001happy to have all of you here um thank you for joining us today on our august 4th school board meeting um i call this meeting to order please uh we thank you for your patience as we are in a a closed meeting so thank you for allowing us the grace to get up here and get started if you will now um please join us in a moment of silence as i catch my breath thank you thank you very much um and now if um you would like to join us please in the pledge of allegiance thank you so much um i would like to now call for approval of our proposed agenda i move we approve the agenda a second thank you all in favor aye any opposed great thank you um we are now
002going to move on to the first opportunity for comments from the community we offer two opportunities um the first being right now we do have some people in the media center and then we will check in after that to see if there's anybody signed up online so we do have a list of people and i do believe the first one on our list is miss katherine tillich so please come up to the podium if you'll state your full name your address and you're limited or we ask that you limit your comments to three minutes please okay uh my name is katherine tillock i will email my address to the board um i go by kate uh has my time started okay um i support the treatment of transgender non-binary students document and i'm going to
003read a list written by my 10 year old child i support this public school system and say thank you to the instructors and counselors who have supported my child to all lgbtq plus people i say i see you you belong and i love who you are at home my child and i are working through this book called do the work an anti-racist activity book if you are white and you have not started your anti-racist work then you are upholding white supremacy it isn't either or this book includes lgbtq people of color such as marsh marsha p johnson sylvia rivera paulie murray audrey lord bayern rustin alicia garza it's important to make the connection that white supremacy is the reason lgbtq rights are destroyed as a white person i have white privilege which is why my
004anti-racism work is essential but as a queer person the ideology of white supremacy wants me gone it does not want me to exist or any lgbtq person of any age which includes our trans non-binary and other lgbtq students this is why we have the don't say gay law in florida and why 162 anti-lgbtq pills bills have been introduced this year across the united states our document called the treatment of transgender and non-binary students is charlottesville's version of that larger conversation about who gets to exist and words must be put into action my non-binary non-binary child has written a list that i'm going to read it's called three things i want to see and z has also coined a term pride plus which is a stand-in term for an umbrella term for lgbtq because that's just
005a lot of letters for everyone to say um this is called three things i want to see one teachers to make it clear what pride plus bullying is and how to avoid it sorry my voice is shaking a little bit i'm gonna start it again teachers to make it clear what pride plus bullying is and how to avoid it two for everyone to use correct pronouns and respect them three teachers to be trained to see and stop where when pride plus kids are being hurt or bullied and to not just make them say sorry but also to tell them why it is not okay and i believe that them refers to any person participating in teasing or bullying thank you for your time thank you all right next up we have miss esposito good afternoon
006dr gurley and school board members i am cristina esposito i am a grt at johnson and i live in the city i'd like to thank the school board for the ongoing discussion regarding collective bargaining for our charlottesville city school employees while we had hoped to have an answer by now i believe it is far more important to get this right than to be wrong and on time i've come to once again express my strong support for broad collective bargaining rights for all of our employees 72 percent of our staff and an even larger percentage of teachers signal their support were the same i suspect that it can feel like we don't really need collective bargaining because the school board and dr gurley's administration are more more than open to discussion dr gurley isn't just talking
007the talk he's walking the walk when it comes to creating a culture of care well i can look at the school year and know we will once again face the challenge of teaching during a pandemic as well as a shortage of staff most notably in the transportation department i'm confident that we will be supported by this board and administrative team that has not always been the case and though we might want to we cannot assume that will always be the case moving forward though i've previously mentioned these issues when speaking before you they bear repeating there was a time when the message from central office was that we were lucky to have a job and that we shouldn't complain or ask questions there was a time i was absolutely stopped from speaking to a school
008board member by my principal countless decisions have been made about what is best for our classrooms and for our students without ever involving us in the discussion we are in fact better together a current issue of concern is the proposed changes to the coveted leave policy according to the documents posted online it looks as if the policy is being changed to include five days of coveted leave per contract year that is not enough it is barely enough for someone who is single for parents and caregivers five days won't cover a single covet outbreak within a household this will disproportionately affect our families with young children as they are more likely to have used up many of their sick days for maternity leave i have a few questions about this change in policy how much coveted
009leave was used last year were there instances where the division felt it was being abused why what would the projected cost be to continue a policy that guaranteed our staff that guaranteed our staff never have never felt as if they had to come in when they were sick because they had run out of stick time i know that unlimited covet leave coupled with teachers not wearing masks is a conversation worth having i'm sure this is something that we that can be worked out but had collective bargaining been in place we would have been part of this conversation from the beginning i do not doubt this board or this administration's commitment to our students our community or our staff i believe that you truly want to create a culture of care in charlottesville city a culture
010of care means knowing that we all want what is best for our students and by guaranteeing us an equal seat at the table you trust us enough to make that a reality no matter who is in charge thank you and next we have miss shannon gilligan my name is shannon gillikin i'm a kindergarten teacher at jacksonville and a ccs parent good afternoon school board members and dr gurley the beginning of school is coming soon and as a parent of three cts students and an educator i would like to urge you to continue mitigation efforts in our schools masking weekly testing covid leave and the test to stay program were essential to keeping our schools open and adequately staffed last year local cases are currently five and a half times higher than they were last year
011and the cdc considers us in a high level of transmission mitigation should match transmission levels and right now we need you to keep us and our children safe i know some of the measures aren't popular but it's not your job to do what is popular but to use your power for the good of the most vulnerable among us tonight i'd also like to express gratitude for the time each of you have given to meet with me and others about collective bargaining our conversations on the phone and coffee shops and overzoom have been honest and beneficial thank you for coming to these conversations with trust and especially for your willingness to ask hard questions and to admit when we don't have all the answers yet we are moving into new territory by pursuing collective bargaining and
012you are being courageous by sifting through all the information and deciding what is best for our educators and ultimately our students there is a path forward for collective bargaining and i believe we can make a compromise that makes us better together you all are setting a bar for future school board members and superintendents and i just ask you to keep leaning into this work and meeting us with trust thank you miss taylor hello my name is jessica taylor i'm a reading specialist at clerk and president of the cea and my pronouns are she her good afternoon dr gurley and members of the board on april 14th the cea presented a resolution for collective bargaining to this board backed by 72 percent of all ccs employees this resolution asked the board to codify our rights as
013public sector workers to have a seat at the table when making decisions about matters that directly impact our work as of today the board has not voted in favor of the resolution i have to be honest when we first started this process in april i thought we'd have a resolution before the end of the school year we have a superintendent who has said that he supports educators and wants to promote a culture of care the board has collectively and individually publicly and privately said that they support educators and collective bargaining so what is stopping us from moving forward it wasn't until i stepped back and took stock of what we have done in the 120 days since the resolution was presented that i was able to see that we have been moving forward members of
014the board cea and dr gurley met many times over the summer to process together what collective bargaining could look like in charlottesville members of the board have individually had conversations with cea members over the summer to talk about bargaining and i know that you have met as a board and talked amongst yourselves about bargaining so my statement to you tonight is to thank you and to give a public testament to the work you have done so far very few school boards across the state have been willing to engage with employees to the level we have in charlottesville and even fewer superintendents that encourage communication and collaboration to the degree that dr gurley does there has never been a doubt that every member of the board and dr gurley want what is best for the families
015and employees of ccs all of this is progress and honestly it's what collective bargaining is it's working together towards a common goal and it's talking about hard things and it's making difficult decisions and it's being vulnerable and saying i don't know and it's uncomfortable sometimes but it's a partnership between you and us that makes everyone stronger so as we embark on another school year in a pandemic please continue to ask us what we think please rely on us for input and continue to partner with us in conversations about collective bargaining a resolution that meets the needs of both the division and the employees cannot be far away because i know everyone in this room agrees that we are all better together thank you and miss horn good evening i am jen horn i teach english
016and public speaking at chs i'm a charleston city schools parent and i am really glad to be here this evening um i'm not going to take up my three minutes i am someone who fiercely believes in speaking up when i feel disquiet but i also fiercely believe in expressing gratitude and i am grateful i sent out an email to all the board members and i heard back in eloquent and interested in detailed ways dr gurley has been nothing but has done nothing but reach out to teachers in very important ways and it has given me hope so i thank you so much for all that you have done and i look forward to when we can codify this and make it so that teachers voices are truly valued and their input is absolutely essential thank
017you so much thank you so that's not on our list but i do see that we have um someone else approaching the podium and and you're welcome to do so so please again just state your name and we'll have you write your address and then you'll be limited to your three minutes thank you very much my name is nomi dave i'm a parent of two children um in the charlottesville city schools jacksonville and beaford so shout out to those and i'm also a member of the charlottesville coalition for gun violence prevention and on behalf of our group i want to extend a sincere and very warm thank you to ms torres to dr gurley and to the whole school board for everything that you've done to combat violence uh the threat of gun violence uh
018in our schools in our community and to work with us um uh to support the work that we're doing and to work with us on a number of initiatives so we're very pleased to say that we're going to be participating in the back to school bash we are going to with the support of dr gurley we're going to be organizing a number of forums aimed at promoting awareness about responsible gun storage and involving panels of pediatricians and policy makers for parents and for school communities and we also look forward to dr gurley continuing to communicate the importance of responsible gun storage as an essential means to prevent gun violence the scourge of gun violence in our schools and our communities as we all know um from the statistics that circulate the vast majority of um
019the mass shootings at school occur because the assailant has brought a weapon from their home so we understand the importance of responsible gun storage and we greatly greatly thank the school board for its uh support of our work so thank you very much on behalf of myself as a parent and on behalf of the group i'm really really grateful to you for all of your support thank you and if there's anybody else in the media center who would like to make comment you're invited to do so now and and then we also have another opportunity towards the end of the meeting and i will now i don't see that there's anybody signed up in the or online zoom so we will at this point we'll close public comment and we will keep moving so thank
020you everybody i will now entertain a motion for adoption of the consent agenda please can i just ask a question about the school board assignments committee assignments i was just looking at it it seems like the vsbi delegates are you and me and i don't think that's true so i just before we go approving that maybe we change that to reflect the reality because i don't think i'm a dv sba delegate and i don't maybe you're not i think you were alternate last year if you would like to are you the vsba i thought mr bryant was so i'm the delegate you're the regional chair okay okay never mind i wish to draw my concern there any questions concerns all right all in favor hi i know i just all right i apologize because i
021got so excited that we were back here meeting that i did um miss the actual roll call of board members um i think it's apparent that we're all here but if we need to do this formally madam clerk would you mind calling roll and i apologize yes madam chair mr bryant president miss bryson warsberger here ms dooley here dr craft present ms mckeever here mr morris president and ms torres yes i am here thank you so much all right so now we are um we have moved down to 8.0 action items dr gurley did you want to i moved that we appreciate oh i thought we did that i am like i'm all in favor i think we had a second dr kraft seconded it and and i asked and this is related to the
022consent agenda correct okay yes all in favor aye sorry any opposed all right now we're moving forward all right dr gurley action items so we will um now have uh miss swift come up this is our second reading of the updated policies good evening good evening madam chair school board members and dr gurley during the june school board meeting staff presented various policies for your review and so at this time we would like for the board to take action on these policies i move the approval of the policies as outlined in the june meeting i move the approval of the policies as outlined in the june meeting i'll second that hey any questions or comments go ahead dr craft just a quick clarification um the policy on um electronic attendance at board meetings and was
023um tweaked was was that just uh um i'm sorry i couldn't find it today to look at dr craft you need to speak is there any change substance of change in that policy i believe that reflects the new law i'm sorry can you speak into your microphone thank you i'm sorry it is summer isn't it i think this is yeah anyway um the uh policy on electronic attendance at board meetings um i was wondering you know if on that one were there any substantive changes that we need to know about from that policy any changes uh what i know it was updated to reflect the amendment of va code uh 2.23707 um and those changes were related to so when we were in the pandemic we were um school boards were doing a lot of
024electronic participation and so that code now reflects what the electronic participation is and so i think we went from a place where no one was doing anything virtually to we started doing it virtually doing the pandemic and now it's just giving guidance to what the electronic participation can look like because that was not there originally thank you any other questions all right so take a motion you moved i asked i'm sorry all in favor great any opposed thank you all right uh and so adam share um so as you know of course and we've heard from our esteemed educators today that we have been working collaboratively towards a collective bargaining agreement and therefore since the school board and cea are still working through the process we will need a motion so we will need a
025motion so that we can grant an extension to continue to work collaboratively with cea and as a point of reference because the 120 day window would have been next will be next week so an extension is required madam chair i move that we extend the deadline for responding to collective bargaining second any questions or comments all in favor aye aye any opposed great thank you and for what it's worth i don't know miss taylor in one of our meetings you know that we had with cea this this was discussed so this was not something that was a surprise to cea they knew that we would be asking for this extension so and we look forward to continuing our work thank you okay moving on thank you so much um we are now at items for
026discussion all right we will have our very own ken powell come and talk to us about pupil transportation good evening madam chair and members of the board and dr gurley um so have have some updates for you this evening some of the information you see will be information we discussed back in june at your last meeting but there's also a lot of new information here as well leslie do you want me to advance the slides from here i think i can yep okay so an overview of where we are now but actually now in this case was june the 12th the last time we were together i thought it was worthwhile to put this keep this slide in the deck so that the public who may not have you know looked at the materials from
027that meeting in june would see what you were looking at when we started this process of preparing for the new school year so to give context at best since the march 2020 school closures the statewide school closures for the pandemic since that point the best we have been with our pupil transportation situation was uh we got up to 16 people drivers we had six cat drivers assisting and so at our best this past spring we had 22 routes serving all three of our tiers elementary middle and high and our wait list was cut to just south of 200 students also for context the absolute minimum number of drivers that we've ever been able to get by with and this was where we were pre-covered was 24 and those of you who may remember those times
028remember that many of our buses were packed to say the least so 24 is a bare bare minimum the best we got to this past spring was 22. and we always have had historically around 2200 students between 22 and 2300 students who request transportation any given school year on june 1st or as of june 1st i was notified that we had two pupil drivers retiring two additional people drivers had resigned giving their two weeks notice so that their time with us was going to end at the end of the school year one of the cat drivers who had been helping was retiring two cat drivers had expressed they would no longer drive for pupil next school year and two additional pupil resignations were rumored and pending and they did happen so as of the close
029of the 2122 school year we only had about 10 drivers back in june that we could identify as being available for people coincidentally that is the exact same number where we were back in september of 2020 when we were trying to figure out how to get everybody back to school in person it was it was a tough day when when we got that news okay so looking looking ahead to where we are now actually maybe i'm not driving i'm pushing the buttons but it's not going anywhere there we go so where we are today and this was august 1st but i checked today thursday is actually a day we have a bunch of transportation meetings these are still our numbers we have six pupil drivers we have four in the onboarding slash training process with
030maybe one who's going to be ready to go before the start of school and it is very uncertain at this time we don't have any commitment that there would be any cat drivers available to help kat also has their own staffing issues as well so as of this moment uh people transportation office is building routes based on six to eight drivers to start the school year and capacity is being prioritized for students who require special transfer required transportation as far as as part of their special education plan and then all our along with that are alternative placement students so as we continue monitoring our own situation and learning from the cdl and cdls shortage that continues to persist across the state in the nation several things became apparent one significantly higher advertising expenditures and giving
031more money and benefits to drivers has not provided a sustainable solution so far and it doesn't appear that that's going to be the answer it's part of an answer but it's not the answer it's not certainly not going to be everything we need a combination of significant societal forces came together to create this situation it's not any one thing it's complicated schools can't solve it alone and it is taking a comprehensive community effort to change our course and we the city and schools um just have had to look at what other cities have done to address this problem even prior to the pandemic because people should understand this critical shortage of bus drivers particularly in cities it's it was happening in some localities like around philadelphia and stuff even before the pandemic hit so we
032have been we look to i look to other localities for ideas to move forward these are just some examples of different models we looked at so anyone who would care to do so on your own time at you know pull up the presentation you might find some of these links interesting um but here's sort of the the assessment close to home if you will in virginia what you see here are a listing of comparable metropolitan areas cities if you will around the commonwealth of virginia and what their walk zones are and some of these may have even changed um beth chuck reminded me some of the these these localities may have even expanded walk zones we have not bothered to look we know they they certainly in the context of this have not made smaller
033walk zones i can say that with confidence but this is from a while back when we did the research and in the little box you see what our walk zones had been in charlottesville so we had been at point three miles for k four point five miles for walker buford and point seven miles for chs we in our national and statewide research haven't had not found any communities anywhere that had walk zones that small the average walk zone that you if you average the numbers there for album all through waynesboro you'll find that the average walk zone for elementary schools is .94 miles a little over nine tenths of a mile and a little over one and a quarter mile for all other grades when you go beyond elementary the work we've done through the
034summer to adjust our walk zones takes our elementary walk zone to three quarters of a mile um or approximately a 20-minute walk and we look at the middle and high school level at one and a quarter miles or pr up to approximately a 30 minute walk that's the way we approach setting our walk zones so what is the new the impact of the new walk zones um i've already mentioned the times the 20 minutes and 30 minutes it's important to keep in mind when you look at our walk zones in some cases we did round up to get to the end of a cul-de-sac or a natural neighborhood boundary in a few cases with chs students we did extend walk zones as high as 1.6 miles if a path is very walkable and we have
035stayed within or very close to our projected time estimates for the walks because we feel like the the time is as important as the distance we've also done a lot of walking this summer and i want to take a moment to thank not only my colleagues who've done a lot of this walking and checking but also community members it's been for as hard as this has been it's been a really great experience having so many community members partner with us and in problem solving and i'm just i'm not going to name names that's a very dangerous thing to do because i'll leave some great people out but it's just feel we feel a lot of gratitude so our bus eligibility is based on um a combination of distance from the school and need and um
036i really want to i hope this works i want i want you all to see this really cool website if you haven't been looking at it it's charlottesvilleschools.org forward slash transportation i cannot give enough credit to beth chuck and amanda corman for the work they've done building this out so when you go here sorry okay um as you scroll down one of the things we're most excited there's a ton of information on this website but this link here and also further down here oh the new walking maps new and improved walking maps are really nice again beth chuck and her team great work there in a very short order um but that link up top or down here there's a section a whole section about it says i've heard that the city's making many improvements
037and you can hit this link and it takes you to the the tables embedded here and by school you can see all these pedestrian improvements that are underway you can see if they're completed planned or scheduled you can see our crossing guard status and i have another slide devoted just to crossing guards so i'll go go over that in a minute sorry probably messed up picking this up anyway all right so this is a really neat thing to look at and um brennan duncan sam sanders the city team just really appreciate the work um this is the separate page that shows the same table but it gives you a feel of the scale of what's been happening we've been moving fast with um our city partners so okay leslie now i've got to get back
038to the presentation can you get me there okay thanks so the community can use that webpage to stay up to date on all that um okay whoops something happened there we go so crossing guards um just to give some context last year we covered nine intercept crossing locations our current plan we're expanding out to 19 17 are stationary and two are corridors that we're looking at we've been talking about something called a walking school bus as we look at some of the numbers coming out of the neighborhoods we may do a more of like a almost like a hall monitor thing where you have um mostly school staff in addition to the crossing guard stationed at different locations so you have line of sight to line of sight because friendship court for example could have
039over 100 kids walking on any given day they had a walking school bus all last year that started at over 30 kids but and we don't know yet um the front office staff there is anderson does a great job reaching out to the families finding out what their plans are but when you think of that high volume of students it's just like the overcrowding we had on the physical buses from friendship court to clark we're going to have that kind of volume with the walking and so we're thinking instead of trying to organize them in walking groups if we start at the clubhouse and have them walking kind of from adult line of sight up to the next adult they'll form family groups and friend groups that might be a better way to go dr
040gurley in his wisdom suggested we're going to test out whatever we do and have another event there but just such a large number of kids the other place we're going to have a similar situation is hardy drive over to venable with our younger students in a large number we will have a crossing guard at 10th and page but again how whether we walk with them in groups or whether we do like this line of sight okay walk from this person to the next person on the next block and they'll be the adults will be able to see them we just this is new but we're going to figure it out um so back to where we are with crossing guards our current assigned is 10 out of the 19 which leaves us nine open but
041we have three interviews this week i know we did one of those three today um we have three additional individuals who are interested but haven't put the application in so we're following up with that outreach and then we have six people who are interested in doing it as long as they have a pairing like they want to be paired with someone and that's great so that could cover effectively three more spots so that's at least nine more solid leads we have to fill that the last nine spots that we need to have open plus our school staff and so we have some some folks there so as opposed to the bus driver equation which i could never balance we got a real shot a good shot at balancing our need for crossing guards and supervision
042on certain routes with with what we need so um jason lee's been doing a lot of work with this this week and we're i'm feeling very hopeful that we'll have everything in place so i wanted to give you that snapshot um so this is a look at the bus situation now this is the data as of july 21st please note enrollments we know were not yet completed on that day um asterisk there's some asterisks on there somewhere or maybe there aren't that actually must be another column that's not on but anyway there was the need for wheelchair accommodations reduces the capacity of buses you have to keep that in mind and then um we were assuming right now we were hoping to have nine to 11 buses per tier but i don't know that we're
043exactly at that point right now um but what you see here are the total enrollment numbers the enrollment within the school boundary meaning it's not like elementary kids who are asking to go out of zone if you go out of zone you're typically not you're not eligible for bus transportation and so forth you can see our old walk zone count was 347. our new walk zone count is 1138. it's over 790 kids ish i mean these walk zones are making a big difference in spreading our available resources to serve the city you can see eligible riders and then you see our bus requests and if you total up that bus request it's right around that this was our bus request last year it was right around that 2100 2200 total students oops sorry do you
044mind if i ask a question at this just at this slide so can you speak specific maybe you were going to at the clark numbers as far as eligible writers and their requests so clark is a very small school zone the requests don't have any regard with for whether they're eligible or not that was just what was requested and i didn't thank you for pointing that out this was just some data that amy herndon in the transportation office had been working up because she was trying to figure out what how things would look when we balance out the numbers but um as a the clark zone when you look at it on the like a map from versatrans and where the dots are within the boundary because clark is already such a small school zone
045there are very few students who are eligible for bus service for clark and that's just the nature of how the clark school zone itself is the smallest in the city right i guess my concern potentially would be that those who have requested it like is somebody reaching out to them to find out if they're extenuating circumstances or i mean that's just a big discrepancy when you know compared to the rest of the right the schools so two two points two things i can speak specifically to clark and in general so on tuesday was a little later than we'd hoped because of the glitch with school messenger but we sent out the customized messages to every family that said your student and if you had three students you got three messages because you could have students
046that one would be in the walk zone and another going to a different school is eligible for bus service so the letters said your student the name is in the walk zone for your school or your student the name is eligible for bus service and so they were customized in that way and then there was a bunch of information about where to get more information and if you had questions and in that there was you know a suggestion to reply to walk zones at charlottesvilleschools.org and we would get feedback from that and we would be able to address those i can tell you that of the thousands of messages that went out as of this afternoon we had 21 that came back and we're doing individual responses for each of those that doesn't encount and
047i don't have a way to track the calls that are going into the schools and that type of thing but we did like faq and guidance documents so that the front offices would know how to handle each call that comes in and sometimes it's something that needs to come back to me so i can work with transportation and see is there an issue with this was it an error because there are going to be mistakes but i have to say we've been shocked that even the couple that were questioning the zones when we looked at it they just didn't know that there was a cut through or they didn't understand that you know what their walk route was um but that's not to say we won't encounter issues um clark aisha anderson who i mentioned
048earlier she's doing personal outreach with all of her families to find out what their plan is and i don't think she's alone in that but anytime you see a discrepancy like that that's the type of thing we would look for the school office to do is just reach it out to the families and say hey do you have your have your plan because i i give our schools and our educators our community a lot of credit that they know our students they know our families our l team phenomenal and a lot of several of the messages that came back were from our l community but they actually had more questions about registration and re-registration than they did about whether they were in the walk zone or eligible for the bus those things they weren't disputing
049but they would be like thank you for reaching out i'm having this issue with powerschool i'm having this issue with re-registration so we got a lot of that type of feedback um just along that line do you are you feeling like the you know the immigrant families and the ell families are understanding this situation so um i had several messages again of the 20 some i don't know if it was quite as many as half but a lot of them came back and it was clear english wasn't their first language some of them came back to me in spanish so i mean we were definitely reaching those populations and it wasn't just um our latino community so i definitely see just from this brief you know what happened just in the past few days that
050it went out and we're definitely getting a lot of our folks who speak english is not their first language they're reaching out to us and and we're able to give them support but also again i know that our l team and those teachers and our coordinator they there's a lot of outreach that happens there and i will also add that our outreach activity to the friendship court committee community was our highest attended outreach activity and that was a very high representation of our elves community and what we quickly realized is that the language was a barrier for example i think i realized in that moment calling calling it a walking school bus it's confusing when you go to translate that i mean because if we're saying there's no school bus but then we're translating saying
051there will be a walking school bus that's very confusing and so that was one of the initial things that we recognized but our we had a great um turnout and participation from our elves families and i think we heard the most concerns from them and i think we have to acknowledge and be very appreciative of the concerns because i think that's how we get better and so we will be differentiating our support and so we know we are going to push forward with our walking school buses but we're also going to make sure that parents have the resources and that's in this conversation too about the booths the umbrellas the things of that nature so yes we have had engagement activities with our elves families yeah it probably would have been helpful the term just
052recently came up this idea of a coverage corridor where you have just higher level of coverage all along a route but maybe not walking with the students when you have such large groups so again focusing on ideas to move forward we want to remind everyone about charlottesville community bikes as a resource for bikes and helmets if if families choose that they believe the best way for their child to get to and from school is with the bike i want to give a shout out to our safe routes to school partnership kyle rodlin with the city he's been a great partner throughout the pandemic and even before then and working in our schools the thing i really want to highlight on this this is where the term walking school bus came from by the way though
053it's a safe routes to school term and then they also talk about bike trains which again is the idea of an adult leading a group of students who are cycling to and from school and clark had a little bit of that going on too in the pandemic but i think the key point from this slide is is something that i encountered in a as we were looking at different models across the country and just researching all of this this statistic came out in multiple places in the last 40 years we have seen students who walk and bike to school decline from almost 50 percent in around 1970 down to 13 in 2009 and i took this exact quote from fairfax county public schools but that same statistic is prevalent in a lot of different places
054when you start to research this and and you hear it from adults when they talk oh we're not you know the old that people joke about walking uphill both ways in the snow and you know when they were young but there has been a shift and i think in that change we have lost some things with physical activity and health and especially when you're battling screen time concerns for kids and so i just take a moment to realize there there can be a lot of good that comes from this although that certainly wasn't what drove the the change i think looking for what good can come of it is is an important thing to do so i've already i think i've already dropped did the mic drop tada thing around infrastructure improvements but this is
055a slide that was back in your june deck and i want everyone to know we took this seriously the city's taking it seriously and we're the work is being done there's much left to do but the um the conversations and the the work and the partnership has definitely got a good head of steam and we're very hopeful it would continue and i there's another link to this stuff i just showed you um okay still talking about ideas to move forward public transportation catching the cat for our families with younger students but also for if family chooses for their middle years or their high school students they could catch the cat just the student and consider that a safe route to school and so um on our website the transportation page there's a section devoted to
056cat and i'd like to thank matthew gilligan he took the initiative to kind of really research a route for his one of their his students who's going to walker from where they live and did put together a really great format and now we're trying to emulate that for some other routes for some other areas to make a ready reference for families to help them understand how cat can be a resource for their family to get to and from school so we're really excited about that and again when we think about good things that can come from this hopefully the cat system can continue to improve and expand and serve all of the community in in new and better ways as a result of this change so wrapping up our keys moving forward expanding to more
057typical walk zones or family responsibility zones whatever you want to call them that that's that's critical to try to balance out our supply and demand situation improve pedestrian and biking infrastructure also key improve cat service and i'll say improving cat information so people understand the cat system better there is a an app and a link in the documentation that tell you how to like know where the cat bus is and getting our students familiar with that helps prepare them to become public transit users for the future and i have not forgotten the multi-passenger non-cdl vehicles um i have continued to do research on that chris um crystal riddival with the city with sustainability and also um harold young who's over fleet had some great conversations with them um i've expanded the conversation and research with
058the highlands to look not just the type a options but also vans which may be a more affordable solution and we'll certainly continue to talk about that one thing that became clear when we talked in june i was kind of still in full-on panic mode from the so i was just throwing everything out there and see what would stick to try to make things better and you guys were all supportive saying just make it the best you can go and do um i did not know in that moment that changing our walk zones would get around make a difference of around 800 students that calmed me down a little bit we still need to pursue these smaller vehicles and we still will be coming to you with proposals and ideas and one of the most
059important things we can do now is look at how our wait lists settle out school by school as we you know get our routes set for the new school year we see who's making you know who's making it to school how they're making it to school what is the waitlist situation at each school and where would smaller vehicles potentially make the biggest difference doing sprint runs or out and back so we can make make the best decision whether it's gas or whether it's electric where we would where we would deploy such resources we did move forward with the purchase of two gas type a buses because we are going to need them for athletics the cdl crisis is also impacting our sports situation and one of the easiest things we can do is get the
060smaller vehicles that some of our coaches can drive and you can't at this point taking an electric vehicle running it all day and then counting on it to go to louise and stuff we we're not ready for that so um we know we knew we needed some gas buses so we've ordered two and so um i'll let people decide if they want to read the quotes or not but again back in september 2020 we were here kind of trying to hang on to what we had saying this is the least imperfect solution set for moving forward that was kind of where we were and as we discussed in june now it's the discussion is really how do we move forward as a community committed to a new solution set that's sustainable and so thank you
061for your support in this really important effort kim i have a question um have you heard from mrs uh miss johnson i know several about george johnson i spoke with her at um at west haven in the community center about the path from friendship court to like we we had a discussion with her there about like the optimal route from friendship court over to buford that type of thing but no this is something else she called in reference to um we do know that eventually those students uh south first street i got that you got that already we got that covered okay all right those those at south 1st street are just going to be temporarily at hardy drive about 23 years right two to three years but they still will need to go to
062jacksonville yeah we need to do that to maintain our um schools yeah lots of things so that's been addressed and i already have the list from chra so we know who those students are we have a shared list thank you for asking any other questions dr crap um i wondered if we have gotten any feedback from the drivers who um indicated that they don't want to return even the ones that are retiring and you know just to understand if if it had something to do with the actual work of driving the pupils rather than other factors so um unfortunately one of the disadvantages of of us not having the transportation um under us like like a typical school division is we were not really able to um to get at that information in a systematic
063way so i really i don't you know have a good lens on that i'm afraid okay and just one other question um uh this is my mom hat thinking but i'm thinking about like raincoats and umbrellas and thank you yeah i should have made a slide we've been working with um denise johnson and um and bianca as well in the family with the family engagement team an equity team identifying what are the supplies we need to help ensure that students have what they need to get to and from school in a walking situation and so um we have just ordered um like these cute little like galoshes and a bunch of sizes that go over your shoes the rain ponchos the umbrellas i hope we got the clear ones i told you that's the ones
064i wanted that you can see through you know as you're walking um we've ordered flashlights different supplies just to make sure um and we have through their hard work that store set up so that like not only could crossing guards or you know people who cover the corridors or whatever you want to call our folks that are out those folks or teachers can recognize needs and put in orders to help make sure that our students have the things they need um to stay warm and dry when they're walking and fun fact jason lee and i were at clark having a meeting about the walking walking school bus and all of that and it poured down rain while we were sitting there and i i eventually just bolted for the car because i needed to get
065back to the office but it was one of those days i'm like a day like this we need we would need to delay the release of walkers and you look at those days when the radar hits and it turns red or yellow so you know whereas when we were providing more bus service and kids are just sprinting to the bus like i had to sprint to the car and that's one of the questions we get a lot like what are you going to do so we have to realize that this will color our decisions moving forward about whether and the whole community needs to understand that um you know lots of questions have been received about snow on sidewalks and what happens when the community is not responsible for clearing their sidewalks and you know
066um we're having those discussions we're mindful of that and we're going to have to really keep a a close eye on these things as we as we move forward um it's it's going to be different um the the community is going to notice this change they're going to see a lot more kids out walking um or potentially biking scootering whatever and just finally thank you um for everything that you've done to you know get this in place to get something in place that's workable i know it's been a huge lift and a lot of huge team effort truly nothing of any consequence happens without a lot of people involved and it our office the annex city hall it's a team effort the community members so it's been that has been as hard as it is
067it's been rewarding to work with people who are all pulling together just trying to make it happen and do the best we can thank you miss mckeever so i was just wondering if the city is going to give us back any money for the transportation contract my opinion um i think the short answer is i don't think they will they'll be all there'll be a lot of discussion about how special needs transportation and it is it's costing a lot more and you know for what we're saving here there's going to be discussion about that these other things are costing more but i do think as we move forward with budget there's going to just need to be a more significant discussion around transportation can we get like an itemized statement from the city so to
068reflect i mean we that that transportation contract goes up every single year obviously i i feel very comfortable with our walk zones i mean i'm not trying to i understand the challenge as a parent he's got a child walking um but this we pay for these services that are not being provided in fact we're asking our students and families to go on to the city buses so how where's the saving like there's how's this work when we've requested it we have received some line item information like that you could see how much the advertising budget went up and things like that but the information we received with regard it shows what's budgeted for like payroll and so forth and what i think we need to do is look more about what's budgeted what's actual and
069we just there needs to be a deeper a deeper dive and just a discussion about what's the most cost effective way to move forward and i would put the emphasis actually on effective at this point because we you know we have to find effective solutions and then we certainly want to be as efficient as we can be but i think that there's neat there i anticipate there'll be significant focus on the questions you're asking and looking at the performance this year and assessing where it makes sense to put put the investments and and what what just makes sense overall moving forward i i mean one other thing that i would really i uh i noted the path that um the friendship court children are going to be taking and how you all had walked it
070and realized oh that's not a good way so we're going to do this way and i just think that's brilliant i'm so grateful i wonder if we could also kind of engage with the community on those streets just to say hi you know maybe a flyer something that indicates there will be students between these hours on your street walking and we need you to be on the lookout like be a sit you know we used to have those stars when i was a child obviously i'm very old um maybe not the stars but there was something that was like this is a safe house and of course whatever i just want all the communities eyes to be on our children as they are walking to school every day we hear nightmare stories in our community
071about how our drivers are just not friendly to our pedestrians and bikers and now we're going to have children uh you know many many more children on the streets and i just want to ensure that our community recognizes that a and b protects us this is just something that we as a community has to have to uphold and and embrace that we protect our children and our pedestrians and our bikers it's just the way it has to be we cannot we've too many children are at risk and we need to really protect them as a community and um so i hope that we will i mean first i think we should engage with the community members that are on the paths that we expect our children to be walking but also i hope that our
072community in general um will support the division in this effort i do not think it's a big ask to ask our students to walk seven tenths of a mile or a mile uh and a quarter i think it's going to be great for the health of our community um so but we we can't can't get them hurt from cars so um we just praying about that will only get us so far we have to protect our students who are walking to school um biking they also bike they will violate the road rules like there are things that um children are to be doing we just have to have a lot more grace in our space around pedestrians and bikers um but especially for our children so i just want to give a little lecture on
073that because i we just have seen it far too often um and with more students walking i'm just really afraid um and that's what i want to say so thank you thank you anybody else you know thank you so much for your work um as you have mentioned there have been a lot of great uh there has been a lot of great work and ideas from community members so a big shout out to all of them as well um and then just a reminder that that these things are phased that the work that the city is planning to do is phased so they're trying to get out and do certain things right away um and unfortunately you know it's not a magic wand where everything can be done immediately but you know i encourage everybody
074if you see something that doesn't feel right you've lived in this community you've seen things happen to please reach out to us reach out to the city share those things you know if family members know there are routes that are unsafe or if you have concerns of course please you know elevate them to us um but then also turn to your principal and and to the school because there might be some thoughts or you know or some ideas that are that are going on there as far as ptos and as ms mckeever said it it's going to take all of us to really to you know to keep everybody safe so but thank you everybody who's contributed to this and before we move forward before we move forward with that i do want to thank
075um i do want to thank miss powell um you know miss powell miss chuck miss corman mr lee miss green and the city i mean because this has been a heavy lift um we didn't just wake up one day and say we want to do walking zones we i mean we literally closed the school doors and then we commence doing this work and and i agree it's going to take the entire community and it's one of those things where you if you see something say something i don't want people sitting on their hands this is one of those opportunities where we have to keep our students safe and i think that what i've charged our team with we're going to be more visible than ever especially as we roll this out i mean we got
076to make sure that our students understand our families understand and we we're going to meet them exactly where they are and so we we all may be crossing guards at some point if that's what it takes um because the bare minimum will not be acceptable so alrighty um next up we have our professional learning uh opportunities and this will be by our newly inducted jessica ford coming to us from atlanta georgia madam chair members of the board dr gurley good evening i'm jessica ford and i'm happy to join charlottesville city schools as a new professional learning coordinator next slide tonight i would like to give an update on professional learning which will focus on professional learning goals professional learning framework and theory of practice i will outline the structure of division and site-based professional learning
077and go through some professional learning highlights and next steps next slide so i'm going to start with the professional learning goals next slide so the overall focus of professional learning is ensuring that professional learning provides ongoing opportunities that are intentional meaningful sustained and aligned to participants practice and has a direct impact on student outcomes learning should be connected to the teacher's practice and allow collaboration and reflection the words highlighted in blue are what we are focusing specifically on this year ensuring that professional learning is intentional and meaningful is imperative for staff to understand the relevance of their learning and its applicability making sure that it is sustainable by putting structures in place that are systematic and cohesive professional learning should be aligned and connected to the work of our staff and the goals of the
078division next slide so the first goal is to provide cohesive professional learning opportunity opportunities that are connected relevant and applicable to teachers practice secondly we want to increase teachers capacity to be culturally responsive and prioritizing the needs of every every child next we want to engage in deeper learning educators engage in deeper learning and lastly we want to focus on building cohesive and efficient systems between departments next slide so i will now go into the framework and theory of practice so with those goals as the focus it leads to the framework that is used to inform decisions around professional learning so our goal is to increase student achievement by building teacher capacity what we are going to do is what is located in the yellow so to increase teacher content knowledge according to lee shulman's
079model teachers need to understand subject matter deeply and flexibly to help students relate one idea to another and address misconception having strong content knowledge allows teachers to see how ideas connect across fields into everyday life it encompasses the structure of knowledge the theories principles and concepts of a particular discipline how we are going to do that is what is located in red which is developing teacher pedagogy so teacher pedagogy is the relationship between the culture and the techniques of learning so in the main aim of pedagogy is to build on previous learning of the students and work on the development of skills and attitudes of the learners it is an educator's understanding of how students learn so by increasing content knowledge and developing pedagogy you will create what i call pck or pedagogical content knowledge
080where it's an integration of how teachers relate their pedagogy or how they teach or how students learn to their content knowledge what they know about the subject matter to create learning environments where every student can be successful the why of why we do this is what's outlined in blue which is the data the data component every decision that we make should be informed by data the context which is highlighted in green focuses on being culturally responsive and tending to the whole child where we focus on building connections confidence and wellness of every student and lastly you see the cycle of learning on the outer circle which these displays the sequential process for learning this learning cycle which is to learn implement and receive feedback reflect and then improve is important as it directly impacts classroom
081instruction and student learning it is a vehicle for teacher collaboration and sharing and the process improves the alignment of curriculum instruction and assessment to state standards next slide this then leads us to our understand with our understanding of goal of professional learning this leads to the theory of practice which outlines that if professional learning does not strategically design and interconnect professional learning opportunities across schools then teachers will not have universally well-designed and well-structured content-specific collaborative professional learning that increases their capacity and then our students when i have equitable outcomes next slide i will now move forward with discussing division and site-based pl next slide in the best interest and safety of all faculty and staff the better together conference will be pivoted to a virtual platform using either a canvas or zoom we don't think
082this will be a heavy lift because our staff has have been trained on these platforms uh the last two years so the professional learning committee consisted of individuals from human race human resources nutrition we had admin techs family engagement coordinators and central central office staff that worked tirelessly to put together a conference style professional learning day with over 100 sessions community vendors and prize giveaways although this conference will not happen on august 18th as scheduled in person the vast majority of the sessions will continue virtually and we look forward to planning another pl day in the future when it's safe is to reconvene next slide we have five scheduled division based professional learning days as i just shared august 18th is assigned as a full division professional learning day on zoom or canvas august 19th
083will be largely school-based with some division-led pl regarding safety the structure of the remaining three professional learning days will remain the same with a good balance of central office pl and site-based pl as well as equity foundational training for all staff members as we focus on our goal of increasing teachers capacity to be culturally responsive three hours will be dedicated to central office professional learning where staff members will rotate through three focus areas that are aligned to the strategic plan of academic excellence safe and supportive school and organizational support site-based professional learning will occur in plcs and faculty meetings it will be aligned to the school's professional learning plan and focus on building continuity of practice across grade levels and schools and they will use data to inform their professional learning communities next slide i
084will now go over some professional learning highlights so as i mentioned before we have our pl conference happening virtually we have new teacher orientation which will take place on august 10 through the 12th where new teachers will obtain the tool of knowledge and strategies needed to be successful in charlottesville city schools the leadership advance which is led by dr gurley is professional learning for all division leaders grounded on the work of patrick rincione's five dysfunctions of the team there is calibration happening across schools as i have begun meeting with principals to discuss their professional learning goals for their respective schools and lastly we have a pipeline to certification for instructional assistance through jmu and pvcc there are six ias who have expressed interest and i plan to work with them to complete their application this
085fall to begin coursework in the spring more information will be forthcoming next slide i'm now going to go over some upcoming next steps so some upcoming next steps are to streamline and begin the professional learning series for mentors and new teachers continue meeting with school leadership to outline site-based professional learning needs continue planning the use of esser funds to enhance professional learning opportunities we are excited about the opportunities that this grant provides us we are currently mapping out specifics key elements of this grant award involve professional learning that would take place beyond contract hours culminating in summer learning academies this fall will largely be used to plan and refine these experiences with full implementation slated for summer 2023 and 24. and lastly prepare for the september division-wide professional learning day this concludes my presentation at
086this time i welcome any questions or comments thank you so much for that any questions anybody i said a quick question on the professional learning series for mentors and new teachers the mentoring program how how was that going to be constructed so dr odi has sent out a mentor recommendation form to principals we are currently working with hr to see how many step zero and step one teachers there are once we get that final number we will pair the mentors with the mentees those mentors will be trained through a series of training just to support on how to support effectively support new features um i just feel like that was a brilliant slide with the keys and stuff so really excellent work it really helped me to understand and visualize and i don't know that
087makes a difference um but i um welcome you and thank you for coming to our little town and i look forward to the brilliant work ahead so thank you thank you anybody else questions sorry just checking i was doing one more scan no all right thank you so much all right we will now have student rights and responsibilities formerly known as the cotaconda presented by dr odie all right madam chair members of the board and dr gurley good evening and tonight as dr gurley just referenced i would like to give you an update on changes to the student rights and responsibilities again formerly known as the student code of conduct here you see our sum and substance shown we're going to talk about understanding behavior enhancements which include a name change the s bar codes
088leveled responses and and we also have cell phone pieces that we want to talk about committee recognitions and next steps next slide please so i'll start with this piece of information that i found on the vdoe website regarding understanding behavior behavior is communication so we need to understand the message behavior has cultural context so we need to know the story behavior is developmental so we need to assess social emotional development behavior is learned so we need to teach our goal is to make sure we understand behaviors so that we can appropriately and adequately address behaviors when they occur next slide please so we have some enhancements to the former student code of conduct our first enhancement is the name change to the ccs student rights and responsibilities and you'll hear me call it srnr sometimes
089as an abbreviation or acronym we have seen a trend um of among school divisions moving to names such as this as it has more of an asset based tone rather than a deficit-based mindset we are hoping to create a positive and preventative approach to student conduct starting with something as simple as a name change in previous codes of conduct we have talked greatly about responsibilities but we wanted to include rights as well when you think of student rights we acknowledge that students do have rights such as faith for an appropriate public education a right to a safe and orderly learning environment and a right to be respected and treated fairly amongst other things and students have responsibilities that we have outlined here in the s r and r document such as attending school regularly knowing
090expectations and conducting themselves accordingly treating others fairly and as they would want to be treated and more we have even included the rights and responsibilities of parents and staff members in this document but for tonight's purposes we will focus on enhancements regarding students the srnr explains expectations for student behavior and adult responses thus s b a r s bar to enhance school safety and to create a fair equitable and supportive school environment and it is more responsive to the changing needs of our students we know that the children are different than they were when we were children many years ago behaviors are different needs are different so we need to have differing understandings of the why of behavior and the responses to the different behaviors as as well as consistency in response to behaviors next
091slide please and another enhancement is the use of s bar codes with fidelity we must teach the behaviors we want to see in a school setting in our school settings these ideas lie at the foundation of the 2021 model guidance for positive preventative code of student conduct policy and alternatives to suspension long name but that is from the virginia department of education and it's directly connected to the virginia tiered system of supports you've heard us talk about vtss previously and positive behavioral interventions and supports you've heard of us talk about pbis the student behavior and adult response esbar behavior descriptors in the model guidance have replaced discipline crime and violence dcv is the acronym for that those are the codes that we have all grown so accustomed to using and research was noticed in that
092model guidance and it stated that african-american students and students with disabilities were disproportionately represented in referrals to juvenile justice in virginia schools students with disabilities and african-american students were being suspended at two times the rate of non-disabled white students and we see this happening here in ccs as well behavior descriptors from the model guidance which describes student behavior without bias and criminalization encourage administrators to ask what harm was caused and what caused the behavior what is the student communicating they refocus administrative responses to behavior to being prescriptive in regard to the student's social emotional development and they give the student the opportunity to understand the behavior's impact on the community and to repair the harm caused the goal is to shift the mindset from criminal language to developmental approaches this is why these behavior categories
093were created by the vdoe our staff were trained last fall record regarding s bar codes by patrick farrell and we phased out the dcv codes in the fall and moved towards using the s bar codes this year will be our first full year of fully implementing these codes next slide please on these next two slides i have included the new s bar codes for your viewing behaviors that impede the academic progress of the student or other students bap or bap behaviors related to school operations that interfere with the daily operation of school procedures bso behaviors of safety concern that create unsafe conditions for student staff and or visitors to the school bsc next slide please behaviors that endanger self or others these behaviors endanger the health safety or welfare of either the student or others
094in the school community b-e-s-o and behaviors that are persistently dangerous pd or you might see that as bpd next slide please yet another enhancement to the s r and r involves the leveled responses to these behaviors this is brand new for us this year what we noticed previously was that there was inconsistency in how schools responded to similar behaviors we've created levels of response one two three four five and determined the level of response for each behavior we are again aiming for consistency with regard to discipline and want to minimize disproportionality next slide please i've prepared a couple of examples as shown on the next two slides for this scenario david uh repeatedly interrupts the teacher while she or he is talking david does not raise his hand and is talking loudly during an independent
095practice so i this would be a level run one response with a teacher looking at the s r and r they see okay this type of behavior i would use the i would it's a level one response meaning that it is a behavior that's impeding the academic progress of that student and or other students and so it's a classroom based response that teacher handles that it's not one that would go to the principal not one that would um teachers would be on the walkie-talkie calling for assistance the teacher handles it there's intervention there's management there next slide please in this scenario we have missy and missy has been caught unfortunately cheating on a test in class so using the srnr the teacher looks to see what level of response does this require and so it
096is a level two response that would work well for this behavior behaviors relating to school operations that interfere with the daily operation of school procedures so some options for um the adult response for a class it could be a classroom based response the teacher could handle that the teacher could call home the teacher could work with a student it could also be an administrative intervention that is required here so there are some options um there could be in school suspension up to three days those are the level two response options that are listed in the s r and r so you'll notice that teachers and administrators do have these options regarding the response to behaviors but we wanted to make the options clear so that there is no second guessing as to what is an
097acceptable or appropriate response to certain behaviors next slide please so here you see enhancements that we have made to cell phone expectations we've had continued concern from staff regarding student cell phone usage during class time and what we have seen is that overuse and misuse of technology such as cell phones can result in problems such as negative academic outcomes chronic distraction during instructional times including phones ringing and students receiving alerts this does happen in the middle of math class unfortunately so you probably know that in previous years we have had guidance in regarding cell phones and other personal devices in the former code of conduct we've had guidance there this year however we are being more specific and enforcing that cell phones and other personal devices should be off and away unless otherwise directed by
098the teacher of that class so we may you know just sort of coined that term off and away and you'd be off and away not a distraction next slide please dr odie can i ask a question um for a few seconds back if i'm okay i'm sorry say it again can i ask questions about a few slides back or do you want me to wait till the end oh you can ask now certainly which slide is it when you were talking about the different tier two level responses and there were different ones is there someone like will you all still monitor because there's still a little wiggle room with the punishments you know and how they're doled out so do you all still or do you like see it in real time and send it
099back or say no this you know it might not be balanced in this case or something like that i try to stay in communication with principals and administrators about different behaviors when there's something minor sorry my glasses are fogging up when there's something minor like a level one or level two behavior i may not hear about those um we do give those options if we continue to hear about or see that this student keeps getting you know this they're just demonstrating this level two behavior and they keep getting up to three days of suspension we'll hear it and so we will we'll work with the principal and and look at why and remember we're we you know we're teaching the kids the behaviors that we want them to display uh we also again i said
100our staff was trained on s bar codes the leveled responses are new this year so i want to be able to talk with them about utilizing those and being equitable and how you know we've got it we can look at the data the data tell the story about the disproportionality i was just having a conversation earlier today as we're preparing for the better together conference and all of that and looking at data and it tells the story and we cannot continue to have you know students disproportionately suspended and placed in uh isb and iss and all of those so we'll we'll continue to work with staff on um using the appropriate response adult response to specific behaviors and we don't want it to be anything to be overused and the other part of that is
101it is the range so what we would not expect to see so for example in the case of the student who's cheating on a test there is a range so we would not be we would not see a student suspended out of school but we would also not expect to see that if a student had cheated on a test and it's the first offense that the student is getting three days of in-school suspension because while we know that that's the range there's also a classroom based response that could happen initially and that classroom based response would i know our teachers do this anyway they want to know why the student is cheating like you know i hear teachers say all the time you have so much potential i know you know this information why did
102you cheat so i would not expect that the student would get you know in school suspension but if there's something that continues to be blatant um and something that's intentional and under continually to undermine the process the educational experience then i think that's when we may see something more but of course one thing that we don't see here is we're going to be engaging families because we want to get to the y um and so this doesn't tell the whole story but we will be doing teachers have been trained um there was some brief training on the s bar but what's brand new that they have not received is the response levels because that's the new component of it so we will have to do that work and which doctor od already mentioned thank you
103does that answer your question okay good um i think we are on the slide with so yes that one uh so here we have consequences to the overuse of cell phones and other personal devices there you've got first warning first offense verbal warning second student conference third parent guardian contact classroom referral fourth parent got it guardian contact office referral like we're not sending our our teachers love our kids they care about our students and and we don't anticipate that teachers will send kids to the office the first time any of these things happen we want like dr gurley just said a range um of what they can do and this really outlines steps okay you got your warning here you know you've got that phone again this is the next time this so teachers will
104have to keep data um of you know how often they're having to ask a student to put their phone off and away um and if they continue to do it and of course if the unauthorized cell phone usage during class continues additional administrative responses could occur such as a student success meeting like what is going again we're trying to figure out the why what is going i think we all love our cell phones i know i do but there's a time and a place for it and so we have to figure out the why um so that could be occurring during student success meetings a referral to vtss counselor support and if it just continues then we may need to look in into tech overuse support groups for students there are other changes to our
105srnr to the point where it is now but i wanted to highlight these areas specifically tonight for your information uh next slide please and we did have a thoughtful and committed committee working with me on our new document and i just want to take a moment to recognize them and to thank them for their hard work you see their names there we had teachers coming in it was school was over it was after june 16th we had two teachers on our staff we had one of three three teachers i think on our staff there um administrators central office folks so i am so grateful for the work that this team did to to help to develop this new very important document that we have to support our students it is absolutely appreciated next slide please
106as far as next steps we're going to move forward with sharing this new sr and r document with students and families we will continue with implement implementation of the s-bar codes with regard to discipline and monitored disproportionality we're going to support schools with consistency of implementation and consistency in the response to the behaviors don't want one um school doing responding to the same behavior that's displayed at another school in a different way we want to be consistent and so that concludes my uh if we can go to the next slide i believe we have the summon substance yes that concludes my presentation um at this time if you have any questions i'm happy to answer them ms dooley uh thank you for this work and to the committee um i would like to see um
107coming back to us um some review at certain points maybe it's at the semester marks of this data broken down by subgroups so that we can see uh the progress towards uh not disproportionately disciplining students that have been targeted in the past so if there's a way that we can work to create a report that we can see that that would be great um the cell phone piece is critical um you know i hope we have reminders to teachers also about appropriate use of phones during uh times but they are student-facing and then i'm also just curious about how we're bringing parents on board i know that there are parents who feel strongly that their students should have phones and they should be in constant contact and i think a lot of the you know
108dinging of texts and things are often parents communicating with their kids right so just you know how are we approaching that conversation to um you know start the year off so that this can be successful you know i worry about the amount of time teachers are going to lose you know we could get through those four offenses with a cell phone in you know the first 10 minutes of a class period and so just you know how much time are teachers going to be spend you know spending on cell phones and then as an extension administrative time just on cell phones um is a little bit of a concern so just yeah that support piece um is huge and then again just bringing parents on board yeah thank you um for for mentioning all of
109that we don't anticipate that it'll be easy like i said we many people love their cell phones our students do as well and you're right that oftentimes it's mom calling or texting the student in class not always but every once in a while i do hear that that does occur so we think that communication is going to be really key if you notice beth tuck was on that committee and so she's been working closely with me i anticipate that we'll we'll send lots of communications out um that we're really going to be enforcing like i said we've had guidance and expectations before it's the enforcement that was not necessarily taking place and we really want to move towards enforcement and we have to explain to parents the why and you know i shared a couple
110of um reasons that overuse of of cell phones is bad there's a whole list of them in our sr and r and so we want our parents to read that and see what it is we're trying to accomplish yes we want our children to focus we want them to be attentive we want them to learn and there there are things that are inhibiting that for some of our students so it won't be easy but we're ready to we're ready to move forward and and get our parents on board and yes you mentioned the teachers as well we got to work with our teachers and i think that they'll be on board too so next um well i i would like to um echo the uh what ms dooley said about coming back i was thinking
111that um it would be really helpful for us to hear like you know halfway through the year or whatever um how this is working um things that need to be tweaked et cetera that kind of thing and you know i really appreciate the effort to be consistent all the way through the process of dealing with kids behavior so thank you so much for that and um my one other thing would be just to you know as you're communicating to students and to parents um i know uh you know education um is just so full of acronyms and this is so full of acronyms that sometimes it's you can get lost i have found myself getting lost in the acronyms and it would be really important i think to not rely on those when you're trying
112to explain this to families the acronyms like bap and bsc and dso those are not necessarily for parents that is really for reporting okay so we're going to be very clear about what it is that the student did and then um and i think in the srnr student rights and responsibility that would have a list of certain behaviors and where what where could possibly fall yeah but just you know putting it in language in sort of everyday street language absolutely i agree i agree thank you for this presentation thank you so much for your thoroughness and i appreciate it mr morse could you come back to me please absolutely mr brent um dr les want to first all thank you all for the great job in your committee but i'm going to go back to
113my in my i'm going to kick into my teacher mode and when i read this last night this enhancement on cell phones because it it has been brought to my attention community members and teachers that how much cell phones is a big distraction in the classroom especially for a lot of our learners and when i look at when i looked at this i said law this is a lot of steps so um miss dooley i've already given her a verbal warning and dr craft i've already she's on her second offense and so you know teachers are spending a lot of time juggling first second third offense and i guess somewhere in this policy and i know i've been reading a lot being on the sva board a lot of schools were doing not doing away
114with cell phones but just sort of narrowing the use of the cell phones before school on the bus before school during lunch and maybe between classes if they have time but they're a little bit more specific and some of them just doing away with them all together but it seems like with all these steps it's putting a lot of onus on the teachers because it looks like it once was on step one step two it seems to be for me as a teacher it would be a lot of steps in terms of the use of cell phones so is there something in this policy that that indicates that and i know parents are concerned about being in touch with their children but is there somewhere in the spouse that we could say before on the
115bus before school during lunch after school to be more specific as opposed to just you know having to go through all these steps we talked about more stringent um procedures and this is it's not i don't consider it stringent i just think it's more specific yeah it's not overwhelming to teachers i think that um what i what i heard from committee members was that if we you know we we know that there are some school divisions that are have completely gone away for the day and things like that um but i think that there was there's a bit of a hesitance to sort of rip that banned band-aid off like that and say they're absolutely not allowed some actually do use them for educational purposes uh in class and so this was a sort of
116a way to address them without because if what i understood was that if we say there's none at all during the day that's going to be a bigger battle than having the giving the warnings you know that's not what i'm saying i'm saying specific times of the day on the bus before class at lunch they still have use of their cell phone specific times of the day and i and i think if i can jump in there um not being on the i wasn't on the committee but i think from some of the initial recommendations so um i know that i had a lot of conversations for example with dr i when he was here because there was a working committee um miss horns shaking her head there was a working committee that really put
117a document together that i thought um you know wow if we take this on at this moment i think it kind of speaks to a lot of what you're saying in terms of um there's these colors and these these times of the day um but i think what happened um you know when you assembled a thought group and such a diverse thought group that you know this is where we arrive and i think that the staff really felt that this was a good starting point because we had some there were a lot of conversations about transitional time and um you know what happens during lunch and i think we can i think we can um begin to i when i was a teacher you know september through september through um through um january i was
118always joe clark i was really just very firm and as we start to learn one another then i can start to relax things and i think what we can do is just communicate to our students when you can when you can use the phones but i think initially we have to build the relationships and i think that this is the professional development piece and and our teachers look good with this so this is not going to be too hard we we build the relationships and we start to remove a little bit of that power struggle so that students understand that you're going to be provided the opportunity but right now until you get this math problem it's um off and away um and then we build up to the moments where okay when you're transitioning
119i mean and i think what we heard is that there's a lot of concerns even when students transition in the hallway that they're getting text messages from friends and that's what's inciting them to not want to go to class and then go out and find this other student and and you know do inappropriate behavior or con or um do defiant behavior so it was it's the task this is a heavy lift um and and i think your points are absolutely correct but i think this is reflective of the these this document is is a reflection of the practitioners meaning the teachers um and where they want to start and i think we can i've seen some of the other options and i think we can get there um but this is definitely going to be
120a heavy lift and we will need to communicate with families and it's going to feel different and you know and i know that this is not too big of an issue with elementary i hope i'm not i'm not even this thought i see teachers back then not this isn't too big of an issue with elementary and i know if dr um hastings was here he would say it's not too big of an issue at walker but then as they do you know as the freedom and changing the classes and and i know that we will work with mr jordan in a b for team we will work with our new principal um at the high school and we will we will make sure that we can meet our students but it's going to be a
121mindset shift and dr gurley i will add that in in the document it does say that students can use their personal devices on the bus um it does it says that specifically under elementary and walker but under buford and chs it says that they are turned off in designated instructional spaces so we didn't use the words that they could have them in the cafeteria in the hallway we really hope they don't just because specifically what dr gurley said and we know that an unstructured times that is often when behaviors spike and escalate but we did uh give a little bit of leeway there that is during instructional spaces that they're often away and also in doing so i think um i know because community members come up and they ask about what's going on with
122the cell phones especially at the high school level and um i think community members also need to be in tune in terms of this as well and also teachers are concerned about um about the cell phone use not being able to instruct because of the distraction with the cell phones the concerns that have been released brought to my attention absolutely and and i hear you also that it can take time uh to have to continue to talk to david or johnny or susie or missy or whatever about the cell phone and that that was also brought up in our committee meeting and and so like was we know it's not going to be easy and i think often times because of the time and effort that's why it's often not enforced we do want it
123to be enforced so that we can have students really focused on their learning and hopefully students will get to the point where okay um miss jones is gonna she doesn't mind if i use it when i'm in the hallway is when i'm in this classroom that i've got to stop using it uh so we're gonna get to that point with building relationships with and i think that that is a huge piece um building relationships and setting those expectations with students and families ms bryce morrisberger no miss mckeever so um thank you again this is interesting um step i understand it's because of the state the vod the standards there my um [Music] i every time you say the word enforcement i get a little trick you know twin i just it's it's a worrisome word
124to me because it's so disproportionate in our community against our um black and brown children and so every time you say that word i just i just see bias and i see disproportionality so i hear you um and i just have to have it be said because um enforcement is not the goal the goal is to not have the behavior um and i i i feel very strongly that every child that comes into our division needs to have an iep and um this any child who's getting regular enforcement needs to have an iep so i just don't know how you cut you know how um we have you know we have many schools we have four schools that our students are going to and i i can look at their records on a discipline but
125i don't see where what we have done to support them necessarily in these interventions and you know we've enforced a lot but what are we doing to make it so that we are are individualizing to them um their education that's just i just feel very strong like i understand that our teachers love our students and our um you know are going to go through this process and do everybody's going to check all the boxes but what does that mean in the end and i think emily's um whole point about a report is great but i actually think we should dig even deeper than that and um and and really understand where our students are coming from and why they are encountering these problems at school so regular it's just not an enforcement problem this is
126a community problem um i know for example at lunch using your cell phone is is literally a fortress right you can you're sitting in your lunch you don't have to engage with anybody you are on your phone and like those protective behaviors are are just so vital for high schoolers trying to maintain a control of their lives so i just worry so deeply that we're gonna find again a person i'm not suggesting this is a culture i'm just saying like somebody will be like oh you shouldn't be on your phone and oh you should do that you know and be telling a student who is you know having a hard day that they should not be on their phone obviously in instruction time we expect you to be learning and focusing any other time i'm
127why are you in that child's business um enforcement is a very tricky word for me and i'm just get very anxious when we use that word because of the way it's disproportionately doled out and i just feel like just because we can doesn't mean we should and what are we doing better to to make that child's educational experience better so um and and that leads me to this dress code because like we talked a lot about cell phones but the dress code obviously i've been here long enough as most of you have i mean we have fought this dress code battle on at least three different times i've been on the board and you know i i really don't want to see a student be sent home because her brow strap is showing or anything
128you know like i s i just looked at the dress code and um i just curious what the ideas are when the board was looking at or when your committee was looking at the dress code um and again i just think it's too i think there's a lot to be desired and there's too much power given to a grown-up in the situation where for somebody to abuse their power rather than find a way forward with the student miss mckeever if i may um the dress quote piece was devised by staff members a few years ago we didn't make changes we actually pulled it from the old document and plopped it right in here so that it is it represented what was decided by charlottesville city schools employees a few years ago i guess i just
129heard last year was a little bit tricky at some schools in terms of the hoodie and in terms of some you know allegedly provocative wear especially early last year so i just want to make sure we're being consistent about the enforcement of that as you know at least the principals are well aware of what that dress code means and and also if i may um i hear you about the word enforce i i it was never my intent to to um have the connotation that it does that it obviously had uh with you when particularly the the change in this document from code of con student conduct to student rights and responsibilities was to remove the criminalization and the negativity and make it more of a positive and supportive document there will be behaviors we
130know that and there will be adult responses that need to occur because of the behaviors we know that and there might be some more serious behaviors that require different levels of responses um i think that the difference in what the beginning of my presentation and the the last part regarding cell phones uh is that the cell phone piece is where we've had it and we just did not really um require the students to put them away so i i hear you absolutely we want to understand the why behind behaviors we want to support students and families and and teach appropriate behavior so that students all students can learn the students that are displaying the behaviors and the students that are near the students who may have their learning interrupted so we we do have work
131to do absolutely and and i believe we we had a a wonderful dedicated committee that's that put some great ideas into this and now it's time to share it with the rest of the staff uh to teach our staff how to utilize how to really change the way that we address behaviors and support students and help our students to understand those expectations as well but it really all starts with building relationships with students yeah i agree i think um just so you know my child yelled at me one time because i texted him in the middle of the day so um i do obviously i was just thinking that his phone was on silent and put away and um he was like i i forgot to turn it off anyway um i just want to
132say that uh it might be a really interesting and good educational community engagement to say to parents like hey you tell your children to have your you know because i mean i text him just not expecting a an answer um but for him to know what's going on with the day and i think it might be useful for um parents to understand to not expect a response because they will be in class learning thank you mr morse um i have a couple points um one was mentioned i think once or twice in terms of responses responses um specifically kind of the level one level two i know certainly our teachers are doing that um consistently um and those are kind of part of their practices to some degree already i do worry a little bit
133about um [Music] putting at least to me it feels like a little bit more onus on the teachers in terms of those responses um but you know as i'm hearing it sounds like there's some buy-in from teachers especially the ones that were on the committee uh to develop this but that is uh just for me i feel like is a point that i should raise as well i think about this document thinking about the name of the document student students rights and i'm kind of curious and i'll take responsibility for this as well because this was mentioned in our last june meeting that this might come up at what point did our students actually get a voice in this um and i feel like if we're going to really take the approach that students have
134rights students have this we are calling on their responsibility at what point do we ask them for their feedback now everything cannot be decided with students i certainly understand that but i feel like in such an important document that really focuses on how they behave in our schools to be able to get some feedback from them i know that at times that we have a student represent representative on the school board um i feel like this is the point where we really want to hear from them in developing some of this again i am a person that really believes in student voice and making sure that they're heard um especially as they're getting older and as a person that has tried to develop a cell phone policy with high school students i know it can
135be difficult um but i don't want to focus just on the cell phone piece i think just overall for some of this i i think it would have been important to have some of their response and feedback and maybe we did have some of their feedback and i'm not aware of it and so all i can assure you that 100 of these so the hot button the big ticket things were all addressed with students so um i won't say that they were they were done with elementary students but denise johnson helped me to organize the superintendent's advisory for our secondary students and so each one of these things were talked about i think that students and i would say the high school group were consistent of some of our honors students and we had students
136who said i celebrate on the days that i get a d because i know i've done my best and those students were reflected in that group as well so i think we got a a great cross-section of students not just always the students who um are are doing well but they're just doing their best and so we got feedback about you know school lunches we got feedback about uh with regards to the dress code and and that i will tell you that that was um you hear me say big lift a lot because that was a big topic because you know i think my views are probably a little 1960s sometimes when it comes to dress but what we heard what we heard was that we need our our dress code to be not targeting
137particularly and i heard our females that i felt like some of the previous uh language only targeted our female students when it came to dress and we needed some more gender-neutral language um and so that's why you heard dr um you heard dr odie say the work was already done here in charlottesville and so that came over um i think students took a harder approach uh with cell phones than we did um on our advisory committee particularly at the high school now our beaufort students they entertain me with the with the cell phone conversation but our high school students um they felt very they felt stronger than i mean they said you know my teacher spends a lot of time correcting behavior or it's it's very distracting and so i do from the teacher lens
138of it and we had teachers on the panel i mean in the group from the teacher's lens of it it does feel like we're placing it like we're placing um the onus back on teachers but i think what we are saying now is we're making it really clear what's a teacher managed behavior and what's a um school administrator managed behavior and we're not saying that um sometimes we know that we need the assistance of the administrator even though we've listed this as a teacher led and if there's someone because if there happen to be one not that there's always one but if we if there happens to be one a teacher who's an outlier who's preferring to use the administrator versus the teacher then we can support the teacher and say hey is there some
139help we need to provide to this classroom but i do believe that we captured now i wouldn't say we captured elementary's voice in terms of students but i do believe that when we put this document together we were able to say but the students are not going to like this because we've heard what they said and we're going to continue to do um the stu superintendent's advisory group um this school year so we're going to continue that thank you for that explanation and additional information um just for me just because this is kind of who i am like sometimes when we go through those policies it's nice to hear that you know just a reminder that this they go in in front of students um and i will dismiss the last thing i have to
140say thank you we're good i'm good for now um our next item we do have our transgender policy by denise johnson and beth chung good evening madam chair school board and dr gurley thanks so much for having us this evening as always i want to take a moment to thank you for your ongoing support and affirmation of our equity work this evening we want to present to you a quick overview of our policy which supports our students who identify as transgender and non-binary this policy is another component of our division's commitment to equity and aligns with our strategic plan as a division we want to be intentional in our efforts to replace the factors that may lead to inequities and instead adopt attitudes and behaviors that reflect acceptance belonging compassion integrity understanding fairness cooperation and
141respect additionally building and maintaining strong systems that ensure that our students that feel connected to import supported and safe is essential to achieving our equity goals as we present this stint this draft standalone policy in support of our students who are gender expansive i'll give a little history of how we got here it's my understanding that charlottesville city schools was among the first in the state to broaden its nondiscrimination policy in in to include gender identity and expression and so while we are always learning and we are always striving to do better we should realize that in some ways or in many ways this commitment and this work is not new to our schools in 2020 the state passed a law requiring the vdoe to develop guidance for schools in support of students who are
142transgender and non-binary after the adoption of this state model policy in 2021 you may recall that the vsba recommended a comprehensive approach to um adopting or trans uh changing policy so in the spirit of that instead of developing a stand-alone policy at that time we followed the vsba's recommendation and we did a review of our various policies and practices and this strategy i think the single biggest kind of takeaway that would be visible or recognizable to families was last fall when denise and i spoke to you about how we were changing how we chan handled students chosen names in powerschool and things like that so those are the sort of um i don't even know that there are a lot of changes even during that year i think a lot of these practices were already
143in place again always being tweaked always being revised but were already in place even then but that was a key uh change that came from that review however at this point we are recommending a draft this draft standalone policy for your consideration the goal of this policy is not to create new protocols or new practices that's the work that has happened over the last years and probably even longer than years the work of this policy right here is to bring all these ideas together into one policy for the sake of clarity uniformity and continuity so here are our next steps we are requesting that you all review and approve the policy when you're ready once approved we will begin division and school-based training on policy and regulations over the course of the school year we
144will continue our training and workshops on supporting our lgbtq plus students with our first session scheduled for august 18th during our professional learning conference lastly as we put systems into place that support our students we also want to make sure that we are supporting our staff as well therefore we will continue conversations that will ensure we are being intentional about being fully inclusive as you review the policy and regulations please let us know if you have additional thoughts or feedback and thank you again for your time thank you um any questions from anybody miss mckeever we'll start aaron so thank you so much for all of the work that you all have been doing on this um my question is uh can we well to what extent do we need to wait because they said
145they're waiting for our approval before they start training on this policy and regulations and i just wonder with start of school it might be useful to have the policy move forward um but obviously i'll take the will of the board i just wanted to know delaying so really i mean we had all of the pieces correct they were just spread out so if i may just was curious like um besides pulling all the pieces together in one one um policy i mean what other type of input or have you had any other feedback or reached out to other groups to weigh in on that i think some of this feedback has come truly over the years as we've made these changes but denise and i did put a little list together you know there have
146been um student groups over the years that have been vocal about some of these issues there have we've leaned heavily into our school mental health professionals to speak to these especially very specific practices um we've checked with members of the lgbtq community for a whole variety of reasons over the years and leading up to this policy including this year we've spoken with principals equity committee members some just some general community members who have expressed interest on this so there has been some feedback both over the months that we've been sort of reviewing this but also again over kind of the years that we've been putting some of these practices into place yeah so and our school board attorney so i mean to what extent um would this impact or hold up training because we we
147have all of this even you know if we were not to to approve this tonight we're prepared to move forward with our lgbt plus uh training as is so we have a training plan in place but to have training specifically on the policy and the regulation of regulations associated with the policy is what the approval will move forward i mean i read through both but i mean does that feel really differently i mean is that going to impact the training i mean are people going to go oh my gosh this is so different this feels different no but we do want the staff to be informed and our students inform the community informed of the new policy and what what's involved with it and so it's a it's an information session that will be had
148about the overview of the policy and the regulations associated with it okay any other questions from so i just have no doubt that this is gonna eventually pass unanimously and so i feel like i would love to keep with our the policy of or practice of not moving something to an action item when it hasn't been advertised as such but i would think that at the august 18th training session you could assume that it is coming can anybody think of any other groups i mean i would like for us and i think we would continue to be open to getting feedback from local groups or other groups i know a couple of us were emailed um you know and had had eyes on this policy and eyes on charlottesville so i just i and not
149that this board wouldn't continue to do better if if there were changes that we needed to to offer to the policy so i mean i concur does anybody else have any questions as far as i think we should vote on it but i i personally feel like my and i will of the board is to go ahead with the training is there any are there any problems with that yeah yes go ahead dr craft um yeah just um i think this is really terrific what i i was wanting to ask about the piece where you're talking about you know use of facilities and if another student is uncomfortable with the transgender student then that student can be shown some kind of alternative alternative space or is that a new thing is that was that added
150as a new thing or have we had that in other policies okay yeah it's just you know in our the climate out there um not not so much in our division but out there um you know about you know um well you know what i mean you know parents concerns and things like that um um i don't i don't you know i mean that's just gonna be out there but i think this is great it's really important for us to have this and i don't think anything should hold up the training that you're going to do thank you mr bryant sure i said a quick question um the student success meeting to support on trans and transgender and non-binary students is this going to be strictly for school counselors or other staff members will they
151be trained in in doing these meetings so we've talked um we've talked at length about this um because i think this was like the who's responsible for this and and really when we think about it from a team approach it's whatever the resource that the student needs so typically the student has this great relationship with their school counselor if we're talking about a secondary student sometimes you know at the we do experiences at the elementary school too where the teachers lean into this but i think when we look at it more so from the developmental aspects of what some of our older students need we really talked about who are the people and the resources that come to the table sometimes it's the social emotional workers sometimes it's the school counselor sometimes it may be
152the teacher leading the work i think it's who has the relationship with the student and i think that that's kind of where we landed we we know that we want our um we want our school council school counselors to be trained in this but sometimes the counselor may say but they have a better relationship with mr bryant their science teacher so we need to pull him into this work uh and so we've not said that this is the sole responsibility of but we know that someone may need to take the lead in order to ensure that the student is successful and i think one of the roles of the counselor on this is just frankly just the accountability piece all right the students said they want their name changed so who's going to follow up
153with that so i think obviously like dr gurley said we're sort of leaning into who does a student have a safe and trusted relationship with but then there's the piece who's going to make sure that all this gets put into place and so i think that's the place where you where you just have to have a designated person so that it doesn't fall into the cracks any other questions comments so not that i expected you to be prepared for this but i was just curious like where are we in each of the school buildings as far as bathroom designation you know i know that some schools have have changed signage on them to just being you know non i i could be wrong but i believe all the schools have gender neutral bathrooms or that
154just say student bathroom and i think all the schools or almost all the schools have single stall bathrooms as well so that that definitely is as you know about the buford designs that is the the wave of the future is to have single stall restrooms and so that's um but we're just fortunate that some of our buildings had that baked into the design even from our even in our old buildings so um so that's that's an area where i feel pretty confident yeah i would just love to hear if there are if there are some that don't have that if we could address that please absolutely yeah all right any other questions comments i just want to make sure for our follow-up so you want to know if that if students don't have access to
155because i know ms swift looked at me like what am i supposed to write so you want to know if they don't have access to a single saw or if there's one available then we're good in every building well i would hope that we're moving towards just gender-neutral bathrooms and all buildings and i want to make sure that i mean there may be some that are designated i don't know but i just want to make sure there is there are access okay in each reversible building sounds great or you know bring that back and we can have a further discussion about it i guess and maybe to add to that the situation in terms of locker rooms um i'm not sure what that is for the school district right now but maybe that's something we
156need to look into and figure out how that's being utilized that's right um related to like how the policy impacts locker rooms okay and we it has language in there about the um so we can make sure we vet that yes i saw the links i just want to make sure that we're updated to make sure we're good and i just i will also just reinforce you know one of the things that just becomes more and more clear to me as we talk about um bathrooms or locker rooms students may want privacy for a whole host of reasons and this is just one example by by training our attention on students with particular needs or particular concerns we benefit all the students thank you ladies appreciate you both i appreciate you all right um we
157have another um policy update for miss powell related to non-resident students and then she will also follow that up with our security camera update policy yes thank you dr gurley madam chair members of the board the first policy that has um three updates is the admission of non-resident students policy um jecc the three updates are fairly straightforward one uh needed to update the titles for who has overall overall responsibility oversight for the program from assistant superintendent to chief operations officer that was just a decision that was made when dr odie came on board she was cao and there was a title change um so that update is reflected here also there was an update to reflect the um our actual practice of allowing payment plans for families before i ever came into this position under
158special circumstances payment plans were allowed up to december and this was prior to the pandemic but families had been allowed to do that uh if there were special circumstances and now um since the pandemic they actually again in special circumstances have been extended to full year at times and in conjunction with that we are preparing to hopefully allow for a credit card payment option we don't have the solution in place yet we've explored some options and some other priorities have put it on the back burner but while we were addressing tidying up this policy we wanted language that allowed for that so that those are the changes for the um policy jecc now i was just going to see if there's anybody question any questions specific to this all right thank you all right do
159you have the next one as well so the next item is the um is a new policy we don't have a policy explicitly for security cameras and video recordings although a number of our policies would make reference to them we didn't have an explicit policy and so this policy [Music] addresses why we have cameras how video may be used where and how cameras operate in our facilities who is authorized to access video the record retention requirements for video recordings which are in alignment with the library of virginia and essentially the reason we're bringing this forward is we found that with the expansion and improvements of this element of our security system um certain situations come up and so forth where we just felt that policy was silent where and we wanted to to be more
160transparent and readily available as far as what the camera system is all about what role it plays in our security system and and how we work with that system so uh this policy is brought forward for your consideration any questions anybody so i mean i did read through this as well um but i'm just making sure that this is hallway or they're not in classrooms no no not at all we're not going there the camera placement is primarily our goals um we're through the in continued investment we're still trying to realize all of this but we'd like facial recognition quality at every entry point into the building in case we need that um there is hall coverage and we like to cover if we're going to cover a hallway and we have to make choices
161you always like to um in our current situation know when students could you know be able to identify entrance and exit to the restroom but you can of course never have cameras in restrooms or in classrooms and then when the other area is sometimes like in large common areas like gyms or cafeterias just general high level cameras that cover a broad area exterior perimeter cameras it's nice to have coverage on parking lots and frequently traveled areas so there's certain criteria we consider about where cameras could be most needed and most useful it's also important understand we don't have staffing to monitor cameras cameras are used to identify what happened after something has happened primarily or and this is considered best practice if an incident is occurring if there's a crisis with an active threat you
162can we can partner with law enforcement for them to gain access to the camera system in the situation and that can help people understand what's going on in the building and that's part of the infrastructure and plans we're working on with our first responder partners any other questions just wonder do we have enough cameras um to satisfy our security needs so the high school we've made great gains and improvements here as well as at the middle school and of course as we design the new middle school we'll have a good lens to that um the elementary schools are lacking in cameras only clark initially had cameras but with our latest round of security grant applications we're looking to add cameras at our elementary schools we've had a number of requests from principals it's primarily property
163damage after hours things that happen exterior coverage is really what we're lacking at our elementary schools and we're looking to make gains in that area it's still good to have facial recognition on who's coming in and out of your buildings but beyond that you don't have the same level of hallway coverage and things like that in an elementary school it's perimeter and entry points primarily those are the goals okay okay thank you thank you miss powell and um our last agenda item is dr baptist and she will be bringing the covet update madam chair members of the board dr gurley well we are going into another school year and we're still dealing with covid um you have a document that has um come from the schools i know principals were involved and i don't know
164who else was involved with coming up with some of the questions and then central these are teacher questions teacher questions okay and then um administrators at central office have reviewed some of the questions and we've also done some research for different things to come up with some answers and as we get started with that i would like to say our answers to some of these questions are current as of august the 4th because things are still changing i was um to be involved in a meeting this afternoon with vdh updates and it was cancelled because they're expecting updates from cdc any moment so there i will have another meeting so what what the recommendations we have now are right now so we will see what happens rather than going through each of these one by
165one unless that's the way you prefer i did want to just list a couple things that we are continuing that we have been doing um up to this point we will be continuing testing we will have the company who's been doing the testing will still be coming three days a week for this next year and we'll have that schedule out soon we still will be doing a dashboard uh we will be encouraging vaccinations if if uh blue ridge would like to do any vaccination clinics within the school system we'll certainly support that but we will still encourage we are going to continue with coveted lead it was mentioned this evening by one of the speakers that it had five days in on our listing that has been changed to seven days and one reason for
166that is with the change that we're doing with only isolating for five days you're likely to have a weekend in there so it could be more like seven to nine days that somebody would be out so the seven days is what we would have for covet leave which would not affect someone's sick leave it would be converted to sickly and dr baptist i think also just to um you know because i know that question came up um earlier with regards to you know we we recognized that as we looked at the data from last school year that households were impacted and so it does list um dr baptist does have listed here that we're going to work with people um but most certainly we don't want to cause any hardships we don't want to cause
167any hardships with any of our employees and i think the the key to what she just said was that you know this while we're giving seven days it really turns into nine days because um just organically a weekend is going to fall in there so it's um it's nine days right now but as we assess each situation and so just working with your supervisor so if you're a teacher working with the principal or if you work if you're whomever else working with your supervisor but this is just the start and it is ever evolving based on the needs of our employees and and one reason for this too is that with our change in expectations for quarantining um which are lessened and for isolating which have been lessened from ten days to five days it's
168not as likely that people will need to be out as long for any instances so as dr gurley said this is something that we will continue to work on um we will still be doing some contact tracing the health department has given us some guidance that rather than doing contact tracing for every case we will do it when we have three connected cases which could be three in one day or classroom or one each day over three days that are connected so we still will be doing some contact tracing filters we will be updating our filters at least some of the filters in the schools with an mou that we have with the virginia department of health we are get are being given about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in an mou for some
169coordination help regarding covid in in way of personnel uh and with filters so we're very pleased we're getting about seven one thousand dollars in filters so we're excited that the division will not have to um handle that expense and then of course we are still continuing masking for staff at this point and so those are the things that we are looking at from last year we do have some changes which somewhat alluded to looking at the changes in quarantine the the advice from vdh did change in july that if someone is exposed whether they are vaccinated or not they're not necessarily expected to quarantine if there are no symptoms so we're following all of this guidance we're looking at it and we are in the process of getting updates on the um division website so
170that we'll have all of that knowing that it's a changing process but we know what's up there now is from 2122 and miss chuck and i have talked several times about getting it updated and we will get that done by the time school opens so those are some of the the main things that are going to stay the same and a couple of the changes and again i will be glad to go through any one of these questions um or in all of them if you would prefer anybody have questions down to my right miss dooley dr kraft to the left just real quick could you just update us on the community transmission level i can um it gets updated every thursday evening so since we've been in this meeting cdc is listing charlottesville city
171back into high we were in medium last week we were back in the high this week and uh albemarle county is listed as medium so i always check around and i didn't i didn't check some of the other localities but we did move back up to high this week you're welcome mr bryant yes i had a quick question doc beth i'm baptist um the new um booster shot that's coming out in september will it be available for charleston city employees or do you have to make our own available i don't know whether blue ridge will want to do a vaccination clinic within the school system or they'll just give us information about where people can go if they're only giving us information about the clinics we will certainly share it if they would want to
172do a clinic within the schools and we would support it is there a reason why we are not going to do the tracker anymore um what one of the recommendations changed because the contact trace i might be answering the wrong question are you talking about the dashboard or contact tracing the bicycles tracker that used to be up where you would say how many cases there were i thought there was a question in there that it wasn't going to be we're still doing the dashboard we just have not had many cases reported we've only had two cases reported since july 1st now do i think there are more cases within the school system yes but since many people are not working this summer we have not had the cases reported but as soon as everybody's back
173in we've already got the mechanism in place for the cases to be reported and we will be updating them daily okay i thought it said we no longer will do the daily i think i think you maybe you were talking about the schools like the calls okay from individual schools that changed right i mean i think that's schools we'll continue the weekly spreadsheet we will continue okay i thought it said we're not going to update it sorry that was it i was we will be continuing that and calls we may change that uh classroom calls versus entire school depending on cases okay and you said that um dr gurley that if um someone has exhausted their leave they could still um to the administration or hr for some yes ma'am so um again we um
174we've been playing with the number um and so what we decided upon was the seven days because that the seven days is longer than the recommended quarantine and then recognizing that that would essentially give people nine days because there's a weekend you know there would be a weekend in there somewhere so that's nine days employees have access to and most certainly if um you know if covet is going through your home and there's some leave issues then we just are going to encourage people to work with the super i'm that i'm going to encourage the supervisor to work with the employee as we always do can i just i'll make the suggestion uh i thought what miss esposito was talking about was very wise that um if we could uh offer a have some of
175the like i think seven days is plenty of time honestly i think i was telling somebody i have like literally five days i believe sick leave the whole year so but i do find that the um it would be helpful to talk with the teachers about that i mean to to have i think that's a a great starting place um is to sit down and ask them what would be best and i think he might come up the exact same plan but i always and and i know that you know everybody's been out of town this summer um and certainly we don't want to ask more of our teachers over the summer than we already do so i think it might be helpful though to have a i would love to see it basically kovit
176committee like we had just kind of continuing to discuss these issues behind the scenes to give us these recommendations because i think we there's a lot of division um and it would be helpful if we could kind of have like some unity saying hey this is what we decided based on x y and z and i would just it would be very helpful as a as a policy maker um so thank you and i think that um and we most certainly can um you know i'm definitely not opposed to engaging teachers to see where they are in terms of you know like the number of days i i think what we all decided as what we all concluded as a committee is that this go around is going to be much harder than previous years
177in terms of like tracking covert and you know we used to encourage people to go to the doctor when they weren't feeling sick when they were feeling sick i'm sorry and now we're doing a lot of rapids and until i think this go around is a little harder and so we most certainly will always work from a great place and and work on the honor system and don't want to penalize the masses because of a few but i think um from the this this one is this go around it's hard um in terms of creating regulations when we um have very little guidance and so yeah we can most certainly pull together a committee and uh one of the things that i put down is um my little chat with um jessica taylor to just
178get some input from c i think that's been like my easiest go-to now just call miss taylor and see what she can help me with i'm just getting the pulse but it this go around is a little difficult for us out of transparency and the health department is still doing the calls with the local school divisions right now we're doing it every two weeks but i we probably will go back to every week once schools are back and i do want to give us a little plug because we are i think one of the only school divisions doing covet leave at this moment so that makes me feel really good to know that you know we are at a starting point of offering something where others are not yeah yeah thank you um thank you
179as always and yeah we understand that things are changing rapidly probably right now while we're in this meeting um you know and and i think what i would hope and and i would ask is that and it feels like you know again we we've had a couple of conversations tonight where um the decisions and the onus and the impact of some of the decisions that we as a board are making and dr gurley and his team are making you know are only impacting teachers and and i don't want you all to feel like that and i'm asking that we all remember that decisions you know whether you're talking about masks or whether it's quarantine um and and the lack thereof now that affects a lot of people and it affects big systems and it affects
180teachers in the classroom and whether if you're out and and we don't have enough substitutes to start so i mean i want and i hope that everybody will pause and just you know is this the best decision and and it's not just about me you know and i might be you know putting out half of my fellow employees if i show up or or whatever the case and then also with families um you know you you've been operating um with the executive order that was put out last spring with the opportunity to make a choice you know for your students to to show up and wear masks or not and we want to continue to support those kids who who need or want to wear masks um again we're not we're not speaking about it
181but i want them to feel supported but i also want families to pause and and i realize that there are burdens on family sometimes um as far as not having enough days to stay home if your kids are sick or maybe the families are sick and kids are most likely exposed but they're asymptomatic but we're going to send them to school and there's trickle trickle out effects for those types of things so i just am asking that everybody really think this through and we are in this together and we are doing our best as a board and a division to take care of everybody and we want people in the in the buildings we want students learning in the buildings we want teachers here establishing and making those relationships with the kids so it's really
182really important so i hope that everybody will continue to do a good job and think about others as well but thank you dr baptist as always that'll find my agenda thank you all right the next item um was our board response to written reports and then we are moving on if anybody had any questions about that and then we are moving on to our next opportunity for comments from members of the community so if anybody would like to come up out of the media center i see nobody jumping up um and if we have anybody online who is raising their hand or expressing a desire to speak we see nobody i'm seeing a nobody okay so thank you um for that and next we have comments from the board so i will start down here
183with miss dooley if you have any comments dr kraft yeah well i would first like to acknowledge that we are starting another school year and this is dr gurley's first start of the year we're almost with us for a whole year but anyway there's a lot of exciting things i know we're all you know we we get bogged down by some of the uh the covet and some of the negative things but i think there's much to be celebrated in all the work that's gone into starting the year and all the people who have put in the work that will help us start off and launch a new year that i think will be a great a great year under dr gurley's leadership so just to mention that and i just wanted to say that
184you know regarding collective bargaining and you know the process that we've been in yeah you don't want to walk out yet but um i just want to say that i feel very encouraged by um the process and by the the hard work that everybody has done uh this is it's so new and you know it can be very fraught in a lot of ways and um uh i think that we my feeling is that we're sort of working through that and i really look forward to um adopting a resolution and soon in the near future and really embarking on this process so um you know i i think it's going to happen and i i feel encouraged right now i feel good about it so thanks to everybody who's making that happen um and i
185guess just along those lines just to reiterate the importance of having uh for us as board members to hear from teachers to hear from staff it's really i mean i'll speak for myself but when we are tasked with making certain decisions um you know for me it's very hard to know how to do that without um knowing what the people who are you know teaching and working in the in the division what people really want and what you think is important so i hope we can we can continue to have a strong voice that and and that you will reach out to us as board members you know to let us know what you think and then uh one more one more thought i had um and this has to do with the media um
186and the importance you know i think the media our local media have been very important in um communicating the work that we're trying to do here with the community with the larger community and now i think it's especially important to be able to you know i to appreciate that appreciate all the work that the local media has done and also going back to all of our issues about transportation and kids getting to school i think the media can play a really important role in um bringing the message to the community and as ms mckeever was talking about before making sure that the whole community is engaged in protecting our kids and understanding you know the difficulties of what we're trying to do and getting everybody to school safely so i know we've lost uh catherine
187knott and we didn't get a chance to say goodbye to her but i know she did a lot of that work and i know there are others out there and so um i appreciate you and and really ask that you continue to you know bring the important issues uh out to the community thank you mr morse spark a small spark can ignite a fire and the same goes for a spark of passion spark of passion can ignite learning and that learning is what propels us and likes the future for our students for any students that might be watching i doubt it during the summer or any parents that come across this meeting and wondering what to say to your students i ask you to tell your student your child to take the path of exploration
188take the path of creation and take the path of imagination because you never know what spark might come out of that and not to be too metaphorical but as educators we have to provide the right environment i won't get into all the kindle and everything to to make a fire go but it is certainly our responsibility and i know we take it seriously as educators to provide the right environment for our students to foster that fire that passion so they can learn throughout this school year so good luck and we'll be supporting you thank you mr bryant well mr marshall a hard act to follow well really right i like that um i'd like to think about it for coming out tonight and certainly uh i want to encourage all of my fellow notice that
189fellow colleagues is once a teacher always a teacher a great start of the school year i can remember i was in august you know the excitement of getting ready getting prepared for the new school year can't wait to see your kids decorating your the bulletin boards and all those things they're going to prepare them for for the children our staff members bus drivers just everybody the whole village in terms of educating our children i wish you well um have a great school year and um by the time we come back together as a board you've already been in the mix for a couple of weeks she would have gotten your feet wet so i wish you all a great school year no miss mckeever oh you're good all right thank you everybody um for all
190the comments those who showed up for public comment thank you as always um for your messages we appreciate all of you i did again i just and i'm not going to read the specifics but i do want to remind people i appreciate emails that we receive um from parents and teachers um and i think i just want to remind people that we do occasionally get emails from parents who who do have concerns you know about the mitigation that we're putting in place and keeping their kids safe so i don't know that that those get talked about as much as some of the other things you knows and questions about some good questions you know but families who would be interested in cohorting their children with with other kids who prefer to mask so i just
191don't want us to lose sight that there that there are parents out there who have those concerns and i'm not to say that they don't all but that they are voicing those and they have some good ideas so again just adding that and remembering that when we're making decisions because there are families who out there who are out there who who do have those concerns and have brought some of those to us so um we appreciate everybody we appreciate dr gurley and all the work and that your team has continued to do throughout the summer we are here to support you and we look forward to a great academic year so thank you dr gurley moving on to you sir all right um i just want to remind everyone that um we are back in
192the full swing of things so our open houses and back to school events will be taking place very soon and the information is is here on your account on screen and in addition to that on monday may the 22nd we are going to have um an event i think someone mentioned it earlier i'm sorry it's because i said may earlier oh on monday august the 22nd we are going to have the uh we're going to do another event over at friendship court um where we are going to do just a little walking um exercise where we just connect with our families and again i think we we talked about the importance of just keep doing this and doing this until we get it right so we do have those events coming up and just to
193remind you know we will continue to do our um testing um our testing events in the school and um and you see this outline you see this outline here um and our back to school um our back to school bash which is on august the 20th um that's a saturday we will be having that and i uh i just want to make sure i say that we have a lot of work has taken place this summer um you know people always say are you enjoying your summer how's your summer off um and i can't there's a lot of teachers that i can say have not had a summer off because they're doing the work the our administrators are doing the work and i just want to make sure that everyone's putting their oxygen mask on
194first and taking care of yourselves and so that we can be well for our students when they return we had a safety summit this um this summer and that was uh ken powell and jason lee led that and i just want to reassure families that as we open our doors that their children will be safe here we've done safety audits we've prepared our staff members with protocols and response mechanisms to keep our students safe and so i'm just very appreciative of all the work that's taken place and that is it and i just want to thank everyone and i'm excited about having my first official start to the school year yeah we'll have yeah thank you um and we have our um first work session wrap up we are testing you [Laughter] yes oh did
195i not say that i'm so excited that you're here it was just very um touching to see her kind of looking at doctor really did i get that right request um so to come back and discuss the student rights and responsibility enhancements um and how it's working overall and maybe share some data and then to make sure all our schools have general gender neutral bathrooms as well as where we are with the locker rooms yep anything else i think oh yeah just consideration of a covid committee convenient kind of thank you thank you so much um upcoming meetings i dropped the ball on that one we have our our next board meeting in september um and i don't have the date september 1st all right so that's an easy one i want to welcome again
196wish everybody a great great start to the year and thank you so much and i will adjourn the meeting