September 9th, 2024 School Board Regular Meeting

001you guys ready ready I'd like to call to order the meeting of the King George County School Board we have an invocational Prayer by Scott Bolton from Oakland Baptist Church thank you would you pray with me Heavenly Father we thank you for this day God today is the day that you have made may we find joy in it and be glad in it God we would like to take a moment to remember those who lost their lives to a senseless act of evil last week God I pray that you would continue to protect our campuses God from those who wish to do harm to our students and to our faculty God we pray for wisdom tonight God we pray that you would remind those who've been called to this vocation to this special calling to

002continue to educate our students so they might become the future workers First Responders laborers professionals Educators leaders of our nation God most of all I pray that tonight this evening God that our hearts would speak and think out of an act of humility seeking the betterment of others God I pray that the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight oh God our Rock and Our Redeemer it's in your glorious name and for your son's name we pray amen you please stand for the pledge the njrc will be leading us to The Pledge and remain standing for a moment of silence I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the Republic for which stands one nation under God indivisible with andice for all

003thank you you may be seated all right let's hear a little bit from the JTC good evening ladies and gentlemen I'm Lieutenant Commander Savannah Nelson I'm the commanding officer of fox company Fox compan is off to a great start this year currently we have about 140 Cadets in our program 60 of which are freshmen our ns1 this year is full of motivated and dedicated Cadets that are ready to challenge themselves and grow as individuals and as a team we have significant events coming up one of which is our area manager's inspection Ami this is where the area manager will come in and he will inspect our unit performance we invite you all to join us on that day of November 20th if for further information please contact major Callahan our Color Guard is also off

004to an excellent start we have an invitation to present the colors at the Washington commanders game this October we're extremely excited for this opportunity and we are excited that we got invited back for our second year of this currently we are focusing on helping our freshmen feel comfortable in the program while strengthening the bond within our unit as well as instilling the importance of community service and volunteerism amongst our units and Cadets we are doing this by continuing to volunteer at Love Thy Neighbor every Saturday as well as raising money by cleaning up at football games and other events to provide families with a Thanksgiving meal this holiday season we're also excited to participate and adopt the family this holiday season as well each Kad is excited for the year ahead and eager to develop

005their leadership and personal skills through these experiences we look forward to working alongside our community and our school to ensure a great year and strengthen our unit while ensuring each Cadet has an opportunity to grow and develop recently our Juniors and seniors went on a trip to West Virginia where they would took part in activities such as whitewater rafting and other obstacles this was a great way to build camaraderie and um build that relationship between our cadetes that our younger cadetes will look forward to as they progress in the program and now I'm going to pass it over to the units executive officer Lieutenant Shelby ye to further discuss our unit this year good evening I'm Cadet Lieutenant Shelby ye I am the executive officer of King George and jrtc um in second in command

006of our unit um in our unit we host multiple events and go on multiple field trips um to really build camaraderie amongst our Cadets um like my committing officer was just talking about we've had our field trip to West Virginia which was really beneficial for all the kets that went and was really exciting trip um uh our unit goes on multiple field trips a year uh soon we're going to go on our field trip to um the um Virginia Beach Air Show um that we'll be doing on the 20th the week after will'll be hosting our annual homecoming uh cookout right before the game uh for our Cadets and their families uh which always has a good turnout for us um we'll also be participating in the King George Fall Festival again this year with

007our color guard and our float and um our unit has two teams uh we have the drill team and the air rifle team um both have started practices this year and have started off from uh start off on a good start uh last year our teams did had a really successful year um drill took seventh out of 30 schools um in our area and air rifle uh had a place at Nationals um for them and yes King George energy is a great program um it encourages students to get out of their shell and teaches them how to be good leaders and followers and we also make it a point to give back to the community um and I'm very proud of the direction our unit is going in and we're looking forward to another success

008year and um with that my and I thank you for your time and your support and giving us this opportunity to talk about our program thank you thank you hold on just you know go ahead if we could we have these leadership cards and we' like to this out to each of you sure thank you sir wait board members you have any questions for them well first of all thank you very much um you're um I mean it's an honor that you're here and it's also what a privilege it is to hear what you're accomplishing here at King George County Schools thank you so much thank you sir we appreciate it oh was there something somebody wanted to say okay I thank you right while she while she's passing they're passing those out um this

009is a time for public comment if you have not signed up for public comment uh please see the the clerk now you can even do so while I'm speaking right over there there's a sign up sheet if you haven't signed up please do so public comment is a time for the community to present matters that they believe deserve the board's attention comments are one way are one-way communication from the Community member to the school board and are not a forum for dialogue or debate the school board applies the following procedures to all speakers and does not discriminate based on identity of the speaker the content of the speech or the Viewpoint of the speaker comments should be presented in a courteous respectful and appropriate manner the public shall address the school board only on matters

010that are related to the services and policies of the school division speeches that are A disruption to the meeting promote private business ventures involve threats of any kind involve intimidating language relate to public office campaigns involve complaints identifying individual students or personal attacks on staff members is prohibited proper decorum and the provisions of this procedural directive are expected to be followed at all public meetings of the school board the members of the audience shall conduct themselves in the same manner as outlined above for the individual speakers and shall not disrupt the open public meeting of the school board no inite others to do so at the discretion of the chair any person violating the rules listed above may be asked to leave the board meetings when recognized by the chair speakers will be asked to

011identify themselves by name State their relationship to the school division such as uh student parent Community member Etc and indicate which magisterial district they reside in commentary during public comment is limited to um to three minutes and our first speaker is Oly Roberts hi Holly Roberts James Madison District I'm a taxpayer um the appeal was not properly addressed at the last meeting the age and grade ratings for the books were not even discussed school library Journal ratings were totally missing not even a single sentence from the appeal was included in the board packet read aloud or discussed the checkout process was not part of the appeal the appeal addressed the ratings for the books showing they belong at the high school the American Library Association says both books belong in high school libraries not in

012Middle School libraries this is misleading and not having this information greatly impacted the outcome of the vote the appeals should be Revisited and added to the agenda tonight I will read the ratings for the two books at the middle school now since you didn't want to for sold the kingor Middle School library card catalog says this book is interest grade level 9 through 12 school library Journal says this book is for grades nine up the American Library Association and book list say this book is for grades 9 through 12 they also say that the book's audio version is for grades 9 through 12 and the book looks review rate is five of five aberant content and not for miners under 18 years of age for TTFN the King George Middle School library card catalog says

013this book is quote interest grade level 9 through 12 media log Incorporated this book has an age rating of 15 plus by Common Sense Media educational value lowest rating positive messages lowest rating positive role models lowest rating Etc School library Journal says this book is for grades 9 to 11 the American Library Association and book list say this book is for grades 10 through 12 as a reminder we didn't elect you to represent the Librarians and the radical left we elected you to represent us the conservative County of King George you ignored what the majority of your constituents wanted and if this is the way you're going to run the public schools we should never vote to add another public school here this whole process has been a from the start and you all have

014allowed it the committee reviews included the middle school librarians as scoring members so there was a huge conflict of interest because they chose the books in the first place we all know the principal refused to label the books sexually explicit even though they clearly were we're not allowed to read the books at the meetings because they're too sexually explicit vulgar and have too much profanity but for some reason you all say that they're okay for 11y olds then when the two books were appealed to the school board you don't even discuss the age and grade ratings for the books is this what is this what we're in for I'm never voting for a new public school here and this was a joke of a process and an appeal so I hope that you revisit the

015appeal actually address it read the agent grade ratings add it to the agenda tonight thank you thank you Colin Roberts my name is Colin Roberts and I reside in the Madison District that's uh Kathy Hoover's District um I want to take this moment to uh thank Ed Frank for his service on the school board and the fact that he very much listened to his own morals and he did not compromise in the situations on the the 19th I also want to thank Matt rolls for all the years that he has served on this school board he has f for conservative values which is what the that represents the uh the conservatives that live in King George there's a lot of conservatives that live in King George and we really appreciate all the time that you've

016spent and all the thankless hours and fighting for what's right I really appreciate that Mr RS you'll be talking about a selection process for the school library materials tonight in this document the library Librarians say that they use the book list which is the American Library Association uh School library journal and other um and others while selecting materials since book list and the American Library Association and the school library Journal give grade level ratings for the books then number six on the document that you're going to discuss tonight um should address the grade level of the students that will be considered so that's something you should think about adding or an addendum to your doc document um the library selection criteria per doesn't mention ordering sexually explicit material for kids that's the problem that we're

017dealing with that's the thing that this should address it's not in there um or considering excessive profanity for an example you have materials right now that are in the middle school that use the F-word nearly 200 times um or materials that sensationalize pedophilia or beastiality those are in your schools as well or lwd and vulgar sex acts those are not addressed in your new policy it's not going to fix the problem that needs to be added in order for us to move forward and actually protect our children um I do want to address uh Kathy Hoover as she is my representative and how she didn't seem to listen to her constituents who were very clear about what they want to done in this situation there's 30% of the county that is never going to vote

018for you they don't like you they don't like what you represent um there is 70% of the County however that really wants to fight with you and wants to to be a part of this with you right we we back you 100% right that's the 70% of the caly that voted for you finally I got some advice from my father one time uh he said don't worry about someone's opinion of you if you wouldn't go to that person for advice in the first place right so that that's something that we're starting to see is listening to people or listening to the crowd even though those people you wouldn't ever listen to for anything else we have a chance to change this County's education system for the better don't miss that chance lead follow or get

019out of the way and let someone who is going to uphold true conservative values in King George which represents the majority here thank you uh Reverend Davis my name is Pastor Davis I vot in a d district and I've been pastoring Tabernacle Baptist Church for about 47 years now appreciate the opportunity to be here tonight read to you from the book of the Revelation I'm not mad at anybody but the devil and uh I uh I'm thankful for the opportunity and proof of the matter is the devil's real and uh I I try to be mad at anybody else because if I do that stuff I kill you but anyway Revelation chapter 21 the Bible says and I heard a great voice out of Heaven saying behold the Tabernacle of God is with men and

020he will dwell with them and they shall be his people and God himself shall be be with them and be their God and God shall wipe away all tears Hallelujah from their eyes and there shall be no more death neither sorrow nor crying neither shall there be any more pain for the former things are passed away and he that sat upon the throne uh said behold I make all things new and he said unto me write talking about John write these things of these words are true and faithful the truth is that we are a broken people this room is filled with broken people our highways are filled with broken people our churches are filled with broken people uh sin has caused a great problem in this world not only in King George but the

021whole world God made man in the beginning and people man lived with God in God's presence and men were created was created to look like God Man was created to love like God and man was created to live with God something happened it's called sin and because of man's sin we have been separated from God and so people in living with God now they live with God out of God's uh but God is still present but he's they're not living with him as they were before they're living without God separated Genesis chapter 3 men could no longer love like God men can no longer uh look like God men could no longer be with God or live with God the fact the matter is sin caused the Great great great uh uh casualty so the

022wages of sin certainly is death separation uh from God death is of course life is short because of sin death is sure sin is the cause and Christ is the cure for our problem and so the verses I just read read read read uh to said that he's going to fix things one day for all those who trust him for all those that believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and what you accomplished for us on calvary's Cross he made atonement that we could be forgiven and I want to see everybody I got a problem I want to see everybody go to heaven is that amazing and all they have to do is believe on the Lord Jesus Christ just like I did 53 years ago as an old warlock motorcycle gang member drug head drunkard

023I just said I heard a message Jesus saves I take that God bless you thank you thank you Jacob Gering good evening my name is Jacob gerding I'm an elementary school librarian advocacy chair Maryland Association of school librarians and a resident of the dogr district I'm here today to discuss pending changes to the library collection development policy first however I would like to thank you for a stance you took on standing up for intellectual Freedom as well as the First Amendment rights of students and their families vast meeting while I don't personally agree with the content of the books the th is indeed the th however I am here today to discuss the changes to a collection development policy I'm not a lawyer I'm not offering legal advice but I'm looking at policy and seeing

024that only Middle and High School lists are being made available for review by the community and to me that's reeks of viewpoint based and content-based discrimination violation of the Constitution I took the opportunity to review that this the book's being purchased for a middle school library this sare I saw there was an opportunity for a community to provide feedback here's the problem with that if you remove a book from a this because a member of the community doesn't like it that's a violation of the First Amendment rights of every student and family through a heckler's v I've heard rumors the feedback will not result in a change in the book ords but if that's the case what's a point the feedback not only is the Supreme Court ruled in cases such as Mahon Area School

025District vbl and Gregory V Chicago among others that the very concept of the heckler's V was unconstitutional but a federal district work case Rel Library spoke on this issue and some verses say of wishall Falls t Texas saying that aing 300 people Al the city of 100,000 ass signed petitions and move books from the CH section to the adult section unconstitutionally confers a heckler's veto on the complaining patrons effectively permitting them to veto lawful protected Free Speech how many people need to say they don't like a book on to this one 100 either way it's a heckler's veto that would put this District in this community right back where we were the Des for Mee the US and Virginia Supreme Courts in Virginia versus American book sellers Association ruled the First Amendment does not permit

026a majority to dictate to discret segments of the population the value that may be found various pieces of work even a minority view among reasonable people their work has value may protect that book from being judged obscene at the vast meeting despite referring to obscenity and harmful juvenile stat the people using it proof they don't understand what the all means and how to apply it it concerns me that the people that don't understand all may be able to invoke it in a way that violates the rights of students and families to access constitutionally protected material and school libraries that otherwise meets The Collection development criteria thank you thank you Mr gy all right we have a superintendent comment or response excuse me I have some I have an email to read from a a resident

027oh oh for public comment about public comment okay be sure to give the name to oh um to the secretary I apologize oops that's okay go ahead go ahead and yeah we're still gonna start the clock Miss Hoover okay my name is James Roberts and I'm a resident of Madison Precinct after sitting through the discussion of the appeals of two books in the Middle School library at the last school board meeting I was surprised to see that the appeal was not even read during the discussion after witnessing this I checked the read ahead package for the meeting and the appeals were also not included in that read ahead package how can anyone justly decide on an appeal without reading it I believe that the appeals should have actually been read at the school board meeting

028and provided to the Schoolboard members in the read ahead package this would have focused the discussion on the specifics of the appeals since this was not done I believe that an injustice has occurred to the individual that submitted the appeals as well as to the rest of the public I request that you revisit the appeals and this time read the appeals before discussing and making a decision on them I did tracked down a copy of the appeal so I have included expert excerpts from those appeals reading them publicly here today is a good step in providing due process recommendation for challenge material TTFN by Lauren Miracle Schoolboard members I am appealing this decision to you I believe this book at King George Middle School is sexually explicit per policy IIA lwd vulgar profane and age

029inappropriate please adhere to the following age grade recommendations the King George Middle School library card catalog says this is interest grade level 9 through 12 media log Inc this book has an age rating of 15 plus by Common Sense Media educational value lowest rating positive messages lowest rating positive role models lowest rating School library Journal says this book is for grades 9 through 11 even the Ala book list says this book is for grades 10 through 12 recommend Commendation for challenge material sold by Patricia sold by Patricia cormi school board members I am appealing this decision to you I believe this book at King George Middle School is sexually explicit per policy IIA graphic descriptions of child rape men raping little girl sexual slavery child and adult prostitution child sex trafficking bathel birth control Etc

030and the not appropriate for Middle School please adhere to the following age grade recommendations the King George medal kgms Library card catalog says this is interest grade level 9- 12 school library Journal says this book is for grades 9 and up even the Ala book list says this book is for grades 10 through 12 thank you all right um Dr Boyd response or comment uh yes Mr chair thank you all I appreciate everyone coming out this evening uh I do want to say uh while we have them in the audience thank you to our Librarians you guys have worked diligently over the past couple of weeks I've had a front row seat to see a lot of the work that they've been doing they've been working through many of the uh emails we've received concerning

031the U content of some of our library books when I'm telling you they're putting in the hours right now they are they are diligently putting in the hours really trying to update our uh collection and make sure things are adhere to our sexually explicit policy I won't talk too much this uh at this moment about our selection procedure as you see that's on the agenda that we'll discuss later on tonight um I just want to say thank you to you all for staying engaged in this conversation please continue to stay engaged in our Public Schools there's a ton of great things going on right now as you just heard from our ngtc program you'll hear another a number of other great things going on tonight uh but again thank you for your continued support with

032uh our school librarians so thank you thank you Dr boy changes to the agenda school board members yes I got a few so first U noticing since it is on the agenda and I can just take care of it when we get to that part and we make the motion to go to close session we need to add something but I can just add that when I read it that is just to add discussion about the performance of Schoolboard employees pick up just a little bit Mr rolls all right so that was a change to the uh motion to go to close session which I can just handle when we get there and then also under the consent agenda and perhaps justr mentioned then too but noticing that there's a work session minutes for May

03315th that yeah um we've already talked about that we're going to just automatically move both the work session and the close session from May 15th to the next board meeting because there were mistakes made but thank you and I also had like to add discussion and going over the uh the minutes uh from April our joint session with the Board of Supervisors saw that um there was a motion there to revisit the budget in August based on spending to that point so we never actually talked about that so just like to add that as a discussion item uh then I'll just mention that also there were some requests here to um add the the book appeals to the agenda tonight I'm not doing that just obviously I'm not in position to do that but asking

034if anybody else respond to that you want to cross that off for discussion what you said well there were some public comment requests for adding the book appeals to the agenda so you mean on the agenda right now the appeal process is that what you oh I'm sorry oh as you had last time wanted to talk about the appeal process I'm I'm referring to the public comment that was just made so I'm not adding it because I I'm not in a position to do that so you're not last time I'm just asking if anybody else is considering that no no what he's saying is is that so you want to leave it like it is well it's different what's on the on the discussion right now is talking about process by which we accept appeals

035or deny them that's what Matt said last do excuse me Mr R said last time he wanted to talk about a process of whether we would accept appeals kind of like the Supreme Court does we could oh yeah if that's what you is that what you'd like yeah okay all right then we'll just leave okay all right all right we'll just leave it where it is PE process it's a little different I would consider that as a separate topic right versus like appealing those two books I think if you wanted to talk about those again we'd have to so you're saying that you want to talk about those two books again I'm not going to say that because you know I was the one descenting V the point me adding it it's only if somebody

036else wanted to okay so Mr rolls but your discussion of the appeal process in other words voting on whether we accept an appeal you want to scratch that particular no it's on the agenda you want to keep that okay so do you want to that would be a separate one though right and I'm not gonna okay what he's saying is is this is his what Mr rolls wanted to talk about which is not the two books that's just the appeal process what you're saying is you want to Simply add that to that since it's already on the agenda well no what he's talking about it doesn't matter what the appeal is it could be about something totally different and okay all right so you want to miss Hoover you want to include that um you

037understand what's happening here all right from what I understand Mr rolls last time he had asked that he wanted to discuss about the appeal process not about the two books but about the process of appealing to a school board um and I there was a suggestion which we didn't vote on it was part of what this agenda would be and that is that if appeal came to the board after it already been to Dr Boyd we could make a decision based on possibly voting as to whether we would accept that appeal that has nothing to do with these books it's about the process of appealing to the board so um that's what Mr rolls wanted um what I think that when we discuss the weeding process and the selective process it's going to adjust things

038already as it is we just and then if it doesn't then maybe just but yeah but that's about the books this is not no yeah he brought up because he's not gonna nothing to do with the books make a motion to do it can you even make a motion yeah I could ask to put on the agenda but there's no point since that was the S vot so the question is like we were asked to re litigate truth is you're putting the pressure on one of us to re bring up these book issues again along with Holly Roberts and if the answer is no then the answer is no it's fine well I didn't say it's no but if you're the one that you're the one that they're looking up to and feel like you're

039listening to them maybe you should make the you know okay the bottom line is first of all we're let's two things here one is Mr rolls forget about the books for a minute do you want to keep this discussion of the appeal process that I just described yes okay number two do we want to add another item to talk about these two books again miss Hoover Mr rolls I'm just I'm not gonna weigh in on that since I I voted last time you abstaining yeah Frank I think we should talk about these two book books again however not tonight we need some more information not information we need some more guidelines and policies that we're going to implement the answer is no not tonight same all right so um yeah we're not going to add

040then the discussion of two books uh we can look more at some of the things that were brought up in public comment so we will talk about Mr rolls wanting to do the appeal process just like it's already on all right any other changes to the agenda all right we will we added the budget from The Joint session that we were supposed to talk about in uh August and Dr Boyd obviously that will refer a lot to you I'm hopefully you'll be ready to discuss that a little bit absolutely okay all right moving on we have presentations Community um eligibility program C presentation Miss Davis hello everyone chair board Dr boy I'm so excited Community eligibility provision better known as C what is C an alternative and collecting household collecting household applications for free and

041reduced price meals in high poverty School divisions and schools allow schools with a high percentage of lowincome children to serve meals to be served meals at no cost to all enrolled students eligibility eligible student schools divisions agree to serve all students lunch and breakfast at no cost for a foure cons for four consecutive school years independent student percentage known as ISP it has been dropped to 25% and before we leave this little part this has been a concern of the community that all the schools probably qualified at 25% so why didn't we do them and all the schools did qualify uh we have schools that are 29% but the problem is that we take that 25% and we multiply it by 1.6 that means 40% of the students that each eat each day they will

042be covered through the C which means my reimbursement will cover those students but the 60% of the students me and the school board would have to come up with a way to uh cover that loss of income so we have I have explained it to parents that have called but it is a major concern since it was posted in a freelance star that 25% El eligibility is possible and people knew that we had that so clarification on that point so it's 1.6 times whatever percentage we have right so if it's 30% then we would we would get more money so higher percentage right 1.6 times that well so it's 1.6 it starts at 25% we at King George Elementary are at 48% which puts us up to receiving 64% coverage from reimbursement and I have

043other ways to recoup the other 34% and that is like doing um um we we're doing a dinner program so that the money that we make from that from reimbursement that will cover the shortfall if we have it with this but I really don't think we will benefits of C it reduces administrative burden with no meal applications uh verification and tracking of unpaid debt increases increase in student participation and revenue more time to focus on nutrition increased quality and customer service question on that if I may Mr chair yeah so you say increase student participation and revenue how does it increase Revenue increases Revenue because for the 63% of the 64% of the students I will be receiving a reimbursement of $4 and $443 for every student that eats and the summer feed program we

044made almost 100,000 off of that so what I have left from that also goes to this program uh allaart that goes to this program so actually when we figured it out well we'll get to that page uh data matching the other thing that concerned parents parents was how are we getting these figures how do we get this ISP the ISP comes from direct SE which is social services so the data matching from other means tested programs such as snap tanith is used to determine the school's level of Eligibility but that also is homeless um it is um H I can't think right now but homeless is another portion of this that will cover it foster care that also those numbers are also built into this ISP a school must have 25% or more students certified

045free meals without an application and that's called the ISP the division May Implement Community eligibility in one school so we don't have to do all five schools we can pick the school that we will not go in the red with even though all the other schools qualified I mean it's just smart business to look at how you're not going to go in the red um of course my goal I'm hoping before I retire is to have at least all three of the elementary schools in this program and I think we're going to get there when I look at what the isaps are right now but we use the April ISP to determine which schools will qualify the school and division Andor division claims a total number of meals served and receives free reimbursement based on

046the ISP and the multiple F factor is 1.6 and these are just some of the programs that will Ben benefit just from King George being a c school and that's Title One um and um the uh let's see Title One requirements are successfully implemented in divisions across Virginia and the nation when C is elected the video Title One coordinator can provide One onone technical assistance and guidance on Title One impact back and then these are just some of um the guidance that we can look at to see what other programs will benefit from just this one school being C application and notification sfas that's me complete the direct certification matching and Reporting requirements and determine each school's ISP complete a financial analysis to determine the viability submit application and to VOD for an individual School

047group or groups uh or division wide by June 30th once approved the C application is is in effect for four years so we have four years so what happens in those four years is as like at King George Elementary their ISP when I looked at it today has already reached 50% so as it increases so does the amount of students that will be covered and will be reimburse for the school division notifies families and students attending the C schools that lunch is free breakfast and lunch are free and are served at no cost and we have done all of this King George County Schools is eligible to participate in C for a an individual School the King George Elementary School has an IEP of 44.8 five by the time I multiply that by the multiplier

048uh the free claiming percentage is 63 .57 which we raise we go up to 64% the vdoe and sncp federal requirement estimator was used to estimate the level of the federal reimbursement received under C and found positive results so the these are the figures that have me excited okay so the current monthly reimbursement these figures are from last year so what I did was looked at what we I didn't do monthly I did a year so for King George Elementary our Revenue was $171,800 the estimated C reimbursement is $265,000 and $200 the differ of $932 and why I'm excited is this because before I came here I have not looked at this up until today when I was like boy what are we doing I took last year's August uh and we served 7 7,672

049meals last year in August this year in August we sered 10,195 meals just at King George Elementary so yes it will pay for itself we definitely my estimated with the breakfast and the lunch is that we should clear $18,300 so even though it's less than you know somewhere between 20 and 50% of the kids are eligible they're paying enough money for those that is actually covers everybody yes everybody in King George it will cover them and we won't have to come out of any money but just in case we had were going to come out I did set aside money from the excess spending just in case said everybody in King George you mean everybody in King George Elementary everybody at King George Elementary sorry so really our next steps are just to re do

050this process again we don't have to do anything for four years but if you want your money to look better then you should do it every four years because it it's increasing our ISP is increasing thank you very much any questions board members first of all this is great news thank you for all your work research and way you stay on top of things M Davis well done any questions by anybody yes yes uh you said we get back [Music] 128,648 breaking of equipment um paper products paper products is a major concern for us um but that's what it's spent on and we use all of that money every year we don't use all of it every year but the way that the state has set it up we can't use it for anything but

051School nutrition so I can buy equipment I I can pay my staff um we can do a few outside things but it they are very strict about how we spend it I think you know where I'm going with that I know I know I'm still looking for the elementary schools yeah their teachers have to eat with their students no okay you said they have to right no okay the cafeteria I'm sorry students eat in the cafeteria elementary schools have monitors so the teachers do get an opportunity to have lunch yeah all I know is when I subed there I didn't get lunch and I was with the kids all day so um there's no possibility of using this money for teachers who in the high school and the middle school who actually want to sit

052down and eat lunch with students I did investigate and speak with the state about that and the things that we do now like in the beginning of the school year we give all the teachers the meal card and once they get to their 10th meal it's free um they're allowing us to do that and they allowed us to do the mentor um lunch well it's for the new teachers so did that but as far as doing it for the whole staff anytime they wanted to eat with the kids they said they we couldn't do it okay I you know we're talking about building relationships with students and that's probably one of the best ways to do it oh I definitely believe that I I know that at the elementary school that is like a kid's

053biggest day is that he gets to eat lunch with his teacher okay all right thanks and thanks for all you do appreciate it any other questions I just want to say thank you because you're always ready and prepared and I like that you're looking forward we have high hopes that this is going to go but just in case we got this and I think that's very smart and we're blessed to have you thank you thank you for the work I gotta say it's kind of process that because you're saying at the minimum if there's 25% qualify then they pay for 40% to eat but the reimbursements are just so above what's actually needed that that covers 100% And we pocket money well really at the 25% and them only reimbursing you for 40% you have

054to also realize that they have looked into how many kids were actually paid kids they're only giving me 32 cents for them so the $443 is only for our free and reduced kids that were in that pocket so they know who's free and who was free at the time that I did this program and who was a paying student now was at 66 yeah yes 67 and again that that's less than 100% but the but the actual money to cover those 60 whatever percent is just well beyond what's actually needed to feed them well I don't gamble so I really would not press my luck with that one I wouldn't want to come back and say and like my first inclination was to do all the schools and that's when I realized that it was

055going to cost us $282,000 a year to do it so I thought okay let me just roll it back and so I looked at the schools that had the highest ISP and the state had checked that King George Elementary qualified and that I should try that so I still did a lot of investigating because I don't want to run short ever but I feel like I we are looking good to do this at King Geor Elementary and prayerfully the other schools will their isps will increase I mean we have pulled in a lot of students this year at the elementary level is it possible to use the funds at the King George Elementary for towards other schools eating for free wh are they against that like a no they're not against it it's it's just

056a chance like if you look at 1500 kids at the high school and in the past when it was free on a bad day only 900 kids ate other than that it was like 1100 1200 so that's what I had to take in that my school kids will take advantage of this and all 1500 may eat and then I definitely wouldn't be able to cover it not at only 40% I'm going to get reimbursed for and then you have to take out the fact that some of them I'm only getting 32 cents thank you thank you again Miss Davis appreciate it thank you all right um now we have work-based learning Mr Rinko good evening Mr Bush esteemed members of the board and Dr Boyd my name is Terry Rinko work-based learning specialist for King

057George County Schools work-based learning is also known as w BL an ambitious study of vocational education conducted in 2007 called learning for jobs found that done well work-based learning appears to be the best way the majority of young people to prepare for the world of work work-based learning student experiences are co-curricular and they take place in the field of work wbl through today's career in technical education previously vocational education has become a national initiative to equip today's high school graduates with the credentials and skills needed to fill vacant skilled trades jobs these jobs were created when laborers retired while the US promoted college for all industry government Workforce Development and educators are collaborating together to help afford today's high school students with experiences needed to provide them with clear career Direction and the postsecondary steps

058needed to fill those jobs last fall at K George higho school students from our focus group named our new work-based learning program the pilot that stands for pairing interest with local opportunities for training this past year we worked to successfully support a comprehensive Continuum for work-based learning that spanned all four grade levels that cycle starts with career awareness with mixed grades moves to Career exploration then career preparation and lastly primarily for our 11th and 12th graders career participation starting on that wheel at King George High School this past year we saw career awareness with 29 field trips and guest speakers in CTE classes you can see that on the left there at CMC rebar 203 of our students in grades 9 through 12 participated in service learning helping to meet the needs of area nonprofits

059Love Thy Neighbor Friends of the Rapa hanic and Valor Ranch moving on that wheel to Career exploration at King George high school last year 30 freshmen attended the bay consortium's virtual virtual reality career goggles session students performed knee surgery welded to fix an assembly line provided Aid after a car crash and fixed internet an internet server all virtually just to name a few six sophomores and juniors participated in King George County School's new summer Schoolboard office externship program in the Departments of instruction communication technology and student and Family Services six Health Sciences students attended Mary Washington Hospital summer externship program where they worked 80 hours learning about the career field on the job 60 students this past year total ages 12 to 18 participated in the new King George Sheriff offices Charter summer youth Criminal

060Justice Academy moving along that wheel to King George High School in career PR preparation 30 students participated in King George High School's new spring semester entrepreneurship class one student actively left working her lash extension business as you can see there on the left 30 marketing exploration students participated in the King George High School school-based Enterprise which is our school store called Fox stocks and 10 King George high school students and four recent graduates were able to attend German's community college's new King George high school after hours core craft class moving to the last part of that wheel King George High School participation in career primarily for 11th and 12th graders career participation we offered internships six students participated in aquaculture summer inter internship studying the local oyster industry King George High School's comprehensive employment training

061program for engaging students with disabilities ages 17 to 22 resulted in five successful placements for employment on nwc's Naval Base at the end of last school year as custodians these these positions came complete with Benefits retirement plans and paid time off lastly one senior earned a stem summer Employment Program internship from nswc where he had a paid internship half tuition college scholarship and he has guaranteed employment at the end of this process Cooperative education we had one paid marketing Co-op student at the YMCA and one paid drafting Co-op at CMC rebar in our Industrial Park those two students worked 280 hours that second semester last school year right in the field alongside with fellow fellow employees there in the companies last but not least King George High School offered clinical experience with our amazing nurse

062aid program we graduated 25 nurse aid programs students students in 2024 with all 25 earning CNA state lur our engagement with our partners is evidence that the work-based learning program that we are building is sustainable in 2023 2024 60 business and organization Partnerships were formally established with King George County Schools six CTE eats separate check stakeholder dinner meetings were held and 5050 mock interviewers volunteered in the spring to assist at our reverse career fair for 200 economics and personal finance students leaders from rapan Community College in Warsaw CMC rebar in our King George industrial park and the division's work-based learning Specialists collaborated on how best to work together to fill cmc's need for detailer or drafting positions new partner for elements electric provided scholarships to two participants of the new germana community college corecraft class

063spurring six other partners to offer additional scholarships until all 14 participants were covered at the bottom right there you had seen there was a reception for sponsors where they got to meet their students and present them with their checks moving forward new partner Rapidan at Goodwill provided dress for success and interview skills workshops for 200 juniors in EPF classes and preparation for that reverse career fair Goodwill celebrated King George High School's work based learning program and by creating a video about it and playing it at the June 5th Fredericksburg Nationals baseball game on the Jumbotron new partner the bay Consortium Workforce Development board not only provided a virtual reality experience for those 30 freshman students but also provided King George County schools with new Career Cluster coloring books for all three elementary schools King George

064County Schools is the first County in planning district 16 to access the coloring books in this middle picture here you can see a picture from that game at the nation Nationals and I was wanted to share with you that over 60 CTE teachers administrators central office staff and their families received free tickets to celebrate our accomplishments this year and our CTE administrator Kim tresto got to throw out the first pitch new partner topside Federal Credit Union this past year provided two Market Day interactive experiences for both semesters of economics and personal finance classes that's approximately 400 students to apply their financial literacy knowledge to the real world think Monopoly in action and Lowe's the King George Education Foundation and Mr Milton Klein of the University of Mary Washington's paint crew retired donated funding supplies and

065time to help reinvent King George High School's old ISS or in school suspension room into a welcoming profession work-based learning space for making business student connections I'd like to leave you all with some measurable outcomes from last school year this past Year's reverse career fair tasked all of spring semester's EPF students who were primarily Juniors with actively demonstrating the important workplace Readiness skills of communication critical thinking and job interview participation in all elements was requ Acquired and students received a test grade the student pass rate of all 2011 students spring semester was 93% henceforth reverse Career Fairs will be the primary means to forming a baseline in important demonstrated workplace Readiness skills across the entire junior class in conclusion in school year 2022 2023 59 work-based learning experiences were documented and contributed to King George

066High School score of level two on the college career and Civic Readiness index or CCC in 2023 2024 272 experiences were documented our goal is to reach level one on that CCC through our efforts in wbl this past year we anxiously await the new rankings to be released later this month thank you so much thank you well done questions comments earlier say that it was going to be announced in August who the finalists were yes so I do have to share we topped out in the career Z challenge we topped out at the semifinalist status and I was sad for a couple of days but I'm very excited because the plan that we submitted is sustainable and it was to enable us is to enable us to do more with what we have we're doing

067all the things the money doesn't matter in US executing our our goal for creating more work-based learning experiences through a Career Academy program with King George high school we did receive for doing all the things going through the semi-finalist status this whole past school year which included 40 hours of professional development and demonstrating satisfactory progress towards Rolling out our Career Academy plan double the amount of intended semi-finalist money which you received um when I think it was last perhaps last meeting so instead of $10,000 for semifinalists we received $20,500 for uh satisfactory completing all the things in our semi-finalist year so we're very proud of that I'm very proud of all of our teachers oh my gosh our business partners our students we are creating a Synergy that is only going to get better as

068we roll out um our complete full roll out of our King George Career Academy plan thank you all so much any other comments or questions well well go ahead did you want to say something I'm a big fan of yours so uh I just appreciate everything that you do getting this rolling and your team that stands with you and um and doing something great for our County and our students thank you uh Mrs R you're absolutely right that the goal isn't just to get a bunch of money it's that's nice but it's to build a program and you're doing that so thank you for all the efforts you thank you it's my honor together thank you fantastic job Terry thank you we have an amazing team the puzzle pieces were there I just honestly get

069to put a few more puzzles in the box and get a lot more people putting that picture together and that's been a thrill so thank you well I can see somebody like you making such a I mean when you look at that from 59 students to 272 I can see that growing and I can see this kind of program being an example to um not just the whole state of Virginia but even the whole United States thank you thank you you have done a wonderful job thank you all so much thank [Applause] you all right do I have a motion to go into close session move that pursuant to state code section 22-37 12a of the code of Virginia I move that the board conven and closed meeting to review hires substitutes resignations and stiens

070and discuss the performance of Schoolboard employees as permitted under 22- 3711 a number one of the code of Virginia and to consult with legal counsel and briefings by staff members or Consultants pertaining to actual probable litigation where such consultation or briefing in open meeting would adversely affect the negotiating or litigating posture of the public body as permitted under 22-37 111a number 7 a second any discussion all those in favor say I I chair votes I we're now in close session e e e it's lot colder in here yes all right let me get back to all right do we have Let Me Wait For Miss Hoover we have a motion to return back to open session return to oh I move the King George County School Board return to open session and certify the pursuant

071to state code section 2.2 3712 D only public business matters lawfully Exempted from open meeting requirements under this chapter and only such public business matters are as were identified in the motion by which the close meeting was convened were heard discussed or considered in the meeting by the public body second certify certify certify I also certify all right we the Motions been made and seconded any further discussion all those in favor of returning to uh Open Session say I I hi chair votes I now back in Open Session do we have a motion to approve the Personnel is presented I make a motion we approve the personal L presented I second any discussion all those in favor say I I I chair votes I it um is passed all right let's move on to the

072agenda uh we have um um the approval of past minutes in the um consent agenda if give you a minute for board members to open those up and there's two of them that we have just to let you know there's two on May 15 that's a special meeting and an um also a work session those uh because of Corrections a lot of Corrections that we need to make those have been postponed to the next board meeting so we will be approving or discussing the joint session on 4:15 the regular meeting on 5 six the um disciplinary hearing draft on 63 and then the 63 regular meeting so looking at the first one which would be 4:15 would be the joint meeting discussions or a motion to approve the minutes or a comment or concern it's

073quite long I will say that in reading these minutes um it makes me and fact if you've read what you said it makes you sound like a like a fool almost because it cuts off words and adds word you know it's it's very difficult to follow everything and I think because they're um I guess writing based on what they heard which is not very it's accurate but it's incomplete Dr Ward you're going to talk later about the budget yes okay yeah that was the U motion that to add the agenda Mr Rolls made any other concerns um I think generally it tried its best to uh the minutes did to convey what was done so do I have a motion or a change I move that we approve the minutes for April 15 2024 as

074submitted second discuss agenda it's supposed to be all together I'm sorry what it's it consent agenda we approve them all together right well you mean all the minutes of all those all four sets of minutes I guess we can just not read off the May 15th ones we're putting those aside so then we should read all the other ones and just prove them as a package unless there's any specific concerns this this is one that's a good point Mr rolls I guess this is one because it was so confusing to read through it that I wanted to deal with it separately but you have a very good point so let's go ahead and just approve this one and then we can look at the other three together you're pulling this one for discussion yeah so

075any yes did we understand what Mr RS is saying ideally we should have put all these minutes together but I thought this one um I spent an hour reading through it because it was quite long and it was pretty confusing I'm glad Mr rolls has made a suggestion to add the budget um especially comments on this particular meeting about meeting about it in August which we did do um but besides that any other further discussion so far we've had a motion to approve this set of minutes and a second any further discussion I'm content to just discuss it when we get to it to the discussion item that we added for the budget piece okay all right all those in favor of approving these minutes say I I I I they're approved all right now

076we'll go on to the uh other three sets of minutes which would be and again we're not doing the two at 5 15 so it' be the 56 the 63 and the 63 it' be the regular meeting on 56 um and then the disciplinary hearing draft at 63 and then the regular meeting at 63 I move that we approve the minutes for May 6 uh June 3rd disciplinary hearing and the June 3rd regular meeting as presented do I have a second any further discussion all those in favor say I I I I think everybody said I chair votes I all right they're approved and then we will discuss the two at uh May 15 at the next board meeting all right moving on um we have the action items and um The Advisory committees all

077right these are committees if you look um that some of us are on and I think we need to reconfirm I don't see any changes from the current committees that were already on you for the board members no that's enough obviously for a lot of others yes um I does this require an approval Dr boy yes all right um glance through those you'll notice our names are still on the same committees that we've already been on as of January um and then other names such as parents possibly staff teachers Etc so um L there's a question ahead of time do I have a motion to approve all the uh advisory committee um all the advisory committees I move we approve the advisory committee membership as presented a second it's been uh moved and seconded any

078further discussion about these um committees say that I do notice in some cases people serving in multiple committees so I do appreciate all the volunteer time to do this it's important job it's true yeah and something I guess I didn't realize I didn't realize that on the special Aid committee that um Colleen you are the alternate the which one on you're on you're the I'm on the special ed committee but you're an alternate I remember talking about it okay that's fine all right any other discussion all right we had a motion and seconded all those in favor say I I shair votes I motion passes all right now we're on discussion items the first one is student attendance policy Dr Boyd uh yes sir Mr chair so we want to continue our conversation on student

079attendance if you remember two meetings ago we took a look at our student attendance policies and the board had a few questions Dr Wright is here this evening to address some of those questions that were asked at the last meeting thank you Dr Boyd uh members of the board good evening at our last meeting we walked through uh the policies Jaa Jed and our Jed regulation um I shared sort of in general what each of those policies outline and some of the guidance and some of the procedures that we follow uh and some of the discussion uh you asked me to come back this evening specifically uh for the presentation that I think you have in front of you which was a breakdown of The Chronic absentee data by grade and also we wanted to

080look at it by excused and unexcused absences so if you do have that in front of you does everyone have it okay so if you look at it by grade uh the column on the left there K through 12 you'll notice that it's uh it is bad K through 12 there the there are very few grades if you go over to the um chronically absent column which is right in the middle of that uh table you'll see that most all of the several of them are over uh 15% which is sort of The Benchmark correct um the the highlights there would be probably your third and and sixth grades which are in the 12% um which would be the best and then if you notice there's sort of a statistical anomaly there with your seniors

081uh I would not say that our seniors although it's 99.8% uh I don't think that's an accurate statement so one of the good things that we pulled from this is we we found that were there were some issues with uh there were two things we realized the column right beside that were students enroll less than half a year students enroll less than half the year which is every student every senior that graduates early okay they do not count for or against us okay so we think just from nickel knowledge uh of of the folks that are in the high school most of the time that that actually probably helps us that they graduate early as far as seniors and your typical senior attendance however what another thing we realized is we have a lot of

082seniors who are either because they don't need too many credits to graduate they're either a late arrival or they're in early dismissal right so what we found was there were some problems with the attendance for those students so met with Mr Watson we have shorted up those procedures uh so the good news is the attendance will be more accurate the bad news is that number is probably going to go higher so we really got to buckle down and make sure we have some procedures and policies in place that address chronic absenteeism uh K through 12 I don't think there's a grade level that doesn't need uh support um and we need to have something that as Mr Bush I think I specifically remember we we're really good with the carrots but we don't have a

083lot of teeth in our policy right now so the next steps uh and if you look at you I didn't want to miss the other columns the excused versus the unexcused which really means excuses there's been communication to unexcused there hasn't been anything from the parents as far as we were you know my child was sick or we had an appointment and those types of things so for the most I mean it's the problem with that now is we don't push it maybe like we used to because unexcused used to mean something a long time ago if it was unexcused that had some that meant maybe you didn't get to make up the assignments or that meant that you didn't get to participate in after school activities and if it was excused you got the

084work now that that is no longer a a guidance and if whether it's excused or unexcused you typically get to make up the work from the absence um the difference is both as we talked about last time both excused and unexcused absences count towards chronic absenteeism so we have really shifted to we don't care whether it's excused or unexcused we really are focused on we want the students here period so that data is it tells a story but I don't know that it's one at this point that the state in terms of accreditation cares about as far as the attendance or un attendance uh what we do care about is truancy that's another piece and those are students who aren't coming period and we are addressing that through um our truy officer uh as well

085as our school teams when there's zero communication from the parents and they're not enrolled in school so if it would please the board the next steps for us would be to look at school divisions that are doing this well that are seeing um their numbers decrease across the board as far as chronically absenteeism and and I'm sure that we have uh counties close to us or far from us but uh go and talk to those folks similar to we did with the cell phones find out what they're doing review their policies come back to you uh try we have a student committee Dr Boyd as now a a student advisory a parent advisory and a teacher advisory so we'd like to run those through those committees get some feedback then bring uh either one or

086maybe a couple variations of a of a policy back to the board for you to review uh and provide feedback and go from there but hopefully Maybe by January New Year we would have something to bring to the board for your review uh if that's if that's your um your choice but um that's what we would like to do and we if you have any direction to or guidance for that I'll be happy to take some notes at this time or questions and I have some comments but I'll hold off what other other board members questions for Dr Wright yeah Dr R we are critically opposite we look at the eth graders and we got 13.31% look at ninth graders and it jumps up to 25% have we looked at you know that's that's a

08712% increase there we looked at the reasons that may be happening it's a that's a good uh I'm glad you pointed that out I missed that but you know when you look at those transition years from fifth to sixth grade and then from 8th grade to nth grade those are tough those are tough years and I think that just not no research on this but just from in your time in in the high school and I know Dr Boyd would say that is probably one of the toughest years and if students are struggling uh and they're dealing with with that transition they're going to want to stay home as much as possible so I think anything we could do to assist the transition uh would be would be would help in that area good but

088thanks for pointing that out yeah we did this at Dr B Bush's request to I make you Doctor Mr Bush um yeah it's not we expected I think your suspicion was that there was really high absity rate for seniors and that's not the case but all the rest of the high school leaders are close to 25% so that's Inc that is noteworthy junior level being the highest yeah and you don't see any similar jump going from elementary school middle school like fifth to sixth grade for instance it's constant so yeah it's definitely something to try to understand I think one of the things um Dr Wright that I think I mentioned this last time and thank you for doing this I know but this is a big deal and it is this is something that

089may be better procedures or Consequences or whatever because you write the carrot and the stick thing I think is really part of this and um uh when I look at especially the unexcused absences you know there's where the stick has to be there and it's like the other side and that is the problem if we were could correct even half of those unexcused absences we'd be under 15% and almost we wouldn't be no that unfortunately uh as I said the the state doesn't care whether it's excuse or unexcused in terms chronically absence what I understand that but if we were to correct the unexcused by a bigger stick or whatever then hopefully there would be less unexcused the excused absences are there and that's fine there's an ex but if the unexcused absences if we

090could cut those down because you're right the state doesn't care they're still absent but to me the piece that we can make a significant difference in is in the unexcused absence that that's what I'm saying it helps it helps and and getting parents to write letters for their children it doesn't help your chronic absenteeism they're still absent I but if even excused absences are absent well here's my point is that today we're discussing one of the um um one of the policies in fact it's the first one ic- um and we'll talk about this maybe a little bit more it's on the first page uh about the fifth paragraph and it is talking about severe weather but it's talking about um if there's EMG situation resulting in closing of any school in the school division

091such school has been unable to meet the 180-day teaching requir teaching day requirement the School Division may make up the missed teaching Days by providing the students with instructional hours equivalent to such missed teaching days to meet the minimum of a 990 teaching hour requirement um it's funny because I don't know how many other places it talks about this we've talked about it a lot but I do know that in the past especially for unexcused absence of absences period if they um did not if if they were 10% below this requirement then they may not get credit for the course that was a huge incentive now I don't know if we can do that anymore but I'm just and I'm not saying we necessarily should but it might be good to look at it because

092I know that in the past um when I was involved in Administration in the school that that was probably the biggest stick of all is when the students realize that I am hitting this 10% and if I'm absent anymore I won't get credit for the course and I might have to repeat a year even if I make an A's I think that's something that we would definitely look very closely at something along those lines so and and it's kind and still even then of course then you could say well you could make it up by doing online and that but that's true but students don't want to do that right and just anyway that was my point I think that's probably certainly um a direction we will look at I I believe we have some

093some uh policies already from neighboring counties that have similar uh guidance exactly okay how about something positive encouraging you know um like with way back when with the younger children they got to pizza parties or things like that and I don't know how that would incentivize moving up the chain but maybe we could think of ways to you know positively impact them I think Dr boy and I we're we're talking that we we've got that down very well we have a lot of the PBIS programs and and some of our contests and uh lots of food involved uh we we do a very good job of incentivizing attendance uh we we I don't think we neglect that I think we continue to develop that piece of it and it's the the difficult part is that

094other piece uh what happens if if people aren't doing it and then yeah I'll tell you what when I went to the orientation day at pic elementary school and I thought the snow conb machine was nice touch there and that's really big for the elementary school kids but that's not where our problem is so much I don't think snow cones are going to attract the high schoolers too much but so I think that's anyway another point with us which I agree I know I've been talking about the stick but the carrot piece is again it's high school if we could correct a high school situation I think it would make a significant difference but what is it that would attract these nth 10th 11th graders um to attendance and specifically thinking what is it about

095high school kids that would really um I don't know maybe offering some scholarships we can't really do that because there's too many but I don't know I think it's very specific is what is it for high school kids especially especially the Juniors that seems to be the worst what is it that we could offer maybe even if you just started do with one class it would catch on high school juniors that would really incentivize um them to be here all year I think that's that's our that's our task I know I know we hope to come back with some answers but maybe if you're specific about an AG or what is it about that particular level I got to suspect that our work-based learning program would be part of the solution for this I think

096that's like that's a good idea Rinko said you know that's that's a lot of kids beef to learn Mr chairman yes sir I think a lot of that has to do with relationships that are built with teachers uh you know I would be willing to bet if we looked at the people that are absent here took them by name and not by number we'd see that Deca probably has very few absentees Roc probably has very few absentees if in some way we could build that relationship uh with the high school teachers for all the kids because you know as we all know we our emphasis is s Sol's s sols s sols and that's you know we're we're more worried about teaching to the test than we are teaching kids so that's that's just me

097I agree with you and I think Mr rolls mentioned um work based learning but you mentioned Deca but relevance was is the key word that I heard and then and then on top of that is relationship so those are two big ones when it comes to getting kids involved and U wanting to come to school and if they they see the relevance and they have relationships at least one one key person one adult in the building that they can connect with the likelihood of them coming back on a regular BAS basis is going to increase well if if you research that and you going to bring it up again in January you know if there's some way we can skin that onion to you know do something about relationships and how to build relationships and

098that's not just with the the groups with the DECA and RC but through the math classes and English classes social studies is who would be the main person in high school it's a question for you or Dr Boyd or anybody Beth um that would kind of think about what kind of incentive I know you you all think about it but is there like one particular counselor or one person who this is kind of their thing responsibility whatever word you want to use that they're thinking about continually ways to incentivize how about we have our student reps canvas their classes and ask them I'm thinking about is there we have a Renaissance progr program at the high school that we've had for a number of years it's gone through a number of different Renditions but they

099typically are responsible for incentivizing students that uh attendance has been a focus for them in the past grades really it's finding any way to really recognize our students and uh create a welcoming environment for them so at the high school level uh Renaissance would be a good place to to see if we can't grow some of those incentives oh is is that several teachers that are in helping with that program several teachers and several students that are involved see that would be the group to really talk to them especially students maybe even asking our two reps um you know we're sitting there talking about getting input what could you guys think of anything that would help with uh attendance especially in high school I think that a lot of it does come down to relationships

100with teachers and then other students I think that having that interaction is super important and you know being able to talk to one another but then again looking at tests you're constantly being tested or being taught to a test and it makes it exhausting to show up to school day after day when you're just having Death by PowerPoint and I I mean it it's great at sometimes to gather information but it does become difficult to show up so I think if there's more interaction and classes or you know teachers teach in different ways and I understand that that's difficult to do for certain you know curriculums but I think that would be beneficial and having more you know pep rally type things or group events that students can really show out to our teachers just

101taking that extra step to try to get to know each student because most of the time I know for a lot of my classes I walk in and I sit down and that's a class you sit there you do your work and you don't talk to the teacher unless teacher talks to you because they don't they're focused on what they're teaching you and it would be really nice to you know have that face- tof face conversation and there are really great teachers that do do that um such as my English teacher she goes out of her way to get to know her students and kids rarely miss her class just because they know they have someone to talk to in their relationship that's interesting um I was thinking of some things that I've seen in

102other schools that actually didn't I um what I hear you saying too is that too much testing what did you death by what did you call it Death by PowerPoint that's very interesting comment I like it but that you think that's one of the biggest detriment to students coming to school is this whole testing and Powerpoints and all this I do um for a lot of my classes and you come in you sit down you get out your notebook and then you're starting at the PowerPoint for an hour and a half and you're not interacting and it's exhausting because you walk in and you know okay I'm going to sit here for for an hour and a half and I'm going to listen to a PowerPoint and you know you zone out and then it's

103hard to you know want to come back in and do that that's very good comments thank you very much thank you sir it's helpful I guess go ahead hey yeah um in my especially uh in my science and world history classes it is usually note taking five days a week like three out of every four weeks and it is yeah as she said it is is exhausting to just go in and just take notes every single day my English teacher uh first of all um as you said Samantha uh she also Myer also takes the time to get to know students you know she when she noticed I wasn't in class for two days because I got sick she before I even had a chance to email her she emailed me and she's like Eric

104are you all right you know you're feeling okay is there a reason you're not I I hope to see you back as soon as possible and you know that that motivate you know like I want to get back as soon as possible and she gets to know every student I got back she sat down you're like you know here's what you missed but like you know do you want to talk about it do you want to make sure you understand everything before I just shove it off to you and she doesn't just give us PowerPoint after PowerPoint after PowerPoint she makes each day interesting different activities and it's it's we're not facing Death by PowerPoint and the other thing that Samantha mentioned the constant testing I noticed that it was a massive increase from seventh

105grade to eth uh I'm now testing probably every two weeks and it is just that's me to mention is like we're they're just teaching the test we we have to learn what's on the test we take the test rinse and repeat or four or five out of of my six classes those are very good points thank you very much all right any other comments board members or Dr boydd I'll just say I think the plan to go look for best practices and bring those back sounds like a good one yeah thank you Dr B I think this is great progress thank you board members for and student Reps for sharing some uh considerations we look forward to really jumping into this and providing really not only the incentives but um the stick I think is

106what you called it carrot and the stick the carrot and the stick always a combination between the two yeah they both are needed all right uh we're going into policy updates and there are several uh as as you remember because of uh big changes with our clerk um we're covering from 10: to 11 per board meeting to catch up and maybe within the next couple of board meetings we'll be caught up I don't know we'll see Mr chairman we're working on it diligently um Mrs Hoover had brought up when we were studying our agenda where is it for this for them to speak so they don't have to States at 10 o'clock tonight well I was hoping we'd finish earlier tonight but we made a change to the agenda last time because we knew that

107there was going to be a lot of public comment we could make a permanent change we're going to be talking about I thought we did that's all I'm sorry I was under the impression we did make a permanent change no we have if you look um a regular agenda meeting format actually today we could actually make that change okay I have that there for another reason having to do with the uh yeah okay but we could add because it's under the same category and that would be an excellent idea and i' actually thought about that too thank you all right um so let's go on to um this first policy which is the uh BCF um Dr boy I don't know whether you want to comment I can just I'll just describe the change this

108change is just uh takes out that last sentence which is not needed these committees serve without compensation for one-year terms uh so again this is scratch from the uh vassp excuse me why I say VP um um fast national school board or uh vsba VBA I got you'll get it vsba so this was scratched from the vsba policy and you'll see a legal reference below that's uh scratched right again I don't think we need to bring this back for an action item unless I have a board member that wants to move we accept policy BCF as presented second any discussion no all those in favor say I I I votes I passes all right next one so this is uh BG gbd it says in the description that the policy is updated to recognize collective

109bargaining however if you look at it it looks like they've just um it looks like some grammatical it's exactly capital letters and you you are capitalized now instead of lowercase as the school all right again do I have a motion this is rather mundane I move to approve policy BG GB d as presented I second any further discussion all those in favor say I I I passes all right next one is next one is uh CBE correct and this is Severance benefits and all it does is is it adds the two cross references that are found in other policies I have a motion I make a motion to approve CBE as presented second any discussion all those in favor say I I votes I motion carries next one ebcd ebcd this comes out of covid

110and so this is just a policy or updating our school closing policy to reference that um if we are prepared that we can declare unscheduled remote learning days consistent with applicable laws and policies I move we approve policy ebcd s presented second further discussion all those in favor say I I shair votes ey policy passes next one GDI GDI we brought back uh again this was I think um Miss Davis I think you asked to bring this back this is one that uh vsba scratched we can certainly keep it uh we brought it back because we we certainly do these things um and it wouldn't hurt us to continue to have this policy but I think you wanted us to check the legal references as well those legal references are really just that the school

111board has the author Authority and the superintendent has Authority as well and it's really as far as it goes from what I what I looked up um if you remember the policy talks about support staff uh being able to be transferred if they're qualified or request a transfer uh if they're qualified for another position so again vsba thinks we don't need it anymore it's certainly a practice that we employ uh King George County Schools is comfortable keeping it Mr D discretion of the board M Davis you were the ones that you the one that expressed a concern about um just deleting this one any thoughts on it do these cross legal references are they still code of Virginia they're still code okay so so we could unscratch it and keep it on the books and

112it's perfectly fine all of the all of the legal references check out I would make a motion to leave it only because you might not always be around and and different staff changes and we have good staff now but maybe in the future that might be an issue I don't know okay we have a motion is it seconded to basically not scratch this but to keep it as part of our policy do I have a second second further discussion I think M Davis has a good point and it doesn't hurt anything so let's um I would vote that we keep it but um all those in favor say I chair votes I motion carries we are keeping the policy next one next one is IIA this is our instructional goals and objectives again this is

113one of those policies that is uh updated because of the Virginia literacy act which you'll see at the end of the policy and you'll also see it updated to uh to recognize uh the requirements of the College and Career Readiness Virginia program which we already Implement so we are certainly willing and capable of of uh implementing what is suggested in these policies and are ready to pass Virginia literacy Act is number 19 at the very end I move that we approve poliy IIA as presented I second any further discussion all those in favor say I I shair votes I it is passed all right next one Dr Boyd so again this this is uh policy IAA it says policy and cross cross references updated but again it looks like it's um grammatical School Board is

114capitalized standards of accreditation are capitalized and now um you'll see in many policies moving forward it'll say programs for students with disabilities as opposed to the former title I move we approve policy I AA as presented I second any further discussion all those in favor say I I care votes I motion carries next one I ID so this is again this policy is in two places so icid is again the school year and school day and if you go down to the end of the first page it talks about the um uh the instructional days granted uh as the the remote instructional days granted this was the same uh verbiage that we had in the last policy that we approved so I just noted in here that by law the earliest possible we can start

115is 14 days prior of Labor Day and that appears that's what we do and has been that case for a while now yes and actually it's um there's also a waiver that if you qualify under certain areas as well then we've done that now for actually we might be going on five or six years of doing that and it's it's well it's been a it's been a good uh change as far as uh that on the secondary level because we get the entire semester in before we leave for winter break come back for a brand new set of courses it used to be before we had the early start you would uh not end that first semester until two weeks after Christmas break so we would go through that first semester come back and take

116five go on Christmas break go on winter break and then come back just for so testing and it was a two week it was it was not as good so I'm certainly in favor of continuing with pre-labor day start there there was a lot of times we didn't make it back because of snow right right though we haven't had that in the past couple years and just again I mentioned it when we were talking about attendance that whole 180 days and 990 teaching hours that is consistent in several places in several policies um none of that has changed or there's not any indication that it will change correct none of that has changed and there's no indication that I've heard of that it will change right do I have a motion I move that we

117accept policy ICI ID as submitted second any further discussion all those in favor say I I all motion carries all right next one next one is igad again this is policy to um this updates our uh Career and Technical education so we vetted this with our instruction department and with Miss Rinko and we are prepared to uh implement the um suggestions in this policy so these were the suggestions of vsba or Miss Rinko or I know no this is from vsba but we are we are prepared to implement it and she based on an amended code right understand any we're good we're good to pass it do I have a motion move we approved policy IG a is presented second any further discussion all those in favor say I all right motion carries next one

118IG a IG a is um a policy that um came through the general assembly this year and it's that uh moving forward each School uh that includes grades 9 through 12 will distribute fentol education information within the first two weeks of the school year so we can we will be prepared to pass that this evening uh we have received that literature from the Virginia Department of Education and moving forward we'll be able to uh implement this this policy I have a question obviously okay we didn't do this policy is new I understand that especially the fentanyl part but the all those things above that's not new no the the things above are part of an existing policy and we've we did that this year I assume all those things within the first couple weeks yes

119we do that so this new one now if we pass it tonight um who is it that does that this would be required through the first two weeks of the school year so we would probably push this out uh we received the information from the Virginia Department of Education so we'll probably push it out to the entire school probably through uh peach jar or School messenger or something like that so that it reaches all of our students typically it's something that the the other stuff that's listed there doesn't have a doesn't have a timeline and it's typically pushed out like through the phys physical education programs um through that means this is going to have a slightly different twist to it so we would probably push this out through like I said Peach jar or

120something of that nature that's our that's the program we use for flyers and and um other information we also have our opening um grade level assemblies where we could push that information out as well which is in the first week of school now what about now if we pass it now will something be done like after tonight once we have that information well I I can check we I don't know that we had the we have the information now I'll see how they intend to pass it out would you would the board like that I personally yes with what's going on with fentanyl and this absolutely it only takes one case and and you know the amount of deaths especially in high schoolers with fentol in the United States is huge we'll take not to

121do that well I want to make how does the rest of the board feel I I saw everybody nod that's why again the specific Dr Ward there's meeting that's uh on the 17th I think it's from 5:30 until 19 well 5:30 until 7: yes talks about pills it's going to be at the high school all is that all that going to be covered I assume it's all going to be covered there that that is part of that president presentation yeah that's that that hopefully we have a better turnout than we had last year uh this is certainly open to anyone that would like to attend in the community we're hoping for parents students anybody that's interested in coming um spread the word see if we can't get folks to to attend I would I would

122like to see something like the Dare program in the high school not something that kids have a how many high schools are showing up to go to to learn about the dangers of fentel and how many of them are going to read it on Peach chart say that again like how many students in the high school are going to read Peach jar for a flyer like if we could do kind of like the pep Ries you've had recently that were wonderful and the kids loved them and I know you loved it and expressed that to me you know what I mean like have something like that a pep rally to however that would look Ty of awareness during school hours all the students have to hear yeah can I say um and I'm sorry this

123is a little I guess not ignorant but again past um there used to be in the health curriculum is a health class still part of the that's through the physical education programs that's what I was referring to before is but there was an actual curriculum a long time ago in the health about drugs there still is and so will fent andol be added to that curriculum I think it's already discussed now this will be something additional so it we'll be discussed I agree with you having a disgusting class and I can I can tell you Mr Frank they used to do something similar in inj as well we still do she's going to explain it right now yes sir so in njrtc throughout the school year we have Miss baitman coming and she talks on

124um drug abuse alcohol all the topics and it's been really beneficial for our program she comes in and she goes through the Powerpoints she talks about the use ofs well PowerPoints but she also does interactive uh games as well just to get the information across and that's super beneficial it' be great if they could imple if the school could Implement that into other classes or assembly of some sort and if I'm not mistaken each student is qualified with naram to administer naram yes sir need that class as long as their parents sign off on a permission form then every student that goes through the classes with her they will receive an our can at the end that's good yeah if we could expand that that would be great that would be we had several IDE

125obviously we're going to pass this but I say that we'll see in a minute but um I think these ideas are good and I it would be nice to push I would think that once we pass it the fentol thing to push it right away in all these different ways aible any other thoughts or ready for a motion well and I just want to make sure Dr boy I wasn't trying to say that we're not already doing things in school I forgot about the PE classes yeah um I just remember Elementary School and being in the Dare program and how excited that was to graduate and I learned a lot as a kid who grew up in you know drug and alcohol home the the Dare program taught me a lot to to avoid absolutely

126and our d dare program is is is pretty strong at the elementary school level um Deputy Marini was actually recognized last year as the D officer of the year um and that still will continue to go strong and there's a number of other things too but as much awareness as we can create and additional things that we can do especially with Fint and all right now I think would be uh would go a long way in our community she's a DARE officer of the year in Virginia in Virginia amazing and she's in King George yeah great do I have a motion I move to approve policy IG a has presented second second any further discussion yes okay so in the addition we have um the grades 9 through 12 and one is spelled out and

127one is numerical we just need to be consistent either spell it out or not that's all that's a good point it's different I don't know why they did that so we can we can update as pass it and update it as um I think they did it though usually in English because there's grades nine it's it's to make sure that they are separated 9 through 12 sometimes that's a thing you do make sure that they're not confused or R over right what you hear me yeah I did I think it ahead I would agreee with Mrs Hoover that should be consistent I would agree too in regardless of what you do have a point you're right sometimes I'm not saying this would be wrong to leave it but I think it's better to change it

128to spell out the word 12 so we can approve it with just that change made yeah so you want amend who made the motion oh I did um should I just do it again do it again say okay I move to approve file IG a as amended second any further discussion all those in favor say I I motion passes just point of clarification you want to substitute the word nine for the number nine no no no I think she wanted to change 12 doesn't matter as long either one are both numbers or both spelled out okay okay does matter okay all right next one programs of student disabilities uh next one yes is igba programs for students with disabilities you can see in this policy so if you remember this last General Assembly updated our

129uh special education procedures some of this is simply grammatical the most important part is down at page the end of page one underline there the special education parent family liaison beginning this school year every school division is responsible for having a parent family liaison uh so we've assigned Dr Howard as our parent family liaison and we are uh at a point to be prepared to pass this policy excellent do I have a motion I move that we approve policy igba as presented I second any further discussion all those in favor say I I votes I motion carries next one IG English Learners next is IG BF is English earner Learners excuse me uh and what you'll see here is again some grammatical updates in that uh where the bullets began from parent to parents you'll

130see the word educa education to educational method to methods um that's really just grammatical updates in this do I have a motion I'll make a motion to reprove uh IG GBF as presented second any further discuss session all those in favor say I I motion carries online course the next one is igb GA and again this is just a a legal reference at the end that includes a cross reference with ige and igf health education physical education programs I have a motion I move that we approve poliy igb GA as presented I second any further discussion all those in favor say I I votes I motion carries last one igb again this is what we looked at earlier where we're updating um the the language to include the the College and Career ready Virginia program

131and the Virginia studies and passport program the Virginia Community College um system recently went through a saxs review not too long ago created the passport program which is a wonderful program for students won't get into all the details but if you um earn uh dual enrollment credits on the high school level they automatically transfer into many of our Virginia four-year colleges this this policy just updates the uh cross references and and the mention of that program so we're ready we're implementing it and ready to pass I have a a question this probably pretty easy one when it says financial assistance to low income and needy students to take the advanced placement or IB exams um what do we have a set criteria of how that's done and who sets that we we budget for that

132we have a line item for that and that's we use the um information we received from free and reduce launch ah okay all right do I have a motion I move that we approve policy IG gbi as presented second any further discussion all those in favor say I I motion is passed all right thank you I know that was a lot thank you Dr Boyd I know it's a a lot of explanations appreciate it and thank you M scal for all your work and putting these out every time and hopefully we'll catch up within the next couple of board meetings all right um superintendence evaluation process um there was a couple of changes there and if you remember um one is under two item number two we changed that um you see what was crossed

133out and we just simply put if any of the three areas in the unacceptable rating improving improved by five percentage points or more from the previous year place it in the developing SL needs Improvement area and see we crossed out a few things and made that change and then also under the board surveys we crossed out all of the individuals and just simply said the survey is issued um to all parents with emails um who file who wish to uh participate and um then we said the respondents include all supervisors and coordinators rather than listing every single one and then that we changed the timeline if you look at the very bottom the past timeline was from last year we made this one which I think we'll be able to keep from year to year

134although it's difficult because the SOS come in at different times now there was a discussion Mr rolls I think you were the one and which is not included in this particular thing but we do need to make a decision on this because within the next month we're going to be using this to evaluate the superintendent but you wanted to include a couple of other things that's not here Mr rolls were you able to right we I appreciate providing some so data my only concern is you look at under number two for performance right now we're doing so uh Pass rates which makes sense to do because it's part of the accreditation so it sort of gets double counted since we're doing accreditation and we're doing that but it's it's okay it's important but with the

135data that was provided it was just past fail and Advance whereas here we're breaking it down by English Math Science and then it's also the data we were given also was by school this this is just for instance uh Dr Bo when we look for English performance over 90% way I read this and I think you would too is that means 90% across their whole division you know pass rate so that's elementary school middle school high school whereas the Des day that we had for advanced pass was we didn't have overall it was by school so it's awesome so the the data yeah so you also have it by oh it's not on there shoot um we do have it by the division as well so what you're looking at in that data is I

136thought we got an updated one but I maybe we didn't or we did get an updated one but we didn't up we didn't get it uploaded but point being is that what this shows is that the number of the percentage of students that pass Advance by school we also have it by the division I'm following you now with what you're saying would would you like it to be passive the the percentage pass Advance broken down by by English by math by science the same way that this goal number two is yes I think that is be the most I don't know easiest to follow us to do the same for both okay so you would add a another under number two you would add this or make this a whole separate category I'll shig how

137to it could pretty complicated but that Dr boy mentioned maybe just make it a fourth criteria that's probably the easiest way to do it we have three make this a fourth criteria right then how do we do the percentage so I I think I'm looking at it now and trying to piece it together so we could do that same thing where we you know came up with a fourth goal and we could do something to the effect of kgcs students will Dem you know uh so iess demonstrate approved so past Advance on the English performance by at least whatever percentage we approve so like if we're looking at and again we don't have the data broken down by that right now but you can see past advances typically in the you know single digits or

138low teams something like that so go ahead you were going to suggest one well yeah I mean we need to have that historical data to look at to pick numbers that make sense we can't picking numbers out thin air doesn't really work so I I guess somehow and I wasn't around to witness it but we're pulling the these percentages we did different percentages for different subjects and somehow they arrived to those and we did the Strategic plan and those are based on the state Pass rates for for accreditation for accreditation that's for full accreditation okay so yeah there's that's obviously the perfect basis for that but I think for as far as the advanc rate that's something we're just doing ourselves so I think we would just need to look at historical data kind of

139pick out what we think is exemplary proficient developing and unacceptable you're saying something like you know 8% is proficient and 9% are yeah you're talking same as here just we look at Circle data to kind of hease that out a little bit so you want to do kind of the averages over the last um since 2018 I'm just talking about to come up with the proficient um Advanced M just TBD later I think we need the data first to look at I don't know we decide right now the data for this year Well historical data right there it was it was needs to be presented visionwide and by subject so we have we can compare kind of apples to apples right now it's we don't have it by division wide and we don't have it

140by subject so it's different totally different than what we have just have it by school You Want It by subject and division same as it is for performance number two in by division by subject yeah just mimic what we have for under number two and how do we come up with the you know well you guys are gonna have to decide that once we have to look at it and decide so you want to look at then a further drilling down into the data to include the um the classes or the and then then look at see then then we'll make a decision as to whether it would be uh you know exemplary proficient developing or unacceptable right but we'd come up with three percentages well I mean there's right now there's what four *

1413 there's 12 there's four levels and different numbers for each so we'd have a fourth category so now there would be 16 now uh that's there's right now there's three performance areas right one number one is is accreditation number two is pass rate on the S sols number three is decreasing the number of vacancies right and four would be S sols again but based on Advanced Pass rates and what percentage would we give that so I think we're right now three we have I believe is are all equally weighted so again it just be equally weight equally weighted among the four unless you prefer something else we we can pull that data and provide a draft and so that would be part of the 40% but equally weighted right yeah but I'll bring up a

142point in that like last year when we did the the rating for whatever reason our score so scores were not very good and it didn't really negatively affect the overall rating that much so a little bit concerning that it didn't have more of an effect I mean because is almost like it didn't matter well that's one of the reason I put the at least the you know the rate of improving that only makes it better exactly so I mean my concern is that the SS were not good and it didn't really seem to affect you want to add this no I agree with you I just we get more and more complicated with this but it's okay true I don't disagree exct way to solve that I wondered you know when we were down below

143it's talking about the raining like I think you basically assign a four to exemplary three to proficient two to developing and one to unacceptable so maybe one a better way to do that is an acceptable zero rather than one the thought I mean I don't know I can look at that why don't you do this Dr Boyd since um Mr rolls is really under this a little bit why don't you do that data and Mr rolls if you don't mind looking at it you don't have to come up we'll come up with as a board but just look at the way he's going to you know break it down and then maybe you could at least we can work out the percentages here but you can look at um the first pass before it comes

144to the board Dr Bo will send it to you is all right oh I'm I'm complimenting you for you know thinking about all this and so follow it through a little bit more because I I need to be sure it's clear because I'm have to be the one to to figure all this out okay yes you are going to be I mean I'll just say in passing that um I was originally thinking that we would roll this into performance number two just for the S sols but and Dr Boy made mentioned making it a fourth thing that actually sounds easier because I don't know it would get super complicated somehow pass let's make it yeah because you start SOS and this now it's too confus I agree let's do it a fourth thing all right

145have we thoroughly confused the rest of the board okay I think but you understand it Dr Boyd I understand and send it to Mr rolls and and also me and then we'll present it at the last board the next board meeting but we're GNA have to pass it at the next board meeting because we have to use it okay I apologize I just noticed something new this time what uh so for under number three for performance the vacancies you look at um under C and D you know developing needs Improvement versus unacceptable yeah the numbers for in George decrease the number of uncertified teachers by 10% it's the same for both so we can't have the same measure for both otherwise how you distinguish between the two yeah so I would just say maybe make

146C for the uncertified teachers make it greater than five greater than or equal to 5% and then for unacceptable will be less than 5 per. yeah do five and 10 there no no greater or less than 5% is what he's saying so for C it be greater than or equal to 5% and then for D it' be less than 5% the dividing line is 5% you see what he's saying Dr Bo sort of 5% on c for the second line yeah it should say greater than or equal to 5% yes F greater or equal to 5% under I I and then under unacceptable you less than 5% less than 5% that would be dii less than 5% okay all right thank you that's good okay so next time if um board members if you get

147a CH before the meeting look at this because of the time schedule and having to evaluate um Dr Boyd we really need to pass this because the so scores are did come in correct yeah they've come in okay and we'll have a an accreditation I think it might be next meeting I'll double check but we'll get the accreditation results from we'll get all the accreditation results at the next meeting along with fixing or making these changes all right um so we're not going to vote on anything regarding to that obviously keep those current things that are there make these other changes there's no sense in approving anything now so we'll put it all together at the next meeting if that's okay with the rest of the board who is going to have to approve the

148changes I know that sounds like a silly question Matt made the motion will he be the one that has to no no he did make a motion and Matt just simply wanted to add some other changes so we'll look at it all together at the next meeting okay Miss Davis and then we'll make the decision okay um all right next is the um selection procedures from the school library Dr Boy Yes uh so we have uh in your packet you'll see the selection procedures for school library we looked at this document last time we had some feedback from the board members and we have some uh additional revisions that we've made to this document we do have Miss drinks and Miss Clark here this evening to answer any questions that you guys may have I

149can tell you that just after our last board meeting uh myself Dr Wright our instructional team and all of our school librarians uh spent a good part of you a work day uh working through this document and uh working through a number of other things that um are related to to the to the book issue uh and really are just looking for some feedback from the board on um whether or not this is acceptable or what suggestions you may have moving forward and uh as I said Mrs drinks and Miss Clark are here if you have questions board members questions I have some but I'll wait yeah the rest of the board so it's obvious that there were updates to the last two sections was there were there updates other than those can you say

150that again Mr I see that there were updates made to the uh weeding D selection section as well as public review were there other changes besides those uh there was also additions made under the criteria for selection you mind summarizing yes specifically excuse me uh number five includes more detail so for number five in selecting materials library media Specialists will evaluate available resources and curriculum needs and will consult reputable professionally prepared AIDS and other appropriate sources for review of purchase materials that was original but added to that is King George Kye school librarians use Title Wave to access professional reviews through book list School library journal and circus reviews and consider other resources as needed so that was expanded so you want to tell them what Title Wave is they might not know yes uh

151our online card catalog is uh through Destiny fallet and Title Wave is the program that cataloges the books and so we are able to access it through our C card catalog and when we look up a title through Title Wave it pulls up um all the information about the publication um links all of the professional reviews to it uh if it's part of a series other books by that author so it gives us all the background information in one location versus us having to search out those individual reviews from different locations other questions go ahead Miss I was just hoping that it would reference the somehow cross reference policy IIA in conjunction with the sexually explicit material that we don't necessarily want selected but I'm not sure where we would incorporate that or if it's

152inferred somewhere and I'm missing it so a bullet referencing um whether or not it's sexually explicit or I'm not sure how I would say that but uh I'm sure we don't want that in the libraries in general so I mean the public has spoken so Dr boy oh go ahead we already discussed sorry in the criteria for selection number two Library material shall be appropriate for the subject area and the age emotional development ability level learning style and Social Development of the students For Whom the materials are selected add something to there or is that spice so what you're saying is is that that's where this um the sexually inappropriate material would be would be under that number two considering the age of the student emotional development okay in a sense I guess the I

153I we were saying that no such sufficient materials for instruction materials and that says that library books are also stru materials but yeah I think it would be helpful just to have that explicitly stay here as well or reference it so for reference because me and Mrs Hoover talked about it like I looked at spot I mean Stafford counties I looked at surrounding counties policy versus the instructional materials and uh they reference that the books would be selected in accordance of following the guidelines of their policy for Selective materials which ours is I IIA so in in the practice is a practice document so in the practice document you want okay I hear what you're saying did you hear that yes okay so reference that uh we will make selection in accordance with policy IIA

154something to that respect so I hate because I know how much work you guys have been doing into this and I appreciate that effort you're putting into or you're you're you're doing more I feel like um towards what maybe you're not getting credit for but I would I I feel like this is kind of open to kind of how it already is uh meaning what yall what has been when I read the reviews and like on some of what the comments of the committee's reviews on these books it was more it felt more opinionated than factual against our policy is how I felt like saying one of them said something like well this is no worse than what how our kids are already talking oh I don't care about that I they're also kids smoking

155drug you know and doing drugs but that doesn't mean we should accept it right so I just feel like if there's maybe more of a solid that there it's hard because I feel like you guys maybe what am I trying to say it it feels too open to still allow those same type of books and what if y'all aren't here and there's a next one another librarian comes in and she didn't go through everything that you guys went through to know I guess what we're looking forward to is being careful about those books I can say something regards to that maybe is I think that the way that we have talked about instructional materials in referencing the um IA policy um and we've already kind of made that with Library materials too it's just simply

156make that near the same in other words um referencing um the policy we did it with the instructional materials and we made that policy maybe just simply have a s because when you think about it they do it anyway um because really Library materials can be used as instructional materials at any time so just simply make a reference to this that policy the exactly the same way we did it in the instructional materials other words in in the proceed in these procedures yeah under number two what do you what is that what well I think what Dr boy is trying to say to us is these are just guidance of how they're going to do it it's not the policy this is just the the practice of it we want them we want them to

157to match but we want the right stuff in the right places is what you're saying you're saying this is the practice this is what it looks like this will be the practice everything according to our policy according to our policy but I think what I'm hearing you say Mr Bush is in number two just make it match what we have reference it put put a reference to you know selection will be you know in in adherence to policy IIA or something to that nature which they do anyway but you know maybe it doesn't need to be said but considering everything that's G on the community it' probably be helpful okay we can specifically reference the policy in the proceed so that it's not open to interpretation thank you that is what I was trying to

158say thank you I had second comment one of the things that's gone around a lot and I'm not sure this is uh maybe a little vague but one of the things that we commonly hear is at what age appropriate levels and I know that it's kind of like any um organization that you use that determines the age appropriate you can have it all the way from you know from sixth grade to 12th grade um it where where in the policy do you kind of help determine the age appropriate levels of things whether it has to do with sexual explicit materials or violence or whatever in other words what agencies do we use does that make sense and you don't have to write anything with this I'm just wondering when you consider what age level the

159book is good for what what do you use what research what criteria and and what while they're looking that the the list that they have available online right now too I was going to say has um a ton of information I wish I could pull it up but uh it basically has the Publishers grade recommendation right and then it has the grade recommendations for four different review sites is that correct am I saying that correctly yeah the professional reviews can be anywhere between two or three up to 12 or 15 for a more popular title so what what do you kind of depend on you taking average of those or Med does that make sense we do we do the median age and then we take into account the individual reviews and the information that

160we glean from those okay so it's like the author these four agencies and you kind of put all that together and take a medium age all right as a starting point do you so for that while we're on this topic about the age because I heard somebody I don't remember who said it at a meeting it wasn't you or you miss clerk but that they Ed the youngest age possible that that's allowed like if you have four reviews and some say 12 to 13 and others say 13- 14 what age do you choose out of those or how do you develop that that's what they were just saying an average yeah we we use an average and that's like what we do like that's consistent for us yes like it's your okay yeah I think

161that was the consensus of the Librarians when we met they don't depend on one lady said you the way to do it and I was just going off her expertise of how I don't remember who it was to be honest and she said you go by we're supposed to go by the youngest we we couldn't go by the youngest honestly if you look at an elementary school library they can't go by the youngest student that they serve and have an entire Library that's appropriate just for kindergarteners yeah you're right we have students 11 to 14 we had several 15y olds last year so that's why we look at the median so we're when we look at that we're looking for the middle of the road age of student that we're serving that's good that's good

162that you do that you know do the oldest or the youngest you take the medium based on a lot of different resources well so I'll comment on number six it says one selecting titles using professional reviews the average recommended age range of students will be considered yeah I don't I don't really want us to be beholding to some National Review service I mean this is King George we don't have to be like everybody else I mean you can based on what once you pick an average you can come up with probably a lot of different ages so I don't know exactly how to word it but really it ought to be sensitive to you know our community and what what community King George finds appropriate not NE just National that would be hard how would

163the librarian determine that that's a very good point I'm not disagreeing with you at all but how would the Librarians determine that in other words what they're doing is taking an average what you're saying is they need to take into consideration where we live here in King George very good point no your community right and I mean and if if they don't then that's then I guess the public review part comes in but prefer to not have to rely on the public review portion so that's just my big picture desire but how to word that well how would they not only how to word it how would it be done how do you determine what the community wants well they talk to parents in school you get a sense of that being around okay so

164depending upon the parents communicating with the library or complaints that might be there that what you're the dangerous thing with that though Matt is you're taken a risk of it being at the lowest age that's what the community says but we're not talking about no one has a problem like well there's fifth grade reading level difficulty books that kindergar are saying okay they're too hard from the read they don't who cares that's no one's bothered by that sorry say it again talk about the example of elementary school like that there's going to be fifth grader books that kind guiders have access to they don't books that are just too hard to read nobody that's fine no one cares about that it's about the if the content's inappropriate they don't have access to it though their

165books are on a have to have parents permission to rent those books out books you talking about any sexually explicit books fifth grade he was just talking in general about reading abilities I think what you're looking for is he said kindergarteners have Community feedback right and I think the process that we have right now for selection is is that two weeks prior to any purchase of books we are going to publish the all the list of all the books that the Librarians intend to purchase with all of that information that was just displayed up there and again everybody has the opportunity to go and and do their own research but we also have a form where we're soliciting information back from really everyone in the community not not a select group of folks in the

166community anyone that wants to engage in the book purchases will have an opportunity to provide feedback through that form it's really transparent it's really open it's really uh inclusive of our entire Community I think the the the the bullet about the the National Review sites is there's there's quality to that but to your point Mr RS I think this process of allowing Community feedback through this form is also going to give the the community our citizens in King George an opportunity to weigh in on the books as well I think that's what the point you were trying to make well now I would say more the public feedback that's the review that's a backup I would not want to make citizens feel like they have to spend a l their time looking at all these

167books they want to have a policy where they look at that like yeah that's good and we just expect you know Librarians to follow it and the public not Define things that they think are inconsistent with it because they're not there so he's basically I think is he's saying is he's hope he wants assurance that this is really going to happen I guess because as much as we're getting feedback from one side we're getting it just as much from Another Side and so where's the reassurance for instance we're saying ages but there's a lot of ones that use 9th through 12th grade and as you know that's been a huge controversy in in our past appeal was that they're it's saying 9th through 12th grade and we have it in middle school which is not

1689th grade so how do we what do what does that look like well that's where we come into using the averages so we have notebooks at the middle school level that every review for them says grades 9 through 12 right because that wouldn't be appropriate for the middle school but when we have a book that comes back with five or six reviews and two of them say grades 9 through 12 a couple of them include grade seven a couple of them include ages 13 to 17 that's when we dig through the reviews that's when we look through the book that's when we look at other sources in order to make that determination so when there's that kind of a gray area that's where we're going to use our other resources in order to be able

169to come up with our final decision and with that if you you don't have to answer this but just so that the public knows what does it look like if it is if it is a controversial sexually speit or a violent what what does that process look like now would be the same hold on like basically you guys would determine if it's and then you would put it in a in the closet right in a lock box and then parents permission yeah I think we need to remember that we're talking about nine books at the middle school that were found to be sexually explicit and we have a collection of 9,000 so the majority of our collection using the this this procedure has worked well to be able to find age appropriate books for the

170students so I would say even more so we're following our procedures to the te to make sure that our books are very appropriate for a middle school audience so I'm glad to hear that the the issue and I just want to say is that we're getting books sent to us that are printed and sent to us that are showing to be kind of not kind of but pretty runchy and so are you saying they're not all 35 of the books aren't there are you're not aware we've recently received almost 70 titles and three of them were for the middle school yeah most of them were from the high school okay thank you and we reviewed those three they had been previously reviewed and so we reviewed those three again you know I'm kind of curious

171are other Librarians going through what you're going through in the other divisions is do you hear this a lot or is it just you don't hear it so much no we hear hear from other Librarians they are not going through what we're going through okay they have I'm assuming that um most of the other Librarians kind of use similar ways of selection that we're using here is that correct okay yeah it's pretty standard okay all right these are good questions and good answer thank you but any other questions yes not questions comments uh I think this thing is really open to interpretation uh really uh the weeding process uh is very vague I don't really understand it you're talking about down here uh in general fiction titles that have not circulated for 5 years will

172be considered first you know not circulated for 5 years what does that mean how many times is it checked out you know if it's only checked out once a year uh and it's checked out you know I I mean that's just very vague and I don't understand it uh un circulated would be circulated zero times no checkouts at all okay so then but what number are we going to get to when we say if it's only been checked out twice we're going to remove it or if it's only been checked out once this it's not what that says it says not circulated for 5 years that means not checked out any in five years that they would be considered first and then the paragraph under there states that fiction materials will be removed from the

173collection 10 years after copyright date unless other factors apply and that would include the circulation numbers okay you know I can tell you A big a comment to your point that came out of the meeting with the Librarians and it's a much bigger issue here and and it's real is that we don't have a l of kids checking out a lot of books right now so when we were talking about weeding out I mean there's there's books and and I think they do did a good job it means more to them because this is their their their document to to work off of so I even had the question when we talked about the the different sections and stuff but there's certain sections of the library where books haven't been checked out in ye multiple

174years uh if we were to begin to weed out books based on a specific number of years we might have empty libraries um and and that's a bigger issue right now but that's why it was really difficult to nail down a specific date where we were going to say checked out this many times and this many years and therefore we would take it out because quite frankly across the country right now circulation numbers are not what they were 20 30 years ago also how much money do we spend a year ordering books library books I don't have that number off the top of my hand off the top of my head but it's it's it's a decent amount of money and and the other thing that you know we had at our last meeting we

175had the community that was there and we said uh I know I said that one of the things we should do was maybe have a library committee uh but I don't see that here in this anywhere uh I mean every I mean there's got to be a better approval process somewhere along the line if there was we wouldn't be in this position right now where I mean this been going on for almost a year now uh and it has divided our community and and we need to fix it sooner rather than later but I I hear you the problem is with a committee are we ever going to get um all of the um stakeholders from every part of the community the committee would end up being 20 or 25 people if you got every

176single stakeholder from every part it it would be difficult to choose a committee that would involve every I mean I'm just saying committees have a place I'm not so sure it would be here though because no matter what committee you chose it would be difficult to represent every aspect of our community Caroline I looked at Caroline's process and Caroline has like eight Carland County Virginia eight people on a committee we just went through five committees that have much less than 20 25 people I just threw that up yeah I I I understand that but it doesn't take that many people if you need a a school board member on there I volunteer to be on it you know every um all the counties surrounding us have committees as well I check that so what's I

177guess a better we we can take the board suggestion on that and and I guess what I asked at the last meeting and I'll ask again is is what is the vision of this committee what's the composition of the committee what is the desire of the committee right now I mean we're putting out every single book to every individual in our community I'm going to assume the desire is to take that list of books and run it through this committee that I I guess we determine who's on that committee and they and they do a similar process as as to what we're doing with with the community right now I would say I would say we do what Dr Wright was talking about earlier with uh you know with the um um attendant and we

178talk with the other communities around us and see what they're doing she's already checked with Caroline and looked at their policy and they have one well that that's similar to I I'm familiar with what it is and I'm familiar with what we used to have here if that's the desire of the board I mean we can look at that type of option I'm just to be honest with you I I struggle with the composition of the committee and and I also and not that I'm you know we pushed every single book out if we want to take if we want to take every single book and just run it through a committee we can do that I think what I struggle with a little bit is how those meetings are going to run and and

179how effective we are going to be at working through those book titles I think quarterly whenever these whenever these committees meet but we can certainly do that I one of your if I can say something I think one of the points in this is what I think you're trying to make is that since we are offering an opportunity for everyone in King George to look at the books that have been ordered um how why wouldn't those who would be concerned about the kinds of books be reading that and give their suggestions I know they're not the ones ordering the books but they're still going to have that input um I worry really Mr Frank I I would agree with you if somehow we had a community that was um but we have so many the

180composition of that committee would be so controversial problem is you guys I don't know if any of y'all have been to a my issue is is that I don't know if any have y any of y'all spoken to the conservative side of King George yes because we're in this position because there were books in the schools not saying whose fault CU I can't we can't blame it all on one person how these books got in um and I with saying this I believe you guys are working with us and I appreciate that even if it's a you know even if you don't like it you're still willing to work with us so I have to give credit what credit is due but we're we're getting a lot of pressure from 70% of King George saying

181how are we going to make sure these books aren't coming back in when when and they're blaming them but I don't think it was just them or whatever I don't know um how are we going to prevent him from being coming back being in the same boat and us coming for the board again let's hear from um wait a minute I'm sorry well I would like it answered yeah well it's our decision not you know we're supposed to talk about that I am that's what he's against the committee I'm explaining why maybe it's a it's like okay I haven't spoken for quite some time if I could yeah yeah so well yeah in general public review so the question is how we going do public review is it going to be like something like this

182or is it going to be a committee so I read this and had some concerns um talk about book purchases will be processed quarterly well can you be more even more precise it's like at the end of the quarter because people have lives all things to do then to be constantly checking the we library site to see what's being ordered you know it needs to be something that's predictable and regular and easy to do but the committee it makes it very obvious okay this is your job we're going to run this list by you do you approve or do you disapprove and and people they can vote on individual ones and so it's just very straightforward with this it's much more ha Hazard and it's unless we really get more detailed it's tied to well

183excuse me I'm just so um in here it talks about uh book purchase the middle school and high school that's one minor point is that made earlier that it should be elementary school as well I would limit to just that so as long as we talk about purchases and it's very clear then then that that would help um but then this is post to 15 days prior but again it's like if you're just rely on people to randomly themselves to this you know it needs to be easy so 15 days having to jump in that window to see it it has to be very very clearly defined I don't know what extent we expect people just jump up and do that I mean maybe they will May makes it much more clear but yeah that's

184that's more structure to the committee original the one that we had before not sure well before I I think Mr Frank said he remembered it many many years ago so we haven't had one in a long time no we haven't not it's not to my knowledge since I've been in King George that's 10 plus years want be sure we hear from all the board members Miss Hoover you have any comments have no comment and as I I've said before the currently for Smoot uh each of the board supervisors appoint two people to the committee there to run that Library we just do something similar here not that complicated I don't think so Mr RS you're in favor of the possibility of a committee that's what I'm hearing right unless this got quite a bit reformed

185so you know what's what's the general sentiment I if if I think a committee is straightforward this could maybe work but it has to be tidied up some so some of the things that I said there anybody else share those same concerns or were you're General well were you are you saying that if we just maybe change some wording that you'd be comfortable with not having a committee did you well if we weren't going to have a committee it'd have to be much more precise about exactly how the review works so it's easier to do so people aren't just like well I got to check this every 15 days to make sure I don't miss it you um Mr Frank we haven't heard from you much I just think we need to get you know

186I want to move on there's a lot bigger F fish to fry uh for a lot of people for a lot of people that aren't but I mean we need to get uh dealing with stuff for students instead of worrying about politics and who liberal and who's conservative and and and you know take care of stuff for students I think the best way and the easiest way to do that is for a committee uh and how we make that committee up I don't know I I haven't looked at any of the uh surrounding counties or and what they're doing but I think it's worth a try to do that so that we can put this behind us all right I'm hearing several things one is that um which we hadn't even talked about are if

187you already started ordering where where do this ordering occur beginning year end year all year orderly all year but yes now we're doing it just quarterly TI to the report cards have you already had one recently no so you're waiting on some of this right now fig Feb we figured we wait two weeks from the time that we approved this process okay well let me it it sounds like listening to Mr Frank and um and Miss Davis and Poss Mr rolls um would it be possible for you to contact um maybe at least two or three other local divisions and especially about this committee thing lot The Librarians there how do what is C you guys are the Librarians and you have what does that look like for other schools that have it you said

188they use the same committees most other like Safford and spoty some larger um counties they have Library supervisors so the individual schools would send their book lists to the purchasing librarian who then would process the orders we don't have that at our level okay but what about schools that have committees or how do you guys feel about a committee or is that a wrong question to ask oh it's fine like do you support that or would it be helpful or not helpful to your job I think we would find a huge time delay in ordering um we have students who are are very anxious to get the next book in a series or a new release I think waiting for a committee to do what they can already do online is going to delay that

189to the point where a decrease in circulation is just going to go further down would it be possible I this is the board question is that maybe we um we temporarily we approve this with the caveat that you might be checking with some other local divisions especially those that might using committees and see how they do that well I don't think you need to approve this but but if there's recommendations that you guys would like us to consider in in terms of revision I.E the committee I guess what I'm saying is approval is not the right word for them to go ahead whatever ordering he need to do to go ahead with that because I'm afraid of you know especially kids waiting for books those are the very ones we want to be reading but

190at the same time if you could come back possibly by the continue the process that you're already starting and using here but then go ahead and check with some other divisions that are nearby that might have committees and how they're using them and then report that next time so we're able to do that we actually I'll be attending a meeting on uh September 19th through vassel which is Virginia Association of school librarians and the people who attend those meetings are the librarian supervisors for each of the areas around the whole state of Virginia so this is something that I could submit for the agenda so that it can be a topic of conversation and that can report back that information how does that sound board members thank you does that sound acceptable I yeah we

191can approve this I feel or I don't I mean I don't know if this is an approval this is not approve it but um you don't have to approve the committee thing obviously you don't have to approve it right I think what we're I hear worried about a little bit is is so right now in the interim what we've tried to do to to to make sure that everyone's aware of where we are with ordering is Miss Higgins had the list pulled up there earlier I I think the Librarians have done really an amazing job of create are you able to quickly pull that list up again is right now uh following our meeting two weeks ago we created the system where they where the Middle School publishes the list of books that they oh

192yeah would like to purchase and that the name of the list is on the the book is on the left hand side and if you click on any one of those it it takes you to uh you know more information but you can see the author's name the intended audience the publisher this is what I was talking about earlier the four different um professional reviews that have grade level recommendations and then the reason for purchasing it on the far right hand side so you'll see stuff like uh you know adding an extra copy replacing a lost copy things of that nature we have a system set up right now where anyone that wants to review this list can fill out a form and provide feedback on any one of these titles Dr right do you

193know right now I'm sorry to put you on the spot do you know right now how many responses we've roughly received on this list I want to say when I last checked it was when you last talked to me about it it was 45 maybe yeah 45 the desire was to in order to the allow the Librarians to purchase books we were going to post this list solicit feedback for 15 days if if you know and make decisions based on that feedback and then allow the Librarians to to make their first book purchase of the year that's what I'd like to suggest if the board agrees to let them do that but then at the same time go to the meeting and find out about these commit because we have some uh you can hear

194that the committee idea we want to hear more about it and may go to that but we would like to hear from other divisions U especially from The Librarians there so how does that sound board is to let them go ahead so we don't have to delay the process of ordering books but still they'll come back at the next board meeting and report about committees you have a question if you don't well did just first does that sound somewhat okay that sounds okay especially if you look at most of the reasons at least on on this first page is just replacing damaged copies they're already in the I mean it sounds fine I agree temporarily for this quarter does that sound good to the board so you'll come back in a couple of weeks and

195then report on committees you saying is this been is that list out for the public to see yeah it is okay okay all right um yeah and so you're looking at the complaints and there's been four or five five of them okay five comments and you've looked at those five you haven't seen them yet they go to Dr they go to Dr W okay well it' be good I think obviously to send him to the Librarians do you want to sh you want him to share the comments now um Bard do you want him to share the comments the five comments that have been made about the list so far you want you want to hear the comments that have been made okay Mr Frank said yes I know this takes time but this is

196important to the community so yeah don't put any names obviously just read the comments I apologize to Librarians for not giving them access to this um data so we have five five folks from the community that have responded the first one was from a parent guardian of current King George County Schools says stop please stop these Community feedback forms for books and just buy the books uh the second one is from a Community member uh says I think the list looks great it looks like what students want to read and we'll encourage them to do so thanks for curating a great list of books like you're taught to do for your profession uh the third one is from a parent/guardian of a current King George County School student um says stop the censorship across the

197county we are in the 21st century parents are the ones who make the decision for our children allow the school superintendent and the Librarians to do their dang jobs and quit washing wasting everyone's time with this nonsense uh the next one's from a parent guardian of a current King George County School student it says I trust the educational professionals and have the they have the education training experience to choose the books for the students of King George County uh the next one is from a Community member of King George uh and list of specific books uh to all the boys I've Loved um one second so all the boys I've Loved Before um think that's the only book yep um this book is sexually explicit and therefore not a good use of taxpayer dollars this

198book was already complained about in August the American Library Association says it's for guge 9212 see the attached uh link uh plugged in says readability age range is 16 and up see the attached image those are all of the statements thank you very much Dr rght yeah I think it would be good for the Librarians to read those um and any ones to come in so then you could obviously look at them and there's been one complaint and the rest were that was forwarded to us by Dr boy oh that one was yes so we we reviewed the book and was found not to be sexually explicit they did share with us information that needed to be reviewed immed did they oh I see okay just not all the rest of those correct I see

199all right thank you okay is everybody all right with them ordering these but then um you said it was found to not be sexually that's correct are you allowed to share the title he did the boys before the bottom all the boys 18 AG 12 and up grade seven and up there's nothing explicit so I would say give it the two week would you say the two week period so when from today because yes from today it's been posted longer than that but we were planning on giving it two weeks from today because of talking with you and then I guess you have to consider other feedback you get right before okay I'm I'm okay with that okay so um go ahead in order the the books um as you said but still we'd like

200to hear about the committee so at the next board meeting if you could report back about that and um and I think um if unless the board disagrees Dr Wright I think even positive or negative comments um just be sure the librarian sees them all no that's fine you're that's fine all right and we need to move on unless there's oh go ahead Mr R so on there so that's one thing that's lacking the public review is okay so you get the feedback what do you do with it she's like oh okay great she wi I mean or is it you know KB it's an appeal process we're going to treat it like that and hold the purchase until it's adjudicated probably something like that needs to be in there say one more time say

201it one more time Mr RS this mic seems worse today for some reason but um yeah so that's lacking from the public review process they need to say well what happens so you get feedback because for KB right now for challenging books in the library there's an appeal process so I would think for this if there's a there's a challenge then prob hold off until that's adjudicated because they would go through the same kind of review just that one book hold off like we would with well you're saying what happens if people give a comment about it like when do you determine that enough comments have come in to before you purchase the book or not and and you're saying to pull those B have like a committee for those books what it look like

202it's not addressed it needs to be addressed I hear you so I just want to make sure I I have the vision of moving forward if if there's one that has a a comment that is questionable then we would hold off on ordering that run it through potentially a committee and right now we have the klb so and I would just say you know if it's you put something here like if it's not there's a whole appeal process if it's not appealed within five days and then you may just assume that they accepted the decision and but if they appeal it then it's still on hold until it runs its course with the appeal process so just run it through KB that's what we have right now so that's yeah I would say okay what's

203the what's the feeling of the board do you understand what Mr RS is saying he's saying that if there is a book like this one that was mentioned that you run it through the KB process um and which would allow for a possible appeal and and just that needs to spelled out more clearly in in the the procedure going forward too that means it's what need to be more need to be cleared out spelled out clearly here in the future so they should spell out what we just talked about as far as that if there's a book that is um specifically um a concern with that that should be processed through the KB policy even if we haven't purchased it well tode decide whether to purchase it he would say hold off on the purchase

204is what he say order all the rest of them but hold off on the purchase of that book or those books currently run it through KB but potentially run it through a committee if we figure if we what kind of separate yeah so you're trying to do a stop Gap right now so yeah so KB for now and I guess I think a committee probably is just the need to way to do this going forward but if we're going to do this for now that's the least with through KB before just AB buying something that's been challenged so for right now you're saying use the KB policy and then if we have a committee will decide how that would be used right in reference to this shoot okay any other thoughts on this all right

205do you do you understand what Mr RS is asking he said with that one particular book um wait the two weeks and then if there's a book that there's a concern with run it through the KB policy but then order all the rest of the books then we will hear from you about the committee in a couple of weeks yes can I say because I guess a big concern of mine is was when we went through the Pol um all the folks that were challenged everyone was by Dr Boyd was considered sexually explicit but the middle you and whoever the high school principal and them said it wasn't but then he deemed it was and I think that's an is that's what some people are concerned about going forward with this it's a legit concern

206I feel as a parent but um I I want to say that I think with going forward I don't know like how is that clearly differ rectified and and I think it's rectified by being open and transparent and providing as much information as we can and I I I still think we're going to Str I still believe we're going to struggle with say this and I know everybody always sits back in their seat but the definition right now for sexually explicit still has some subjective terms in it and it it's it's from the state I mean so it is it's it's the valid definition um and I know we're venturing into other areas like implicit and and some even some other topics um I think right now sexual explicit is is um still a term

207that's that's difficult to nail down entirely but I think that the more information that we push out similar to this here um and really I mean my I I understand the value of of the hearing you all I understand the value of of uh different perspectives I understand the value of the committee I'm also concerned because of what we've gone through in the last year to be totally honest and Frank with you that um it could be some very interesting committee meetings and maybe interesting is not the right description of it it could be some very contentious committee meetings uh and and I'm I'm struggling with how to work through that right now we have a situation where everyone can review the books we can take the feedback uh we can use that feedback to

208make decisions everyone has an equal and open opportunity to do so um Dr boy I don't we're not I hear what you're saying but again there's been no decision to have a committee we're gonna wait and hear from them first okay we may not have a committee at all no he's pinpoint he's pointing out what we already have in place and and I do know there was a parent that was concerned about these books her suggestion was to can we at least put a be as transparent as possible and put a list on the website and so we're doing that right um and if a parent is truly involved in their kid you know they're gonna pay attention to that stuff but so I do like what we're doing and how we're moving forward I'm

209just because I am representing everyone as far as in schools kids parents in the community I have to relay what's been said to me and asked that I feel legit but I'm happy with us working together how we've been doing I do feel like a committee possibly would have prevented us from being here in the first place you know it would have stayed at how why not I mean if and you wouldn't really know because we don't have one and take into consideration that if there is something questionable that we can agree on there's the process that okay then a parent's going to be called your child wants to check this book out can they or can't they and that's kind of one more stop Gap to put in you know in place so we're

210moving forward with the current process that they've been doing which has been a lot of work and um then any complaint about a particular book you'll run it through the KB policy sounds good all right okay let's move forward then does that do that clear M Dr others what we're saying and first I want to thank did you type all this up thank you that is a lot of work I I just can't express you know how much effort and time you put into this and thank you for doing that Qui question I'm sorry D all right go ahead it's nothing bad um so the one that provide there's another list that was sent to us us and it says like King George High School library and then another one that just says library and

211but it has high school age level um it was in the email we got I'll just forward it to Dr Boyd and then he can clarify that question all right book um it was a list of books I I think that are already on the website okay this is a great discussion at start so by speak want transperency I think ultimately this does have to end up as like a regulation so it's in the policy manual it's it's out there for anybody who wants to see it yes that's important you want to make all this that they've done a regulation right it could be used as the basis to ultimately we need a regulation so I think this would probably be a great start on that all right so next time let's list their policy

212that they've written as a regulation maybe a regulation maybe with those changes we've that they said they would make about that one referencing the 2A and then the any complaints runs through the KB policy um as far as forming committee I just had a quick question or suggestion if you will under our responsibility for selection it says it's delicated to the professional library media specialist on staff through the superintendent in school administration is there a reason why any book that was up for question or concern couldn't be referred to Dr Boyd for making that decision that's what KB is what KB says yeah no that's what we're saying is yes she means other than doing a committee yeah we're not making any decision about a committee so just what you just read is what we

213will do and just you getting around other PE professionals that are involved maybe getting an idea from them what what their policies and maybe why or why they don't have committees so right now they'll go to me yeah so yes and then we're just seeking some feedback on committees that in other schools no decisions have been made about a committee but we do want to here what you find out it gives us time to do our own research as well yeah okay let's move on we spent 30 minutes with this thank you guys thank you all right um next on the agenda is the um Regular agenda meeting format I think this will be fairly quick um there is one thing I've been reading it the last couple of times um but I was suggested

214actually by the lawyers that um what I'm saying about public comment um if you notice this was a change from first time that I read this which was from some other divisions and so right here if we approve this um and then there's been another suggestion that Miss Davis has made which I think is good but so one of the things on here yeah I'll tell you what you made a minute ago one of the things on here is obviously the public comment what I read okay we need to make this part of the policy so then there's no question it goes beyond me and that means all the chairman will read this from now on I've been reading it it's not that I was wrong wrong and that's what the lawyer said but it's

215better to make it in policy that this is our agenda there was another suggestion that was also made as long as we're on this and that was the um student reps that are here is rather than waiting till the end of our meeting like it's going to be near 10 o'clock is that um right after the um presentation to allow the um student reps to give their reports rather than waiting till the end I'd like to ask them so would you like to have left after the presentations or has it been any value since the presentation you hearing what Mr ol is saying we're asking you we're looking at changing the um the agenda so if you if you remember right after the presentations that Miss Rinko made is then you would do your report

216then you could leave and wouldn't have to stay so late but what do you think about that you could stay if you wanted to we're not saying you'd have to leave but then because it is late you'd have school the next day you'd be able to leave right after um the presentations and you give your report then you could leave you like that idea an option right yeah well they can still stay you guys turn your mic off 11:30 but no it won't put in there presentations and note that flexible fre say put it after presentation note that it's flexible yes that'd be excellent so we'll put this um if you if you would Dr Boyd after presentations uh reports by um student um Representatives um and then you could even put well I mean

217they could make it at the end if they wanted to just put it student presentations you mean comments comments student comments sorry presentation put it after presentation or student representative comments yes so I do have something to say about your blur that you proposed so it says uh the school board applies flying procedures to all speakers and does not discriminate based on the identity of the speaker the content of the speech or the Viewpoint of the speaker and it goes on to describe how we discriminate based on the content of speech so I think maybe we should strike that part strike the first sentence just strike out the phrase the content of speech because we do discriminate on the content of speech we buch of things that we don't allow as the following does not

218discriminate just scratch the content of the speech right oh well go ahead can you discuss it now or you want to wait okay all right we can put this as an action item maybe at the next meeting or another discussion then first of all put the thing about the the student reps and then uh go ahead and make that change about does not discriminate I have a question sure what we have action resulting from closed meeting way down at the bottom wouldn't that be like right after the closed meeting look at number 17 oh that shouldn't be there yeah so that needs to I'm sorry that's a mistake you're right thank you number 17 shouldn't be there that should be right after the returning to open session should be up at number 11 should be

219number 11 and then erase number 17 well everything would everything would move down then so just just to be clear we made a motion to move student comment to after presentations we didn't make the motion yet okay but we will and we we will include in that motion moving action resulting from closed meeting up to item 11 correct and uh the motion will also include striking of the content of the speech from from that correct okay that first sentence yep okay and did you want to still talk about more M Davis if it's going to be put in policy I would like time to I haven't really read it okay just make those changes then and we'll put it at the next meeting for fin I can take the time to read it myself and

220if I feel like we need to look at it I'll talk to you first about it we still need to hold not sign today it'll action next time say that again not going to decide right now it's it'll be an action next time so we'll make it an action item next an action item for the next meeting okay thank you all right let's move onh okay appeal proc no yes appeal process Mr rolls okay so is anybody tired of talking about books yet might be a common sentiment so I think it's important that we have KB I mean obiously it's an important discussion to do have all that but at the same time if there's unless there's at least two board members that want to talk about it I think there's no point you know

221we're just going to be spending a lot of time reading books arguing about it and not really deciding anything so my suggestion that I made before and it was turned down but I think maybe now maybe be more receptive to it is that we added to KB that unless two at least two board members want to hear the appeal of the superintendent's decision on a book then we don't hear it then the superintendent's decision stands that could save a lot of time I think okay so you're recommending we change the KB policy to add what you just said right does that sound generally like something that we should bring back for Action well why don't we why don't we look at that then do you understand what he's saying add that to the KB policy

222about that an appeal will not be considered unless there's a majority of board members I no I said two I suggestion is just is two adding to the KB policy that the appeal um will not be considered unless at least two board members um approve it add that to klb and bring it back for riew just discussion for next time well can we discuss it now then is there that much to look at you understand what Mr no one likes the idea we don't need to bring it back um what he's saying there's two things here number one is we can make the change right now and just simply make a motion to do it or if nobody likes it then don't do it at all or we put it in there and have it

223for discussion for the next board meeting one of the three let me hear from the board members m co first so we appeal lots of things lots of decisions it's not just regarding books correct well KB is book specific is it only book instructional material yeah so to be clear you're saying and and decide that at a board meeting ahead of time like how would we decide that well the with just to you know the chair could basically just talk to people individually figure it out and when we get when the chair would receive an appeal you know say the superintendent made a decision about whatever instruction materials and then there's an appeal made about his decision then would come to the chair then at soon as it comes to me then I would ask

224the rest of the board here is the um here's the appeal here's the decision um that was made do you want to consider the appeal and if at least two board members say yes then we would go ahead in the next meeting look at the appeal I mean c right now we say that if a majority wants something on the agenda it's GNA be on there I'm just lowering so right now it's like the way Kaleb B reads is there an appeal you have to hear it no matter what so it's a lower threshold than to get something else on the agenda but it's a higher threshold than every single appeal comes to the board it's a very dangerous ground to walk on I feel like you get a new board different opinions different views

225I like it but at the same time what's going to determine I don't expect a decision tonight I'm just like is it worth considering to bring back next time is question I think you brought this up before and then we all were like that would be considered good now but um I just is that opening a door that you don't want to open tell you what it sounds like we need to have the discussion why don't we put that in klb um do you understand Dr Boyd and mcal put that in KB and that'll be a discussion for the next board meeting I would say majority rather than just two that can be part of the discussion that's good all right let's go on religious exemptions um was there we just need to approve that

226don't we or you don't have to approve it but last year you asked just to see them how many how many are there I think I counted seven I want to say seven okay then just have they been sent to us yes they're in your packet they're in the packet I'm sorry they're in the packet they're in the private packet oh I'm sorry yes they okay that's fine so yes um and I'm sorry I haven't seen them there's no approval process needed though they were sent in an email I apologize because I was at the VA all all right the calendar I believe this is was a request by Mr Frank go ahead Mr Frank yes uh looking at the 200 day calendar to our package for teachers for the elementary teachers we have them

227only going a half day in the last Wednesday of each month why can't we have secondary teachers also we have the elementary teachers going only a half Dave on the last Wednesday of each month why can't we move that and have the high school teachers do that also give them more time for uh right now they have the PLC coming in which is a a professional professional learner com Community professional Learning Community uh I've done I've done some research on that and there's there's a lot of things out there but however um and that's there for the high school they could take the high school and the middle school they could take that half day that the elementary school gets and take care of the plc's at that time also we have the high school

228we have all teachers coming back the 2 and third of January for uh work days why don't we just give them that as part of Christmas break or the holiday break if they need to come back uh to get their their rooms ready they can do that on their own but there not something that that uh you know is going to be required of them any comments from the other board members I do I do want to add to the this that um Mr Frank has been like working hard on this calendar and speaking with many of the teachers who have been studying it so his um advice that he's given has come from multiple other teachers or staff and I was there some of the time well I me I know there's a lot

229of work goes into a calendar committee so I got to think that things are the way they are for a reason so I like to understand that they change them often though they change like every year they change Thanksgiving minute Miss Hoover comments about the calendar what Mr Frank said my initial thought was before I looked at this that like having actually myself substituted all the um schools as well it seems like elementary teachers just don't get a break but then when I looked at the actual time instructional time and minutes for lunch I I I can see why it would be equal to also give them some extra time well I comment similar to what Mr R said is you know there's a calendar committee and that that has stakeholders in there and it

230would be it's almost as if if I was on the calendar committee and then we made all these changes I would be like why am I even on the committee the board just simply you know overrides everything I say um I I understand um Mr Frank what you're saying but there's so many considerations I mean there's Transportation there's um there's differences between I'm being having been an elementary teacher and a high school teacher I can tell you there's huge differences on preparing the classroom when I was elementary teachers I mean my goodness I was I would spend days getting my by the room ready um but when I was high school teacher I was more concerned about the subject I you know I didn't have fancy things in the bulletin board but in in elementary

231had to I guess what I'm saying is there's so many different stakeholders in this and I think the committee has a representation of most of those stakeholders and I would just hate to see even though I know that you've spoken to some you know some high school teachers many teachers it just that this that's what the committee does so I would just hate to see us override that however I think those kinds of suggestions to Future committees Mr Frank would be very valuable um and then maybe even making sure that um is there a board member that's on the committee there I don't think there is no no there hasn't I don't know whether that would be I can see negatives and positives to that but um I would just hate to make a m

232some major changes like that in this middle of or as the year's already started when the calendar committee's already done so much work thoughts I was going to tell you to the board memb is not on the committee because you guys are ultimately responsible that was the negative part you're right all right go ahead Mr Frank the plc's were not even a part of this when this calendar was developed uh that's something that has been added in there um and for groups of teachers to meet during school hours it means that you're going to have to find subs for their classrooms for their classes so this is actually going to save us money in the long run if we if we you know just have the high school and the and the middle school off

233on Wednesday afternoons just like the elementary schools are because we're not paying for subs or having other teachers come in and sub doing their planning that's there it's it's taking things off their plate rather than adding it back on and as far as the January the 2 and 3D you know if uh it's professional development days that are is listed as that right now but you know if a teacher wants to come in to set up their classroom they're more than welcome to do so not you know they can you know be out of town at home a young teacher be out of town at home until you know the fourth and then come back in instead of having to drive on New Year's Day to come back in uh to be at work on

234Thursday for a professional development day just a thought Dr boy didn't you say Stafford was looking at something like this they're doing a four- day week I thought you mentioned there was a school locally actually what we're going to do in this next calendar rendition is we're going to take a a good look at the the length of the instructional day that's what I was referring to when I mentioned staffords yeah okay Stafford has um much shorter instructional day right now than we have ours is stretched over many years there's been terms like Bank time and all of this other things that have um really been there for well over a decade I believe believe maybe longer Mr Frank and uh recently Stafford changed their instructional day to be just the minimum uh which is

235is uh five and a half hours of instruction and a 30 minute lunch so their instructional day is like six hours long so um it's certainly something we're going to look at this year in the uh in in our calendar committee it's probably the top priority we're going to look at because um right now as we know we're losing teachers from an HR standpoint we're losing teachers they're making substantially more money in Stafford County and they're working a shorter day uh so we we want to take a look at uh what that means in terms of instruction right now we are well within our policy range uh we are we far exceed 990 instructional hours uh we we do not go to school 180 days right now but no School Division around us is going

236180 days anymore that was uh really a policy that's the verbiage is still in the policy but every everyone's everyone knows that that the the floor there is 990 instructional hours we we we well exceed that right comments about Mr Frank's suggestion for making those changes to the calendar I think we've heard from most of the board members sure um of the I'll go through each of them I I think um as you guys remember well we we do go through the whole calendar committee and and going through the calendar committee we try to figure out what I say every year when we go through this calendar committee is if you want to start at the first week of August and you want to end by Memorial Day and you start taking out the holidays

237that we all know we celebrate you'll start to find out very quickly there's very little variability in in the school year calendar um calendar committee does does a good job of that every year right now we're at 175 instructional days what you see in that first table in your packet is the number of instructional days and the number of instructional hours we're fine there um the two days after um I guess after winter break um yeah those are not instructional days so uh if if the board was to make a consideration uh I did ask our staff what they had planned on those days right now I got a few things back high school has a faculty meeting on January 2nd January 3rd there's a faculty advisory meeting elementary school counselor meeting all of those

238things right now are set up currently not that they can't move but nevertheless it empowers this conversation those aren't instructional days uh so it doesn't worry me too much I I can understand the argument about the half days for high school teachers I I can tell you high school teachers what you can't see in the table is um it's welln I'm not saying anything that anybody doesn't know they have much much more planning time than than our uh than our elementary school teachers do and with the Virginia literacy act requirements that's why we put those half days in for the elementary school now Mr Frankie is right uh the high school has an initiative to try to grow the professional learning communities and is trying to figure out how to borrow some of that time

239within the school day so that they can get together talk about specific students talk about data and really Drive their curriculum uh which is a good thing but to his point it is it is taking some instructional time from our teachers right now so it's a very good and valid point um the only other consideration I I would be a little bit concerned about is on the secondary level when we think about our different stakeholder groups uh and we think about our students half day's attendance is not good traditionally uh so that I I just that worries me a little bit uh so so if you you know I know that's a say again not good how oh they don't yeah half days they don't they the absentee rate is higher on a half day

240traditionally the elementary they're more uh but but Elementary it's not always that CA that way because they'll they'll get on the bus they'll come to school parents will send them it's it's they've got to go to work and everything else the high school students traditionally half day is is a is a is a high absentee rate um so that that's a point of consideration but uh th those are my comments I I think the second and third is is is totally um unintrusive to our students unintrusive to our families uh the half days you lean into the other stakeholder groups there's there's some things to be a little small things to be concerned with with our students I think it's great for our teachers because this PLC idea is one that needs some traction and

241needs some footing it it could provide that opportunity for our students I'm afraid about the absentee rate for our secondary or excuse me for our parents if we think about that stakeholder group um the half days are for the elementary school kids right now they're not for the high school kids some of our parents require our secondary parents or our secondary students to watch our elementary school kids so that that argument would would lean in favor of allowing our our high school teachers to have those half days as well does that make does that argument make sense okay all right I don't know just some considerations one of those parents what's that I'm one of those parents yeah that you need your high school student to to yeah so that that's certainly obviously a good

242argument and and I can tell you too um moving forward I learned this lesson when we changed the the the Thanksgiving calendar um few years back I I think as early as we can make the these changes if we make changes or if we could solidify them through the calendar committee uh communicating this as early as possible to our community is very important if we we change this calendar uh what is if it's perceived to be late a late change um then we get some push back on people not being able to to adjust their schedules so what's the feeling of the board so specifically you're looking at um I know you said the second and third of January and then half days yes they have days of the fourth Wednesday of each month and

243I don't see well sorry all right um yeah let's hear from all the board members go ahead Miss ho well you were worried about um I guess the committee getting upset that we changed but not upset just just why well one big reason especially for the Wednesdays is we didn't know of this PLC when the calendar was made right so that's kind of a justification um and I don't personally see any problem with giving the teachers the second and the third off so I would I would be in agreement with Mr Frank RS just discussion time right now I'm not really didn't really come know what we're even talking about so I wouldn't I just suggest putting off till next meeting to act oh you'd still you'd still like to consider it and put it

244as a discussion because but Dr boy has a point we need to make this decision pretty quick um but the next board meeting I guess would be okay so it's okay with Miss Hoover but you also wouldn't mind waiting till the next meeting Miss Hoover you would like to think about a little bit more and wait till the next meeting Mr rolls um I know Mr Frank's opinion Miss Davis my concerns I love the half day ideas because we're my only concern is the parents how many parents are going to get get upset because now they got to figure out child care halfway through their workday something that they're used to doing but I know what some of the community members would say well that's the parents job figur that out but that's my concern

245like that part of it are we putting more of a burden on the parents which it's their job as parents to figure that out not the teachers for the second and the third of January no no no I think we should just approve that today to be honest with you well the other the that it's just the second the secondary I mean the elementary kids are the already have a half a day so it's the secondary students so it's only the high school then he's saying to match the high school with what the elementary are doing to allow for this PLC sorry I was misunderstood yes because High School people off yeah okay I'm for it I would be open but the but the teachers would would still be there the kids would have the

246day because they would do the PLC in the afternoon I moved to make a motion well we have two people we have two people that wanted to put it off until the next meeting so they could think about it some more Kathy do you want to put it off she's shaking her head no I was just I understood Mr R's concern I mean I'm I would be ready to vote for it but I understand Mr rs's concern I haven't spoken yet I'm the last one Mr Frank you want do it now or or Mr R's opinion I see no reason to kick this can down the road do it now Miss Davis well obviously it's three to one without even me voting so um all right do I have a motion let's make it real

247clear though okay do I have a motion yes I make a motion that we change the calendar to give the secondary schools the last Wednesday in each month a half a day also can we match it to those days there I don't think it's always the last match it to the elementary days I it's the October 14th you see November 5th should be the October 30th that's what I've got here right oh okay yes October 30th there's nothing from November since there's uh uh thank thanksgiving's there there's nothing for December since there's a break there the 29th of January the 26 yeah hold on they're they're right there I think we missed September to yeah it's yellow yes the yellow yellow so there is the December the 11th the 29th of January the 26th of

248February the 30th of April those would be the dates and also for January 2nd or 3rd which is a professional development date now for teachers to make that a holiday I have a second second discussion I'm a little concerned I haven't you know obviously three people wanted to do it now I I hear the PLC thing I kind of like the two days off I I guess I'm thinking about because you're talking about for the all the staff the whole staff speaking in my past experience elementary teacher if you were to give me this is just me if you were to give me a choice when I was teaching fifth grade say one of those years you know U Mr Bush there's two days here that um are in service days you can get your

249classroom ready you can do this this and this or you can have the two days off I guarantee you I would take the two days off okay however I would still say man I really do need to be in my classroom like it's not ready I would probably take at least one of those two days off and you would say Mr Frank well that's fine that's up to me right well my point is is that if you have a real conscientious because a lot of people would say no I'm going to extend my vacation a little bit longer and they'd get back and the classrooms wouldn't necessarily be ready um I I know that's a judgment on on teachers sometimes but having been one for many years I just know that that could happen that's

250one thing and the second thing is just a little bit of a problem again with the now this not the PLC this is more about those two days in January I don't have a problem with the with the yellow deals I think that's fine but the two days in January I have a little bit of a problem with but anyway that's my only discussion any other do you want to leave it to where if they want to come in they can well of course they can always do that because they can prep early but I guess what I'm my confusion is how much changing in the classroom do they do over break oh my from Janu from Christmas to January well a lot it's not as impactful probably for the second for the high school

251it's they're starting an entirely new semester with brand new classes brand new students that's right the yeah so they're coming in on that first day back for your high school teachers on the 6th they're walking into it's the first day of school it's it's all new classes all new uh ready to go well they had to have gotten their classrooms ready before uh in December before they went on Christmas break but they are adults and can decide whether they're responsible enough to get their classrooms done or I don't know we're trying to build morale because it's you know we're losing teachers and this is a cheap I don't want to say cheap way because it costs us to do this because is it paid holiday oh yeah it doesn't change it doesn't change their salary

252no yeah so it is it is an expense to consider oh okay any other comments or discussion all right um I need a vote there has been a motion in a second that um we take the the uh PLC days for the um High School to be the same as the elementary which is showing in yellow there which um the dates were already identified by Mr Frank and then also two days off on January 2nd and 3rd of 2025 so we'll take the individual vote we'll start with Miss Hoover y or nay yay Mr rolls yay Mr Frank yay M Davis [Laughter] yay um well I'm going to be a bad guy and I'm going to wrote nay it doesn't matter but it's just that um again the comments I've already made motion passes all

253right those days are off and then also the PLC days so I am happy for the teachers though all right let's move on you get all that Dr Boyd okay all right we're moving on to um student enrollment yeah so I just wanted to publicly bring to the board's Attention our student enrollment numbers as of August 28th this is an uh an important time in the calendar this is after the school year started and we allow 10 days for no shows we settle everyone that's transferred out everyone that's transferred in and once the dust is settled in the school year is underway what you'll see there is enrollment numbers across the division so I think it's important uh to mention that uh this school year compared to last school year uh we have 11 additional

254high school students that's 11 more than we had last year we have 42 additional middle school students this year over last year we have 37 less students at King George Elementary School although that's really rather beneficial because we if we moved our preschool over there so they lost 37 students and enrollment but gained 110 preschool students at pic Elementary School we're up 26 students from last year and at sealston elementary school we were up 34 students from last year so across the division we are up 76 students from last school year so that's that's a decent in one school year for King George County uh you can start to see that uh as as we grow it's beginning to have that exponential curve we are up 76 students just over one school year it's important

255to note when we're talking about uh the need for a school uh and and those conversations correct just wanted to bring that to the board's attention any questions or comments on this report thank you Dr Boy Yes Dr boy if you don't mind please yes sir uh on the last paragraph there it's got preschool and Head Start enrollment for 2425 yes sir we got head start with 26 and then we got a group together VPI ecse peer models and speech service can can you break those down can you break that 84 down I mean how many students are there under VPI okay and how many are you know special early child or special education I'll send that to the board in an email okay thank you anything else all right let's move on um Mr

256rolls you want to talk about the budget from uh related to the meeting we had and the joint meeting and right there was a motion there to go back and at the budget situation in August to see about maybe getting some more of the money that we had hoped to have for our budget that we lost on account of that I guess you call it a accounting air um about a million dollar short so Dr Bo mind just saying yes I certainly can update the board on that so if you remember uh once we worked out the error in the budget our budget request to the Board of Supervisors was 1.7 million the Board of Supervisors at that joint meeting awarded the school board an additional $7,000 uh what that covered was the increase in

257cost and the salary increase basically uh what we did not receive in the budget request at that time based on that allocation was the additional staff positions we requested and you remember the um initiative we had to adjust the compression at step six in our pay scale neither one of those the new positions or the compression were satisfied in the last budget which is a Delta of about a a million dollars if I think Mr sullin has asked for that a number of times so the new positions in the last budget requests were $718,000 and the compression step was $397,000 I believe so at that work session and again I think this is where those minutes get a little muddled uh there was talk about coming back to the Board of Supervisors uh in the

258fall or August was mentioned at one time to request our end of thee fund balance to carry over to this school year to make up for the shortfall in the budget request in speaking with our financial secretary and the financial secretary in the county that's Sher Williams for us levita cob in the county uh we need to wait until the audit is complete which they're working on right now it's I think in in process once the audit is complete that will give us the final fund balance that is remaining for uh King George County schools once we know that sum we will take that sum to the Board of Supervisors the board will request superintendent goes to the Board of Supervisors request that sum uh along with the the list of items that weren't satisfied

259in the budget the point I made to you guys um or the point that's important to make now is the items that were not satisfied in the budget were recurring cost staff positions are recurring costs they're funds that are needed year-over-year the compression step is going to be a cost that is recurring year-over-year my concern is if we request our carryover funds let's say it's $500,000 just a a rough sum that I believe is going to be a one-time lump sum to the school division uh that year it's not going to increase our operating budget by $500,000 meaning I don't know that it would be wise to to uh solicit new positions or adjust the compression step with that money at this point in time if you follow me uh it might be better to

260take a look at one-time expens that we will have in our budget um in our budget requests this coming year or in this current budget request uh stuffs like stuff like uh technology items stuff like CIP projects that we're not satisfied um textbooks this is a big adoption year for textbooks we're looking at some different options there but nevertheless this year is our adoption year for math textbooks and English textbooks probably our biggest adoption year for textbooks uh so I just put that to the board this evening that uh that's the process that's where it sits right now I'm certainly happy to go forward to the Board of Supervisors and request those funds uh hopefully I've made it clear as to you know some of those recurring costs that we need to be very cautious

261and considerate of uh and and any feedback from the board would be appreciated on on how we might want to go about requesting those funds and and using those funds Al I think my understand that meaning was that yeah we all realiz it's kind of like a unfortunate situation where I think the board supervisor was trying to help us out as much as possible they gave us 700,000 they were going to try to give us more later so I would have that conversation with them I think very likely the reasonable thing would be to consider whatever additional money they gave us to have been part of this fiscal Year's budget not so we could just treat it like that's that's a baseline now we don't have to treat like it's a onetime payment so but

262that's a discussion have so so I'm clear and I understand what you're saying so whatever the fund balance is at the end of this year request that they increase our operating budget by that amount I mean they'll they're going to give us how much of that they're going to give us and then it's just a matter of the presentation for next year whether we just you know treat that all as if it was awarded I mean in the end it was all awarded for this fiscal year so we can just that the Baseline for this past fiscal year when we're comparing for we're asking for for next fiscal year understand that that would be my point this money in the first place you know if if we' have filled all the positions if we' done

263everything there wouldn't be much of a fund balance if everything would have been filled and done there wouldn't be much of a fund balance you're you're you're always gonna have a there'd be some but I'm talking about you know better yeah or we wear orange jumpsuits I understand but but still a lot of that fund balance had to do with um recurring costs that we didn't have because that those positions weren't filled or or whatever what I'm saying is so it's in a little bit of agreement with Mr rolls was saying I hear what you're saying is I would like to see us presented to the Board of Supervisors that I don't know how much of a percentage but definitely a percentage of this money was supposed to be for recurring costs that we did

264not we did not use because we didn't fill certain positions this was TC's point and so if we say okay we may use these for recurring costs but then you need to understand Board of Supervisors next year this really is more of a baseline like Mr rolls was saying in other words I'm just giving further explanation from Mr RS point is it was budgeted in the first place for a portion of that I don't know how much maybe half of it was for this recurring cost that we did not use because we didn't fill certain positions so I'm agreeing with you it's just that that there's a reasoning to understand this wasn't just simply one-time things and we have this fund balance these really were some of this recurring cost that was a part of

265our a significant part of our bud so I think we're kind of saying the same thing in the sense that whatever the fund balance is from last fiscal year add it to our current operating budget this year and make sure that we request from the Board of Supervisors that this now becomes the the budget allocation from the Board of Supervisors going forward because if that's the case then we can explore recurring costs staff positions the the compression step things of that nature but if it's not if it's just a one-time lump sum then we're in a position where we have to use it for one-time expenses and then understanding though that this is where some of that fund balance came from in the first place all right any other comments Mr Frank Davis yeah I

266mean I like where we're heading I I I might have already spoke to a Board of Supervisors to kind of get it out there because I forgot about that until I read your email Matt so good call out or Mr Mr um RS but I think that what one thing to bring up to the Board of Supervisors is that we did present them our original budget it didn't change from this year just because we didn't get the money so we hurt because we didn't get the money so going forward that last year's budget should be our operating budget that we put in without knowing the mistake you see what I'm saying because we're also asking for a new school a new preschool and then we got to hire new teachers and we're gonna so we're

267going to extend our budget a million and then we're also going to ask for $57 million not including staff and furniture all right that's good thank you any more comments all right thank you Dr Boyd um hopefully you got some marching orders there yes all right and again we're all we're still waiting for the it's all predicated on the A on the uh the completion of the audit the audit right okay Dr Boyd superintendent report oh no committee let's I'm sorry committee reports I don't I don't have any M Davis no Mr rolls oh I understand our new CGS director is off and running but no meetings until next month on that silver I don't have any um I don't have any either I believe the ATI um they cancelled that meeting so we didn't

268have a meeting I wouldn't have been able to attend anyway I was in Texas but um all right um next superintendent report uh yes so I'm happy to report we've covered a lot of stuff tonight but we we hadn't said that um we have 10 staff members that are interested in pursuing the CDL the bus driving standing uh so so we're moving forward with that that's 12 now it's up to 12 all right we're up to 12 now uh so that's wonderful if we can you know it's the same old story we have buses but we don't have bus drivers so if we can do some creative things then we should be able to provide a lot of opportunity for our students so that's wonderful if you guys hadn't had a chance or if our

269community hasn't had a chance to see our uh September newsletter that was created by Miss Higgins it was a great great newsletter showing a lot of wonderful things that's going on in our school division from every single school and across the division so I would encourage everyone to really take a look at that great pictures great verbage uh as far as what's going on I wanted to update the board we did do the uh I think it was last week in our preschool tours Friday night we had about 15 folks show up I think Saturday we had maybe 25 folks interested in in seeing both the preschool and the um retired Middle School I think from all estimations right now the um from what I've gathered the CIP was approved by the Board of Supervisors

270but it was resent because there was another consider ation for a parks and wck project so I think it's kind of on the table right now but I say that because I I think the top priority in the CIP this year is to level the old Middle School it sounds like that's happening um but again that's the final decision of the Board of Supervisors but it sounds like that's happening um I want to REM remind the board that the Fall Festival is on October 12th so put that on your calendars typically um it'll be it's your first time around right first time around first time around so what we'll do is I'll give you further detail when we get closer to it but we uh set up in the back of my truck I give

271you a ton literally almost literally of candy and uh as we work our way down uh route three you will have a ton of kids basically asking for candy and it's a good time it's a great you guys I don't need to talk about as long as it's not rain as long as it's not raining last year it was it started pouring right when we uh jumped in the back of the truck and I never knew how much kids love candy when I saw I mean it was pouring down raining and we were throwing candy and the kids were making a dam on the curb so that they could catch the candy as it was right working its way towards the gutter and eating it so it it was interesting but anyways October 12th is

272the Fall Festival and as we get closer to it I'll make sure you guys know when and where we're meeting we typically meet at Smoot Library I'll give you the times and all of that but make sure it's on the calendar and then finally um this year uh with Dr Wright our instructional staff and our secondary principles we've been doing learning walks and they've been amazing I mean going into our schools and seeing our teachers teach is um it's just so refreshing to see the great things that are going on in our schools and our classrooms and it really brings you back to why we're here doing these things uh and it's just been a wonderful wonderful experience so um I just wanted to make sure you guys knew that uh we're on top of

273things instructionally and and really there's a lot of wonderful things going on in our school division in terms of instruction so thank you Mr chair and that's all I have for this evening all right um student rep sorry it's 10:25 but um we'll start with um the Middle School okay so a lot of what I have today is uh preparation for data collection over the next few months that I can present in future meetings uh I brainstormed a little bit with Dr nice on Thursday for ideas um and the biggest thing we come up with was a Google form that would be sent out to the entire Middle School and it' basically be a student survey and they would rate their approval of different like you know like the phone policy and the bus policy

274um the new grading policy like the 70% product 30% process uh and then under it will be a little space for comments or questions or anything they had uh and you know it might be sent out monthly or whatever and we would some some of the questions would be the same each time so we could track the approval and other questions will be different as you know we find more things to you know track the progress up um so yeah the three that we decided for the first Google form which I'm not sure exactly when Dr ni plans to send it out might be you know next week uh again the the phone policy uh the bus policy and how it's affected the dismissal policy at the middle school and then uh the new grade

275waiting policy um I'm in you know um I've begun reaching out to the sports coaches for The Middle School um because I noticed Chad had some stuff about sports in his report last meeting um but you know they just you know they just started so I don't have that much right now but by the next meeting I should have you know a little bit more on that uh though I will say um very recently lights have been new lights have been installed on the girl softball field uh because previously they could not play after dark because they did not have working lights uh which meant you know to be fair the um the baseball field and the boys uh baseball also couldn't go late because it wouldn't be fair to the girls uh but now

276both can you know go later if they need to because now we have lights so that's nice uh the last thing I wanted to touch on was the um Middle School um superintendent uh student advisory committee meeting we had on Friday I think it was really productive I think uh we talked a lot I think it was like maybe a dozen or so kids we had sixth seventh and eighth graders and we you know we talked about um the phone policy we talked about the bus policy the lunch policy because you know we've we've had this problem especially in in my grade and eighth grade but like you know just as all all the grades had this problem during lunch these students will constantly be moving around uh like not they're not allowed to like

277they they'll go table hopping uh to talk to all their different friends and we want to give because like the majority of students don't have a problem so we want to give the majority of students who are doing fine some freedom but we can't just open seating to everybody because some people would abuse that and misuse it and so the idea that I'm sure you all know we've come up with was uh you know the uh lunch pods where we group uh the like three teachers would go into a pod and their students could sit together and you could sit with anyone in your pod in the hopes that if you didn't have anyone you wanted to sit with in your class there'd be somebody there's at Le there would at least be somebody in

278your pod that you would want to sit and talk with I can't give too much on that right now because as of as of you know originally the plan was to activate the ponds so we could move around between any like any of the three teachers right after um the the I Labor Day uh break but that didn't materialize I'm not sure exactly why but as of right now we're still stuck at our one teacher but hopefully pretty soon assuming we can you know the grade can demonstrate that they you know are appropriate enough and you know have the the ability to to accept this without misusing it we should hopefully uh move into the Pod system shortly and that's all I have for now thank you very much all right good evening I'm San

279Nelson I'm the other um student representative alongside with Chad so to kick off the school year starting on September 4th we had our all-in day this was a really great experience we had a phenomenal uh guest speaker come on in we had great outdoor activities outside on the football field this is a great way for all the students to interact with one another and get excited for the year uh further our football team is doing great as well as our other fall sports are off to a great start this Friday we have our first home football game which everyone's super excited about the theme will be camouflage so you guys should come out we're your best camouflage and support our team um to address a Hot Topic about phone policy right now everyone's doing pretty

280well just adjusting to uh this policy it's still in the works people are still trying to you know get used to it uh especially on a communication level but it's going we're figuring it out um also we have homecoming that's coming up on September 28th everyone's really excited about this we'll be holding this at the high school it's always a great time students are getting you know really pumped up talking about their dresses their plans so that's really exciting to look forward to um further RTC we super excited to be here with you all tonight and to share a little bit of our program with each of you um and in closing I'm really excited to and thankful to be a part of the board this year and uh serve alongside Chad so thank you

281for your time and I look forward to Future meetings thank you Mr Frank I just want to thank all our teachers and the staff for all they do out there they do a tremendous job thank you Davis I put my step away so I'm just going to keep it short um I just want to thank you our new members on the board our student Representatives um you're doing great because this is your first year right and so you have you have as far as public speaking you have two bright examples of how great or how to who to follow in a as far as your public speaking abilities like I'm learning from them so um good job for being a good example to the younger ones coming up behind you and thank you for having

282the courage to to step up and be our student representative in coming tonight miss Hoover well thank you also to the student reps you guys are doing a great job um and I wanted to thank Mrs Davis and Mrs Rano for their presentations because it's always wonderful to hear positive things that are going on in the school and they're doing great things um one other thing is I got these two Flyers at the YMCA last week and I just thought I'd mention that there's a help build an anti-bullying parade float opportunity this Saturday at the kingb Learning Center from 1 to two um and the King jge Learning Center I just learned is down Route three uh where the driving school is and the kind of close to Shiloh Baptist Church that's the old Shiloh

283Elementary School I learned something new and then there's also um a second annual Candlelight vigil on Friday November 15th from 6:00 to 7 at Cel Brooks Park um so I just thought I would promote those and thank you everyone Mr Rose also welcome our our student reps and uh Savannah thanks for coming tell us about njr RC I'm always so impressed about work you guys do sering the community and the schools it's really impressed with you do it's really just I think a point of Pride for King George just how well you guys do I already right down work based learning a bit already so that was really good um and then I do want to mention the C the community eligibility program it's kind of a hard one but I got to share with

284you I do have kind of an unsettled feeling about it because I definitely would be for it if we were going to have to pay for it a bunch out of our local funds which is what I thought it was going to be looking at the slides for coming here and I know it's easy think well it's free money of course you got to take it but it's not free money and we federal government took that money and um and so on one side I guess it's gone so we it makes sense just compete to get as much of it back as we can for stuff like this but important thing to also share is that think part of the goal here is to produce productive citizens who are ready to vote and be constructive

285contribute to Society and also be self-reliant so they are not dependent on the government and they can hold the government accountable and you can't really hold the government accountable if you're dependent on the government to feed you it's it's really kind of undercuts you and uh so it's it's a tough spot to be in right it's why Federal spend just keeps growing out of control because everyone just wants the free money and you you got to step back look at historically you see LBJ with this Great Society we're going to pay for make poty go away and what's happened really food stamps are just sared since that it's made more government dependence and it's kind of creating a problem that we're now we're going to spend more money to solve the problem that we created

286so that's a concern uh so I don't have a great quick fix for that but I mean that's just something I think we need to think about it's not maybe so much of a no brander as we might be tempted to think uh on a lighter note I did enjoy having an extra week off between board meetings with the five day five weekend month in this past uh month so what does a school bro member do with his extra Monday well okay so this guy I I went and got some friends together we watched um uh educational documentary naturally called called uh God bless Bitcoin and it's it's excellent so even if you don't care about Bitcoin I mean it's it's so good it's covers economics history um Civics and it brings all together especially

287about how doarian governments tend to grow take root and the relationship with that with money it's so good that I actually would love for all King George students to have seen it by the time they graduate from King George schools I think that would be really beneficial thing to our community and uh in fact I I recommend it to all citizens to watch that documentary again it's King George I'm sorry not King George it's God bless Bitcoin it's available for free on YouTube all these folks got together and and Don don't their time and money to make it happen just because they believe in it so much some of the biggest names that you probably recognize that participated are RFK Jr and uh Mark cubin many others uh so again it's YouTube for free uh

288and they have their own website too God bless bitcoin.com with probably lots of other options where you can see it okay the next couple things are ones that I cut out for time last last meeting so but I'm going to hit them this time time and ironically I don't know if it was any any earlier tonight than it was then but I'm going to just do it so um so again this is from last time so I saw an article before last meeting that was about Title Nine that's a big deal for us in education obviously uh lot of money comes through that so it's good for us to track what's in the news there and so what I read is that the Supreme Court just before the last meeting voted five to four to

289reject the uh Biden Harris's administration's emergency request to enforce the utile 9 protections that include transgender students uh and particularly Provisions that would allow biological men to access women's bathroom locker rooms in certain States the rule affected from August 1 so over a month ago now interprets discrimination on the basis of sex to include gender identity which has been contested by more than two dozen Attorneys General including our very own Jason Ms here in Virginia that would have been a huge impact for us to uh deal with here and Countrywide really been scrambling to make sense of that we haven't had to because of the injunction so far and last uh meeting I did talk briefly about uh separation of church and state and and prepping for that I I did go back and for

290the first time I read the U letters between the Denbury Baptist Church and Thomas Jefferson where that phrase comes from and there's a line from that that's actually very much applicable to this Title Nine topic so I'm GNA read that for you it's it's striking just how very literate people were about the Constitution back then and what it meant and how to apply it to their lies and to stand up for for it as well they wrote to Thomas Jefferson sir we are sensible that the president of the United States is not the national legislator and also sensible that the national government cannot destroy the laws of each state so I thought well someone should tell the Biden Harris Administration that that it doesn't get the legislate by changing the meaning of words and laws

291to suit his preferences fact article one section one of the Constitution which is literally the very first thing after the Preamble in the Constitution so you can't miss it if you make any attempt to read the Constitution at all it says that all legis all that's all all legislative powers here and granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States not the president so I guess those attorneys generals General did essentially inform the administration that it's overstepped as constitutional Authority but this is the same Administration who CDC unconstitutionally pushed masking on school buses among other Co era con constitutional violations with the apparent attitude of Constitution be damned we'll do what we want until the court stop us so here we go again and uh some might think that's an appropriate political statement

292but it's not I don't oppose the administration's actions because of its political affiliation but because it repeatedly and bracingly has violated the Constitution that we all have sworn oath to and so it's our duty to call such violations out luckily we have been forced to take action on Title 9 yet but this is a worsening trend and it's for this board we have to be ready to resist be aware of this uh the only thing stopping this now is the injunction as I I mentioned from the federal court and that's only temporary by by Nature the uh Co area booes may have caught us all off guard but there's no excuse not to be ready going forward so insisting on the Constitution is the duty of all elected officials and all citizens really not the

293responsibility of the courts what it's worth I would have very much like to have called out the massan school buses overreach earlier but maneuvering on a previous board kept it off the agenda so we weren't able to do that and I skimmed the suit that Virginia joined uh against the federal government and it notes as part of the argument that the Commonwealth of Virginia is a sovereign state and to that I say amen and the day we stop defending the sovereignty is the day that we lose it that would be a totally unacceptable outcome and as far as educating the Next Generation it's important that we realize that learning about the original content of the Constitution it's better student rep just left it's not just merely an academic exercise that we do for a grade

294on our test it's vital information that we all need as United States citizens to recognize and actively push back against constitutional encroachments that have been happening for over a century and growing exponentially worse in recent decades it's important that we all wake up at our precious and vulnerable Constitution before it's too late without people knowing of their and honoring their constitution is just an impotent piece of parchment we the people must know and defend it or it has no meaning or power so lastly to this board I say we must practice what we preach whether or not this board takes defending the Constitution seriously speaks much more loudly than what's taught in the classroom so just say that as encouragement and if that wasn't enough controversy for tonight like I said I uh had a

295couple more thoughts on separation of church and state but I'm going to keep that fairly short and just the point I think past four meetings has shown that um we need some training on this topic several Educators have even come and highlighted their confusion on the matter at some Schoolboard meetings I'm not just concerned about that but also the ones who don't speak up and maybe are intimidated by so many Supreme Court rulings that it's you don't know what to do and it's easy it's just understandable to be uneasy and just unsure about what's appropriate and what's not and then just unnecessarily self-censor so because who wants to really go through those court cases to try to make sense of them so I'd like to emphasize that you do not lose your religious freedom simply

296by walking into a public school but there are things you have to keep in mind it's actually a much less restrictive environment than most people imagine some training has been provided so I'm grateful for that if anyone continues to have questions and concerns please push those up through the principles and the superintendent as needed to get answered despite my concerns about the constitutionality of the Department of Education I've actually put out really good guidance on this topic much easier to read that a bunch of Court opinions and there's some commercially available training on it too if more is needed or desired I understand we're going to be putting some links up on the school website to get easily get to those resources and I encourage all employees to take advantage of them so bottom line

297is there's no need to feel uneasy or uncertain about this topic since there are good resources really available to answer them that your typical questions and so the final thing I have to hit is um that the put it mildly last meetings vote about the inappropriate books in the middle school was disappointing to me and many others but it was also a catalyst to me to think about the fact that we each only have so much time on this Earth so we must use it judicious as judiciously as possible where we can do the most good there's no sorage of battle to pick these days second so a Man simply must pick where he needs to choose and choose well I doubt that if someone were appointed in my place on this board for the

298last year or so of my term that it make much difference if any to the outcome of significant votes also a key commitment I made in my campaign literature was to guard students hearts and Minds the book appeals were the most direct tested my sincerity about that on my literature I also referen a quote from the most ban booked of all time and by banned I mean possessing that book could get you imprisoned or killed in some countries I don't mean ban like it's just not available for free in any library that you might want to go to so the quote in that literature was from Matthew 18:6 I won't read it but look it up uh it describes in terrifying terms what will happen to those who mislead or corrupt children like I said

299it's terrifying it's something I don't even want to mess with at all I even play around the edges of that so taking all that together I feel compelled to resign from the King George School Board effective one week from today at noon if anyone is disappointed by that or thinks that I'm quitting simply because I lost a 4 to one or three2 to vote um like I've lost lots of votes it's not that's not why uh so I've already given my reasons but I want to emphasize that I believe in never stopping to fight for what's right and I encourage everyone to never grow weary of doing good but sometimes doing that most good requires a new battle or a change in tactics for some it might be right for them to mercilessly press the

300attack for me it's time to vivot to a different theater at least for a season nevertheless don't expect me to completely disappear from school bar meetings I just won't be sitting up here anymore so to everyone who spoke up about this important issue and about this Insidious threat to the kids and our community I want to encourage you that your efforts are not in vain youve made more of an impact than perhaps you can tell that you have been an honor to serve on this board for nearly three years it's been wonderful getting to see many things that the King George school has do well and are hardworking and caring folks that make that all happen thanks for what you do it's been amazing to work with you I count each Schoolboard member as a

301personal friend and so I'm sorry for and I thank you for that friendship and I'm sorry for any heartache or trouble thism cause you may be so bold I asked that in considering my replacement that you respect the will of the James Monroe voters who decid to El Me by choosing someone in line with the principles and values that I campaigned on that I have represent on this board extent that you can I you generally know what those are but I will list just a couple uh please select someone who who knowledgeable about the Constitution who will unapologetically insist on supporting and defending it I think picking a veteran would help with that second as a lifelong learner I do love education but not having a professional background in education I think think in fact

302has been valuable to bring that outside perspective on things as you just some diversity on the board uh so there of course is a lot more but I think you know and ultimately the choice is yours and so I'll leave that leave it at that except to again ask that you respect the will of the James Monroe voters that elected me I'd like to leave you with the final thought that the most also from the most banned book of all time that's been banned because of its power that because of its power is feared by T the world over it's from Philippians 4:8 reads family Brothers whatever is true whatever is Honorable whatever is just whatever is pure whatever is lovely whatever is commendable if there's anything anything is excellent if anything is worthy of

303Praise think about these things I pray that we make that the focus of King Georg education all I have well Mr rolls I'm sorry to hear that it's definitely unexpected I don't have a whole lot to say after all that except that um really appreciated your attendance on this board and you're going to be sorely missed I respect your decision but I'm disappointed by it sorry to hear that um and we will do our best to um appoint someone who is um has some of the things that you recommended thank you uh wanted to thank the student Reps for their um job well done and then also the presentations that were made it's already been mentioned several times might also mention that in the the two books that were that we've been talking about that's

304been quite controversial is that we the board did receive all the appeals and the board did read all of the um all of the related literature whether it's from the appeal who made that those were all read by the board members or whether it was from the administrators from Dr Boyd um we I did not read all those publicly but the board member had read all of the materials um also um uh thank the board for um this evening sorry that we've run so late um but um appreciate it and again it's a little depressing to end uh based on Mr R's decision do I have a uh a motion to adjourn I move that we adjourn second all those in favor say I I I we are adjourned