001i would like to have a certification motion thank you okay uh certification motion madam chair i'd like to make a motion the close meeting was conducted in conformity with the provisions of the virginia freedom of information act as required by section 2-2 that's 3712-d of the code of virginia and certified that the only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements were discussed and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion by which the closed meeting was convened were heard discussed or considered okay is there a second i second that motion okay at this time we will vote okay thank you vote pass thank you okay good evening this time i would like to welcome everyone to our regular board meeting and i will also like to say happy new year
002to you if this is your first time out of course i want to say welcome welcome to alawite county school board regular monthly meeting and thank you for coming out next thing on our agenda we will have a pledge of allegiance and a moment of silence by and we will be led by our assistant chair mr cunningham i pledge of allegiance of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you okay oh this chair is just something wrong with the rollers in that roll okay at this time we will have the alawite achievers and the alawite achievers this month is which building are they from ms getz hello hi good evening madam chair dr thornton members of the board i'm no lynn
003bricks but i am going to do my best to fill in for her tonight and do the isle of wight achievers okay the vision for isla white county schools is to create a learning environment that will enable every child to discover his or her unique talents and gifts the isle of wight education alawite 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 we're going to recognize smithfield high school the smithfield high school theater team recently competed in the virginia high school league state theater championship in charlottesville the team performed an early lin manuel miranda play 21 chomp street and made it their own with seamless transitions and two outstanding lead vocals theater director cheryl lynn castell prepared the cast
004from mostly freshmen and sophomores for the challenge they nailed an outstanding performance and finished as vhsl class 4 state runner up the team finished just a few points behind the three-time state champion jefferson force from bedford county prior to this competition smithfield advanced the regional and super regional competition and joined jamestown high dominion high and jefferson forest in the final four i'm going to call up the members most are here tonight mr lombardo has a certificate and a pen for you and do we want them to try to stand up or what do you want them to mrs getz just call a few at a time and have them stand out there okay because we have a crowd here tonight and i would like to keep everyone safe as possible okay okay yep i can
005do that and it's not the boy it's safe everyone's safe absolutely i can do that okay so we're gonna start with karen albers here because they're going to probably get a photo of them so we just need to make a stand right there in the middle of it thank you man we're going to put a few of you up here there you go hang tight for a minute okay elizabeth davenport [Applause] taryn richardson davis [Applause] kennedy freeman [Applause] kylie hilbert [Applause] christiana hobbs kirsten holly [Applause] all right so we'll pause i don't know if there's anybody that wanted to do yes right ahead take some pictures feel free to move if you'd like to take pictures [Applause] alrighty all right next we have samira johnson [Applause] [Music] [Applause] christiana jones [Applause] zakariana jones [Applause] richard
006kennedy [Applause] liam mccaughey [Applause] sierra payne [Applause] sean pleasants [Applause] peyton raynor [Applause] rihanna mccall [Applause] jocelyn russell [Applause] siobhan taylor okay there's only two more so i'm gonna go ajay ward [Applause] and emma wheatley and i believe their teacher their coach miss castell is not able to be here this evening okay okay pictures if you all right guys great job congratulations okay next we have seniors of the month and our first one from smithfield high school the senior of the month for january from smithfield high school is reginald johnson [Applause] his peers use the term reggie as an adjective for awesomeness in engineering explorations he is the lead designer for the sean's tiles project where students are designing and printing 3d tiles for an elementary student with multiple disabilities the tiles are multi-sensory ways
007to communicate for students with multiple disabilities the communication tiles are used as both a teacher model and communication and emotive communication for the student reggie took on the most difficult prototype design and he is helping his peers with their tiles he is a lead producer of the packer report the daily news show broadcast to all smithville high school students and staff quote i give reggie my instructions for the new projects in advance he does the work and he gives me feedback on what i can change to make the instructions better for his peers you may see him as quiet composed gentleman with one of the world's best smiles but he is a powerhouse powerhouse of intellect and packer pride and that's from miss heather greer his engineering teacher [Applause] all right thank you oops all
008right next we have winter high school the senior of the month for january from windsor high school is william carlson will is a most caring helpful person and he readily assumes leadership roles in the classroom he works to make sure that all around him understand no matter the task he volunteers to work with a student who is struggling because he likes to learn and wants others to like it too he complements as he instructs instructs which is a testament to his caring nature recently will was overheard encouraging a struggling student and one of his classes to not give up because quote you're smarter than you feel i know you are you've got this you just need to have confidence in yourself there has been a noticeable proven that students group interactions in the class quote
009will genuinely cares about the best being the best that he can be he puts in the hard work to get the most out of his educational experience his sense of humor and personality are refreshing and often cut the serious nature of class which helps those around him to relax and to learn and this is from cassandra preston his english teacher will will is attending that's okay that's all right we'll be attending virginia tech where he will study psychology congratulations great and that concludes our alawite achievers okay thank you very much at this time i would like to thank all of the students and most of all thank the parents for preparing them for this this day and this is coming from the bullet thank you very much and before you uh leave the parents and
010students i would like to say this too alawite county and i'm not just saying this because i'm up here on the board i followed county is my home i raise my child in the school system here we have remarkable people working in our school system and the last few months they are showing us how remarkable they are if you all would just hang in there with us until we can get through these times because you know last year this time the students were home and a lot of you were pulling your hair out okay trying to get through the instructional piece we're trying to keep the students in school if you can just bear with us just a little while longer there is a possibility i'm not going to say we're not going to shut
011it down but we're going to try our best to keep the elementary students in class they do not move around during the daytime like the middle school than the high schoolers and if we do have to send students home it will be for a very short period so they get a little quick vacation that's it i just want you all to bear with us and thank all of you parents your wonderful parents because you're sending us wonderful students thank you [Applause] and at this time if you have to leave to go do homework and all we're going to pause for a second so you can be dismissed [Music] had anything to eat today but i think i had a couple of crackers do you know where you're going to college next year i've gotten into
012florida supply school businesses because i didn't apply early decision that's where i want to go okay so that's great public relations and sports media and analytics okay so the big sports girl okay well that's awesome yeah i'm excited so but tech comes out super late so i won't hear until late so what the other schools have you gotten here i got into jmu today so sports analytics like like ken palm um it's more maybe like statistics like base yeah so um just like looking at all the data from like sports like one of the classes they make a march madness like bracket based yeah that's what i was talking about ken palm he has a he does like advanced statistical analysis so kenpo calm perfect yeah thank you let me write that down i'll forget
013i wish i was um when i was in high school i wanted to do sports analytics i wish that existed i didn't know that you can do things like that they just had to like scour through the majors they like hide it okay do we all have our places now that are gonna be with us all right uh i'm gonna welcome those that are just coming in and joining us tonight we're going to have windsor elementary school eye on alawite instructions hi my name is erin white and in the fall the secretary's at one dollar mentor completed a pbl unit that inspired our community to live reading and we are happy to share it with you tonight hi my name is ainsley boyd hi my name is adam watches hi my name is tristan brocco
014okay hi my name is aubry hi my name is elliott griffin hi my name is abigail ray diemer hi my name is mason gunman okay each friday in the month of october we got a special reading day the first one we got to use flashlights to read in the dark it was really cool to read a certain flashlight the next friday we got to bring an afraid stuffed animal during any time we got to eat to our stuffed animal one friday we were allowed to read on our ipads using an app called epic i like to read real books but sometimes it's fun to read on my ipad and plus there are millions of books on epic we even got to meet a real author her name is bryn parker she came and read us
015her book called my friend taylor before she came we used our critical thinking skills to create questions to ask her next we got to choose a book and decorate a pumpkin to match our favorite book character here are some pictures of us at expo where we dressed up to match our book here with pumpkins throughout the process we read and wrote about the different story elements in our books we didn't just do one draft we wrote it got feedback main changes until we were proud of the final products my friend sam wasn't able to be here tonight so i'll say his slide [Laughter] okay we also learned how to summarize the events that happened in our books like the beginning middle and end all right finally it was time for the big night expo we
016use our communication skills to talk to the grown-ups and asking them about what we had learned through the process my friend emilyn wasn't couldn't be here tonight so i'm gonna be reading her slide also wanted to get the community involved in it in this a librarian from the wender public library came out to our expo to get people signed up for a free library card this allows more students to have more books at home this pbl unit has inspired me to become a lifelong reader thank you for allowing us to share our learning process with you thank you very much these young people from windsor elementary and you all have done so well the board is going to get up with all of their bones and applaud you okay thank you we would also like
017to thank the sponsor their instructors as well thank you and don't forget to tell your classmates that could not be here tonight thank them for us as well thank you excellent all right so here we go mr [Music] hmm summary uh okay all right next one on agenda we have request to speak on the agenda items citizens wishing to speak during the citizens comment section of the meeting can contact tracy ruit the board clerk at truitt at well i'll read her email address in case you want to write it out t-r-e-u-t-t at alawitecountyschools.k4.va.us or by calling 757-357-8841 prior to the meeting citizens can also sign up to speak the night of the meeting requests to speak during citizen comments must be made before 6 p.m the night of the meeting okay mrs ruiz do we
018have any requests tonight yes ma'am in accordance to policy bddh-e presentations of information on any subject will be concluded at the discretion of the board no person will be recognized to speak more than once six citizens scheduled on the agenda will speak i'm sorry citizens scheduled on the agenda to speak will be permitted four minutes maximum time for their presentations 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 they should be given to the board clerk please do not approach board members the school board requests that speakers refrain from referring to specific individuals and that any matter related to specif to specific students or individuals we discussed
019in a closed meeting the first one we have mr herb degraw madam chair board members herb de graaf hardy district personnel reported denim and closed session motion was to discuss a personnel investigation also susan getz's name is on the personnel reported then to be approved as deputy superintendent for the 22-23 school year i respectfully ask each of you to table this addendum or simply pull her name from the addendum and my reasons are as follows why would you consider gets for any promotion when it is clear she is incompetent in her current position excuse me mr degrawf that sounds like a personal issue right now because you're calling a staff member's name it's not a personal issue it is about the party's promoting i know it's about the promotion not a closed session issue ask
020him okay i i was listening to you and i just want to tell you if you're going to start saying some personal things about mrs getz then we need to go and i'm going to get into what she hasn't done in her job which isn't personal it's a matter of fulfilling your job responsibility and this should not deduct from my four minutes it's not madam chair i i think we should let mr degroff has four minutes and then mr degrawf i apologize okay no problems i'm in a learning position known you and your mom a long time anyway um it's clear she's incompetent in her current position as executive director in coordinating curriculum instruction and supervising nine principles dr thornton has allowed this to happen and in violating his own policy cba qualifications and duties
021of the superintendent which states he is the supervised principals and associate student assistant superintendents he violated this policy for the last seven years so that's where we are with the two of them the iwcs board policy cba qualification and duty for the superintendent were revised on 9 september 2021 and it stated his major duties are as the educational leader of this school division to supervise the principals and assistant superintendents i informed the old board you madam chair on 9 july 2020 of the many racially discriminating actions of getz and thornton over the years with no rebuttal of my facts from either of them or the board at the time they removed all white students from the alternative school and left all the black students there to finish their placement while the white students went back
022to the regular school in violation of law and policy how many black employees have filed complaints against guests for receiving unsatisfactory evaluation when they never receive one before i know of several brown and edwards are there more white administrators got principal ships that didn't qualify for their minimum requirements on the job posing while there were black educators who met the requirements but they were denied the jobs and the list could be considered almost endless executive director get should not be considered for this promotion be given due process to explain why she has been negligent for over seven years in meeting her job requirements would include developing a line curriculum for all of iwcs we know she didn't do that because she told everyone that at the 12 august board meeting when she talked about buying
023hampton city schools aligned curriculum and dr thornton and her have failed to provide the bare minimum of resources for our teachers which is to have an aligned curriculum to teach from required by the virginia code dr thornton has already said her executive director position was being eliminated dr thornton had a portion of the 14 october 21 board meeting video from the iwcs youtube page deleted where it showed miss goetz and the attorney mr pack having making fun of another central office employee are there actions professional in keeping with what is expected of an executive director and a board attorney that we want to represent our board my vote is no forgets as recommended for promotion and the board you need to ask dr thornton how many more iwcs board videos and public records under for
024you have you had altered or deleted as for the motion to go to the website to go into closed session that says to discuss a personal investigation does that meet the specificity required to be in compliance with the subject found in a 40 loss if it doesn't why not on the 14th of march 2018 mrs hewitt talked about a contract that had been rewarded without school board approval the policy mistake were identified and swift action was taken during the december meeting and appropriate personal actions were taken a four-year request showed that person to have been dr thorne mrs carr in 2020 sent me a letter dated 17 june that stated she wanted to stress when concerns were brought they would take the appropriate action well will this board investigate dr thorntons and gets his action
025wherein iwcs policy and virginia school law were violated what will this board do tonight if thornton gets or not held accountable policy and law what does that say about other employees do they have to do their jobs by their contracts policy and law students should they have to behave in school and follow the rules thank you mr degrawf i look forward to your answers and writing thank you mr chairman madam chair next we have mr marsh good evening appreciate y'all giving me a couple minutes um madam chair i heard what you said while ago about keeping in schools open i appreciate that and i hope we can make that happen i know that alawite like a lot of other schools across the country are having issues keeping bus drivers and i know that you've got
026some smart folks working trying to crack that nut i have no doubt um as a parent and i don't think i'm the only one that feels this way i think the negative aspects of virtual learning are are far more there's far more negative parts of virtual learning and it can't be it's got to be easier to crack this nut about school buses than just closing the schools so um it's tough times you said it yourself so sometimes tough times require unprecedented actions um i know we've got a strong community so let's let's use it use us over the past few days after i got a notification about potential closings due to school buses you know that caught my attention immediately and i know that i'm not alone so i have wrote down a few suggestions
027hopefully it's something maybe you haven't thought of i don't know if it's something you already thought of don't take it as an insult maybe get something out and run with it monetary compensation i mean listen we can go make 20 bucks an hour at walmart warehouse tomorrow so i i don't know what bus drivers make but maybe we need to look at getting a little bit more if they're only getting paid for six hours a day maybe they need a little bit more let's see let's maybe another step end i don't know non-monetary compensation uh i understand that drivers aren't allowed to carry unsaved leave over for the next year and they aren't allowed to sell back on the unused leave that's already money spent so why wouldn't we afford them the chance to do
028that especially if we're short on drivers additional staff support if you got people back there that are in transportation maybe they can all figure out how to drive let's use what we got um perhaps teachers and staff could use that as a part-time gig they're already familiar with the program why not use them to drive some buses and i understand you have to have a cdl to drive a school bus i don't know the legality of it but maybe we could consider waiving that for a temporary period of time look at our ojt program for how we teach people how to drive and maybe we could beef that up and waive the cdl requirement for a while i don't know maybe that's not even an option but something to think about advertising i've seen school
029buses in different places i just a couple weeks ago i drove to texas and back and i saw school buses on the side of the road with big banners saying we're hiring you know that should be pretty easy and inexpensive advertising a ride share program you know we've got a pretty robust it department maybe we could use our it facilities and get together with some people in the community get some heads together and figure out how to there's there's parents that are working that are dependent on kids getting on a school bus and then there's people that don't have to i'm pretty sure the people that need the school buses can't afford their their kids to be at home you know what i mean so let's let's try to put those people together like i've
030been doing a ride share program me and my wife and a neighbor across the street we share the duties for picking up and dropping off our kids and when i pull into windsor elementary i'm cramming three kids in a little mustang but we make it happen because that's what we have to do so again sometimes we got the tools right in front of our face we just have to figure out how to use them so i hope that helps all the best thank you mr merchant do you mind leaving your notes with our clerk i don't mind at all staff to look at thank you for coming out tonight that that's all for this okay for this section okay the next thing on our agenda is board members committee report information i'm sure some of
031you probably don't have any reports other than maybe mrs dowd mr cunningham or mr collett mr vines we just assigned our committees at our special meeting last week and we have not gone forward to have any meetings at this point but if you have done something with alawite county schools or anything you can mention that during this time so now i haven't had my committee meeting which is on the 23rd of february zoom i'm over the special education advisory committee and i'm alternate to the cte program as well the advisory committee there but i did visit hardy and westside i have to say west side omg i am so excited for my boys to attend there next year um mr johnson his energy was like on 10th i was like i want to come back
032to school i mean he pushed a button for me the music was playing i was like okay i liked it um and miss denson she showed me um hardy it was very fun so i'll be visiting other schools over the next uh i got two two days planned for several schools this month and then for march as well but yeah i had a good time every everything was good yeah tell me about your amazement at hardy no i'm just i'm just gonna say that i'm glad that we decided to build a new party um i had never been in the school before and and yes that was a much needed that was much needed that's all i can say yeah i'm glad they're getting a new school she actually shared with the boys she said
033we only have two halls i said yes the school was built years ago when they only had minimum requirements thank you anyone else okay at this time the next item on the agenda is the financial report did i skip 13 i'm sorry [Applause] thirteen two that's at the top board compensation sorry i didn't see that i was at the top of the other sheet at this time are there any discussions on board compensation yes i brought to the board's attention uh at our last meeting that the alawites county school board had not received a raise within the last 10 years and we did some research based on other school districts like virginia beach uh surrey and alan white is the lowest paid school board almost in this area so um i'm going to make a
034motion i'd like to put a motion to assure that there's an increase in the salary uh for our lake county school board okay there's a motion on the floor for salary increase is there a second what's happening okay we have a motion in a second that there will be a increase in the alawite county's uh school board um compensation at this time we'll vote any discussion oh i'm sorry mr collins help me along okay i remember any discussion can i can i say something before you discuss yes um i'm just asked could you clarify the the motion to the dollar amount okay we'll do that um mr we had some discussion and the board of supervisors of alawite county currently receive about a thousand dollars per month and we would like to be in line
035with the board of supervisors in holloway county school board i would uh uh i started yeah yeah well go ahead mr caller what when i decided to run for this um and i got elected uh one of the first things i did was uh mention to the school board clerk um that i didn't want to get paid i i don't need the money and i really didn't want it and then um we talked offline with a couple a couple of you individually and you explained why we need a little bit more and i said okay possibly if you need a unanimous vote for about a hundred dollars a month more i could do that at that time we were under understanding during conversations we were getting four thousand dollars a month we found out earlier
036this week not four thousand a month excuse me thank you a year a year oh good lord yeah it's not a mom but since then we found out we're getting five thousand a year and the chair is getting six um so i personally will not support a pay raise because i consider this my civic duty but i'm not going to tell you not to proceed mr cunningham i would like to hear from our attorney if we can actually i i know looking at the paperwork that we will not get the pay raise until next year right so what we vote on this year will benefit the people in the future will not take effect until next year and i'm sure uh some of the citizens are wondering you know are we trying to just get
037a pay raise for you know this year and and i can tell you the amount y'all really don't know the amount of work that goes on you see what goes on here on the nights of our meetings but we actually do a lot of work during the week and and some of the members up here have jobs i'm retired so i have more time to do it but there's work to do at night and during the week we have special meetings that we have sometimes between two which you don't hear about that because this foyer says if we have over two people in a meeting then it has to be uh announced but if it's two or less we don't have to announce it we have meetings all the time we answer answering emails some
038of you have contacted us understand some some of us haven't gotten back to you as quickly as possible but that's not intentional we have a lot of things going on that you don't know about so you voted for us to get in these positions i know some uh some come up for votes this year in november but we are honestly very busy trying to do what you want us to do and that's one thing for my district the hardy district which i believe is district 3 now with the reorganization and everything hard but but the thing is what you want you need to get in touch with us via emails which everybody should be able to find our emails if you don't have my email and you're from the hardy district i'll give it to
039you tonight but contact us and let us know when i ran for this position the big thing was i represent you i'm not representing mike cunningham what mike cunningham wants it's not about what i want it's what you want so if you want something contact us but this this burns up a lot of our time a lot of our time away from family i mean i got family asking me to do things i can't do it because i i owe you for the next four years at least i owe you my time you elected me i'm gonna give you my time to the best of my ability now the question i have for pac uh am i right we don't if if we do get the raise whatever percentage or whatever we come up with
040we don't get it until next year anyway well the the law was recently changed so it's less clear how the law was previously written was you have to make a vote before this uh december for in effect for next year now all the law states is that a local school board representing a county may establish a salary increase prior to july 1 of any year in which members are to be elected or appointed or if such school board is elected such as you all or uh for stagger terms prior to july 1 of any year in which at least 40 of such board members are up for elections so in this case there are two seats up for election and you know the while the law is not clear there's nothing for the school board
041to prevent that um for for saying that look when we vote on this the salary will not take effect until next year after the election any more clarification yeah so we have a motion on the floor but okay mr caught in him okay the last thing i want to say i think we need to come up with a percentage a recommended percentage and just instead of just saying we we want to get you know whatever amount close to the board of supervisors i think we need to come up with a percentage so i really don't believe we we have had enough discussion tonight or have really looked into it tonight to to we can vote for a raise but we shouldn't vote on the amount of the raise until we have more discussion and my
042question would be to the to the board is when was the last time the board had a raise you would know well this is my second term i cannot answer that question because when i came on board the first time what i earned uh i guess a month ago was the same thing you know so so my question and so your term you've served more than six years this is my sixth i finish and i'm starting my seventh year [Music] matter of chair i would move that we table this uh pending uh asking the clerk she would do the research force on this and then bring it back to the floor at another meeting okay our second mr the thing is there's already a motion on the floor so i think i think we are
043i mean we can certainly certainly well no you don't i mean certainly mr vines if you would like you can withdraw the motion withdrawal motion mr vines would you like to withdraw your motion and we table it and come back next month and once we come back with the figure amount yes i was trouble almost okay the motion has been withdrawn and you've heard mr collick said he would like to table it until next month and we can come back and um take action at that time if needed for you tracy so we have a motion by mr no he's he's just he's he's withdrawn his motion if there is no need for a motion he's just making a recommendation that we'll table it until next month okay and mrs i mean clerk ruid if
044you were possibly if you could find the information how far back we need to go as far as a raise and if you can't find it then we know it's really fallback okay all right thank you all right we'll move on to the next item on the uh agenda which is financial reports oh hold on hold on let me let me get mr cunningham you're correct um it says no salary increase may become effective during incumbent members term of office okay yeah right that's it that's what i thought so if we do vote on it the earliest we'll be able to get it would be january of 2023 exactly correct okay we're ready good evening madam chair members of the board dr thornton just want to present to you the um financials closing out the
045month of december uh so uh in addition with your packet we did have a couple excuse me in a second uh going forward when you come up to make your reports to us you don't mind stating your name and if you and as well as your um position because we have virtual people out virtually and some people don't know you could be some people in our audience that sitting here may not know who you are okay very good thank you good suggestion i'm steve kepnes i'm your executive director of budget and finance uh present the financial reports uh there were the standard four reports in your packet um one was your large ticket items those that exceeded thirty thousand dollars so we did get um long overdue kitchen equipment for the various kitchens throughout the
046division and that was funded by your food service budget so that did not come out of your operating budget and we installed much of those pieces of equipment during the summer months and then secondly you'll see we did install from play core wisconsin a spec a playground for special education students and those are your two large ticket items there any questions on the check register that was in your pack in your financials closing out again december um what we always try to present is how much have we spent of the budget so far and now that it's january closing out december we are at just under 52 so halfway through the year it's about 50 so that makes sense to me but that's an important number because we have to follow that and certainly we
047can't overspend and we want to make sure that we're on track in terms of a cash flow so as far as i'm concerned that's that's a good number any other questions on the summary of your financial reports it speaks to your food service account speaks to your health insurance fund and your other funds that are throughout your budget so that's all i have for financials if there's no other questions okay thank you sir you're welcome are there excuse me are there any questions for mr kipnis thank you okay next we have foods that you do the food you're gonna do the food okay we have food service budget amendment 21 through 22. very good last year we did something similar to this i'm recommending an amendment to your food service budget and i think it's
048important to understand this doesn't cost the taxpayer so let me speak to the food service budget the food service budget is a standalone budget that operates based on sales so the students are charged we bring that in as revenue and over the years time we collect that and we spend that it's run like a business during covid last year and then they approved it into this year as well the federal government said that they would pay for lunches for all students not just low-income students in the past it's been low-income students now it's all students so more we have many more call it sales even though the students aren't paying for it we still have to count the lunches we still have to submit a report on a monthly basis to the federal government and
049then we get reimbursed those reimbursements are significantly higher than they would have been in a normal year so we're getting much more revenue we're also spending more money because we're buying more food so both sides of the budget are increasing so we looked at the budget we re-projected with the new average reimbursements that we're receiving and i'm recommending to dr thornton and then bringing to you an amendment of an increase just over 2.1 million dollars on your revenue side and the same amount on your spending side and that should then balance the year so that we can get through the year it'll readjust your revenues and then also give a more solid number for those expenditures okay memories you have heard the report coming from mr kidnis this is an action item so the motion
050would be to uh provide an amendment of two million one hundred and twenty two thousand seven hundred ninety seven dollars madam chair motion that we add an amendment the 2 million dollars to make a revised budget for the under the food service budget category of 4 million 200 000 seconds all right you have a motion on the floor ah mister colic uh mr cunningham will you show him where the emotion is because i want to get it right because what you said when you said something revised and some other words and i wanted to it's right here yeah it's right here just read that just read that motion so we know we have it correct but it's the color okay okay a motion to approve an amendment to the 2021-2022 food service budget and authorize
051the superintendent to request appropriations from the border supervisor in the amount of two million one hundred and twenty two thousand seven hundred and ninety seven dollars okay now we'll have a second mr you're not a second that thank you very much gentlemen at this time we will vote on the motion oh before we vote any discussion hearing none we will vote at this time okay the vote passed thank you very much and thank you mr kittness next item on the agenda we have support services and the first item on support services transportation they'll be domestic i'll let you introduce yourself good evening madam chair dr thornton members of the board my name is todd christensen and i'm the interim director of operations so we'll start off with the transportation report and a few pieces of
052good news we did recently have a newly purchased special education van that arrived that van was specifically designed wheelchair accessible so that it can be utilized as part of the community based instruction for students young adults with disabilities as part of the adult transitional program so it's really allowed that program to to expand and so that's a piece of good news which we're always looking for in transportation especially these days um we do also have several so when a driver gets hired it begins a process the the slow wheels excuse the pun begin to turn and so it's not just you hire them day one they're on the road we did have a few drivers who recently have completed their training we were able to get them on the road take over some routes in
053theory to lessen the burden of those those buses and um have fewer students on the on the runs in less time the cold reality especially over the past few weeks as you all know have been um driver shortages there's been call outs that have really impacted um the way that those operations have run so while it's great news that we're getting more drivers in we're getting that process going uh we are having the the driver call out that's that's impacting operations and that brings me to the proposal that i would like to to bring forth to you all tonight and this proposal actually came out of a meeting that i had with a number of drivers and the discussion turned to getting drivers compensated based off their years of experience and the conversation was really
054geared towards next year's budget um and one of the drivers um bernard jones he spoke up and he said while we appreciate um that you value us and are looking to make things you know get us those years of experience based into our compensation for next year what about this year like what what can you do for us now because things are urgent now we're feeling the heat now what can you do for us now and a light went off my head and he was right and so what i did is i went back and and crunched some numbers and did some thinking about what can we do now to make sure that our drivers do feel heard supported and compensated and so what i'm proposing is that we change our base pay for drivers
055to 20 an hour and what i'm further imposing is that we take those years of experience some drivers have up to 47 years of experience in this county and take that base pay and adjust it off of the year's experience as well it's 350 for each year of experience so if you plug those numbers in um and i've i've presented to you two different sets of numbers that you should have in front of you i'm i'm proposing that this change take effect february 1st um and i've listed the numbers as to what that cost would be um for our drivers i know that's an aggressive timeline so i've also included what it would cost for us to make that change effective march the first in addition to increasing driver pay i'm also proposing an increase
056to driver aid pay to go to 15 an hour and those numbers are in front of you as well so first off before i go any further i do want to just thank mr jones i spoke to him earlier today i hope he's able to watch tonight and thank him for advocating for himself and for his drivers because honestly if he hadn't raised his hand there this this may not have ever happened so i want to thank him um for advocating for for the drivers the other piece of good news here is that we're looking at retention and retainment and attracting drivers from other counties that's what this is all about and because of that we were contacting vdoe and we uh may be able to utilize esser funds because of the nature of the
057request um that we're making here um so that's the other good news in terms of a source of funding um to for the cost that uh increase that you see in front of you so um i'm happy to to answer any any questions or elaborate on my proposal in any way that i can help madam chair i do have a question okay mr colic first mr cunningham anyone else they missed the vines all right uh thank you mr christensen does this amount of money does it include um the billets including the unfilled positions that we have so if we were to bring on ten more drivers say is would this bottom number change at all yeah as current drivers it's an excellent question so i did take into account the uh vacancies that we have
058i base this number off of an average years of experience um of the drivers that we have in the county and and that's where i i came to that to that number so so yes they were accounted for it is an approximation because if we get drivers coming in they have 50 years of experience or one year of experience there's some variance there but i used an average of what we have okay so hiring it's not going to affect that very much uh no not one way or the other no very good thank you i have a oh i'm sorry mr cunningham and i asked my question after mr question okay well my question uh is and it goes back to uh uh finance finance do we have enough money to fund this for the
059rest of the year that's the big question i mean the numbers to me look good but do we have enough money to to uh finance stuff that's the campus would you like to come forward and address it and i mean okay doctor dorothy said he would do it so uh when mr christensen came forward with this proposal um i did meet with mr kapnis we looked at the this year's operating budget is that a possibility we also had mr lombardo contact vdoe to see is this something that we can use our esser funds with for the difference of their pay this year and the answer was yes so we would have to amend the sr grant to do so and and then because we're funded by category we'd also have to ask the board of
060supervisors to amend the category because even the grants are funded by category so we would we do have long answer we do have the money in esser funds and then any increase ongoing would have to be funded with next year's budget and i know i've shared with some of you the budget looks good for next year from the state i have been going to the state either as a finance person or a superintendent for 22 years to the conferences at vaspo and to the legislators and and we had a financial consultant who forecast for this for the state and for our organizations i have never heard anyone so positive that the forecast of the current governor has forecasted very low at like a four percent and we're in double digits we were in double digits
061last year they didn't spend all of last year's money and there's no end in sight we also had a state senator and a state delegate i've never heard that come out of anyone's mouth ever that we have buckets of money to take care of public education and share support a variety of things now they have to go through all of those those things so from the governor's budget i'm very optimistic that we can fund this moving forward okay thank you mr vines my question was answered by doctor two okay all right uh my question was answered as well and boyd you've heard recommendations coming from mr christensen did i do that correctly your name thank you i'd like to make a motion that we accept this proposal that miss christians has presented to the board
062tonight okay which one all right you want me yeah yeah the oh hold up i wrote it down yeah i'm gonna need it the top one first i'd like to make a motion to approve the bus drivers and car drivers and bus aid raids as presented starting february 1 2022 based pay at twenty dollars an hour and a pay at fifteen dollars per hour uh three hundred fifty dollars for for years of service beginning february 1 2022. okay that's a separate did we hear this oh you already sucking it or actually all so i can okay mr cunningham sucking it and we'll need a verbal so mr vines say it out loud i'm not we don't have it online okay so i make a motion that uh because we also have to ask the board
063of supervisors for permission yes is that a separate motion you could add it to the same emotion can we add it to the same motion attorney and you can you can authorize i would like to add and i'll read the whole motion again so we won't be confused motion to approve the bus drivers car drivers and bus a raises as presented starting february 1st 2022 the base pay 20 and 350 dollars a year for experiences and to request approval of a categorical change in esser e-s-s-e-r-3 funds from the board of supervisors to pay for the increase now i wanna this is january so the board of supervisors will have a meeting because i would like for them to approve this probably put it in and you know implement this so would that be enough time
064do you think or do you want to uh everybody doesn't get approved uh by the board of supervisors we could we would not implement it and if it gets approved after that february one timeline we can go back and pay them starting february one okay but that's fine then yes okay all right motion on the floor so i need a verbal so i still have the first and the second okay right so correct mr vines yay this dial yeah it's time yay mr cunningham yeah mr college okay thank you i vote thank you very much and thank you mr christensen thank you this one's actually me as well so the support services and operations um report is in front of you a few items that i did want to highlight um on the topic of
065transportation the transportation annex is it's on the ground um so that's good news um the building is currently being equipped with plumbing and electric once that electric component is hooked up that'll really allow things to kind of take the the next step in terms of getting this building to be move-in ready dominion was on site thank you uh dominion was on site uh just this past week so they are currently working um on that sorry and um the goal is to uh the internet wiring process has also begun i'm working with mr coop rider on that and the goal is to have that building ready for occupancy um here in the next few months the west side drainage project so anyone who has ever been to the back of west side during a heavy rain
066understands what we are contending with back there it is a site that has been in an area that needed addressing here for a little bit and we were able to finally get that project underway which is great news they're back they're digging right now i had a meeting with the gentleman on site and things are progressing nicely it's scheduled to be completed in approximately 10 days that's weather dependent but it shouldn't be a hugely long project and what that's going to allow for is it's going to allow for better drainage in general behind the building it's especially important now because of the setup that west side has with the buses going around the back those students are coming out at the end of the day and it's a very heavily trafficked area these days more
067than on that has been in previous years so getting that drainage um working correct is going to be a huge step in the right direction for that building and lastly we do have a new nursing room that is beginning to be installed at smithfield high school it's part of uh expansion of the cte program the work is slated to begin next week they actually did some preliminary work there this week i'm just clearing out the space and getting it ready what they're going to do is they're going to attach it to the current nursing area that's adjacent to that nursing area and kind of expand it into one big area there for the nursing part of the cte and it's part of a patient care program that is slated to begin at the 2023-2024 school
068year so that's exciting news as well just beginning but but exciting news and the last thing i did want to give you an update on it's it's not on um the slides that i presented but i did want to give you all an update as to the current situation of the smithville high school gymnasium and the hvac so unfortunately the heat is out at the gym and we've been working with ssc our maintenance and facilities vendor to identify what is going on there and how we can get it fixed we're talking classes games practices the gym's a very heavily trafficked area and so what they have found out is that it is a motor that has gone and that motor while it's under factory warranty is a three to four week lead time due to
069uh supply chain um concerns before we're going to see that thing and so middle of winter three to four weeks no good but what we are looking at are alternative solutions for the intermediary to try to come in and get industrial heaters any kind of temporary fix that we can implement while those parts are on order and mr lombard is going to speak a little bit more to those efforts thanks doug so madam chair members of the board dr thornton mike lombardo i serve as assistant superintendent just to provide a little more information i will tell you that as it relates to the heating issue at the smithfield high school gym principal brian thrift and also our athletic director matt moore they're working very closely with mr christensen and also with our um uh partner
070ssc um regarding those necessary repairs that he spoke to but also that timeline so they're in close communication they're also working with them um in regards to the implementation and looking into the possibility of some industrial portable heaters and how feasible that will be so that's in process right now the programs that are impacted right now you basically have your physical education classes during the day we have a wrestling program who uses that facility and also both the boys and girls basketball programs so the the plan um that they have right now for physical education classes now of course depending on outside temperatures and the temperature in the gym consider that smithfield high school will use the gym if it's appropriate if the temperatures are suitable and if needed they plan to use the field
071house weight room for physical education the fitness room that we have which was a great redesign just a couple years ago and also commons areas so they've already had that plan in motion and we'll continue to use that for physical education class we feel very good about being able to serve the kids in those classes for the wrestling and basketball programs mr thrift and mr moore they're planning to use the continue to use the smithfield high school gym if temperatures allow but they're also going to use the smith the smithfield middle school gym for practices for all three of the programs they said that's very easy to do they have a plan in place they can schedule that without a problem i got off the phone with them actually again not long before this meeting
072and then also they have the ability to utilize the georgie tyler middle school gym for basketball games as that is a regulation high school gym and wrestling matches if they need to be adjusted as far as their location those are going to take place in the smithfield middle school gym as well they have a plan ready to implement with that if needed so as far as communication because as we know that's right one of the biggest things anytime we have a situation like this i will tell you that our athletic director matt moore smithfield high school he's already been in contact well before we're speaking now he's been in contact with other school divisions athletic directors briefing them on the situation also letting them know well in advance if there's any adjustments necessary to location
073and also um mr thrift and mr moore have been communicating with with each of the programs and they plan to send a very detailed message regarding each program and the plan and of course something like this there will be ongoing communications based on temperatures and what they need to do to accommodate each sounds like they have a very good plan and also a plan for communication so i did want to share that with the board okay thank you thank you so with the support services piece i'm i'm happy to answer um any other questions that you all may have um at this time questions are there any questions thank you mister chris yes what was the turnaround time for the ordering of that motor again yeah so the motor is a three to four week
074lead time is what they've given us so we're in communication with that company to get the specifics of the warranty because understanding is that it is under factory warranty um but you know in the meantime we've got to kind of figure out an intermediary plan okay any more questions thank you sir thank you all right next we have security equipment grant awards mr cooperator good evening madam chair board uh eric cooperator i am the director of information technology in our school division so this is just a quick update i had brought before the board a few months back uh in regards to an equipment grant that we had submitted for with vdoe we've won it several times in the past uh this year was no different we did submit for continuing installation of badge readers
075within smithville high school in windsor high school this is to replace your standard lock that's on a interior door with a bluetooth lock uh we've had them in place now for about a year and so far we've only had two issues with them really and the teachers seem to really like them as far as they don't need to have a key they just walk around with their badge and they get in where they can get in uh we also submitted to begin this same work at smithfield middle school as well as two exterior doors at windsor elementary school uh basically that just comes from principals all year long every year send me hey next time you do anything can we get a new door and this year we happen to win winsor l um so
076we requested 231 200 for a total project cost of 289 000 because the school division needs to present a 25 match for whatever we win and we did win the full award okay so there is a motion on the table so that we can proceed with obtaining allocation of that if there are no questions okay uh madam chair i'd like to make a motion to approve an amendment to the 2021 technology budget and authorize the superintendent to request appropriations from the board of supervisors in the amount of 231 thousand two hundred dollars second you have a motion and a second are there any discussions hearing none we will vote okay 231 200 is the amount of the increase because the other is already in my operating budget motion passes thank you very much mr cooperator
077yes ma'am and the next item we have is auction items good evening again so the items up for auction are all coming from the smithfield high school um and windsor high school the cte welding lab um i say both schools because they're both participate but it's located at smithfield high school and so what is happening is a couple of different things these items are either um broken and too expensive to fix or they're just taking up too much space um and the good news is is that these items are going to be making way for some uh new items that are currently um there's a donation process that's going on um and so it's gonna be sort of an out with an old in with the new um and so that's why these items are
078being uh requested to be put up for auction so what you're telling us it's not going to be any money coming out of our budget for any of this my understanding is that it is all going to be done with donated items from the bear the company that we do partner with all right so did you hear the report all right make a motion to approve the welding equipment presented to to be placed up for auction we have a motion and we have a second from mr colic all right or any discussion hearing none we will vote motion passes thank you very much and thank you mr christensen thank you again okay we have reports from oh excuse me you ready madam chair members of the board dr thornton uh mike lombardo assistant superintendent so
079this evening i'm happy to provide an update regarding our new strategic plan process and so what we're going to do is we'll start with a brief video and we've done that as you know going back i believe now this is the fourth meeting in a row that we've done that and through the great work of mr david elliott we have a wonderful video that'll capture our last strategic plan steering committee meeting and then i'll come right back up just to provide a little bit of some more brief information on our next steps and timeline okay we've got important work to do today and you'll see what we're about to do is is very important because we're now in that phase where we're not just visioning anymore we are we are designing and what we design
080will constitute the dna of this school district's trajectory for the next six years okay so in this activity we're creating all of our like core values and statements and we did it in individual groups and now we're going around to each other's groups and seeing what we like and what we want to include all together in our values and statements for illinois county schools we took a lot from our focus documents from the last strategic plan um those are kind of all compiled together and we wanted to really separate it out to make sure that we're getting those really key points and they're not all lost in a bunch of jargon we've seen collaboration through a few posters we've seen communication the trigger the real world authenticated the magical application that has just been comments
081about it career pathways queer life ready there's keywords from our documents have been found in just about every document i know we talked a lot about how the focus documents were unique to olive white and they're not in a lot of school systems and i think that they really made it easy to see all the values that all of white holds because they're really reflected in those documents and i think it's made it a lot easier to build upon that our focus documents really seem to hover around all of the goals the academic excellence student well-being um hr efforts and maybe focus documents weren't so much of getting these teachers in but for keeping our teachers and making sure that the teachers are prepared and showing that we are invested in the teachers and then
082also the focus documents do hover around the learning environment as well i thought it was really eye-opening the quadrants because if you looked at the top two programs i think we're doing a really good job putting the students first and there are so many things we're providing for the students and then it was very eye-opening some of the projects that didn't have as much that if we want to continue to have that impact on the students there are other areas where we really need to focus and if we focus in those areas it's going to follow back up on the lifelong that we want to prepare these students for life not just high school graduation i now want you to document the initiatives that isle of wight does not have but needs [Music] what are
083you going to put on your grid that more purposefully balances the supports available for these four emerging focusers every organization has a mission and vision now that's all fine and good but without values or core beliefs those those mission statements those vision statements have no rocket fuel there's no how there the values and beliefs do need to be a group decision it cannot be like these are my values and beliefs and this is how it's going to be it should be centered around the entire community or organization as leaders that we can sometimes you know without an organization's values that we then would put our own values in and we want to make sure that it's the organization's values and not our personal values that are being represented in the organization since we're talking multi-year
084uh you have to be fluid because it's going to change doing that you're not going to be it's not going to be set in concrete look back on how much has changed in the last five years if we assume the same rate of change for the next five years we better not be designing values for today we have these great documents but some of these things are lost i see authentic learning and student centered if i walk through our schools today is that our number one focus i still think we are geared towards our sols and these other things so if this is our true values and beliefs i think this activity is strong how do we get there this would focus us every day in our buildings how do we get there and remember
085we're trying to get there i think that's about it i was floored as to how much we're doing right like sometimes we don't think about how much we're actually doing and it was really nice to see like it all laid out it gives me hope that we can do more just sing back sometimes you got to see what you where you started and i think it's good for us to see where we started see what we're doing now and then that gives us hope for what we can do in the next five years i think today really gave insight as to like how we make our plan and how important our values are in creating the foundation for what students are going to be experiencing for the next couple of years honestly just as a
086parent of these students in alawite county it's just inspiring to see first of all the administrators care second of all the passion that all the teachers have for their students and then progress forward and so that's just very encouraging and inspiring to keep my children here and out of white and then you know as parents talk you know the word gets out on the great work that the county is doing thinking about just how we all kind of came together if we could get our community like thinking of all of our stakeholders out there if we could communicate and share what we're doing and try to get everyone to come together i just we could do amazing things for isle of wight and for our students and frankly i feel like they deserve that look
087at what is look at the results on these walls this is more than just color there are powerful powerful ideas on these papers it is a joy to work with with a community that cares as much about its schools as you all we are expanding the window of dialogue in this community by bringing in work groups in the new year we will also go out to community and invite family members caregivers taxpayers local citizens the opportunity to see the emerging work that we have and to have a dialogue with us and so this net is going to continue to be broadcast wider and wider and then later in the winter and into the very early spring we'll tie it all together into a strategic plan it won't just be something that lori and i cooked
088up or that your district worked on behind the scenes this will be something that's authentically co-created across the community we will come together date to be determined in february and when we come together again oh my goodness will we have something to preview your job as a steering committee could not have been done better you have created the structures and the urgency for dozens and hundreds of others to contribute to the details of this community strategic plan so just a little bit more information especially regarding next steps and that came out a little bit there in the video i believe um i will say um obviously we saw neely as part of that um strategic plan staring together miss tynes and also mr cunningham have been working very hard and been part of that process
089all the way through so just to recap a little bit and take you um just a bit down the timeline so at that december 14th strategic plan committee um session basically what the committee did was we we narrowed and refined can consolidated all of that information into four broad goals four broad goals and so those four broad goals emerged as academic excellence retainment and recruitment of staff you saw student well-being slash family engagement and also learning environment slash operations so those are those four broad goals that the steering committee refined that work to so now beginning in february so very quickly we'll switch gears to the next phase which is stakeholder work groups so work groups will consist of stakeholders parents students teachers administrators and also business partners we have university partners and some others
090will be tasked with brainstorming performance objectives and strategies so these are sort of your your objectives and your action steps some real specific strategies that will be necessary under each of those four broad goals so each of those four work groups will be facilitated by a member from the steering committee i wanted to give you a little bit of information on that so those four work groups will have um shantae denson who is the hardy elementary school principal she's going to facilitate the academic excellence work group um susan goetz executive director of leadership she will facilitate the family engagement student wellness work group um i will actually facilitate the learning environment slash operations work group and laura sullivan windsor high school principal will be facilitating the recruitment and retainment of staff work group so i
091will also note that all of the facilitators that i just mentioned were trained by amos fodchuck who you saw there on the video he is the president of advanced learning partnerships consulting we were all trained by amos on this next process and facilitating these work groups on december 14th so we're real excited to be in a position to help the work groups moving forward i will also let you know that the invitations for the work groups are going to go out next week to those participants and we'll probably then have at least two work group sessions in february but we'll obviously be bringing more information back to the board next month on this process each step of the way um next just to summarize next steps in the timeline we'll complete the work group sessions
092um i'm sorry yeah we'll complete the work group sessions of generating performance objectives and strategies that'll be hopefully by the end of february very beginning of march um we're going to conduct community forums in march and maybe a little bit into april we'll reconvene the steering committee at that time for some final adjustments based on work groups and the community forum feedback and the goal then would be to have the first read of the strategic plan to the school board and that would be at the may school board meeting and then we would have that come back as an action item at the june school board meeting which would put us in a great position to move into the summer ready with a new plan and to be in a position to start the new
093school year with our new plan in place with that i'd be happy to answer any questions okay are there any questions from mr albarto okay thank you sarah next we will have updates on hardy elementary and following that the water tower at hardy elementary madam chair school board members dr thornton i have the pleasure to go over the new hardest elementary school project update uh one face that you see in the audience at this time is gonna be mr chris bilbo he is the project manager for um the actual project from khan heartland he's putting everything actually together so you'll see his face time and time again here any of the very very hard questions i'm actually going to call him up to let him actually go through it okay all right and well we're
094pulling up the actual agenda one thing i wanted to actually point out was that uh construction is going to start uh very very soon construction will be starting next week now when i say construction is starting next week we're looking at minor uh land work land disturbance that's what we're going to actually focus on for next week some of the things that have actually transpired thus far was uh pre-meetings and different things of that nature just getting all the stakeholders together on one page uh some of the stakeholders could uh include some of the uh actual county uh employees that are out there helping assisting making sure that we're getting everything dressed right dressed all right now with the new hardy project i'm just going to go over here now the project scope a lot
095of us already know but i just want to go over for the general public it is a construction of construction of a new two-story elementary school building totaling approximately 108 172 square feet much bigger than the old foot space we have there now what we're talking about earlier with the land disturbance it's uh including site development mechanical electrical plumbing fire protection interior building out and the finishes so all of that is actually included with the um construction thank you there okay what are we doing all right now also what is included in the actual constructions the demolition of the existing building will occur after construction of the new facility is complete and we must understand that it's going to happen but it's not going to happen until construction of the new building is actually over
096now remaining site work will also be completed at that time one thing i wanted to actually point out the student population for the school is 885 students now it was 885 students plus faculty of a hundred so we're looking at 985 uh personnel in the school at all times next one touch bases with you concerning the permit status as you know when you start off a project permits permits permits permits all right well msa has submitted an early site work package for the erosion and control earthwork at this time when this actual presentation was put together this was in the process now it's already have been completed so that has already been approved number two msa has submitted the third site plan package for county review this is still under review at this time but
097we look forward to having this actually approved very soon now once the above is approved rrmm will submit the complete building package to alawi county building permitting for final review and receive the building permit that's when we actually can proceed we're on the actual footsteps of that occurring to for us to actually be able to move on now one thing that has i apologize i want to go back one thing that has been actually approved is the vsmp application and that is the virginia storm management plan so what this means is next week we can actually go out and start putting up the silk fence around the perimeter and actually bringing out the construction trailer so once again we're in the process of moving forward next is the construction status on 1214 2021 a pre-construction
098meeting was held at the new hardy site now this is something that's going to occur once a month twice a month depending upon how how much information is going on and how much construction is actually going on during that time now um also i wanted to make sure that um i pointed out once again envy con and heartland is playing on the mobilize on site in the middle of january which we are predicting for next week i will make sure that i get out the exact dates and times with you me mr bill um billboard was talking in the back another thing that we're going to do is actually make sure that we send that information out to the board of supervisors and all schools to ensure that the surrounding community knows what's going on
099because as you know once construction everything starts to go on there there's going to be a lot of questions we want to make sure that we keep the community well informed and finally i wanted to touch base with you concerning about the change order for the water tower all right as you know there's a new water tower that's actually being built on the site this water tower will ensure that the school has everything that it actually needs from water consumption and everything else of that nature now this will be a 500 000 gallon elevated water tank now on december 10th the actual board of supervisors approved this so now it has come to us to actually approve a change order for our initial gmp all right so what we voted on before what the board
100actually voted on before was thirty six million eight hundred sixty eight thousand six hundred and thirty nine dollars for the gmp the guaranteed maximum price for actually new harding with the addition of the water tower would be an additional two million eight hundred and forty three thousand three hundred and forty seven dollars that is the addition of the water tower which brings the new gmp the new guaranteed maximum price 39 million 711 986 so that is the actual changes for that what we're going to find next is are there any questions concerning this before i actually move on to the action item any questions something new harding information that you wanted to see uh next month anything of that nature all right thank you just exit out of this er don't do it okay absolutely
101i think this is the action item okay i'm just going to click it you don't okay all right next what we have is the action item what i just uh went over was the actual change order for the project so what you have in front of you madam chair is the action item to approve the change order for the water tower did you hear the report coming from mr coleman are there any questions before we put act on this action i make a motion to approve the new heart of water tank change order of 2 million during the 347 increasing the original guarantee maximum price of 36 million 800 680 639 000 to the new guaranteed maximum price of thirty nine million seven hundred eleven nine to eighty six okay we have a motion a
102second any discussion please vote okay all right motion pass it's nice yes ma'am and i do apologize madam chair for the audience my name is christopher coma i'm the executive director of sports services and operations and before mr coleman leaves the podium mr coleman got a new title over the holiday he is dr christopher coleman now so when you see him around i'd like to commend congratulations dr coleman yes perfect wonderful jobs you're doing for the county i'm really impressed and as we continue to move forward i'll look for great things all right thank you then mm-hmm thank you mr cole dr cole dr okay next on the agenda if you don't have anything up report from the superintendent the action i'm close tonight oh we passed that right i forgot you know what my
103mistake because i was looking forward for dr thornton and uh mr lovato came up that's it i'm sorry actions to on closed item excuse me action on closed session items we have the personnel report and the addendum okay so we need an action on personnel yes so i'd like to make a motion that we received a personal report as presented by dr thorne as is and the addendum personnel report also included second we have a motion on the floor any discussion yes madam chair mr degraff made some a lot of accusations and if true they're serious but they'd also be verifiable um and i would just like to say you know any potential promotion would occur on july the 1st so postponing the any action our message gets by one month giving mr degraff the
104opportunity to bring forth any evidence to the board of the accusations he made and then we act on that next month and would just require him to bring the evidence at least three days before the next meeting because again these are serious but we've got six months before the promotion would take effect so let's give them the opportunity to uh to bring forth uh the evidence i disagree uh i don't think that the information has warranted uh i've known ms getz for a number of years in the county and uh um agreements that we are making a great selection and i don't think that we need to prolong this any longer i i don't dispute she's a great selection what i'm i've had i've had experience personally with this happen to me where i said
105no we're moving forward i'm not listening to the accusations to find out they were true and i'm not saying that true mrs goetz but i do want to get to the bottom of this and if there is evidence i want to see it and if there's no evidence we're going to know that as well one month and should still be five months before the promotion would take effect i disagree i agree with mr um fines because it's not like mrs getz is someone new to us in the school system mrs gatt's been here for years she was here when i was on the board the first time as principal when i started as principal of one's uh it was with the georgia tyler school now she was in uh and she moved from there to
106the central office under the leadership of uh the former superintendent prior to dr um thornton and um even then that was dr pereira she had great things to say about her so i'm thinking if there is any negativity out there it would have come before our hr department prior to today i i mean all of us sitting up here i'm sure somebody can come right right up here right now any citizen in the usa and say something negative about us but it should not stop the productions what's going on in alawite county schools because every day we delay and table things like this this is an instructional position it hurts our children it is hurting our our students education is being delayed indirectly this is what's happening we're in the middle not in the middle
107we're still in a pandemic i don't know how long it is going to be but we need all of the help we can she have been very supportive during this pandemic and getting staff where they need to be even today she gave up her staff and her time to go to windsor into the county to substitute for teachers that were out i like i said people can say what they want to say but right now there is a teacher shortage all over the nation not just teachers but we have an abundance of people top if you notice around you people are going back getting their doctorates they want to be at the top they want to be superintendents they want to be here but we don't have teachers mrs getz has worked very she has
108really worked hard with the teachers here she um i have talked to some of the teachers as well as some of the buildings administrators and they say they enjoy working with her she's open they can have open dialogue with her and this is what we need we can bring in a new person but it's going to take that new person anywhere from 6 months to 12 months just to learn what's going on in alawite county schools haven't even pretty much got to the curriculum yet she knows all of this she's a part of alawite now it's just a change in title that's all because she's actually doing the work with the new title that we've given her that we that we'll we haven't given her that we plan if we vote on this tonight she's
109been doing that work now for years and i don't see a reason for us to be sitting here and having an argument i i mean it's going to be an argument no matter what people somebody's going to disagree no matter what what madam chair i don't think it's an argument um the information is either there or it's not but we cannot verify the information we're not going by just a citizen walking up and saying something negative that you just made my point madam chair if we can't verify it then we would vote anyway is hearsay is hearsay and then it's not verifiable it doesn't exist as far as i'm concerned but like i like i said let's see if let's see if there is evan any evidence john let me i'm going to put it
110in a language where you can understand and you being a christian man being a biblical person this you're doing the exact same thing that they did to jesus the exact same thing excuse me let me make it easy for you you're accusing me they said nobody of anything but you're validating what someone walked up we don't have to validate that we are elected officials we are the board miss guest has been in this county for almost 20 years and has done exemplary work with our children and i am arguing with none of that okay so then somebody made an accusation let's move on there's a motion on the floor uh uh there's a motion on the floor i need a second and we'll vote on it mr vines thank you there is a motion on
111the floor we've had the discussion at this time board please vote okay motion passes thank you next thing on the agenda adoption of consent agenda i would like to make a motion to approve the consent agenda as attached and presented and this will consist of field trips facility usages those financial reports all of those things were included in that package i need a second a second all right there's a motion on the floor any discussion hearing none we will vote motion passes thank you next item policy updates and revisions oh sorry oh that's right policy updates and revisions uh we have policy for second read and on secondary policies it's an action item we have policy adrl 12.9 21. actually that particular policy for those of you is the educational philosophy alawite county school board
112is committed to providing equal opportunity for every student to achieve intellectual social emotional and physical growth and to ensuring that each student be equipped to communicate effectively with other people to be competent both on the both in the workplace and in higher education and to feel confident of the ability to make creative constructive decisions alawite county school board provides the necessary trained and dedicated leaders leadership qualified personnel equipment and materials to ensure an appropriate education for every student treat all members of the school community equi equally and with respect allocates and uses assets fairly and effectively it was last revised august the 12th 2021 and this is just a review and if we vote on it tonight that date will change to january of 2022 january 14th so do i hear yes we need a
113motion to approve madam chair i'll make a motion to approve the uh policies for a second read second we have a motion on the floor to approve the policy for the second read in the discussion the yes madam chair the second and third bullet under alawite county schools to me um i think they could be written by the the second one doesn't make a lot of sense to me according to national association of colleges employers the term equity refers to fairness and justice and this distinguish from equality whereas equality means providing the same to all equity means recognizing that we all do not all start from the same place must acknowledge and make adjustments to imbalances the process is ongoing requires to identify and overcome intentional and unintentional barriers arriving from bias or systemic structures
114okay to place how we make these adjustments is not how we treat each other but should be how we allocate our resources madam chair i'm motion that the words in a second bullet treats all members of the school community equitably and with respect be replaced with treats all members of the school community with dignity and respect and the words in the third bullet allocates and uses assets fairly and efficiently be replaced with allocates and uses assets fairly in an efficient and equitable manner thank you the emotion is all the orders emotion already on the floor we have a motion on the floor we had a discussion at this time we can vote on the motion the original motion that was on the floor a point of order madam secretary i'd like to make an amendment
115to the motion on the floor we just voted on the motion it was put up for vote did you vote did you not vote well we had you you could have explained we had a discussion you you discussed and no one else discussed the vote was there are we using robert's rule of water madam secretary we're using alawite county school mr vine has emotion and mr colic has a motion to men i i that that's a proper motion madam chair so if we're so i think what we have to do is under the office world order mr college is correct that he can make a motion that is ancillary to the the main motion on the floor which is to amend so if you want to vote we can the the board can certainly have
116a discussion on that the motion that um that mr colleague is presenting and then after which we can take a vote and and the board can decide whether to you know however the board chooses to vote on mr cox motion and then and then depending on that vote then um the board can vote on the the main motion on the floor okay thank you any discussion on mr collick's concerns or motion i don't have any yeah okay so we need to make them so what what was it you have a motion was there a second we need a second it no there's no there was no second so we don't have a motion we don't have emotion you don't have a proper motion unless it's second and it wasn't second so therefore i went forward
117with the first motion i right i think i was just clarifying that mr mr caller can certainly make a motion i mean not permission but he could by robert's rules of order yes but there was no second and i knew that okay thank you attorney pack for keeping me in order okay all right so at this time we had the discussion thank you mr collock for your concerns but we do not have a second on it there was a second on the first motion so the first motion is the one that we're gonna vote on which is leave the um we're gonna leave it policies for the second reading as it was written in the on the agenda okay motion passes thank you very much we'll move on to requests to speak madam clerk do
118we have any speakers in accordance to policy b h e presentations of information on any subject will be concluded by the discretion 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 speakers 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 they should be given to the board clerk please do not approach the board members the school board requests that speakers refrain from referring to specific individuals and that any matter related to a specific student or individual will be discussed in a closed meeting first we have miss
119williams got another assignment always an assignment i my first one to start with saying um neely i enjoyed seeing you on the film i don't teach in this district but okay so you have to actually switch your assignments we did you did yes we did okay last month i like this time i like these type of students thank you but neely i wanted to say that i don't teach in this district but um i am a teacher and so um i represent your heart and so i love seeing you there it just um it just enlightened me so thank you yeah thank you all right so i gave you all um some slips of paper um and i'll explain and my students um they actually wrote it and then they erased it and i'll tell
120you all what that means in um in a second it says public schools are not teaching our children how to hate america but the insults and the threats that we continuously hear within our community are showing our children that hate and discrimination and a lack of wanting to know hidden knowledge that is missing from the curriculum does exist in our world and my title is about curriculum and instruction so the wearing of our masks have become new forms of hidden racism division and political arguments while we're pulling up credentials of others and wondering how many of these people or these parents they're pulling up these credentials will be willing to use their own credentials to upgrade their credentials to come and substitute in their classrooms and stop being green so if you don't know what
121green means that's something that the students do so that that's that's something that you need to make sure that you're beginning to understand and stop living in that traditional mindset so just because there is an upgraded title included with a name does not mean that he or she is qualified to fulfill an assignment we must begin to evaluate the passion and experience and not the title if you don't know what that means it simply means that you don't understand our children of today so i'm asking each school board member to search within his or her own heart to address the true issues that we're facing within our schools developing activities and programs to address the depression with our students and our faculty creating lounges that exemplify positive emotions and networking with our churches and our
122other school districts we don't have time to talk about crt which i named it clueless rhetoric of today which is what i like to call it since it's pure ignorance we do know that real teachers if you don't know real teachers we laugh at that concept because we know what the teaching we don't teach that in our classrooms these next components are not in a curriculum but we are heroes so we know how to differentiate and how to be equitable which i would never take away from my lessons no matter who tells me to take it away which teach the students we teach the student from the broken home the student with cuts on his or her arm the student who considers his or herself a transgender student the abused student the student who lives
123in the motel after leaving the classroom with a student who is hungry who eats in her classroom pantry or the student who needs a coat from our community closet in school we become their safe space in their place when we look around and hear the adults are acting like kids who need to learn crisscross applesauce only we are afraid to sit down on a foundation that we don't understand so our legs will not fold because we are so traditionally straight but it has become a black and a white thing a republican and a democratic thing which leads to stupid things when it should be a hard thing and i hope that you don't think that a new governor or any governor will fix our school system because it's already been broken one minute so in
124case you don't know my fellow teachers are true warriors only teachers will understand this statement we teach what we have to and sometimes the curriculum or pacing guide does not support those particular needs so some of these parents get up here and they talk about crt in the books of explicit language by the way the swords at the beginning of the prologue of romeo and juliet were not actually um swords but shakespearean language was so eclectic that a simple mind could not grasp his words but language evolves people evolve and words become modernized so that we can try to understand but your kids know what those swords really are so it's not about giving these people out here what they want and not what i want it's about giving each student what he or she
125needs you can never erase what was written the print of it is still there so if you look closely on your piece of paper no one is trying to erase what has been written we as great educators we're trying to show our new students this new world and how to add to it so that our students and our children and their children can be prepared to understand diversity so if our school for today becomes a reflection of our community of what we are hearing and seeing then we're all punished thank you i do want to say diversity and power is an intelligent heart and mind diversity thank you um next we have a heidi schwartz good evening um mr coleman um well i will say i've sent out a lot of emails i have not
126gotten responses so i'm just going to say that real quick um i'd like to address the klb policy um i've been told a lot lately to go through that so that needs to be looked into because it's a long process and it took me three months to follow through it i was directed by the school board members to go through it in regards to the controversial apps on the students clever devices i was denied at the first level i moved on to the second level i met with mr lombardo and miss getz they were the two of the people that purchased one of the apps in question and i didn't think that was very fair to then have to go to them for an appeal because then they're making the decision on the appeal and
127they purchased the device or the apps during the meeting they gave um me and another parent name of four professors who they stated had done studies that aligned the app with the curriculum for the instructional use keep in mind these apps we were told were purchased for teachers to use with an align with the curriculum the teacher i met with in my first meeting didn't even know that the apps existed we had a parent reach out to the four professors whose names that they gave us and none of those professors said that they did any studies regarding these i was denied at the second level and so i asked why could not i at least have the items removed from my child's device i was told by ms getz just go back to the principal
128and tell him to remove him so i thought well why did i just spend three months going through policy which is what is marked on your klb form to have it removed from your student's device if all i had to do was go to the principal to have them removed that policy needs to be relooked at this week i think many of you know that i had an issue with the sir the student survey that went out to the smithfield high school level all i should have to say about this is that on your own school board policy on the job section it says that the school board in the section c states the state law says that parents should have 30 days notice in advance if any survey goes out to students we did
129not get a 30-day notice it went out on june or january 10th on monday and our students were access to it and it was given to them i made a complaint the emails went out today dr thornton told me that he would not discuss this any further with me if you're aware of these emails that are going back and forth you know what took place this is what i have to say dr lane the state superintendent's memo went out in october and it was sent to dr thornton in regards to the survey procedures dr thornton is responsible for this procedure period regarded regardless of the statements that is going back and forth the vdoe works hand in hand with the dcjs regarding the surveys the superintendent is an employee of this school board he's an
130employee like anybody else like a principal a teacher or a bus driver dr thornton last year made up a protocol or i'm sorry thornton did not follow a protocol from dr lane 30 days of notification he failed to notify the school board of the survey or did he did he let you guys know that this survey was going out because you guys have to follow state law too you didn't let us parents know there's two chances of the parents being able to be notified and neither of those were followed to me that he's in violation of this the school board's in violation of this one minute windsor high school was scheduled january 25th and their their letter went out january 11th to me all of it should be taken off last year dr thornton wrote
131a protocol regarding personal contact with ms carr and she signed it for all employees of iowa white county would follow and and how to discipline including himself not to be exempt last night dr thornton failed his own protocol in his response to me as a parent he accused me of having a vendetta and he was rude and he was an accusatory if any other teacher administrator had written a response to a parent is this i'm positive they would be disciplined it's not his first time responding to me he's also sent text messages which we found in foia between a school board member he's been using words like vendetta against me unkind texts and other issues i don't have time to speak on all of it because we only have four minutes but i'm asking that
132there's a disciplinary policy be used for you as a school board i'm a mom and that's what i'm here for that's it thank you mr sports for coming out tonight next we have laura fletcher oops well i'll just let it hang um good evening madam chairman members of the board and dr thornton i'm laura fletcher speaking regarding a laundry list of concerns months ago now at a candidate meet and greet i've mentioned it to you before a gentleman asked if any of the candidates had considered this was for school board and others as well the financial implications of race-based politics companies are making tens of millions probably hundreds of millions generating equity curriculum and equity surveys are part of that these equity surveys which i understand you've begun doing these surveys are developed by education
133companies like panorama education which is merrick garland's son-in-law's company in conjunction with facebook when they push these surveys this is what i want you all to understand they are data mining our children and data mining our families to develop curriculum to to sway opinion and minds entities that we don't know that we can't control have now have intimate information when they receive these surveys about our children their parents and families these questions can include sexual issues leading questions regarding lgbtq and trans issues equity surveys also feed into social emotional learning i really encourage the new members on the board to to learn what this is because it sounds good social emotional learning is essent essentially teaching and preparing children and young minds to accept relativism is an idea that there are no concrete truths so
134for those of you that believe in god that's an issue it undermines conscience and is a counter to strong to a strong foundation of empirical solid facts which is what we're here for we're teaching children facts we're also taking away vital instruction time in doing these surveys particularly right now and putting additional stress on teachers students administrators regarding the ess esser funds i understand these funds are primarily to be used to make up for learning deficits children gained as a result of the pandemic we're spending tremendous amounts of money but with very little concrete aid for teachers and students regarding masks there's zero evidence and i just want you all to hear me because we can fight about this all we want but there is zero evidence that they provide any protection for our children
135and mounting evidence that they are harmful my main issue is how important it is for children to learn to read facial expressions to be able to express joy or anger or hurt and to seek kindness on someone else's face please be courageous and allow parents to make decisions for their own children allow them this freedom transparency is an issue please each of you consider it i will be in uh i wanted to bring to your attention number 11 on the vsba code of conduct which you all approved last week it says i will be informed about current educational issues through individual individual study and participation in appropriate programs such as those sponsored by my state and national school school board associations that's fine you can be responsible for that but you're also responsible to the
136your constituents for understanding issues that are of concern to us you should make that a concern and finally regarding ms goetz just sitting in the audience i didn't know what was coming but i'd like to say you've actually done ms getz a disservice tonight there have been accusations made and her promotion now was rushed through and voted on mr khalik was right i think it's unfair public confidence and her professionalism and ability has been undermined and you owed it to her to give her a chance to say something next we have oh i'm sorry timothy mallory good evening house school board chair vice chair of school board members and superintendent my name is tim mallory just want to have a few words with you today as the pandemic wrecks havoc on our communities everyone is
137on edge the educational environment has changed since the pandemic there's never been more of a difficult time for educators and support personnel working in our schools and we need to show them how grateful we are for their heroic efforts during this pandemic and among all other distractions of violence in our communities bad disciplinary behaviors and mental health concerns still having the responsibility of educating our children among the many responsibilities that you have overseeing the vision of the school district that seeks high achievement for all students is the most critical you must engage the community and support your superintendent administrators teachers and support personnel in improving the quality of teaching and learning a goal that is directly correlated with how our students perform on our assessments and it should be the core business of school districts
138the community expects that you your fellow school board colleagues will hold each others the superintendent central office and the school staff accountable for maintaining these standards know that the lesson of the day is not always important if there are distractors that cause barriers for our students to learn be prepared to participate responsibly understand your role and duties as a school board member do your homework remember that sometimes the work is to listen and to agree and disagree as your values dictate and accept that the group decision is legitimate even if it's not your personal choice it's not accept acceptable to have opinions and not express them don't leave the district from behind your desk or operate in a silo focus on serving all children ensure every deliberation decision action reflects the best interest of every
139student you serve no child is more important than another represent the community not a single single constituency you will understand or identify with certain constituencies but you must remember that the as a board member means serving in trust for the entire community there is no way you can provide a spokesperson for every constituency or legitimate interest so in moral sense you must stand for them all be responsible for group behavior and productivity you're responsible for not only yourself but the group if the group does doesn't do its job meddles in administration or breaks his own rule you personally share the responsibility honor divergent opinions without being intimidated by them you are obligated to express your honest opinions issues and so are each other board members encourage your colleagues to speak their opinions and listen to
140them carefully and respectfully but don't allow yourself to be intimidated by louder or more assistant board members or constituents please be please view the school district holistically use your special expertise to inform your colleagues if you have special expertise don't feel that you have to be the knowing of knowing at all don't be afraid to say i don't know but work on identifying people in the community members and colleagues that have expertise in special areas many times decisions are made in education without involving those that have education knowledge skills and abilities to get the job done and educating and keeping our children safe be aware of the community and staff's perception of the board if the board is perceived as being unethical dishonest secretive or self-serving they'll become the reality of the community involve diverse
141citizens in dialogue that liberation collaboration thinking around common interests to support the school community serve as navigators for families when they have questions or concerns in their child's education cultivate a climate of diversity foster inclusion and promote equity remember the work you do today leads back to classrooms tomorrow thank you thank you very much for coming out mr mallory mr ozil excuse me if you're in the audience without a mask please put your mask on unless you are drinking water you can take it off to drink your water but otherwise in this building it's not a school board rule government rule mass please okay good evening board members michael the heart of district happy new year to all and welcome aboard to the newcomers and welcome to new staff we'll be having it i know
142y'all heard the saying see something say something now see some say something do something yes that's my toe now um i just wanted to share y'all some good trouble that that has been going on for some time now i'm not going to go through all of this but i will hand miss tracy this information to y'all to review it and get back from me but these are serious matters that we need to take issues up immediately because we can't continue to let these things go on and i would like to have a closed session coming up after y'all do this because what i have to show y'all and what i have to present to y'all because if it's get out of hand it will be there it will cause discount to be really uproar for
143the education and like i said um some of the issues is on him i'm gonna hand this fish and y'all can view and get back with me but i need to have a closed session on the last issue you will see in here because like i said we i know everybody's new and we all can make mistakes but like some audience say all we're trying to do now is keep the communication line open and be transparent as much as possible because that will help all of us and once we do that then we all can kind of all work together um and that's it for you and i thank you for your time thank you mr for coming out tonight mr boykin uh both people awaken carson district soon to be district one unless they
144change the numbers it's nice to come up here tonight and agree to uh madam chairman and board to have come to bring up a problem that seems to have been solved i'd like to congratulate mr christensen on the work he did on the school bus driver project to find funding and basically that's what i came about and i hung around to tell him you did a heck of a job you uh you can't get the kids at school there's no need to spend millions for the schools and people may not think that a school bus driver makes more than fifteen dollars an hour or maybe that's enough but in the service you gotta have you gotta pay them to get the people there that's why policemen make a lot more now than they ever made
145before simply because well nobody wants to do that job but sooner or later you they're going to make 100 grand a year to get them to do it and if you got to pay the school bus drivers 20 an hour or 25 or whatever you got to have it and enough money gets spent on some uh programs and these surveys several hundred thousand dollars on social engineering and these other things take the money and spend it on the school bus drivers or whatever it takes to get them there but again thank you all for passing his suggestions and thank you for a job well done thank you mr bullkins that's all okay this is the end if is there anyone out there did they not have an opportunity to sign up tonight this is your
146opportunity to come forth now all right seeing none we'll move on um and i would like to thank all of you for coming out tonight to speak the next thing we're going to have board member requests and comments and i know earlier mr colic you mentioned to myself and the clerk that you had some requests this is a time if you want to bring them up and we will have an opportunity to hear them and if it's something that we would like to act on we can put it on the agenda for next month okay very good i do i do have a few comments madam chair but i will mention that first is uh next month i would like to have put on the agenda the superintendent code of conduct for adoption by the
147school board and it's directly from the aasa website i've given everybody a hard copy of that and if you need a soft copy i will get it to you and i'm madam chair you do have a soft copy that i sent you the other day and tracy you do too a couple other comments that i do have the bus driver situation everybody is all over that um you know what one of the recommendations that i would have and this is totally the superintendent's you know call it's his purview but we have a a working group composed of citizens school administratives transportation specialists and hr specialists to see if we can establish new methods of recruiting and retaining our drivers and i think mr christensen you did a wonderful job tonight identify in some ways identify
148the most effective ways of car drivers see if there's any potential updates to writing software and maybe identify any schedule changes that could alleviate the stress of drivers maybe you know schools you know when school start and things like that or possibly hire a modeling and simulation firm to do some of that workforce so that's one of the things i wanted to talk about another thing i want to talk about is you know more often than not in these meetings everything's negative so tonight i wanted to mention a couple staff members at carsville elementary school who have been working very closely with students who have been sick and not able to attend school a couple times so far this year the teachers are mrs kellerson and mrs jones and they have been cited as going
149above and beyond what's required of them and when i talked to miss hatfield this principal she said that is not uncommon in that school nearly every teacher is the same way so i want to really publicly give kudos to the staff at carswell and i'm sure carsonville elementary is is not unique i'm sure it's going on throughout the county and i also want to mention miss kim the school nurse who has been doing an exemplary job uh coordinating with families and teachers so we've we've got some great folks out there um and then the the survey that was distributed uh that um mrs schwartz um mentioned you know we're we're gonna we're gonna work to do better you mentioned the policies that are in effect um we're going to look at like mr cunningham said
150we're working many hours to make sure we know what we're supposed to do we're going to be going through some school board training um i'm not gonna put everything on the superintendent i do put a lot on them but i'm not putting everything on them we have our responsibilities and we've got to know what they are but we need your help so please and i ask everybody that's at home listening everybody here if you've got an issue please contact your school board rep okay get a hold of us and guys let's make it that effort within 24 to 48 hours and give us 48 hours to respond and then hold us accountable after that all right if i get something from somebody and i've got to go talk to the superintendent i've got to go
151talk to the chair that's that's what i'm doing and they'll both tell you that i've talked to them um but we've got a lot of work to do here we've got one of the best school systems in the area bar none there are things like anyone anywhere else that we've got to make things a little bit better and i think we're going to and i want to say one thing to mrs goetz okay i am a person that really digs in facts i spent 35 years doing nothing but intelligence work and that's that's what i live for is that i want evidence and when somebody says something i want the evidence i want to give them the opportunity there is nothing personal against you i voted for that because i do believe the opportunities have
152existed in the past for evidence to be brought but i also believe that the board should have given mr degraff one more opportunity you bring evidence because they're either there is order isn't okay um and i wanted to make sure publicly that there was no outstanding issues okay and the jew felt there were no outstanding issues so um i congratulate you and i look forward to working with you madam chair thank you thank you mr collick any more comments okay okay okay i have some comments too so you can go because we haven't heard from you tonight mr vines mr cunningham and then what about you and then i'll go so we'll probably have another few minutes if you all can just hang on i want to be as transparent as i possibly can oh
153you wanted to go first oh yeah okay very important okay when we are in session like this and you know who you are please do not text us on the board do not text us while we're in session requesting things to be done that is not professional it's not ethical to do that i'm not going to call you out this time but the next time you send me a text message in the middle of a board meeting i will call your name and i will ask the chairman to have you removed thank you mr vines okay okay hi everyone so um we're introducing ourselves so i'm neely harris um i'm the smithfield high school student liaison representative for the school board very long title um so but i represent the students of smithfield on the
154board and recently i've been going like each meeting i talk about things that are happening at smithfield just to give insight as to what's going on in the students lives so it hasn't been very busy because we were on break for two weeks but our winter sports are in full swing i went to a basketball game the other day women's basketball team won um we're moving back into our school lives from break i know a lot of students appreciated the break um getting to sleep in and now we're preparing for second semester i think everyone's excited for a fresh start new classes so it should be good but nothing much has happened because we weren't at school forever like katherine bailey we appreciate that coming from you okay miss cunningham okay uh what i want
155to talk about uh quickly as possible and and which i believe needs to be added to the the agenda for next month uh is school resource officers um and and the superintendent has been looking into it but the biggest thing is on the funding the sheriff's department from what i understand needs funding to put an sro in each sc school resource officer sro in each one of the schools that doesn't have an sro and right now i don't believe the elementary schools and correct me if i'm wrong i don't believe that elementary schools have sros i'm very proactive i don't want to see anything happen where we could have prevented that but it's it's about the funding and getting the money to support that so i believe we're going to have to go to the
156board of supervisors to request money to actually put the officers in the schools and uh the superintendent i know he's been talking to the sheriff uh at least in golf he call it tn teeing the ball up but we still need the funding the big thing is the funding so uh all the citizens i i mean if you can support us on that i mean make phone calls you know the sheriff works for all of us so uh but the superintendent if you have anything to speak on on that sure mr cunningham uh i i actually met with the sheriff yesterday and just some preliminary discussions uh if we were able to have nine resource officers how could we fund those would they be in our budget would they be in his budget and i
157think from the past history going way back to their prior share if there was debate in the county uh we did have resource officers at the elementary and then they were taken out of the budget so so we have an open discussion about we don't want them to be our employees we can't oversee that but could we pay for them through like purchase services and they would work for us for 10 months so we're preliminary and just to share that information and so if the board wanted something like that i'll cost it out we'll look at it for the upcoming budget and and then we would have to jointly go with the sheriff's department and talk to the board of supervisors about where this money should should be and whose budget should be thank you
158so madam chair like i said i would like to add that to the agenda uh if not next month uh the following month once some uh if more information is provided and a cost estimate of what it would cost to put sros in each one of the schools for 10 months so that's that's my piece of it is that okay with everyone yeah okay so clerk will take care of that mr cunningham anyone else say anything tonight i have two things and going forward they we always have the eye on alawite we have our achievers to come out here they are our present day students but alawite county every year we graduate 500 to maybe 600 students a year from our educational program and a lot of times you don't hear anything about what they're
159doing out there in this big world and going forward i would like to ask my board members if there's someone that you know in the community that have done something and they are graduates of alawite county school please come to the board member and let us know during the comment time tonight i just happened to find this one myself on social media and her name is emily gibson she graduated from windsor high school now i don't know the exact year she graduated but i'm going to say maybe around 1999 because she completed grant she graduated from virginia tech if she at well ms gibson has been named by the president and board of virginia tech to represent them as the university office of government community relations director of legal government and community relations in the
160new river valley and work with elected officials and community leaders on an array of issues important to both the university and the community and that is a wonderful position to be in and you all know how large virginia tech is so she has a big job and this young lady is a product of windsor high school and i would like to applaud her for her new position [Applause] okay my next my next one this email was sent out today it wasn't sent directly to the board but a lot of times the superintendent shared things with us that sent out to the superintendent and his staff so it actually came to the superintendent and his executive staff it started out as good evening i know that the last few weeks have probably been filled with lots
161of not so great news but i want to share with you positive feedback say thank you and offer a suggestion thank you so incredibly much for blessing our clinic assistants these women have been the best things to happen to the clinics in a long time they are former waitresses stay home moms cnas former emts college students and on the run they have come to us from all walks of life and they have joined us at a time that is critical in ensuring all student staff are performing safely and are safe and healthy to perform my suggestion suggestion is would it be possible to do a meet your clinic assistant and put their beautiful faces out to the community for parents to become familiar with and understand their roles many parents have not have no clue
162they exist and are surprised to get phone calls from them an overwhelming thank you you chose an absolute angel on this earth to guide and supervise us ladonna roddy is one heck of a don dynamo nurse and educator this district truly found a gem in her as in our end of 12 years i know how blessed we are to have the level of skills and educational background that she brings to our district so thank you for all that you do and have done and are doing warm rewards and i was from nurse shea and she also put on this a little quote what lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us that's by ralph waldo emerson and if nothing else come before this board tonight this
163meeting is adjourned