've had using this company so i think i think this company has been reliable and we've understood when they haven't been able to meet to meet a deadline we understand why to be honest it's some of the same issues that in the labor market impact on workforce all of that that we all are facing um at huddleston elementary we do have a tank a larger fuel tank on order so that when we do get an order it lasts longer and just mediates some of the up and down that you know a run on fueling will put on

137it we'll follow that up quickly with a larger tank at stake i say quickly we'll follow it up with another tank at standard middle as well that's larger so that we can address just having more on hand and less frequent deliveries i think that will be more stable for our drivers and for fire and rescue these are fuel those tanks are taking a long time to get delivered after you asked the last time i've had we looked at this and this tank is months in the making and delivery um and then it'll be installed as soon as soon as we're able to get it on hand so meeting all environmental requirements it's not as fast as we want but it's on the way so i think those things will help i think this company having

138to establish relationship with them knowing who to call when and how that works it will be will be um effective and we're still letting drivers know uh whenever there isn't an outage absolutely as soon as we can yeah thank you so much kind of question are the buses allowed to get fuel from uh you know a convenience store or in a situation like that but in an emergency situation we would maybe we would we would work something out another vendor might might bring a load if we haven't gotten to that point and uh we have because we have promised um in these year-long contracts right um a certain expected um usage you know we try to honor that yeah okay any further discussion hey do we have a motion to accept your wins madam chairman

139i make a motion that we accept the fuel bids as presented to us by dr dukes i have a motion by ms harrison do i have a second second i actually heard mr leaning second by mr lamy we'll call for a vote all those in favor oh i'm sorry discussion which we've already had they'll call for a vote all those in favor signify by saying aye aye anyone opposed it's after the fuelbeds pass now we'll move on to the adoption of the bcps mission and core values dr bergen did you have anything to say uh yes but i'm sure this is just a follow-up to the information item earlier this evening we explained the reward in the community the process we've been undergoing the last several months in the creation of a new strategic framework

140that would go into place next school year so we're doing this in phasing so tonight we would ask for the board's consideration of uh if we're proposing that we update our vision and mission statements and maintain the current core value statements if you see the screen in front of you and to the to the viewing gallery the screen above the board members this is what it might look like so veteran county public schools bcps building citizens promoting success would be the vision statement for veteran county and the mission statement would be bedford county public schools will provide equal opportunities to enable all students to think critically collaborate create communicate and become productive citizens so the word equivalent will be changed to equal the core values would remain the same uh except we would update the

141word uh well we actually if you can scroll somewhat like whoever has the mouse there in the center it's focus on students rather than focus on learners this is what we're proposing for the board's consideration it would replace the current vision and mission statements of empowering learners for future success as a vision statement and the current mission statement that lists five bulletin points as to what we hope to accomplish for our learners this would again go into effect next school year and these statements would be the underpinning of the phase two of our work which has developed goal statements that we'll bring back to you next month and then after adoption of goal statements we'll come back to you with uh strategies resources and measurable outcomes and then it'll all be packaged together and you'll

142take one formal vote on the entire strategic framework in june to be implemented july 1st so any questions from the board runners about what we're proposing or any concerns about no i think it's a great job do i have a motion then to accept the mission statement proposed vision mission and core value statement with the change of changing the word equitable to equal do i have a motion and well that was already changed on this document but gotcha but learners to students my chairman i make a motion that we accept the adoption or adopt the bcps vision mission statement and make the core values and make the corrections of equitable to equal and learner to students i have a motion by dr miele do i have a second second second by mr lamy any further

143discussion good call for a vote all those in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed motion passes health institute and safety mitigation strategies dr burton yes madam chair this item is on the agenda at the request of multiple board members we're about halfway through the school year so we have staff on hand tonight to address any questions the board may have about our current health and safety mitigation procedures and to accept any direction from the school board on any changes you would like to implement in our health and safety mitigation okay um i think our best course of action if there's any change somebody let me know but our senior procedure is to read the motion or call for a motion have a second then open up for discussion and i think we can

144follow more follow that guideline okay so i have a motion regarding the health and safety mitigation strategies madam chair yes a move that based on a determination by the school board that requiring the universal masking of students is not practicable that effective february 1st 2022 the school board suspend its current masking requirement for all k through 12 students wearing a mask while present at school or school sponsored extracurricular activities masks are optional by parental and or student choice i have a motion by mr gill do i have a second second by mr holbrook discussion another discussion anything um i just want to make sure um so i do want to understand um for discussion um dr bergen how many uh students withdrew from before county public schools after making the mass mandate 385 withdrawals of

145students to homeschool or private school occurred right around the time of the board's motion back in august to require universal masking i i couldn't say with certainty that all 385 withdrew because of the actions of the board and that policy but i think it's a reasonable assumption to say that the vast majority of those may have withdrawn at that time out of their concerns and answer your question was 385. all right um how many uh accommodation requests were granted during that time yeah in addition to those 385 students we received 272 requests for accommodations from universal masking so an answer question mr nelson it's 272 across the school today so find those numbers it's in round figures just north of 650 students or about seven percent of our population expressed some concern about the policy

146of the board is that 272 requests or 272 approved requests 272 approved requests out of how many um i'm studying my notes here mr elena we had 52 students who uh there were 241 so is the total that were originally proposed and act and there were 40 52 students uh that we were not able to initially have agreement about mask accommodation so we had more conversation with those families an additional 31 of those 52 then accepted the same accommodations as the first five of those 52 requests withdrew the home school enroll their children in virtual virginia including an additional 16th child enrolled in virtual virginia and came to school for their literal virginia instruction so it's a grand total of 240 272. okay so what you're telling me is that 272 approved correct correct what

147you're telling me is all 272 approved yes okay thank you you're welcome yeah you know it has do you think that the mask has has caused the staff to be pulled from their primary duties you know trying to regulate all these you know the rules and regulations yeah it's it's certainly been challenging for our students and our administrators we're you know years into into this covet 19 and people from weary uh as you walk through any one of our schools you'll you'll frequently see students who are needing to be reminded to wear their mask as they were intended to be to answer your questions so there's some amount of time being spent in the classroom by teachers and by administrators and redirecting students to to follow the policy mr lambie so if i understand you

148correctly um distilling it down what what you're saying is that you believe that instructional time is being taken away from the teachers by having to be the masters there's there's definitely some challenges uh for our staff yes i couldn't speak for all of our teachers uh but sure i'm i'm sure there are teachers that that are having to use instructional time to redirect students okay thank you any further questions okay i'll call for a vote all those in favor of would you read the motion again please mr hill just sure for clarification move that based on the determination by the school board that require the universal masking of students is not practicable that effective february 1st 2022 the school board suspend its current masking requirement for all k-12 students wearing masks while present at school

149or school sponsored extracurricular activities masks are optional by parental and or student choice all those in favor signify by saying i opposed no no miss johnson will you please pull the board ms harrison no mr hill yes mr holbrook yes mrs kirby yes mr lamy yes dr maylie no mr nouns yes you guys have it with five madam chair yes mr i have another motion move that effective february 1st 2022 the school board suspend its current practice of contact tracing for students and modify its practices accordingly in the division safety and mitigation plan i have a motion by mr hill do i have a second second second by mr holbrook any discussion okay we'll call for a vote all those in favor signify the saying hi uh opposed no miss johnson will you hold the

150board miss harrison no mr hill yes mr holbrook yes mrs kirby yes mr lamy yes dr amelie no mr nelms yes you guys have it with five thank you madam chair yes i have a motion a move that all of the remaining health and safety mitigations continue to be implemented to include requiring individuals who are physically ill to isolate masking on school buses per federal requirements masking of staff per osha and vosh regulations daily parental health screenings for all students daily health screenings for staff and visitors enhanced daily cleaning of classrooms and restrooms regular hand washing and respiratory etiquette and physical distance seen of three to six feet to the greatest extent practicable i have a motion by mr hill do i have a second second by mr nelms any discussion i just want to

151make sure i understand so we will retain the maps on buses students will be required to wear masks on buses to and from school or any activities and that staff will still be required to wear masks correct [Music] is guys keep it down okay but we can ask the question i thought the supreme court just shot down yeah that's the that's the test vaccine so i have a motion by mr hill i have a second by mr nelms we'll call for a vote all those in favor signify with saying uh i didn't want to speak for you but i thought i heard you second yeah okay i just want to make sure okay we're good yeah okay all those opposed and passes okay move on to item number 10 superintendent report dr bargin yes medicare

152so despite you know having an extended winter break where we didn't have students and now well a terrific winter break that our students and staff could be with families and loved ones we still have plenty to celebrate since our last time that we were together i'll ask our technology staff today to put up the presentation first of all congratulations to forest middle school they were selected for the plant of the moon challenge this is a global science experiment learning activity and inspirational project-based learning challenge to see who can grow the best crops using lunar regolith simulant middle school will submit a report detailing their experiment set up the parameters and the results to help nassau scientists understand how to use lunar soil to provide to provide nutritious crops for future missions to the moon all

153participants with completed projects will be invited to showcase their work at a virtual symposium with nasa scientists program executives and other dignitaries and there will be a best in show award presented to teams with the best experiments in a variety of categories we'll certainly bring back our fingers across for forest middle school we'll bring back celebratory congratulations after they are chosen best uh plant pitch for the moon as we shared earlier tonight in our public recognition of students and staff we just couldn't be any more proud of big island elementary school for their selection of just one of only two schools in all of the commonwealth of virginia to be designated as a national esea distinguished school for the 2021 school year based on their exceptional student performance and academic growth for two consecutive years

154the staff as we shared earlier in this evening is being recognized during the 2022 esea conference being held on february 16th to the 19th in new orleans congratulations to mr bliss and the entire big island staff someone advancing the slides forward oh we're having a technical we're having a how about the enter button does the enter button thank you very much congratulations jefferson forest high school their one act version of shakespeare's the comedy of errors was named vhsl class 4 state champions this is jf's third state championship in a row you'll recognize some of these names from earlier recognitions apprentice patrick carter skye evans sarah lynn locks and michael willis swept the outstanding act of recognition which has never happened before way to go jf thespians has been mentioned several times by some of our

155public speakers and others congratulations to our new school board members last month just prior to the winter break marcus hill district 4 representative was sworn in for his second term on the school board while matt holbrook district 2 and duane nelms district 3 took their first dose of office with judge james updike presiding at the bedford county circuit courtroom there are many other elected officials and county administrators including myself and several other board members who are in attendance congratulations to these two gentlemen and thank you for your service to our school division and lastly as you may be aware governor northam has proclaimed this week january 8-14 that's virginia school principal appreciation week i had the opportunity earlier this week during our regularly scheduled monthly meeting to extend mice and see your thanks and appreciation

156to our hard-working principals and i know that you board members and you our parents and our entire community are appreciative of the leadership that our principals provide so if you've not done so already i'd encourage everyone in attendance tonight everyone viewing this meeting please take a moment to let your principal know just how much you appreciate their leadership matt i'm sure that concludes my remarks thank you dr murray we'll move on to comments and concerns from school board members and we'll start with dr mealy okay um i know we're not supposed to do this i just can't help it thanks to all of our principals they have an incredibly hard job you just can't imagine if you've never been in that seat how many decisions you make in a day and how many times you

157come in and you just think oh gosh i have three hours today i can actually get some office work done and something blows up and that time goes away so they have an incredibly difficult job and i truly appreciate everything they do um i would like to encourage any of the public that's listening staff members and especially our school board members um to participate in some of the focus groups that are currently going on i participated in one today um i didn't really say i think you only said one thing somebody asked me a question i was just there really to listen but it was so great to hear um the ideas for the the future goals of our county from parents and from former graduates so i would just um encourage you to participate

158there there have to be at least 10 or 12 left to go and you just go to the information dr bergen sent us with regard to his evidence for his evaluation the link is right there just open it up and you can click on any one of those to attend on the date and time that's indicated it's just great and i think it'll be so beneficial as we redesign our goal statements to address our future needs so it was just a really nice experience today and staff i have to compliment you it was really well done um it moved along you didn't sit there like you know it was in fact we ran out of time um we got into or i didn't but the group got into such a good discussion so i would

159just encourage you to do that um i'd also like to welcome mr holbrook and mr nelms and mr nelms and i'll be doing financial stuff together so i'm looking forward to that um um miss kirby i just had one thing for you too when we get emails to the board you're gonna are you gonna continue to answer them on behalf of the board yes ma'am i'll follow the policies that we've established okay so just so the to revisit it for the public if you want to email us individually if you want a specific answer from me then you have to email me if you email all of us then ms kirby will answer on on on behalf of all of us um and that goes for anybody if you want to speak to mr nelms

160or mr leaning then you would want to address the email to them i also want to thank mr edwards for his recognition of the big island family and the big island family oh my gosh that's like the biggest um honor in the whole world and and i just think you know takes a a whole school to to do what they did it's it's not just the teachers or just the principal or just anybody it's the cafeteria workers who make sure that that food is there and the custodians to make sure you have a clean environment and the clerical staff and uh the paraprofessionals and you know just so so much congratulations to to all those people um and just a short continued thank you to our staff and our students i know this is an

161incredible time that we're working through and i just appreciate all that everyone is doing thank you madam chairman thank you dr maylie ms harrison thank you ma'am chairman uh again i want to echo welcome to uh mr nails and to mr hobo for joining us as school board members like to have you guys on board with us um and also again this is probably my fifth or tenth time that i've said to big allen elementary school how just so very proud um that we all are for what a just a wonderful accomplishment this is just really huge for this school and for our county as a whole and so again just congratulations to the entire staff the community the parents the students what an honor and i am just so so very proud so very

162proud and also um just uh another shout out to the principals i posted something on my facebook page regarding principal appreciation week again to echo dr meanley the the work of all educators is certainly one that is uh can be difficult that can certainly be a challenge it's very rewarding uh as a principal you're kind of set out there sometimes on an allen all by yourself and uh i just wanted to say how very much i appreciate um the principals here in bedford county in our school district i know they each work extremely hard and so thank you for just a job well done and you deserve every every bit of recognition and and honor that's for sure i want to give a shout out to staten river high school girls basketball coach and team

163coach kim um jones i along with i'm sure all board members and community members are just so extremely proud of these girls and their efforts and all that they've done the tenacity the hard work it is just really really awesome so congratulations to you all and keep it up keep it up i'm rooting for you uh and i'm also looking forward to attending the cavalier theaters production on alice in wonderland uh looking forward to that this weekend hopefully the snow won't interfere but i am making plans to take my granddaughter with me to see that so i'm looking forward to that um i also wanted to um to oh i wanted to tell the teachers my teacher friends and and others out there that i'm rooting for snow so i've got lots of snowballs and

164snow globes and snowmen around my home and i plan on putting some cubes of ice you know where that goes the night before so i will be doing that because i am hoping that we're going to get this snow because i know how much the teachers and students appreciate the snow and having snow dance so that's all that i have okay thank you mr goldberg mr nelms um i don't really have any comments i'm just still learning and gaining knowledge and wisdom from you all so uh just appreciate everybody all the support um just wanna just say i'm extremely humbled to be here thank you mr lamy um welcome to mr holbrook mr navs especially you mr knowlms says now i won't be lonely on the front row during photographs shout out to big island

165rock keep up the good work i'm glad to see we're able to get a couple of things done that have been kind of rocking my shoe over the years uh first thing uh well main thing being the public comment extension i mean we we should be listening to what you say and taking it to heart and this gives us opportunity a greater opportunity for that to happen and then um basking optional one step closer to getting back to real life that's all i got thank you mr laney miss jail welcome dwayne welcome matt i'm certainly thankful that district 2 in district 3 put you here [Applause] i wanted to also mention jf cavalier alice in wonderland go see it tonight through saturday based on what i'm seeing sunday's 3 p.m showing has been changed to

166saturday 3 p.m so still an extra show that you can go uh go see um reminder of community zoom meetings links are on the social media pages as well and i've already had somebody ask me today i did join the call i was only able to do it for about 15 minutes and then they said dr maylie that you joined afterwards and they're like was that on purpose that you dropped and not remember no you know i had a note on my refrigerator and of course what did i do walk by to get water oh my gosh and it was about 15 minutes late so i wanted to say that was not on purpose um stanton river girls much love and respect to coach jones and the lady eagles not only do they play basketball

167but they are a community they support each other they make each other better if you haven't been around coach jones and those girls i highly recommend go see a game go be part of that atmosphere that culture that she's driving um i can't say enough about her and those girls one thing doc that miss harrison forgot to mention she mentioned the ice cubes but from what i mean told you're supposed to turn your pajamas backwards so i wanted to make sure everybody had that for a good snow day so just a reminder parents are welcome in our school and that policy is in place i'm not sure i had a staff member remind me tonight parents are welcome and so we want you in our schools so please don't think there's a policy keeping you

168out i need you to hear that loud and clear that parents are welcome so um i'm going to remain here afterwards i've heard lots of people comment that you know i i'm glad and thankful we're going to extend that time for community public comments i'll be here i'm going to stay if you have questions you have comments i will be here until i talk to each whoever wants to speak or has questions or comments etc so i just wanted to offer that i'm sure other board members will do the same and then i have to say this because i i took the challenge from dr mealy but i invite anyone and everyone i want to use the word everyone uh to go to the doe.virginia.gov website where you will see the banner virginia is for

169learners right but you have to read on as to why no no no no you can't make you have to up why they say that i knew they said it but that's not what we're using it for mr lamey always used to say by the time it gets here you sound like a broken record and and so here goes skips and and the breaks um welcome mr work welcome mr nels good to have you on board um welcome back mr hill couldn't imagine without you thank you at this point um and i want to thank everyone here for electing me as chair um appreciate your trust in me and be patient with me while i still learn the ins and outs um again i'm going to echo everyone congratulations to b island and all the

170accomplishments that we recognize tonight and hope they all keep on doing great things um we appreciate every single principal out there um principals assistant principals i know you're going through a lot especially now and we do appreciate the work you do um [Music] what it's interesting to me i'm sure most everybody in here does social media at some point when you go back and you look at your memories from a year ago five years ago one year ago around this time we were fighting for the kids to have the right to play sports and for the right to parent for the right of parents to choose to match their children it's taken us a year but we've gotten here i am respectful of covet i am glad that we are we decided to keep the

171other mitigating factors in there um but i'm glad that we have our choice um i go in ms harrison i'm glad she brought it up and mr hill mentioned her um coach jones at sand river she's awesome she really is awesome and that group of girls and on top of that i want to say congratulations to the 2021 hall of fame inductees at stanton river i attended that ceremony and it's good to see people coming back and living my mother used to call your high school days your glory days and it was wonderful to see them coming back and living their glory days and um i just want to follow up with one question and if someone could remind me i know we had talked about um the possibility of looking at bonds for redistricting

172when can we get some type of update on that well we'll engage the new facilities committee in that conversation and come ask them to participate in that conversation come back to the full board with them great thank you so much i have nothing further and i know it's before 10 o'clock but you know we can break a rule tonight do i have a motion to i have a adjourn by mr hill do i have a second thank you second by ms harrison all those in favor signify by saying ah meetings adjourned