School Board Meeting 2/10/22

001that 2.2-371 2d of the code of virginia and certified that the only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements were discussed in only such public business matters as were identified in a motion by which the closed meeting was convened were heard discussed or considered okay you heard the motion do we have a second i'll second that motion on the floor in a second at this time we'll take a vote motion carries we have four to abstain someone didn't vote mr vaughn let me do it again i could take a verbal yay okay motion carries five to zero thank you good evening at this time i would like to welcome all of you to the alawite county school board regular meeting uh tonight we have quite a few things on our agenda we're in

002our budget season for next fiscal school year and so tonight we will have presentations introducing the public to the budget tonight is not the meeting that we will discuss anything about the budget uh on the 15th the school board will get together and have a discussion and that's a workshop on the budget and following that workshop we will have a public hearing where the public can come out and address anything on the budget agenda that they would like thank you at this time we will have a pledge of allegiance on a moment of silence we will be led by mr cunningham thank you i pledge allegiance one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all moment of silence thank you okay we have business bricks with alawite for cheeks thank you madam chair

003vision for olive white county schools is to create a learning environment that will enable every child to discover his or her unique gifts and talents the olive white achievers section of our board meeting gives us an opportunity to recognize and celebrate our students and staff for their unique talents and gifts first tonight from carrollton elementary school we have stem teacher pamela hall so pam if you'll come up pam has published her first book and i'm going to set that there for you be their warrior helping all students succeed through culture community and being strong a description of the book found on the amazon website states do you ever wonder how you'll bring out the best in every single student be there a warrior will inspire you stretch you empath empathize with you and empower you

004to be a warrior for all students award-winning educator pamela hall shares her strategies and stories for building unwavering life-changing relationships through culture community and being strong you'll gain powerful principles that rewards of high student engagement and achievement while enabling all students to blossom her book is available through amazon in paperback or electronic form for use with the kindle app but you won't need to wait to purchase it as ms hall has brought a signed copy for each board member and the superintendent so this time i'll let miss hall distribute her book congratulations thank you man thank you and congratulations okay oh this is great thank you very much and i think ms hall just wants to make one or two remarks about this i just want to say nothing great happens in a silo so

005when you look at the acknowledgments in that book you will notice our own district's christie bucks oh okay you will notice haley cooperider in the acknowledgments you will notice natalie street in the acknowledgements and michelle pilo and in fact this graphic was created by michelle pilo so nothing happens by ourselves and i just wanted to acknowledge that um anything that good happens to me is because i have great people that help congratulations thank you [Applause] okay next we're going to do our february seniors of the month the senior of the month for february from windsor high is randy vo randy is a positive force at windsor high school while many students meet the criteria for a devoted student athlete randy stands out in his personable approach to staff and students alike in randy's four years

006of high school he has always treated others as an immediate friend he consistently looks for ways to make those around him smile and feel accepted this character trait of randy's makes him stand out amongst our students he is a role model of acceptance and is extremely respectful and non-judgmental of others and their beliefs even when they differ from his he is humble kind and giving randy's always willing to help his peers whether it's assisting students with their belongings due to an injury or tutoring his peers during his win block he often offers his assistance to the adults at windsor high too and no matter the task he can always be counted on to provide quality help quote randy has become a role model for the underclassmen in my class he leads by example and often

007shares his experiences with the other students in the class and that comes from mr joshua bush engineering teacher randy plans on attending either virginia tech or east carolina university to study engineering we congratulate you randy [Applause] all right anyone else all right thank you we wish you well randy the senior of the month for february from smithville high school is christiana jones christiana has reached great heights in the execution of her duties as a student director and the drum major of the smithville high school band that number 60 students she's exceeded the expectations of her superiors peers and subordinates her sound judgment experience and technical proficiency have made her an invaluable asset to smithville high school and the surrounding community organizations she academically maintains an a average and is a student consistent in displaying loyalty

008respect and commitment to the band and other extracurricular school activities she is undoubtedly the most talented and skilled vocalist musician at smithville high school christiana was selected this month to be the first ever student conductor for the symphonic band and the student jazz ensemble director while maintaining the drum major duties for the marching band cristiana successfully auditioned and was selected as the winner of the soprano voice in the all district 4 course finally she was named a member of the national honor society quote christiana jones has embodied the military saying early is on time and on time is late she believes that success for any event requires arriving early to manage the preparatory needs to ensure that the time scheduled is maximized she believes this concept will breed success in all aspects of her life

009as it pertains to her educational growth and that comes from mr joel joyner band director at smithfield high no surprise christiana will be attending old dominion university and majoring in music education and i'm going to put you on the spot and say i hope when you graduate you will at least apply back to isle of wight county schools okay it's on tape and we've got it here all right so let me get a picture really quick right and family oh hang on grandpa here there you go thank you christian we're gonna do one more with randy with his mask off okay for photos okay all right okay where's mom right behind you [Applause] um next we'll hear from ssc each month as ssc the company that provides custodial services for the division recognizes an outstanding

010employee as their employee of the month at this time i think we'll have mr yep tyrone come up good evening good evening madam chairman members of the board neighbors this is my absolute favorite thing to do recognize someone who's a part of our team who's a valuable part of our team who helps us to continue to move forward and do those things that we're contract to do and should be doing and that is expected that we do miss leona batten has the other vet has been on this for a while she has constantly improved herself that she's going through to the point of she should be a supervisor she doesn't know what she wants to be but i will continue to harass her but she does an ext an outstanding job she leads by example

011and she can always be counted on if there's something extra that comes up that needs to be done so we want to take this time to recognize leona and thank her for her efforts [Applause] okay all right um next we'd like to announce that february has been designated as school board appreciation month in virginia and as citizen leaders school board members face complex and demanding challenges yet few people fully understand the scope and far-reaching implications of board members responsibilities tonight we would like to recognize the vital contributions of our school board members and focus attention on the crucial roles that these elected officials play in the education of our children their job is to establish a vision for the education program design a structure to achieve that vision ensure schools are accountable to the community

012and strongly advocate continuous improvement in student learning that job entails an endless string of meetings and school functions to attend lengthy reports agendas proposals and other information to read and study and a host of difficult decisions to make the time spent in board meetings represents just a small fraction of the hours school board members spend leading the division they also work hard at seminars and training sessions to keep informed of the latest trends in educational leadership are deeply involved in community activities and spend time in the schools and at extracurricular events their love for learning and concerning caring for students staff and community drives our board members desire to lead so students can achieve in recognition of the dedicated service of school board members throughout virginia february has been designated as school board appreciation month

013this is the time to show our recognition and to increase our understanding of how local board members work together to provide a better future for our children tonight we want each of you to know that your hard work has been noticed and is truly appreciated we have chairman denise times from district 5 formerly the smithfield district we have vice chairman michael cunningham from district 2 formerly the hardy district john collick from district one formerly the carsville district michael vines from district three formerly the windsor district and renee dial from district four formerly the newport district and you each received a certificate from the virginia school boards association and we say a wholehearted thank you for your service [Applause] next week is actually school board clerk appreciation week and in honor of that week we are

014recognizing our clerk tracy ruit and backup clerk jessica whitlow tonight so i'm asked jim i put tracy on the spot and jessica they're always behind the scenes but if they'll come up we have a special something for them we'll have them stand in front and if if you've interacted at all with jessica or tracy especially tracy i'm going to go and you'll know what that is need it now board clerks are tasked with maintaining accurate records of school board meetings a record of all receipts and disbursements and a record of all official acts but they are more than record keepers for the board they make sure the board has the materials necessary for their meetings in a timely manner they serve as a point of contact for parents employees in the community on behalf of

015the school board and the superintendent and they work additional hours attending meetings we would like to thank tracy and jessica for their dedication and service to the school board of isle of wight county [Applause] so here we go one two three beautiful thank you thank you ladies and this is going to conclude our isle of wight achievers for tonight i want to thank all of the honorees and their family members who came out and supported them okay thank you i um like to also thank some people in this school district i would like to thank the agriculture farm mr daniel jekins and his staff they presented us today with some of the soaps that they have made they're natural soaps from the farm we have smithfield middle school gave us the bag and the package

016we also have tala middle school we can't see that oh oh yeah thank you eric oh yeah you hold that post up and they all get and they gave us a qr scanner once we scan this they all i think they put a message it's a video and a message for the board members and i would like to thank all of them for uh recognizing us this month if you notice we are wearing red tonight as well and um the reason the board is wearing red is to represent national heart month okay and i know a lot of you were probably thinking we were celebrating valentine's day but it's more national heart okay thank you very much at this time we will um before i move on i do want to say this i was

017watching tv one night last week the news which that's about the only thing we get to watch right now is wtkr's student athlete of the week we had two young ladies from smithville high school they were the dynamic duos and i i don't want to mess up their names but if i do please correct me someone jayla hira hairup herp okay jayla herb she's a 12th grader she's number five and then we had kayla abraham she's 12th grade as well number 32 and i would like to applaud these young ladies for their help thank you okay at this time we're going to have a special presentation from is it smithfield high school okay smith high school good evening i thought she had a child good evening madam chair members of the board and dr thornton

018my name is andrew wappelhorst and i'm a student at smithfield high school my classmates and i would like to talk to you about our vehicle safety inspections pbl we are part of coach ridick's um sorry we are part of coach radix driver education class my name is sophia hewitt my name is elora wooten my name is jordan brazile my name is meredith pappel our driving question was how does proper vehicle maintenance extend the life of the vehicle and prevent potential accidents we started off this process by researching creating a list of helpful and typical inspected safety like safety procedures then we created a safe route among the school parking lots for students to be checking the cars then we got our teachers to volunteer their cars so that we can could expect them and then

019lastly we gave the teachers back their feedback and we analyzed the data we got the opportunity to spend time out of the classroom with our classmates getting to collaborate and work as a team to inspect all the vehicles that were in the uh inspection we checked things such as tire pressure tire tread and the windshield clarity before i was taking this class i was unaware how to check any of these i was unaware how to check my tire tread so i would like to show a demonstration oh my bad this is my favorite part right here you take a penny you flip it upside down and you put it in the groove um if you can see abraham lincoln's head then you need the tires we also sent out a checklist to all of the

020members that participated in the inspection um to let them know what their safety violations are good all right um one of our fellow students phillip said this project helped me learn just how important yet easy it is to maintain your vehicle our fellow classmate hannah said i learned that having your vehicle inspected for safety is very important and helps keep ensure ensure you keep yourself and other motorists safe on the road i learned the importance of safety while driving and that even something small can become very dangerous my classmate kid inside i learned how easy it is to check things like tire tread if you're worried about the simple safety check taking too much time out of your day don't be so out of the 23 cars that we were able to inspect tire pressure

021was the most missed in mirrors and winches with elise miss this being reason being is that you're constantly looking out of your windshield and adjusting your mirrors but you're not always checking the pressure on your tire especially when it's cold outside overall none of the cars that we inspected were 100 safe we decided to create these pamphlets to give out to staff as well as students when purchasing their parking classes my classmates and i worked on this project throughout the course of several weeks and we made multiple drafts until we were finally satisfied we would now like to hand out the planets that we made we started off our expo night with going outside and checking one of the county cars which actually ended up passing with flying colors and then we spent the rest

022of our night back inside the building talking with parents and adults and teachers and telling them what we did and using one of our example tires to show off how we checked tire tread and tire pressure using one of our tire pressure gauges based on our presentation does anyone have any questions i have one question you all did the brochure yourself yes this is excellent yeah yes and you of the the vehicles that you all were they just random vehicles in the parking area or you just did the faculty volunteered us to go and look at their cars pardon me teachers teachers let us inspect their cars okay all right thank you you did excellent job i didn't know to i knew you could use the penny to put it in the uh treads but

023ida was thinking i didn't know it was the head i just thought you just put the penny in there i didn't know that he had to look like family to say but next time i know okay thank you very much you should go through the class yeah that's true too but thank you very much and you know i appreciate you all coming to tell us those things tonight because we learn from you all and i tell people all the time it doesn't matter how old you are you can learn from someone okay thank you very much thank you [Applause] okay okay at the beginning of our meeting tonight we amended our agenda so on your um agendas you probably do not have item number 11.2 11.2 is when we're amended agenda to discuss and possibly

024pass the mass mandate okay at this time we'll open it up for discussion if anyone cares to discuss it certainly you know this has been a very contentious issue in the county um for the last few months and as you know can you guys can everybody hear me okay as you know um the senate passed senate bill 739 it's going to the house and the governor expects to sign it next week or in a couple weeks and fast track the bill so that he can implement it on march the 1st however for him to implement it on march the 1st it also has to go back to the general assembly and both houses have to vote on it to approve that if either house fails to do that then the date for mac masks to

025be uh for parental uh choice is effective july to first so i i think um a good compromise is for us to go with what the governor has said um march 1st for the county um to remove the mass we give parents the choice if you still want your children to wear masks obviously they would be able to um and then we would implement it regardless of how the general assembly votes if if that's how we vote so after everybody has a discussion then i'll make a motion okay thank you mr colic any more discussions i just wanted to say that the um well we all know what came down the day before yesterday yesterday we had some of the board members had discussed it not in a group one-on-one something like that and we

026were thinking about maybe in uh spring break deciding to do this anyway but the general assembly is going to take care that probably they stepped up the day before or month before we did that we said you know everything hopefully spring break was going to be springtime everyone would go out and take a vacation you know their spring break we'll come back and that we will have the parent option those who want to wear masks can continue to wear masks those that do not they do not have to wear masks but at this time if no other board members would like to discuss i just wanted to say um if we vote uh to lift the mass mandate on the first of march um the students would still have to wear the mask on the

027buses coming in and going home um the uh teachers still have to wear the mask that's out of our control oh sure osha ocean has them win it but the the parents uh and the students when they're at school uh the parents can you know have them come out in the morning if they ride the bus wet a mess on the bus when they get to school they can take it off uh their option if you want to keep the mask on that's fine too we're going to let y'all choose that um the numbers are coming down looking at uh cdc's uh what they're saying so we just want to do what's right and that's that's all i have to say um uh dr thornton do you i like this okay go ahead i'm sorry

028mr vise i like to say ask just one thing you know if this is gonna it's inevitable it's gonna happen why wait two weeks why not do it now all right the reason why we want to wait the two weeks what's on the floor of the general assembly is just for parents and students that's the act for them this is a school board all school boards we have to think about more than just students sometimes we have staff as well we have a lot of staff members that may have medical issues we don't know them personally but we're sure they have medical issues some of the staff members have to care for people or they live with people with medical issues the two weeks will give them an opportunity to well like if they have

029to make some you know arrangements or change some conditions at home or whatever that will give them an opportunity to do that too give everybody an opportunity to think about which direction they want to go in okay so the two weeks is there that's it i don't mean to sound controversial but you just said a few minutes ago that the school board was deciding to lift the mask anyway at spring break i mean did y'all not just hear that uh two weeks i just believe our kids have just gone through so much with these masks we've gone back and forth it's just been so much controversy and i think now if this is inevitable and it's going to happen march 1 what's the difference in two weeks that's my question amen okay [Applause] excuse me

030we're in the middle of a discussion no applause right now please we appreciate that thank you hi madam chair i will make the motion that effective march the first we will implement parental choice regarding the masks no matter how the general assembly votes in alawite schools second we have a motion on the floor with the second any more discussion any concerns with the motion hearing none at this time we will take a vote madam clerk do we need to do a verbal vote or do you have it in okay thank you yes okay all right the motion carries the vote is all for yes and one day thank you right the next thing on the agenda is request to speak madam clerk in accordance to policy b-d-d-h-e presentations of information on any subject will be

031concluded at the direction of the board no person will be recognized to speak more than once citizens scheduled on the agenda to speak will be permitted four minutes maximum time for their presentation delegations will be requested to limit their speakers to two persons speaking are asked to be specific state issues for the board's consideration and attach a copy of your prepared remarks if you have prepared remarks they should be given to the board clerk please do not approach board members any matter relating to a specific student will be heard by the school board only in a closed meeting first we have her excuse me a second um one second officer at the door uh with those citizens like to come in and have a seat we have some seats now the choice is up to

032them i just want to let them know we do have some seats in here available if they would like to come in and join the meeting we're going to give them a chance mr degroff to come in well that's why i'm giving you all an opportunity to come in okay ma'am thank you if that's it we're ready mr degraw madam chairman board members herb de graft uh and i found out from the registrar today i'm still in the hardy district until the court rules so mr collick will be mined eventually the superintendent's three greatest responsibilities since i'm talking about his mid-year evaluation and some other agenda items are the strategic plan supervising principles and ensuring that all instruction being told is with a aligned curriculum along with the virginia standards of learning dr thornton's mid-year

033evaluation should definitely say he isn't doing any of these these are spelled out in the iwcs policy cba and abiding by his contract provision and vac 221-70 obviously dr thornton doesn't care about these because he's run the iwcs school boards to this point in time you allow this to continue and not hold him accountable for his actions or lack thereof iwcs doesn't have a current strategic plan since the previous one ran out in december of 2021 and according to mr lombardo it won't likely have a new draft until about may of this year that'll be nine months without a plan and this is against iwcs policy and virginia law years ago for an example in september 2016 it was noted all schools developed related to lesson plans was five c's embedded in all curriculum that

034was impossible since the plan wasn't approved until a year later so that's the problem we have and it's not the first time that dr and thornton thornton's been involved in falsifying documents right dr thornton we know he has never supervised ibcs as principal for seven years because he said so at the 9th december board meeting remember he said mrs goetz has 9 reports 9 principals reporting to her board i say to dr thornton i have that portion of the video saved so that if you want to do something with it as you've done with some other public records violating for you again i have the unaltered one a superintendent is to enforce school laws we know that's not true when it comes to dr thornton because vac 22170 states powers and duty as a superintendent

035generally a superintendent will perform such other duties that may be prescribed by law by the school boarded by the state board and a superintendent oversees planning and evaluation of curriculum and instruction dr thornton appeared to have a plan all along that he and executive director guts wouldn't do anything for seven years and then pick up the phone and call hampton city public schools and buy their curriculum for 66 000 of us taxpayers money right board members please take action this evening like you did for your board clerk and have the superintendent sign that aasa code of ethics if you don't you'll show the community again who works for whom the key word for organizations and leaders is trust presently most on this board and the superintendent are not trusted by the citizens incompetent behavior some

036exhibit at each board meeting and some's interaction with us sitting cement this the board voted on the 6th january to table discussion on protocols so this february regular board meeting somebody lied to the public y'all drove to charlottesville vsba to escape public view and discuss them there provisions have been made right the pending protocol changes once again inhibits citizens trying to get documentation say even mr pack told you shouldn't do that vsba training was not identified as regular special board meeting because still conducted business lastly on 22 january i received a letter unsigned marked alawite county school board with no comments and i don't think you all even knew about that were you covering executive director's failures madam chair on her failures of job reforce performance the reason i say this you approved guess's promotions

037as executive director of school supervising her relative than the principal of carrollton elementary in violation iwcs policy into law during the 12 august 22 board meeting getz made a presentation informing the board that iwcs hadn't was buying hcps as a line curriculum she said quote we have an alignment issue and some of our standards are not aligned as they need to be and this will help fix that as times you said my january comments were hearsay then said back then susan thank you very much i was very familiar with hampton's program i have friends that work there time in any case um i'll give this to the clerk i'm giving this one drive for you to do an investigation by sir you can't get out i've got one for this midfield officer sergeant uh can

038you give that to the clerk sir no you need that so you can conduct an investigation and i'm giving one of these metro councils you next is heidi schwartz [Music] good evening um after reviewing the school board policies i had some concerns p1 48-hour notice notification for agenda items in the event of a last-minute citizen notification to a board member will the board member still be allowed to add to the agenda and will notification not only be notified to board members but updated to the citizens also p13 the board member will reach out to the chair with a request to add items to the agenda the board chair and the superintendent can postpone those items to me since the superintendent's not a member of the school board why does the superintendent get to have the

039decision of postponing an agenda item by an elected official why is the superintendent creating the agenda in the first place they should be submitting items to the board for agenda not creating the agenda if this needs to be a two-person decision should it be the chair and the vice chair at minimum to postpone items p14 communication between board members and staff it states that board members should not be communicating directly with staff with requests for information requests from the board should go through a chain of communication meaning the superintendent just to be clear is there still other avenues in the event of a conflict of interest if someone were to be involved with the superintendent or the designee otherwise it appears to be undermining your position and setting up more complications for those working under

040the superintendent or their designer p-15 i believe this to be one of the most important ones for the constituents of iowa white county responding to the staff or community comments outside of the board meetings we've been told send us your emails we will respond and again i've sent emails but i don't get responses i followed up after last meetings with suggestions on improving two protocols the klb and the instructional materials i haven't heard anything from board members i did hear something from the superintendent this states that board members will refer comments and concerns through the chain and communication starting at the lowest level applicable are the board members not allowed to assist directly with the citizens that they represent that's my question what is the lowest level considered for the chain of communications is this

041a person is it letters being received back from you guys is it emails what the school board after we speak at meetings we really don't get letters anymore we get a form letter i'm not sure who it's coming from i'm not sure if it's the clerk i don't know where these letters are coming from it's coming to the fact that it seems like parental and citizen involvement's not respected or wanted unless it's a puppy dog wagging its tail the school board was designed to represent each district and was fought for by individuals who become elected position my question is does some of this protocol strip some of your obligations away you're supposed to be representing for the people that elect you into the position to govern the public school system that their tax dollars go

042to and the children and the staff that attend and work in illinois county one minute i'd like to add that as a windsor citizen i was appalled by my representative tuesday evening to have mr vines invite someone who does not currently live in isle white county to speak and then have a sit-in citizen removed who does live in the county and then later allow another individual from that same area as the person he removed it speaks volume of your double standards of transplants and what i think is white women and to allow this fellow board member mr colic be called a white supremacist when mr colic only stood up by your side defending him in regarding questions aimed at mr ride's re-transportation into windsor on the january 13th school board meeting mr vines threatened to

043have anyone who texted him removed from a meeting a week later he sat through a meeting texting many people i could go on and i'll finish with this i look forward as a windsor constituent collecting signatures to put jason marsh on as a candidate against you mr vines and i have signatures for any voter in the windsor district that would like to sign it thank you david adams good evening board members dr thornton and my fellow citizens my name is david adams and i live in the windsor district uh during the town hall meeting that was hosted at windsor elementary school on tuesday february 8th by mr vines and mr collins adams yes in this portion of the uh comments yes it's only things that's on the agenda if you're going to discuss the town

044hall then you need to do that at the next uh comment section yeah yes mr chairman i understand this is um this will lead into a budget i'm just kind of setting the stage for a comment that was made about the budget you hold that comment for the next comment section okay you need to go directly into your you you should be discussing budget if that's what you're going to discuss right now okay sir yes ma'am okay thank you the the the reason i was setting the stage was because mr mr edmunds was a a fellow citizen at that meeting who suggested to the two board members present that they work with the superintendent's office to identify potential gaps in funding based on things like transportation okay masking okay social distance thank you sir yes

045ma'am um we just need the central administration office to make a policy on what it looks like post-pandemic so that we can you know educatedly make a budget moving into fy 23 because if we don't know what the policies are going to be then it's really hard to budget those items out specifically homebound my son had homebound instruction when he was sick there's no budget item for that and uh then i also noticed that that in fy 22 the united states department of agriculture paid for all the meals for all the students in isle of white county is that going to continue in fy 23 we don't know so that's revenue that we're going to have to make up somehow so these are my concerns about the budget i had a a list of things

046because i thought this was the public comment on on the budget i understand now that it's a later time so i will i will reserve my line items for them thank you we are going to discuss budget tonight but we're going to have a special uh public hearing where you can come and if you have more items at that time we're going to have it i don't know which where it's going to be 24th here it's well it's going to be here on the 24th okay and then you can come that night if you if and you know voice your opinion then anything you want us to add that's the time that the citizens come in and we can adjust the budget okay uh the february 15th working session is that open to the public

047all all of our sessions are open to the public unless it's a closed session sir the only thing the uh work session is just going to be the board members and staff talking it's pretty much if the public come in they just be hearing us talking okay your night will be the 24th i don't miss i don't want you get you get to speak and be in control of the 24th okay i don't mind listening to talking i do that all right okay all right um thank you for coming out sir that's it so on agenda items okay all right yeah that was all for the gentiles thank you all for coming out tonight for uh to speak next on the agenda we have committee reports and i'll pretty much start since i have some

048things to um on february 2nd we went uh well i'll start january uh 24th 25th the board members were in richmond myself i was here in uh home i did the virtual the other board members actually traveled to richmond and i was the virginia school board association capital conference on um february 2nd we went to charlottesville the board for training uh we have four new board members and i i don't know if that has ever happened in the history of alawite county before work we have four new board members come on at the same time because we normally have staggered uh elections and with that many board members coming on board we felt like we needed to do uh special training with the board and that's what we did and it was very beneficial on

049february 7th uh i and mr cunningham did a field trip with the superintendent and we got to visit um the alawite county cte programs was a high school smith high school and the agriculture farm located behind windsor elementary school and i if if you are especially the parents if you're a parent i would recommend that you get with the building administrators and have them to take you on a tour of those programs if you're a citizen do the same just call to the school or you can email the building administrator and they will set up a date where you can come in and actually tool the programs because the young people in our school district and i'm going to brag on them they are doing some remarkable things that we don't know about and we

050need to go in there and see what they're doing the reason why we had not been into the cte program is because of the pandemic of course we wanted everybody to stay safe yes school board members were considered people that did not have to be in the building okay during instruction of time so this was a time where the superintendent felt like you know okay we're ready now it's time we're going to take you into the building we have all of the new members and they needed to go as well i today he took the other three members on the same tool that mr cunningham and i went on monday um let me see what else do we have here madam chair thank you uh can i say something really quick about the cte tools

051okay um so we don't disrupt the instruction uh is there a way that we uh that the schools could have like an open house because if we get uh and and i want the citizens to actually see what's going on with the cte program but i don't i would prefer that you know i don't get that they get two people come in on a monday three people come in on a tuesday spaced out like that but uh uh if the superintendent can speak to how we can work that that's where as a group you could go in so so we could probably put on what we call an expo and just for the cte programs and see if some students want to volunteer to share what they do during the day and with the instructors

052that i think that would be great that would be great okay definitely thank you thank you i would like to thank some people that um on that tour we were like first we i i we thanked him earlier that was mr daniel jackins over at the agriculture farm we would like to thank mr jackson and his staff and they gave us a little goodie bag while we were there and then we got to smithville high school and we would like to thank mr horn and his staff that's mr scott horn of the culinary arts department they provided lunch for us his students they prepared the lunch and a little box lunch and they also baked little cookies on the side and prepared it for us and we would like to thank them as well yesterday

053i attended the strategic plan workshop academic uh it was an academic section of it experience and mrs shantay denson which is the principal of hardy elementary school she was a group leader and mrs denson did a wonderful job leading the group of educators and parents and community people as well we were at westside elementary from nine o'clock until eleven o'clock and she started exactly nine o'clock and she ended at exactly eleven o'clock and we got everything done we pretty much got um i guess i'll go we gotta go we gotta go to go that's that was our task so they're going to pull it all together and see what happens and the next date we we meet with mrs denson will be i think it's march 9th or something like that and that's all i

054have anybody else want to share their things that they've done during the month you get on everything well you know i i'm the cte uh representative and i went on that tour today and it was just phenomenal um i've been familiar with vocational technical training in the past and um this puts everything i've ever seen to shame and it's it it really is something that if you are a taxpayer in this county you really need to get out and see what these young men and women are doing um i'm actually i've got a meeting tomorrow morning with the new secretary of education and to discuss lab schools and this is one thing that i am bringing up is we've got lab schools ready to go we've almost met all the criteria that's being developed so

055far we are in a very unique position we're setting our children up for success in the workforce or in college their choice but a lot of kids are going to come out of school with a trade and a diploma that will get them into the college of their choice and none of this existed five or six years ago this was the brainchild of dr thornton and i think he deserves an awful lot of credit for that particularly since more often than not he's being attacked but this is really dr thornton's brainchild and it is far better than anything i have ever seen so please get out and see that when you can thank you thank you mr collins thank you anyone else like to speak okay mr cunningham actually uh to add on to what

056mr collick just said uh most of the equipment uh the that the welding class and and and the other classes cte classes most of those pieces of equipment that are being used did not come out of your tax dollars dr thornton actually went out to industry and they donated that equipment so i mean really we should thank him for that because if it wasn't for him we wouldn't have that equipment because unless you want to pay more taxes every year i mean but but really uh when you come out and see the equipment that these students are using and what they're learning it's unbelievable i mean i was very impressed and i'm an industrialized technology education major but i was a long time ago when i went through but to see what these kids are

057doing now your kids your your young ladies your young men is unbelievable go see what the nurse the nursing program they have it's unbelievable and the culinary arts oh yeah i went twice that's all i got to say i just it was really a delicious meal yes yes okay any concerns mr vines miss doll okay all right thank you at this time we'll move on to 13.2 and that's the board protocols and we work together on that as a group and form them we treat some of the ones that we had and we added to the ones that we've uh added a few more to the list and that's what we did in our training session when we were in charlottesville uh we need to make a motion to approve those protocols unless someone would

058like to discuss it any board member would like to discuss any of them because we had an intense discussion that day um madam chair if i could um there's been a number of people reaching out to me for clarification um on a couple of these um particularly uh p15 okay board members will refer comments and concerns through the chain of communication starting at the lowest level applicable folks this does not mean do not contact your board member if you have an issue that falls under the purview of the superintendent or principal we will guide you through that hey you know we need you to go back to the teacher and talk to the teacher talk to the principal fill out a klb form let us know okay if you live in the cars real district

059i want to know about that so i can kind of watch what's going on but we do not have the authority to step in and say dr thornton you will fix this he's got way too much other stuff to do anyway so we're to we're here to help you and guide through fixing things but we always ask that we fix it at the lowest possible level so if you get in and you talk to a teacher you have the meeting of the minds everything's fixed if the teacher disagrees with you okay you go up to the principal this is not meant to tell anybody do not contact your board member it's the exact opposite if you have an issue that you need to talk to your board member by golly call send us an email

060okay i'm not speaking for every board member but i will respond okay thank you madam chair madam chair yeah i just wanted yeah definitely that does not mean you can't send us emails i understand sometimes we don't get back to you immediately but we try to we try to get i know i try to get back to you with some kind of comment at least acknowledge that i've received your email uh usually when when you email us uh and and for what i understand we're getting uh phones uh tonight so you'll be able to call also uh i don't know if i mean your tax dollars are paying for the phone so you should be able to call us but uh i don't know my number though well no none of us know the numbers

061yet but but yeah please contact us and i've been saying that uh contact us uh whether we're doing good or bad because i've gotten good and bad emails but i mean and uh we were told in charlottesville's one thing if somebody's satisfied with what we're doing then you won't hear anything but if you're dissatisfied that's where you get all these emails so i mean it's nice to see that we're doing something right sometimes so i'd appreciate a thumbs up and i'll take the thumbs down and what we do we you have to understand the responsibilities of the board and the responsibilities of the superintendent and the responsibilities of the uh the principles at the schools so we're learning we are learning so when we get something in if we don't get back with you we're

062passing it down to the next level the superintendent then the superintendent will pass it down to his staff and and so it may take a week or so for you to get a response but i mean we're not ignoring your emails i'm serious you may think we are but we're not we're trying to figure out where does it where do we send this and most of the time it is to the superintendent and he rounds it down to his staff make sure right there that's all i have okay yeah yeah there it is right there you come with p14 okay yeah so we're not going to read through all of these because you have these so take a look at it and uh and email us yeah i mean and there they are up there

063too if you want to yeah okay take a look at it any comments i just wanted to say um mr cunningham brought up our phones we will be issued those phones at the end of the uh session to that the meeting this evening look up i guess um go to the school board website our i.t staff will update that i'm not gonna say it's gonna be updated tomorrow but hopefully it will be updated within five days okay that's a week of um and uh we're gonna have phone numbers there so you can call us now if we don't answer please leave a voicemail uh because in our protocol we said we will actually respond through email as well as phone so now we have that and i'm going to tell you sometimes if if it's

064spring break holiday or something like that we're not taking the county phones with us the school board phones with us so just leave a voicemail we'll get back with you okay so any any more concerns okay at this time we'll move on oh we need an action on the protocols madam chair i make a motion to adopt the uh protocols as written second and most okay we have a motion and a second to adopt the uh board protocols as written at this time we've already discussed so at this time we'll take a vote okay motion passes with the five zero in favor thank you all right we'll move on to the next item on the agenda superintendent's code of ethics any discussion madam chair i make a motion that we adopt the superintendent code of

065ethics from the aasa as written second we have a motion and a second on the floor any discussion about the motion hearing none at this time we will take a vote this will have to be a verbal okay mr vines yay miss top dial yeah it's time yeah mr cunningham mr collins yay okay motion passes with five zero vote thank you very much all right the next item is 13 4 school board conference compensation i at a previous meeting uh one of the board members brought up and [Music] we supported it although sometimes just because we don't answer or we are not verbal at the time uh sometimes people think we're not in support of things but it has been years i don't know how far uh back that alawite county school board has had

066a raise i know um my first time on the board of course there was no raises and i was out for about four years and i'm back now so that that's been at least eight years and i think with the research that we got it has been at least over about what 10 or 12 years 2015. 2015 was the last time and that was the uh chair of the board got a i think was 500 raise yeah madam chair um muniz is our uh budgeting system okay and that was new in 2005. and there has not been an increase since that was put in place we couldn't find pass that any historical it's been at least since before 2005. okay um we had staff as well to check with other jurisdictions close by to alawite

067county and some of the jurisdictions they checked on they were um i'm just going to read a few to you franklin city uh gloucester hampton newport news isle of wight southampton suffolk syria and yorktown and franklin city the board members salaries 2560 the board chair 4050. the county of gloucester which is pretty much the size of white county madam chair i'm sorry it's up there okay so they can see it if you notice gloucester what i'm just tell you gloucester is about the size of alawite county is that we have more schools and more students and uh you see what they're getting of course hampton is a city we're not trying to compete with the city so we'll skip a new news in hampton all of white you see at this time uh board members

0685000 board chair six southampton five boy chair five three uh suffolk city as well surrey six and seven and york county uh your town is nine thousand and board chair ten so with that information that the staff and thank them i would like to thank the staff for getting this information for us because we don't like to just go out and do things without doing a comparison with what the other uh localities are doing close by and with the same size uh students that we have of course i said hampton newport news and stuff we're not going to compare them with us but we added them to the list because they are next door any discussions i thank you all for researching this information since i'm the one that brought this to the boards and

069to the county's uh mindset and i think would be we'll be in good grace and in line if we look at what your town is getting um and and gloucester that's looking at an increase for alawite county school board do you have any more concerns from board members yeah madam madam chair um i i would rather see his vote on on this as we get um closer to the time frame that it could go into effect because we've got the citizens here who really are going to write our report card whether it's through emails through editorials in a newspaper um and through one-on-one conte contact um i'm uncomfortable voting for rays right now and particularly because it can't go into effect until and please pat correct me if i'm wrong until after the next regular

070election of two or more board members and if that's the fact the earliest they can go into effect is after the 2023 election november 2023 january january 2023 the election of 2022 because we have a special election because that's my question does a special election so um mr colley that's a good question i've i did research this there's no there is no ag's opinions on it the code if you look at the code itself it's just it just says that um a local school board represents county may establish a salary increase prior to july 1. so you're going to do this you got to do before july 1. right and then the second thing is that if such board is elected appointed for a staggered term prior to jail one of any in which at

071least 40 percent of such board members are to be elected or appointed so it just says elected okay it doesn't qualify with special election or or not special election so my reading this is just a plain reading of the stash statute i would say that it qualifies because there's no qualification of it only has to be a regular election or a special election it's just says election so before july 1st of this year that's right qualified thank you sir and and so i i still think it's premature at this point until you know until we get some work behind us yeah to be honest with you so i'll be voting no if it comes to a motion okay all right last week uh i would prefer to look at uh instead of this voting uh

072voting on an amount to have a work session and discuss uh a percentage of a raise instead of just you know going for a solid figure uh and and to table this until we can have that work session and discuss it with the public watching and listening to what we're saying and and discuss that before we just vote tonight and just vote for a race because i'm sure we're to hear that uh that wasn't right to do it that way so so i mean discussion is always good and with the community hearing what we're talking about and and maybe explaining what we do with our jobs maybe it won't go over as hard so uh i prefer to not vote on that tonight or at least to table it okay all right so i'll tell

073you what we'll do we'll um i'll sign a committee and we're gonna have a work session i would sign mr mr colic and mr cunningham to do the uh i guess the uh figures the work and bring it to and give us some options okay that we can discuss all right yes ma'am and at this time we will table that item is that okay with mr vines and ms doll okay it has been agreed that we will table the item in the future thank you thank you all right at this time we will have the financial presentation and this is what we look forward to this time of the year now this isn't the budget quake i know but this is the time of the month very good good evening madam chair members of the

074board dr thornton well it in your packets was included uh certainly the all of your financial reports the check register but first and foremost was what we call our large ticket items and there were two that were on the list the first one is we bought through school specialty they're called full option science system kits or foss kits to supplement our science curriculum and we spent just over 47 thousand dollars for these foss kits secondly was a special ed bus that we bought from bluebird bus sales 67 236 dollars so between that and or your check register were there any questions on those no we have to have the buses so and secondly for your financial reports our revenues ending january our revenues did exceed our expenditures to the amount of eight million three hundred

075thousand so that's good our cash flow is solid in terms of percent of budget spent is at 59 which does exceed last year's percent at this time i do need to remind you our spending was down significantly because of the pandemic last year at this time was 56 so it's close but it is higher than last year at this time are there any questions on your financial reports good that's that's all i have then are there any questions for mr hemsner thank you very much very good thank you thank you we'll see you later [Laughter] okay next we have 15 support services is that mr christensen is he here with us tonight he's the christian okay is the transportation oh we're gonna have okay we're gonna have mr mordeca with us tonight okay good to

076go transportation hold on today how are you good evening members of the board i'm jeff mordica i'm currently interim transportation director tonight i'm going to give an overview of the transportation update for february as you can see on there it describes the open positions that we have in transportation that we're working with hr attempting to fill to get that support in there to get our students safely to school um continuing to hold the transportation meetings with our bus drivers to have that open ongoing dialogue to hear their voices extremely important uh you know the information the feedback that we've received they do feel that they hear that they feel that they feel you know they're really stressing that they they are seeing action in regards to uh steps in regards to that value in regards

077how often are you every month yes ma'am because i i do know i don't know if it was the last one you had but i do know you had one about a month or so ago i think dr thornton was there and he spoke as well i understand it was very productive and i i heard it from some of the drivers as you know just passing through the supermarket and all and they said oh it was really nice we really you know that it was very productive as a matter of fact from several of them they told me it was the most productive one they've ever had since they've been drivers and i think um a couple of them have been over 10-year drivers yes ma'am and it's good to hear that that's a positive

078positive we and we want to hear that feedback good or bad and like i've already heard tonight good it's here good to hear like once in a while that's good but even if it's not we want that feedback either way um so yeah we do hold the north end and south end we hold meetings um every month beginning in a month and but what i'm trying to tell drivers too is if you've got a concern we're going to continue a whole monthly meetings don't wait a month okay you're going to see me out and about you're going to see me all over you know where i'm at but please come see me do not wait a month we're going to continue to hold that but i do not want you to feel like you need

079to wait a month to come see me okay you know we're a team we're one team we're in this together let's come see me let's come see reach out please do not feel like you need to hold that concern so that's the message thank you yes ma'am so and there's a couple celebrations i want to make sure i get to in here um we are continuing on with a bonus that was already put out to our drivers that we're continuing on um even with these difficult times there's an attendance bonus for those drivers who meet the criteria and for the first semester even with all these challenges and obstacles in place and we've seen with you know sickness that's in place we still had 25 of our employees who qualify for these attendance bonus pay

080okay so yes there are challenges there are difficulties people are out sick but we still have people reporting to work daily oh and come into work and yes we do have a lot of people who needed to miss time because of the illness that's out there yes sir uh yes sir i do have a question when you have a driver who gets exposed to covet while at work and has to stay out of work for five or ten days do they still get credit as if they had gone to work during the time they are out for that bonus no sir if they're out just like if they were out for any other illness you know people who get any other illness they didn't want to be ill either you know i i got ill

081of another illness i didn't choose to have that illness either i i didn't plan to catch that illness i didn't plan to catch this or that illness either so you know with that you know okay thank you sir um another thing and i heard y'all referring to it was the culinary and this this was really great feedback on this you you were kind of speaking to that food in that program uh yeah so they they did a day where the kids came in a service learning for the kids they got to work on their skills but even bigger than that i think more important working on their skills is that service learning and giving back and supporting others and they did that and they prepared a meal and it's in there and talks about you

082know the they prepared pimento cheese rit crackers old-fashioned chicken and dumplings mixed berry cobbler and they had neat little messages on there you know handwritten keep on rolling thank you very much handwritten out packaged very nicely put out for the for the drivers for them to come in and pick up when they could during their routes in between or whenever was convenient for them that was a huge effort on the parts of the whole culinary program big shout out chef horn his kids you know like i said yes they were working on their skills and the packaging and the preparation and what it takes to prepare and advance preparation and to get ready to be able to do that all in one day you know what that takes but then the acts of kindness so

083huge and we want to thank them for that and will certainly receive well from our drivers that's it dude do you have any questions for me oh i had one question though are you standing there um right now how is the transportation department as far as people being out due to illnesses are they back full or i would like to say that but no ma'am so we did have a little period there where you know when we got back it was i know i understood that one right it was large numbers and then we had a little dip there we started to get some drivers back and it spiked back up so you know so the next i mean this weekend maybe last week that's what i'm thinking about so yeah i mean this week

084we've had a number of drivers out okay yeah we've had we've had some drivers out this week and it's it's gone the numbers have increased and we can't predict that you know what we are doing though is we have a tracker where we're we're tracking out five seven days of the ones we do know okay we know these these drivers are out the next five days they have cove we know they have to quarantine five days so we know these routes are going to be out for five days what are we doing to cover these for these next five days we know that this route we need to cover let's not just cover for this day let's have these drivers go ahead and cover these five days so we'd go ahead and have this covered

085now we don't know okay who might call in tonight or tomorrow morning because they got sick for something that we didn't know about what's going on it's not the only thing yeah is not the only thing and they could find out in the middle of the night they don't feel well and call us and we got two additional drivers out that we didn't expect okay so all of a sudden we got two more and that could have a domino effect on other routes so you may say well you knew about this we didn't know about this which then impacted two additional routes that we thought we were gonna have that we didn't and we had to make adjustments on the fly at five o'clock in the morning right so yes ma'am one other question do

086you supply your drivers with the uh n95 type mask we just got a matter of fact we just got some delivered down there we've issued them out so they have these right here as a matter of fact i just grabbed one to kind of see how this one feels actually they were delivered ms whitlow sent them down to us and we've got them issued out to drivers so the ones you see in my hand are the ones they have thank you yes ma'am because i had noticed some when i was coming up here today i i noticed they were not the n95s so i actually they have one like ms uh clerk has on now those types yeah and then and you know of course they said they don't fit as snug so i'm thinking

087you know if they have the ones that fit snook maybe we'll help some so those are the ones they were wearing and we just got those sent down i think it was earlier this week and so we've issued those out and they're getting to designated drivers who are now issuing those out to all the drivers okay now i want to let the parents know that those master and 95s are for the drivers now if the students get on the bus they will probably still have the normal one that they would give them okay we want to make sure we keep our drivers healthy i i don't want the parents say well then you're supposed to be getting their 95 when they get on the bus no no that's just for the drivers okay thank you

088yeah no since we discussed it tonight i just want to make sure all right okay thank you anything else that's it thank you very much thank you thank you board thank you all right okay we have support services update that's mr christensen thank you mr todd christensen thank you and good evening madam chair members of the board dr thornton i wanted to provide you all with a couple updates in the support services and operations world we do have a update for you here with the transportation annex it's a really nice looking building it's there we're making really great progress on moving forward with moving towards occupancy carpet's recently been installed the landscaping we have we're working with the county to make sure that the proper trees and shrubs are are put down as well and

089then working to get the final inspections um moving forward so things are are happening things are looking good and um progress is being made so i wanted to make sure you all had an update on that transportation annex thank you very much uh and another update i wanted to give you all i spoke with ssc um maybe a little winter weather coming up this weekend as well but having a few uh snow events in the past i wanted to give you all an update as to kind of what the preparations are when we do have winter weather coming through um just so you can kind of have an idea for what happens behind the scene so there's definitely close coordination between isle of wight county um and um the pre-treatment of the walkways entranceways and

090sidewalks with the rock salt and the ice melt is something that's done in preparation for the event as well as um after the snow is is complete uh ssc will actually push the snow from the sidewalks main entrances fire exits and bus loops when it comes to the um to the the parking lots that's actually done um with a plowing company so i'm in coordination with them over the over the weekend it's been a week in the last couple of times during the event to see whether or not the amount of snow dictates plowing for the parking lots to make sure those lots are safe when we do come back to school we will continue once the event is done to inspect those areas of high refreeze potential north facing and areas that are in

091the shade even though the sun comes out and most of the snow is melted there are some problematic areas that can potentially re-re-freeze and be a slipping hazard so we definitely keep a close eye on those and then we're always assessing fields for proper drainage once that snow does begin to melt and then as far as the actual buildings themselves that's really a whole separate world uh first things first we're checking the emergency generators in the event that we do lose power make sure we do have a backup plan for that small drip in the faucets especially for buildings that are prone to past freezing events hvac units we really want to make sure they're clear of ice and debris when those events do happen our techs are able to monitor the systems whether it's

092from home or on site on their laptops that's been a really nice upgrade they've been able to make to those systems so they're able to really find out if there is something happening that needs urgent attention no matter where they are so that's something that they're doing as well covering the outside drain fixtures so with the water valves the hose and the fire connections making sure that those are kept an eye on as well and then when it comes to the power outages i will be coordinating with dominion for them as well to make sure that we do get them on site in the event that there is a power outage so just kind of wanted to give you all an overview of kind of what does happen behind the scenes when we do have

093winter weather coming through um happy to answer any questions about this or anything in the support services or operations world that you all have what's your title mr christensen i'm the interim director of support services and operations any other questions mr christensen okay thank you all very much sir okay now we will have 15.3 update dr coleman update on hardy elementary school oh got you kevin good evening madam chair school board members dr thornton i'm gonna dive right into the new hardy update i will be using this the actual pointer and i'm going to go to this screen and that screen because we really need to get into detail about exactly what we're looking at i've been getting a lot of questions concerning the placement of hardy and different things of that nature so i

094really want to get into detail and i'm open for any questions all right first let's talk about the contingency meeting now the contingency is part of the actual contract that's been set aside for as the state's uh in the contract the amount of money set aside to cover any unexpected costs that can arise throughout the construction project now we wanted to actually meet before we actually get deep into construction to ensure that we're all on the same page that is uh the construction con companies are con and um heartland and also dr thornton wanted to be there to make sure that we're all on the same page getting into it so at this time the contingency hasn't been touched and the greatest part about the contingency is it will be returned to the actual county

095uh the funds that are not used so we want to keep track of that and i will make sure that we are staying on top of that to ensure that um that uh the board knows what's going on with the contingency all right now this is the new hardy overlay and we're going to talk about phase one now i'm gonna go through some details of phase one and then i'm gonna put a another uh screen up there so we can go into more detail but i want you to see the overall approach first i want to show you oh yeah okay yeah there we go i got you guys all right first on this screen i want to show you the phase one line and the phase one line is um the outskirts of the

096actual building on here and you know what let's see if i can just use this okay here we go this is a little bit better the outskirts or the actual site and this is where they put the silk fencing up right around the outskirts just to give you a more of a navigation here this is blunt's corner road on this end right here and this is old stage highway right here this is hardy as it sits right here if you can look closely you can see the outline of the existing hardy right there that's the outline of it so the silk fence has been actually put around the perimeter all the way out to blunts corner road and comes back around the existing houses come all the way down to the corner and then comes

097out to old stage highway all right the water tower the water tower is placed right here on the actual diagram that's where the water tower is the water tower road we're getting a lot of different calls in concerning the road at uh road that's leading from blunt's corner up to the water tower some individuals thought there was a back way to get into hardy and it's not that is the road that actually leads to the water right here so that's the water tower road another item i want to point out on the actual layout is the two playgrounds this is one playground here you can see those circles and this is another playground right here now we're going to talk about this in a little while but this right here right behind the residential homes

098or is the bmp pond this is the bmp pond this is where the construction actually started at digging out the actual bmp bomb next is the temporary fence for the separation of the construction area and the old hardy school that is this dark black line right here it traces right around the school and right here this a temporary fence has been actually put into place to ensure that there is no leeway going back and forth all right now the new car drop off this will be right here for new hardy and i'm going to switch to the next slide just so we can actually start getting into a little bit more there we go so now color coding this is thanks to miss briggs helping me out and she tried to stay in the lines

099too this is the actual pose hardy elementary school as you can see right here once again you can see the old school right here right beside it so construction is going to be happening uh as school goes on and it's that close actually but everything will be paced off everything will be guarded off of that nature now the new bus loop this will actually be the new bus loop right here in right here i apologize the cars the car loop for the drop off will be right here in this area right here of course once again this is the bmp pond and of course this is the residential housing that sits across here now the bus loop will actually be right here in the front as you can see it actually will go through the

100old existing school that would be the bus loop comes in and go out they have buses will have its own uh turn in and turn out lane so it will be separated completely separated all right and okay and uh and that is it for me pinpointing some of the questions that actually came to me concerning uh where's the location of hardy and actually what's going on are there any questions at this time that i can actually pinpoint while i have the color cool it map there i've got one yes sir uh looking at the well how the buses are going to be turning around on the left side of the blue uh is that the old it's going through the old hardy area yes sir so uh the the question i have that areas are

101going to be torn down before i know eventually but that's going to have to happen before the new school is at well what's the timing on this okay that's just that's what i need now all right i have that in the next slide okay okay sir and um but yes it will be showing down okay so probably during the summer or something absolutely we'll join it during that time period okay about three questions yeah jump right to that go ahead no okay all right well first um we did have the opportunity to have a visit from school board member and um miss tines actually were there too along with dr thornton and the principal and there we discussed in detail more with phase lines one and phase lines two disturbance letters that will be sent

102out to the community letting them know exactly what's going on at the actual site and a timeline of completion we have mr jefferson uh bought chair for the board of supervisors there he's on the left absolutely of course the it was a grading savings through the new gps system and we're going to pinpoint that to talk about the grading savings also because it was a state-of-the-art equipment that they were actually using that i think the public will be um very interested in knowing about all right movement on site as you can see from this picture here this is the construction trailer the permit has been actually uh already put in with the county and it's actually been moved in was questions that actually came was this part of the new school the trail is not

103part of the new school this is just um the actual site for the construction worker now cutting out the bmp palm that's actually going on we pinpointed the exact location of the bmp pond so you can understand that and delivery of the storm structures that creates the actual manhole covers what you see here is the body of actual new hardy um right there so this is the area they're gonna start actually building the foundation on concrete piping and plumbing different things of that nature all right and also the grading tool make sure all right yes now once again the grading was done a little differently it was uh they used a system where gps was set up at different locations on the grade and actually attached to the grading machine with uh with that in

104place there is a individual driving the machine but it's actually not driving the machine the machine actually lifts and puts down the grade by itself based off of the gps system this is saving um hundreds of million hours and i had an individual here that could actually talk about it a little bit more in detail um than i could just now good afternoon my name is nick ayers with heartland construction and we are teamed up with mbcon to build the new hardy elementary school in isla white we're using the new gps coordinate system with the gps points for the topographic to grade out the entire site taking off cuts building ponds building pad everything else that we need to build the building itself and around the building saves a whole lot of time instead of

105stringing along points on a with string lines and everything else once you set it once and build the topographic map everything else is just takes over it's automatic usually the bigger companies have them because it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort actually set it up but after you get set up it takes care of itself on a job this size it probably saves hundreds of man hours all right there we go now also the timeline this uh just to notify everyone that's what's going on the timeline will be january 2022 of course we've already started and the completion is june 2023 so that is the timeline that you were asking about mr cunningham now new hardy elementary school will be built behind the current hardy elementary school as soon as construction

106is over demolition will occur on old hardy as soon as the construction is actually open so once again everyone knows now envy con and heartland construction have been instructed to keep roadways clear avoid any work in the evenings and on weekends and that can disrupt the normal flow of traffic now the summer hours will end daily at seven and um of course if they have to actually run over it'll be altered uh the community will be notified the community will be notified of any sort of run over um now iwc has to of course apologize for any potential inconvenience and thank all residents in the neighborhood for their patients and any noise issues environmental concerns traffic concerns or anything else that's going on on the site um i will have my that's my email address

107and i have a number up there for you can actually for the residents can contact me so i can get in contact with him and find out exactly what's going on all right any questions at this time question yes ma'am um coleman um and the previous not that one the next one back where you had the color coded right here and you were in that oh you said where the bus circle is going to be and which is going to right now is going to be part of the existing hearty okay that's going to be taken down uh june of 2023 because it would be com the new school should be completed yes ma'am all right my question is hopefully we'll have enough time to put the bus circle in before school starts in september

108right that's what i want to know and of course we do want to make sure that we consider weather right hurricane season different things of that nature of course good delay but right now we are moving right on time we are moving right on time of this month but and just in case just like you said because of weather you have an alternate route to get the buses in absolutely yes ma'am absolutely if necessary they have to do this car route okay all right are there any more questions thank you very much all right sir thank you for your time okay thank you mr coleman and now we have miss mr lobardo a report from the superintendent 16.1 strategic plan update madam chair members of the board dr thornton this evening i'll just provide a

109brief update regarding the development of the new alawite county school of strategic plan and miss tynes already highlighted some of that with the work of her work group earlier so as part of alawite county schools strategic plan development process work groups did meet on february 8th and 9th work groups consisting of parents students teachers support staff administrators community members and even university partners were tasked with brainstorming a goal statement performance objectives and strategies for each uh strategic plan focus area that was generated previously by the steering committee now there were four work groups and i'll remind um the board and the community of those four work groups but not all of the work groups ended in the same exact place and i'll sort of highlight that a little bit as well so just as a

110reminder those four work groups consist of academic excellence family engagement organizational effectiveness and efficiency and also recruitment and retainment of staff during the work group sessions on february 8 9 participants reviewed the work that has already been done by the steering committee they also identified common language and strategies associated with the development of strategic plan goal statements performance objectives and strategies participants also engaged in a fairly rigorous protocol in which they collaboratively developed a goal statement actually ended that first session coming out of there with a very solid draft goal statement for their area of focus some of the work groups like the work group that i facilitated we actually were able to begin that next step of looking at brainstorming and developing three to six objectives so what will happen as we move forward

111on m on march 1st and 2nd all four work groups will reconvene and we'll pick up where we left off but that's basically at the point of brainstorming the objectives and the actions necessary to achieve those objectives within each of those work groups and we'll come back to the board in march with another update but basically steps beyond that are going to be to reconvene the steering committee to take a look at the work that the work groups have done but also to begin those community forums as we move into spring with that i'd be happy to answer any questions you might have thank you okay thank you you're very welcome all right moving right along we have a 16.2 black history celebration my mrs gatz yes ma'am madam chair members of the board dr

112thornton this month in all of our schools students are engaging in a variety of activities in honor of black history month we're going to be compiling video and we will share that video with you in march okay okay thank you thank you all right next we have 16.3 cte and certifications update stop dr calz good evening madam chair members of the board dr thornton i'm here to provide you an annual update on the certifications for our cte program i'm also going to give you a little update about where we are right now so during the pandemic our class sizes went down a little bit based on that virtual day on day off kind of schedule so we are just proud to announce that all of our classes are at or nearing their capacity at this

113point so it's really nice to see the renewed interest from our students and to get those classes back up and fully fully filled um also this year the walter s newman chapter of the ffa which is one of the founding chapters in virginia which started in isle of wight but has been defunct for about 10 years uh mr brittle and mr judkins have worked to revive that chapter and so the students are not only competing in ffa competitions learning about the agricultural industry but they're also finding ways to give back in our community a couple of those they recently worked on a stew they hosted a stu on a saturday in january and they raised over two thousand dollars that they donated to the christian outreach program here in in isle of wight and they

114also collected 575 pounds of canned goods that they donated to stock pantries giving is uh is catching so and nothing says love like like home-cooked food our culinary arts students work together to plan a menu shop for supplies and then to prepare from scratch bag lunches for all members of the transportation department and so that included the mechanics the dispatchers the drivers everyone they added little little notes of encouragement as mr mortico was telling you earlier thank you very much for the berry cobbler and and keep on rolling um lunches were bagged and available for pickup at turner and 10 and then also at windsor high school for all staff our building trades department has recently finished their what we call their warm-up projects or where they're getting started in those beginning level skills and

115they have redesigned and rebuilt the school board sign for the maine school board office mr rogers has assured me that when ground conditions are great he will go ahead and have them install that sign so look forward to the the new update of our sign now they are preparing for the remodel and repair of a bathroom which when you came for the tourists this week you saw them staging that right there in the facility they are going to reinforce a bathroom for a lady in need whose bathroom is actually rotting out beneath her so something that they do regularly and they really enjoy they were very busy and we were in their way they were very busy um with all of these developments in our building trades program you know news travels fast about good

116things and so we're very excited that chesapeake public schools has reached out to us they want to visit our our programs they've want to look and see about all the great innovative and comprehensive things that dr thornton and our school division have been able to do just in the last five years which is a tremendous you know accomplishment in such a short period of time and so we're excited to serve not only as a model but as a partner in helping them learn and grow and develop their cte programs we've had a lot of awesome visitors this year so in october we brought students from both ends of the county to the welding program that are in the welding program and we had a visit from the head honcho mr roth of the american welding

117society which was really really neat and an honor for for our chapters so when he brought with him a team of people that spoke with our students about different career paths and opportunities in the welding industry we also had dr corey mcrae and his team president of paulde camp come and and do a tour of our facilities and we're looking for opportunities to partner with them to continue our students education and work with them to continue that workforce development piece as well we've had newport news shipyard so gary arterbridge and his team have come and they've looked at our model and they're interested in working with us on recruitment efforts of our students brian shalesma with the roofing company has been here and we're also working with lori sanderson from mccooskill sheet metal eric stickler

118with heartland construction and with court research for lee baer and we are really looking to expand opportunities for our students so those are just companies that we've talked with just in the last couple of months why are all those cart partnerships important um internships and apprenticeships and and that's really the the golden goose egg really at the end of working in these cte programs is getting out into the field and getting that job opportunity and being exposed to real world right um and so in the first semester we had 17 students participating in internship opportunities eight of them were engineering students and nine with teach for tomorrow we have been working with the department of labor to bring youth registered apprenticeships to iowa county schools which is a model for students to go out and

119work say at liber and during school hours and get credit towards their apprenticeship hours and also they get paid so they they would be getting paid at whatever the minimum is for the industry and so we're working with a number of business partners to get that full-time work experience for them we're really targeting juniors and seniors who've met the majority of their course requirements and then looking to possibly supplement that with online options i am excited to say that we had our first student go out today for an interview with sumitomo drive corporation um to start a work based apprenticeship in their welding department hopefully in the next week or so so a little good vibe for him say that again is that in chesapeake it is in chesapeake yes and he's a senior at

120smithville high school so we're really excited for for him right and that was one of the questions that came up when we were on the tour the other day because the students there are going to participate in that those internship programs they need to be drivers because they're going to have to provide their own transportation yes ma'am and so there are other students that would like to participate but they just don't have the transportation piece yes ma'am and so those are things we'll have to try to work out for example um the annual update piece so as you see here and i won't read all of these to you there's quite a few of them um these are the certifications and credentials that our students earned in the 2020-2021 school year there's quite a few

121you'll see like the osha administration down there all of our cte students go through the osha 10 safety requirements before they are allowed to engage in the hands-on experiences the workplace readiness skills identifies those skills that are most that help you be successful in the workplace most common skills um and then some of those others like the welding society so level one welding exam we had lots of students that were successful with that one as well and we're really excited about these the numbers here just given the the smaller capacity of our programs for last year this slide i included because sometimes it's hard to really understand how rigorous some of these assessments are or where we really need to grow and so you can see here how many students actually attempted each individual assessment

122versus how many of them passed in each one all right and then last i wanted to just let you know about the dual enrollment alignment grant award so part of what i do is i work with the dual enrollment with paulde camp and we have been working to increase our offerings to students and the state has put this grant out there and we applied and we were awarded four thousand four hundred and twenty four dollars and seventy six cents and that money will be used to align our de credits with the passport which is the first ten courses of an associate's degree what we called gen eds when we were in college and then to also align your course offerings with the uniform certificate of graduate studies which means that when students transfer a credit

123from us that it's a one-to-one transfer so it doesn't go to that university as a elective credit it goes as an actual what they took um and so it's important that we're offering those de courses so that kids get the credit that they have earned at that time any questions thank you very much thank you i do want to say why mrs cows is here i i remiss i did not mention it earlier but we did visit the preschool program at wednesday elementary the day we visited the farm building and the little little sprouts yes and they are i was like i was amazed i said this is preschool and i asked the teacher i said so they're going to be leaving here to go to kindergarten she said yes i said no they're i

124said these young kids right here they're ready for first grade or something because the things that they were doing sitting down they're very attentive and their little you know on the mats with their little ipads and all and the things that they were doing i was amazed because normally this is what they they're doing around you know the end of kindergarten beginning first grade they were the preschool students always makes you feel good to visit that one yeah we're going to be producing white county in the next 10 or 15 years we're going to be producing some excellent students we're not saying they're not excellent now but we're going to have a 100 percent graduation rate yes and close to it thank you thank you okay now we have we don't have we have mrs

125magna she's going to give us a special ed update mrs magner is the director of special education yes good evening thank you madam chair members of the board and dr thornton this evening we have the special education annual plan it is for information tonight after tonight it does go to the public for comment and we also will take it to seak for input essentially very basically the annual plan is a grant that we receive the money amount is based on the number of students with disabilities in their county as of december one of this school year it is in two parts you'll see 611 and 619. 611 is the school age grant 619 is the preschool grant so we do spend those a little bit differently the majority of our grant does go to pay

126for benefits and salaries for several special education teachers and other staff and then we do also have a large sum of money that we do are able to spend on curriculum materials and supplies for teachers so if you have any questions about the annual plan tonight i'm happy to answer and then we'll be back next month for approval okay good all right all right thank you thank you very much okay okay now we have mrs cheryl elliott hr director with eric and actually tonight i'm here just for information for those of you who may not be aware the e-rep is our early retirement incentive program and what this does it allows any retirees who meet certain criteria who are interested in staying on our health insurance in turn they would give us back 25 days

127of substitute teaching and they can do this for up to five years it is a great benefit for the retiree it's also excellent benefit for the schools because it brings in a seasoned teacher who's familiar with the students familiar with the curriculum so it's a win-win all around so next month we'll be bringing this back for vote but if you have any questions i'd be glad to entertain them okay great thank you thank you thank you okay now we're on 16.6 this briggs with the school calendar for 2022-2023 yes thank you madam chair board members dr thornton we conducted a survey that was open to parents employees community members to get input on the proposal for next year's school calendar the calendar that we presented was very similar to the one that was originally adopted

128for this year if you recall in the fall we made a few modifications to this year's calendar we did not include those modifications in next year we went back to what we had originally planned and we had over 800 responses and as you can see here if i scroll down just a little 86 percent said they were fine with what we were proposing we had a small percent that did have some recommendations probably the the one recommendation that came up the most was to go back and make thanksgiving a full week which is something you did this fall originally it was three days and i shouldn't say this but i thought that's probably a lot of employees because you know yeah who doesn't like that but it really was a lot of parents but once

129again i'll remind you it was 56 out of 850 that made that so even though it was the one that got the most response it was still a small percentage of the overall respondents who made that so tonight it's just for information so we're presenting that we'll bring bring the calendar back in march for approval and i'm here to answer any questions you may have about it i have a question yes ma'am so you have the days broken down by quarter yesterday when i actually calculated all of them it's 174 days aren't they required to have 180 days that's an excellent question the state allows you to have 180 days or 990 instructional hours so we exceed the 990 instructional hours so they let you do either or used to be you had to do

130180 and that's why we had a lot of time we were making up any time we missed a snow day now we've got time built into our schedule even with fewer days how do we see that like how does the citizen be to get to see that well um we don't have something on the front view for citizens to see the amount of hours we're required to have a minimum of seven and a half hours per day in our schools we do keep calculations on the back end so that we can sort of track if we have an early dismissal because of weather if we have a late arrival and then we kind of track to see are we getting to a point we need to make up some time so we don't have those

131numbers facing to the public because it's kind of behind the scenes and it does vary our elementary is different from our middle which is different from our high so who's in charge of the hours at the end to because if you don't if you don't do these hours or days i'm sure there's a penalty is that correct yes ma'am yes ma'am the state requires us once again to have 180 days or 990 hours so we are tracking it we have a staff member in central office that keeps close track of it and we check with her as we're looking at you know potential weather issues to see where we are and i believe the last time we made modifications to the calendar we were in good shape and fortunately we have not had any significant

132weather events to impact the time we have built in is that available for the public to see again like who whatever the hours are yeah it is school by school we can talk and see if that's something that what we can do about it but like i said it does vary for example carsville is a little different because of their arrival and dismissal time so even though they're elementary they're not going to match the exact same minutes as hardy winds windsor high and georgie tyler are actually not exactly the same as smithfield high and smithfield middle because of how the buses pick up georgie tyler right so it is really school by school um carsville was out due to heat one day right let me just like at the end because you have to calculate

133at the end i'm assuming okay and that's the request like a parent can request that or a citizen can request to to see if that's what's being done if the hours are that's what i mean i didn't mean like sorry miss style okay uh sure yeah they could certainly ask to see at the end of the year where we were with ours i believe it's something we have to verify with this um soq report annual report to the state and we have to provide that documentation so yes we keep track of it and could certainly provide that information to anyone who asked at the end of the school year to show that we did comply with those 990 hours i have one other question i'm sorry that's okay this may not pertain to the calendar

134per se but i had a question about the two snow days that we had why were they not virtual days for school learning why were they just we were just out and kids didn't have any learning well miss guetz could i defer to you on that one chris um coming up here that's a little more of an instructional mrs doubt uh you brought that up but i actually talked to businesses that's about that and it's not something that we just can say okay school is gonna just say tomorrow morning there's an incident or something we have to close school okay it's not something that they just can't turn around like you turn around and spin around on a dime and say hey it's going to be a virtual date we're going to put a plan

135in place and this is what they're working on we are ready and working on that plan no not working we are okay okay you're ready see i knew she was going to do that and we're going to send it out to the parents what the plan is and then whenever we have those days that the students cannot come to school those days like weather or whatever the parents will know what to do because they would have the plan it it is our decision if we want to go virtual or not right um we do carefully consider it i will say we do realize not every kid has access to the internet so every time we make that decision it is it's a tough one because we know some parents really want it but we also

136know we have a large number of students who do not have access to internet that's why we haven't done it and as ms briggs said we meet the hours we have no problem being the hours if we were getting close we would have to look at that and if we had a lot of days i know we would go virtual right we're ready we are ready to go but i think i think it's not so much whether we have the hours or whatever i think what it is a lot of the parents the kids are at home right and and like the last time it was two days okay they were there friday and they were there monday a lot of the kids especially though they're just there you know doing the videos all day

137long or whatever they want to do yes so i'm thinking you know well hey why can't we they can do some instructional things during that time half maybe the morning instructional time and then the afternoon they can do all the videos they want versus sitting there doing 48 hours of just videos all day long you know their personal videos do some instructional things that's all the kids are groaning no but yes yes we we can do that and we are ready to go in the event that we need to yeah i think i mean you know it's it's if they're gonna be home put them do something a lot of the parents i know have things there for their children to do and it's probably not a lot but a few parents but a lot

138of them the only thing they would have is the tv or the video games okay thank you thank you thank you any other questions i just wanted them to know we were working on it and it came up and i actually called dr thornton and mrs getz and told him hey we need to do something these kids just sitting here i needed to phone a friend on that one i can't i can't add some of that happened last year even though we weren't open fully we were alternating days and i meet every month with the region 2 superintendents and we actually talked about that and we did get some feedback last year and some of the feedback was you know what it's a snow day and kids be kids and go play in the snow

139and leave it alone and not that we would do that all the time or make that decision all the time because now we do have the technology to do something other than go play in the snap but i mean it's not like they're going to be all day long right there doing you know something right for the school they can still have that play time as well but if you can give they're going to give us two hours at least two hours of that whole school day okay they can do it anytime you want they can play the snow all day and do the school work at the evening at the end you know and some of our teachers like to plan the snow that's true yeah that's important mr collick did you have a

140i do so miss briggs i look down at uh december and we've got two full weeks off for christmas christmas falls on a sunday so we've got a week you know we we start almost 10 days before christmas with a vacation and then we go into january january 2nd would be because new year's is falls on sunday january 2nd would be the holiday so i i think it's my opinion i don't have any kids in school anymore they're all grown up but something i would rather see if i was still a parent with a child in school is some of those days during december moved over so we can pull back um in june and get the kids out a little bit sooner than than we are i think the 14th or 15th and then

141add the holiday a day after the holiday in on january 1st or january 2nd that's just you know some input that i would have if if my kids were still going to school we received a few comments from parents about that i will tell you uh the history and you hate to say it's how we've always done it but i got school done that yeah don't go messing with that two weeks let me tell you today it it's been it has been a nice plus i will say for our employees because typically they are not able to do anything related to the holidays until school ends it also keeps them from taking time off heading into the winter break because they know they have that time available to them prior to the holiday we did

142get a significant amount of feedback from the employees about that day after break being a work day for them they were so appreciative so appreciative that you guys approved that and they could come in and get there as they said get our feet under us before the students came back so i think that has was just a huge morale boost for our employees but truthfully the two weeks why don't we see the facebook comments we get on that tonight and and we can bring it back up i did so and parents have to we have we heard um a lot of our military families say this is great we travel i don't have to pull my children from school you know other divisions are going up through the wednesday and my child's missing days so

143it does help our families as well it gives them time to travel and visit relatives without their children missing so you tell me that's pretty popular i know this year we did uh give the staff the workday it's coming back from the holiday is it on the calendar to do it next year as well it is that is the only modification we did keep and once again tremendous feedback from staff how much they appreciate it just okay that's that's the one thing you don't hear much positives that's a positive you should appreciate because they're gonna the kid's gonna they're gonna be away from three weeks the staff needs to come back and really loved it yes ma'am it's good all right thank you okay thank you very much mrs briggs okay now we have 16.7

144mr cunningham asked to do some research on resource officers and the possibility of extending them past the two high schools and the two middle schools which we currently have and there's some history to this we we used to have them in this county at every school and now we don't some of the concern from the sheriff is the distance to get to carswell in case of an emergency and the time that it would take and and that's been brought up through the years it's also been brought up through the years who pays for this is serving our children for 10 months in our schools but they have to be the sheriff officers employees we don't know how to manage or train police officers so uh the sheriff and i met and uh we came up

145with a memorandum of understanding that uh and you can see this one says counter proposed so we had some discussion on the different things and uh in your packet you can see this is what we came up with to share with this board to see if there is interested in in doing this and then again we'd have to put it within our budget it is not in the proposed budget because you have no idea you guys haven't even discussed it so uh it says the nine uh sros will remain employees of the sheriff the schools would pay illaway county sheriff through purchase services provided september through june so for 10 months and then they would be on the road in the county for the other two months and this will be the salary and benefits

146for the sros for the 10-month period and there's a budget sheet that you had in your packet as well and the sheriff has also asked uh that we pay for the uniforms and equipment so up front that would be more initially and then that would come down each year so if you look at the budget sheet [Music] and the sheriff's office will provide the vehicles so it comes up to with pay and benefits the uniforms and equipment per officer and that's an approximation depending who they hire years experience etc so if we were to absorb all nine resource officers within our budget it would be an additional cost in our budget of six hundred twenty three thousand eight hundred fifty three dollars and so currently the budget for the four we have sits within the

147sheriff's budget okay so this would be us paying the shares through purchase service each month for those services for 10 months yeah for 10 months okay so we would be paying for five officers because he's above what we're paying right now well to make it clean is is what we want to do is put all nine officers within our budget because they uh work for us okay so we would the money they're getting for that would come to us and then would pay to pay it forward that's where we're at apartments okay so what was the total for that 623 that's about an additional roughly three hundred thousand dollars if we get the money that they're already okay all right so we need an action no this is just information this is something to for

148you you guys to discuss during the budget uh work session and then if there's some agreement that you think we should have non-resource officers we will put added into the budget and then of course the sheriff will have to present his budget to the county as well as us presenting our budget well somebody with a lot of experience and threat um this is would be a very small price to pay to help you know uh with a portion of mitigation and any potential threats it's it's not the end-all be-all but a definitely a big help okay okay thank you dr thornton at this time we'll move on to 16.8 revised school board meeting dates mr ruid oh it's on the screen too okay so the april 21st meeting uh you know we meet on the

149second thursday that falls during spring break and so we're asking that it be moved to april 21st and at westside elementary school and the other two dates may the 12th and july 14th those are just location changes because the board of supervisors already has this room for those dates and so this would be an action item and the main thing would be moving april's date to april 21st instead of the second thursday so it's april 21st may 12th and july 14th okay july uh may 12th and july 14th are just location changes yes and we do need an action on that board okay i'd like to make a motion that we accept the school board meeting date changes as listed you want to include location as well and include the locations as well uh changes

150changes second okay we have a motion and a second that we will accept the changes of the um calendar dates for the school board meetings april 21st is the date change may 12th and july 14th our location changes yes madam chair um as i look at this i see november 10th um we would have on the uh schedule as well but that's next of 2022. yeah it's on this calendar um that is the night before veterans day and more importantly it's also the marine corps birthday it's hard birthday the marine corps the marine corps i would like to see if we could change that date or hold it in advance and change it a little bit later um but i think eventually we we should change that date as well why because veterans stay in

151a marine corps birth no that was a joke it's the night before veterans day and so it's gonna be a long weekend and so some people may want to take off it's a marine thing it falls right before a long weekend yeah or right on a long weekend it's november the 10th any any other board members have a concern with that date remember now november is also the month we have thanksgiving mm-hmm so we we can't be playing with a whole lot of dates there back one day you want to put it back on the night one day that's what what would that be on monday wednesday wednesday wednesday yeah these are okay when i go back i went back a day you want to go forward to wednesday versus tuesday well this is thursday

152so it will go back it would be wednesday you're correct yes ma'am i'm sorry that's that's all so you want to put it on the 9th of uh november or wednesday do we have to vote on that tonight no the reason is i don't have a problem with it but i would like for staff to look at that date and and just make sure it does not uh have a conflict with some other things that we're having okay oh certainly yeah i tell you now we can bring that one back next month mr colic and if it's not a conflict yeah mrs ruit check to make sure it's not a conflict with anything like the high schools or anybody having something that night or and uh we can come back and it's not an issue

153yeah that would be great because that that is a holiday weekend okay thank you all right thank you so we'll table it until further notice okay good to go all right so we have a motion on the board on the floor and at this time if we don't have any more discussion or concerns we will take a vote so we voting to table this no no no no no we we're voting on the campaign on the cow of the dates april 21st may 12th and may 14th oh i mean uh july 14th okay can you reach that in november november the 10th mrs style we're gonna take okay because we have some time on that one reset it yeah tracy reset i had to reset the votes okay okay got to vote again yep i'm

154sorry so that was me i hit the wrong button it's all good it happens we can take a verbal you have to refresh that's your pop-up you have to refresh yeah if you refresh your screen see if i refresh mine it's going to throw me out because you have to go back last time you have to go back in if you if you didn't but try okay thank you all right we're good okay the motion passes 5-0 thank you all right at this time we will have 16.9 fiscal year 2023 proposed budget mr kempness he's going to do a power point i guess in december so then we have to tie our expenditures with the state aid and which ultimately leads to this initial presentation as ms tynes has said we'll be meeting on the

15515th as a work session so you should have it with you in front of you your budget book i ask you to bring all of your detailed questions to the work session this is a general overview of the budget and we can get into as much detail as you choose to i believe it's tuesday tuesday tuesday so just to outline what we'll be discussing i want to look at the division values because the budget does reflect your values our enrollment and the trends that we've seen over the past several years and then we'll go through the categories of revenue which ultimately leads to how much we can spend we'll analyze our salary and payroll costs i want to briefly discuss what our health insurance fund is it's a self-insurance plan and i'll explain the difference

156between a self-insurance plan and a private plan and how we benefit from that and the risks but then i also second from the last bullet the funding calculation so you have a better understanding of how all divisions in the state are funded in particular isle of wight and there's something we call a required local match that might have been brought to light in the past and i want to explain how that impacts isle of wight and some of the surrounding divisions and then lastly the appropriations or your expenses and we'll take a look at those so first and foremost i think it's important that you keep this in mind because the when we finalize this budget that's our best estimate of spending at that moment in time and i can almost guarantee you the day

157after you approve a budget something might change which changes costs fuel oil may go up or down that will then change costs we don't necessarily go back and change the fuel oil but now we have to adjust along the way so i put three important bullets it's only a spending plan it's a working document constantly in flux and lastly most importantly it has to be flexible we do have our limitations but there's a lot of changes that take place along the way and that's all year long and secondly is your vision and your mission so i'll read these out to create a learning environment that will enable every child to discover his or her unique gifts and talents and your mission to enhance and expand on each child's unique gifts and talents to ensure each

158child is college career and life ready and my opinion this budget serves those purposes so here's your enrollment and you can see the trends back to fiscal year 2018 and the fiscal year is the year that it ends in so the fy 18 was your 17-18 school year and you can see we had a steady incline in your 2021 or fy21 fiscal year 21 it did drop and i do believe that was similar to many other divisions around the state due to the pandemic parents withheld their kindergartners from enrolling and students we just had to drop off because of the pandemic those four years 18 through 21 were based on what we call the spring data or the spring financial verification report every march we count our students however in fy 22 that is based

159on the fall data because we haven't counted them in the spring yet we haven't gotten there yet so you can see there was an increase to 5 516 and then lastly fy23 or next year is the state's projection and that's what they base their revenue their state aid on based on that exact number so that's the number that i'm going by 5568. so let's start with your revenues and i'll go through the categories of revenues we'll look at state county local and then some miscellaneous other so the state does provide your general fund which is ultimately your general operating fund which i call fund 100 and you can see the state revenue this year compared to next year a significant increase fund 200 are your textbook funds which are um things not only for textbooks

160it's become much more flexible over the year it can be software that supports the textbook it can be training to support the teachers on the curriculum within the textbook so that's become a much more flexible category of spending but it does have to tie back to your textbooks fund 600 is your grant or tech grant and the state has offered the same amount next year as they are this year and then lastly this is a unique item the state construction grant one time so when dr thornton first looked at these he made a point to point it out to me because this is a unique category that we don't see and when i read the detail of how to spend this it is one time so you don't want that to flow into your operating

161budget and spend it on various things and then not get it back in the subsequent year in fact you can't do that it's dedicated to school construction additions infrastructure site acquisition and the assumption will be we will not get that in the future and we have i believe two years to spend that i'm still waiting on guidance on how to apply for those funds as though it's a grant so i didn't build it into your general budget your fund 100 it's i tucked it away into your your grant budget so if i could interject here we we have had some communication and i've talked to the county administrator that uh 2.8 million can be used in hardy but now that would be the county to figure out what they've done with their bonds and if

162it makes sense for them to use it within that so so we've already communicated that but again this is the governor's budget we don't know if it's going to show up in the house and the senate budget the assumption is it might because school construction is a major issue okay and let me reiterate and expand so the governor presents revenues as it proposed then the senate will either revise it or keep it similar then the assembly and then they all mines come together so we'll actually see four versions of these revenues and that we might have to adjust them as we go and now on to the county portion of revenue um you can see in the current year the tooth 26 million two thousand oh five nine did actually was able to come down

163and that's due to an increase in state aid it's that simple and there's a required local match and we'll get into that more in a bit but the state does require a local match in the textbook funds and that's where that number is coming from when the state provides our state aid numbers they also have that number for textbook funds as the required local match and i just plug that into our budget so that's a request of the county um the fund 400 we call that our local or school capital improvement program or cip maintenance program and we will be requesting of the county to support us by offering another 250 000 which they did this year and in years past to support our local maintenance projects so the total county revenue is a slight

164decrease so i call that relatively flat but it is a decrease of just over 23 thousand dollars and now onto your fees and other sources many churches and other organizations use our facilities and based on your policy there is a fee that we charge them so i'm estimating another 250 000 would roll in from those fees you'll notice in the tuition those that's out of zone students um so i looked at the 100 000 i looked at prior years trends and we haven't consistently hit the mark of bringing in a hundred thousand dollars in tuition so conservatively and that's me i am estimating slightly less than one hundred thousand i'm looking at about seventy five thousand for tuition coming in i'm leaving the six 000 for summer flat that's been a good number historically of

165students participating or paying ultimately to come to our summer programs and we've received funds over the years from the prudence center that is now complete they've paid us everything they will pay us so the 10 000 is ultimately a miscellaneous amount this other category that we likely do see in addition to the prudence center but that's a significant decrease in your budget is the loss of that revenue lastly is e-rate what is e-rate e-rate is federal funds that ultimately support communications and technologies in schools so as we have our internet we will file with support of our outside vendor to file with the federal government and we will then get reimbursed for um funds towards internet and is it hardware technology infrastructure yes category two category two so and we typically get about ninety thousand

166dollars for those e-rate funds and you'll see the total decrease was ultimate ultimately for that miscellaneous other category related to the prudence center a few more categories federal so special education medicaid initiative which i refer to as semi if families have special ed children and those families are also on medicaid what we do and we do a great job of it is we count every time they have an occupational therapy session a physical therapy session an iep meeting we prorate salaries of the staff related to those children whose family special ed children whose families are on medicaid we submit that and we get reimbursed and we are on track this year we budgeted 160 000 i think we'll exceed that amount but for next year we're looking at 190 000 because we're doing such a

167great job in filing it's it's it's very taxing because you have to count every session and we do a really good job our staff have to log it and then we have central office people that file the reports secondly junior reserve officers training corps we will get sixty thousand dollars from the federal government to offset the salaries of the gentleman who are overseeing our reserve officer training corps program and lastly is impact aid projecting that we'll do slightly better in impact aid what is impact aid so we live in a high military area so military families do get a break on paying property tax it's a fact um however our state aid is based on property tax values so the state the federal government is acknowledging the shortage the hardship for not necessarily receiving all

168of those property tax revenues if you will and they allow us to again count put out surveys from to our military families and then we file and we will receive revenue from the federal government to offset that loss any questions on these revenue categories expecting us um i see as a large increase from 25 to 40. so you're expecting an influx of military decline now we're just we're getting a higher level of responses and when i looked historically we've been doing better than 25 000. okay um yes that's a good question uh but it's it's very hard to in a granular way to know how many will be coming in how many might be leaving so i'm just basing that on my the history that's a good question on to our grants so i call

169these urban entitlement grants you might have heard of title one title two in title four um and you'll notice and this was intentional we haven't yet received we don't know what our allocations will be for these entitlement grants we are entitled to these grants so at some point late june into july the government will let us know what our allocation is then we tell them how we will spend it we submit the application and we will get those grants without knowing um i just left them all flat the idea ms magner had hinted towards 611 and 619 individuals with disabilities in education act 611 is our the general population and the 619 are the little ones the preschoolers and i'm projecting at least the same amount in that lastly is the carl d perkins grant

170a gentleman who was into education at a us congressman and he pushed for funding for schools and that ultimately goes towards our cte programs our career technical education programs so we just left that flat and that was intentional because we don't know what allocations we will get and some miscellaneous i wanted to isolate these because these are your pin i call them the pandemic grants you'll see esther uh elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund sr2 we already had us her one that's her two that's her three arp is american rescue plan again idea individuals with disabilities in education and then the american rescue plan i refuse to memorize this one so i wrote it down coronavirus state and local fiscal recovery funds c s l r f r f and there might be people

171in the audience that have heard this as the hvac grant dedicated towards improving ventilation in schools so we are just now getting approved for the hvac grant so over the next few days i'll be working with ssc and we're planning to change out some boilers that's this year seven million dollars in pandemic grants for this year so that will skew many of your budget reports when you see significant decreases significant increases because you might see it on a piece of paper but it's not going to say because of pandemic grants so i may remind you that's why next year you'll see the sr3 that's a redundant number we won't be getting another 2.5 million we're going to be using some of the 3.5 we will intentionally not spend it we're applying it towards next year

172and we and we have time to do that so ultimately you're going to see that significant decrease at the bottom of the screen 4.4 million in your grant funding unless after july 1 we are told more esser funds are coming i don't know [Music] this is just another depiction of your grants uh you can see they were flat the yellow is actually spent in prior years and then the red bars are budgeted because we're not done with these years so i can't tell you what we've spent um so 18 1920 relatively flat we did get a spike in fy 21 because we did get one of those actually two of those pandemic grants a five hundred thousand dollar grant a nine hundred thousand dollar grant and we did fully expend them last school year however

173this year if you remember all of those esser funds the hvac funds the arp funds are all built into this year now uh i can't say we will spend them all but we will certainly try and then we're carrying over some into next year and i think this is was important to show you some trends here because education as you know is is a huge partnership and we feel it's a partnership with the county so it's our goal to mitigate any exp any increases as much as possible in the name of doing what's best for students but also for the county the blue bars are your state aid and you can see a very linear situation in which the state aid has increased significantly over the past several years however notice the brown bars which

174are the counties portion of the budget the first few were flat but i do want to point out i'm not sure the best pointer but in fy20 this is important that you understand this is actual revenue not budgeted revenue when we went into fy 20 we budgeted more than that brownish bar is showing we budgeted 1.4 million more and at the end of that year we gave back 1.4 million so it looks like in fy 20 we actually did spend less but had i shown you a budgeted amount you would have seen a stepping down if you will similar to the fy 20 from fy20 to fy21 so you would have seen that decrease um it looks like it was flat from 19 to 20 but we gave significance funds back so between funds returned

175in fy 20 1.4 million and we did give funds back in fy 21 uh because our spending was was way down with the pandemic we gave 2.6 million dollars back so we try to return oh we in fact by statute we have to return all of our funds but it's our goal to not necessarily spend down this entire budget if i can add here we worked with the county knowing this phenomena was happening and and two things with the hardy project the architectural fees are not part of the construction piece your furniture is not part of your construction fees your technology infrastructure which eric actually puts together the package for the new hardy is not part of that so although the pandemic had a lot of negatives by giving the 1.4 million dollars back to

176the county we're able to use that to pay the architect and the 2.6 will pay for the new furniture priority and also the technology that will go into hardy and those funds right now are back with the county and so they're set up for those areas as we proceed with building hearts and this is now not actuals but budgeted and i just wanted to show percent increases or decreases along the way this is only the county's revenue over those years not the state but you can see from fy 17 to fy 18 was a drop of 2.79 then as we have the straight line effect 18 to 19 went up 4.46 then it continued to 3.63 then it was ultimately flat we did that's the year we gave back 1.4 million then from 21 to

17722 the d the drop of a negative 1.85 was when we returned the um 2.6 and we're looking at a for next year a slight drop of 0.3 or 3 10 of a percent i do understand it didn't go down 1.85 because we gave the funds back that's what we asked for that year thank you that's right these are actually that's right very good thank you so a little bit of history over the the total um the total increase was 2.88 i haven't been in the division a long time but that it's really unheard of over that many years to have that straight align if you will with a very low increase so that was outstanding job done by predecessors before me so and now in the spending side of things what's in this budget

178new things in this budget so i want to go through some positions that are built into this budget so you'll see four admin associates at those schools and due to the busyness of central offices with the pandemic due to the chaos of students being out students being in teachers being absent needing substitutes we did build in four additional what we call admin associates secretaries if you will in those schools um you'll see a couple guidance positions uh again those are needed for what we call the standard of quality your soqs and the need for family engagement and the mental health of our students so they're having me more so meetings with the students and lastly that special ed position one additional special edited georgie tyler which is really driven by your numbers in special education

179and we have to submit this budget to the county by category there's the instructional category this is the next category admin attendance and health category and this is a statewide system and again health the nurses offices comes under this category so you'll see in this budget an increase based on eight clinic assistants supporting their nurses we had a strong recommendation from our head nurse we heard we visited the nurse's offices we saw the chaos not nothing because of what the nurses weren't doing just the busyness they had many more clients patient students visiting them so they needed help and we heard that loud and clear we built eight clinic assistants in secondly the long uh title assistant superintendent admin finance and operations you what you'll see for that position then that's based on the reorganizational

180structure we're taking that salary and spreading it out over three of the categories this admin category then you'll see it in transportation a third and you'll see another third in the maintenance and operations category and you'll see that as we go and when we get into your detail come tuesday i can point to you uh we wanted to make sure that everything panned out the way the board your prior boards and you were informed how things would pan out and on page 27 on your book and you can get into it now or not we'll look at it tuesday in detail you'll see some decreases that are really driven by changes in position that are pay more than paying for this additional position i would like to point out here too with the esser funds

181one of the things that we tried to do because that is not ongoing money is we try to fund things at a one-time cost because it's not going to stay in the operating budget the eight clinic assistants we are currently paying for them this year through escrow funds so this is one area that we need him for asser but in talking to the head nurse and talking to the nurses uh one of the days i delivered cookies to the nurses and talk to each one individually this is a need whether we have a pandemic or not the filing that they have to do if they're called out for someone hurt on the playground they may have feeding tubes that they have to do for certain children we need that nursing assistant in that office with

182the nurse and so that's why we have put it in our regular operating budget for next year and the increase transportation category so you'll see a clerical position listed now you heard this evening from mr mordeca and the variables that we're experiencing in transportation with um bus drivers being ill with routes being changed and diverted on the fly um so and with with him getting around the division holding northern meetings southern meetings we felt we needed support with responding to parents responding to the department um and supporting that department and the second one in here again you'll see a third based on the reorganizational structure of that other position lastly maintenance operation this is really the only new position or part of a position in this category so any questions on the new positions okay

183so i want to take a minute and explain self-insurance and compare it to private or more traditional on the traditional insurance you have an insurance company they tell you your premium rates how much for a family plan single plan and you pay them that every month and at the end of the year they do two things they pay the doctors and they keep the profits and if they're short the following year your rates spike because they don't they can't they won't take a loss that's a very simplified version of the private insurance with self-insurance we charge insurance costs in our budget we then charge our budget and move that money over to a different account that we have a health fund the same money and from that we receive and we actually pay the claims

184through a third party administrator we don't pay the claims out of our office with 450 insured people we're not writing checks to doctors um but that's again a simplified version some things that we're able to do to mitigate costs is one first and foremost is about shopping for your stop-loss insurance in other words if someone is continually ill and they receive a certain level and our stop loss for an individual is 125 000 so if one individual hits that amount for doctor's bills and it's it's a shame they're very ill exceed that the stop-loss insurance covers the balance and then there's what's called an aggregate stop-loss if many people start hitting stop-loss or the division as a whole has paid x amount and that change is based on how many members you have it's about

185four million dollars then that stop-loss insurance pays the bills and we have the luxury of shopping around for stop loss insurance and that is that that cost is about a half a million dollars for that level of stop-loss insurance or what they call re-insurance so again we charge your budget we move that money into a health fund it collects theirs as a revenue if you will and then we pay the claims from there and at the end of the year if there's a bit of a windfall we are protected in future years by generating a fund balance and we need a fund balance in that fund that's not a zero-based fund because you never know if people get ill you need uh funds for that rainy day is that more long lines of a health

186savings account a health savings account uh now is more on an individual basis as opposed to this is on a bigger scale um comparable but for this is for would be for an employer's um situation any question on ensure the self-insurance plan so talking about health insurance you'll see the current year's budget at the bottom 4.2 million we are anticipating a rate increase we do believe doctors rates are going up so we have to plan for that so you'll see the the increase of about 351 000 for health care built into this budget which represents about an 8 increase in health care now i'm going to lead into salary costs state aid and how they calculate the funds that we will receive when we receive the notice on our state aid from the from the

187department of ed uh this statement and it's it's whittled down it's paraphrased a bit school divisions that provide an average salary increase of less than five percent will receive a pro-rated state payment so if we're not certifying at the end of a biennium two years worth that we've met this five percent mark per year we won't we will not receive the full state aid amount it's our goal to receive the full state aid amount so built into this budget is a change to allow for a five percent increase for staff members it also allows us to be competitive with other divisions in the state so we can get talent we have talent we want to hold on to talent and i will say on that a tuesday meeting i had with the hampton roads superintendents

188i think it's everyone's intention to give the five percent so just to stay even where we are now we would have to do that okay and in terms of salaries and salary related payments fica vrs is the pension system virginia retirement system you can see those increases by category those are the five standard categories that are built in that are throughout this budget again that's the standards we use in virginia so the the total increase for salary and salary related benefits not health care not health care is your bottom right 3.4 million so what that really says if you look back at the revenue slots even though that increase seems very significant from the state the majority of that money is tied up in the five percent and so it's not extra money in there

189for other things that we could use in our operational budget it's pretty much driven by the five percent that's why it's actually not in this is missing okay sorry i apologize it's good no worries he's just not that hard i think you updated it before your presentation budgets are flexible sorry about that miss that's okay let's die all right and now i want to briefly talk about how the state funds are your revenue the most important word on this page is sample this this is a sample of funded positions there's many there's more funded positions but i don't want to take slides and slides to show you i'm showing one sample for a reason when we get our state aid we will see pages similar to this but if you take a look for example

190at the elementary teachers the third one down that's what the state is funding and then if you go slightly further down secondary teachers 116. that's 180 people well i'm sorry that's 262 and we took a look in your budget it's so we are drastically under funded which and that's intentional the state says there's a required local match they know they're not going to cover all the costs but the amount of underfunding is is just ridiculous for and you look at the kindergarten aids it says on our division we should need they're funding 5.5 and a quarter kindergarten needs it's just i mean to me it's it's amazing how underfunded it is and that leads to we have seven kindergarten classes in carrollton five in hardy uh five in windsor elementary two in carswell the state

191funds us five and they're mandated to have aids in kindergarten and so that's what skews your your required local effort and and steve's going to get into that in the next slide every school system is way over the required local effort because the state doesn't adequately fund what's needed to run a school mandate right they're saying you can run a school with half an elementary assistant principal for all of our elementaries that's not per school that's how much we get funded for the district county division and it's it's it needs to be updated it needs to be real and as you probably have seen in the vsba stuff that comes out support staff the support cap it was eliminated about 10 years ago and support positions due to the crunch in the state budget at

192that time it was supposed to be a short-term fix and put back into schools it's over ten years and it has never been put back and we are fighting to have that put back and i know vspa is friday we can vast this fight we are all fighting to put that back the economy is good the intent was never to take it forever so we're asking for that money to be put back which will help sure up school budgets so this is an interesting graphic and it's it's dated a bit but it's the most recent one that the state has published that i could find this is back to fiscal year 18. 18 is during the 18 and the 19 time frame 2018 2019. so if you look this is the number of divisions exceeded

193the required local match that's my rlm local funds so the top number 11 there was 11 divisions school districts that exceeded their required local match by anywhere between zero up to 25 percent so they didn't exceed it by much then going clockwise 45 in the orange area there were 45 school divisions that exceeded their required local match between the percentages 25 up to 75 percent you'll see that's where we're at during this time frame in this report we were just shy of 75 continuing into the bottom section there were 34 divisions that were exceeded by up to a hundred percent meaning doubled of their required local match and then that were 100 or more more than doubled so the majority of the 34 and then the top left 45 well exceeded the required local match

194from your perspective i i would ask you to keep that in mind because when you see our share it's it's not out of line in fact i think we're doing a really good job at mitigating local costs and it depends how you read data you know i'm a math guy some people will look at data like this and use it and say if you're in the bottom half your locality should be doing a whole lot more for you or what i'm saying is since i've been here working with the county administrator and the boards working together we have tried to to keep a pretty level local request each year which is why we're only at two 2.88 percent over the six-year period so i look at it as we've done a good partnership to keep

195our local tax dollars down and ask for what we need and because there's a whole lot of wants but uh what we need and and i think we're doing well with it so just one more slide just to share some uh comparisons with your required local match so these divisions and you'll see i love white second from the bottom but these divisions are one of two things they're either in our area a regional area or of a similar size to isle of wight um gloucester at the top so you'll see the required local match was 12 million uh their actual that they collected from their local was 24 million 98 over their required local match and you can just take a look i'm now i'm looking at the percentages suffolk was at 82 percent over

196franklin city was it 80 percent over and buzzing down at isle of wight there's we were just under 75 percent 74.43 and southampton is winning the day at 68.04 percent over their required local match um and it's it's difficult to calc it's a complicated calculation that takes three uh three measures into account your property value the adjusted income in your area based on your filing of your taxes and your taxable retail sales so they mix all that up they compare it to the state's amounts and they come up with ratios to determine a composite index which ultimately says how much isle of white can afford and that leads to your required local match so now we'll just get into some of the sheets that summarize your spending these numbers should tie to your revenues but

197these are all funds including your grant funds and that's important these numbers are going to be greater than your general operating fund so you'll see from the state we did get some additional funds from the state that's inclusive of that construction one-time grant of in excess of two million dollars and then you'll see your local isle of wight county that's both your general operating as well as your textbook funds and the rest are really self-explanatory and this is broken down by category and there's a debt service piece from our energy savings in years past but again they just speak for themselves you can see the changes over to the right one of my questions jumped out at me on the first category instructional services at the top shows a decrease remember this year will be

198skewed because many of those pandemic funds were in the instructional category this year so that jacked up this year so it appears as though there's a decrease we will not have those pandemic funds in next year's budget and now this is without the grants this is just fund 100 or your general operating fund when someone asks me what's your budget to me these are the numbers that represent your budget because grants tend to come and go so this is a more day-to-day operation if you will of what we would plan to spend and then lastly is by category you can see the instructional services it ties very nicely to that five percent um you'll see uh the other categories and what their percentages look like and the total increase at the bottom in the admin

199in attendance and health as a reminder that increases due to those clinic assistance transportation if you remember the board did approve um a well-deserved increase for drivers that's no pun intended driving that increase operations and maintenance and then your technology down below so one more statistic here for you on the left side the orange and the bluish is the the general fund and of that general fund eighty point four percent are salaries and benefits people um and that's not uncommon and 80 20 split salaries and benefits versus all other costs but of that blue the colors are intentional here to the right is breaking down salaries and benefits and of the salaries and benefits 83 percent of that is school-based your teachers everyone in the schools so most of this budget is in classrooms is

200running the schools as it should be so again just another statistic for you to take a look at a breakdown of the categories in your general budget instructional services with this is now inclusive of all costs 75 percent and lastly just some dates that you have as a reference so at the top we'll be meeting again 9 a.m here and we'll take a lot of questions i'm sure and then the public hearing where we put an ad out to publicize in the paper um that february 24th again here at six is a public hearing to hear from the public so any questions okay thank you and it would be helpful uh if you do have questions as you look through the like 50-page document that you have the excel as you get those questions i

201know steve would appreciate if you could send them to to us ahead of time and so hopefully you can answer all those questions while we're actually there uh at the work session but some will come up as you go through that book yeah every time i look at it i have a different question so it's yeah i got one very good thank you thank you mr kepnes okay at this time we'll move on to 17 point actions and closed session items we need a motion personal report madam chair uh i'd like to make a motion to approve the uh [Music] personnel report the personnel report as written go ahead submit it right here excuse me i'll check in that okay we have a motion and a second to approve the personnel report as submitted along

202i'm sorry with the the second the second was mr collick and then motion was mr cunningham have any discussion at this time we'll take a vote the eyes having and emotion carries 5-0 thank you um miss madam clerk the uh the packet that the board is voting on just for the record is available with you correct so if members of the public would like to see it so they know what the board is voting on madam clerk has it okay yes and make sure so in the future when the board takes the vote make sure that we announce that it is available okay because it's it the board is voting on something that's different than what is published beforehand so make sure you you or you you announce that the one they're voting on is

203available thank you mr pack is there anyone in the audience tonight would like to have a copy of it just step over here and the clerk will hand you one thank you that's the personal report that we are voting on well we just voted on okay we'll move on to section 18 adoption of consent agenda are there any any discussion on the consent agenda well we need an action an action item so we get a motion ma'am uh madam chair i'd like to make a motion to approve the consent agenda as attached uh well as presented second we have a motion and a second on the floor to approve the consent agenda as attached and presented any uh discussions hearing none we'll take a vote eyes have it motion passes 5-0 thank you now we

204get to the portion of our agenda where the public gets to participate request to speak ms ruiz in accordance to policy ddd h dash e presentations of information for information on any subject will be concluded at the direction of the board no person will be recognized to speak more than once citizens scheduled on the agenda to speak will be permitted four minutes maximum time for their presentation delegations will be requested to limit their speakers to two persons speaking are asked to be specific state the issues for the board's consideration and attach a copy of your prepared remarks if you have prepared remarks given to the board clerk please do not approach the board members any matter relating to specific students will be heard by the school board only in a closed meeting the first one

205is miss tantiana turner hi good evening everyone good evening um i would like to start off by saying how disappointed and discouraged i am by the most recent events and actions that were taken by some of the school board members regardless of whether you were elected or appointed the positions that you took have a great responsibility that comes with it and you all are leaders of this community our kids are looking up to you we are looking up to you and we expect you to behave as such um so far i've seen irrational decisions that are being made based on personal experiences and opinions on the other hand i feel that our opinions and concerns don't matter to the majority of the school board members we are forcefully being removed during the board meetings for

206speaking up or voicing our concerns citizens are being personally attacked by the school board members we are being told that as transplants our opinions don't matter as much and with me being um so-called transplant it is very disturbing to hear from a figure of authority in this community that is currently responsible for my children safety in schools my kids go to the same school as everyone else's they follow the same rules they are being impacted by the same policies so i feel like if i need to speak up my opinion should matter just as much as everyone else's and um i had a whole speech prepared on masks at this point i feel like it's a mute point to even uh discuss that but i would still like to say that it is very disappointing

207that this decision that was made today i feel like was made because school board was forced into it not because school board stood up for our kids heard our concerns and made the change based on the information that was available to them i would also like to mention um something that has happened during the town hall meeting a few days ago there was a lady that was trying to speak from the hardy district she was removed because she wasn't allowed to speak because she was not from the district that uh was speaking but at the same times there were two gentlemen that were allowed to speak one of them was from the hardy district as well and another one was invited by uh mr vines that does not even live in alophide county nor pays

208taxes but he was allowed to speak as well and i would also like to add that the most recent pdh guidelines regarding the staff states that i'm reading from the vdh um guidelines educate staff regarding their chores pertaining to masking um nowhere in there it stays that it should be mandated i would like to ask school board to consider giving our teachers a choice as well and even if you look back at everything that happened in the past in the history never people that were forcing others to do something were on the right side of the history and that's what we are currently doing i understand school board cannot change the whole world but i'm asking you to uh at least try to make a small change in difference um that's all i have okay

209thank you excuse me what's your last name doctor claus excuse me ma'am i didn't get your last name when they called me uh my last name is turner turner okay thank you mrs all right thank you robert gibson um tricia williams sorry all right good evening my name is tricia williams and i'm in the carsville district as far as teachers and masks like tatyana said the updated osha guidelines the bdoe guidelines and the vdh guidelines all state that school officials are to educate their staff in regards to their choices regarding masks so i ask you to please update the guidelines for teachers and staff it's imperative for speech and language development as well as social emotional development for our students next i'd like to thank mr colic and mr vines for hosting the town hall

210meeting on tuesday evening i was able to formally introduce myself to both of you and it was a pleasure speaking with you mr colic thank you for responding to all of my concerns my emails i've sent many so i thank you i haven't heard anything from you um miss vines we've spoke or missed out we've spoken so mr vines let's see as you all know i'm a teacher here at alawite county schools and it takes a lot of bravery i think to come up here in front of y'all i'm going on my sixth year with the district and i'm very proud and dedicated teacher who not only loves my students but all students i also respect all students their families and the citizens of alawite county and i am appalled at how these citizens were

211treated at the meeting first off as a special education teacher for this county i feel the need to correct you on a statement you made at the town hall meeting regarding ieps you stated that ieps in this county are over six months overdue and that's completely false our special education department is amazing and we legally follow a timeline in regards to child study eligibility and iep meetings so again that statement was false during the meeting you were combative you accused a citizen speaker of racism you had the sheriff deputies remove a citizen from the room and came off as extremely rude you referred to most citizens of our county as transplant transplants and that offended many and it sure sounds as though you feel that if someone wasn't born and raised in this county they

212don't have a voice i am a proud transplant and my opinion does matter like i said i'm a teacher for the county and i have two students in this county um it shouldn't matter if you've been in the county all of your life or two days if you're a taxpayer your opinion matters and your voice should be heard and it's your job as a board member to listen you're supposed to represent alawite county schools which is my place of employment where i'm very proud to work for and where my children go to school and it was completely unprofessional if i were to speak to any of my students parents members of the community fellow staff members in a professional capacity the way you did i'd be held accountable and i expect you to be held

213accountable as well um lastly i just hope that constituents remember that this board the entire board minus mr colic did not support parent choice you guys are now being forced um to give us our choice so i just hope that everyone will remember that for november's election thank you for your time robert sweat is that right robert okay mark wooster good evening board members and fellow attendees my name is mark wooster and i reside in district 4 formerly the newport district i want to say i'm surprised and confused by the vote you took earlier pertaining to the mask i would like to know what the change of heart is basically as the opposition to that i have witnessed in the past i'm not looking for an answer right now i am curious i had a

214well thought out preparatory speech but by doing that vote you circumvented it so i want to point out a few things um when you made the initial vote okay to stay with a mandatory mask i was disappointed i sent an email to my representative of district 4 and i did not receive a response or an acknowledgement to that email now in my representatives defense i did not specifically request a response to the email i merely assumed as a representative of my district the person would be response respond automatically what i've been witnessing many parents have spoken before this board and they've expressed their desire to have their parental rights in deciding whether their children will wear a mask or not i know i've noticed that they have either been ignored or silenced at times parental

215input should not only be heard but it must be encouraged parents do know what is best for their children i want to commend you on your vote tonight however for removing the mask mandate i do feel it is too little too late i currently have two children remaining in the alawite school system i'm very disappointed in the majority of this board and their decisions as well as their intent to silence and ignore or ignore the citizens they represent due to these reasons and my lack of confidence in the majority of the board i have decided to run for alawite county school board in district 4 formerly newport district i can assure you if i am elected i will value the citizens voices thank you [Applause] sydney mcclaire mckay sydney uh good evening my name is

216sydney mcalier i'm a junior at smithfield high school and i came this evening to respectfully request that the mass mandates be lifted in isle of wight county schools but the vote earlier did confirm that that would uh be going into effect i believe you said march 1st so um my prepared remarks aren't entirely useful at this point but i just did want to come up here and say uh thank you guys for your consideration i know this is a decision that a lot of people are going to appreciate i think the bottom line that the majority of people were really trying to emphasize was parent choice personal choice of course this doesn't mean people can't wear their masks it simply means that you get the decision to do what you want to do and i

217think um with recent downtrends in the uh coveted cases and as well as some other points which i'd be happy to go into if anybody was interested um i think this is definitely going to be the best decision um for our students and families so thank you guys candace vanderbreak hello um so i was here because i just wanted to bring up that the previous board had blindly trusted all the figures and presentations seen before them during meetings just as the city of troy gladly opened their gates for the trojan horse alawite is a very diverse community and i applaud you for creating a plan to actually work with the communities we have to appreciate the fact that so many parents and grandparents are passionate about their children we need to make sure that teacher

218contracts leave room for them to come forward and share experience with people that can advocate for them or their beliefs we don't know what is foreseen in this crazy world democrat to republican we can say that we would like to keep politics out of the school but we can realize that lately that seems impossible we need to set forth policies and rights for our teachers so that they know they can be advocated for i am not sure who responds to the teacher advisory committee but those responses were cold and i did not read any response i came up with a solution or said they would investigate we have voted on so much lately with no teacher input hampton curriculum the discovery app the superintendent code of ethics we have spent so much money on things

219that we know little about we do not actually know if the teachers want it i think that we should find one teacher first for something and one teacher against something and then let them speak the last board meeting we heard ms getz speak on parental involvement there are several parents i know that have just removed their children from the school system because that seems to be easier what parental input are you seeking i know when i had a meeting with getz she mocked my parenting style in a meeting with her unbelievable i believe was the word chosen unbelievable i haven't taught my five-year-old that believes an elf disappears every night what sex is i emailed lombardo and i told him whatever committee you need parents to sign up for i have not received one call

220many things i have learned in meetings with central office i cannot even verify the sources parental and teacher input needs to be involved and all parental rights need to be corrected whether they see a with or against the board's views above parental and rights innocence and mental health need to be number one mental health has become such a critical and intricate part of our community i think we need mental health counselors in schools and frankly i think that we should have them weigh in on policy and material given to students or maybe even two each should be of opposite viewpoints of issues so that we can see case studies that support each view i would hope that the board would listen to them with open minds and open hearts to contemplate a medial outcome that

221both sides are happy with or unhappy with i think that the school board needs to define the word morals because that's come up a lot and there's been no definition for it my son is five he is wonderful and innocent he believes in santa elves god and everything good videos that go against parental views on vaccination videos defining transgender with applicable for the kindergarten grade level assisted with cartoon books videos on intersectionality lgbqia sex family life material gender identity and more are on his ipad he wears his heart on his sleeve and he loves everyone and he has everything good inside of me and more and i ask and i plead that we don't allow materials in the hands of my child that will take away his childhood before he is ready he will already

222remember the last two years covered with mass so that he cannot see emotions let's not teach our kids to cower any longer behind worldly fears [Applause] jason marsh good evening jason marsh windsor district 3 transplant i appreciate y'all giving me a few minutes of your time january 16th i reached out to mr vines on an email and i asked mr vines what is your plan to make sure ola white is in compliance with governor younkin's executive order one that ends the use of inherently divisive concepts to include but not only crt i've yet to get a response you're my rep that's january 16th today's the 10th january 25th i reached out to chairwoman times i recommended that she share all the examples of divisive concepts and materials that have been identified over the year and

223i warned i shouldn't say i warned i advised mrs tines of the governor's tip line on crt and the sheer fact that that exists is an unfortunate reality january 30th still i hadn't heard anything back and this was after mr tines stood up and categorized me and others as a transplant and voiced me it wasn't mr times because mr times has never been to a school board meeting thank you okay well we can get into semantics anytime you want to we've been doing that for over a year you meant mr vines mr vines i apologize thank you i appreciate it i apologize tongue-tied so january 30th i reached out to chairwoman tines and that was after mr vines categorized himself as categorized folks like me as a transplant and made his self-appointed authority to speak

224for the entire board uh [Applause] that same day mrs tines in kind replied to me this was on sunday and i appreciate a sunday response uh and she apologized for mr vines for his discriminatory remark and clarified that he did not speak for the entire board right in that same email mrs tines spoke for this entire board when she said to respond to e01 isle of wight will not have to take any actions on this order divisive concepts include crt theory has not been implemented implemented in our schools i have in my hands 10 pages of examples of material learning resources we can call it whatever you want to call it it's divisive much of it is directly related to crt today most of this is available on every student's clever account so again i

225want to know what the board's plan is to make sure we're in compliance with e01 if you don't have one that's an acceptable answer for now one minute i sat down with mr lombardo and mrs getz on friday we had a good meeting he assures me he's going to provide me a formal response to my klbe submission i learned during that meeting that mr thornton has since removed or at some point in time removed ted ed from not just elementary accounts but all accounts thank you sir that is one of three applications i and others have sincere heartburn with thank you i believe our teachers have our kids best interest in their heart and i don't think i'll white teachers are actively teaching crt but what i do know beyond the shadow of a doubt

226is we have inherently divisive materials available today it needs to go i don't care how it got there i don't care how much we paid for it these fine folks are going to come up with a plan i trust but you're responsible for this thank you david adams good evening again my name is still david adams and despite the length of this meeting i have not moved from the windsor district no i'm kidding thank you all for being here thank y'all for being paid i i issue a call to not board not just board members but also the citizens of isle of wight county for a call to civility y'all are getting phones and they're going to be published and i i would definitely get familiar with the quiet hours on those phones so you're

227not getting texted at three in the morning that's just that's just me i think there's a reasonable expectation that you respond during business hours whatever that is if you choose to respond after then that's on you but let's try and be civil about it everyone during the town hall meeting at windsor elementary school on tuesday february 8th and at the special meeting held on thursday january 26th at west side members of the public and of the board were were throwing barbs at each other words like white supremacists were thrown around individuals were suggesting that certain board members don't live in the county none of this is helpful none of this is productive towards engaging a successful dialogue just to be clear i'm no snowflake words don't bother me like some of the board members and

228citizens in the audience i've served this country in the military i've heard things you i won't say here but i fought to defend all speech even that which would even that which i find repugnant how do these words and engaging in personal attacks help us achieve our common goals we have more in common with each other than not let's not forget that all of us choose to live in isle of wight county for our own reasons some like mr vines have generational familial legacy others because they found a job here while others still work in a neighboring area but moved here because they love the clean country air and the people who live here you may have different reasons for being here but you're here just the same while we may disagree on policy personal

229beliefs and ideas i believe firmly we can find common ground i've spoken to mr vines and mrs dial personally and we have differing opinions about masks i'm glad that's done we agree on a lot of things i want isle of wight county schools to hire and retain the best teachers for our students i'm sure the members of the board agree i want all of our children to feel safe at school and i'm sure the parents grandparents and other family members in the audience can agree with that i want all these things and more but i don't want to pay more in taxes i think we can all agree on that my point is the only way for us to find common ground is to talk to one another without preconceived notions of who the other

230is i'm going to share some personal details with you so you can see where i'm coming from and who i am i have been in a multi-ethnic marriage for 23 years i know you're looking at me like this guy's been married for 23 years what is he 12 it doesn't matter i don't use the term mixed race because in my opinion we are all one race with different shades and textures well we're all one race we have four children two of whom graduated from windsor high do the math uh and and two more going through or have gone through windsor elementary my wife and i have both experienced racism i'm not pretending that i know what it's like to walk in anyone else's shoes but please don't presume you know me or my journey i

231grew up as a lower class kid in upstate new york received public assistance well into my teenage years and believe the only reason i'm here is because i joined the military how many of you had that idea of me before when i walked up here how we act now and how we treat each other will be the blueprint for generations that follow us how you how do you excuse me what do you want your legacy to be i extend an offer to anyone still listening let's meet for coffee at ringo's or taco tuesday at el rodeo let's talk so we can figure out what we agree upon let's build from there build a community that takes challenges head on and reaches solutions thank you for your time laura fletcher good evening ladies and gentlemen of

232the board excuse me and dr thornton critical race theory and its divisive tenets are woven throughout our curriculum yet you deny an optional mask policy and this is a little doubt data but i'm still going to stand by it was given under governor younkin's e02 and every avenue is opening us for opening for us to safely unmask the children of isle of wight county and yet you defy this body has worked consistently to silence the free speech of parents and citizens we have watched as you voted i guess really it was the previous board as well to limit speaking times to one minute we've watched as you voted to rearrange the request to speak portion of the agenda in order that uncomfortable topics brought before the board come at the end of the meeting we've

233watched as you've called special meetings regarding iowa white county mass policy without a public comment period these actions were taken to quell public input and to silence dissenting opinion and conservative voices all of this i decry tuesday evening i attended the town hall co-sponsored by mr john collick and mr michael vines held at windsor elementary school the unelected mr vines and his co-conspirators the naacp orchestrated quite a show reverend willie williams was the first to speak he accused mr collick of being a white supremacist as in the past mr colic had referred to his conservative values reverend williams finds conservative values offensive and links conservatism with white supremacy following reverend williams several speakers later a young man mr brandon randleman approached the podium mr randleman admitted to having graduated from windsor high but no longer

234living in the county you might also remember mr randleman from a wavy tv 10 interview from april 21 2021 regarding the now famous traffic stop video by the windsor police department reverend williams and valerie butler of our local double acp are also featured in this andy fox story mr randleman clearly an naacp activist was given the floor he continued in the denial of crt the lie that it is only taught in graduate level courses and then proceeded to rail against governor younkin's parent tip line which exists for parents to report divisive teaching related to all things crt diversity equity and inclusion do you know what necessitates the tip line the continued denial by the department of education the virginia department of education and even iowa white county schools of the existence of this divisive ideology

235in our curriculum the tip line exists because of the silencing and ridicule of the conservative voice parental rights the rights of the family are inherently conservative the audience was then forced to listen as the two vines and brattlemen waxed in waynes in a mutually respectful manner about alternative facts related to america's family founding mr vines i'm going to skip ahead what was your intent in orchestrating the events of tuesday night can you please explain to us the difference between equality and equity as taught by dr martin luther king did dr king advocate for equality or equity those are my questions finally i'll close with the isle of wight county school math policy and i'm just going to skip ahead to this too this is something i did agree with you on why not end it

236now and i'll tell you why because when we know how detrimental prolonging this policy is for all involved children staff teachers administrators yet still say some let's wait let us see what the courts decide we should know in a couple of weeks i say the time is now because when something's wrong and you know it you fix it and you don't need to wait and delay for anything and i mean end it all masks cleaning procedures miss martha jackson [Applause] brittany oh miss martha no you're good chair times school board members dr thornton martha jackson smithfield virginia hardy district in honor of african-american history month there are some school board movers and shake-its shakers in your packet now the innovation dream team of briggs coop rider and elliott my packets aren't as neat as something

237they would do so mine's probably like an elementary school person i have listened intently to the maligned opinions of some who have come before you presenting what they propose you should do for their children some have spewed vitreous inaccurate comments some have threatened harassed so much so to the tune of two former board members resigning and some have been heard saying they plan to do the same to those who do not support their cause they will continue to persist in opposition to the work that is assigned to you as a board you are familiar with the old adage the more you stir it the more it and i will say that outside i won't say it in this venue as a critical link to public education you have been elected appointed and tasked to represent

238all of the 5 000 plus students in our nine schools not a select few whose parents who only have their interest in mind some of you have even used your position on this board in self-serving while you pursue selfish personal ambitions by using social media and appearing on talk radio shows that represent your stance this is not appropriate i urge you to remember your calling and that is to make sure you provide the best education you and for all students all caps all students you're not going to be popular and yours is not a popularity contest as hot button issues continually come before you stay focused in the midst of your detractors keep integrity intact when you face formidable opposition and obstacles let integrity shine through you are unsung heroes you are established establishing a

239vision that will continue to enable our learners all of them to take on the world in a big way keep on reporting students student success stories one minute as all of our all of our student successes ion instruction student of the month of all of our talented students please do not let criticize criticism stop you from doing what is best for all children it is urgent that you prioritize your energies don't let the negativity circumvent what should be at the forefront of all of your decisions our precious children all of them thank you thank you okay um mr i'm sorry miss um brittany taylor good evening i am here today because i am a parent um and as much as i would like to praise you for your vote on the masks i cannot this

240was a total about face when in fact just the other week you said that you guys would not change your vote even after reviewing the health guidelines um [Applause] i believe that this is because certain realities that most of you ignored are now smacking you in the face the school board has ignored its own policy that allows the public to speak it has had people unlawfully thrown out ignored the virginia department of health's latest guidelines that show the harm masks can do to our children you willfully ignored and then at a later special meeting which i attended so that even if you i went there what the message you're saying is that you don't care about our students you don't care about their health you're not putting them first and that clear message to us

241is that you have to go those of you who are going to say that you put our children first but yet state you're going to ignore the guidelines and now that it's a popular choice now that the now that they've passed that law all of a sudden you are in such big favor of it i don't buy it i don't buy it and to the comment that was made at the town hall two days ago this is very upsetting a reverend who said the word conservative him conservative makes him think white supremacist i don't know if any of you have heard of dr carol swing but she is from bedford virginia she is a retired professor from vanderbilt university of political science and law and she's a proud black woman and she's a conservative and

242i would like to see somebody to look her in the face and say because she's a conservative she's a white supremacist and to have that said by a man of the cloth all i'm hearing from him is his own bias his own hubris and sewing seeds of discontent and last time i checked that wasn't that's not what they're supposed to do i find it to be extremely inflammatory it is unhelpful and it does nothing but separate us when we should be coming together thank you reverend williams um melissa is it whited good evening to get started i would like to acknowledge that i didn't have all the information at the town hall meeting on tuesday before presenting my question it was pointed out that i needed to have all the facts in an effort to

243not embarrass myself before asking a question but for what it's worth that's the joy of being able to ask questions in an effort to gain clarification so i appreciate that i had the opportunity to ask my question in order to do that just get the facts i encourage my children and grandchildren to always ask questions and never worry about feeling silly for not knowing everything i have since been able to gather more information the system i used only showed two owners for the property in windsor but isle of wight county showed three regarding the suffolk property that it was stated sold over two years ago according to two sources it sold on seven two twenty one however the property that is appearing at the top of the list in my search is actually not the

244address of the property that sold a little over seven months ago and is in fact the property in question while someone can absolutely own more than one home as was vocalized which is a gift in in in and of itself it leaves room for question when all the facts are not given in response to asking a question it's difficult to find clarity to questions when responses are muddled with seemingly condescending remarks the town hall meeting for windsor and carsville districts on tuesday night was sadly one of the most chaotic demeaning and hypocritical public forums i have ever attended the rules at the beginning were as follows only people from two just from the two districts were allowed to speak and would speak first at the completion of resident speaking people from other areas would be

245able to come up and speak the board followed the self-established protocol for maybe two or three speakers that was a tremendous there was a tremendous amount of disrespect condescension arrogance discrimination bullying over talking and unsettling remarks being used by a board member that were extremely inappropriate and antagonizing these remarks created a tremendous amount of discontent for the concerned citizens who were there in hopes of getting answers and facts these types of intimidation taxes tactics intended to demean and degrade the citizens of white county should not and will not be tolerated one citizen was escorted out by deputies prior to even being able to speak even though she was invited up by one of the board members all citizens wanting answers should be allowed to speak and receive a response in a professional and courteous manner

246and this person wasn't even given the opportunity if the board allows adults to be treated in this manner how are they allowing our children to be treated we have to be the example and we shouldn't treat one another this way it should go without saying that the length of time someone has lived in this county should not matter and it should not be the defining question as to the sincerity they hold about the education of our children and and in the same respect nor does being born and raised here make anyone an expert i find it disheartening that you as a school board are allowing one member to create such a contentious environment which makes it virtually impossible to have an open and flowing dialogue with the concerned citizens of this county as i bring

247this to a close it's important that i state for the record the color of your skin or anyone else's skin for that matter is not in question it never has been and i wholeheartedly accept you as a member of the school board or someone in my life regardless of the color of your skin however kindness does matter how you speak and treat others matters and a member of the school board what matters is that you are willing to take on the responsibility of the education for for the children in a manner that is positive fulfilling and inspiring that matters but does it matter to you is my question after what we witnessed on tuesday i sadly i'm not sure if the answer is yes and as such i am suggesting the immediate resignation and or

248removal of michael vines from the school board so that we can get back to supporting our children in a positive and fulfilling way and i believe that includes being able to have open and kind discussions regarding the concerns of our children's parents grandparents and other family members thank you thank you i would like to thank all of the citizens for coming out tonight and voicing their opinions uh did these were the citizens that signed up is there anyone out in the audience that would like to come up that did not have an opportunity to sign up this is your opportunity okay thank you very much okay all right at this time we'll have board member requests and comments item number 20. hi guys um so i'm the uh i'm the smithfield liaison um at smithfield

249high school and you might have seen your name oh i'm neely harris um so nothing okay athletics has been pretty hot right now at smithfield but we haven't had much on like the academic scale because we just started our new semester so everyone's getting into their new flow of classes and getting ready for what's to come smithfield athletics is having an outstanding winter season our girls basketball team is 16-1 right now with two games to play and we will be seated at the top of the region and we also had two of our senior players who you mentioned earlier tonight who have signed to play d1 basketball kyla signed with baylor and jayla signed with east carolina and our boys basketball team is also having a good season they're 13 and 6 right now wrestling

250and swim have their regional competitions at churchlin and midtown aquatic center tomorrow both plan to qualify multiple students for states and wrestler nick voros who's also a senior recently secured his 100th career win um and that looks like it's about it indoor track they have several qualifying times right now and our spring sports have tryouts in two weeks so busy times for sports do you have a report okay um so our girls basketball oh and i'm from windsor but um our girls basketball team is doing did really well this season we actually finished number two in the district um so we start the regional i think game on friday um we had a lot of students wearing red today and support and we've had black history questions of the day every single day for the

251chance to win like a gift card for like chick-fil-a or starbucks or anything so like popular it'll be a quote and it'll be who who who said this pretty much so and then we just got the announcement that the junior and senior prom will be april 23rd okay thank you very much uh has smithfield set a date for their prom ours is normally mid to late may we wait till ap testing is done so they can enjoy their time okay i uh at this time i would like to thank um the two high school principals mrs laura sullivan and mr brian thrift for allowing us to come on their campuses monday and today to view the crt crt sorry to view the ctr programs thank you cte i'm sorry i'm just i'm just i'm just

252it's been a long day the cte programs okay thank you all very much i appreciate that and i know it took a lot of a lot of time out of your daily schedule to allow us to do that and make sure the staff was in place to also and the students to show us around thank you very much any other comments from or concerns from board members yeah i'll show you the college hey folks this is just uh our second meeting this year so it's actually my second regular meeting last month was a was a big time learning experience i know at least for me we had some good training about a week or so ago with the virginia school board association without that training i don't think tonight's meeting would have gone as well

253as it did and i want to thank the rest of the board for going to that training and um really participating with all our hearts um i am learning so much sitting up here and working and and as somebody said earlier we we put a lot of a lot of work into this um whether it's researching things on our own asking the clerk for some information talking to dr thornton talking to each other from time to time and answering a lot of parents i try to answer every email someone someone sends me and it's not always going to be the answer you want but i but i will strive to answer every single person and i i do appreciate the good comments but i also appreciate people who come and tell me hey you did

254something wrong would rather see you do this or do that and i write that down and i i take that constructive criticism and i try to try to see how it fits in and and if i can make a change um we're not going to please everybody um the the mask you know that was a contentious issue we came to what i think is a good compromise and and hopefully everybody in the county understands that and we move forward from that and we take care of the more important things now of making sure that our kids get everything they need for a proper education make sure that we get them teachers that we need to hire the bus drivers the staff and we get everything in place so we can continue a tremendous school system

255that we've got here so again i want to thank everybody for your comments tonight for your comments over the last month and you know keep them coming the good the bad ugly the only thing i do ask is please everybody be respectful thank you um just before i adjourn mr adams in the audience just i would like to speak with you before you leave sir okay thank you any more concerns for the board