School Board Meeting 2/11/21

001thank you we will now reconvene into open session we need certification of resolution of compliance please thank you madam chair certification of closed session i make a motion the closed session meeting was conducted in conformity with the provisions of the virginia freedom of information act as required by section 2.2-3712-d of the code of virginia and certify that only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements were discussed and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion by which the closed meeting was convened were heard discussed and considered second can we have a motion and it has been second vote please um okay motion carry i want to welcome everyone to our february school board meeting many of us are dressed in red and that's to celebrate american heart month the goal

002throughout america is to help motivate us to adopt healthy lifestyles to prevent heart disease now i got a little history lesson for you tonight the teacher in me is coming out so it was president lyndon johnson who made this first proclamation in 1964. raise your hand if you were alive in 1964 and my hand is up with yours yes yes well since then every president in the united states have has annually declared february is american heart month and with that being said i say you're welcome that was totally free at this time vice chair ms denise times will lead us in 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

003and justice for all thank you okay it is now time for our olive white achievers presentation up there and while they're doing that i will say welcome the vision for isle of wight county schools is to create a learning environment that will enable every child to discover his or her unique gifts and talents the olive white achievers section of our board meeting gives us an opportunity to recognize and celebrate our students and staff for their unique talents and gifts and tonight when i call up our achievers i'm asking them to stand right here and face the board i'll read their accolades and they'll turn around to the audience so if they have any people in the audience that want to take a picture they can do so and that's how we're going to do the

004procedure for tonight so our first honoree tonight is aubry ellis from windsor elementary school [Music] aubry was a finalist for the state computer science educator of the year award the program recognizes educators who go above and beyond while using teaching or integrating computer science at their schools mrs ellis was nominated by chris hardison a kindergarten teacher at windsor elementary here's some of the information mrs hardison shared in her nomination of mrs ellis mrs ellis opens the world of coding and computer programming programming to students who would not have that chance otherwise she is incredibly gifted at working with students who struggle both educationally and behaviorally she gives them the self-confidence they need and uses coding as the means by which to grab their attention and work wonders in their lives i'm shocked to have a

005kindergarten student show me how they created a coding project their little faces are so completely absorbed in their project when explaining it it gives me chills to see what they can do this doesn't even begin to touch on how much she's helped some of our autistic students aubrey ellis has advocated for computer science in our building most recently by creating a team of teachers to become coding coaches through code va she's able to see how various coding activities could work in almost any classroom setting and she is always willing to help make these activities meaningful for both teachers and students we want to congratulate mrs ellis for everything she does for the children of windsor elementary and for being recognized by the state as an outstanding computer science teacher congratulations miss ellis and i think

006mr elliott is going to get a photo real quick so huh are we good at this time we are going to recognize our seniors of the month and we're going to go back and recognize our january seniors of the month because we did not have them in person in january because schools were closed our first senior of the month from january is from windsor high school and that's alex judah so alex is going to join me up here [Music] alex is an exceptionally bright student who is not afraid to jump into a class discussion to share his thoughts alex is always up to date on his assignments and he has been dutiful during this difficult time and remaining imminently conscientious about his work quote alex is a very pleasant student and always has a smile

007you can tell even with that with his mask on because his smile reaches his eyes every day he makes a point to say good morning mrs preston and tells me to have a nice day as he leaves the class and that's of course from this cassandra preston english teacher at windsor high alex plans to pursue a four-year university degree after graduating from windsor high congratulations alex [Applause] and i don't know if we have anyone in the audience that wants to take a quick picture i think i see mom mom good you can come closer mom okay congratulations alex [Music] the senior of the month for january from smithville high school is chris gundy chris has been offered the opportunity to play football while attending the naval academy next year chris quote chris has always been

008a standout student who pushes himself both on the football field and in the classroom i am so proud of what he has accomplished in his four years at smithfield and that's from his margaret challenge challenge pardon me science teacher at smithville high school we congratulate chris and wish him well next year the naval academy okay now we have the february seniors of the month the senior of the month for february from windsor high school is lindsay dubay lindsay is that wonder of all wonders a well-rounded student she has been an important part of almost all avenues of windsor high life she's been a cheerleader a soccer player a vital participant in class activities and a state-level forensic state competitor most of all she has been a superb student and a wholesome and fundamental member of

009our school's culture lindsay continues despite the hardships presented by the pandemic to contribute to our school her determination leads her to be an example to others while her kindness and compassion toward others makes her a blessing quote lindsay has it all great intellect passionate hunger for the rights of all and a giving and encouraging nature she has been an intrinsic part of the fabric of windsor high since she entered her future is bright and that's from his luanne scott english teacher lindsay plans to go to coastal carolina university to major in marine biology congratulations lindsay and our final senior of the month from smithfield high school is daniel luke skribanic [Applause] [Music] scrivener luke participated in his first deca event the district leadership competition which was held virtually for the first time and required to

010link the exam as well as scenario analysis and role play via flipgrid as a first-time deca competitor luke won first place in the entrepreneurship event category he outscored his closest competitor by a whopping 72 points and earned the highest overall score in the entire competition across 12 event categories luke consistently contributes in a meaningful and thoughtful way to class discussions and group activities as well as submitting high caliber work on each assignment he pushes he pushes the boundaries of what is required demonstrates a high degree of initiative and self motivation and is passionate about learning more than the minimum quote he demonstrates critical thinking as an entrepreneur applying learned concepts and knowledge to his own auto detailing business called diploma detailing which he started to save money for college and he exhibits a solid grasp

011of the principles of marketing and entrepreneurship including the need for a dynamic model that relies on goal-setting risk-taking drive curiosity constant evaluation and adjustment a commitment to customer service a strong work ethic and a creative mindset and that's from his diane fulton his marketing teacher luke has been accepted to old dominion university and is waiting to hear from uva and women mary he plans to major in business and hopes to concentrate on the areas of entrepreneurship finance hospitality and tourism and he hopes to start his own business after he earns his bachelor's bachelor's degree so another plug diploma detailing right okay you're welcome congratulations luke okay um at this time we also want to acknowledge this month as being school board appreciation month february has been designated as school board appreciation month in virginia and

012as citizen leaders school board members face complex and demanding challenges yet few people fully understand the scope and far-reaching implications of board members responsibilities tonight we would like to recognize the vital contributions of our school board members and focus attention on the crucial role these elected public officials play in the education of our children their job is to establish a visit vision for the education program design a structure to achieve that vision ensure schools are accountable to the community and strongly advocate continuous improvement in student learning that job entails an endless string of meetings and in most years school functions to attend lengthy reports agendas proposals and other information to read and study and a host of difficult decisions to make the time spent in board meetings represents just a small fraction of the hours

013pardon me the school board members spend leading the division they also work hard at seminars and training sessions to keep informed of the latest trends in educational leadership they're deeply involved in community activities and spend many hours in the schools and at extracurricular events when there's no pandemic their love for learning and concerning caring for students staff and community drives our board members desire to lead so students can achieve in recognition of the dedicated service of school board members throughout virginia as i said february has been designated as school board appreciation month this is the time to show our recognition and to increase our understanding of how local board members work together to provide a better future for our children tonight we want each of you to know that your hard work has been noticed

014and is truly appreciated you have a certificate at your seat from the virginia school boards association and we have a clip from a video we showed last year and while mr smith gets that ready to go i'll say last year we created a nice video of you visiting schools and unfortunately you know we couldn't do that this year but we we wanted to share the last segment of it because it's still really powerful and we thought it kind of shows how we feel about you y'all as board members you ready okay thank you thank you [Applause] oh that was great and i hope we can do that next year and i think it's fitting we posted something on facebook about it and i saw a comment that probably some sums up your service somebody said

015while i don't agree with the decisions you always make i appreciate you making the decisions in the best interest of our children and i thought that was very nice so now in addition to being school board appreciation month we also have clerk appreciation week and that's coming up next week but we wanted to honor our clerks tonight so we're recognizing tracy ruit who's over there at the table and our deputy clerk miss jessica whitlow who's up here in front [Music] and for people who may not realize board clerks are tasked with maintaining accurate records of school board meetings and official acts a record of all receipts and disbursements and a record of all excuse me and i reckon all the board materials necessary for meetings they serve as a point of contact for parents employees

016in the community on behalf of the school board and superintendent and they work additional hours attending meetings we would like to thank tracy and jessica for their dedication and service to the school board of isle of wight county they did receive certificates from the virginia school boards association and we gave each one of them a nice arrangement of flowers and tracy volunteered to keep both of them on her table for tonight but we want to thank you very much and finally we have our custodial company ssc ssc recognizes an employee of the month each month so at this time we'll have ssc come up to do their recognition we have mr kenny gray hello everyone on the board how are you doing today i have the honor of recognizing a friend uh kimmy has been

017here i'm going to tell you a story everybody kevin started really briefly he started with us as a temp uh back two three years ago he was a tip on the project he was a standout so we acquired him from his temp team and he started with us in custodial as a night floor tech moved to supervisor i think we moved him in grounds for a little while and now he's the lead general maintenance technician on our plm team um so he takes care of the furniture moves all the things that we have for chris coleman our last minute projects he likes to give us that he's taken care of but kevin you have been outstanding and we wanted to congratulate you today um i wish you well hope that you'll be standing in my

018chair one day and i can look back and be thankful that i know somebody like you myself so thank you very much [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] thank you and that concludes olive white achievers for tonight thank you thank you lynn that was good like to celebrate tonight i will say when i walked in tonight to come to the meeting i saw students out there walking just everywhere and it was such a blessing to hear the buzz and see kids in school it was just it warmed my heart okay next on the agenda is request to speak in accordance here in accordance with policy bddh-e citizens scheduled on the agenda will speak will be permitted five minutes maximum time for their presentation delegations will be requested to limit their speakers to two persons speaking are asked

019to be specific state the issues for the board's consideration and attach a copy of your prepared remarks if you have prepared remarks they should be given to the board clerk please do not approach board members the board requests that speakers refrain from making references to specific individuals and that at any matter related to specific students or individuals be discussed in a closed meeting the first person in is mr michael ozil okay good evening good evening welcome to new staff first i think your name is jones johnson johnson john jones to the um our school system and in the county i don't haven't seen him but i don't know she is yet pleased to meet you welcome welcome aboard now i want to tell you something about some trouble that we uncovered that's going in our

020school system we looked into it we have researched it and have did a number of things i think that uh we need to get together on as the citizen we all know that there's the division that's what's going on around the world and in our school system as a whole trust truth transparency racism division all might all lives matter we had that right here in our school system i have spoken to you a number of times in closed session on some issues and still right today have not been solved right this day why i will tell you in closed session what i think it is okay i would like to tell you this in closed session it has come to this point that all us supposed to be working together both boards we have uncovered

021some things that's going on in our school system that will affect the county and schools students citizens and the public this is why we're asking for a joint board member school board and board of supervisors so we can expose and uncover and tell you what we found uh i'm just saying i'm trying to say this one time that's why i'm bringing to y'all because i don't i don't want to stand up for the board of supervisors and say this again that's why i feel like we should have a job for school board and board suitcase since i was told briefly about something years back from a board member that we all working together now we'll find are we working together tonight this meeting will not be held with the superintendent but we did not elect

022him but he will be called in as questioned if we need to um we will expose some things y'all might not know but we know about it and it has been tracking for years there will be others called to response to what they know with their actions so that we can finally get to solve this issue if we go back some years back i brought some to y'all while back uh you should be on your nose because i kept my nose that we was working on in closed session and you'd be surprised what recently found out the board member too we asked some questions also so that if any of you knew then again and you might not know but we know remember you asked to see something say something now we say see something

023say something else reminding you to do something because what we said explode what we got exposed will like i said affect the whole county as a why and you know me i would i would do my best to bring something to y'all to solve it before and i was gonna get to it i'm all right that's i've been doing that for years so i'm taking initiative from the citizens and others to bring it to y'all in closed session there will be citizens there there'll be um one minute there will be uh local citizens local leaders uh will be also sitting in that meeting because we feel like this needs to be solved immediately and like i said before you asked us to see something say something now we are doing it now i'm gonna see

024what y'all gonna do about it so that's why we said we want a joint board meeting with the sports supervisor and school board because like i said if this goes out it will affect the whole county and school that's why so that's why they asked me to bring it because they feel like i've been talking to the board knew y'all you know try to work with y'all and that's what i always did so that's why i told them give me a chance to bring it to y'all time so that y'all can at least know something about it before the fact y'all thank you for your time thank you mr ogle okay next we have mr rod roger snodgrass good evening my name is roger snodgrass i reside at 115 robin lane smithfield virginia last month

025when i attended this meeting i arrived early and while i waited i read the bios of each school board member i was impressed with your quest for more education it was also noticed that many of you have retired from a career in public education as the public part of the meeting started i heard one county school administration employee after another mentioned doing what was best for the children doing what was best for the children doing what was best for the children as the meeting progressed the superintendent made it known that the school board whether unanimous or not was bringing on an employee who would be bringing inclusion diversity and gender identification to olive white county school-age children i graduated primary education before any of you and like you i knew which bathroom to use before

026i started school i came to school to learn how to read how to write to do arithmetic add multiply divide subtract history basic science etc what i can be thankful for is that when i and you were in school there was not a paid mind confuser telling me that i was not a male or telling my sister that it was okay for a male to use the girls bathroom or dress out in the girls locker room during gym class or compete in girls sports because they identify as a female and vice versa let's be perfectly clear on this this is not education and the sense to raise our standing in the nations of the world where we rank 27th or 30 years ago we were sixth but it's a social experiment pushed by the nea

027and destined to ruin the lives of children this resident of isle of wight this taxpayer of isle of wight is expressing to you that is not your place right or privilege regardless of what misguided rules or regulations and entities so wholly separated from isle of wight has given this school board the inflated opinion that we the residents of isle of wight need want or desire our children to be coerced into a controverted opinion of themselves the commonwealth of virginia the nea or the isle of wight county school board did not conceive one child in this county change its diaper feed it a bottle or breast burp it love it nurture it clothe it or give it value so please drop this misbegotten social experiment to ruin the lives of our children and thus the fabric

028of american society this is not what is best for the children thank you thank you mr snodgrass is that it okay okay thank you at this time is the board member committee reports and or other information good evening madam chair um this past month i had an opportunity to do a virtual meeting with the ciac and the cia special ed advisory committee they it was very informative for it to be a virtual meeting and i think miss times i'm sorry can you hear me down yes thank you okay i'll start over i had an opportunity to do a virtual meeting with seac this month and seattle's special education advisory committee this month they had some special guests to come in along with our staff and if at your places they have they presented five behavior

029tips for the home a lot of the parents and students as well been having a lot of stressful things going on especially with virtual learning and this this is just the package that they presented and it's not just for the students that are in this fed programs but this can be adapted for any student in any class or grade and they also had a little session going on where it was uh the family assessment planning team and that particular team consists of uh you have the social services department uh the courts uh services the community services board as well as the schools and they make up the team and you have the parents as well as the student and what that particular team does they sit down with their parents and students they assess their

030goals status where they want to go in life and um they from that point they decide to help them accomplish those goals and i thought it was very informative to know that we had those organizations in our community not just in when i say community it's not just the alawite county community but it's in the hampton roads community it's a large branch of people that are willing to help all of our students that are in need and i'm sure these organizations although they're they specified students in the sped program but i think is pretty much open to any student in any school system uh whether in the regular class or the spec class and we're going to have our next uh the next meeting will be next month it should be on the 17th but

031they had some there was some planning going on someone had an event so they moved it up to the first part of the month i think it's going to be around the 5th okay thank you miss times i also attended an all-day vsba virtual conference that was for school board chairs and vice chairs an all-day virtual conference is quite an experience i got a little taste of what our students do each day but all in all it was a very valuable conference i also met with dr thornton and the naac this past month the purpose was to continue discussion on their concern with equity in alawite county schools we introduced the members to to miss kiana jones the new coordinator of equity and inclusion and she shared her role and vision as we go forward

032and we will be hearing from miss jones later this evening at this time we will have our monthly financial presentation madam chair before we go to the financial it was something i wanted to mention as well that they covered in that meeting it was de-escalation of words and phrases and that is very important as well as staff parents anyone in the community when you're dealing with a child and you're trying to de-escalate a situation they're in is is the words you use with them the phrases as well as your tone of voice and they covered all of that in that one-hour meeting this month thank you very much thank you okay good evening madam chair members of the board dr thornton thank you i just wanted to start by pointing out on your check register

033that last month miss tines did quite there was a questionable uh payment listed in your check register and it is note i want to note that in the check register this month it was credited back to the account in the it was only 98 but it's important nonetheless so i did want to point out that that was followed through with the bank and that was returned and that was a very insightful question are there any other questions on the check register before i move on to the financial report no i have no questions in your financial report you'll notice highlighted in yellow we report on the amount that we've expended so far this year and compare it to this time last year last year at this time and we've only spent 56 percent of the

034budget at this point last year at this time it was just over 60 percent so we're spending less and that would make sense based on the coven restrictions fewer transportation fewer field trips less substitute costs so that made a whole lot of sense to me also in your financial report i just wanted to point out in the cip projects you'll see 331 000 remaining and as a reminder that is for the windsor high school roof mr coleman is moving forward i know he had met with contractors today looking at bids and we're still on track for doing uh replacing that roof during the spring months so we're excited to get that done and i did point out last month i want to i want to remind you because this will segue into my next piece

035your health insurance fund claims medical expenses or unknowns we never know what's around the corner with our health so it's important that we generate some reserve in that account and there is just over 1 million dollars as a reserve in that account last year at this time there was only 269 000 in that account which would have been concerning at the time so i am pleased to see that we do have 1.1 million in your health reserve the next piece regarding your health benefit provider if you will as a reminder we are self-insured so we oversee our own health insurance but we partner with a professional health insurance company so as a reminder we had gone out to rfp request for a proposal for that health partner and we did meet along with our consultant

036we met with three proposers bpa is our current current provider anthem blue cross and optima miss elia and i along with our consultant we had a a about a 45-minute meeting with each to go through their proposals most importantly i think most importantly to our our staff is that their doctors are covered in whichever plan we go to because people don't necessarily like to change doctors and we don't want them to have to change doctors so the size of the network is critical and the second piece is cost to you and to the staff as a reminder the staff does contribute to health care as does the budget and the board of education in the county so we're looking at those two pieces so we i would like to recommend dr thornton and i have

037spoken we've spoken with the executive team to recommend moving forward as a recommendation with anthem blue cross and we would like to recommend for next month at your march board meeting that the board take action to approve a contract with anthem we think it's in the best interest of the staff and we think it's in the best interest of the board and by approving them in march it will give us the go ahead to work with them so that by april 1st whenever we want us whenever we switch insurance companies they like it's it's a comfort level of 90 days to switch over so that would give the new insurance company april may and june to switch over to get new cards out to our members and that by july 1 everything is up and

038running flawlessly so again we would like to recommend the change to anthem at your march board so are there any questions regarding the health insurance at this time because that's a significant decision and a change to the staff okay that's all i have thank you thank you okay with this time we're ready for the transportation update mr livingston good evening everybody good evening anybody behind me or in front of me doing their snow dance tonight it's a possibility all right you have my uh monthly report in front of you here to answer any questions if you haven't lee usually a transportation director doesn't hope for snow well if you want a four day weekend i usually get worried [Laughter] i think uh miss root put some cards in front of your desk february is a

039is a big celebration month and uh it's uh known every year as love the bus month and that's what your uh big red bus lips are uh for there and it's sponsored by the american school bus council yeah and it's just uh a time that uh it's a national time a celebration in our in our industry that we celebrate what we do with the yellow bus each day safely greeting our students known as the statistically as the safest mode of ground transportation so that's what we do during love the bus month very informative thank you thank you madam chair i'd like to say something mr living livingston i'm gonna send this right back at you with a big hug to all of your uh transportation uh staff because you all have uh a lot of

040times it's not that we forget you we see you first thing in the morning and the last thing in the evening when we see the little yellow buses coming by but i would like to thank you all for what you have done during the pandemic because we have as a board dr um thornton have made a lot of changes and you all just like we said the children they can bounce back quick you have bounced back and made it successful i didn't get any uh calls or emails or anything from parents talking about transportation but and i'm thanking you for that because i'm sure your staff you all have done an excellent job in transporting the students that needed to be transported thank you very much thank you we appreciate your support okay next on

041the agenda is support services and operations full report mr coleman madam chair school board dr thornton this is support services and operations a report for february yes all right while he's getting that ready for everyone to view uh one the first thing that we're going to actually discuss is the actual rfp that we're actually into right now there's a couple of day changes modifications they were uh actually had transpired but just wanted to make sure that everyone knew that february 12 tomorrow will be the technical technical proposals phase do a phase two and it's due by 3 p.m we're going to meet as a committee we're going to actually start working through the process a little bit more february 17th we're going to actually get together for the interviews oh there we go we're going

042to actually oh right here we're going to actually get together for the interview process for that and actually go through the interviews with uh on telephone and digital interviews for the actual companies february 24th uh we're actually going to the school board approval ranking of the shortlist offices and then on february 25th we'll actually have the highest rank officer and negotiator that's going to be the january february all right all right next as as the we were discussing earlier was the invitation for beard today that was it when it was the windsor high school the re-roofing project now that was actually located at central office it was the pre-bid meeting for the actual windsor high school roof there we met with several of the actual bidders and it was an open access community so i

043had to actually tell everyone what was going on at the meeting who was bidding what companies were bidding and then we actually rank those listings also once we actually get together we go through the short list process once again and uh and one is proposed that's when we bring it before the board once again for approval to move on with the windsor high school roof next is the saguaro solar progress it's just a progress report to let you know exactly where we stand at right now with the actual solar panels and different things of that nature now uh three schools i wanted to actually point out once uh the first one would be the carrollton elementary school now there's a downspout in a particular area on the at uh carleton elementary school and that equipment

044will have to be moved to another little area and all we're going to do is move the actual down spout to area and actually be able to input the solar panels and everything that's needed in that area so that's one the second one will be at cars elementary school the panels in the closet panels for monitoring equipment will have to be actually shifted in one of the plugs uh and the actual solar panels plugged in to monitor the equipment also and then the third change will be the actual gtms just on the outside some of the big yellow ballers right near the entry door they will have to be moved over and said gorsola is actually uh doing this process themselves and making sure that everything is intact the last item i want to bring

045to your attention is um action item it'll be the prudence center and just to explain this a little bit more the city of suffolk is planning to install a water transmission lane along route 460 putin boulevard in the near future as a result of the construction of the improvements the property owned by iwcs this project is also being administered concurrently with the prudent boulevard prudence road intersection improvement so it's a project that actually is going on in suffolk right by the prudent center and a turn lane is actually being put into that area so but before they can actually move forward they had to contact us so what you're going to be looking at in your packet for action item is just to sign off on a transfer of deeds and this transfer deed of

046easement has been prepared and is actually in your packet are there any questions concerning the deed at this time no we reviewed that ahead of time but i ask that we have information brought to our citizens tonight because you know when we parted from pruden yes we were getting um an amount of money each each year and i was going to have us review that do you have that information dr thornton yes madam chair i have a part of the budget presentation but i have it right now when we left the prudence center we have an agreement with uh suffolk and they had to pay us seven payments of just over 222 000 a year they pay that every march and we have four payments left to receive and the last one is in march

0472024 so every march we receive that payment so for the transfer of deed we're still on the deed and we don't need to be that's right and we shouldn't be making decisions for suffolk county so that's what this is about to agree to deed it over to them they're still obligated to these payments over the next four years okay that's what we wanted to hear yes this will totally cut tides with prudence completely okay so we have uh we need a motion do we have a motion to approve the deed of transfer madam chair i make a motion to approve the deed of transfer second okay we also need as part of that motion that the um to authorize the chair to execute the documents for the d transfer so i need all of that

048in one motion okay okay madam chair i make a motion to authorize the deed for transfer and the chairman of the school board to um have the power to do so is that good enough second to offer that okay so we have a motion that has been made more or less to approve the deed of transfer and authorize the chair to execute the documents for the deed transfer sure okay we're ready for a boat so okay the motion carry all right madam chair that concludes the support services and operations briefly is there any questions well i did want to say was you were talking it's like i've seen slides of what you were saying so i think it was slides in the packet they were in the back okay i thought so okay because i

049could see everything you were talking about thank you very much for your graphic um the wrong one was sent to technology so the correct one is attached on the agenda so that is the one that you reviewed when you tried to review but the wrong one was sent to technology okay i have a question i don't know if this is more appropriate under return to learn or if it's more appropriate under facilities um with us going back next week is all the furniture in place in all the schools to make sure that space is this do you want me to save them some of these questions for return to learn or do you prefer it now you can ask it then okay so um for the furniture that was we were putting extra furniture in

050yes is that all in place at this point because they're coming back tuesday correct absolutely absolutely uh that's what's something that we're working on actually today with uh not only furniture but with actually the plexiglas knees guards also excuse me but yes furniture is in place we have a list from every single principal we made sure that we count the classrooms and counting each classroom with the students that actually come in to make sure that each student have an individual desk and actually a space appropriately that we have so yes we have moved forward well already uh ssc will be actually working on friday and monday to secure it but yes that information came directly from the principal and the teachers of how many individuals within each letter okay and then are you are you

051guys in charge of buying the face shields and stuff for the future so that's all in place going into tuesday yes the face shield well the plexi guard that the sneeze guard on the desk yeah that was actually delivered uh yesterday it was dispersed today so every school has their uh shields ready to go and my last uh question g ford the return to learn is uh the ac at carrollton i heard it was not working 110 and that's going to be important going into with all making sure the ventilation is properly moving while the students are there is that going to be up and running properly come tuesday the uh the heat at carrollton the heat well the heat and ac system not yeah absolutely the at this time i have to check uh

052once again i have to check with the maintenance department but this time the heat was working but it was working too much it was actually overworking so we actually had to cut the system back so it was actually too hot in several different classrooms so that's the information i was given i would definitely have a more in-depth report for you um that school board meeting but yes the report that i've given it was working over much so yeah i just want to make sure everything is like good and flowing come tuesday because you don't want anyone to be sweating it out right in in those rooms freezing madam chair and just clarify because i don't want misconceptions because you guys uh voted to have new furniture as well at carrollton that furniture has not arrived

053and is not going to be in place tuesday but they already have individual desks they're the old square desks but there's still individual desks placed appropriately and there's enough so it's not the new ones because someone might be thinking oh we we voted for these new ones right so they should be in soon okay so every student has a desk but they're not necessarily the new furniture right that will not be okay that's what yeah thank you for clarification and also clarification on the shields the death shields are are not a mitigation strategy that has to be in place we gave out shields that we had i think it was three or four to every classroom in the division teachers have used them for small group reading sometimes one-on-one in the high school or middle

054school we were able to get an additional 400 shields and these actually are two pieces that can fit on those more triangular desks and again we do not have one-to-one shields per desk we've reached out and we've asked teachers to actually tell us if you'd like shields and some prefer them some give them to another teacher who may like them so you will see them but it's really dependent on a measure for whether the teacher wants that in their room okay so just wanted to clarify already any other questions those are my questions regarding that for you yeah i'm good now thank you thank you thank you okay next on the agenda is report from the superintendent and we're going to begin this section of our meeting by welcoming miss kiana jones she will come

055to present to the school board for the first time the equity plan phase one madam chair for dr gordon thank you tonight i will be presenting the owl of white county schools equity plan and this is our phase one the equity plan is foundational goals to establish an intentional inclusive culture across the division that will lead to an equitable learning and working environment in old white county schools this plan will include equity and inclusion education coaching and resources equity cannot read that so my laptop just in case equity requires us to acknowledge and respect that everyone has different needs experiences and opportunities inclusion is the result of equity it is where we it's where different groups of individuals having different backgrounds become culturally and socially accepted welcomed and fairly treated equity acknowledges that there are

056differences and that there are disparities inclusion invites everyone in and ensures that everyone is treated fairly and gets the resources that they need equity in education pays off because the highest performing education systems are those that combine equity and quality so here are a list of our phase one initiatives first is our dni coaching and cohorts dni stands for diversity equity and inclusion diversity recognizes all the differences in our social identity and so with our coaching sessions we plan to coach start coaching with our executive team our principals our assistant principals coordinators instructional coaches this coaching starts next week however our executive team started coaching last week and then earlier this week our goals for our coaching session include but not limited to addressing historical systems of inequity defining equity for the division establishing shared

057language developing restorative action plans conducting equity audits for each school and the division and creating equity community agreements our equity audits will conduct a comprehensive assessment of the division's diversity equity and inclusion practices and policies to identify disparities in opportunity gaps along racial social economic gender or other major demographic grouping some of our goals include but are not limited to division-wide surveys policy analysis bias reporting system culturally responsive curriculum review achievement equity discipline equity teacher quality equity data analysis and division level at every division level next are our professional equity learning communities it's formerly known as professional learning communities so when we are doing equity we must include equity in every aspect of what we do this is an equitable practice based learning community that will promote courageous conversations with our teachers about how issues

058of race bias privilege impact teaching and learning some of the goals cultural competence and cultural sensitivity acknowledge and heal the impact of daily implicit bias review divisions equity community agreements restorative practices summer reading and equity boot camp all of our teachers will will all of our teachers will participate in the professional equity learning committee next is community engagement a huge part of my job is also implementing the community in equity and inclusion if we create an equitable learning environment in the schools and send our students home and we do not create partnerships there then equity and inclusion stops the moment our students leave it is so important that we create partnerships and collaborations with our community some of the things are for our goals creating community partnerships establishing a community diversity committee and organizing and

059sustaining programmatic equity initiatives i want to acknowledge that this month is black history month it is important that we acknowledge the contributions and accomplishments of black people but that is not the only heritage month that we will celebrate as we move forward we will begin to acknowledge other heritages we will begin to acknowledge sell and celebrate national observance and commemorative months march national women's history month which we will now call women's empowerment month irish american heritage month april death national death history month may asian asian pacific american heritage older american monk jewish american heritage month june lgbtqia pride month september national hispanic heritage month october national disabilities employment awareness month national italian american heritage month and november national american indian heritage month it is important that we acknowledge all of our students and that all

060of our students see and hear themselves in our schools next we have our diversity committees it is important for us to establish a group a committee to come together to have these courageous conversations and put forth initiatives some of the initial committees include but are not limited to student diversity committee divisions diversity committee our community diversity committee and our parents will be included for the division and the community some of the goals create community programs in collaboration with the school division create equity community agreements and strengthening partnerships within the schools and the committee next are student equity initiatives student equity initiatives will deepen their understanding of diversity equity and inclusion champion actions around bridging achievement and opportunity gaps for their student body goals student focus groups student diversity committees and student affinity groups our implement

061implementation plan starts next month after our plan after our coaching sessions that are happening throughout the month of february and march then in april we will initiate the professional equity learning communities where all of our teachers will will take place in equity training however it's so important that we understand that if we want teachers to buy into this it has to start from the top the executive committee has to do the training the executive team has to understand what is the shared language that we're using in our schools we have to all be on one accord are we using the same shared language are we all familiar about what equity and inclusion actually is and are we ensuring that all of our students are seen and heard at the end of the day it's not

062about us it's all about our students so february we started our coaching and cohorts we started our heritage month launch and then the divisions equity and inclusion initiative the virginia state board has deemed march as equity month and so next school board meeting in february we will present a proclamation for equity month in march thank you any questions one welcome i'm excited to see you here thank you um i do it's more like a statement than questions but i do have three kids in the school system currently a sixth grader a third grader and a first grader um and i went through a school system that you know was harsher and so i understand what it is to be different than everyone around you and to have someone there who's coaching teachers to be more

063inclusive um to help people understand the needs of other people because sometimes ignorance is our biggest problem with it and it's not a a malice or anything it's just a lack of knowing and sometimes we need to know people and learn things and connect and so i appreciate you bringing that into our school system in a deeper level i'm hopeful that with this inclusion you'll see lower suicide rates of students because that's a huge problem for a lot of kids who are struggling feeling included feeling important because we all are who we are and um i just i'm looking forward to seeing what you can do in our system to just grow and expand and make it a more inclusive environment for everyone and a respectful environment for everyone yes so thank you for coming

064and working with us in isle of wight you're very welcome a big part of inclusion is a sense of belonging and everyone needs to feel like that they belong there we can't invite them in but are we making space for them to feel that that they belong thank you madam chair i'd like a little follow-up a statement so um there was a letter to the editor in uh this week smithfield times that asked some excellent questions about the new coordinator of equity and inclusion position such as why do we need the position and what are the expectations the press release announcing the position provided a broad overview of the responsibilities and reasons it was added but didn't get into many specifics about the position and i wanted to address some of those questions tonight in

065addition to what gianna cox jones has shared with us already and so the position will be looking at all of our practices and procedures to make sure our work is equitable and inclusive for all students people usually think about a position such as this as targeting only racial concerns our division does have racial disparities we see it in our discipline data that i've shared this in the past with this board the number of advanced studies diplomas our special needs and gifted populations we needed a position that could focus training staff on identifying the underlying causes of the under or over representation of minority populations in these groups so i want to emphasize we need someone for training miss jones cannot do this on our own by coming in here the training is the key as

066we move forward with all staff but this position is not just focused on racial equity and inclusion our schools are seeing more situations involving sexual identity sexual orientation and gender fluidity among our students our schools especially high schools have students who freely express who they are but things can be complicated when these children don't have support from their families i want to share a recent situation because i'll tell you in my research often when you have a position such as this the community will say oh you hired this position and now you have these situations that this person brought in these situations are here and so recently we had a middle school student ask their teachers to be addressed by different name and announce they identified as a different gender this middle school student they

067also requested that their parents not be notified we have to determine how to support this child and how to provide guidance for teachers and staff at the school on how to handle such a situation the virginia department of education has drafted model policies for the treatment of transgender students in virginia's public schools in response to legislation approved in 2020 although they're not finalized we're using this document for guidance but we've already sought legal advice from our school attorney for handling these situations a lot of these situations are new to us i went to school many years ago and students weren't open in expressing these things our coordinator of equity and inclusion ms kiana cox jones will be involved with our process and procedures for supporting our students who identify as members of the lgbtq community

068one thing we have noticed is students are much more accepting of their classmates who are different from them especially with sexual identity and orientation than perhaps students did five to ten years ago ms jones cannot solve all these situations by herself training all star staff from the top down is the priority for a common language and common understanding of what equity inclusion and bias looks like in our schools we want every child to be comfortable being their true self while at school and we will be addressing any barriers that may prevent them from discovering their unique gifts and talents that is our vision to discover your unique gifts and talents you can't discover that if you are scared and feel unsafe at school and so this is a major initiative this is not political this

069is about helping children find themselves working with them working with their families and working with the community for the success of all of our children thank you madam chair for dr doyle thank you miss james okay next on the agenda is miss miss briggs and she is going to come and give us an update on the gifted education program good evening madam chair school board dr thornton dr marcia kale will be working with gifted education but as she is going on maternity leave tomorrow i am filling in in the interim so i'm happy to be here tonight to give you a quick update on a gifted program since our last board meeting the gifted education advisory committee met january 19th with 21 attendees and this was a zoom meeting participants gave feedback on what they

070would like the gifted experience to be for their children we also had held student focus groups with elementary middle and high school students and surveyed midland high school students regarding their gifted experience in the division and the gifted research team met friday february 5th and reviewed information gathered from all of those groups as well as research they collected including gifted plans from other divisions and this is all part of the work to develop a new updated gifted plan for the division so what's next the gifted research team is actually meeting tomorrow once again through zoom to begin identifying goals and priorities for gifted education they'll be looking at all of this information that's been compiled they will be creating a draft plan and the plan we will ensure the plan is equitable for all students

071it will be reviewed by the gifted education advisory committee revise some more and then later this spring we will be bringing you a first draft of that plan for review and hopefully adoption i'll do my best to answer any questions you may have no questions next is the proposed school calendar and you get that prize too i do i do i'm up here a couple times mr hill yes we are in the process of creating the school calendar for next year we did a survey that was put out there to parents community staff we actually had over 1600 participants in the online survey which is it seems like calendars are very very near and dear to people's hearts and tonight we're presenting you draft calendar just for first read so there's no vote but we

072will have it at the next meeting 75 percent of the people excuse me i apologize 89 percent of the people that took the survey were fine with what was presented probably the one comment we got quite a bit from the people that had comments was we had we had identified three of the staff development days as asynchronous learning days and there were families that expressed that can we when this year is over can we please not go back to that we we do have enough time in the calendar we don't have to do that we thought we'd sort of test the waters and we heard pretty loud and clear that just give the kids the time off if there's enough time in the calendar so you'll see a line drawn through that part on the

073calendar just so you know it was on the survey but we're asking we're going to be removing it from the proposed calendar are there any questions yes i have a question yes ma'am miss rick um i was wondering if you got any feedback in your survey about the uh possibility in virginia extending the school year to the summer for those that are needed we for those students that need that particular program we did um not too many but there were some there were some that really felt they did not want to have it extended unless it was an optional item they they really felt their students needed a break okay to have family time over the summer but they did support optional programs for students who may need that support not just across the board

074right okay thank you yes ma'am okay next is the comprehensive strategic plan for 2021 through 2026. i think a madam chair do we have one item right before that was proposed a change change change calendar it might have 20 20 20 21 15.4 15.4 okay i'm looking at the old oh i'm sorry mr okay okay thank you we have had to come to the board to change a couple dates on the existing calendar because of the schedule we're on this year and we have a date coming up in march right now it's march 15th which is a monday that would be used as professional development for staff we don't want to take away time from students while we will have k-5 back in five days we're not sure of the status of middle and high

075so we're asking to move that day to friday march 12th so that would require your vote tonight okay this is an action item do we have a motion madam chair i make a motion to change monday march 15th professional development day to friday march 12th 2021. southern devotion okay we have a motion it has been seconded the mission is to recommend changing the monday march 15 2021 professional development day to friday march 12th 2021. vote please [Music] mr wilson could you hit your button again it didn't go through i'm sorry okay got it okay okay motion carried now we're ready for the comprehensive strategic plan yes ma'am and mr smith there's a short powerpoint for that item yes sir okay the current plan for isle of wight county schools actually ends this year in october

076and policy af outlines expectations for a plan so we're moving forward with developing a new plan and just tonight i wanted to give you an overview of the timeline we are currently working to gather input from our stakeholders and last time we did the strategic plan it was in 2016 and in that year we did a lot of community meetings we had these activities where they came in and worked in groups so it was very interactive and as you know we're not able to do events like that so we are going to take advantage of some zoom meetings with focus groups we're going to also do surveys we'll be working with parent groups student groups employees and community members we already have some groups in place that will be perfect for using as focus groups

077such as our teacher advisory council parent advisory committee special education advisory committee the gifted committee cte committee plus we have our board liaisons and we have our principals we'll be working with community groups that we've already been in partnership with such as workforce development the local naacp and the diversity community diversity committee that ms jones referenced in her presentation we will have miss jones involved throughout the process we want to make sure that the entire plan hat is equitable and has an equity lens throughout it it will not be one part of the plan it will be incorporated into the entire plan and we will be bringing you a draft in august we are required to have a public hearing on the plan so we would look at september for that with adoption of the

078final plan in october so i don't know if you have any questions for me at this time it's very preliminary but we wanted to let you know where we're headed okay thank you thank you so much okay next on the agenda is the proposed school budget yep so madam chair and board members first i'd like to thank steve for putting this presentation together for us tonight as we go through the recommended budget we're going to look at division values the enrollment revenue comparisons additions and deletions for fiscal year 22 and then appropriation comparisons the 2122 budget is a spending plan based on revenue and required expenses and it's a working document that addresses the goals and the mission and division of our school division and lastly and probably more now than ever a budget is

079flexible and it's based on unanticipated changes and priorities as i've stated before our vision is to create a learning environment that will enable every child to discover his or her unique gifts and talents some of you reminded me and our team at a previous meeting this year in a work session about the budget to remember the unique gifts and talents and even though we're in a pandemic and we're trying to get through it let's not give up on some of our initiatives in our schools and our requests so we kept that in mind as we prepared this budget enrollment this is directly from the virginia department of education and you see the dramatic drop this year due to the pandemic so from an enrollment of 5630 all the way to 53.96 and the estimate from

080the virginia department of education is still 53.88 and i believe they did that on purpose because of the unknowns there are just so many unknowns and who will come back who went to private school who went to homeschool we have kindergarteners that never registered because they were hoping to wait a year so we could be looking at an explosion in kindergarten and uh what's called like a bubble class coming through but i do want to thank the governor for putting in a hold harmless fund and gives us some stability moving forward even the enrollment looks very dramatic up there and for those of you who don't know we're funded by the enrollment by the average daily membership so that's a critical number as we move forward so revenues are state revenues first in the general

081fund you'll actually see an increase there of almost a million dollars and that is due to a brand new line put in the budget called no loss funding and so it's previously was not in the budget documents from the state and then that one line is 1.6 million dollars for our white county so you can see the impact of the adm if they had not done that for us and then you'll see textbook fund which is a separate fund that went down slightly and then grants those are technology grants that stays the same so you see an increase in state funds of almost a million dollars from the county you'll see no increase asked for in general funds and this revenue is different than most years that that we've looked at because you'll see the

082cares funding on the on the county side that was five hundred and forty thousand dollars the county gave to us and appropriated for furniture earlier in this budget year so you'll see a decrease of five hundred forty thousand dollars but that's because of the cares funding you'll also see a decrease of about nine thousand dollars in textbooks fund and that's driven by the state numbers they decide how much is textbooks from the county and from the in from the state and then capital improvement you'll see that going from 500 to 250. traditionally the board of supervisors funds us 250 000 a year in capital improvements and at the beginning of this year if you remember we had major chiller issues at smithville middle and carrollton and it wiped out almost all of that 250 so

083they did give us an additional 250 and they have been a very good partner to us along the way especially understanding we need to take care of the infrastructure of our schools and so you see a decrease of 799 000 but the reality of the general budget and and what my proposal has for the government contribution is actually less that nine thousand dollars so basically level funding and not asking them for any additional money and a lot of that is due to the unknowns that they are facing too and citizens are facing so we try to put a budget together that would not impact the county at all next where you see revenue local those are fees we collect building rents tuition you will see we're predicting a decrease in tuition and that's historical data

084it's trending downward and then you'll see in there the other category and that's where the majority of the prudent center money is so we received that revenue like i stated earlier every march and then e-rate we're looking at a slight decline in that as well at the federal level your title funds you see slight decreases these funds year after year stay about the same title idea carl perkins and then the the newest one of course is the cares fund again so in addition to the 540 that the county gave us we received approximately 530 at the beginning of the year and that could be used for two years then if you remember like last minute i believe it was in november the governor released additional monies to school division and we received 981 thousand dollars

085that had to be spent by december and we did spend that money again furniture and some of the other cares money we had spent could be like reimbursed so we've spent the 981 we still have quite a bit of the 530 left so that's good and then you'll see in next year's the 2.1 million dollars that we just found out that we will be receiving and that will go through 2023 and i'll talk about that more later in the presentation positions added that would be new to the budget and requested first in special education three self-contained programs two at hardy and one at carrollton so this is three teachers and three aides and these are driven by special education numbers next is a spanish position spanish teaching position at smithfield high school they've been requesting

086that a while our numbers are extremely high in spanish and so we really feel like we need to fill that position next is a science teacher and this is a resource teacher at windsor elementary school and this is a position associated with the farm initiative that's on their campus and i believe windsor elementary school has been waiting for this for two years we it has been in the budget and it's been something that has been cut and this is one of the things i was talking about earlier it's an initiative that's been there and we think we can fund it this year and we'd like to see that happen as a resource class at windsor elementary school next was a secretary position of transportation we've actually filled that position and this year with well every

087year they have a million calls i think lee has asked this for several years as well and with the pandemic it was a much needed position we had the funds this year because of less fuel but you still have to account for it going into your next year and so we've added that position next is windsor high school these top three a mathematics teacher spanish and an admin associate secretary to help with truancy windsor high school has one person in their front office up front and the other two positions are driven by numbers in the school and this has been a request for two years now and the last one was a request from mr coleman's department for a coordinator of capital projects for the division as you know mr coleman is the only person

088in his department in support and he oversees ssc transportation technology and probably one of the biggest things is safety for all of the schools and then all of our rfps our cues etc we see this as a temporary position while hardy's being built and boots on the ground over the next two years at hardy this person would be on-site daily and meet weekly with the construction team and the architect now mr coleman will also meet with that team and if you know anything about construction they have a weekly update what was completed what was done are you on schedule what are the holdups and if there's any there's some give and take there and looking at that did that really happen did it not happen in discussion it's really our eyes on the ground making

089sure those things are done so i'd love to say in a perfect world the construction company and the architect is going to say dr thornton and mr coleman this was done yes perfect i feel a little better if we had our own employee boots on the ground that could verify that for us and for the board and this person could give the board updates to the process and we think this is fiscally responsible in the past people would hire a firm to do this and this could cost about six hundred thousand dollars with a firm that does this an outside firm and with us using construction management at risk we feel like if we just have a person boots on the ground we would be in good position dr thornton i have a question yes

090ma'am that position coordinator of capital projects yes you said it would be temporary i understand it's going to be temporary but uh would this i don't know if you're going to have the same individual but would you you said hardy project are you are you also thinking about using that same individual in the position for the west side replacement project if that comes to fruition yes then then it could be a four-year position okay all right right yes miss yeller um something we talked about that i don't see in positions added is additional reading specialists and math remediation specialists for the younger grades i don't see those positions in here as something we're calculating into the budget okay so on this slide these were positions and costs added through the coronavirus money the 2.1 million

091that we talked about and some of the positions here are currently suggested for the remediation plan over the next two year period that the instructional team has shared and it's still not fully developed so we wanted to show you where we were with the cares money so that you would feel confident moving forward that there's money available for additional needs so if you look at that slide the total is 653 000 over two year period you would double that to the 1.2 so it still leaves quite a bit of room and so we're just not ready to say what that is at this point but uh we we are talking about that so i'll give you for instance first of all the special ed coordinator we have two in the division currently and this would

092be adding a third and due to we have major remediation that needs for for all students but our special needs students not only will there need to be remediation done you'll have to have iep meetings and remediation plans developed with a team so what is being suggested that we have a special ed coordinator teaming with a psychologist and there's a team that will handle three schools so we'll have three teams to hit all of our schools and therefore we'll have they'll be able to put all their attention on those schools instead of being spread division wide so that was that's one of our positions for remediation next is speech pathologists we've kind of had this need not a full-time position in the past but again due to the loss of time and the one-on-one time

093doing speech we we're gonna have a bigger and bigger need so we felt like we need a additional speech pathologist for those needs for remediation then we we debated about the next one that you see the 10 ia positions and remedial software those are kind of combined and we we talked about what if we hired five math teachers and five um reading teachers and as we talked about that we thought okay where are those teachers going to come from if they come from our ranks of our teachers that we have already that may be good in reading our math then we now have 10 more openings and we already have a ridiculous amount of openings that we can't fill so are we shooting ourselves in the foot and creating another group of students next year

094that will need remediation because we don't have our best teachers in the classroom teaching them full time so i know the instructional department is doing research right now looking for remedial software that will put the student at the level they're at whether it's for reading or math and be able to they'll be able to progress at their own pace the aids can be trained to help work with them so that that's part of the plan i know chesapeake has just approved a software a similar software doing the same thing and went through an rfp for that so that's one of the things that we're looking at and the last thing is a another technology person [Music] for eric again just a helpline has taken so many people off and now we have a device in

095every child's hands and so just the amount of devices that we have to put our hands on is enormous and you know we added one this year this is an additional position for that yes ma'am the remediation software so these kids are on zoom right now some of them or they're on zoom two days a week and clearly they're falling behind so how is using software comparable to what they're doing now going to fix this problem with remediation i don't see that as a prudent investment based on my personal experiences because you have to have if a child cannot read and you give them remediation software they're going to need someone to sit with them and help them with it mike would you like to address that that was one that was one of the

096questions we asked by the way because i mean this doesn't like the kids can't read how are they going to use software so in regards to the remediation software i think first of all um you're talking about using something that's being used in conjunction with the classroom teacher with the daily reading instruction with the [Music] small groups and individual sessions so the type of software that we're looking at is adaptive what it would do is take for instance our star data for our students and based on that star data would put the student where they need to be at their starting point the software is also adaptive as dr thornton was mentioning so as a student is progressing the software is working with them where they need it but to go more into your point

097what the software is also doing much like an st math that you're familiar with what the software is also doing is it's giving the teacher and the for instance in this scenario the ia's working with the students weekly reports on how the students are doing within the activities but also then it can lay out for each individual sol whether in reading or math how the student is performing it will actually for the teacher be a great time saver because it can actually group the students and say okay well these four students experience some difficulties in this area this past week and then it's actually going to give the teacher resources and activities that are research based again that's a huge time saver for our teachers so that very teacher who's working with that child in

098whole group instruction small group and individual sessions during our instructional framework when the children are rotating through working with the teacher doing independent work one of those independent workstations can now be this remediation software which can then be part of that entire process for that child for instance in reading and or math um and we could use that k through eight so mike if i can add because not everyone understands adaptive technology so what adaptive technology does and i think it addresses your appointments you look is so if a child's in there whether it's reading or math and they're on a screen and they're not progressing through it at all they can't for whatever reason it will go back and put them on something until they can progress and move forward and it could take

099them back several steps and so even though we put them in somewhere they they still might not be on the ball with that topic and the software will go back once they start to master it then then the computer program will go forward with them and and all of that information is captured in the report so an aide or teacher will see oh he went back and he went forward and now we are still going to do some sort of positions where we then will do some one-on-one or small group learning activities with them as well so it's really using the in classroom and then additional pull out for those students who may need it even more and some of the face-to-face with possibly some teachers because i feel like in the return to learn

100section you're going to tell me how returning the classroom is very important how that personal interaction is important for these students absolutely how this level is going to be really high and now you're trying to tell me that this computer program is what's best for students so if a computer program is what's best for students then why are we going back to school at all so this i mean i i think being in classroom is important and so when they do go back to the classroom when all these kids who are virtual eventually do go back in they feel it is safe um that is where we're going i want to see reading specialists and math specialists in this budget i think we need to budget for them i think we're going to need them

101i don't i don't mind using a program or software but i think those positions need to be in here and budgeted appropriately because we know we're going to need reading specialists and we know we're going to need math specialists i don't think that's been a debate right or am i totally off kilter and you think we're we don't need reading or math specialists coming up next year right alex hasn't addressed that but i do want to address i want to be careful because this is some of the conversation that comes up with my colleagues as well and instructional teams in the region as we discussed before let's think before the pandemic in this day and age we have where with the teachers lecturing maybe 15 20 minutes and then we go to different modalities some

102are hands-on some are computerized etc all this will do is go back to that same strategy so just because yes they were on zoom having to listen to a lecture we're still going back into the classroom and using adaptive softwares and softwares that have been successful and we used in in the past so we're talking 30-minute session at a time where the majority of their day will be interactive with people so and believe me your question is well taken i said the same thing when i first heard it is technology i think we all commented on that but then when you sit back and think about what were you doing before what are you to do moving forward so very good question go ahead yeah i just wanted to remind you all that we do

103have our intervention reading intervention teachers we have three at hardy three at windsor one at carsville one at carrollton and another one will be added into carrollton next year for reading intervention so those are the classes where the teachers pull out small groups five students for 30 minutes ongoing all day long that's already in place so what we're talking about is adding additional support you have to balance that with how many times do you pull a kid out of their classroom so that is what we're working on with our instructional team and our coordinators right now is what is the best way to meet those needs of a student but yet you can't constantly pull them out of their second grade classroom because then they're missing their grade level instruction so that's right now i

104mean this is all what we're trying to to determine what is going to be the best method in that plan let me just add this real quick in the plan of the 10 ias we're looking at possibly three of those ias to support carrollton west side and carsville for additional supports whereas miss coop rider would provide them with training on what to do and then we would kind of set them forward with the reading coach to help you know to drive their day-to-day interactions with kids what that schedule would look like so we are looking at people carefully as well and i think if we could great 10 great teachers that can do reading and math i think we would take it any day of the week the problem is just what dr thornton said

105we can't fill our classroom positions so i'm worried not about like one kid coming out multiple times you pull them twice a week i'm worried about the volume of the children that are going to have issues that did not have issues in the past yes um and that's great you want more ias a lot of these ias are not you know you could do a session with them or two but there are people who have master's degrees in reading specialties for i mean my master's isn't has a minor in literacy for um high school so you know functional literate but those are very specific things but if we're not even having these positions open we're not even you can't catch a fish if you don't put the hook in the water you know like we

106we do need these everyone's going to need them every division is going to be looking for reading specialist math specialists but what's upsetting me is that it's not in our budget i'm not seeing that position as a new position in the budget specifically and i think it needs to be i have a question guess i just heard you when you said the 10 ia positions and you i don't know if you were just referring just gave us an example or that was what you the plans your goals you said maybe one carrollton uh and carsville and i'm i was just wondering because of the i'm thinking of the enrollment in carrollton as well as westside they're much larger than the very small enrollment that we have in carsville so i was wondering if you would

107want to double up and put it maybe carrollton i don't know but i'm i'm asking the question are you doing it based on enrollment or you're doing it based on where you think there may be a need when the students come back good question let me clarify so would be one ia in all elementary and both middle schools and then we would look at potentially an additional one at carrollton and west side and maybe like a part-time one at carsville and maybe to share somewhere else so we're also that's it's still preliminary okay but it would be like because you're right carrollton and west side so it would be in addition to thank you and and miss back to you just to your point of you're right it is very specialized and they do have

108master's degrees we would not put the ias out there you know some of the ias we hire quite honestly are teachers they just don't want to be a teacher absolutely so we would look very carefully at the ias maybe we already have them in our system and we can train them to do what we want them to do or we find additional ones they would work under the guidance of the reading coach in the buildings they wouldn't just be like here you go it would be under the direction i mean i understand that it wouldn't be just but i mean we're looking at kids who maybe wouldn't have had a reading problem had we not had a pandemic now needing this assistance kids who wouldn't have had a mathematics problem and i don't see anything

109really in here for math we have gigi and that's great if the kid understands math and the same thing with this reading program that you want to do it's great if the kid can can move through it and you have a parent who's helping them but a lot of times we're not looking at the kids who have parents who are helping them in the home every day and working with them and doing math with them or reading with them so i mean i just i just know that even when we're talking person to person these are things i think we really do need and i'm just i'm a little frustrated because i'm not seeing them on here and we have discussed in the past these positions on being in the budget and i think several

110of us have said it in different meetings about meeting reading specialists about needing additional math uh specialists which i don't even think we have math interventionists at all our schools or anything like that so we've discussed needing it and it's not in the budget at all because i mean we put positions in the budget and sometimes we don't find them but they're in the budget so i don't understand why it's not in the budget well well part of the reason is what i stated there's still plenty of room under this cares fund to make decisions where the other positions that i showed you that are in the regular general fund those we have to know what they are specifically how much they cost because the balance the budget has to balance from state and local

111money federal dollars are separate and and i don't think we're ready to say because again going back to it uh and i know this is the first time you're hearing it the positions we already have already pull out students for reading and the gaps we are going to have additional students caused by the pandemic we need to see the data that we're going to be getting from the spring and see how many we have okay how many can our existing staff do how many more do we have then we will be able to make a clearer decision okay maybe we need to hire two reading specialists and maybe they both need to go to carrollton we're going to look at data not if we have one net cars villain one here and that's not that's

112not equity and it comes with equity in an equity lens that's equality because we have nine schools we're going to put one everywhere i really want to look at the data so i don't want to stand up here today and i made the decision to stand not commit to positions when we're not prepared to tell you we need those positions and and part of the discussion is and we still need to have that debate if we put 10 positions out there that are teaching positions we do feel like many of our teachers will apply for those positions and that's 20 minutes with us with a small group of students scattered throughout a week like you said maybe two times versus taking a top teacher away from 25 kids all day long those are those are

113tough decisions and so we're just not prepared to say that to you but what we're prepared to say is uh we're we're hearing you and there's plenty of room in there if we think we need to go that that direction and we need to continue i think that discussion because i've heard you in multiple meetings saying we're going to need this position both of them the reading and the mathematics i mean if we know this is going to be a hard one to fill um and find these people who have these qualifications that we're looking for shouldn't we at least have one reading specialist coming up in the budget and one mathematic and if we need more yes we have room but shouldn't we at least be looking because we know we're going to at

114least need one more in the entire system correct yes and we can and we can advertise that we advertise all of these positions we can start advertising as potential positions so we can do that i just don't want to be behind because now we didn't actually you know i know you're looking at data and where to go and i understand that i'm not saying put one two at each school spread them out even because i know there's more kids at carrollton than there is in carsville so what one person can do in carsonville will have a deeper impact than what one person can do carrollton just because it's one person and the volume of students at that school i'm what i'm saying is we know we have this need we know we're going to at

115least need one or two reading specialists and we'd love to get a math specialist in there i just don't understand why we're not budgeting for it specifically and i hear what you're saying i just i'm not agreeing with what you're saying okay i would just like to say that when these kids come back we and we test these students we're going to see things that we have no idea what and i can see where our principals and teachers and administrators are going to get together and they may come up with a plan that we've never done before because we're going to have situations we're talking gaps that we've never had before we we might see um kids going across the hall to another teacher for something instead of being pulled out for i mean it's

116just all different things that we can do but we we really have to look at the data and the needs of what we have and then we've got some smart teachers and administrators out there that can come up with some different plans to to meet the needs that come to us but it's it's a heart i mean i don't envy you guys for what you're having to to plan for when you really don't even know what you're planning for yet and this is the initial superintendent's budget proposal and we have a work session and we're going to talk these things out so that this is the time to do that and and hear from it and you are hearing it for the first time right all right the next is proposed reductions and currently we

117have one process facilitator westside elementary school and if you remember a couple years ago we were going to pilot a couple of these positions and one went away i think with the pandemic so we only have one left and we we've watched this position function and this was a suggestion from the instructional team special education team and it's what i said earlier to to hire another sped coordinator to work with a psychologist and do a team of three schools where they concentrate in those three schools helping the iep teams write the necessary remediation plans and move forward as a team and not be spread out all over the county and so we are eliminating the process facilitator now if we if we did feel like that was a strong thing which we don't it still

118would have had a major fiscal impact we would have had to add if you remember back all the principles asked for this that would mean adding eight positions as process facilitators to help write ieps we feel like this team and from our instructional team they feel strong that they can do a better job supporting special education by doing it this way the next position is latin i think if you remember back we removed latin from windsor high school due to declining student interests we also eliminated french back i think in 2015 16. and when i say eliminate eliminate a in-person teacher we have virtual virginia long before the pandemic existed for over 20 years and students are very successful on virtual virginia taking foreign language so we suggest that we do that and we don't

119again this is a fiscal decision this is saving about an eighty thousand dollar position with benefits and the virtual virginia slots we don't have to pay for after a certain number we have to pay but we have free slots next is the three alternating weak positions this is an initiative that we're not moving forward with because of the unknowns but i will say jeff is looking at different ways to meet the needs of some of our seniors the alternating week schedule was comprehensive nine through 12 but he is looking at building trades food occupations cosmetology agriculture in the farm some of those working areas that maybe seniors have a special schedule where they can still access those programs in in maybe more than a double block so so we'll be looking at that too but

120that will not have a cost impact and then an accounting technician this is in the finance department and that's just through attrition and we feel like we can do without that position moving forward the the next is nurse's salary adjustment proposal this recently came up and was not really in our conversations um we talked about the cola that you all gave for january and then we talked about the teacher step and the governor's proposal and we really talked about that that was it we are losing nurses if you look at this that's a minimum salary right now for starting rn in our system the same rn level of degree could be working in a hospital setting for eighty thousand dollars a year and i i understand that's another 60 days they would be working in

121the hospital it's 260 days versus 200 10 months and i also understand there's advantages of coming to work for us so i'm trying to promote nursing too here is you have a set schedule monday through friday and you're not working weekends so there's some good benefits but the cost discrepancy is very large and i will tell you back 20 years ago i've had nurses on the same scale as teachers and so we are behind the time and need to do something about our nurses not because of the pandemic you know we've added like halftime positions at i think west side in the future windsor elementary the number of people who are coming through there is tremendous so this is a plan just to move the minimum to 40 000 next year and then 45 the

122following year and that's a minimum and so the ones we have now again would be adjusted for years experience so we don't they're all rns we don't do lpns in our schools we do have one and so the rns are exempt we do have one that is non-exempt so they would not be included here and our goal is that we have all rns okay next for salary i think i've shared this with you before we talked about it when the governor's budget came out he provided a two percent one-time bonus payment and uh so we would like to use that money as not a bonus a one-time bonus doesn't help your vrs and use that money and that is a new line item in the budget again i think it was 300 and some thousand

123dollars for the step increase for our teachers salary scale and again that's not a guarantee just because you're on a step and we want to give them the step increase in your each year we have to pay for that so we are recommending that and i do want to point out um you may be seeing other divisions giving raises now when they present to their board and but you guys gave an increase a cola increase to all employees and adjusted some salaries as well in january what this did was allow them to get six more months of that raise so where others waited to do it in this budget so our employers are actually better off getting the raise so their raise happened over an 18-month period versus a 12-month period so we feel good

124about our increase next we wanted to show you this slide i don't think we've done this in the past and oftentimes i think we all do this we look at our salary and we say oh that's all i'm getting paid these are benefit costs that we pay out in the division health insurance over four million dollars your fica your virginia retirement that we pay into disability group life and our early retirement incentive plan that we also have so over 13 million dollars in additional benefits so you heard me say earlier teaching position was eighty thousand so you might make fifty uh fifty five fifty six sixty thousand you're you're actually paid in benefits around eighty thousand dollars so i think it's important for people to understand that next is e-rip and we'll be asking you

125to approve this next month each year you have been approving the early retirement incentive plan and we just wanted to show graphically what this is we talk about it every year and i think steve did a nice job putting this together so the e-rip cost you see is in blue the reason it goes up every year and this year is about 193 thousand dollars is because it's a five-year plan for employees to give 25 days as a sub to work with us so as we keep adding people who retire to this plan the cost will go up but what we gain from that in that bottom orange is the sub pay these are subs we would have to pay anyways but now we have our quality teachers who just retired who know our system they

126know our kids they know what we do and you can't you can't replace that but what you also see in yellow is these teachers have to have 30 years experience so they're at the top of our scale and unless we replace them with a top of the scale teacher their savings is well there and so that's what we're we're showing there and i think we used a 15-year teacher so if we hire someone with 15 years experience we're seeing all of those savings so we think it's a great program to have and offer our teachers for five years after they retire the next slides are just the summaries i'm not going to read all all of the dollars but you see basically the total revenue for next year is 69 million 766 356 dollars and

127that's all that's not just a general fund that's all your federal dollars your your food service that's everything and then of course that has to balance and so you see the breakdown by category and the bottom line total is the 69.7 million dollars and you see the different categories now this is a little different this year and you'll probably have questions when you go through the booklet that you that you've received if you look at administration attendance and health you see that's going down dramatically well the only reason that's going down dramatically is a lot of the money through the cares fund that 540 000 was put in that category to be spent out so it's not necessarily we added to administration it's really the cares funding and next this is just an illustration so

128you see the breakdown instructional services is 76 of our budget and then you see operations and maintenance at nine percent transportation at seven percent technology at four percent and admin attendance and health at four percent and debt service at 1. so it really shows that the majority of the budget is in instruction and that's what we do and this was a nice graphic steve and but he wanted to just show is and illustrate all of these things even though instruction is the largest we have a graduate there it takes all of our departments and staff working together to get our students from kindergarten to graduation and i think it's important to note that all staff is important for the success of our children our calendar the work session is scheduled for tuesday at 10 am

129at the courthouse so we will have those discussions you have your books to go through and you can quiz our new finance executive director and we will have continued conversations about remediation and other things that you see as you've heard the presentation and go through the book and have questions and then after that we'd like to have a public hearing on february 25th at smithfield high school so this way the public would have seen this presentation this will be all online and have questions they may come and ask for certain things and then we could have another work session if it's needed and then a final budget approval in march and then it becomes your budget that we have to send to the county administrator by the end of march and that is it if

130you have any additional questions or you want to hold them to the work session until you can really dig through it i think it'll be good for us to resume this discussion at the work session right it's a lot it is to go into and uh like i said i do want to thank steve and the whole finance department he's new to us this year virginia is different than jersey and how they do things and categories and learning a new system and uh i think he did a good job putting this budget together hey thank you next you ready for the return to learn update not really i'm tired i knew i should have had steve deliver the budget next year steve tuesday's coming steve so i put this presentation together we talk about return

131to learn every month and but i was recently asked to share our return to learn plan with all of the state superintendents this past tuesday on a zoom call and chesapeake did the tuesday before they were a large division that they've already been five days a week i know our community is sending emails to you board members and me about opening tuesday five days a week and so i thought this would be a good opportunity to share what i shared with them and share some additional information for you so first initial concerns when we first opened if you can remember back there or if you want to forget all of that in the fall and one of the big concerns was in-person instruction would cause covert 19 spread in our community so if we opened

132and we let kids in it would infect teachers it would get they'd go home they'd get their grandmother sick and it would just create this huge community spread so that was an initial thought and we still opened for just our early learners because we felt like they needed face to face also kovid 19 is easily transmitted by touching surfaces that was initially so how could we possibly clean the schools and keep it going on a daily basis and then the other thing we heard a lot was students would not follow mitigations and especially at the high school level they said they wouldn't stay away from each other i i said that i was concerned about high school students sorry and but but we and we wanted to provide options for parents and so why did

133we reopen our philosophy from the beginning is that we're essential workers educators are essential workers and just like health care workers who have to be there other essential workers that have been identified essential are people who check you out at the grocery store life has to go on and there's nothing more important than the education of our children and then we also learned with the quick shutdown from march to june that we struggled with virtual learning this is new for our teachers it was a lack of training this is still an issue with connectivity and equity we still have kids that are not getting through the zooms and doing what we need to do but we understand their family is is more afraid of the virus than that loss and that's a decision that they

134that they have to make but that's out there and at this time we still believe that virtual learning cannot replace the quality and expertise provided through in-person instruction and that if you remember back that was our schedule i'm not going to go into that and at the high school that was our in-person continuum and i do want to say this because it this is a good talking point as we move forward there's already conversation and some legislation that we're trying to pass saying schools have to have a virtual option and i do not believe that's going to pass or has passed but at the elementary level we are considering as we we move forward too and have conversations we can do dedicated virtual teachers at an elementary k-5 level we cannot do that at middle

135of high school we couldn't do it during this time and our middle and high school teachers stepped up and had we're teaching in person and virtual at the same time with their extra ipads and have done an amazing job we cannot sustain that if people do want virtual next year it's going to have to be through virtual virginia but at elementary we are considering do we have 48 slots per grade division wide or 72 per grade we're going to be talking to the community and surveying them as well we may put a limit but it will not be the virtual that we're living now where vdoe says you have five days to turn in work and you can't be counted absent and you don't have to be on zoom if we do something in the

136future it'll be very rigid with rules no if you're not on zoom you're marked absent and no your work is due when the teacher says it's due and and that's a real virtual program if we go down that road so i just wanted to to let you know we are having those conversations as well key decisions we think we did make along the way is that educators are essential and that we did have the opportunity to have dedicated virtual teachers at the elementary level and the next one is fmla was not automatically granted kudos to hr and cheryl she met with teachers and other staff that had issues and had concerns and had some medical concerns she went through each one individually they went back and forth with mitigation plans and to try to accommodate

137that employees but we didn't give a blanket if you don't feel safe you don't have to come in and i'm going to say lots of people did that across this country and you guys see now where there's teacher unions like in chicago and they don't want to come to work after a year with no kids there so it's it you can't just have this blanket fair so i think we did a good job with that and and our teachers did a good job with that and the mitigation plan was approved by western tidewater they came and talked to the board early on and said we have a good plan we think it will work and it has worked and then contact tracing we were trained with that we're still hearing divisions that don't do their

138own contact tracing and and some that said they can't do their own contact tracing that's why they're not open and again our nurses have been trained in that they've been doing a great job with that there's so many people that i could name behind the scenes that have made us successful and transportation i think miss times i think you hit on that earlier with lee but i will tell you this i'm a little concerned with transportation as we go to five days a week because we are getting requests and i still want to encourage parents please drive your children if at all possible because right now we are one perceived or less and we hope we don't get to more than that i know lee's been looking at those numbers carefully as we move forward

139but uh that that's a concern i don't have a question with the parent pickup i know even now before the five days a week pick up is a challenge with the long lines do we have plans for that in place i know mr coleman is reaching out to the local sheriff's department and local law enforcement to see if they can help especially in week one to see what's going to happen and see what that will cause to help us with traffic control so then we can maybe adjust from there miss perkins did you ever okay so next was lessons learned and uh one we learned very quickly the staff can adapt to the changes and they have have come forward and done an amazing job and next we learn students with will follow mitigations so

140here where you can chastise me where i said i don't know about high school students wearing their masks staying away from each other if you remember when we first opened at the high school in the other schools it was six foot and you didn't have to wear the mask in the classroom i walked through those high schools early on and 60 or more of those students had their mass on even though they were six feet i think a lot of it was out of respect for their teachers and i think a lot of it when i had some conversations is we want to stay open we don't want to spread we want our schools open we want to be here so um so that helped so final thoughts i want to go back to opening

141schools did not equate to an increase in community spread because i'm hearing now too some of the concerns dr thornton the spread is higher than it was when we opened in the fall are you concerned about that and and some of my answers to that and i'm going to show you some of our our data from um isla way county but i want to say to that and what i said to others who have not opened yet we opened and we didn't know what would happen now we know that school spread is very low and that it's not spreading fast in schools and whether you open those doors or not and many systems around us have never opened their doors they still have community spread as high or higher than we do so schools didn't

142cause community spread the virus in general cause community spread so what did you gain by not opening your door oh you gained nothing you still have community spread what you lost was face-to-face instruction relationships all of the trauma that has happened with our young people and the social well-being of our young students so i think that's important to remember by opening the door did not cause us the spread and also the cdc is still saying that you don't have to be vaccinated to open your doors and i told you what my recommendations would be based on science and and and trying to be logical while still reading every email every concern every individual thing that i've heard so next i wanted to show you this is a map indicators and this is on february 9th

143and you know the colors of red are high green is good this is a 14 day percentage and i don't know if you can see out of the white but it's red and so for the 14 day average of percentage we're red this slide goes back to february 7th this is the seven day trend and you see here we were orange which is slightly better than red but you see a lot of people around us were trending down into the greens then go back this is february 9th again but the seven day so we were red for the 14 day trend but in the seven day trend now we're light green then if you go to yesterday we became dark green in the seven day trend which is even better than light green then if

144you go to today we are dark green and the drop is 27.1 percent drop on the seven-day uh trend which is a large drop now that doesn't mean it won't go up 15 percent tomorrow but the seven day trend is pretty clear of green and we're trending downward which is a a good sign and next i think miss you look you had asked me for for pictures here's a picture i believe this is that hardy and we took this i think when they first got the desk and filled it up with uh with students so this shows the spacing there's actually 24 desks in there and and they're not six feet anymore if you have 24 students not all of our classes have 24 students in fact division wide very few have 24 students so

145this was 24. at carrollton it is mostly 20 between 22 and 24. isn't it or at least it was before i believe i had the numbers but i believe there was three at 24 at carrollton and then what the other ones were close behind it and then they range they range from 16 to uh like 22. oh because half of them are still virtually learning roughly or 40 something percent right some are yes so this kind of gives you a sense of what it looks like and that's what it looked like when susan and i visited chesapeake this is a classroom at windsor and so i wanted to point out here too because some of the people again are concerned about less than six feet this classroom we filled up the desks with some students

146from another classroom but prior to that this has i think 22 deaths there were 16 students in that classroom already on a day because when we second semester started we did have an influx of more in person so they were already less than six feet for the last couple weeks that we've been in session many many of our classrooms and where is this at that was at windsor that's at windsor elementary school yes so i just wanted you to see those things see the map see some of the data that we look at all times see some of the conversations that we have about you know opening the schools did not cause a spread in the community there's still a community spread if you look at just the 14-day cases for the whole state the

147state's right most of the country is so that is a fact that that we're dealing with and i will say one more thing i will say one more thing that is important to so as we open and you are less than six feet one thing that we're going to specifically look at to make decisions as we move forward is now we have put you closer so when we do have cases and we still are going to have cases that six foot circle for quarantine now i may have to quarantine more kids for 10 days so as i as we go through the next couple weeks if all of a sudden i'm quarantining a lot more children that defeats the purpose of being open five days so that is like the key factor that we're really

148gonna watch as we as we see what happens over the next two weeks and as we try to make decisions for middle and high school as we move forward i do have a question if when we talked about um busing in the beginning of last year you know like august in july you said that plexiglas doesn't work on buses how is it different um in a classroom than a bus i mean i'm not asking to be like i just i don't know right so the reason is not a like a true mitigation that they they want to say that this will work is let me give you a couple examples so in for reading when you have a small group with like three kids in front of you we have the plexiglas and both are

149wearing a mask so your spray it could still go over but there's less chance of any kind of aerosol going back and forth so what the vdh has told us is you can work with a child for up to 30 minutes and then you won't have to quarantine in that setting so it's it's not an end-all but it will help some of the aerosol so that's why we offer it to some of our teachers if they want the plastic shields on their desks it could help some you know it still is not going to keep us from quarantining students and on the bus same thing it could help some and and i think when we looked at that it was safety concerns and costs i really don't even remember why we didn't do it back

150then but we could look at that i don't know if anyone's done that at all lee do you know of any division who has done that or okay i can i can look into it but that that's kind of why because they're not saying it's a guarantee because the aerosol once you breathe out can still go over and then um i know there was a survey that went out for virtual learners um in regards to if they're going back five days a week why would the virtual learners just stay three um so do we have results from that do we have a plan for the virtual learners in this as well as we return to the five days yes we do um so we surveyed the elementary schools um are they happy with three days

151would they like four days would they like five days of live zoom sessions right now they get three days of live zoom sessions two days is the asynchronous work so we were trying to determine what do our parents want our parents want to keep it the way it is um across the division about 72 percent said keep it the same three days of live zoom eighteen percent four days ten percent five days so our parents don't want to change the schedule and and i'll just give you i just you know looked through all the comments because we did leave it open-ended and it was things like my schedule is already set please don't make me change my schedule again you know my work schedule my child care schedule um coordinating this with multiple kids is

152a challenge if you change it i don't know how i'm going to make it work nearly burnt out from zoom time please don't give me any more and other various comments overall though i will say that the comments were very positive like thank you so much my teacher is amazing my child loves her teeth i mean they were very positive comments um and a few just like feedback of you know here's here's some things you could do better but they were very very kind comments for the most part so our recommendation right now is that we leave things the same and just continue with our three days of zoom and continue with individual and small group sessions as needed okay and then you you said that you were worried about busing um what is the

153plan if you have more kids needing transportation than you can actually provide so we can provide it but what's going to happen is there's going to be more than one child per seat that could have that could happen we don't see that right now but as our driver drives next tuesday and the child's standing on the side of the road they're trained to pick that child up so even if it causes them to be more than one seat if we find that out then we'll report that the schools will report that to lee and and we'll start looking at what we could do whether we can change some routes or what we're going to have to keep going on the fly like we've been doing all year long and try to strategize as it as

154it happens but that's why i want to encourage if you can we know it will cause a backup in the roads as well but if you could please drive your child it still would be a better thing mike do you more important if i may um to dr thornton's point mr pullman and mr livingston are monitoring with the schools the data regarding bus capacity as we're speaking those numbers are climbing up so it could very well be that we have buses in schools where we do have more than one per seat but again i wanted to make sure because we are monitoring that data late this afternoon mr coleman was briefing me on the fact that they're working on that and they're looking at mitigation but certainly as dr thornton's alluding to one per seat

155may not be possible to provide transportation to all of our children who need it because i mean at this point i get the emails when there is um the school email when there's an issue or quarantine or um and i get them weekly like there's weekly [Music] you know from multiple schools right um i mean i just i have concerns that i'm seeing more of those quarantine letters going out and now we're going to open up and put more kids together in tighter quarters um so now you have a kid who gets on who has it he spreads it on the bus because now they're sitting two in a seat now you've just quarantined all these kids he goes to class now he's three feet instead of six feet now you've just quarantined all these

156i mean i just i have my um i just don't that's it i don't see the in the data where it was better than the fall we haven't gotten better and the teachers are still waiting to get vaccinated um i know a lot of people's got cancelled because of state and issues with the vaccine i know we have plans to hopefully get it to them sooner but i mean i would like to see the teachers who want to be vaccinated vaccinated i know it's not a requirement but i think it would be prudent um because we're not seeing that the children are displaying symptoms that we don't know long term what those symptoms would be to them because it's new so there's no way no long-term outcomes but i mean for the teacher's health and

157their family's health because the kid could come in asymptomatic give it to a teacher and if the teacher wanted to be vaccinated but wasn't able to not by anyone's fault just circumstances of what they are um that is my concern i would feel better about it if we had the willing participant teachers who wanted to be vaccinated were vaccinated at least with the first shot so i i just have some trepidation about going in five days a week at this point and i know i'm gonna get some emails that are angry and i know i'm gonna get some happy people who agree with me but there's no winning in this for anybody even the kids aren't winning um either way because if they're home for 10 days on quarantine they're not winning you know and

158if you know it just there's no perfect outcome in this situation i don't want to seem like i'm they saying i just i'm trying to analyze all the information i'm getting the best way i can and ask as many questions that maybe somebody else has as well and that's a good point because everything you said is logical and so and i think that's why like chesapeake and we were asked to present to other superintendents chesterfield is uh presenting uh and and they're going to five days and so what we're using is our best experience through chesapeake who we went to visit and who has been doing five days k through five since sometime in the fall and they they didn't see what you spelled out i don't know why and again we don't know why

159when all these other schools have opened their doors why it didn't happen so that's why we we feel like we have all the mitigations in in place we've been doing well with them that hopefully we will have the same results of chesapeake with everyone knowing that from the beginning this was a continuum of possibly temporary remote possibly two days a week hybrid in five days and i think like i stated earlier if we see a bunch of quarantines then i'll pull back and go back to hybrid two days i mean at first if you see a bunch of quarantines you're going to shutting down for two weeks if it's high enough if oh if it's high enough yes and then we lose two weeks you know what i mean like i almost feel like maybe

160i think we what we have is working for us uh you know we we have these vaccinations rolling out i feel like we're just jumping the gun a little bit you know what i mean i just don't want to jump too fast and then end up going way back you know what i mean and it's not my call because it's yours and your team fall the school board voted on that um but that's my personal opinion on it yeah and there's no right or wrong answer and i really do think um who knows when the right time to jump and i guess i go back to the same thing we have so many divisions that kept they keep trying to figure out when the right time is to open the doors and a year later

161they've never opened their doors we're in a much better position when we opened our doors but now our our conversation is when do we open them five days a week and i don't know when that is or how long you should should wait and we feel like we're in a good position now so like i said all of these points are very valid and and i think i told some teachers the other day i read every email i get i know you guys share emails that you receive with me and we talk about them i don't i think everyone has valuable information and that's why we read every every one we have meetings every day on this and we agonize over these decisions it is very tough i just we have a vaccine out it's

162just not out as much as we'd like it i just i would feel better for our teacher's sake if we could have that vaccine to anyone who wanted it obviously there are people who don't want it i'm not making anyone do it but i know a lot of the teachers would feel more comfortable with that because that's been one of the things i've been hearing from the teachers i want my vaccination it got canceled i'm worried about the five days because i want this vaccination first so that i do hear that and i you know i just wanted to voice that concern yeah thank you dr thornton i um would like to share something yesterday a mother of when of a windsor high school senior called and she shared a facebook post from another windsor

163high school senior and the post was from a gentleman his name is terrell pittman and i believe terrell was recognized as senior of the month not long ago but i was blown away at the facebook post that he wrote and i received permission to share this with you tonight and his post is is written to the first semester so he says dear the first semester of my senior year 2020 2021 i honestly don't know how i managed to survive this battle with you you beat me up a thousand times and constantly knocked me down you caused me so much stress and procrastination that at one point i thought i was depressed you lessened my interest in my education and made my grades plummet to the floor you watched me and my friends give up countless

164times and you made us all lazy you caused us to hate the school that we used to love and just took everything away from us you see the thing about me is i'm always being involved and i'm always smiling and laughing i'm always the positive person in everything i do but you took that away from me you took away my friends and you took away my happiness nothing was there to replace the pep rallies and feel the times that i would usually spend being productive the lack of normality this semester has caused me to come someone become someone that i am not i started getting out of shape staying in bed all day being on tick-tock all day and just ignoring my work because i would do it later and once i got behind i

165just lost all hope because i thought there was just no coming back i started being okay with zeros and accepting the grades that were horrible because i just didn't care anymore i almost accepted my first b ever because i thought i was trying my hardest and i was wrong although you have been a burden on my life i am extremely grateful for you out of all the negativity you have caused in my life there were some great things that happened after breaking me down to the bone you unlocked an extremely strong person you allowed me to see how damn bad i was and furthermore motivated me to push through these hard times after the semester i've come out stronger than i ever thought i could be i stayed up well over 24 hours multiple times

166throughout the week just to turn in my work and get my grades back on track i went from 60s and 70s to straight a's again to make it simple i won you tried to beat me but i won i didn't quit i didn't give up i just kept getting up after you kept knocking me down if you made it to the end of this post i just want to thank you thank you for just listening to an ounce of what it's like being a senior this year if you know any seniors or any students really please just stay in contact with them and send them a few encouraging words tell them you're proud of them and that they've never tried their hardest no and that they've tried their hardest it's been tough for them and

167i know they could use it right now with that said i'm glad to go into second semester with a positive outlook here's my grades a couple of weeks ago and my grades today and he posted them i'm extremely proud of myself and other seniors that managed his me as well i also put some pictures and videos of how things used to be and i truly miss it also i can't forget to thank my lord above because without him none of this would have been possible when times get got tough it was the lord's words that kept me motivated terrell pittman this young man a senior at windsor high school was able to rise above this extremely challenging semester but he won this young man's future is extremely positive it's extremely promising has such a good

168outlet look what a post i mean this is a post that i feel sends a tremendous message of hope and encouragement from one of our very own you see the say a truth is not everyone has won yet let this post encourage those who are living out what he first described and let this post encourage others to reach out to those we know who are possibly knocked down and not yet back up our children want to go back to school and our goal is to eventually get them there isn't that amazing again his name is terrell pittman from windsor high school okay at this time we have moved down to action on our closed session items and the first one is the personnel report and remember if if anyone wants a physical copy of the

169personnel report you can ask for one before or after the meeting from the board clerk or download it from board docs so we need a motion to approve the personnel report madam chair i make a motion we've approved the person personnel report and addendum okay this is a motion that has been made in second and it is to approve the personnel report as presented because we have the other coming after this they're together they're together they are together okay all right i'm sorry thank you oh i thought you said the casino agenda i'm sorry so did you get that motion all right let's go mr wilson could you hit your button one more time thank you welcome hey motion carried next is to approve or make a motion to approve the religious exemption madam chair

170i make a motion to approve religious exemption feb 01 and feb-02 second okay a mission has been made in second we're ready for the vote so okay motion carried next we need a motion to approve the consent agenda madam chair i'd like to make a motion that we uh approve the consent agenda as presented second okay we have a motion it has been second so you need to hit it again there you go okay motion carried next is board member request and comments madam chair i just like to mention that next month i have the opportunity to present a solution to a problem i've been hearing a lot about in the high schools lately a lot of students while we have amazing electives and cte courses to offer a lot of students are choosing not

171to take them because they fear their gpa will be dropping because of it for instance a theater one and a theater four are currently weighted the same 4.0 gpa and students really aren't getting the recognition they deserve for the work that they do in these higher level electives that they stuck with their whole high school career so i'd like to present my solution to this current predicament that will hopefully encourage students to appreciate the like the amazing electives and cte courses we have to offer okay thank you i spoke enough tonight do you have anything to say okay thank you well i know one thing we did receive a lot of goodies up here this was this is from smithfield high school student cancel advisory we've got lots of goodies up here i want to

172thank you for that and um i just want to to say that i've reviewed the um family life education policy policy igah and i know in the spring that's when this is something that we do and it does state in the policy that parents and guardians have the right to review the family life education program offered by the school division including written and audio visual education materials used in the program parents and guardians also have the right to excuse the child from all or part of the family life education instruction so with that being said i know we have to make sure that we make this easily accessible for our parents now it used to be years ago that we would send home the grade level objectives and specific information was mailed home to the

173parents annually so they would have time enough to allow parents to review the information and make informed decisions on the family life education for their child now and with today's technology world i think that we can do better than that so i would like to suggest that we possibly have on our website a link or a parent portal listing the grade level objectives steps to follow if a parent wishes to review the curriculum dates of materials taught maybe the the forms if they choose to excuse their child for all are part of the family life and education instruction so for next month i'd like a report on how we are currently informing parents of family life education instruction and possibly make changes to make it to make sure that it's easily accessible to them to

174ensure our parents are well informed in a timely manner and that they understand their rights and again our meeting our next meeting is february the 16th this is our school board work session and this is at the board of supervisors meeting room and this is at 10 a.m and then on february the 24th at nine o'clock we have our four-year training is this at the central office okay with that our meeting is adjourned