001[Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] e e meeting is called to order the meeting is called to order uh item is electronic participation by a school board member uh the member has discussed with me and they meet the guidelines for electronic participation so is there a motion to approve the electronic participation motion second um Mr Connor and Dr Tinsley and Mr Andrews um any discussion Madame clerk would you please call the role Mr Conor yes Mr jilo yes Mr Andrews yes Dr yes Mrs Preston yes mral yes Mrs La yes Dr T yes motion thank you Dr day you on board you're there next is pledge uh today we are honored to have Dr Tinsley he is a veteran on a Veterans Day please uh if you can carry the pledge pleas all right join me
002in the Pledge of Allegiance please I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible liberty and justice for all thank you Dr Kinsley thank you for all your service and next one is approval of agenda is there a motion to approve the agenda M motion to modify the agenda yes sir uh um from point of discipline I'd like to add uh um that we discuss change to JD jgd jge to include uh another uh condition to be referred for long-term suspension okay so how about when we come to that policy we'll okay modify that okay it wasn't I didn't see it jdg is not there I didn't see it if it is then we'll come to it yeah okay
003during that discussion I promise just remind me sure don't forget and run over fair enough it's not on there so you want to add that I'd like to add that all right so is there MO is there a second to that motion second Mr Connor any discussion Madame cler would you please call U uh the role for amended agenda Mr Conor yes Mr Julio yes Mr Andrews yes Dr Dave Dr G yes Mrs Preston yes Mr depal yes Mrs Lor yes Dr CH yes motion carries thank you uh in I think we have a pretty lengthy agenda today so I'm going to skip the chair comments and move over to uh principal goal presentations Dr cand want to turn over to Pew so she can get us kicked off with the principal presentation thank Dr
004Copeland um as you may remember on September uh 17th the work session the first group of principles presented some of their goals and information about what they're working on and focusing on um the second group today cohort B is here to present to you just u a brief overview of some of the things that they are working on um and they'll come back um mid year probably February um to give you an update on some of those things so we will go in the order as it's uh listed um I just want to remind principles that was in a communication um keep your presentations short um and Schoolboard members if you have questions for a specific uh principal or about a specific school or practice please write those questions down um and then I will
005um take those questions from you I will work with the principles to get you the answers and we'll send those back out to you uh versus taking time today for a Q&A session all right so first up is Lori McVicker and Tris Marshall from RS welcome hello good evening everyone I am Lori mfer the principal of RSP Elementary School Travis Marshall the assistant principal at RS pay so imagine if you will that you have a line of 29 dominoes lined up in front of you and the first Domino is only 5 millimeters tall each Domino after that grows one and a half times the size of the Domino that comes before that one by that math the first Domino is the size of a Tic Tac and the 29th Domino is the size of the
006Empire State Building the laws of physics show that the tiniest Domino can create a chain reaction big enough to knock down the largest domino while this may seem like a silly comparison RS P has an Empire sized or Empire State Building size domino in the form of student achievement simply put we want every student in our building to succeed so how do we knock over that Domino by knocking over every Domino that comes before it at RS pain we have four other dominoes that may appear ludicrously small to the untrained eye however each Domino holds the power to knock down the larger task ahead ultimately the goal of student achievement must be preceded by the momentum of the smaller dominoes falling before it our five dominoes are simple and they fall in this order to
007begin the chain of reaction we have the smallest Domino and also the only Domino that requires a little push and that is relationships the second Domino is engagement and the third is attendance the fourth is behavior and the fifth Domino our Empire State Building student achievement with all of that on the table we wanted to briefly take some time to talk about the efforts that the RS pain team is putting into each of these dominoes so let's first talk about relationships that is number one we all know in education that if don't have strong relationships with our students and our parents and the community then that is number one you have to have that is the foundation and so we have a really amazing office team that just um holds to hospitality and customer service
008as number one and that's just the beginning we did something the last this is a second year of something called service learning projects um that we have had some amazing community members come behind us and partner with us and help us to to have our students experience being able to go out into the community and see what is an opportunity for them to serve others and come outside of themselves and see the opportunities that they have and so that has built some really strong relationships across the school with community members with Community organizations and with our parents who have also partnered with us to do that and then another big one is thinking about even things as small as open house like where we had the typical open house this year we really wanted to
009change that to bring the community members that have been helping us and how do we do a block party with those community members involved and really make it um just a dragon family across the board including our community and all of our neighbors so our next Domino up is engagement and rs Pan's been tackling that by shifting from worksheets to Hands-On learning uh and then we are focused on manipulatives being in every single classroom and engagement protocols and focused on getting kids excited to be in the building in in the classroom excited to learn happy to be there attendance we all know attendance is a huge thing we want students to be in school and one of the we have a great attendance team that has really increased social media presence as much as possible
010um as well as things going out to families consistently and then we have done an initiative last year and this year called show up days um the students get really really excited everybody gets on the intercom and says show up day and everybody screams and they get a prize if they are there that day for the show up day so that is something that has increased attendance on those days we want that to continue with others as well and our fourth Domino which is behavior um a lot of people might think that this might be number one uh but you have to knock down these other dominoes to get to Behavior Uh so in RS pain we're looking at uh giving kids dragging dollars for exceptional behavior and doing what needs to be happening in
011class and staying engaged and staying focused um we also have the dragon wagon that comes around that allows those kids to spend those Dragon dollars on cool little prizes and trinkets and uh fun stuff throughout the uh throughout the month we also have the uh dragon Pride events that we have at our school regularly uh and that is something that is a PBIS initiative that focuses on kids who are you know staying you know referral free and doing exceptional things throughout the month um we also have our Awards assemblies and the bike program we have social emotional learning videos that get pushed out those include staff and students in those videos so we try and include everybody throughout that process uh we have a mindfulness program that we're piloting at RS pan as well and
012we are pushing that primarily in the mornings and that is that is focused towards uh deep breathing and squared breathing and getting kids ready for the day uh to get rid of that that anxiety they have about coming to school sometimes uh that also occurs during transitional times um we also have our red carpet walks and this is something near and dear to my heart um I tend to get a little over excited when we have positive referrals in our building uh I literally roll out a red carpet from the office and I go absolutely crazy um I shout I Hoot and Holler and then kids walk down the red carpet and into an office that is filled with people that are clapping and cheering and they get a prize out of the treasure box
013and then they carry on with their day but it is a super super cool experience for the kids who go above and beyond in our building um and on that note uh on the behavior side of things we crunched some numbers the other day we are at a 32% decrease compared to quarter one Daya last year as far as Behavior incidents go all right so where are we with student achievement so if we look at it I'm just going to throw out some numbers so our English academic AC achievement for all students is increased 6% um our Gap group of black students is increased 2% increase for our Gap group of economically disadvantaged students 2% and our um our Hispanic students increase 46% so in math our overall increase was 20% and then increase for
014our Gap group of black students was 18% and then increase for our economically disadvantaged students is 26% % and then increase for our Gap group of Hispanic students was actually 114% for that group from one year to the next so what steps do we need to take to be able to continue um we need to increase the capacity and knowledge of our teachers or what we have done I'm sorry so we increased capacity and knowledge of our teachers we did a lot of Summer work we were able to get a school Improvement Grant did some summer work with backwards design cross-curricular lesson planning engagement strategies we also have been doing some professional books on trauma and engagement and um just a tremendous amount of different things and we had a really really great turnout of
015of Staff this summer um and then we work in plc's and we look really we're going to be doing some workshops on lesson planning alignment high yield teaching strategies because we do have a very young teaching staff um and so continuing to build their capacity is one of the big things and so we we have continued work to do and so we're going to continue on all of that those different things that we have been doing um so thank you for the opportunity to share and um about our awesome so we look forward to sharing with you in the spring thank you thank you so much thank you um next is um sandes Elementary School drick wack and Josh Boyd and then after that pal Monro queue up the welcome good evening Schoolboard Members First
016I would like to uh introduce to you all who may not know me just kidding just kidding uh Derek wack proud principal of sanduski elementary school I think I've seen a few of you before uh thank you for this opportunity to come and just speak briefly about uh sanduski and where we stand where we're going and the positive things that are going on uh with me uh is my trusty sidekick uh Dr Boyd uh he's not a doctor yet but I definitely call him Dr Boyd couldn't do what we do without the support that he's providing this year and so I am going to stick to uh the three to four minutes that was uh shared um we have a lot of work to do and we know that looking at the scores uh you
017all have already seen the scores in math science reading uh as well as social studies that come out the attendance scores uh and so I won't bore you with going into those details as you already have that information for you I will share with you that science is a level three this year and so that's a major Focus for us uh for the for this uh year and so we're digging into professional learning communities we're going in every week talking about science and each grade level looking at the standards digging deeper into the standards to see making sure that we're digging deep enough and providing the rigor uh not just with the Hands-On materials but also how they're being assessed what are they being assessed on making sure that lines up with what the so
018is going to ask them and so not only will you see Hands-On materials in uh in the hands of students uh during the day but you'll also see in those assessments making sure that they are moving that they are manipulating on the screen because they don't have to do that in person they have to do it on that screen and so we want to make sure that uh what we're digging into what we're presenting the children on a daily basis is is lining up with how they're going to be assessed on the so so that's our professional Learning Community work uh the other thing that we're doing is looking at common assessments making sure those assessments line up with what the so is going to look like often times we give an assessment and when
019we get to the end we recognize wait a minute that's not how they're assessed and so if we make sure that our common assessments weekly then our our formative and summative assessments line up with what the so is asking then we're feeling that we're going to have greater results at the end of the year and those are the things that we've done in math and reading last year and we want to continue to do those things in science this year as we saw gains in math and meeting last year Dr Bo is going to speak about some other things we're doing inside and just to piggy back off of what uh Mr wack had said uh we are providing weekly feedback to teachers on their science lesson plans again looking at the rigor looking at
020the alignment um to be able to provide that feedback that they need weekly to be able to make plans um as they go science is so much about doing learning by doing and so one of the things that we're asking teachers to do is to do more stem and uh Project based learning actually getting their hands into that science even looking at trying to get some Partners in on that learning as well but making science relevant and meaningful is critical to them learning science and and doing it then also making sure that our plc's um are uh excuse me our teachers are using um space practice so you have to learn science every day you can't learn it one week here and then go back to it two weeks later you've got to learn it
021every day so that students are able to do an experiment over a couple week period or one week period perod um and so those are just some of the things that we are doing to improve our science scores for all of our students and then the last thing that I'll say is um the motto of sanduski Elementary I won't quiz you all on this but all of you should know what the motto of sanduski elementary school is we do it better together I thought it was going be better but with that being said we want to put some of those materials in the hands of our parents our number one Partners in education and that's how we're going to make the needle move to where it needs to move so we invite you to come
022in as you all have opportunities but when you come in be prepared to get to work so thank you all for your time thank you so much and joining Mr Boyd is uh principal Donna bear from palman Road welcome good evening and thank you for having us here tonight we're so happy to have the opportunity to share with you um the progress that we're seeing upon common row I am very proud of our teachers and our students and I am very pleased to be able to report that we are fully accredited in all areas um English all of our students 91% you look at all students in math we have a 91% rate as well and in science 83% and looking at those scores I am you know ready to celebrate however when you start
023digging just a little bit deeper you start realizing that we still have quite a bit of work to do and we believe at Paul Monroe that all children can learn and all children can achieve and so when you're looking at our data and you look at the percentages for our students with special needs we see a gap and it is our goal this year to decrease the um we want to decrease the achievement Gap in special education so at this time if you look at our reading some of the strategies that we are trying we are trying some um evidence-based reading programs if you walk into our school you would see all of our classrooms using the new Benchmark reading series you would see you fly foundations and you would see Integrity Bridging the Gap
024all of these programs that have a very balanced approach to learning and this is how we're going to make goals with our children we also work very very hard to have our special education teachers teaming with the general education teachers so that we can put our together and we can make a plan for the children that are not achieving at the rate they could be they work together during PLC times they have times during the day where they can sit down together and have a common planning period and we also do quite a few data Dives looking to see where we are being successful and where it is that we need to go to move that needle okay and literacy block if you are in kindergarten through 2 grade you're going to get two and
025a half hours of language arts daily if you're in third through fifth grades you're going to get two hours and this program is very structured you're going to see teachers teaching phonics you're going to see um comprehension lessons with the Benchmark you're going to see lots of writing in response to reading and we're going back and we're looking at that grammar how can we be better writers also we're doing a lot of cross-curricular teaching and what does this mean this means that when you're sitting in science class you're not only learning science content but you're going to learn some reading skills when you're in social studies the same thing we're pulling that reading instruction into science and into social studies you might be in a math class and you might see a teacher with a
026journal saying okay we're going to work in our math journals today so children are writing and they're using those reading skills in math as well because we know reading is everything you need to be able to read to do any type of content data collection special needs teachers have data notebooks they are consistently um looking at their students achievement their monitoring their goals and all of that is being recorded in those data notebooks we want to see all right if is this working do we need to change our strategy we're having those data Dives constantly so if you're familiar with John Hattie's research about student achievement you know that one of the greatest determinants of student achievement is collective teacher efficacy and so I think the collaboration between the general education and special education teachers
027in plc's is so critical that they are pushing into plc's to help Provide support and help make this instructional decisions for the grade level not just as somebody who's adding on but an actual teacher in that grade level is going to be really powerful for our special education teachers using evidence-based practices um such as explicit instruction using research-based strategies um such as number talks and uh building fact fluency are going to be really critical for our students because they're going to be enhancing their problem solving strategies um something that Miss Barett talked about was math journals so math journals promote reflection of their problem solving strategies and makes thinking visible and reinforces those key Concepts through writing and then ultimately making sure that we are collecting accurate data in our data notebooks and then talking
028about those data notebooks in plc's or in admin and teacher meetings as well thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to speak with you tonight thank you than you next we have uh bedord Hills and then Heritage followed by Lorn Elementary good evening I'm Sher steel principal at Bedford Hills and this is our assistant principal sit back there Don ranker you didn't want to come up here that's all right all right so we do a lot of those um things you've already heard so I'll highlight some of the things um that we're doing as Jim Collins says in the book good to great we have the right people in the right seats and we're moving in the right direction and we're all moving in the same direction we call it the Husky way
029every day it means that the more we're consistent the more we're all moving in the same direction pulling together we're going to be successful together so we are a PLC a lot of people talk about PLC as being that time that you meet we call that our achievement collaboration teams which also means act because we're going to act we're going to do something about it we're not just looking at data to look at it we're going to develop plans we're going to individualize we're going to make sure we're using evidence-based research and really do something about what we're doing we function as a PLC that's how we are I invite you to come anytime you can sneak in the back and go in the teachers's uh lounge and you could just listen and hear and
030what you're going to hear is adults talking about children success what can we do what kind of strategies do you have how can we do this better what do you know that I don't that can help me with so everything that we're doing all day is positive it's student centered and we're very solution orientated I invite you to come anytime you go into Kroger you can turn down Mimosa stop in pop in we'd love to have you there um we work not only across grade levels but we also work through the grade levels so when we're talking about math instruction we're making sure we're talking about what kindergarten looks like fifth grade and everything in between to make sure that we're all aligned and really working together um we take our responsibility as a foundation
031of Education very seriously I know on day1 at kindergarten what we do at Bedford Hills matters to the graduation rate at EC glass so um you know we come to work every day with that mindset every day matters every minute matters what learning is going on what can we do and how can we do it better as we all work together so um we also have a wonderful counselor Miss Darby and we are working a whole lot on the attendance piece we have to get our kids to school on time ready to learn when they come in late it not only impacts them it impacts everyone in the classroom because the teacher has to stop they have to get that child orientated all the learning is stopping as children are coming in late so we're
032really trying to get to the root of why are you not in school why can't you get here on time and what can we do to support you so we do do some incentive programs and things like that and you know prizes and that sort of thing is great but really you have to dig into the root why are you not here what's going on is it a mental health issue is it a I can't sleep at night issue you know what what's going on so we can find a solution and really help all our kids get to school so we've been working really hard on that this year and um we of course engage in our families we are going to have a kindergarten through second grade night where we're going to do um
033Orton Gillingham in a bag it's called OG night we're going to teach our parents how to work with their kids at home what they can do we're going to have um 3 through five math night where we're going to give them math manipa lives and different kind of activities I always say the grocery store and the car are two great places to learn when you're driving to soccer and ballet and everything else talk about math talk about reading talk about what you see shapes colors size anything have conversations with your children about what they need to learn so um we really really engage our parents and make them a part of the process we are doing um individual reading plans for every child who is considered high risk on the new vows assessment so parents
034are involved in that process um and we want to make sure they really understand how how they can help their children at home and sometimes it's just be positive about school get your kid to school on time be positive that's very very helpful to us and we appreciate that so um not only do we you know a lot of times we focus on the weaknesses as Educators but at bford Hills we really f focus on the positives we focus on the strengths we come at um challenges from a strength based uh perspective so that we find what are you really good at what are you strong at and how can we use that to help you with your weaknesses and we also have a lot of kids who are coming in ready to learn every
035day so what are we doing to challenge those kids to accelerate their learning to get them up and make learning exciting and engaging and challenging for them every day so we always keep that our Focus but we invite you to come anytime stop by if you let me know you're coming I'll make snacks and I'll get you drinks if you just show up he going to get what I have in my candy jar but come on by we love to have you there so thank you thank you Miss Anderson and Mr Boyers great evening Dr Copeland School Board chair Dr Gupta and extin members of the school board I am Sharon Anderson the proud principal at Heritage Elementary School number one little orange country and I have with me my assistant principal and he just
036had surgery and he's in a lot of pain so he will not s today he'll just stand here and hold some things up for me so thank you for being here at Heritage Elementary School our mission is to help help every student succeed and our vision is every child every day and every way to individual success this evening I will focus on our guiding principles achievement behavior and culture our ABCs of success we are proud that based on our spring so results we are level one in English for all students and level one in math for all students although we are proud of our achievement we are keenly aware of the growth opportunities and challenges that we still have in the area of reading math and science based on our spring so data we are
037a level three for one of our achievement Gap groups in reading and a level three and two of our achievement Gap groups in math and a level three in science to a to address our achievement gaps Heritage is currently implementing targeted strategies in reading math and science that consists of the following professional development around the new literacy Benchmark adoption and effective implementation of the adoption through classroom observations and feedback contined professional collaborative with teachers focusing on unpacking standards identifying essential standards lesson plans and assessment alignments professional staff have established smart goals focused on closing the achievement Gap among lower performing student groups with progress closely monitored by administrators M Anderson could you hold this for a minute let let us make it that quiet this background okay I apologize I was trying to use my
038five minutes [Laughter] wisely go ahead okay continue we're continuing with achievement a balance of computer time and teacher time during their instructional day daily dear time drop everything and read individual reading plans for students in grades K through three that is progress monitored every three weeks grade level common assessments interactive notebooks for English Math and Science student accountability for their achievement each student has their own student data notebooks where they record theirl data as well as grades on assessments so that they can progress monitor their growth in reading math and science consistent and intent intentional classroom observations with specific feedback building teacher efficacy and confidence specifically classified and provisional licensed teachers and teaching reading math and science by attending the division level academies parent involvement to assist in boosting boosting students fact fluency by sending
039home math practice activities and flashcards incorporation of reading math and science into larger parent engagement nights as well as parent small groups to build their confidence in helping their students at home as well as our flashbacks that includes math facts science vocabulary and magnets that include the scientific method effective use of the division science kits handson science experiments quarterly data dumps with staff using the most recent assessments and grades to determine the progress of students and to develop plans if students are underperforming daily daily student participating participation in Allin tutoring and after school intervention groups three days per week for third fourth and fifth grades Behavior B we are proud to report that the number of referrals and out of school suspensions have decreased significantly compared to last year at this time we celebrate this
040achievement and our goal is to sustain this positive trend this year we have continued to implement several strategies lessons and activities to ensure continued success we continue to have Virginia tier system of supports led by Mr borers our assistant principal they meet after school once per month with our restorative clinician Behavior coach and grade level representatives to review behaviors and Implement schoolwide plans and incentives student of the week recognition school counselors focus on bullying during classroom guidance and our Behavior team pushes into classrooms to support behaviors to attempt to keep students in the classroom during instructional time as much as possible C culture at Heritage Elementary we believe that Student Success is a shared responsibility and we are committed to fostering a cultural collaboration among all stakeholders we engage our parents through our HS flash
041programs families learning at school and Home Evening family engagement events as well as small group sessions we also actively engage our community members I.E our mayor school board members local organizations in supporting our students growth we partner with students from Liberty University who work with our second grade students in reading and math one Community One Voice support student attendance future Educators from Heritage High Schools teachers for tomorrow and many dedicated student teachers and reading volunteers all play a vital role in contributing to academic success of our students together we are all in working side by side to ensure that every child thrives in number one what little orange country thank you thank [Applause] you Dr gzowski um Linn elementary school and then the last will be darington Elementary dumbar Middle School and Hutcherson welcome good
042evening I'm liling Kowski principal Elementary School um thank you all for the opportunity to share our school's goals and progress um and plans for this upcoming school year or this current school year um at linor elementary our primary goal this year is to make substantial improvements in literacy um currently we are working under um accreditation with conditions and we believe that literacy is most important um it's our Focus for the year because it is so foundational to all other learning um and future academic success for our students our supporting goals include enhancing mathematics achievement and reducing chronic absenteeism um math performance at Linkhorn is currently at 39% proficiency um which does show a need for targeted growth um particularly among our economically disadvantaged students and students with disabilities additionally 20% of our students were chronically
043absent last year um and we are recog we recognize of course the critical role that attendance plays um in student achievement um and we're working to to um bring that down um hopefully within the state and local goals of 10% um to achieve these goals we've implemented several strategies for Parental engagement we're working to build stronger family connections um through multiple channels um communication um Class Dojo newsletters inperson events um we've introduced a Pep Squad this year um for Pep Squad um positively engaged parents um to help kind of foster a supportive environment for our faculty and staff and our students and help strengthen that connection um between the families and the school um we have Title One family events um book nights for families um we just had our Halloween open house so we're
044trying to make sure that the families come in in a positive way and that the students get to see that um student engagement is another Focus area um we've developed targeted interventions and small group sessions that emphasize vocabulary development comprehension skills and foundational math concepts um areas that the data indicate require more support um our instructional practices um Cent on collaboration and data through professional learning communities our teachers analyze student data develop standards aligned lessons and create common assessments by using data driven instruction we're able to track progress and adapt the teaching strategies to meet the unique needs of our underperforming groups um for example um last year our third grade team worked collaboratively to implement data um driven grouping across the grade level um they saw a reduction of almost 35% of their students
045um not needing Title One services at the end of the school year compared with the beginning of the school year um in addition their um math testing and fall growth assessment the majority of the students the average um were in range one which is the lowest range you can be on those growth assessments um by the end of the school the average students were in range four and just to give you a sense the state indic state sees one band growth as being growth um and those students went from range one to Range four um so we're take trying to take what third grade is doing and kind of size that out for the rest of the building um professional development is also key our teachers participate in ongoing training focusing on evidence-based literacy and
046math interventions um assuring that we're equipping our teachers with effective strategies to help support students um Community engagement also plays a part in our efforts we're continuing our partnership with the University of Lynchburg um they continue to have reading classes that take place in our building um and their students get to work with our students um and both big the big kids at the University and the little kids at our school um get so much out of that connection um getting to work together those hopefully future teachers get to see what it's really like to have an impact on students and to work with students and our students get to have role models that look a little bit more like them at times um to monitor progress and accountability we regularly review literacy and math
047data um especially looking at tracking proficiency tracking growth um especially for our economically disadvantaged and students with disabilities um in closing we're fully committed to trying to help all of our students be the best that they can be and to really succeed as every way possible thank you thank you thank [Applause] you good evening welcome I came in and said I hope they go in alphabetical order so I can go first and then of course I signed up last so I'm last um my name is Jason chamb Bron and I'm in my second year as principal of uh darant Elementary School for Innovation uh we are considered the dynamic uh Duron dolphins and so I'm very proud to be up here um I can say a lot about what's going on at Duron and it'll
048sound a lot like what you heard of um earlier this evening um as a seconde principal one of the things that I wanted to make sure that I did was to um surround myself with people who um have been making a difference and so these principles who you've heard from this evening as well as the ones you heard from a couple of months ago they have wrapped themselves around me to make sure that I know what I need to know so that we can be successful so a lot of what you heard is a lot of what I am doing but I want to talk to you about one that I'm proud of that um we are at level one for um all of our areas um except for Science and I will tell you
049how we'll address that but one of the areas that I was very proud of is attendance when I got to darington our attendance we were at level two and so I made it my business that I wanted to make sure that we um changed that because students have to be there in order to get the instruction and so one of the ways that I did that was by um building a strong relationship with the families and that made a huge difference so we ended last year where we are now at level one with attendance as well as our other academic areas besides science so I'm very proud about that but that is great but we've got to stay there it took work to get there and it's going to take work to stay there and
050so this is what we're doing um as principal I see that it is um very important that we look at three areas to make the success stay one is our parent family and community connections and what that means is one we've got to get the families and the parents to buy into what's going on at Duron so they understand the importance of uh the students seeing their um collaboration with us we're a team and so one we have family members and they have been coming out to all of our events so much so that we now have to do our family events in two shifts because we couldn't house all of the family members that were coming that's a great problem to have and so we have um an event coming up on November 14th
051which you all are invited to come just let me know but um you all are invited to come but that way now parents are hearing the information from me they are now engaged and so now that translated into their students being engaged because the family see our heart not just our heart but they also see our effort in really educating their students and so the parents and the family members are excited so that was one way another way was with our community members a couple of you all or some of you all have been at my school you've read to my students you have shown that you care and we appreciate that thank you very much but also we have other community leaders um sororities we have uh Liberty University we have University of Lynchburg
052they come into my building during the day and they help us to um Supply our students with some uh during the day tutoring where we're able to have intentional small groups that we can actually um work with them on specific areas that they are U finding some trouble with so you can come to DAR on any given day day and you will see many small groups where students are getting that one-on-one attention to help them with their language arts or with their math or with their science and speaking of science we are doing something very intentional to get our science scores up we have something called Saturday science and so what we're doing with that is once a month on the second Saturday our students come to school on a Saturday and it's been absolutely
053fantastic we have Partnerships with Camp Kumbaya we have Partnerships with funquest and we are again digging into the science and it's a lot of handson experiments and things like that so they are actually able to see what they've been learning about in the classroom they are actually able to see it last um two Saturdays ago I went to Camp Kumbaya with our students and they had such a great um time there and one of the students said oh I don't want to leave the woods and we were able to show them that everything you're seeing here is actually at Desi as well and so you can still do science outside of Desi so that's an exciting thing that we're doing we also are looking at our so um standards and Science and we're doing questions
054of the day so we're actually preparing them now to be able to take the s sols coming in the spring so I'm excited about that another way that we are are reaching a student and again this three to five minutes y'all I cannot tell you enough about what we're doing so I hope you're getting it but just come to Desi I promise you um you will see a lot of what's going on but the whole child we've got what I've realized is that before you can teach a child 2 plus two is four you've got to really show them that they are valued and that you value them so we are looking on the inside of our students and how we're doing that is one every single day they're learning um affirmations and they say
055every day and if you've been to Desert you've heard it I am smart I'm important I am hardworking I am respectful I'm goodlook and I'm the best part of the future they say it every single day the also what we're doing is we're doing mentoring with our students so I do I've come through uh lur City Schools as a mentor since 1994 so what we do on Thursdays at 10:00 we stop what we're doing for our third fourth and fifth grades and so our boys come into the cafeteria with me and there they're learning how to be good citizens not just good students but good citizens how to show respect um they're learning how to tie tie they're learning things like how to shake a hand how to look somebody in the eye so we're
056taking the time to actually build them up from the inside and then our young ladies who we have deemed the Queens the Desi Queens um we have three of our adults in our building that meet with them and teach them certain character traits that they will need and so we're again starting from the inside and then we're teaching on the outside we have seen such a great um change in Behavior because that was a huge issue the beginning of the school year we attacked that thing like like it was really important because it is because it was impacting what they were getting as far as knowledge and so what happened is now we have students who are now raising their hands they're not calling out they're not just jumping out their teat because they're learning
057how to be good students that was important for us to teach them so that we can then teach them the uh language arts and the math and the science and things like that and then lastly another area that we wanted to address is our staff we've got to make sure that our staff members are equipped with the tools that they need in order to teach so in addition to the division-wide trainings that are being offered that they attend we do trainings within our building for instance like I said we were having issues with Behavior so we had our Behavior coach and the bcba come in and to train our teachers on how to act and it was a monthlong training on how to actually do classroom management we saw a huge difference once they graduated
058from that month uh training we saw a huge difference in how they were uh approaching the behaviors in the class and we saw the referrals go down we also are doing um lesson plan training some of our teachers uh this is their first year they don't they don't know the procedures of lesson plans the way that some of our veterans do so we're teaching them about lesson plans we're digging into the data we're showing them how to look into data for themselves and how to tear their students off so that the students are getting the attention that they need but also the principal needs the training as well so again I have kind of put together my own Council of principles that I go to to say hey I need your help what would you
059do with this what would you do with that and so I'm grateful for that I also take advantage of trainings that are outside of the division I'll be going to rote next week I'll be going to uh jamu coming up because I want to be better so that I'm better for my building and lastly I just want to just um mention some things I want to make sure I didn't forget so I wrote them down um I think I have a minute and 30 seconds so we have um our plc's um I love plcs I love what we're doing but let me say this about that what I really love is the staff that we have at Desi I'm going put this paper w the staff that we have at Desi that's what's making the
060difference they work together it's an all handson Deb and I know you all have great staff members I have some of the best staff members ever at Desi and what they do they go Way Beyond the Call of Duty to make sure our students are getting what they need not only that but we are digging into that data to make sure we understand what we need to do um one of my uh uh colleagues um Miss Foster she said in her presentation when you see that the students are not getting it then what and so I've taken that model if we see that the students are not getting it then what do we do and we don't leave the table until we figure out what to do we involve the community we involve the parents
061we involve each other we involve other teachers and other schools because it's that important we're going to continue to see our numbers go up because we're going to put in the work lastly I want to say this is what I told my teachers we don't I don't want you to teach to say you taught I want you to teach so students can say and show what they learn and that's what we're doing this year thank you'all thank [Applause] you hello thanks again for having us here tonight so we're going to share a little bit about what's been happening in poet Nation um when it was really really stormy back in September and others in our um side of the country were experiencing and um hurricane difficulties our families showed up and showed out up at
062um dumbar so we do student Le conferences and so that means parents don't just come to meet with teachers by themselves they bring their students because we know students are a big part of the conversations that we need to be having they're part of the goal making they're part of the academic process they're part of behavior and so we had 370 conversations um with students and teach teachers at dumbar in September 270 of those had students participating so about 73% so we were super excited to have them seated with us as we talk about their academic success and their future goals we also um revamped our sixth grade to be operating in two cohorts so we have a purple cohort and a gold cohort and so similar to the elementary model um you know we
063know moving to middle school is a little bit challenging for some sixth graders and so this allowed them to have the support of a network of core teachers to help them bridge that gap between elementary and middle school and so we've seen great success with that we've seen a decrease in our behaviors as well and the teachers have each other to lean on when um maybe they're having some academic concerns or maybe some attention concerns or maybe a behavior concern um with the student then they can talk with each other about strategies that work for that child and then lastly we are talking a little bit about um our work that we did as admin so last year um we kind of fell in with um a a grade level just because we were all
064new um together the S Burns we joined her um and so I took sixth grade last year and so Carrie took seventh grade and Miss Burns remained with eighth and so this year we actually had Carrie Loop up with those students and families that she had gotten so comfortable with and knew so much about so that she would be a great voice for the teacher and help with strategies and things that we tend success with um so this year I'm with six um because of the new cohort model that we took but the goal is for me to move up with those until they eighth graders and then Miss Burns is with seventh and she'll move up with those eighth graders next year and so we're excited about the success we're seeing with our families
065good afternoon Schoolboard members Dr Copeland um I'm Mrs Burns as Dr born always already stated I am the seventh grade administrat at dumbar in addition to the athletic director as well so I have the joy of talking about our Athletic program at dumbar um so first to start at the beginning of each season um all student athletes and that parents guardians or their entire family wh whomever they bring they are required to attend a mandatory um parent meeting and including during that meeting we discussed expectations for the season but most most ly including grades and behavior um and then a huge part of the contract focuses on academics and student conduct and to ensure that our students keep their academics on the Forefront of For That season there is a mandatory one-hour study hall prior
066to any practice at dumbar that's something that we were more intentional with this school year and we have seen great success in that and our student academics when we got our first quarter report cards um next I'm going to talk more about our poets academic team in an effort to align donar's Athletic program with Virginia High School league academic requirements and eligibility standards donra coaches teachers and administrators have had an intentional focus on student academic Achievements not just in season but out of season as well as we all know that students are going to work when they're incentivized and during their season they're incentivized by being involved in their respective sport or academic team we do see some of our student athletes academics decline um significantly in this division when they're not involved in a
067sport or some type of club or academic team within a division um so our ultimate goal is to make sure every student who who is part of dart's athletic program is to be more than prepared to transition successfully to the next grade and ultimately to high school and have an opportunity to contribute to the success of our athletic programs our academic programs and as a whole Lynchburg City Schools athletic programs and academic programs for the fall Sports season which we just concluded yesterday Dumar had 89 student athletes that were on the football team volleyball team boys and girls tennis cross country or cheerleading of those 89 student athletes 65 which is 73% made the Poise all academic team and they will be recognized at our um fall sports academic banquet that's going to be held
068in December and in order to make the team they have to have a BS and C's no D's no fs and we had 73 of 73% of our students that's going to be recognized out of five of six of our teams six of our teams had I mean five of our teams had an 80% a better team average that made the academic all poorts academic team needless to say we are extremely proud of the great display of character Sports ship and high academic achievements from all dumbar student athletes and students as a whole and we are truly thankful and blessed to have coaches teachers parents volunteers and community members who invest invest countless let me say that again invest countless hours of hard work and dedication to make sure that our students have all of
069the tools to be successful in the school as well as in their own communities thank you um thank you board thank you Dr Baldwin thank you Miss Burns I'm Carrie Wills the proud assistant principal at dumbar and I would like to thank These Fine ladies for taking a chance on me so with careful review of our data we first decided we needed purposeful scheduling so we blocked off fifth period and all of our students in fifth period attend Allin and intervention and Innovations a resource we wanted to be able to offer our kids groups that were fluid Based on data often times uh the same kids are in intervention groups and they rarely get to participate in Innovative um activities and we wanted to make sure that we offered that to our students so it
070wasn't a full year of intervention if they have shown growth then they can move to an Innovative class also with our interventions in poets block for fifth period we were very purposeful and looking at evidencebased practices and we wanted to make sure that they were implemented in reading and math with Fidelity and we knew that the interventions had to be systematic and explicit and so we chose those type of strategies uh to share with our teachers we offered professional uh learning for those teachers so that they would feel comfortable delivering those evidence and I didn't I said evidence not research-based evidence-based practices to our students last but not least um Innovation so we are p uh Paul Lawrence dumbar Middle School for Innovation and we came together as a a team and we really wanted
071to speak to Innovative classes um unfortunately I don't think a lot of schools have implemented the 2018 computer science standards and so what we did is we took those standards and we embedded them into core content of math science social studies and reading so our kids are not only getting the core content again but they're also getting those plugged and unplugged computer science skills that we know that our students need um for their 21st century careers and we have had great success with that um our teachers um a lot of our teachers have taken off with that and it has been amazing to see the growth um we look forward to continuing um to raise the bar at Dumar no excuses uh because our students deserve it thank you thank you and certainly uh last
072but not least um paully Smith from welcome olly Smith the very proud principal of Hutson and um we are the best kept secret in Lynchburg so I want to ask you all to come visit us I do want you to think about this every morning when there are about 22 2 to 5 year olds in our school they make the Hutcherson hero pledge we are the Hutcherson Heroes and you will hear them say heroes are safe heroes are kind Heroes listen to grow their minds and we say I'm a Hutcherson hero and I help myself and others and that's what our school is all about we want to make sure kids know that they can do it and they are special and all of our teachers are Hutcherson Heroes we're very proud this year that
073Hutcherson was recognized as one of Virginia's quality um uh schools for early childhood and we scored one of the highest scores in Lynchburg have to say that in Lynchburg City because that's what we do um and this year we are focused on schoolwide communication young children need to learn to communicate they need to learn to use language they need to be able to ask for what they need they need to ask they need to tell you about their day that is the foundation of reading until children learn language they are going to struggle with reading so this year we were very fortunate to get a partnership with the Virginia Commonwealth University for Hutcherson our school to have um um a a partnership of uh training uh coaching and all all the best practices of CH
074of teaching children how to communicate so our whole school is working together the regular education classrooms and the special education classrooms for schoolwide um communication um and then the other thing we're very proud of is that we are joined in with uh James Madison University and we are working on our inclusive practices of children with and without disabilities working in classrooms and learning classrooms together um we're very fortunate we have two pilot programs that are going very well and I'm I'm very proud and would love to show you all how great they're doing um the teachers are working really hard uh and then uh and we want to make sure everybody knows that a Hutcherson everybody's included every single day is a new day sometimes it can be a rough day but the next day
075is a new day um one of the things Lynchburg City Schools should be very proud of and last week we had um um Dr Don Hendricks from the Virginia Department of Education visit Hutcherson we have established a new assessment called the transdisciplinary um play-based assessment for our us our program for special education and we were the first in the state of Virginia she is the coordinator of Early Childhood special ed for the state of Virginia and she came to observe and was very impressed with our initiative and other school divisions are coming to see it the biggest um advantage of it is that we are including parents they're right there assessing children and we're doing it as a team we've gotten great feedback of how positive it's been um the other thing Lynchburg City school
076should be very proud of is that we've added three um three-year-old pre kindergarten classrooms and you say oh three that's not so many but when you meet three three-year-old three kindergarten class that's a lot so it's one of the hardest working classrooms in the city it's been a huge benefit because the children that go from the three-year-old classroom room that may have been really learning about how to be a part of a group now go to the four-year-old classroom they're doing better and then by the time they go to kindergarten they're doing well we have um a very high uh waiting list for that so I do have to tell you that there are parents that'll call me up to find out when the applications come out and they will stay up until 1201 on
077February 1st to to be the first to put in their application and that's not exaggeration they will do it um the one area that we still are trying to work on and I'm sure everybody can uh appreciate it is the area of behavior we um are very fortunate to have Horizon um therapeutic services in our school and harvest um support services and we have some wonderful teachers that have been trained in trauma practices and we still struggle some days with behaviors but we're we're working and we are excited to maybe gain some more systematic approaches and more resources to help children because we know if we work on these skills when they are two three four and five years old we've really enhanced their brain development and made their trajectory a lot better so I
078ask you to come visit the best kept secret in Lynchburg and um I thank you for letting me be thank you thank you and school board members again if you have questions please make sure you get those to me and I will work with the principles to get answers to those um for you let's give a round of applause to all our [Applause] principales next one is special education presentation Dr Copan Dr Daniels Boer and the rest of your cak folks if they're here um good evening Dr gupa Dr uh Copeland and members of the board um I am Janine Daniels berer I am the director of special education the special education advisory committee or cak as we refer to it is a legislatively mandated committee and Adriel Roberts is our chair I do want
079to recognize that there are members of the cat committee here tonight as well as some of my super visors to support adri as she talks about what the team has been talking about thank you Janine thank you board uh good evening my name is Adriel Roberts and I am the current chair for the special education advisory committee or cak for Lynchburg City uh I'm here today to present recommendations that our committee believes would benefit special education in our Lynchburg City schools these recommendations have been created over the past few months by C collaborating with special education teachers and supervisors along with addressing care and concerns brought to the committee by parents and guardians of students with disabilities currently in Lynchberg City Schools our recommendations are as follows number one to finalize plans of building closures
080and zone changes to ensure that impact on students with disabilities is considered And Timely notice is given during this process these decisions will directly impact several programs and assignments for the special education department and ample time needs to be allowed to implement new building assignments and Equipment transfers to coordinate with the final decisions that are made the impact of this change will be difficult for students with disabilities and preparation is needed to successfully transition students staff and families cak asks that a decision be finalized by the end of the current 2425 school year number two to continue the implementation of the Virginia IEP system to assist sped staff to coordinate data and to better develop IEP goals as well as facilitate meetings with parents and Guardians number three to continue to conduct collaborative IEP development
081training for local support service providers such as Department of Social Services and like providers to focus on IEP critical decisions and clarifications of the regulations governing special education programs in Virginia continue the training that was held this past spring for current staff we also ask that LCS considered providing better training resource opportunities to parents and guardians of LCS students to better help with collaboration during IEP meetings number four continue to fund for the science of reading by using strategies like Orton Gillingham multisensory for all LCS students students teachers and schools lack of knowledge about such strategies from current staff has demonstrated this need and the inability to implement this program Citywide in all schools due to lack of funding that has made the strategies inaccessible to some students who would truly benefit from this program
082number five increase the number of LCS special education instruction assistants who have completed the 40-hour online training specific to registered Behavior technicians to a minimum of 10 for current staff we feel this especially is important for the instructional assistance assigned to the city's autism specific classrooms number six continue to review and train all staff on IEP requirements for assistive technology to ensure proper use of state-of-the-art updated assistant te assisted excuse me technology devices number continue LCS disability awareness month activities as planned annually to include visible and non-visible disability awareness help to establish connections with providers in the area to better broadcast special needs accommodations and events for families of LCS students lastly number eight re-evaluate and increase wages of sped Department staff to be competitive with surrounding counties and increase retention in the department several
083surrounding counties offer more competitive wages and incentives for special education staff turnover for the special education department of LCS continues to grow because of higher wages and bonuses that Educators can receive in surrounding areas to our city a neighboring County to us for example offers a $5,000 sign on bonus for special education teachers LCS currently offers no signon bonus or incentives for special education Educators for us to embody a tradition of Excellence for all there must be stability and most importantly inclusivity current staffing needs have created holes and gaps with Services provided and IEPs being followed for students with disabilities please consider this one moving forward with budget discussions in the coming months thank you for your [Applause] time excuse and next is uh student representative Dr cop good evening this is the first time
084we've had our students for this year so uh paper rock scissors for who gets to go first first okay um I'm fine to go first so hello everyone again I'm Lucy I'm the student representative from glass and I hope your November hasn't been too cold just yet um because unfortunately that means fall sports are wrapping up and I wanted to highlight some of the almost final records for this year varsity football is five and five and they're actually still playing they have their first playoff game at GW Danville this Friday which is 100% worth the drive because it's supposed to be a really great matchup so among two really good teams so JV football is 8 and two uh volleyball which I'm going to talk about in a little bit is 21-4 which is really
085impressive so congratulations ations to the lady Hill Toppers JV volleyball is 5- 12 and field hockey ended the season being 1 and 11 but we had a lot of fun this year um congratulation to congratulations to the Midtown boys for managing to keep The Jug at home this year it was a really hardfought game on both sides and I think it just really shows the amount of hard work and talent that we have within our two high schools the score was 17 to uh 17 to 13 so super close game and we're really proud of them for pulling it off so a few days before The Jug Bowl student council members uh set up jars in the cafeteria in order to raise money for the park viw Mission students could put their cash in the
086jar of whatever administrator they would want to see dress up as a turkey suit or in a turkey suit at The Jug bow we definitely didn't raise as much as Heritage but every penny does count and I'm really proud of the glass students who donated and we got to see Dr R in a turkey costume so it was not a bad night at all um I'm thrilled to be able to say that the EC glass volleyball team is States bound after an amazing season um last night they beat Jefferson forest in the 4D uh State semi-finals and brought home a victory they'll be traveling to jameswood high school for a 6m game and I know that I'm going to be making an effort to go because the E glass student section is just so much
087fun especially at volleyball games speaking of bringing home victories on the weekend of October 26th our acting two class and our Tech two class went to Virginia Theater Association competition in Richmond to perform their certain version of our place which is a comedy drama kind of telling a story of a group of unlikely friends on a Lakeside Dock and they won an honorable am mention award awards for specific students went out as well and we had a few uh will Hoffman receiving acting honors nari Walker Sophia halp and EJ Matthews all received all-star cast Ava Medina Coleman received second place in Scenic Design and Percy Phillips received an honorable mention in costume design oh and glass received a judge's special award for stage combat so congratulations on Halloween night EC glass cheerleading put on a
088trunk Retreat for different sports teams so they could come and volunteer uh there was candy games and a competition for whoever had the best trunk it was a lot of fun seeing all the costumes decorations and it definitely helped make Halloween even more fun and um as you know Veterans Day was on Monday and um our boys basketball team um did some volunteering as well they passed or they served and passed out stickers to Veterans at Golden Corral who were being served free food they helped the staff clean seat people and even showed off their cooking and baking skills if you can see that picture there um our yearbook staff from the 2023 2024 school year have gotten results back from the Virginia High School League's publication evaluation and they received the highest honors available
089um we received Superior ratings and were ranked in the trophy class so great job to last year's staff I'm on the staff this year so we're celebrating in class but that's all I have for you guys this month so thank you so much thank you [Applause] nice um so it's my turn um I hope everybody's having a great November and had a great October so I want to start with talking about the Pioneers outside the classroom so this year um during Unity day in October during un day in October some of our Heritage High School cheing and varsity football team went to perrymont to get the students excited about their school day it was an amazing opportunity to be able to brighten the students mornings and it personally brightened my day when I went and
090saw the little kids faces so we also want to thank um Mrs Foster for allowing us to be involved at paramont also our HHS harmonizers got the opportunity to sing at St Stevens's church at their 10 :30 service on Sunday October the 27th we are so proud of you for sharing your amazing talents with the community so um during B call our students got the opportunity to work with begin of Hope and counselors on college applications and essay writing and also were able to get the chance to meet with certain schools for their on-site admissions day and also learn about their admissions decisions we want to thank Beacon of Hope and all of our counselors for their hard work and we want to congratulate the all the students who worked really hard and the students
091who um got accepted into their schools um so our HHS students participated in red revon week during that week students were able to learn about the effects of drug abuse that has on your body and many students also committed to to living a healthy drug-free lifestyle seniors were also able to hear from the Legacy education center about Workforce Readiness it was a great opportunity for seniors to hear about their Futures and the many different pasts that they can take um so next up we have our Pioneers making minutes matter so our attendant our tenants Award winners are daqui Cruz and Zariah Franklin so congratulations to those students for being at school so um also we have our pioneers and hilltopers leing the open hand like L Lucy said we did a food drive at Heritage
092and both Heritage and glass got the opportunity to spend a week raising money for local food banks around the area the Pioneers were able to raise and donate 7,18 64 cents to the Blue Ridge area food bank we are so proud of our staff me staff members and students for donating so much money towards a great cause very good so next up is fall Sports so a lot of our Sports wrapped up their Seasons currently so volleyball Varsity had a record of 515 and JB 2 and 18 our cross country team had five males and five females make it to Regionals golf had Jacob made it to Regionals and competition tiers made it to Regionals and hit zero football ended their JB season with 7 to3 record and varsity is going off into the playoffs
093the 8 and two record and Friday night we're playing against russb at home so make sure to come out we also want to thank or not thank but congratulate Giana early and um MAA rll for their all District's volleyball recognitions congratulations to the both of them and congratulations to all of our teams so we also want to talk about our theater who won first place for districts during the Halloween weekend and congratulations to Luke Snider for his acting award um so regionals are this Saturday at monachello high school so congratulations to them and also good luck our big marching machine um placed fifth out of 12 bands and their um class a um competition so we want to thank uh congratulate them for their amazing season and good luck to all the seniors and good
094luck to their future endeavors as well so um here are the Pioneer senior scholarships so there was a building bridges Productions um scholarship that was for the Performing Arts and three out of the four recipients were LCS students and two out of the four were Heritage students so Emily Salazar won third place and I won first place so congratulations so we have some new PR programs but they're not really new they're just starting back up this year so engineering has Partnerships with Vector space Fatone and bwxt where students are able to learn about more engineering and working on Special Projects the academic support program was during ninth grade year but it stopped and now it's starting again this year so after school teachers and counselors came into the media center and they tutored students and
095helped them with like areas they were struggling in and it was a great opportunity for students to learn and get help in areas they were struggling with so I'm excited that it's coming back so we also want to give a big shout out to miss cordal for going above and beyond and everything that she does for students and just making this school a better place so thank you and have a great day in number one big Orange country and have a great Thanksgiving thank [Applause] you right thank you thank you to both of you um next one is public comments uh Dr Tinsley yes I want to read the uh public climate statement here before we get into those comments persons appearing before the school board will not be allowed to campaign for public office
096to promote private business ventures it should not use profanity or vulgar language or gestures make comments about a public official or an employee that are not related to the public official or employees official duties engage in behavior that disrupts the meeting or intimidates others or address the school board on issues that do not concern the services policies role and or responsibilities of the school board individual speakers shall limit their comments to three minutes a speaker representing a group shall limit their comments to five minutes the representative shall identify the group at the beginning of their presentation a group may have no more than one spokesperson total a lot of time for public comments Schoolboard meetings is 30 minutes voicemail messages to be played are also limited to 3 minutes for individuals and five minutes for
097speakers representing a group priority will be given to in-person comments before voicemail messages in the following order students staff parents Guardians and then community members public comments are reserved for public for the public to provide input the board does not respond to comments answer questions or otherwise engage in discussion at this time so the first person on our list is Netty web not here all right next Aaron Reed good evening board my name is Aaron Reed I'm a 27-year veteran of Lynchberg City Schools I teach at EC glass High School I am the chair of the English Department I am the co- coach of the award-winning public speaking forensics team I teach AP Language and Composition I teach AP research I was the first teacher in the state of Virginia to teach AP African-American studies
098and we continue it to this year in 2023 the vhsl named me the speech teacher of the year and tonight I come to you with a warning I need you to understand that the conversations that I have had with the staff at my school as well as at other schools tell a story of teachers feeling like they are losing autonomy in their classrooms and this is a throughput from every grade level that I have had a conversation with a few examples we have heard some fantastic stories tonight from our elementary schools of children succeeding and all that is true but one of the things that you have to understand that's coming down from both the state as well as here within our division is that some of those literacy programs literally put books in front
099of our teachers and make them read the blue words to Children there is no autonomy there is no choice in terms of what they say at the secondary level in middle school and in high school the secondary book list that we used to have is abolished and in favor of that instead of that is a pacing guide that prescribes the books that teachers will use for each quarter there's a larger picture here of teachers in your system losing autonomy now tonight what I'd like to talk about is kind of the most recent component of this which again is the conversations that I've had with people in my building as well as teachers beyond that the concern has come down about the superintendent search committee which as far as I understand it includes a total of
100zero staff from schools my understanding is that it means there's no teachers on that committee that there's no instructional Aids on that committee that there's no support staff on that committee and I completely understand I have listened when Dr Tinsley has reassured that LCS employees will have their voices heard that there will be listening sessions and that there will be surveys I understand that these things will happen but you've got to understand that the problem with surveys in the 21st century is that for those of us who are staff it continually feels like someone is checking a box to be able to say I gave a survey but that it does not translate into anything that's meaningful the alternative to asking us to complete a survey which we don't have faith will ever translate to
101the committee that's making the decision the the alternative to that is getting some people from these buildings on that search committee and I understand that that committee has already started and it's probably in a variety of places in terms of communicating with the organization that is finding our candidates and all of that but here's the good news it's not too late part of what this board I hope wants to do is rehabilitate its image as a board that is listening not only to parents who are important stakeholders but to faculty who again feel like their autonomy is spiraling out of control we need to know that we matter in some way so including teachers support Aid instructional staff someone who is in the classroom and who can be at the table and the survey and
102the listening session is just not enough man it's just not enough we need to know that when candidates come before decision makers that we're part of that process literally we're in that room and if our voices matter I think you want us in that room I would hope you do because here's the alternative if you don't want us in the room then the message is we don't matter as much as you said that we do you don't think as much of us as you want us to believe and for my teachers who are reading blue words out of books and for my teachers who are being told what books to teach that loss of autonomy suddenly feels Complete because the end of that road is you don't even get a say in the people that
103lead the division I want to believe that you don't believe that but until you have action that shows us that that's all that we have left I am happy if you want to reach out and contact me further about this if you need to you know where I [Applause] am next up is Carl loose amen thanks and no applause you know the he read the policy so please go ahead all right um well good evening to all of you and as always uh thank you for your commitment to the students and staff of Lynchburg City Schools my name is Carl loose I'm president of Lynchberg Education Association and I'm here to write a wrong I stand before you tonight with a petition that has more than 275 signatures from every site in the district and
104our request is simple add one teacher and one educational support Personnel to the superintendent search committee last month one of the board members commented on wanting to keep the committee small and manageable our committee has seven members city council has seven members he said the school board has nine members exactly the school board has nine members our request if granted would make the committee also nine members a manageable number by your own admission the same school board member then went on to assure us that our input would be part of the process ladies and gentlemen there are Miles and Miles of empty Meadows between having input and having the chance to advise this board on its decision you've left us on the outside looking in peering through a cold frosted window as we struggle to
105survive Starving in staring in at a bountiful table that includes Business Leaders and parents but not a single one of us we are all we all fully understand that this board will make the ultimate decision on who our next superintendent will be but we also understand the challenges we are facing that are unique to our school division we understand the issues that the students in front of us face on a daily basis we understand what implementing the policies and procedures of this board and this division actually looks like in our schools and on our buses we understand what we have done in the past what worked and what didn't we understand that we are the experts on the best way to educate the students of Lynchberg what we don't understand is why you don't see
106that what we don't understand is why you wouldn't want the voices of the paid professional Educators experts in their fields to be a part of your decision-making process as you prepare to make one of the biggest decisions this board can make we teach our students at every l level that actions speak louder than words we watch these meetings month after month and we hear a lot of nice things said about our teachers and staff and we appreciate that we really do but actions speak louder than words this board voted to increase Healthcare cost for its staff by an average of What 14% that action spoke volumes because of this board's rush to move on from Dr Edwards we're now paying two superintendents this year that action spoke volumes too and now to come in here
107and dictate to us who is best to lead us that action is unconscionable for a school division to be successful its employees must trust its leadership employees must know that they have the respect and admiration of those that lead through actions not through their words a successful school system has employees byy into to the vision of its leadership and there's no better way to have employees buy into a school division than to make sure that they have a real voice in the process to choose their leader so lead by example show the students of Lynchberg City schools that actions are more important than words show them that when a tough decision needs to be made you make sure the experts have a seat at the table and help you make it take action today by
108appointing one teacher and one educational support Personnel to your superintendent search committee thank you next up is Gary Taylor good evening Dr Gupta welcome back Dr copelan all school board members uh just wanted to spend a few minutes talk now that the election's over I think all of us are glad it's over so in recap I am Gary Taylor the founder of citizens for a better Lynchburg bipartisan organization looking to unify the city of Lynchburg we had seven goals last year we wanted seven groups individuals or people replaced or removed from office and I'm happy to report that Bob good and Jeff helgerson are no longer in their positions so that is a starting point to reimagine a more united Lynchberg and um we look forward to what's going to happen next year but I
109think it's also important for you all we spent the last decade many of us laying the groundwork for a successful Lynch City school system and how we have managed to run that thing into the ditch in the last two years with a dysfunctional city council and all the other things going on in this city is very disheartening to say the least so what's going to happen in 2025 is Bob good and Jeff helgerson are going to try to take out wend Walker most likely because he's aligned with the yunan administration and myself and other individuals are going to look to take out Senator Mark Peak because he has cow toow to the disgraced Lynchberg Republican folks so that's what's shaping up for 2025 at the state level also they'll be a governor's race most likely
110Abigail spanberger a Democrat Centrist is going to be the next governor of Virginia but we'll have to see but she's the second most popular politician in the state of Virginia so from our perspective now that the election's over we need to get everybody back on the bus and driving this thing in the right direction before we H some of us that have been involved for a decade now need to go to the yunan administration and the state level to see if they're going to have to interject in Lynchburg City Schools so the process is going to be is we're going to start sending out foer request starting immediately like people give out candy corn on Thanksgiving the lack of transparency has been a real issue and we have to get all together on the same
111page on what needs to be done now there are two very suin silos so I'm a corporate guy a business guy silos and fums I was labeled as a silo Buster in the corporate world because silos are no good you have to have horizontal and vertical collaboration so to do that you have to designate your silos your first Silo is school closures that's an individual Lane you have now because no action was taken in 2024 you now are required to close four schools it was three and A2 for The Last 5 Years everybody knows it no Republican no Democrat no school administrator there's not one person in the city of Lynchburg over the last eight years that has not agreed schools need to close how we got to where we got to it's a shame
112but we're where we are now so that is one Silo so you work in that lane and then the other Silo is which schools to close they're not mutually uh tied together they're mutually exclusive but you have to get back on the track of working on we got to we got to get something done okay so all I would ask is I will resend the information that I've given to everybody last month okay regarding MGT and the disastrous worst in the history of the city of Lynchburg consulting job period thank you have a good night Madam clerk are there voicemails onea hello this is mie malcol addressing the Lynch Lynchberg City Schools board meeting and I would like to request um that students who are homeschooled would be eligible to participate in extracurricular activities and
113sports at the school in their District um at least having access to those things would make it fair for students who live in that in that District um I'm just speaking for myself but through my experience I am voicing a concern that several parents in uh the city of Lynchburg um something that a lot of homeschooled parents are requesting um I if if you are willing to contact me I can share my email address and phone number with Tina day and she can follow up um with an email to you all thank you for considering and have a great day thank you Mr chair that concludes public comments thank you thank you Dr Tinsley uh next one is a consent agenda is there a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved Dr Tinsley is
114there a second Mr Andrews any discussion CL would you please call the RO Mr Conor yes Mr julo yes Mr Andrews yes Dr day I think he's having connection yes Dr G yes Mrs Preston yes Mr depal yes Mrs Lor yes Dr T yes motion cares thank you next one is finance report Dr cop Miss James good evening chairman Gupta members of the board and Dr copelan and welcome thank you for the opportunity to address you this evening I'll be brief in my remarks no really I promise um you have before you the September 30th 2024 month in financials as of September which marks 25% of the fiscal year already passed um the percent of revenues collected versus original appropriation sits at 16.71% year today the amount of expenditures versus or original appropriation is at
11516.52% year-to date it's always good when you're under spending your Revenue receipts however small uh the total expenditures inclusive of encumbrances equates to 72.5% so there are a few notable variances uh in expenditures this month and that is a budget percent used generally 40% or more of the budget this point in the fiscal year um if you will refer on the expenditure sheet for line function 8100 the technology classroom and instruction line other has used 64.2 6% of the budget that's due to expenses related tol learning software and classroom Hardware as you know those are one-time expenses and that expenditure will uh will catch up with itself towards the end of the fiscal year line 90 which is function 8300 technology Administration other has used 104.7 one% of the budget due to expenses and encumbrances
116related to new school year technology needs those include vendors related to CDW government secured Tech Solutions and Frontline Technologies um if you will scroll down just a bit online 92 function 8500 technology Pupil Transportation other they have used 100% of the budget due to expenses related to where's the bus software used for bus operations um and line 94 function 8600 technology operations and maintenance other has used 100% of the budget due to expenses related to operation hero and Raptor Technologies again those percentages will catch up uh further on throughout the fiscal year um statement of revenues there are no items to address at this point uh monthly uh the monthly report not to appear to be a rerun but the health insurance summary for FY 2025 will not be finalized for reporting until after the
1172024 audit is complete we are finalizing that hopefully this week we are answering some final auditor questions they have moved over into the city they're finalizing the city's audit and therefore an occasional question pops up for us so we are answering those questions as quickly and succinctly as we can um on behalf of the city so so uh other informational items the FY 26 budget development process for schools and departments is underway um I've met with 15 schools in one department so far uh regarding their requests and I'm scheduling remaining schools and departments this week the FY 26 through 2030 Believe It or Not CIP budget submission which was approved by the school board on September the 17th uh meeting has been submitted to the city prior to the requested deadline go us I was
118first the FY 2025 open enrollment process has come to a conclusion inclusive of the new premium increase which was approved by the school board on October the 15th the changes will be applied as of January 1st 2025 I will entertain any questions that you have at this time otherwise that concludes my report for the evening questions for Miss James I have couple you got about still a deficit from carrying over from last year for health insurance so um so as far as uh the deficit is concerned we are trying to align that with the new uh premium increases so that obviously we won't know the final numbers until the audit is completed hopefully this week and I'll be able to report out on that as of our next financial report but um you know we're
119hoping and strategically planning for a a lower deficit if we if there is one so my assumption is with the new rates your deficit will go down to zero uh supposedly so in a perfect world uh not going to make any promises at this point uh but we will actually know those figures as of the next report because the audit will be complete and that deficit is included in the whole auditing uh process so Mr depal will have $1 million exess next year the contingency reserve that's where we're we're strategizing to help uh provide that and you'll be sharing audits for the board right once absolutely sir thank you m any other questions see I can find my agenda uh next one is uh ad hoc superintendent search committee here Dr Tinsley the only update
120is that this Thursday November 14th 3:30 p.m. here we will be doing interviews of the search firms that have been selected for interview um so hope all the board members can be here I will be calling in virtually um but uh the committee as well ADOT committee will be here as well and we discussed with the school board attorney in terms of closed session or Open Session since the contractual issues involved the recommendation was to do it in a closed session that's all I have thank you Dr Tinsley um next one is comprehensive strategic plan Dr day you're there we're missing you here yeah I'm here I don't know if you can see me can you hear me I can see you okay um not strategic plan um we are required by um a section
121of state law to adopt a division-wide comprehensive unified long range plan um and the law imposes various requirements for review and update of that plan um it might be worth the school board members actually read the code state code on this um our most recently developed comprehensive plan was for the years 2019 through 2024 um and you can find that on the LCS web page um we were due to update it last year but due to the inordinate amount of time our budget and Facilities planning took we voted on June 4th to extend the plan for an addition year to cover the the current Schoolboard year now um we at least I've talked to uh the chair and um our interim superintendent about this uh we feel that we should not put in place a
122new comprehensive plan without the input of the uh superintendent who will carry it out and of course we won't know that who that is until the superintendent search is done so I want to move that we extend the 2019 2020 2019 through 2024 plan for a second year so that it covers the 2025 26 school year so that's a formal you making a motion you're making a motion Dr day yes A second stand second so your your um uh reasoning is so that the new superintendent will be a able to uh help in developing and then Carry It Forward yes I think so yes other discussion the motion it seems to me that that can be something going both ways you can have a development of a comprehensive plan set and then it be edited
123or given a brainstorming session um before or after a new superintendent is seated um you can also do what you're asking basically is wait until a superintendent is seated to start the process of developing uh the plan that doesn't seem to be a good use of time if we have the time to do it beforehand and get it ready then the superintendent can add his two cents or her two cents and make the changes or additional recommendations to the plan thereby saving time and maybe coming up with something that we hadn't thought about beforehand i' agree with that Dr TI I think it's an opportunity for the new superintendent to build teamwork uh to do visioning Mission and goal setting um I think if we do that work and say Here's your plan it it
124it undermines the new superintendent and can as it were cut his or her legs out from under him I I think we should extend the plan I I agree with Dr Day extend the plan for one more year it's not kicking the can down the road it's just giving the new superintendent the ability to be a leader when he or she steps into this position and to guide that process and be influential in the in the development of that plan I don't know if I can say I thought that the same thing as well but someone brought up to me the point that the decision and the development of the plan is the board's plan for the district not the administrative plan for the district so the administrative side of things executes the plan that
125we develop it's our responsibility it's our vocation to um part of our vocation to do that so that's the distinction that I've come to understand about a comprehensive plan any strategic plan is a team effort where you have board the administrators have uh it's a pretty um Dr Copeland was involved when we had the last GT plan development it was a room full of people different stakeholders that's the word so it's all the stakeholders are involved in that process um you going to say something or Mrs Lowry has go ahead no that's what what my question was I think you just answered it so just clarify because I was thinking well wouldn't we get together with the superintendent if we're it's our comprehensive plan and they are working there are employee we should all be
126sitting together working on it together so that is what happens okay it was a you want to do go back to the memory lane and uh it's all started with myself Dr Edwards and Miss Morrison going to Charlottesville for a training session I forget the name of the group but on strategic plan development uh and then we came back to to the division uh and started the development of the plan involving the board with the major Milestones or the the major goals as they were developed and it is a all stakeholders input process um so if you think about what's in our current strategic plan uh and and where the division needs to go I'm kind of with Dr Tinsley that the new person needs to have their stamp of of origination and development in
127that if I was to show up and you had a strategic plan uh I would feel a little bit taken aback uh that something's already Road mapped out for me and it would be something that I would look at very closely in the application process to see if I think that I can meet those goals and objectives so that's what I was thinking as well it's to even be a part of this particular division you would have to look at that and say I'm on board with that type of plan if it existed before you jumped on board there are pros and cons to each approach to any approach okay it is M CL would you please call the room Mr car make sure are we saying that we're going to hold off I'm yes
128to holding off until yes Mr J no Mr Andrew yes Dr day yes Dr GTA yes Mrs Preston yes Mr depal no Mrs Lori yes Dr tanley yes motion carries thank you Dr D uh next one is new business graduation location Dr C Dr W would like to have some discussions about where we want to hold graduation so yes sir um thank you Dr Copeland and good evening members of the board um both EC glass and Heritage high schools have requested to make a change in our location of graduation um as you aware for the last several years really since covid graduation has been held uh at City Stadium um as a result of the need to have plenty of room um there's been lots of positivity with that uh we've had a lot of
129f had have had folks bring as many people as they want it's been many many beautiful days of of graduation but there's also been some pretty significant challenges as well uh in terms of coordination of time with the minor league baseball team uh and the parking there's always a game right after graduation so we're always trying to get out as fast as we can um and everyone else as well um we also always have the concern about WEA um in the last couple of years we've it's you know there's been a a day of maybe a little spitting rain kind of threatening uh it's always worked out uh but it just uh it's always been that threat um as well as just simply the cost of doing it at City Stadium so so renting the
130sound equipment uh the the cost of staff and time and other folks that we need to hire for some of the video uh work and that sort of thing ultimately it ends up costing about $25,000 to do graduation at City Stadium so uh the the schools uh reached out and requested could we move graduation to the vine Center at Liberty University uh and the contract for that would be a little less than $10,000 so it would save about $155,000 you wouldn't have to have the concern about whether uh you wouldn't have the concern um about staff time as nearly as much the Liberty University staff would would do all of the work uh that you know to run the event of course our uh faculty advisers would have to bring the decorations and those sorts
131of things but it would be there um but I will say this was uh this was a topic that was brought up in the city a number of years ago probably five or six years ago uh and there was uh there were some folks that were very in favor of it and some folks that very much were not um and I think that as what we've experienced we just want to bring this to you as an alternative um I certainly think it's a reasonable reasonable alternative um that has the support of the principles of both high schools um we didn't do a survey this year but we did do it the last two years uh and there was kind of some mixed feelings on whether or not to make that change uh for a variety
132of reasons um in the past before City Stadium of course we were able to hold graduations in the Civic Auditorium ADC glass and the gymnasium at Heritage High School um that worked very well for for many many years um but there is the concern about not being able to bring as many people as you want to uh to graduation for and for the the very important Milestone that is graduation a lot of families have come to like that very much have that be a huge part of their family and their their friends um and so would appreciate some direction from you um I would appreciate a vote uh this evening of one way or the other uh and again the request is to move uh graduation to the vine Center uh the reason I would
133ask for a vote tonight uh is because we just have to get the the agreement signed um going forward um and this was uh we I talked to Dr grp about a month ago and he said this was probably the best way to have a discussion with the board to make sure that we were doing this in a public way and it was a it was a clear conversation so I make the motion Mr D Mr Conor second any discussion on the motion I just have one question you said it cost $25,000 is that $25,000 per school or is that a total of 25,000 total total of the City Stadium is $25 ,000 and the total at Liberty would be 10,000 just go ahead Mr i' I'd like just like to say that um we
134should as a city take advantage you know not every city has a major university and Liberty is growing to be a worldclass major university right here in our city and we should begin to take advantage of the facilities that they provide at a at that level so I I would totally agree that that would be a better place to have graduations and the the other part was the parking they just finished the new building parking lot thing at the very end as you enter so there'd be plenty of parking drle yeah I I I think there's plenty of space there I don't think we're going to have a space issue parking is not going to be an issue weather is not going to be an issue and Liberty's a great partner Community partner I mean
135and and and I think going along with Mr Connor I think we need to take advantage of this and there's a a significant cost differential in our favors so you know president Coston always says I'm here to help my athletes are here to Mentor your students so he has extended um helping hand every time I've met him just going back to the um it said Deon Memory Lane uh remember last time this proposal came in front of the board um was it four five five years ago uh there was some push back from the community I don't know one of you would like to share it's not to sway one way or the other just to make sure you got a historical context uh were you here Dr Copan that time I was here I
136don't remember what the major points against it were other than at that point in time everybody was real happy to celebrate on campuses uh then the pandemic happened and indoor graduations became a thing of the past had of necessity uh but then everybody realized City Stadium worked um if you go back to having it at the EC glass or the Civic Auditorium that's located at EC glass or in the Fieldhouse at Heritage high school there was always the ticket control and what I'd call the the bartering of tickets if you didn't need your six who could you give a couple to to help somebody out um so it always created a little bit of stress to have them on the campus environments uh Dr W could do you know how many surrounding high schools use
137the vine center right now so I think it's everyone yeah yeah I was going to say it has been kind of a consensus move uh from a setup standpoint I believe Liberty will do it all for us like Dr W said we show up decorate it organize our crew uh and uh then leave it and they'll clean it up afterwards uh so there is a certain efficiency with it um look forward to to how you guys decide we want to move forward Dr D do you have any comments or questions oh I'm in favor of it so should we ready to call a v Madam clerk would you please call the room Mr Conor yes Mr Julia yes Mr Andrews yes Dr day yes yes Dr G yes Mrs Preston yes Mr depal yes Mrs
138Lor yes Dr CH yes motion carries uh next one is self policy jcz cell phones Dr day yes um okay um so um let me give you a little bit of History here um you may recall um that on July 9th the school board approved some revisions to our policy on personal electronic communication devices um and on the same day the governor issued his executive order 33 instructing vooe to develop guidelines for what the state called cell phone free education um and it was clear at that point that there was one major uh aspect in which our recently adjusted policy was uh different than the vdo's policy and that was that we were allowing high school students to use their cell phones during their lunch periods but the state guidelines did not recommend that they
139recommended what they called bell-to-bell uh nonuse of cell phones um and so um we did make a modification to the policy regarding the use of privately owned headphones for instructional purposes but as our policy stands at the moment um we are still allowing um high school students not Elementary or middle school only high school students we're currently allowing them to use their cell phones at lunchtime but to bring our policy into compliance with the state guidelines we need to change that now um both I and attorney hope towns have read through the uh State's final guidance on this and uh have found a couple other aspects of our policy that probably need to be updated to bring it into compliance with the state guidelines um so um there's a couple docu two documents linked to
140the agenda one of is one of them is a file called JF cz-5 um the second one is a file called JFC z- new suggested changes those are some additional changes that hope towns suggested um so I'm not quite sure what to do about this because uh hope has suggested a couple things that are a little bit different than than I had put in JF dz5 um I'll go through try to summarize for you what the what the changes are um I used in in the version I wrote um I used the the term regular school day where the the state's guidance uses the term Bell to Bell so I had written our policy with using the term regular school day and included a definition of that hope suggests that we change it to Bell
141to Bell because that's the way the state guidelines are worded um um I had thought that after removing um the allowance of cell phones to lunch time for the high school students that our policies at the elementary middle and high schools were identical so I collapsed all three to a single policy statement applying to all three School levels uh hope suggests that we break those back up again because she thought that we um should add a Prohibition of cell phone use on school buses for the elementary school students so that's another point of difference between what I suggested and what hope suggested um then hope added a suggested a couple other things that I don't think are controversial at all um she added some language um that allow um that say any additional restrictions that
142a principal makes have to do have to comply with State guidelines and um and a specification that if a student goes for instance on a field trip so they're located at a different school campuses than the one that they're normally enrolled in then they need to abide by the policies that are in effect at that school campus where where they are visiting so hope added some language to that effect um I also added uh suggested some cross references to some of our other policies student conduct policy student conduct on school buses policy and our crisis and Emergency Management plan ought to say something about cell phones in particular the crisis and Emergency Management plan ought to say something about recommendations for parents trying to call the schools in the case of an mergency so um
143unfortunately because we've got two sets of recommendations here I don't have a single version of a proposed revision to this ready for you um I think the best we can do at the moment is for board members to express their feelings about these various um possible modifications that I've mentioned and then we'll have to draw up a final version of this to come to the board for approval at its next meeting Let's uh give chance to attorney towns attorney towns would you be willing to speak uh yes and I just wanted to add I think that uh Dr Day the succinct um summation of the two policies that um you know if the board feels there needs to be some type of alation of both um that we can do that I think that um
144one of the things I did want to make a point for the way that um the recommendations I drafted is because um you know the guidelines I think it's a 32 page document of guidelines and so um we address many of the major uh points in our policy however some of the things such as field trips off-site visits um the issues with uh English as a second language students or students that have a IEP uh that building principles have an opportunity to go back to the guidance and look at the recommendations of the guidance uh first and hopefully that will clarify any points that there are concerns about um before they have to go back to uh building Administration or myself if they have any questions so um that's uh for the particularly the changes
145down in section g just to make it clear that um to go back to the guidelines for cell phone free education um would be the next line after this policy and to make it clear to the state that our policy is in consideration of the guidelines put forth but again if um you all have any input you know I'm going to I'm prepared to try to put some things together so you all have something to vote on uh at your next meeting Mrs Lowry um well it looks like from Martin what you did um then what pop put together looks like it's more specific so I think if what she's put together and you two had talked about this then it looks like that would be the one to go with but um but when
146we put this in place it will go in place January 1 correct so my other if if we approve a new policy it becomes effective when we approve it January 1st is the deadline for us to approve a policy that's in Conformity to the state guidelines okay in a way you're right it takes time to start enforcing it yeah okay and then my other question really is for um interim Copeland um cuz I visit schools and stuff and so I still see students with them in the hallways and bathrooms in and stairwells so I just don't know how um we're going to make sure that it stays a cell phone free environment we will work diligently with the principles to enforce the policy that gets approved by the board yeah um I think the having
147the policy the way it is now we're seeing where the certain gaps are where students are are bypassing the rules so we'll work with the principles and I feel like that's my fault because I was the one that suggested the lunch thing thinking to give them a break just at that point but it's not working so other questions so may I suggest that um hope and I work together to produce a finalized version of these modifications to bring back to the board okay Dr D let's see if anybody else has any comments or suggestions for you Dr Tinsley yeah I I would just uh affirm the use of the state's terminology in verbiage so you I would I would agree with bell to Bell since that's uh the guidelines that we've been given from know
148from the governor's office I agree I love Dr Dave I have a lot of respect for you but I go with my attorney you get what you pay for Mr one one thing that i' I'd like to see us do because it is an issue that once we do affirm a policy at this board meeting we need to implement expeditiously um get it out to the schools that hey this is the state's mandate this is now the city's mandate you must follow these rules and regulations these policies Dr tin in an absolute prohibition a BTO Bell policy like this is going to be a lot easier to implement because there's not a lot of nuance you put it away in the beginning you take it out when you go home and so I think implementation
149should be quite a bit easier enforcement might be an issue but enforcement is going to depend on on people being able to actually adhere to the policy and I think in the vague terms that we were talking about before oh I forgot I I didn't remember I was supposed to put it away and all that sort of thing if it's Crystal Clear and nobody's supposed to have a cell phone except Bell to Bell then we're going to we're going to right you know adjust and and manage each other so to speak so that that doesn't happen so I have a question yeah so um do we want our policy for elementary school students to be different do we want want to prohibit them from using it their phones on the buses where we don't have
150that kind of prohibition for high school and middle school students what is I'd prefer all of them to not be able to use it on the bus yeah we can write the policy that way if that's what the board wants um through discipline um cases I I can see where that would benefit um safety yeah I could see that I could also see a counterargument that maybe it keeps them occupied on the bus so that they're not inter well and high school kids are going to have greater responsibility than elementary school kids I may need to call somebody that to let them know that I'm late or I'm early or I got to pick up my brother or sister or whatever and that's going to be the responsibility perhaps of a high school student but
151not of an elementary school student right so I mean I can see that there would be a different a different set of rules if you will what do you think hear your opinion because you count do you have any recommendation on this one attorney tell um as far as um what I can say uh this is the language from the state they have um you know mandated that Elementary School students not have a phone on the bus um and the board can always put more restrictive measures in place so that is a Jo discretion that's what the state says then no me what I'd like to hear your opinion you dealt with the buses on for those years there's really no reason for them to have it on the bus elementary kids it do high
152school middle and high school they're usually listening to music with their headphones or whatever but there's really no reason for the elementary students to have ones that need something to occupy themselves they usually have a tablet I've seen many kids with little game tablets something not phones yeah not phones wouldn't that be the same for high school just in case they wanted to create a situation to upload to the net later my my thing is this we I think we need to align as close as possible to the state guidelines so fair enough I believe the state says what the state doesn't exclude it for high school students on the bus or does Hope any towns I'm sorry my my volume is a little low for whatever reason so did uh someone say something yeah
153we were asking the guidelines for high middle and high school on buses the state guidelines what did it say they made no made no recommendations as far as buses in the state guidelines only for elementary school students so perhaps a great compromise would be to make all of the school bus seats like airplane seats which has monitors in the back and you can just play educational things all along the trip when they go to school and go back home that's expensive and you're going to you're going to pay for that out of your pocket that's a good compromise it here in green though devices may be for Middle School um and I guess for high school too devices may be used after school and on the bus yeah so once they step off the school
154bus they that's when the bail starts right go once they get on the school bus the baell is over there on the way home and elementary school if we you know and just a reminder that uh both Dr day and I and the original policy states that you know in additional procedures and restrictions that a building principal can always uh do what they feel is appropriate for their school and make more restrictive rules as long as it's communicated to the uh students and parents I I I'd like to avoid what I've seen recently um on some social media um where parents did not know where the bus was and it was a bus that was uh was being substituted substitute driver and it was an elementary bus and if we say you can't have a
155cell phone and we can't let Mom know that I'm I'm on Bus 70 I'm on a different bus today and we you know there was some issues recently and I thought they would come before the board um tonight and bring them forward but we really need to look at um elementary kids they're on the bus well but in the past years and stuff usually if there's a issue that parents call Transportation yes and then Transportation gets on the walking and finds out where they are and then they tell the parent correct have you actually tried to do that well I've been at school after school when they've been trying to get a hold of parents so you just got to wait there's a waiting period as they do that so I'm just saying it's something
156we probably need to consider that children need to be able while they're on a school bus they should be able to contact their parent let Mom know we're running late or whatever well then we should make it a grade specific a transportation utilizing some kind of system wherein if a bus is going to be late they they contact parents you know using their cell phones or or whatever call so they're going to they're going to get the message Elementary that that was the that is the plan but apparently when it doesn't work that's when the tensions rise because it didn't work the way it should have worked it was such a last minute situation you need to know ahead of time well if a driver doesn't show up you don't know until they're not there
157you know 15 minutes after their bus should have been at a location oh they didn't come to work today so so then you got to scramble to get that information in the system I'm just saying that you know there there could be a lot of reasons that that doesn't always flow perfect world yeah a driver call in sick boom here's the sub subtitute here's the substitute number put it on the all call but on a no call no show or driver has an accident on the way to work things happen then there's no way for to commun you know so if a child is on the bus can say Mom the bus is we had to go to a different Elementary School the driver says we're going to be late I don't know Dr Tinsley
158and Mr Jal then just going back to attorney Town's point though I think the executive order of the governor's guidelines are that Elementary School students won't have won't have then that's then that's what we should follow right so I'm saying if we stick to the to the state guidelines and we you know right and so and and then the other point I would make is and this is going back to miss Preston's comment I think Bell tobell is such a clear policy if we if we go beyond that with high schoolers and middle schoolers I I think it gets into gray areas and Nuance like what about sports programs what about after school and then we're just going to open up a lot of uncertainty I think Bill to bill is very clear we we
159know when the cell phones are prohibited any other time except for elementary school students on school buses you can have your cell phones if the state Mr J I know what I know what's being meant by Bell to Bell but you just brought this thought up technically the bus is after the Bell going home so is that going to cause can that cause a technical issue with a um you know not a lawsuit but a problem with an issue that comes up with parents the law the particular guideline and um the fact that it's not technically within the Bell System attorney towns what do you think well I think that's why it's it's carved out as a as a separate issue for uh Elementary School students that you talk about Bell to Bell regular day
160and then you add there's an additional restriction on Elementary School students that also the bus is a place they cannot use their phone so the way it's written I don't see that being an issue what we could do is that Dr D you work with attorney towns go ahead Dr the Y hand well I was going to also raise the issue of how do you enforce a cell phone restriction on a bus you asking the drivers to do something if they see a cell phone in use we need a hire a 25 25 Aids on the bus the seats are so big on a bus you can't even see the elementary students doing yeah so I also am in favor of just sticking with what the with the state guidelines say and not adding any
161additional enhancement at this point we've got a big enough job just to enforce the main part of this uh bell-to-bell Prohibition in the schools themselves um if we can if we can make progress on that battle I'll call it a success regardless of what's happening on the buses so would you be willing to work with attorney towns and bring a version to our the summer meeting any board members have suggestions they can email it to Dr today and we'll bring it as an action item we didn't have very many agenda items for third so this gives one agenda item for third thank you next one is JFC you again Dr D it's you and you had one item right yes um JFC was was one of the um I don't I'm not quite sure why
162this that was there um on our agenda tonight JFC was is um JFC is a student conduct policy and um I think my point was just that that ought to be cross referenced with the cell phone policy um okay that's the only thing I know about yeah so we'll we'll defer that for next meeting too so that you can cross reference with a cell phone policy you're okay with that yes all right next one is mrul you had jfd JG d and jge e um let's M you have both JG DN j j g d slash J G all right now this was a discussed in discipline committee wasn't it's not a motion uh that we're bringing forward so it's a discussion item right now and I hope that we can vote on this uh
163we want to add we've discussed adding um uh verbal threats uh verbal langu uh vulgar language uh cussing swearing at a teacher to be added to the list of things that are to be considered for a long-term suspension and it's just adding those words uh vul vulgarity swearing cussing out a teacher along with u physical threats hitting um assault or battery is there a policy for the teachers to be written up by the principal if the the other way around I'm not sure say that once more please the teacher is cussing at a student if that ever happens I don't think it happens but that would fall underneath unprofessional conduct under the HR policies there'll be HR is there a state uh terminology that deals with this I don't know if the state has it
164I'm using cussing vulgarity cussing um swearing at a teacher and and we know it's something that some I think Dr Tinsley brought up um when a Supreme Court justice was asked to describe what pornography was he says I can't give you a verbal description but I can tell you when I see it what is curing can I give you yeah I can tell you the seven words you can't say on television uh what is swearing what is uh vulgarity all these things are in my opinion and when we were discussing it at at one of our meetings something a teacher should not have to experience 100% I agree so we want to add that to be considered once again not necessarily expulsion but we're looking at this as something to be considered to be brought
165before the discipline committee to for consideration for long-term suspension some real quickly some of those types of words can be used as threats not just as an offensive right exactly the point so and we have been notic we've been noticing that when they start the the progression of vulgar language it usually ends up becoming a threat so we can nip it we can add it if it doesn't get up that further the next time it does I it's what we were discussing Dr Tinsley so the point that we discuss in committee is we want to be tough on misconduct um we we are our discipline committee is is we have stated many times that uh we want to support our te I know we all do but we we want to really support our teachers
166our principles our administrators you know teachers in the classroom um and and we want to we want to up the Annie a little bit you know it's not just about putting your hands on a teacher if you curse at a teacher you threaten a teacher you swear at a teacher that's going to bring you before the committee as well our intent behind that is again to be tough on misconduct hopefully decree enhance good behavior within our schools because we are in a business of providing quality and safe learning environment and if anything is coming in in path of that safety and we got to take care of that as a policy matter right I hope this board agrees with that and the enforcement becomes uh another aspect of that that when board decides a policy
167that policy needs to be enforced fully not partially fully enforced in every school wherever the policy is applicable so I was thinking uh Mr depal maybe you can work with attorney towns and we need items for December 3rd meeting bring if you need items we got I'll I'll write it up right attorney towns would you work with Mr depal to make sure this policy is in compliance with all the legal codes Dr sure thank you Dr D go ahead sir um I want to point out that policy JFC also has already has a reference to inappropriate language uh this is listed under um prohibited conduct it says students are prohibited from using profane or obscene language or engaging in profane or obscene conduct it doesn't prescribe a penalty but it does already say that profane
168Lang anguage is prohibited JFC is a cross language policy so once you have an independent Standalone we can update JFC for that if you added a phrase like may result in no suspension shall okay shall result but shall is is a different perspective of course and to your point shell means that they will be brought before the committee okay it does not deny them of due process okay okay okay if if that's if that's what it it it legally means because you know I could say something really profane to you and if I said with a big smile on my face you probably just laugh I mean really that's if a student walking down the hall saying a rap song it could have a lot I think we're kind of saying when it's when it's
169used in a threatening manner staff memb direct consider the circumstances and then and it's hard to put that in that's why we have ATT in in the building the teacher or the building superintendent will know that that was the difference between I'm I'm singing a Melody nasty Melody from a rap song versus I'll bust you you know yeah you're mad at the teacher and from the confrontation that's what we that's what we want to prevent and also bring some penalty to those threatening aggressive angry um and because we've seen some in the discipline committee that would make your hair stand up yeah and and that's what I was going to say is that is that we we're getting some I mean some of the language again is pretty appalling and we're just kind of hearing
170about it through other cases so we want to avoid that that kind of threatening and and demeaning language that our teachers are having to hear in some cases from our students we want to make that want to be tough on that and May and shelle has a difference s wiggle room ab and the wiggle room makes the enforcement inconsistent right so the policy enforcement needs to be consistent and when there's a wigle room there's always discretion and discretion will bring inconsistencies and inconsistencies are not good in long term so um and we have to remember this is a reason why we're losing teachers this one of the reasons is behavior so good uh Mr deul you'll work with attorney town so we'll have an item looking forward to it hope Dr Dave if you want
171to jump in feel free to jump in into that team of two well I was going to say that we don't want a situation where every time a student uses a foul word they're brought before the board's student discipline committee you'd have 500 cases a week not so there needs to be some discretion and I think this is what Mr Connor was getting at we need to make sure it only specifies a a required penalty when it's clearly used in a um particularly malicious way uh so we need to be careful that we don't make a policy that's we just can't cope with and the not everything comes to with the new policy made it goes to a hearing officer yes first and the the the compromise offered by the hearing officer is not accepted
172then the due process requires for the student to be able to appeal to the board discipline committee yes only thing I would say uh Dr day is that's why I think going with attorney towns and and sitting down and and hashing through legal language and making sure that it says what we want it to say so yeah we're all we're not saying Every curse word that's said was brought before the B board but things that are directed towards teachers and threatening harassing harassing ways we do want to hear those good right good so we'll discuss it again on this thank you next one is School Board member reports G School Mrs Lowry okay cbgs meets 124 we haven't met yet and Laurel meets 122 so you took care of both Laurel and excellent thank you
173STEM Academy Mr Conor okay all right STEM Academy we have 32 seniors and 27 Juniors nine of the seniors are LCS students and seven of the juniors are LCS students um they held Junior orientation on August 7th and they had to postpone the senior orientation it was due August 8 but there was a storm and I think they ended up doing the very next week um on our meeting today first semester is going well um 15 to 20% of the current students have already committed to State seniors have committed to remain at cbcc as um students and most are considering secondary education at a um college or university um interim grades issued in October they found out that physics has been the most challenging um and that's because most of these students have have flown
174Through Math and different when they got to physics it created a greater level of study requirement so they're teaching they're really focusing on time management and teaching them how to study to um to master phys physics um they're having mock interviews this Friday um for all the seniors where they're going to bring their resumés and actually interview as though they're interviewing for those type of jobs um and um stem promotions are scheduled in early stem promotions where they're promoting um the stem program they'll be going and visiting each school um in early December um all the schools that participate to to try to reach out to the sophomores for the next and then I got a couple more notes um they gave a financial report current revenues $396,900 5,821 which is not all available because
175until our audit is done those so that will reduce that but they're still in good Financial um position um they're taking Thanksgiving break from November 27th to the 29th um the end of the fall semester is December 13th first day of internships they'll be doing internships starting January 8th the spring semester starts um January 13th and they'll have an information session for prospective students and parents on February 6th thank you fin name is facility chair dep Paul yes um we just met a few minutes ago so um a couple hours ago um but it was great because even though we appreciate Dr tinley's input he wasn't there today so we actually left in about 45 minutes it was really good the uh the agenda uh what we were I was really talking about was about
176capacity and and zoning and how we're going to be using uh GIS and uh some of the programs that the city has we're hoping to uh we're going to be compar comparing what's possible uh with the numbers as well as what's uh politically expedient for whoever coming up for the next election uh one thing came up that was really important and that was the transportation department needs to be included they have their fingers on the pulse of where the kids are and uh do Dr Connor um Mr Connor he has uh been a wealth of information just by coming here this one time so I'm going to invite him back for several more meetings um we uh will'll be focusing on more close to home opportunities and uh actually try to create a demographic uh
177a position of a demographer uh so that we can um uh help supervise through our own eyes uh and I'm going to say create a position but actually just increase duties of those already involved uh Dr Copeland and um Miss Jamies um are going to be investigating the numbers and the dollars uh for what the additional uh um software sub subscriptions will cost us um based on um u a um study from Hope um I'm forgetting what's hope um Lots LS LS uh she says that uh there's 2025 and along with Mr Connor 2025 buses could use an instructional Aid and uh based on what hope and Miss Jamies came up with approximately is that uh if we assume level funding uh then we are not going to have the money for it and if
178we assume that we might get the money for it I don't want it to come out like we're flip-flopping on things which we have been accused of and it's not really what we're doing but we do have two real goals that we're trying to accomplish one is to go within the budget that they're offering to us the other is to try to find more dollars through other method through other parts of the city and again just to keep it fresh and people's minds the track and field of EC glass is going to need to be closed if it doesn't get fixed and I'm not talking about just another topping you need to bring a r down to the the ground and as Dr waro was saying it's between 1.5 and $ 1.7 million that needs
179to be done and um terms about who's the landlord came up and we need to make sure that this does not reduce our bottom line Top Line um this needs to come from this needs to be helped from the city or we need to close it down um so we're looking at what is the likelihood uh what are the possibilities so we're going to go between the dichotomy of those two goals and how we can best serve the the the schools the teachers people can I ask so I'm assuming the EC glass is on a CIP which the board approved right it is yes sir so the the question is for City to not take it out from the CIP pretty much and leave it there and hopefully not take it out of our bottom
180line thank you next one is LCR chair Jalil we did not have enough members and we did not have enough preparation to uh really make a good go at having a legislative breakfast so we canel it and we canceled the meeting for today because of uh being out of town members out of town and we will U either prepare a legislative advocacy list that we want to to bring to Richmond by December or at the very least by January and have our meeting then and then make a make a um plan to go and deliver it to Richmond after their legislative advocacy days which are coming up pretty soon that's it academic success committee chair lowri um we're working with Community leaders to we um to bring awareness to parents of struggling students planning phase
181for tutoring after school in the community with the aid of local colleges universities as well as um during the school day and thinking outside the box using student sports facilities when they're done um uh we still have to come up with a slogan um talked with Mr Kirkwood today I sent all of you the email about the pamphlet that we worked on last year with the administration um and we added a bullet requesting parents to look up free children children educational websites so plans are in the works with um Miss boy to get those Partners to us that work with families to email them the brochure um and that they will be able to print out the amount that they needed the different businesses will be um it's it's so important to prepare when you
182have your child from birth to the time they enter school to prepare and this way cuz I can tell you personally when a child comes not knowing anything which used to be the motto years ago it takes twice as long to get them caught up so the more even parents read to their infants the more they know before they come to school the better success for your child so um Benchmark is being monitored I gave all of you a list of um what we received in the academic success committee from the first um test that was given the first assessment so this is a starting point these numbers I know are would make you happy but but we're starting with this new program so hopefully as we see the next quarter and the next quarter
183we should see the scores improve that's the goal um but we're keeping a close watch on how students are performing and what can be done to help them succeed as well so that's thank you next one is by Mr Andrews and Dr Tinsley so our last meeting was November 7th um next meeting is December 17th of off schedule there uh just the uh Partners in education breakfast skill schedule for January 9th planning is still going uh for that and then they do the Pi Day each year which will be March 14th uh so um that's really the only updates we have from that next one is at Foundation Mr depal and Mr Jal we just made contact with them we haven't really had an opportunity to schedule a meeting yet however so no progress on
184that thank you Beacon of Hope Mr Andrews and Mrs pres okay go ahead you want go I got you okay um they they had Virginia college application week October the 20th through November the 1st um they came out with a lot of good data and I'll share that with you as well um are preparing students and families for December 1st opening of this year's free application for Fafa which is the federal student aid application process um they will host an inperson and virtual appointments for students and families to complete the application and of course in January they will host fter completion night at both high schools and then um they are also doing a career acceleration program targeting LCS graduates um this is uh for their for them and their parents to return to school
185upskill and of and or Advance their careers Services include career coaching resume writing interview preparation workshops and some more things in terms of stats for the application V uh Virginia College week um they had about a about 968 applications submitted um to a total of 109 schools and then they had saved about 40, ,000 in application fees which I think is actually pretty cool so that averaged about 179 um per student saved them some cost in applying for college soent thank you and they put it all together on a nice little information sheet great work they did yeah that was the the greatest number right there the scholarships over $900,000 yeah there you go on the spot award thank you next one is superintendent commins Dr copelan good evening everyone uh I'll be brief but
186I've been spending a lot of time in school buildings um and we'll continue that all the way up to the Thanksgiving break I've also been spending time with uh directors of departments that might not necessarily be in this building uh getting out and visiting with them and seeing what their current challenges are uh just some good news to share uh the Child Nutrition department under the leadership of Beth moris is always looking for Grants and funding uh and uh Lynchburg City Schools was awarded $ 63,65 uh for equipment which does two critical things for us it actually will replace aging equipment on the Heritage Elementary School service line and actually provide an opportunity to um add additional options uh and replacing a uh antique oven at RS pain uh so um Beth is always looking
187for things that are out there I think her Professional Network amongst the state and the nation as a nutrition director uh benefits us directly when she when she gets these types of of Grants and work that help us help our students um great information about what the Beacon of Hope did during college application week uh they work hard for our students every day uh and um two good programs that I was invited to uh one at Laurel for Veterans Day uh they did an amazing program out there probably recognize around a dozen different veterans um from around the city uh and then Bedford Hills I thought I was going to a faculty meeting uh and it was uh a presentation from a couple of students I've got it hitting sitting in my office now uh
188they worked really hard on it and it it was it was the highlight of my day on Monday uh to be out there at Bedford Hills um if there are things that that you need you would like schools things you want me to go out and visit take a look at please reach out to me and say hey check out this see what's going on um there's a lot of hard work going on out there you heard you heard the principles today they are they have a laser focus on what the needs of our students are and I think they are really thinking outside of the box um and how they connect to students you know when you think about the dragon wagon and the purple and gold teams uh and uh the things that
189Mr Jam Bron's doing at Desi uh they're working hard for the students of this city and and we're continue to do what we can every day to support them um because that's what we're all working for is we're working for the kids uh that's it that's all I got thank you we'll start with both comments from Mr Connor oh got you off guard so no my report for um accelerates my comments for tonight thank you Mr Jal I want to thank all LCS veterans and remember Veterans Day um remembering the people for their sacrifice uh enabling us to remain free I um I saw a digital billboard recently somewhere on one of these highways here in Lynchberg that uh talked about the attendance issue that we had spoken about recently as well and it was
190some kind of encouragement to be in school but it was a little bit generic and it wasn't as clear as it could be probably needed some marketing expert it's colorful digital billboard I think it was going south on on Highway 460 I'm not quite sure maybe it was five but I I think that that is a really good idea the digital billboard making it clear and actually applying it to LCS I'm not even sure if it was for a school system here or particular school but it was nice to see I would like us to revisit the makeup of the superintendent search committee simply because it is a continual ask of our staff members and our teachers and those who work at LCS uh let's find a time to do that or I can um
191ask for it to be added into the agenda to review it I would uh like to see an increase of opportunities for higher LCS grade levels to tutor or chaperone younger children or even help teachers save time by grading papers Etc Etc like to see teachers save time that way if we can get that organized little better it would be very good for example and I also wish we had $438,900 and uh if we get a penny more please add it to the goal of having monitors in the back seats of buses so we can help our kids pay attention um not cause disturbance lastly I think we should find more ways to shorten the distance between a behavior that we don't want in students and uh the opportunity for that student to modify the
192behavior through community service there's so many Avenues of community service in our area not only in in the Lynchberg City Schools but elsewhere here's a couple of a few examples helping younger children to read uh and hand out food at a local food bank collect winter coats for low-income families add local tourist commiss add Aid local tourist commissions uh make books for underprivileged children in the community perform acts of kindness for Rescue Squad volunteers Vis visit senior citizens at nursing homes rake leaves shovel snow clean gutters or wash windows of schools nursing homes and wash school buses that's a possibility clean up a vacant lot or Park hold a donation Drive for local fire departments and clean up roadside trash volunteer at horse stables there's all sorts of things that they can do and I
193I think that should be more of a um uh behavior modification uh activity that we apply for the things that we don't we don't like amongst the students and I'd like to just thank this uh board for just making progress I I like what I see even in just the beginning of this school year thank you Mr Andrews uh I'd like to give a shout out to alah Andrews my daughter she's a senior at EC glass she uh she got accepted Rand College um going to Rand College yeah so I'm just a proud dad man so that's it that's all I got her first grade teacher said congrats that's right she that's right exactly right Dr D thank you um would I just wanted to point out that I am attending the spma conference in
194Glenn Allen on December five and six and I think several of my Schoolboard colleagues are at least considering it I want to say that I found SP spma very helpful and supportive of me as a school board member and would encourage others to attend uh non-members of spma can attend although the registration fee is a little bit higher uh the speakers are going to include the Virginia Secretary of Education deputy secretary of education and Virginia Board of educ education chairwoman um among other things I found these meetings to be an opportunity to talk with other Schoolboard members from across the state in a modest to small size so that there's not 10,000 people there there's maybe 80 or something like that it's a very comfortable setting uh but if you are going to go uh
195you should try to complete your registration and payment by November 18 because as the registration goes up then and uh if you do go please be advised the registration fee does not cover lodging that has to be arranged for separately that's all I have to say thank you congrats on having a new family member added to yours grandaughter congrats thank you thank you Mrs Preston um is anybody else going to the the the okay I just was curious yeah I'm curious about about that I'm looking forward to that because it's always a good time to learn some things and to collaborate with other people who have the same kind of goals and responsibilities as we do so thank you for doing that Mr Deo um I've heard it a couple times and I really appreciate
196fj's um um comments but I don't know where I've ever been Dr C maybe you can share help me I've don't know where I've ever been with where uh where some where employees get to choose their next boss so when it comes down to teacher input I I'm really surprised that there is such a um um move to have that change and please help me understand some way somehow how that works I just find it odd uh but welcome Dr Copeland I really appreciate you being here I think you're uh going to be a great asset while you're here and I just look forward to working with you thank you Mr Mrs Lowry um I'm also going to both conferences um I went to TC Miller K play kindergarten play today about the gingerbread man
197which was absolutely adorable um I also visited the restore Academy today I've enjoyed RS pain Heritage Elementary darington and bike presentations and the kids were so so excited I also saw our place um when the students at EC glass performed it I want to thank the veterans in our school system and our city including Mr Tinsley and Copeland for their service I'm a military brat but I wasn't in the service and I've also after hearing um the Gent the gentleman speak today to this evening to gentlemen I have been asking principals counselors I'm going to continue to ask teachers and other people what they would like for me to ask for of the when we do the interviews because even though I keep hearing there's no teacher on there while I still uh tutor in
198Lynchburg City schools and I tutor privately I am in involved and I want and I I said what I meant when I first became a Schoolboard member I am here to represent the teachers cuz I know for 31 years what it feels like sometimes a lot of times not to feel like you're being heard so I for those of you out there I am coming around as much as I can I want to be finished before Christmas break and getting input so if you even think about it now please email me what you would like to ask and I'm going to put those questions together the ones that are similar and cuz I don't know how many questions we'll be able to ask because of time so I want to be your representative because I
199am still a teacher I'm not on the payroll but I'm still a teacher I'm still teaching I'm still certified to teach and I am here for you so you are being heard thank you Mr L Dr Tinsley yeah I would just reiterate that I mean we we are we we really do legitimately want to hear from all the stakeholders um and I understand where the teachers are coming from U but we have to have a limitation to the size of a committee and uh and the limit has been decided to be seven we've moved forward with the committee and the committee will hear all stakeholders I know that's words are cheap but I think you'll see in in time that that's a true statement would also just in in reference to Veterans Day um just
200remember that within the city limits of Lynchburg you've got a a national guard uh headquarters and headquarters company you've got uh United Army National Guard you've got an Army Reserve Center on Graves Road you also got a United States Marine Corps Reserve Center as well Mo a lot of these soldiers and Marines are LCS students right and former LCS students and staff and and teachers so you know just remember that that you know when we were we're dealing with these students we're teaching these students we're thinking about these we're planning for these students a lot of these students are going to become members of our military many will go off and be on active duty units and and U we are training up the next military service members of our country so I think that's
201pretty awesome and uh I've served with a lot of LCS former LCS students in the military so it's been good thank you thank you Dr Tinsley thank you for your service and thank you Dr Copeland for your service here yes thank you for being in and my I'm going to read but I will say a couple of lines um for all practical purposes Dr Copeland you are the superintendent the board has chosen you to lead the school district and it comes with all the powers and responsibilities so um this you have the responsibility to take care of these kids like they were taken care of them yesterday today and tomorrow they'll be taken care of them those are in our responsibility that's the per um responsibility of this board to make sure it's done seamlessly
202and I'm hoping and praying you're able to do that without any hers so I for one is 100% behind you and I'm assuming other board is to so that you can perform your D duties efficiently and effectively thanks Dr G yeah thank you and then informational items are discipline review data committee meeting Wednesday November 13 3:30 Friday November 15th legislative breakfast uh it's cancelled vsba Nal convention November 20th to November 22nd Williamsburg please say hello to Gina Patterson for us who are not going uh next school board meeting December 3rd at 5:00 p.m. here in the school board room next school board work session is Tuesday December 17th at 5:00 p.m. here in boardroom lccr is Tuesday December 17th at 3:30 p.m. uh which one did I miss and then finance and Facilities is Tuesday
203December 10th at 3:30 p.m. discipline review data committee meeting is December 12th at 3:30 p.m. in the boardroom and the academic success committee December 3rd December 3rd 3 3:30 p.m. in the boardroom yeah just our meeting on Thursday special call meeting a special call meeting yes thank you you uh there's a special call meeting on November 14th at 3:30 p.m. here uh Dr Tinsley as chair of the search committee will you'll conduct that meeting we'll be hearing from the three shortlisted search firms uh and it's a closed session as advised by our school board attorney and um you want to say something just I said earlier yeah I think we're same time 3:30 that meeting starts at 3:30 these people are driving from out of town we have to make sure safely back home um
204before it's too late thank you very much the meeting is adj thank you [Music]