School Board Meeting 8/12/21

001and this time i make a motion the closed meeting was conducted in conformity with the provision of the virginia freedom of information act as required by section 2.2-3712-d of the code of virginia and certified that only public business matters lawfully exempt from open meeting requirements were discussed and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion by which the closed meeting was convened were heard discuss all considered second we have a motion that has been second vote please okay motion carry this time i want to welcome everyone to our august meeting and we're going to open by asking ms tines to lead us in the pledge in the 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

002under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you we're going to begin with special presentations emerging leaders program presentation thank you [Applause] how you doing good afternoon madam chair board members dr thornton so this year we this summer we were able to launch the emerging leaders summer program and so this is our mission statement and um this summer we had two sites for the emerging leaders and we understood that we needed to separate them so we had them at windsor high school and at windsor elementary school and the purpose was to create an enrichment program that was diverse that allowed for students to have a sense of belonging unity and exposure to a variety of resources and a sense of awareness we had site leaders at both locations we have four teachers and

003two instructional coaches and this lasted throughout the duration of summer school so for four weeks the emerging leaders summer program is for several weeks an interactive workshop that promotes a safe space to take risks associated with intellectual growth and development our students were able to take risks this summer and being able to explore what does it mean to be a scholar what does it mean to be a leader and that's not always the case because sometimes they're so focused on feeling different or being excluded that this summer we wanted to make them feel included where they didn't have to focus on their social identities but they can just focus on learning and they did that we also talked about understanding and embracing oneself they were able to embrace each other they took a chance with

004each other they were able to have courageous conversations that they decided to um have conversations with each other to embrace each other's differences but also value what they all had in common and then they realized that they had more in common than they had and uh differences it also was a spacer that was daily affirmations every morning they came in there were sticky notes that had dearly affirmations they were able to pick a an affirmation and read it in the mirror so they felt empowered throughout the whole entire process and then we also was able to expose our students to things that they some of them were num were unable to ever be exposed to we had a student to say this is my first time ever out of smithfield when they went to nauticus

005our goals we wanted to increase their insight we wanted them to see themselves differently we wanted to help them cultivate their their creativity with deeper learning so many of them got excited about learning to learn for many of them school was not their thing and we had a parent to say like what are you all doing there because during the school year he didn't want to get up and go to school but now this is something that he's interested in what's going on and we just reminded them that also it's it's different because the classroom is smaller but also we were taking the uh taking them outside of the box and helping them to remember that this is limitless giving them an opportunity to think what is it that you want to do if there's

006anything in the world that you could be what would it be and then allowing them to drive the car to their education and then we took the the passenger seat and we took that ride along with them i want to introduce today um chelsea who's going to speak to you about her experience throughout her experience throughout the program good evening madam chair and board maya angelou once said if you're always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be the emerging leaders program strives to develop a sense of belonging self-awareness unity and exposure to diverse resources that will pioneer cultural and historical traditions therefore the purpose of this writing is to explain my experience as an emerging leader and how this program helped me to begin what was my experience as

007an emerging leader my experience as an emerging leader was inspirational it was inspirational because as an emergency because each class session started with a positive every student made sure they encouraged and supported each other for instance each student would choose an affirmation then he or she would read the affirmation in the mirror and place it on the affirmation board the purpose of the affirmations was to export inspire you to keep going emphasizing that you are amazing and you are limitless therefore the affirmations the encouragement from peers is what made my experiment experience good next i also had a fun experience at the emerging leaders program the experience was fun because we had an opportunity to go on field trips play games and do puzzles the first field trip was nauticus nauticus was fun because i

008built an underwater robot and i toured the battleship nauticus the last field trip was the farm at windsor elementary the farm was fun because we were able to feed the animals and learn a little bit about them two of the games we played were jenga and shoulders knees cup the motive of jenga was to see who would knock the blocks down first the motor motive of shoulders knees cup was to get the cup before the before your opponent my class and i completed completed about three puzzles as a whole to show how teamwork makes the dream work lastly how did the emergent leaders program help me the program helped me take a step out of my comfort zone the person who helped me do this was my teacher miss davis miss davis would always call

009on me to answer questions or to give my opinion about something for example we were listening to a motivational speaker and at the end she challenged us to ask the speaker a question when she called me called me to come up i had questions but i was scared to ask finally i gained enough confidence to ask the questions after that moment i felt super proud of myself because i didn't let fear or shyness shyness win in that moment therefore miss davis challenges and putting me on the spot has has helped me be confident to answer questions ask questions and give opinions to break it all together i'm glad i had the opportunity to attend this program everyone's experience may be different but i believe everyone can say that it was a great opportunity the emerging

010leaders program helped me to be more confident in myself and brought out the leader in me i'm a little sad that i won't be able to attend next year due to this being my senior year i will make sure i will implement everything i learned in this program to my next chapter in life as my opening hook says if you always try to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be i'm glad i took this step out of normal routine because i realized how amazing i can be thank you [Applause] thank you chelsea do we have any other emerging leaders here just want to make sure i didn't miss anyone okay so our students um concluded the program with final presentations so the sixth through eighth graders did their presentations at windsor

011elementary school and a 9th through 12th at windsor high school students presented all of their presentations throughout the four weeks and we did a gallery a gallery walk where students had to present their purpose their research they talked they were teamed together and so they also explained how it was to work with each other and be able to compromise when doing a project then during the ceremony we heard students use words like i felt accepted we heard students say i felt heard we heard students constantly repeat the model for emerging leaders which is on the shoulders of those before us we emerge they took the time to learn olive white history but they also took the term time to learn their history and think about those who came before them and the sacrifices that they

012had to make so that they can be successful this summer we just opened their eyes to that anything is possible if you just believe they concluded with their emerging leaders pledge i am unique and there is no one like me i'm extraordinary and no one else can do what i do i'm smart and i have the power to learn gain knowledge and use education to make an impact i am talented my gifts are unparalleled i'm strong i will be resilient in the face of adversity i am supported my community believes in me nothing is impossible if i just believe and put in hard work i am my ancestors dream i am an emerging leader they said this every day at the end of the day as a reminder to themselves our students felt heard our

013students felt accepted and they were different from different walks of life but they accepted each other they loved on each other and they grew and at the end of the ceremony we had a parent who said to us this is not the same student that started the program it's just about giving them an opportunity and that's exactly what the emerging leaders program set out to do and i believe we accomplished that thank you board thank you dr thornton one one comment when you guys do this next year this coming year let the board know i would love to have gone to some of those meetings with those kids she did mrs perkins she invited us i had an opportunity to attend the middle school one but i couldn't attend high school the day before because

014of medical appointment what she did and i'll tell you about it later what happened board members i will say i had an opportunity to go to the to one of their classes where they were practicing presenting like two weeks prior to their final presentation and just in that two week period the confidence was it's like there were new people in a two-week time period and they did the research the first time and had great research but they weren't confident delivering and within that two-week time period what a change they were confident and expressing what they had learned it was it was nice to watch similar to i know you've all seen our expos and stuff and our confidence when you learn how many students was it we have 40 students we have 40 students yes

015so 20 at each site um and so we have 40 slots opened for all of our students did we have a waiting list we did end up having we did end up having a waiting list we did so hopefully now that we um started the program we can take more students next year but also the you know to add more teachers too so that we can have that close small community so that they can be able to express themselves more and take risks these were all students who had all the potential but just didn't have the tools they didn't have the tools to for someone to believe in them and to take that risk to think of education differently to see education and and not be boring that this was something that this could i

016could do this and at the end of the this program they felt like they could be limitless that the sky was the limit um and they were encouraging each other um at the sixth to eighth grade presentation that they were coming out they started to applaud for each other they started to give each other pounds they were just um cheering for each other and telling each other you can do this and we're so proud of you they were they inspired us the staff was inspired by them this summer and it's a great reminder of what building a community looks like thank you very much today i want to say one thing they uh worked hard but they were having fun while they were working yes they did i mean the at the end presentation they

017were having so much fun sharing their information um and it was hot so we were all just walking around but they wanted each one of us to come to their table because they worked hard in development that developing that information but they were so excited about it they said um this is the first time learning seemed like it could be fun but it had always been there our teachers do this all the time but sometimes students do need a little bit more focus and attention on them so we just that the program creates an opportunity to give them a little bit more time to develop and become that leader who's emerging and then we did take a vow the community took about and stood up parents and the community members and said we vow to

018support you to remind you that you can stand on our shoulders to do this and then the students read their pledge to their parents and to the community so this was um this was a collaborative effort this is not just the students we all have to be a part of this too it's all of us or none of us madam chair uh to follow up with mrs jones was saying i mr uh lovato and myself were there and i was like said uh mr lobardo i said that's dr thornton the future dr thornton and that day we even completed the whole school board because i could see all of these young guys bright-eyed children and students they were our future leaders in our community and that's why i was so proud of what they were

019doing they even had an opportunity to dress themselves the way they wanted to and it was one young man he actually had on the full suit everything and he his parents i talked to his parents and they said he really came out they were really proud of him i said well that was the future superintendent of schools i mean the way he carried himself the way he talked he just had he just believed in himself i know i can do it i'm a leader and that's what we need in our community because of i've i said that to say this a lot of times we go out into the community we ask people run for public office do this would you want to lead and i know the board of supervisors as well they need

020to fulfill positions in the community people say no hopefully these young people will be out here in our community i give them 10 years six years 10 years and we will have them ready to fill in to carry on with positions within the alawite county community or wherever they choose to go absolutely thank you it was a lovely program and i enjoyed myself thank you okay thank you [Applause] okay next on the agenda is request to speak and just want to remind everybody if there's anyone here to speak on masks in schools please know that earlier today governor northam announced a public health emergency order to require universal masking when indoors in our k through 12 schools i think the um except the accepting except in when they're eating physical education and when they're playing

021musical instruments and of course when they're outside okay did i get that right you do okay okay so um so first i want to let you know that there's about um there are 27 people that have signed up so i'll start out with the policy in accordance to policy in accordance to policy bddh-e presentations of information on any subject will be concluded at the direction of the board no person will be recognized to speak more than once citizens scheduled on the agenda to speak will be permitted five minutes maximum time for their presentation delegations will be 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 their prepared

022remarks if you have prepared remarks they are asked they should be given to the board clerk please do not approach the board members the school board requests that speakers refrain from referring to specific individuals and that any matter related to a specific student or individual be discussed in a closed meeting ready so the first one is um miss arien williams that's when we'll talk about that when the 30 minutes is over is that what you're talking about i know but we need to make that announcement now because we have so many we need to maybe reduce that time so we won't be here so late tonight well we're going to wait to the 30 minutes and then we'll talk about that okay so ready so the first one this is um arien williams yes sorry

023thank you good evening madam chair and school board members and community shakers changers and builders you know we should be shakers changers and builders in order for us to build a solid foundation i want to talk about unity this evening as we seem to be deepening a divide within our community based on misinterpretations and misconceptions as an educator i'm not teaching critical race theory in my classroom in fact it is not even in a part of the k-12 curriculum i do teach culture in every lesson that i present in my classroom the problem is simply that some do not understand how to define culture i guess what's hard for me to understand is that if a person has never been a part of developing a school curriculum cannot list the standards of learning or never

024created a pacing guide or even sat in the classroom to participate in a lesson well it's hard to assume what is being taught inside of our classrooms so here's a little wordplay it's hard to race critical crit critically with just a theory hopefully you know that a theory is just a rational type of abstract thinking about phenomenon or results of such thinking but i'll just leave that right there for a pondering moment of deep knowledge if the phrase critical race theory offends the spirit then let's just call it coming righteously together for this evening to harbor a much softer tone i love to teach tone with which which is diction in my classroom it is also differentiated in a part of culture by the way you do know that culture is in everything that we

025do the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively as a definition or shall i say the denotation which is the dictionary meaning of the word and that word is culture you see my concern is unity my concern is acceptance my concern is the mental state of our students when they come back into the classroom my concern is equality my concern is being fair which is synonymous to the word equity we are deepening a divide with our anger our negative voices and our traditional mindsets and i will tell you that the students that sit in my classroom they're already seeing the future yet we have closed our own eyes to the past because we are afraid to open them to see the true reality but a unified community and culture cares about the

026diverse world that our children will interact with once they leave the school and have interact with the interactions with a diverse world but a unified community and culture has no problem with transitioning with the world by releasing a traditional mindset and adopting an authentic mindset that is not built on weak misinterpretations rather strength growth and the ability to plant a legacy so in my classroom being culturally responsive means that i have to dig into the hearts of my students to find out who they are and where they come from so that i can help them to get to where they are and to need to be in the future but that's culture so i don't have time to fight over a theory you can do it all you want but you're wasting time but i

027do have time to fight for every single one of my students in my classroom with lessons that allow them to tap into their destiny and their journey through diverse lessons that challenge the mind break depression cultivate the gift within explore the many facets of the world through perspective and find their worth show them how to break past change in future chains and show them freedom and creativity but let me stop right there because i can go on and on because the fight reaches beyond just this moment so the fight reaches beyond holding a community status for our friends and the fight reaches beyond a theory but my fight is educated as a mother a famous author once stated language is powerful when you're able to name a thing it moves out of the realm of

028mystery into concreteness so let's name some things that we can do to empower our community and not make it power less but let's put some things in concrete that builds and i am big on symbolism so this is what i have i did bring some puzzle pieces um today and i'm going to place them out there but if we're truly a part of diversity and we're truly a part of um of community then i challenge you all to take a piece of that puzzle but they're all different types of pieces and so when you all go home i want you all to think that you still hold a piece of your particular community so whether you take it or not i want you to remember that it's not about us it's about our children and

029it's about us changing the future so that they can understand the future for them we're not always going to be here one minute [Applause] next heidi schwartz good evening this board and superintendent have continually said that they will not address comments about what we continue to ask in regards to questions regarding critical race theory and training i ask you parents and citizens and the board of supervisors of iowa white county if this is an acceptable answer the board also publicly claims that they are not teaching students about critical race theory this is a completely false statement let me explain why with thousands of pages obtained by parents and foyers this summer we have indeed found that principles of marxism and critical race theory are being trained to the administrative team and starting this month plan

030to be trained to the teachers which will inherently be trickled down into the classroom this includes er this includes a detailed equity tool plan asked by miss jones and completed by the hardy elementary principal mrs denson found in this plan she states incorporated culturally appropriate lessons and instructions within the curriculum and a goal is set for leaders to ensure all students are acknowledged and seen for who they are by the color of their skin let me repeat that lessons and instructions within the curriculum and students are acknowledged and seen by the color of their skin this is racist marxism and critical race theory this is much more than the courageous conversations that the school board keeps repeating is the goal for the equity and coordinators hire of the iowa white school system the board also

031states that this was not made likely to hire the equity and inclusion coordinator the board stated that this was based on a percentage of student suspensions attending hours and dual enrollment in our schools along with citizen concerns of bias based on these reports i've received some of these studies myself and it would take a much longer time than five minutes tonight to explain them so i'm going to share a quote that was sent to us by a school resource officer the school resource officer served in all the schools but one and it states this i had personally witnessed the discipline administered according to the rules and all students were treated equally when it came to that discipline there was not any racial bias discipline that i witnessed during any of my time at the schools

032i'm going to address the salary of the equity in a coordinator at over 80 thousand dollars a year this board has explained to me that the salary was set at a scale the set scale included years of experience degrees earned and along with her formal training from what can be attained on public record the equity inclusion coordinator has no past experience in the k-12 nor any degrees in equity or trading that's not to say that an individual can come in and not position or do well in a position like this but your explanation of her salary doesn't fit that another citizen tonight will address in more detail tonight expenses over one hundred thousand dollars spent on training and consulting for this equity coordinator if the equity and coordinator was hired at a high salary based

033on her experience and degrees why is the community still spending an additional sixty four thousand dollars on consulting and forty six thousand dollars on training in addition i'd like to address one more thing the superintendent's appearance of abuse and leadership and power the board needs to investigate his social media post the isle white school facebook page when he addressed the post from an individual who paste posted a picture of miss jones he blamed this on a group of parents thinking it was done because she doesn't look like us and called us shameful he knew that this was and completely false he knew this was done by a single individual who has nothing to do with the group of parents who have been attending these meetings emailing the board and meeting with the board and with

034miss jones herself his statement was a racist statement one minute which provoked division something that the group of parents that have been coming before you have not done not once have we addressed this board nor mrs jones in a racist or hatred manner we've come to you because of a propaganda and a racist curriculum within our children's education there's no place for that here in education or anywhere thank you [Applause] if she would pass me but she really proud of them going in your paper she if she wants to turn it in she can no no go ahead okay is miss valerie butler here i don't know she okay i want the she wasn't sure if she's gonna make it thank you okay next miss jennifer nape beer okay good evening my name is jennifer

035napier and i've been living in isla white county for five wonderful years i could go on and on about how great our schools are but i won't because we already know that i understand that you have stated critical race theory won't be part of the curriculum at isla white schools however evidence says otherwise you can call it something else but if it looks like a duck and talks like a duck it's a duck i'm puerto rican italian and irish born in new york who was transplanted to virginia i've dealt with racism multiple times in my life from black folks white folks and even latin folks it's true i wasn't latina enough my parents dealt with it before me white skinned woman married to a very dark-skinned new york man in the 70s good luck finding

036in apartments my mother's parents before her too an irish woman with an italian man a big no-no her mother made her wash in the hallway after their dates to get the olive oil off of her skin my father grew up in the projects of the lower east side of manhattan where you had to go for where you had to look up whenever you walked around in fear of people throwing bricks and glass off the rooftops he witnessed something someone being murdered on a basketball court as a kid drugs were everywhere human excrement elevators prostitution and drugs in the stairwells talk about overcoming adversity through hard work and dedication after all this do i have hatred in my heart no stupidity is everywhere it knows no color i am teaching my kids to be stronger than

037that to stick up for themselves and to strive for what they want excuse me and to strive for what they want just like i was raised because it's the home's job to teach morality not the schools i know it's taboo to say but i don't care i don't see color clearly i see color because i'm not color blind theoretically i don't see color i base my judgment on a person's character which is what i also teach my children the school system can't even tackle bullying i surely do not want them teaching my kids morals that's my job it's my job to shape their character and it's your job to help them teach grammar spelling math science history etc stay out of our homes and since this all ties in i don't care what anyone's political

038affiliation is because that's none of my business so keep politics which is what this all really boils down to out of the schools as well you're part of the problem you are the ones creating the division and not the arithmetic kind period [Applause] mr reverend willie williams good evening madam chair school board members dr thorne and everyone who is present tonight i want to speak truth to the powerless i know from the onset that many of you want to know who is the powerless and it's why why speak truth to the powerless well let me give you a quote from page six and seven of mcgill a de la torre's book entitled decolonizing christianity becoming bad ass believers by now and this is a quote by now some of you are probably asking whether i

039as author have a responsibility to raise the consciousness of oppressors and thus have an obligation to try to save white people from their falling no doubt silence denies justice but all too often people of color are expected to speak truth to power the expression has always distressed me because it assumed power is ignorant of the truth and that there is the potential for redemption when truth is heard and because the abused and misused know the truth they must shoulder the burden of speaking truth to their persecutor regardless of the consequences i maintain that those in power know the truth all too well yet still choose unjust and oppressive policy because they are profitable i am not motivated to speak truth to power i would rather focus on speaking truth to the powerless who have been

040taught for generations to believe the life of those who shape our unjust social structure speaking truth with not two the disenfranchised raises consciousness and decolonized minds which can lead to practice that might bring about change and maybe even change for the better in a quote i have sat and listened to much opposition to the state mandated equity and inclusion program which has been implemented in our school system there are evidence of aggressive attacks made and are still being made against school board members superintendent staff and citizen in an attempt to overturn the implementation of an equity and inclusion program why is the equity and inclusion program and staff receiving so much negative reactions i hope to answer the powerless question in a moment i am well aware that any kind of change will bring about

041resistance but this kind of resistance is more than one should expect or even anticipate whatever opposition and or concerns the powerful have expressed the school board have already attempted uh to answer but no answer is sufficient so i have come to the conclusion that these folks are playing a game described by error eric bernie in his book gains people play as paul mean in this game the person has a dilemma that they do not truly want to accept a solution they do not want a solution because an accepted solution will reveal a hidden truth that they do not want you to discover you watch the games at the powerful play with the school board they raise issues such as i don't want no teacher uh no one teaching my child a different family value that

042i am teaching well i want to share two questions with you who qualified them as a teacher when my children were born i do not recall the doctor or nurse handed me an instruction booklet nor a teacher's certificate every teacher in the school are qualified and certified to teach the truth as they know it you ought to be rejoicing that the school board is willing to take the risks of enhancing their skill through the implementation of the equity and inclusion program my second question for them is if what you are teaching your child at home is the truth then why are you so afraid of your child being exposed to others teaching okay i'm sorry time is up okay let me finish this statement let me just give the conclusion we have to we have

043to because we've just since the decision of brown versus the board of education 1954 we have to every public school well anybody that wants a copy of this uh you should i will be glad to give it to you please give a copy and you need to read it thank you because you need to stop playing games and tell the truth the truth of the matter is thank you mr williams if people just give you they're trying to disguise taking us back to segregation and it ain't gonna work [Applause] okay next we have mr todd meyer i get to go after the preacher thank you i appreciate that well in lieu of um that last comment i'm going to switch gears for a moment maybe you know i'm not going to address those topics since

044the mask are off the docket for speaking due to our governor and the health department that'll be addressed i'm sure by other colleagues but for today i'd like to address um some finance stuff i have questions as a parent and i'd like to raise some of these things the aarp that we discuss or you all discuss in the closed sessions of the 4.7 million dollars that's coming up you that you're going to be voting on here in august roughly 3.6 million of this of that money is going to be spent on facility upgrades the question i have is um i know a lot of it has deal with the boilers and the piping we have boiler issues and we have piping for heating issues but will that money be in addition to the original budgeted

045money how much is spent into the infrastructure because i know at various other schools within the school system we still have issues with coming back off a break and we have no oil for the elementary schools and kids are stuck in classrooms that are at 40 degrees then we gotta send it back home because we don't have heat i know we have a building automation system that's supposed to be doing predictive maintenance and being able to tell us such things is when boilers and chillers go offline i'd like to know about on that note like the uh issues with the various ac systems we have i know um but uh windsor elementary had uh water issues with their well water at one point and i also know that the uh um like carrollton with the

046ac trying to get the ac balanced um in various classrooms there was very challenges with that so are we spending funding to address those problems directly with the ac systems the infrastructure since the majority of this money that's being allocated to us is going towards these things how much of that is going to be in addition to the original schedule funds and our our what is the backlog look like on those maintenance requests how many do we have how many of those issues have been identified what is the five-year 10-year and 15-year strategic plan and those things the other question i have which is a huge one that i can't seem to find any information on is driving around the county i see all these solar panels going up we see solar farms going up

047i'm curious was there a grant was there funding provided for that how did we wind up putting solar panels on these buildings and with that question is we just built a brand new middle school so georgie tyler has a brand new building with a brand new metal roof that we just put solar panels on a roof how does that affect the warranty because now all roofs sleek anyone who's done facilities works knows that how do we repair that leak when you have solar panels on top how do you get to those to repair the leak do we have a separate rider for that what is the warranty who carries that warranty when we do inevitably get that leak and how does it get repaired or do we now have to fork out as a taxpayer

048more money and ask the board of supervisors to ask more money for our spending i was curious how that is the final question along with the the solar panels is um is there some way i can get the information on the return on investment on there the life cycle cost the upkeep of the maintenance costs on those i don't know i've been able to find out is that a demand only system is that one that we actually negotiated both buys with through the um community electric with where we purchased so many kilowatt hours worth of power and what price are we paying for that has that been negotiated in with that price is that total life cycle cost the uh are we tied into load shedding capabilities um which is the ultimate goal of that

049for generating our own power that means it has to go somewhere if we're using it that's part of that negotiated stuff so i'd be curious to be put in touch with someone who can answer those questions um one minute since i'm down to a minute i'll i will buy more time for other people to speak thank you for your considerations do you have all these questions written down that you can forward yes so next we have miss lakeisha upfold up fold it was about math so maybe she will okay okay i am not going to be able to pronounce this next gentleman's name [Laughter] i had a hard time when you spelled it for me i appreciate good it everybody say your name and do it illumi day illumi day on d day did you

050get that you got that oh my god um yeah i typed up something nice here but something in my heart is telling me to say something else so i'm gonna start off with this ad equity virginia aims to eliminate the predictability of student outcome based on race gender zip code ability psycho-economic status and or language spoken at home i got that right so teach us something about what's going on like getting everybody on the same level because i don't know about everybody here but i know i have to tell my kids at home that you have to work 10 times harder than the white person to get to their level 10 times harder i don't know you guys might not know that but that's what we have to do every day when i go to

051work i got to work 10 times harder than the next person right person to get to that level and this is what this is about putting everybody on the same playing level and my my thing right now is why in this community are we getting so much pushback on that if you want everybody to be equal equal rights and justice for all then that's what it's about it shouldn't be a pushback if we're putting this in school everybody thinks it's about somebody coming into your home if you have a strong home nothing outside of your home should be getting in affecting your kids or your teaching and your kids at all if you got a strong home and if you're teaching the right stuff at home so it shouldn't affect any of that and and

052and that that's it period i mean you have people it's just crazy that the fact that one person comes in here to change for the for the better and she gets so much flack from the community isn't that crazy that that's that that's what bothers me here this is a community right somebody came in here to better the community not to hurt you not to hurt your kids but yet this woman is getting harassed like she came in here and stole somebody's kid or something or she abused somebody kid she's getting harassed that's crazy to me in the community we claim well america's not racist we claim everything is equal but do you open your eyes and see it if you've never experienced it how can you tell me it's not a deal how can

053you tell me it's not there i've experienced every day of my life i grew up in brooklyn i moved to virginia i went to hampton university at hbcu i mean every day when we go out i have to do extra do you know what's what it feels to drive in the car no you not done that police come behind you what do you feel like as a black person my heart's not beating i know i have done nothing but just the fact of my upbringing my heart stopped being automatically but this white person worry about that [Laughter] not like our heartbeats not like not like you don't know that have you been watching the tv the last two years have you been watching you have you have no idea you have no idea because since

054i was 12 years old playing basketball on the street police come up pulling guns at us do you know what it feels like to be a teenager and get a gun pulled on you and know you have done nothing wrong you have no clue one minute no clue but to restate it makes no sense as a community that we are harassing this young lady who's coming in here to make the community better and that's what she's trying to do i'm sorry to go off on a tangent but that's what's in my heart and we need to understand that point blank period don't care what color you are whatever whatever your political aspirations whatever it is we need to understand that she's coming here to make the community better that's it i'm good [Applause] all right

055jason marsh that's well said sir well said thank you and i listen you've all heard me i'm pretty sure everyone in here has heard something from me somehow some kind of ways i have turned into that guy and that's not necessarily where i want to be but that's where we're at um jason marsh thank you okay that's me i think we all want the same thing i don't think that i know that we all want the same thing for our kids we all do and i don't think anyone in here has a problem making sure everyone gets a fair shot the problem is the approach and it may not be happening in our schools in our classrooms today i'll take you for your word but where does it stop so pastor you said is he

056still here yes sir so you said it right you said it right so you you said what i have a problem with without really saying it so this critical race theory which is certainly not a curriculum it works on the premise that our whole makeup as a country is inherently racist it's systematically racist in white supremacist i don't think anyone's going to argue that that may have been the case years ago right can you have the speakers address the board please this back and forth between the audience is not necessary why does it stop with him let's go ahead okay here here's where it gets down to it so i have a little girl an eight-year-old little girl and a four-year-old little boy and i don't want anyone telling them that they are an oppressor

057i just don't want that happening that's the problem i don't want anyone sitting down any way shape or form telling my little girl that because she's white she is an oppressor and that because she is white even though she has no control over it she is inherently biased i don't want anyone telling my little girl because she's white she's inherently biased and she's racist and if she doesn't admit her racist then she has to feel that discomfort that's what critical race theory does it forces racism racism is bad so anything that you folks are feeling that i haven't never experienced i get it but these little kids today let's change that let's not force it on them in an opposite direction because i think that's what's happening here i've presented i don't know how many

058bits of information with the helpless a lot of other folks it's being taught to the teachers we're telling teachers that you have to recognize your implicit bias you're shaking your head have you not read the stuff that i've sent you have you not read it because i'm not making this stuff up i'm not pulling it out of the air it's in there we're teaching the teachers to sit down and recognize their implicit bias you've had dr gladys billings who's a self-proclaimed critical race theorist her presentation was offered up to your staff on critical race theory so people could adjust their white fragility i'm not making that up you've all seen it it wasn't open to the public we had to dig it out that's my problem i don't want to shortchange any little kid but

059i don't want anybody putting a finger on my little girl and telling her she's racist that's not right i'm no preacher i don't think that quick on my feet this board has the final say-so in how these schools operate as your constituent i implore you to acknowledge that the evidence we've provided is at the very minimum related to critical race theory i just want an acknowledgement it's been introduced into the schools and then i want you to be courageous and have some of your own courageous conversations and stop it make sure every kid gets a fair shake without pointing to the color of their skin i'm confident that this board and the many professionals under your tenure sir can come up with ways to make sure every kid gets a good education without being biased

060or prejudiced and without making them sit down and have courageous conversations and say yep i'm white i'm racist we don't need to do that that's it [Applause] so madam chair um the maximum time of 30 minutes has finished but we still have 18 people on the board i mean on the sheet to speak okay now our policy and it it has been like this not just now it's been like this but the policy states that a maximum of 30 minutes will be designated for public comments and in order to extend the time a motion will be neat will need to be made and passed so is there a motion to extend the time so we can hear the remaining speakers okay well i would like to make a motion to extend the 30 minutes designated

061for public comments giving the giving the remaining speakers two minutes maximum time for their presentation do i have a second if not the motion dies second we have a second and now we vote we will vote verbally i have a discussion before the madam chair um you said two minutes but we have 18 more speakers is it possible that we could give them one minute and if they have to extend your mother would take you to task for that okay two three that's that's right yeah that's that um as far as i'm concerned i was just threatening officer okay she asked him removed him from the meeting because i don't take threats okay i'm just asking the fact we have 18 people to speak okay this is discussion with the boy that's right this is

062discussion with the board and the motion is two minutes that would have to be an amendment to to your emotion right the motion so an amendment to the motion would have to be second too is that correct yes okay does anybody want to amend my motion instead of two minutes to one minute madam chair you had a motion and a second on that motion she had discussion i just had a discussion i didn't have a motion so do we vote on we would have to vote we vote on this on the numbers and then see if this passes correct okay so we have a verbal vote yes are we ready so that i have a first that was mrs carr and a second that was miss perkins to with for a two minute time limit

063right to extend the experience yeah so now we'll do a verbal mr wilson no miss perkins aye ms car yes no no she said you said no no okay we only have four and that's two to two so the motion is it dies um but we can make another motion if you care to make another motion madam chair i would like to make a motion that we will extend the time but give the speakers one minute if there is a speaker out there that have signed up to speak and you need more than that one minute i will be willing to stay here after before we adjourn to hear what you have to say but the way it is now with 18 people to speak even with the two minutes each double that we will

064be here until the night we have lots of people here okay so the motion is if they are if they are willing to stay here till 12 and 1 o'clock in the morning fine we'll do it all right so would you repeat your motion because it has not been second so just repeat madam chair i would like to make a motion that we will give each speaker one minute um excuse me at this point we don't have to give them so the motion has been made to extend the 30 minutes designated for public comments giving the remaining speakers one minute maximum time for their presentation that was a motion by ms times is there a second okay verbal mr wilson yes miss perkins yes ms carr yes yes okay so that's a four to zero

065okay all right so let me get my stuff ready all right stop launch set all right next we have miss jennifer boykin i'm gonna try to cram in half of it since y'all are pulling a fascist move i want to talk about uh teaching material related to ibrahim kendi who wrote how to be an anti-racist and has stated that capitalism and racism are conjoined twins and both must be eradicated and material related to robin d'angelo who wrote white fragility and makes the claim that all whites are racist this is extremely polarizing agenda driven and divide people into identity groups judging them by the color of their skin and has no place in school or any grade these materials may even violate federal anti-discrimination laws and should be met with extreme caution i give you those

066uh two examples because that has been brought into our schools by our equity and inclusion coordinator as recommended reading books for teachers and staff to read i wanted to talk about culturally responsive materials but i can't but i will say that uh some material has been ordered from a california company called eventbrite that's um that says supporting transgender by uh smithfield middle school thank you you all are a trump and if you say crt and his components are not interesting they're liars mr john college i like to wait till after the meeting okay all right mr albert burkhart madam chairman members of the board just one very quick story i had something else but i'm gonna do this real quickly uh about 15 years ago i was at the volunteer fire department a student uh

067who just come out of high school he was wearing a shea guevara t-shirt back in front she you know who shea guevara was revolutionary communist marxist his father looked at him and said where did you get that t-shirt why are you wearing that t-shirt he said my social studies teacher gave me extra credit to wear this he sent that kid into the bathroom and had him take that shirt off and they destroyed it that teacher retired just a few years ago and that kind of marxism communism is in your school he was given extra credit for doing that now he's retired now and i suggest that you all maybe look at some of your so current social studies teachers and and make sure that that stuff is not continuing thank you all right miss martha

068jackson parents want their children in school learning children want to be in school we want to we need to make every effort to ensure that learning is not hindered by unsafe practices all families need to be flexible with changes as needed to help all children attend school put aside the what i want what i need what i gotta have we need to be compassionate and put others above ourselves a small price to pay it would be a devastating and tragic catastrophe if we were to lose one child to covet let us examine evaluate and check what is important is that we do everything by being good examples for our children they watch what we do i challenge you board members the central office staff to wear your masks will you accept the challenge don't fool

069me now all right um [Music] last name is um last name is boykin okay thank you my name is volpe boykin and i want to address one thing that was said earlier i want everybody to know that not teaching children that they are oppressors is crt and its tenants it has its tentacles in the school system says is not taking anybody back to segregation it's keeping from putting other people in segregation um the other thing what is the group i'm president of has been accused of taking things personal nobody has made any personal attacks on anybody evidently people they take elected positions or positions in the school board and they think if people disagree it's a personal attack nothing's personal that's why you didn't hear from anybody last year the year before if they just

070didn't like you they'd have been up here years before nothing is personal i work in the field of lawyers with them we fight like cats and dogs in court time every day say thank you and then go eat lunch um catherine smith was about mass okay so i'd like to just give others a chance thank you um angela gibson okay okay it was about mask also okay um is that rock rhodey last name oh same oh sorry okay about mask okay all right sorry um fletcher i'm laura fletcher and i had did have a speech but i'm going to change it a little bit too first of all as our elected officials and as we do pay our taxes or paying your salary and your time and for the schools and to limit our time

071and to take a vote in front of all of us is disgusting and every single one of you should be held accountable and you should be gone it is disgusting now to my community members i am going to turn around because i heard what you had to say and i heard what you had to say there are some issues in regards to race there's no question it's in our past i think we've made huge uh improvement and i would like to read you this and then i'm going to show that we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and that to secure these rights governments are instituted among

072men deriving their just powers from the time of the government thank you please take your time to read this the greatest next next is joanne james joanne james is joanne james no longer here it was about math now okay all right we already got reverend williams herb de groff it's powerful my 81 year old ears may not have heard you right can i wait till the end and give my full presentation well we're just going to be no we're going to be up here to talk to people at the end is that the way you you're talking about it no give everything to her they asked you not to approach the board again [Music] herb de groff the hardy district crt by any definition an attempt to denigrate the historical evolution of our usa's history

073seemingly our nation's history presented as being better than gooder through crt really do you think that historical warts are greater than the ultimate good that has resulted from the founding of our constitutional republic thanks to the founders like every nation history has recorded the good the bad and the ugly of our usas however i submit the good vastly outweighs the bad and the good and the ugly we continue to improve and then in the face of societal ills which happened every night when you listen the next morning's time who got shot where mr ozil there's a resolution for you all to sign to back up your public remarks that you aren't going to allow crt in school [Applause] how much i'm going to chain this up deck here a minute i'm gonna jump right through

074the fact well you have one minute one minute i'm gonna try to push it i'm gonna try to push give me a minute oh transportation just july the 29th our bus was spotted in uh churchill at 9 45 or 10 o'clock at very high speed one drive was in it and it was bus 96 now i have been speaking about security about what the security is at if no security is at that building weezer's in trouble that means somebody can stow stole the bus drove it outside the county and board it back documentation just monday or instant happening transportation department i'm glad all y'all here because i'm going to get it straight there's a problem transportation i've been telling y'all for years closed session i have brought to y'all several times hot to be more

075mighty well anyway mr mr bill jenkins time flies when you're having fun bill jenkins [Music] thank you first of all thank you for your service i just wanted to state tonight that many of the citizens of alawite county do not want to see our children and grandchildren being subject to the same liberal socialist and even marxist teaching that is taking place in our nation's so-called institutions of high learning or colleges knowledge is important but knowledge without morals or the common sense to use that knowledge is plain dangerous we must not let the same trash that is and that's what i call it it's my opinion that is being taught in many college campuses be taught in our k-12 local schools please make a stand and make sure that our government's liberal liberal values are not

076instilled in the children of alawite county critical race theory please make sure that this type of marxist teaching is not taught in all of white schools under any name i believe this type of teaching is racist in itself i've always told my child and my grandchildren i've always practiced myself to treat everyone the same no matter their skin color i don't want anybody i've never oppressed anyone time my children have not oppressed anyone in my grandchildren haven't i don't want any school system tell them they have thank you mr james ford james ford good evening madam chair and members of the school board dr thornton administration and the families and representatives here this evening i have one thing to say quite personally i am embarrassed by olive white county first and foremost because it's ridiculous

077it's ridiculous we can be civic-minded and be civil and it's a difference now i'm going to challenge the board naming and framing issues difficult issues is something we're going to have to face in our public roles in our public duties and responsibilities so i'm going to challenge you to come up with a way to bring this community together on this issue because it's ridiculous that we have to deal with this every meeting so some kind of task force has to be formed that's the only way we can have a participatory democracy in this country all sectors represented thank you thank you so much carl that's all okay ma'am jeremiah just made one come out i i think that is um the next part hold on because next is board member comments reports and information so

078you want to make a comment i would just like to say hold up mrs perkins we have someone in the back yeah but he's not and he's not ready to he can't speak right now you can't speak that's out of order you may carry on we are not we are here here we go you are out of order thank you man that's twice we are not in isle of wight county teaching critical race theory sign the resolution that's three two out of order you're out of order two times you should be attending yourself you'll hear us that's his third time thank you sir we can call my mother did you have anything else to say okay so we're at board member committee reports and information and i will start with um i'm sure everyone knows

079that it's been made public that vicki hewlett is no longer a member of the school board because she moved out of the newport district and can't represent a district in which she does not live so required legal documents have been sent to the alawite courts by our attorney as of today and we are accepting letters of interest to fill this position through august the 27th so if you email or mail a letter of interest including some background and reasons interested in filling the position to tracy ruik the school board clerk a special called meeting date and time will be communicated in which interviews will be held to determine a new school board member to represent the newport district through december of 2022 it'll be a special call to election for school board at that time

080did you have anything to say mister okay did you have anything else to say madam chair on july the 20th i attended the virtual uh virginia school board association conference and that was their annual annual conference and i i did it i did a report i think it was something like about nine started about eight where you could go in and do some virtual things and then um nine o'clock they actually start the session and we had these little mini sessions that you could sign up for with you know uh topics of the different topics and i attended four of those and it was from like nine o'clock until about one o'clock with two breaks in between okay okay and i was gonna uh say this at the end of the meeting but i i

081feel like it's probably more appropriate now based on all the comments with critical race theory a critical race theory concerns continue to come our way it's a huge issue most everywhere and i will once again say that the critical race theory has no place in our schools it is divisive it puts us in categories as oppressors and oppressed it has roots to socialism and marxism we want no part of that and this past month i have spent hours reading about critical race theory i have purchased the book a parent's guide to critical race theory i have seen information foyered which led me to asking more questions i have met with the superintendent to ask questions and get answers i've met with a couple of board administrators i have met with teachers and parents to ask

082questions i even went to another school divisions meeting on critical race theory in gloucester county to see what else i could learn you see school board members are not part of the day-to-day instruction the purpose of our monthly school board meetings is to inform us of what of the what's taking place give us a chance to ask questions and make requests for additional information we learn more when we're talking to building administrators or teachers or parents some sharing great things while others share concerns our responsibilities as school board members are to help establish the vision and the goals for the school district and we're going to begin to work on a new strategic plan very soon our job is to work with policies our job is to hire and evaluate the district superintendent adopt and

083maintain an annual budget that is aligned with our vision and to serve as leaders and representatives of the community and as advocates for students and the school district we're not involved in the day-to-day instruction and through all that that i have done with my personal readings and meetings i've learned there are some similarities with equity and critical race theory and they are not the same yesterday outside of the central office i was speaking to an employee not at central office and this person said ms carr think of religion the mormon religion and the christian religion have similarities but they are not the same critical race theory and equity are not the same what has been made clear to me in my meetings with school employees and parents is that segregation or discrimination is not part

084of our equity program i have heard no one speak of any kind of curriculum to indoctrinate our children i have six boys coming through this school system and i do not want the critical race theory in this school system i would fight for it i'm telling you critical race theory may have some similarities with the equity but it is not the same and it is not here one of our building administrators said to me we are about unifying talking and better understanding one another talking about issues that are presently in our world and instead of sweeping them under the rug it can be beneficial in understanding each other and building relationships among our colleagues and understanding different cultures if anyone is concerned about critical race theory in our schools i strongly encourage you to learn

085about what critical race theory is and then get involved in your child's education know what your child is learning and if you have a concern with what you see your child is learning go to the teacher and get answers and if you don't like the answer move on to the principle stay informed with all the communication that will be forthcoming with our new strategic plan be involved that this will be a good thing parental involvement directly affects student learning and we are about to begin another very challenging school year and there will be even greater learning gaps especially in our early elementary grades it will take all of us working together to support the success of our children okay next on the agenda this is where we added the item um oh yeah about 12.2

086now um uh governor school of arts and the csap and whro okay well the first thing we have to do is uh feel the spots that miss hulick was was filling with these committee positions and one is governor school of arts and the csep so do we have a nomination for one to fill that position no nominations all right we don't have a nomination do you have a uh the alternates are still in place okay who are the alternates the alternate for whro i believe was miss times and then the governor's school um c7 governor's school for the arts where was you okay so we'll just step up we just wanted all right so what we will do if it's agreeable for the school board we will you take the the ones who were the

087alternates they will move up and be the um actual committee member and do we need to vote for an alternate no you don't have to okay all right so that's what we'll do so that means that i am back on the governor's school you governor c 7 governor school for the arts and the miss times would be the whro so i have you as making that motion for the first and if we could just okay we need a second second okay okay okay so emotion has been made and it has been second that i would be the um the representative for governor school of arts and csap and his times will be the w-h-r-o we have a motion it has been second vote do we vote verbally no it's coming it should be coming okay

088it's not going to be on mine because i'm so eric is eric in the room perkins died her machine how did i get this neat okay got it close okay it passed okay motion carry next on the agenda is financial presentation good evening madam chair members of the board dr thornton in finance we're just getting going in the school year so the percentage of use of the budget is very low let me just compare it to last year at this time so far we're at 12.7 percent spent compared to the full budget last year at this time ending july was at 14.3 so we're moving along more slowly which in my opinion is a good thing you did have your your check register large ticket items in addition you had your facility use so if

089there's any questions on any of those i'll i'll answer your questions now i have one sure on this the standard solar and company 535 dollars for solar energy and i know that we we received the solar panels it was a grant it cost us nothing right it wasn't a grant they they own it and we pay them for the electric that we use from those but they got the grant somebody right it didn't cost us nothing cost us a dime correct that's what kind of stuck in my head it cost us no cost now all right so the 11 535 dollars helped me understand that they put solar panels on our roofs we will pay them for the electric used out of those solar panels so the question is and it was a very insightful

090question we pay we will pay a lower rate per kilowatt hour for the for the energy used from the panels and we will pay dominion less accordingly so over a year's time and we can't answer that now but theoretically over a year's time because we have a lower rate hopefully we pay more towards the solar panels with a lower rate than to dominion after a year we will know how much we will have paid less in our electric altogether than we would have paid over a year's time paying just dominion okay so this is going to be accumulated data that we will be looking at that's exactly right okay yes okay all right secondly i'll move on to the american rescue plan thank you eric all right and it's just one slide just as a

091reminder but we're asking the board to take action vote on the application so we can submit to the state and also request from the board of supervisors additional appropriations on the far left the 4.7 million that's your full location if you want to call this sr3 or round three they call it different things so this is our third round of federal funding however last month we did appropriate a million dollars the board of supervisors appropriated the million dollars for facility items so we could get going with things over the summer so the balance of that which we're asking for the board to approve is the 3.7 on your approval two things will happen tomorrow we would submit the application to the state so they can review our spending plan and secondly we would send a

092letter to the um the county requesting that the board of supervisors at their tax meetings appropriate the additional 3.7 million are there any questions on the american rescue plan well i did ask and i think i understand to get um parent input on all of this we sent out surveys correct yes we did and the surveys helped determine how we were going to spend some of this money and um dr thornton can you give a just a quick overview of some of the things that um is going to be part of this yeah so what the survey uh talked about was a lot of parents responded that their child struggled in reading and math those were the two main themes so one of the things that that's in here is ten additional teaching positions in

093the previous round were additional aids in first grade second grade and third grade first and second grade so that they would have aids during reading time in math time and in this grant also is promethean boards which are an interactive board so that teachers during student work time can separate students in groups and work on their individual needs and those boards have software involved in them or that can be installed on them to easily pull up an aide can easily pull it up and it'll be at that students whatever their deficit is or whatever they need to work on and then there's additional laptops as you know we now have a device for every student with that is great but now we have to try to keep up with that and so there's money set

094aside for that as well what about the air purification that was in the first million that was in the first million yes and there's a little piece of the air in this one that's exactly right there will be yes do you remember how much like an additional 400 000 correct it's ultimately to continue to maintain at a higher level our air conditioning classroom units and one of the things we're in the we're doing right now to maybe done right now is one of the things with all the buildings different ages built at different times there was a hodgepodge of the control systems oh correct and so they didn't talk to each other and we didn't have a central control so we have upgraded we have essential control so our maintenance staff will be alerted ahead

095of a problem if a boiler goes down in the middle of the night they're alerted to that and alert to what the potential problem is so we now can control it from one computer which the maintenance department has and and they're monitored to basically 24 hours okay any more questions yes i have a question i know we're not uh actually spending any money right now for maintenance or anything with hardy elementary because we're going to be replacing it soon but with um everything that's going on now especially with uh the covet virus i just wanted to ask the question i guess i could need to ask mr coleman a question if if everything is okay with hardy elementary as far as the air and the purity especially for staff and students returning to school because

096that is one of the older buildings in the county and i knew we were not putting a whole lot of money well in it if i may okay we're not abandoning taking care of hardy so as far as i'm concerned we will continue to take care of hardy just in preventive maintenance okay tending to those units just as though we were not having a new school built okay all right yes thank you you're welcome this is an action item this is an action item do we have a motion okay mapping chair a motion to approve the submission of the american rescue plan application to the virginia department of education for their approval and authorize the superintendent to request appropriations by the county of by the county board of supervisors and the additional amount of the

0973.7 that we 3.7 million that we need seven 3708 no three million seven hundred eight thousand three hundred seventeen cents yeah i did three points i don't know why but yes yeah i just look at those numbers very much okay we have a motion do we have a second we did have a second who's second mr wilson okay so now we need to vote is it not working i can't do anything all right hey mason kerry okay that's it thank you thank you next on the agenda is the transportation update good evening everybody good evening have my report and i'm here to answer any questions gave us a lot on your report very detailed it's busy this is exciting about your uh new office building coming uh very exciting i know you are you're currently

098at georgia d tyler middle school um can you give us an update on when you are expecting the new office building last i was told it's going to be delivered on the 30th of this month when they actually start construction constructing it putting it together it's a modular type building when they actually start putting it together depends on the demolition and right now has the demolition started yet it has not uh we're waiting for clearance from dominion i believe so if for some reason dominion cannot come and give you the clearance before the deadline what are you going to do for your office once after september 7th because school is going to open that day and you i know you're going to have to move out of we're prepared to work out of georgie tyler

099for at least the first couple of months of school okay all right okay you ready for the big day no but we will be because the next time we see you right here we'll have three school will have we will have been in school three days that's right good luck thank you thank you support services and operations full report madam chair i'm doing that for mr coleman okay and so the the first item is the furniture for the high schools as you know you approved this a long time ago and as you know there's all kinds of backlogs in everything we do expect this to arrive prior to school and having it in place so that we can have the proper spacing in all the classrooms well next item is a smithfield high school playgrounds

100and people may ask why do you have a playground at a high school this is i believe our third special education playground and it has a sensory car wash and it allows wheelchair accessibility it allows students with disabilities and the opportunity to interact with the playground equipment did it say serving 30 students serving over 30 students okay and the next item was an rfq one out for architect so what that means is we have an architect who's on contract for items less than five hundred thousand dollars and that's what this rfq is for for things that we need or drawn up and then when we build like hardy and all that we go through a full process again and do an rfp and find an architect for that particular function so this is for more

101of the smaller items that that we have to go through and um so we've gone through this we've scored it and next month we'll be able to bring you a recommendation who that is okay the next is a chemical hygiene plan and this is by policy ebaa the reporting of hazards and a communication plan so this something that we have to do by policy and what this really talks about is the chemicals like in science classrooms or chemistry classrooms and you have to make sure that they're labeled and accounted for and a communication plan and we have to have copies of those in the office library and central office and all that is in place next um we noticed some structural cracks in some of our buildings one that was pretty visible at smithfield high

102school on the back side of the gymnasium really up high it actually looks like it's bone a little bit and then those other areas as well and mr coleman brought in a structural engineer they did an assessment on every one of those areas and they are still all structurally sound and we just want to let you know that was done the next item is the school safety audit survey and this is the actual screen from that we send to vdoe and you see all schools have been completed in 2018 2019 and we're currently doing 2020. and then the school safety audit committee findings so mr coleman meets with a variety of representatives parents teachers local law enforcement emergency service agencies local community services board traditional and public safety personnel he meets several times a year

103with these individuals and but with the safety audits they go through the principal safety audits they look at them they see what they've asked for and review it and they make recommendations for improvement and so that has been done and that's an ongoing thing you can do it once a year we mr coleman meets with them often and reviews safety that's a process it is next is a new hardy stat status so the next step we were at we went from 35 percent design to 65 percent of design the next step is 95 and then to 100 because of the prices exploding we're really monitoring the subcontractors and so the builder has said he can't hold subs and ask for a 95 price and then go back and ask for 100 so they've asked to

104go to 100 so what happens next is we'll meet september 1st with the contractor and they'll be presenting a guaranteed maximum price for the construction of hardy then and as you know dick rice serves on that committee we'll be talking about that price we'll be bringing a recommendation to the board whether we move forward with that guaranteed maximum price and then if we do would be moving forward to the board of supervisors so we're getting close it's been a long process and a lot of work has gone into that and a lot of scrutiny along the way and i believe that is all of chris's i want to go back to the um safety audit i remember when i was reviewing all of this um i remember you know the principals put in things that

105they were concerned about at their building and and i saw three principals talk about the sros like um i think hardy principal and carrollton principal and i mean if carsville still you know my heart too all of them are but that certainly that's something that we need to consider when when we're talking more about budgeting and that's still in the hearts of principles and we certainly want that to be a part of something we put in our budget soon request for budget it's not forgotten right and that's something we really need to talk with the sheriff's department and probably you with the board of supervisors because it belongs in the sheriff's budget because they're they're employees and we did talk with them regardless of where they're located whether in the schools or they're on the

106road it all comes from the same pot of money from our local tax base so i think if we're all on the same page we need to to have that discussion and we did meet with them and then kovac came and everybody kind of i mean just it got crazy but um we need to it just kind of sparked in my head something we need to continue to talk about and not let it go by the wayside yes ma'am oh it's you i was wondering why you were standing there time for you to talk huh i was being patient good evening madam chair board dr thornton i just wanted to give you the technology update for august 2021 um it's been an interesting year in tech um coveted made us very busy you still have

107hayer i do but i don't have a whole lot of great because it just falls out instead of going gray so but i'm starting to get grey in the beard so you know uh first i wanted to talk about money it's important to everyone we are approaching budget season and so it's always one of those considerations this is not a negative money conversation though it's always a good one with me right um 1819 with the uh vdoe security grant we applied for 191 500 we received a hundred thousand dollars of a maximum reward of a hundred thousand dollars i just wanted to give you a little history uh in 1920 we applied a project for a project for 293 000 with a maximum reimbursement of 235 we received 41. so not a great year but

108we still received a reward i submitted the exact same project the next year and received almost full funding for it that was the classroom locks that you may recall from last year which have been fully put in um i actually got a text from one of the principals this morning thanking me about 40 times for putting him in she really likes them what school was this that was windsor high she's like oh my god i love not having to carry keys around to walk classrooms can you elaborate what those are yeah those are the classroom door locks just like um when you enter a building um you can badge in right we added them to every classroom in both high schools we were not able to do every room because there are a lot of

109offices just because we didn't get the full award you can see here we received 151 but we were able to with that 151 as well as a little bit that i put in in july 2021 as soon as the fiscal year shifted i finished the last of the classrooms for both those both of those buildings so does that mean just the teachers and the principals can go in teachers principals admin aides custodians maintenance technology central office executive team can walk into those classrooms without a key so if students want to get in the classroom and it's locked they they would have to be let in they would have to be let in so during the day when school's in session are the are the doors unlocked or locked that is teacher choice okay so a

110teacher can unlock a door if they choose with a key nope with their badge and it will automatically re-lock at i think i turned it on at eight o'clock if there's any door unlocked in the whole building that a teacher is unlocked that day it'll just re-lock so the next morning so do the doors lock on the inside like while the teachers are teaching oh there's no there's no interference with egress so you can leave a room no matter what okay right it is just like uh in a building when you hit the crash bar um it's two different locks uh one's referred to as a mortise what's a cylindrical but you can get out of the room no matter what it's just getting in that you need a badge for okay um and so

111this year uh we wanted to continue that project and finish up smithville high and windsor high as well as i'm also applying for smithfield middle to add on the class classroom doors and there's two exterior doors i've been trying to get funded at windsor elementary now for about four years so i'm trying that as well and that is a total project cost approximately 289 000 with a maximum reimbursement of 231. so that went in i believe dr thornton approved it a couple of weeks ago and i think we should hear something back it's usually late october early november so just wanting to give you an idea on that this year we also have two new programs there's the emergency communication fund and the emergency broadband benefit that were released as part of the american recovery

112act um emergency communications fund it will assist schools with connectivity and devices offset some of that cost and the emergency broadband benefit is a community program that if you are below a certain income level the government will pay for your internet um i believe it's 130 percent what we've been doing is um everyone that submits a free and reduced application mr criner has been sending that information to them i also uh briefed i'm on a task force with several members of the community and the county for increasing connectivity in the area i'm just there for information they're really doing all the work but i did bring that information to them and they we're going to add that to their resource page as far as the emergency communications fund i've been filling out paperwork for a

113few days now and it's due tomorrow we should hear back what we got funded and what we didn't but i am trying to get basically 400 for every student that filled out the survey that we had just finished because we had to present that as evidence it's really exciting with the the low-income families being able to get access to oh most definitely fantastic and uh the task force uh mr robertson runs and i think mr rosie is on it mr gray and a lot of community members they've been doing a ton of work and they're submitting a huge thing with uh vita that like dr thornton signed a support for and i believe you did as well ms carr that is a joint project between illinois county and suffolk so hopefully that gets funded as

114well so lots of money floating around uh this is just a year-over-year technology review so um this year dr thornton was feeling very generous to me and allowed me to get two additional bodies during coveted one of them is operational and one was funded by grant um to give you an idea uh when dr thornton started 2015-16 that's about right isn't it um we were running 2932 work orders per year on average well actually that's exactly what it was and 72 phone calls to our help desk which in case you didn't know we had a live help desk from 7 am to 9am every day nobody used it but we got 72 calls in a it year mostly in case something was down we had somebody there who could answer the call the next year

115we went to 3865 work orders with 99 calls next year 4257 so steady trend upwards next year 5784 345 calls last year there was a dip in the work orders obviously because we kind of stopped early 5351 work orders but we did jump to 1035 calls that was we shut down on march 13th the live help desk was up by march 20th and we had five guys answering it the rest of the school year um parents we actually publicized it to parents at that point we had not done that it was just for teachers and staff before that so a big difference this year a little busier um 6174 work orders with 5565 phone calls how many bodies did that two uh we have six technicians that answer the help desk okay so not just

116those two extra correct you had oh everyone for we our actual busiest day was the second day of school i believe we had 474 calls so i was answering the phone brian who's hiding in there was answering the phone my network administrator who hates talking on the phone with passion was answering the phone we were busy so that's just a inkling of part of what we were doing so some of the projects we've been doing this year uh the most prevalent one currently is the west side auditorium we i just finished putting up the last of the cameras today in that room i've put it you'll see a picture of it on the right side i've got full audio system in there and about six cameras and lots of televisions looks kind of similar to

117this actually um it'll be for the school to use as a presentation space as well as i believe a public uh pd space when it's not in use by the school so it'll be very useful for that school um we also are working on that annex replacement you were just talking about with mr livingston keep in mind anytime you hear a construction project from mr coleman i'm involved there somewhere because people don't like to go without their internet so um we've also replaced both well we replaced smithfield middle last year in the middle of covid their public address system we are starting on carsville's replacement on the i believe right now it's the 21st of august is the estimate of start date it should make the beginning of school interesting but we'll figure it out

118it would have been done earlier but everything is getting delayed which you'll see momentarily but we've also done all the wireless expansion and upgrades into our parking lots we've done buses in several areas in the county we've expanded with county assistance to make sure our community had as much opportunity to access the internet as possible we did a storage area network upgrade as well this is um not something you would necessarily know about i just wanted to mention it because it's probably a hundred thousand dollar project that we did without anyone realizing we did it which has to be done every five years it's basically where all the servers run from um and when we can do something and no one notices that's a huge deal for us we've also done all the high school

119badge readers that we were talking about and i also um turned on a new global web filtering system today monday actually and got my first email from a principal today i'm sorry so last year we put in a a web filter it's so that when students are at home they are still being monitored on any device we provide the one we put in place it was okay it did the work it did the job our principals really hated it so we replaced it this summer with one they hopefully would like a little more which was also a big project and of course dozens of smaller ones that we've been working on so the challenges that are still in front of us i mean we're three weeks to school now all right three weeks soon um

120we still have all of these things to worry about so uh production and product delays we ordered items in april we still haven't received um i went to order us an amplifier for a audio system the other day and the rep actually looked back at me and goes i think you'll have it in 2022. i was like oh that's too far so production delays are killing us delivery delays um you know estimated delivery of august 10th for items that i need for the freshmen still haven't arrived they don't know where they are should be fun uh contractor availability is of course another concern so every time we have to do anything i got to schedule a contractor for it they're having labor problems which means everything they're doing is slowing down which means getting them

121scheduled is no longer hey can i get you here in four weeks it's can i get you here in eight or twelve right and then of course enrollment volatility um i just wanted to put that one on there as we had no idea what our enrollment was going to end up this this year there was talk of possibly a double strength kindergarten enrollment we had no idea if parents were or the community were going to be concerned and possibly not re-enroll kids our enrollment's looking good right now as far as i've seen but we have to be ready for every child to walk in the door and have a device so i have to be ready for whatever hits right right last year we had a device for everybody so what's the difference like i

122have to prepare every device for every student we replaced all the chromebooks right we expanded chromebooks to third grade this year we also bought brand new chromebooks for every ninth grader so i had to prepare all those then i had to take all the senior devices clean them physically like get all the dirt and grime off of them and then clean all the data off of them and hand them to our seventh graders i had to rotate things around the division and that's not including the fact that i also have to be ready for new teacher orientation on the 18th which cheryl stresses me out about a lot so if the the new products don't come in we do we still have something we can give them one way or another everyone will receive a

123device i have received the device themselves we ordered dr thornton lettuce order early this year because i told him i was like i am not seeing the summer going well for delivery so he let us order early this year and i've gotten the laptops the problem is is our insurance says i have to have a case on those laptops right so all the insurance plans that we offer out there every one of them requires a case the cases we ordered on april 14th no one knows where they are hopefully they'll be here this week or next week let's go with next week so in the end we have prepared and keep in mind we touch every one of these devices every summer to upgrade clean charge assess repair everything we've done 1200 1250 ipads around

1241800 chromebooks and 2600 macintosh computers so that's all since we weren't allowed to collect early this year because of the virtual so it's probably since mid-june any questions as far as technology is concerned thanks very much thank you good luck okay next on the agenda's report from the superintendent reboot and the strategic plan yeah so it's nice and refreshing to talk about instruction and i wanted to share uh the training that we had for administrators uh system principals principals instructional coaches reading specialists everyone on the instructional side and so we kind of named it root reboot because we were getting back into the swing of things and having all of our students back and then also where are we going into the future planning for the strategic plan over the next five years so i'm

125not going to share every slide and talk elaborate about some of you know about this but it's just like a refresher what we have been doing and what we're going to get back to doing so first we wanted to start with just celebrations then we put up some here that were noteworthy that hardy's coming and it's right around the corner we had the first division wide girls on the run and that's in the nation that every school participated the first lady of virginia visited twice last year hardy elementary school and wins elementary school the secretary of ed came with her to windsor but then was very interested when he saw our farm behind that in our land lab then went out there and was amazed and shared some of that with others around the state

126then you know we've gotten grants through because of that land lab every year since we've had it and the excellence and workforce readiness award um that for the state through vsba and that was first the cte award yes and that's first place for school divisions between 5 000 and 10 000 students and it was for cte programs that enable students to transition to high demand high-wage jobs directly from high school that's been our focus that yes we still encourage you to go to a community college or or further your education if you want trades but we want to be able to send you into a high-paying job right out of high school and we're able to do that in some areas and we're doing a good job at that that's a huge accomplishment and i

127remember um someone saying we even through the pandemic we had 25 welders leave our program certified ready to go into the work workforce and so first place award by the state that is an accomplishment and i'm i just am very very excited about that one of our students won first place in the state for vsba the sa and the speech that they gave and gave that speech at the vsba conference in july it was the conference i attended yes and we're still working with ferguson enterprises that donated 25 000 you know we've helped rehabilitate two homes in our community so far we hope to do more with ferguson as we get back to a normal school year and i i had to put this one our cafeteria staff through last summer and delivering meals and

128going all over the county and then opening during the year and serving students in classrooms we served over 1 million meals and and that's major and then the the service calls you heard about the one-to-one and in all of this we were able to still play sports and we did have two little shutdowns in sports but we were able to win three state championships one in boys basketball uh one in debate which i would say debate five years in a row state champions that's unbelievable now to be able to do that and then boys soccer so a lot to celebrate uh even though uh we had a lot of challenges so very proud of that give this one and i don't want to leave these students out okay but we also had some champions with

129um track track and field track yesterday four by 100 boys yes 100 400 meters right right you're right i missed that that was not a team one but those four individuals yes i remember because we honored them at our last meeting you're right so i'm sharing what some of the stuff that was shared with principals and we talked about we got to reboot we got to refocus fix emerging issues we still have issues that are coming up and we have new challenges that we thought were behind us and some are still here and who knows what the future has to hold for us but we have to be prepared we have to correct software glitches we are so dependent now on technology and try to restart and halt those memory leaks damage has been done

130over these 18 months we know that we're assessing our students we're going to try to remediate our students but even though we're remediating it we're doing within our classrooms and we're still trying to accelerate and move forward and and then reignite and update and work for improvement okay so the first thing you can click is our focus documents these documents as you know have been around now they were developed through the last strategic plan this is our work instructionally it's the instructional framework it's deeper learning lessons going deeper and critical thinking in teamwork collaboration all those five c's that we talk about that is framed that was developed by instructional administrators teachers a lot of involvement that's what we do and that's what guides our staff so that still a big part of what we

131do yeah we're doing well with that we want to get back to that and so the instructional framework is what happens in a classroom and i didn't show you every slide but this is the critical part student work period you see 20 in red that's direct instruction where the teacher's delivering the lesson that should only be about 20 of the time of the time is small group teacher guided like i said maybe at the promethean board that could be where remediation happens that could be where acceleration happens that could be projects that could be team buildings all kinds of activities and give students a chance to be in charge of their own learning that's critical and that's in all of the research for their learning and none of us want to be talked to for

132a long time okay one of the things we talk about is norming the the observation so we're talking to administrators what does it look like when you go in and what are you looking for we're looking for things in in those focus documents are those happening in the classroom and when we say norming we want to make sure all of our principles and the system principles are looking for the same thing so that that is occurring during our training critical thinking deeper learning our focus documents we identify the verbs we highlight them and then we these are some of the questions that that our principals work with teachers and teachers work with each other and instructional coaches are you familiar with critical uh thinking strategies and and we have been trained in all these but

133we're reviewing all these we're we're trying to re-energize and get back to what we do really well and what could be added to the lesson we're always critiquing each other and how can it be better and did that work in that lesson huh it didn't work for those so and then the other part the depth of knowledge wheel that we have is it rigorous are we just asking yes or no are we really challenging our students so all of that goes into the observations the training and the communication what did what was that dok what was that the depth of knowledge of knowledge okay what was it called before hunters um just yeah i don't know i don't remember the alternative you know like understanding checking for understanding analysis um evaluation it's because yes it's

134a new word for the same thing and uh providing feedback so what are the coaching conversations you'll have with your teacher after this observation and that's what it is a lot of times people think there's this divide between administrating and teachers that's an administrator's job to sit down with someone after an observation and let's talk about what went well let's talk about what maybe we can improve and have it back and forth and so and you're trained on how to have those conversations because we don't want it to become confrontational it's not about that it's about getting better at what we do and this next one this is a key question we ask how can you ensure that high expectations are evident for all students in your building so a lot of what we talk

135about for teachers is delivering instruction they're trained how to deliver instruction they're not even really trained how to develop curriculum and we'll talk about curriculum later but we know and some some of you that have attended the senior of the year banquet where they honor teachers the teachers who connect and build relationships and understand who each individual student is are the ones who make a difference and during that night they don't talk about miss jones gave a beautiful lesson in math they did pay attention in math and did well in math because they trust that teacher and they have a relationship that's what has to happen and so i wanted to share uh high expectations because that is a key that we're going to focus on too in convocation i'm going to take you back

136to when i was a principal like over 25 years ago and i went i took over a high school with 50 percent white children 50 percent black children approximately but free and reduced lunch high poverty and that's how socioeconomic status was done in that time the sol scores in that school at the time the highest sol pass rate was 37 in math it was 5 and i'm looking at those teachers who were working hard and were educated they knew how to teach math and history they went to college for that and so why were they not achieving and so i did not go in as principal and see how did miss times teach math how did ms carr teach history and analyze that and i'm a math teacher i'm not an expert in history why

137would i be able to tell a history teacher how to teach history but what i did go into because our gaps were black white a huge gap back then our gap was social economics those free and reduced lunch kits why did they exist so what i did through my own training as i came up and this was 25 years ago now i went in there with the seating chart and i put a little check every time the teacher called on a student then i wrote what type of question did they ask was it yes or no was it a high order question was it an analytical deep thought type of question what were they asking them and then i met with that teacher afterwards and i showed them the chart and in most cases on

138that chart they had called on mostly white students they had called on mostly white girls and they were totally unaware of that and they said to me i didn't even know that and when they asked some kids that they looked like they were in poverty how they were dressed and stuff they asked some yes no question and they never asked them a higher question those teachers responded to me and said you know what i've never had a better observation you didn't come in here and tell me if i had my objective on the board and this or that you gave me something that i didn't know i was doing that's the only thing we did different it's the only thing we did different and talk about all the time just because these students are in

139poverty should not mean they can't pass these tests they and they should be able to go on to college they should be able to achieve just like every county around us and i push that and that's all i push two years later fully accredited high school fully accredited then i said you know what the next gap we looked at looking at our data was we only had 25 of our kids getting an advanced studies diploma then if you don't have that you're not going to college so if you don't take the right courses to get you to college you're not going to college and i said we need to push more kids and let them take algebra to chemistry world history two those are the three tests to get an advanced studies diploma let's give

140them a chance and i will tell you some of our teachers like whoa whoa wow mr thornton that's going to affect our sol scores we count on only the top students taking algebra two only the top students taking chemistry and if you put other students and they fail they're going to lower sol scores it's not about being fully accredited it is about do we get students from point a to b to c and to graduate so that was the next thing we push and we put those kids in that class two years later we went from 25 of our students getting advanced study to 71 percent of our students graduated with advanced science diploma in a county with 65 percent free and reduced kids that weren't supposed to succeed and it brings us back to

141a lot of conversations i'm hearing those teachers love children but what those teachers admitted is they their lived experiences for so long is they weren't successful with these students and they started thinking how can i teach these students they're so poor and they didn't even know it yes we didn't know that word then but what it was was an unconscious bias that they were told this little county can't be successful because they're poor and once we took that away and said you're going to have a high expectation for everyone and we did this they achieved because we took that away that's what made the difference that's what we're doing now what are the barriers that are keeping our kids why does isle of wight which only has 35 or 30 free and reduced and is

142a beautiful county with beautiful people why do we only have 50 percent of our kids get an advanced studies diploma and i'm not saying that i'll have to go to college but it would be nice if they took the classes that if they wanted to make up their mind their senior year or maybe a year after they're out of school and say hey yeah i do want to go to college they can go because we put them through the coursework that could get them there and even if they didn't pass all the classes were they more challenged did it help them grow in whatever they would tackle yeah those are the things that i hope we look at as we move forward with the strategic plan so the next area that we look at is

143project-based learning gosh we missed this and the expos and i think ms jones shared some of that with the emerging leaders our young people telling us what they learn versus taking a multiple choice test and everyone who's seen our expos what a great thing and and that's not specifically math or history those are presentation skills let's go goes back to those five c's and go ahead tracer so we need to align the pbl process and go back through that we haven't been able to really do that go ahead and the and these are some of the things we go through in the training a project is not dessert it's not an add-on let's get through teaching this and then we'll let you do a project project-based learning is we're going to learn all the objectives

144through the project through all the activities we do and that takes a lot of work and a lot of training and we were getting very good at it and we want to get back to that and these are some of the uh six a's of powerful projects you can assess differently it's not a multiple choice test the adult connections presenting to the public active exploration applied learning academic river rigor and authenticity and one of the examples was going out there and redoing those people's homes and that's authentic work so how can you ensure high expectations are evident in your building with this that's another key question it's another equity question when we examine this and i don't know how it happened but as we implemented project-based learning teachers were implementing it in their ap class

145or their honors class but let me implement this in honors earth science but then i can't do a project in regular earth science the whole idea of project-based learning is to find people's unique differences and talents and skills and how they can apply that to a project and we weren't letting that happen we were only letting the top kids do a project and so we need to look at why did that happen we can't allow that to happen that's for everyone to learn through and so that's something that that came out this is a a moment to brag here too is check us out isla white county pbl projects this is on the pblounge.org these are vetted projects with the content of virginia standards these are 92 projects vetted this is on that website that

146any teacher in the world can tap one of those projects and our teachers developed those projects and those were very successful projects that happened in our school and we're proud to share those with anyone there are they on a wall at a school they're on a wall so you can come up and put your phone out there and and do it but they're they're online for anyone then and they have to be submitted to pbl lounge and they are high quality projects we have some high quality people doing high quality work so they don't have to keep reinventing a wheel exactly yes and there and there's descriptions on it all of them the sol standards that are in there the appropriate grade level different activities you can go there and copy it you can go

147in there and tweak it maybe and that kind of make it your own but yeah you don't have to start from scratch if you're not sure about projects and we have instructional coaches that will help us and i've mentioned this before the soft skills through the pbl when you have to be stand up and present your project and that's one of the things i said to the young people when i went this summer you guys did such an amazing job researching i can't believe how how in-depth you've gone but some of you i could barely hear where some of you kind of your voice was shaking i don't know if i believe you i said if you want someone to believe your research you've got to be confident you did the work be confident deliver

148and that's what we say we don't say any more in either way thank you denise for standing up in class when you did a horrible job presenting what does that do it reinforces poor presentation skills now we don't blast you but we do do critiques and we pass balls around we let peers critique and this is what you could have done better denise here's what you did well denise and and those are critical conversations we teach kids how to have gentle critical conversations with each other so that they can improve so th this is some of the things i just talked about critiquing peer critiques gallery walks drafting and revision so we go through multiple drafts it's okay if something doesn't look great the first time you do it let's critique it and make it

149better the next time and assessing besides using just a multiple choice test and reflection looking and going back and reflection logs what could i have done better what went well those are all higher order thinking skills that we're teaching our kids that will be useful no matter what they do when they leave our school then expos like i said amazing when our young people can share what they like and curation we have on our walls if you go through our schools throughout the year what the the projects are are and curating that work because they're proud of their work and they want to show everyone and student differentiation projects is a powerful way to do that i already said it everyone can add their talent gift to the outcome but they're all hearing each other's

150talents and gifts and they're learning from each other and so these are just questions we ask principals and we ask our teachers as you go through and some of our teachers are great at this some struggle at this that's what we have our coaches for and to assist them to to take a risk and try these things so the next one i might ask you to address it susan put you on the spot it's just two slides so curriculum alignment we have noticed through the years that our upper teachers experienced teachers they're retiring and i'd love to keep them forever but they get to retire and across the united states we have a teacher's shortage that's because less than those young people are coming into education and the majority of our teachers are probably 20

151years plus and they're leaving us and so these young teachers may not have the curriculum alive so we have worked with hampton city and we have purchased curriculum so that we know we have a fully aligned curriculum and if you want to explain the benefits of that so i'll start with just what we've purchased from them and then i'll go into some of the other details about it so we've purchased elementary curriculum mathematics so k-5 aligned curriculum and i'll talk to more about what that is fourth grade virginia studies and fifth grade science we've also purchased six through 12 all four core areas we also have access to high school classes such as art classes cte health curriculums and those will be if teachers want to use them they can use those curriculums like the

152cte the art the spanish go ahead that's right okay so the hampton curriculum is completely aligned they've spent five years working on this um as you know they have a huge staff of instructional personnel so whereas we have hailey coop rider as our reading person they have like 10 haileys um same thing with math we have kristen from ella who's math and science they have a ton of people in math a ton of people in science so they have um aligned this curriculum and they are allowing school divisions to purchase it people purchasing it are probably divisions like us smaller divisions who do not have large personnel to write curriculum the curriculum includes pacing guides all lesson plans with lots of links for resources for those lesson plans so you get on a lesson plan

153it goes to the complete plan with numerous links and all the benchmarks so they're all aligned those benchmarks obviously will help us to better monitor our teachers we're comparing all all benchmarks the same thing so if you're taking fourth grade math everybody in the division in fourth grade math is taking the same benchmark and they're aligned so their new standards aligned and hampton will also provide us with a detailed analysis that they will do again it saves time from our staff doing it again small staff and they can do it very quickly so it'll be a help for our principals again i said with our small instructional staff it's been really hard we have worked to create our own write our own curriculum we do have k-5 reading so haley with our reading coaches she

154has developed k5 curriculum we're not going to change that we've worked really hard on it but in the last what four years we've gotten through really good curriculum for reading we've worked on math but it's teachers coming in during the summer you know and it just we've gotten some done but it has not been to where we want it to be which is why we've taken this step to purchase it um a great resource for teachers they actually have a curriculum to follow so if you think about if you're a brand new teacher coming into isle of wight you did not have a curriculum you had standards of learning and you had some resources but you did not have an actual curriculum to follow and so now we are able to hand new teachers here

155you go and in fact some of our new teachers who have learned of this they are excited and our new administrators because we have several who have come to us from hampton they were jumping up and down at boot camp last week when we told them we've purchased this curriculum because they've seen the benefits of it they've seen that it is aligned and how how much time it gives back to teachers um giving them giving our teachers this resource we're hoping that's your tier one instruction so when you have students and we know we have students with lots of gaps coming back to us you can focus your time on what are you going to do for small group instruction how are you going to address those gaps during the framework student work period here's

156your here's tier one now what are you gonna do to address those tier two and tier three students so we're hoping it's gonna give time and lastly here's your sunday back you know you don't have to spend you remember teachers right you spend it may not be sunday but you're spending one of your weekend days typically planning planning planning i know that was me sunday afternoon um so we're trying to again giving some time back for teachers what questions you have about it okay so curriculum when you say curriculum define that i mean it is the pacing of week one week two week three week four weeks five it is um the stand by day this is your essential question here's your learning of learning intentions here are your learning outcomes and then literally everything

157you can do to begin your lesson and hook them what is your t what it is that you're teaching that day um guided practice independent practice i do we do you do all of that assessing um how can you extend students if they already know the content what can you do to remediate kids and differentiate for kids who are struggling it's all there for you but does it have the flexibility to add your thing sure so if you if you have a great way of teaching a standard and you've been successful in it yes the pacing will need to be the same but if you know a great way to teach a certain standard we're not taking that away from you we're not saying you can't do that what we are saying here's a great

158resource that is aligned use it here's the pacing but we're not taking away all of your autonomy and saying you can't change it up right because i mean we remembered concern me yeah we remember the day when we started on page one in a book right and by the end of the year we might be on chapter 20 and it was 25 chapters to it and we just never got to the last five chapters right but now it's like we're teaching the standards and we are aligning the breaking the standard down to of teachable objectives yes and teaching okay yes and when i say aligned i mean whatever that verb is that you're being asked to do in the state standard that's what you're going to be doing in the class what we see a

159lot with our sol scores is we're doing well but we still have 25 percent 20 percent of kids not achieving we have an alignment issue some of our standards are not aligned as they need to be and this will help fix that susan thank you very much because i was familiar with the hamptons uh program i have friends to work there and not only that it's been in the media for the last year or so and um i can remember when i came out teaching although i was in sped program the regular classroom teachers had the textbooks the curriculum that came with the textbooks that's what that's what they use i'm glad to hear that we're now collaborating with other districts because when as our students could not compete with the students from the larger

160cities but now they should be able to as far as as far as academics because they seem to have like you said taught on a higher level they had more staff than we had to concentrate with those students and i'm glad to hear that you all have reached out to the hampton uh public schools to uh collaborate with them and use their curriculum yeah and they've offered this to anybody who who wants to purchase it and so we just decided to take it we've looked at it we've reviewed it we're very impressed with it so we decided to take them up on it thank you you're welcome so so next strategic planning through an equity lens so i want to share with you we do not have a separate equity plan we're we're building a

161strategic land for the next five years that has an equity lens that we that we investigate and we look at things and how we're doing that and now does miss jones have a plan that she will submit to mike lombarda yes that with objectives that she wants to accomplish just like the math coordinator does and the history coordinator does does that mean all of that plan happens no it gets tweaked as we go along and things and we're learning and especially with equity i already expressed we we've been doing equity 25 years ago or more but now there's a vocabulary out there and so a lot of it is new to us and as we learn with anything and even when we've developed this five-year plan that plan is going to be tweaked as we

162go through the five years what have we done well what are we not doing well what do we need to look at it ended up different than we wanted it to be and we're moving slowly what we've done so far is train our administrators and in instructional coaches and our next step is going through uh training for our teachers and i'll talk more about that but that is in small groups that's going to take until spring of next year that's the the biggest goal as we go through the strategic planning is that awareness training for teachers and then the other goal is serving on the ac the strategic plan as we look with that equity lens and i think someone read this earlier and we keep asking what is our goal for equity this is

163our goal for equity to that education equity is achieved when we eliminate the predictability of student outcomes based on race gender zip code ability socioeconomic status languages at a spoken home i shared an example with with you this evening where the school i took over it was just accepted that they weren't going to do well and it was okay we do the best we can that doesn't have to be the final answer this should be the final answer so the next thing i want to address is this picture which so many people can concede in so many different ways i want to share what i see i see a fence that's a barrier for access into the game and not all students need the same support to have access to that game even though all

164students with the proper supports in the second picture have access to the game undoubtedly not everyone is going to still achieve the same level how do you participate in the game what do you put into the game there's still going to be differences in outcomes that's not that's not going to change but do the if you don't even have access that's when you have huge achievement gaps when you have access then you help individuality helps determine your outcomes too so you have to have access our gaps to them that we found already is our black and white students with achievement is our special ed students with achievement and in discipline to say i'm going to be colorblind no i'm not that is a problem there is a difference between black and white student outcomes here

165just like there was when i was a high school principal i didn't go like this and say god i hope it goes away let's sing hallelujah and we don't have a problem no we have a problem let's find out what it is and how about trying to solve it because that's why we're here that's why we go to in-service training that's why we we go to project-based learning training that's why we do all that we do and in all of those trainings through the years i was a teacher too and an administrator and i sat in those things where i was like man this training's crazy and that may have been project-based learning training or something else no one sits there and agrees to everything they're given for training but you take bits and pieces

166and you make it yours into your classroom and your instruction so the ultimate goal is to build relationships and find out who the students are in your classroom what are the barriers so hopefully you can remove the berry and i see the young man who can see over the fence he can see over at all time that may be the student that we look at that comes from an affluent home and we look you're an upper middle class home and you have two parents at home and the world looks wonderful we look at that and they're well dressed and we look and they could speak well because maybe they had grandma at their house reading to them from age two and we look at them and say they have no problem in the world we

167don't know that until we get to know our students we're in a different day and age now with technology the way it is and the exposure our kids have yeah we need to teach them at home and if you don't think they're going to be exposed to god knows what out there in the world then you better put them in a little bubble and take every device away from them but like i did like someone else said you still control your home i learned this here i learned this here what does that mean how do you think that means mommy or daddy or grandma and that's what education is you take everything you learn and you analyze it and you make decisions and if it's not that way then we're gonna have a bunch of

168robots that is what the beauty of education is so go back to that explain the um the second that i see the equality they all got the same thing well they didn't do them um all the same way but the equity like the tall boy didn't get anything so explain that right so what that is showing that some people come to school and they already see i already have access to the game and even that's an assumption that's what i mean by we think we label kids even if we we think oh that's a great family a great kid they have everything going for them we expect great things for them we don't know the trouble they may be having they might be depressed and a depressed kid may not even show this family the

169family may not know that's why we need to start having conversations with our kids and understanding where they're from and we need to understand the vocabulary but that equity picture is not saying we want them all at the same level no we want them to have access to the game and when you have access we all have individual differences we still have kids who will have access now with different supports and maybe they still there's other things maybe they don't really care about history so maybe they won't do as well as the person sitting next to them there's all other factors too education is one of the most complex things that we do and we just want to make sure you have access to participate and it's just like our reading program when they come

170we have kids come into kindergarten that are already reading and we have some that have had very little access to books so for a kindergarten teacher to meet a child where they are and take them to the next level we're not going to hold this child that's already reading back and just let them be there we're going to take that child to the next level while we're meeting this child at this level when i first started teaching we were all in the same reading book and if you weren't on that level i'm so sorry that's how i grew up our teachers look at srl scores and that's just one sampling our teachers look at how those kids scored the year before and if they have a kid who scored 500 which is past advanced they're

171trying to get that kid to 550. that's right if they have a kid at 375 who didn't pass they're trying to get in the 400 to pass if they're 400 they're trying to get them to 450 trying to grow every kid it's not going to be equal outcomes but we want to look at if you're having trouble why what is causing it and there's a whole lot of things it's not just the kids or their family life we just talked about curriculum if we're not teaching what's tested and how it's tested with the right verbs and this teacher is teaching it this way without the verbs we're going to have different outcomes and they didn't do it on purpose those are all things we look at we exam we try to examine all of it

172to so our kids will be successful and you're right and maximize their potential the doctor sees one patient at the time a classroom teacher has a class and i mean they they need support from the hayley's and the coaches and all because of all the different levels they have and the resources we need because we've got so many different levels that we want to take to the next level in the classrooms so next is the culturally responsive training teaching that i said was going to last or take it through the spring to get it done to get four sessions done with all of our teachers and it's an awareness it's a reflection it's not a mandate that you believe this or else there's more diversity in our classrooms than ever before and we need to

173take the blinders off and i'm not going to apologize we do discuss privilege bias transgenders lgbtqia because it's a new vocabulary i've learned things in training i didn't know i have transgender kids in my school i do know that but i didn't know some things that i should know and i don't interact with the kids day-to-day like that but one thing that that came out is we had a teacher this year that actually asked their kids what pronoun do you want to be called it was an activity at the beginning of the year and to get to know their kids and i had a parent email me furious what are you all doing up there i didn't know they were doing that and i didn't know if it was a bad thing or a good

174thing but i found out in the training is not an appropriate thing to ask that person who may want to be called by a different pronoun may not be ready to share that they don't want to be asked and you're putting people on the spot that's not appropriate through that training i learned that now we're sharing that with our teachers it shows a new teacher correct yes and and young and they're exposed the reason this language is out there we all have internet it's out there and it's defined by whether you like it or not the far right it's defined by the far left it's defined by moderates it's defined any way you want and that's education too and you read it and you reflect and you figure out what it means to you and

175how you may use it in your work that's what this is about and it's not something that we're going to teach kids there are people who argue that you know what high school kids should talk about this i'm not going to say we're putting that into the curriculum but i'm going to ask you how are you going to keep it out of the curriculum when current events happen in history when you and i were were in history classes didn't you all ask questions of your history teacher hey i heard this i saw this and now kids are exposed to a whole lot more we used to only be exposed to what that history teacher shared with us now we're exposed to everything so if they ask a question we don't have to give our opinion

176we always tell people don't give your opinion but you can give them here's where you can read on it go home and talk to your family about that since i've been in education as a student we have governor elections presidential elections and i remember having to make posters i remember a few years back when it was trump and hillary and the students one of their projects made posters and they had to take a position we weren't trying to indoctrinate them to be hillary clinton or trump they were researching about what they believe in and stand for and what the election's about that's education and then those students hopefully went home and talked to their parents about what they heard and then they probably heard what their parents thought and then they make decisions this is

177not new stuff it's new vocabulary that's been happening forever and again we're not the fear that's out there about some of the stuff is just there is no evidence we're not teaching kids this curriculum but we are teaching adults this we're exposing them to this we want them to be aware we want them to reflect so steps in the strategic planning we've outlined the process and the timeline at the last meeting i've gone over uh culturally responsive teaching training that's going to occur and the equity audit that will be conducted over the first couple months of school year all of this data and more data will be used to help inform the strategic planning process as well as community input in the focus groups along the way and i guess what i want to say

178to to end is the equity audit let me let me talk a little about that beforehand what the equity audit is going to do is have an outside firm come in and evaluate our practices and look at our data and get their reflection of our data it's hard to examine your own data and they're going to look for and determine recommendations practical strategic and actionable next steps in one of the things that i thought was powerful is they're gonna they're gonna have and share with us the differences in how students and how families and parents may see our schooling versus how we see our schooling that's going to be powerful information we have one lens looking at what we're doing parents have a lens so do our students that's going to be valuable as we

179collect that information but as we go through this process here's the difficult part i've been in poor school systems my whole career until this one this is the hardest job of better you know why it's the hardest job because we're good and everyone knows we're good but to go from good which at this time doesn't include everyone to great that's the hardest work because when you already know you're good you feel satisfied there's a certain part of our population that's not part of that we're not going to be great until we include them and i want the whole community to join into the strategic planning process so that we can be great that's the goal to be great and include everyone and i hope people join us i know i was long-winded questions so next

180on the agenda is the calendar yeah update on the calendar so if you have any questions on the calendar i can ask i can answer those for you graduation will be june 10th and that is why we have added in the day off for students on june 10th so that we can hold windsor and smithfield high graduations at liberty and if our staff you know obviously our staff to attempt yes yes um and then we also added in two early dismissal days to accommodate parades for homecoming and that's why the dates are different you couldn't figure that out okay each and have their homecomings they'd like to do the parades and what we find every year is parents and students are asking because they want to attend the parade so we're giving a little bit

181of early dismissal for the two dates okay and i'm delighted about graduation yes graduation last year was what wonderful wasn't it wonderful it was wonderful and so we've secured that location and they'll both be on that friday well this is something that we had asked for years ago yes we sent people out to get that information susan you were here and we were told that that liberty live was not large enough to hold the um with the congregation from alawite county special high school and i just said i've been in that place i don't see why not it seemed to me just as large as you know the coliseum maybe not as large but we proved them wrong yeah it was amazing it was amazing yes and we got through it and i don't i

182haven't heard of anyone being ill thank you thank you you all did a wonderful job okay next on oh we have the action it's an action item i'm ready to move i'm sure i make a motion to revise the 20 21 22 school calendar to include early dismissal dates of september 24th for hardy elementary carlton elementary west side elementary and october the 15th for carsville carsville elementary and windsor elementary june 10th as staff work day student holiday for graduation and june 20th school closed for juneteenth holiday second and we have a second seven here we have a motion it has been second mr wilson can you hit yours again it didn't go through okay you want to just give me the verbal and change it yes that's fine okay yes okay there we go it

183passed good okay okay still it's still up there i know it still said okay i'm gonna have to could be yeah yeah yeah it didn't let me fix it but motion carry so we're going to move on is that okay okay next on the agenda is mass for the 21 22 school year we know earlier today the governor mandate of masking for all k through 12 students certainly for many in our division was a big disappointment and we have listened to to the hearts of so many parents passionate about masking and others passionate about parent choice and i feel for you because i'm right there with you i have grandsons entering uh kindergarten grade one now grade two four and seven but this is what it is and we wanna make the best of it

184and um while i have nothing to do with the instructional day schedules i would like to encourage mask list breaks as many as we can get for our students kindergarten i mean elementary i remember having three recesses you know in the morning after lunch and in the afternoon and i mean that's just the way it was back then middle school high school we need to be creative will we get through as much instruction we don't know we don't know you know but we're going to do the best we can um but the fact that learning is taking place and children are going to be with children we can look forward to some fun time together continuing to grow and learn excuse me i i just want to say something because medicare what you just said

185is so contradict what has happened earlier today with the governor okay and i feel we're a school board sitting here what you just said you have children or whatever i didn't i felt that statement didn't need to be made coming from us right now okay i don't know how you took it what i meant was many are positive about what happened where many are disappointed so but we're all in the same place so we got to make the best of it that's what i meant if i came across differently i mean i'm not stating my opinion i'm just saying about all the emails that i got there was some passionate about we want masks and others were passionate about we want parent choice and where we are is there's no choice so we got to

186make the best of it that's how i meant to come across i apologize if i came across differently thank you right next on the uh agenda is the capital improvement plan so the capital improvement plan is something that we do every year and update every year at about this time of year this is information tonight next meeting we want public input on the capital improvement plan last year when we had public input we had requests about renovating the abandoned course rooms and we researched that and and came up with an approximate cost of 1.3 million we had requests from the public for a synthetic football field at smithfield high school and redoing the track and many of the teams we play or maybe all of them at this point play on synthetic feels with the

1874a schools where smithfield plays not windsor and then the reconfiguration of vestibules that is a door and then another door before you can enter the school so for security reasons and all our new schools have those in our design but could we reconfigure the ones we have and there was a cost to that and then this is something that that i had this was not added last year officially but as we researched a new west west side middle school and explored and found a georgie tyler being built in chesterfield county but with 1100 students which our west side needs to be we found out it was far more than 28 million it was going to be about 40 million and i know mr grice helped research that and and found that out as we uh

188and it might cost more with the economy we have who knows hopefully prices start to come down and i'm here and they are starting to come down a little with with lumber and certain things so those are things that i'm going to submit for next year but then we need input from from our principals or anyone that they've heard in the community or anyone that wants to come forward next month and speak to the board so the next slide i know it's really small and you have it in your packet but the top one shows last year and if you so for the public there's 16 million under there for hardy that's the second year party that was what was approved in the board of supervisors plan and it goes through the planning commission and

189then to the board of supervisors it was 11 million dollars the first year for hardy and then 16 million so 27 million and you see next year you see hardy's not even there because that was already approved and this is a moving 10-year plan that doesn't mean that money disappeared that was appropriated for those things and you see the 28 million that was there for west side but the rest wasn't in that plan so the second slide which i'm going to click for is this slide everything in red is what we're requesting that wasn't approved in the past and so you see the bus garage and central office is in there that's really a placeholder of about two million dollars but you see that's in years six through ten that's the out years and then

190you see our most immediate concern is the security vestibules for 290 000 we probably need to be moving at that and smithfield high school and windsor high school and some of our schools that don't have that and then the additional money for westside and none of that is officially proved we still have to go through the whole process and those numbers have changed since the initial conversations i'm hoping that we can still build a new west side middle school because if you remember when we developed a plan for the northern end of the county it was for growth hardy helps growth but if you don't add students and build a new west side and have more capacity then we've got a problem with growth you build both then the high school middle school that exists

191now become eight through 12 instead of seven through 12 and we have growth so hopefully it all still happens and but we got a long way to go and a lot of conversations and a lot of research still and that's it if you have any questions thank you for that update okay next is the action on the closed session items personnel report and addendum i'm sure i moved to apprecia approve the personnel report and addendum reckon okay we have a motion has been second vote please okay motion carry okay next on the agenda is the religious exemption requests but they were taken out of the packet okay next is the adoption of the consent agenda the minute meeting minutes donations and financials this is an action item after i move to approve the minutes the

192donations in the financials second the consent agenda right yes yes anybody second let's okay sorry motion made second and vote motion carry next is the policies the second read from our july 28 work session do you have a motion madam chair i'll make a motion if we approve the policies for the second read as presented okay we're going to vote before we vote i want to say that i support our current policies that were discussed at the july 28 work session that protects the rights of all students and prohibits discrimination of any kind including gender identity i do not support adding the virginia code section 22.1-23.3 to the legal reference sections as it could imply that we support the entire 20 27-page vdoe model policy document that could conflict with other virginia laws the motion

193has been made it has been second vote please so motion carry next on the agenda is policies for first read this is an information item any questions you skipped one 18.2 sorry well is that the very bottom of the page okay i see it right 18.2 policies per second read there are three policies for second read this is an action item any questions okay you have a motion i don't share i'll make a motion that will prove the policies for second read but um from the july 12 meeting as presented well now that oh was that the yes that's right july 12th meeting of july 12th okay thank you miss times you have a second okay we have a motion it has been second vote please emotion carry next on the agenda 18.3 policies for

194first read we had a number of them any questions or comments this is the first read we will be voting on them not tonight but next school board meeting okay next is policy for approval okay this is that jn right student fees the student fees the policy itself has not changed we just every year we have to update the fee schedule and i did ask the question why are the class dues different at each high school do you want to i mean because somebody looking at this may question it could you give that answer yeah it's up to the buildings how they want to do it and it's dependent upon what traditions are in place what activities are planned typically during the senior year so it's up to each building how they want to handle

195it okay thank you all right so this is an action item we need a measurement i would like to make a motion to approve the policy jn with the student fees as presented for the 2021-22 school year okay motion may it's been second vote please okay motion carry next on the agenda is uh 18.5 regulations and exhibits this is an information item we're not voting on it any questions comments and the policies 18.6 policies reviewed but not revised there were three policies any questions or comments okay do we have any board member requests and comments i have a comment madam chair first comment i would like to make is not a comment i would like to say something to the public tonight um i apologize for my public outbursts that happened during the um [Applause]

196citizens comment some of you do not uh many of you that know me most of you in here do not know me 12 years ago this month i lost my mother to a homicide when that individual stood up and said what they said and screamed out my mother it became very personal to me and i apologize if i had an outburst because that is not me okay and i hope you accept my apology secondly last month i had to distance myself and leave the meeting early and i've heard a couple of comments that i left because i didn't want to hear the citizens speak that was not it i'm going to share this with you i have a severe back issue l4 f5 and l3 on l4 i have a growth and i was still

197in the middle of my treatment i could not sit down it just got to the point if you were at the meeting i was doing this i was doing that thank you to my pain management doctor i am able to come to my meetings now and sit until i can have the surgery and those two things i would like to apologize for thank you you miss times do you have anything mr wilson did you have anything no not right now no no they were taking off ms perkins because uh due to the age of the youth the request they will maybe come back next year okay you have new comments no i have none and now um we will this is where we would adjourn but we agreed to hear from how many was it

198that we there's only one person that wanted to stay after the meeting okay one person to stay after the meeting so do we want to just carry on and let everybody hear the person or do you want him to come up miss times or he can come up and he can have the five minutes that he normally would have but i i just i and i and and i want to explain myself about that too i wanted to go on and take care what we needed to do at our school board meeting but yes as citizens i would like to hear you out okay thank you miss tice i appreciate that and again my name is john kolick first i want to start off by thanking a chairwoman for your kind letter in response to

199my comments last month i'm very heartened to hear that all the students will be treated like that is with dignity and respect the policies against harassment bullying etc apply to all students faculty and staff as they should there's no daylight between the board and how i feel um but before i start i'd like to ask you to please remember that you represent the citizens of iowa white not the virginia legislature your job is to set policy reflective of our shared community values while upholding both the u.s and virginia constitutions it's not to enforce any unconscionable laws established by people who seem addicted to power in richmond as an elected body you should not be subject to the dictates of another elected body now as you know my primary concern was that parents must be notified

200when a child identifies as transgender and at the 28th july work session the superintendent clearly articulate that exactly what would happen and i thank you sir he also mentioned that he would like the authority to promulgate regulations based on those policies that were approved this evening and i look forward to reviewing those policies now my secondary concern was that boys would attempt to use girls locker rooms stating they identified as girls again i think the superintendent made it very clear this is unacceptable in our schools and parents would be notified again i thank you sir now in addition my concerns about this topic which should be described as critical gender theory since the roots come directly from herbert marcus who developed critical theory ideology i'm also concerned about the critical race theory that's been discussed

201a lot here tonight as it's known in many schools and throughout corporate america as equity and occlusion now i think we all understand there is no curriculum developed for crt however we do know that alawite teachers are being trained in this type of ideology this can be referred to as transitional education that is by influencing the teachers or educating or training them you expect them to influence the students some teachers may even feel they're being threatened by termination if they don't pass that along but because time constraints i'm not going to go into any more than that and i'm not going to talk about the large sums of money that are being used to purchase literature and training materials for equity inclusion but i will say that it does take away from the primary mission

202of our schools that is to provide high quality education and develop a sense of patriotism and citizenship in every single one of our students we need to return to educating our kids and stop indoctrinating them sadly it seems that our school system is slowly moving towards the indoctrination whether or not wittingly or unwittingly and the equity inclusion and transgender model policies are examples of that as a citizen of the county i will not allow social experiment in our schools to go on without a fight now one way we can do this is to change how our schools function and change it now they need to our schools need to act as a business almost like walmart one minute traditionally businesses seek to maximize profit through sales but sam walton tried something different he focused on

203minimizing expenditures and was able to build an empire that's what we need to do in our school system i'm going to skip a couple and just basically say as i close i want to remind each of you what i said last month and find it even more true today as both the u.s congress and the virginia legislature continue to pass legislation that most americans are against and i continue to stand by my comments that quote most of our elected officials and many bureaucrats in our commonwealth have become little tyrants forgetting they are subject to the people not the other way around over the last two years they've made laws and regulations that are abhorrent to the average person folks i had a great night tonight i learned a lot and i beg of you not

204to become little tyrants by ignoring the people that elected you fine thank you very much and now our meeting is adjourned