001and then you kill all your clover and spray the kill of weeds and you kill all the chlorine welcome everybody to the september 12 campbell county school board meeting we're going to start with the pledge of allegiance followed by a moment of silence i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you all right we are going to open with dr stanley giving us some report on how everything went with the opening dr stanley thank you mr chairman i'm pleased to report that we had a great opening we had our back to school nights and a lot of people have commented that it's been one of the smoothest openings we've had in
002years including transportation so kudos to dr ranella and all the work that his department has done we've really been excited i think you know one of the biggest reasons for that is the fact that you know we're all happy to be doing what we were designed to do so that's made a big difference the presentation that i have tonight i've got some pictures to show you and i think they can do a much better job of describing our opening than i can so tracy please [Music] do [Music] again seeing kids get on the bus and seeing kids in the lunchrooms and in the in the ball games after school has been really exciting to see so we're off to a great start if you've got any questions about our star i'll be glad to answer
003them just a just one quick comment though god dropped my grandson off a lot of times on my way to work over brookfield middle school and i know there's a lot of people still commuting or bringing the kids in and i'm just amazed at how well they keep that thing moving so it's so smooth through there as many cars that are going through there so i know it takes a lot to make that happen it takes a lot to get the school year started and i really want to congratulate all of our administrators and teachers because it's quite an undertaking to start a school year and it's quite an undertaking to wrap up a school year and uh this year has been been fantastic they've done a great job clay i know leon asked you
004earlier but how are our numbers our adm numbers well right now i don't have any confirmed data but from what i've heard from principals enrollment has been up at least when we had our back-to-school nights you know a lot of them comment on the fact that they had 20 30 kids showing up that they weren't anticipating yeah so i don't know if that's the case in every school but we'll figure out what that number is and share it with you end of this month september yeah so you all feel good about the numbers i i from what i've heard from principles i am good yeah have you been any hiccups it kind of early yet wait to see it no hiccups other than the fact that you know we've had a little bit of illness
005and and we had to close one leesville road special a highly specialized special ed classroom for a few days and then we had a driver uh one route that we couldn't cover one day in the rushburg area but everybody was great to work with um showed us a lot of patience and uh and working with us in terms of the community and you know so far that's it good good any other questions for dr stanley no i mean that that presentation is what we're all here for that's right that's right look good that's right thank you yeah thank you all right next we're going to hear from we're here for captain lawhorn school safety and student resource officer program welcome well thank you mr chairman dr johnson board members i'm captain lawhorn campbell county sheriff's
006office and proud to say one of the first school resource officers that campbell county had in the county kind of showing my age but the 1998-99 school year was the first year that we put school resource officers into the schools in campbell county there was two of us that covered all 14 buildings and we have now progressed to where we have 14 school resource officers with one in each of the buildings you see on the news right now where a lot of the other jurisdictions around us are getting funding for school resource officers after sandy hook we were very fortunate that the school board and our board of supervisors looked ahead or looked forward and decided they wanted to try to get school resource officers into the buildings back then and we were very fortunate
007to do that some of the things that we do of the 14 school resource officers three of the school resource officers are fletc federal law enforcement training center active shooter response instructors they either went to south carolina or georgia years ago to obtain that that training which they bring back to the other school resource officers as well as to our department so even our deputies that are on on the streets go through that training as well our relationships that we've built in the schools between the sheriff's office the school system absolutely amazing we have a great working relationship anytime there's an incident that happens throughout the country i know for a fact that principals their sros usually are on the phone that night talking about what they've seen talking about what they need to do
008in their schools to to to learn from from those things even at my level now dr johnson and i if something's on the news we'll be on the phone at nine o'clock at night and again i know the principles uh when i worked with mr dr stanley he and i would be on the phone first thing in the morning you're having a meeting what can you learn from that what can we bring to keep our kids safe our goal was to provide a safe learning environment so that those videos that you just saw the kids can go in and feel safe and learn and obtain all of the information that you guys are willing to provide to them some of the some of the things i'm not going to go into too much detail in
009reference to what we do in reference to our training but we participate with the schools we are part of the faculty um so to say threat assessment teams that the school each of the schools have our school resource officers participate with the principals and the faculties when that incident occurs um and that may be during the day or it may be at night on the phone when when we receive some sort of information or whether it's the sheriff's office or the school system that receive the information even if it's at nine o'clock we start looking into it and investigating to that point both sides the school and for the sheriff's office we also participate in any of the drills that the schools do our school resource officers are there whether it's roundtable um drills that
010take place or whether it's the lockdown drills that the students do and and participate in to prepare should that incident ever happen and they need to have that so if you have any questions i'll be glad to ask those or answer those maybe i'll ask you guys something i don't have a question mike but i appreciate what your sros has done as far as your relationship with the kids i went out to dinner one night with one of our sros and we literally couldn't eat because the kids kept coming up to them hugging and i was like you know next time we got to go to grad i mean it was but but they had built a relationship and and we see that from the sheriff's office we will see a 911 call come in
011at nine o'clock where our kids call and requesting assistance and they'll ask specifically for their sro yeah and that right there is heartwarming that's what this job is about to build that relationship um with you all with the faculty but more importantly with with the students that are here in the schools thank you michael's oh i have to hit this button sorry my first time with the mic can everybody hear me yes mike that i learned about the training in the summers if you wouldn't mind just kind of sharing with the public about the training that also includes state department for the state police i guess it is at all town does some training we we our our school resource officers and and i've been very proud of this through the years we have trained
012inside of our school buildings for 15 years probably in in preparation should we ever need to respond to any type of incident that's there whether it be a bomb threat or whether it be a rescue call for someone so during the summer months of course if schools are closed and the kids are not in the building we take the opportunity and we will usually schedule it through central office and then through the principles and we'll come in and utilize learning the floor plans of the buildings as well we'll do that at night our night shift road deputies will visit schools at two o'clock in the morning should they not have calls that are going on and um at a bare minimum i'm learning the floor plans but to get it i don't want to get
013into the specifics on on what some of those drills are but we utilize as much opportunity and as much time as we can to to be inside of those buildings prepared for whatever that we would maybe need to respond to mike i'd like to commend you and your team i think campbell county's been held as a yardstick for the state of virginia dr johnson i think you've been contacted by the state superintendent and steve newman here recently so i think that's outstanding demonstration of what type of great program you guys have built from the ground up and so keep up the good work how's the morale of your deputies in that role is that is that it in the role of school resource officer and i just spoke to one that's has been here in
014the schools probably for a year and a half absolutely loves the job that they're doing um it is it's different aspect from answering the calls at two o'clock in the morning to to watching the smile of the third grader when they come through the front door so it takes a special person but the ones that request to come over that go into work in the school it is extremely rewarding law enforcement now is a tough profession to be in across the board so and as you see in the news it's really hard to come by deputies or police officers across the board so we're very fortunate to have a great group of school resource officers that want to be in the building and and have the heart for it it's good to hear i'd just
015like to thank all of you for your dedication everybody i've interacted with they've all had a positive attitude friendly easy to have a relationship which really encourages the kids to to interact with them engage with them and share what might be on their mind and and the whole bunch are just friendly and helpful and you know pitch in and help out wherever they can and and i also enjoy having you guys at our meetings because you bring a lot to you know our discipline uh cases where you know you may know some insight about charges or weapons or drugs that may have been involved and that helps us a whole lot when we make our decisions and i mean can't thank you enough for what you all bring to you know our meetings just you
016know i've been you've been around here a long time and just appreciate everything you've helped mold and you know put in shape and and you know we owe the county you know the fact that they supported us when we needed it so frank we appreciate that i mean but just thank you you know thank you again for all you do i don't believe we can thank you all enough mike that the professional job that you and the rest of staff have done and like i said attending meetings here and and everything and the friendly uh folks that you got doing these hard jobs just like the gentleman in the back uh i see him see him at before high school all the time and and you know you know talking with the kids and it's
017just wonderful and thank you and i don't think we can thank you enough and thank you to board's advisors for allowing us to do this several years ago i would add one thing a lot of you were asking about the digital mapping we finished that last week the of their full plans they were in schedule last week and so now all of our building floor plans that digitized and would be available to whoever needs those and i'll touch on one more thing without getting into specifics i assure you um from the top levels in the sheriff's office to the school administration building anytime something happens throughout the country or information is made available we dive deeply into it and try to learn from anything that we can and make adjustments or prepare ourselves so that
018we can provide the best services for all of our students and all of our staff here in campbell county that's good to know and we appreciate it thank you mike thank you let's get my hand should we give him a hand [Applause] everybody thank you i certainly think you've been leading this sro conversation for a long time uh on behalf of the campbell county school board our principals teachers and kids i want to present you with this framed poster of your different resource officers throughout the county um with kids and interacting with them and we've also got a brief presentation we'll show you as they've received each one of them received a gift this week of appreciation awesome so anyway thank you for what you can do very well i appreciate that really good [Applause]
019[Music] so uh [Music] so [Music] [Applause] that's very nice that brings a smile to it warms your heart that's good okay all right matters from the floor i think we have two guest speakers mr otero i'd like to come to this podium let me just mind you at this time the board will hear matters from the floor each speaker will have three minutes to speak please be respectful of the three-minute time limit prior to speaking please state your name and address and comments must be directed to the board and not the staff or the audience or the media good evening my name is robert otero a resident of evington this evening i addressed a grave matter of concern for the children of campbell county on the campbell county school website comprehensive plan outlines specific objectives
020detailing character development for children in grades k through 12. castle is an acronym it stands for collaborative for academic social emotional learning a scholastic organization that publishes and distributes programs for k-12 in the past this board has denied teaching from castle publications nothing further is from the truth moms of liberty had been referred to as liars conspiracy theorists crackpots when we stated that castle publications are in the county school system let's review objective two of the comprehensive plan listed on the campbell county school website there are two programs character strong and caring school communities ken caring school communities and character strong are both castle approved programs used by campbell county schools these programs are better known as social emotional learning sel an intro an indoctrination program for radical thought disguised as mental health it focuses
021parents by hijacking phrases that no parent would object to the program's claim to impact engagement promoting belonging and student well-being being they are not what they claim they are indoctrination programs linked to castle according to castle sel can help address various forms of inequity and empower young people and adults to create thriving schools and contribute to safe healthy and just communities fancy language that means nothing truth is these programs are hateful they lead our youth to culture of submission despair and depression under the guise of improving learning it's a full-fledged indoctrination and all you are responsible for approving these programs for campbell county schools you are interested are you interested in answering the questions parents adults and members of the community are asking what does integrity have to do with academics what factors led this
022board to use castle programs does characters strong assist students in providing learning opportunities in math reading and writing what character traits are school leaders seeking to develop who identifies them what role does the teacher play in these elaborate lessons are teachers just asked to facilitate videos click on the lesson and press the plug and play thank you for your time thank you ms coleman good evening i'm crystal coleman from alta vista virginia let's take a quick trip back into the very recent past on april 8th one of you sitting up there emailed me the following and i quote we don't teach castle that simple phrase gave me the confirmation on what i had already suspected this person did not at all understand the topic but more on that in a second on august 8th i
023received a response from the virginia department of education regarding the social emotional learning standards this state agency had to be contacted as we were receiving no information from this board the vdoe stated these standards are considered guidance for school divisions which means they are not mandated each school division for each school division has the autonomy to determine how sel is implemented within their schools we encourage division leaders to engage community stakeholders families teachers students etc in a discussion of the sel standards to determine which concepts to prioritize and how to incorporate these standards into their curriculum one would think this is a cause for celebration but not so fast the beginning of the school year has brought the following character strong and caring school communities campbell county's answer to the seo question and guess what
024yep you guessed it one only had to click on the very first part of each of those programs to find wait for it castle that we don't teach it claim for those in the general public castle pushes a social justice message to implement sel and is widely considered the trojan horse for critical race theory two of their foundation partners are none other than bill and melinda gates and the zuckerberg initiative imagine that this is what campbell county came up with aren't we the county that adopted a resolution against divisive concepts or was that just a smoke screen to quiet people down what is even more inconceivable to me is that you never thought anyone was going to check on any of this that we would rub a stamp just as this board seems to rubber
025stamp there's a line from an old betty davis movie that says hold on to your hats it's gonna be a bumpy ride and if you continue to underestimate this community you better hold on tight thank you all right we're going to move on to the business payment of the bills no i'm sorry we're going to approve the minute first of approval mr tim second any discussion on the minutes all in favor please say aye aye any opposed nation carried now payment of the bills motion pay the bills second the most in a second any discussion or questions all in favor please say aye aye any opposed motion carries donations mr any questions or discussion all in favor please say aye aye any opposed promotion carries non-resident tuition tonight you have 116 applicants any questions actually
026i did want to ask were there more applicants than the 116 is that just how many openings we had for applicants we approved a lot of them last month good question any other questions all right we have a motion on favor please say aye aye any opposed motion carries thank you but we also have appropriations one more yeah there's one transfer of appropriation this month unless you have any questions motion to approve second all in favor please say aye aye any opposed all right that motion carries all right personnel report mr chairman members of the board you have the personnel report in front of you unless you have any questions i'd ask that you to prove it as written you know what i'm going to ask are we fully staffed we are not we have
027a couple openings that we're working on since the beginning of the year at the beginning of the year we were we had a couple of long-term subs in place that we're still working on um but have some long-term plans for those and then we've had a couple openings since the beginning of the year we're working on it thank you not too far off if there's no other questions i'll move for approval second i have a motion in a second all in favor please say aye aye question carries thank you several religious exemptions yes sir good evening tonight i have seven uh families requesting religious exemption for their children if there are any questions i ask that you approve those any questions for mr says no motion to approve second mr person made a motion gary
028second okay all in favor please say aye aye any opposed thank you all right dr johnson this resolution thank you mr chairman um i sent you an email with a resolution in regards to financing the last what i would call draw financing for the new rosberg middle school if you recall the first um the first time the county went out they um secured funding minus i think about seven million and so this time they've gone out again for the last bit of funding uh it was his plan this is the formality um it's just you it's taken care of by the county's finance uh folks and their attorneys and it's just collateral for the russburg middle school to finish that out all right well all in favor please say hi and he opposed all right
029i guess get that last little bit finish it up good we're still on budget with the school everything's looking good yeah yeah i can't say the materials and everything um is all good you know we still uh there's a serious supply chain backlog with different products and so it's creating some issues but we're still on target hopefully to open it in january when we return but you know we'll keep you up to date if anything changes but for example all of the interior wooden doors are not being shipped until the first week of now i think of october okay gonna be a lot of overtime yeah so um yeah but but we'll just have to see all right all right good okay all right dr johnson you'll have a report that you'd like to share
030well let us have a couple of things one uh dr stanley's already talked about the opening it was it was one of the smoothest that i can recall and appreciate everyone working hard to plan that that doesn't happen by accident that's a lot of work if you went to some of the open houses you saw all of the work that that this principals and everyone all the staff put together um in regards to uh to having everyone back but anyway no i just want to mention just a couple of things in regards to the speaker's comments tonight i just wanted to remind you that uh the code of virginia section 22.1-20801 regarding character education i'm not going to read the whole thing but the basic character traits that are taught so um include trustworthiness honesty
031integrity reliability and loyalty respect and cl including the precepts of the golden rule tolerance courtesy responsibility hard work economic self-reliance accountability vigilance perseverance self-control and i could go on and on respectful authority in the law castle is not a curriculum that we teach we teach two pro correct castle is a what i would describe as a clearing house approved by the doe that different programs are on we did choose we do have we have chosen and vetted two programs that teach just those things you might look in on castle and find a program that we would not teach in campbell as far as the makeup and the integrity of the castle people i can't speak to i just know that we are required under the code to teach those character education traits i don't think
032anybody can argue with the those things that i just mentioned but uh our programs were on there they've been vetted we've not seen anything um that we feel is divisive or doesn't meet the um i guess the of what campbell county would want uh i'm sure that's that's out for interpretation but uh we're comfortable with what it is i'll be glad to answer any other questions i've sent you some information on it i appreciate miss coleman sending me her comments or her subject in advance so i could give you some background information and any more that you'd like to have after tonight i'll be happy to to get that out and that's all i have thank you all right comments from the board you want to start mr brandt well i just want to again
033thank mr long for coming tonight and telling us with great things have been going on for many many years for that's our officers and all the great professional work that they do and we can't thank you enough uh i attended both open houses at elementary school in high school normally you see the parents smiling and the kids frowning this year the kids seem to be pretty excited about coming back i want to i want to thank everybody put all that together it was both of them were pretty amazing and andy i think with covid hopefully behind us i think everybody's glad things are getting back to normal thank you just again i'd like to thank everybody for all their hard work and contributing to a smooth opening uh day of school and an opening start
034to the school year uh captain lauren thank you so much for all you do and all the resource offices um it's furious you know i know from just the parents i talk to everyone takes a lot of comfort in knowing that we have resource offices in all of our schools and we appreciate everything each and every one of you do so thank you very much so mr jones oh well we can go down the line yeah this is mark i'm sorry i'm ready to go definitely thanks to the sros um also to dr johnson for getting me um an invite to the security summit that senator newman sponsored and we hosted here for all of the local school systems uh their principles that well not the principles their leadership and their and the sheriffs from
035all the local folks and folks from richmond came to i learned a lot there and everyone in our area does look to campbell county i was beyond uh proud to be sitting here as representative of campbell county and we thank everybody for your service and sro hutcherson get to know him more often with all my visits to brookfield our opening was amazing i was meeting new teachers old teachers i had folks approaching me which was great because you know that's what i wanted when i got on here i wanted them to come to me with questions or concerns and i never got out of the high school in both of the two hour sessions or three hour sessions but it was fabulous and it was packed i mean it was packed everybody was there i
036want to mention too that my friend claude harris out in the audience there brought to my attention early in the spring constitution day so i did some research as many of the folks up here know found out that it is actually a federal and a state mandate for or law for us to recognize constitution day i wanted to see how we were representing it want to beef it up even if we're doing a great job and we were doing a great job and we are beefing it up i want to read something to um that was provided to me on an update i don't want to mention her name she wanted to be humble but who helped coordinate this with a lot of folks across the school district they she had them share their plans
037this is all teachers and principals ship for the whole county share their plans with her regarding constitution day which is friday a wide range of activities are planned including including virtual field trips to the us senate a create your own amendment with mock proposals and the ratification process poster projects book walks read alouds about citizenship and laws escape rooms based on the constitution how cool is that um and the fourth graders at um at lres will be presenting um an observance during their virtual announcements and that we can actually sign up to watch that and numerous other prop projects i was just very very impressed so super excited to see how that plays out and i did want to also address the sel in april's meeting i addressed that um in pretty much in depth
038about how it was it is part of the law to teach character the sel is actually the law actually states that the bvoe has to provide guidance castle is i didn't mention castle at the time but is an approved guidance provider and i have met with miss mickelson and miss walsh prior to my announcement of my findings back in april and was given books i mentioned that too kindergarten and first grade books to look over there they were extremely passive i was also asked about a software program that the kids could access certain books the teachers limit and pick the individual books that the children have access to so our teachers and our leaders are for lack of a better term cherry picking the things that are character based only and that do align with
039campbell county values and i was very proud and very pleased with what i saw i mentioned some of the buzzwords for those in the audience like the genderbread man they literally physically recoiled had no idea what that was so i was very pleased you know that our leadership has not seen any of the divisive things that are happening in other counties further north than us um and i think that was it thank you guys thank you thanks for sharing that yep thank you you need to go for barry thanks to dr stanley and all the administration for getting school off to a great start um as dr johnson mentioned i know it's a huge effort on everybody's part so a great job in that regard thanks to our sro officers mike thanks for the good
040presentation tonight and speaking of that i appreciate all the hard work you guys do and have been doing um got a little feedback from dr shields at rosberg high school so sports are back in full swing and roxburgh high school both varsity and jv football are 3-0 and varsity and jv volleyball are 6-0 and they had a cross-country match this past wednesday so we did well with that as well and the college admissions workshop they held this past wednesday and had good attendance at that also so a lot of activity going on at roseburg high school and then from yellow branch elementary school i got some information from miss brown and as was mentioned by dr stanley earlier she just mentioned it's nice to have the little things that we took for granted before like
041parent involvement parent volunteers back in the school pta back in the building the back to school bash they had eating lunch in the cafeteria just a little things like that we've taken for granted before back in the swing and doing that kind of stuff again so um i think that's all ahead thanks today should we go now yeah certainly want to recognize mr rogers back at this glad to have you come anytime just happy to have you um certainly want to thank clay for your i think two presentations tonight right opening school and then on sro amy credit where credit's due that's right uh on the way over here tonight uh the sun was kind of going down in the west and hitting the front and the side of the russberg middle school and the
042colors showed off and it reminded me of when dr johnson called leon and i go down and look at those samples of bricks said pic which ones we should use well i don't know who ended up picking them but you sure did a good job i mean they look spectacular with the different colors and it's really it's really beautiful so mr nell at concord says that this has probably been one of the best openings she's ever had at concord everything's gone good parent student participation has been great everybody's excited we had a governor's school meeting wednesday dr hale was there it's really an amazing place we went to some of the rooms or labs whatever you call them and i i took a little opportunity to look at some of the equations that were written
043on the board from that day i guess and i was very happy that i'm retired and let us do it but but it's very very um amazing place we have 14 juniors and 12 seniors you know attending there this year um we they gave us a demonstration on was it four robotic arms four that we bought and they're able to program the robotic arms to take blocks and move them and identify colors and it's just pretty pretty amazing so and the school sros again just my hat's off to you everything you all do and just we thank you so much that's all i got right i really that's a hard act to follow everybody so i just will pretty much echo our appreciation for the opening and how exciting it is to feel like we're
044back to normal dr mo just want to thank uh wfct for being here tonight uh been a long time but uh y'all welcome back anytime yeah um where was that i know what i'll speak and you know i recall when we put our heads together with the county about being able to put an sro in every every school and that you know it always i was curious when i came on how that got done that you know especially in elementary schools when they were rotating it would be just the luck of the draw if something happened so i'm really proud of our county as um to make this a priority and as you shared you know we're a model and that's always that's always the right place to be i appreciate that just a little
045update on laurel school we had our quarterly board meeting dr johnson is the rotating chairman in charge we've added some programs there i think we'll try to get an agenda item sometime that we can sort of go over that but everything's good at laurel and um that's all i have so congratulations everybody all right anybody else got anything if nothing else i'll move we'll adjourn a second we have a motion the second third tournament all in favor all right