School Board Meeting - January 14, 2025

001e for e okay good evening oh wow this works it was not nearly that loud at the work session look how quiet everybody got though that was good good evening I'd like to welcome you to our Tuesday November I'm sorry January the 14th 2025 Hanover County School Board and I would uh entertain a motion to return from closed session do I have a motion you have a motion to return to session thank you Mr uh Cipher is there a second second second from Mr Coleman is there any discussion all those in favor say I all opposed motion carries and I need a motion to certify closed session coach Ike did you find it it in my binder right hold on let me find it then if it's in my binder here you go look at

002this it's on pretty Yellow Pages but that's we change location see thank you Mr chair I'd like to certify the session whereas Hanover County school board has convened closed meeting on this date pursuant to an affirmative recorded vote and in accordance with the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act and whereas section 2.237837 each member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully Exempted from open meeting requirements by Virginia law were discussed in the executive meeting to which this certification applies and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the executive meeting were heard discussed or considered thank you we have a motion is there a second second a motion in a second Mr Coleman is there any discussion all those in favor say I I all opposed motion carries it's been a

003pretty tough week for us uh in Hanover County Public Schools uh especially I know everybody enjoyed having the extra week off but uh we lost a uh a student um this past week due to health issues and so I'm going to ask everybody to please join me in a moment of silence for the recent passing of Rowan Hayden Rowan was a Hanover High School student who also attended the advanced College Academy at Patrick Henry High School our our thoughts are with the Hayden family their friends and their school Community please join me in a moment of silence thank you tonight uh first of all welcome back to the uh Hanover County Schoolboard office uh nice to see everybody back here as I'm sure everybody remembers we are U renovating in the building out at the

004uh Courthouse the public admin building um and in fact the Board of Supervisors will meet here tomorrow night uh tomorrow afternoon actually so they'll be in here tomorrow afternoon too so with that uh we would ask that you join us in our invocation and then our Pledge of Allegiance our Pledge of Allegiance this um evening is going to be led by Ben Boston a junior at Atley High School who's a member of the volleyball team and is being recognized tonight who has the invocation oh go merciful and gracious God thank you for your presence in this building tonight I come to you to heal the hearts within our school Community from recent tragedies I pray for comfort peace and strength to those seeking your compassion I pray for students that they know peace I pray

005for teachers that they possess wisdom I pray for parents parents that they show understanding and continue to be actively involved helping their children in our schools I pray for our administrative staff and those in leadership positions that they exhibit patience and understanding and I pray for this board that they lead by keeping the main thing the main thing which are our students Lord God in heaven let us be faithful stewards to educate the Next Generation and honor you through Unity using your teachings of mercy and humility I pray this in your name amen thank you coach uh Ben you want to come forward good that you brought a fan glove with you to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic which stands one nation under God indivisible liberty and justice

006for all thank you okay as we continue on with our meeting now I do just want to uh acknowledge one thing um I uh am a little bit uh laid up tonight I had knee surgery a week ago and I'm still recovering I had some problems from the last two days so I have a brakes locking me out so I'll be you'll see me sitting up here and I'll put my leg up to try to keep the swelling down so I apologize for that and you'll probably not see me put a coat on tonight so I ask that you indulge me in not putting a jacket on uh because of uh my knee surgery and with that um we would entertain a motion to approve our meeting minutes from our last meeting so moved coach

007Ike is there second Miss Welch is there any discussion all those in favor say I I all opposed motion carries and at this time it's time for the recognition and announcements Mr Whitley thank you Mr chairman members of the board Dr peniku it is always a pleasure to bring forth the great news of the school division their first recognition of the night goes to the vhsl class 4A State boys volleyball Champs from Atley High School this is the Raiders first boys volleyball state championship in school history congratulations Raider Nation at this time please join me in congratulating and welcoming coach Nicole yo and principal Dr John Wheeler who will recognize their players and coaches Mr chair members of the board Dr peniku and Senior staff and we certainly would like to take this time to

008thank you for recognizing the outstanding student athletes and coaches of the Atley High School boys volleyball team the 2024 season was one for the atle High School record books for the team that we are about to recognize as you all know building a state championship culture takes many years in this particular case our boys volleyball team had an extremely solid run the previous school year advancing all the way to the state championship finals for the first time in school history where they lost to County rival Patrick Henry High School using last year's loss in the finals as motivation the boys and our first year head coach Nicole yo had one and only mission to Dethrone the Patriots of Patrick Henry and bring their first state championship to Raider Nation sorry Mr cyer on Saturday November

00923rd their mission was accomplished as they defeated a very talented team from that School located down Route 301 in Handover in straight sets to win their very first state championship they finished the 2024 season with a record of 20 and five five players were selected to the All Region team and two players were selected to the All State team at this time if the following team members would make their way forward and join us on stage number one senior Cooper Conrad number two sophomore Parker Powell number three Junior Aiden Allison number four sophomore Chase eckel number five sophomore Alex apostoles number six sophomore Bryce Whitlock number seven senior Bryce Bedford number eight Junior Grant Wolford number nine senior Von Mayo number 10 senior Bryce sker number 11 Junior Ben Boston number 12 Junior Anthony low

010number 13 senior Drew Oro number 14 freshman Reed Hilton number 15 senior Sam Cook and number 17 Junior Bon Soo at this time I would like to introduce our first year head coach with Nicole yo also a special education teacher at Atley High School assistant coaches Jonathan Frank and Margaret an chess spenter and our outstanding athletic director Michael kit who's in audience one right responsibility there you're on a roll Mr Whitley keep it going right okay our next recognition of the evening highlights the 30th anniversary of Han County a or agriculture day at this time please join me in welcoming our curriculum specialist for science Mr Wayne Gilcrest who will recognize those who have been vital to ensuring the lasting success of this important annual event Mr yest chairman May school board members Dr peniku

011senior staff this is one of the highlights of my year for decades we have offered a day to every third grader in the county we have exposed them to all of the different things that go into to uh Virginia's largest Private Industry it started with individual schools it outgrew Poor Farm Park and is now at the State Fairgrounds at the colonial Farm Credit Pavilion this year was our 30th event and almost, 1300 students and 150 teachers and parents rotated through stations looking at livestock crops bees soil machinery and aquaculture none of this would be POS possible without the initial Vis vision of retired principal Billy Young and the continued support of colonial farm credits Megan Arington and cab hardwood for the Stellar event it enriches our young people and helps them to understand where all

012of the stuff that we use comes from thank you all right we go big smil congratulations thank you thank you uh Mr Whitley I think you're done making sure um the announcements of our public but president budget presentations time and dates Terry are you prepared for that or are you looking for me to do that I would if I had it in front of me but I don't it's next Tuesday right I got it it's uh the 21st we are doing our budget presentation um the Schoolboard meeting budget presentation will be here at 6 PM next Tuesday night the 21st January 21st 6 PM um superintendent will present the budget to us for our consideration uh 6 PM next um Tuesday night the 21st I'm dragging this out as people are leaving and then um

013we'll go ahead and start now go around with board member announcements any uh any announcements on this side of the room Mr Hut Mr Martin I have a couple um first um I have a third grader who got to go to AG day and she loved it so thank you uh couldn't couldn't stop talking about it um and while Mr kid is still here and Dr Wheeler I wanted to give a Han County shout out out to former atlet Raider Tyler Warren who is a standout for Penn State and was um most outstanding player in the Fiesta Bowl be a first round draft pick no doubt in the spring uh I don't remember the last Hanover athlete that's made that big of an impact on the national level so I thought that was pretty cool

014and wanted to recognize him um as a former Raider myself um the other just Public Service sort of announcement um our one of the great things that this this County offers to underprivileged um and and financially challenge folks is the opportunity to get free and reduced meals um I think a lot of our people in the county don't know that that's out there um there's a lot of people that probably would be eligible if they apply so for those that are watching at home um that period is open Miss Baker till when we are sending out a communication to All Families but you can apply anytime during the year okay thank you very much I just wanted to put that out there because I don't think a lot of people realize that there's there's that

015opportunity that's all I got thank you thank you anything else anybody on this side this side um I just have a couple of comments to uh mention tonight um principal appreciation week and we appreciate all our principles uh especially you Dr Wheeler because I think you're the only one I see in the room so we really appreciate you tonight um but uh the governor's proclaimed this week as Virginia School principles appreciation week and so we are blessed with such talented principles who are truly dedicated to the betterment of our students staff and the school community and uh I would also be remiss if I didn't mention that the Handover Education Foundation held their Gayla on uh December the 12th and it was a fabulous event a very in a great evening we all had a

016wonderful time and we appreciate all that they've done um I want to take this opportunity to remind our families that it is not too late to complete the free or reduced meal application doing so is simple at the school division outlined is the what are you doing that what I don't think he was listening you what oh sorry about that hey there's power strengthen numbers go ahead finish I have my list of things that I brilliant and I just wasn't paying attention when you spoke Ryan I'm sorry and the finally the uh superintendent search meetings we had our uh first meeting was uh Monday night with the community uh pretty well attended lots of good conversation uh we're having another meeting this coming Thursday at 7 pm at Mechanicsville high school with our hya uh

017Community hya team that is um leading our search our executive search for our next superintendent and then we have two Zoom meetings which is January 22nd and January 23rd 7 pm. so lots of opportunities for the community to be involved we're really happy with the uh input so far from those that have been asked to participate uh we feel like we're getting a really nice uh input from our staff uh and the teachers and the administration so uh really happy with the participation so far so with that uh I will close board member announcements let somebody else oh goe now has one yeah since this is our first meeting after the holiday season and the extended holiday season and who knows it might be another extended holiday season down the road with more winter uh

018coming but uh We've not met since um I just wanted to it kind of struck a chord with Dr Wheeler being here and unfortunately being the only principal here but I I wanted to congratulate the principles and I guess point of contacts in each of the schools that we kind of found out last year about that some families uh have shortages during the holiday season with foods and gifts and uh I know that the schools um really do partner amongst themselves to find out where the needy families are and and at times they reach out to this board and this board covers it uh with without a blink but you guys do all the hard work and I want to commend you for that and and thank you for that and um I I wish

019Tyler Warren all the best in the world I watched him perform all year but I want to say it and I don't want to jinx him or anything but the last time that somebody that celebrated went to the NFL um was Damen Woody and he's got two Super Bowl rings so um you maybe he's on his way to doing that which would be kind of neat so yeah okay thank you uh it was it is need to get to do that in the holiday period to be able to have our board um support the schools in that way and Ensure that students that are in need of of meals are able to get a nice holiday meal out of it we appreciate that okay I'll close board member announcements and would now entertain a motion

020to approve our consent agenda so moved coach Ike is there a second Miss Welsh any discussion all those in favor say I I all opposed the motion carries and now that we've approved the consent agenda I can publicly do this recognition which we're very happy to do um tonight your board met with our newest uh employee starting well we voted her in tonight but she's gonna start with us in February um we're very honored to have with us Dr Melissa Reams who will be our new director of Elementary education so Dr Reams and she has with us her husband is with us tonight also Hugh Reams so Hugh we appreciate you being here also you're part of the family now so welcome Dr Melissa Reams comes with a doctorate from William and Mary and she

021has been a principal in Guin for many years and we are very honored to have her and look forward to her joining our staff um as soon as she possibly can start coming this way instead of going west so with that being said uh thank you and welcome Dr reams and with that we'll get to our instructional highlight now and uh Dr Sher Beth fiser will do our quarterly academic report thank you good evening Mr chairman members of the board Dr pennycuff and Senior staff during the December Schoolboard work session we provided an extensive update to inform you of our implementation of the division literacy plan including professional learning and resources for teachers the instructional block and practice teachers use of adopted hmh resources and student performance I'm joining you this evening to share the

022impact of our current elementary literacy practices Based on data collected during the first semester of this year of course all of our work is Guided by the Virginia literacy act and is tied to Hanover's comprehensive plan with highquality literacy instruction being a significant component of goal one objective one now before diving into Elementary literacy data I wanted to take a brief opportunity to share Handover students overall performance across each content area based on last Spring's s so tests while we are pleased that our students have achieved at the highest levels across the Metro Richmond area we continue to aim for 100% of students meeting expectations our intentional work in the area of literacy particularly in our elementary schools will lead to even higher levels of student achievement so as you know there have been many

023substantial changes in literacy over the past few years from new standards and curriculum resources to new assessments and interventions our teachers deserve praise and celebration their willingness to respond to educ educational research and deliver the highest quality instruction is the primary reason that I am able to stand before you this evening and celebrate student growth they've made incredible strides and you will see in this data that our students are reaping the benefits our kindergarten through third graders are participating in the Virginia language and literacy screening system assessments this year the purpose of vowels is twofold first scores can be used to identify students at risk for reading difficulties Additionally the screener measures both foundational literacy skills and oral language development which are predictive of later literacy achievement this information allows our teachers to design instruction

024that Target student needs after students complete each subtest the screening system categorizes them into one of three risk bands students who are identified as high-risk receive an individualized reading plan results on the screen reflect our initial fall assessments students are currently in the process of taking the midyear assessments we are proud that in each grade level our highest percentages of students are at low risk for developing reading difficulties first grade results were especially exciting because they were a direct reflection of the impact That explicit systematic phonics instruction had on these developing readers during their kindergarten year last year according to the vow screener 81% of our K of K3 students in Hanover are demonstrating appropriate foundational literacy skills which is certainly a celebration while we anticipate the vows test being available to our upper elementary

025students in the future it currently only goes to third grade so we continued the battery of Assessments we adopted last year with our fourth and fifth graders the first assessment in the battery the informal decoding inventory story requires students to read both real decodable words and nonsense words that follow typical decodable spelling patterns nonsense words allow us to assess whether a student has mastered phonic skills and can decode automatically without drawing on their memory here you can see how our current fourth graders are firming up their phonic skills to read complex words you can see significant growth from August to December in reading words with all aable patterns students Mastery of reading real open syllable words increased from 64% to 75% while their ability to read the pattern and nonsense words Grew From 58% to

02676% fifth graders are demonstrating similar growth just at higher rates due to their additional year of schooling you will notice the greatest instructional focus and impact here was on Words With open syllable patterns as students increased their Mastery from 76 6% to 85% for real words and 66% to 84% for nonsense words their Mastery of these skills is especially critical as these were the students who were kindergarteners at the start of the pandemic and of course they'll be transitioning to middle school next fall the second test in the battery of Assessments is called an oral reading fluency assessment this requires the student to read a grade level passage accurately at a reasonable rate and with comprehension in this table you can see students progress from Spring of third grade to de December of fourth grade

027Research indicates that we should see an improvement first in students accuracy followed by an increased reading rate and eventually comprehension gains this is precisely what we see in our fourth grade data which is particularly impressive because the grade level text becomes comp more complex each quarter the expected words correct per minute and comprehension expectations also rise each quarter again our fifth graders are Al also completed this test and are showing a similar progression with only 51% of them reading within the expected range of words correct per minute in the spring of fourth grade to now 78% of them falling within that expected range our third test within the battery of assess assessments is new this year the hmh inter reading materials we adopted include a spelling inventory that is administered like a spelling test that

028you and I may have taken in school similar to the decoding inventory this is scored based on Mastery of word patterns while our fourth graders have certainly gained skills from August to December with their highest growth in spelling INF flectional endings spelling is an area of focus for us as we move into second semester you will notice that fifth graders are expected to master even more spelling patterns including Advanced prefixes suffixes and Greek and Latin roots spelling will be an area for of focus for them as well as as we move into second semester overall we are proud to share that all elementary students have made significant progress between August and December and we're confident we will continue to do so as we become increasing familiar with our new standards and resources as you can

029see here our teachers consistently find engaging ways to use these resources and our students of course soak up all of the opportunities our teachers dedication and our Student Success is certainly worthy of Celebration and I thank you for allowing me to provide updates to the board and the community at large thank you so so Dr Fischer I just have to ask um were you chosen to present this month because we knew Dr Reams was gonna be announced tonight and so she could see what she was coming into so just no but I'm very excited to partner with her in this work oh good all right any comments from the board any questions go ahead Miss Welsh thank you so much for sharing that and congratulations on the the success to you and your team and

030to all the parents out there like this is a huge win uh for your children so um pay attention to it yes and a huge shout out again to the teachers who are doing the hard work in the trenches it's a lot of new for them and they are really embracing it and and doing what's best for kids and we can see it in the data so it's exciting and it has been a uh these teachers have worked so hard to learn this yes and it's taken a lot of time outside of the classroom on them and so I do appreciate them 100% And it's working so thank yeah yes any other questions comments what do you do you attribute it to uh our new program the hmh and is it is it consolidation of

031everything what do you what do you think absolutely I mean I think that we've been making some deliberate efforts over the past three years and they're all kind of coming together and leading to this like larger impact now but absolutely I think hmh is streamlining things and helping people know exactly what the expectations are and then they can follow that with Integrity so excellent yes thank you Dr thank you all so much thank you all right and with that we'll move into introduction and discussion and let's start with Athletics miss gri all right chairman May board members Dr penf earlier today you received a report from staff on the health science Specialty Center and what options might be available related to enrollment and Athletics um to summarize for those in attendance here and those listening

032at home uh we shared with the board what some of our recent data shows about the population of athletes at Handover high and so this data table provides a breakdown for all of our athletes into three buckets the first bucket is um students who would have attended oakn who now attend Hanover High School um and are not part of the Hanover um Health Sciences Specialty Center the second bucket are students who are a part of the Handover science Specialty Center um but would have already attended Handover High School to begin with and then the third bucket are students who attended one of our other three middle schools or came from outside of our middle schools and are part of the Health Science Specialty Center and so you can see that the percentages have remained fairly

033steady for the course of the three years and so that's just a table of the athletes who attend um Hanover High School we conversed and checked in with both the vdoe and the Virginia High School league to determine what the possibilities might be both of those agencies organizations um give a lot of latitude to school boards to make the best decision for their communities for the vdoe it's just about the school board having a policy and practice in place and then we just make sure that we report out the data appropriately according to those decisions and with the Virginia High School league it's really pretty cut and dry uh a student may have athletic eligibility in the school where they will earn their diploma and so where they start as ninth graders how they are

034enrolled and tracked in our system system is the way that it will be reported back out and you gain your eligibility status in that way so staff really looked at three different options and went through these options with the school board uh this afternoon when you look at the table the First Column is the one for current practice as most of our community knows students who apply to and are accepted and then accept the acceptance to attend the health science specialty Center immediately become Handover Hawks for all purposes academic purposes athletic purposes whatever that might be all of their classes are taken at Handover High the other two options that are being considered by the board option A would be almost a flip of that and students who are accepted into the health science Specialty

035Center would then still remain attached to their geographically zoned school and so they would attend classes at Handover high but all of their data all of their reporting and their diploma would all be tied to the high school where they would be geographically zoned option b is a little bit of a hybrid where the students themselves and their families have the opportunity one opportunity as they are rising nth graders to declare whether they would like to remain attached to their geographically zoned school or whether they would like to follow the current model and become attached to Hanover High School the rest of the information in the table goes through how vooe um takes care of reporting considerations and what our obligations as a division would be for example discipline attendance academics in our current practice

036everything belongs datawise to Hanover High School for those students in option A the data would revert back to the geographically zoned school so a student who is a health science Specialty Center student um but is zoned for Atley High School would attend all of the classes at Hanover high but any discipline any attendance any academic would revert back to Atley High School um class rank would be calculated in the cohort of Atley high school and the diploma would be issued by Atley High School in option b where we give the choice to the students as they are rising ninth graders um that data would then follow the student according to that student's choice so a student coming from Atley who says I want to just be enrolled as a Handover Hawk um everything datawise will

037stay at Hanover High School but that same student from Atley who might say I'd rather participate back at my geographically zoned and I want to remain attached to Atley all of that students data would revert back to Atley High School when we look at the athletic components of this we can see that the changes are very much in line with a very simple understanding of whoever owns the students enrollment for purposes of graduation and diploma is where that student is eligible to participate in athletics so in our current situation they are eligible to play at hanor high school from day one in option A students are eligible to participate at their geographically zoned school from day one and in the hybrid model option b it will depend upon the choice that the student makes and

038so that would be a consistent one-time decision not a back and forth opportunity or um revert back and forth so the one other piece that we wanted to bring to the attention of the board is transportation we acknowledge that right now we provide transportation to our health science Specialty Center from throughout the county and so we deliver our students there for the academic day and students who are participating in athletics or any other extra curricular activity continue to just stay through the day and transition into extracurricular activities in the afternoon excuse me in this case parents pick up from the end of practice or pick up from a game um at Handover High School in option A we do have to consider what the transportation might look like um from the end of the academic

039day into the transition to extracurriculars at the end our current situation has us on a hub system and you can see where the Hub schedule delivers Health Science specialty students back to their geographical location um and you can see that that varies widely with students getting back to Atley fairly early and getting back to Patrick Henry fairly late um during the work session earlier today the conversation came up around this as we understand that this is sort of the the equity piece of the conversation or the equality piece of the the conversation do all students have the same opportunity or is it dependent upon whether their parents can drive them and they don't have to wait and to get home at Patrick Henry until 4:50 and so we went back in the interim between the

040work session and here and we've charged staff with looking at whether there can be other Transportation configurations that might provide opportunities that are a little bit more even throughout the county so that it isn't about a ninth Rising nth grader making a choice based upon their parents ability to step in and help with that um and so we will bring that back to you next month um we already do have some ACA Transportation that's only in Every Other Day Option but because that's direct from school to school um it does tend to cut those times down a little bit so we will bring you some of those opt options and also bring you the cost associated with expanding that Transportation option in option b we see that some of the students would have no problem

041they would just continue on at Handover High um into the extracurricular time period after school whereas others would also be Reliant upon that Transportation um so I didn't ask for a bit of information as I just said related to the ACA currently the bus that runs every other day from Patrick Henry back to Hanover High School is a 405 arrival um and the Mechanicsville bus running back to Atley is a 415 arrival so there is some impact to our ACA students who rely on the transportation who are athletes and so I did ask the principls at Hanover High and atlete to just give me an estimate because I knew that they weren't sitting in front of their computers to look this up and they they both said 10 to 15 students of their ACA um

042are participating in athletics throughout the year and so that is the end of the report and we are happy to bring back any other information that you would like for next month any new questions that we want to ask or anything else from any board members Miss L you just jumping to do it no I just wanted to say I appreciate you bringing up the transportation thing because I don't want this to be a program that only the kids who have parents that are fortunate enough to be able to drive them can participate in fully so I'm glad you're going to do that I really appreciate that thank you miss Lynn anybody else question Miss Welch buses or is it is it one bus that's taking them to all three School three bus well for

043the ACA it's one bus in each Direction every other day currently our Hub locations it's not just a single bus from Handover to Patrick Henry depends on where the students live where the hubs are arranged each year that's something that Mr Frierson reroutes every single year depending upon the students that we serve thank you anybody else Mr cyer and I'll say it's not just uh you know giving the kids the opportunity who have the means to do it but it's also uh you know some kids don't want to leave their high school and their friends and that so if there's a way to allow them to stay at their high school and still benefit from this uh so I really appreciate you looking at the other options thank you thank you anybody else coach I

044I want to thank you for going back after the work session and and answering my question I greatly appreciate that that's appreciate that but um the other piece though of that 99.09% on the very first page is all of 2024 do you have any idea how many of them are Juniors and seniors that drive I don't right now I would have to I I don't know what their driving status will be I can tag which ones are Juniors and seniors but I I wouldn't be able to tell you I see the numbers have shrunk since uh 2223 I think it's more that the fall of 2024 is a different sport like a different arrangement of sports than what you might see in the winter or in the spring and so you just might have students

045with different interests playing in different sports in different seasons so in the fall it's very heavy on football right and so a good percentage of our fall athletes are football players and that just may change the percentages I'm just wondering then is the winter of the spring going to be the most needy for a transportation for the Hub right we definitely would see some EB and flow depending upon the sporting season I think that's going to be a little bit difficult to predict because as we know the students who are coming in as ninth graders haven't made any team yet back at their geog rical Zone school or at Handover high and so predicting out who might need it during what season um for the rising nth graders would be difficult well maybe uh looking

046back at the what they did in the past what was the school year 2223 for those seasons and also 23 24 those Seasons might give us a little bit better handle on what to expect and then might give us more data in order to make a decision next month okay yeah thank you Miss okay thank you anybody else alrighty thank you Miss gri excellent job as usual and with that we will now turn over to our school boundary adjustment update there she is I couldn't find you anywhere so you you are here bye Dr re we look forward to seeing you again uh hello uh thank you for having me uh chair May Vice chair ikenberry Dr pennycuff and board members uh my name is M larby I'm here with MGT impact Solutions um here

047to give an update on um the student forecasting and Boundary adjustment process uh here's a brief agenda of what we're going to cover tonight we'll look at the demographic and economic overview um we'll go into the forecasting methodology um we'll look at residence versus enrollment we'll look at capacity and utilization the actual um results of the student forecast The Guiding principles that are guiding the decision- making um for the boundary scenarios and then attendance areas and feeder patterns uh this is where we are in the process in the schedule uh we started back in August of 2024 um Gathering a lot of data it's a very uh data driven uh process we are currently in phase three which is developing the iterative scenarios um and we will be having um Community meetings at the end

048of this month that'll uh go through at the end of this presentation um we'll then refine those scenarios based on community feedback and then in March and April we'll be um rounding out for final boundary options uh just an overview of how um Handover County compares to the state and the nation um you are expected to grow by around 12% um that's much higher than the state and the nation averages um based on uh Census Data um your population growth by age structure shows that you're expected to increase by 6% in both elementary and middle and also in high school 6% each um the really interesting um piece about this age structure is that you can see that the grade the age groups of 55 to 65 are actually declining in the next 10 years

049and what that means is that you have a an older age structure in within the county of Hanover so as those uh families um leave in downsize those kids will be grading out of the system and so you're you're going to experience quite a quite a bit of resales um within um the county of hover uh your population by race and ethnicity is largely white non-hispanic um but it is expected to grow more diverse over the next 10 years your uh largest industry currently is in retail trade um however transportation and warehousing is um your highest your top growth industry so that's likely going to take over the the top spot in a few years uh the community at large um looking at the community as a whole um the median household income is about

050104k um you've got about 41,000 households and most of those are were built between 1970 and 1999 if we look at just parents or guardians of children in public school um we see that uh 83.3% of um those families uh live in owner occupied houses uh largely have uh bachelor's degrees are higher and are mostly in management in the labor force and the medium household household income is a bit higher at 136 um th000 uh this is an overview of um our methodology for forecasting um the three main factors um allow us to predict um student populations in the future our birth factors looking at birth rates within the county of Hanover allow us to predict the kindergarten classes 5 years later the mobility factors look at grade over grade growth or contraction and then

051the student yield factors are applied to uh future growth within the um within the county as far as housing developments um this is a bit of um we we start with the student data we have four years of student data it's verified um with the with the division um we place each student at their household um and then we also break the um County into 448 study areas these are smaller um data units that we can use to predict student growth or contraction at um here's an overview of where those students live um the the the hotter the the um more yellow um dots um represent um higher um density so you can see you've got some density in ashin in Mechanicsville and above uh right above Richmond these are your birth rates um and

052um birth factors for the next um foreseeable future so this is what we utilize to um understand what we can expect for kindergarten um two things that make you an outlier are that you have increasing birth rates which is um not happening in most of uh the rest of the United States at this point um you do have a little bit of fluctuation but the trend is going upward um so that's good news it means more students um and then you also have an extremely high capture rate meaning that you're capturing over 100% of the bursts that were um happened five years prior we don't see this we've only seen this in two other districts that I've worked with it's very rare it means that there's a lot of inward Mobility a lot of resales

053a lot of families moving in um this is also uh positive news um you've got positive Mobility factors um in your grade progression ratios meaning that your uh your grade progression so for Ashlin Elementary School from uh K to one your um your Mobility factor is 1.06 this means if you have 100 kindergarteners you can expect to have 106 first graders meaning that inward Mobility the green areas the green cells show inward Mobility the yellow outward mobility and 1.0 is neither in or out um you do see some outward mobility in the higher grade grades in the high school grade group um that is normal just due to um attrition and having more choice you also see a little bit um lower uh out or higher outward Mobility from fifth to six and that's normal

054with uh grade um transitions grade group transitions um we also looked at all of all of the development within Hover County um you have quite a few uh developments throughout the county um they're not extremely large they're they're smaller um developments um and so again that inward Mobility is being driven by um your resales however um we looked at your student yield factors so for single family detached they're in the table on the right um your um student yield factor is 0.512 meaning for every hundred units of single family detached homes you can expect to get around 51 students and grades k12 and these are all phased out I will say that a lot of the phasing happens in the first 5 years um there's a lot more um unknown in the 5 to 10

055year forecast um I'm going to speak briefly about the Elementary attendance areas and then talk about uh where students live and where they go to school um you have 14 elementary schools uh four middle schools and for high schools um at each of those schools we need um to understand and uh functional capacity um meaning how if a school feels overly full or underly full um we do that by looking at Staffing worksheets building plans and layouts um loading standards current enrollment um and this was uh Cooperative um back and forth with the division leadership um to uh to come at this uh functional capacity uh this is a really good tool that's used to understand where students live and where do they go to school um the darker boxes in the diagonal show that

056those students live and go they live in in the attendance area that they are assigned to um and so that that third column kind of shows this is how many students are living within that boundary um and as you go down the column say for Ashland you're looking at where students are being pulled from and transferring into um so if you look at the bottom row you're looking at what a principal would see in their um in their school so for Ashland Elementary School there's 611 students coming in from within the county 12 students come in from outside of the county and then there's also 46 uh PK that are um uh accounted for separately so principal would likely see around 669 students in that school but it shows you the the kind of transfer

057patterns um throughout the district and you have very low transfer patterns so most students are um living within and attending their assigned school this is a look at the utilization utilization piece um so we're looking at the number of students um within that school and the school functional school capacity so the the we have a residence column that looks at the number of if all the students that lived in that attendance area went to that school um for example School Cool Spring Elementary School would be at 100 and 10% of its capacity the enrollment column shows how many students are actually there um at least in um October of 2024 um so it is currently at 112% of capacity from an enrollment standpoint for K5 and then it shows a little bit of the in

058andout it also highlights um other areas that might be underutilized such as South Anna at 62% utilized um pole green is at 66 or 68% utilized um and then um so there are other pieces in here to look at other than being overly utilized um here's a look at that same piece from a middle school perspective um you can see that um very little movement between middle schools um a a lot low transfer rate um and you do see that chikamin middle school is at 95% of capacity and then if you look at at the residence piece you see that oakn middle school is at 63% of capacity this is a look at the high school um with that same uh attendance matri Matrix on the left um if you look at the right at

059the utilization you can see that atly high school is currently at 90% um of uh capacity and um Handover High School is at 66 if we're looking at uh residence-based so we put that all together um and run our resident student forecasts um and so what you can see here is some of the the dips in enrollment um or in Resident student population in the lighter um the lighter cells the darker the cell it just mean it's it's a larger cohort so you can expect um you've got also historic numbers there on the left um we expect the district to grow about by 850 students over the next 10 years 350 in growth in K5 350 in 68 and about 150 in 912 there's a bit of a dip that we are expecting in 912

060in the first half of the forecast and as those larger grade groups filter into high school we expect that to recover and go on an upward trajectory here's a look at so that was just the resident students when we add in the out of District students um we can look at the the total student ratios and we see that it's a same Trend so K5 is um set to increase by about 5% 6 through 8 by about 99.3% and 9 through 12 by about uh 2% for an overall growth of about 5.2% over the 10year forecast so we know that your district is growing your division is growing but we don't know exactly where so we look at where it is growing and there is uneven growth throughout the county um the darker these are

061study areas as I mentioned earlier each study area has about 50 to 75 students in it um you can see in the dark purple that's growth um so that's this is a five-year outlook for K through 12 those dark purple mean growth either in Housing Development that we're expecting um or in resales the darker orange colors mean contraction so that's Aging in place um or low Mobility um with resales so we've got to look at where that growth is happening throughout the district both now and in the future um you don't want to make any decisions in boundary adjustments if you don't have an idea of what those adjustments might do might do in the future um so it's really important to look at um this graph has uh the larger blue background is the

062capacity of each of the schools the gray bars are the uh current student population the lighter pink bars are what that student student population is predicted to be in 2029 so the five-year Outlook and the darker pink is the what we expect the student population to look like in 2034 so the pieces that stand out first off are Cool Spring Elementary um there's an overutilization issue there now now that is only going to be more dramatic in the fiveyear it's it's set to drop a tiny bit in the 10year stabilize out but it's going to be um an issue in the future um and then there's other pieces here that are important where there's a lot of space between those pink bars and the top of the blue bar so you've got South Anna um

063that is uh appears to be underutilized as well as Pole Green um and then you have areas like rural point which doesn't appear to be an issue now however there is growth expected in that attendance area and so you have that growth um in the five and 10 year which would put it close to capacity the other thing that I want to point out here is that um Washington Henry is expected to increase its capacity so it is close to capacity um where we are now um and it but with the new capacity um that's set to open up in school year 2027 that is expected to have more space so that's expected to go go up to 495 um so we know where they look we know what the the schools look like on

064a graph but where are they on the map if the most over capacity was right next to the most underc capacity then that makes things a little bit more direct however um what what likely would need to happen is that um students would need to move need to be shifted in order to um even out that uh uh utilization so you have Cool Spring and the the dark the co the darker the color the higher the utilization the lighter the color the lower so you can see South Anna and uh Pole Green there in the lighter yellow um and then Cool Spring in the darker blue and that is the current the five and the tenure so it's important to look at this geographically and not just on a graph um this is the same

065aspect from the standpoint of middle and high school um here you can see that uh chikamin middle school and Atley High School are both um they're up there in Capac in utilization um what we don't see um in the in just looking at the current is that Atley High School is expected to be over capacity in the 5-year forecast and in the 10year forecast chick homon is expected to be close to capacity in uh the 10-year forecast um on the flip side of that you've got oakn middle school with a lot of space and you have Handover high school with a lot of space and this is another look at it from the geographic perspective so you see the darker colors um mean higher utilization lighter mean lower utilization and then this is a look

066at the um high school and so you have that really dark color in the fiveyear at Atley that's that goes into I think 102% utilized and then 103% utilized so um you have un uneven um growth within your District you know that you have an immediate need in an in a school that is overcapacity so um how do you make decisions about boundary modifications um well you use guiding principles so the executive team and you all have developed um guiding principles to help your decision-making um uh core values these are extremely hard this is not an easy process by any means um you've got to keep in in mind special populations keeping neighborhoods together minimizing impact your feeder patterns Transportation capacity and utilization there's a lot of pieces that go into um making these decisions

067and a lot of these are contradictory to one another so you might uh you might really want to keep neighborhood schools however you might have some natural boundaries or barriers um or um split feeder split feeder patterns so working with all of these um came up with these are the guiding principles for this process um to balance utilization not only now but also in the five and 10e forecasts to minimize the number of students impacted by boundary adjustments um to maintain those neighborhood schools consider Transportation impacts and also minimize disruption to and impacts to special programs or special populations some considerations that we wanted to look look at um uh more closely um geographically this is Cool Spring in the center in the pink um and then it's neighboring um elementary schools surrounding it um

068these are the attendance areas so you've got natural boundaries um up there to the north of Cool Spring you've got Transportation hurdles with dead ends and um the way that the neighborhoods are set up you've got to consider neighborhood cohesiveness throughout you've got Transportation times that you're keeping into um consideration and then you've got changes in future capacity um so all of these pieces um really um lead into making informed decisions under those guiding principles the other thing that I wanted to go over um really quickly in case um uh some W unaware um I'm sure there there are many that are aware but um your feeder system is is fairly clean comparatively speaking to um com compared to other districts um meaning that elementary schools for the most part feed in directly into middle

069schools and they feed directly into high schools your middle and your high schools all share the same um boundaries with one another so they are direct feeders however you have uh four splits from elementary into middle um they are the area here in Elmont this is uh in the purple is Elmont this area here um is Elmont and then the darker line shows your current uh middle school high school lines and so this area currently goes to Elmont with it with their cohort um for K through five and then these student the rest of Elmont goes to the north these students actually go to the South to chiam manyy uh Middle School and atly High School these students here in yellow these students are assigned to cury cre so they go to KY Creek with

070the rest of the yellow uh boundary here however um for high school and middle school this area here just this area here is assigned to Chickahominy middle school and Atley High School the rest of kiry Creek uh attends uh oakn and Hanover and then there is a small little cutout here in Pearson's Corner um it's a smaller neighborhood um these students go to Pearson's corner uh with their cohort K through 5 but then these students here attend uh Oak and Handover and the rest of uh Pearson's Corner goes to Chickahominy and um Atley High School there's one more split down here on Mechanicville it kind of splits right down the center so the northern portion goes to the North and the southern portion goes to the east um these are pretty populated areas here in

071the north and in the South so it would be hard to clean up um feeders or get keep cohorts together in that um situation so it's important to keep all these into consideration when you're when you're looking at elementary boundaries as well as Middle and High School boundaries um with that um I'm excited to announce that we will have uh three in-person Community engagement meetings Community forums at the end of this month um the first will be on Monday January 27th at 7M at Atley High School the second will be on Tuesday January 28th at Patrick Henry High School all at 700 p.m. and the last one is at Wednesday on Wednesday January 29th at 7.m at Mechanicsville High School um I also want um to let folks know that we will have a virtual

072opportunity that will give a presentation that gives more context to um the potential options um as well as an interactive map that folks will be able to um get a little bit more context with the options um as well as a survey that will be going out so um we we hope to see um many of the community members at the end of the month um gather their feedback and inform uh the decision-making going forward thank you very much it was a wonderful presentation uh we appreciate the opportunity to talk with you in the work session this afternoon also um are you are you satisfied with the information and input and everything that you're getting and you're being able to do um respon you're being responsive and being able to give us what we need

073out absolutely I will say that the committee has been phenomenal they've been really um uh hitting these scenarios hard they have been looking and doing their due diligence we look at a lot of scenarios that are kind of interim scenarios um they try a lot of different um configurations um and see what works and and more importantly what doesn't work I always say knowing what doesn't work is almost more important than knowing what's what works because somebody else is going to have that same concept it's important to know the why and so they've been doing a fantastic job um going through those scenarios and they've put a lot of work in so I want to um give huge shout outs to the executive team okay thank you any other questions from the board members thank

074you very much we appreciate it job alrighty with that we'll move right along to our quarterly dis discipline report Dr Malby good evening chairman may members of the board Dr Penny Guff and Senior South I am here today to review discipline data from the first nine weeks this is an abbreviated version of what was presented at last month's work session so getting into it first of all of course we base our work specifically this on the comprehensive plan looking at goal four which is identifying designing and implementing systems to support positive educational climate Community within that goal four uh is Implement and active approach to student behavior and school discipline diving specifically into the data from the first nine weeks we have broken this up into elementary middle and high so the next two slides

075are specific to Elementary the breakdown here the chart in front of you is first of all ISS incidents students receiving in school suspension the number of days based on those incidents and then the third column there is unique students involved just a little note you may see that there's more students than there are incidents that's because there are incidents that involve more than one kid so what you'll see sort of across the top there is students received from the first nine weeks in elementary school 25 days of ISS 58 days of OSS and then you can see the corresponding total excuse me incidents than the corresponding days and the unique students for each additionally we've compiled the list of the top five codes used during the F first nine weeks to disciplin students what you'll

076see there uh starting with the number one one code is Reckless Behavior was used 19 times and then from there you'll see minor physical altercations refusal comply fighting and use of force against staff I will continue to compile data during the second nine weeks third and fourth I will bring that to you as well and starting the at the end of the second nine weeks so I'll be returning to you very likely at the board s or the work session in February we'll be able to start comparing year-to-year data as well so looking at the middle school data again you'll see a 100 39 incidents for ISS which resulted in 208 days of ISS that was involving 143 students and then again you'll see OSS across the bottom what you'll start to see as we

077move into Middle School of course those number of days of ISS and oss the number of incidents increase I also just want to put a note out there as we start to see students getting older the days that students are suspended also increases so the behavior you might see getting a maybe a day or two of ISS at a lower level starts to increase over time also the introduction of long-term suspensions or alternative suspensions happen so if a student was suspended and upheld say for 45 days that cluster involving one student would all be accounted into this total so when we also look at Middle School discipline codes what you see is the number one code on here is violation of the Schoolboard communication policy specifically phones right following that refuser to comply I won't

078tell you there's a direct correlation I will however tell you that some of those are reflective of those students who for the first time was told I'm taking your phone and you can't have it back at the end of the day um so we'll see during that first nine weeks especially folks came at this hard right so our admin were taking those phones they were addressing the situation those Communications went home and as you can see here the number one code used by far was the cell phone code as we move forward again uh high school you'll see again I s incidents 214 resulted in 359 unique students 216 OSS again that 714 seems like a large number I will tell you that is a composite of several 45-day type suspensions where it takes only

079a few kids with longer term suspensions to equate to a larger number so that's what you're looking at there again if you look at the particular codes that are used number one by far is that cell phone code I mean it's not even close in both cases middle school and high school it's five times more than any other code what I very much hope you'll see and I've actually spoken to a couple principles about sort of anecdotally is that as we move through the year that should be less and less and less uh as students understand what the expectation is it's now very clear that you will be consequenc if you continue to do this uh and again you see reflected here that it was very much uh approached with a heavy hand during that

080first nine weeks what I really want to dig into a little bit is about so what are we doing to be preventative what are those proactive measures we're taking what are those things that you also supported moving into this year so we could get ahead of discipline and so just I'll read through the the list with you guys for a second the substance abuse issue continues to be a problem we now have four uh of our counselors one for each of our corridors and they are working consistently I I want to say there was a point last year where we maybe had to the first nine weeks had about 60 uh incidents where students were were uh working with one of our substit use counselors we are now at uh closer to 80 in that

081first nine weeks right so there's more total cases we have a new assistant principal at Georgetown which is is fabulous really allows that extra time to get in and work with kids establish programs uh the two new Elementary Behavior coaches have moved us much closer to a one-on-one in each school which really allows for the assistance of the school to work with kids to work with teachers to get those tier 2 supports in place btss or Virginia tier system of supports is now in every school every school has a coach every school has a team so that they can really dig into that individual school's data to figure out what they most need to help support the kids in that school again we've expanded our teams and just to note there we had division threat

082assessment training which we will do every year to work with any of our new faculty or any of our new folks that need training at the admin counselor psychologist or social worker level we've even invited anyone who wants to be an admin in the future to attend that um our state law says anyone who may be a part of that threat assessment team should be a part of this training we had that most recently and this is something that we redo every year for anyone uh that needs it with that being said I'd be happy to take any questions thank you Dr BBY any questions or comments Mr cyer I I don't think those numbers are that high for the phone violations when you consider you know how many kids and all of that but

083uh just wanted to make sure that that number isn't a distraction you know that it's not distracting from what's going on at the school you know being I mean it took effort no doubt when we roll out a new policy like that not only the communication but the implementation of not only uh delivering the expectations broadly not just to the school but to the school Community but also making sure that everyone in that school all the teachers all the faculty all the admin were on top of it so early on yeah you know it it was they had to come in heavy to make sure it was communicated what those expectations were and then folks got to see the accountability for when folks violated that I again I hope that that becomes less and less

084as it becomes more just a part of culture I mean if it stayed the same is it still a good policy and you support it or so it's still new right and and My Hope very much is it's less and that's what I'm hearing but we're still learning over time I would certainly hope that there less of a problem again as more and more kids realize that this is now an expectation for all of us regardless of age and then the second question uh opinion here but the new phone policy do you think it might help reduce other discipline problems um you know fewer fights uh fewer whatever because I hope so right so the the taking away of that communication device specifically that social media posting throughout the day the taking of the videos

085and being posting can I tell you I've seen it directly not yet though over the course of the Year again when we go back to look at data versus last year I certainly hope that's true thank you thank you any other questions coach yes I do go ahead um since like Dr Fischer gave us U information about language arts and reading and things like that and I believe in March uh Dr pennycuff we're going to have a little update on math and and when we do these academic things we look at uh past performances and we we rate those kind of things academically I'm just kind of curious we at the end of the year get a quarterly report or in end of the year report that breaks down school by school do you look

086at school by school as a result of that first quarter to see if we're having any trouble spots that shows that the schools that were a little bit more challenged last year in discipline and I know I do happen to know that answer are we still work are they working in that same direction or have they improved at this time of year from a year ago in the first quarter and again take away the Comm and take away the refusal to comply but like if you go to the middle school and you look at the last three are we about on par are with minor physical altercation a violation of acceptable use and profane language and gestures and things like that so I could take a look at last year's numbers and what I said

087is and even the previous years yeah yeah and so what I said is starting next nine weeks we'll be able to put them side by side so we'll have that direct comparison from memory I actually believe those numbers are a little bit lower as well so I think we're making some positive gains there because I know the individual principles do I just um you know from not having to go to all the different principles and ask I I curious to know how we set right now versus um 23 24 22 23 that kind of thing yeah and so I can tell you first quarter numbers sure what I can just say just as aside that we we review those numbers all year long uh Dr Penny Dr peniku Miss gri and I are actually meeting

088on a monthly basis to review those trouble spots specifically those individuals that are rising to a higher level to figure out how best support those kids in schools and those are the kids that are taking up the most time have the most discipline within those schools so yeah we're having not only conversations about schools but individual conversations with about kids about how best to support them okay thank you yes sir anybody else any other comments thanks Dr mby I would just like to say that I know that the principles do support still the phone policy and there's no doubt about that and we're going to get it it'll get implemented and working well and it'll probably take us a couple of weeks to get back into this semester but it's going to be okay thank

089you very much absolutely thank you yep okay next we have a couple of well thank you Mr Martin no I just appreciate you getting up and making an appearance everybody know you're here how many you taken alrighty proposed policy and regulation revisions Miss Han um thank you Mr chair so what you have before you um you'll see on the agenda that there are actually three items listed um you recall during work session uh the board's desire was to pull back the change to regulation 6- 5.2 C so that will be um not considered for first read this evening right U what you I'll make a comment about that when you finish the other two certainly um what you have left uh one is the result of kind of a wholesale change in the code of

090Virginia and the way that the code refers to tobacco products um so it's not really a change in the intent of the statutes um or even of our policy it's really just a change in language um so the code now uses retail tobacco products in place of tobacco products um they are using hemp product intended for smoking as opposed to nicotine vapor products that doesn't mean that we are no longer addressing nicotine vapor products those items are now included Within in the definition of retail tobacco products so it's a bit of an expansion and just a change of language uh you will also see policy 6- 3.14 substance abuse education um this has been a big push as I'm sure you all know for educating everyone on the dangers of fentanyl uh so it includes

091a provision uh that quite frankly the schools have known about and have already been in the process of putting in place uh the awareness information on fenel the other thing that this policy does to reflect a change in the code is it adds gambling um as a list of to the list of safety hazards so um not just other type of addictive items it also now includes gambling and again these are on for first read there's no action needed by the board this evening um I'm happy to answer any questions that you have so so before we ask you any questions I just like to comment about uh 6- 5.2 um after discussion during our work session today we the board have decided that we do really do not need to modify our policy but

092rather we need to put a priority on implementation of the policy in all our schools further we have we the board have asked Dr peniku um to take a look at the form uh that is currently used and to see if it needs to be revised in any manner sh shaper form and she's going to take that under her as that is an administrative form that was developed by staff so she'll take that under her guidance as our staff director so now with that we'll ask anybody have any other questions of Miss Han No gambling or fentol okay thank you Miss Han as usual did an excellent job thank you Mr chair and Miss Stone good evening Mr chairman uh school board and Dr peniku I have my backup now Mr Frierson it's all gonna

093be well now that's right her timing was off just a bit during the work session um so as we discussed briefly uh we did uh pilot a bus Quest application with the fifth grade at Pearson's Corner in the fall there was no cost associated with this because it's a feature with assoc it with their routing software so we're able to just kind of turn it on and start using it uh the pilot began in October parents received an introductory email and then uh if they also had an activation email where they could register the account as we talked about earlier today it does not track the bus for the entire route but you identify the particular bus stop for your student your child and then you can see when the bus is in close proximity

094um it doesn't work for a substitute because if they're driving a different bus it's not tracking uh that bus per se or for extracurricular activities um so what we did is when they registered they were given access to a detailed uh guide I think what we learned was that while we had uh 50 plus parents that attempted to register um there were only 30 really that started to participate some did not get all the way through the process uh we did a survey in December we had seven responses and one verbal and four said it was great it was excellent those people who were actually using it loved it and the other four said I had trouble activating it was too complicated and they identified an email activation issue that we originally were not aware

095of so um there is one email associated with the activation if you wanted to add another there was a process that uh Transportation needed to go through to kind of accept that additional email we understand that process now and so I think we can do a better job of communicating with parents and ensuring the activation ensuring you that they have more information if they are unable to uh really register then we can identify those and help them um so we'd like to propose that we extend the pilot to all grades with Pearson Corner uh we're going to track those email activations better and um then we'll do uh send out more communication to the parents and then also try to send more communication in regards if you're having trouble what do you do reach out

096to the transportation office we think we'll have maybe better participation and based on that um we'll likely be back to you and talk about maybe rolling it out to other schools so I'd be happy to take any questions which I will likely look to Mr Frierson well I was just going to say now that Mr frierson's not is my Mr frierson's Here No One's Gonna have any questions so any any questions from the board Miss Welsh when if and when we decide to roll it out across the county are there is there a cost associated with it or is there no cost because of our routing if we roll it out to everybody there is no cost associated with it and we would likely want to roll it out one school at a time because

097there is some work um uh with that now with that said with any software vendor we will continue to have that conversation with them and make that they don't come back five years from now and say oh where this feature was free to begin to begin with you know now there's some cost but at this time I'm looking Mr Frierson is giving me a heads up so at this time there's not would you stay within the center of the county since you started at Pearson's in your next school or would you start going west or east on something like that West um you know Beast is in the East and I have not had that conversation feel free to email me ideas this miss Lynn and I on either side of you you know it's

098going west next right because you're between us that's right but I'm in I'm in the C the uh the registration issues um was that user error or software eror I think it was a combination I think what we have to do is better communication and better support so it's likely parents became they started it they became frustrated there's also a timing associated with what you do first and we have a reason to believe that we didn't communicate that well so they started with step two as as opposed to step one and I I know that's true I can't tell you what those steps are per se but um we we just feel that we could do a better job of getting guidance to the parents of how to register and how to activate I wonder

099if a middle school or a high school might be better I don't know I mean I know you've got limited maybe from high school but just because they are techsavvy um I don't know I know it's for parents but I mean let them let them figure I think they look at Mr Fri doesn't he look like he's got this under control and maybe the first of the year is the first of the school year we're just inundated with stuff as parents true maybe true it gets lost in the shuffle Mr cyer I would also say for Middle School school and high school students there's a great app Life 360 so I think the older kids have their phones able to have them on on the bus and uh very easy to track them with okay

100any any other questions comments Miss Stone no none other thank you very much you're welcome thank you very much with that as we get ready to go into public comment I just have to make one comment that is um you know being being a chairman of the school board or member of the school board you miss a lot of things going on in your life and tonight my granddaughter cheered her final game at chamy middle school so I got I missed it but he knows that Papa was thinking about her so and with that we will move into public comment the school board conducts the public comment segment of its meeting to receive information from the general public on matters related to Handover County public schools for board policy the total time allotted for public

101comments shall not exceed 60 Minutes speakers addressing the school board are requested to follow these guidelines as each speaker is recognized by the chairperson the speaker is asked to clearly State the speaker's name magisterial district and the subject of the speaker's comments speakers are asked to address their comments to the board and not to the audience the board requests that the audience refrain from responding to the speaker's comments with Applause or other audible expressions of approval or disapproval the time allotted to each speaker shall be 3 minutes each speaker's elapse time will appear on the screen speakers will also receive notification from the vice chair when their time has expired although the board does not permit the use of slideshows or other projected materials during this segment speakers are invited to provide printed copies of

102such materials to the board the board expresses its appreciation for the Public's comment and cooperation during this segment of the meeting and with that I'll turn it over to you M coach ikenberry thank you Mr chair and I'd like to appreciate all nine um speakers today with uh giving our clerk their magisterial districts ahead of time I can't remember a time where we had a unanimous list so I appreciate all that when you registered greatly um starting us off tonight is Connie Piper followed by Kristen Stevens hello my name is Connie Piper and I live in the Beaver Dam district and I was here tonight to talk to you about the revision to 6- 5.2 I'm very pleased to hear that you are not going to change that to allow for anonymity I think that

103um that was a terrible idea and it would have led to more distrust um and lack of transparency and dissension that is where my written comments are going to end I do want to share a few things things because as you consider this policy I feel like we've spent so much time um in the last couple of years talking about this policy I did just want to make a couple of comments for you to consider as you review the policy and possibly the forms that are used for it um first of all the legislation which was passed last year does not require the removal of books for sexually explicit conduct in fact the model policy that the state provided actually said it was not to be used to censor library books um it was expressly

104said it was for notification to parents for instructional materials of which most of the library books are not used in direct instruction um I also want to point out that reading in its entirety is important the state law for obscenity looks at a work in its entirety it is lwd sexual conduct across the content of a material there are reasons sometimes for their to be some sexually explicit content in an age appropriate manner in a book such as a non-fiction book if my personal child was not comfortable I hope they would be but if they weren't comfortable coming to me with a question it is age appropriate as you're going through adolescence to have questions about sex about your body about other people and and sexual relations I would much prefer my child go to

105a non-fiction book and read material that has been fact checked and looked at and reviewed then go to the Internet or heaven forbid go to their friends who may not have correct information to share with them so I think if a child is curious enough to be looking for that book it does take effort to find that book it's not just sitting on display they have to go and seek that book out then they have a question and that question needs to be um needs to be answered in an age appropriate way there is a reason we have a committee to make the decision to remove a book it is very serious to remove a book from 177,000 students and the bar for that should be high the reason the committee includes teachers Librarians and

106principles is because we are um experts at what is age appropriate at different levels and those are the kinds of questions that are discussed in those meetings so I hope that you will continue that um finally I would like to say if the school board does decide to use their right to remove books I feel that should be publicly voted on so that the public is aware that those decisions have been made we already have a policy in place that allows every parent to determine their own child's reading selections and we already have a policy that works if we'll trust it to allow a Community member to question materials in a school classroom Library thank you Miss Piper thank you Kristen Stevens followed by Kristen hty Stevens Mechanicsville um I stumbled upon a new word

107this morning exhaust welm related it's the feeling of being exhausted overwhelmed and overstimulated and it perfectly describes how I felt when I saw the agenda for this evening because a Community member was able to be present in live stream the work session I was able to hear some of the discussion that was had earlier this afternoon I know others will better address your propensity for Banning books my request is to Dr pennycuff since you were tasked with a challenge of reviewing the book form challenge um don't let it go to an anonymous situation U my gut tells me that the parent that wants to remain anonymous is one of our locally effect elected officials who are parents with students with an hcps and have already taken some heat for challenging picture books even if it's

108not one of them any person who feels they need to challenge a book and remove its accessibility from all students in this County should have a strong enough spine to stand up for their convictions um I really came to express my concerns for the change in the Health Science Specialty Center and athletic participation um to begin I find it pretty shameful and disappointing that many board members do not understand how that program actually works and how the students in our County are transported to the high school for that program and how it is completely different from ACA Roc and the trade school my daughter graduated from the specialty Science Center in 23 with her pharmacy tech she's a lifelong gymnast and was on CMS and Handover High School gymnast astics team in addition to her

109competition club that she trained with um she is one of the 7% of all high school students Nationwide that go on to participate in Collegiate Sports her pharmacy program got her in the door at her University and her gymnastics got her on the Acron and tumbling team both of those got her um scholarships for her education because she's a student before she's the athlete I still haven't really heard the why behind why you guys are changing or entertaining changing a program that works it sounds very much like you're fixing a problem that doesn't exist which you like to do um I do hope that this isn't the outside influence of parents or coaches who are more interested in the athlete instead of the student although I've heard the mission of Handover High School football is

110to build better husbands and fathers who show up love and don't quit 30 perhaps there are some students and families that want their sons groomed to have a ring by Springs so sending them to the specialty Science Center is their best option the possibility of an NCAA future is high stakes it's become an even more high stakes money game with the addition of the nil and I'd like to think that you are not choosing to put the athlete before the student in considering these changes I encourage you to keep this program as is until you all finish addressing actual problems like the redistricting and potentially expanding our trade programs and which time addressing changes to the Health Science Center might be more appropriate thank thank you thank you Kristen halty followed by Charlie Hogue good

111evening school board and administration my name is Christen Hol of the Cold Harbor District I am appreciative to speak tonight and I'm glad that there was no snow today I want to wish you a happy New Year you know I like to be positive you know I don't I don't spew hatred like some other um members of the audience I want to show my appreciation to the Handover County School Board and all it has accomplished I know firsthand that the left ACLU NAACP bully threaten and intimidate and P and and put on a full-blown fake chore choreographed show with Twisted information and lies to spread Miss information they are hypocrites for they scream tolerance but only tolerance for their views Dr Lisa peniku I appreciate you and your professionalism you are a good foot fit

112for Hover County and definitely qualified I am rooting for you I am so glad that corporations are doing away with their diversity Equity inclusion policies for they are are not beneficial for the community at large in the last few days meta ended its Dei policies and McDonald's has revealed it revealed a major shift in its corporate policies stepping back from its diversity equity and inclusion Dei initiatives there is no perfect County but I believe Handover is as close to perfect as it can be like there's no perfect Utopia County so people who want to criticize every little thing I'd like them to to find a perfect uh County as far as the phone policy it takes time for kids to adjust to not having a phone because with this culture they're used to constantly having

113a phone and texting and videotaping as far as the book policy if a parent wants to get a book for their child that is sexually explicit they can get the book themselves and show it to the child because it's their prerogative the schools do not have to if if if a book has a sexually explicit picture that is totally inappropriate for the age it should not be in the school I will continue to support our Handover County school board for they have been absolutely patient respectful and accommodating to the left ACLU and ACP 20 seconds when the same cannot be said for the left ACL NAACP it's just it's amazing how disrespectful I've heard some of the Audi me audience members can be I just want to bring positive a positive aspect because I do

114appreciate all of you thank you very much for letting me speak thank you Charlie Hogue followed by Bridget Charles good evening good evening uh my name is Charlie hog and I'm I'm in the ashon district and this is regarding media literacy in schools one of the nation's largest and fastest growing educational technology platforms newella is also a foremost provider of media literacy lessons for schools the platform started in 2013 has experienced tremendous growth its educational products are used in over 90% of schools in an educational context the term media literacy is intended to conjure the politically neutral image of Educators helping students become more fluent and well- read but the actual field Bears little resemblance TOA to traditional literacy media literacy organizations including the well-known government funded media blacklisting organization News Guard have focused on

115creating products for educators to teach students not how to read or think original uh critically but instead each uh teach students what they should read media literacy organizations teach which courses and perspectives students ought to trust and which ones should be avoided Nelis functions Nelis function in the education system revolves around the idea of publishing content from only approved sources in their own words newella curates material from trusted sources and makes it instruction ready for ELA social studies and science classrooms the content from these trusted and inv vetted sources is re written by their editorial staff to be easily read and interpreted based on a child's reading level these trusted sources are exclusively establishment approved partisan Publishers such as the New York Times Washington Post Associated Press and the guardian none of the none of

116newel's over 100 content partners are non-establishment even moderate right of Center Outlets like the Wall Street Journal and Fox News are absent as detailed in a recent I'm sorry beg your pardon as detailed in a recent ffo uh report new Zelda spark controvers controversy 30 seconds recently due to an uncovered investigation by accuracy and media which caught teachers on camera discussing how new Zilla could be used to smuggle partisan ideologies like critical race Theory and formed 1619 project into classrooms and teaching assignments against the wishes of parents and state policies uh I would just like to add that I support Dr pennycuff as Hanover's next school superintendent thank you thank you Bridget Charles followed by Peggy lavender good evening happy New Year's to all now that I got that positivity out the way let's get

117down to business this is a new year but unfortunately we have the same issues we still face the issues of the racial disparity in our school systems and my prayers is that you will evaluate your policies to make it fair for all Races and my goal is to stand on every desk until to make sure that you do as someone who is very involved in the community I have spent more time defending people and children of color than I have servicing all those in need in the Handover County my question to you is what are you looking to change or do about the issues of the racial disparities in our school systems how long are you looking to ignore the voice and change and act as if there's no issue I want to say a

118great job to Mr Malby on his presentation uh next time put in there how many students of colors are receiving the discipline I will continue to press the issue of needing more than just one person there needs to be two people and well as well as is trained with dealing with all cultures fix the things that need to be fixed and not the ones that don't thank you thank you Peggy lavender followed by Chris web is Chris web here oh how are you good evening my name is Peggy lavender I'm with in the Mechanicville District um I had to muster some courage to come back and speak to you all after what happened last time um I would like to say again that I have been doing this for six or seven years and my

119personal experience as a community activist as a volunteer serving on committees um raising three kids in the school division should count for something I shouldn't be automatically questioned when I tell you my personal experience and my knowledge of the school system and what changes need to happen my personal experience also um should not be called into question when I express it in public so what I want to talk about tonight is the book policy another issue that I've been very involved with since it started coming to Handover because it was like a wave of a bad smell coming across the country and I knew it would get here eventually so I looked at email the first email I sent about this was in November of 2021 um so I was glad that that was removed

120about changing the book policy it should be hard to ban a book from 177,000 other students in the county um you guys already have cart blanch to pull a book off the shelf and nobody needs to know a thing about it that's what I believe has happened a couple of times so knowing what books are being targeted did requires a lot of effort and somehow that was the secret the book that came up in the work session today nobody wanted to say the title of it I don't understand that um so I would like to know that information so I don't have to Foy it it shouldn't be a secret um I have spent lots of time and some money fying information about books that are being challenged there's no transparency there um so I've

121asked before and i' ask again again that that changes I want to support our Librarians and say that they are paid highly qualified highly trained very dedicated to their jobs they're experts and they should be included in any changes regarding instructional materials and library books I'd like to hear that the plaques are on the way to recognize um black students in our community and um 30 seconds it's going to be a great time when those get unveiled there needs to be a lesson in our Public Schools about why we're putting plaques up every student in our schools needs to know that story um and what else did I want to say well I can't remember but thank you for letting me speak thank you Chris web followed by hat Hunter Jordan good evening I'm Chris

122Webb I'm from an A District and and I'll be speaking or I'll be reading a letter from a Handover County Public School employee regarding the library policy this evening I approach you as a licensed Public School educator in the state of Virginia with more than 30 years of experience in the field most importantly I approach you as a parent whose own children have been entirely educated in the Virginia Public School System as a Handover County Public School employee I've optimistically and patiently waited to hear of a policy change update for our school and classroom libraries to allow for the automatic reinstatement of all books removed in our district during the past few years most of which were removed without an official Complaint ever being submitted or a vote being taken I've optimistically and patiently waited

123to hear a policy change update that ult ultimately gives Credence to the many Educators and Librarians who are trained many with graduate level degrees to educate and promote reading among all students instead now we are faced with yet another policy change that would allow for anonymous Community voice in this submission of a book challenge during the past two years our district has removed 91 books more than three times as many as the second leading District in Virginia that move has silenced those authors and their stories and has subsequently made their books unavailable to all students here via Handover County Public Schools the decision to remove most of these books was made without parental input teacher recommendation or consideration for literacy standards since the removal of these books we have given our parents total voice and

124choice for their own children's of access to school and classroom library books yet even in these drastic measures in place we are considering in the year 2025 to give more leeway to the removal of library books by Anonymous citizens parents or politicians as a mom I understand that what it means to guide my children and monitor exposure to material that I or their father deem is inappropriate during my children's years in the public school setting I never once felt that school or classroom Library were a threat to the values my husband and I share for our children instead my concerns and worri lies elsewhere I've always been concerned about access to inappropriate content via the Internet I've always been concerned about fraud and IID any theft I've always been concerned about my children's personal safety

125in the Cyber realm finally I worry about all children being seen as competent contributors and accepted by others in our society and world as an educator I worry about the regression in learning resulting from school closures during the pandemic pandemic of 2020 we but how we're going to work together to increase reading stamina and Jo after analyzing statistics that clearly show that reading for pleasure is on the decline 25 seconds these are priorities apparent as an educator these should be our shared priorities as we look to the Future our Collective priorities should be focused on our District's Vision empowering confidence productive lifelong Learners um at this time I implore you to move to a different direction please continue discontinue utilizing the policy to silence voices and remove material that to many may be considered invaluable

126I just like to add I this would have been much more powerful read by the person who actually wrote it versus me reading it anonymously thank you for your time thank you Pat Hunter Jordan followed by Amanda Cronenberg good evening board members good evening uh my name is Patricia Hunter Jordan Cole Harbor district and I would like you to know about the positive things that our NAACP is doing you know all during the Christmas holidays we were there helping our school children providing food for them providing gifts for them during this last time when we had water outages we again provided food for our students in our schools um we are a very positive organization we don't speak words we act that's what we do when there's a need we meet the need that is

127what I call positivity now for me I want to First than this wonderful curriculum team the wonderful work that they have done to increase what we have been talking about for at least two or three years again a positive move we the NAACP said that a change was needed and I'm grateful that they've acted on that and you can now see the positive results coming from the work we want to thank them for that work I also know that we're supposed to come here and speak to you about issues that you can do something about I don't think anybody up there can do anything about the NAACP and so I I find it Shameless that I have to come here every month and hear someone attempt to discredit our organization and nothing is said about

128it that is the criteria for speaking to you to speak to you about things that you can do something about so again I'd like to say that I'm excited about the developments there what I would like to see for this year is that you focus on the main things as Mr ien B said let the main things be the main things our students need your help with mental health we need to make certain that punishment is carried out equally we need to make certain that our athletes are looked after and protected and punished when necessary thank you for your time thank you and Amanda Cronenberg and that's it hi I'm Amanda Cronenberg and I reside in the ashin district and I see and appreciate each and every one of you for being here today want

129to start positive I came here to talk about the proposed change to the book policy and I am very appreciative that you chose to not make that change because to my knowledge it would be the fourth change in two years To None of none of the changes which involved the input from professional Librarians or teachers so now Dr peniku that they have uh tasked you with updating the form I just want to ask that you make sure that the form keeps the person's name on there and that people are not allowed to challenge a book anonymously because you already as a parent have the right to challenge and keep your child from Reading any book that you want but if you want to restrict mine and everyone else's children I think you should have to

130do that with your name also if you have an anonymous book challenge the school board member would become the complaintant in that case which basically allows the school board member to be the plaintiff and the jury at the same time so I ask that you don't allow any Anonymous book challenges but what I ask of the whole board is for you to drop the ACT we've been told by members of the school board and proponents of restrictive book policies that the changes are to protect the children no teenager ever died from checking out a copy of wicked from the library but teenagers have died because Intruders entered their school and shot them right now there are schools in Hanover County that do not have working Intruder alarms on the second floor of their building if

131an intruder reaches that school students and faculty on the second floor are to listen for an announcement over the entcom if one could even be made in that instance if you and the Board of Supervisors who appoint you really wanted to protect the children you've been working on installing those alarms for the past 2 years rather than spending your time keeping books with lgbtq themes and characters of colors off the shelves while you're busy protecting your children many parents in this County are having to protect their own children from your harmful policies and complete inaction on issues that matter thank you thank you I appreciate you all for your time thank you for your time thank you Mr chair thank you uh Mr Vice chair I just want to one comment that was made earlier

132that I do want to uh um I want to just address and it's my fault I should I had it out to talk about and I didn't do it earlier but um we have purchased the plaques um the two plaques that will be going in each of our high schools uh to commemorate the students that were the first to integrate those schools we're we're uh and I'm careful when I say this because people will hold me to it it's going to be here by this date and I can't guarantee that we are hoping and Terry's over there watching every word that I'm getting ready to say we're hoping that those plaques will be here in the middle of February that is our prayer we won't know that for a fact but that's what we're praying

133for so as soon as we know that then we will work with the people in our community to arrange for the ceremony to hang the plaques as we talked about the other the other uh signs that we have is the Henry I'm sorry the Hover County Public Schools central office office John M Gandy building signed there are actually two of those one of them will be hung on this building at the main entrance and the other one is a sign that will go out on the road um announcing that it's the Hanover County Public Schools central office John M Gandy building and both of those we hope to be in about the same time as the plaques for the two new schools but there's no guarantee so it won't be up probably feel safe that

134it won't be here by February's board meeting I would not expect that right but we could possibly see them by March correct thank you we will rush it as much as I know you will and I I did the ma for what you said on the time I was just trying to make sure that I addressed that and um and Miss lavender before you leave tonight I'm trying to get the name of the book for you that you ask about because there are no secrets we don't have anything to hide from you the book is what the the book was was what was used for us to work through this challenge it's not that we have kept the we we didn't focus on the book we focused on the process and that's what we you

135were here that's what we talked about at the at the work session and I'll I'll get you I I don't have it in front of me if I had it I don't have it in any email I don't have it in anything if I had it IID share it with you now but I think I know where it is y you were okay well I'm just trying to save you some money because I worry about that with your four year request so okay and with that that concludes our public comment time and we will now move on and they are two action items consideration of proposed policy revisions Miss Han thank you Mr chair um these are the policies that you saw at the last board meeting that we're on for first read um I

136am back in front of you to ask that you adopt these revisions um so they can be made officially a part of our um policy manual thank you Miss H is there any questions of the policies I would entertain a motion that we approve the policies as a whole Mr chair I like to make a motion to approve the proposed revised policies as a whole thank you is there a second second we have a motion and a second is there any further discussion all those in favor say I I all opposed motion carries thank you Miss H and the 2526 calendar oh that's why you were here today I was trying to figure it out I didn't see your name on anything here but it is always so nice to see you it's very nice

137to be seen thank you so much um yes good evening Mr chair board members Dr pennycuff and Senior staff at the board meeting in November the proposed 2526 school calendar was presented um and at that time um the it was requested that we look at some other options to consider so at the November work session several options were presented and three options were selected to share via survey um with our public in order to decide or hear more about preferences um and so we shared three options the first option was the Traditional School calendar um the second option featured a 4-day weekend in October for students and a full week off at Thanksgiving and then the third option features um a three-day weekend in October for students a full week off for teachers and students

138at Thanksgiving and then a student holiday on February 16th which was also a professional learning day uh in the morning and a work day in the afternoon or a clerical day for teach fees um is there any way you can pull up the not the options but the data it's easier to look at at least that's yes it's easier to look at so um we sent out a survey and we asked the respondents to identify which group they belonged with um whether they were a parent um or and a non-employee of the Stu of um a student uh or of Hanover County Public Schools um if they were an employee with or without students or if they were a Community member we had uh 3,556 responses um the survey opened up on December 12th and

139closed January 8th um so we had 3,356 responses overall um and as you can see if we can scroll down um 38% of all respondents um selected option three as their preference um the parent non-employee respondents 37% selected um option three as their preference employees with and without students 41% um selected option three as their preference and then for community members it was 45 um um 56 um selected option three as their preference um so that is the data for you to review and if you have any questions I'm happy to answer them so I'm sorry Dr pennycuff go ahead I was just gonna ask that they pull up option three so that people can see that yeah we're gonna we're GNA end up taking a vote tonight correct based on this yeah she's asking

140would you pull up option three and I'm sorry I really hate not having my back to y but um yeah and it's so option three was the most popular among all the groups and in the overall response um in October um that was one difference between the three options in that we have October 20th as a parent teacher conference day and a student holiday um in uh and then we also have the full week at Thanksgiving for um teachers and students as opposed to the traditional uh two-day uh week where the students come to school for two days and then they have three days off winter break is the same for all of the options and then February 16th um in this um option uh is a um I'm sorry that is a student holiday

141and then professional learning in the morning in clerical in the afternoon for the teachers um the other difference in this um uh in this option is at the end of the semester would be an early release day so instead of having four early release days we would have five okay so to answer your first question of me you have days one and two are Bank time days three four and five are designated in the calendar so there days that there there that are considered work days or no student days that then would be able to be used for up to five days is the way I read it is that am I pretty we have our three inclement makeup uh weather days yeah that answer your question yes P your button makeup day too if

142we needed to go a full day does that count it it does we are also allow owed to use up to 10 virtual instructional days so um that are unscheduled basically weather makeup days and we're looking into that because we haven't needed to use those in the past few years so we're updating our information on what is the latest requirements related to that yeah I'm gonna ask you that question when we get done here so just so you know that so okay any other questions of the calendar as presented yes sir coach um when did stag starts begin of the first day of school no um what year oh because I don't remember when I was I'm sorry I gotta um uh it was covid uh it was 20 uh 2020 2020 okay so why

143do we continue to do it when CO's no longer here actually it was a practice to help welcome our students who were not continuing with online school and it has become uh something that the um schools have appreciated and at the um with the calendar committee we did have discussion about is there need to continue that and the school-based Personnel felt it was very important and very useful in particular for those kindergarten um students and the first grade students so we continued with the practice okay I don't I've gotten feedback that they don't like it from parents right I I from who I've gotten feedback from parents that they don't like from parents what did the teachers and principales say all the principles that I have gone to visit the week of opening school love

144it agre which is the what that's my feedback that I've been given and I probably see I don't know 10 12 schools on the first week of school so have we pulled the parents no I didn't I'm sorry but it allows what it what it allows specifically I'll speak Elementary School uh what it allows is to allow those kindergarteners to come to school and get all the attention so every teacher is out there on the first day of school and and get those kids when they're crying they don't want to get out of this the vehicles they uh the they have a teacher that will work with them and walk them to their class and they get to spend the entire day being the the the important person on campus for lack of a better

145word and it's the same thing at sixth grade because I can also say at Liberty Middle School and at chomon this past year um that was a feeling that's a pretty strong feeling about firsttime sixth graders the building is significantly different than what they were used to in the elementary school so that's the reason the teachers and the principls love it so much Bob oh is it for K six and nine yes on day one and then everybody else is on day two and you have to and it also gives them a day Mr Frierson left it also gives them a day to try the bus system out I don't mean that in a in ugly way but it does it gives us a um the first day of school is not near as many

146students but they're running full bus routes if I could offer one thing you may and the uh the feedback from the parent I remember it specifically but they talked about they had a kindergartner and the kindergartener uh Big Brother the third grader wasn't able to go with them on the first day and obviously that would have been very helpful so maybe it's possible to have a compromise certain situations like that something to consider yeah we could change it around the next year let the third grader go first and bring the kindergarten in the second day is that a compromise maybe Ryan I've had a kindergar three out of the last four school years congratulations yeah and we we loved it um as parents uh I I I liked it a lot thank for for getting

147acclimated um and I think Sixth and Ninth is the same that's a big adjustment it is it's nice to get to school with less people find your lock I think you and I were at the same Ashley together if I'm not mistaken now 10th grader loved it as a ninth grader she was incredibly nervous to go so to have the school to herself was a big liked you're not getting a coach no I've I've had three kindergarteners are in their 30s and 20s now and uh they survived just fine and um I don't know I'm just not feeling it okay I'm really not it's a I understand maybe during Co but but the teachers ready close the door on that one our teachers and our staff think it's a wonderful idea and I I therefore

148support it and I think it's a great idea because of that okay well we vote in just a minute you can actually have that say but miss Lyn and I on both sides of you are gonna probably vote against you if you do exactly all right any any other discussion or questions excellent conversation so would you like to make a recommendation or you want me to just make the proposal I'll let you do that okay we would like to accept everything you said I I will just comment it was very interesting as you looked at the uh at at at the statistics um you know I'm a guy that one in one always equals two and so I immediately went to that it was very interesting that it was 35 to 45% uh for for

149vote three on every one of them you know it was very um it was it was very consistent against all the numbers and we got a heck of a lot more responses on this than we did the first time if I'm not mistaken um yes about than I thought was pretty good about 3,000 yeah so I'd like to make a motion oh I would entertain a motion I guess and I'm pretty sure coach Ike is not going to want to make this so I I don't mind making a motion to approve option three um maybe with a caveat that we could examine more thoroughly the staggered in the future I I'll tell you every year it is part of the committee discussion do we continue with stacker start is there a value and the committee

150consistently says yes thank you we have a we have a motion is there a second second second by Mr Martin who's had a kindergartener for three years in a row that should be record three out of the four I'm sorry okay uh any further discussion all those in favor say I I all opposed thank you for the hard work I know this was not easy and we appreciate you taking the time and leading this charge and getting it done for us so thank you I'm problema I'm glad to do it thank you thank you so uh I think that's all of our action items so it's before we move on I do want I have I have two questions and so I'll give Terry time to prep you could probably answer yours Dr pennycuff um

151Terry when do we brief the uh Board of Supervisors I got board members W to get it on their calendar you remember you can look that up while I'm talking to Dr piku it may be it may be in our calendar but I don't have my computer with me um I'm pulling it up now thank you and Dr pennycuff you want to try to explain to us the um this this making up days just so that because that's board members are asking me how many more days do we have to make up and yada yada yada can you can you try to give us that in a in a quick version yes yes I'll be happy too so the way the policy with the state works is you must make up the first five day

152for day after the first five you make up one for every two and the state expects us to do all we can to make up the instructional time and they have even allowed for 10 unscheduled virtual learning days so in the past they have required some special caveats like ensuring students have food access to Wi I um and in order to be able to do their work so that's what we're looking at now is the last time we used that instructional strategy the food was required so we have um applied for the ability to um do those kind of meals to have the states uh go ahead for when we get the other information that we need because our hope is that if we see another round of snow that we will be able to

153use a virtual day to make up for that okay yes so so far we are day for Day made up but we have used our time we do have those um early release days at the end of the year but we'd like to preserve those for the teachers if we are able to thank you and I saw you did you did somebody did uh send out the notification about the change to the semester end and all that stuff because that was another question I was getting lots of emails about and so um anyway okay thank you very much Dar do you have me an answer I do roll here you go guys and absolutely if I knew how to do that but presentation to the Board of Supervisors is February 19th February 19th is the

154presentation of our approved Schoolboard budget to the Board of Supervisors and and we talked about next week for the school for the presentation um To Us by the yes by the superintendent but the public hearing will be the following week on January 28th y'll have all that on your calendar I hope but you got three weeks in a row of meetings she did I'm just reminding because I've had people ask me tonight so I'm trying to be a good chair right it's Dr PFF briefs to the um Steve and I need to be there we the chair normally introduces the budget um but it uh people some in this room would have to know what that is um but yeah normally we try to encourage as many board members as possible to come on the

15519th it's usually early in the afternoon and you usually can see either the sheriff's or the fire departments the same day because they usually kind of go the same time in the afternoon yeah we'll start at 1 and I we'll have an idea which one she's going to be and it's about a 30- minute presentation so if she's second or third you can know it's going to be at 1:30 or o' thank you gate okay um other things that the board you have fiscal status report facility usage report oh look and there's the calendar of all the board related events if I had my computer I would have seen that so any anything else from the board for the good of the order anybody Mr Martin you have an hour to make up so you

156got anything you want to talk to us about well you aren't going to listen to me anyway if I that's true I was you know it's really funny you said that cuz I was doing is Chris sent me a note and said I put it so and so and so and so I'm like Oh my God look at all these papers up here where did he put it so that's what I was doing was trying to figure that out anybody else all right with that I would entertain Dr Dr uh PFF you got things for next board meeting yes thank you we spoke with um the architect for CRA and we will be ready for an update on the Washington Henry Elementary School design and the progress and next steps towards the conditional use permit

157to start working towards the um getting Washington Henry Elementary School out to to for the RFP process we also will have the revisit of the athletic options for Handover High Health Science Specialty Center we will have a school board appreciation month and a school board clerk appreciation we will begin the review of our code of conduct and then we'll have tonight's proposed policy for Action next time okay thank thank you thank you and and um I you know I HTE everybody I'm glad there's some people that are still here but you know we're pretty excited about the budget this year and I hope y'all can find it as exciting as we are because we've we think we've made some pretty serious steps towards some things that you can really see that we are trying to

158put our money where our mouths are and and doing things to support our schools and our students more importantly our students and U there are a couple of if you're at the work session today you got to get a pra of it but uh there's some really big news coming out with our budget proposal this year uh we're very excited about it and uh we feel good about it and so I I encourage you to please come back or listen online next Tuesday night uh I think it does start at 6 o'clock instead of 7 o'clock um so we get we get started an hour earlier on uh Tuesday night and um and so we're very excited about that um and the other one is so we got we got two pretty big things going

159on well there's another one too which I can't believe you didn't bring it up but we did open bids uh so well the point is that we are moving along with the process is what I was trying to say I'm not asking you to tell any secrets I'm just saying that we're we're the process is moving along is what I was going to try to say it is yes the bids for Battlefield Park um were opened uh today and so there's a process there's a legal process to go through however we think we're within budget and we're we're feeling feeling good about it excellent thank you that was the part I just thought we should share is that we are got some positive things moving on and staying under budget and being within budget is

160always a very important thing uh so we don't have to go back and ask for more money um we're one week away from the beaverdam bids coming in yeah and so Beaver Dam will be next and then we're now getting ready to start our third and I'll just share that we did have a meeting the rest of the board can know this that Dr peniku and I met with and and the staff uh we met with our AR Texs to go over any concern that may be about this is too much going on in a short period of time and they assured us with that they are they are fully prepared to provide us the support we're looking for to get these three projects going so I share that that's very exciting stuff I won't

161spoil all the rest of the stuff because there's some other pretty exciting stuff uh for our budget presentation next week and then just a reminder we talked about it earlier the public comment times for the um the the new school districts I encourage everybody to make sure you participate in that and the other one is in the search process for our new superintendent the board has dates locked already we are planning on making our announcement at the April board meeting on whomever our next superintendent will be so we want to make sure that we keep the the public informed and that you have the opportunity to participate in those meetings that we're having both virtually and in person and with that unless somebody's got anything else I would entertain a motion oh miss Welsh so

162on my calendar it says that our here that is correct okay now may I entertain a motion from Mr Martin if you're listening I make a motion to adjourn I can I listen to that that one Mr Colman second we have a motion in a second is there any other discussion all those in favor say I I we are adjourned