January 7, 2021 Charlottesville City School Board Meeting 1

001strange um let's see hi everybody hey hello james are you you happen to be using a device that has like a a webcam cover by any chance oh that's right i forgot to flip the camera don't ask me how i know that because it's never happened to me i never do embarrassing i never do embarrassing things on the uh on calls right dragon story i've never said anything totally embarrassing to put my foot in my mouth i think my favorite was the one going somebody carrying it to the bathroom i think that was oh he got right before i know it was like wait a minute that was all dr mackin brought it i did i didn't i didn't think to say anything we were all so shocked well i i think i started screaming

002you did what is she screaming over like oh yeah that person was so embarrassed yeah get that person's attention all right it looks like we are just now getting pushed live to facebook and our uh pages so what i'm going to do is open up for allowing people to join the meeting so we can start at five o'clock you all right i've got five o'clock on our watch here and um just stop staring sharing my screen so i'm going to turn it over to you to get the meeting started madam chair homo thank you so much good afternoon to our audience and to our school board members i'd like to call to order the january 7 2021 school board meeting we'll start the meeting with a moment of silence thank you hold our clerk please

003do the roll call man this is mr bryant president it's bryson morseberger here dr crabb present ms mckeever yeah ms per year present miss torres yes mr wade yes and our student rep ms packer president thank you madam clerk tonight is our board organization night and i will serve as the chair of the board until a new chair is elected so i would like to open the floor now for nominations for chair of the charlottesville city school board i would like to nominate lisa torres for chair of the charlottesville city school board thank you miss lisa torres has been nominated i second the nomination dr atkins wonderful miss torres has been nominated and seconded any discussion madam clerk we're ready for the vote mr brian yes miss bryson morrisberger yes dr craft yes miss mckeever

004yes miss per year yes miss torres yes mr way yes thank you madam clerk and now i will turn the board meeting over to our new board chair ms lisa torres thank you madam chair thank you dr atkins and thank you board members uh for the nomination and your vote of confidence i look forward to our continued dedicated work together um and now i would like to take us to the next item which is electing a vice chair madam chair i would like to nominate mr james bryant as vice chair thank you we'll second that nomination great we've received um a nomination on a second is there any discussion great thank you madam clerk may we have a vote please yes madam chair mr bryant yes is bryson morrisberger yes dr craft yes ms mckeever

005yes ms per year yes miss torres yes mr wade yes thank you very much welcome mr bryant thank you all so much for your support looking forward to continue to work together and moving to 4.3 um is the appointing clerk and deputy clerk dr atkins would you like to yes madam chair i'd like to recommend uh for clerk miss julia green and for deputy clerk ms leslie backer do we need a second on that i will gladly second and then i will i will i will remove those nominations sorry great now how about i'll second that then okay sounds good and is there any discussion all right and madam who gets to take roll on that madam clerkstow please thank you thank you very much mr bryant yes is bryson morrisberger yes dr craft yes

006miss mcgiver yes yes per year yes ms torres yes and mr wade mr wayne all right yes i'm sorry thank you thank you all right and our next item uh is 5.0 approval of the agenda so moved second promotion and a second is there any discussion all right madam clerk get a vote please yes mr bryant yes is bryce and morrisberger yes dr craft yes ms mckeever miss per year yes miss torres yes and mr wade yes thank you um our next item is uh 6.0 comments from members of the community um i believe we had mr coma if you'll help me um remember how many people were signed up but a reminder to our public that you can address the school board on any issues during this public comment we hold public comment towards

007the end of the meeting again we also have an option to reach out to us via school board so that's school board at charlottesvilleschools.org and if you will i guess either raise your hand in the chat or raise your hand on the zoom or put your name in the chat and mr como will call you out and kind of cue you up and if you will also please state your name and address for us and we ask that you limit your comments to three minutes great and i know there was an accommodation for somebody on phone to speak so i'll make sure that i acknowledge that personnel and and see if they're still here and wanting to speak but right now the idea here for speaking first is listed as stephanie just yes oh i'm

008here um can you hear me yes miss just thank you thanks and i'm stephanie gist and i live at 307 5th street southwest great thank you um so i will i'll go ahead i want to first thank the school board for your leadership the issue i want to talk about is sros and sros being put back in our schools and i remember finding out that when the sros were voted on to be removed just how thrilled i was that it takes a long time and a lot of places for school boards to get to the point that they're willing to fight for that and also i feel for you all um and for like at the i've been to the meetings and the majority of parents do not want um uniformed police officers or armed

009uniformed police officers in the school and so i really feel for you guys the battle since you had a vote and it's now being kind of taken back um and so what i want to do in i got the really nice uh email from dr adkins and miss mckeever and you want facts and then that's what i'm going to try to do and then also what we all need to be doing is showing all of our students that all of them matter and that all of them are really capable of great things so for facts regarding sros is there there are not any quantifiable verifiable facts that sros actually increase safety they definitely a lot of our culture has a perception that police create safety but facts don't lead to that what we do have

010fact-wise is the fact that students of color don't perform as well in places where they see uniformed police officers and especially an armed uniform police officer but this doesn't mean that our administration doesn't need a tremendous amount of support teachers don't need support so what we need to be looking at is the correct way to do it and it is not police even police will tell you and i've heard them say that they're overused that police in mental health they don't have the training and they're not the right fit and i urge you guys to really stay with the fact that it doesn't have to be police to equal safety um the thing with what we have here with our population to go to more facts is any student of any age that is acting

011out what they really are looking for is connection and what the resources that people need are people who are trained with this age group amazing it's a tricky age group teenagers but there are people who are passionate and trained to deal with people who need connection and need support so that's what we need to help our school with i need to help everybody with is finding those people who can actually make a difference um and so that the schools do need support but we know that armed police officers are not what we want to be [Music] if i've got another couple seconds just sorry oh um another thing in this educational theory is that kids will rise to what we give them they can't rise above what we give them and if we put police

012officers in there what we're saying showing them is that we do expect them to engage in criminal behavior is that's what police do so we need to show them have resources there because we know they can do better and that we believe in them to be that thank you miss just okay next we have sage boyer and i apologize if i'm saying the the names wrong um but sage boyer is next on the line sage welcome are you there hi um as far as the sros go i think that there should be around but i don't think that they should be involved in disciplining of students that's all i wanted to say thank you okay and um i believe we have uh richard firo who's joining us through telephone and so richard if that's you

013i believe it's uh star six to unmute um to unmute your phone let me see if that works on your end yeah it looks like that worked now richard all right mr phil hey hey y'all this is richard 825 prospect um and appreciate you making sure i got on i actually um i got the voice mail from dr atkins earlier uh today so i i've decided not to make any comments at this point thank you thank you sir and mr como next sure um well at this time i do not see any hands raised in the oh there we go we have a hand raised and it is um the call the person is named john wells welcome mr wells are you there hello i'm here can you hear me yes sir you have three

014minutes thank you great uh happy new year everyone jennifer that's a pretty large smile um thank you for giving the community the opportunity to comment i live at 1122 east jefferson street um and with all the known equity inclusion issues that covet and the related virtual learning has caused i assumed that priority number one would be to get the students teachers and staff safely back in buildings it seemed like we were on our way with all the schedule planning and physical safety mitigation conducted over the last nine months and then it seemed like the division and the board moved the focus to pre-k through fourth grade which i understood the lesser focus on bringing walker buford and chs back a hybrid schedule for those schools it seemed sub-optimal giving the scheduling issues uh which beg

015question to me why not talk about bringing them back four days a week too but anyway uh you were not going to hear from me again actually on the subject of getting kids back into school however the meeting prior just prior to holiday break happened and it was announced only pre-k the second would go back face-to-face since then literally no stakeholder i have spoken to including parents teachers students or other community members understands why you would consider approving splitting up elementary students considering that many third and fourth graders have pre-k to second siblings the decision the decision exacerbates inequality because not only do guardians of split siblings have more logistics and potential expenses to figure out the community organizations that stepped up when no one else did are are being asked to remain off to

016remain offering additional services unnecessarily it makes no sense and i question the process and influences to arrive at that decision to my knowledge no real explanation was offered i asked at what point do we decide to go back if the buildings are mitigated the contact trace is in place we are all wearing masks the local case numbers have gone up as i'm sure you'll cover tonight but thankfully the local hospitalizations have come back down off highs i estimate between half a percent and 2.4 percent of the health district currently to be infected with cova vaccine-based community immunity is unlikely to be with us this spring or even by this fall unfortunately meanwhile a number of school systems and schools in virginia have successfully navigated going back face to face at some point i would suggest

017letting the 35 percent of students who do not plan to come back in person be taught by the 35 percent of teachers who do not want to come back in person i ask that you pass on holding any kind of vote tonight in terms of going back to school in person i ask that the board and dr atkinson staff talk offline between now and next thursday then i ask that you meet and vote next thursday january 14th to send pre-k to fourth grade back for face-to-face instruction on january 22nd whether it is an optimal decision to send all the kids back on january 22nd or send none of them back sending a fraction of schools that a fraction of each school back that may have multiple siblings across the grades is simply a confounding decision

018that causes more stress for our least fortunate community members thank you thank you sir we have um jessica taylor has a hand raised miss taylor can you hear me yes ma'am you have three minutes okay madam chair members of the board and dr atkins from the onset of the pandemic the cea has stood firm in his demands to maintain open and honest communication between teachers and administration transparency and decision making and that the safety of our student staff and commitment and community be paramount through much hard work by all stakeholders and dr atkins's commitment to our community significant forward progress has been made but it is clear that we are not yet there just today the percent positivity in the tv tjhd reached 11 we all know that ccs has done a remarkable job in

019developing and implementing protocols and measures intended to mitigate risk while most of us find this reassuring there are countless studies from the us and other countries that show that masks and social distancing are not foolproof people can and do get sick despite following all guidelines either at the grocery store or at work the official assumption is that teachers would contract covet outside of school but without adequate contact tracing and a full testing protocol that includes asymptomatic children we can't know this for sure governor northam just yesterday announced that teachers are in group 1b to get the vaccine along with first responders and frontline essential workers this is an additional measure of defense for your educators that will enable going back into classrooms feel that much safer you know we miss our kids you know we

020miss our work families we want to go back to school we just don't want to have to risk our lives to do so waiting just a bit longer to reopen and bring students back into the buildings will ensure that we won't have to thank you miss taylor anybody else mr como um there's nobody just quite yet um i know we normally give 30 to 40 seconds for any last uh minute people who'd like to speak sure or a song by miss mcheever and just a reminder to anybody else who's considering to speak we do have an opportunity towards the end of the meeting as well all right i think we will move on for now thank you everybody we our next item actually is 6.2 it is another opportunity for public comment uh specifically um

021about the 2021-2022 budget so if anybody has some thoughts again you have an opportunity now to speak and or you know feel free to send us an email anybody mr como we did have one more hand go up um and the attendees listed as dd smith let's get there we go dd smith is now unmuted thank you thank you and i appreciate the time um as you consider your budget i would like to um suggest as miss mckeever did at her last meeting as chair to take extraordinary measures to undo the damage that you've seen in the last year and really quite frankly the undamage you've seen in many years before to bring all children up to competency in reading writing and arithmetic by the third grade i mean it is time to take extraordinary

022measures and as you consider your budget i hope you will keep that in mind you can really make a huge difference in going forward because as you've heard tonight with miss just i i actually really appreciated her sro comments children who get in trouble later are very likely to be academically behind and i just really hope that this whole crisis we've seen in the last year will you know springboard some efforts to say yes all of our children deserve a quality of education they deserve to have a competency that enables them to have a successful life so as you consider your budget i really really hope that you will think outside the box as miss mckeever said and as i certainly agree in really bringing all your particularly very early elementary children up to competency

023um so they can be successful thank you for your time thank you miss smith anybody else mr como that at this time there is there are no hands raised in the attendees gallery give it just a second or two more and then we will move on all right so i think now we'll close uh public or comment for now and we'll move on to uh item 7.0 which is adoption of our consent agenda i will entertain a motion for that please so move okay i second it promotion in a second is there any discussion all right if we could get a vote please madam clerk it's madam chair mr bryant yes is bryce of morsberger yes dr craft yes ms mckeever yes ms peryear yes ms torres yes and mr wade yes thank you thank

024you all right our next item um is 8.0 and we have action items and 8.1 is to discuss the approval of policy revisions and i will allow dr atkins to intervene for emergencies what it would look like um so there's that initial training and then there's advanced training um as you're as you were speaking of um where we want to have skilled individuals in our school buildings that would be able to appropriately respond part of that advanced training we've used mant is i'm talking students through their cru through a crisis but also the um appropriate way to um restrain or seclude students until it is no longer an emergency situation and our policy also says it's own as soon as the there's no there's no emergency the restraint and seclusion stops so we do have

025that um which i think um supports what you were bringing up as important um needs doctor can i have a question um based on what i read in regards to this policy is the policy this policy is designed to use restraint as a last resort after all the other measures have been steps have been taken to to sort of control the child or calm the child this is not the first step if it it typically no there are um most situations the um interventions that you describe mr bryant are the ways that our school staff respond to calm students the restraint and seclusion arts are emergencies only used to bring make sure that students others are protected from from harm from physical harm so but yes you're right that is our first go-to but those

026are not the emergencies as a student has a weapon or possession of a controlled substance um [Music] those are the time or any other date um dangerous object those are the times those are that would be an emergency so basically this is the last result in terms of restraining a child for those rare cases yes and also in regards to the training of staff all staff members we talk about teachers administrators administration assistants assistants all the bus drivers everybody will be trained all of the senior staff i see okay all um employees okay thank you thank you yeah i just want to say i you know i agree with you know what our priorities need to be um and our values in looking at this situation i and i i actually feel like the wording

027here i feel comfortable with it because i think that one paragraph what we're looking at is the wording that that basically um allows uh a staff member to in in the case of a last resort an extreme emergency a student may be about to harm themselves that it doesn't require that staff member in that situation to have to do something else before using restraint and i i feel like that's appropriate of course that's never what we want to do with students but there are situations where um you know that might have to happen to protect the student um so i you know at this point i feel comfortable with the way this is worded yeah i'd just like to chime in as well on um um based on what chandra um said about the task

028forces looking at this and we are as far as long term we are you know these are some of the questions that that um we're answering trying to come up with a really a solution to how to address some of the safety um issues um for restraints and really how to de-escalate you know and i understand that that this won't be used in really certain circumstances and and rarely used but uh that and and i think this came up last month as well but this is i think a tool that i think administrators really have to have um to use in just in those rare rare moments so uh um but this is this is something that will be good as we are discussing it um um for the task force so i would just

029like to say that um that paragraph that says um i it's not in front of me but that says that our priority is to not use physical restraint um that should be before it currently is like it should be the value statement and then the rest of it says how we can go um i mean if that's truly the case um the encourages the use of positive behavioral interventions should be the first like we should be should preface all of this um in my opinion um it's like an afterthought in this and i just don't think that's what it is in our values so that and i'm specifically talking about this one um and i also want to note that occasionally um our policies are used against us and that is i have to you

030know so that's what i worry about and i and and i don't i you know oh well we can both we can all seven of us look at a situation and have seven different ways that interpreting it and so i i just want to use caution and i'm i'm comfortable with the language of this if we move that paragraph up as the in fact preface to all of this but i also want to be very clear that what you would consider an emergency and what i consider an emergency and what somebody on the ground considers an emergency very different it's just very different and i also have not even started to indicate what my concerns are about knaj um and i've last month i did um and i don't see those changes in this policy

031from the shall mandatory language to the um for more permissive may language so i just want to put that out there because i don't know if i'll have an opportunity to mention that again can i also add in one thing about knaj um that one i would like the first paragraph about investigations by law enforcement officers i don't like the language in that one either law enforcement officers occasionally talk with students about a variety of subjects including a legal activity and then it goes on to say students suspected of an involvement in a crime in the community shall be interviewed in the presence of a parent or school official when feasible i don't like that at all they should you know their their their children shouldn't be questioned by law enforcement on school grounds um

032without the permission of a parent and um it says uh if the the police office determined that they can't delay the interrogation until the appearance arrived i'm not comfortable with any of that language at all miss um bryson morrisberger if you'd like to go through this policy and indicate to us what you'd like to strike what you'd like to change what language you'd like to change then we can make those adjustments in that policy okay i'm just not comfortable with the open-endedness of it and allowing children to be questioned by law enforcement without parental permission or a parent present dr atkins may we i mean if she starts with that and i miss more bryson morrisburg i don't know if you you feel comfortable doing that but if you would like to have a first

033go at it um and then we can uncomfortable with that or if other school board members would like to one at a time um provide further input on that either way works for me does that suit you dr atkins yes that that would work well uh we want to make sure that this is a policy that the board embraces and that we can implement in our school division so we're glad to strike some of this language we know that there's a robust discussion going on now is the role of the sros in our school division period um so we will happy to strike some of this language are we talking about doing that offline after the meeting and maybe not approving this one tonight that would be fine yes okay i'd be comfortable with that

034mr torres if you want to i could work with two board members to make these adjustments and bring it back to the board in february okay that's fine um if if you all would like to reach out to me i mean i have a couple in mind but i'll wait to see if anybody else is interested after the meeting that would be great um oh you you're getting good at this chair thing already aren't you you know i've had some good uh good prior chairs to to watch so thank you um madam chair that was for policy knaj that would be offline um jm are we um is it the will of the board to to move the um paragraph that miss mckeever was referring to um as a preference as a preface to all

035about um school board wants the um positive behaviors that to go up at the top well um we can check in with everybody thank you um that was definitely a comment i was going to make and she beat me to that i feel i feel very strongly no no no i feel very strongly i was referencing miss mckeever about that same same point so i would i would prefer that that we start out strongly with that um but i'm open to hear what everybody else feels and thinks about that yeah i would agree with that too i i think um yeah and i i don't know when we're ready to to move approval of this but um maybe if if we could make that change um and and move that statement uh to the front

036of our policy um you know i would entertain a motion to um approve this with that in mind with that change you showed me that paragraph you're referring to on page three of jm and it's the third from the bottom but i'm gonna give miss thacker a second to get that one uh or backing h3 there we are do you see it mr bryant is the third bottom the school board encourages the users okay okay thank you yeah i agree that should be moved so miss kraft made a motion to um i believe correct me if i'm wrong take action or approve this um with the modification that we will move that to the beginning of this policy okay thank you any further discussion are we just voting on the we're not voting on knaj

037are we that's waiting right correct just jm so we have a motion on a second no further discussion is that correct madam clerk can you take a roll please did we lose her sorry i had to wait for the screen to come back okay thank you um mr bryant yes this bryson morris berger yes dr crabb yes it's mckeever um yeah miss per year yes miss torres yes mr wayne yes thank you all right the next item um dr atkins will you uh introduce we're talking about uh our program of study please yes um madam chair in a december november time frame we brought to the board the program of studies any changes to our program studies at walker buford and the high school tonight we have dr odi and we have representatives from each

038of those schools that will present to you a reminder of what you discussed the previous meeting and ask you to take action thank you dr adkins madam chair members of the board and dr atkins uh good evening as dr eiken said last month our staff did present the program of study for the uh 4 21-22 tonight dr atkins recommends that the board take actions and if you have questions we do have dr irizarry and miss delaurier here in the gallery at this time i'd ask that you take action thank you dr odie do i have a motion i move that the school board accept the recommendation of dr odie and dr atkins to accept the program of study for the year 2122. nice second debt thank you and are there any questions or discussion from

039other board members at this time miss mckeever anything okay mr wade i don't see you on my screen right now but any questions no all right mr bryant no a second emotion okay miss purrier nice craft i'm good all right madam clerk we take a vote please mr bryant yes bryson morrisberger yes dr craft yes it's mckeever yes miss prayer his per year yes it's torres yes and mr wade yes thank you thank you dr odie um dr atkins 8.3 is the continuation of fam the family's first coronavirus response act madam chair we would ask that the board take action to extend the family's first coronavirus response act that particular act allows our employees to have a paid leave should they be involved in a covet 19 situation at their homes or on the person

040or members of their family the families first coronavirus response act expired december 31st and we would uh we asked the board to approve the continuation of that act through june 30th uh 2021. i so moved that we approved the family's first coronavirus act extension let's second it any discussion or questions madam chair um i'd like to ask dr atkins a question dr adkins this is an extension of what was in place first semester and there have been no changes am i correct that's correct mr brady thank you dr hubbard you were over in the right of my picture screen i will tell the board that we have several of our employees who have taken advantage of of this league and they have been extremely appreciative of the opportunity to do that to care for either

041themselves family member or one of their children any other questions or discussion great thank you real quickly i just wanted to say i'm very appreciative that we were able to extend this um i know this isn't something that that all school divisions i think most are doing it so i am very appreciative thank you and madam clerk if we could take a vote please madam chair mr bryant yes he's bryson morseberger yes dr craft yes it's the keyboard yes it's per year yes ms torres yes and mr waite yes thank you great thank you um we are now moving along to items for discussion and 9.1 is review of metrics dr atkins adam chair we we would like to present to you tonight the current metrics for the coronavirus spread in our community and in

042our region december's 16th meeting the school board gave permission for staff to start working towards a return to to face using model a tonight we would ask the board to take a look as the board committed to do to come back and take a review the metrics uh as they currently stay in and give us additional guidance on moving forward with face-to-face learning so dr baptist okay if miss thacker would display the slides please as she's pulling that up we do have several different ways that we're going to show you on the data also looking at charlottesville specifically then also as dr atkins said into our um region because we understand the importance of what our neighbors are doing since there is so much back and forth between um the members of the charlottesville population

043and those around us so if you go to the next slide please this is just an overview of where we've been for the last 14 days you can see the line that if we were in a straight line where we would be um but starting with christmas day up through today you can see the top line is our cdc uh incidents per hundred thousand and it's been up and down but mostly up and then if you look at the lower line that is our actual number of cases over the same time period and again it's not quite what a straight line would be but you can also look at the last few days has been much more of an increase than we had been over time so this is the overall look and now we'll

044get into more of the detail this slide has lots of numbers on it so let me tell you what some of them are you have seen some of this in previous meetings and this goes back to the 29th of december where you can see in the second column the cdc cases per 100 000 how our numbers have gone up over the last however many days that they are here when we last met in december um the numbers were i had it right in front of me and this when we met december the 17th we were at 365 we're now at 453 so you can see that that has been an increase is this the largest we've ever been no it's not uh we were larger in the beginning of october as we were finishing the

045surge from fall return to school for everybody but right now we are at 4 53 the number of cases for the last 14 days some have questioned why i showed that i understand that the 453 is a standardization factor but to let us see exactly where we are not trying to diminish or increase the the information but where we are is 218 and you can see over the last uh 10 or 11 days we have had steady increases from having 135 over 14 days uh a couple days after christmas to the day we had 218 cases over the last 14 days so we are steadily increasing our positivity rate based on the cdc factors we started out the end of the year and the three percent range which is considered at a lower risk starting

046on the third of january we moved into the moderate risk we're at now 5.9 using the cdc metrics over a 14 day so those three columns are cdc information based on 14 day numbers the next column can be confusing the 65.9 listed today says there were 65.9 percent more cases in the past seven days so january 1 january 7 compared to the last of seven days of 2020. so when you see those numbers we're getting more and more cases in the last week compared to the previous week then the last couple columns are um the virginia department of health columns and they look strictly at the for uh the seven day rate these others are 14 days this is seven so you can see we have been now pretty much steadily going up on the

047seven day rate this is an average rolling average over the past seven days we're up to 40.4 for today which is some of the highest that we've been not the highest but pretty high for the seven day positivity rate you can see that on 12 31 we moved from a lower risk to a moderate risk level for positivity percentage and today we went up a full percentage point for the seven day rate and then in the last column is the number of new cases per day for the last seven days just so that you can see how we have been going up over the last seven days when you compare the 218 if it everything was pretty equal half of 218 is whatever that number is i'm not going to try to figure it up

048in my head right now but it's not as high as 136. so this shows you that some of our higher numbers are occurring in the last seven days as compared to the previous we had almost reached a low after we got out for the um winter break and then it has started going back up since christmas so looking at the last seven days to me is a very important factor while we're also watching the cdc 14 days both the red column and the dark blue column indicate numbers that are not in ranges that we want them to be they indicate the highest level of of risk again the red column works with 14 days the blue column works with seven days uh next slide ms becker so where are we compared to our neighbors um

049this looks at last thursday this past monday and today with neighboring school divisions so you can see if you follow the line across just for charlottesville our cdc number has gone from 322 to 340.8 to 45 453.1 and our positivity rate has gone from 3 5.1 5.9 so you can look across at many of our neighbors yes charlottesville and albemarle still have the lower positive rates for uh percentages for positivity again how uva numbers factor in that not exactly sure because uva is not doing as much testing right now they still are testing and even today there were 29 positive cases within the uva population you can though look at some of our other neighbors who have got really high um cdc numbers and high positivity rates so this is all cdc information and the

050reason these school divisions are selected is i was told by the high school that these would be some of the school divisions that our athletes or other virginia high school league activities would participate in so that's why especially goochland and orange are owned here next slide miss thacker here are the same divisions looking just at the virginia department of health seven day rate anytime you see dark blue sort of like the red and the other ones is not good and you can see a lot of dark blue here again charlottesville and albemarle over the seven day rates still better than some of our neighbors but we are continuing to go up our seven day rolling average just in the last week has gone from 24.3 and anything over 14.3 is considered the highest risk so

051you've got 24.3 to 27 to today 40.4 positivity rate for that seven day in the last week has gone from 5.1 to 7.4 so we're seeing steady increases over the last seven days um the blue ridge uh positivity rate was mentioned earlier it was 10.1 percent today for the entire blue ridge uh region a couple of other metrics that we're looking at that are not listed here but they were mentioned earlier we know that when we look at the cdc metrics we've got core indicators which are the the case rates and the positivity rates and all of the mitigation that ms powell has been sharing with us but there are some other um numbers that we also look at some we don't have much we can do about and so we don't really display them

052one of them is that percent change that i showed you where we were 65 percent higher the pre this last seven days over the previous seven days that is considered one of the indicators we also look at our regional hospital rates we can't change that but it is reported to us every day the hospitals that are attributed to charlottesville which i make the assumption are uva and martha jefferson are currently at 84.1 occupancy rate which is considered moderate risk and then for the percent of hospital beds that are um occupied by covet patients for the same region we're at 15.7 which is in the higher risk it's not considered red but it would be in the orange if we had that displayed so those are metrics that we we follow but would not be a

053major uh thought process for what we are doing to to look at so i know we've got lots of information that i've just shared before i talk about vaccinations are there any questions about all of the numbers i can't see everybody so if you have questions go ahead i've put them all to sleep miss torres i doubt that well can i just ask dr baptist looking at all of this it seems like just about everything is going in the wrong direction is there are there any bright spots here that are not going in the wrong direction um not really i mean right now everything is in an upward trend it is best better that for charlottesville and albemarle on numbers are less but we have to remember charlottesville is not an island because we've got

054people coming in and people going out every day so there's so much movement back and forth that's why i share with you the information for on the other nearby localities um looking at these numbers knowing about the christmas travel which for many people probably ended sunday we haven't reached the surge um or we're beginning the surge anybody who traveled over christmas or had some of the smaller social gatherings we're probably seeing some of the numbers now but it could be another two to three weeks before we get full impact of that if it is in the same pattern as thanksgiving because when i showed you december the 17th where we were we were still somewhat in the surge of thanksgiving and that had been three weeks ago so i can't for sure tell you what's

055going to happen next but i'll be surprised if we start down much if any for the next couple weeks i'd love to and i do update these numbers every day as soon as i get them so they they are available for you to see so um go ahead mr wade yeah i'm sorry um dr baptist i think that what um the public and probably the 60 people that are tuned in on this evening would like to know is like with these numbers what does that mean based on the parameters that we set you know last month or that we have been working on but does that mean that we go back or is that you know part about um discussion i think that that's like you know because this chart here just like you know

056usually after four or five numbers it's people started to glaze over this has a little bit more than that so right so just you know what's you know your your bottom line like analysis or or summary of what this means um miss thacker will you go back to the the slide that the cdc and vdh risk factors for the last 10 days mr wade normally what you have been looking at is the first few columns were the red and orange the cdc metrics are what has been recommended to school divisions to use as part of their decision making but not to look at just one metric anything over 200 in the cases per 100 000 is considered at the highest risk we have been in the over 200 now for just about all of the

057time since they've started this metric back the end of september we have gotten close to going below 200 but you can see we're now double that and the numbers are going up so you know you know what that tells me is that for this community that is considered one of the the highest risk for transmission but we don't want to look just at one number so i guess you know i'm trying to share with you the information that we have for the board to look to decide with this information what do we think is the best and safest thing for our students now this is community this is not within our schools this is the community and since most of our students have not been in schools we we don't have a lot of information

058about um you know what is is going on with them we can see where outbreaks might be occurring in other school divisions but i think the numbers that really need to be looked at here would be the cases over the last 14 days whether they're going up and down and we did talk on the 17th of december that we wanted to see that number return to or start moving toward closely to 200 we're not doing that at this point look at the positivity rate you can see that that's continuing to go up and look at the seven day rate the the dark blue and see that it's continuing to go up so right now as dr kraft said our numbers are sort of going in the wrong direction to consider for the overall community i'm

059sorry what is the blue number ideally should be again the blue number under the vdh daily case rate anything over 14.3 is considered the highest risk okay thank you yeah and well you can see i've got up in there one threshold is five and then the high threshold is 10 and then anything above 14 is considered the highest uh yeah okay and then for those um positivity rates anything between uh three and five is this green color and then this i'm not sure what this other color is but um puts us at a moderate risk [Music] so dr baptist i think it'd be very helpful to talk about the vaccinations just so that we can have the a really big picture of what because i think there's also obviously multiple layers to these decisions right

060so i guess where the good news part comes in dr kraft is this next piece about the vaccinations we are um getting at the beginning of having the vaccinations there was a meeting dr atkins miss powell and i met with ryan mckay the other day to really talk about how they might be able to use our facilities for uh coveted 19 vaccination sites and you may have seen the the temporary building that's now over at the kmart uh parking lot but asked him you know what we could do that could help um he's given us some information about volunteering so i think we've got several people within the school division that are going to try to sign up with the medical reserve corps to be volunteers uh not only to get the shots because some

061of us can't do that but some of the clerical type tasks that can be done one of the things the health department has said that is uh slowing them down a little bit is having enough people to actually give the shots and i was shocked to find out that anyone who gives the vaccinations has to have 20 to 22 hours of training to give the shots including the skill based assessment so it's not just i've been given shots for years i can now give this but i think some of us will try to volunteer to help with some of the other pieces so uh we are in the 1b group and uh along with several others that was announced officially yesterday by governor northrup and today i've got a survey and i have submitted our

062number of employees to include full-time part-time hourly and those that we think might be substituting to give the health department a ballpark figure of the number that we might need that doesn't mean that everybody and within that number will get tested or won't get tested but we've given them a number and then the expectation is we will get another survey soon and i'll submit names and email addresses to the health department the health department will then send out individual emails to each employee for the employees to make their appointments to get the first vaccination and i did see something today that they said they hoped 1b would be early spring i'm hoping early spring is more like late winter um so that we can go ahead and and get the the first vaccination realizing that

063with the moderna vaccine which is what we will have in this area we will be taking two shots at least three weeks apart so the good news is dr kraft vaccines are coming they're not here as fast as we want them to be and there is a site on the virginia department of health website that you can look every day to see how many vaccines have been given in each locality and as of today charlottesville has had 2465 uh vaccines given so we're on we're we've started questions i just really want to encourage and ask how we are going to encourage our staff to get vaccinated um this being a critical component to um i don't know the well-being of our community is there any are there any plans to support um i don't know

064promoting getting a vaccination we will certainly work with staff that to if you know based on the time of their appointments to have coverage farm if needed to go get the shots we'll encourage them to get the shots we are not going to make anybody take the shot but if someone doesn't take the shot and we have uh an outbreak or some problem you know within the school system we may have to um have them not be in the building as we would for any other communicable disease that we would would have but we're certainly hoping that um our staff will want to take the shots our nurses are in the 1a group their names and email addresses have already been sent in and we're hoping that they will get theirs within the next week

065or two and so that would be good to have have them done and as the last bullet on here is i'll be the point of contact between the school division and the the health department so that i'll i'll keep trying to do what i can to get in our information to them so that we can have the vaccinations dr kevin one of the other ways in which we will be encouraging our community and our staff members is is by volunteering um submitting our names to be volunteers um brian um made us aware that when individuals see familiar faces that makes them more likely to want to come and receive the vaccination so i think our presence uh during the time that that we are engaging our 1b group and our teachers and our staff uh

066would be encouragement for others to come in we'll be sending out communications to remind our staff that the health department is looking for them to sign up so we'll help to get those messages out to our staff i'm sure dr atkins will volunteer like some of our country leaders have to get hers on air so that will encourage the others to come in and do it i think we'll all maybe not maybe not um but we we will definitely be there for our staff yes and help to encourage them to make a decision uh to get theirs just also i want to note that there's this like um concept right now called the vacci which is basically a selfie with your vaccination so uh not necessarily when they're giving you the shot but certainly after

067the shot um you know so i there are minor minor um effects of the vaccination but two people in my household are uh volunteer firefighters so they both received um their first shot yesterday and i just really want people who have any concerns about the vaccine to really research it um the science is really there to support the vaccine um and i think the only issue that we're having as a school division um and as a community is just availability of the vaccine and um and just kind of the the process but as soon as that's in place i really do want people to think about very um and and research and get their um concerns uh allayed because it's um it is safe and it is um something that will really support our community

068as all of the other vaccinations that we have received since we are children um have done too so i'm sorry doctor and miss mckeever i i will assure you i'll be as soon as as the health department says that i can get mine i will get it i think we do have to acknowledge that in our black community there is some reluctance from past history and um and how medical tests have been run in the past with african-american communities there is some reluctance for that community for our community to come out and to readily be first in line to receive the vaccine however um we will be there there are many african americans in our community who have said they will take the vaccine and we will be there to encourage others to take it

069also so um this is all of us together this is a part of the village uh and we will all be there together we care about the health and the well-being and the safety of all of our community members and us our black community has been disproportionately affected by covet and we want to encourage everyone in that community to take the vaccine thank you dr atkins i agree um ms mckee were to your point as far as education and support that we might offer to staff or anybody who who has questions there are a lot of great resources right within our community you know i don't anticipate or don't begin to think that everybody tunes into facebook on monday but dr cameron webb dr tyson bell both uva physicians hold great sessions question answer sessions

070regarding kovid updates about the vaccinations i don't know if if they've put out anything as far as an you know an info session that we could make available to our employees if they have questions or to set something up like that um but that's you know those are great uh leaders and uh experts right here at uva so that would be something i would i would love to see if we consider can consider we'll certainly work to see if we can get that and to see what anything else that the health department can give and i've heard also that dr fausti will be on facebook tomorrow yes i believe so the other uh point um and if anybody else has questions please speak up here in a minute but i did want to back to

071some of the um the metrics you know as far as the school metrics um that vdh puts up you know and i know we we haven't really talked too much about uh the percentage of hospital beds in the region i mean you you mention it but i i do feel like it is critical and an important number to track and and um you know because there are people outside of our localities that are you know feeding into these hospitals and these numbers are changing um rapidly and in my my daytime job i'm seeing that firsthand and personally so i really do encourage us to to keep keep that in mind as that is a concern in mind if there's anything else does anybody else have any questions or dr baptist did you have anything else

072here no thank you i'll keep plugging in the numbers thank you for all your work here um all right i use torres we have some continuation of this presentation i'd like to make a recommendation to the boy now oh absolutely go ahead thank you on december the 17th the board gave permission for staff to continue working towards returning face-to-face using the model a for our students and to come back at this board meeting the decent our january 7th board meeting to review the metrics uh to confirm or to change that january 19 return to face base date staff has worked diligently towards preparing our teachers and our curriculum to transition to face to face however after looking at the metrics reviewing those metrics realizing that we want to make sure that we have student and

073staff safety as our priority along with the consideration of the community transmission and the eminence of the copic 19 destination for school personnel we are recommending to the board that we push out the returned face-to-face learning model a from january the 19th to february 22nd during that time we would hope to see the community transmission rate be decreasing start to decrease have a significant decline we'd also hope during that time that we will get more information about the vaccinations and that we would be underway in getting our staff our teachers and our staff um involved in getting the fascination so at this time we'd recommend to the school board and that we return face-to-face using model a february 22nd 2021. we would also recommend that during the february meeting uh school board meeting that we

074again review the metrics to ensure that we are headed in the right direction as we move towards february 22nd and we do have here on the screen as a reminder what those options look like for our elementary school students pre-k through six we would bring back our pre-k through two students uh they would be face-to-face and that would be those students in those grade levels whose families have already indicated that they want face-to-face learning then we would bring back a high-risk population from grades three through six and that would be students who are special education based on our teacher recommendation teacher and parent recommendation we'd also bring back our english language learners who are at level one and two we would also look at students who are struggling academically and school-based teams will make decisions

075as to which students would be coming back into the building and then we would have the a model for beaufort and for charlottesville high school and both at beaufort and charlottesville high school we have the models that we have set up will preserve the qualities that we have developed right now in our virtual learning while bringing in again a select group of students our most at-risk students into our building for face-to-face learning and we would be recommending that all of our students pre-k through 12 would follow the february 22nd date for returning miss mckeever hey thank you um so i think that february 22nd is far too soon um i think our board meeting is in um the early part of february now we have a budget meeting on like february 17th or something um

076so i'm not quite sure what you're talking about in terms i feel like if we review the data uh the first week of february by the third week of february then the the data could be very very very different so um what i would i mean i think we could review the data at the february 17th meeting and then maybe three weeks later we start rather than at which i think the first week in february is going to be very similar numbers if not worse numbers than we are seeing right now begin because of the community spread um that i think you know pretty like if you look at projections we're not projected to kind of hit the peak of this community spread surge until february 22nd ish um so i i feel like it's

077premature to talk about february 22nd as a potential date i think um we could i think it also stresses out our staff whenever we um review this data and information so um i think the kind of anxiety that obviously is very prevalent in our community around when we're going to start school we just need to have a little bit more certainty then like in the next three weeks we're going to look again at this data like if we could just have a solid six weeks of this is what we're doing we'll look again on february 17th and then decide if we're going to open like three weeks later because again i want to give plenty of time to staff um to um to get back into their classrooms and do the whatever they need to

078do in this the class um but so that's kind of what i was thinking about the recommendation i just um i think if we look at the my my goal actually frankly as i think we should go back and at the after spring break that would be my i mean i feel like the first week of march is okay i mean sorry february 17th is like a uh a concession i'm making because of your recommendation being february 22nd um but i personally would rather just see the third nine weeks go virtual and just stop having all of this anxiety and unknown things now again i'm not afraid necessarily this time of uva students coming back i am afraid that this that getting the vaccine widely available getting the biden administration to demonstrate some uh federal

079leadership and then um getting our numbers in a more controlled area those three things are going to take time and i just want to have less of this anxiety being ramped up every time we have a meeting and more certainty until we can get some of these other factors more uh all these other balls rolling in in the direction we need them to uh to roll um yeah also i think many of the so i'm just gonna keep talking sorry i know everybody else has a lot to say too but i'm afraid i'm not going to have another opportunity to say something but i think many of the model a components um for buford and walk in the high school can start today like i don't think we need to have additional school board approval

080to start some of the model a components if our students need person-in-person support and our teachers are willing to do that and the principals work with families and the transportation to make that happen we should do that and the reason i say that is because um vhsl is transporting students we are transporting students to vhsl events right now and i i so that doesn't require school board approval so i don't think that we necessarily need school board approval to do in-person one-on-one or group work with students who really need that um especially at buford and the high school because it doesn't have that disruption that model a has for the elementary school um also just because of the i mean again i want to get kids back to school especially our k2 but given some

081of the disruption that that means to families i mean let's just be real it's also my family i'm going to have a fourth grader and a first grader and it would we'll just like all families in our division have done we would roll with the punches if we could minimize the disruption to families and staff about around child care by splitting up elementary schools by waiting a couple more weeks to go in person um and then just having everybody go back in person those who chose at the beginning you know with the survey that they wanted to go back i think that would um i think that would be really helpful um but again and also i think it would help um with the with that uh what mr fierro mentioned about the um the

082the virtual remote centers learning centers that we have in our community uh so that's what i have to say right now thank you for letting me talk thank you miss mckeeper anybody else i would um like to add if i could madam chair yes um i would just um agree with what miss mckeever was saying um that this revisiting it every month every three weeks and just pushing the date out without a real reasoning behind it if teachers are in group 1b and they're scheduled for early spring that's a good reason to wait early spring will give us more opportunities for outside type of uh room to be outside because the temperature will be more forgiving and where everyone is in just a like a world of anxiety every time we have these meetings and

083the dates are very arbitrary at this point we're in the middle of a surge um and so i think that we just need to pause all the dates moving another date another week because the date to go back in february is still we're in the surge so i just think we need to just let it settle for a while let the new administration come in let the teachers get the vaccine and people are coming into contact with students get the vaccine and then we can do a little clearer picture and also in this process we are missing the opportunity to fix the gaps in virtual learning so you know there are equity concerns um and i've spoken um to ms ferro at the about the you know the remote learning centers and so instead of

084putting all of our resources and efforts into one more meeting in february and then maybe go let's put those efforts into making virtual learning right now equitable for those students who need it right now um instead of putting all these resources into pushing it out one more month when in all honesty we're still going to be in the search um so and it's a lot of anxiety and virtual is far from perfect but we need to be focusing on what we have and virtual is what we have and we need to make it work instead of putting all of our resources into where we want to be instead of you know where we are thank you miss craft dr kraft okay well uh you know for sure you know in terms of where we are

085now um in terms of the surge you know i i certainly think we're not ready to be back in person so i would agree with that my feeling is i don't know i think the vaccines are such a game changer and we're not exactly sure about the timing of that when i listened to the governor yesterday or tuesday or whenever it was um i felt like there was a really good chance that the process is going to move faster now we don't know that but i think the combination of what he's doing and putting this other person in charge of it and ramping that up plus the new administration and the resources and money that uh will be put toward vaccination i think there's a reasonable chance that um the the 1b group um will

086actually be starting sooner and that i you know my thought and hope would be that perhaps even by the end of february that the teachers and the education staff personnel would be vaccinated so you know i don't know exactly what to do about the dates i'm not comfortable now saying that we should just stay virtual for the entire third nine weeks you know i'm not there yet um and i guess what i'd like to do is just see we are pushing it back i'd like to see when we can actually have a reasonable idea of vaccinating our teachers and i think that will make a big difference the one other comment i have in terms of model a you know we had gotten a lot of feedback about concerns about you know that we're sort

087of we don't have a plan for three to six grades three to six and exactly when they'll be going back and i wonder if we could take this time to to work on that piece a little bit more so you know there are a lot of families that have kids k to two and then they have other kids three to six and perhaps that's something we could take a look at um because it seemed like we were kind of leaving that group hanging perhaps a little bit too much um so i don't know if february 22nd is the right you know the right date now i really just don't know it's really hard to say i don't think it can be before that um and it may be a little bit after that so yeah

088so that's where i am i guess i don't want to keep revisiting it like every two weeks but um you know i really i think we just have to try to get our kids back as soon as we can you know some of our kids we have to get this rolling as soon as we can and we're not quite sure when that is yet but i'm really hoping the vaccines will help us to answer that question and that that process will go more quickly yes um madam chair um i agree i'm really um you know i'm thinking about what jennifer said and and um i support us you know if any kids can go back now based on state guidelines um one-on-one type of thing um i think we we should we should definitely do

089that because i know that that the virtual is just not working with um a lot of us our students and we're doing what what we can and i don't like the you know what what we're doing you know as far as um setting a date and said we'll look at it and then make a decision but i really don't see what any other options we we have because i want kids to come back as soon as we can but if we had said like on the 17th when we 16th we met in december that we're going to set the date for january 19th no matter what then we will be in making some changes now so i think we have to give ourselves some flexibility there if we want the kids to come back sooner

090than the nine weeks so um i think that the method we have now is i think the best that we can with the vaccination in place maybe things can get done sooner than the nine week gap if you if you will so um you know it's just it's just difficult and i think i i've heard that um you know as far as kind of catching up we heard it from some speakers today is that um that maybe in the next school year maybe even later this year if we're able to get back in person that we add on some time um every day definitely next year i like to add another as much as we can as much as we can on the day so that we can start to maybe make up for some

091of those um this time that we've missed um and i know that we're educating them now but i think that that um face to face but most kids is is ideal so um that's that's my position just to kind of sum up i think that we definitely can't do it this month the numbers are just off the chart um and um and i think february the 22nd seems reasonable at this point thank you mr wade miss purrier mr brian um i'm here go ahead mr bryant i'm sorry um based on what i you know i remember december we discussed that we would you know revisit um the opening of schools based on the metrics and we did so tonight and i am an agrees with um looking at the february date staff and administrators have

092been really working hard and getting these schools prepared and a lot of other folks who are doing working to do so the good news is that we will have a vaccine hopefully um soon that our teachers and staff can get the vaccination um that's a source of relief um i know virtual is not working well for a lot of students that does worry me as a retired educator but i think it's reasonable to have favorite 20 uh 22nd because we had agreed that we would look at the opening dates based on the metrics as a board um it could very well be february it could very well not based on the metrics uh you got to remember that um in charlottesville we have students who are coming once we get up and rolling and opening

093of schools we have students coming in from many jurisdictions around us so if they're coming from a place where the metrics are very high you know that could change a lot of the scenario but anyway um i am in agreeance with that recommendation to really look at opening of the schools with model a in february thank you mr bryant miss per year in december we indicated that we would review when we came back in january and a proposal has been put forth um to us this evening i presume that our superintendent has spoken to all of the people that have worked diligently to begin on the 19th i.e the people that are doing the work uh the principals and the people in the building the instructors um yes there is a vaccine we may have

094it late february we may have it early march but i feel that today is the seventh three weeks from now um four weeks from now a little bit a little bit over uh four weeks from now we will meet again and if the metrics have changed um the 22nd i think was the date given may still be able to work um if we're in the 15 range it won't work but i think that we have sufficient time to between now and early february if we need to change to change but i feel that um however that date was derived there was a pedagogical reason for it i'm not sure that if we went back after spring break what impact that would have on our students academically and so for me to vote to change to

095after opening after spring break i would need to hear [Music] from a pedagogical standpoint uh an academic learning standpoint what implications from february 22nd to support after spring break would make for our students i'm comfortable with the date uh and the recommendation that came forth from our superintendent this evening i would just like to note that i made the concession because i want to have to start after spring break i can see that that's a long way off but that we the anxiety that staff and this community have about uncertainty is dramatic and never mind like we just sent out this lovely email and communication the february 22nd data me caught the attention of everybody and they started texting saying what is this date and that date i when i spoke to um it is

096arbitrary just plain arbitrary we could do it the 22nd we could do it the following week and we could do it the week after our march sec seventh board meeting or whatever that is so it is again february 22nd is when it's the projection is the governor's projection to be the peak of this surge i just don't i don't know why we're going to continue to live have our staff live in anxiety about when we're going to go back to school for all of this and then like the you know i cannot imagine on february 4th in four weeks that we're going to make the decision or the numbers have improved in such a way that the february 22nd date is going to be it's going to hold so i'd encourage us to think a

097little bit more strategically about what we've already asked our teachers and community to do and what we're continuing to ask for from them and to to consider an a three-week change from february 22nd to the i i think it's like the week or two after our march um march 4th board meeting we could start march 15th again because it's arbitrary there's no pedagogical reason for this i just feel like we have three balls in the air none of and i'm positive that things are going to go in the right direction we just don't know when that's going to be and i just think given the anxiety in our community we could give our staff a break and our parents a break and just have a little bit more certainty thank you yeah so yeah i

098understand what you're saying you're saying in three or four weeks we still may be in the same position where we are now as far as with the numbers but and we at that time we would likely put off the 22nd as as well so he's saying just go ahead and put it to march 15th or so okay dr craig oh i'm sorry mr wade no i i just i think that that's i i will be agreeable to that i think i could support that okay dr craft you're muted muted i'm wondering if we might incorporate into whatever we do tonight of the the vaccination process and so it seems like maybe what we could say is now at this point because we know it's coming that we would support um you know delaying our in-person

099return until our our teachers and staff have been vaccinated have received the two vaccines and the at that the end of that period whatever that is it could be sooner it could be a little later that that would really be um the time when i think what we could you know with more confidence you know and with the staff feeling more confident going back into the schools i think we really you know safely could do that at that point so maybe that's something we could also uh include in our emotion whatever motions we make this evening so dr kraft are you saying after they received both of the vaccines or the first vaccine i think both of the vaccines i just didn't hear you that's why i asked yes i would think both of the

100vaccines um i mean i'm not a doctor but my understanding is that you know the first vaccine um provides about 60 percent um but i think the two vaccines provide over 90 percent and i know that there if it's moderna they're 28 days apart i do know that so but it seems like you know given where where the virus is in our community and now given that we're on the threshold of a vaccination process that that should be um really part of our decision making at this point for for the sake of our staff i i would tend to agree with that i guess i would like to pose a question to everybody to see what you think i feel like if and when we know and our staff are receiving that first vaccination depending

101on which vaccine it is it is either 21 days or 28 days for that second one so that would be in my opinion a great time to reconvene to have a discussion about how is it looking as far as setting a date for that return for face-to-face i do feel um as i think all of you have stated that the vaccines are are crucial um and important um for the safety uh you know of of all staff um you know from bus drivers um all the way up to you know the uh support staff um in the buildings teachers um with you know the variant um that is is prevalent um and and i'm sure it's here um you know it's it's pretty much uh you know we're seeing numbers spike at all levels so

102i i feel strongly and i i would be supportive of that and i'm curious to see what you all think about that so lisa are you saying that if everyone received the vaccine on february 28th between the 28th and the second vaccine the board would reconvene to select a date to open schools is that what you're saying i'm saying yes that that at that point once we know um you know the last person who has opted in to receive that vaccine as has received it we can start the clock um you know depending dependent on which vaccine is issued and you know look forward three to four weeks but also be watching the data you know and and incorporating that into it so yes so i don't quite understand what you're saying would be the

103projected start date i mean we're looking at right now date that rosa has recommended february the 22nd jennifer has a proposal for march 15th and what is your proposal i mean what is your are you saying at the 20th we would look at that point to start a date or what what i'm saying is um i guess my question is how important is is the vaccine to us as a board as our staff and everybody receiving that as um you know one of the factors of when we are going to feel comfortable for everybody to return to the building so we don't know we don't have an answer um we are all hopeful that that this is going to be uh faster than than spring um so i guess that's the first question is is

104that a piece you know is that piece our staff being vaccinated um one of the determinants that we want to use to when we feel comfortable um yeah i guess i still want to look at the numbers because i because even if all the staff you know that opts in for the vaccination what if you know the numbers all the other numbers that beth talked about before are still kind of out of whack so yeah so i mean i guess i will be less i would be a little bit reluctant just to again we're not looking at just one number so maybe i would support if we factor that in with the other numbers that we consider right i mean i'm not saying that those other numbers i mean of course those those are really

105really important but but knowing the vaccine is on board could could make a little bit of a difference you know maybe um yeah more more students you know in that group a are comfortable being phased back in i think we just need to keep looking at both all of the factors um and not you know i just until we feel a little bit more comfortable about where we are i mean we're just at the beginning of this surge is what i'm concerned about and that's why i just want to give a little bit of relief to our staff saying hey you guys been working really hard we appreciate it what can we do in this context and then and then like i want everybody to have both vaccines but that could be really summer i

106mean if we're just being really honest what dr baptist said was what did you say late spring early spring and we were hoping for early winter i mean lately we're hoping for late winter they said early spring um and that's like a pretty significant that could be anywhere from mid february to mid april and um you know we we gotta get a handle on the numbers um and i think what if we look at it on february 4th and see what we currently see which i can't imagine we're going to see much different um unless we start the vaccination on january 28th which is highly unlikely um then 22nd is an unrealistic at this point um and so if we could look again at the second meeting in february our budget meeting we can say

107look wow these numbers that are looking better they're look you know because maybe maybe we've peaked and maybe we've come over maybe the vaccinations have started then i think it'll be more realistic the kind of the broader view i mean if everybody got vaccinated in the next 45 days let's start school on the 46th day um that's we can always make that decision um but none of that seems likely even if everything goes in our favor and can i just add that i i think that the idea of waiting for the vaccine dates would give us a a better plan to start with i was just um speaking against the february 22nd the date not another meeting but just that the date is arbitrary i think that we need to take into consideration a number

108of factors but i just don't want to set a date and we keep chasing a date and it raises up everyone's anxiety instead of chasing a date let's put some you know expectations in place about what we need to be back like the vaccine being rolled out for teachers and for our numbers because the date chasing is just it's creating more stress than there needs to be and we've done you know we've gone back and forth as a school board and as a community but we've gotten this far along and it would be a shame when we're this close to the vaccine and we're in the middle of the search for us to make a just a decision because we're all getting covet fatigue um i just think it's better if we really base it

109on what we know is coming and instead of setting a date just set a goal post like the first vaccine for teachers and then let's revisit it whatever that date will be i think you're putting a lot of weight on the vaccine because you're making a presuppo presupposition that everyone in the school division is going to get the vaccine so if 50 percent of the people in the division get the vaccine and you use that as a basis for opening school what does that mean i think into consideration i just don't want to set a dead date like a drop dead date anymore because that's what's causing the anxiety the date nothing else added in like we can re february 22nd we could say like it's great let's do it but i don't want to

110say today let's go back february 22nd and we'll revisit it if because it's just up down right i underst i understand what you're saying lashandra i just wanted to say that if we select a date then whatever date is selected it would be selected on the basis of something whatever we just whatever the board feels to something should be but i don't think that the mitigating factor or the leading factor should be the vaccine because you just don't know how many people are going to do it the statistics that dr baptist brings to us are very clear the numbers are up or the numbers are down and if we say that our cutoff is x percentage based on the information that she brings us that's something definitive because you know what that is if you're

111using the vaccine as your basis and 40 of the people take the vaccine then you've got 60 percent of the people hanging out there and i just i think the vaccine is important i'm not saying that it's not but i'm not convinced that that can be a driving factor because uh you know it it is not as it is not the vaccine is important but it is not as definitive as the numbers that dr baptist brings that's what i'm saying well then we can absolutely set the numbers but let's wait and revisit the numbers and not set a date before we revisit the numbers that's my only suggestion whatever we pick let's use that as the basis and not the date just set arbitrarily in the future okay so that's another option out there there's

112no no date at all so that's it that's another so let's just try to come up with seven to really confuse the staff here so um you're up mr we have talked about the metrics you know we have talked about um relying on certain numbers um you know for our decision making and so you know i yeah i think that that is important and the numbers have to be a lot different than they are right now um you know and so i you know and i think we just won't know so i think one of the things we could say is that you know unless the numbers um go back into the like either under 200 cases um per capita cases or a certain positivity rate that we're not prepared to you know return to

113in person so we could say that um i i don't know i mean i don't think the vaccine is the deciding factor but to me i think it's kind of it's pretty important like um you know as far as the safety of our staff in the buildings you know we can't make everybody take it but i think i think a lot of people will take it and um you know understanding where the community's spread is right now like my daughter is a coveted tracker and so she talks a lot about the where it is in communities and just how explosive it is right now and how dangerous it is right now in communities um and you know so i think that's our reality right now it's not safe uh period and you know we can

114we can say that we we you know we would love our numbers to be back down by february 22nd but listening to everybody's comments i we can't say that we just don't won't know that you know we can you know meet and see where things are at our february meeting but i think maybe we might just want to say we're you know we're not ready to set a date until we know that our numbers are below certain threshold so that's another way we could approach this everybody i think dr bath just wanted to to share something um one thing about looking strictly at the numbers for us to get down to 200 which is considered the the edge of the at-risk we'll have to be down to 96 cases over a two-week period we're at

115218 cases over a two-week period right now so it's going to take us a long time to get to where we would be at the edge of red going below so i would also hate to see us look at just that one number also the positivity rate was mentioned i see the positivity rate i followed the positivity rate i know what it is but i still do not know how much of that is just charlottesville and not the university included and i keep asking since the students have been gone less testing has been done so i think what we've got now is a better indication of closer what our positivity rate is than what it has been and it's going up so if the students come back and they're doing more testing our positivity rate

116could show lower when it's not really that lower but again you're getting more numbers in the denominator for figuring the percentage i think we need to be careful of picking one metric or even just two to to say it if we're going to do it by the numbers i think it's got to be a combination of all the factors you've talked about i i think that's our conversation really is boiling down to um that none of us well i personally do not feel comfortable setting a date the numbers are clearly going in the wrong direction um we have two meetings in february we have another meeting in in january just the work session um so we have opportunities to continue to look at the data um we're not going to turn on a dime we're

117you know if we looked at the data in february 4th and said wow it's a miracle everything is right we could start on february 22nd but saying that now feels premature so i would just ask and maybe make a motion to say that we will continue to look at the data but not provide any um return date specific at this point um and that that's where we go because the data is going to continue to include the number of people vaccinated um and so that really does change the calculus and you know we've been looking at this data for 10 months now so we know how to look at the data and how to analyze it with all of the variables um so is there any other data that the board needs that i'm not

118giving you well i thought the with the hospital bed and the 84 i thought that was very helpful so that was helpful for to me i'll go ahead i'm sorry i apologize go ahead no go i'll go after you at some point can we see uh data for uh school divisions that are open and um because i remember before when we had our first meeting with the top i'm sorry the blue ridge health district um the lovely woman i'm forgetting her name but she's saying yes she was saying what is considered an outbreak how many there have been in schools and things like that that public information that's available if any of that is available that would be nice to know okay outbreaks are published they're on the website every friday not our website the

119virginia department of health website of course there has not been much of the last couple of weeks because school divisions have been closed you ask about school divisions that are open when you saw the information tonight about our neighboring school divisions you've got louisa county numbers listed there they are open greene county is open and dr atkins you may have better information about some of the other school divisions that that are open but i know louisa and greene have been open from the list that i shared this earlier and i would say that some of those school divisions that have been open they are doing the same thing that the board is doing now looking at the metrics uh evaluating it to determine whether or not they will continue face to face or go back

120to virtual learning and some of those decisions are being made now about what to do i do have great concern for the safety of our students and our staff how where transmission is concerned i am very hopeful that the vaccine is on the horizon i don't want us to lower our guard right now and start thinking that because it's on the horizon that we rush in and we we expose our students or our staff and teachers um to an undue risk i do however have grave concerns about our students our teachers have done an amazing job uh with online learning and they have made so many adjustments i don't think we could have could acknowledge and praise them enough uh for what they have done our principals have done a great job however our students

121are in need virtual is working for some students but there are also students that virtual is not working for especially when you get to our high school we have students that we're going to lose in our high schools because they're not engaged right now and we all know that during that stage of development students need to be connected connection is the most important thing for students i don't have the answer i appreciate the discussion and the deliberation that the board is undergoing right now there are no easy answers i am concerned about the safety and well-being of our teachers but i also am concerned about our students and i want to make sure that we give our students and our staff for each need as we're considering how do we return to face-to-face i don't

122believe that whenever the boy makes the decision that it's time for us to return that we are going to be free of code the the the effects of covet will still be around the transmission may also be around mitigation is one of the best deterrence of transmission and when we look at the mitigation that we have put in our school division it it far surpasses what cdc has recommended it far surpasses what any organization has recommended for mitigation so that is in place in our school and that is one of the the key factors in uh controlling uh transmission so i appreciate the deliberation i appreciate the conversation and and we as staff we stand ready whatever it is the board would like to put forward as far as our return date we certainly can

123implement that thank you for stories can i ask dr atkins do you think i mean again because of vhsl thing i feel really strongly that we can have students in the building just not at a very significant level but that the 9 to 11 thing that's at the high school i think i i don't see that as any different than sports frankly and so i would propose that you start model a at the high school in buford if you need to um because i don't see that as return to school you're still largely virtual and not expo and many many many of the students are still just all virtual so i just wonder what you think about that let me make sure i'm understanding what you're saying to implement model a at beaufort and the

124high school uh and that would that's bringing back in students who are at risk our special education students based on iep decisions and our english language learners yeah i mean i think that would especially at the high school i i'm i would love to hear more about the beaufort's plan but i think at the high school given that it does not disrupt the virtual learning for most of the students you know having this additional time for our targeted students from 9 to 11 um masked with the mitigation um i i just i feel like you don't need approval to move forward with that because you're not changing the schedule for a first student maybe 100 a day but that's not i just don't see that if students can go to sports games and practices this

125to me is a lot safer than that so that's how i see it if we talk about bringing back the students who are at risk i would certainly want us to the high school students that we consider at risk that would also cause me to want to bring back the the elementary school students who are at risk to select one group that should come back in um i would struggle with that just to bring back in high school students um i'll pre pre-k through second third fourth grade students those are the years foundational years that we're developing and we all know that [Music] so i think we have to take a holistic look at our entire school division to look at each group and each level as to what should work best for each of

126those levels and responding to the needs of the students at each of those levels so jennifer are you saying you would like to reverse the schedule i.e have the older children go back first and then the younger children come back is that what you're saying okay i'm not talking about all students what i'm saying is the high school continues with their what they currently have which is virtual remote learning that many students are after those school hours going to practices and interacting with faculty and students getting on buses and going to sporting events in addition what i would like to see is nothing disrupt any of that but that we continue that we target students as mark um the as the target group um that we add the 9 to 11 which is what model

127a proposed for the high school is just to have some targeted students go to the school have some targeted instruction return home and then start their virtual learning day now i am personally not opposed to um the elementaries i mean i don't wanna can i don't wanna make this more complicated than it is i'm happy to talk about all sorts of things you mentioned specifically losing students at the high school level our job is to ensure that they graduate dr irizarry his staff know which students we need to focus on they've already reached out to the students and families i want those families if they want to be back in school and they have teachers who are willing to do targeted instruction for them can we just do that from 9 to 11 like we

128like you proposed under model a we can talk about buford we can talk about walker we can talk about elementary schools we have to do baby steps vhsl has already started that's why i look at the high school differently jennifer when you say that are you talking about the february 22nd date or sooner are you i think she's saying immediately never is whenever it can happen i just don't want to be a barrier to that happening for our students okay and i mean the thing about the elementary school model a is it disrupts the current what's happening currently with all of the virtual learning um and that's why you know i'm happy to look at the big picture and have a and i don't i know that there's a lot of plans out there um

129but if we can just see if we can pilot it at the high school see how that works get comfortable with that then we talk again about data and dates in a month um i don't know i'm just trying to get make sure that our kids graduate so dr atkins i mean you did mention you know concern about about certain kids i mean do you have do you have a thought about how they could be targeted and supported better i mean what can we do i think the plan that that has been put forth for model a is one way to target the students who are struggling and our younger students it would be difficult logistically to have everyone following a different schedule and to just say arbitrarily select the students that you want to

130come in and let them come in we'd have to provide for transportation we're trying to provide the food services for all of the groups of students and if we're just arbitrarily letting individual students come in without a comprehensive plan then they they could be coming in at all different times of the day um missing the distribution of lunches missing distribution of breakfast we would not have a comprehensive program in which we can ensure that we're providing for many of the needs of all of our students that is not i'm suggesting that we go with model a at the high school which is a comprehensive plan that that you all have presented to us and and i i appreciate that as i said i am willing and i'll staff the recommendations are legitimate recommendations um we

131can certainly work with those recommendations um and our goal is to safely get our students back into school and provide the best model possible we're open to suggestions uh we're open to any of the recommendations that that any of the board members might have um having an open ended that we don't know when we're coming back or we don't have a projected date that we're working towards is going to be extremely difficult for spain it's just as difficult for staff where we come back every month and push it out like my anxiety is here and i'm not going back into the buildings and so i can only imagine the stress there are parents who are thinking their kids are going to get a different teacher and now we're pushing it out so that gets pushed

132out it's all stressful all the way around but we can a projected date isn't an end-all and it's crea it's just creating more stress i don't know how else to say it either but i think that there's a way to do what jennifer is saying where there are kids when we're talking at the last meeting where you had metrics the high school has metrics in middle school they have some metrics i don't know the name of the system that says these are the kids who are falling behind these are the kids who are in need uh we're english is second language special education where we can focus our efforts on those children right now while we're still virtual because we can't go back because we're on the uptick to find a way to try to

133make it equitable right now with teachers willing to go in the building that's what i would like to see a model um that focuses on those students most in need we're all struggling virtual is hard i have two children at home it's hard but there are people who are struggling far more than i am and i would like to see a model that addresses those people the pharaohs come to every meeting and they're saying these kids right here need help so while we're waiting to go back face to face can we come up with a model that addresses those groups right now for some condensed portion of the day the way special education something to start somewhere and are you talking about groups from pre-k through 12 or specific grade levels all the groups all

134the way through but the high school model that jennifer was saying is a place to start so even if we can't have the kids in all day every day everyone who wants to be back at least we can go in and have those most at risk even in the elementary school it's a model that works like the high school one does or like we're currently doing right now with special education um for those targeted groups that were targeting at the high school under plan a so i mean i feel like we've had a lot of um great discussion here we've got a lot of um concerns i don't know if there's a way to kind of streamline or or guide us back to um just looking at whether or not we're comfortable putting a date

135on this i don't want to table all of this necessarily i mean i think we need to continue to talk about it but i think we could all continue to talk about it for an hour or more here tonight [Music] dr atkins what what do you need from us right now what would be most helpful i think the question is to do what so um so um so i think what what do i need from the board in order to do what what is the board's goal i definitely can hear that there's a desire to provide intervention for targeted groups i'm not clear as to whether that's from our elementary level middle school and high school upper elementary level all of the levels or specific levels in order to do that it will require some

136reassigning of teachers and identifying teachers that will come in and will be assigned to come in and meet face-to-face with the students so it will take us a while to get that that underway in a comprehensive manner so i think what i do need from the board is the direction of what you'd like to achieve and then we can work on achieving that i mean i feel personally like you know the discussion um i mean i i feel confident that we all want safety for everybody we're all on the same page with that there's no there's no doubt about that um you know as far as timing how we make that decision what we're looking at um for an actual date i i don't i'm not sure that we came up with an answer for

137that i think you know we this discussion um veered off a little bit because we heard you know that you have concerns about certain groups and so we are reacting to that and wanting to support you i feel like i hear what you're saying as far as if we do that for the high school students you know how can we not do that for everybody but then if we do that for everybody we're basically saying green light for for plan a um and and that's what we're kind of trying to hold off on um [Music] because i don't feel even though we have all of the mitigation in place that were that were quite there so um could i just mention kind of where i'm getting hung up um in the discussion and that is

138what i'm hearing is that to set a date and then to keep coming back and changing the date is more stressful for the staff um and you know so that the staff don't want us to keep having to do that to keep doing that they'd like to kind of know you know with more certainty sort of what's happening when and i don't know if we're at the point now where we can actually do that but that's what's bothering me uh you know like here me sitting here i could say yes february 22nd we can say that and we can then revisit the data but i'm hearing that that is actually very stressful on the staff and the staff perhaps would prefer that we don't keep doing that if that's at all possible so that's where

139i'm getting a little bit hung up here and knowing what to what to do and i don't know you know if if there's a way to hear anymore about that am i right are we is that true is that what the staff are saying that you know to keep doing what we've been doing is more stressful on them and they would rather that we didn't do that dr atkins i have a question on the february 22nd date i'm sure there had been discussions with administrators and staff members uh in regards to how their date came about it wasn't something that um an arbitrary date there was a reason why that date was selected um could you share some of that with us well in terms of perspectives from the administrators and and your discussions and

140how that date came about because it seems like you know um teachers are feeling anxiety there's a reason why that date was was suggested in the recommendation what i understand about the um levels of anxiety about continuing to come back to review the dates is that every two weeks was a lot the thought that each two weeks the board would be coming back to make a decision or to review the decision that was made pose a lot of anxiety because it just left people in limbo and for such a short period of time but stretching out further into february gives us about six weeks in order to prepare for coming back and to look forward if the metrics are where they need to be at that time it also gives us some time hopefully to

141start with the vaccinations so that was a part of the discussion it was that staff may feel a sense of relief having a date but having a date far enough out that it might be realistic that we could return at that time but the two-week rotation was causing anxiety because it was so frequent now there may be other anxieties that i'm not aware of that staff may have shared with either some of the board members or with others that are legitimate anxieties that we should consider so i don't know that that any of these models are the perfect models i certainly would say that they are not what we're trying to do is find a place in which we can land that we have adequate time to prepare that we try to reduce the anxiety

142that our staff and our teachers are feeling but also reduce the anxiety that our parents are feeling and our students and try to come up with the best plan and the best model to respond to all of those needs and concerns thank you for the clarification so um madame chad do we have a motion on the floor guidance on on the floor for consideration well i believe miss mckeever kinda proposed something but i don't remember what it was um i i was just curious i don't have calendars in front of me when we're looking at february we have our february pulling up the calendar right now we have our february 4th meeting do we have a work session or something in february we have another school board meeting on the 17th or the um 18th

143of february to approve the budget the 18th yeah the 18th of february we approve our budget in a school board meeting so um jennifer um i should know this but the date that you gave in march was that the end of the third nine weeks no i think the end of the third nine weeks is um later than that it's like 26th or 25th um wait maybe it might be even later than that actually okay the end of the third nine weeks is april 2nd okay i just want to i just here's what my here let me just propose this like that um we continue to look at the data at every board meeting the and when the data gets to be even close to where we're much more comfortable that's in terms of vaccinations

144that's in terms of positivity that's incur all the cdc stuff then we talk about dates um and i think anywhere from you know you know two to three weeks after that meeting that we say okay this is this data looks good we'll start in three weeks what do you think is that i i would suggest maybe that you know given our conversation tonight that maybe we just push it back two weeks and pick that date because i think um i think the chances of having the robust vaccination program in place are higher um i think the chance of being beyond the sir this surge are higher and you know going in the right direction so that would be another option that we just give it another two weeks march the 8th or something like that

145yeah yeah or is it for us or to convene to have a discussion about it well i don't think we have to convene we have several that we could devote a small part of our budget meeting our regular meeting um to this look have a look at the numbers dr atkins um there's jennifer's suggestion with a proposed date of march 8 which is two weeks after february 22nd thoughts please i appreciate that is that two weeks or is that one week two two two because the 22nd is the last okay it's monday in february and march the 8th is the second monday in um february i mean in march because march comes in on a monday march 1. we certainly can work with that do now we are asking you as a board with all

146of your education knowledge to do what jennifer suggested with a date that sherry has proposed of march 8th you feel will do the same types of things as if we were on february 22. the two weeks is not going to i'm not talking about the numbers but the two weeks will allow us to get the children in in the designated um categories as we had talked about in december which you showed us earlier in the presentation remember the categories [Music] yes um yes i i certainly think that we can work with that one of the comments that um a principal made today when we were discussing the dates for returning uh asked if if we could give them a forecast whether or not we will actually be bringing students we realistically think we're bringing students

147back face to face and we would get our third and fourth grade students back in face to face because as the principals and the teachers are making schedules and planning for instruction depending on how these models unfold and how we bring the students back they're making different decisions they're making one group of decisions based on bringing in the preschool the pre-k through second grade students and then the at-risk students at the third and fourth grade as opposed to bringing in the preschool and then at some point bringing in the risk at risk students and then later bringing in more of our third and fourth grade students so the more clarity that we can provide for dates and direction for our staff for our principals and for our teachers and for our families i think the

148more successful we're going to be and having dates whether it be a february date or march date or later date having a date that we're we're shooting for helps to bring some of that clarity about for planning purposes can i ask i hear what you're saying like i i know you want to date certain is the march 8th date a reasonable date is just as reasonable as february 22nd so we can look at the data at the two meetings in february the one meeting in march but and and any time during that six week period we may decide to alter that date but that is the date that like this board on this date says is okay yeah um i i i like that approach i think that eat what whatever date we choose we

149will give staff two or three weeks to prepare and the parents two or three weeks to prepare um yeah can i just offer this as i mean we i'm comfortable with march 8th my concern at this point is what the concerns that we've heard from parents um and staff about the pre-k through two returning and then three and four returning later and not really having a plan for their return so i wondered if anybody had that concern as well that we should address or consider maybe not today maybe we talk about it into what i but i just i also don't want to leave that like hanging because it is definitely a concern uh sorry i just asked a quick question uh probably to jennifer so jennifer when you were talking earlier you said the

150projection for the current surge will still be in it february 22nd that is projected to be the peak of the surge and now we're saying we're going to vote on a march 8th return we're trying to make sure that i'm sorry the eighth is a return not just another meeting date but return that would be the proposed return if all of the numbers got you know there's still a lot of uncertainty in the next two months so but thank you that's a really important clarification all right so i think i have heard um a date and kind of emotion are we all comfortable without any more comments are we saying march 8th as model a yes that's my yeah um i'd also i i guess um um also like to between now and and then

151to really take a look at bringing our you know our third and fourth graders back or having a plan so that people know what's going to be happening and maybe condensing the uh you know the roll out a little bit so that because we're you know we're getting on in the year it'll be march and maybe not waiting quite as long to bring that group back seems reasonable anybody else um have anything that they'd like to ask otherwise i will entertain that miss mckeever if you can repeat i actually don't think that march 8th is a good date i think that the model a at the high school should start sooner i don't i am not in agreement with this motion and i also don't think model a works for elementary school if we're starting

152much later so somebody else has to make the motion i moved that we um you use model a with the new date of march the 8th yeah i think that's that's all right i need a second second so um if madame jeff win discussion um i would like that if we do this that um if we can you know have the principles you know i know that we can't say those you know those students that are kind of falling through the cracks that are not um expected to come back because they don't meet any of the categories that we have now but just may need some extra support at home you know maybe um some guidance or whatever you know is a way that the principals can send out a notice or something to parents

153that if you are having trouble or whatever and they may be doing this this now i'm not sure you know uh a way that they can follow up and contact the principal or a school administrator to let them know but one i don't understand because under what you have just moved we're not doing model a until march 8th which would allow the parkinson's to return until march so like even doing what you're suggesting is not permitted by that motion that you just made until march 8th what i'm saying now is that the students are currently doing will start the virtual learning um at the beginning of the the when would virtual learning begin um for uh students like one will want to break in when is that date in targeted students you mean or i'm

154sorry you said virtual learning yes yes well they yeah they're back and break so gabby's not in school now so yeah so so i'm saying but the students that are now in virtual learning yes sir that some of those students as rosa mentioned that they may be falling through the cracks but they're not scheduled to to come back in person at all but um they may be falling through the cracks they may need some some guidance on on how to connect to class or they may just be feel disconnected um and that's what i want and and they may only need a call to say this is how you do that it may not mean them coming to school they just may need some guidance on how to do something and so that's what i'm

155want to make sure if there's some small low hanging fruit type of things that we can take care of with the students i just want to make sure that that's done with the virtual learning that's going on now i'm sorry i apologize madam chair no no um i just was curious jennifer i mean that's basically what you you've been saying correct that i don't know how to prioritize students i'm not an educator right so i feel like we have a lot of students virtual is not working for um and our principals and teachers know who they are um without disrupting virtual learning at the high school level you can bring those students back in the morning and connect them to people each other and to teachers that is what model a allows for and that

156is up to a hundred to 150 students a day depending on your grade right that's what dr ia rizzeri presented as model a which i think would allow for not just ell not just special ed not just um children with reading issues um but also those students who you who need connection um so that's why i just feel like thinking outside the box is the most critical thing that we need to do right now we need to reach student this is the opportunity we have at least two months but probably longer if we're going to be really honest to reach students and how are we going to do that without disrupting what's working for some students in virtual learning well jennifer my question is if this is for the high school students you also have

157to do it for the elementary school students that's the foundation i don't know that you do sir i mean we have the schedule as an educator i disagree you know that i i certainly would you have to have the balance you can't do one and not do the other one what about the elementary the pre-k through two and the three and four-year-olds we can do so we're in fourth grade as i mentioned i just don't bring one back at the top and the elementary kids are left out that's the foundation it is not that it makes sense to me it really doesn't we need those kids in high school to graduate yes that's true i understand that as a counselor certainly many many years but we also we have to also remember those little ones

158as well if you're going to bring them back you can bring the little ones back so how do you balance both and do both dr atkins has not presented us with anything that will allow the students to most students to remain virtual and reach children um who are targeted and who need that support at the elementary school can i ask a question um so if we we have a motion on the floor here um is there a way to allow for um plus some flexibility in this and the decisions that could be made uh not by the board but you know by the principles or by dr atkins uh if there are some targeted groups that you know we feel need somewhat of a different timetable and we're able to do it on a small

159scale can we have that kind of flexibility even if we you know if we approve emotion now with it with this march 8th date can we have both dr atkins maybe that's a question to you i i need to give that some thought and um than answering that now i really do need to pull to assemble the team to talk about what are all of the implications for having a fixed schedule and a flexible schedule at the same time what are those implications for all of the other services that have to be coordinated with that i guess if if we can ask then if you could do that i think i mean obviously we're all very concerned about about you know the students that need the targeted interventions how we can do that and be

160least disruptive i would like to um ask and is is that okay with you yes it will and so let's make sure that we lay out what the parameters will have to be we'll have to then identify specific teachers that will be coming in the building to meet face to face with the targeted group of students while we're saying that we're not bringing students back into the building isn't that the same thing that you've considered for the february 22nd day um well the february 22nd we're bringing in cohorts of students who have indicated that they want to come back virtually what i think i'm hearing um the request is is not to bring in a co-grade level cohort of students not to identify a grade level cohort to allow teams at the school to identify

161individual students to come into the building for face-to-face instruction and intervention and it would be building based decisions teachers and administrators which can make great decisions they do know our students who need support and help but they would be convening determining which teachers will be coming back in the building and determining which individual students will be coming back in the building when those students would be coming back the frequency of them coming back in the time that they will come back and so that's what i mean we have to assemble the team to talk about what are the logistical implications of putting a plan like that in place which is different from the a model that we're recommending or the a model that we have discussed lashandra so yet to to add on to what

162you were saying the way that you at the previous meeting we talked about how there are students who needed intervention i believe is specifically special education students and they were coming in the building at different times so i think what we're asking or at least what i'm asking is looking at that right now for kids most at risk by whatever metrics we measure it you know in each building with principals and teachers working together and even some thinking outside of the box for kids in those um learning centers where i read on twitter where there was a teacher who just went to one and visited her students like little things like that like that's what we're asking what can we do right now before we're back in school for targeted groups that need intervention by

163the metrics that principals are using in the building can we do something or come up with some plan like that for targeted interventions and teachers that are willing to do it that feels safe doing it i'm sure we can work towards a plan that looks like that miss purrier did you have a question i'm probably more confused than i was when we started but i think um leshandra may have cleared it up for me between she and dr atkins um the children that we all have concerns about le chandra has indicated is there a way dr atkins that we can target those children now in order that when when in order that when face to face starts they're not more underwater than they are now is that what i'm hearing you say lashandra that's sort

164of that they're not more underwater and just in terms of equity because it's not just about the academic part it's about right and dr adkins is saying to answer your question no dr atkins is saying to address your concern there is a way that she can speak to people in the building whether it's school counselors teachers administrators whoever to look at those particular children in order to deal with them at this point so that they are not more underwater than when that that they are not more underwater so that when we go back face to face it's more for lack of a better word leshandra you know even equal level you know yeah that's that's what i'm saying but i also just to complicate it it's not just about the curriculum the kids in the

165learning centers are there in mask they're with kids of all different grades and ages they have to wear headphones they don't have the same connection even if you're just at home by yourself learning virtual and you know just for equity they're seeing i've seen in my daughter's class and i asked how i can help there i see kids in their car still sometimes trying to get a signal or trend so that's what i'm talking about like helping where we can with curriculum and falling behind but also just with equity to let them know that they're important and we haven't forgotten about them we look at the option a the preschool through k the pre-k through six students the estimated number of students that would come face to face in the at-risk group for grades three

166and four would be 55 to 85 students okay in the 5-6 group it's from estimated about 55 to 85 students would fall into that at risk group so that's the numbers that we would be looking at for those grade levels and then we would have to consider what does that at risk group look like preschool through second grade in order to cover all of those grades and then the beaufort and the high school would have to do the same um i believe the high school i don't see their numbers on this chart that i'm looking at eric how many students 100 at risk group it was 100 to 150 what 100 right right now our our invite list is around 300 um and we would re-examine that list at the end of this uh semester

167that's coming up too so that would that would start to grow from there that's that's a kind of at this moment snapshot per week okay yeah right that's 300 that 300 would be divided into two groups right dr irizarry uh four the 400 would be divided into four groups or two groups right right now we have 300 at-risk you know students that we will be inviting into the building um those are nine through 12. so that would be divided so that 300 at this point would be divided by four and those numbers would probably start to grow after the end of this um semester okay dr arizari are you the 300 students each each cohort that you would bring in at a time would come in one day a week each group yes they would

168come in um yeah they would come in so each grade level each grade level will come in on their own particular day with some exceptions for esl and our walk students that may come in a little more frequently but those are lower numbers of students but the majority of the students would be coming in by their cohort or their grade level on a specific day from 9 to 11. okay dr irizarry i really want to make this happen for your students honestly and i just i cannot again because of the fact that 9th and 10th graders are barely know what school looks like 12th and 11th graders and 12th graders are really at risk of not graduating i just so and and because the plan does not disrupt virtual learning for anybody it's just additional

169education targeted instruction for these 300 students from 9 to 11. you still have your 12 30 to 4 instruction i just i don't understand why we can't make that happen for students and teachers who are willing to make that happen when we have kids doing sports just doesn't make any sense to me dr irizarry do you feel like i mean if say this were to happen in a couple of weeks i mean are you staffed and ready to roll with that no i mean at this point we're you know we're we're working on calling each individual family because they're you know our plan did change from the original proposal um and then from there we would have to figure out in each grade level what you know where our students struggle and we would have

170to ask the staff in this new scenario who would be willing to come in and you know they're for for everything that we've mentioned today we you know we have students that are struggling but we also have a lot of anxiety out there with staff too so i i would trying to piecemeal something together what you know i i don't know where we'd be so this plan what i'm saying is this plan would depend on how many teachers would be willing to come in and i don't know exactly at this point until we can come up with some dates and in a solid plan you know um i don't know what that number is right right at this moment we would have to you know but it would have to rely on this on folks

171coming into the building okay i just felt like it was important to ask you that so we could hear where you're at with that so thank you you're not ready to implement on january 17th or 19th or whenever we were supposed to go back to school that's really what i'm not asking a piecemeal approach i'm asking for like model a yeah we're currently in the process right now um you know with our our date was february 1st so that's been our target so we're you know since last you know thursday before break we've been working on uh our student life counselors and everybody's are calling families to explain this new plan and trying to recruit those students that are targeted to come in our esl team has worked out their plan walk has their plan

172um so we're just waiting it is moving ahead um as you know as we've been planning for february first okay thank you and i do have the numbers for uh beaufort that they would have somewhere between 70 to 80 students per day so their numbers relatively speaking are similar to the ones at chs so i would like to just kind of bring us back if we're ready to do that um there was a motion um mr wade i believe made um yes it was essentially model a with march the eighth and and i'm certainly open to any modification to that um the main purpose was to get um you know to get some action get some movement sure and i appreciate that and i think i if anybody else has some discussion on that i

173just wanted to share and i don't think i had spoken directly to that um i dr atkins i hear the importance and the need to kind of have a target date um so people can plan but i i'm not comfortable i feel like that is a little premature as well as far as the eighth you know that we would be ready um to go back so i don't know where we go from that unless we wanted to take a vote if there's any further discussion about you know reconsideration of the eighth as a return just sounds like we are really talking about two different issues here um and so if we are talking specifically about a return date i think two to three weeks after we make a decision that we can return you know

174given the data that's where we should go we just don't have a goal line right now but with respect to small cohorts of children going back to school or having these targeted interventions that sounds like a different different thing and maybe that lighting them at this point is problematic it is a little it's i think we're sending mixed messages and and you know i think it's it is kind of getting a little bit confusing um and i don't know that the board can you know reasonably mandate it that you know these targeted groups start coming in with teachers who we don't know you know we're we're at the peak of the search you know the virus is the worst that it's ever been and um you know we have no idea which teachers are going

175to feel like they can go back in the buildings with these groups of kids now um maybe there are some but i really don't know and i i don't feel comfortable mandating that um i you know i wish that if we can just have some kind of language in there that allows for some you know some additional process to to you know really take a look at what's possible here you know that our the board's desire is to focus on these targeted groups of students and provide additional interventions for them and as to how we do it and where we do it and who does it you know i don't think the board can make that decision so i guess i feel that way um as far as the date goes i i actually am

176comfortable putting a date out there of a date of march the 8th at this point and i know it's possible that it may change but i think it's you know it's two months from now so i think things will be different and i think the vaccine is a real factor at least in my thinking okay any further discussion and then i think we're going to call for a vote did i have a second i'm sorry did we have a second on that you did sherry seconded okay thank you i missed what she said okay well if no one else has any further discussion on that um madam clerk could you call for a vote please okay and just to clarify um yes it was um mr wade had motioned and dr craft um second that

177correct okay okay for the vote i have mr bryant and this is for march today correct for the march 8th yes yes it's bryson morseberger no dr craft yes miss mckeever no he's prayer you're muted miss purrier yes miss torres no mr wade yes okay thank you very much um that was a long one where are we um this is the wrong agenda i'm looking at sorry literacy i think she's frozen oh no you're frozen am i frozen oh now you're not i'm sorry i was like wait am i frozen or is everybody in school um yes so i believe we're unless there was something else um that we we missed with that 9.1 we are now at 9.2 which is a literacy update thank you mr torres um we have um dr odie will

178introduce our literacy specialist um steph taylor and to talk with you give you an overview of our plan for literacy and where we are to date dr martin thank you dr atkins um madam chair members of the board uh dr atkins good evening again uh tonight steph tatum our literacy coordinator is here to share with you our literacy update miss tayden adam chair members of the board and dr atkins tonight i'm going to update you on all things literacy uh there are some slides and maybe while um we get those pulled up i'll do a rousing read aloud of chicka chicka boom boom how about that all right um and actually we're gonna slide thank you um all right well i wanted to start with these four interconnected goals that drive our work from pre-k

179through fourth grade and what's most important here that i want you to see is that they are all levers for equitable outcomes for every student you can go to the next slide um and embedded in um our goals is an emphasis on bringing an awareness of the science of reading so i'm going to talk a little bit about the science of reading um i want to define what it is and what it isn't it's a really hot term right now if you were to google it you'd see all kinds of things um so i just want to make sure that we all have a common definition so the science of reading is the body of research over the last 50 plus years from several scientific disciplines about language development how we learn to read and

180which instructional practices are proven to be effective through that sound research it tells us that systematic and explicit phonics instruction in the early grades is absolutely essential and non-negotiable but not without high quality language and meaning based instruction the science of reading is not a debatable philosophy and it's also not a program that comes in a box it is about applying what we know to be true about how children learn to read through a curriculum and instructional practices deemed effective through this research so what you're looking at now is called the simple view and it's uh it's called a simple view of reading and it's a really good summary of what is actually not a simple process it's actually a very complex process that requires a great deal of teacher knowledge to do really really

181well um as louisa mote says teaching reading is rocket science and this shows us that reading comprehension is actually the product of word recognition you can also call that decoding um and language comprehension which includes vocabulary background knowledge and verbal reasoning so we multiply rather than add because this is important strength in one area will never fully compensate for a weakness in the other so for example if i don't teach you how to decode words in a way that's evidence-based you're going to have a really tough time getting through complex literature and text and science and social studies and conversely if i only teach you phonics and ignore vocabulary knowledge and critical thinking you might be able to decode the words on a page but you won't understand them so you can go to the

182next slide so the reason why we're talking about this is that our data fits a larger statewide and national pattern of a lack of reading progress across across the last four years so this slide is from the vdoe and it shows in the overall gradual very gradual downward trend of statewide sol scores and reading across all across all grades that are tested for sols in the last four years we say we see this same trend nationally in the nape reading scores in both fourth and eighth grade so in the next slide um this is just an image of a flyer from the vdoe the vdoes share these seven strategies for improving literacy instruction and the number one strategy is to enhance the science of reading for all learners so we've been working on this in

183in charlottesville bringing an awareness of the science of reading and how it's evident in our curriculum and instruction here in charlottesville um and because of the covet slide this is more important than ever so on the next slide i'm going to talk a little bit about where we are um so um i know you're all wondering how has covet impacted our achievement we're still sort of trying to figure that out and while we have some fall data it's important to consider the limits of the data gathered remotely and so we are thoughtful about which assessment data is going to be useful valid and worth the time we lose for instruction to get it so school divisions were required by the voe to administer pals this fall in grades pre-k through three and pal stands for

184the phonological awareness literacy screening it's a series of tasks that are administered one-on-one um our schools got super creative this fall about how to give pals through zoom on every pre-k through third grader um and we work very closely with the pals office to understand um that our data collected in this non-standard way and as a result it's the data set that we have that is probably the most comprehensive and with a relatively stronger degree in validity um so the next slide i'm gonna show you um the percentage of students in grades k through three whose pals some score did not meet the benchmark as compared to the fall last year so the blue is last year the red is this year um and this is showing the percentage of students who did not meet

185the benchmark so you see an increase in this number of students who did not meet the benchmark that benchmark is a combination of individual tasks so keep in mind that this data does not tell the whole story of a student's literacy achievement but it is an indication of the initial impact of the covet closure and the reduced time for literacy instruction and practice for our k3 students it shows a consistent pattern from k through 3 that more students this year in each grade did not meet the fall benchmark we did anticipate that this would be the case and we are not alone this is where what it's looking like most places um and on the next slide i will talk about how we are responding so first we are implementing um our new curriculum framework

186in a very very focused way we have a team of amazing teachers coaches and reading specialists who've been working together to prioritize standards strategies and pacing and lesson resources second we just began to create a long-term strategic plan for implementing and monitoring our curriculum framework so covet or not this is a long-term strategy and third we're working to provide sustained professional learning and coaching to teachers this includes leveraging our existing processes and roles such as instructional coaches reading specialists and plcs as well as two new opportunities letters training that we want to expand through third grade after this year and a new division literacy course for pre-k through sixth grade teachers both of which will bring awareness of the science of reading and how to apply that in instruction and then on the next slide

187um i'll just quickly update you about ebl because we are using the ebl program this year to help mitigate the covid slide so for direct support to students we are doing one to one virtual tutoring for identified students in elementary and we made lexia core 5 available to all pre-k through 4th graders for differentiated practice and instruction and foundational skills so lexia core 5 is a is a computer program it's not a magic bullet but it is something that families can trust in which there's there's children can get practice and for building teacher capacity ebl is also funding the 39 teachers specialists coaches and administrators in kn1 to complete the letters training um but it's not all about pre-k through five so on the next slide i have a little six through eight update um

188about what's happening at the secondary level teachers are using their new curriculum uh buford is benefiting from a three-part professional learning series with dr sarah lupo from jmu about how to scaffold complex texts for every student to further unleveling and equity work and we're doing some of that same pl in sixth grade as well and on the next slide um in grades nine through twelve um the uh the english department has come together to support our ninth grade class as the first class to begin the high school writing portfolio that will take the place of the end of course writing sol which is normally given in the 10 in 10th grade this will be the last year of that sol as we transition to the writing portfolio performance assessment which is going to be better

189connected to curriculum and show growth over the years and have students be involved in their portfolio and a very exciting collaboration has been in the works between the english and history departments to align content across those two departments specifically in ninth and tenth grades and the purpose is to deepen learning for students and give them more opportunities to learn about the world and apply their skills across classes teachers are working very very hard and thoughtfully on this effort to integrate their standards and provide a meaningful learning experience for students and then i just wanted to leave you on the last slide with our mission and goals for literacy in english language arts i was told to be short and sweet so that's what i'm doing here um and i hope that you see that the

190work we are doing teaching in reading writing and communication to be integral to the division's commitment to educational equity i want to thank you for your time tonight and i'm happy to try and answer any questions you may have thank you miss tatl as always i enjoy hearing your updates to any of the board members have questions um i just had a um a question or comment and um you you mentioned some term that some professor at jmu is using and if you could explain that a little bit more really you know learn a lot about different methods and processes when um in reading and comprehending so i can't remember the term that you use because you went through pretty quick do you recall what you said about that was it complex text or scaffolding

191complexity yes capital yes yeah no thank you for asking and i apologize uh i tried to de-jargon this um so basically that means um i don't want to say grade level text because there's uh you know that can mean a lot of different things but for a long time now um you know we've had an emphasis on leveled text putting kids in a text that's at their level um and if you're if you're not yet reading let's say you're an eighth grader and you're not yet tip normally reading 8th grade level stuff you're going to get put in text that's easier for a long time and then there's never an on ramp for you to to experience challenging text and so when we say complex text we're generally talking about grade level text that is

192complex because um it's authentic text it may it may have sophisticated structure or language a lot of um you know figurative language and vocabulary and it's meaty and it gives teachers an opportunity to really teach language and um and text and actually teach teach reading so it's about um and when we say scaffolding scaffolding is kind of a fancy word for teaching or instructing um but the idea and this is and i'm glad you asked because this is a real equity lever is if we don't give every student access to grade level complex text every student does not have the opportunity to make to to achieve at those levels and so ensuring that every student has that access and that um every teacher knows how to teach that text for every student um you know

193that that's a really important lever for equity to make sure all those kids are are get are getting the access so i guess long story short um you know i you may have students who aren't ready to read um an entire text by themselves but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't have access to some part of it or some some way to interact with it because they're going to learn a lot of background knowledge and vocabulary and be challenged by it does that answer your question yes ma'am thank you any other questions board members dr kraft yeah um thank you thank you for this presentation it sounds like there's a lot of really good stuff going on and oh i don't know this is my question so um how do we what i mean what

194is your feeling about like what do we need to do to make up the lost ground uh from the pandemic do we do i mean just what are your thoughts about how we do that with literacy yeah well i will say i mean one thing that we're doing right now is that i think that our teachers are teaching like their hair is on fire um and they're continuing to move ahead with grade level content and that's really that's really key so that's one thing is um is is is to sort of not not not go back and just try to remediate remediate remediate so one thing we know from hurricane katrina um is that that's sort of the only example we have in this country of like a massive amount of people who had a

195lot of interrupted schooling and one of the mistakes they realized they made was they went back and did a ton of remediation and made it very like low level skill and they know that that didn't work and so some of the guidance that we're getting from the state and also from a national organization called student achievement partners is that we have to think about how we bring children into grade level content whether it's first grade learning how to read or 11th grade writing really sophisticated essays not so is thinking about like how do we bring them into that content how do we support them to do that grade level work not whether and so um so one of the things we're doing is really keeping a keeping tight on our pacing um we have these

196in k5 and in 68 um as of last year the two programs that were purchased the timing could not have been more more perfect because um you know while teachers are having to learn how to implement this whole new program they actually have a program they have a curriculum that is both digital and print which is really critical right now um so so that's one thing is to sort of uh try not to go backwards we also um i think the the um for the for younger kids again lexia is not a magic bullet it is not a panacea but that is practice that kids can do at home and through this summer families are going to have access to that all summer long um to continue to have differentiated practice um and practice for

197mastery which is really important um i think the other thing is just finding more ways to build in more time for literacy instruction in the time that we have with kids right now and i know principals are really thinking about that um and thinking about how can we how can we be creative with the time that we have so that we have like i said more time for instruction um and then i know you know several of us are starting to think about so next year so what do we do with our pacing for next year in order to continue to provide grade level content for every child uh but at the same time try to build in some of that recovery that we're for sure to have to do thank you great answer anybody

198else i just really want to give a shout out to the lexia it's like really the only way we can do fridays um and that my kids get good reading time i do think obviously i emphasize we emphasize you need to be doing your lexia um so it might be helpful to kind of just note that to parents like hey i mean maybe teachers are doing it individually but like i don't know how to get parents more engaged in literacy instruction because myself i'm terrible at it but maybe there is some encouragement we could offer for parents about lexia especially that summer but i think that's really helpful sarah says hello miss bryson morrisberger um can we at some point if you could email it to us or at some point can we see a

199breakdown of the pals um testing numbers by ethnicity as well i uh broadly yes i can't share names of students with you of course of course yes okay and then another just very maybe random seeming question but if you're a grade level behind um with reading and you got all the interventions and we did everything good everything perfect or whatever what's the timeline for catching you up like how long does it generally take to catch someone up if they're behind a grade level in reading or you know more than a grade level but i guess how how long does it take to make up that gap if we do everything we're supposed to do that is a really hard question um i think what we're trying to focus on is how do we prevent the

200need for intervention right now as best as we can like how do we really strengthen what we're doing and what we call tier one which is like the instruction that everybody gets during the day how do we focus really really focus on our tier one instruction our planning our professional development our time time for teachers to do that planning together so that they can do the best tier one instruction possible so that we reduce the need for intervention so that's the first thing i know that's not totally answering your question um but but that is the single most important thing is putting putting as many eggs as we can into the tier one basket um and one thing we know about with reading and this is something the science of reading tells us is that

201even when everything is perfect even when your tier one is perfect and the tier you've got tiered interventions you've got everything is like cooking and great there is always going to be a percentage of of children who have difficulty reading and there will always be a small percentage of children who have a significant difficulty reading and that's because reading is not a natural human activity so children learn how to speak without any instruction right reading doesn't work that way because it hasn't been around long enough for the human brain to evolve for it to be a natural process and learning to read in english is very tricky um and so there's always going to be a need for intervention and that's part of the rta the the thinking behind rti response to intervention is that

202there there will always be um kids who need extra support um and so to answer your question in a very non-answery way it just depends on so many factors right it depends on that individual child it depends on what what are the issues um you know if like you said everything is perfect and great and everything is working at every single level then it shouldn't take it shouldn't take years and years and years so if it's taking years and years and years it's either because we have a problem with our tier one instruction or for some kids they're just it's always going to be a struggle and um you know we live in the in reality and so in reality we are not yet to the point where we can say that everything is perfect

203so we have to look at our own instruction first and our own processes thank you i appreciate the answer i just work in worst case scenarios so i try to go as you know but i appreciate the answer thank you yeah i wish i had a better answer for you it was perfect anybody else i know bianca is ready to talk so all right well thank you so much for for all that you do in your presentation i appreciate it thank you all all right um and next we are at 9.3 student and family family engagement early connections update please ms torres and many of our community members saw several community events the response to essential needs extravaganza that happened in our community and we are so pleased to have with us bianca johnson who

204is going to talk about student and family services and all of the great work that she has done with her team so dr odie i'm going to go ahead and pull up bianca thank you dr atkins introduction made miss johnson thank you um good evening madam chair members of the board dr atkins and everyone else attending today's school board meeting thank you for having me tonight i'll present the family engagement update from the last time that we presented a year ago until now and we can go to the next slide and so our updates are going to be from january to march of precovid march and covet to the end of the school year and july of 2020 to now and first i'd like to start with a quote from the national education association and

205it reads family engagement is about every adult in a child's life working together to help the child reach their full potential just like a space launch needs engineers mathematicians and physicists to work side by side to send astronauts to space families schools and communities need to form partnerships for all children to have the opportunity to succeed and with that being said family engagement is a shared responsibility between all of us to make decisions in the best interest of our student population it's it's a culturally responsive approach to relationship building it's a plan for connecting with a child's key family members and this looks like different things depending on our role within the division we can go to the next slide in january the family engagement team continue with our planned activities we can go back

206one please in january the family engagement team continue with our planned family activities such as cooking classes this was made possible through our partnership with aetna who provided interactive lessons while we tied in math and gave out resources throughout both january and february my colleague and i continue to support school-based events such as school at morning meetings family nights and just stopping by in classrooms to say hello and spend some time with the students next slide we attended the family engagement professional development with virginia-tiered systems of support and the family engagement academy through the school university research network or cern at william mary at the vtss conference my colleague and i presented a year of review of our work and family engagement we also presented during a professional development day to division staff on the

207topic strengthening family engagement and we're also working to plan the next parent university and as you guys know that's a series of workshops for families to learn about best practices to support content learning at home as well as good to know workshops about topics like the growth mindset march parent university was in partnership with the art connections art show and this is when kova hit parrot university was canceled our school shut down for a little while and this has ultimately shifted a lot of our current practices events and even how we interact it's limited our normal in-person gatherings such as bus stop meet and greets as well as community workshops you can go to the next slide during the remaining school year in covert we coordinated a supplies drive for families to have what they

208needed during virtual instruction and we also kept in contact with community centers and other partners to do donation drop-offs the electronic version of the reading math and science connection flyers were still distributed virtually for our elementary families we also kept up with our professional development with a book study on the culture of love by louvelle brown and before we knew it the school year was over and we were planning for our next year and during our transition from one year to the next we went from a team of two to one and go to the next slide and the summer was dedicated to planning making community connections and meetings for the upcoming school year denise johnson the supervisor of equity and inclusion and i worked on a return to learn videos for families detailing what

209to expect for the upcoming school year how to become involved in contact information i also presented virtually on an introduction to family engagement within ctss for the new division staff the partnership with the ready kids ready steps program is continued in the virtual world from in-person many workshops to on-demand workshop videos for the families that they serve some of the topics have included schedules and routines and reasons why parents and families are important to their child's education in october i presented the six types of parent involvement from the book school family and community partnerships by joyce epstein at one of the equity lunch and learn series city of promise and i also communicate frequently to support the families in their neighborhood and i've also been available to support elementary schools with advanced tiered family engagement

210conversations regarding engagement and attendance as needed go the next slide um and now i'd like to share a short video about the response to essential needs drive through that i've coordinated this year it'll give you some insight on the process and collective work that we've done to get the ren uh extravaganzas [Music] meeting with dr adkins early on this school year slightly sorry i got an area that said the video won't play so let me restart or refresh this no problem first i think that bianca could talk about the greatness of those events that the video is not going to play um i have it up and ready if i can share my screen i'm happy to play it give me one second and i'll promote you there to be able to share okay try

211now see if that works for you all right after meeting with dr atkins early on this school year volunteers all came together to bag distribute and receive contact information for those requesting additional services from this first ren we observed that the need for basic but essential items was much higher than we anticipated because this need was so great plans for another ren drive-thru started immediately jody murphy facilitated a connection with the chris long foundation board meeting through this meeting the chris lawton foundation graciously agreed to fully fund the next response to essential needs drive through for this drive through division staff and volunteers provided information about community resources and winter break activities calendar full-sized hygiene items coats books and food we partnered again with the united way of greater charlottesville so ptos as well as

212new partners custom made a donation group on instagram and cultivate charlottesville on december 12th at chs over 130 cars drove through to receive around 300 cloth mass both adult and child size over 450 hygiene bags and 500 plus codes for our ccs families as well as the items mentioned earlier to date we've received over 27 000 in donations to meet this need for our families these donations have provided 700 hygiene bags 500 plus coats hundreds of books food and information for our families that need it the most none of these things are possible without the family school and community partnerships that family engagement speaks about we are planning for one more response to essential needs in the spring in which an organization has already expressed the desire to purchase some of our supplies all right

213thank you i think there was more to your presentation is that correct bianca uh yes if we get to show the uh the presentation again um wrong one uh leslie the student and family engagement engagement yes all right next slide please i've also worked with other division staff to provide extra support in getting supplies to students and families home visits and survey canvassing and our receivable communities specifically for the intent to return surveys the family engagement team is still a part of the family engagement academy through cern and i also joined the district leaders network of family and community engagement through the institute for educational leadership in washington dc and this network networks those in similar roles as me uh to meet collaborate and create family and community engagement strategies at the division level for

214winter break another winter break activities calendar was created with different activities that families can listen to or work on together while they're at home this is also another opportunity to display some of our day of play videos from the weekend of december 4th next slide and in this moment the next parent university is being finalized the name has been changed to family university of wheat as we've seen that family members other than parents are also doing their part to continue learning for our students timing has been a challenge as we've been figuring out the safest way to continue learning going forward and i know that families have a lot on their plates and i want to make sure that family university will be at a time that's accessible for them the format will of course

215be virtual with one workshop weekly for about four to six weeks once topics presenters and days are finalized information will be shared with the public the next slide and to wrap up i'd like to thank these folks and organizations that i've worked closely with to make this year's division family engagement support possible thus far family engagement looks like practicing communication that's responsive to families needs it's hosting collaborative activities with families in mind it's offering community resources and family support and all of these things benefit youth development creates systems of trust and provides new experiences and going forward my hope is that as a division we'll all continue to work together to do our part to maintain the family school and community partnerships that family engagement has modeled no matter how big or how small our

216role is it truly does take a village to support every learner every day everyone and thank you for your time thank you bianca beautiful presentation very much so thank you so much i mean what a wonderful way to truly um show how our community has come together thank you anybody have any questions for her before we move on all right thank you again very much thank you all right next item um 9.4 update on diversity equity and inclusion initiatives please thank you madam chair i would also want to say thanks to steph tatl great presentation really enjoyed that um and now we have our um diversity equity and inclusion uh coordinator denise johnson she has been working in the community in our schools she has done an amazing job pulling together efforts around equity and

217keeping equity at the forefront of our decision making so denise thank you dr atkins good evening madam chair school board and dr atkins thanks so much for having me this evening i want to take a moment to thank you for your ongoing support and affirmation of our equity work as a school system and as a community we all have a role to play in moving equity forward thank you for your ongoing commitment to our staff and our students next slide peace please note that this presentation does not include all the equity work that is currently happening on a school-based or content-based level this is a quick update as a division we are all working to use equity as the foundation of our work so other staff may present at a different time to go into

218detail about specific areas but it is all interconnected before i update you on our current equity work beth will take a moment to update you on past work thank you denise i i just want to bring some history to our conversation today and i'm not going to go into detail because i know that you all have actually been part of this process to make these changes possible i'm not going to read the slides and i don't offer them in a congratulatory spirit although there are points to celebrate i present these slides because it's important for us to document what has been in place in part because change does not typically bear immediate fruit new initiatives may take a while to have impact in that sense i think documenting our history is important to understanding our

219present and our next steps if you would like to see details about these or any other initiatives i encourage you to visit charlottesvilleschools.org equity it's pretty built out for previous years and denise and i have been working on building it out for this coming year thanks beth all of these historic slides are available on the presentation so you're welcome to deep dive into them as you see fit next slide please leslie since adding community partnerships to my duties i have worked with several of our community partners to push for initiatives that will support our students and staff among these are the creation of the support cevil education equity website freedom school and our upcoming mentoring program in partnership with uva as a division we have also continued our equity centered learning opportunities we have hosted

220a series of lunch and learns next slide please we have hosted a series of lunch and learns on topics such as asset based thinking mapping ceville and lgbtq basics all of our topics were aligned with our four key focus areas and i want to say a huge thank you to all of our presenters for sharing some amazing information with our staff next slide all of our equity councils are currently working within their schools this year's focus is on our foundational knowledge and everyone's understanding of their role in our journey towards equity while deep diving into an equity topic of their school's choosing next slide please our division level equity committee will be focused on creating our inclusive excellence framework and data dashboard these tools will map out our equity goals and create an infrastructure for

221equity into the upcoming years our work will continue throughout the semester we have identified candidates for our new engagement support assistant positions we will soon be rolling out our adopted chs senior initiative and our hr and pe departments have received training or supporting our lgbtq plus community we will have ongoing learning opportunities for staff and community conversations where we will continue to learn and receive feedback i will also be working with our professional learning coordinator to create our anti-bias professional learning and training calendar in addition we will have community workshops in partnership with our ptos we will also be hosting a series of internal conversations in conjunction with uva speaker series which includes dr kindy who is a renowned author of how to be an anti-racist and stand as you know our equity work is

222a continued journey these challenging times have shown even more clearly how important this work is both as we respond to the immediate needs and as we proactively work to ensure that every learner has the support they need to develop their full academic and social potential everyone's input is important as we move forward we must continue to support the we must continue to support and be the village of support for our students please continue to participate and find and communicate all of your ideas it's so important you can find my contact information and all updates on the charlottesville city schools website under our equity tab thank you again for your time this evening ms johnson thank you yes ma'am thank you miss johnson um board any quick questions or comments i have a question mrs regarding

223the engagement support assistants tell me more about those did we where are those tell me more about those dragons did you want me to answer did you want to take that oh miss johnson please do you are beth chop thank you okay we uh wanted to have a extra system of support uh for our students that were may need some extra attention or support during virtual learning and being engaged in virtual learning so we thought it would be helpful to hire some assistants to actively engage our disengaged students and so chs has made an offer to hire two engagement support assistants beaufort will have two and walker will currently have one although they're making an effort to have another and so ideally every school will use their engagement support assistance in their own way to

224benefit their school but the foundation is to actively engage our disengaged students and each one of those schools they identify specific students that could best benefit from the engagement so we're looking forward to and some of it has already started looking forward to doing more of that individualized engagement and that seems extremely relevant to the conversation we just had so i'm i'm kind of surprised to be learning about this at this moment i'm glad to hear it i think obviously elementary schools need it as well is how where did this funding come from how are we what method how was this decided on this where it would be in all of this stuff well we know our high school middle school and upper elementary school have students who struggle with engagement um and they struggle

225not that our elementary students do not but because of the age level of walker buffett and the high school students they are much more independent and make decisions independent sometimes of their parents so we know that it's important that we connect them to um community members mentors and people that can encourage them to continue to stay engaged with learning to stay engaged with the virtual process and to actually achieve at the levels that we know that they can so we've used some intervention dollars to help some cares dollars to help us put these positions in place and to respond to the needs of the students denise did you need to add anything to them no they are active participants in our family engagement teams and so they'll be working as a unit with the engagement

226teams at every school will they be doing any delivery of instruction were they just like or will they i mean i know a lot of i mean i'm sure they're not but like will they sit with a child and say like what do you need i mean i don't again i think this would have been very helpful in the previous discussion so i'm this is why i'm like i have some questions yeah the goal is to reach out and connect with every student individually and see what the barrier is and so for some they may need internet internet access and so we're working to get that provided for some they need more they may need more structured space and so we'll work to create that um so we're working with the individual students to figure

227out what the barrier may be and then the engagement support assistant will be the lead liaison for part of that communication and help the school team provide what they need some of our students may just need someone to listen and to talk and to share what's happening with them to share their feelings uh to be encouraged to follow through on on school assignments um to actually help them with the communication between the student and the teacher so it really comes down to the individual student and what they need and thank you for pointing out dr atkins because the core of their work will be to build a relationship and we know that we need their relationship in order to re-engage them in learning the students who are working with this team may also receive [Music]

228a tutorial services intervention services they can take advantage of any of the other services that we have available in our school division and are these positions i mean long term or just for this this year just to meet the need that we have currently and then we will assess and determine what we do ongoing but they will put in place to respond to the needs that we have currently i'm wondering if the the series of talks um at uva is that something that could be made available to any board members who would like to participate because some of us could benefit from that absolutely i believe uva speaking series will be public um but anything that they do i'll make sure you get the information for thank you so much any other questions board members

229thank you miss johnson appreciate you you miss johnson thank you bad miss chuck thank you all right next item if we may move on is 9.5 and i believe that is the 2021-2022 budget development update um miss kim powell thank you yes good evening um madam chair and members of the board and dr atkins i hope you can hear me okay my microphone has had some problems in meetings around me today um this is a brief update because the only new information since our work session uh in december was the uh release of the governor's budget and our analysis of that and this factor you can advance to the next slide and there are really only two items of significant note um in our analysis of the governor's proposed budget one is his proposal does

230include funding to go towards a two percent bonus for soq funded instructional positions and support personnel that would be effective uh funding that would be uh in effect on july 1st however um the key terms here are the soq funded positions in every school district in the commonwealth those will be goes beyond the sop as far as staffing their um their schools and certainly charlottesville is one small exception to that um there are other factors that also make this amount of money that's actually associated with this bonus not um not that large it's uh about 110 000 which doesn't really cover the cost of the 2 bonus but it is something and that it could become instead of a bonus there was some talk at some point about it being funding for a bonus or

231a raise where they would make it specifically for raise but um you know the process in which we will determine ultimately what's attached to that funding the bigger and most significant piece of the governor's budget proposal is the no loss funding which is also known as total harmless funding and this is to hold all the visions in the commonwealth harmless from the enrollment laws which would have a significant impact on our state revenue but because and as well as for all of the um school districts in the commonwealth so um that is the really significant thing that we all need to look for that to stay in there as the budget works its way through the house and senate because that is that's very important for us at this time our state funding will be

232essentially level for next year thanks to that no loss provision staying in there so the stack you're gonna get next slide get the last slide please thank you so um this is just a quick reminder about the key uh dates we have ahead of us not this saturday but the following saturday is our budget work session that saturday budget work session where we um start to provide more details about anticipated budget changes and so forth and then another significant date in january will be our joint work session with the sit with city council that's on january the 28th i won't read these other dates to you all but um you know we're in that time now this is the heavy lift in the budget process i'm happy to take questions renee who was on as

233well and she's happy either one of us is happy to entertain the questions if you haven't at this time thank you cam i appreciate it thank you any questions from board members i know we're going to be talking a lot about this in the next couple of weeks all right thank you ma'am appreciate it um and then our next item is 9.6 locally awarded verified credits review panel ms torres the state department of education gives school divisions and school boys the flexibility to offer locally verified credits for their students and it is it does require a review panel at our high schools so dr king will present to you tonight that review panel and um ask for you to take action on that to approve that panel thank you dr atkins um why miss thacker

234is preparing to share the slides um i as dr atkins said i'm presenting information on the locally awarded verified credit review panel appointments and just to give a little background before i share what the flexibility waiver provides one part of meeting graduation requirements is with verified credits and students earn a verified credit by successfully completing the requirements for a high school course and achieving a passing score on the sol which would be between 400 and 600 um yup that's perfect slide ms thacker thank you currently our students um have opportunities to earn verified credits in um starting in eighth grade if they're enrolled in algebra one or geometry because those are high school classes um if ninth grade math they didn't take it in eighth eighth grade um or seventh science as well as history

235and then 11th grade they have the opportunity to earn a verified credit with reading next slide please recently state board of education revised the emergency guidelines to remove barriers to earning a verified credit for students to who continue to be impacted by our ongoing pandemic conditions and that's for immediate implementation and as dr atkins as well as myself next slide has referred to um local verified credits and dr atkins referred to us already having local um awarded verified credits but the guideline that has been updated due to the pandemic we now have some flexibility guidelines so this chart shows you what the changes are between the two the current guideline for locally awarded verified credit has the students must pass the class must attempt an sol in one of the subjects reading math science or

236history and score a 375 to 399 there are caps on the number of locally awarded verified credits that a student can receive and there's also um they must demonstrate mastery of the curriculum and that would be determined by the local review panel with the flexibility guidelines um it still continues to have student must pass the class um they do have to attempt the sol but that attempt is in reading math and science but they do not have to make the um to attempt the sll in history um in steph taitl's presentation she's just very very quickly mentioned performance assessment task in history our students have already started taking those this school year so our high school students will not take the history sol due to other flexibilities that have occurred then also the range of

237scores that students can achieve instead of 375 it's now 350 to 399. there is there are no caps on the number of locally awarded verified credits the student can receive but they still have to demonstrate mastery which will be reviewed by the local review panel next slide please so we do have our school board policy ikfa on locally awarded verified credits has the school board appoint review panels of at least three educators those proposed list of appointments for buford charlottesville high school and lugo mcginnis academy has been presented to you i don't know miss thacker if you want to post that or share that display and what the just so that you know what the verification process includes for the panels they will review evidence when i say what does it mean to demonstrate mastery

238they're going to review the evidence of their students masteries by looking at their achievement of standards and confidence in and objectives but they're also going to determine the information to be considered as evidence it will it be results of classroom assignments or division-wide exams they're going to consider whether a locally awarded verified credit is given to all the students in a particular course or are they going to do it by student by student basis and how that will occur and then lastly ultimately what they're going to do is actually award the verified credit um deny it or provide additional opportunities for the student to earn the locally verified credit so at this time i will pause for questions and when we're done i would um ask that the board as dr atkins said um take

239action on this item any questions from board members i'm not seeing any thank you dr king thank you so we do need a motion please could you clarify what are we ask being asked to approve yes the appointments of um staff members at each school location who will participate in the verification process for students who meet the flexibility criteria that's been offered by the state due to the pandemic okay so i will move that we approve the appointment of of these um reviewers against this review panel the review can yes a second can we see the review panel again and can you explain why all of the guidance counselors are on there and not just like it's important because they award all of them i believe the students laughing they do that on their cases

240mr bryant they award their local verified credits for students on their caseloads okay so are they then only going to be on those that um are with their students correct okay so that's why they're okay and now over a second the motion any other questions okay but there's only one in i guess is the eighth grade i'm just trying to understand there's only one in is that just because he's the eighth grade counselor that's why and they only are the ones who get locally awarded verified credits because they only get it in math correct at the moment you don't have a whole lot of students other than ones taking math and it's not required for um beaufort has two for both to be on um the only requirements that you at least have three educators

241and each school did a educator from the different content areas thank you all any other questions so i believe i have a motion and a second if there's no further discussion if we could get a vote please madam clerk bryant yes is bryson morseberger yes dr craft yes miss mckeever yes miss puryear yes miss torres yes and mr waite yes thank you all right thank you very much dr king thank you dr king all right moving right along we're at um 10.0 which is board response to written reports um any any comments i'm drawing a blank on this one yeah no question no comments from me all right and we just keep on rolling is that correct no comments all right thank you um and now we are at um 11.0 which is our second

242opportunity for comments from members of the community um again i will have mr como notify us if if he sees um hands raised in the zoom or anybody signing up in the chat and a reminder that we ask that you limit your comments to three minutes please and identify yourself your address and name as you speak and madam chair we have um beth ike with her hand raised and at this time she's able to unmute and um uh present and speak thank you um i'm beth ike i live at 802 st claire avenue um i want to echo miss mckeever and miss bryson morseburger's comments earlier about our uh code return or return from covid plans and the stress of it all the stress on staff and the stress on families um we had a

243parent conversation last night and the sort of ping ponginess of every two weeks reconsidering a plan was certainly something that came up as frustrating and difficult to manage the expectations of our kids but also difficult on ourselves and i'm sure difficult on staff i guess i'm wondering why we are not doing nine at a time like we talked about it in the fall my understanding was in the beginning of the school year that we would look at each quarter individually that seems reasonable and i um i'm curious why we're not doing that i also don't understand why model a keeps um grades i still don't understand this this meeting i will say was easier to follow than the last one but i still don't understand why model a keeps grades three to six home miss

244period had suggested that there was a pedagogical reason for the dates that to me had seemed pretty arbitrary i'm wondering what the pedagogical reasons are for keeping three to six back um i applaud miss bryce and morrisberger's ideas about getting the at-risk and maybe not just her but getting at-risk kids in and miss mckeever's creative thinking about how to handle the 9-12 kids and in general the idea that we might consider an alternative to model a as it was presented because as time moves on and different things make themselves known and goal post change i feel like we need to continue to have creative thinking um [Music] i would hope that the time that we now have that with the time we have that the administration would take the time to have some creative thinking

245and hopefully find a way to get grades three to six back to the school whenever we will return i can't imagine that it would be march 8th i think um the conversation we had earlier and what we know about rates and where we are and where an expected um height of things is going to come feels unlikely that we would go back before the spring um so i hope that you guys can just consider to think about how what return looks like and is it should it be the same thing that you thought it should be in january if it were not actually going back to april um lastly i wanted to say about vaccines i didn't hear anything and i haven't honestly researched this a lot about vaccines for children but while you guys

246were on the phone i did look it looks like moderna has only just started testing vaccines for 12 to 17 year olds and i know we're talking primarily about vaccine vaccinating staff but i didn't hear any conversation about vaccination for children and wondered if that was something the kovid committee had talked about at all and how that plays into safety of return um thank you guys so much for everything i really appreciate everyone's effort especially our new madam chair thank you for taking the job thank you miss ike um anybody else mr como um i don't see any hands at this time or any comments in the chat box normally would not make a response but i did just want to pass on regarding vaccinations for for children and maybe dr baptist has some information

247but everything i've read and heard is that nobody feels like those would be even ready to begin to roll out at the earliest it would be fall so i think there's just not enough data and research for kids at this point i've seen in the virginia numbers where um children 10 through 19 have been vaccinated but i don't know much of the research about it and i'm assuming they were mainly the 18 to 19 range all right anybody else there are no there no other hands up or any comments in the chat at this time madam chair okay thank you i think i'm going to close that and i'm going to move on to comments from the board and i am going to start with miss packer and apologize again that if there were comments

248that you meant to share earlier i kept looking at you and it just seemed like things kept rolling so if you would like to start or you can wait your choice but thank you for spending your time and being present with us thank you for having me today absolutely is there anything that you'd like to share any thoughts or questions not really i just did a lot of listening today but it was really helpful and i took some good notes well thank you again and we appreciate you all right um so we will move through um the rest of our board members so i'm looking at the screen and i am going to start with miss mckeever do you have anything else that you would like to share hey i was just um i think

249one of the primary things that we haven't really talked about is what isn't working in virtual um and um the miss johnson's presentation about the engagement assistants um just you know i i feel like we just don't have enough data to like really put the pieces of the puzzle together um but i heard from the public about like keeping um well like mr fierro has uh in the abundant life um center that they do they they they need like 24 adults in the week to keep the kids in the um in the center and engaged and you know we know where there are students who could really use some support um and i just wonder who were who were asking um who needs these supports so um i just i i'm always like concerned where

250this where information is coming and how it's flowing and whether we're getting if we're all siloed or whether we're like actually talking with one another i was it was great heartened to hear about the initiative coming out of family engagement and diversity inclusion um and i hope that that will continue um to happen i just hope that we're also talking to you know uh the nonprofit providers in our community our principals and our teachers and and families um i just i'm not on the ground personally at all of these places and uh it sounds like engagement is i'm really grateful for that um and would love to devote more resources to that um especially if it means supporting our families who are really struggling um also we talk a lot about what's not working in

251virtual and there's no specifics about what that is i know i've heard that many times from different teachers like what does that mean um i think it means predominantly social and emotional well-being for students um and i do think that probably means connection um and engagement with other students um but it's it's funny like uh i can hear you know my child's first first year in public school for my first grader and she she's like has no idea who's you know who these people are she knows um miss bryce and bryce and norris morrisberger's uh child because they're in the same class but that's about it right she and she's like they just wave to each other on the screen and they've never had any interaction socially and that's fine i mean for us for

252now but i know that that if there could be time to talk but i know we don't even have time to do both math and literacy in a day so i'm not sure what the answer is but um i definitely um i had one more note that i wanted to say um what yeah so i just i think mostly with the engagement assistance i'm a little a i think that's a really relevant data point for our return to learn um discussion and i think there's a lot of confusion about what is permitted and what is not permitted given our vote about what in per what does it what does it mean um we never really voted to let special ed children come back one to one um so does that mean that what does that

253mean and i think there's going to need to be some clarification is there going to be no like no i i don't know what it means and i don't even want to speculate my reading of it is that no more children will go back to school between now and march 8th and i just don't know that as a board um i just know that that does not serve all of our students and i would like to have a more individualized approach in this extraordinary time also would like to not have to be thinking so um so narrowly i would definitely like to have a little bit more broadly broader thinking about what's possible and what our students need um and i think it's really unfortunate that um we are at a point where we have

254a divided board rather than a board i think it's meaningful thank you thank you miss mckeever miss purrier congratulations to miss torres and mr bryant for your most recent election i would like to say thank you to ms mckeever for allowing me to serve as her vice chair over these past several months uh she and i uh have faced many challenges uh and as it relates to the board and i um appreciate her support and i appreciate the support of the other members of the board and of our ccs family i am looking forward to a lot of exciting things in 2021 and i am going to attempt to the best of my ability to remain positive and upbeat in order that i be objective and continue to do the work that i have been

255elected to do thank you miss purrier um let's see mr bryant um first of all i want to thank uh i would like to thank um uh mrs perry for her nomination for vice chair and for all of y'all who voted for me i do appreciate your vote and i do um i'm very honored uh to be serving as lisa as your vice chair so i'm looking forward to spending many months with you on many issues and when i think about my journey um i started out in the charlottesville city schools as a substitute teacher and a homebound instructor before becoming a music teacher at a council educator so what a journey so i'm looking forward to the next chapter in my life um i um we had a great discussion tonight board members i

256don't particularly think we're a divided board we all have differences of opinions um as to how we are going to proceed in getting our children and staff members safely back into the buildings um i certainly would like to give a shout out to all about wonderful teachers and staff members administrators who have been working hard behind the scenes to eventually make this happen but we're in a pandemic and um things are going on all around us not only the pandemic but just the society as a whole this country is broken and there's so much going on in our communities um people are having a rough time so we as a school system hopefully we'll be able to get our children and nothing concerns me more i know a lot of our children are some are

257doing very well um i have nephews and nieces who are doing virtual learning one is doing very well other you have to give her a little nudge um but also we know there are other students who are struggling so that that worries me i you know i don't get a lot of sleep at night thinking about those children but i think through it all we're going to get through this and um at the end of the day um we have to think about the safety of our staff members and our teachers and um i'm looking forward to the day that all of our students be walking the halls back in these buildings um so yes we're going to have robust discussions but that's good you know that's that's very good for the board to um

258to be on one end of the spectrum in the other the community engagement folks you all have done a marvelous job of connecting with our community i like the fact of the engagement assistants that are targeting those students who need that extra push and that one-on-one um so thank you all for doing a great job um as well as our equity committee initiatives so having said all of that um i think um we're moving forward in the right direction it's going to take time and patience thank you mr brandt mr wade uh thank you madam chair and um congratulations to you and brother um bryant um i i i just wanted to quickly respond to jennifer's comments that the board is divided um and i think it's okay to um be a boy to disagree

259um but i just just for clarification that she said that we wanted to start the students back sooner and she had proposed the 15th and we're march and we're going on the eighth so i'm not understanding her her logic there but i mean um this is just a very difficult decision that we have to make and and we're dealing with a lot of information and i think that we made the best decision um with what we have and we always have the ability to go back in and change and and i hope that the numbers work out and we are able to go to school and have the students back in school sooner than march the 8th thank you thank you mr wade miss bryson morrisberger uh yes thank you and congratulations um everyone on

260their new positions i just wanted to say that i think that right now that we really should be focusing on equity and it can look different students different models different ways and i know we can't solve everything but we have you know the the abundant life childcare center they're showing up every meeting saying that they have needs and that they need support so the people are coming to us telling us exactly what the needs are we need to support them right now even if we're not back in the buildings and also to echo what ms mckeever said you know until uh the meeting in november i believe i didn't think any students were in the building so there does seem to be some wiggle room about how we're allowing students back in the building and

261on on what basis so i i think that there's still room for discussion about um additional students who are in need of support who are comfortable and also um as as as long as the teachers are comfortable coming back into the buildings as well and um just to to echo or to go back to a past meeting i i want to emphasize that like students we want to protect our students and we want to keep faculty and staff safe and so anything we're suggesting i wouldn't want staff and faculty to be comfortable coming back into the buildings and a few meetings ago we were talking about like who wants to come back and we're weighing it with supply and demand and i don't think that we should look at it that way um if if

262teachers are willing to come back that's good but it supply and demand it i don't view them that way and so i really want to emphasize that anything that we're suggesting is if teachers are comfortable coming back and if they're able to actually do it and they don't have extenuating circumstances like pre-existing conditions or older relatives or you know just at-risk people they're taking care of and also the the date i believe that miss mckeever was saying march whatever date we pick we're still chasing a date that was my point is that let's just we we have more data that we can look at and instead of picking a date i prefer to pick metrics datas and vaccinations because it's this roller coaster is stressful on a lot of people and lastly um whatever we

263decide to do i hope that we're realistic in our expectations of what we can do during a pandemic i don't want any students to slip behind but it's a pandemic and there's going to be some slide and when kids were in the buildings we've had achievement gaps for decades so i just want to be realistic that we're it's not going to get close during the pandemic and so i just wanted to have realistic expectations for ourselves our students and our teachers um and i believe that's it thank you um thank you everybody for your comments and the discussion oh i'm sorry dr craft yeah thank you um i'll be really brief um i you know i think we're trying to do something that we have no template for this is a process and a situation

264that we have not been in before and you know i think we're all struggling to sort things out and uh you know try to weigh various factors you know we're not magicians or anything uh we're doing the best we can and we're you know putting our best opinions forward but it's really hard it's a very hard process as you know if you've stayed with us for these four hours of this meeting you'll you'll know that and you know i appreciate the robust discussion that our board has um and did have on this issue and and it will continue we also really value your feedback community teachers staff um you know so we it's important that we hear from you uh so that we're not just guessing and um feel free to contact us uh in

265between these meetings and just let us know your thoughts and your concerns and you know that's why we're here a couple of other things just um i am part of the vsba federal advocacy committee and that's the group that usually we go to washington and we lobby our congress people uh regarding our needs and of course we're not actually going to washington but we're still going to um be lobbying and meeting with our congress people uh in you know we have a we have a brand new representative um and so anyway just wanted to let you know that that process is happening and you know we're being given some excellent talking points and frameworks for you know to lobby for our needs um and so that's going on um and then i'm part of the

266mental wellness task force um that is actually meeting tomorrow morning and just want to say there's a lot of really good work going on in social emotional learning so there's a lot of efforts being made and you know i feel really good about that the needs are there the needs are really strong and especially strong this year but i think there's a strong group put in place to try to reach out to you know to address those kinds of needs um and um also i appreciate all the engagement work and the presentation all of that all of what's going on i think we need our engagement team more than ever this year and you've really come through so really appreciate that and finally i'd like to actually thank ms mckeever for two years as chair

267and for your service and now you get to sit back in that chair and relax a little bit more so anyway thank you so much for stepping up it's hard and welcome lisa and james to the leadership team and that's it thank you and i'm sorry i almost missed you um also i again yes want to express my gratitude to miss mckeever and miss purrier for the last couple of years uh your leadership of the board um i look forward to you know continuing our work um continuing these discussions as many of you have said you know that this isn't easy it's all really really challenging um i don't know that there's you know a right answer um and and we all are doing our best so i i appreciate the input of each and

268every board member um you know the uh expertise you know and and the voice voices of teachers and people in the buildings and staff thank you for all of the work you do and we do we appreciate hearing from you what's working and what you know what we can potentially tweak a little bit and how we can support you that that's really important going forward um to you know the families that that reach out to us um you know we hear you um i i often um feel like you know i should i should extend um some type of apology you know it's hard and and you know it but this is so much bigger than all of us and so all i can do is encourage us to to continue to support each other

269the best we can and to to do our part to continue to stay healthy and and wear your masks and and to not give in to this covid fatigue and it is it's tiring and this is a long haul and you know even with the vaccines um on the horizon you know we still have to continue to to do our parts because we are uh really nowhere near where we need to be as far as out of the woods yet so um i i think that's my biggest point that i'd like to leave with everybody dr atkins thank you and your team for all of the presentations and at this point i will move to our next point and that is superintendent comments dr atkins thank you mr torres i'd like to echo all of

270the thank yous and congratulations for the board members uh thank you miss pur year and miss mckeever thank you both of you for leading us for the past two years that has been wonderful and i think we've accomplished a lot congratulations to ms torres and mr bryant um taking those leadership roles and we look forward to all of the great work that we're going to do going forward and i agree tonight the discussion robust discussion there are no perfect answers there are no perfect models to put forward and we will keep tweaking our models and tweaking our pathway forward as we work our way through coding so um miss backer let's let's recognize some of our staff members so again this board member we'd like to recognize our virtual instruction pros our vip awards and

271we have two sets that we'd like to bring our december 7th award winners we have nicole armstrong who's the assistant principal at charlottesville high school lois burke student achievement data analyst at chs so we have two winners from chs this week we also have deborah johnson who's the instructional coach at johnson and lisa wallace who's a spanish teacher at walker congratulations to these four winners for december 7th they were nominated by their peers to be recognized as the vips the virtual instruction pros and for the week of december 14th we have winners also we'd like to recognize we have emily um a rico the librarian at walker lynn hermann reading specialist at greenbrier and brendan martin engineering teacher at beaufort and calder mcclellan the instructional coach at venable and our very own leslie backer who's

272the executive assistant to the superintendent so congratulations to all of the award winners it really is nice to receive an award when you have been nominated by your peers so thank you to all of our teachers and thank you to the recipients um we honor you tonight for all of the work that you have done um and that was all my comments miss torres oh one other a comment with our covet 19 vaccinations we are working with the health department to support their efforts um they have indicated that they need volunteers they of course need the medical personnel the nurses to be trained to give the vaccinations but they also are in need of non-medical personnel to support the whole process of getting um individuals through to get the shot so here is a link

273to the vdh medical reserve corps and you can go on that site and sign up to be a volunteer and we would encourage anyone who might be interested to do that and that will help us to be able to support the blue ridge health department's work in giving the vaccination again thank you for all of your work and we look forward to taking what has been discussed here and voted on at the board meeting back in with staff and start working on our pathway forward thank you mrs thank you dr atkins um dr king do we have anything for our work session wrap up yes madam chair there are two items schedule meeting with dr atkins and at least two school board members to revise um draft of policy knaj and provide pals fall 2020

274data by race thank you um [Music] quickly just a review of upcoming meetings uh we do have a budget work session saturday january 16th uh via zoom we have a joint budget work session with city council january 28th that is also scheduled via zoom and then our next regularly scheduled board meeting is thursday february 4th at 5 00 pm um via zoom do we have times for the the budget works that's at 8 a.m or 8 30 a.m that correct it's at 8 30 i'm sorry i thought that was longer that's okay and then i believe our joint budget work session with city council is an evening meeting at 5pm on the 28th okay great thank you and i think we got through everything so unless there are any objections i like to say we

275are adjourned for this meeting sound good thank you great job thank you everybody thank you