001ready good evening everybody welcome to the february 7th campbell county school board meeting we're going to open our meeting with pledge of allegiance and followed by a moment of silence i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of under america indivisible with liberty and justice thank you okay can you hear me okay we've got a few speakers that would like to speak to us tonight so we're going to start with matters from the floor and i'd just like to remind you to be respectful of the three minute time frame and so i'd like to invite beth hart up first please beth hart all right we'll move on to mr gifford david gifford i'll also be brief i just want to thank the board for recognizing parents rights i think it's a great day
002can you speak into the mic a little bit i'm sorry you get a little closer there i want to thank the board for recognizing parents rights i think it's a great day in virginia i think it'll help the families in their homes in raising their children i think it'll ultimately bring more respect to the teachers in the schools and uh congratulate you mr miller for uh being our new chairman and for ann being on the board anne parker and i also give thanks to god that he had to turn virginia red and some people didn't think it could happen but uh anyway it's a great day thank you thank you mr gifford mike levin jackie mendes all right hi good evening um thank you for allowing us to speak it's a little bit better in
003here this time around than we were here a couple of months ago but good evening board members in the campbell county community my name is jacqueline mendez and i'm a resident of campbell county i said the curriculum in the schools is still pushing irrelevant ideas and tasks that harm kids ability to learn the fundamentals of math reading writing and science here's an example from the veto curricular suggested primary gate grades thematic booklets do we all play the same feel the same grow the same look the same live the same act the same this is for the earlier grades for third graders and so so as a board member are you are you where are you on these aspects of critical race theory emoji learning and social emotional language i was researching the vdoe teacher resources
004where i found vocabulary for the sake of diversity equity and inclusion for third graders our children are being introduced to words such as race and advocate i think this is a little bit outrageous i wasn't learning those words in third grade and i was in public schools so the easy way out would be to pull our kids out of the schools it may be an option for some parents but 80 percent of our parents in the county don't have this luxury so i ask you are you gaslighting us tell us here and now are we wrong so much of the last two years has been probably problematic because of the pandemic so now the students are back in the classroom we need to take aggressive steps to maximize learning through innovative ideas to raise reading
005math and science benchmarks in the county so how do you improve every child in mastering the fundamentals and beyond here's a viable program i always come with ideas i mean that's what i do that's what i get to i get paid to do at my job um i think here's a viable program partners that should be considered as a co-curricular activity instead of partnering with agencies like beacon of hope which offers social justice themes and and instill division and hate i think the ben carson dr ben carson reading rooms are created and equipped to instill the love of reading what a neat idea connect with um instill the love of reading connect with the organization to start the process there are 200 reading rooms around the country virginia has none identify partners in the community
006that are able to donate funds and books you got parents here people who are willing to give books to the to the reading room publishers furniture for the rooms in the school staffing can be arranged with teachers and parents and grandparents willing to offer a few hours per day or a week i said reading and the love of words ignite a child's imagination and reaching their god-given potential so how amazing is this for this child in campbell county to achieve their own success as parents we don't want to settle or ignore the signs of mediocrity we want excellent exceptionalism in our schools so let's work together to start a number of reading rooms in the school district thank you thank you this is phyllis floyd phyllis floyd good evening i'm so glad to be here
007my grandfather my great grandfather actually founded the campbell county school board walter garby and we have had over 36 teachers in our family since then i have the side saddle that my grandmother and my aunts rode to teach and i've looked through this board and i'm looking through this room i don't see anyone in here young enough to have been taught the trash that we're allowing in these schools it will affect our grandchildren it will affect everyone i've been blessed to help found several christian schools that are very large i've been principal of several i've been able to travel around the country and the biggest the most eye-opening event that i ever had was fema hired me to develop their educational program and as i traveled around the state and heard this i was appalled
008and saw the results of it when we lived in canada the school had a class in the high school the bible and other myths so naturally you can imagine that i went to the school board and i was nice good manners are nice rudeness is not a virtue but i was told that all of this we're talking about right now was already in the united states we just didn't know it and i'm looking at really smart people that wouldn't be sitting here right now if you had this kind of education so i'm begging you to pay attention it's a hard job to be on a school board because you don't hear everything you can't go in and watch everything but you do have a superintendent that does have a staff and i hope to be
009around to find out what's going on and see if i can help i'm not here to hurt anybody i'm not here to damage anybody but i am here and i have to say i'm really motivated because my granddaughter was in a school in midlothian and as a result of this trash being taught in school she was attacked and it's just about destroyed her so it just has to stop [Applause] thank you miss floyd kim lemberg good evening i'm here on behalf of the campbell county special ed advisory committee i am the chair um we met last month to dr pontius go over his uh budget request and i know it's that exciting season for budget talks um and he had shared with us early in the school years and a pretty impressive piece of news
010campbell county had an 80 graduation rate for students with disabilities at the end of the 2019 school year that's the last data available through the vdoe that's impressive the state mark the state target is 61 which is nobody's proud of 61 right so i needed to put that in perspective because i want you all to understand it too um of our neighboring districts everybody that touches campbell no one else got to 61 percent no one pennsylvania county came close so i wanted to know how we were doing in the state there are four other districts that performed at or better than 80 percent one of them is false church their per pupil expenditure is roughly twice our per pupil expenditure since i've known dr pontius since my son has been a student here i've been
011very impressed with his dedication to our students to ensuring that the individuals with disabilities and education act does what it's supposed to do to get our kids ready for education and employment beyond campbell county schools and we scored above on those measures as well and i know staffing is a huge issue but i have to believe that there are those folks out there that maybe will settle for not the best salary knowing they are doing the best work and that's what we're set up to do here uh there's no fluff and what dr pontius has asked of dr johnson i know that he will put it to good use i know that it will benefit our kids that look different that act different that sometimes sound different to get them where they need to be
012in life i continue to be very thankful for dr pontius and his staff and if anybody has any questions related to the budget or anything i'd be happy to assist thank you thank you thank you very much mr lemberg and randy dunton please as a former basketball coach it's hard to do anything in three minutes but we'll give it a whirl so appreciate the opportunity to be here we're very humbled and honored to share with you tonight a program we're doing congratulations chairman miller ann on joining the board uh we've had conversations in the past with dr johnson he's been very helpful uh we look forward to more conversations with him in the future about what we're doing so in the face of a lot of times that you guys are battling the issues we're
013here to offer you a little support tonight and uh this is a post-secondary program so as a coach i became very aware of individuals that were trapped in hurdles and barriers and weren't making it you know their way into the uh labor markets and so uh when it started to become real popular in the in the media that lynchburg had the highest poverty rate in the state of virginia i first was shocked how that could be and then i started going to some of the meetings and so as i went to the meetings i really came to realization that uh you know the problems weren't trying to be solved uh and again in coaching you got to solve a lot of problems so in the end my conclusion was the only way you're gonna change
014poverty is you gotta change income levels and so we put together a program here that really is doing a great job we've gone through our pilot stage and it hasn't been without its problems as you guys deal with uh to to get it up and get it going it's birthing pains as we call them but uh we've gone through our pilot we have 26 students now that are employed um i could give you a stat on on bedford because it's probably more relevant we had five bedford students in the program all of them are making above 35 000 while they're finishing up their degree or they went into the trades and so what's happening at legacy uh is three things credited academics we partnered with cvcc liberty and bluefield then we're teaching extensive life skills
015very important that you understand what's going to happen to a student that comes to legacy from 8 30 to 9 30 monday through thursday it's all life skills and one of the greatest things that's missing right now in our curriculums is life skills i mean i sat with a university in town that we could all know there's no sense saying a name but i said hey is there any life skills as part of your curriculum i said absolutely not there's none and so then we wonder where our graduates are not you know what we call ready for workforce pressure that's coming on them and then they fail out so we wanted to introduce you tonight a little bit about what we're doing because we're on the agenda for march to make a full presentation i'll
016bring our staff here i have three three phds five master's degrees that are in the building every day working with the students legacy comes to the students at no cost to them we just help them with their with their take their pell grant money and then to buy their education and then we assist them to get to the to the finish line and then get into the workplace like tomorrow i'm one of our students has been a little bit of a project but it's great at 12 we're having an interview at cloudfit well cloudfit's got great jobs and a lot of times the individuals in your communities aren't being connected to them so uh appreciate what you're doing we look forward to seeing you next month but appreciate the three minutes tonight and god bless
017you guys as you move campbell county schools forward thank you very much look forward to hearing from you all right i think that's everybody that signed up but is beth hart here or mike levin okay okay so uh approval of the january 10th meeting minutes move for approval second motion a second any questions or changes to the minutes all in favor please say aye any opposed some carries thank you payment of the bills we pay the bills as presented second i have a motion in a second any questions about the hills all in favor please say aye aye any opposed motion carries thank you acceptance of donations mr mcclanahan tonight you have six donations that were listed in advance of the meeting on board docs unless you have any questions i ask that you approve
018them as presented i have a motion second motion a second on donations again we want to thank those people who make donations to our schools um any discussion i was just gonna just add i noticed that that new 7-eleven it opened up right there on the corner timberlake donated that's great okay all in favor say aye aye any opposed all right motion carries non-resident tuition tonight you have three applicants being considered for approval as a non-resident tuition student principals have already endorsed the students ask that you approve them as presented motion second a motion in a second any questions or discussion on that on favor please say aye aye any opposed thank you motion carries supplemental transfer of appropriations tonight you have three appropriations listed for your approval unless you have any questions i ask
019that you approve them so we have a motion in a second any discussion or questions from ms mcclanahan all in favor please say aye aye the opposed motion carries personnel report sunley thank you mr chairman you have the personnel report in front of you and as a reminder it is longer this time because it's based on our survey that we sent out in january so unless you have any questions i'd ask that you approve it as written there are no questions i'll move for approval in a second do we have any questions i'd just like to recognize a fine gentleman back in the back uh who's the only person i'll report tonight i want to thank him for his many years of service and uh if you can stick around for another four or five
020years i think it'd be great all right and also amy for your can you tell us how the job fair went sure yes so we had that on saturday we ended up having about 60 people that came to the event to interview it went really well i think we have some outstanding candidates to start with we already have some principals scheduling some follow-up interviews so i anticipate a lot of these positions will be filled by next month right i agree yeah i've stopped by for a few minutes on saturday and i want to thank all the people who were there to participate to help out and make it successful thank you all thank you thank you for coming by okay we have a motion for the personnel report we had a motion did we get
021a second we've got a training discussion all right so um all in favor please say aye any opposed all right thank you very much all right dr pontius dr miller members of the board thank you for having me tonight uh this is the presentation of the special education annual plan which is i've already given dr johnson our budget request this is just your federal assurances that you'll receive federal funds and you'll allot it to the education of students with disabilities it's really just a an assurance that that's how we'll use those funds we actually don't get the appropriations until later in the year of what we're actual federal fundings will be so uh i'll take any questions or ask you to prove the annual plan are the numbers consistent as far as the amount at
022this time they are we haven't seen any increase in federal funding been pretty much the same for as long as i've been here and i would just like to um echo what was said before about um our special ed program under your tutelage and that's a it's a um real feather in your in our in our cap under your guidance for that success rate well i just get to be the roar of the lines right there's good people in the field doing good work yeah yeah you have good people so all right so um any questions for dr pontius okay so do we do we need a motion to approve this yeah okay i hear a motion motion second okay mark made the motion and animate second all right all in favor please say aye
023aye any opposed thank you okay uh consideration of a resolution condemning the use of inherently devices concepts including critical race theory mr phillips thank you dr miller yeah i would just like to bring before the board tonight a motion based off of some of the feedback we've gotten not only at our meetings but some emails that i've got from some constituents and i would guess the rest of the board has gotten some of these concerns from the constituents of campbell county as well that we make a motion where i would like to make a motion tonight directing dr johnson and staff to draft up a resolution in regards to the divisive concepts including critical race theory for us to review at the march meeting second any discussion or questions all in favor of that motion
024please say aye aye any opposed all right that motion carries we look forward to [Applause] look forward to see this resolution next month all right dr johnson now the nitty-gritty can you hear me okay okay so tonight we are presenting the 2223 draft operating budget for the campbell county schools let me first i think um michelle and the finance office and amy a lot of work in the personnel office to pull a lot of information together um for the hard work that they've been doing um let me start just by making you know uh a few comments regarding the budget one we're doing the budget earlier than we ever have we've mentioned that before the only information that we have is based off of the previous administration governor's budget as you note the general assembly
025is in session now they there will be amendments to the governor's to the budget that we base these numbers off of the house will develop a budget of their own the senate will develop a budget of their own and then they will work have a conference committee come together to work out those differences so we have used a lot of trend data but the majority of the information that's in this budget is off of the governor's budget um we fully expect to have to come back and uh make amendments to it once the houses but we have to have it to the board of supervisors before that will before a budget will be adopted in richmond okay that's not unusual we are doing it a little bit earlier this year than in the years past
026um but anyway so tonight what i'm going to do is really highlight the high level um what's in this budget that's new compared to this budget that we're currently operating under okay um just a couple of things that i want to point out in here when you look at the increase in the budget recognize that it has we have 15 million dollars in carryover funds stimulus funds that's inflating this budget number okay those are federal dollars that have to be in our budget until that could be potentially in there until the end of 24. so 15. nearly 15 million you'll see when you look at your revenues on the uh federal side you'll see that at the bottom that number that that increase but all of those all of those monies have been accounted for
027or planned to have expenditures associated with them regarding capital improvements and things of that nature okay but they but they will be spent over the next two years but they're in our budget now so they're already encumbered well we a lot of them were grants that we had to write and tell them what we would use that money for so yeah okay okay so let's go ahead and get get started um the first slide that you see again this is based off of the governor's budget that was released in december there will be some tweaks and things to that so here you'll see that we're going to get about 66 million dollars from the state from the commonwealth that's about nine million more than this previous year okay and so um we fully expect that
028to change some but all of the information that we're hearing out of richmond there are some commonalities among the the the house and the senate and they primarily um are associated with the five percent raise for all instructional staff so in this budget there's about three million dollars there's three about 3.2 million to provide that five percent increase we get about 1.8 million from the state to do that and then we have a local match remember they when they talk about funding a fully funding a salary increase they don't truly fully fund that because it's based off of the minimum standards of quality and no school division in the commonwealth of virginia is able to staff at the minimum standards of quality okay so there is a local match to go with that um one
029of the other things that you'll see in this budget and you'll see a line item in this budget and and let me just say this budget's not quite balanced yet and i'll explain why and because i want to get some some thoughts after you've had an opportunity to digest this but one of the things that we've talked about for years is how do we get teacher our compensation pay up from being fifth or sixth in the region up in the top third or second or third you know we don't we'd like to be number one but there's a couple divisions that have extremely high teacher salary and we're not going to touch those but the groups that we primarily compete with right here in our region lynchburg bedford amherst maddox and we would like to
030be in that top two to three so what i we did was with the additional revenue that we had in the budget we have begun exploring through the personnel office miss mcclanahan as and as i've shared with you you can't catch up in the teacher's salaries by just giving cost of living raises because everybody's given a cost of living right so it's square what i've always said is you've got to put some money into the scale into the teacher scale so what we're proposing in the budget is to take up to 700 or approximately 750 000 of those new funds and dump that money into the teacher scale okay now the reason we're not giving you that number or tonight exactly is we're we're still exploring some different options for example when you look at
031our area average of teacher pay based from zero to five years five to ten years and then ten and beyond we do pretty good in the you know in the early years we do fair in the middle but we're woefully behind in the latter years which which pays and rewards our most experienced teachers so one of the things we've looked at is can we go into the scale put um a thousand 500 into the first that zero to five year steps a thousand into the second and then two thousand in the upper this year to get our to bring our scale so the task that i gave amy and it was to how can we bring our scale evenly across the board but get us up in the top two to three in the region
032okay so we've done that we've costed that out and you know that's basically approximately a 750 000 endeavor okay um give or take so we're still full with that one of the other things we're looking at is when we take that amount of money and then we put it into the scale equitably across all of the steps what that might look like so we are still exploring some best i guess best use of those funds to get us to bring our scale up where we've been wanting to for years so now we there is some money in this budget that allows for that so we're trying to figure out what the best use of it is so that's so i'm sorry i don't have tonight um exactly what that might look like one i'd like
033to hear what you believe number two i would like for us to do some more work because that's that's a lot of work on the teacher's pay scale and one thing we don't want to do is have unintended consequences in this budget so but what we're what but what you're sure we're showing in here is a line item for that money to go into the scale okay i have a question yes i was gonna say before i move on yeah devil's advocate have we ever since my first year have we ever seen what's come from the state ever drop or have we always gotten similar funds or more like you oh no we've seen drops okay oh yeah we've seen during the recession it was big drops it was 9 12 million but we're not
034predicting i feel pretty comfortable that it's gonna be somewhere here we we know um that there could be changes um but we feel fairly confident that it's gonna be somewhere close to what we're doing here and we we would have contingencies built in where you know we're sustainable yeah that's right yeah that's exactly right okay yep okay the other thing that you'll see in the budget is obviously you know minimum wage has been going up and it's incrementally been going up or has to go up to eventually get to the goal unless something changes to 15. we were scheduled to go to 12 this year we've tried to plot that out a little bit each year instead of having a big jump in any one particular year so what we're proposing in this budget is
035going an additional step taking it to 13 which would overall increase our classified or classified pay scale for those for those folks so in addition to our certified teachers getting an increase there would also be an increase in for classified employees many of you have talked we've talked for a long time this budget does include the pay scale adjustments for bus drivers and uh and bringing that up to you know approximately 15 59 an hour for starting pay that's about 120 000 expense to them to this budget um we are i've talked to the county uh the county administrator we're both going to budget in this operating budget a two percent increase on the health insurance side for the employer and then the additional two percent would come from the health insurance fund okay for
036those of you that may not recall we are self-funded we've had two or three good years um so we will pay some of that increase in cost out of that fund there will be no no cost passed on to the employees for this for this current year remember our health insurance runs on a january to december calendar so every year we're budgeting for really two two budget years in an operating budget um and then as as you may have heard tonight with um with inspect special ed there was some we've had some personnel requests for the last several years that we've been not been able to meet but but we believe in this budget we can do that the requirement for esl teachers that's english as a second language our the number of students speaking
037english as a second language continues to increase therefore we have to increase the number of teachers per thousand that we have and so we're proposing that we add an esl teacher there's this budget emphasizes early childhood um education there so this would fund an additional virginia preschool initiative feature and an aid it would reading specialists are big in this budget so it would fund out of the additional funds reading a reading specialist three full-time and full part-time and two additional aides it would include three spec-ed teachers and two aides and then three secondary teachers math and science primarily as we went to block scheduling a couple of years ago we've been short staffed especially at out of vista combined and this scheduling has been a real challenge it requires a few more staff members when
038you but when you block schedule so we are proposing we go ahead and they were asked for last year and we eliminated those just due to the amount of money we had and then we've had a part-time mentor person for the last two years mentor coordinator very important to our new teachers as we see new teachers leaving the profession now we've got to provide them as much support as we can we're proposing to make that a full-time mentor position out of the hr department and then two additional and maintenance positions would be added into that budget many of you heard a couple of weeks ago we had the joint meeting some concerns that we were understaffed in maintenance i don't think there's any question that we are one of those positions went away during the
039great recession and it never got filled so it's really only an additional one so that's that's really the big that's what's in here other than what going on this year in past years there are no other new initiatives that's the changes to the budget within that one slot that's a big change big change but good change i've never seen that many new positions well we've never gotten that much additional you know revenue from the state nine years if it holds it's a big deal if we had one so that's huge right so um but again it's early and we will but we're doing the best with the information that we currently have okay let's roll to the next slide i've already mentioned um the proposals the uh five percent salary that's in that five percent
040this year it's additional five percent next year that's in the uh in the buy any budget as i mentioned to you i think maybe at the last meeting the the interesting one was the school construction funds of 3.8 million dollars that's never not that's brand new i've not in my 10 years seen that in the budget so we'll be anxious to see if that holds grocery tax hold grocery tax hold harmless that money it doesn't show up in our budget it may show up on the on the information our calculation tool that they give us as grocery type that's really been dumped into the basic aid and but they gave as you've heard there's a lot of discussion about eliminating the grocery tax across the state so what they wanted to do was make sure
041schools weren't harmed if that money went away so that's what that's with the zaire but as you've also seen in the last few days that's getting some pushback and some debate and there's some concern that it could be long some long-term funding issues if that goes away so we'll we'll keep it a close eye on that the rent the in their budget it says re-benchmarking hold harmless every two years the state re calculates they'll re-benchmark their standards of quality the staffing levels everything they expect us to do the reason there's money in here is because they use previous the previous two years as data and if you recall in 20 transportation special education all those things were shut down so there was a lot of unspent funds so if you used that data they would
042be significantly shortened the amount of money you're getting so they may they went ahead and re-benchmarked but they also put in hold harmless based off of our composite index in this in this budget as i mentioned last time there are no changes to the brs and i've already mentioned that the health insurance increase would be two percent um next slide is just again projections adm that's average daily membership we use the department of education's number to create this budget we put that into our calculation tool that doesn't necessarily mean how many students we actually have that's how many students we're budgeting for okay so um you know that those those are really two different numbers the next slide shows our school nutrition budget that has to be included in our operating budget but it is
043separate but when you when you adopt our regular operating budget you see jan's budget here jan does a wonderful job of managing the school nutrition program and that budget and i've not had any issues you know with that over time just to to break out some of the um different the general fund where we get where we get our money you can see that we get the majority of it from the state that's because our composite index is uh fairly low you can see in just so you know that we are requesting level funding from the county this year but we did in our in when we sent our course our communication over to the county last week they wanted a tentative number as to what we might be asking for we told them we
044was going to be level which they were appreciative but we did say that to keep making sustainable then next year we probably would need some additional funds from the county and we've asked for level funding now i think this is three or four years in a row so but i did put them on notice you know that we would probably need additional funds next year because it's not as much of the compensation supplement in the second year of the biennium uh and again the federal you can see that the the the amount of money that's in there for that and then just a couple of graphs that just to illustrate visually where our funds come from the green obviously being you know the state level you know the majority of our funds and then the
045state and then the federal has grown over the years some not significantly i remember when it was much smaller than that and then if you go over and look at the expenditures the general fund expenditures obviously the majority of our money is is spent in instruction our federal programs you can see that's a big piece uh admin pupil transportation those are all categories required by the uh the department of education estate that's why it's broken out into those different categories okay and then again a visual to illustrate what that looks like and then the last slide before i take questions would be just again to remind you that we have a second meeting this month the 22nd to uh adopt the budget and then i think we have to have it in the system by
046the 23rd over on the county side so we will hopefully the last few days a couple of days leading up to that once we've worked out any kinks and and we've communicated individually with each of you we'll start inputting some of that that information so we can come in on the 22nd and to adopt a budget that would be the only only agenda item that night and then as far as at the county level we will be uh available if they begin their work sessions and start having having conversations and things we will be available to answer those with them if they request a joint meeting we will go uh but again it's usu it's it's at their pleasure so that's a lot and it's quick it's a good budget so let me let me
047just stop there and ask you uh as michelle and i said today i'm like sure i can put it exactly like she did but it's a little um i don't want to say unnerving but when you're working with so many uncertainties at this point this early in the year with this kind of budget but we're based based off the best available information we have today but we feel we feel fairly confident that and as i talk with folks in richmond um as i'm the aboriginal region five legislative person i get a feel that there's that a lot of a lot of this may work it out they may move the deck chairs a little bit but the overall bottom number is going to be fairly close is what i'm hearing now who knows what could
048happen in the next few weeks but it you know again once we adopt the budget if we have to come back and make changes we'll do that so what i'll answer the questions that i can tonight but what i would suggest is is once you've had a time to look at get into it give them give us a call either make an appointment individually to come in and sit down with michelle and i to review it and we can answer any questions you might have by phone but i really bring you back to that first real slide where that's that's what's changed in this budget over our operating budget this year nothing else the minimum wage increase to 13 an hour when you said it may go to 15. how do we get caught if
049that happens and ours is 13 26 and it goes to 14. it goes down 26. yeah we got time all right and then the 750 dumped into the teacher pay scale i would encourage you to to be liberal on that because other localities are going to do the same thing and if we do our part we may even end up losing ground well so i haven't heard anybody say they were doing that except i appreciate you doing it because it's something we haven't done for several years the only opportunity we've had in those years so i think it's a great move yeah i hope that that holds i really do i'm confident the 5 is going to hold with certainty i'm hope very hopeful and fairly confident that we'll have additional funds to put into
050the scale but there's no guarantee there but we're going to start out with that that would be our goal that's what we're shooting for if i'm wrong but we've been able to absorb that health insurance increase for several years now yeah we've had some good we've had all right so again we're self-insured so we don't have those high administrative fees of being fully insured okay meaning that they take all the risk as opposed to us and we pay them for taking that risk um so we've had good years meaning their claims have been within our targets so we haven't had to dip into the fund so we've actually a couple years been able to add some money to the fund but i've been here long enough and watched and seen that it does this we
051have two or three good years and then we have two we'll have a couple bad years so you're going to have a bad year sooner or later where our claims are going to be up and you but you'll be able to absorb that so that's what we've kind of done is smooth this whole thing out over time using the fun keeping you know not getting not saying oh man we've got a great year you know let's use those funds for something else you know we don't do that we keep those funds there and and wait for it uh wait for the bad year because i've been here when we've had the bad years yeah no that's great yeah and now i don't know exactly how many years but i think it's been at least three
052years since we've had to pass on any employee um increases to their health insurance and that's been something that's been very positive for us and helps us in our recruiting and everything when you hear other places going 12 increases so you get a 5 raise and you get a 12 increase in health insurance doesn't take a lot of math to get that out it's a loss yeah what is the current starting pay for a bus driver what is the current starting pay for bus driver hard and dr houghton you put any additional money in for fuel based yeah we talked about that today put some in yeah so not to not to be a debbie downer but this roughly nine million dollars more that we're getting from the state than we've gotten in the past
053we're going to need most of that well i guess other than the school construction we're going to need that again next year and it's it's the most most of it is in there in the second year they give us both years when they do when they do a biannual budget they give us both years so they they're indicating that there's going to be additional dollars in the second year of the biennium it's just not going to be quite as much and see and with the reason i say we may need more there's a lot of unknowns in this budget health insurance cost you know our electricity gas you know all types i mean there's a lot of moving parts fluid parts in this budget that you know we make assumptions on and you know so
054if for some reason um some other fixed cost exceeded our normal trends then and you had this compensation in there then you make you'd need some additional dollars yeah i hate to spend money or hire people and then not be able to pay him in a couple of years so but i'm real excited that we're adding staff i mean and i'm real excited real excited that we're um looking at our pay scale and making adjustments well it's like able to do both classifications both certified and by going ahead and raising the minimum wage to 13 it's not just those people that that go up that were below that so what we do is when we do that we move to everybody because it's not there to just all of a sudden pay somebody you know
05513 dollars an hour and somebody's been here 10 years it's you know it goes ahead of so what we do is we have to adjust the entire scale when you make that increase to the minimum wage now back to that same slide we have breakdowns of how much the five percent raise will cost things like that but we don't have a breakdown of personnel additions so maybe before we vote on it sure yeah we can probably we can add that over to and decide to guess it's a problem am i fair to say roughly 60 000 per fte on average that includes salary and benefits that's a rough round number that we use okay in-house okay but we can put that on here next time okay give that to you specifically and there those positions
056are in already in here and somewhere and you'll see in the comments section yeah you'll see it in the comment section so it will be in here and where it'll show up the increase that it went up but but for simplification we can put that dollar amount out on the side all right bobby is this technology piece it's about five percent is that consistent with what we've been doing in the past with the technology portion of the budget any increase there or decrease or it it well obviously in the compensation and those people that are paid from the technology budget those they went up but i think that we have managed pretty well dr slusher's giving me a thumbs up you know we we've put a lot of money into technology over the years and
057we feel pretty confident that he's not beating down my door every day saying i need additional dollars yeah he's sitting behind a lot of technology that's the ball road that's borrowed we're still trying to get the new equipment for this room so we can stream properly but it's held up wherever it's held up in a container somewhere i don't know that's kind of what the reason i ask very is and then we also adhere to some federal programs that allows us to pay 30 cents on the dollar for a lot of our hard work that's the e-rate program which is extremely beneficial yes i was asking with all these you know the laptop expense and online and uh online learning and so forth i don't know if we were seeing a spike there well i
058saw we just bought a couple of promethean boards last month right well we haven't come in and we do we do a lot of our own maintenance any other general questions for those who might not see the budget i just want to appreciate and i know i asked a lot of questions coming in but uh i love having it basically i'm looking at five years side by side so that gives me a lot of perspective that you know to figure out where the money's going where it's been and almost all of them are yeah but i do want to point out if you'll notice in last year's audited numbers a lot of them are going to be much less okay okay and the reason that that is is because we use stimulus dollars okay and
059we returned that money uh that was county money that we returned we use federal dollars and return the money to the county and it's sitting there in a capital plan for a capital improvement plan for maintenance long-term maintenance projects so that's why that audited number from the last year will be a little skewed down where do you get into carry over that gets confusing too so yeah well good any other questions all right do you have any report i do other than i do okay yep so um i have a few things that i want to go over that have come up in the last couple meetings one of the things is i i got several questions today did anything change in our mass policy no in regards to the most recent two findings you
060know court cases that are in uh we're staying the course masks are optional and we'll let it play out in the courts and hopefully by then it'll all be done i did while we're talking about budget we did recently in the last week post on our on our web page beside the budget and we do have a summary sheet on there that we created last year that will be updated once this budget is adopted to reflect this budget but the one that's on that now is is the summary sheet for the operating budget that we're working from now but we also posted a chart of accounts which is technically a legend for all of the object codes and all of the numbers and that's on our budget our budget is dictated by the state and
061we have those five categories that i showed all those object codes and everything are dictated that chart of accounts is dictated by the state so that with the end of the year the one big report we do many but there's one that's the the queen of them all the annual school report and it's so that when we upload that information it's it's goes into their system and it's comparable to other systems across the state but so i'm not saying that chart of accounts and when you look at it it's going to be easy to understand but if you spend some time looking at it and you want to know what an object code is and what it references to you can go there and find it and go back to the budget but that that
062is what it is okay but we did we did post that to try to help some okay um i wanted to speak to some technology safety that was brought up at the last meeting um i've asked our staff to to look into that um so i'm gonna read some of this from you that came from our staff first off we from the inception of the use of air technology we've complied with all federal and state laws and there are lots of them in regards to using technology children internet protection act children online privacy protection act family educational rights and privacy act so there's a lot and we are in compliance we have to be in regards to doing what we're doing you know to protect students from illicit internet interactions we have continually updated our
063network with software hardware and other techniques to bolster our technology framework for the purpose of having our students safe when interacting on the internet for educational needs we've inserted some instruction within the curriculum teachers have to educate students on the proper behaviors when using the technology our students will provide a device for inter internet interaction for educational purposes only and per the acceptable use agreement that is displayed on their main screen every time they power on a computer they also provided a school email with a permanent password that they cannot change in its first instructional communication both the device and the email or property of the schools and are not for personal use and the device and emails are monitored they are monitored as best as possible by the technology department and administrators when needed
064all of our devices are filtered with software that is compliant with the state laws that i mentioned earlier that process happens that process is in place whether they're in school or at home okay so those filters are in place um with with any system when it's not 100 students are smart and they are continually working to try to figure out ways to get around those softwares and those things and we are we stay on top of it as as we find that they have breached or figured with some a way around a particular um filter then we we try to correct that okay but it's not um it's not to say that it's 100 foolproof um so we're continually adjusting and upgrading the system to try to get to protect the safety of all of
065our students our network system does not allow student smartphones so if a student's in their school and they want to log onto our network with their personal advice they cannot do that they have to go out to the internet use lte or whatever else there is they cannot we shut down the guest network a year or two ago for one this being one of the reasons they were using personal devices to download illicit content okay so we don't allow that so if they are doing that on their own devices they're doing that on their own data they cannot log on to the net our network in our school to do that so what i would say in summary is you know it's it's moving it's all the time if you don't you hardly hear the
066news when you only hear about cyber security or something of that nature these kids are no different they know and are working and it's a small few the majority have done everything they're supposed to do and they're doing a great job with it but there are a few so we're i can say that we're constantly continually looking we have all the safeguards in place we're compliant with all the state federal laws that we have to do to to deliver you know put these technology devices out to our people and we're constantly working and trying to educate our students on proper uh etiquette for technology and we'll continue to do that but it's not foolproof you know um and so we would just you know we would encourage parents to monitor what their kids are doing
067when they do have the devices at home if they have our devices and and help with that any questions on that so i wanted to give an update at the last meeting i mentioned cultural competency um that we hadn't gotten a lot of information um there was some training that was to occur for our administrators who would be doing who would be evaluating teachers there there was training for them on that i asked our personnel director to evaluate one of those trainings and she did and was not impressed at all in matter and after we discussed we said we would not sign up any any administrators for any of that training uh ironically i think it was just last week that the doe notified us that they had pulled that training put it on hope
068but we weren't doing it anyway so that's all i have to report other than i we did recently post on our facebook page some upcoming meetings that were to occur at the department of education and as we get um as we get i'm sorry if i'm agreeing yeah i'm not sure as we get notifications of upcoming meetings and evaluations of of department of education things we we're going to start posting those on our way there on our facebook page okay and it's in regards to mr phillips and i have been in discussion there for several months we've reviewed a lot of different materials that have come in we've asked our instructional staff to review all curricular and materials that have come in and we will embed that in the resolution that we draft and hopefully
069i can get the copy of that to you prior to the march meeting so we can have that tied up nicely so you could take action on that first board meeting in march that's all i have thank you awesome thank you all right matters from the board will present different topics i guess we will start with mr jones i guess first i'd just like to thank the individuals and the teams whoever they may be that clean the parking lots and the sidewalks during all the snow and ice because that was a tough deal if the sun didn't hit it it was tough to get the ice and snow away so just thanks to everybody was involved with doing that again thanks to all the staff throughout all our schools that are keeping us going and
070and just dealing with you know everything on a daily basis and it's just just truly impressive and we truly appreciate it and this is from concord this is mrs vanello's vocabulary not necessarily mine we are rocking and rolling as we welcome february the month for kindness we have students sharing random acts of kindness all around the building and mrs herbert our counselor has events planned both for this week which is school counselor week and next week which is virginia kindness week we are also going to be dancing it out on friday as we are holding a dance fit fundraiser to raise money for a second shade to go on our playground so appreciate all she's doing at concord and again i want to thank dr hale and the russberg high school staff for making accommodations
071that for us to meet there the last i don't know three or four months just just appreciate what all they did to make it possible for us to meet there the rustburg middle school building continues to grow and it's very very impressive it's i'm sure they're dealing with mud up to their knees but it's it continues to grow and it's very very impressive when you drive by and look at it thank mr dunton for sharing some what sounds like some very promising information that may benefit the individuals that truly need to to get a benefit and amy looks like you've been working hard i mean you've got a lot of years of experience that are leaving but but thank you for all your work and michelle and bobby and whoever else helped work on the
072budget thank you for all that hard effort that's all i got mr phillips you're going down the line i said um see we've got the annual dodge ball tournament coming up on february 24th at rushburg high school they do this every year to raise um canned goods for one of the local food pantries so uh that's a great uh effort there and glad to see that's continuing this year um i also want to thank our speakers that came out tonight thanks for bringing your concerns before the board i always like to hear from you good bad or indifferent um and thanks to dr johnson and ms mcclenahan and the staff for uh pulling together the budget for us to review tonight i appreciate that and i think that's all i have for tonight short and
073sweet the sparker do i talk loud enough or do i need the mic all right all right uh thanks to everyone i have to just let everyone know i've met with mr sisk and a doctor i can't remember who her doctor sisk and stanley dr stanley uh this week we actually had such great meetings i didn't make it to see miss hundley um so i appreciate everyone i've had great open door with everyone since i've been on the board i'm super excited and i'm really proud and happy with all of the wonderful things that have been happening this year already with us at the board um i would like to obviously thank our speakers tonight i like the reading when jackie spoke about reading room i remember the pod i don't know if anyone had
074pods growing up but we had pods and i think only the good kids got to go to the pods if i remember correctly in elementary school but obviously reading should be at the front and i know that i loved seeing the reading assistants on our proposed budget so i think we're all moving in the right direction i did reach out to the finale last minute as i apologized even to mrs white this this morning to tomahawk brookville middle and brookville high school and mrs white had a little bit of an update for us on its senior night uh i have a senior it's kind of exciting right it's coming close to graduation but wednesday boys basketball indoor track and wrestling have senior night and thursday girls basketball swim cheerleading and prep band also the region
075swim and dive is this wednesday and the regional indoor track and forensics are both on saturday and spring sports tryouts start already on february 22nd i cannot believe it um here already i do want to say hello to miss natalie stevens who's out in the gallery she is a student a russberg student and duly enrolled at cvcc in government and she was burdened with shadowing me and attending the school board meaning to learn about policy making so we appreciate miss natalie tonight for being here um i also want to mention that last week i was actually honored to be at the virginia capitol to support educated related legislation my first time ever everyone should go i got news today that senate bill 656 passed out of the senate education and health committee with bipartisan support
076making it its success through the full senate is very likely as i noticed they really lean on their special committees when they go to vote so we're hoping that this will pass in the senate this week this legislation will ensure that parents can review except excuse me sexually explicit material taught in schools and request alternative assignments for their children so reach out to your senators this is in the senate mr newman let him know that you'd like him to do what he can to get that passed i also want to speak to you know how great it is that we're putting together you know drafting a resolution to look for divisive issues in our local school district and just remind everybody that the governor passed executive order one which is specifically for the state the
077virginia department of education to recognize he gave that superintendent i thought originally it was for bobby so i had written this whole resolution you know for us to help bobby in his 90 days find all of this madness in our schools but it's actually the state superintendent was given 90 days to acknowledge divisive practices in education and as you've heard from dr johnson's update and seen things like the math they've been striking things left and right since january 15th so super excited check out the virginia department of education it's looking a little less icky every day so i'm super excited about that lastly i want to say that i'm also happy to see on a national level that pennsylvania new jersey and delaware are also going to mask optional for students thank you mr epperson
078thank you i'd like to thank all the uh speakers that came out tonight we appreciate it and uh appreciate everybody braving the weather and coming out um also just like to thank mr dunton too and i'm looking forward to the next meeting to hear more about the legacy education center amy i'm sorry i didn't make the job fair i had basketball games for my granddaughter and grandson i couldn't make it but i'm glad it was a success and it sounds like everything went well dr johnson i'd like to thank you and the staff for your hard work on this budget i know it's not easy even when you think you're getting more money easy so we appreciate all you do and i just like uh going back to the um education i mean the uh
079personnel report i know we got a lot of retirees donnie wilkerson is he still here thank you i just wanted to congratulate him on his upcoming retirement wish him uh wish him the best and i think that's all i've got uh excuse me i'd like to congratulate the altivista alumni that were inducted into the first class of the hall of fame at the alpha vista high school they were awarded uh plaques during the basketball game saturday against william campbell and then afterwards they had a uh a banquet meal uh leon's buddy bud foster was there as a guest speaker and uh it was really nice to see the community support them it there's like 200 people at the at the banquet and i hope they can i hope they have the ability to continue this
080because it was it was pretty impressive we had uh three former nfl players there a little school act out the vista that's pretty impressive and also i'd like to congratulate we had uh 10 students on the swim team qualify for state that was also saturday cool so big things have a little school you're eternally off my turn i won't repeat everything but uh um barry started out by thanking a lot of people the last month and doing things around the school and budget and michelle and bobby and amen i'm not gonna stop naming names because i'll leave somebody out but thank you all for all the hard work you've done on the budget got uh talked with the principals in the brookfield area and uh ms white i think you've been very busy giving her
081a lot of reports so uh she let me know that corey bonham teaches science and math at brooklyn high school was recently announced as a top teacher in the lynchburg living magazine and this article will be published in march and april issue so also i was able to attend a production that was held over the last four days thursday friday saturday and yesterday afternoon and uh the was called the crucible and students didn't know they just did a remarkable job it was almost three hours and i could watch a ballgame for three hours but foreign for three hours but it was well worth it and very much enjoyable also this week is uh february 7th through the 11th is the national school council's week and i want to thank you thank all our school counselors
082for all their hard work and dedication that they have and i think on dr johnson barry we have a joint committee on wednesday in brooklyn high school so that's all i've got thank you thank you everybody i just sort of want to echo what everybody said about we realize how much work goes into preparing these budgets so thank you for all that thanks for all the speakers um i guess she's not here the siac representative um i wanted to personally thank her and um we had a brief laurel board meeting mainly budget stuff and we don't have our budget yet because we don't have numbers and stuff and there's some some stuff going on with laurel that we're looking at but everybody's doing well there every everybody's doing a good job there um as far
083as um brook new elementary and william campbell i spoke with the principals and um they're pretty happy with how things are going they're dealing with absenteeism and a lot of other sicknesses other than just kovid but i feel things are going good the sols they felt comfortable with of course swim campbell was very proud of their basketball game the other night against one of our in-town rivalries and so uh i won't rub it in gary but um but uh so so that's i think that's all i have for tonight so yes um thank you to go out so next week is school board clerk appreciation week so we didn't want to overlook uh tracy dobbins she does a great job of keeping us all in line one week early but we'll get it in there
084so thank you all right anybody else have anything and i think i will entertain a motion to adjourn not not all at once okay do we have a second all right all in favor say hi and close your laptops