001good evening everyone can you hear me in the back yeah great all right i'd like to welcome everybody to the may 9th campbell county school board meeting and we will start an opening with the pledge of allegiance followed by a moment of silence please rise pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of the america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you everyone all right so our first part of our agenda is matters from the floor i'd like to read a little statement first 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 comments
002must be directed to the board and not to staff the audience or the media and our first speaker and that's fine our first speaker is crystal cohen mrs coleman good evening i'm crystal coleman i'm from alta vista let's review some things number one to provide a world-class education that enables every student to choose and pursue any post k-12 endeavor that's our school system's mission statement number two our student conduct policy in which our students are subject to corrective action for any misconduct that occurs regarding assault and battery sexual assault etc number three our standards of student conduct conduct another policy regarding student dress clothing jewelry or other apparel or personal belongings with language or images that are vulgar or obscene clothing that is otherwise sexually provocative are not allowed students shall not use vulgar profane
003or obscene language or gestures or engage in conduct that is vulgar profane obscene students shall not use write create or possess pictures documents or other tangible items that are vulgar profane or obscene number four our acceptable computer system use includes provisions dealing with obscenity materials that are harmful to juveniles materials that are harmful to minors and material that is otherwise inappropriate for minors family life education parents and guardians may request that their child be removed from part or all of that program number six we even have a policy regarding violent sex offenders on school property but using a tool provided by a prominent virginia attorney this our school libraries have the following and this is only a smattering the kite runner which includes graphic detail of homosexual rape the glass castle a memoir which includes
004graphic context and molestation death prefers blondes teenage socialite leads a double life by day she dodges the paparazzi while soaking up the los angeles sunshine by night she pulls off increasingly dangerous heists with a crew of teenage drag queens and then we have the loveless series where gay to lesbian to heterosexual love is depicted and the first in the series starts out with a romance between an 11 year old boy and a 20 year old adult male and as the series builds it excuse me it builds on the premise that each person is born with cat ears and a tail which disappear only if that imperson that person engages in a sexual intercourse doesn't specify of which variety can there be any wonder that again i am requesting a process to be put into place
005to vet what's in our libraries and to provide options to parents and guardians who would choose otherwise for their children thank you next is jackie miss mendes good evening this weekend we were at the virginia education summit putting children first very informative lots of board members there from other districts so we got to network with a couple of them so some of the things that i want to share with you we heard from the lieutenant governor when some seers asking parents to stay in the fight challenge the school boards engage with principals teachers and school personnel make your concerns heard that's why moms for liberty is here we were we heard from congressman bob goode who's pushing some bills at the congressional level of he's part of the labor and education committee parental bills are
006being sponsored in congress through capitol hill um we heard from a very interesting person ian pryor he's the lawyer who's heading the lawsuit of the rapes in loudoun county very very um a grand jury has been has been convened and we'll see the results what happens there we heard from elizabeth schultz the office of the virginia board of education and in in as a as a concern that parents are coming to school board meetings and other grassroots organization the doe has established a parent executive director position to address parental concerns and parental rights very interesting katherine gorka if you guys don't know who she is she is the wife of sebastian gorka who works for the heritage institute who is also going around and working with grassroots groups in in organizing and letting them know
007legally what their rights are and then we had numerous delegates in the age of from the education committees in virginia we had tim anderson mike cherry and carrie greenham who are willing to work with us here in campbell county and with parents so um part of it came out a hope scholarship that means that the kid goes with the money the money goes with the kid so west virginia has just instituted this at the state level and it's been very very successful we're looking to have it here in virginia commonwealth is on the move to change the outdated indoctrination of kids in public schools this has been going on for a long time as moms for liberty represents parental rights we expect campbell county school board to comply with parents and taxpayers and one last
008mention here we heard from numerous board members on the panel describing how archaic the training of new and existing board members we're learning how the sausage is being made members are trained to follow the superintendent protect him and others in official capacity this is unacceptable outrageous and moronic so the virginia school board association the virginia association of superintendents and professional organizations undermine the kids the parents and the teachers so my last thing here so i won't disrespect the definition of insanity is voting for the same representative and believing they're going to fix the thing believing they're going to fix things so term limits are needed and parents deserve a clear window into education which we don't have here and everyone is a stakeholder in education thank you thank you next is robert otero yes sir
009i hope you're not putting us in order because that's what you want to hear first my name is robert otero a resident of spring hill district two bid road evington as a county resident engage in challenging the school board over public education i cannot help but wonder how the public school system became so detached from the will of the people whose tax dollars fund the school system even more to the point why should us parents have to fight an uphill battle to shake off the title of domestic terrorists simply for trying to exercise autonomy over our own children none of you has yet called as domestic terrorist let's keep it that way teaching a child about a way of life comes under a parent's responsibility our schools must not come between alternative places to re-establish
010a different faith in a child's mind through education adding the subjects of homosexuality and gender identity and teaching children to accept a lifestyle that is rejected by millions of christians muslims and jews is not a society of multicultural diversity it is brainwashing rejecting a specific lifestyle is not a definition of prejudice or bigotry but a belief that each group embraces without crossing the boundaries of others curriculums at school must not contain lessons that teach doctrines for the purpose of changing students mentality and re-educating generations who have different beliefs because of their family's traditional lifestyle the board has approved 14 new hires the community wants to know how many applied what specialties will they perform are they certified we deserve to know how teachers are recruited and appointed we have been vocal about transparency we need
011to know that decisions made are in collaboration with the community at large leadership relies on trust and verification it is sorely lacking with this board we are not seeking good faith from everyone under dice and the deus finally i want to thank miss mendes for attending and highlighting the middle resolution policy network virginia education summit putting children first thank you next is reggie herndon reginald herndon 6698 wards road rushburg good evening i'm speaking tonight in my capacity as the president of the cameron county branch of the naacp to address the passage of your resolution against so-called inherently divisive concepts adopted april 25th let's review governor younkin campaigns against so-called inherently divisive concepts the board of supervisors passed a resolution telling the school board that it shook what it should and shouldn't do governor young then
012issues an executive order to make good on his campaign promise this body adopts a resolution which refers to governor jonkin's order against inherently divisive concepts despite the cameron county naacp and many more members of the minority community requesting this buyer to stay neutral by not adopting a resolution and you did so in such a dismissive manner that in some ways might be disappointing more than the content of the resolution itself we had a motion sucking no discussion unanimous vote all in 34 seconds to add insult to injuries you didn't even bother to a second time to explain yourselves doing matters from the board in which you said you had the chance to do so by that display it looked like the result was the predetermined and lacked total transparency we found it hard to believe
013that you are working for all the citizens of campbell county disregarding constituents is behavior that shows many people's distrust in our political leaders the main thing to remember is the critical race theory and the 1619 project will not be taught in cameron county public schools this frackless resolution shows us what you would do if in fact you have full control over instruction and that is deeply troubling to us in our letters to you we stated to adopt the resolution would be to solidify our view that the cameron county school board does not have the best interest of our children of color in mind our confidence into the capacity of this body to administer public education in a nonpartisan manner has been greatly diminished we'll say again the interest of people of color deserve equal consideration
014along with everyone else's when this board is considering any action i'm reminded of dr martin luther king's statement that says the time is always right to do what is right god bless and i thank you for your time dawn bergen i'm sorry dawn barrigan good evening dawn bergen galloway drive rusburg pennsylvania i'm sorry um anyway um before i get into what i would like to say is um thank you for everything y'all do unfortunately education has become something that is not quite just education and that's why we have a lot of issues i think and if there is some way somehow to peel back to a place where reading writing and arithmetic science and history and social studies with without any kind of agendas or anything at all i don't know you know that would
015that would really solve a lot of problems but maybe you know anyway last thursday i sent an email to everyone i hope you got it it was regarding the florida bill to protect parental rights and education you may be familiar with the bill i hope you got it it does three specific things regarding classroom conduct any questions you may have will be spelled out in the sent information it's just an email and it has links you can touch in it and it has like a little bullet point of of what it what it is um anyway the bill prohibits instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity and k to three grade classrooms and after that conversations need to be age appropriate it ensures that at the beginning of every school year parents will be notified
016about health care services offered to the school and the right to decline any services offered the bill ensures that whenever a questionnaire or health screening is given to k-2-3 students parents receive it first and provide permission for the school to administer these to their child the bill doesn't go far enough in regard to age in my opinion i think it should be k-12 but that's that's how i see it discussion of sexuality and gender identity should be excluded from most classrooms biological reproduction and sex should be taught at the appropriate grade level discussion that isn't reproductive science oriented could be subject to bias or agendas by teachers or others well-meaning as they may think they are directly challenging the natural values that parents have in place perhaps some of the measures already are policy here
017in campbell county or they're being considered and if that's the case thank you when i started making calls to see if this type of law could happen in virginia i was informed the next legislative session doesn't start till january of 2023 but the school district could choose to make it a policy they saw fit and she reminded me that that's how crt theory started in the state it started at local policy levels so please consider making these parental rights a policy for students for next year children have so many things in their young lives to be confused about to worry about anything we can do as adults to preserve innocence and certainty would be an act of love thank you thank you that's all the speed that's it okay thank you everyone all right next
018item on the agenda's approval of the april 12 meeting minutes make a motion to prove the minutes as presented i have a motion a second any questions or corrections to the minutes all in favor please say aye any opposed promotion carries payment of the bills mr chairman i mean we pay the bills and so far as funds permit second i have a motion a second any question about the bills or discussion all in favor please say aye aye any opposed motion carries some klan hand donations tonight you have eight donations that were listed in advance of the meeting on board docs unless you have any specific questions i have sent you approved it as presented motion to approve second question in a second any questions or discussion all in favor please say aye aye any
019opposed thank you consideration requests for supplemental transfer of appropriations tonight you have four appropriations that were listed on board docs unless you have any questions please approve them as presented room for approval mr chairman second we have a motion in a second any questions or discussion all in favor please say aye aye any opposed there's some carries miss hundley personnel report thank you mr chairman members of the board you have the board the personnel report in front of you if you have any questions please let me know otherwise i'd ask that you approve it as written i have any questions for miss hunting motion second okay all in favor please say aye aye any opposed thank you mr sisk good evening members of the board tonight i have one policy to bring for you that
020student conduct policy if you recall back in the fall there was a request by a young man to go back and look at our policy regarding portable communication devices and cell phones which we've done quite extensively and we have talked to our principals extensively and you know have worked out a change in our cell phone policy and it's as written i would ask that you take a look at that if you have any questions now or during the during the next upcoming month any questions now i have any questions have you talked to any of the teachers because it looks to me like we're putting all this on the teachers i've not spoken to teachers just the principles okay thank you what do you mean it's putting it on the teachers well it's they're the
021ones that are going to be responsible for deciding if the kids get to use the phone in the classroom the classroom deciding whether they can use it or not and monitoring their use that specific caveat was placed in there because we do have a lot of teachers at the specifically the high school level who will do activities where students do use their phones and if it was monitored and controlled by the teacher and then the child and the children not children at that point these adolescents put away their phones when they're done with the activity that's perfectly fine is what this policy is saying so you're using a phone for a purpose a google search or correct yeah only for a directed instructional process right and then and then put them away when you're done
022with that that's what i was getting today so they pull it out for that purpose and then they put it away after that task is complete correct now could they do these tasks on the laptops that we provide for you it's possible i mean we've we've looked into um the fact that they could but teachers sometimes for whatever reason it's a tool for them and they have used this in the past with success use those students devices the student doesn't have their own device certainly they can use their laptop um i'm i'm comfortable with whatever you certainly want to do with that tie to it okay thank you yeah have a good day any other questions yep all right all right tonight i have two students before us whose family have filed proper documentation for
023religious exemption i would ask that you approve those please yeah yeah okay um i'm sorry any questions or for mr sisk about this religious exemptions on favor please say aye aye any opposed motion carries thank you mr sisk dr stanley so thank you mr chairman members of the board tonight i am presenting to you the 2022-2012 comprehensive plan after i go over the beliefs and i guess long-term goals that will drive our most recent decisions then i'm going to have ms robertson she's going to talk about our assessment data and kind of give you a snapshot as to where our kids are currently and how we measure that then our director of elementary education ashley walsh is going to talk to you about some specific interventions that we have in place now at the elementary
024level to help move students forward and address learning loss dr james mannell couldn't be here tonight he was going to address the secondary programs and resources but i'll cover those the best i can first of all our long-range plans focus on providing students with strong literacy and math skills mastery of content needed to pass our sol test and provide students with the skills that they need to be life ready we realize that passing the test and graduating is not enough employers want candidates that come to them and they can think critically they can think on their own they can think creatively they can communicate well they can collaborate with others and they have the citizenship skills needed to strengthen our community this comprehensive plan provides focus for our division as we seek to recover from
025the covet 19 pandemic and provide that education of enabling every student to choose and pursue any post k-12 endeavor if you'll remember before the pandemic we were doing well all of our schools were fully accredited our graduation rates were high students were passing their sol tests are showing growth and and we were providing opportunities for students to learn more about careers and get into the workforce but i want you to know that the learning loss is real achievement gaps have widened our fourth grade teachers who used to be who are accustomed to dealing with some students who might be on a third grade level and some that are on the fifth grade level are now dealing with beginning readers um so that that that i guess span of ability is increased a lot over the
026last two years if you remember in the spring of 2020 in that march all students went home and we pretty much shut down our schools and our teachers and our administrators worked hard to provide packets of information that students could work on and continue their education the best they could then in 2021 we had almost a third of our students choose to do online education while we continue to do in person to the to the to the greatest extent possible for students who wanted to come for elementary students that meant four days a week in most cases but for our secondary kids they would come to school two days a week and receive an online instruction three days a week and then this year when we thought we were really going to get back to
027normal we spent our similar really talking about instruction and how we're going to return to normal we didn't return to normal we returned to mitigation strategies we returned to contact tracing we returned to you know kids having 30 and 40 absences a year we returned to trying to cover our classrooms and sometimes we had to close them because we didn't have teachers and in some cases we came close to closing some schools because again personnel absences so we've not gotten back to that level of normalcy uh quite yet but i do know that after watching our teachers over the past two and a half years and watching our administrators and and knowing our central office staff i do feel that we're going to catch kids up as quick as anybody but understand it's still going
028to take some time so the first area of focus in our comprehensive plan centers on curriculum and instruction the most important thing that a school division does our goal in campbell is to ensure that our students are demonstrating grade level competence especially in literacy and math but obviously we want that in all content areas we know that students who stay on grade level and they progress on grade level are much more likely to graduate and be successful on the back end we don't just wait for the sol test to tell us that okay we give formative assessments throughout the year to see if we can start to identify where kids are falling behind again if we can put intervention strategies in place quickly then it's more likely that we could keep the kids on grade
029level and keep them again on track to graduate we're always looking at our formative assessment process we want to make sure that we're testing enough to know where kids are but obviously we don't want to over test i mean our number one goal is as educators is we want kids to love school and i don't know if you remember when you were in school but testing all the time was not a lot of fun but it's important again for us to diagnose where kids are and then what do you do with all this data we want to make sure that we create a systematic approach to use this data to personalize instruction and maximize our instructional practices that's going to be our most important focus moving forward here as we recover from the pandemic on
030the back end we've got to remember we've still got seniors who are going to graduate in a couple of weeks and they're going to go out into the workforce or they're going to college so we still have to continue to do the good things that we were doing prior to the pandemic but honestly during the pandemic they dropped off a little bit and those are the the things that have to do with college and career readiness you know every year we're always looking to evaluate the programs that we're offering do we need to tweak them do we need to do anything to them to make sure that they're more aligned to the workforce okay and meeting our profile of a graduate alignment this year we've had over 60 students in the cbcc cte dual improvement
031in dual enrollment program we've got 28 students who attend governor's school every year we've got 48 students who attend the early college program right down the hall 12 students who yearly go over to the stem academy this year we had over 400 kids take an ap class back at their home school and then of course every day we've got approximately i think 300 kids that come over here for to the tech center for cte electives so we've got a ton of opportunities we're doing good work there but this process is continual we always have to look at what we're offering can we expand it to more kids are we impacting as many groups of kids as we possibly can and put them in a great place to graduate be successful in a career go to
032college meeting our mission in terms of professional development we believe that strong organizations provide professional development and have meaningful conversations about their craft we think that professional development is important we can't continue to do things the way we've always done them our students have changed i mean just in the past 10 years we've doubled the number of english language learning students that we have in our division we have over 200 right now we've got five teachers this year with your blessing we hired our sixth teacher and what they do is they do push into the classroom services and sometimes they pull kids out to provide services but that means for the majority of the day our classroom teachers are working with kids that don't speak english that's not something they did 10 years ago professional
033development's important because we know that literacy is is our number one i guess factor when it comes to student success and lifetime success we've got to make sure that we're always training our new teachers and keeping a sharp eye on what we're doing in terms of literacy starting last year we started providing training with a program called letters letter stands for language essentials for teachers in reading and spelling it's a program for beginning readers and struggling readers it's a program that's science teaches teachers actually how the brain works when it comes to literacy and they're loving it right now we've got about 50 some teachers trained all of our literacy coaches are trained our elementary coaches are trained and that's something that we're going to continue to do um i had a teacher tell me
034this past weekend that that's the best professional development he's ever been a part of this was an elementary teacher um i believe tomahawk that's great to hear okay again these are important things that we have to have professional conversations about teachers want professional development they want to get better at technology they want to get better how to use the block schedule they want to get better as teachers and we have an obligation as a division to support them and provide that the second focus area has to do with student support services we believe that every child has the right to be in a classroom that is conducive to learning and has a positive environment to do that our number one goal is to reconnect with our community and engage in positive social interactions between schools
035parents and students we want to have great relationships with our parents okay in the spring we had our first open house in two years and they were well attended in most areas but that was welcomed by all of our administrators and all of our teachers they were happy to do that and to start rebuilding those relationships as a principal for 20 years or an administrator for 20 years the the parents that i had great relationships with their students thrived and we know that it's just like two parents in a household when everything is working kids are in a good place in most cases at the same time when the parents and the teachers and the principal on a good working uh have a good working relationship and support one another kids thriving school okay that's
036something that we celebrate we cherish and we want to make sure that we're continuing to maximize we also want to look and make sure that we're going to train our administrators this summer and talk to them about um you know rebuilding that positive classroom environment rebuilding that positive school environment you know that took a hit during covet the absences the wearing of masks the mitigation strategies it's hard to build relationships in that environment so we're going to talk a lot this summer about how we rebuild that and then what can we do in classrooms to help with behavior management because when all of our kids came back we noticed this year that we had a slight uptick in and behaviors that warranted discipline um you know that's natural i think that's that's part of it
037a lot of kids have been at home and uh we've got a lot of first and second and third year teachers that we haven't really spent a lot of time with so we've got to make sure that we're helping our principals understand what good classroom management looks like in our build how that needs to be systematic with all of their teachers and try to be as proactive as possible we recognize the fact that we gave out a lot of computers overnight we became a one-to-one division um and so we got some ketchup to do last year we did a lot of work in terms of providing training and digital citizenship but that's that's ongoing because the threats that are waiting for our kids and even waiting for our teachers on the computer and the internet
038are real so we have to make sure that our students are smart when it comes to using technology we'll continue to train our school personnel to recognize signs of trauma and mental illness and students who are at risk of falling behind because that's not always based on effort or ability sometimes it's based on hunger sometimes it's based on basic needs not being met we need to make sure that our teachers recognize the difference and know what to do if they start to see signs of that we're also going to train our school personnel to recognize threatening behavior and provide them with ongoing support um with their threat assessment teams safety always trumps everything that we do okay so you safety is not a specific focus area but understand that that is our number one responsibility
039is to make sure that our students make sure that our staff they're safe our third focus area focuses on human resources we understand that our teachers and our staff are our most important resource and we're committed to hiring and retaining the best teachers we can get in order to do that we've got to recruit teachers we got to make sure they understand what our mission is and what campbell county schools is all about uh we need to look at our job fairs all the things that we can do to recruit more teachers to that look at how we're handling social media and facebook and our websites can we do a better job of communicating our core values in those areas and once we hire a teacher we need everyone to know when campbell hires a
040teacher that we support that we have a mentoring program that starts the day they walk in the door and will continue through their second year that's something that we've had in place but again with covet it's dropped off a little okay something that we need to call our our lead mentors back in and kind of go with those expectations again that we can retain good teachers that we don't have that's one less that we have to hire and then obviously we're going to continue to look at data salary studies from around this area and make recommendations to you because we can create a great environment and we can provide them all the support in the world but as you all already know we still have to pay them with competitive salaries to people around us
041if we want to retain great teachers in terms of school operations we recognize the fact that our facilities and the school environments and how we do things impact learning and it impacts our school environment so we're going to continue to utilize and update our capital improvements plan obviously this is an area that we have i guess kind of excelled during the pandemic um obviously you go down rushburg and look at the new building and a lot of things are happening with our cip in partnership with our our board of supervisors we're going to continue to look at population trends and make sure that our building capacities are are okay and that our facility needs are being met and part of operations you know um under operations follows our crisis plans and that again is something
042that we only annually have to look at and make sure that our our administrators know how to handle crisis situations and they train for that and they prepare for that that's kind of an ongoing objective that we have and always will have part of school operations is transportation and you know the struggles that we've had when it comes to finding bus drivers so we're going to develop a plan that provides for an increased pool of bus drivers and support staff i think you'll start to hear a little bit about that in our next meeting when it comes to their salaries and then i guess the most exciting part of school operations is monitoring and facilitating the successful transition into the new russ burke middle school obviously that's a big deal coming up for us and
043we're looking forward to that day technology doesn't have its own focus area but technology every five years is required to do a technology plan so what i did is i shared that with you as well and then we're going to talk here about really the five focus areas for technology our technology staff just like our teachers you know we need to take our hats off to them because of what they've been able to pull off the last two and a half years i mean we went from the idea of okay we need students to have computers because when they leave us most jobs require some form of computer and then when they go off to college you see even cvcc using blackboard using moodle using all these different delivery systems and our kids are graduating
044and they've never seen them so we knew that having a one having computers was important what we didn't count on is having to do it overnight um so we still got a ways to go to to be great at it but that's our goal so in terms of technology our technology staff they want to personalize and support student learning while providing opportunities to expose students to 21st century skills just like we talked about before except with technology and they want to encourage innovation by providing support to our teachers and our teachers are always looking for new and better ways to teach and to be engaging but they need support to do that otherwise you know we end up with a kind of a hodgepodge all teachers doing this something different and that's not real conducive
045to running a school system so they need our support and then providing a shared vision that integrates emerging technology with traditional teaching practices what does that mean it means just because we give a teacher a laptop does not mean that it takes the place of the teacher okay so there's a constant conversation going on there of appropriate device usage within the classroom and then providing and supporting a secure and robust infrastructure so that when it comes time for our kids to log on the computer works okay and our staff has done a great job at doing that but again that is an ongoing process and then minimizing network threats while providing a safe online environment for students and staff cyber security is a real issue okay and our staff takes it seriously thank goodness they
046understand it obviously better than anybody in the division and they do a great job of keeping our network and our kids and our teachers safe to summarize in order for us to meet our mission and prepare students for any post k-12 endeavor we've got to ensure the safety of all of our students and staff number one we've got to provide a positive school learning environment for all students and it's conducive to learning for every kid we've got to hire and retain the most qualified teachers we can find we've got to ensure the mastery of foundational literacy and math skills and then we've got to expose our students to college and career opportunities while instilling in them workplace readiness skills that will help them be successful those are the beliefs and those are the long-range goals
047that drive what we do in campbell county and will be next year next month and and within the next five years obviously as you have this plan it's a lot more strategies in it than what i went over today you know feel free to call my office ask any questions this is a draft so you know nothing's set in stone and even once you pass it it's still a working document i mean it's not something that we can't tweak and work on as we go so next i have sarah robertson she's going to talk to you about assessment kind of give you a snapshot as to where we are good evening as you know school divisions in virginia are measured summatively by sol data as part of the state accreditation system and in pre-pandemic years
048i have presented accreditation information to you in late fall after it's been released released by the state of virginia prior to the pandemic all of our schools were fully accredited and with it being waived the last two years i really haven't had much new information to share from you from the state what i do have for you tonight is a look back at our sol data that shows you where campbell county public schools has been so i have for you tonight slides that compare our subject scores in the core content areas against the state of virginia and as you can see and as dr stanley mentioned that prior to the pandemic we were successful and our schools were succeeding and you will see that we stayed in line with the state of virginia in 2021
049you'll notice the drop that was the year accreditation was waived but we still tested last year and they did report pass rates as you can see the same slide is here for writing available and our writing data truly mirrors virginia and also dips a bit in 2021 but it doesn't dip as much as it could have because a lot of our writing data was waived in grade 8 with a local assessment our math scores dropped more dramatically when you compare them and from previous years from the pandemic but we still came in right in line with the state at 54 percent so we know there is work to do in math our science data also dropped more significantly in 2021 and it is still a little bit lower than the state of virginia but also
050during the pandemic our focus was truly on literacy and math instruction and as dr stanley mentioned not all of our schools had school every day four days a week at most and a lot of our students were learning virtually our history data has always been in line with the state of virginia longitudinally and it too dropped off last year but came right in line with the state at 54 percent but as a note history is not included in state accreditation it is merely reported as pass rates this data chart supports the previous graphs that i have shared with you and again the color coding alone shows you that we were performing quite well prior to the pandemic and then in 2021 we clearly dropped off as did the schools across the state but this data
051is old to us now since it represented last year's summative data and prior so now i want to show you what we are currently where we currently are and how we have measured growth and progress in 2021 thus far to begin the 21-22 school year coming out of the pandemic we knew that we had learning loss as you could see and our focus needed to be on making up that loss and identifying gaps and growing students and in campbell county we use nwea map assessments map stands for measures of academic progress and we have longitudinally since 2016 pretty much kindergarten through 10th grade and these tests are growth measures they're adaptive and so they help us to see academic growth throughout the year in reading and math they challenge each student since they are adaptive
052and adjust in difficulty depending on how the student answers the question the results are reported in rit scores and the ritz score is then compared to a percentile based on norm's data that they release rit is just the vertical scale that the company uses in their measurement but our maps data can be compared across the nation with students not only against our own schools but also division and then of course as i mentioned the nation but it's been important to us that we have used map data for this long because the state accreditation system heavily focuses on growth now in grades three through eight reading and math and as you know sol testing is summative we get our results really at the end of the year and you all see results even after we've moved
053into the next school year and so it's important to us to have data that we're able to measure our students and inform us within your growth and historically how they've done not just for this 21 22 school year you can see here this chart is quite comprehensive and difficult so in a minute i'll pull out a couple of examples from this chart but i wanted you to see how we as a division look at our data longitudinally in these grade levels particularly k through eight here and you'll see in the first row that it reports the ritz score which is the division level risk score for each grade and this is the math example and the number below it is the correlating percentile so you can see how that grade level performs over time and
054the trends that it gives this chart this graph shows you some of the grade level examples that come from the comprehensive data i just shared with you so i pulled out four grade levels as an example and you'll see in most cases we trend mostly growing there often in fall we'll dip a bit because we do have summer loss as students return to us and we're starting that school year again you'll also notice that in fall of 20 which is when we returned from the pandemic our data is falsely high and that is because we didn't have certain students test because they were out we also had a lot of students who tested remotely and so there was a lot of parental participation in some of our data in fall 20. so we kind of
055use that as a caveat but if you'll really notice what we're measuring now from fall 2021 to the spring of 2022 this is what we've used to take a look to see how our grade levels are trending in this math example and there you'll see some of them are trending up but we have some areas of growth to make there and you'll notice in that sixth grade example it's trending slightly downward where it goes in winter from the 39th percentile to the spring at 37th but that does not mean our students are not growing the ritz score actually improved from 216 to 219. what it means is that our students not are not necessarily growing at the rate at which we want them to grow and so that's what we're going to focus our intentions
056on and a little bit later i'll show you more student specific data so we can make some decisions about these students i have the same chart there for you in reading looks very similar with the ritz score and then the percentile and the yellow highlighted for you i pulled another example for you to see and the reading chart really mirrors a lot of what you saw in the math example two we also have grade levels that are performing well and we have some where we need to take a look at what we were doing again you saw the inflation and fall of 2020. another high-level report that we receive from our map data is the projected proficiency report where it links to the virginia sol proficiency and this takes our spring data in math and
057we're able to view and see that it's projecting 62 percent of our students will either be proficient or advanced on the math sol you'll notice that grade 2 is also listed and we do not test sols in grade two but map extrapolates that data as a projection but when i've removed second grade it is still 62 percent projected typically in years past these projections have been close to our initial raw data and so that does not include any expedited retakes where we typically see an increase of almost 10 percentage points and so that really also does not include additional growth calculations that we see when we get accreditation information the map projective proficiency is also available for spring reading and the virginia linking study was just updated for language arts this year so it does
058not extrapolate any additional grade levels so that shows in grades three through eight projected proficiency of again we expect to see almost 10 percent higher reported once we have students who have qualified for expedited retakes that means they're within the range of 375 to 399 and get a second attempt at that test for themselves so we're encouraged by these data projections that we have seen thus far but we are cautiously optimistic because we also know there is continued room for improvement as you have seen i also wanted to show you an example of how we're able to drill down into our data because data drives our decision making and what i showed you thus far was high level but classroom decisions and instructional student decisions are made by looking at individual students so this is
059an example of a map report that was produced by our data team just recently and this is a snapshot of second grade reading and this is division level data and numbers so this chart here shows you quite a celebration as you can see because our second graders in fall 45 were considered on and above grade level but by our spring testing 60 were considered on and above that's quite a celebration but it also means we have 40 percent of students that we need to make plans for and take into consideration that may not be on or above grade level at this point so in order to do that we have to know who these students are so that we can make strategic plans for them another example of this map report is shown here but
060i have no student data for you for privacy sake but i wanted you to see the different layers of this report you saw the division level chart just now each school has access to that for their school and grade level they can also drill down into teachers with that information and also student lists you'll see you can also view the subgroups there you have different races students with disabilities etc but you can then filter to find out who are those students who are in the low category less than 20 percent who are the ones in low average 21 to 40 percent and find out whether their students who are making progress but not at the rate at which we would like or whether their students might have an anomaly in some of their data and
061it needs to be compared to other data sets that we have but our goal with that is to be able to speak to individual students so that we can have individual monitoring to measure the growth that our students are making as noted before our sols did bottom out but we're pleased with the student growth that we are seeing and this data really helps us to have laser focus to make some improvements next mrs walsh is going to speak to you about additional elementary data and how instructional decisions are being made to catch students up and how we're going to monitor and evaluate these actions i have a quick question before you yes sir move on um and you may have mentioned it and i missed it but in this in the data review are you
062able to extrapolate i think the difference between those like this year for 21 22 the students that are at home learning still doing distant learning as opposed to the ones that are in class and what the difference is there certainly we did that a little bit last year with our sol scores that came in and we did that with our raw data the state did not provide it that way the map data i was able to see as well that way but this year we have so few that are really still virtual that it's not been necessarily as much as a gap as it was last year okay thank you thank you i'd also add for that for elementary our online students this year we actually really want them on level so those students that
063we didn't feel like would be good online students we had conversations with those parents so that also excused the data somewhat okay i'm going to dive in a little bit deeper into elementary we do of course in elementary sol we do map but we also do pals and pals is done pre-k through five and pre-k it's really just the screener in grades kindergarten through five it actually gives us levels on our students what does it do it actually for kindergarten readers it assesses rhyme beginning sounds letter sounds and spelling for those students that are readers that are grades one through five it looks at spelling word wreck and isolation then passage reading fluency and comprehension so we're going to look at some of that this data one of the blessings that we have with kovit
064is saying when i went to meet with principals looking at data in a little bit different ways and you're going to see that tonight so this is our kindergarten data be aware that pals is given at the beginning of the year mid-year in january and end of the year we're currently doing pals testing in our in our classrooms right now um so we're going to be looking at beginning of the year and mid-year data and i'm really excited about coming back and talking about end-of-year data because we have some good um teachers are emailing it and telling me when i'm in buildings how much their data is moving this is our kindergarten data from the beginning of the year to the end of the year if you look at on and above blue stands for
065beginning of the year and red stands for mid-year you'll really see that our data didn't change we didn't lose any student students didn't fall back any but we didn't get those students that were below level caught up some reasons for that teaching kindergarteners how to make sounds without seeing the teacher's face or the student's face is really difficult so once this data came in in january we really looked at some things really encouraged directing our teachers we actually bought kid lips which is a program that has pictures of kids with them pronouncing letters and being able to see exactly how to pronounce the letters um one of the things that dr stanley was talking about letters training what we know is it's really really hard to teach sounds without showing students exactly how to make
066your f sound so our kindergarten data did not move any we didn't lose students but we did not catch any up we believe that our preliminary data coming in is going to be very different at the end of the year a first grade data a first grade data is more promising um you will see that on the on and above level we caught some kids up a number of kids up when you look at percentages what we did is um we looked at how that happened and what we needed to continue to do part of that is our small group reading and how we're teaching small group and some training we've done with teachers we've like has really paid off in this regard you will see we did a handful of students fell below one
067year below and you'll see that as being a trend in our data between beginning of the year and and mid-year we had a group of students um fall back um as after simon mentioned earlier we had some students miss 30 40 days um and when talking with principals we do zero down when i'm with them in their buildings our principals know their their students and their teachers know their their kids and we were looking at a lot of those students that missed the most cinematic days were our most at ri risk kids at some times so our first grade data looks promising but we still need to catch um some kiddos up second grade palzetta did not look as promising um this had me having lots of conversations and we made a lot of changes
068after this data you will see on and above we did catch a group of students up but you will also see if you look at one to three months below and four to six months below we don't like that the red is lower than the blue because that means um if you look 7 to 12 months they went there they fell back and what's important is it's not like they're not learning but to keep up when you look at a learner you have to be going at a certain rate so when i would talk with coaches or teachers or principals they were like well this student moved this many levels and they may have moved two levels but they needed to move five levels to be on pace and they needed to move seven levels
069to catch up so that's always what we're chasing after so when we looked at our second grade palzetta we made some changes we talked to teachers we got some insights and we made some changes between mid-year and end of year as we just saw in map we think that we're going to be making we're going to see more students moving at our end of the year data as well for third fourth and fifth the trend is really the same we're catching a group of students up you see at the on and above level that red we are catching those students up we still have a small group of students that are falling behind again not that they're not learning but they're not learning at the rate they need to learn so you see it that
070one to two years below so you're going to see what some of the things we've really been looking at is exactly the math data that you were shown is how do we drill down and figure out these students how do we look at them we did that with map that report that was shown we also did that report with pals data so our teachers and our principals next year can very easily say where was the student and who are those students one to two years below and which students were seven to 12 months below and now went to one to two so it's really valuable data we have in our hands to figure out what do we do so third you'll see we've got some growth but we had a small population that we need
071to look at fourth grade same look we've got a little more growth on and above but we still have some students we need to move in fifth grade as well so that being said um dr stanley talked a little bit about earlier and i can't i can't commend our teachers enough this year in the sense of um he talked about the spectrum you know our teachers always teach on the spectrum they're always differentiating their instruction you know a third grade teacher always has some students below level and some students above level and some students on well this year they went from this to this meaning i'm teaching literally end of kindergarten skills first grade skills and as a third grade teacher and our third grade teachers all of our teachers jumped on board and said
072what do i need to know to meet these students needs how do i support them some specific things we did for our teachers this year and they have used in in very wise ways was the development of the math spectrum across the nation across the state here in campbell county our math has dropped um and so we developed a mass spectrum in in regards to if i'm a third grade math teacher teaching fractions and i'm trying to teach students how to add fractions well if i'm a child that doesn't know a fraction yet i can't add fractions so our teachers needed support in knowing where those skills come in contact each other so if i'm here what do i need to back up to and how do i figure out how to do that that's
073sophisticated and hard work and our teachers have been doing that work this year along with this use of this mass spectrum we also implemented a new phonemic awareness program k-3 if you hear the word hegerty that's the name of it our teachers have told us they believe this program has helped our students become better readers but not only better readers better writers in addition to that we implemented a new multi-syllabic program in four or five and we've heard the same news about that um that multi-syllabic program went 4-5 it will only be in fourth grade next year again we covered it wider this year because of copic gap we'll go back to fourth the the same thing with the fundamental awareness program we want k three next year will be k two because we went
074wide with the cova gap in addition we implemented new small group reading plans for early readers it's an increased focus on phonics and i'm teaching you that finest skill and i understand that skill and i'm manipulating that skill and then i'm actually reading those kind of words and text so our plans have changed and altered this year and our teachers are raving about the changes they see in their students due to these changes along with that we purchased additional decodable text sets what we knew is we had a lot of students farther behind and some of our teachers were like there are no books left in the book room that i need on that level and to teach this skill and so we purchased more for teachers so they had that opportunity and lastly we
075did ongoing training this year we did letters training which was spoken about earlier we did small group reading training with our teachers k one two and three and sometimes four needed some of this um and we did training on all the following new programs so we did a lot of work this this year and again our teachers should be commended in addition to that that core work i just talked about we had to expand our interventions we're very used to title one in elementary school and having title one teachers pull out students and meet their needs with covet gap there were more students we needed to serve than we had people so we had to get creative and so we used again our teacher our title one teachers for our most at-risk students but then
076we said let's start using teachers and their schedule but more than that teacher assistant stepped up to the plate kudos we had retired teachers coming in with coveted money and we literally bought targeted interventions for our students in reading and math to say okay these students aren't way back here they're here let's catch them up and we've seen a dramatic movement in our students by using our teacher assistants well and these retired teachers coming in as well so that being said we need to start looking at where we go continued focus for next year i met with principals two weeks ago and we came up with a plan for next year and where we want to go along with teacher insight our curriculum teams are going to start meeting and making some very clear decisions
077but we know that we need to increase the amount of time students are actually reading what we found this year specifically in second grade is we were doing so much work that that you gotta remember our second graders didn't have an entire kindergarten year didn't have an entire first grade year they came in and were like let's go and each one of them had different gaps and so i may have this hole tracy may have this hole michelle had may have this hole we have to figure out what those holes are so as we're looking at that we knew we went to work on those gaps but we then lost some of those students just actually reading applying those skills to actual reading and loving reading so we put some more time in the schedule
078phonics instruction and application and text pre-k through five we're going to be looking at continue to look at how we do that phonics instruction and how we make sure students are applying that we're going to look at more effective and engaging and differentiated independent practice what we know is small group is key to catching our students up because we can differentiate and meet their needs but we also know is when i have a group of five students then i have how many students out there doing some independent work reviewing skills so we're going to look at how we support our teachers with more effective engaging and differentiating independent practice and we're starting that work now small group instruction for our weakest students a trend was we have our weakest students are sliding what do we
079do we are looking even more intensely on how do we meet those needs and exactly what's going on with those children and doing literally plans on how do we move them student behavior you talked about you heard about that earlier but from dr stanley we had a wide variety we're going to look at how we meet their needs not only with supporting teachers with behavior management plans but also a behavior coach saying okay this student's demonstrating this behavior what are some strategies we can use what's the core of that behavior and what's some strategies we can use to help remediation will continue to be a key we'll continue to use care's money act to bring in retired teachers to work with our our students and our aides have done some great teacher assistants have done
080some great work and they're loving it they love teaching our kids and they're there to be committed we'll continue that practice next year and lastly parent involvement um although we communicate with their parents and we connect with their parents it's nothing like having them back in the building work side of their back so we are really going to zero in on simple things our parents and guardians can do to help with their children this honestly it doesn't take them doing much it takes them sitting down and reading 10 15 minutes a night and asking this question of this question and sometimes we understand that our parents like but what question or how do i do that we want to give them first we want to empower them we want to give them that they don't
081need much they already have they know what they need to know to read with their child simple math games here's some flash cards do some things of this nature next year we will have an increased focus on that parent involvement so that's our elementary i'm going to turn it over to dr stanley talk about secondary when you see all that processing of data and grouping and and what our elementary teachers were going through last year you can understand why they were asking for a few extra work days there during the school year because that's a lot to process and a lot of it has to be done when students are not in the room they're doing that on their own so as i said dr vanella couldn't be here tonight but in terms of summer
082school i mean in terms of secondary programs one of the biggest things that we're going to do particularly at the middle school is we're going to instill a new program this year called my path and that takes data that you saw from ms robertson when it comes to map scores and it helps create a plan for each kid that's been asked to stay back and to attend summer school and we're really looking forward to trying that for the first time it kind of tailors summer school to meet specific needs obviously our high schools will be doing credit recovery like they've done before but they're also doing more bridge programs and when i say bridge programs rush berg's been doing it for a while but that's a program where we're bringing over kids who are transitioning
083from middle school to high school and and focusing on literacy and math to make sure they're where they're where they need to be to be successful so some may be doing credit recovery some may be doing a bridge program we've used read 180 and math 180 for a few years now with a lot of success those are programs that again assess where kids are it's more computer-based though it's not necessarily with a teacher doing day-to-day instruction students go to a lab again middle school high school level and they work on these programs on their own but again they've been very successful and then we're also looking at bringing letters to the middle school what kind of reading interventions do we have to have at the middle school because the read 180 has been great it's
084not enough to meet the need that we're seeing right now we need reading specialists and people in the middle schools helping kids get to that next level where they can be successful in terms of professional development for secondary the secondary level we're going to sit down with all of our administrators not just secondary administrators and really talk about the observation tool that we use to monitor teachers in the classroom and the evaluation process we want to make sure that that process is good for teachers that will provide meaningful feedback and that we're getting the most out of our classroom instruction principles that they've been doing them i would have to say that contact tracing has gotten in the way quarantining has gotten in the way you know so we really hope that this year will
085be the year we get back to instructional conversations every day and we talked about creating a positive learning environment and managing student behaviors that will also be professional development for secondary administrators and then we're going to talk about best practices for block scheduling i mean that was a big transition from going to us from a seven period day to a blocked schedule and we still believe it is best for our kids right now and one helping kids get caught up to fill in some of these gaps and and the learning loss but it also allows them to have more opportunities for engagement and it also gives them more opportunities for electives so we like it there are some areas particularly at the middle school level where we believe that english and math need to occur
086every day 180 days so we're creating kind of a hybrid schedule where we're going to have a block but for math english and middle school it's going to be every day and then one great thing that came from the pandemic was zoom and our teachers having the ability to collaborate without being in the same room years ago we did plc work okay where we brought teachers from all over the county to the same place to have meetings to discuss their practices and to learn from each other and it was hard because one we had to you know do a half a day back at the school building to give them the time to do that and then they had to travel so we had to figure out you know where they're going to meet is
087it fair for a teacher from william county to travel to the tech center every single time what does that look like well now we can do plcs virtually so this year we're going to come out of the gate and we're going to have ap language and literature teachers conducting plc work through zoom and then also our science teachers are going to be doing a learning collaborative and lanny patrick and kimberly hancock are going to be leading those so we're excited to see the potential that's there with getting our teachers together for collaboration and then how do we monitor everything that you just saw you know the expectations that we have for our teachers and our administrators and for student learning well you know we do um all of our administrators do school improvement plans where
088they look at their data and they and they create strategies to address them in every building what we do is we go when we meet with our administrators and we have conversations to monitor that progress throughout the year that's that's ongoing and how we monitor how students are doing how our teachers are doing and how our administrators are working through that process part of that is having conversations about map and sol data you know and then finally we have cohort means really at the high school and that's where a cohort is a a group of kids who are entering the ninth grade for the first time that's a cohort and we go out and we meet with principals and we talk about are there any kids or any students here that are in danger of
089not graduating and we try to start right there in the ninth grade of monitoring their cohort what's the issue that's keeping them from being successful is it attendance is it is it is it you know engagement you know we've got to figure out a plan for each kid and that hard work has led to great graduation rates over the past few years i mean it really has it's so it ensures that we don't have kids falling through the cracks that's what those meetings do with this year's sol testing which we're in the midst of doing now our scores will account for accreditation for next year so once we have all that data in place we'll come back to you and share with you how we did next year's accreditation will include data from 2017-18 1819
090and then this year so i feel like with their all schools will be fully accredited we hope um but i mean as you saw this data here we got a lot of work to do i mean there's no there's no denying that we have learning loss and that we have achievement gaps that we have to address so if you all have any questions for us i mean we got our staff here tonight we'll be glad to answer them and if not please feel free to pick up the phone and call or answer anything you'd like board members that's a lot to take in it's a lot to take in edna it was a lot to put together i can imagine that dr stanley is there anything um over here um that you guys are doing
091in regards to the math and science you know your charts kind of showed that was a little bit off the curve more than reading and writing um to bridge that we talked a little bit about that today and i think that math is is a skill you know it's obviously a skill that it's not like reading i mean reading you you get better at it but math is one that you know you know one day you're doing fractions one day you're doing something different and i think the the gaps in time have really impacted us when it comes to math i think one the consistency of being in school every day the high expectations of doing the work going to help address that science to be perfectly honest when we went to schedules where we
092were trying to maximize our in-person instruction we had a focus on math and literacy and so i think just getting back to a normal routine will address both of those situations quickly i mean math is always a challenge every year and we're always holding our breath on math but i don't think your block scheduling would benefit your sciences with your labs and actually bridge the capital more quickly with that type of scheduling anyway hopefully anyway we'll see i guess but you know i really think that and of course we're all keeping our fingers crossed and praying for a normal opening to the school year and to get back to a normal situation i mean we i think we've proven as a division we know how to do it and we we show here that we
093are spending time we know what the issues are we just have to have consistency with kids coming to school and consistency with our teachers in the classroom and getting back to having instructional conversations and having high expectations for student attendance higher expectations for student achievement and we had a lot of grace over the last few years you know helping kids move along and navigate the pandemic and to support our families but at some point we've got to get back to hey your homework's due tomorrow okay you got to do it you know those high expectations when it comes to achievement success you know hopefully that's what we return to in the fall so i i have a question and it's going to take a little bit of a crystal ball i guess but you know
094we look at your second graders who are below six months below and and i don't i don't you all have a reference point i don't have a reference point three years ago how many kids or the percentage were six months below you know behind but those kids that are six months behind or three months whatever are gonna go from second grade to third grade and they're still six months now they're probably further behind because they're at a different grade level right and you're you've and i know you're t and what i do appreciate is all of your testing from what you've explained identifies johnny and susie it's not just mrs mitchell's class you know so i really appreciate that we are able to focus on the individual child and and that we have the tools
095and the resources but but the crystal ball is is are we going to be able to catch those kids up in two years three years 18 months you know because i'm i'm worried about johnny and susie who are six months behind in second grade when they're in fifth grade or when they're going to middle school yeah i agree i mean if we don't catch them up then those graduation rates that we've celebrated over the past few years are going to look very different because that's the number one indicator is kids ability to read you know if they're on grade level can read well most likely they'll graduate um but if not they'll get frustrated somewhere along the way and say hey this is not for me so that's our goal i mean i wish i
096could tell you that when the time comes they'll all be reading on grade level and that the law graduating and um i feel like we can get them there but every kid will be different in terms of how fast we get them there sure because that is and i'll tell you after i saw that mid-year data i was people will tell you right i wasn't happy um one thing we know is we have research out there and research hobby is a researcher an educator researcher and he talks about certain things that are in play that will move students not at a normal rate that will move students within a year they can do two years and so we're going to continue we've always looked at that school improvement wise we're going to continue to look
097at that kind of data you know it's things that really matter relationships matter right relatability matters knowing what i'm learning and why i'm learning it matters so we need to go back to some of that which we had um but in addition to that when we look at these second graders it's really essential that we look at them and we know them well first like you said but we also look and say this remediation this remediation shouldn't keep them on par if we're doing remediation our core instruction correctly with our classroom teachers well that should keep them on pace like i talked about that you know levels you know i need to i need to grow three levels right well if i'm getting that three level pace in my that intervention we're doing at the
098elementary level should take them even farther that's gonna help catch them up and so we're looking at zeroing in on that and saying what do we do and we're saying what do we change and how do we change it so it's going to take work in my i'm i'm hopeful to bring you we saw some of that data right um the map data from the whole year and we're slowly going there is that at a rate that i'm i'm happy with nope i'm really hopeful that our pals data will show a lot of growth and i'm hearing that from teachers i want to see it and this summer we'll spend even more time but we're going to have to be really clear we're meeting with second grade teachers um actually thursday to talk with them
099about some plans of what they think we have some ideas for them we want to hear which one of them we think will move kids the fastest but we've got to move them more than a year just with core instruction and we gotta look at research for that and then we gotta look at how we use these people that are doing intervention and saying this intervention has to move them even more than that does that make sense it does um and then go and i know you said your the map and pals are going to follow from elementary to middle but do you have good communication i mean about this individual child does better when he works in a group or this little this child works better with independent so that the middle school knows
100this child because this teacher you know can tell them about this individual child do you have that kind of communication well obviously the two combined schools have an advantage yeah um because they're in the same building but that's a benefit of the bridge program you know those kids who are struggling the most are going to go over to russburg high school go over to brookfield high school and run out of the gates start building relationships get used to the facility and start working on their literacy and math so that's that's really the whole purpose of the of the bridge program do we get every kid to come to that program no but we typically get quite a few um summer school you know we'll start last day of school is the 27th i think we
101have a week where we're going to wrap up the school year then we've got two days for teachers to do what they do with all of this data and get ready for summer school that starts on june 6th so then we've got four date four weeks of summer school five days a week full days where we're doing nothing but targeting these students with interventions to catch them up last summer we did six weeks but we think we thought we needed to scale it back a little bit our teachers are valuable and we need to be ready to go in august as well so one other question about parental involvement when and i know there was always parent-teacher meetings and stuff like that but when we do have a child who's behind and are struggling or
102is not growing at the rate that we think they could is there more parental involvement or more dialogue with the parents to reinforce homework or reinforce tools i mean are we are we upping our parental involvement well that's always an administrators and a teacher's number one go-to's have you called the parents um so obviously we make those phone calls and we try to you know have as much interaction as possible you know sometimes for kids who are struggling that's not always great and sometimes it's the what makes the difference um but yes i mean that's obviously something that we push for and and want to have more of these are the parents that we look for at our parent teacher conference nights or anytime they're willing to come in i think what you've done is
103extraordinary for the period of time and to be able to identify groups as well as individuals to to realize what they need to so-called catch-up and that's i mean the catch-up is it's a good term but the ones that are catching up are they having any effect on the ones that they're catching up to the ones that continue to achieve throughout this whole process how are we keeping them engaged and not reviewing what a fraction is when they already know does that make any sense at all and as i don't know when it comes to elementary i mean we've got our fundamental thing with elementary is we do groups and um and they're they're fluid they move um but that is really important because our students that are above grade level i group them for
104the sake of the the chart on and above together but they're not being taught on and above both in reading and math specifically they're being grouped and here you are let's move you this you're you're really i mean that's a it's a great question because it's something we have to make sure we're continuing to do so again that span was here and that span is still here now these students still need to be stretched and so in that small group they're still meeting with the teacher every day and they're here while this group over here is actually learning what a fraction is they're you know up here you know doing major things with fractions we're still different with the word called differentiating for our students so our high students are above level students are getting
105what they need our own level students are getting what they need and are below so we're doing that we're in elementary we do a lot of whole group clarity of things so then it's exposure to our low level students it's right on and then it's review for our high then when we get into small group as we would say exactly what do you need versus what do i need and they they're pulled daily with those thank you and i think secondary the schedule has given us that flexibility to work with kids you know who need additional interventions there's more time during the school day with the block for that to happen thank you the reading 180 is that taught at all levels grade levels or just middle school right now that's just secondary that's secondary
106intervention yeah we pretty much take this data right out of the gate and we start you know shaping up what our groups of kids look like and if they need to have read 180 and read one he's been a good program yeah okay but we've had it for a while right we have had it for a while but traditionally our schools have about 10-15 slots and then principals use those as they see fit this year and and we bought a lot more licenses because we had a lot more need but again i think the needed sec at the secondary level particularly middle school is going to exceed that we're going to need some people we're going to need some reading specialists who can use that time during the block to teach reading be real interesting
107to track our youngest children cohort as they progress through up through middle school and high school that'd be real interesting i hope i hope for their sake that we can get them all there they will yeah they will we'll give it our best that's for sure any other questions uh no just a quick comment i have heard from multiple elementary school parents and they're thrilled with the reading the literacy and the small groups i've had a lot of feedback fantastic i i would just like to add to that i i think we've always we we always strive for excellence and i know our teachers want what's best for their kids i think your comprehensive plan is it's comprehensive but it's not rocket science right we want them to graduate we wanted to be prepared and
108and here's the tools that you hope will achieve that and um but it still comes down to the teachers teaching and we really we really appreciate it and let you guys keep up the good work keep supporting them and providing them the tools and resources they need without a doubt they're our number one resource are there any things we've learned in the catch-up phase that we're going to implement permanently or that's a that's a diamond in a rough we're going to keep it in place i think in the short term we're going to keep everything in play that we're doing here in order to catch kids up you know long term i think that's kind of a wait and see right now our focus has got to be on the learning loss and the gaps
109that we're seeing in the classroom by doing what we're doing here summer school i mean that's going to be a year to year evaluation what we do next year may not look exactly the same as it does this year which doesn't look exactly the same as it did last year that's driven by student need obviously number one and then you know what are our teacher needs i mean sometimes you can get more bang for your buck when you're training your teachers and they're ready to you know do something different than you can by doing the same old same old thing more more and more of it um so that that varies thank you and thank everyone for all your hard work and your dedication to this because i mean at the end of the day
110this is what the kids are here for that's right that's why we're here while we're here that's right exactly that's that's what you know that's the ultimate goal for them to be successful in life so thank you thank you the superintendent thank you mr chairman um i just have some brief comments tonight regarding the book list that that you were presented with on april 25th i've spoken to all of you in regards to that some of you several times i just want to give you an update we've done some inventorying of those texts some of them are in our library some of them are not and we're not sure why um the the link or the the software um is including some of those that have not been a good example is one that was
111listed at rossburg middle school when we inquired about that that book was sent by a publisher but the review process that is in place worked it was not appropriate and it was sent back but it's still being shown as in our library so we're working to try to figure out exactly how that is some of those books are marked age-appropriate they're behind the counter some of them cannot be checked out unless there's parental permission but we're still you know working through that um another thing in regards to you know we have policies that and that speak to reviewing materials and i had a conversation in our staff meeting this morning we're gonna con we're gonna have meetings with those folks at our school level administrators media specialists department heads whoever is tasked with reviewing those
112materials we're going to go back and and review our policy with all of those making sure that we are following policy and providing as much consistency across the division as we can in addition pre-covered this we were working on a media specialist librarian a handbook um because everything stopped meetings stopped that that got put on the back burner but i have been told that that that will be completed by the summertime that will have some guidance in it as well to those people who are charged with reviewing materials specifically books and everything that comes in but it needs to be communicated to everybody so forth so um i just wanted to share with you that we are looking into that we're viewing our policies with everyone making sure everyone knows what that means to to
113have a thorough review policy and then the other piece is we do have a policy that works that's in place that when a material is challenged there's a policy that's in place to objectively go through and have that book or material whatever you have reviewed so um but anyway i wanted to just give you that that update in regards to that list and then the only other thing is i appreciate all the work that's being done on the comprehensive plan you will be asked in either june or july depending on the comments you know the feedback and questions that you might have asked to adopt the comprehensive plan so it is an action item in the future and then lastly just a reminder of your work session monday night with the architects and so forth
114here at 6 30. can i ask you to speak on the superintendent's visit i'll address that oh okay scott sorry i'll follow up if we mess up yeah that's all about it all right thank you all right um let's start with mr maddox i just got one thing i'd like to thank all the individuals the ptas ptos the booster clubs that honored our teachers last week i'd say most of them gain anywhere from two to three pounds but i was impressed what was done for the teachers and thank you very much that's all i got did i was that but also just want to thank everyone for coming out tonight and speaking i appreciate everyone taking the time to come out and address the board a couple of things that i wanted to mention the
115uh stem senior awards banquet or ceremony is tomorrow night at community college it's really a good i've been going for the past several years and i really enjoy it unfortunately i'm not going to make it tomorrow night because brookfield high school is hosting the spring course concert so looking forward to that my grandson will be in that i'm looking forward to seeing that and then i forget who said it but i had the opportunity yesterday to ride by frostburg middle school and it's pretty awesome coming along really well and i was just wondering dr johnson if it's something that i know it's still a ways to go but is there a way for us to get a like a tour of that sure sure i can set that up i think it'll be neat to
116kind of see walk through it see it up close and personal so um other than that that's all i got thanks mr jones i don't have much so i'd just like to thank dr stanley ms robertson and miss wallace for and everybody's efforts to close this gap and get people caught up with me and caught up to me is not the right word to use it's it's you know we're filling a gap or filling a void or something that got created by you know nothing we had anything to do with but you know we owe it to all the children and just appreciate all y'all's hard work i mean your material was great but but you know the nuts and bolts of it that's where the thanks needs to go the people that have done
117and what you all are saying that the aids throughout the elementary school maybe we look maybe we need to look at how valuable they are to us you know down the road because it sounds like you know they've been certainly valuable to us just just thank you all that's all i got um yeah i'd like to echo again thanks to dr stanley administration for all your hard work with comprehensive plan it was um i'm a charts graphs kind of guy so i appreciated the uh the data review and um like you guys i look forward to seeing it another semester or two down the road and hoping to see better results and look forward to your ongoing efforts in that regard so thanks for the great summary tonight mr herndon my sincere apologies if you
118felt the resolution was dismissive in any way i would encourage you to follow up with either myself or your representative to talk in more detail about that but the intent of the resolution was to i appreciate both yourself and others coming out last week this week i appreciate all of our speakers coming out to each of our meetings it's good to hear from our citizens in campbell county um and i'm sure the rest of the board and myself we listen although it may appear we don't i do and i jot down notes and take things seriously about what people bring to our attention not only in regards to crt but the library issue that's a hot topic and thank you dr johnson for giving some additional information on that tonight on how our policies are
119in place to address some of those issues so um so feel free to follow up if you have any additional concerns in that regard but um you know i did weigh the concerns from all of our citizens that came to speak in that regard prior to the vote on that so and a couple of things just kind of year-end events coming up in the rustburg district we've got choral concert and the band uh we've already had the choral concert actually band concerts coming up on may 12th this thursday at seven we've got some several senior nights coming up so it's great to be able to have these events again they were postponed or not held at all over the past couple of years so it's good to be able to have these events related to
120our fine arts and our sports programs our girls softball team is once again number one in the region so far they've still got some games to play but so far so good there so congratulations for a good season so far and we've got the community awards night coming up on may 26 at 6 00 pm at the high school as well as the senior awards ceremony coming up on may 27th at 8 30. so thanks to dr hale for sharing that information with me to pass along to you guys tonight i think that's all i had mr parker uh i also want to thank all the speakers for coming out really appreciate hearing from the community as you know i'm always looking for more information from the community i really appreciate you being here i
121do also my goodness you guys thank you for the presentation that was wonderful information what i appreciate as miss walsh knows you know from taking time to sit down with me and answer a lot of my questions about what's happening in our elementary schools i'm so pleased to see that campbell county just doesn't sit back and wait and like you said do more of the same we're looking for new better different you know hybrid you know try this see if it's working out i love the little videos that you shared with me when we met in person that the teachers are actually doing regarding you know citizenship and character building um so that it's you know they're not just sitting back pulling books out you know and working with the kids with just the books
122they're provided have been very very pleased and a belated happy teacher appreciation week to all our teachers you know just can't say enough and yes we had a lot of great support and i think they were well cared for in in the district uh spring sports season is here so i just want to encourage everybody it's so exciting to drive by the schools and see every field full on the parking lot full please stop and pay five bucks you know and go to the game i just said just you know warms my heart got graduations and proms coming up so congratulations to all our seniors i just cannot believe they're so excited you know no masks no social distancing they actually get to go to prom and have their smiling faces in their pictures i
123know they're all so excited same with graduation and i do want to go back to the challenge of or the request to review some of our learning materials we did have one experience so i got to see that in motion everyone was happy including me with the result and our policy works so if you see something say something and i appreciate everyone for being here thank you good well i too want to congratulate our graduates because i guess we're not have they'll be graduating before our next meeting so principals extend that and and then thanks to all of our teachers for appreciation week last week i had another laurel meeting where we basically did approve to expand uh some of what laurel does and we'll be offering some behavioral and emotional opportunities for students in
124need and i think we'll probably have an agenda item on that at some point for a presentation so we did have a wonderful meeting with the state superintendent jillian balo um she came here to the technical center by herself she didn't come with an entourage and for an opportunity to to listen to our our needs and also for us to really showcase campbell county and i think we did an excellent job of that and i think she was was sincerely impressed she was a very genuine person and seemed seemed apolitical at least right here and enjoyed meeting with her and mr hardy i really want to um thank him for how he really she was really interested in cte and she was also interested in literacy and coincidentally we had a letters training program going
125on it was not a setup but we had a letters training program going on and so she was able to walk in and and see that in action but mr hardy took her around to different shops and dual enrollment and early college and so we really had an opportunity to showcase campbell county and and and i think we really came away feeling pretty good and she also got she's from wyoming and she got to appreciate that virginia is not all northern virginia and richmond and i think that was a good take home for her and and so i i don't know if you want to add anything to that but i really think we had the opportunity to show off campbell county yeah the only thing that i would add was would be that we
126had some very frank conversations about the role of the department of debt and the relationships and what it's been over the years and what it should be going forward and i think we all agree that you know what we want and what they what i think she wants are the same and was so i think it was very it was a very positive meeting with this with the new state superintendent so she was very appreciative of the invitation to come out so and i think she will call dr johnson to bounce things off of them and uh new policies or whatever we extended that invitation and opportunity and i i just seemed the type of person that would do that so yeah and i think that's all i have and we do have a need
127for a closed session so on that mr chairman i move that we convene in a closed meeting for discussion or consideration of disciplinary matters or other matters that would involve the disclosure of information contained in a scholastic record concerning a student in the school division specifically students number 37-39 from 2021-22 school year in accordance with section 2.2-3711 a 2 of the code of virginia 1950 as amended second on favor for say take a five minute recess who did that last week uh i asked for a motion certifying that to the best of each member's knowledge that during our closed meeting only public business matters lawfully exempted from from open meeting requirements by virginia law and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered
128in the meeting by the school board motion on favor please raise your right hand motion carries okay mr chairman i know that we accept the administration's recommendations on student number 37 and 39 as presented in a move that we accept the administration's recommendation as modified to include attendance at cornerstone learning center for student number 38. second we have a motion in a second on favor please say aye aye any opposed that motion carries that concludes our business i asked for a motion for adjournment motion to adjourn on favor please say uh all right aye all right here's 6 30 6 30 do we need to bring laptop just nope