School Board Meeting 9/9/21

001okay thank you madam chair certification of resolution of compliance motion the closed meeting was conducted in in conformity with the provisions of virginia freedom and information act as required by section 2.2-3712 of the code of virginia and certified that only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meetings requirements were discussed and only such public business matters as were identified and the motion by which the closed meeting was convened were heard discussed or considered okay and we have a motion that has been second vote please all okay motion carry we want to welcome everyone to our meeting tonight and we're going to begin by welcoming miss renee dial to the school board this past tuesday evening she was voted in as the newport district school board representative ms dial is a parent of three children in

002our school system and comes to us with a master's and physician assistant from eastern virginia medical school she has a bachelor's in science biology and psychology from old dominion university and we believe ms dial will be a great asset to our school board and we look forward to working with her so let's welcome this guy okay i'm now going to ask our vice chair miss times to lead us in the i'm sorry okay i'm sorry i have been told to make the announcement about the mask masks are required by the county and the county building so if you do not have a mask on we ask that you put a mask on if you don't have one you are asked to leave the building the masks are required by the county and the county building

003now at this time i will ask miss times to open us with the pledge and moment of silence i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you we're going to begin with special presentations and we have recognition of mrs victoria hulick gonna take this off to speak okay all right um miss hewlett if you would mind with mine would you please stand up here while i talk about you okay when vicki decided to run for the school board there were a lot of changes taking place in the division isle of wight county schools had welcomed the new superintendent dr thornton to the helm in july of 2015. in november vicki won

004election to the newport district seat on the school board where she served until august of during her six years on the board she was elected chairman for two of those six years during her tenure she facilitated a revamping of the cte program construction and renovations of facilities including the land lab and barn at windsor elementary and a new hardy elementary school which is in the works she also supported the implementation of coding in elementary schools and an emphasis on stem in all schools vicki has been an advocate for the newport district and for isle of wight county schools regarding her time on the board dr thornton shared she accepted her responsibility as a board member and had high expectations for me and the division if we fell short she made sure i knew about it

005i always respected her and appreciated the accountability she brought as a board member vicki thank you for your tireless service to all of white county schools and we would also like to thank your family for sharing you for six years we wish you all the best in your new home and your new ventures and we have a beautiful plaque made in the smithville high school maker space that says isle of wight county school board recognizes vicki hulick in appreciation for being a dedicated public servant and for doing what's best for all children newport district 2016 to 2021. so i want to hand that over to you there you go thank you congratulations thank you vicky mr i want to to also thank you for your years of dedication your hard work your commitment to the

006school board our division our school community your passion and your desire to do what was right for our children was evident throughout the time you served and we do thank you thank you it was a joy working with all of you and some of the best times so thank you so much and i respect all of you including the style who uh took over and i appreciate everything i know you're going to do and mrs helich uh vicki i had an opportunity to work with you the last what what two years it's about two yes we're going to say two years and um when i finish the remaining two years it gives you time to consider to come back okay and i'm very serious about that because you did you did an excellent job and

007you were and and you know you helped this team grow to a positive team so uh please consider coming back in two years okay thank you okay next on the agenda is emerging leaders madam chair dr thornton board so last month you heard for from one of our high school emerging leaders but we didn't get a chance to hear from one of our middle school and so we're going to hear from charlie miller and his father today well that's charlie so we come as a charlie and charlie team i just wanted to thank the board uh for this program it was absolutely fantastic initially when i received the information about the program i totally took it as a re-spin on summer school i couldn't have been any more wrong what he took from the program

008what i saw as he developed he initially was standoffish and wasn't interested in the program no matter how i pitched it but i saw him starting day one by day two he had both feet in up to his knees and he was all in and i appreciate everybody's work with him and with the other students as i toured around for their last assembly and saw what those students had did and the amount of passion that they put into their work i was touched i was moved by hearing those kids and hearing the confidence that they all came out this is my son charlie he has a little bit that he would like to say about the program himself good evening board members faculty and parents my name is charles stephen miller thank you for allowing

009me to speak tonight i'm here to tell you about the amazing experience that i have had at this summer's emerging leaders program this program has helped me reconnect with old's friends as well as make new ones it has also helped me develop collaboration and and take away my my stage fright i've also been exploring my creativity which has allowed me to focus on my strengths i'm here in hopes that others get to do get to have the same experience experiences for years to come my favorite parts were the field trips and being able to stand in front of all of you without stage fright any questions that's awesome thank you for that okay next on the agenda is the capital improvement plan public input so at this time do we have anyone signed up all

010right we will move next to the agenda which is the request to speak in accordance to policy bdd h-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 citizens scheduled on the agenda to speak will be permitted five minutes maximum time for their presentation delegations are requested to limit their speakers to two a maximum of 30 minutes will be designated for public comments 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

011related to a specific student or individual be discussed in a closed meeting speakers are addressing the school board and will face the board while at the podium and not interact with members of the audience first we have miss schwartz so i've been here before tonight i'm going to speak about the read work challenge that has come up at smithfield high school um i first of all brought one of the books that we're going to talk about the hate you give i just want to point out i've started the book and what i have listed here in colors are pages that are marked with profanity just in the beginning that's what i've gotten through so far so i'm here tonight to discuss the read rope challenge at smithfield high school are any of you aware of

012the challenge and if you are when have you become aware of it i had no idea that this became effect at the high school in november of 2020. three of the books that are on the challenge right now um are in the top 20 i'm sorry are in the top of the 2020 of the american library association of schools of university of the most challenged books of 2020. i've got that here if any of you would like that um let's see um some of these books have a lot of sexual content that are deemed appropriate to me in the school system setting they talk about gang bangs tapping each other down the line one shared a story of taking naked selfies of one another and sharing them by text we all are aware that this

013is a felony of child pornography when under the age of 18. it's in the school policies that a lot of us just signed again this week with our students and i'm understanding that this is um announced frequently in the middle and high school announcements there's talk of drugs pill popping weed and more we have a lot of cop hate and you know we just we have school resource officers in our schools and we just celebrated honoring deputy uh guateny retirement in the june school board meeting so i find that inappropriate these books do not promote unity they promote promote further divide the one book in particular that i have a problem with that i started to read myself so i would know about it was the hate u give it's in the top 10 and

014it is number 10 on the book that should not be in schools it became a movie and if you wanted to come in here and read a section um which is what i was going to do tonight but i figured i would be hauled off maybe by them if i started to read it because it's that inappropriate so i won't read it i'll just tell you about it the book contains 89 f words in it it says it 89 times along with a lot of b s and h in the movie they gave it a pg-13 rating and they had to get special permission for that to be a pg-13 to get special permission you need to have it um one word of an f word in it this book contains it 89 times and

015it's in our schools um so if it if it was in our schools and it was a movie made like that in our school system it would be an r-rated movie but it's in our schools i don't find that appropriate at all i don't think either of you guys would either in a recent letter to dr thornton he saw nothing wrong with this he compared this book to katrin ryer and huckleberry finn a few difference of these books is that they were written for adults at the time they were written unlike the read book the read wrote challenge the rude wolf challenge was written towards teens and it continues to take from them what some people think is okay which is their childhood to the critics that state that our kids see this and participate

016with this stuff already and that we should expect this in public schools i don't see it that way they say that we should send them to private school or home school for my student that's not an answer as an alternative to having these books in our schools they are still highly inappropriate we should be guiding our children better than that they are still our children my child walked up to me and said the f word once twice or 89 times i'd have a problem with it and if you said it in the school system i'm pretty sure i'd get a phone call from the school i'm going to leave you with one thing that um the writer of tom sawyer and huck finn himself said he wrote i'm greatly troubled by what you say that

017i wrote about tom foyer and huck finn for adults i wrote it for adults exclusively and it always distressed me when i find that boys and girls have been allowed to accept have access to them the mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean thank you okay next we have miss jennifer through the freedom of information act we have learned ms jones tried to hire randolph carter a member of the black panther party as a consultant for equity training while back in the spring he wasn't able to provide services i do not know if he's being if he is being contracted for any future date we've also learned that all training equity plans and costs had to be submitted for the school board's approval did any of you ever question any

018of this training or the cost did any of you question mr carter's credentials or were you all okay with his involvement in a violent racist hate group also in these same emails miss jones indicates to carter she was being questioned about how an equity audit can be done confidentially who directed this and what was to be kept confidential through foia we have often also attained obtained a copy of your equity plan some of this plan includes creating an equity in community agreement what is this what makes up this agreement where can i find this agreement on the school's website there is also an equity diversity committee who and how many serve on this committee how are people appointed to this committee what is the goal of this committee and where is this on your website

019this plan also requires teachers to acknowledge and heal the impact of their daily implicit biases how is this measured who's judging daily implicit bias is there a form they fill out every day what if a teacher genuinely feels they treat every child equal and without bias do you call them liars but my big concern is the one-on-one interviews with students and the 20 focus groups that are to be conducted according to this plan how are students chosen will parents be notified their child is chosen to be interviewed what are the questions that will be asked of each student in this interview what grade levels will be included will these students and focus groups truly be diverse who will be asked to serve on the focus groups parents students teachers general public where can taxpayers find

020the results of all of this after spending several hundred thousand dollars on equity plans and training so far not including ms jones's annual salary why did you solicit a quote for more training in june from consultants at solution tree with the price tag of over three hundred and forty two thousand dollars if we have an equity coordinator why are we pouring money into other people coming in to do it this is irresponsible and misuse of taxpayer funds have any of you researched and questioned any of this one last thing part of this training included a statement that children living in a two-parent home are privileged this is disgusting disgusting to make anyone think that because they live in a two-parent home they are privileged they are blessed not privileged and how can you judge a

021one-parent home as non-privileged and inferior that child might be better off in that home this is one example of the potential to warp the minds of these kids and cause further division if a student isn't being abused mistreated or neglected in any way then who are you to judge their home life the school's job is to educate period [Applause] district and since she brought up money i got a suggestion uh you spend our money and we want to know on what now uh the county's put in a system by miss stephanie humphreys who is more than happy to help you all put in a like system so that any of us can go in see what you're writing checks for and to who and how much it's our money you spend two thirds of the

022county's budget we want that system and i've got a suggestion for the board of supervisors to give you guys 60 or 90 days to implement the system or you get no more taxpayer money until it's implemented you say you want transparency let us see where the money's coming from where it's going let us see how 340 thousand dollars is being spent and some other things and i think you have no excuse since miss humphries is willing to help you put it in not to have it some other news for the people in the newport district and they can check the dates but miss hewitt's resignation it would appear that she closed on her house june 22nd that she resigned from the school board august 6th which if my numbers are correct is one day outside

023of the time limit that would have allowed the citizens of the newport district to have that space on the ballot for them to vote who represents them now you can say it was coincidence you can say what you want but after 40 years as a detective to me it smells really bad um one other thing on equity and inclusion sometimes i disagree with them but i really think the smithfield times hit it on the head when they printed this the equity movement while often admirable in its intent goes too far with telling people how to feel that might have its place in politics churches and even some college classrooms but k-12 has its handful hands full in our view teaching kids to read write solve math problems and preparing them for success in college and

024the workforce but back to the money you have no reason no excuse you've got somebody willing to help you do the work the only reason you wouldn't put a system in where we can see who you're writing checks to and what those checks are for just like the board of supervisors has implemented is if you're hiding something so if you're not hiding anything i expect in about 60 or 90 days to be able to go on your website and see where you've been spending my money and something i wasn't spent playing to speak on uh miss schwartz the books and i have no reason to think that what she's saying is not true if you all have approved this to be read by students it is dereliction of your duty it is disgusting and i

025know that i'm old but if i brought a book like that and though any school i went to even as a senior in windsor i'd have been suspended at least so thank you and if you don't look back into these books and pull those out you're as disgusting as the people that wrote them thank you [Applause] jason marsh windsor district so they've already beat up the weed rope the weed reed woke challenge pretty good these three books like they've already said were listed as the top as three of the top 10 most banned and challenged books of 2020 by the american library association i wrote a letter on august 29 pointing this out these books promote drug use group sex gang violence racial stereotypes and an anti-cop sentiment mr thornton's response to my letter said

026that this exp this is a quote reading these books exposes them to different cultures and it's just as important as math and science based on feedback from our business partners i'll say it again your quote exposing people exposing kids to these books is just as important as math and science based on feedback from our business partners who are the business partners that's what i want to know and when did public schools become a business mr thornton i thank you for validating that your self-serving business endeavors have become such an influence on our schools i want you to hear from my words my mouth first i want you fired it's unacceptable miss perkins you represent windsor that's my district i've asked you several questions and emails i asked you twice if you approved this you did

027not respond i'm asking you now in public do you approve of the books in read woke challenge ms carr i asked you the same question twice via email no response at least mr thornton has the gumption to respond do you approve of the read world challenge books it's a yes or no question and i understand you're trying to appease everyone and i understand you're trying to keep your seat but the public deserves to know where you stand on this material i'd like to answer mrs perkins do you have to ask permission from the chair to speak because i'd like an answer do you approve ms carr do you approve our policy is we don't respond to public comments very well i'll look forward to getting a response in writing [Applause] okay good evening my name

028is eureka mcclellan i live in smithfield and i have two children in the isle of wight school district and i'd like to like to talk to you about the atrocious bus situation we've all been experiencing this week daily bus transfer to and from school is necessary for many students and we as working parents count on this tax funded service in these uncertain times a reliable timely and safe means of transportation greatly reduces anxiety and stress in children and parents alike i understand the difficulty in hiring qualified bus drivers individuals with a cdl and a clean record are highly sought after and bus drivers are needed in school districts all over virginia however i am failing to understand while isle of wight is not trying harder to attract candidates by offering higher salaries and perhaps bonuses

029for those who are running the extra routes where drivers and buses are not available school bus drivers just like our teachers are underappreciated and underpaid they ensure our children are safe in a safe clean environment so they can focus on learning and personal growth unlike the administration none of those groups got a raise last year in my opinion the budget for this school year needs to be reviewed and funds need to be shifted to cover the essentials why are you spending money on woke training for teachers and allocate funds for equity plans when you can't even get our kids to school on time please please focus on providing schools and students with the core elements that allow them to succeed before you focus on implementing what you and dr thornton deem as culturally relevant why

030should my child suffer by losing valuable instruction time in the morning and then spend an additional hour after dismissal sitting in the auditorium with several other children while waiting for her bus to become available it is not acceptable to put responsibility for the students timely and reliable commute to and from school back on us working parents an employer's patience for tardiness only go so far you as a school board need to step up and do what is right for students and parents thank you [Applause] miss crystal harris crystal harris um miss vanderbrite hello so i wanted to go over so dr thorton i did not talk to one person that could verify your story from the last meeting about using equity observation or rising advanced study diplomas to 70 zero the board and thornton have

031said that equity training will not be passed down to students it's for staff only but in dr thornton's facebook video he states need to be cautious about diving too deeply into societal and political work and issues but there will be times these will intersect with k-12 education the board has stated these books on equity and anti-racism will not be encouraged in classrooms for students to read yet online the schools have a woke reading challenge i find it interesting that equity training is for staff only and state on a slide that white is a privilege and interrupt that privilege one must advocate with bipod then online for your awoke reading list it stands read woke as a movement you stayed in that it's not all about being fully accredited at least now we can clearly see

032your views on accreditation by your statements and by your history at mecklenburg taking a fully accredited school district with two blue ribbons and leaving only one school accredited and zero blue ribbons by the time you left i also find it interesting that your equity slide used in last month's school board meeting that the public can see is not the slide i received in the equity training packets there are zero case studies that show any correlation with implicit bias equity training and achievement gaps zero there's none out there i search i spent hours searching miss perkins out of numerous emails asking about feedback on better implementing equity plans and explanation for certain programs or policies you have not emailed me back one time how are you effectively voting for your windsor district without communicating with them

033ms carr is the only one that's ever attempted to find out answers and you only have one person up there emailing people back and writing letters and responses how do you find out how to vote you have a director comparing windsor traffic stop to minneapolis you have a principal that shares the status i don't believe that on a whole teachers are less racist than cops i think we don't carry guns and that our damage is done quieter and over the space of years you have a superintendent that lies you have board members that don't care and look around the room to see how to vote you have another board member that asks why are you doing this when a member voted differently than another one telling her that she needs to vote with everyone else

034and be unified from every direction this administration is coming apart i'm not saying after meeting ms cox and much research that i do not agree with the equity program i do not agree with some aspects of it and i'm working to change it and reviewing every piece of material i can to protect my child from the school i am just asking for honesty do not sit up here and deny that certain views and politics are not being pushed into our children's curriculum stop lying take accountability and prove me wrong because i would love for you to prove me wrong oh i bring it on i would love for you to show me some statistics some case studies should i mean show me something where i'm wrong i have documents to back up everything that i

035said tonight do you send me documents send me what you got because i've got everything that shows up everything that i said on here is completely true and i have not received anything from anybody stating otherwise [Applause] mr burkhart madam chair members of the board albert burkhart newport district when i left the house this afternoon to come over here i just i i googled the school board i noticed she had four members and so i came here tonight to see who the new member was and only i came here for one reason only well besides to be entertained but that's okay but to see who the new school board member was and you did that and ms dale you introduce yourself and i appreciate that and that was the reason i asked to speak tonight

036thank you hey madam chair members of the board my name's herb de graaf in the hardy district my concern is in this statement for the board tonight is the violation of iwcs policies bddh and kd public participation at school board meetings by you our iwcs board but mainly chairperson car u at the 12 august board meeting before i get started doing my presentation about the 12 i am bringing to your attention iwcs policies bddh and kd revised on the 10th of june 2021 that allows by these two policies two public comment policies that state the following no one is allowed to make any additional presentation to everyone who wishes to speak as an opportunity to make an initial presentation my second concern will be about the soq report so will these policies bdh and kd

037be adhered to tonight with council present maybe i should suggest you take a recess at some point and discuss it with him to make sure you don't violate the policy again at the august 12 board meeting during the request to speak or public comment section of the agenda the board clerk stated madam chair the maximum time of 30 minutes has finished but we still have 18 people in the sheep to speak then share a car read from her computer not her school board issued ipad the following our policy it has been like this not just now it has been like this policy states a maximum of 30 minutes will be designated for public comment in order to extend the time a motion will be needed to be made and passed so is there a motion

038to extend the time so we can hear the remainder's fevers no board members said anything at this time chair carr continued to read from the computer and says i would like to make a motion to extend the 30 minutes designated for public comment to give the remaining speakers two minutes maximum time for their participation madam chair i ask you to provide your written responses to all my questions that i'm posing why did you and the other iwcs board members deliberately violate board policies bdh and kd public participation that was revised on the 10th of june 2021 which does not stipulate any maximum time limit for public comment the reason i say this is because the board voted unanimously to delete the section of the policy that stated at a reasonable time period as determined by

039the school board will be allocated at each regular meeting for community members to present matters of concern in other words the board has no authority to set the public comment maximum time limit or vote to limit the speaker's time whatsoever because the public comment time limit is endless by virtue of your policy not saying anything madam chair will you preserve the information on your computer that you read from during the iwcs board meeting on the 12th of august in regards to your statements about public comments since it's an electronic record or document that's a public record and has to be preserved not destroyed why did the board members illegally vote twice on the 12th of august board meeting to limit the time of public comment for certain speakers madam chair on 12 august what policy

040or exhibit were you reading from or referring to when you stated quote in order to extend the time of notion we made it made in past since that is not found in neither iwcs board policy approved that is bddh or kd or the exhibits bddh-e or kd-e each iwcs board member except mrs times was present during 2018 when the board deleted a 30-minute timeline for public comment and there was even an article in the specific times dated december the 12th titled school policy changes question that stated the new policy more flexible than the old lets the school board decide how long public comments can go along is deemed appropriate rather than capped at 30 minutes knowing the 30-minute time limit had been deleted from the policy why did the boarding clerk say there was still

041a 30-minute time limit was it to limit the number of speakers in their comments so they wouldn't be heard by you madam chair you've stated before what good is policy we do not follow it and mrs perkins has stated if we the school board don't follow the law we're asking for a lawsuit and we're not following the law we're not doing our job with those statements said by elected board members madam chair did you and other board members do your jobs and follow your own iwcs board policies and the law at the iwcs board meeting on august the 12th doing the public comments section ms carr is board chair i hope you take the time to read over my statement and answer all my questions and also attend the 16 september board of supervisors meeting

042and you all go with her to explain why you violated your own policies on the 12th of august and let the board of supervisors look you in the eye and you explained to them why you violated the policies thank you very much [Applause] martha evans jackson hardy district 511a cedar street in smithfield virginia first i want to say thank you to the smithfield high school representative neely harris and to the windsor high school representative miss kylie sharp for willingly serving on as school board liaisons many have repeated over and over that you don't want a program that teaches your children morals you are 100 percent correct that is a parent's job but just as you are passionate about teaching morals what about being equally as passionate about your children learning about the many atrocities that

043black brown and others suffer and continue to suffer will you teach your children i suggest you already teaching by spewing hateful rhetoric about the equity director what we do is more important than what we say or believe do you tell your children to act one way at home and another at school social functions or sporting events i worked in two school settings for 41 years where children would often come to my desk i would ask them a question usually about attendance they would answer honestly and look directly in my eyes and say but my mom and daddy told me to say this and so not an isolated incident student i'm leaving early to go on a trip usually that happened on a friday parents come in may i pick up john david and sue they

044have doctor's appointments i could go on we can take lessons from our honest children many of you that object to the equity program do you even have children in olive white county schools do you complain about the other subject areas math reading science why not with permission from your child's school sit in on an equity lesson so that you can see without bias what your children are learning let's move through fear find out what connects us so that we can see and make our communities better if you don't want this for yourselves let's at least do it for our children we cannot stop our unconscious biases but we can counteract or mitigate them with effort to overcome we want to live and work so our communities will be places for all to be proud to

045live in the equity program serves as a vehicle for blinded eyes to see and close ear to hear the plight of marginalized history it would be a catastrophe not to do so i urge you olive white county school board to wholeheartedly support this program welcome mrs [Music] that dyer i mean that's everybody the last person on here has already spoke so okay next on the agenda is member committee reports and information does anybody have any committee reports okay no i haven't attended it i think i did get some information from the whro that i was that they added me to their list and they'll be i think that their next meeting will be october okay and i don't have a committee report and i'll save my comments on the woke challenge for the end of

046the meeting school boy comments but i would like to mention that august the 27th was the alawite county school convocation where teachers and staff and administrators meet to bring in the new year and it was absolutely heartwarming and energizing there was so much excitement and enthusiasm in the air the rebooting videos shown by each school demonstrated such spirit and teamwork and then there was a speaker mr larry bell he did such a good job emphasizing the importance of student-teacher relationships and and high expectations for all students the convocation ended with great music from a newly created band uncovering talent most of which came from central office and it was such a great kickoff for this school new school year i visited our four schools on the southern end of the county the first day of

047school and seeing all the smiles and feeling the excitement was such a great experience this year has begun with some challenges but at the same time we can't ignore the positives and there are lots of positives um just as madame chair said we normally make our comments at the end but i want to say this while we have the full audience here tonight i would like to thank all of the bus drivers for alawite county public schools what you have done in the last few days it's not just you you're not out there by yourself it's not just our transportation department it's a regional thing it's a state thing it's a nationwide thing but i would like to thank them parents the only thing we ask is just to work with us and we will

048get these things sought out i would also like to thank the cafeteria workers it's always a whole lot when the students come back to school especially the high school students because they at middle school because they like to be picky about what they're going to eat but if you can get them all through the cafeteria and back in class on time that is a reward within itself thank you very much for what you are doing also for alawite county schools okay it's not that we're forgetting you because our cafeteria workers they work with the private contractor but we still we are still thankful for what you're doing and mr livingston we thank you i'm thankful for what you're doing as well with your transportation department thank you okay next on the agenda is the financial

049presentations okay good evening madam chair board member dr thornton welcome this dial congratulations let me just start with the um the check register that was attached to your agenda i just i was a little concerned with what the gentleman said about our financials i do try to do my job with integrity transparency i'm not a perfect person and it's certainly not a perfect system but your financials your check registers every month they are online and they're accessible i think that's important to know because as with a public board public funds it is the public monies and they should certainly see what checks are cut every month so your check registers are online so let me start with that are there any questions on the check register or any parts of the check register well i

050i wanted i thought it would be good for an explanation on the american uh reading company assessment subscription and data assess analysis software and then the um that was 69 000 and then the renaissance learning online instructional tools okay i think susan might be able to help us understand what both are used for and why we need them and this amount is for the whole year correct and the difference between the two because i think the arc is just reading but the renaissance is reading and math yes correct um so for the arc materials that is the school pace online version that we are using so it's how we assess our students and we record the data about their reading progress online so it's the tool it's the online tool that goes with the american

051reading company any other questions about the renaissance so what's the is the result so it's just assessment or is it actually yes so that's that's for star 360 and that is a math and reading assessment it's a universal screener so it screens our students and it tells us strengths and weaknesses of those students um for math that is the screener that we're using obviously we don't have another screener for math that is the one that we use and it helps us to group students it tiers our students so we know are you a tier one two or three student and it helps us to know which students need more support for the reading we do use the reading as well and again we just use that as another measure for students if we have concerns

052about their reading again we can go and look what are their weaknesses it also is it helps us place them in freckle which is something we're going to be using this year for students who need tier 2 and tier 3 support the star will align with freckle and it gives them a starting place in freckle so that's why we use those and we give star three times a year so you see where the two tools complement each other oh well so when we're using um school pace with american reading company that is our daily monitoring of goals and progress on those goals in reading so that's every single day we're using that um it's a star 360 reading is three times a year so it's a point in time assessment and yes it does very

053much align because you know we're using um erla and school pace daily and then we're seeing what is the measure with star 360. so um it does a line if it's not then we need to look and see what's going on so it's just another measure and time of that student's progress okay thank you you're welcome yeah i have another question um steve the the transfinder corporation that was the 7 000 school bus tracking and routing solution solutions i know last year we talked about it this year what apps actually implementing and is that correct uh please close by yes we are i can't speak to the specifics of it um when lee does his report i don't know if you're prepared or if you want to ask him any specific questions okay i knew

054that was 7 000. so he's going to talk about that and then the the check expenses that are listed under the bank of america there was a lot of listings on the professional development staff development training and and travel and training correct so could you help us understand why one's called staff development one's called professional development it's my understanding that various categories were just created with different descriptions at different times and i don't believe there's an intent to have a difference between them okay they're all ultimately that's correct so i think the best suggestion and dr thornton had had asked that we go through each one and if you look at the brief description of each of those there's really no difference between what you had said professional development or travel and training they're all

055towards professional development i could ask if there's any historic that in my office if perhaps they talked about mileage as being one maybe perhaps they talked about overnight travel as being another category but it's my understanding that no over time they've just developed those descriptions and they're not necessarily consistent did anybody else have any questions okay madam chair and board members uh just for clarification uh for your purposes uh as you know under financials and board docs we have a report on large ticket items facility usage financial reports and the entire check register it's also under the consent agenda and this is on board docs for you and the public to see every single month and we use the exact same system that kind of uses called munich so i mean everything is for the

056public to see in fact i even went on this past week as a citizen would go on not as a board member right so as did i um with what uh the gentleman had said i got a little concerned so i went on without necessarily logging into the back end just as the general person from the public and it is there yes i certainly have to know where on our website to find it um we could do links to everything we do and that that becomes the challenge we do so much what do you highlight so if there's ever any any questions i would encourage people to call us or or ask the question um then secondly i'll move on from your check register uh secondly your augut closing out august was listed um we

057are literally one percent spent more of your budget this time of year compared to last time of year this time which didn't surprise me because we were not doing this what we're doing now we were not doing this time last year to this extent so we're we're literally 15 into your budget so we're just getting started are there any questions on the financial reports and that's really all i have if there's no other questions okay thank you thank you all right madam chair school board members support services and operations full circle full report all right hope nothing exactly thank you first we want to step right into the division survey manager this is the overall survey manager for the division when it comes to school audits safety audits and everything else that the state of

058virginia requires you to have this is just stating on august 31st it's mandatory that every division signs off that we have completed everything in full that system has been checked off and has been signed off we have completed all the school safety audits and everything for them for this school year this is just to inform you that there was a uh update for the new hardy elementary school uh the project review meeting for the lfg the gmp the final guaranteed maximum price now that occurred on wednesday september 1st 2021 at 9 30 a.m at the school board office conference room so i'm going to let you know that we actually went through that and we have a small presentation after this next i want to bring your attention the auction items the auction items we

059have four cars and one van for actually auction and just to let you know we have the make model and exactly the mileage for these vehicles the four vehicles is an auction item age is one of the factors condition of engine and most times it's uh the vehicle is going to cost more to repair than actual vehicle is worth at this time with pinpointed four cars and one van for that so those are the ones that will be going for auction i have more details if those details are needed all right next madam chair if there are no questions concerning the support services operation full report the 15.2 new hardy elementary school i want to introduce a couple of gentlemen here from mbcon construction bill cram the executive vice president of chris bilbo the project

060director from heartland construction i want to introduce eric strickler and from rrm architects i want to introduce jeff harris to come up and talk a little bit more madam chairs they come up i'd also like to recognize i believe we have dick rice here tonight from the board of supervisors and tom durg from the planning commission who both served on our committee throughout this entire process going through the uh again to today's guaranteed maximum price and so we thank them for serving in their committee and i also see mr jefferson here tonight too problem with the drive the uh school board presentation about that sir okay good evening madam chair dr thornton members of the board administration thanks for having us here tonight um we're excited to bring this news to you there's been a

061lot of effort put into this uh mr coleman kindly introduced everybody's one more jim thornton one of our consultants is sitting in the back there you can recognize him with the hokey mask on as he's usually wearing obviously i have stage fright like that young man that just left here oh yeah i'm going to ask jeff harris to lead us off bring you up to speed a little bit on the design so jeff i'll let you start i'm sure most of you guys have seen the site plan you're very familiar with the site what you see in front of you is um the current hardy elementary school site with the new building located uh right in the center of it it's situated uh if you're facing the site it's to the right-hand side and sits

062a little bit behind the existing building the reason for selecting this location is to allow the existing building to remain operational while the new building is being constructed so one of the things that you guys did to make this possible at the county with the county's help is to purchase additional property that freed up a little bit more room to make it uh to make this the solution work uh at the you can see on the well i wish i had a pointer um so we bring uh cars and buses and in the lower right-hand uh portion of the site there we go can we back up sure yeah it's there it's just very light can we use the mouse i'll try and use the mouse i don't think you'll be able to see the

063mouse okay again so we have um cars enter enter right here a decent stack lane for parents to come in drop off where this the pointer is located that's the main entrance to the new school parents drop off and exit right here in the center of the site plenty of available parking for staff and visitors we maintain a service drive access back here to where the kitchen and mechanical room is located and buses enter on the opposite side of the site so we've maintained uh good separation and security safety between vehicular cars and buses you can see all the playgrounds located immediately adjacent to each of the great houses but it fits nicely in the site one of the other elements i want to point out is the elevated water storage tank up here in

064the tucked in the back corner of the site there was potential discussion for maintaining an existing wing of the existing hardy building to serve as some community function uh possibly in in the future if if that was to be maintained you can see its location we also provide a separate drive and parking that has yet to be determined if we're going to keep that probably won't but in any event we needed to go through the conditional use permit application process to make sure that it would be possible if you guys decide there's a there's a good purpose for that edition all right that existing edition um previous edition sorry this is the floor plan of the new hardy elementary school right here is the main entrance flanked on this side is administration and clinic and

065guidance on this side there's a main street that separates the more public side of the house on the right-hand side from the more private side or the great houses on the left-hand side media center essentially located easily accessible from each of the great houses we've got kindergarten and pre-k extends directly straight out to the left-hand side second grade is located at the bottom first grade is at the top i should mention that the site was planned to accommodate future additions if you felt like there was a need to expand the school in the future so we did plan for that with site amenities and making sure that utilities were kept outside of that potential expanded footprint this is the second floor we have fourth grade that stacks over second grade cleanly and then third grade

066stacks over top of fifth grade we've got a project-based learning space located within each house it's centrally located and easily accessible for each of the students and staff within that great house on either side of the media center you can see the media center this is the upper portion of the media center right here in the center in white we have learning stairs that flank each side going down and it provides a nice presentation or collaboration space for staff and students so do you have any questions about the floor plan design and the way it's laid out okay this is an interior rendering of what that main street will look like you're looking at the main entrance in the background coming towards you headed towards the gymnasium on the left hand side is the cafeteria

067which also includes a stage for evening performances and on the right hand side some transparent transparency and some glass that looks into the media center this is what a typical classroom is going to look like each great house kind of has a predominant accent color in this particular rendering orange is the primary accent for that particular great house but you can see the uh the furniture and flexible arrangement that some of the furniture you guys have already purchased will go into this building and will work very well for different arrangements that teachers might want to do on a daily basis so part of this effort one of the advantages of the cm at risk process is the ability to see pricing along the way we're in the middle of a very difficult construction market because

068we had the contractor on board early on in the process they're able to provide estimates along the way this gives you the advantage of kind of knowing where you stand and not waiting until the very end and and when you receive prices on bid days you you might find out that you're over budget and now you've got sticker shock and you need to scramble and figure out how to move forward this process has allowed us to address those types of issues along the way so the committee that's been assembled this entire time we've gone through ve efforts to try and minimize costs wherever possible look taking advantage of those things that we can make changes to the design into the building without impacting the quality so here are some of the recommendations that were made

069we tried to limit the use of metal panel and use more brick and masonry because at this point brick is cheaper than metal it didn't used to be that way that's my question so you can see here we did have some metal panel accents around the facade originally and at the end of the day we removed most of those and went with an accent brick still gives you the same effect but it's uh it's uh you know financially it's it's a better situation better move uh to go this route so you can yes ma'am let's finish your sentence and then i ask my question i'm just going to tell you that even making the change from metal to brick it's still a great looking elevation doesn't really impact the look of the school but it

070is more cost effective okay we're you're going to replace the metal for the brick it's going to be the same color brick that you're going to have located in the uh exterior all of the brick are going to be the same color yes ma'am okay i didn't know if you were going to do a lighter brick or you're going to replace the metal or not but it's all going to be the same so we we started with a darker chocolate color brick as an accent and we just kept that same same color accent brick where we replaced it with the metal or front in place thank you so at the front entrance this is what the design looked like originally we have a very inviting entrance something that looks modern and fresh we did have

071a canopy that extended over a little bit beyond where it where it needed to so the committee felt like one of the things we needed to do to be fiscally responsible is remove what's indicated in red along there are some metal accents around the entrance that we did feel like were important to maintain but again we've minimized it tremendously so after we removed that extra piece of the canopy that's what the front entrance will look like moving forward still it's a great looking entrance a nice curb appeal i like it better i can see it better i like that i like the second entrance better it looks better good well that's where where it's headed and i'll turn it back over to mr cram i should ask do you guys have any questions about some

072of the images and renderings okay thank you jeff um the committee also felt the finished elevation was a big looking elevation so we have consensus i think between the meeting tonight one of my jobs is to bring the news of cost to our clients and back in april we made a presentation to the committee and i'm going to just hit a few of the highlights for that you tonight for you tonight you can tell by my age i've been doing this a long time i've never seen a construction inflation market like we're seeing now the closest i've saw to it was in the late 1970s when we had extremely high inflation a few of the statistics are up there on the screen softwood lumber was up 73 percent year-to-date at that point good news is

073that's fallen back to pre-covet levels the bad news is there's very little wood in the school but scrap steel was up 26 percent the last two months of last year another 21 january february scrap steel is the foundation of all steel products reinforcing steel steel beams metal panels on the building you name it drywall was up 20 percent the first quarter copper up 13 the associated general contractors has been running an annual or monthly construction index for over 40 years and at the end of the first quarter of 2021 the previous 12 months was the highest inflation rate they had ever seen in over 40 years and march of 2021 was the highest monthly inflation i took a deep breath before i made this presentation to the board before to the committee because it wasn't

074the best news that they were going to hear our initial estimate that we presented at that time based on the what's called 35 documents it's before we have all the details before we have all the specifications everything drawn out we actually had a number internally initially there was about 500 000 more than that but as and i appreciate jeff's comment about us being on board early we were able to have a lot of conversation with the design team to one better understand what was there and ultimately we felt it at that point that that snapshot in time is how i described estimates uh we're at about 33 million 221 thousand dollars for what we thought the cost of the project would be and as always we advise our clients to include a contingency in the

075project for unforeseen conditions things that may happen along the way brought the total to about 34 just over 34 million dollars following that i want to talk a little bit about the guaranteed maximum price development process and let me first define what a guaranteed maximum price is as your construction manager at risk when we sign a contract we're going to give you a price it's called a guaranteed maximum price and what that is that is the most you will pay for the project if it goes over that cost it comes out of my pocket if it comes under that cost you receive all the savings we do not participate in any savings and as we stated during our interview process not every meeting we are completely transparent you have full access to our accounting system

076uh we will provide you with whatever level of detail reports you would like we will back up all of our invoices with detail but at the end of the day you will only pay a maximum of this amount and becomes it less again all the savings stay with iowa white county schools so we presented the estimate that i just showed you on april 23rd we also presented extensive list of cost savings opportunities mr harris touched on some of these and it's what we call an intensive value engineering cost savings effort and it truly was a team effort it involved the members of the committee it involved the design team including their engineers and involved mvcon and our partner hartley in construction a lot of meetings a lot of emails a lot of phone conversations we

077reduce costs by focusing on needs not wants and that was a major focus for us in this process for the entire team a couple things i want to talk about no reduction in the square footage of the building no reduction in programs the changes we made were aesthetic in nature and not impacting any of your educational process the education of your students or the size of the building from in the committee uh made that clear from the start that that was a very strong focus for them and we as a team bought into it again i would say it was a great team effort it's been a great pleasure working with this team uh again we have multiple meetings and reviews we provide a lot of additional supporting data if there were there were questions

078about what an item might be if there were other alternatives it wasn't just a quick one-shot thing was a very intense effort and again the collaboration produced outstanding results we had initially identified 64 potential areas and some of them rightfully so were rejected by the committee uh they were ideas we threw out there we we kind of do this as a process of coming up with anything that we think of but the committee rejected a number of those because they simply weren't suitable a practical for alawite county schools however 43 were partially or totally accepted and just in general terms nine of those were on the building exterior again jeff pointed out a couple of those that produced some savings on the interior we identified 22 items removing some some additional drywall soffits and classrooms

079changing some of the flooring materials i think we changed the type of folding partition again nothing that impacts program nothing that impacts education just looking at ways to save you money there were five items identified in the mechanical and electrical sections and seven in site development so then i came back on september 1st to another meeting hoping to have better news on the marketplace unfortunately the news wasn't good in the marketplace through the couple of weeks leading up to our making this presentation we were uh very strongly in the subcontractor and vendor market some of the things we picked up in the course of time was that the cost of aluminum which goes to all the windows and storefront door frames and other components of the building cost of aluminum had gone up an additional

080eight percent one of our major steel suppliers have been told by their mill to increase their budgets by 88 dollars per ton per week until further notice that's how much steel continues to escalate doors frames and hardware there's a company called assa abloy which is one of the largest distributors in the nation of hollow metal frames wood doors metal doors hardware in may they imposed a 10 surcharge on every order in july that increased 25 percent and as of september 20th that surcharge is going to 45 um just anecdotally one of my wife's cousins visited with us over labor day she happens to work for a large hardware auto metal door supplier in charleston so i just gotta ask barbara by the way barbara have you heard about this and she said absolutely we got

081an email last week that said this 45 surcharge so it wasn't just the bidder that was telling us on this project it is uh something that's happened second thing is delivery times for materials are getting totally out of hand right now steel joists structural steel joists and deck we're being told to be as much as eight to ten months some roofing materials are as much as eight months out there so there's a supply chain issue that's impacting construction cost as well when we want the gmp guaranteed maximum price development process when we got the final documents from rrm we did a detail quantity survey and what that entails is counting every block every brick every door measuring everything in the building to make sure we understand what the quantities are so when we talk to

082subcontractors we have a basis a conversation with them intensive market outreach we contacted over one thousand vendors directly by email by telephone just reached out to people that we know in the market between heartland and mbtown we haven't both have extensive databases but we reached out to over a thousand vendors directly we also publicly advertised for bids in the smithfield times along with multiple construction trade journals and plan groups we wanted to get as broad coverage as we could because competition drives better pricing we analyzed and scrutinized over 230 bids uh every every person that submits a bid has a list of qualifications on it so we had to go through all those make sure we weren't missing something making sure that if we included it in the price that it was the products that

083were specified by the architect that you were getting the right thing result is we actually brought the cost down in face of this fierce price escalation not as much as we would like to have but it still was an improvement in the pricing uh the now we have a uh anticipated cost of the building of 32 million six hundred ninety seven thousand nine hundred seventy three dollars uh included in the specifications were unsuitable soils allowances of 218 thousand dollars and this is if we hit soils that are not strong enough to support the building or to or for bedding pipes that sort of thing there are now allowances in there to protect against those unforeseen costs and then again there's a contingency of two and a half percent of the guaranteed maximum price of 817

084000 so while we believe the building will come in at about 32.7 the initial contract amount including those would be 33 million 733 422 some other things to consider and this is what i call market wild jeff suggested i explained those one more time if we don't hit unsuitable soils that money stays with the schools and the same thing with the contingency any unused portion of that comes back to you as well as any savings under that guaranteed maximum price line as well all those savings returned to you and i can assure you we'll make every effort to return those savings to you because you we want you to be a happy client market wildcards these are things that could impact pricing i i am uh my office calls me the eternal optimist they don't

085understand why i have a smile on my face every day despite the uh opportunities i have to solve things and i would like to be optimistic and tell you the prices are going to come down to three months but i'd be lying to you i just don't see that happening and the number one reason and i put this in green to show is dollars i guess if the federal government drops the hammer as i call it on this 1.2 trillion dollar infrastructure package it's going to further exacerbate construction costs it's going to drive them up because that's going to put even more demand out there dropping back for just a second what happened to caused a lot of these problems with the with the cost and supply chain logistics at the outset of covid everybody

086thought the entire industry was going to shut down construction did not virtually every state in the union designated construction as an essential industry so we kept working the supply chain side did not get the same designation so supplies got short they laid people off thinking construction which shut down and just the opposite happened i think everyone's aware of the housing boom among other situations and that goes to the supply chain logistics there is still a long backlog we see spot shortages of things at different times an example is we're doing some libraries and just the slab of corian to make the reception desk normally is something that the vendor would pick up the phone call the supply house and have it delivered three days later they told maybe december plan on january just get a

087basic slab that's how far backed up some of the materials are and the last part is labor shortages we are seeing that in the construction industry and we think it's going to continue uh the reason i'm bringing these up well let me back up again just a second i think it's that way yeah i figured out this time thank you uh the reason i'm bringing this up is to emphasize that the time to buy is now i'm having this conversation with many clients i do not foresee prices dropping in 60 days 90 days 120 days probably not at best for a year and even then i think that's rolling the dice uh simply because of that federal money that may be coming down the line that's going to further heat up the construction market so

088my advice is if you can if you can make it work now is the time to buy this project second thing i want to talk about is what i call schedule wildcards right now we are on track to complete this project summer of 2023. be starting late this year um complete the new construction about the time school would get out 2023 and then over that summer demolish the existing building and finish out the parking and site work a couple of things out there is the phase one archaeological survey uh that was conducted and there's a meeting next tuesday to discuss this and at that point we'll have a better idea what if any impact that will have on the schedule but there was an archaeological study that uh identified or suggest that there was a

089presence of one or more dwellings occupied over a period potentially spanning the late 18th century through 19th century so as always on sites that may be something that needs to be investigated we have a meeting next tuesday we're hoping it's not a major impact but it is out there again supply chain logistics the sooner we can tie down vendors and subcontractors the better delivery dates we will get just based on what's going on the marketplace and labor shortages we think competition for labor in our industry is going to be intense over the next two to three years there is a shortage of skilled workers as it is and that's another thing that we see is going to drive prices up is companies competing with each other for that labor so again we think it's a

090a good time to go forward so let me talk about moving forward one comment i will make is further and i put it in quotes investment an existing hardy is wasting precious dollars there's not a good long-term solution to rehabilitating that building any dollars you spend in there as i make the metaphor you may as well just take dollar bills and set fire to them because you'll have a very short return on anything you spend on that building so to move forward first step is to approve this gmp proposal guaranteed maximum price proposal currently we do not have a construction phase contract that would follow the approval of this guaranteed maximum price we are under contract for services through this point and assuming this is all on the assumption that this gets approved schedule a

091groundbreaking ceremony get some excitement going about what's coming we're nearing completion of the permit process i believe jeff a number of approvals we have to have through various departments i will give a plug to alawite county that the folks we have worked with have been tremendous very cooperative just great to work with it's been a very smooth process once we have all that done we can establish a firm construction date and that great expression get redone and with that i'll be happy to answer any questions would our schedule as far as getting her done would that be altered as far as if supply and demand and you know do you foresee some delays based on supplies coming in our deliveries and all that based on what we've been told that i can assure you in

092tj and david out here i want to give credit to two other folks that aren't here tj canfield with heartland and david knight with mb kind of the two estimators have been working hard on this they've been in touch daily with literally hundreds of these suppliers and subcontractors and that's where we're getting this information on delivery if we can move forward and get approval this month we can tie down those delivery dates and it will work within the schedule if we wait 60 90 days i can't i can't tell you what will happen other than it's doubtful that the completion date could be made this is unfortunately a decision that needs to be made pretty quickly simply because of the market volatility i'd like to say too serving on the committee and going to the

093construction management and risk process even with the statement we need to move forward quickly we have followed the process in the timeline of that process exactly and we are at the 100 design which is the time to make a presentation decide to move forward so we haven't rushed past the process i want to make that clear but now that we're at this point with all the other factors that they're sharing time is of the essence thank you dr swan so this is an action item yes so we need to um okay [Music] madam chair we're like oh this is it okay wait a minute okay madam chair would like to make a motion to request the board of supervisors to approve the guaranteed maximum price of 33 million 738 872 for the new hardy elementary

094school construction and demolition we have a motion and it has been second we need a vote please this is the vote that i've been waiting for still using it okay i'm excited we are all excited about this one thank you very much so madam chair i'd just like to point out the next step is a presentation next thursday night at the board of supervisors meeting and i do want to reiterate i've built several schools before and been involved in the process and this is the first process that the school board and board of supervisors and the planning commission have had members at the table throughout the process and i think it's been very insightful and very helpful from both perspectives and it's been a good process i have a question so after next thursday when

095the board of supervisors uh act and if they do act um uh saying to go forward when it's the earliest that they could do the groundbreaking because another day of the groundbreaking it's normally the same time they would normally start construction that day if there's no more to dig in a hole so uh we were we would start immediately on a contract okay and then i guess when the permitting was done i may step back up here uh the groundbreaking server i was talking about was more of a uh ceremonial groundbreaking for the board and all that could be done yeah we would like to assist you with that and generally takes about a week to two weeks to get through the logistics of setting up a program and picking a date and all that

096which we'll be happy to help with then the actual construction start we're anticipating being right now tentatively about december first okay we think for the permitting process and also part of it ties to those long lead items what we don't want to do is get out there and dig holes and foundations and then sit there for three months twiddling our thumbs that's not efficient for anybody so we're going to time the start of that to tie into some of those supply chain things i'd just like to say that i think everybody on this board is so excited to get this project going it's just phenomenal well it's kind of why i threw that line in there for the groundbreaking ceremony okay all right thank you so much december yes ma'am now we're going to 15.4

097if you don't mind man we're going to architectural services this is just the information i apologize trying to move too fast auction items we talked about earlier the four cars into one van at this time i just need a approval action item to move forward so we can actually auction those vehicles off so right now it's an action item to move forward with auctioning the four cars and the one van 15.3 madam chair like to make a motion to approve the auction of the five transportation vehicles due to age condition and cost to repair versus value okay we have a motion and it has been second we need to vote please i'm sorry who was the second mr wilson hmm okay motion carry now we're ready for the architectural services yes ma'am this is informational

09815.4 with architectural services every five years our alawite county schools have to actually go out and re-bid for a new architect for the next five years it's a five-year one-year renewable rolling contract uh this was presented for the school board and rfp was actually written and it was actually submitted from there since then there was a committee form we actually took all of the actual applicants or the i should say the selective quality in and actually made a decision moving forward and this is just the information to let you know that rrm has been chosen as the architectural firm and contract for next five years with a rolling one year okay yes ma'am if there are no questions concerning that next will be the 15.5 carsville additional classrooms all right this is just informing that

099a ifb has been written and has been sent to the lawyer essentially attorney and checked over just for the specifications of the actual carrsville additional classrooms these are two classrooms fitted for carsville the proposed plan at this present time is once these classrooms are installed to move the fifth grade out to those classrooms the resort room um to resort actual students around the building to add more space and add more um just room for instruction so this is just once again a informational letting you know that tomorrow i will actually put this out on eva eva and start selecting bidders if there's no questions i will move on to 15.6 the crisis maintenance next 15.6 the crisis manuals this is more one more time informational you have the actual uh foul we've sent the file

100over to you with all of the crisis manuals from the nine schools this is in compliance with the actual dcjs showing you that every single school has a crisis manual and has the exact topics that it actually touched on so you have those and you can actually review those and just let us know if you if you uh need any more information concerning it please understand that each one of those crisis manuals are a fluid document it will continue to change in those you have something similar to a traffic plan and as you already know the traffic plans continue to change to meet the needs of the public at this time so that crisis plan will continue to change if there's no questions we'll move now to 15.7 the transportation update and chair if i

101can just point out one thing on that because the crisis plans are on your board packet under executive content because we do not release our our crisis plans for protection of if there is an emergency we are the ones who know and and our students and staff are protected and those manuals are so detailed and you when you read through them it just if there's you just imagine having to use some of these and you just cringe because i mean it happens right the principles put a lot of hard work and dedication into those a lot of thought and time and energy goes into these plans and we hope they never have to be used yes ma'am good evening everybody i'm gonna you've lost more hair [Laughter] took my fire away there anyhow i prepared

102some remarks i'd like to start with tonight when we started we were eight bus drivers short of having enough to cover all the runs and that that initiated to double runs at smithfield high smithfield middle west side carrollton and one at windsor elementary we planned uh pickup times first uh we're scheduled for double runs and drop-off times due but due to traffic and car riders and etc uh it has thrown the times way off from what we had planned and anticipated we have to account for all students as possible writers on day one and usually adjust within the first three weeks that's normal [Music] this year is a bigger challenge without the proper number of drivers we have collected information on how many students are actually riding each vehicle and we spent the entire day

103today looking through the possible ways to consolidate some runs and eliminate the double runs this will make possibly make some buses very crowded and make existing runs longer but it will better serve our students who have been stuck at the school waiting on a double run we have also worked with mr johnson at westside elementary school to reroute the buses to the back of the school and make three parent drop-off loops in the front the buses will be going to the back the parents will stay out front and we're going to pilot this tomorrow morning a communication has gone out to parents and staff will be on site to direct traffic on the grounds and i believe dr thornton will be out there with his uh flags helping as well we will continue to monitor

104all runs and try to solve the problem the best we can i do apologize for uh if we or any of the schools did not accum communicate properly with parents when changes were made we should always be able to tell parents what bus their child rides at any given time it's our goal to eliminate the double runs as quickly as possible and we're going to take a look at making some re-routes and tweaking the routes by the end of next week to be able to implement the following week and kind of move into the question you had for steve ms carr the transfinder payment that you question transfinder is our routing software as you know we hired a new routing tech this summer to replace uh the one that left earlier in the year and

105of course there's quite a bit of training involved with being able to use the software manipulated and so on so forth that particular charge was a one-time charge for training and i also at the time i had them uh contracted with them for some consulting services to take a look at what our current our current situation our current runs were doing and and make sure that they were doing what they needed to be doing for efficiency uh although that was a little bit before we knew we were quite in the dire need for for the bus drivers and what our needs were for enrollment so um we were we were doing good if we had a body to put behind the wheel of every bus that we had planned so that being said uh we

106are currently taking applications and i'll put this out here anybody that's interested in driving come on down i'd sure like to chat with them and i did plan to put together a presentation and i think i'll do that next month about what it actually entails to become a bus driver but uh uh what we look for and and uh the type of folks that we that we look for and also you know what legally that person has to do to to drive a a school bus in this in the state of virginia so um at this time i'll open it up for questions you have my report in front of you so madam chair um as you know in the personnel report transportation brought forward to the administration a proposal to offer a 1 000

107stipend to any bus driver who refers a new employee and that they go through the training and that we're actually hired and that's one of the proposals that you'll be voting on later and the other was due to having we we have to operate from the standpoint of we may not find date drivers chesapeake everyone is fighting for the drivers and so our goal is to reroute all those buses which may make some of our existing routes longer but we want to eliminate the double routes so that students are our first priority they get to school on time they don't miss class and they get to home at a time where they won't miss football practice or cheerleading practice or dance or whatever they're involved in and so with that we value the bus drivers

108we have and so we also put in a recommendation for a one-time emergency stipend of one thousand dollars to every one of our drivers who's a regular route driver whose right routes will be extended and we will uh pay for that through the cares funding and to help her stay [Applause] so i just wanted to point that out because that was that was brand new as we're trying to solve the problem that transportation brought forward and we'll bring that to you tonight are there any other questions do we have more students riding the bus this year i mean because i'm looking and we still have lots and lots of pickups you know the the long lines on the roads of parents trying to get in to pick up their children we didn't used to have

109that but now we've got the long lines of pick up drop off and pick up but we're still you know doing the bus driver issue too so we've got two real issues and i see administrators and their staff out there doing a great job trying to figure out you know how to to um organize the parent pickup and they're having you know it's a challenge right now you say okay this didn't work let's try this and that's what you they have to do but i was just wondering are there more it's still the lines for the kids to be picked up or dropped off are still long but we still have all these bus driver issues go go susan i can't respond to that we have a lot more parent pickups and drop-offs um just

110i was talking to miss couch and this year she has 189 compared to 132. so carrollton every worse scene a lot more west side tons more parent drop off and i think kovid putting kids on the bus maybe parents aren't comfortable so they're dropping off picking up and we're trying to adjust to that and it's going to take us a little bit of time and we're asking for parents just to really be patient with us we're trying to figure it out yeah because that you know i got a email from a parent very concerned about the safety because on the highways you know going around a curve and here's a car that stopped so you know i don't know if the law the you know our police can help us with with this because i

111mean you know we want to really be proactive in identifying some safety issues while we figure this out is it possible to stagger the uh parent uh drop-off times like i guess schedule the parent have them to sign up for a time that they want to drop off within a window so you wouldn't will not have the ball there at the same time the the problem with this year versus last year is the state of virginia offered a waiver for our clock hours that waiver is gone okay so we have to we can't let them out earlier like we did last year we let car writers out earlier all those things are over because we have to meet our required clock ups and i think we might want to communicate that to parents because i

112don't think they understand i've had you know a few parents say why can't we do it like we did last year last year was working like a charm so we need they don't understand that time allotment that we have to follow from the state and just for instance with westside when west side first was built it was not as large as it is now so those drop-offs were probably appropriate 60 years ago or whenever that building was built and but we well we were able we cleared out the whole back area where the food service is and then we had parking there we had parking for central office we've removed all of that today we drove a bus back there to see if it could make the turn and we were able to which is

113going to allow us to bring the buses to the back and allow us three lanes for parent pickup and drop off in the front we're hoping that will take those cars off the road and because it is dangerous and it's blocking traffic it's blocking people who are going to work on the windsor end of the county it's becoming a hazard carrollton we as we met uh lee's right we met all day and uh we talked about what can we do at carrollton which is kind of landlocked where chris is investigating there's a little piece as you pull in there and you go to the back there's like a dumpster we're investigating do we own the land right by there or do we own enough to to pave an area and drive past the playgrounds and

114build a parking lot so we're trying to investigate anything we can to create a bigger loop and get those cars off of the roads and the police do help us at west side uh i will tell you and this is hopefully some of the communities watching we're often asked can you change the light at smithville middle and high school and police officer at the light you have to go through vdot for approval for that and often what is stated is the lights are timed with the weight of the vehicle and the lights do a more effective job plus with four lanes it's not very safe it would take three to four officers out there to control that traffic so we we've been investigating anything we can of these to solve this problem and um and

115we don't want to discourage people from bringing their children either because we don't have enough bus drivers in space on the buses so it's uh well even at carsville i know i had a parent communicate with me how far the line goes on 58 and just wondering if there's some way they can even be tracked down back in the bat where the plate you know about where the playground is because we got to get these cars off the hallway and and i think rink allen's here i think ellen couch shared with us earlier this is the first time i think she's had a problem with them backed up on the roads and that school was a little better designed with some zigzag and area to put cars it is it's a major challenge it really

116is and i just wanted to reinterpret what dr thornton was saying about the law enforcement assistance that we've been getting is outstanding in the carrsville area for the windsor area the actual uh the carrollton area and of course the smithville high school area it's been times where they had actually had law enforcement that was off duty that actually assisted in the actually uh helping out with the buses coming in working directly with the principal so it's been outstanding for the last couple of days with the law enforcement i just want to make your point of view that's awesome thank you for sharing that thank you thank you miss tines for your your statement earlier from the entire department thank you yes i appreciate everything you all are doing i know parents are going to be

117upset and the students right now may be a little delayed in getting home but the most important thing is we get them there safely thank you go fix it [Laughter] okay next on the agenda is the report from the superintendent we're going to start with the equity update is great thank you good evening madam chair members of the board and dr thornton we are um going to share with you a little bit of what we're doing with regard to social emotional learning as the kids have returned to school this year but i will start with eric is it an arrow key yes okay i'll start with what we and what we did last year just to recap last year when the kids returned to school thank you school-based mental health staff such as our school

118counselors social workers and psychologists they've met monthly and they discussed things like counseling adult and teacher self-care covid 19 specific issues threat and risk assessments they also reviewed video ease revised suicide prevention guides and they discussed tricky ongoing cases and needs presenting throughout the district in terms of training and resources last year teachers were trained on sel and abuse during pre-service weeks we did partner with western tidewater community services board and we trained on youth and mental health recognizing and responding and we also provided resources to schools highlighting simple tier one interventions and supports and we did a list red flags for the need for additional tier 2 and tier 3 supports for students this year we are taking a different approach to behavior a more structured approach to behavior we do we have had

119our behavior ias in the elementary schools for the past couple of years now they have been under they have not been under special education but this year they will be they are actually going to be supervised by our board certified behavior analyst and she has the group of five behavior ias working with her they've been training all summer and we are going to be implementing rti with behavior so we're approaching behavior more structured and through that rti process this year so what that's going to look like is at the tier one level which is that base level of intervention the behavior ia is going to be working with our behavior coach and they're going to determine what tier one interventions would be appropriate for specific students that are identified by the building administrators as needing

120support materials and supports are going to be created by that behavior ia and that behavior ia will meet with the school team talk about what the interventions are going to be and then the general education teacher will implement those interventions because this is at tier one so that's that base general education level trish i have a question sure so the behavior ia that's instructional assistant yes so have they had special training yes uh they how many are at each building one one at each elementary building not middle and high correct just that's elementary right now yep and how many behavior coaches do we have one so kalyn long is our bcba she's our behavior coach and she has the five ias under her currently so after tier one if those interventions are working great if

121not they will move to tier two through the rti meeting process in terms of tier two interventions that's when the behavior iia is going to possibly tweak what's been presented what's been tried they might introduce something different in terms of a support but that's when they are hands on with that student so the level of intensity just you know uh is up one notch essentially in that tier two process again we're looking at a three week time frame in terms of allowing the interventions to take place going back to the rti team determining if they're working and if not then we move to tier three would we be able to to get an update on how this is going since it's a new program yeah we can update it um whenever yeah semester might work

122we have a great data collection tool and that we've designed to help not only the administrators identify the students but as the ias are working with the students to identify how the interventions are working and where the kids are in terms of the process and their progress really with behavior so we'll have that data so we can take a look at it when you guys would like it sounds like a really great program we're hoping uh it we're hoping that it it takes off the way we envisioned it um kalyn has been working with the ias already this summer they're doing a lot of training um they have uh a lot of materials at their at their disposal in terms of visuals in terms of reinforcers so we're hopeful that this would be a support

123to the schools and the kids and this is these are children who aren't yet identified in special education correct thank you yep these are students who don't have an identified disability exactly so we're trying to broaden that support for kids who are simply having difficulty you know returning to school all right and at that tier three level which is the top of the triangle in terms of rti uh we are at that point if things have not worked with just the general accommodations and supports the hands-on support with behavior ia we're now looking at a behavior change plan so that's a little bit more formal and we have that uh behavior change plan in place it's going to be more formalized documented again we're increasing the supports we're increasing the time with that student and

124then of course after three weeks if those things have not helped with regard to that individual students needs then we would move to the next step which possibly could be child study do you guys have any questions about that plan best of luck thank you i really wish you the best with that we're hopeful i think it's a good plan and um we'll tweak as needed we need something like that it's structured and we've been needing it so i think it'll be good thank you thank you thank you good evening madam chair dr thornton board members congratulations the greatest of the community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of his members that was a quote by coretta scott king in an effort to show more compassion and support for all of our students

125in the isle of wight county community we teamed up with farmer's bank and christian outreach to give over 350 backpacks stuffed with school supplies last thursday september 2nd families on both ends of the county came to windsor high school and smithfield high school to pick up backpacks so that our extraordinary children could feel prepared and have a sense of belonging on their first day of school inclusion ensures that all of our students feel invited to school but equity assures that they have what they need when they get there we would like to thank the teachers staff members student volunteers and community partners who showed up with compassion to serve our families next year my goal is to double the number of backpacks we gave out this year to 700 for next year and anything is

126possible if we all work together as a community now this is just the start of our goal to become more engaged with our families and i'm excited to announce that 12 staff members from the division including myself will be attending the 2021 national family engagement summit in norfolk virginia i'm still learning to say norfolk the way you all say it i tried so hard but my jersey accent is still there i'm trying though y'all i got you all right i got it all right um the theme for the 2021 national family engagement conference is reconnecting and reimagining now the goal of the conference is to help us as a division do a couple of things the first is gain strategies to promote equitable family engagement practices now that includes but it does not limit communication

127is accessible to all families regardless of internet access disability or language barriers number two discovering family engagement practices that lead to maximum learning advances for all students evaluating the effectiveness of family engagement efforts in our school across the division four exploring how to build capacity to support more collaborative family and school partnerships five to gain strategies to connect with families in and out of virtual environments and six finding best practices to empower and support all of our families while celebrating language and cultural diversity now we hope that we will grow in excellence with intentional family engagement that fosters a sense of belonging in our community after all the african proverb does say that it takes a village to raise a child thank you [Applause] any questions i'm excited about the family engagement summit i'm looking

128forward to hearing about that yes ma'am the twelve uh uh that's hard this did say staff yes ma'am i was wondering if you had any um citizens parents you know involved in that group but you did say staff yes and that's made up of there's some teachers um some staff members but they're also counselors because we know that they are directly um connecting with those family members and then some central office staff and together we will work and come up with uh bring that information back from the conference and present that to dr jordan and the strategic plan committee okay but the goal is more family engagement that is the goal because if it takes a village then we have to empower the village and so when we talk about equity equity is not just

129giving our students what they need but it's giving our teachers what they need is giving our parents what they need is giving everybody what they need and so we are focused into building our community and making sure that our families and our community members have everything that they need to support their child so they can get the best education thank you thank you very much [Applause] okay state assessment update well good evening madam chair members of the board dr thornton this evening i'll provide you with an update regarding state assessments uh specifically state sol assessments accreditation and also student growth assessments so let's start by looking back at state assessment administration and also the impact on the pandemic of the pandemic on on testing in the state so the last full year of testing prior

130to the 2021 school year as you know we gave the state sols in the spring of 21. prior to that the last administration was the spring of 2019 for elementary and middle schools and the fall of 2019 for high schools as far as accreditation i just want to remind you that accreditation from the virginia department of education in the state was waived for the 2021 school year because obviously no state sols were given in the spring of 2020. and then also due to the continued impact of the pandemic on students accreditation was waived for the current school year that we're in the 21-22 school year i'll have more on accreditation and um some subsequent slides yeah ask so we're going to be testing but the accreditation is is that what you're saying for this year

131accreditation is again waived for the current school year that we're in do the testing that's correct we will be testing and i'll speak to that a little bit and also accreditation you may have some more questions at that point on it so as far as the purpose of the sol test i think it's important for us to kind of pause for a moment understand what is the purpose that the sol tests were given in the spring of 21. um it's very important that those assessments were given knowing that during a pandemic things were not going to be the same especially student achievement data but the the most important thing there for us as educators and for our students is the information regarding the impact of the of the pandemic on student achievement so we have

132rich data vast data now to look at to help our students with the needs that they may have and it's also the spring of this past year provides a baseline for growth for future accreditation calculations and i have some specifics on those calculations in a few moments in addition the the vdoe allowed for remote student progress tests this past spring and what that basically means is that for families who did not want their students to come in to school to take the state sol they may have been home on virtual learning and they didn't feel comfortable having the child come in the state did offer that student progress test it wasn't a secure test so it's not an sol test but from that we now have again detailed information regarding those students and how they

133fared on the state standards of learning for their grade levels and subjects from last year and also obviously to identify areas for instructional need and areas of instruction one of the key pieces here is that the purpose of the spring 21 administration and now the data that we have and it's been put out to the media and to divisions from the um state from the virginia department of education from the state superintendent it's been made very clear the purpose of that data is not as we've done in past years where we look at our data we compare it to previous years for our division grade levels or maybe we compare to neighboring divisions that's not the purpose the purpose is to have the student achievement data to inform instruction one note that i will make

134that came out from the state state and for in our case iwcs pass rates for the 2021 sol tests reflect disruptions to instruction caused by the pandemic decreased participation in state assessment programs pandemic related declines in enrollment fewer sol retakes that was not an emphasis obviously this past administration retakes and more flexible opt-out options for the state assessments so the piece that i made about the importance is this the achievement data and the reports that we get regarding individual students as well as some aggregate data for student groups um to inform instruction that's the key but you can see here some aggregate data um you you'll notice isle of wight on the left and then the state is the blue bar and i'll speak to why there's those are missing for writing in history so

135here you'll see uh reading writing math history and science those are aggregate from third grade right through eighth and then high school end of course that's everything combined and another important piece here is with the um writing and history you don't see the state data and that's because those state scores are not reported due to the large number of divisions who used flexibility for local performance assessments in those two areas so they just didn't report out on that data point as far as the remote testing that i talked about and those that was for students who parents were not comfortable having them come to school to do the sol test administration those remote tests that were taken those scores are not in this aggregate data they were not a secure test they were again simply

136used to help us with data to inform instruction another um important piece that i've mentioned is how the data is going to be used to inform instruction let's take a look at that a little bit more closely so what i what we pulled here um colleen loud helped us with this she just did it pulled a generic um student detail by question report so we get these reports for each and every student and we get very similar data for those who took that remote assessment but this is the type of data if you look at for instance that box that has i think it's like a yellowish oranges border at the top that's where we literally can see for every student the reporting category we can see every student um question from the um adaptive

137test which you see it's either you know the higher middle or lower level question that was asked and then we can see by the x if the student got it correct the check mark if they had it wrong but that's just a wealth of data at the teacher's fingertips and they have that for individual students they can also then look at some more aggregate type data for like a grade level things of that nature which can really help to reflect on pedagogy that was used for different strands if i'm a teacher in a particular class then i'll have the data i have access to the day of all the students that took the test in my class that's correct and ms perkins you would also have data for students who took the remote assessment it

138wasn't the sol but it's based on the standards and so you would have very similar data so this student here you said that x were the ones that were correct and the checks were wrong i'm sorry i may have said that in the converse of that the x would represent wrong and the checks would represent correct so but they can quickly look and see and identify which standards and start to then say okay small groups where might some needs be for that student very important then you put that together with some of the data assessments that we use that ms getz was speaking to we start to very quickly be able to address need one one quote that i wanted to share was something that the state superintendent dr lane said and i think it

139speaks to what we're talking about he said recently about the time this data came out what matters now is where we go from here and we'll use the data from the sols to identify to identify the unique needs of every learner as our school reserve resume in-person instruction but again his emphasis is on use the data to help children now to grow and i think often we get caught up into comparing ourselves to the state or comparing ourselves to suffolk or hampton and that is what i mean a lot of times about we get hung up on one assessment one day in time it's to inform our teachers our instructional staff how to better teach our children as we move forward and what are their gaps from year to year one example back on that

140slide so you see past proficient a teacher may see this and she may see that first one draw conclusions with assume you've got it wrong she may say see that three-fourths of her students got that wrong so they're triggered yeah she needs to i need to teach them exactly however i delivered that it didn't seem to stick with anyone so teachers really dig deep into this information to inform their instruction and become better and i think we have lost our eyes sometimes when we focus on just competition competition or we haven't been next to it's about meeting every kid's individual needs so teachers in schools will do exactly what dr thornton said with this data data that's coming in for your students that you're receiving but you can look at the data also for the

141group that you taught the previous year now you have that data and you say well what strategies or approaches did we use to teach a certain concept that students did very well on or maybe not so well and you might adjust your pedagogy from that data so here next we'll look at growth assessments all right so looking at legislation in 2021 general assembly passage legislation requiring the implementation of growth assessments in reading and math for grades three three so that's in place here's the timeline from the virginia department of education so our current school year right now this is year one of that growth assessment timeline we will implement growth assessments this fall so they'll be administered this fall and we'll then give the state sol the formal sol test in the spring and again

142we're talking about grades three through eight reading and math year two of the growth assessment implementation per this legislation is the 2022-23 school year and for that you'll do a growth assessment in the fall one mid-year in the winter and then you'll do the formal actual sol test in the spring so you can kind of think of it like little check-ins along the way you'll have the fall you'll do a check-in mid-year that's rich data same type of data and reports we're talking about that we just looked at all to inform instruction and to help us form groups help meet the needs of students whether it's to accelerate them remediate whatever they might need so that'll be a tremendous asset but the word growth let's not lose that because that's critical to this um and

143we'll speak to that in a little more detail in a moment when we talk about accreditation please so now what we've been doing is we've been assessing when they come to school about mid-year and at the end of the year and we've been doing that but now the state is coming along saying we're going to test at the fall in the middle and at the end which we've already been doing but now we're going to have to be doing that for the state and we're going to be doing our own we're saying no we're just going to do the state and we're going to we're going to adjust our whole timeline you know for next year and for the mid-year like we won't need to do that for every student i was going to say

144because that's just what's too much testing yes yes correct so with this we obviously will have some natural adjustments that we'll make with what we have been doing previously so a couple notes about the growth assessments that are developed by the virginia department of education they're fairly concise computer adaptive tests and this is really important so when you look at the fall of 2021 right now we'll give that um growth assessment and that will be based on content from the previous year's instructions so if i'm a sixth grader i'm a sixth grade math student i'm going to take the growth assessment it will be an assessment of the fifth grade math standards of learning so it's not a pretest it's to see how have i done in mastering the previous year's standards of learning and

145then my teachers can use that to help craft a plan for me to support me moving forward so that's that's a very vital piece of that it's not like a pre-test of content to come do we know if the test is going to look like a sol test or is it going to be a different kind of test it i believe the format that students will be fairly similar in a computer adaptive test to what they're used to doing now i mean i think a little short colleen you want to speak to that a it is going to little bit the math is 20 because you can tell from the mic so they can hear you at home the math is 20 to 25 questions reading is 17 to 20 questions it's run through test

146nav which is the same program that sols are run through so when the kids go in it's going to look exactly like it looks in the spring when they take sol tests it's just shorter okay thank you welcome give some test taking experience as well prior to i'm sorry i said again give some test taking experience too prior to taking the oil down exactly especially for our third graders who have never taken it before yes and even our fourth and fifth graders who if they they refused testing last year then they wouldn't have taken one yet so it does provide valuable experience there we've always tried to provide our students with some sol type experiences but this is the real thing created by the department of ed that the students are set for so that

147that's definitely a great point okay so as far as the purpose of the growth assessments well we've talked about some of them already they'll identify learning gaps from the 2021 school year due to the pandemic and of course by doing it in the fall based on the previous year's assessments that's kind of already been made clear we'll receive that student detail by question report that i shared with you will receive that same type of report for the growth assessments for each student but it won't have on the one that i showed you it had a um it had a a score whatever that is 0 to 600 it's not going to have that the purpose of that is just the data from the test administration so there's not a score that will receive like the

1480 to 600 or that the student would ever see it's also to provide a baseline for a baseline to measure growth for accreditation for the 22-23 school year so as we look to next year they will have an accreditation formula and these growth assessments will be part of that so if you look at the next part i included accreditation calculation will look at the spring of 2022 sol so in the spring we give the formal sol it'll look at that it'll compare to the fall growth assessment and it'll also compare to the spring of 21 sol whichever comparison shows greater growth for the student will be used in calculating accreditation and so with that if you have any additional questions be happy to answer i asked along the way thank you very good thank you

149okay next on the agenda is the zone transfer and application for non-resident report so you have the report in front of you as you see we have lots of zone transfers and tuition students we're just asking that you take a look at if you have any questions please let me know quite a few quite yes yes but they were approved some weren't i saw correct very few but some yes and um they're only approved if we have room for them so we have room for them our employees we always approve oh i see what you're saying that's where most of them come from our employees it's a really nice perk that we give our employees they can bring their students here for free and they can also choose which school they go to whether they

150live here or not so we do allow our employees to do that the other ones if we didn't have room you're going to see they were probably declined yeah thank you you're welcome okay next on the agenda is advanced placement test scores oh sorry annual professional development that's what we don't want to miss good evening madam chair members of the board dr thornton so i'm here to talk to you a little bit about our annual professional development where we are so far this year um kova definitely put a little little jam in that last year but we did a lot of training virtually throughout the year it was kind of an ongoing process this year our theme was to reboot and by reboot we meant refocus realign reignite learning so we really wanted to get

151kids excited and get our teachers excited about remembering their why and their passion for teaching we started early august with our administrative boot camp it's three long full eight hour days where all of our administrators so our central office administrators our principals assistant principals instructional coaches this year even our reading coaches attend our boot camp as we call it and we address issues of instructional leadership we norm our walk through documents and we review lessons and we kind of talk about what the feedback's going to look like for those individuals during that time so that we're all talking the same language in every building we address curriculum updates anything that's going to be coming down the pike for them things they need to know about we talk about management and expectations and making sure the

152the facilities are up to par and taking care of your work orders and processes things like car drop off and that sort of stuff um and then most importantly we talk about strategic planning within the individual buildings so that they are aligning their practices with the mission and vision of the division then we launch our new teacher orientation um this is two full days for all of our new teachers i have to say this was the biggest class we've had as long as i can remember but they really come together and the new teachers kind of get a sense of community as they get to know each other there's a lot of team building but then there's also talk about school and classroom culture and how you build that in your classroom with relationships with

153your kids there's an emphasis on deeper learning and we go through the focus documents so they really understand what that means and what it looks like here in our building we talk about the instructional framework and we walk them through each stage of that and they actually leave with a lesson aligned to the instructional framework that they will teach in their classroom during the first week of school we talk about critical thinking and they get an opportunity to explore the critical thinking focused documents and really dive deep into how they can institute and implement those specific practices in their classrooms and then finally we talk about project-based learning units we introduce them to the pbl lounge where we house all of our projects that have been created and vetted by our staff over the years

154and we walk them through the process of planning tuning designing and launching a project and then even talk about expo then there's convocation which is an exciting event it's personally my favorite event of the year this year as you said we did have mr larry bell who came in and he was really just just dynamite with our teachers and really getting people excited um good google mogul right um the power of a teacher and he really talked about that in his breakout session as well and then all of our teachers attended a reboot session that led into their monday trainings around the four and the four documents that we're emphasizing this year so pbl deeper learning instructional thinking instructional framework and critical thinking um so they did a little starter session on friday and then

155on monday they had a longer session in depth with their coaches in the building and last but not least is the work week and recurring professional learning and work week this year was a lot we had quite a bit of great opportunities for our teachers to to learn and explore the aligned curriculum resources the focus documents discovery ed we rolled out freckle waterford letters and no red ink all programming i heard susan talk about freckle too what's freckle so freckle is um is our response to intervention piece so students it takes their star 360 score and then puts students for remediation or for gifted we have both sides of freckle um so it's an adaptive program that works with that student at their level um waterford is a reading program for k2 i can't haley

156is here and kids well haley's not with us but susan could speak more to the the waterford piece letters is is more about really learning to read and the science behind how children learn to read and so we're really excited about that one and then the no red ink is um something that our upper level teachers have been asking for for years that really helps kids with grammar and writing don't write mark their paper up with red ink no we don't actually and neither does that mean it's the program no ready well that's what i mean i'm not doing that we also took time to vertically articulate our k-12 stem initiative and so we had our k2 scientific investigation gifted teachers push in our stem teachers all of our high school engineering teachers they all

157came together and looked at what we're doing at each level so that students are getting a different and unique experience in each of those courses and they aren't getting the same thing in stem class that they're getting in their scientific investigation push in so we wanted to make sure that it's unique and challenging and rigorous from a k-12 look we reviewed our ka gifted plan we've been through our fine arts alignment and curriculum resources there was early intervention training the star self-contained cohort continued their work streaming three our pre-k had a little reboot as well with the uva program power school special programs then even pe sped and ell teachers all had different opportunities to engage in dialogue and get back together and start that planning process again we had of course our open open

158houses and our planning for the cultural competency which is coming down the pike with the teacher evaluation piece so that's where we were we are with professional learning today we know much about the cultural confidence i think the the information has just really passed and we are getting kind of working through that right now to see exactly what that because the state kind of put it out there didn't give us a lot of guidelines around what it is in our policy too so i just didn't know if we had the information yet it does have to be in the teacher evaluation um by 2022-23 and teachers will have to go through some training so will they provide the training like is it something we don't have we don't have any of that okay we do

159know it's going to be part of the evaluation process yes thank you any questions here so the next one's me too all right so ap testing results for the 21 22 school year um so this says testing changes but really these are just changes from the normal way of testing for ap these were things that were actually carried over from when we shut down in march um so there were multiple windows for testing again this year all content was still tested there were full-length tests provided to students they had paper and computer testing options and then students with significant medical issues were in fact allowed to test from home again this year which was a carryover we gave 54 tests in the math and science arena a lot of the calculus biology those were our

160predominant ones and tests in the english social studies and fine arts areas so there was quite quite a big interest in those those assessments so i looked at this powerpoint of course before tonight if you could go back one screen i don't understand why windsor high school has no calculus a b or i mean it's like all the smithfield high has and we don't have any at windsor the students may not have opted to take the test they can choose not to take it if they don't take it they take honor's weight for the course rather than the ap weight it also does have to do with course offerings and what's offered okay so that's what bothers me our are windsor high school not offered these at windsor high because that to me does not

161seem to be um incredible windsor has the the de offering of the course calculus instead of the abbc and that's just what they've elected to do and they do have a strong enrollment in d e calculus smithfield does d e precalc they don't do d e calculus if a kid wanted least wanted a particular ap course that was offered at smithfield could the parent or the student asked to be able to take that course at that school we typically would use virtual virginia at that point we do um if we needed to do that but like i said it it is it's just a difference in course offerings so it's not a disadvantage that's what i want to know calculus which is weighted as a five and is accepted in colleges so that's a very

162strong course offering um smithfield does not offer de calculus they offer de precalc it's just a difference in what they've done traditionally yeah i mean that's a whole lot of listings right there that's zero i don't know i just want to make sure that windsor inn gets what they should be able to get they can take it on through virtual virginia they absolutely can take it through virtual virginia but you also have to have enough to make a class so that's and you know miss perkins you remember being at windsor high school you always struggle with if you have three students who want to take d uh a b calculus you can't make a class right i understand that so is that when they're offered virtual virginia yes okay yes but they can take could

163could would it not be possible for that kid to go to smithfield to take up that class it depends on when it's offered i mean that's a 30-minute commute both ways um i'm not saying no it's not possible but it just would depend on do they have time to get there and many times that's going to prohibit them from going to the other school but like if you go back to looking at d e calculus you're getting a same that's the highest weight you can get a p d e so you're still getting that coarse weight okay all right one more question yeah you know how we got really good at virtual learning yeah at home is there any way that windsor high could be virtual at the smithfield high and not have to travel

164but do the virtual into a classroom that might not have made at windsor high and there's already we've done that before years ago we and we've explored that and those are things we could do it's not that we could not do that we can it just hasn't been a need where the school has requested us to do that hey we have these kids that really want to take it the kids take um the de calculus okay i have a question for you the last two the physics have we actually have we ever had students enroll in those programs we had students that sat for that test last year okay all right thank you all right so but total we gave 427 ap tests across the division now that's not necessarily that could be more than

165one student taking more than one test so that counts each individual assessment not each individual student so our average scores by subject the first column there you see the lighter blue that was our score last year and the dark blue in the middle was our score this year our average score and then the final one on the end is actually the state average score so as you can see they went down a little bit but also when you take fewer tests it has a bigger impact on your average and i think that they're pretty well in line with what we saw across the state so any questions thank you okay next is the vacancy report good evening madam chair and members of the board just a brief report on our vacancies for this um this

166summer we had as i think dr carroll pointed out we had a record number of new hires which is great and i do want to emphasize that a lot of the the increase in the vacancies had a lot to do with the beginning of last year um we had a lot of teachers due to covet reasons and not teachers but staff in general um resigned last year and so some positions were not filled so that created a bigger vacancy pool than what we normally have um to date we've filled 71 teaching positions um we've filled approximately 34 instructional assistant positions um 11 administrator positions we still currently have five regular teaching positions to fill two special education teaching positions and eight ia positions to fill tomorrow two of the schools have interviews for two of

167their teaching positions so we're fingers crossed for that and yesterday i got a bus driver application and today i got bus driver applications so yeah yeah some of their parents were thinking they would sign up for parents bus drivers any questions the ias that you said we have eight ia i think it's about eight others are they spent ias they are yes we have one um we actually have one kindergarten ia um which is part time and then we have one um the first and second grade ia the new position we have one of those and then the rest are sped so with are we having sub ias right now because i know we have to have the number um christine are we using subs for the ideas story with you but i all of

168think high needs situations okay that was sort of our goal all right thank you okay next on the agenda is bullying prevention resolution yes good evening the virginia school boards association identifies october as bullying prevention month we have a resolution we typically bring to you in september so we can get that approved before october gets here and um you know i have to say i'm not in the schools but when i am we've got some amazing kids and i'm not saying that bullying is not an issue but i sure don't see a lot of issues like i did when maybe i was back in school they seemed so accepting and respectful and i kind of wanted to segue from what ms jackson said i think a lot of times the children can be our examples

169for the adults so having said that i would appreciate your approval of the resolution okay thank you hey this is an action item okay madam chair would like to make a motion to approve the bullying prevention resolution as presented by ms briggs motion made it has been second vote please and this is something near and dear to my heart there is just no excuse for bullying and i just i cringe when i even think about it okay mesh and carry next is the report on opening day of school now i get the good part because i'm just going to make you smile i'm going to look at cute kids i'm going to let you look at cute kids i'm just going to let you smile if you have any questions let me know obviously we

170welcomed a whole bunch of kids back on tuesday kids that haven't been in school for a very very long time um and i think if you were out and about you saw there is a lot of excitement as this little boy clearly here we go getting off the bus kids have their mask on coming into school there's long lines of cars you see them don't you dropping off but look at those little kids coming in there's miss couch directing a little student yeah oh look at him they're so cute they are i know even but there's a mask to see them with their mouths getting to work and you know really our goal for us this year is trying to make school as normal as possible for these children that's what we're trying to do

171we're trying to get back to normal oh look at the cafeterias and they're so happy to see their friends again dr thornton has orange jacket there i will tell you that young lady when i was talking with her was drawing a nice picture with all different colors and she said i want to draw you dr thorpe she picked up an orange pencil and started coloring in an orange and then she looked at my pants i had my burgundy pants on because tech had won over the weekend and she said those are like brown and this was a in kindergarten and they were she was trying to take two colors together to make brown wow and it was just uh it's so fun to go i guess it's high level thinking there yes and i got

172to vis i went to visit windsor elementary school and west side and yeah it was just such joy in the building excitement and i'm going to put in a plug for west side go visit west side the gray tiles are gone we have completely painted the inside of the building softened that building the gray tiles made it look so dark dingy matt johnson has institutions lights on in the hallway like stick on lasers i don't know what they are but he is turning that through his house system into a magical place to be and we all know how old that building is and it is worth go walk through that building yes and uh the and the renovations we did in the auditorium there's a lot of good things happening in that building and it's

173so colorful look at this there you go thumbs up we're learning center kids it is it is aren't they sweet is that windsor elementary there that was windsor wasn't doctors so they're the the four those are the four-year-olds okay yeah they look kind of questionable because they look like they could be about first grade big kids yep you see i told you i'd make you smile right now you're welcome thank you susan i know it's cheating it really is and ms carver before we leave my report i do want to put in another plug and thank hr department for the work they did to fill so many vacancies and really recover from the pandemics [Applause] dr thornton opening school how many students did we have enrolled as of end of the day today i have

174no idea okay give me a minute i'll tell you what about yesterday what about yesterday can you tell me yesterday yeah if you give us just a minute we'll pull it up okay i was just wondering i can tell you smithville high school ninth grade is at close to four i thought it was close to 478 which is about 70 students more than very high normal so that one grade in particular we usually see a little boom there because kids may have been in a different school from k through 8 and then come to our high school but this is one of the largest ninth grade classes 5619 today okay which is over the projection yeah that's over last year this is just the first few days of school yeah some of them are still

175on vacation and i will say i didn't know we were over well i'm not saying it as a you know but some some kids probably won't come back until this weekend if they're out of town for you know but but normally the last number we have to get to the state is september 30th okay and normally we're down to 300 students at this time we don't get to where we project until closer to september 30th so that is that's a scary number because there could be a more common one well i'm happy to see that because as a board member with the pandemic and everything and the children doing virtual and then you're hearing a lot of parents well i don't want to send my child back i want to do virtual i was afraid

176it would really be low but i'm glad we're where we are you know it did drop drastically where we well pretty much i think about our budget okay in our funding i didn't want it to be to the point that it dropped to the point that we had to alter some things thank you okay next on the agenda is action on the closed session items we need a motion personal report first yes i'm sure i moved to approve the personnel report set candidate and second it's not there i hit it oh there it goes no it's still not showing we'll get air oh you did i'm sorry i didn't see it you did god thank you um okay mission carried all right next on the agenda is religious exemption r-e-x september 21 0-1 matter of

177share our motion to approve the request for the religious exemptions for the compulsory attendance for rex 12 21 0-1 and we have a motion and it has been second we need to do all of them separate okay motion carry yes all right next is religious exemption wreck september 21 21-02 madam chair i'll make a motion to approve the request for religious exemption compulsory attendance for rex september 21 two okay mission made motion second mission carried next on the agenda is the religious exemption wreck september 21 0-3 madam share i'll like to make a motion to approve the request for religious exemption for compulsory attendance for rex september twenty one zero three what you want to do in the all right uh i'm jera but she hasn't called in next on the agenda's religious exemption wrecks

178september 2104 i'm jeremy to approve rex uh religious exemption rex september 2104 okay motion made and it has been second vote please mine didn't come up i think it's tired next on the agenda is um the adoption of the consent agenda the meeting minutes donations field trips and financials i'm jared i moved to uh approved to through the adoption of the consent agenda second mates and it has been second vote please how are you okay motion carried and next on the agenda is the policies for the second read any questions on any of those listed the only one i had was i h a which is grouping for instruction and that has been totally eliminated can you explain why so that's a vsba recommendation because it's not required in state code so they have they're

179going through and they're removing those that aren't required if you read it though it's what we do anyway i was going to say we do it we don't even need it we don't need policy to no it just it's just good common sense really it's what we do anyways but that's why it was removed okay okay so this is an action item madam chair like to make a motion to approve the policies for second read as presented made and it has been second vote please it took a half a day to read them okay motion carried next on the agenda is regulations and exhibits and this is just information we had one any questions on that one okay this is not an action item okay and finally finally it's a word everybody's looking to hear

180for tonight um bored comments oh i was gonna say something um is it on okay so first i just wanted to welcome ms style and kylie i'm very excited to work with you guys and i also want to say thank you to all the staff for making my first day of senior year very special because i was so excited to come back to school and everyone did amazing and it was perfect everything you can imagine so you're gonna drive to school i did drive to school so traffic was a little crazy there was a lot of traffic yeah getting a field hockey practice which was like 50 feet across the road was a little crazy but made it on time so very good and it's so nice to have you sitting up here too we

181welcome you is there anything you'd like to say how was your first board meeting good answer did you have anything to say either one of you no okay um well i said pretty much what i wanted to say at the beginning but i would like to at this time thank all of alawite county school staff for getting our students back to a regular school year thank you very much also um neely and kylie y'all got this over there i want to confuse those two i'm not i'm not asking you to do this but think about it if you would like if the two of you would like to work on a joint project this year it will and it will be helpful to me and probably the other board members and dr thornton and staff

182if you could um maybe do a survey in your building about uh dress codes and how the students feel about the dress codes that we have now uh well she just fainted now just do it just do a little survey bring it back it needs to go here i mean but these are experts they work with the students there in the building and talk to them okay i mean because we are one generation you all are another generation you know maybe you know we could sit down and discuss this and see where if we possibly need to tweak it or something you understand yes and i'm not we we have to we're we want them to cover okay yes but you know i trust you young ladies thank you like i said i'm not asking

183you to do it but if you want to do a work on a project you know i would just want to see what which what would happen that's all are we going to survey that i'm sorry susan are we going to survey the teachers too well that well that that that's what that's what the staff to do they're going to work with the students that's what they're here for to bring their information what students want need and if we need to tweak some things okay and there's times i would like to bring up i know neil is very interested in mental health oh good he's going to be pursuing that and doing some wonderful around that yeah explaining well talk to me later i might have some other avenues yes it was hard during the

184summer just because it was crazy for everyone especially like college applications and it was yeah insane so but we were talking about starting it back up once the school year started just because it also wasn't much to do over the summer since nobody was in school so well the reason i said that nearly because i sit on another a board regional board for mental health okay oh perfect okay okay and um i am going to end with a topic that's not as fun as what susan got to do but we did hear concerns about the woke challenge books and i did get emails over the the last couple of weeks and first of all the books available in the woke challenge they're optional reading in the library but the big concern for me is the

185need for parental involvement and transparency with the mature controversial topics in some of the books books containing mature adult topics on sex explicit descriptions of rape and vulgar and obscene language violence drug use so our goal should be parental involvement and transparency that includes the need to communicate to parents books that their child has checked out at the media center and that communication or that communicates and allows parents to review all books and the right to provide direction for their child and if read discussion with their child from there so i would like to see because i've been thinking a lot about this i'd like to see if we have the technology capability to send out email notifications to parents for every book that a child checks out this involves the parents on these growing

186controversial issues that are in our world today this would provide transparency for parents on materials put in the hands of their children and i dare say there are not a ton of books checked out on the middle and high school levels so even if we don't have that click of a button capability an email notification to parents on books checked out at the middle and high school levels doesn't seem unreasonable so at the next meeting i'd like to have information on the possibility and other possibilities to provide needed transparency and parental involvement the growing number of controversial books made available to our students could we have that i'm asking we we could i think that's an overwhelming burden on staff and it's not as easy as you think we'll investigate to see the possibilities and

187um next are i i guess i'm going to say is the next question every book a student picks up in the library and doesn't check out and happens to read in the library should we zoom in to see what they're reading i think we're we're trying to get a little bit overboard and what we're we we have a we have a policy and a form in place that if a parent doesn't like something uh that their student is reading that they fill it out it's sent for it and there's a procedure for that and i think there's no way we can possibly read every book we have in our libraries that's not what i said that we need parental involvement parental involvement these are not adults in high school they are still children they're not

188adults and for this kind of content to be available for these children without parental involvement knowing what their children are reading i don't think we've done enough to make the the transparency that is needed and the parental involvement where they know what their children have and if if if we i don't know what the technology involves but i know that we have student id with their email their parent email and they scan stuff here and they scan stuff there i'm asking if a child checks out a book from the media center why is it not possible for the parent to be notified because if my child checked out a book with explicit sex descriptions of rape vulgar and obscene language i'd want to know about it i as a parent i would want to know

189about it and then if i get the notification i can look at the book i can approve it or i cannot approve it and if i approve it then it's a time where maybe we can i can have some discussion with the child from there right now we give parents the opportunity to opt out of sex education but we're not going to give them the option to say that book that if it were a movie would be rated r we're not going to give that parent the option to say i don't want my child to read that book and i don't think wait okay i don't think this should have to be overwhelming because i i i personally don't know the number of books that middle and high school students check out so if we

190can't do this at the click of you know a scan then i don't see where it could be impossible to email for the staff to email the parent the the book that the child and it would it could be the controversial ones or it could be all of the ones that they check out but i know when i was in high school i didn't check out books because i don't want to read them because i had enough to read that was assigned to me so that was the least of my worries but if a ch if my child were to pick out some of the books that i have seen and i have reviewed that would bother me as a parent so i am here to protect our students and parent rights and and my

191biggest thing in education is that parental involvement directly affects student achievement we want our parents involved we want them involved from preschool right on through 12th grade and if this can help them be involved in their education help our transparency and provide and encourage parental involvement then i think it's something worth pursuing we can look at the time frame and it would have to be every book checked out because whose moral compass are we following yeah some of the speakers that spoke tonight is it their moral compass that we are going to decide what's in our schools or i didn't say for you to determine what's appropriate if you said either all of the books or the inappropriate ones well i'd like to know what the inappropriate ones are because what's inappropriate to me and

192you and sue and lynn and george are all different the ones that they have that they have deemed as being ones that have been banned and the ones that have all the controversial issues but i think none of those books have been banned well they were viewed as challenged they added the word banned i did my own reasons may i read something no no no that's all right go ahead i just want to read something from a sec because one of the speakers tonight brought up something and i had read it earlier this week uh the american library association condemns citizenship and works to ensure free access to information and the kids students get information from what books media and everything uh i guarantee you at least 75 percent of the homes that are teenagers

193that are going to alawite county schools and and there's probably more they're on tick tock and everything else and and and they have all sorts of ratings on tick tocks but for i well even when i was in high school and that been years ago um we had a few parents wanted to i don't want my child reading that book but fine your child don't have to read that book but maybe my parent didn't have a problem with it because they wanted me they wanted to expose me to the things that are going on in life we are training our students when they leave smithfield high school wins a high school they're going out there to a world that is not censored for them okay they're stepping out there we want them to be able

194to survive it's all about survival this is these books are not on elementary they're not on middle school they're high school these young people we are training to become young adults in our society now if there is a problem we have a policy the parents can take care of that with the building administration that's it unless we go back and change our policy that's the way it is now otherwise we're going to be censoring all of the materials they're reading we're going to have to start censoring what's on there ipads or whatever and you know that's just too much that's a whole another staff completely not even i.t no i agree with with you mr times i think that uh when kids get in high school they need to have the opportunity to explore different

195options they may be exploring options with sexuality their own sexuality and they need to have the opportunity to read books on gender and i mean maybe some of these books that that you know people are taking exception to have to do with that but we cannot censor i do not believe the kinds of materials or the kinds of books that libraries accept in schools and center those and not make them available can i i just want to say so i have a teenager that's a senior i knew nothing about this challenge as a parent and her dad didn't either i kind of agree with denise they are all on social media we can't get my teenage daughter off social media at all we have to take her phone at 9 30 and that's it if

196we don't want her to read a book she's not reading a book period i don't care she can bring it to me if i see it i don't like it it's it it's what we say so that's the structure in our home so we have the right but i wish i would have known about this challenge because i had no clue i found that out today so if that is that was that first all the parents to see was that something that was displayed to all the parents because i just i knew nothing about this challenge so maybe just just making the parents aware of the challenge not necessarily not taking the taking the books off but i would have liked to known about this challenge where where was that information up for the parents

197to know about it's really not a mandatory challenge is something that i'm thinking the library no smith high school library the librarian probably said well okay i'm pretty sure every year they have some project for the students to do but it's not a mandatory thing if the students probably want to go in and take and participate and take on that challenge they have that option okay and and just like you said as a parent you have the option to say well i don't want my child to read the books that are on that list do you have another option where they can still participate maybe any challenge but not read those books okay and that's what's in our policy that is for assigned readings if there is an assigned reading and you don't agree with

198it then there's policy these books are not assigned readings when you go out in the world movies are rated video games are rated and it helps you know what's in the content well books aren't rated but if i'm a parent and we have that kind of book in the library and my child were to check it out i would want to be aware of it so i could talk to my child about it i could look at it i could say no i don't want you reading that oh yes we can read this together have discussion with it but i feel like that parent that parents that we need to be transparent and parents need to know if those books are available they need to know if their child has it so the concern is

199the language in the books it's a it's more than language it's sex it's explicit descriptions of rape it's vulgar and obscene language it's violence it's drug use have you walked in the halls of high school usa there during class change exchange you hear lots of things okay the language that you hear well i'm here to pure language i am one of five but i have expressed my concern i don't feel like that book should be i just feel like parents need to know i'm not saying ban the books but if my child has it please let me know and if we have the technology to let me know i don't see why it can't be done if a child checks out a book at smithfield high school zip zam i get an email i see

200oh we checked out the book [Music] and the three bayers so that mean so i know what they checked out and i don't have a problem with that i don't need to say anything but if i look at a book and i'm like what is this i can go and i can do my own research and see if it's something that i want to talk to my child about so at this point we're going to need the emails the librarians and all of the schools now we'll need the emails of 5619 parents i just asked if we have the technology available i don't know that was how i ended my my um request and even we're going to have to start even from the case if that's what we're going to be doing uh your

201child checked out this book maybe julia had a problem with her child checking it out yesterday in kindergarten i don't have a child but the librarian is going to not just check it out to that child anymore we also have to let the parent know that this is going on if you don't you just listen to the child no children should have an opportunity parental involvement and transparency that's what it's called well we're not going anywhere so i would like to mr uh dr thornton i would like to know if that technology is available by the next school board meeting that's what i want to know we know if our children uh um no we can't we can't do that so anyway that's my request the meeting is adjourned