School Board Meeting 8/12/2021 - 5:00 PM

001[Music] um discussions i probably wouldn't do it i'd like to call to order this august meeting of the bedford county school board johnson would you please call the roll mr johnson here mrs kirby here mrs harrison here dr hicks yeah mr hill here mr lamy here dr miley here mr chairman you have a forum excellent thank you ma'am we have a motion to approve tonight's agenda mr chairman yes sir mr lim uh before we do that i ask that we waive the 25 minute public comment limitation tonight of course you do okay the mrlini is requesting that we um deviate from school word policy and waive the 25 time limit board members what are your thoughts that's jim i think we have a lot of business to uh take care of tonight and we had

002a long meeting on uh july 29th and gave parents an ample opportunity to voice their opinions on asking any of the subjects so i think we should stick to the agenda i agree i support that okay i agree with mr laney i'm with mr lamey i mean you're right we did hear a lot of feedback but it appears that the majority of the board didn't listen and so i think mr mr chairman would you please bring this support meeting to order yes um so we'll get right back to you in a second so we certainly appreciate everyone and your attendance and your participation but while the board is conducting business please refrain from speaking um we will give you opportunity to speak but for now please listen while the board is conducting business mr hill

003the other question i have around the agenda is i had requested a larger location and i know at least one other board member had requested that and as we can see we're meeting here in this small conference room is there a reason why we were not able to meet at a larger location yes sir we with today being the second day of school and the auditorium being an active classroom space students being on campus there were concerns about that about the time that it would need to take away from supporting direct instruction to set up the room and other concerns uh regarding uh security that we decided to continue to hold the meeting here who is we we would need me in consultation with um with administration so administration said that they could not use

004they could not set it up for us to use the facility no they would have difficulty doing that okay so so back to my original request regarding the 25-minute public comment invitation with that um we have a full list tonight and um if any speakers don't show up we can accommodate other speakers is that a yes or no that doesn't help okay thank you great so do we have a motion then to approve the agenda so moved have a motion by dr hicks to approve the agenda do we have a second second second by miss harrison any other discussion not call for a vote all those in favor please say hi hi all those opposed no no all right mrs johnson please pull the board is harrison yes dr hicks yes mr hill no mr

005johnson yes this is kirby no mr lee me no you dramely have it with yes or stupid you guys have it before thank you ma'am all right you have a motion to go into closed session mr chairman i move we'll go into closed session pursuant to the code of virginia section 2.2-37-11 a1 to discuss the assignment appointment performance this one and release of contract for specific school board employees and pursuant to the code of virginia section 2.2-37-11 a8 for consultation with legal counsel retained by the school board for legal advice concerning the freedom of freedom of information act and coven 19 mitigation strategies thank you so we have a promotion by ms kirby to go into closed session we have a second all those opposed the board is now in closed session mhm um [Music]

006is [Music] dr now out of closed session ms johnson would you please certify the closing where the beverage county school board has convened a closed meeting on this week pursuant to an affirmative recorded vote in accordance with the provisions of the virginia freedom of information act and where section 2.2-3712-d if the code of virginia requires a certification by this school board that such close meeting was conducted in conformity with virginia law now therefore be it result 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 conveniently closed meeting excuse me in the motion

007convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered yes yes yes yes yes yes thank you all right there being no action items to come in a closed meeting tonight we will move on to section 3.01 updates on student enrollment staffing and facilities executive staff dr bergen dr deuce is going to lead up and we have a presentation for the viewing public on the screen behind the chair and the board members it's been uploaded into fort knoxville follow along as well well we finished our second day of school today and we wanted to take a moment to just give an update on our enrollment staffing facility issues and be able to to share that sort of information we're going to review where we stand in our district with regard to enrollment staffing transportation and facilities

008as we start have started school this week and then of course at the end we'll have plenty of opportunity for questions about specific items today our student enrollment student information system reported that we had 8684 enrolled students in kindergarten through 12th grade our projection is for 8 851 that you may remember seeing last november uh when when he presented um we are pleased that uh while um you can see a decline in enrollment over time with these numbers from 2018 to the present that we're nearing projection for this year and um it's not a typical to start with fewer students on day one than we have after a couple weeks of school so we anticipate that we'll get get closer to that projection you got each day as we go forward all right before i

009start good evening board members i want to start off by thanking the hr and talent development team for all their hard work and dedication to getting all the positions filled in bedford county they have gone above and beyond working over to get people in place for the first day we have hired 74 new teachers 37 of which are zero year teachers i'm happy to report that we are 99 filled at this time we need 10 additional teachers we need three english and those are due to reassignments to like learning coach and itrt within the division one resignation that we received on august 9th we need one science teacher due to a reassignment one math teacher who went to virtual virginia in its hard field position one ecsc teacher which is a hard to full position

010two gifted and two elementary teachers one due to reassignment and one was added late on august 2nd due to enrollment all positions were ready to go for the first day with long-term subs in place most of these positions actually have certified content sub long term in their assignments we've hired additionally we've hired four assistant principals six principals seven positions of school leadership directors executive directors and specialists twelve of these leadership positions have been reassigned staff and five were outside hires we have also hired three nurses two psychologists five counselors and fourteen paraprofessionals there are still needs for additional staff for cafeteria bus drivers maintenance substitute paraprofessionals and nurses we are making it work in these areas but we are still understaffed i'll now turn it back over to dr dewis thank you this has been

011a busy summer for our transportation department as part of our annual replacement cycle we purchased 14 new school buses this year we anticipate that two of them will be electric for the first time we've been successful in applying for grant funds to cover the costs beyond those of a standard diesel bus these buses along with their charging stations will be in place this winter we think in this first step into use of electric buses we hope to see budget savings uh in our fuel line and a greener approach to transportation as we dip our toe into that water we've moved the start of the elementary instructional day back 10 minutes to allow more drivers to drive both elementary and secondary routes as we discussed previously this change along with some routing efficiencies and some driver

012hires has held off the worst effects of what is still a driver shortage we haven't had to take more drastic steps than that this will be our first full year of implementing an automated routing system that promises to improve access to route information for school staff as well as families and when fully operational the system will email parents with route changes or if buses are running late due to a bus accident or some other reason it'll give staff and schools quick access to ground information and allow the district to improve routing efficiency we continue to work with the bedford police department to plan for a speed enforcement camera at the bedford elementary school zone which is a particularly tricky one up on burke's hill while that and that's still being being implemented negotiated and so

013the start date has yet to be determined summer's also been productive for the folks in our district working on facility maintenance we've completely replaced the hvac systems at four schools this summer we're beginning the design of new systems at six additional schools uh as well um that will probably be completed next summer we anticipate we've begun a duct cleaning cycle and cleaned the hvac ducts at four schools this summer a process that will continue each year we've removed old carpet and replaced it largely with vinyl tile at five schools and the picture here shows forest middle school nearing during the work there you can see how much brighter that that hallway of the original building is than than it was before and much easier to clean we're nearing completion of a study of the stanton

014river high school and liberty high school auditoriums that will inform us of the feasibility and cost estimate for upgrades to those facilities we should have that information within a few weeks all this was completed while also responding to 479 other work orders for facility maintenance needs in june and july so at this time on any of these topics or other opening of school related topics i'd like to ask if board members have questions that's dr mealy first yes i have uh several um the um liberty and staten river auditorium study we had i think if i remember correctly discussed whether or not we would be able to use any coveted money since those were being used as classrooms do we have an answer for that yet um in looking at uh the hvac projects we

015already have program for the cares act money um in the escalation and prices on that we're seeing 25 30 even 50 escalation those prices um don't believe there will be much money left to allocate towards the auditoriums so um if there's more money at the end that's left we'll have to put it to some other projects but i don't think it'll be as substantial as we're hoping for uh because of the escalation in prices and dr jews i have some questions about the um new software for the buses um i visited um several schools on the first day of school and and certainly there were some problems with that um and i would like to say upfront that you know no first day runs without any problems um having done quite a few of them

016in my life um so but i i did hear from many parents and employees um can you just tell me how that was um rolled out to everybody did they when did they get information regarding this and did they get any training regarding it that sort of thing we um we were ambitious and uh employment implementing this uh electronic routing system it's something we've been been trying to put into place for a long time um what we anticip we didn't share information with parents regarding bus routes the way we traditionally have in that we've placed large maps on walls and and charts with bus stops on wall so that parents at open house can see that because we knew that the system would email parents their routes and we did that around the same time

017period what we found however is not everyone got that email and so there were really too many people who didn't and we certainly apologize for um for that um we i think we understand why that was so we can fix that going forward um and in the meantime we've we've posted that route information and communicated it to parents so that they have it now and i think today was much smoother than yesterday when did employees and administrators get this information um late before the school year started there there wasn't a large lead time for training and we've been continuing to work with uh both office staff and principals for how to to get access and use it did we do any sort of trial run with it to see if it worked was there not

018enough time to do that why did we not do it we didn't because we were we were trying to get it ready for the start of school and and we could have done better with a lot with longer lead time to question thank you thank you mr chairman is harrison and mr lainey than dr hicks okay um so dr um dua's uh doctor really has asked a number of the questions that i had um i also received a number of phone calls at from parents as well as staff members regarding the program and certainly i understand that on the first day you're gonna have little hiccups my question really relates to the software program what other divisions are used using this particular software and did we do any research or talk to any of those

019divisions regarding the software and maybe some hiccups and problems that they had we have and actually have have looked at a number of different programs and options along the way i don't have a complete list of other districts i certainly can provide that if the board would wish to see it um it's not it's not the software's doing it you know this software takes information from powerschool when when students when families addresses are are clean that you know the data is clean there and it comes in uh it uses it and then it flags ones that it doesn't recognize or that there may need to be a manual look at and it's those that didn't get the call and we know that we need to allow time for that manual look going forward so we

020knew the feature was there the system did what it was told to do um and it it's it has to do with um you know making sure all that information is cleanly there in plenty of time i'm all for updating and certainly streamlining our system and making it effective but i think it's just very very important that we realize and i'm sure you do that we have so many families who don't have adequate internet services right uh and so that could certainly pose a problem for those in terms of getting the information um hindsight is 20 20 but i certainly think anticipating problems before they're actually problems is really important when you're rolling out something new like this um i'm happy to hear that things are improving so that that's good it was very concerning

021to me the things that i had heard the phone calls that i've received um so my next question is to dr calvert um 32 new teachers wow that's 37 37 new teachers seven brand new zero okay 37 so brand new that was going to be my question are they first year teachers okay awesome it's going to be a lot of professional training and development and melanie sherry and melanie will wash your lease and melanie simmons will work with them okay um they've already started they came two days prior to everybody else coming um they've done training on those two days they will meet with them monthly they will observe them they will meet with them in schools they will do in-field coaching they're on it dr dewis um reflect my memory please do we historically

022purchase buses or lisa all right we um release purchase them uh we lease uh we pay for them over seven years and we run it for 15 years okay gotcha so these 14 new buses fall under that same correct in in in part of the later in the agenda is the approval of the lease payment and we put that out to bid to uh banks okay um how many okay uh see grants for electric buses have we are we just writing those are we are they've been approved we have them do they include how many buses do they include number one well let me i've got several questions so two separate grants uh one bus each and they're designed to pay the difference between what a diesel bus would cost in the electric and largely

023that's the cost of the battery as well as the charging station so two separate grants one has been approved uh one we're very hopeful of that will be announced very soon okay so it um grant does include the vehicle itself as well as the infrastructure needed to charge okay where will that infrastructure be installed for these first two buses our plan is to install the charging stations at our um our fleet maintenance facility just down the hill our bus garage because we're going to deploy these buses on shorter routes here in the town area before we um you know while we're still getting used to them and making sure battery life is is what it's advertised to be and all that so so that they're not out on longer routes so those would be buses

024that would be charged here at night and and during the day as well okay now at least another question what's the estimated battery battery life or distance traveled for these vehicles um i'll have i'll have to follow with you on that um but you know i don't want to speak um it's pretty substantial and i think it's improved a lot over time but i'll i can follow up with that exact information in talking with sonny merriman who we purchase our buses um i believe the estimate was about 60 60 miles on a charge which if we're doing two runs in the morning two runs in the afternoon you've got to do some of your shorter runs because there's not enough time to charge it before the second runs in the afternoon and um battery life

025were open for the 15 years um no guarantees on that though so a lot of these buses are new other divisions have done it but nobody's been running them for 15 years or even seven years so we're hoping didn't expect that it will they will last up to the 15 year and that's when we usually pull buses off the road is this going to require any additional professional development for our mechanics yes and and luckily our same bus provider which is just uh county over sells these as bless you and sells these as well and we'll provide it okay dr hicks oh yes uh dr dewis uh uh regarding the uh some of the uh transportation issues that we had yesterday and uh um do you think that that having radios that would allow the

026schools to contact the buses directly rather than going through the transportation office would have helped in some of those situations maybe so there was a lot of radio chatter yesterday just questions about stops and routes and specific kids and families um and so we we balance how many voices to have in that chatter with our number of drivers and that so but but yes it's something to study and um you know we do have radios at the school for that for that communication back to the um base you know to to transportation department but i can certainly talk talk with the group about that and to determine you know impact of that all right well i i i talked to a couple of of drivers uh today and they thought that that would be helpful

027to have a direct yes that the school could talk directly to the driver that way if you had a kid on the wrong bus you could let the parent know quicker than going through the transportation office and then to the bus oh yes sir just to follow up on dr hicks's question uh do we just have single channel radios in the buses or do we have the capability where we could have multi-channel radios to allow just what he described to occur uh top three multiple stations either the transportation office or the schools we're using this we're using a single channel now but i think that's another angle that we can certainly look into okay thank you any other questions thank you very much all right miss next time policy updates hello board members um i'm

028tonight i'm presenting 19 policies and one regulation for information which can be found by clicking on the link in section 4.01 of the agenda we have changed the layout of this to make it better available to the public and staff as well as make it easier for the board to view it all in one place as usual the majority of these changes are updates for code or policy as recommended by the virginia school board association and if you have any questions i'll be happy to try to help you or get someone else it's truly me um can you elaborate on policy ka correction k-n-a-g-j relations with law enforcement authorities what what all does that encompass restrictive or can you shed a little light on what that's all about that's one that that that i worked

029on prior prior to the meeting um really this just this policy um outlines a lot of the key areas that are already in the memorandum of understanding that we have with the sheriff's office about how investigations are to be conducted the role of administrative roles versus law enforcement roles much of it is in state code it also talks about the charges that must be reported to the superintendent and school district when they happen when our students are involved with them and similarly what behaviors at school need to be reported to to law enforcement uh that's been a big topic um of some revision over the last few years just so that um school isn't seen as a you know an overly punitive place when it comes to law enforcement charges are only there when they're

030definitely needed and so all that's been clarified in in this policy as well as that mou so does it i guess my fundamental question is does it in any way negatively impact the current working relationship we have with law enforcement and if so how it does not it it only clarifies those roles that already exist and we we maintain and continue to a very strong working relationship with our school resource officers so no limits okay thank you yes we appreciate our sros and everything that they do day in and day out so i want to make sure they fix it i wasn't expecting that all right great any other questions on this if not miss sexton i love the new layout i find it very helpful so thank you for that at that this point

031we will break for dinner and the board will reconvene at 7. all right because they're going to come recognitions thank you you two are not right thank you i think um like to reconvene this meeting of the bedford county school board in our much cooler meeting space now thank you dr dewis for adjusting that temperature um but everyone please join us for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states at this time we have some students and staff members to recognize mr edwards okay mr chairman dr bergen we've got you uh we've got you in your places that's good tonight we recognize three separate success stories from our students and our staff students and staff when your names are called please come forward to greet dr bergen and mr johnson and to

032rece receive your certificate and after that please remain standing to the side and once we finish calling names for each category we'll pause so that a group picture can be taken for the first time in recorded history bedford county public schools has two students representing virginia's ffa association these students have already begun serving in their new roles they'll both have the chance to travel internationally to study agriculture and leadership abroad and both will have the opportunity to serve as delegates to the national ffa the virginia ffa association secretary is stanton river high school's emma jackson [Applause] and and the new virginia ffa association president liberty high school's charlie moser me can you take a mask out for a picture are you comfortable doing that are you okay with that okay outstanding thank you very much

033[Applause] in the past liberty high school has had an extremely successful ffa program and that tradition is continuing right along this year recently the school's livestock judging team participated in state competition evaluating beef cows market goats market lambs and hogs and after the scores were tallied no other team in the entire state judged these animals better this state champion team will now move on to national competition in late october in indianapolis indiana where they'll compete against champions from every other state our state champion liberty high school livestock judging team megan cash [Applause] mckenna garrett good job once again mr charlie moser [Applause] kevin payne chad [Applause] [Laughter] and finally liberty high school ffa advisor lindsay tomlinson [Applause] your liberty high school state champion livestock judging team [Music] can you take your mask um [Applause] [Music]

034finally this evening the jefferson forest high school soccer program also has a history of excellence and this year they continued that tradition barely losing the class 4 state championship game 2-1 the cavaliers finished the season with a 14-1 record 11 of those 14 games by shutout the team advanced to the state championship with an amazing performance against james wood high school a contest that lasted approximately two and a half hours and went through four overtime periods to penalty kicks where they won four to three the state runner-up jefferson forest high school boys soccer team jacob gong [Applause] landon howard [Applause] walker steppings [Applause] oh yeah ethan green [Applause] jayden williams [Applause] andrew hammer thank you looks weidermeyer [Applause] um aiden arthur [Applause] oh he knew what's up quinn mackey [Applause] the stopping point christian heckler

035[Applause] okay zachary hinton [Applause] tyler henson [Applause] and john tony [Applause] [Laughter] absolutely [Applause] head coach of the jf boys soccer program scott zaring [Applause] [Laughter] the jf runner-up soccer team 2021. [Applause] six guys six guys six guys you got big there we go hmm [Applause] good morning all right folks that that concludes our recognition you are welcome to continue your celebration with your kids if you just want to follow out the way you came in thanks so much for coming tonight it was good to see all of you some of them were taller than they've got the bargain i'm just coming back [Music] well we are transitioning congratulations to all of our very accomplished students ffa soccer everyone [Music] um [Music] item 6.03 vspa media honor roll resolution mr edwards mr edwards whereas in

036each school division the public schools are shaped by the community to provide the most appropriate and effective education for school children who attend those schools and whereas public schools are dependent on the community's support in countless ways including support in setting goals for the education of our children and establishing successful volunteer and booster programs at the schools for annual funding of operations and in the elected election of qualified school board members and whereas much of the community's knowledge and opinions about the public schools rely on responsible reporting by local media representatives who decide which news to share with the community how much attention will be focused on various issues and what the tone of that reporting will be now therefore be it resolved that the bedford county school board placed the name of jamie cross

037news in advance on the statewide vsba media honor roll calling attention to the ongoing responsible and exemplary nature of reporting on this division's public schools we express our appreciation for your balanced and accurate approach to sharing with this county the challenges facing our schools and the successes achieved by the teachers and the students your work has aided this community in focusing on the goal of providing the best public schools we can for the children who attend them mr chairman that's great thank you mr edwards do we have a motion to approve this resolution recognizing this jamie cross of the news in advance motion by mr lamy do you have a second sec all right all those in favor please say hi any opposed all right the resolution is approved and we'll be passing around a

038copy of the resolution for all board members to sign miss cross will you please stand [Applause] mrs cross thank you for the good work that you do we really appreciate your coverage of our school system move into public comment period so 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 and organization or group if applicable school board is here to listen to your comments but will not engage or respond to speakers during this 25 minute period please remember this is a public meeting that we expect all speakers to refrain from any foul abusive

039or hateful language mr edwards will serve as timekeeper for individual speakers with a ringing bell indicating that a person has 30 seconds remaining a second billable ring indicating a person's three minutes have expired mr edwards will also serve as timekeeper for our cumulative 25 minute period when mr edwards's three-minute timer bill rings please discontinue speaking and allow the next person in line to come to the podium should you be unable to finish your comments please send them or give them to mrs johnson and she will distribute them to board members mr edwards who has signed up to speak tonight mr chairman we have had one individual who signed not attend tonight so i will ask the first person on the waiting list kristen rodriguez if she's in attendance or maybe outside yeah okay apparently we

040have located her the speakers for this evening in this order include emily lindy david beauregard leslie lauks stephen younghouse robert verbecki mandy baber aaron farrell and kristen rodriguez mr chairman i will make you aware that at least a couple of the individuals are outside so we will need to switch out a few of those during this session thank you sir emily wendy is emily out there emily lindy encountered okay david beauregard thank you and uh good evening um friends and school boards oh [Music] okay um i just wanted to ask a couple questions i know you're not going to answer despite what the constitution says i'm just wondering how is it possible that the bceps bedford county public schools could publish on august 8th an update on the mass debacle when the clear voice of

041the people regarding the mass mandate was rejected resolutely by the people and subsequently voted on by the board four to three to allow parents the right to choose for their own children on july 29th how is that possible well in my estimation i'll give you a people's perspective i think it's for those who voted against it subsequently to that vote i think it shows on those people's part arrogance and absolute disrespect for the people as such does the no answering of comments at any time throughout the year to those of us who are your boss and by which the constitution says you are amenable at all times which brings up with something else i uh and the closed meetings codes of virginia cannot supersede the constitution i know you know that [Applause] [Music] policy cannot

042supersede the constitution i know you know that and i know you can speak because mr johnson i address you a couple weeks ago and uh you wouldn't answer but i did find your commitment that says i jason w johnson do solemnly swear affirm that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the commonwealth of virginia and that i will faithfully and partially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as a member of the school board for bedford county for a term beginning january 1 2018 and expiring on december 31 2021 so it looks like your your turn may be coming to an end [Applause] as one you are not listening to the people okay and you are the head of this group okay so they're gonna go where

043you lead them and you're not leading them where we're directing you to lead us okay you are a representative but so i checked the code of virginia regarding closed meetings and they have here it is uh code 2.2 371 closed meetings with anybody yield three minutes to me yeah exactly okay in three minutes um closed meetings authorized for certain limited purposes do any of you have any idea how many how many uh certain limited purposes are are mentioned in that code no don't want to take this well it's not one i was reading down a page and i got about a page and a half but it turned out i said what the heck's going on and it turns out there's 54 54 exceptions for you to ignore us for you to not listen to

044our voice nine pages that you have used to usurp the constitution and to ignore the people who pay your salaries thank you mr beauregard leslie i i was yielded three minutes thank you accountable to us sir we're not accountable to you yes yes yes don't look at him he ain't gonna take you nowhere also on the school board document dated june we will be mindful this is a school board speaking we will be mindful of the different roles and responsibilities throughout the school system and maintain fire you have been asked to leave a focus on policy if you don't leave one of these films [Applause] let's support here [Applause] but you you are also subject to the people who is the next state in this capacity yes you are you are accountable at all here

045who's next on the list speak up ryan who's next leslie lops okay [Applause] heck can you all hear me here is this good can you hear me okay um mr edwards is it no okay i'm leslie walks from district five tonight i'd like to address some things that were discussed and said at the special session that took place on july 29th for most of us watching that meeting was an embarrassment to our community our schools and the children they serve for some i'm sure the hateful rhetoric of certain community members school board members and elected officials hit a little harder so tonight i'd like to address those children individuals and families in the transgender community who were most affected by the things that were said first and foremost it goes without saying that you belong

046in this community and in any other community excuse me i'm speaking allow ms laos to speak thank you uh hang on can i find my place okay second i know many of you personally but it is clear to me that those people who spoke at the july 29 meeting and implied that by simply sharing space with other children you are somehow infringing on the rights of others or pose a threat to them do not actually know you if they did they would know this they would know that you have more courage and resilience every day you walk out your door than they may ever have and sadly some of you have to have that courage and resilience in your own homes they would know that most of you have already been coexisting and sharing space

047with their children and have been accepted and embraced by some but not all of them they would know that you are not looking for special treatment but rather equal treatment as is your right they would know that because of your own experiences most of you have developed empathy and compassion beyond your years and most of all they would know you who you are as individuals with strengths and flaws just like the rest of us and i hope someday that they will take the time to do that because they are truly missing out on knowing some amazing people it is definitely their loss you are welcome to share space with our family in our schools and athletic competitions on the stage or in our home finally to those who spoke at the last meeting though i

048too am christian i'd be a complete hypocrite if i didn't admit that i sometimes speak in anger but i have to say that while you may struggle with how to understand something or reconcile a particular social issue with your personal beliefs i think we can agree that a scene like the one on july 29th did nothing to resolve those issues that rhetoric does not belong anywhere much less when discussing children in public schools i hope in the future we can all move forward in a way that better represents our community and the values we claim to hold thank you [Applause] stephen younghouse you ready yes sir okay i came here to speak um on behalf or in favor of the new resolution uh that has the mask mandate i urge the board uh to conform

049to the spirit of this mandate i know that they're all i know that there are a lot of people in here who are trying to um supersede this my daughter refrain from interrupting speakers or you will have to leave tonight's meeting are you ready please continue thank you very much um my daughter uh is entering sixth grade excuse me again did we just warn you usa hat what i'm gonna yeah okay you're all out of line and you're you're violating the conscious [Applause] young house okay thank you um i need to say that for the life of me i do not understand how this issue became politicized this should not be a political issue this is a public health emergency i believe we were just warned gentlemen in the grave this is a public health

050emergency i think that many of the people who oppose the mask laws here don't really understand how the masks work people think of this as an infringement on their freedom i think of the mask as a way i protect the people around me because the mask protects me from you but more importantly it protects you from me let's look at this this delta variant is much more contagious and it is spread via respiratory droplet the mass presents the prevents the droplets from entering the air my daughter does not have a choice because she's not 12 years old yet she cannot be vaccinated so this is the only way that she can be protected she does not have a choice in the matter this is a public health issue finally i just wanted to mention um

051if at all possible to do whatever possible to uh improve the ventilation i think that would help the coved issue as well i appreciate your time thank you very much great thank you sir hey aren't you a taxpayer yes are you a taxpayer i'll tell you a lot of times how does he have to leave there you go ladies and gentlemen please remain quiet during the public meetings because it's important for you as taxpayers in the county of bedford to hear what they are the interruptions tonight the board is clearing the room of everyone except speakers and those who have business before this board say it again the board will stand in recess [Music] oh [Music] right hey everybody okay on facebook this way oh they just left but we need to let these people

052talk when you let people talk they show you what's inside their minds when they send them your talk don't interrupt them they're giving you ammunition right they're giving you ammunition we got plenty of time there's no need to freak out but here's what you got to do you got to show up next month and you got to show up the month after that that's what you got to do patience patience and that goes for them letting us talk too let them talk about this decision [Music] we just now woke up all right [Music] just like okay oh um okay is um i um [Music] return from a very unexpected and unorthodox recess apologize to everyone at home that was watching that um it's important that we have public comment that we'd be able to hear

053and the speakers be able to share their thoughts with the board and with the community without interruption so for that reason we had to take this action mr edwards who is our next speaker mr chairman we have a speaker who was attempting to begin who we're going to permit to come back his name is robert verbeck uh and then we have two more scheduled speakers following that and two other speakers who were on the alternate list that we uh before we were in the 25 minute time frame had mentioned as well okay great so robert good evening tough act to follow um thanks to the board for the chance to make some comments tonight i'm robert burback i'm from forest um and just as a little bit of background i've got five children that range

054in age from 23 down to a new kindergartener so in reality i will have had a child enrolled in this county from 2004 until 2034. so hey i've bought a lot of school supplies but b i have a vested interest in how we proceed not just with this issue but the direction of the school board and the policies that we're going to enforce so that's why i'm here tonight uh obviously i'm here about the mask mandates which i thought was resolved a couple of weeks ago obviously i think it's clear there's a lot of disappointment about the reversal on sunday and it appears to continue to be in progress as for the board itself i assume positive intent in people as just a way of life okay and i assume that all of you are

055serving here because you wanted to make a difference in the community and you wanted to work with kids and make the school system better okay in all due respect i'm addressing you as school board members not as the united states supreme court and we have to have a dialogue and your positions are to support our beliefs and our agendas and what we're asking you to do so i respectfully offer that for your consideration and if you need to push back against the governor you have the ability to do that you clearly have a lot of support in this community in terms of masks experts agree that masks most people wear provide little protection whether it be the fabric that it is or the way it's administered let alone and that's in adults let alone for

056children okay we've heard stories about masks on the bathroom floor in schools the kids putting them back on their face the reality is for kids and maybe most adults the only safe thing would be to be outfitted in something akin to scuba gear okay and that's just the reality of all of this debate uh as late as this week august the 9th in the wall street journal there was an article entitled the case against masks for children and a couple of points you're welcome to look it up but a couple of points north carolina study a study conducted north carolina before vaccines were available found not a single case of student-to-teacher transmission and that was with 90 000 students in that system okay i believe if the facts i'm seeing are correct bedford county has

057something around 9 000 students give or take um and the last thing in that article that i thought was relevant that the quote is any child who wants to wear a mask should be free to do so i don't think anybody opposes that but before we follow the policy of masking 56 million american children across the country or 9 000 in bedford county i think more research needs to be done we need to know the outcome of it let's see the data showing the benefits and weigh them against long-term harm unless you know all of this at the end of the day right now has turned into cosmetic theater in my opinion tonight you guys have an opportunity to stand up for those who are too little to speak for themselves and for this county

058the time for common sense and for goodness sakes listening to us is now and it might be the biggest issue you face during your tenure on board you get to decide the legacy that you're going to leave behind bedford county's county line thank see how easy that can be mandy weber chairman what was that gentleman's name again robert mandy baber [Applause] hello a little loud out there my name is mandy baber mr leamy's district parent of three bedford county school students i had an entire speech planned for today one that was strong on informing you how senate bill 1303 is not a mass law as broadcast by bedford county schools um in light of the announcement from the governor just hours ago i considered yielding back my time the more i thought about this and

059prayed about this i realized this is exactly what he wants to silence the parents that are speaking out the hush the crowds of opposition the voice of reason and liberty was a little too loud too many people were using their freedom of speech too many school boards were working hard to represent their counties it must have been too much for richmond i decided that i will not be silent i am instead encouraged my voice was heard all the way to richmond my voice that represents the children my voice that represents people and parents who are not able to speak here tonight my voice represents liberty what you need to hear is i'm not auntie mask i'm not even anti-vaccine i am however against anti-liberty i am starkly against things being done in secret and against

060policy i am against strong-arming those with perceived power who have perceived power against those who do not have power and to the position they think we should be in i am against a group of people thinking the public is unaware and uncaring about what goes on in their county those who may think information behind closed doors are truly secret went in a public office those who may conduct a poll or a vote while not following proper guidelines i am against empty threats of lawsuits that force the hands of others i am against someone or a group needing to be so right that they force their rightness on others i am filled with sorrow for you our school board who lost your own abilities to make decisions today you were trumped i asked what is the

061point of a school board if the governor's office just wields the sword of power to make everyone bend in its direction i am filled with sorrow that the public health commissioner from an executive branch demonstrates powers that belong to the legislative branch we all need to question this line of thinking with great respect i do not envy your positions my mother debbie hoback served on this board for eight years and i know from her experiences that those who truly care about their county and take time to invest in research bear a tough cross and they are often geared in the news taking a stand is hard to do at times in closing like i did last time a verse for you to consider first corinthians 14 33 god is not the author of confusion but

062of peace as i mentioned in the last meeting i've spoken i will be praying for wisdom for each of you thank you thank you aaron phil farrell [Applause] good evening my name is erin farrell i live in the third district with my husband who's a veteran our children and we're also foster parents who um hopefully any day recently will uh have some kids place with us so we hope to have our children in bed for schools for a long time i'm here pretty emotional both angry and very disappointed about a few different things i want to express some concerns i have and then i have some ideas and solutions i hope you will make um not just shut out the people who have a different opinion than you do and i really hope you all

063take this in consideration um a lot of logistics first of all need to change as far as the meeting um i spoke to miss harrison today and um i attempted uh to speak with um mr johnson or mr johnson um this week and didn't get a call back but um and i got to speak with mr x2 so i appreciate them calling me back um the the what happened earlier was a result of the logistics of a suppression of the community being able to have their voice heard as well as be able to listen here so every future meeting should be held in a larger place um miss harrison you spoke today about the bus situation that we should have anticipated what was going to happen and you mentioned this was a regularly scheduled meeting

064i'm aware of that but my point is we know the climate we're in we should have anticipated so it's not an excuse and if you can change the mask rule last minute then you can move the location also in addition um it's hard to understand legitimately hard to know who's speaking um when i was watching online based on the mass a lot of times people are talking i don't know who's speaking it's hard to see the name so that's a problem you guys i hope will look into resolving also um the the reason they were so upset is because you didn't let them speak and i appreciate that mr hill was fighting for us to be able to speak even if people didn't get on the docket early enough you guys should have like you

065did the last open meeting because of the impassioned situation allow other people to speak and that would have when i spoke to you today ms harrison you mentioned you were concerned about the um one of the things was even safety well covet is real and it is dangerous so why are we crammed in here we should have been spread out so anyway um i have a lot more to say i want to say um mass have the the change was not communicated well regarding mass it was very disrespectful especially my opinion to principals and teachers and i think that you guys need to revisit how you communicate stuff please allow the principals and teachers to know um in advance so they can make plans i think you should have delayed your decision even though um

066it was done in the middle of the night and possibly i think probably unconstitutional i have a few more briefings if you will just allow me to finish um i want to ask thank you if i could just have 15 more seconds i really appreciate it just as a courtesy um thank you so um the original masked mandy i just want to say to any parents watching we have waivers all over my email is biased echo dot and if anyone wants a waiver for their children to not have to wear a mask per the the rules that originally the governor said in his edict that you can choose not to have your kids wear a mask for either medical or health exemptions also if you guys don't continue to represent us i just want to

067say to the people who aren't listening to us that um we have in place people who are going to uh vote on november 7th on november 2nd um mr hicks mr johnson please consider representing us um there's so much more i want to say mr johnson would you mind calling me back so that we can talk more in your last meeting you said that you allow people we will talk okay one one more second no no no in the last meeting you said that you'll be available after but i've talked to many parents who don't get calls back from you so you're welcome will you please call us back i will call you back yes thank you mr edward smith kristen rodriguez okay he's rodriguez hi my husband and i have five kids we live

068here in bedford county um two of them go to otta river we love our school and i serve on the pta board there for me this isn't about math this is about having the right as a parent to make informed decisions about my child's health and well-being i think there are numerous reasons this recent mass requirement of our school board and as of today our governor is unnecessary unhealthy and most importantly overstepping their boundaries many of my fellow parents have brought up excellent points during recent school board meetings um but tonight i just like to focus on something that i've been concerned with one of the most frustrating things to me of this pandemic is this claim of do it to keep everyone healthy school board at the last meeting talked about what they need

069to do to keep students safe and healthy i think we have a very skewed view of what healthy actually means the majority of america thinks that you can eat fast food drink soda be overly stressed not get enough sleep do little to no exercise but you're healthy unless you have a heart attack or some major health diagnosis you hear frequently how healthy adults are getting very sick and sometimes dying from covid the problem is the majority of americans at baseline are not healthy i have my bachelor's a master's degree in nursing one of the most early things that i learned was a definition of health that is a state of emotional physical spiritual and mental well-being not merely the absence of disease so this mentality we have in america of what is actually a state

070of health is very flawed and this flawed mentality and focus was evidenced by the school board or government and became greatly highlighted with its most recent mass requirement they made it clear how important it is to follow cdc guidelines but it seems that there's a preference as to which guidelines we're going to follow so a couple examples screen time cdc recommends no more than one to two hours of screen time a day they also recommend at least an hour physical activity a day older kids are on chromebooks at school they're on screens a lot sugar intake aep recommends children over the age of two should have no more than 25 grams of sugar in their diet each day this is about six teaspoons so over the summer and every day at school children are offered

071chocolate milk at breakfast and lunch each day which is a total of 22 grams of sugar then if kids are given or eat a pop-tart and an uncrustable sandwich both of which were sent in the lunch and breakfast that were free over the summer that's a total of 46 grams of sugar from only four food items this brings up an entirely different issue that should be addressed at some point and obviously in situations where a child unfortunately has no food absolutely some food is better than no food at all but it is interesting um to note that when we consume sugar um our immune system is suppressed for up to five hours as our body shifts to process that sugar there was a recent study and i won't take the time to read the quote

072now but there was a very good study by frontiers in public health about the progression of cobin 19 and their research found repeatedly that elevated blood glucose was a key factor in the progression of this disease a very interesting article my point in all this is that our goal is a little bit skewed here for keeping everyone healthy these mass mandates where's the actual evidence of a child five years old with a homemade mask wearing it all day long months on end inhaling fabric particles where's the evidence that you guys are going off of i know you get it from cdc but demanding evidence for their actions their choices for what they're making us do thank you thank you mr rodriguez mr edwards he said we have one more here i am again and again

073no one's wiping this microphone off or this podium so i i guess kovid's still on here um so again my name is tiffany foley i spoke at the school board meeting just two short weeks ago as did many other parents begging to make masks optional for the children for the staff and for the faculty of the schools i've reviewed some of the numbers then and i'll review them again and i'll review them now bedford county has a population of 79 000 people coveted cases as of today which is 104 only 104 more than what it was two weeks ago population is 79 000. that's only 8.9 of the population in bedford county that has had coveted again i'm not saying that it's terror or that it's a great thing i know it's terrible but we

074ought to look at the bigger picture here covet deaths as of today 111 that's one more added since two weeks ago again any death is regrettable but none of them under the age of 19. that's less than one percent of our population which is precisely 0.14 has died of covid in bedford county what i'm telling you is that our children are have more of a chance to get struck by lightning than they do to get sick and die of coven they also have more of a chance of getting sick from the germs inside their mask and i have references if any of you want to see them the law that everybody's talking about is senate bill 1303 has one sentence about mitigation strategies for schools the key words in this sentence are practicable and applicable

075are those strategies of masking our children both practicable or applicable for bedford county public schools the numbers say no i also do not care what governor northam's emergency public health order says it's not a law because he didn't get 100 compliance from all of virginia schools he decides to make a mandate and everyone is supposed to concede to that no kids do not wear masks outside of schools they haven't worn masks all summer so what is the purpose of the supposed mitigation strategy of masking while in schools to protect our teachers they can wear a mask if they want to protect other children they can wear a mask if they want they have an option you need to make decisions on what's best for our children not governor northam stand up and fight we need

076you to be a voice for our children who do not have a voice in this fight rosa parks simply said no and she was an army of one you have an army of people behind you outside these doors you will not stand alone in a fight like this if you're not willing to risk anything then you are not going to get anything and you will get nothing in return the government cannot kick all of our kids out of school they are for not wearing masks and they will certainly not get rid of all these parents who are ticked off because someone else is trying to do our job reverse reverse course again and simply say no to governor governor northam's tyranny and this nonsense from the cdc thank you miss foley okay mr edwards i

077believe that concludes our conflict thank you mr anderson yes i mean i would suggest that perhaps it's up to the board but if you want to go into closed session to talk about your options going forward the rest of the meeting we can do that if you want to go on your agenda you can do that would be need to amend the agenda to go into closed session to just have this conversation right i don't understand why why would we i don't see what the benefit is at this point i'm doing that why would we go into closed sessions i just want to know how you want the meeting to proceed whether you want to let people back in whether you don't want to let people back in what the repercussions of that might be

078but i'm throwing it out there it's not my decision anyone want to have this conversation with their attorney i'd like to make a motion that we do have this conversation with our attorney so we have a motion by ms harrison to go into closed session to discuss this with you let me give you the motion you need motion to go into closed session pursuant to virginia cold 2.2-37118 for consultation with legal counsel regarding the freedom of information act all right so we have a motion by mrs harrison we have a second second by dr emily any discussion call for a vote all those in favor please say hi hi all those opposed no no mrs johnson please pull the board ms harrison yes dr hicks yes mr hill mr johnson yes this is kirby no

079mr lamey dr maylie yes the eyes have it with four so this time the board will recess into closed session right as well thank you [Music] um all right how are you thank you so much is [Applause] assistant all right so we have a motion to come out a closed session for dr bailey second by dr hicks all of us in favor say hi the opposed the board is now for the closed session ms johnson please certify the closed session of course the bedford county school board has convened a close meeting on this state pursuant to an affirmative recorded vote and in accordance with the provisions of the virginia freedom of information act and where section 2.2-37 if the code of virginia requires a certification by this school board that such closed meeting was conducted

080in 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 misses matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered yes yes yes yes yes yes yes thank you do we have a motion on the consent agenda mr chairman i knew that we approved the consent agenda as presented the motion from dr hicks to approve the consent agenda has presented him second second agenda is unanimously um i did want to thank everyone for your patience earlier apologize for that um i can appreciate the quiet as

081we work through tonight's meeting um and to thank you for that very unusual circumstance staff reports okay we covered all those before dinner okay moving along to additional action items 9.01 health and safety protocols for 21 22. so in talking to this i would like to walk everyone through a timeline of events over the past three weeks to explain how we got where we are since the time of our last public meeting with regards to universal masking for students staff and visitors inside our school buildings our timeline begins on wednesday july 21st when governor northam gave a press conference and announced that school divisions would have flexibility in making decisions about masking and other prevention measures the governor stated virginia has followed the science throughout this pandemic and that's what we continue to do this

082guidance takes into consideration recommendations from the centers for disease control and the american academy of pediatrics and will provide necessary flexibility for school divisions while ensuring a safe healthy and world-class learning environment for virginia students that same day following the governor's lead the virginia department of health and the virginia department of education released new guidance for pre-k through 12 students for the school year that reinforced the importance of in-person learning and reiterated that school divisions would have the flexibility to make locally informed decisions on masking and other prevention strategies to mitigate the spread of coven 19 in our schools based on community level conditions and public health recommendations less than a week later on tuesday july 27th the cdc made a major announcement out of growing concern over the rapid spread of the delta variant

083of cobia 19 and stated that masks should be worn indoors in public areas by all individuals regardless of vaccination status in any locality with high or substantial coven 19 transmission two days later on thursday july 29th the school board held a special called meeting at liberty high school to hear recommendations from the superintendent regarding a healthy and safe a health and safety plan for the school year dr bergen reviewed the guidance he had received from the vdoe and vdh and also mentioned during his presentation how the cdc had just updated his guidance about masking after reviewing the guidance from bdoe and vdh dr bergen and dr woodford presented an alternative plan developed by staff that would have provided parental choice on masking for the start of the school year and moving to required masking as

084a layered mitigation strategy if and when the number of covet 19 cases in bedford county reached the same high point as last year around thanksgiving on a 4-3 vote the board rejected the superintendent's recommendation the following week on tuesday august 3rd school board held an emergency special called meeting to seek legal advice on the actions from the july 29 meeting specifically whether or not other health and safety mitigations other than masking should be implemented at the end of a closed session at which our board attorney was present i read a statement on behalf of the board that our previous 43 vote was that in our previous war three vote we were reaffirming that masks would remain optional but that the superintendent had the authority to implement other necessary health and safety mitigations two days after

085that emergency special called meeting on thursday august 5th the cdc again updated its masking recommendations and called for universal indoor masking for all teachers staff students and visitors to pre-k through 12 schools regardless of vaccination status that same afternoon governor northam held another press conference and reversed his position on masking and reference legislation passed in march by the general assembly specifically senate bill 1303 which requires all school divisions to offer in-person learning options this school year while also stating that school divisions must follow any currently applicable mitigation strategies to reduce the transmission of coba 19 that had been provided by the cdc the governor was quoted as saying it is the law of the commonwealth of virginia and i expect school divisions to follow the law if they choose not to follow it they should

086have a frank discussion with their legal counsel that same afternoon the virginia department of health and the virginia department of education updated their guidance for pre-k through 12 to align with the cdc recommending that all pre-k through 12 schools should require math should require students teachers and staff to wear masks while indoors regardless of their vaccination status i met dr bergen the following day on friday august 6th and he informed me that he had spoken with our division attorney as well as our school division's insurance carrier to seek legal advice about the governor's comments senate bill 1303 and the updated guidance from vdoe and bdh that afternoon he and i held a three-way phone conversation with our attorney during that phone call we discussed several possible solutions for moving forward and engaging the entire board

087and discussion about this change in the governor's stance and in particular the risks to the school division with not adhering to the requirements of senate bill 1303 should we not adjust to changing circumstances one option we discussed would be to wait until our next regular regularly scheduled board meeting to discuss this matter tonight however we were all concerned that students would have already returned to school and we would have been out of compliance with senate bill 1303 we next discussed and agreed the most prudent action would be to assemble all the board members for another emergency special called meeting on monday to consult with their attorney and then consider taking action a third consideration we discussed was for me to share the email with other board members from the attorney which contained his legal opinion

088about the governor's comments and the law to determine if a majority of the members now favored allowing the superintendent to update our health and safety plan to require masking in compliance with the cdc recommendations and senate bill 1303 over the weekend i spoke with many of my fellow board members to determine each member's interest in the action the majority of the members were either not many of the members were not available on monday nor in favor of holding another emergency meeting however a majority of members were in favor of updating our health and safety plan to be in compliance with senate bill 1303 prior to students returning to school on the morning of sunday august 8th i informed dr burgin that all board members could not be assembled on an emergency special call meeting on

089monday but the majority of the board members now supported adherence to sv 1303 and the mitigation measure set forth in the cdc guidelines i suggested to dr bergen that he drafted a statement for review by myself and our attorney in hindsight i could have handled this situation differently and thank you but because of that i along with three other board members believe the school division's health and safety mitigation plan needed to be updated to comply with the law before the start of the school activities i supported the superintendent including in the press release that he had a support of the majority of bedford county school board to update the plan and require universal basking that afternoon after consulting with both me and our council dr bergen met with his executive staff to create a communication

090plan for informing students parents and staff of the decision to update the health and safety plan to require masking and parents then received communication from the school division prior to the start of the open house and back to school nights scheduled for monday august 9th since that time governor northam has introduced an executive order to confirm the content of senate bill 1303. ms johnson mr lehmann would you please also clarify that not all board members were contacted regarding a special college meeting [Applause] so i reached out and a decision of this consequence i thought it was important for all board members when all board members were not able i did not contact i did not continue after all board members were not available after you changed your mind that's wrong uh barry do you can

091you put up the infographic please board members this is attached to the agenda item if you if you uh want to see it on your screen it's also the exact same infographic that is on our school division website and through our social media channels and i'm just having staff projected on the screen for the people who are in the rooms that you can see the infographic will look familiar to our community the health and safety mitigations that are listed are precisely what the school division was using last year throughout the school year with the exception that this year students are not cohorted with middle school students up at the high school and the fourth and fifth graders at the middle school we are all of our children who are elementary school age are in elementary

092school classrooms middle schools middle school high schools in high school we've had two terrific days of school our support team has been out supporting teachers and principals and visiting with students in classrooms and have been just so pleased to welcome our students back to another year of learning the health and safety communications that are on the screen are familiar to you prior to sunday all of those mitigations were in place and have been communicated to the community and the top bullet in support of mr johnson's statement there was a great deal of conversation between myself and the attorney for the school board and for the attorney for our insurance carrier for baycorp and their legal opinion to me which i shared with the board and i believe was shared with all of you is that

093we would be in legal jeopardy if we were not in compliance when we had students back in our building and i was gravely concerned for the school divisions legal stand as well as the health and safety as recommended by the governor and by the virginia department of education and virginia department of health so when this board took action publicly you were in full compliance with the recommendations and with the regulatory guidance from bdoe and bdh and remained in compliance all the way up through that thursday when governor northam made an announcement about senate bill 1303 i was that was the first time i heard about senate bill 1303 and uh and its ramifications as it was explained to me and when it was explained to the public by the governor when he spoke from the

094had i known in advance of ben i certainly would have shared that information with you when we had our public meeting at liberty high school on our emergency special called meeting but i did not have that information it had not been shared between my media leader bdh or by the government's office so the actions that i took as mr johnson explained them was i worked through the chair to communicate with with you and upon receiving his uh approval after having communicated on my behalf with the with the board and having received the information from the attorney i then updated the health and safety mitigations in specifically the top bullet that pryor said mass would be optional for this board's vote and then it switched to massa required of course i think you're all aware at

095this point uh all of the lead up to all of that that occurred and all of that uh heartache uh over the over the weekend for the community many of whom were very upset about this change in the position that the board had taken action and then it was a change that was communicated to them today again we received another announcement from governor northup i heard it when you heard it at uh it was two o'clock three o'clock this afternoon that uh dr norman oliver has created an executive order that there is a mass mandate now for all children staff and visitors in school buildings i'm sure there will be some regulatory language that comes along with that i have not received that regulatory language and i anticipate receiving that in the coming days and

096once i have that i'll certainly be communicating that to the board and then asking you to get it so i have you for the comments this is to both um chair um i specifically when this was mentioned uh asked for there to be options to our parents uh to provide medical and religious exemptions and how to do that that was ignored um and i'm disappointed that we're not giving our parents the options even after northam has come out with whatever he's saying um the other thing i wanted to make sure in the comments that were made by the chairman when it says we were all concerned that is not a true statement i stand behind my vote [Applause] and i still think it's the parents right the chance [Applause] and to just to clarify i

097think that i'll refer to dr bergen and the attorney and i'm not the board collectively so i understand your position but when you're speaking you're speaking for seven people i cannot hear because of the gallery again do we need to clear the room or can we ask them to be quiet i cannot hear what's being said everyone keep it respectful so i just want to make sure when you say that that does not represent all seven members at this table correct okay mr lee again i was i was not consulted about the option or opportunity to meet either monday or over the weekend i would have moved heaven and earth to be at a special call meeting to keep this out in the open and to maintain transparency that didn't happen i was also not

098notified by the board chair about the change i found out about it on sunday afternoon when my phone started blowing up with communications from constituents i do not support any provision it takes parental masking choice away from the families and places it in the hands of the state of virginia that's all thank you mr chairman yes um mr anderson could you explain because i know um i've gotten some concerns about parents feeling that our polling of the board was illegal in some way so could you please explain what foia requires and whether our meeting was legal or not there was no illegal meeting under foia and the freedom of information act specifically allows a board chair to poll members of the board didn't have to be the board chair it could be any board member

099to pull other members of the board and so the action taken by the superintendent was well within his authority to take knowing of course that he had the support of the majority and mr anderson is the superintendent without a vote from the board required to file follow the laws of virginia yes both by contract and the school board itself is required by statute so we did not need to vote on anything once this became a law that would be my opinion it's not a law mr mr chairman again the gallery is preventing us from continuing our meeting i can hear fine i can't so it doesn't matter to me if you can i can't no it doesn't matter don't matter everyone just be respectful okay any other help a student health standpoint and from a

100community health standpoint from a legal standpoint from a liability standpoint and from a moral standpoint the mitigation plan presented by the superintendent is absolutely the right and necessary thing to do ms harrison the safety of our students of our teachers and our staff must be first and foremost the steps that have been taken in terms of following the law i believe is correct it's accurate and it's the right thing to do thank you i don't doubt i'm not a coveted non-believer i know it's out there i know it's real i know it's very dangerous um as a parent i want to protect my children but there's the key i want to protect my children there's a meme going around social media and and i wish we could uphold it that says i will not co-parent

101with the government and i do not want to um my vote if we were to vote tonight my vote still stands it is the parent's choice totally to decide whether or not to mask your children thank you thank you [Applause] mr anderson do we need to take any action i don't believe it's on there for action by the superintendent it's under additional action items so yes we in my opinion we need to vote we need to formalize what was done in a smoke-filled room on the weekend any any board member mr lamy can make a motion and i'll be happy to help you with that mr chairman um i move that we uh uh accept the mitigation plan presented by the superintendent tonight let's take a second okay okay so we have a motion by

102dr hicks and a second by ms harrison to approve the health and mitigation health and safety plan presented by the superstars so we're saying what we voted on on july 29th will be superseded by the motion that was just made correct okay so we're voting to take away parental rights is what we're saying from my interpretation of what mr anderson just said the executive order today overrides any other actions this board has taken to the past correct overrides parenthood it's it's a separate executive order what you're what you are voting on the motion that's on the floor is to uh adopt the recommendations including the requirement for masks regardless of anything having to do with the executive order all right some parents have the right to know about the team teachers in their school any

103other discussion on the motion i didn't hear yes or no so we're voting to remove parental rights that's not what the motion was no that's what i'm asking what's the difference in what stands and what the motion is my motion is what i stated i'm asking you to restate it because i don't understand so we're saying instead of parental rights to choose masking we're now saying that masks are required yes we are saying that that's go required so then that's a yes you can interpret it that way if you like thank you any other discussion yes dr hicks yes mr hill no mr johnson yes this is kirby no mr lamey oh dr miley yes you guys have it with four thank you miss johnson so the important safety plan presented by the superintendent is

104supplemental appropriations all right time to move on supplemental appropriations an update for lacrosse mr hagler and dr cornette yes good evening board um at our last board meeting we talked about in in going back uh earlier talking about um limiting the budget and also adding lacrosse as a varsity sport to our high schools there is one uh school that has lacrosse up and running and there's going to be um dr cornett will speak about the uh the efforts we are to get the other schools up and running and if they get the numbers up there we'll add those at those schools too part of the uh adding a varsity sport is a budget process since it wasn't done in the original budget before you tonight is a supplemental uh appropriation the only amount that we

105need to appropriate and um is fifteen thousand dollars to pay for the stipends for the coaches that money will come from this the club account at jefferson forest for laplace and that money will be sent into the division we'll do an amendment to the budget and pay those stipends out to those coaches if there were other schools that were to add varsity sports we would have to do come up with that money to go ahead and add it for any school that has enough kids to participate so that's my presentation that there is an action item to to amend the budget with the supplemental appropriation and uh dr prenet is going to speak about some of the other items we talked about as far as increasing interest in other zones good evening members of the

106board i would like to provide you with an update on providing lhs and srhs students with opportunities to participate in and show interest in lacrosse as presented at a previous school board meeting the jfhs lacrosse club has worked for nine years since first implementation to get their current to their current level it does take time to develop a strong jv and varsity program if there is student interest being the juf is a much larger school with more student athletes there are concerns that lacrosse could potentially pull athletes from other spring sports for which they already struggle with recruiting currently we have one school who is potentially not able to field a fall middle school sport due to the lack of student participation i worked with the bcps athletics team that includes all high school middle

107school principals and athletic directors on thursday july 29th and tuesday august 3rd 2021 the jf lacrosse team will offer two lacrosse clinics one at liberty high school on saturday september 18th and one at stan river high school on saturday september 25th from 10 a.m to 1 p.m the farham college lacrosse coach is planning to attend these clinics as well students from both schools will be able to attend either or both clinics participation and interest data will be collected for each school for each individual school the bcps athletics team will then review the data after those clinics to determine if there is sufficient interest at each school and if so determine what next steps are needed to provide additional opportunities for lhs and srhs students at this time mr hagler and i will be happy to

108answer any questions ms kirby um dr cornette the clinics that you're offering on the 18th and the 25th yes ma'am um will equipment be provided for these kids or one day clinic i don't want to be a parent go out and buy equipment jf um the lacrosse team there are they are going to bring the equipment um to each school okay and is do the athletic directors anticipate there be a large turnout from other schools to be interested in it so i know it's not something that that generally this community the liberty community is not exposed to on a regular basis you have to go above and beyond well when we first met i believe the athletic directors felt like there wasn't a great interest but i think these clinics will help us gauge that

109and allowing it two weekends two different weekends where they can go to either school can can really give us some data how needed it is at each school and has logistics been worked out if it were to be accepted have logistics been worked out for field space not not at this time that would be something that we would have to continue to look at as as i presented in the last meeting there's there's field space concerns now with the current current sports that we have so if there's a probability then they would have to we might have an extra cost of if there are teams of taking them off campus to find a field there would be additional transportation and field maintenance that's that field on off campus yeah thank you john cornett appreciate it

110are there available fields if you have to pay for them we have looked um at some areas before for soccer we haven't found a viable solution yet but if there is a need we could get into a greater search other questions mr hill would you like to make a motion i would love to make a message i would like to make a motion that we accept the superintendent's recommendation around supplemental appropriations and lacrosse for jefferson forest high school and for the other two if interest issue okay so we have the motion mr hagler do we need to read the resolution i think just the last part of it not the entire part it's the last part okay the last paragraph of the resolution we're done um we'll see here school board policy get resolved i

111think just the last paragraph would be fine the be it resolved paragraph yes okay all right be it resolve that before county school board requests that the bedford county board of supervisors authorized a supplemental appropriation in the amount of 15 000 to the 50 000 to the operating budget in the fiscal year 2021-2022 school budget great we have a motion by mr hill do we have a second second by mr lean any final discussion uh actually i have another question yes the resolution a little bit closer and um where it said asking request the board of supervisors to authorize the supplemental appropriation fifteen thousand dollars if they do not because right now the way it's worded we're relying on the supervisors to appropriate the 15 000. if they don't can we work it into our

112budget to fund it the money is available at the school it was offered up by the school i don't see any reason that they would not in my tenure here they've never rejected any of our supplementals but any budget amendment requires board of supervisor approval on the budget we can do category transfers if it were denied and we could say we're not going to spend money somewhere else to to do this and work that out but it is a formal budget and i i don't see any issue with this i just want to make sure that we have a backup plan we would look at other options if this were not approved but for fifteen thousand dollars um there's been much bigger appropriations and they're always usually approved i'm always approved thank you mr chairman

113can the board help me with this like i can't remember we did discuss if um the other two schools couldn't do that or did we just help me remember that they would be able to use that money that would have gone to lacrosse for something else but i think it was a commitment for the board that i know from this i'm just saying it can did we were we leaning in that direction that i don't think we've had really any further discussion on that particular area thank you we're hoping that we're hoping the school's good yes i'm hoping they do too right then in that case unless there's other questions concerns call for vote all those in favor of the resolution please say aye aye aye can you opposed motion passes um congratulations jf lacrosse

114looking forward to hopefully seeing lacrosse at the river and liberty absolutely not too distant future bus lease um approval mr hanklin yes members board um each year within our budget we at least purchase 14 new buses to maintain our fleet we do replace our buses every 15 years so there's no buses out there on the road older than that with uh we do go out for bid to banks and financial institutions to finance that over the seven year period this year bank america is the lowest bidder and i request that the board approve uh bank of america to do the lease purchase finance on this year's buses great any questions for mr haggler on the bus mr chairman i believe that we accept the bid for bank of america at a rate of four 1.0400

115four percent annual payments two hundred and eleven thousand six hundred and twenty nine dollars and seventy six cents and total payments of one million four hundred and eighty one thousand four hundred eight dollars and two cents so we have motion by dr hicks to thank america let's do we have a second second any final questions or discussion on this not all those in favor please say aye hi can you pose it sounds like pat's getting some new buses and could i add i will be bringing supplemental appropriations for the grants that we went after for the electric buses and that will come forward once we finalize those at future court meetings but both of those together will be close to half a million dollars so those are very big wins for us this year on

116brands okay sir we look forward to seeing that in a future meeting superintendent's reporter dr verde uh well i think i may have alluded earlier but it's worthy of going back to the meeting we had a terrific first couple days of school the executive team and i were out and about visiting with principals and seeing students i'm excited to be back in their in their elementary schools their middle schools and their high schools teachers glad to be back with kids it was a great two days of learning we do sincerely apologize to those families who are in convenience on transportation issues it worked very well in many of the schools most of them and it did not work well in some of them and we have gone back and reflected on why that may have

117occurred and we made improvements upon the system and it has terrific future capabilities for us to be even more effective efficient with our communication with families um i just want to go back and touch on action item 9.01 just one more time um i'm just as many in the community are and and many of you are just bitterly disappointed with the timeline of mountains on this bike i there is the court of law i do believe that we were acting within our legal responsibilities i'm firm about that i i spoke with this board's legal counsel i spoke with the insurance carriers legal counsel i spoke with the state superintendent of instruction and i rely on all of those individuals as all superintendents do to provide good sound legal advice and all of them advise me

118that without complying with senate bill 1303 as it had been explained for the first time on that thursday of last week that we did not follow the law as it was explained to me by those who interpret law that i would be exposing this board to future uh jeopardy should we be sued we've got students staff the children in our buildings and rewinding the clients so there's the there's the rule of law and there's there's that there's also the court of public opinion and uh i understand that the public is upset about this that they saw that there was a public vote taken by this board and that there was a reversal of the implementation of our health and safety mitigations and for that i am truly sorry the timing of it is terrible and

119i understand that the perception there are some whoever's their perception is that they just didn't like how this transpired and they don't like where we ended up um so we settled that here tonight we i want to go back and remind the board in the community i have two very sincere goals for all of us as i explained at the last public meeting at liberty high school my first goal is that we keep our schools open every day five days a week for in-person instruction for our children and in order to do so it has to be a sacred life this is kirby you're you're right covet israel and there are children who can be carriers of covet 19 and not show symptoms and they can infect other children who can infect other children and

120infect other children and without proper health and safety mitigations in place i'm earnestly concerned that we're going to end up with children in quarantine we're going to have a staff and quarantine we're going to end up with people sick worst people hospitalized and i rely on the guidance that we receive from the virginia department of education the department of health is also more dentistry that's my responsibility to this board of this community and so these health and safety mitigations are designed so that we can meet that first goal that kids will stay in school every day five days and then my second goal is to keep our extracurriculars functioning they're very important in my personal life to my children's life they're as important as the what happens between the first bill and the last bill

121what happens in the afternoon and evening it's just as important our kids and again there have to be health and safety litigation so that we don't lose the ability to to fully function in our in our core mission which is to teach children and provide for those extracurricular i appreciate uh everyone's understanding that this situation has evolved rapidly over the last two weeks there has been a swing and the legal advice that has been that all superintendents have received in just a very short period of time and i am navigating as best i can to protect this school division both in terms of health and safety as well as our legal responsibilities to the community for for future lawsuits and not being fulfilled i was going to introduce you to our our newest assistant principal

122from stanton river uh middle school but i long ago invited him to go home and i'll bring him back to to uh to our next meeting so that i can introduce it to you so we didn't have an opportunity to meet him tonight but uh he was very excited to be uh down at stanford middle school today i did get to have to see him and uh his new principal that concludes my comments thank you thank you dr bergen thank you for all that you do great matters and concerns from the board start on the other side tonight mr hill i attended the open house at four of the four schools on monday it's great to see our students and teachers back i was going to comment to mac on the facility updates they all

123look great saw updates at all four schools that i attended so i really appreciate that um only concern i heard about mack knew it was coming air conditioned in six classrooms at forest middle school still don't have an update on that i know we've moved them to classrooms but you would like to know that should be cooler tomorrow there with honeywell made made some fixes today that we're thinking are working so and then mr chairman um i have a concern about i thought the board had agreed that we would not be interactive in day-to-day operations uh that would be left up to the superintendent and his team and so i noticed this week that we had a board member that was replying to comments on the before county public school social media page and so

124i'm interested in what action if any needs to be taken to make sure that the board understands we're not supposed to be involved in day-to-day operations dr burgundy any thoughts on that i mean i presume this was an individual board member responding in their capacity as an individual or that's my question i thought we had agreed that we would not get involved at all i mean i think that's probably a good idea when if as long as you're responding as an individual you can come in on anything said is that accurate how do you feel dr bergen about board members we haven't talked about this i'm not even sure what you're talking about okay well sounds like it's not a problem so it's precedent setting and we can go at it right mr hill i

125i don't know what you're what what i don't know on the bedford county public school social media page okay there were concerns about what had taken place this week by this board okay and we had a board member responding to those comments so my question is is that what we're agreeing to as a board that we go out and we can comment on social media pages that are tied to bedford county public school or is that your staff's responsibility on the facebook page just for clarity social media the one that we maintain um i to my knowledge our staff are we're not we're making a post to inform the community if you're talking about the threat of comments we're not engaging with them or not okay and you have you have a different understanding that's

126what i'm trying to get to so i have an understanding because if it's a precedent and we can all comment as individuals so be it i want clarification from the chair so if i appreciate the question so let's talk about it so it'd be yeah the the purpose of the facebook page from staff's point of view is to inform the community about the great happenings in our school division and any important information that they may need to know we're not engaging them in conversation about it they may be engaging themselves with one another but facebook is facilitating that we're not um i would encourage you not to engage with the community in that way because um but that that's up to the board i i work for you if you if you all want to

127engage in that way through the social media then you should that's your question and you should establish that now that that's up to what i'm asking mr chairman is that not under our norms and our protocols would that not follow under that that's where i thought it was miss harrison that's why i'm trying to clarify right so i would say if if i remember correctly we probably need to discuss that particular area a little bit further i don't recall uh having a discussion on that during our training and i was also left to to think also that we needed to further uh look at and broaden our norms and protocols so i think that probably falls under that so i would ask that we just uh have that discussion uh again when we are looking

128more further at our norms and protocols and discuss it at that time could we add that to a future agenda then to have that discussion that's the world award did you control your general and talk about whatever okay that's all okay mr leaning uh first off welcome back students secondly uh jf men's varsity soccer team in ffa keep it up and the third thing i have i'm going back and forth on this um and i'm going forward with it because i'm frustrated i'm very frustrated how things have occurred over the past week or so and i want to i want to preface this by saying i don't hold dr bergen responsible for what went down dr bergen was in a bad place and dr bergen needed some guidance the issue that i have is the

129process under which that took place as you've heard per our attorney and i'm reading off of this it's scratched up so cause i've been going back and forth with it tonight for our attorney the weekend procedure to override the board's open session vote falls within legal parameters i personally question its ethical legitimacy just because you can do something doesn't mean you should nor that it's right the way that this handle i guess the nicest way i can put it it stinks this board has been working towards restoring public confidence through transparency we were on a good glide path toward this until this weekend we suffered an easily avoidable setback regarding public confidence and i'm unsure how long it'll take to overcome this we find ourselves in this position due to a leadership failure misinformation half

130truths and a series of bad decisions by our board chair and i just want to stay publicly i will be supporting susan kirby for chair and marcus hill for vice chair at our organizational meeting in january [Applause] mr limit ms kirby i want to echo mr leamy and congratulating liberty ffa and jf soccer um those are amazing accomplishments um young people should be proud before county public schools does a really good job educating our young people and we've really made some people really come out of of the schools have made really big names for themselves i'm proud of them um i understand from our presentation that we were given earlier that we are still short some bus drivers and i know earlier we were talking about um the parents could drop off and pick up

131their children it would be helpful which we have done as a family we've chosen to do that um and i know goodness knows i've done this many years and i know the first few days are always really rocky and and backed up um but i will say that as a parent trying to drop my child off the lines are majorly backed up and if there was and i know we adjusted the start times to accommodate for the lack of bus drivers but if there's any way that we could start just 10 minutes earlier i think that that would eliminate a lot of the line um but the people that are standing out there trying to help unload the children getting them in school they're fun and i enjoy seeing them every morning especially dr trosper

132i saw him this morning um you know if there's any way we could adjust that by 10 minutes i think that would eliminate a lot of the line and i'm not sure how many people are on facebook and saw the post yesterday by the bedford chamber recognizing russia warwick she has been out there for this is her 50th year she tried to retire once and it brought her back i told her she wanted to do it and i of course now she's moved over she's still at bethel primary she'll leave there and she'll go over to liberty middle um she would go to the street corner right by my home place and i still find it amazing that she's there helping my kids and she used to yell at me when i was a kid

133i just wonder how many generations that lady has seen and all the changes i mean just the models of cars that she's seen change over the years that would be amazing so kudos to her ms words keep on going um august the 22nd i have it marked on my calendar i don't have the time to be able to convey it to everybody before elementary school will be conducting a clean up day um if anybody can come out and help i'm sure they would appreciate the extra help and i want to say best of luck to everyone in our school community for a great 21 22 school year thanks jeremy johnson thank you miss kirby ms harrison yes thank you mr chairman i would like to also echo welcome back to all of our staff i

134have the honor and privilege of attending an open house at goodview elementary school and i tell you i thought otter river had a major issue with traffic when i served as principal but i tell you goodview they have quite um just a long traffic pattern there it was just amazing but the work of the staff was just uh wonderful so kudos to them and other schools too for having such a successful opening of the new school year i also would like to echo similar sentiments that other board members have said here tonight regarding dr bergen uh and his team uh along with board members too as well we were all placed in a very awkward and very horrible position learning so late in regards to the mass decisions and this of course was out of

135our hands and my hope and my prayer is that we everyone the community that we will work together for the good of this community and will not have to prayerfully be in the mask this mass order very long uh if we all work together and think about the safety of everyone i also want to say that the back to school bash was a bash it was just awesome i enjoyed every minute of it the staff and their participation you could see just the joy and the fun that they all had and i look forward to a future back to school bash so that was just fantastic as well and i wish our staff and our our teachers everyone just a wonderful successful school year and i look forward to getting out and visiting and and

136seeing all the wonderful things that our students are doing thank you dr hicks uh i visited uh um london academy uh and uh it was good to see the smiling faces of of all the students so mr abby the principal said they had a great first day with only a few transportation issues i attended aladdin at liberty high school i thought that was a great performance by all the kids from several different schools i attended the back to school celebration at liberty high school with lots of enthusiasm and spirit i thought it was a great way to start school year and i attended the cvgs organizational board meeting for 2122. uh dr arnold from amherst is the this year's superintendent in charge we had 22 juniors and 22 seniors attending this year first day for

137students was august 3rd they start earlier than we do and all students and staff will be required to wear mask along with other safety measures thank you dr thanks dr emily um yes i too attended the aladdin performance and i just want to give a shout out to ms cruz and the students it was an amazing performance one of the leads was a fifth grader and he was just amazing um i also want to say that i believe if i heard her correctly that they put that performance together in 10 days so they just did an outstanding job i too visited some schools on our first day and um all i saw were students that were just thrilled to be back teachers that were thrilled to be back great atmospheres of welcoming i want to

138thank our custodial staffs i've been in several of the schools they just are shining um i personally wouldn't let anybody on the floor if it were me but they have them just beautifully cleaned and welcoming so thanks to the custodial staff the cafeteria staff i watched them as they really tried to feed so many students um in that first day back they did a great job the office staff were handling all sorts of uh concerns and questions from parents so everyone just did a great job i want to thank you i also want to thank the hr department because you know having 99 of our jobs filled is nothing short of a miracle these days um so thank you so much for doing that and welcome to all those new people in bedford county i

139also want to congratulate emma and charlie and the liberty livestock judging team i just can't even believe kids that are you know probably a half a decade a half a century younger than i am no more about a pig than i do um or cow or whatever that's i think that's just amazing um and also the the jf boys soccer team they are all really big people you know wow some of them were taller than you were dr bergen um and i also want to say uh because we haven't mentioned it but um miss harrison and i have been asking and asking about intervention specialists that we now have how many ms robertson 17 positions with one still to fill okay so we now have 18 people who are helping our schools with mental health

140intervention for our students and that's just a really important thing right now so thank you for all your work for that and and please convey my appreciation for what these people are doing i've met some of them and um i just think they're going to be tremendous help to our students thank you again i saw dr bailey and dr hicks both at aladdin jr and it was fantastic job congrats to ms cruz and her her team for pulling that together yes in 10 days that was absolutely incredible and i also enjoyed the um back to school bash and i'm wearing my just added the positivity bracelets so i hope this is the start of a great school year for everyone welcome welcome back all right do we have uh a motion to adjourn so moved

141mr chairman aye thank you