001miss times here ms carr here ms schulich is out and miss perkins yeah thank you this time we need approval of agenda or amendments madam chair i would like to make a motion that we will approve the agenda as presented and including the amendments second and i need a verbal so mr wilson yes ms tynes yes ms carr yes ms perkins yes we want to welcome everyone to our school board work session and at this time i would like to ask um miss times to open us up with the pledge and 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 under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you okay our business for the day is
002going to begin with the vsba policies okay madam chair and board members um as you're aware vsba does our policies and they have sent information of about 15 different policies that you saw at the last meeting that would put us in compliance with virginia code 22.1-23.3 and those areas that have to be covered are compliance with applicable non-discrimination laws maintenance of a safe and supportive learning environment free from discrimination and harassment for all students prevention of and response to bullying harassment maintenance of student records identification of students protection of student privacy and the confidentiality of sensitive information enforcement of sex-based dress codes and student participation in sex specific school activities and events and use of school facilities activities and events do not include athletics so those are the areas that we have to be in
003compliance and those are the areas that these policies according to vsba address so i'm going to go through them in the order and what i've done is if you see the first policy up there jb which is equal educational opportunities and non-discrimination bsba as you know sends the red line so if it's crossed out those are words that are coming out if they're inserted they're read and underlined the majority of theirs address uh title ix and nondiscrimination which is federal law and then i have highlighted in yellow like you see that first one gender identity that word was already in our policy that's adopted what i have highlighted is what vsba has said because those words are in policy then they meet and comply with 22.1-23.3 does anyone have a question on that before we
004get started so we're not going to read over every policy i've highlighted them you've you've seen these but i do want to go over those areas so for non-discrimination having the word gender identity in the policy and the word all students covers us for discrimination of all students including gender identity and then the last part of jb page five you see the code reference 22.1-23.3 which covers non-discrimination so the next policy is jfha slash gba and that is prohibition against harassment and retaliation okay and then page one you can see highlighted the word gender identity again already in our policy and so that covers any student that is in that category as protected for harassment and retaliation and you see they've added instead of status as a veteran they put military status was one of
005their other changes and i believe that is the only change in that policy except for the code reference again on the final page again all of the red underlined text is referencing title ix which is attached to federal law yes right and as you know as we go through policies every year these are sent out redlined with suggestions from bspa and those are done with bsba's attorneys so again on page 18 you just see the 23.1-23.3 the next the next area is gba slash jfha so it's like the reverse of the the letters that you had before and this is for um this for personnel so the first one for students is for personnel personnel have the same rights and so the same thing was done that military status thing and gender identity is already
006in there so that is again that is covered by having that word in there and again on page 18 of that policy gba slash jfha is the code all right the next policy falls under the category of maintenance of safe and supportive learning environment free from discrimination and harassment for all students and that is policy a.d educational philosophy and on that you see highlighted again you see one word that was crossed out maximum but uh basically highlighted it was is committed to providing equal opportunity for every student to achieve intellectual social emotional and physical growth and then in bullet number two under alawite county school board bullets bullet two says treats all members of the school community equitable and with respect and as you can see the majority of those words already existed in policy
007there any questions with that one you decided to strike out the highest degree of just um respect you sh actually put the red line through the highest degree was there any reason or you just figure it was just too many words or something i believe it was you're going to treat people with respect and then what it what is the highest degree of respect so it's just a word smithing okay who's who's going to determine what the highest degree is right okay thank you and and vsba does that often they wordsmith through the years but well yeah that was the intent but what is who's going to measure that well that was good right so a lot of it is worse method that was the 2000s right the highest okay gotcha yes ma'am you also
008have to be careful as far as the letter of the love versus the spirit of the law but one person might interpret one day and based on their uh geographical location they might actually be speaking from another issue if you understand what i'm saying yeah right right you might have someone say your policy says the highest respect you're not showing me the highest respect right okay yeah so if you take it i can't just say respect exactly yeah all right so the next policy that falls under that category is a e and that is school division goals and objectives and what was highlighted or suggested to be highlighted that meets the code is the recognition of each student's individuality which again these things were already in our policies programs emphasize diagnostic and prescriptive instruction allowing
009individual approach to each student's learning style and educational needs so all that speaks to is we we do look at all students needs and and provide the supports the the learnings educational needs that are necessary and and we're required to do so so as you can see as we're going through these a lot of this we already do for all students i don't see where we've made any changes on our policy right we're really not making changes on our policy we have protected all students and that's why what what i'm recommending as a superintendent is we don't need a separate policy for transgender students we protect all students it's incredible and we have all of this right so the next policy that falls under that category is ch and there it says the school board
010authorizes the superintendent to create and update regulations necessary to carry out the policies adopted by the board and that is again we've always had that the next policy is parent and family engagement and that's igbc and it says the isle of wight county school board recognizes that the education of each student is a re is a responsibility shared by the school and the student's family so that speaks to well we're always going to involve the family in in decisions and things that happen with individual students [Applause] and that's part of our us constitution absolutely they are part of parents have constitutional rights and the only time that as a school system that we're required to do anything is if we feel like a child is in harm's way and then we would we're mandatory reporters
011for social services right other than that we are supposed to communicate with parents and we do so and we've always done that absolutely absolutely and the next policy that falls under that area is ij guidance and counseling program and you see what's highlighted there is each school provides the following guidance and counseling services to all students and then under the third bullet it says personal social counseling which exists assists i'm sorry assists a student to develop an understanding of themselves the rights and needs of others how to resolve conflict and to define individual goals reflecting their interests abilities and aptitudes information and records of personal social counseling will be kept confidential and separate from a student's educational records and not disclosed to third parties without prior parental consent or is otherwise provided by law parents
012may elect by notifying their child school in writing to have the child not participate in personal social counseling no student is required to participate in any counseling program to which the student's parents object so again this is already in our policy and it addresses the students rights and parents rights to privacy and i would assume that anyone who wanted to come to the central office and read these policies would have the opportunity to to look at one of these highlighted copies i actually posted them on board docs so there are highlighted ones now so that any parent can see this who wishes to yes dr thornton um i know we put it out on board docs and everything is it possible that i could make a recommendation that we put one in the uh local
013library like the smithfield library and maybe windsor and just keep it there for right now since we've making a lot of changes in these do we have policy anymore in libraries i know we don't have to but i was just asking if we would do that just this one time just for maybe a month because you know a lot of people out there in the county they still do not have the wi-fi they cannot go and look up on our board docs but if we put it in one of the local libraries they can go there and read it for themselves if needed at least for you just say we'll leave it there for six weeks or something so they can see it the but if you don't want to these specific policies you're talking
014about yes the ones that we are updating like this notebook like this but we're this is just talking about because i mean just for six weeks not because you know we don't i know before they had to keep it up but i'm just saying a lot of people don't have wi-fi and they can't just go to bulldogs and read it right okay do we have anywhere because i mean i i know how to go to board docs do we have any kind of um information that is for parents to know how to get to board docs where do they go to find out how to get to board docs if they go on our website under board under board and then meetings it gives you directions and a link and you click on anything but
015see a lot of people don't know that so we've got to communicate that i mean it's it when you pull up board and it explains all that in the verbage to look at previous meetings click here right yeah yes i just want to make sure that it's there our community knows how to get to that it's there well i just wanted to reach the people that do not have tech technology and they do not have wi-fi they can still say hey i saw the updated ones we put it someplace where they could see it because if your office or they could come to the school but yeah school board office is open during the daytime you know bankers hours pretty much to say a lot of parents at work if we put in a public
016library they can go into evenings and free to read it right all right so the next policy jfc student conduct believe on page three if you scroll down [Music] highlighted is bullying and use of the electronic means for bullying and that talks about bullying is prohibited and then harassment which references the other policy j fha and gba that we already went over so by having those that under student conduct again that puts us in compliance the next area is prevention of and responsible and harassment and that starts with policy gcl and that's professional staff development and there's a typo in development oh development yeah i saw that all right so um you see the highlighted part if you scroll down a little bit more roman numeral five designed to decide to educate educate school board
017employees about bullying as defined in virginia code 22.1-276.01 and the need to create bully-free environment it's already in our policy next policy is gc gcl again and that just has the code reference next policy iga i is character education and you see highlighted there is the program also addresses the inappropriateness of bullying as defined in virginia code 22.1-276.01 so all of these areas address bullying of all students and then next policy in that area is jfc student conduct and highlighted it says this policy and the standards of student conduct apply to all iowa white county school students again the the language has always been in there to protect all students all right the next area is maintenance of student records and the first policy under that is j.o student records and you see that that
018whole first two paragraphs is highlighted the alawite county school board maintains accurate and complete records for every student enrolled in the public schools in accordance with all federal and state laws the superintendent and or his designees is responsible for the collection of data record maintenance and security access to and use of records confidentiality personally identifiable information dissemination of information from records and destruction of records including the destruction of personally identifiable information regarding a student with a disability at the request of the parents the superintendent also provides for notification of all school division personnel of policy and procedures for management of education records in notification of parents and students of their rights regarding student records including the right to obtain [Music] upon request a copy of this policy so basically what all that means is that
019we we train our staff and we have to protect all student records and personnel records as confidential [Applause] i believe that was the only change in my policy yes all right the next policy goes to the identification of students [Applause] and that is policy joa student transcripts and you see highlighted there secondary school transit transcripts contained contained information as specified by the virginia board of education so there's no changes to that as well why would this be part with the transcripts it just i mean this doesn't have anything to do with it i mean that the transgender it does for coding if they if a transgender student wanted to be coded all the students right okay and and that's right the next one is field trips iica and because it talks about one of the
020one of the areas that i read at the beginning it says student participation in sex specific activities and events and use of school facilities so field trips falls under that and again you don't see a change but the highlighted areas are field trips are off campus instructional activities trips are approved by the superintendent or superintendent's designee pursuant to regulations developed by the superintendent so field trips all that is saying is field trips are instructional all the rules harassment discrimination everything is covered on a field trip as well and then instructional goals and objectives the iowa county school board develops and implements a program of instruction for grades kindergarten through 12 that is aligned to the standards of learning established by the board of education and that meets or exceeds the requirements of the board of
021education so basically what that says is we are teaching this the standards of learning next policy is student organizations igda and on the last page of that compliance with law and policy student organizations shall not engage in any activity which is contrary to law division policy or school rules which disrupts or clearly threatens to disrupt the orderly operation of the school or which would adversely affect the health safety or welfare of any student or staff members failure to comply with these provisions shall be grounds for disciplinary action again this is already in policy and goes to any student organizations [Applause] the next policy is jfcb sportsmanship ethics and integrity so the school board recognizes the value of extracurricular activities in the educational process and values that students develop when they have the opportunity to participate
022in an organized activity outside of the traditional classroom participants and responsible adults involved in school board approved extracurricular activities are expected to demonstrate the same level of responsibility and behavior practice and competition as is expected in the classroom so again anything that goes on with our athletics extracurricular still fall under all of our rules all of our policies and regulations and and then non-discrimination ac is there again and it's brought up again this was one of the first policies we looked at but it falls under that area of activities and events as well so you can't discriminate for any uh activity and again it just highlights the word gender identity that was already in there and that is all of the policies according to vspa that will address 22.1-23.3 and as you can see we
023have not added anything to policy that i think is controversial or changes what we're doing today and have been doing for many years so what we have just gone through shows that our current policies in place already prohibit discrimination of any kind including gender identity but i have a problem with the virginia code 22.1-23.3 because that directly connects us to to the vdoe model policies and one item i mean like you read them all out but we didn't read b which is at the bottom of the policy that says each school board shall adopt policies that are consistent with but may be more comprehensive than the model policies developed by the the department of education pursuant to subsection a and my the red flag goes up to me is when i look at the whole
024model policies that came down from vdoe and one red flag is about the the parent rights that their model policy when you really look at the pages and pages all the details not just what we read at the beginning but you know it talks about a parent that the parent doesn't have the right to meet if there's some conflict in the discussion of the transgender that this law goes against the constitutional right so to put that number in all of our current policies to me brings conflict so i feel like because the 14th amendment says that parents have the fundamental rights to control the upbringing and education of their children including those attending the public schools that this would include involving parents in discussions and decision making about his or her child and there's indications
025in that number that would bring it in conflict i don't see it as that i think that policy that the state put down there is for those school districts that are not in compliance at this time we are already in compliance we are so therefore why so they are i can answer that question okay so they the model policies are suggested language to meet that code the sba has sent to school boards across virginia and said they don't believe this should be a stand-alone transgender policy that you already have these 15 or so policies in place that meet that code requirement and we've addressed parents rights the way we always have and unless we put that language in that's in that model policy then we're not following that language we don't we don't have to
026adopt that language into our policy but if you're not going to put the code number then what you are ignoring is law virginia law that says you have to demonstrate that you are meeting that code we're saying we're meeting that code by doing these 15 is what we're saying and we're demonstrating that i don't understand why the number has to be in there because again someone could come along and say that when we put that number in there it reads what i just read about consistent with or more comprehensive to that model policy and we don't want to be connected with that model policy and how it is written i just feel like it's a conflict with the with the um the constitution and i don't want anything that could come against our parents rights
027to be a part of their child's education and yesterday i i have been reading so much about this and i've been reading about what other counties are doing throughout virginia and there are many divisions that are not ex have not adopted the model policy but yesterday there was a court decision and one significant outcome is the court's opinion clarifies that vdoe's model policies are only guidance and when that court says that their only guidance and if you look if you if you go back to what you read a says the department of education shall develop and make available to each school board model policies concerning the treatment of transgender students in public elementary and secondary schools that address common issues regarding transgender students in accordance with evidence-based best practices and include information guidance procedures and
028standards relating to those eight items that you read at the beginning but then there is that b that says we are going to be consistent with the model policies we're not consistent with the model policies if we're not doing all the other stuff that's in those pages if we show we have all these policies we're already following the law without that number in there that could connect us to those um policies that we're not in agreement with like possibly not including parents in some of our meetings with these students none of those model policies are part of state code then what is b why is b put in there you said it's a model developed we we're choosing not to use that language but all of our policies anything that's passed by state legislation comes
029down as policy is it is reference that code policy in every single one of our policies that is a law not all of our policies are law but if they are law it's reference to show that we are following virginia law is there any way we can include something because if you go down those eight those eight items we follow the eight items and i don't have a problem with that it's it's all in what we had before we've done anything i don't understand why you object to citing the the law because of what it says at the bottom of the law b that each school shall adopt policies that are consistent with but may be more comprehensive than the model policies that's not it it's like how many pages is it dr thornton it's
030just pages and pages of details as to what schools should use as their model i mean like um for example going to their gender appropriate restaurant i mean the gender identity for their restroom like that's in there it says that if a boy who identifies as a girl wants to go into the girls restroom they should do that that we should allow them to do that we haven't addressed that right now because what we're we've done right now that has been working is the transgender student the principal and the parent and any other expert on this situation come together and they create accommodations for that individual student they together come and and create a plan and that has worked for us the i mean our principals have worked with students and it has been such
031that our students have felt safe and they've been accommodated and something and that's the same thing we're going to continue to do make the environment safe for the student and if the student and the parents feel that they need to come down to sit with the building administration to come up with a plan they can continue to do that this is this is what we're saying we don't necessarily have to go by that guideline it's just a guideline for someone to use that doesn't have anything out there to use okay i would like to share to be accurate all those guidelines are recommendations that's it and we don't have to accept the one ms card speaking about that is case law from the student gavin from gloucester austin that is that was filed under title
032ix federal law discrimination and equal access if a transgender student comes with their family and sits down with the principal and says i would like my child to go to the restroom where they identify we are legally obligated to let that child do so have we had that happen no we we and one of the guidelines i think you're talking about is we can't stop any student we're we're still going to stop a student if a male goes up to the girls restroom we're going to stop the young man say you know what are you doing and if the person says i identify we're going to send them to the principal's office we're going to call them their families and we're going to deal with it as an individual issue and work it out that
033is what we have always done we're going to continue that practice and by putting the code does not mean you're obligated to any of those guidelines those are recommendations from vdoe there may be people who object to that these 15 policies do not comport with the law and they may challenge us and say it doesn't and and say what you're saying jackie that you have to adopt exactly what they say but what what i'm saying is vsba has research and says if you would adopt what you basically already have with a few little uh tweaks and most of those tweaks are title nine that you are covered legally when you take that code off i think you're opening up the board to a possible lawsuit and that's just my i i have to share that
034and i have to share what our attorney has shared with us currently with all of our students if if a student comes to us with any kind of problem whether it's handicap a medical issue like a peanut allergy the adhd for testing we accommodate that student to address their needs and that's what we're currently doing with our transgender students it has worked we have been successful we haven't had any issues and i just feel like we are when we add that code that's connected to the part that could could come back to haunt us can we write some way or in our policy that that's just the guidance i mean that's what the court the uh the judge said it was judge frederick what rock watson um he's it was said yesterday that one significant
035outcome was that all of this is merely guidance where can we put that that part be that that could connect us to all that all the things that were put in addition to what those eight things were listed all the details about overnight field trips and parents meeting with um not being able to meet with their students their guidelines that they put in this policy that we don't want any part of that so how can that be put in our policy to say that we're not obligated to follow that part b of that virginia code you're not including them is already doing that if we did that we could we could go through every one of our policies every one of our policies and said let's put in some other things that we don't like
036about any policy that we have and now our policy book is going to be uh 20 times the size it already is it's up to the board to decide what you want to put but i think you're opening yourself up for a challenge when bsba attorneys have already done the work and have shared do this you're in compliance with the law and and as board members you take an oath to follow the law i take an oath to follow the law so i can't recommend that you don't follow the lie we don't follow the law we're we're asking for a lawsuit and we're also asking for the community as a whole to have any faith in what we're doing if we are not following the law we are not doing our jobs we are following
037the law because we got it all right here we got all of our policies right here that says we're going to follow the law i just don't want to be attached to the nonsense that i have read in the other part of the video we recommendations we are in compliance we are and the key word there v-e-o-d recommendations it it did not say it was mandatory okay it's a recommendation so we are in compliance with what we're doing we're planning to continue to stay in compliance and go forward with what we have here with the few tweaks that we did absolutely and we were in compliance before this number came along so that's a good thing and there are a lot of school districts out there they're probably we're not in compliance okay and this
038is where they have to address they're not just thinking about alawite county they're thinking about all of those 200 and some or 300 to some odd school districts out there in the state of virginia you all have to do this okay so far we've been in compliance with all of these things absolutely what's wrong with having the documentation the documentation is necessary i don't mind the documentation if it wasn't connecting us to the model policies that is above and beyond what one through eight is all the pages and pages of the details to it that to me is what our community many of our community is is um not feeling comfortable with we are saying we have policy that has worked we've had no problems we're going to continue all of this but when we
039connect ourselves to a number that connects to us seeing a policy that could have us not following the constitution that's what i have a problem with i have a problem with b if we could take the b out of it i would not have a problem with with it but it connects us to it well i guess i i've had a member of the community contact me and said by adopting 22.1-23.3 you're adopting mild model policies that's his opinion it's totally wrong and is not the opinion of attorneys and i'm not going to suggest and make recommendations based on people's fear and we have handled all of our students well we've handled our trans gender students well and i think a few members who get of our community who are riled up because of fear
040i don't think that should uh guide us in our decision making well and i think it's wrong it goes back to back when we first had gay students and lesbian students the fear of them going to the restroom or they're fair that a male gay student going in a a male football locker room how dare we do this nothing came of it this is a new thing that a lot of us don't understand which is exactly why my staff and our teachers are going through training because they have no idea unless you have had a transgender student you have no idea we need to know their needs we need to know how they feel in order to support them in school and a lot of this is being blown up that we're trying to turn
041people transgender it is fear and rhetoric and this policy has none of those things in it and if it doesn't have any of those things in it we're not doing any of those things and to say we are again is rhetoric and fear that continues with some members of the community well it's not just it's all over the state i mean you can go and look it's it is all over the state because people are looking at all the details in that b part and that's what they have a problem with eight one through eight all the policies that we have that's treating all students fair with dignity and respect and that's what we want we have been doing that and we will fight that to the very end because everybody deserves that but i
042just don't want to see if we put that number in there that someone else can come along and sue us because we're not doing what that says that b part but we also have to be careful that we are on the same page that our surrounding competitors are if we are on the wrong page think we're doing what's right then it's not going to work in my opinion just make sure you do what's right and get on us get on the same page the law as long as nobody's child is violated no individuals because we could be having the same conversation with an employee they didn't have to start with the children so we just got to make sure what we're doing is the right thing we're on the same wagon that i think we're
043all in agreement i think we are all in agreement with the policies we have in place and i will end by saying i am in total agreement there are no changes we've made to our policy and everything that we've had have done and we'll continue to do just like we're doing with the meetings with the parents and the principals and coming up with accommodations where everybody feels safe one-on-one that's what we've done it's worked and we're going to continue to do that we've made no changes in here except add that number and the only problem i have with that virginia code is the b and if we can be guaranteed that that b doesn't open up lawsuits for other reasons then but i i don't know that how can we guarantee that you can't guarantee
044you can't guarantee if you don't include the state code that you're then going to be sued for the other side saying that you're not protecting the rights of transgender states but we have the policies there how could we be sued saying we're not because you've ignored the state government then you open up a can of worms and then they may come with a lawsuit and try to force part b in in on you because you refuse to protect transgender students so it's i rather go what's recommended by attorneys from vsba then then what ifs and that's why we have attorneys and and we have always and again it's an oath to follow the state law and in those model policies are not state law can we put that in there model policies are not state
045law we could put that in somewhere i would be well we really don't have to write it because the key word there is model okay if you think about your keywords model recommendations they use those words coming down from the lawmakers okay they are the words they use the only thing we have to concentrate on mandated okay you have to if you want to continue to get our funds pretty much remember if you change any of the wording it's no longer a vsba policy is no longer protected by their attorneys and our collective organization we can put ps [Laughter] but the attorney general's office is now on record for saying that boards who reject this advice as being wrong for children in the community need not be concerned about losing funding as a result that's
046the advice miss perkins i totally agree with you go and read all the be part that is part of the model policy that's the only problem i have a problem with and when you've got a model policy that rejects the constitutional right of parents that's i don't want any connection with that that's the policy model well it's a bad model policy but that's that's a possibility that's why we didn't okay it's a model it's a model a model okay uh for instance we can have uh a model to come in here with their latest design and model we can like it but we don't have to wear the same exact outfit okay that's a model we can go get one uh similar to it or whatever and this is what we we plan to do
047they send models down there but actually they could have taken what we already have in compliance and use it for their model across state because we we're already there they're trying to catch up with us madam chair i i i don't see any resolution to this the differences that we have if there needs to be a vote yeah we don't vote today we don't have to put a phone at our first work session where we're talking sharing what we feel and it's okay just to throw things out there for others to consider i mean this is healthy for us to discuss all of this kind of thing well basically now i think all we're doing is going over the same thing yeah i've expressed how i feel yeah and then that's what we'll do with
048um and we'll vote on it august the 8th but i just i want you to know i agree with all of our policy and there's only one problem i have and that's the b to the to the b part to the virginia code and that's it madam chair august the 12th oh i'm sorry august 12th yeah thank you all right let's get to the next controversial topic so i've included this powerpoint this powerpoint was presented to superintendents on july 20th that's why you see the date um by vdh the virginia department of health and um some of these slides i'm going to go through quickly this is just a number of cases by data of symptom onset basically you can see the trend in the in the state is is way down due to vaccinations
049the next slide is what they talked about every layer protects us and i know it's hard for some of you to see that but on the left it talks about preventative measures and it says vaccination mask distance and washing and they're saying if you do all of those layers you're going to have more protection of course that makes sense the more layers you have and then on the right hand side to contain it it says testing tracing and isolating so the same things we did during last school year once we found out we had a case following those procedures yes and this is also attached to the agenda for the public the next slide were steps to guide decision making about prevention strategies and school operations as you read through these you can see these
050are the same steps we took last year in the decision making of whether to open whether to bring all students etc evaluating the level of community transmission evaluate local and school level vaccination coverage as feasible now when they said that that they said you have to talk to your attorney there's no guidance claire can we ask if you've been vaccinated that could violate hippa rights right and as far as i'm concerned right now we are not asking that if people want to tell that they can tell that consider the level of impact to the school understand your community and determine and implement a layered approach with multiple prevention strategies example masking distancing testing some schools are investigating testing personnel and students i am not recommending that we test any students or personnel and then step
051one this just shows the evaluation and level of community disease so same charts that are available through vdh that i looked at every single day during the school year last year to help make the determination uh next slide is step two evaluate local and school level vaccination coverage and again um it says right there book the third bullet in consultation with school board attorneys you get into the area of hipaa violations there if we're going to start asking if people are vaccinated or not step three evaluate the level of impact to the school again last year during the pandemic that without any vaccination the only spread we had in school was i believe it was the football team and the girls volleyball team at windsor high school we had no spread in school with our
052students and that's probably based on all of the knowledge now that we know and didn't know a long time ago is that the the transmission level amongst students is like one to three percent risk and so they're not spreading it and and students have a very low transmission rate unlike adults that have a higher and though those are some facts that were not included in here though they did not say that uh step four understand your community and again looking at all the different areas these are things we already did we're making all those decisions before and considering individuals with with health needs which we do before even before the pandemic uh step five plan and implement layered prevention strategies so this is probably the key to the discussion today this is cdc's guidance and
053i heard cdc guidance has changed today and i don't even know what that is but at this time said promoting vaccination consistent correct use of mass physical distancing screening testing ventilation hand washing so this is their laid approach do you have to do all these things no and it's it's left up to the locality actually this morning i was listening to the news and cdc they came up from cdc came out with um that they recommend everyone where the mass even with the vaccinations and everything going forward because they showed a map of some of the states that were high risks last week they were pretty much on the west midwest it has moved to the east coast and virginia was included in the red and they just recommend uh even for school students going
054back to school was a recommendation right all right so well the next slide then was the recommendation last week uh we'd said elementary schools because children under 12 are not vaccinated to be wearing mass again what they do not share is the fact that elementary school students are the lowest risk of transmitting their disease to each other and so it it doesn't really wash mass and middle schools it says vdh and video he strongly recommend the middle and high schools implement a requirement that if you are not fully vaccinated again i think that leads into issues about hipaa as well and how do you regulate that if you don't know the vaccinated or not i think that leads to problems and then it just goes into some of the same things physical distancing now they're
055saying and i'll tell you this just my uh opinion but this physical distance and now they're saying it doesn't have to be six feet it can be three feet and then they're saying it can be less than three feet if you have to because the state has passed a law that you have to have in person learning if if people want it this school year so if everyone comes back and your classrooms can't be three feet apart you're less than three feet that's right so it's like some of these things we follow and some of the things we don't follow and i do think this topic is very very political and it keeps flip-flopping and as superintendent and we went through the pandemic last year as one of the only school systems i know chesapeake
056was our friend throughout going through the school year and opened and then opened ultimately five days a week for our elementary kids knocking on wood very successfully with without outbreaks so my recommendation for the next school year is that mask wearing is voluntary if you want to wear a mask then wear a mask if you do not want to wear a mask then don't wear a mask and with that said it is federal law that you must wear a mask on public transportation public transportation which includes school buses in any of our school cars so we would will enforce again i'm not going to violate the law we are going to have mass on buses in any of our school vehicles but i'm recommending that we make masks voluntary current choices and again parent choice
057and that is a again those are cdc guidelines and recommendations and i do also want to say if we do have these other community factors that we watched last year and we do have some sort of outbreak in school that we do have liberty to say okay we need to mask up yeah until we get through this period of time but i'm saying if there's an outbreak in our school i'm not saying in in the world there there's a lot of outbreaks on the southern border right now and i don't i haven't seen an outbreak in virginia this is new news to me but i think that this is local control and that that's my recommendation to the board and of course the board needs to it was national news national it could be in
058a certain location in virginia and they just make everything red okay we have it there so it's red okay and i know the other hampton roads areas are debating this still and i know you guys see the news i do believe chesapeake just passed it as uh parent choice or volunteering if we make it i i i don't have a problem with parent choice because it should be a parent choice but we need to make sure that the parents understand if their child is going to participate in public transportation meaning riding all school buses they must wear masks right because somebody's gonna argue the fact no they said it was my choice okay and your choice except on a school bus or a school cause because that's federal law yeah it's a federal law we
059need to let them know you know and i'm just thankful that the state gave local school boards the right to make that decision and they not make that decision for us and and really they they need to do that and really have to do that by virginia's constitution yeah unless the governor has declared a state of emergency you have local control and the school board has local control and to take that away is unconstitutional and i i hope they don't declare a state of emergency at a drop of a hat when as much as we know now about the virus we are educated people and can make educated decisions and we're not at the point we were 18 19 20 months ago well we are going to be voting on the policies as well as
060the masking at our august 12th school board meeting anybody have anything else they want to share before we adjourn that school board meeting will be located the location it's here it's here okay