001board room and i um in the courthouse complex this is where we are okay at this time we need a roll call mrs ruiz mr vines present here here mr cunningham president mr president okay thank you i would like to at this time we need a motion to approve the minutes not the minutes i'm sorry agenda madam chair i'd like to make a motion to amend the agenda to include a discussion of possible action on needed repair to the cooling tower at georgie d tyler middle school okay okay okay we have a motion and a second at this time mr vines yay dial yeah yay yay thank you okay we have motion carries five five thank you i would like to welcome everyone at the annual public hearing for the alawite county school but school
002board budget for the school year 2022-2023 thank you all for coming out tonight this is the this is the moment where all of the citizens this is your meeting you come forward and tell us your concerns about the budget and this meeting tonight is about budget budget concerns if you have other concerns for the board then you can come to the may 10 march 10th meeting march 10 2022 come to that meeting with your concerns this one is only about the budget that's going that we will have to send forward to the board of supervisors soon thank you with that said we'll move on to um pledge of allegiance and a moment of silence upon him i pledge allegiance thank you okay at this time we will open public we have a brief uh yeah
003okay okay before opening we will update we will get an update from the staff and this is some things that have come forward since our last workshop meeting about the budget what's the madam cham board members mr kepnes and mr lombardo going to update the the items that we talked about the work session the school resource officers and ms dale brought up a like a dean of students but to help with guidance and so we've had similar positions in the past and they've done some research since then we want to share that with you yep good evening madam chair members of the board dr thornton thank you um i just wanted to point out at your seat you have these packets and it's ultimately starts with that cover memo that i wrote to dr thornton
004what we've done since the last time you saw this budget we've added two pieces to the budget we've added sros school resource officers and that amount is just over 623 000 but we've also added and mr lombardo can speak to this uh more specifically testing coordinators in the amount of 550 000 so the total increase in this budget is 1 million 173 853 in total so you'll see that on the first budget page i highlighted in yellow the areas of change so that's where the changes will take place in the revenue side it is on the county's revenue piece but it's also on the expenditure side under instructional services ultimately because both of those cost categories will be taking place within the schools and if you turn the page which is really just the general
005fund the operating fund you'll see the similar areas highlighted in yellow that's where the change is taking place compared to the pages that you had in your book the last time we met and then thirdly you'll see the detailed pages but if you look at the bottom right notice it says page 28 of 30 and page 29 of 30. i didn't print the entire 30 pages of that group i thought it was unnecessary because you do have that already in your book so the change as i highlighted in yellow you'll see under the purchase services on the top of page 28 is the amount for the school resource officers and then on the second page which is listed 29 of 30 you'll see other professional salaries which ultimately that is in total for these testing
006coordinators and the details you have a summary from the sheriff's office for the cost for the sros and now i'll hand it over to mr lombardo really just to speak to the need of these testing coordinators yeah so what you'll see is in the email there that i had sent to dr thornton and the table very clearly that just lists the schools and so you can see each of the schools listed there and one school testing coordinator being recommended for each of those schools the only ones that we've recommended shared position would be carrollton elementary and hardy sharing and carsville and windsor elementary sharing there as well now i will say and i'll come back to this but the school testing coordinators and ms dial had um brought this up at the previous meeting by
007adding these i'll go through the job description but that also then of course has the direct impact on allowing counselors to spend that at least 80 percent of their time during normal school hours in direct counseling of students if you move on to the next page mr kepnes worked up the figures for the school testing coordinators those seven positions moving forward from there the next document that you have is actually the job description for the school testing coordinator we have in iowa county schools going years back had a similar position and we've simply updated that but you can see by the job description very clearly overseeing all testing in the building working with data also having connections to the assistance needed with 504 plans of course these are things right now the counselors are having
008to account for in our schools so this is very clearly addressing some of that need and much needed and then the next page you'll see we just added there for the board the school counselor ratios for the 21 22 school year and so you'll see each of the schools listed the number of counselors at each school and then the corresponding ratio to students the thing i would mention we went ahead and just put in where you three where you see the three asterisks next to carrollton hardy and windsor we simply added those two additional counselor positions that are in the f23 budget to show you what that would look like rather than just creating a different table and and you'll see the footnote at the bottom of that page to reflect that for you and
009mike can you speak to does this meet the so the new soq requirements and i guess my other thing is what what is the additional testing that is now required as we move on because i know we used to have these positions in high school but i guess speak to the need of why in the other schools yes sir so we do um first of all it does meet the soq requirements so we are within the soqs for our ratios with what you see there currently and in that document moving forward to f23 to your other point dr thornton so the department of education this year implemented in the first year growth assessments in the fall so we're used to grades three through eight giving all three three giving math and reading assessments sol assessments
010in the spring this year was the first year the department of education has added the growth assessment in the fall we did that this year next year what you'll see grades three through eight for all those schools you will have a growth assessment in the fall you'll have a mid-year sol assessment think of that like a benchmark or a checkpoint and then we'll have of course the one that we are used to the one that sort of counts for the you know what in the past has been our accreditation that one that's given in the spring well that so instead of just having that one test administration in the spring you're now going to have three formal sol test administrations going on in those schools that is a huge additional piece that's in addition to
011all the things that we've been doing with star and other metrics that allow us to know where students are so that we can intervene and i know ms goetz was just meeting with principals today about those types of assessments moving forward and how that data is going to be used as part of our plan to make sure that we're intervening with students but that does speak dr thornton to that heavy additional piece of testing and in some of the informal conversations that i've had i know one in particular at smithfield middle school as i was going through this school they are supposed to by soq that passed was last year the year before spend 80 percent of their time with children that's just not a reality in schools even by increasing the numbers to meet
012soqs having to do with what you see on that sheet it takes far too much of their time and and we and we talk about we want parental involvement if a counselor is supposed to sit down with a parent like in middle school to play in their high school years how can you do that with so many students if you don't have time because you really should meet more than once it shouldn't be a rubber stamp and say hey mama fill this out it looks pretty good you got any questions and then we move on it should be a discussion with the child with the parents and and hopefully this will facilitate and bring back counseling and get away from oh we're still going to do the testing but someone else has that burden yeah
013dude i haven't that's bad are you on counseling i'm still going to bring up the fact that since the pandemic you can't hear me i'll speak up since the pandemic we have a lot of students that need mental health counseling now i know when we had the budget workshop we address the staff piece because uh hr told us that that's included with their insurance if they need it but the students is there that's my concern a lot of the issues i think we're having right now it's like uh they're bringing it over from um the pandemic you know the issues being home shut in wearing masks whatever you know and and i and it's not something that maybe needs to be ongoing but maybe right now we need to include mental health counseling yeah so
014so yeah i'm sorry i didn't bring that up so one of the things we're going to do for that is one we need more time to research who those individuals are what should be the qualifications because you're getting in you could be going past what a normal school council i think you said that before and we feel like that may not be a permanent thing so that's something in the 2.5 million that we still have in so3 funds that yeah so we're going to research that okay and bring a recommendation and then pay for it through yes or no all right okay that's important because uh yeah if we don't deal with the mental health and i need the others thank you okay thank you thank you okay at this time we will open up
015the uh public hearing um first we have ms laura fletcher excuse me a second madam clerk how many people do we have sign up tonight for or all right i'm gonna take this action ban boych here we have four people to sign up i'm gonna allow five minutes per person because our normal normal meetings comments is what four okay so we'll give you an extra minute and if you need it if you need a little longer after everyone else is spoken you can come back and finish thank you good evening ladies and gentlemen of the board and dr thornton i'm laura fletcher and um i attended the last meeting of the board where the 2022-23 budget was presented and has since made a quick review of each page which is a lot and a primary
016concern with this budget is regarding the lack of transparency expenditures are listed but vague and not easily identifiable we're living in an unprecedented time when citizens are recognizing the need for accountability and transparency in every action taken by our elected officials and government employees in light of this i'd like to ask the board to provide more information to the public regarding instructional training and learning materials prior to taking a vote on the 2022-23 proposed budget i've seen articles promoting models for this for providing transparency in school training and curriculum and much of this can be provided even on the isle of wight county schools website budget transparency is required in light of governor younkin's executive order number one which ends the use of inherently divisive concepts including critical race theory and k-12 education throughout the
017commonwealth i'd like to know precisely what instructional materials are being purchased who produced them what's the company's name and ideally i'd like to see a link so the public is able to review what isla white county schools is proposing to purchase and yes this is because i'm looking to identify any materials or companies that push or promote critical race theory and any of its tenants diversity equity inclusion social emotional learning at the last meeting there is a brief but interesting discussion regarding the process by which isle of wight county schools hires and substitute teachers mrs elliott explained that the school system has contracted with a company ess to handle substitute staffing in just a few minutes online i was able to review their website and some additional sites where ess was being promoted crt equity
018language can be found throughout their stated values and information it appears that ess substitute candidates are trained in equity intersectionality cultural awareness competency and i must now ask was the board aware dr thornton were you aware because contracting with ess would place us an immediate violation of governor younkin's eo number number one when reviewing the budget document expenditures to ess have been listed i guess as substitute services i will list most of those quickly carrollton elementary twenty thousand one hundred and thirty five dollars carsville and forty 3649 hearty thirty six thousand four hundred and eighty six dollars windsor elementary nine thousand seven hundred and thirty dollars that was sped windsor elementary again one thousand two hundred sixteen west side 14 282 dollars smithfield high school 13 378. windsor 29189 smithfield middle school 38 uplift academy
0191216 and georgie d tyler 25 541 dollars that comes to 193 dollars parents are learning that the crt agenda is often hidden and even denied has been has been has been the case in meeting after meeting before this very body we've learned to recognize the language used in its promotion and implementation throughout virginia's classrooms crt language can be found in articles and blogs directly on the ess website additionally in an aaspa blog entitled the importance of equity in education the author fred benson writes though ess is a leader in the nation's ongoing effort to ensure equity in education and it continues and then again ess continues to invest daily in achieving equity for all student education and someday contributing to bringing down those barriers all together the most damning information however linking ess to crt
020was found in an article from street insider a majority interest of ess was sold to vistria a chicago-based social justice-minded private investment firm i'd like to find another way to hire substitutes in isle of wight county and i think it's wrong and i'd also like to also add i don't think it is in the school's prerogative to provide mental health i think we can care for our students but we don't need government taking that on in fact i think it's actually dangerous for parents and families to have school provided mental health professionals i think we can help them seek those things elsewhere in the community thank you next um david adams good evening madam chair board members dr thornton and fellow citizens my name is david adams and i live in the windsor district just
021two kind of housekeeping items i'd really like to see a glossary of acronyms in in the budget makes it hard to follow especially when you don't know what the acronyms are for i mean just that would help us as citizens reviewing it i know the board and and uh this superintendent his staff probably use these all the time but i don't know what some of these mean um along that same vein of thought i'm not sure what supplemental salaries and wages are i did a quick search and what i could find in rfps and statements of work but it looks to be additional wages for overtime or bonuses is that a correct assumption can i ask that question with an answer or do i just have to vamp no okay without knowing without knowing what
022that is i i can't i can only make assumptions uh so i assume that it's for those things that i described on page 9 of 30 in the instructional service budget um specifically for windsor elementary school that that value is cut and i know that those individuals are working hard this was across the board for that category so without knowing the context of that category i can't speculate what that is but most of the schools had a 100 percent decrease in that so not knowing what that is i don't know how that impacts if it's for the ladies and or the teachers or instructional staff or office members that are out front uh helping kids go out of school or into the bus or out of cars in less than optimal weather i think that
023should be reinstated i don't know what that money's for as a parent of a student who utilized homebound services i strongly encourage the board to consider adding some funds to that i didn't see any it was uh i don't remember the exact section but it was ims homebound and there was no funding for that for this year excuse me for um kudos to the superintendent of the staff for the additional money and the transportation wages i i think that the bus drivers and and the additional bus drivers are going to be a huge help because busing in the 2021 school year has definitely been a challenge same thing there and this is page one of two in the transportation section the supplemental wages were cut in half without knowing what those are how does that
024impact those those bus drivers i'd also like to see some type of incentive i know that they do if you show up a certain number of days you get incentives from the transportation department but we need we need more people to drive buses so i think anything we can do to get those people to take on that arduous task um thank you for proposing an increase of the instructional salaries by six percent i think that's great i think our teachers need more money i think they they spend 60 hours a week doing 40 hours worth of pay so i'm all for that i'm a little disappointed that we just found out about the testing coordinator i don't remember hearing that in the working session i was doing my best to attend that i don't think
025the decision was made this evening on the way here so it would have been nice for the public to get that maybe a day ago or two days ago so we could at least review that it sounded like about six hundred and twenty three thousand for the sros and about 550 for the s uh the school testing coordinators um i'd like to know the number of those individuals how many sros are we buying are you know paying for how many testing coordinators and mr kepnes may have said it i was i was jotting down notes but i didn't hear the number uh the last thing i had a question for and and this is me not knowing how county um employees get benefits but is there tuition assistance for teachers and people in the school
026district that want to continue their education i didn't see a budget line item for it so unless it's at the county level i think we should consider investing in that you know i want i want our teachers and the people that are that are interacting with our children to have the the most education they can have we focus on the students let's focus on the staff um that's all i have thank you very much thank you mr lewis edmonds hey good evening uh louis edmonds windsor district uh i'm gonna kind of be a little all over the place and i'm kind of making notes as i as i could uh going through the budget and then uh through last uh your last work session so i'll start with mental health counseling so um i don't
027think it's your intention but i think we need to be careful that we don't oversimplify this it sounds simple to say hey we just need more mental health there's a lot of ins and outs that go with that specifically with privacy and and health privacy and that kind of thing so that's something that really needs to be thought through um so i'm supportive of it but just it just really needs to be thought through some a place that maybe you start with that is exposure to counseling so you know maybe you tie it into the health and pe classes or something like that where you say hey this is what mental health health counseling is and everything else maybe through that exposure where you can't provide for it in the school system you at least
028get the students exposed to it and they can ask about it through their families speech special education at the elementary school level so it looks like roughly funding increase of seven to eight percent which i think is mostly uh increasing compensation and bonuses i specifically think with the pandemic speech is going to be a significant issue coming out of the post-mass era i think that you know more than anywhere else is where we've probably lost a lot of ground so i would strongly encourage you to uh to be really careful with that one and uh consider being a very proactive and leaning forward with that and possibly that that's a good area where we may be looking at a short-term two to five-year kind of problem that coveted funds would really kind of go after
029that specific issue uh school board compensation so as i understand it through the budget your real compensation and benefits cost for for you as a board as a total is roughly thirty three thousand four hundred forty dollars because it's your compensation plus your health benefits i was actually surprised that you get health benefits so i mean it's a separate line item in the budget so i would can i would encourage you to maybe consider removing that from the budget you can roll that into the compensation piece especially because there is uh somebody pointed out that that that specific health piece is going to increase uh it's 103 percent so you could roll that in so you know if there is a need to compensate you more maybe that's a good way to neutral a neutral
030uh growth there because that would increase all of your salaries by roughly 1500 a person and it would be a stable cost it wouldn't kind of fluctuate uh over time uh school board attorney fees y'all brought this up uh during the work session it's uh you know ten thousand five hundred dollar or fifteen percent increase uh it wasn't clear whether that's just more billable hours or rate increase it may be a combination of both clarification that would be would be helpful plus knowing that the school board attorneys his practice also has ties with vsba who you also pay membership dues to who also provide you legal services so where those lines are and everything else i'm not suggesting there's anything undo there but there is a an interesting relationship with that uh so i'll touch
031on the equity piece for a minute um i i agree that given the amount of controversy over it i think transparency regarding the equity plan and how that's funded is important my personal concerns with it more so than anything else is how effective it's actually going to be at solving the issue of improving the lives of children that come from challenging backgrounds for a variety of reasons so a lot of what we've seen with the equity plan is kind of a theoretical piece and not necessarily a boots on the ground how are we actually providing more services to to those children so um i think that's helpful plus you get a lot of foia from that foia is a good thing the challenge with foia is it lacks context so it leads to a lot
032of things that's not to degrade anything that's been foia and some of the efforts of citizens but foia does not provide context if you provide more transparency up front maybe we can alleviate some of that it also has a lot of consulting fees tied with it and as somebody who's dabbled in the consulting world i can tell you that that's always fraught with danger and i would also be interested in how much of that is grant funded i do have a lot of other thoughts probably another five minutes so hopefully i can get round two in some of that i want to give praise for some areas where i think you're doing well and i want to come back and talk about teaching teacher raises so thank you thank you next we have mr de
033gras evening board members madam chair hardy district herb de graf thank you for doing this public session i'm glad to see more folks show up tonight last year the board of supervisors approved a gross budget of 69.3 million and what you're all talking about is 13 plus um literally you're raping the taxpayer whether it's how the white taxpayers or u.s taxpayers wherever the money comes from this comes from taxpayers but you are going from a little better than 12 and a half thousand dollars per student to a little over fourteen thousand dollars per student that's really unconscionable i think the sro program that's been called for forever is absolutely a need because those remote elementary schools that i've talked about for years they're still remote and reaction time and presence is absolutely critical the comment
034uh in a community must dial on the mental health issues and you too madam chair licensed professional counselors are not a dime a dozen and they aren't cheap um and as others have said you've got to be real careful uh in an environment that's not conducive to mental health counseling to do that and that's really something that needs to be identified and under insurance programs that parents may have get it there but yeah our children have had mental issues simply because of this thing covering up their smiles kids associate with facial characteristics when it comes to the budget overall the standards of quality set special requirements anything that is not required by the standards of quality yet don't need and you don't need all of those non-standard equality positions that has been approved over the
035years in the fiefdom built in the central office that's unconscionable those teachers those people in the building they're the people that deserve the money because hey they're like you know the beau fighter in the ring the moment of truth arrives in that classroom and as pam edwards used to say it's what take place in the building and in the classroom that really counts and that's where we need to concentrate we don't need to concentrate on non-soq stuff that just makes the teacher in the building and administrators in the building's job more difficult because i dare say it's not worth the powder it would take to blow your nose so i urge you to go back and really take a look at this budget line by line and i was amazed at the lack of objective
036questions that were sumpted substantive on the actual numbers during your work session but please go back and do this because you owe it as a part of your job to be responsible the taxpayers that fund the school system so please do your duty and if you want to reduce uh at least about a quarter million dollars for the cost review that thumb drive with them mr cunningham and you can take action to reduce costs by about a quarter of a million bucks thank you thank you all right was it mr edmunds we'll allow you an extra minute an extra minute did yes need some more time yeah and it's not like i said okay we'll allow you whatever you do you can stop me if you don't think i'm no longer effective so uh so
037i i will try to be quick um so a couple things uh i really appreciate the support for cte funding i think that's a really good thing something to consider if it's not already part of it if it is i apologize is maybe some type of a tech track specifically with cyber security and programming i know as a previous employee in the in the packaged goods industry when you have mechanics and everything there is a lot of programming now that's involved in that kind of work and even with cars it's getting into a lot more programming so scada and that kind of thing is something that they're not going to get in college and they will be uh way above their peers when they come out if we could extend to that maybe not next
038year but something to think about down the road i do want to commend the board on how you've maintained maintained county share you know y'all talked about that a week ago two weeks ago i think that you do deserve credit for that and in terms of real money and uh understand this is government math but you're probably saving the county money because if you're maintaining i think it was like 2.8 percent uh when you factor in inflation and everything else in real terms you're probably actually driving it down a little bit so i think you are being responsible to the uh to the tax base in that sense uh carsville assistant principal i think that absolutely made sense i appreciate the conversation about that srsro i'm appreciative and supportive of that as well it is
039a large price tag so i would say that if it doesn't get fully funded i would uh focus obviously on the high schools first in the middle schools but absolutely carsville elementary given its remoteness compared to the other schools grant writing um i you know i don't i don't know how many you miss on but you all seem to hit on a lot or i'm sorry the staff does give credit where credit's due the i.t department uh specifically seems like it's a revenue center instead of a cost center with the way that he's able to pull money so appreciate that uh the discussion about zero-based uh budget especially with some of the changes that are coming up with dr thornton leaving after next year and everything i think that was good conversation and worth kind
040of putting in the back your head for future budgets teacher raises so i don't think it's your intention at all so i want to be very clear about that but i don't know that we're really given a raise this year we're really given a cost of living increase and and i know that that's not your intention this isn't meant to be a criticism but essentially year-over-year inflation we're looking at seven seven five percent uh i forget what the exact number is but i think we're roughly at like six or six and a half percent raise so um again that's not a criticism but just something to consider um i know that uh teacher student ratio is a moving target uh windsor elementary is near and dear to my heart for various reasons uh i know
041when you're briefing uh student teacher ratios a couple months ago they had some classrooms that were you know at the upper limit so uh where it's possible in the budget i would uh encourage being aggressive there to to drive that number down um teachers having to use their planning period so i know we had a lot of conversation about this over the past couple of months so i'll give a good new bat on this i think if it's possible finding a way to be able to pay teachers from the sub budget for when they have to use their their planning period would be a positive thing the bad to that is i fear the amount of administration that would come with having to try to keep track of that so i realized that there's a
042balance there so but i thought i would throw that out there and on the last piece and this kind of goes back to good fiscal responsibility um and maybe to some public relations recommendation here i think it would be really good it would be some hard staff work but it'd be really good staff work for the staff to really look at how many positions you have that are required or and we kind of just talked about this with the testing coordinators how much are you actually having to fund to pay to be able to do state and to meet state and federal regulations and and that includes testing and all the reporting and everything else you have to do so um well i think that it would be healthy to look at certain positions within
043central office i think central office in some ways also gets a bad rap because a lot of their work is trying to meet and maintain state and federal regulations and i think that if you could show the taxpayer hey if i didn't have to do all of these things to meet state and federal regulations you know then i wouldn't necessarily have to have these other positions or i wouldn't have to hire 500 000 or whatever it was of testing coordinators just to ensure that my guidance counselors are actually being guidance counselors so i think that's it i appreciate the extra time i hope my comments were helpful thank you thank you very much okay is there anyone that came in later and would like to not have an opportunity to sign up that would like
044to speak the public hearing okay [Applause] number one too 6.2. good evening madam chair members of the board dr thornton uh so in front of you you should have a uh a summary and outline of a recommendation that mr kepnes and i developed based off of the recommendation from ssc so the georgie tyler cooling tower had an unexpected and severe failure so what we are looking to to do and are recommending um is to move forward with an emergency um procurement of moving forward with just having the one vendor which is laid out in front of you that vendor has been on site they've surveyed the work they provided us with a quote they're familiar with the system based off previous preventative maintenance on the system but the reality is that those parts are on
045severe back order it's going to take a long time for them to come in we know that already and the sooner we can get this started the better as you can see that's laid out in the recommendation in front of you so we are recommending to move forward with the emergency approval i have a question for you but i know you already know this but the public is here um of course georgia tyler is our last school the newest school built in this county so uh i'm i'm guessing that none of this is covered under any type of warranty the warranty no ma'am now we are moving forward with an insurance claim however the insurance claim has been filed and we are very hopeful that after review that they will reimburse us with of course
046we're hoping for the full amount of that cost but the reality is they're not working on the same timeline we're working on we need that building cooled for our kiddos and we can't wait for the insurance process to play out so we are looking to take immediate action hoping to recoup um through the insurance uh process but the warranty you know ma'am have another question yes of course georgia tyler again man the newest school in this county that was built that is um would you say that this is a normal wear and tear for building that size or this is just something that maybe was something to just malfunction from a bad part or something it was a catastrophic event so um yes ma'am so it's it's it was a failure of the pump on
047a cold cold night and it was just the stars were aligned or misaligned i guess would be a better way of stating it but everything went wrong that night and the coils froze and the system went always seem to come up when something breaks it's like we're waiting for parks you're in the military preventive maintenance we don't have any spare parts on hand when something like this happened because we have a similar situation at cosby elementary school but i think an hvac system is out and we're waiting for parts and it's like we're always waiting for the parts to come in and so some type of preventive maintenance would be in place to have spare parts something available so that we would not be caught with our pants down each time because now here we
048are again waiting for parts yes preventative maintenance did occur on that unit so that was occurring right on a regular basis um through uh one of our vendors but this specific event happened just outside of that and it was so catastrophic that it wasn't you know oh we'll just get a part here apart there it was a we need to look at a complete overhaul of the system yeah we don't have too many negative 17 degree days in this area so it got really cold i i don't i forget what the exact temperature was that night but yesterday it was a very cold night and the pump failed and it was just things that going on for this area yes sir okay so this is uh 500 that's for repair of the system correct yes
049sir okay um how much would it cost to replace the system and the bottom line is the more cost effective than to the repair than to replace it that's the bottom line yes i'll have to go back in and check those numbers uh from ssc that's our our vendor who made the recommendation to us so i'll have to go back in and see what the number would be for a full-on on replacement of the system i don't know that number off the top my head okay okay how long how long had this system been in the building on the building is this the original one yes i believe that seven seven years seven years okay so so the next question would be what's the uh expected life expectancy of the parts that's what all right
050yeah that's much longer than seven years okay that's why there was a warranty on that because that's a new school and something like that's going out you know i mean hey but you said it the warranty is over so it's insurance maybe what maybe will cover it so if the parts are hard to get is the system obsolete should we just look at purchase a new system if the parts are that hard to get maybe that they are obsolete so this is the cooling tower which is a major part of the entire system when you talk about replacing the entire system now you're talking about millions of dollars okay so this is a major component of that system which is why you wouldn't have that part on hand because the part itself and to put
051it in is almost 300 000 okay so so that that is why uh the the price tag on it and unfortunately as we go through and we've worked with ssc and and actually my dissertation was in facilities these things have life expectancies of anywhere from 20 years that's usually about it 15 to 20 years and we have all that program through ssc about the expected life and we've been replacing some of those things along the way and then you you make a value adjustment too if you're at 20 years and it's still working you let it keep rolling and but sometimes you have failure prior to the the 15 years or 20 years and this is one of those cases which is why we do think there's a good chance insurance is is going to
052help us with this and i'll tell you warranties since we are building hardy now the warranties are not very long on mechanical parts uh for these buildings your roof warranty you probably be the longest thing like 20 years or 30 years and that's if you don't let your staff go up there and stuff step off where they're not supposed to so so they're very strict on the warranties and what you do to it and uh yeah so i hope that helps clearly more questions from uh what yeah collect ms doll well i i do i do have one question on the 298.5 now do we and this may be something more for mr katniss do we have some surplus money in this year's budget or is this something we're going to have to go to
053the board of supervisors for oh i'm going to answer that one too very good unfortunately unfortunately um uh with the esser funds in maintenance we can go with that and and and move quickly but you are correct otherwise this would put us over the 250 in capital maintenance funds and we would have to go and traditionally we've had to do that some years because these aren't expected things but again just to streamline we're when less able to use the grant and move quickly yes so one last question so what is our projected timeline for receiving the pump in that we need to make this reset the estimate that was given to us was a 16 weeks from the day that we placed the order so we're looking at at least that amount of time but
054we are putting in temporary during that time yes we're exploring those options as well because obviously you can do the timeline in your head it's going to get warm before that of course so we're looking at temporary solutions in the intertime okay okay any more questions this is an action item all right madam chair i'd like to make a motion authorizing the superintendent or a designee to negotiate and upon completion of the negotiation to enter into an emergency contract with the uh to move train to repair the cooling tower at georgia d tyler middle school an amount of 298 500 dollars as authorized by virginia code two point two that's four three zero three f second motion second and that we um emotion has been moving second at this time we will have a vote
055any discussion well we just discussed it i can have a discussion i do want to add uh because we we didn't bring this up our attorney uh advised us on the procedure for the emergency procurement and uh so we have followed all the three requirements that you need for that and the the last requirement would be after you vote if you approve it we will post that in all the documentation on the website okay just want to mention the other concerns any other concerns okay at this time we'll take a vote mr vines yay style okay motion passes five five thank you okay all right at this time we're asking are there any bullet comments chair i do have one i probably should have asked this earlier well this is comment time so this is
056fine [Laughter] when we're talking about the sros the 623 853 do we have within the budget us pulling in the money that the board of supervisors is currently given to the sheriff's department for the current sros so we grabbing that back and then um putting the 623 in i can speak to that so i actually spoke to to mr keaton today about the sros and and pretty much that same fact that four of them are already funded in the sheriff's department fully and what we're saying is we're going to fund five additional um for ten months in the four ten months and put all that in our budget and uh so it's really a matter of randy and the board of supervisors where they transfer that money out of the sheriff's department and put it
057in our budget uh it's all county money so whether it is a need that pete the people believe we should have it's really a matter of logistics now the benefit of having it in the school budget there is some history at one point we have as some of you are aware that all the resource offices all the schools and one of the sheriffs at some point made a decision to because they were in his his budget made a decision to move that money for some other need in the county and reduce the number so with us putting the money in the school budget that decision in the future because the money would be in the school budget to pay resource officers would be a school board decision and so i think it just works out
058better for whoever the sheriff is and for the school board that the school board may make that decision that we need a resource officer or not i do have a i have a question and i think this was a comment um an email that i think a lot of us got as far as sro officers i see there's nothing in here for training and somebody was concerned about the sheriff not being trained for like students with disabilities like is there no training at all like we're not funding any training for them no we're we're funding the unit we are now we're funding the uniforms the training and their their salaries and benefits for for 10 months and the sheriff is funding the vehicle and their salaries for the summer months so yes there's training and
059what we also hope since they will be working for us especially at the elementary level to bring back programs like the dare program and educating young people on drugs and violence and other types of programs evolved through the years and we really haven't had that so this opportunity through some resource time to expose our young people okay there are no more void comments or any concerns from i had just one um what was the percentage that we were given to raise for our teachers was it seven point nine six one two six point six six point 6.6 and i think that was an increase from the original originally when we started the budget i think it was like five percent of course for everyone and um it has increased to six points and we had
060a citizen tonight to recommend six i didn't wanna squeeze the budget anymore but i think we should look at that again for our teachers to even be more competitive because he was right that's merely a cost of living raise and to be competitive with the upcoming school year you know i think our virginia beach was getting close to uh 12 you know so we need to do a little bit better you know for our teachers um if we're going to keep them in the county you know we're going to keep them you know you know we because that's where the rubber has eroded with our teachers in the classroom we're going to ever be able to compete with the beach because they're their budget is much larger than ours not trying to compete with sandy
061because i understand what you're saying i don't know if alawite county budget can go in that direction for 12 i mean well they say virginia beach we can look into it we can look into it before we finalize everything but the state says that virginia beach is the richest city in alawite county it's a richest county tax bases are different yeah virginia beach has millions of citizens and alawites still trying to get to 50 000. we're rich over here but is it's a nice thought because i've always been an advocate for the teachers and getting a higher pay raise for the teachers but i don't want to put out there something i know that we cannot do and um we also had a citizen come up tonight and said you know we need to be
062visual about what we're doing because also alawite uh majority of the citizens in alawite are are senior citizens and when i say senior citizens maybe 55 and over a lot of them are retirees and uh they may not want major tax increases you understand what i'm saying although this is a this is a discussion for the board of supervisors but we have to uh be realistic um we're doing the best we can right now okay