001[Music] hand over to Dr Dave for pledge of allegiance you have the Pledge of Allegiance please rise Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all thank you thank you Dr item C is approval of agenda is there a motion to approve the agenda so moved M Preston Dr day any discussion on the agenda mam clerk would you please call the Mr Andrew yes Mr TR yes Dr day yes Dr yes M yes Mr yes M yes thank you next one is the chair comments I just wanted to wish everybody a Happy New Year and hopefully we'll have a fruitful New Year for our staff for our faculty for our students and everybody in Lynchburg
002City schools and in city of Lynchburg so welcome back to the new year with that I'll pass it on to Dr Edwards for uh you can just make it okay yes so our student reps um are not here today because we uh had an early dismissal so we let them um early dismiss and we will reschedule uh Our Guest student rups who were I think sandeski Middle School were scheduled to join us too at o thank you f public comment Dr D okay um so I'll read our usual statement of the policy pertinent to public comments uh persons appearing before the school board will not be allowed to campaign for public office or promote private business ventures and should not use profanity or vulgar language or gestures make comments about a public official or an
003employee that are not related to their official duties engage in Behavior this that disrupts the meeting or intimidates others or address the school board on issues that do not concern the services policy role and or responsibilities of the school board individual speakers shall limit their comments to 3 minutes a speaker representing a group shall limit their comments to five minutes the representativ shall identify the group at the beginning of their presentation a group may have no more than one spokesperson the total allotted time for public comments at school board meetings is 30 minutes public comments are reserved for the public to provide input the board does not respond to comments answer questions or otherwise engage in discussion at this time and uh we will try to follow our protocol of hearing from students first staff
004second parents or Guardians third and community members 4th um on the list of people that we have that have signed up I do not see any students um but there are um two teachers which uh count as staff the first is Aaron Foreman good evening Dr Edwards Dr gupa members of the school board my name is Aaron foreman and I am the technical director for E glass theater I also teach video and media for the CTE department and I manage the E glass Auditorium I have been teaching at e glass for five years and I am a product of Lynchburg City Schools as an alumni of EC glass tonight I come to give information on a program you may not know much about and that is the ASL Shadow interpreting program for EC glass theater
005this program was started under the direction of Tom Harris in 2012 and integrate sign language interpreters into the performance that means the interpreters are on stage write next to the performers and interacting with each other during the play allowing the deaf Community to see the action as it happen happens this is different than placed interpreting where our interpreters are standing stationary on one side of the stage and Sh signing the show as it goes on similar to what you see our interpreter doing this evening Shadow interpreting relies on acting movement and interaction of the interpreters with each other and the speaking actors to help bring our show to life for members of our deaf Community now did you know we are only we are one of three programs in the nation that offer shadowed interpreting
006I didn't know any of this prior to joining glass theater myself members of the deaf and harder hearing communities travel from miles away to view our shadow interpreting shows and they are by far our best attended performances to highlight this amazing program my video media class is preparing a documentary which involves multiple interviews with the interpreters industry professionals former students and members of the de Community we hope to have this documentary completed by your next school board meeting so that you can learn more about our amazing program we could not offer this program to our patrons without our amazing interpreters and I'm so grateful for those interpreting services that they provide for performances however it has come to our attention at both EC glass and Heritage Theater departments that no funds have ever been earmarked
007for the provision of interpreting accommodations now those costs are being pushed out to the high schools to cover their own reduced operating budgets which they can't do without additional funding the LCS budget has never included an align item that safeguards the rights to the death on heart of hearing individuals access to these interpreting services at public events in December Katherine McMullen lead education interpreter presented a request to you at the budget meeting that LCS include a lion item of 10,000 a year 5,000 for each High School to provide interpreting services for public theater Productions I come tonight to Echo that request as these Services have given our program so much over the years having had deaf students as a teacher the majority of them have said that the interpreting at performances has allowed them to
008engage in theater in ways they could not before in addition glass theater has also proudly hosted deaf and heart of hearing students as actors and as technicians as recently as last year these students are students who never would have had the power of Live Theater without having it interpreting to them Shadow interpreting is a major Pride point of glass theater so if you are intrigued by what I have said I want to personally invite you to see it in action on Friday January 26th at 7:00 p.m. glass theater will perform silent sky with Shadow interpreting please come and see the power of Shadow interpreting and please also adopt a budget line item so that LCS can continue to provide these services at our performances I hope to share our documentary with you at our next
009board meeting and I thank you so much for your time thank you um next is Malia King hi um it's Malia King and I am a proud EC glass alumni also uh a parent a fiscally conservative Lynchburg taxpayer but this evening I'm here because I am the special education case manager for all the students with disabilities who are enrolled in our Virtual Academy I would like to share some of the differences between what we provide compared to Virtual Virginia and other online platforms none of which are free for clarity please know I'm speaking about secondary middle and high school tonight what we have built over the past three years is a program that is dedicated to relationships and differentiation while holding all of our students to high expectations because we provide live synchronous instructions in
010the four core classes our teachers develop relationships with students and learn their personal goals needs and strengths from the brilliant students who excel in all they do who need to be challenged but also appreciated for their unique ways of thinking to those students who for any number of reasons have rarely felt success within the school buildings we are providing what they need and what works for them virtual Virginia and other online platforms are generic asynchronous and taught by teachers who do not create the material have hundreds of other students and many of which do not live anywhere near Virginia there is no differentiation no special education services minimal accommodations and particularly with virtual Virginia the courses are intended for independent students who are at or above grade level in contrast our teachers create their material
011so they can adjust as needed and because of our class sizes and how we get to know these kids we are able to provide project-based learning experiences and more importantly our teachers have a vested interest in these students because they are part of our communities we go to their basketball games their plays their concerts we see them on the marching band field and we do that just to maintain that connection that we know is so important the Blended type of instruction that LCS has allowed us to build is providing for many students we have more inquiries every week the world of education is changing this is year 25 for me and I spent 22 of them at Sheffield Elementary but the way students are accessing information is learning and is changing and evolving and I
012am one that does not like change but we're going to have to change with these kids and with the world and virtual learning is going to be one of those key components so LCS can continue to be on The Cutting Edge as the Trailblazers we are or we can just drop this program and risk losing these students who are going to go elsewhere to find what works for them if we don't provide it so before you or any of the stakeholders here make a decision that impacts these students I invite you to please come visit us meet these kids drop into our zooms and watch what we're doing and listen to the kids stories and look at what they're producing what we're providing is worth the investment thank you so much thank you okay um
013I do not see any parents or Guardians on the list so uh we'll now turn to community members um the first name I have is Lindsay Kirkland hello I'm Lindsay Kirkland I am a parent of an LCS student and I'm also a member of one of your advisory committees the equity task force and we have the following statement and recommendations for you all as a board it's evident by your search for alternative funding that the board recognizes a need for a safe space at EC glass for all students to decompress self-regulate and gather their thought thoughts in a calm distraction-free environment it's also very reassuring that the Administration has committed to funding menal products in order to be compliant with the Virginia code in addition to partnering with Community organizations such as the pad pad
014Center and park viw Mission however there is an additional aspect to the grant that alternative funding will not be able to supplement this includes the full year of Club operating funds that were included in the grant award the grant was awarded in late spr however the board deferred making a decision to late Autumn leaving the club in limbo and limiting its ability to procure funds from another resource this ties into a bigger concern of inequitable administration of board policies and the Discrimination of a minority group within the LCS students current LCS board policy khz dasr as I'm sure you're aware clearly outlines a criteria for acceptance of Grants by a school board it requires the superintendent to report gifts offered with a value of 5,000 or more along with recommendations in a proposed gift agreement
015the policy states that gifts will not be accepted if they would undermine the goal of equal of equal educational opportunities to all students or if the terms of acceptance unreasonably interfere with the school board's control of its operation of the division it also states that gifts donations in request to the school division should be reasonably free of restrictions on their use not contain overt advertising or reflect commercial interest support equity and access to educational resources include installation cost if they're significant and not require excessive maintenance Personnel or other cost and be consistent with the division's vision mission and goals the board's additional requirement for the GSA to provide a detailed budget and outline of how the materials will be used is discriminatory and not in accordance with with the current policy nor has this requirement
016been asked of any other previous Grant recipient the board did not provide clear evidence of how this grant failed to meet the current criteria established in policy KH z-r many objections were unclear and not based on specific criteria outlined in the policy the current LCS policy already provides for a fair and Equitable decision if implemented correctly and the board failed to implement the policy correctly on November 14th which is essentially nullified the validity of the vote the equity task force your advisory committee makes the following recommendations for reconciliation and to restore the trust between students staff and the community with the school board two things we propose a new vote on the GSA Grant honoring the existing criteria outlin in kz- policy with the understanding that the vote will reflect the factual information that has
017already been presented to the board board as well as the grants alignment with the division's vision mission and goal and two to discontinue the pursuit of additional criteria that has been discussed which will make seeking grants owners for staff and students and creates additional barriers with potential community members remembering that the current administration of the Commonwealth of Virginia has encouraged students and staff to seek alternative revenue streams through grants and Partnerships with businesses and industries we want to praise the students involved in the GSA who have gone so far above and beyond to model what it means to be in tune with the needs of their peers writing grants is hard especially if you've never done it before and this grant deserves to be approved because these students saw two different needs in their campus
018and research best practices for Solutions put together a winning proposal for a highly competitive $10,000 grant that will not only create immediate Sol solutions for EC glass students but also address ongoing problems such as lack of mental health support behavior and emotional distractions in the classroom and school attendance other student group fundraising efforts gets approved easily or at least they used to there's no reason why this group's Grant which benefits the entire school and aligns with LCS mission to meet every child's need should be any different we hope that the board will live up to the LC s value of integrity and do the right thing in an ethical and transparent manner thank you thank you um Dr William Atwell hello my name is Dr williiam at will I teach ASL I've been teaching ASL
019for more than 20 years I grew up oral and I was diagnosed being de and I have gone to many theater shows and I felt left out because I didn't understand what was going on I saw my friend sitting beside me my classmates really enjoying the performance then we moved here and LCS was the first place where I experienced shadowed interpreting it wasn't sometimes I miss what's going on on these St they provide 100% equal access for death people like Aon said just around the nation people come here here to LCS because you guys are a spotlight for the death Community with that being said if you do not provide the money for this department we be back to old ways and the opportunity to really enjoy theater we don't feel like we can enjoy
020that without an interpreter uh either place or shadows and we can't call that equal access equal access is a big thing not just for the death but the variety of different patrons you know for people who have um just different things going on in their lives but you know we think about the death Community it is really strong that we and support them and with the interpreters and they are so willing to do these plays for us and what they do to memorize the lines and everything as same as the students it's it's crazy and the funding that is not now allowed for these things or is limited for these things it's taking away equal access for the de patrons and um you will have a limited number of people now death coming to your
021performances you know many of us we grew you know we grew up watching you know different things different um opportunities but we missed things with Mary Poppins wow this show and E they did they provided it now I watch it and I'm like oh my gosh that is why it's funny and I get it now because of the interpreters and their shadow of performance and the way that they provide Shadow performances for the community I teach and train a Blue Ridge ASL and hoping that they will also um come and watch the Shadows interpreted I ask you guys to consider that the budget that you keep it alive and you will also draw More Death students as well they will want to be involved because of the interpreters more than before thank you so much
022thank you okay um next I have Laura Atwell oh I'm nervous remember you know a movie screen a long time ago was called silent silent movies people would watch it and their facial expressions but you really didn't know the story and then later they added voicing imagine as a de person everything is silent everything you don't understand what's going on so that's why we feel it's important to have interpreters to understand what's going on when we have a place interpreted show we can see the interpreters yeah but the action's happening maybe far away and we can't see them maybe they're hugging or dancing and like oh we missed it and we're like what happened you know to watch a place Show versus The Shadow show so different when it's Shadow we can see everything we
023see their faces we see just you know they moving across the stage and all of the action that's taking place you know when I see a place it hurts my neet you know CU I look at one place for a long time and then I have to look around plus just involved with the kids and the community my daughter graduated from E glass and I brought her here for parents also that didn't have right to expose them interpreters to see the death culture in the community and the shadow performances I've been faithful in coming to all of them I don't miss a thing because I don't understand everything sometimes with the place time I have a hard time understanding them but when they're on the stage with the actors holy cow I just is amazing
024so I ask that you will continue to support Shadow interpret it's the only District that provides interpreters for their place other districts don't so where do de have opportunity to go we want to go and enjoy um theater thank you thank you um and then the last person I have on the list here is Helen Knight hello my name's Kellen Knight I'm speaking on behalf of a group uh the queer Town Hall um I'd like to start with a quote I looked at the way in which we might be providing a disservice to these young people coming up by having them think that you know if they just whine and cry enough it's going to make a difference we need to be an example of standing up to negative things that happen in this world
025that's what we're doing here and that's going to be a lot better than saying it's okay you know you're a victim we need to make people stronger that's a quote from last month's meeting by Mr depal research shows queer teens attempt suicide at four times the national rate for adolescents to quote the Trevor Project lgbtq youth are not inherently prone to Suicide risk because of their orientation or gender identity but rather placed at higher risk because of how they are mistreated and stigmatized in society this is the negativity that the itot better campaign and your whiny student are standing up to what was the negativity that you were standing up to the emails the public comment if you're looking for strength in facing those things it's been more than exemplified by the GSA they didn't
026come to you to cry for your pity they came because you were the ones placed in a position of power to affect change ideally in their interest however after the confusion Sur last meeting surrounding the grant with questions that had been answered several times over several months I'd argue that these kids are a victim of at the very least weaponized incompetence you know and you're in a bit of a pickle where grants are concerned not only to the detriment of yourselves but to the students in the school who have to wait an indefinite amount of time to find out if they'll get the chance to see their hard-earned money based on whether or not it meets your vague criteria I say vague because the 50/50 Grant checked the boxes for the questions Mr Jalil suggested
027be asked in the future does it follow LCS policy yes is it helpful to the whole student body yes does it come with strings attached no is volleyball equipment helpful to the whole student body I don't know I realize that these are just ideas for what the process may be but I urge you to think this through Lynchberg City Schools need all the help they can get especially with talks of schools closing setting up barriers to that aid helps no one it benefits no one but it hurts everyone in the long run approve the Dick Sporting Goods Grant you made a mistake dismissing the EC glass GSA but delaying funds to dumbar Middle doesn't fix that if you do end up drafting some kind of document send it to the school so students can figure
028out which grants are and aren't okay before they write it out only to have their hard- ared work be denied by those tasked with their well-being and be sure to let EC glass know exactly which part of the suicide prevention nonprofit didn't fit LCS values lest they think it stems from the same stigmatization that pushes so many to the very crisis they thought to prevent thank you that completes the public comment period thank you Dr D item G's Finance report Dr Ed okay so I'm going to bring on Mr soron and Dr for the November Mr soron for the November uh 2023 Finance report okay uh thank you Dr dward good evening board members there are three reports uh in your packet the same reports you get each month these St for November uh if
029I may I'm going to start with the summary report there's also one for detail for revenues and expenditures but to the summary report uh through November 23 we're pretty much on course with our expenditures and uh encumbrances where we thought we'd be this time of year a little ahead of November 22 but again in line with what we would expect health insurance fond is uh a little better shape than last year still not in great shape but we do we are expecting some more Revenue to come in starting this month is we've increase the employer and both the employee contribution to that fund so we hope to improve the position of that uh and again at summary level that's that's what I have and I'll be glad to answer any questions you may have thank
030you thank you question any questions doesn't look like okay thank you thank you next item is H consent agenda is there a motion to approve all items look good you want now there I think there's some corrections that need to be made all right go ahead you want to make the corrections beforehand or after the motion is approved um maybe I should make the corrections first so we don't have to go with through an amendment process of the mo um almost trivial one the minutes for the December 5 meeting item K9 the next ad hoc uh discipline policy review committee meeting is January 25 I think it had a different date on that and for the minutes of December 12 um Mr trost was not present at that meeting correct no um so uh he
031was listed as present on in the minutes so that correction should be made and when we uh voted on the high school program of study item H1 in addition to Mr trust's absence there was one exstension so there were only seven people casting votes so the vote should be recorded as 7even to zero abstentions do not count as votes cast um so I just would like the the minutes to reflect those items accurately thank you mam CL do you have that is there a motion to approve cons set agenda with the changes as suggested by Dr Day R second Mr I know right those are any discussion uh Miss Lowry Mr depal second would you please call the RO Mr yes Mr Andre yes Mr yes Dr day yes Dr gupter yes Mrs Preston yes
032Mr depal yes Mr Lor yes motion cares 8 to Zer um in that motion with the human resources report um was the approval of our new CFO who we are really excited about Sonia Jamies um who is uh no stranger to this area she was resume in front of me she was the assistant Town manager in Bedford so um she's very familiar although she was most recently the city manager in uh Jasper uh we met with her and we are so excited to work with her um great ideas great energy I think the board is going to be very happy to have her um she can start mid January which allows time um for overlap and seeing how we do have a new CFO it's a nice time to thank our interim CFO um Mr
033senson who has done a magnificent job of filling in and really helping us get some things on track um but we will put out a press release regarding Miss uh Jamies in the morning but I did want to just take a pause and say congratulations what you're saying you're not keeping Mr Solon for a few more months um his wife has we would love to keep him um for more we will miss you you you are a man of character thank you thank you MRK you very well done you appreciate that next one is School Board member reports finance and Facilities Dr D um see catching up with you here well nothing has happened since our last meeting our previous meeting was November 21 and our next meeting is January 16th so there's nothing AV
034thank you J School Miss low um this is so loud okay um we met and in um December and um the one thing that they said that that really positive there no increase for of tuition next year so um they they're very good at handling um Mr Smith is very good at handling how many students come in and balancing out not having ra to to I by um he's been able to keep it it was at the1 150 students $10 a students, 1500 so he's able to balance that out so he doesn't have to need to raise um tuition for next year um they do have to buy credits for dual enrollment so um they would like to see more of a a dual enrollment um to save money um doing more of it with
035um cbcc and also so see was the other I on um I think that was pretty much it the rest of it was just budget so and um and how they're using the state money like jar fees are not reimbursable enrollment they were just going through line items like that process to go through U it's long and costly so that's why they only have a partnership with one University which is Lynchberg University University uh un I'm sorry University of Lynchburg um they have no agreements longwoods $140 teachers for tomorrow um UFL no cost to students so they hope to keep the $40 there's no cost to them I did ask about other colleges and I believe that Lu requires the teachers to sign a um statement of faith so that's why they could not accept
036that one and I think that's it thank you is Laurel I think Dr up today sh and then stem is Dr Carter she's sick today Le Mr TR the legislative advocacy and Community Relations Committee met today at 3:30 during that uh meeting we finalized our legislative priorities for this coming year we have those and we'll report on those later on the meeting um in addition we uh kind of began developing our plans for the capital conference Dr Carter uh will help us be your head those items um our next meeting is set for February 20 2024 at 3:30 pm. in room 26 thank you Partners in education U Mr depal and M L um nothing since the last meeting but our next meeting is Thursday morning at Camp Kumbaya sounds like fine we'll be singing
037be wet thank you Education Foundation Mr TR okay um registration is now open for the Lindburg City Schools Education Foundation 18th Annual breakfast with the superintendent so excited about that please uh sign up it is set for Thursday March 14th 2024 7 :30 to 900 a.m. at the Burton dining hall in the Dale Student Center at the University of Lynchburg address 1501 Lakeside Drive uh tickets are a bargain at $30 per person should be more than double that to hear our esteemed Dr Edward speak she's worth infinite more um we look forward to people signing up registering coming out and supporting uh not only the Lynchburg Education Foundation but our city schools thank you be can up hope um M Mr Andrews go first yeah go right ahead okay so Lauren sent out over a
038ton of um amazing things that the Beacon of Hope is doing so they're creating a cohort model to offer internship training to select CTE programs um they are launching a career fair for every senior student at uh Heritage High School EC La um the career fair will have 50 plus employers um represented and this will take place on the 27th of March um and then of course they have their uh third annual internship program that will take place this summer for riseing juniors and seniors applications open February 20th um student and employee match day will be uh April the 18th at the alliance Lynchberg I call it the alliance sorry Lynchburg Regional business Alliance um and so last year they had um over 100 students match with local businesses um and try to create some
039shadowing opportunities for those students um getting draw some interest and they were pretty successful it's growing every year so I'm hoping that they'll have even more students this year so um that's what I got I don't know if she has anything more in December the Beacon of Hope represented um at the high school futur the high school future centers at the Virginia College Access Network a number of school systems across the Commonwealth were interested in launching a program similar to to the Beacon of Hope and so they are really doing some positive things to impact our students among those pos positive things are the Commonwealth scholarships which are awarded $5,000 per student who attend college or technical programs outside of our stay close goar region and in 23 2 students earn the Commonwealth scholarships and
040represent LCS at UV uh represent LCS at UVA Virginia Tech Norfolk State William and Mary Washington and Lee JMU VCU George Mason and other institutions across the Commonwealth applications for that common for that scholarship are due uh for this year's scholarship are due on February the 15th and um any LCS graduate that currently through the class of 2029 can attend cbcc debt-free or a apply the $88,000 plus scholarship to any of our stay close goar Partners colleges and certificate programs which include Liberty U ofl sweet Brier Randolph College Central College of Nursing or Longwood University and the deadline for those scholarships is May 15 2024 so obviously the begin of hope is doing some really positive things to engage encourage and support our students and if I could just say I mean those some exciting
041stuff Mr Anders would you please repeat again because I think it's so important that CTE career day I mean we we heard the community and some different things out there again what when is weend of Hope and CTE have partnered up together um so they're launching a career fair for every senior student at Heritage High School in ET glass on the 27th of March um they anticipate 50 or more employees will be represented Beacon of Hope future centers are working with high school counselors and faculty to ensure that seniors have a resume developed and ready for the event so parents and underclass students will be welcomed to meet with employees for exploration and summer jobs from 3:00 to 5:00 pm on the 27th of March so that's pretty amazing exciting stuff for CTE y so
042I have a question about um how are they going to advertise so people really know it's going to go on that's a great question we'll ask Laur we'll ask even in the county you know County might want to come absolutely I don't want to give you any correct information so we make sure communicate that to I'm sure you guys already know guys and gals already know that um there's a lot of free advertising on TV as well as radio um they they give the opportunity for shoutouts and as well as they have a budget so just so you don't leave that stone unturned they might want to explore that texted me today that there is on January 31st Mr douly is giving a tour of um Middle School and High School CT programs after the
043brief meeting so I don't know if we can get the information then those board members who would like to join that is will that be okay um to look at the CTE programs at middle school and high school good Stu yeah she going to circulate that information January 31st you good next one is academic sexus committee Mr Jal yes we're gonna talk about it with Tish um yes we talked about um Mrs Cruz came Miss Cruz came and we um because we submitted um to help close the achievement Gap a kindergarten screener and so she always has she already has a team there's started working on it they want to roll it out this may and in the summer and they want to make sure that teachers are um trained especially new teachers on it
044so this way it gives a heads up to the kindergarten teachers of the skills their children have before they come instead of starting the school year and figuring it out as you go along so this is something a jump ahead that we um initiated and um and administration loved it and so we're going forward with it and then the other thing we talked about was um uh Dr Rica came and we were uh we were talking some about the programs and our school system that we're going that they're working on and pioneering and um want to implement I think this would be good especially when we go before with our budget before our city council joint me meeting to really emphasize how we're closing achievement Gap where we're going and a vision and it looked
045really really positive which you'll see later and there's a Community member who may be interested right you want to mention that the Community member who may be interested in getting involved absolutely um just right out there you mean Mr McCain yeah so I mean some of us been around for a while know about Danny McCain he's an outstanding uh advocate for the children been doing it for many many years really uh interested in helping with us the school system close the achievement Gap got a number of people that meet in my office uh on a fairly regular basis kind of working in the community wanting to help um so I want to connect maybe uh I think Danny would love to be on your committee if that's possible I know there's a number of other
046individuals that are um saying we'll step up and let us know how we can help um they see it as a big opportunity in our community and want to help us anywh they can so I'll get uh Mr McCain in touch with you if that's okay yeah I don't know can he join the committee but he can come to the committee meetings meetings are open so he he just wants to be uh made aware of it and he wants to lend his support and he want to he wants to get out into the community in a Grassroots SE effort and say this is what we need to do to help our our children okay and also help to close some of that awareness of achievement Gap we're working on a pamphlet we're going to work
047we have a rough draft but that was given today but we're going to work on our next meeting um this month later this month and then we no February is that February in February and um we on one side will'll be focusing focusing on the elementary piece on the second side the middle and high school piece with links information readbooks you know shapes colors um you know we have this CT we have AP we have duel so we want to put something out there in businesses and hospitals and around to promote and also to help parents know what they should be working on from with their baby or their little young one before they come to their first year of school so that hopefully will help close that achievement Gap so with lots of suggestions
048and links and things that they can go to thank you I appreciate it the focus is coming back to the academics and that's wonderful thank you for sharing that information um comprehensive strategy plan fiscal responsibility Dr Edward sure um not really an item but I just wanted to uh bring to your attention that in your comprehensive strategic plan two of our um goals uh revolve around budget development velopment U compensation which is some of the things that we're going to talk about tonight so um for the record since we are going to discuss it and um look at uh the budget tonight I wanted to make sure that we captured it there and we're going to move on and we'll discuss in in more detail under item K1 we move on to item K1 fisal
04925 operating budget discri all right item K1 well welcome to uh the new year and the new budget season so tonight it's going to represent our first um deep dive into the details um I'm going to start with saying we will not solve all the questions tonight we might generate some great ones um but we have a lot of information for you I do want to say to the public that the PowerPoint that the school board is um looking at which is in executive content for the board members I put it in public content so if you have been on board docs but not within the last hour since the meeting started started you can access that by um going back onto bardocks refreshing you should be able to get a copy of the PowerPoint
050I will warn you in advance it's not a 15minute presentation it's got a lot of information in there um and we were intentional intentional about putting a lot of information in there because um we know that school board members go back reread and it helps to have the details in there as well as our public um for that um so our our next slide our agenda for tonight and you have a copy of just the agenda page more for you to write notes and take um take uh uh questions uh the slid should be numbered so if there's a particular slide that you're like oh I have a question about that you can jot it down but we have five sections to our agenda one is just his history about the budget development process and
051we thought this was important because as I look around this room and I ask one simple question question who was here in March of 2020 when we closed schools or when the governor closed schools anyone anyone the only person who you you were here did you start in 2020 or long long before that and um Mrs Carter Dr Carter is also um a board member but most of you weren't here listening to those discussions and having that that board history so part of what we want to do is provide a little bit of board history about the bu Budgetel velopment process but also go over the car's funding overview with you all so that you can get an idea of how the then seated board and Boards um we're making decisions in section two this
052goes along with What U Mrs Lowry talked about our high quality classroom plan um and this is what we're calling our budget plan which is going to set us up for Success um for Innovation and acceleration and wonderful things so we'll talk a little bit about that in section three we have um the school administration priorities and considerations we went over a little bit of that in December before we receive the C tool so we'll tell you what's different uh there some other budget considerations that we've looked at since then um and we tried to capture some of the school board requests and considerations which we'll go over um again here section four is the meat uh and potatoes uh that's where we have the financials for um projected uh revenues uh what we know
053right now as well as looking at proposed uh expenditures and proposed reductions big picture items we're going to spend the next couple weeks and months um drilling down for that uh a city budget request there's a deadline for that so that's going to be important that we attend to that and then section five is obviously superintendent recommen recommended budget and uh next steps so what we would like to do the way that we structured it because we know you have lots of questions is we go through a section pause take questions on that section go through the next section um and I gave you a hard copy of the agenda just so that you could say oh okay that section's coming so you might want to hold a question if it's in the next section
054so we're going to start with section one uh which is this budget development process and I'm going to Tee It Up and turn it over to Dr W well thank you Dr Edwards and good evening members of the board um as Dr ever said we know this is a number of members uh first uh budget process we also know a lot of community members are taking a look at or or watching us as we develop this process and our budget process uh has a lot of steps to it so we just want to really briefly go through how the budget development development process works because you may be saying well how did they get to these numbers and why are they where they are so we just want to give take you just a couple
055of minutes to go through that um Austin if you go to the next slide um the so just to base briefing on on how our finances work we have a fiscal year that runs from July 1st to June 30th that's why we are in budget development season right now uh we actually start that budget development process really much earlier uh in the in the school year uh for the following school year really in September when we start talking to principles and directors about their needs and what uh their expectations are for uh where and and what our sort of goals are as a division um as we started through this um we've understood this year that we have some pretty significant financial constraints we're going to go into a lot more detail about that so
056we've asked principles and directors to really evaluate what their staffing needs are right now uh making sure that we are really um not asking for more Personnel this year and also making sure that we are keeping to the non-personnel operating cost flat uh from last year uh after that after those were those submissions were were provided by principls and directors those were reviewed by the two Deputy superintendents and Mrs Pew and I conferen with a number of principles and directors as necessary Neary to talk through some uh questions and ideas that they had uh to kind of figure out how to how to best do certain components at the same time our finance department has done an incredible job of taking a look at the uh the financial position where we are right now um
057taking a look at uh data and information that really just needed to be cleaned up uh over from the next last couple of years so position control is a technical document but it really is what it is it's positions and how we control where they're proved into the into the finan system um and so we wanted to make sure that is really clearly and and to the best extent we possibly can reflective of our actual Workforce making sure that our data is accurate so Mr Soren and and his team have done an incredible job uh taking a look at that and and really spending the time getting making sure that's right um also understanding our our position with cares funding uh and how that is ex expiring over the next year um and then really
058another very important thing that we'll talk about in just a few more minutes is getting a really strong historical analysis on a number of key line items in the budget uh and how we make sure that we're budgeting accurately and we're reflecting the actual cost of the school division uh we talked about some of our priorities with the finance committee uh back in November and then we had of course as you know our December 5th first meeting with the school board uh or excuse me the the budget public hearing with the school board a week later we talked with you all about your priorities uh we heard from the governor on December 20th about his released his recommended budget um and then finally uh last Thursday night we finally receiv received the actual Cal tool
059which is the actual numbers that come from the Virginia Department of Education that reflect the recommendations that the governor has made um as well so we were up late Thursday night crutching those numbers uh and addressing where we are so next time uh going forward uh once the superintendent talks about her budget tonight uh we will have the opportunity as a school you have opportunity as a school board to start discussing that and developing the process and over the next couple of weeks you'll make a decision on what amount of money to request from the city that's a key and important part of our budget development process um and you ultimately will uh spend some time working through that in February you'll continue that that'll be that'll continue through this month in February you'll continue
060to discuss the budget and finalize your draft budget uh by the end of that month and that at that point you'll be awaiting the city and state funding uh decisions that you'll have um and then in March of course uh we'll have the opportunity to host another budget public hearing and you'll be able to adopt a preliminary budget at that point there are two concurrent uh other organization budget processes that are occurring at the same time that affect our budget process that's the city council's budget adoption process uh which includes the operating uh funds for uh for um LCS as well as the state budget development process really briefly on the next slide I'm just going to kind of talk through some time frames on when those processes occur um City staff should be working
061right now uh to work on their budget as well as in the next couple of weeks balancing the city manager's recommended budget based on a placeholder number that we will provide from the school division uh the manager will ultimately in March present his recommended budget and over a number of weeks the city council will debate that uh funding amount uh and and in various uh recommendations that he may have and ultimately pass a a funding amount for LCS as well as other City departments uh usually that occurs in early May uh so we'll know that that goes on um usually we'll know uh in most years we'll know a little bit earlier than that what we think we're going to be getting um although some years that's been later than that as well uh the
062state budget process concurrently uh right now the uh the house and the Senate will be getting together very soon to propose their various uh funding amounts for public education in Virginia um February 13th is what we call crossover day so the house will debate their uh their budget ideas the Senate will debate their budget ideas and they'll cross over and they'll ultimately have to come to an agreement on what that will look like and by February 20 February 28th we'll know what the general assembly has passed and then of course ultimately they'll have to negotiate with the governor on what exactly is ultimately adopted so we have a couple of months before we really know what our revenue is going to look like um and and usually that occurs uh shortly after uh the time
063frame for the the governor to uh adopt the budget budget but uh of course last year that that also did did not happen it's been a challenging uh couple of years so uh once all that's done we can take all that information and the school board will then be able to uh uh revise their budget based on what our city and state funding positions are and usually that occurs again in late May early June and our new budget will take place uh July 1st so we're talking about things that are happening four or five months from now so we'll all be together and doing this having this conversation for many months ahead since it is January now and we have lot lots of work to go um that's that's the overview of the process thank
064you thank you okay um the next thing that while we are talking about developing the operating budget is is really important that we understand the cares funding budget where we are where we're going um we knew this day would be here that we would be out of car's funds and we are here so what we want to do in this next section is kind of go over um where we are and then of course since you all weren't sitting here or many of you weren't how did we get here um and again a little detail just so that you can go back and digest it but also so that the public uh can follow along so if you go to the next slide you'll see just a breakdown of positions we've talked about a number
065of cares position of of um LCS positions that are being funded by cares and there's a mixup there of those positions that were created as a result of Co um uh you see a lot with the the mental health staff LCS restore um up there as well as um the uh Virtual Academy folks um were also staff that as a result of covid you see some folks that are in there like classroom teachers who were the result of um I like to say hold harmless keep hold let's not lose our staff there was a provision very early in cares um where we could do that particularly right after uh schools were closed and we came back to our hybrid um in 2021 and some other positions um that were also in there that the various
066um throughout the years the board has approved so we've taken a look at exactly what's in there right now and we are a fan of the get reel look at the the big picture um just to make sure that we're presenting all of the information and we're tag teaming so that you have three places to look tonight so I'm let P jump in thank you and I just want to emphasize that many of those positions if not um most of them the majority of those positions were based on student needs um especially in the area of behavior concerns uh you know in in the classroom and so many of those positions that we see that are F being funded by cares um or a result of um changes in education in the pandemic um but
067overall students mental health um and well-being and so those positions were necessary um to really service and support the whole child um tending to their academic needs but especially the some Behavior social emotional concerns do you have a question just wanted using public to clarify the first two line items were as a result of shortfall in Lottery and S tax revenue yes all that I will will hear all that yes um and again I'm going to apologize that we normally don't do very dense pack slides like this but this is this is is a historical record so we all can go back um next slide so besides people um there were things that were also funded um by our car's budget uh such as summer school Extended Learning um if you remember early covid uh
068when we had quarantines anybody remember those days when we had to be 10 days out and we had teachers out and then we had students out so then we had substitutes and then we had substitutes out so some of our covid um money was used to give uh buildings building based Subs so that we would have people there on the off chance that someone either tested positive and in the early days Not only was it whether or not they were positive it was if they were exposed so um just looking at some of the things um people often say why did you do that well that's what we were thinking that was the thinking at the time um there are some other things in there that again are good for students you can see edmentum
069in there we did a lot with advertising um trying to do some recruitment for our staff and career Affairs so you can see the amount of I like to call that the stuff part of Co of uh cars okay next slide so how did we get here um and now in these next couple of slides as I was sitting here I'm like there's very few of us that actually have that historical knowledge so it's important to capture it um up here as to what was occurring um from the time from fy20 which is really the 1920 school year all the way up to right now and then where did the then seated board um along with myself and team make decisions to use cares funds to F fill the Gap so going back to 20
070um in March uh that's when we got the announcement from the governor that the schools were going to be closed and I say closed in terms of being physically present because our staff went right in and started with some online um learning and virtual learning and at that time we were not in the virtual platform so we were learning a lot about Google classroom and and a whole host of things um but there was a decision by the city to reduce our fy20 funding by $1.5 million so you'll see that there um the then seated board um has has done a lot of work and and as a board goes I like to praise the board for the work that they've done to build up salaries focus on retention and Recruitment and the last thing
071they wanted to do was lay off staff or um you know riff people or uh change their hours so during the end of 20 Although our staff were home working um online our food service and our bus drivers were doing home delivery uh so we tried to keep as many people employed there uh and despite that reduction of funding in that year we did not have any layoffs we didn't have any risk we didn't refill any positions so if you left you didn't get a new one but but we did our the best that we could at that point moving to fy21 which is the 2021 school year we reopened um but when we were developing our budget um we noticed that at that point that's where the sales tax was unpredictable and the lottery
072was unpredict predictable between the time that we were building our budget in the spring of uh 2020 up until the the fall um and we weren't sure and the city wasn't sure and at that point the city um when we were looking at our funding reduced our level funding by $2.2 million it was 1.5 and then at a subsequent meeting it was another $700,000 um we still reopened we were hybrid for students but we were full-time for staff so we needed to pay all of our staff uh the the decision at that point was that we would revisit this because we were predicting how bad sales tax would be we would revisit it in the fall but in the meantime we without the 2.2 next slide uh we had to cover that Gap so as
073you look at some of the things that we did again we were trying to protect the staff that were here here and we had to make some cuts and there's just a list of things that we reduced um on this particular slide to give you an idea of how did we fill that gap between uh the loss of 2.2 projected revenue and we made Cuts in the in the area of about 1 1.48 million uh some of that was Personnel some of that was positions that were hadn't been filled so we sort of froze them and didn't refill them some of it was recommendation that the board had that they wanted to put in place at that point that we could not do so we removed some of those things that were in our recruitment
074plan as such as tuition reimbursement and a few other things to to meet the Gap uh next slide fy21 so then in July of 2020 during that summer is the first time that the school board actually approved using caros funds to keep our staff whole so we talked about if we we had to um have about 37 and a half uh FTE which were teachers um while we looked at the lottery and the sales tax so we held our breath we did that we put money in cares to help out and there were some other things that were going on at that time and I also want to share that during that time we still had the general assembly provide for the 2% salary increase and that's wonderful except we don't get 2% for everybody
075we get 2% for S soq funded positions only which is about 40 45 depending upon the positions of our staff um and during that time LCS we provided the local match because we didn't get an increase for the local match from the city during that time as well as um funding for the nons soq positions uh minimum wage was also going up during that time from 725 to 950 uh when we got to the fall this a question that we were asked um when we started looking at sales tax and and then it it wasn't as bad as we thought which is a great thing a great place to be um but at that time the city did not reconsider um reesta or giving us back that $2.2 million that was taken for our Revenue
076but the then seated board because we were kind of sitting Frozen for a bit wanted to make sure that we um gave a per rated step increase which we did that following February to staff for for that um and again just looking at retention and competitive wages next slide okay quick SI so in the beginning we got some cares funding we didn't know what it was going to be and how much was coming later the city had some as well and remember in the beginning we wanted to use all our car's money to get sanitizer and mask and all of the cleaning supplies and things like that to keep um to keep the uh schools clean and then it shifted to we started needing more and more services for kids we needed tutoring we needed
077um uh um um mental health services so you'll see something different so this fy20 when 22 sorry uh when you're looking at the operating budget here one of the things that uh immediately uh people pointed out when they look at this slide is wow you have a lot of money you have a lot more money um and at that point questions were coming up what could you actually use cares for could you use it to offset some things could you use it to do some HVAC we we invested in some of those things um could we help out would this help out and offset some City CIP and some city funding at that point so again looking that we were tremendously B blessed at that time and receiving car's funding the then seated board said
078we could possibly offset some of the requests right now but that's a right now but it's going to come back later um so that was a right now decision so if you go to the next slide you'll see this is a slide from our March 2021 presentation to both Schoolboard and subsequently to the to city council where we took a pause and said here is an opportunity for us to be a team player because we were receiving a nice chunk of car's funding um we could uh you know we do rather than asking the city to fund the additional uh local match for salaries and but things were increasing we could try to see where we could use car's funding to fill in the Gap and then wait until the city ourselves that everybody was
079in a better fiscal State and this was sort of the projection that said you know what in in 2020 before Co this is what we looked at with State funding and and federal revenue if we do this if we supplement with cares that is not a long-term solution and I can still hear Dr gup to saying this is not sustainable this is not sustainable and it never was sustainable if you look we projected that we would have to come back to the city in FY 24 and say okay we need to get back to the city funding um our school system which is exactly what we did in FY uh 24 so if you look at the next slide what did we do um in 2022 we used car's funds to um build this Virtual
080Academy um which was in support of parents uh not every parent sent their grp back to school right after um the the closing of school in that spring and then we had a Virtual Academy uh that our parents liked that our students were thriving in so the board supported it you heard tonight some of the special things that go on in the program and the same is in the Virtual Academy with support for our specialed students um support for students who had special needs and just differentiation we also this is the time where we're starting to see behaviors so one of the things that the board was hearing was O these behaviors are different particularly in elementary levels where we were seeing things that our kindergarten teachers had not seen so we put some supports
081in for additional um counseling and Behavioral Health Services behavioral coaches and other divisions did it too but we all had a hope that well it took us one year to have that Co it'll take us one year to get out of that and we now know that the effects of that are a little bit longer lasting than what what we predicted um but as luck would have it while we're sitting here and we did not ask for additional funding at that point um there still was a 3% increase so it was five over the B any and we had done two so this means we had to do three and again the then seated board was we want to stay competitive um we want to do this other divisions are doing this we'd love to
082do more but let's stay um at least in the ball part and minimum wage was going up again so okay next slide FY 23 here we go um we had not you know defer we had deferred our request and we're getting to the point where we're like okay it's starting to get tight we know we're going to have to weave our way back into city funding and sort of not having cares supplement things and where we had seen 2% and 3% increases we're now seeing 5% salary increases um here uh and in this particular year uh what we what we did receive from the city was flat funding plus the 966 966 th000 which is the local match for the salaries for only the soq funded folks and we are grateful for those dollars and
083we took those dollars but we also had to figure out a way to do additional um salary increases for the rest of our staff as well well as there's that minimum wage going up again but the board uh was not happy with that progress because we weren't even at Living wage so you'll see that third bullet on the bottom says we were trying to get up to living wage at that point another thing that the then seated board was very vested in was bus drivers and transportation which is still a concern even as we've invested some um some funds in that and you can see historically how the the the the seated school boards I would say have increased the hourly pay for our um bus drivers that's the starting rate um um about 31%
084over those five years during that time so those things were all going on as we're you looking at our cares funding trying to figure out how we can close the gap and then we get to FY 24 next slide and I bring that slide back up again again cuz there it is where we started with by fy2 24 we'll start to have to have the city come back and match um some of the funding requests that we had deferred and what's most important about FY 24 is usually when we get these salary increases they're like 5% over a bium and we can split it out uh this one ended up being 12% it was five five and then an additional two if you remember uh which is great we love that we want that will'll
085take that this is also when the board was uh proposing uh, 1550 which ended up being 1547 and we raised from minimum wage our hourly wage from uh 1311 to $15 an hour because we were concerned about our lower um wage employees um so again if you're looking at uh at what has happened in this current year in FY 24 um we did request this was when we chose option D I believe is what it was after we worked out the uh grocery tax um an additional $6.4 million which sounded big but remember we had deferred a little bit over the years um to sort of catch up uh but we did not get that funding um the local match for even taking the salaries was $2 million we actually received a reduced funding from
086the city um U from 41 to down to about 39 of which which 37 was available for planning and using to build our budget so we kind of went from 41 to 37 because 1.9 is in contingency funds um and how did we handle that we reduced uh again 17 division positions and we moved at 38 school administrative assistants who had always been in operating we moved them into car's funding because we just did not have enough funding to support them as well um so those are some of the things that have um occurred uh and while those were good decisions I will say that uh you know we we're creeping up to the 15 we were creeping up to 15 but living wage was still uh it's about 1651 right now so we're still
087under um but representing the thinking of the current board the average V Virginia teacher salary is somewhere about 57,000 the average Sal Sal for teachers Across the Nation is 68,000 so the board the boards I should say that have been seated in the prior years were dedicated and trying to get upwards to that Mark in a systematical in a in a systematic stepbystep way so I often get the question about how did you get here did you just pick positions and increase and it there it wasn't just an increase it really was more of the Gap filling um types of things okay I think that's the end of section one so we can take a pause I can take some water we can take some questions before we move on to section questions for Dr
088Edwards Mr Andrews I got one um if the state is going to a banal um budget how does that affect us moving forward or does it even affect it does and I'm going to we have those numbers we're going to go through the governor's budget well we'll go through the governor's proposed budget it could change too we'll talk about that too okay um on page eight U you uh indicated that the um positions being referred to here were a mixture of positions that were new newly created uh with the cares funding and some that were you call them hold safe positions that's not quite the phrase you use but this doesn't tell us which this is the combination of those two we don't we're not seeing those separ it out we can go back and
089track them because you have them on previous board budget spreadsheets so for example um you'll see and I don't remember which year where the behavioral coaches were added the first year the 2021 teachers I think were added during that first year so we can go back historically and pinpoint where each one of these um were added um but for purposes of this discussion we wanted to start with let's let's show everything that we have there right now so that the board can do it go ahead M um since the positions were filled with car's fund and now that's going away couldn't we is that what we need to ask city council we're going to fill get now we don't um and I will tell you that that In fairness to the then seated seated board
090and our staff the thought process really was we knew oh this is for cares like when we were looking at mental health we like okay we'll get some folks who'll come in here they'll work with our kiddos we'll get them back to where they were pre-co and then these folks are gone and as we started to see our staff is like uh it's taking a little bit longer and we you know we and even if you ask them right now with car's funding going away um do you still need support mental health supports do you still need help with behavior your staff is going to tell you yes they do um but the thinking was some of these things would be so temporary and then they would go away things like the Virtual Academy um
091the then seated board let's let's see we had never been in the virtual space before let's see what happens and one of the things we looked for with Virtual Academy was once we open schools particularly fulltime with the Virtual Academy um enrollment completely drop off and it didn't so that showed us that our parents were interested in that type of learning so we kept it going so my other then my last question then is because you mentioned that is okay so everybody that's in Virtual Academy were teachers before Co correct uh most of them some of them might have been new hes I know Mia yeah some of them were but some of them were also new hires okay because I was thinking could they if we can't keep that like there in that building
092to say budget wise for the we're going to talk about that then maybe if they go back to their base school and still do virtual at their base school we could talk about that so we are we are very flexible and open to ideas that will that way they can still do it but not have to pay rent from the any other questions go ahead Mr this maybe uh addressed by Reed or whomever positional control tell me I want to make sure understand the positional control is that a number that we're utilizing to establish how many employment seats we need yeah so that's so what position controls is the technical thing it's a database of all the positions we have in the division that are budgeted the issue we've run into is that that for
093a couple of years had not been adequately managed and so we've gotten we try to get close as close to matching the workforce as we possibly can I'm not saying there's not a a missing person here or there but we've gotten as close as we possibly can so that we know that the budget numbers we are providing to you are as accurate as we can possibly make them now you're and you're going to be working on that correct or do you already have it we feel pretty good about it now okay so um I guess what was our what was our error or percentage of error that we think we have tightened up on position control if you know I don't know if it was it wasn't in terrible shape um I don't really know
094the question Mr Tross but um I can try to go figure it out but and what I'm after is you know if we thought we needed a budget number obviously of of X because of our positional control and now because you've tightened up now we're at a presumably a lower budget number of why what what is that budget savings that's what I'm after if we know and and if if it's such a small number doesn't matter then move on but I I think the bigger issue is making sure that we have the right positions in the right cost center okay uh so making sure that if if Miss Lowry works at pal Monroe she's being charged of pal Monro gotta and that's and and there have been some irregularities like that that that do really
095matter in the budget process but that's more of a that's more of a technical thing that it's not so much it's not a topside issue it's more of a a lower level issue with um categorization or that's right okay very good thank you you may remember a a couple 2019 I'm trying to oh boy maybe you don't remember um there was when it was probably my second year where we were looking at the budget and it was a position control and we found like POS we budgeted for positions that weren't here and we ended up like city council had given us an additional $800,000 and then we went through and we were trying to clean stuff up and we noticed that we had positions that we had budgeted for requested money for but they weren't
096clean in position control and what we did was go to city council and say we we we can't take your money because this is an error on our part um and that's when our cleanup of position control so to your point where you're like that part of it was done now it's just the are people in the right I think the big thing is we're just trying to say in that in that point we want you to know that the data that we're presenting to you is as right as we can make it and it's important that it's right because it should be right so I'm not I'm don't so tro don't expect some savings because we found I'll call it ghost positions there no ghost positions really all right I was hopeful me me
097too EXA just two questions is the funds for the authoritative suspension Center safe or at risk they're at risk they're at risk okay yeah we'll we'll show you where they're and yeah some of it is there you go y but some of it is also if you if you recall one of the things that um Dr Brown and student services do pretty well is they they can get some grants so some of it is some of the program supports are in that $8.4 million Grant and actually on the agenda tonight night there's another Grant so he's always looking for ways to fund um those supports outside of it but some of it is in cares and in Opera all right I've come across some grants as well so I'll just feed them to you if
098they're not already being worked on um and my second question is do you have are you are we waiting to come up with agenda an agenda or line items to ask city council for parts of the 1.9 million or do you already have a plan for what you're going to ask later on yeah we we I think we have a plan for that that will be discussed finance committee going back to your um any other question before your first table says 2020 was 37 million from City and I think 2021 was uh 39 million so that was not a flat funding is that an error in that that table where you had the yearly local match uh go back right there so 37 Million by the time they do actual and it changes a little
099bit with and then adopted in 2021 was 39820 that that was a year they cut the 2 million we cut the 2 million um at the end of f year of 2020 20 oh yeah at the end yeah that's why it went down remember they cut 1.5 out of 2020 so that's an increase of 2.4 million no no no no no no so the if you look at what was actually approved at the start in in like fall of 19 that's and then in March it's like school's done and then they took it so they reduced it so sometimes you'll see actual that's at the end of the year you'll see adopted what we actually thought we were going to get and then if I'm not mistaken doesn't fund balance and when things come in
100and it it changes uh what that looks like there so what I'm hearing from you is like a perfect storm building up from covid where your lottery and sale tax revenue were going down the decision was not to lay off teachers continue them employing as a stop Gap Arrangement short-term funding and uh hopefully we'll be able to backfill it once the things go back to normal yeah yeah and and and that is a a correct summary and I believe if we go back and even listen to conversation it was we're sort of deferring an Ask of the city because we've been fortunate to have some money given to us um and we didn't know what position the city was in either um and somewhere in there I don't know the exact time is the bridge
101and the dam in the lake um incident too so we know that the city was undergoing some things as well and we we really were trying to be a team player and it and as time went on schools got more Co fun or car's funding to use for various things so we were just being and correct me you may know better meal TX for the city was shrinking too as a result of Co because people were not going to restaurants right well we thought it was going to and then it ended up not really shrinking as much as we thought because we assumed because they're closing and then and as a recall but it ended up not being nearly as much what we thought it was going to that's why we we really really um
102when I was at the city we really were conservative in our fiscal year 20 uh reallocations because we we just cut everything possibly could because we just didn't know what's gonna happen and I'm assuming you'll be sharing with us the sunset of these care funds do they go away this coming fall or in 2025 right how much of that the distribution it's end of end of September 2024 everything all everything dries up yeah with the only would be there's the D Bar money is at the end of the end of the calendar year but absolutely yep thank you all ready more yeah keep section good sum good sum okay so so we hit you with some aha like oh my so now some good news right let's talk about um that high quality classroom plan
103that um we are looking at because we're always looking to the Future and what are the absolute best educational services we could provide our kids and honestly that's how we try to build a budget based on what is that vision even if we can't get quite there next year but in two years we might be able to get there we have to have that Vision in front of us so we know where we're going otherwise we're just spinning around without a Direction so I'm going to turn it over to um Dr wer Miss Pew to kind of do a little bit of the High um Quality classroom FL yeah I'm so I'm going to start on the next next slide um so this is a slide that you will see over the next couple of
104months quite a bit this will be coming from what ultimately will be our our facilities and programmatic master plan you spent a lot of time working in a lot of conversations this fall I know we all remember that uh talking about the facilities we also are now transitioning in the first conversation we had this uh this afternoon with the academic success committee talking really about the programmatic component of that and making sure that the Investments that we are making are tied to a larger strategy and so this slide is something that we really are hurting in on helping us to understand where we are moving as a school Direction School Division and in UL ultimately our goal is to say you know great public schools are designed for Community Excellence Public Schools should not be
105separate or different from the community we are part of a community we not an island unto ourselves and so that means a couple of different things first of all it means that our public schools have to be intentionally designed to be academically rigorous have to be focusing on a whole student development so thinking about the whole students opportunity to grow we need to have highly trained well respected and as Miss Lowry added this afternoon flexible uh faculty and staff who have a shared vision for students who are focusing in on where we're going uh we obviously need uh of course fundamentally need an Engaged families and a members of our community who support Innovative instruction throughout the School Division and then we need our instruction to be aligned to students lives and what the impacts
106we will have on their ability to uh lead successful and happy lives so we're going to take two of those components two of those bullet points and apply them to the highquality classroom plan because we think budget uh budget decisions ought to be tied to a larger strategy as an organization and Miss Pew is going to talk about that absolutely so um as Dr W mentioned we're focusing on those um two um components of that Vision the um the highquality classroom plan really focuses around that increased academic rigor and as we've been talking about um which is really important is reducing the achievement Gap um so if we look look at the academically uh rigorous um increasing the rigor in our academics and our classrooms really focusing on that whole student development um that's a
107critical piece of that high quality classroom plan as well as having highly trained and well respected faculty and staff and as Miss Lowry said in our academic success committing today meeting today it's really important also that our staff are flexible um because as we make changes um change is not easy um but at this point it's it's critical it's important um it's what's best for our students and our community um so we need to really focus on two pieces those academics as well as um a highly trained well respected staff um and those are two components that go into that highquality classroom plan um and if we look at some of the strategies to get us to that it's really creating high expectations um what are those high expectations um that are academics uh what
108are we expecting in the classroom how are we supporting literacy um and and moving forward um some of those um best practices in teaching and instruction strategies um it's also about being a leader with um staff compensation um so we're going to talk a little bit more about that as well and also really committing to Innovation um and thinking um not just something new um sometimes people think of innovation is being new and it's bright and it's shiny but how can we take some of the things that we have that are working and really raise the bar and raise the level um to support academics next slide um so you'll see we just talked about those three strategies and as Dr woda mentioned it really is important for us as we develop any budget but
109especially this budget um they need to be focused on academics and instruction um because that's our business that's our main business so some of the budget priorities for the um fy22 five and Beyond um to support those um high expectations and and increasing rigor um we are really hoping to be able to maintain some of those critical positions um that you saw in previous slides that are currently in cares and being able to transition them into the fy2 budget so and we'll talk a little bit more about what those priorities are um in specifically in terms of LCS restore and mental health um support that's also a huge priority for us um we've seen the benefits of that which the next s will talk about in um in a little bit more detail um and
110then the all-in tutoring program and I'll go into that in a little bit more detail in the later slide as well as um another agenda item um but one of the things we need to remember is that the all-in Virginia program which has three components is state funded but those funds are allocated for that specific program and can't be used to support other things in the operating budget um but that helps us with our um high quality classroom the leading comp compensation um we've talked about um we've heard the board talk about the the 1550 and we were hopeful that maybe this was a year that we could increase from 47 to 50 but we know that that's going to have to be a future priority for the budget but we do need to to
111continue to be a leader in competitive um instructional staff salaries um and then we also I think Dr W is going to talk a little bit about this more um but updating stiens for arts and Athletics and other extracurriculars that should be a priority for us in the future um those that are com uh related to The Innovation um we really want to make sure that we have choice we know that that's a priority for our governor it's a priority for our Central City Council so we want to make sure that we have lots of different opportunities for Family Choice student Choice including perhaps the virtual options uh CTE lab school um schools for Innovation Etc um and then one of the things that we'll you'll hear a little bit more about tonight as well
112as in the coming weeks um developing some Elementary region um regions that will have assets and some vertical alignment so that will need to be a future priority for us um next slide so I mentioned LCS restore and and in uh the impact on improving classroom opportunities to learn um Dr Dr Brown has been before the board many times talking about the LCS restore program which not only has the restorative suspension Center but it has the restora ofies for secondary as well as Elementary and here you see some data particularly related to the restorative suspension Center which serves secondary students um before the restorative suspension center 57% of our students were resuspended that's a huge amount of of of students to be uh repeat offenders um and as Dr Brown has said you know you
113can for the for Behavior you can put the same consequence in place 14 15 times and if the 16th consequence is the same it's not going to change the behavior and so that's the premise of the restorative ummies and the suspension Center um and 80 cent 87 students accounted for 637 referrals that's a small amount of students small number of students for a large amount of referrals um in the year that the restorative suspension Center has been not even quite a year um has been in place um 10% of our students only 10% of our students have been resuspended um and the same students only accounted for 89 referrals so you can see a huge decrease in behaviors resuspensions um in Behavior infractions this has allowed our teachers in our classrooms to be more focused
114on instruction Less on dealing with student behaviors um and that our students are mo more focused on learning and the students who need it the most are getting help um they're getting academic help they're getting social emotional help they're learning behaviors and strategies to help themselves with their behaviors um and this is working we can see it um if you've not been to the restorative Academy or restorative suspension Center I suggest that you do it is working and it it has to we have to fight for this approach not only for our students but also for our teachers um next slide so just briefly uh we mentioned the all-in Virginia initiative which has three components um tutoring attendance and the Virginia literacy act as I said it is a state required program with funding that
115extends between FY 24 and fy2 these are one-time non- reoccurring funds and as I said earlier they are only to address um these three initiatives and not other operating costs for the school division um this year and next year it will provide some additional compensation for those staff instructional staff both teachers and instructional assistants and others who are involved in the all-in tutoring um it also has some funds that are focused on intensive training and the implementation of this on the science of reading um for our um classroom teachers um mostly focused at the elementary level but then continuing on into the secondary level um I'm not going to go into a ton of detail because that's another agenda item um but I this these pieces as well as attendance and chronic absenteeism are crucial
116component components of that highquality classroom plan next slide so we have uh talked about some incredible ideas and opportunities for us we we've talked about at a lot of these meetings U but practically what we know is that in order to make any of these ideas work we have to have incredible Educators in front of our classrooms every single day so I've said it quite a bit but the most important thing that we do as a School Division as a as a school leadership team is to put incredible teachers in front of classroom rooms in front of students every single day that occurs with coaches also uh instructional assistants bus drivers everyone else um so you've seen the slide before but we just want to reiterate how important it is over time for us to
117invest in teacher compensation and making sure that we are being competitive with regional and peer School divisions throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia and you can see just from the slide where we are in comparison uh to other cities as well as some of the counties in the region again we've had some conversations about this uh and we know over the next several years we need to continue to be aggressive about our investment and our teacher compensation it is one of the most important things that we can do to ensure that these highquality programs that drive highquality classrooms are helped by high quality teachers next slide um so talked a little bit before about Innovative programming and these are just a few of the things that we feel are um important focuses um to that highquality
118classroom um thematic language intense prek classrooms um that are based on experiential learning um there is some research that um shows a strong correlation between students background knowledge and their understanding of text and so we feel that it's really important for us to um look at experiential learning um through some thematic based and some language intense classrooms at the prek level um we've heard about the early literacy focus at the Linn Elementary School lab which is a partnership with the University of Lynchburg um so that will be a choice it is a um should we receive the funding from the state um that program will really focus on an intensive early literacy um that is aligned with the Virginia literacy act um and based in um evidence-based reading uh instruction intervention and assessment um we
119want to make sure that we're continuing uh schools for Innovation if not increasing some opportunities for schools for Innovation um as well as gifted opportunities um we'll talk I'll talk a little bit more about the elementary region and assets and that vertical alignment piece um at in a later slide um we've talked all year long and we'll continue to talk over the coming months and and years about the importance of CTE um and it's really important for us to move some of those CTE activities and courses down into the middle school as well as into the elementary um we want to continue to see if we can there are some virtual program options for us um as well as um continuing and perhaps increasing some of our high school and doal enrollment programming options that
120we have with our partners across the city next slide all right and so going along with with all the great things that are that are occurring um another item that we've talked about as with the school board um and as a staff is really thinking about again going back to that competitive compensation for incredible folks that work with our with our students every single day and that is our extracurricular stiens uh this has been a this was a priority in our our budget development process uh before we received our Governor's uh uh C Tool uh and so it is not something that is included in the base budget now but we do want to make sure that we're continuing to talk about uh what we're paying coaches and arts directors and everyone else we spent
121a lot of time over the fall uh working through a different model by which we might uh compensate again the incredible and impactful people that coach our students that direct the Arts programs um Etc and so right now we have a little bit of an inconsistency in approach uh we're also far behind a number of our peer School divisions we want to make sure that we are recruiting and retaining high quality coaches in arts and extracurricular activities uh directors um as we go uh continue to go forward are you able to tell us the average of our comparable City yeah so so I provided that a couple months ago I can't tell you I can't tell you off the top of my head right now but I can provide you that data again as well
122um on the next slide um that's me that's Amy yeah um so again this is a a plan in progress It's a work in progress we talked with academic success committee um about this this afternoon um and it's one of our future priorities is um as a component of the LCS master plan which Dr woda just mentioned talks about facilities but it also focuses on instruction um and that high quality classroom component um we are planning to reorganize elementary schools into regions that are aligned with secondary schools um so with the closure of of two elementary schools that takes us from 11 to 9 and you know our idea our thought is to group three elementary schools um so we would have three regions um or clusters of elementary schools that would then move in
123into the three um middle schools and then those three middle schools would then move as they do now into the two high schools um but these regions would each have various programmatic themes that contribute to the general curriculum um you know some of them that we've talked about are and these are things that are are becoming the real focus of the leading um competition in terms of um businesses it like environmental systems and biomedical um those types of things uh Technology and Engineering so those would be some of those programmatic themes that would then move into the middle school and then into the high school um the elementary regions would engage in a K12 planning process and Alignment structure so right now most of our elementary schools are planning you know what we would call
124horizontally and not vertically um they may collaborate and plan with other elementary schools um but there's very little conversation in planning from an elementary school to a middle school and that transition then from a middle school to a high school so this structure would really help ensure that elementary middle and high schools are aligned and a developmental approach for our students um and that we're starting at an earlier age in elementary school to prepare our students for graduation and Beyond um and each of those regions we talked about will have several assets that will make this plan work um and so some of those assets might be a gifted Opportunities Center or gifted program in each region instead of just in one school um Regional autism classrooms um and special education coordinator for each region
125um Early Learning Center in each region so we talked about making sure that our prek classrooms were clustered together versus just um in you know one one or two classrooms in each School across the division um and and a dedicated resource um teaching team for art and music and violin so we are really excited about this component of our master plan because we really feel like it is going to move the needle um not only in rigorous instruction but it will be a huge component of what we're calling um design for excellence so um when we started this section of of the um presentation tonight Dr Waker will talked about um highquality School divisions it's about that planning piece and really designing for being part of an entire community Comm and so we're we've spent
126a lot of time talking about rethinking rehashing um but we have a really good plan that we will release at the state of um LCS event on the 24th um that we'll talk a little bit more in depth about these details um for our um instructional plan so that's the exciting part if you wonder why we love our jobs that is the part um that makes us love our jobs um so that's the end of section two so we're going to stop because we know you may have some questions about some things that you heard in in section two the next couple sections are shorter um in at least in one questions yeah I have a question I'm trying to back up to slide um just to um is this the right place oh I
127just wanted to ask if you could clarify what when we talk about the whole students development can you help me understand a little bit more what that means sometimes when we think about school we think about it just being focused on instruction and academics for the students but as we've seen um even more so through the pandemic and students coming back to school we need to focus on social emotional learning and social emotional aspects student Behavior their Hess their well-being as a whole person so not just about my intellect um but also about my health my physical health my mental Health um those types of things so that's what we talk about when we say educating the whole you know really focusing on the whole students development could I add to that too yeah so
128so we're also thinking certainly in terms of traditional classroom experiences Math Science History right we also think that uh School experiences as we all know should be diverse opportunities to experience different things that you might not otherwise have that have that opportunity so so Athletics are really important to the development of young people Arts are really really important so we want to make sure that we're not losing that in our conversation about different instructional techniques as well is a good point yeah if nobody go ahead okay I was just going to make a statement that slide you showed for the 57% to 10 plus the Innovative Pro um program slide if you combine those together I think we meet with the city jointly and bring up the fact that MGT will help us build what
129we need to support all of that I think that would be very Comm thank you so I did have a question about this slide just to clarify the numbers 50% of the whole student body or 57% of those who had at least an initial referal 57% of those who at least had a suspension okay um were resuspended okay and then same thing on the right hand side um and then uh when you say same students on the right what does that refer to it's it's the 87 87 students 87 students the same 87 students only accounted for 89 referrals ah now I understand instead of 63 right um and I think the point here is that the focus on and again the whole child um being not just academics because the restorative suspension Center and
130the restorative acmy focus on academics students are there to learn but they're also focusing on strategies to um help them with their behaviors with anger management um it might be substance abuse um so you know it it's they're they are U receiving sometimes in group counseling individual counseling um you know substance abuse training those types of things so we're really focusing on student behavior and how to change that and you can see from the 57 to the 10% being resuspended that's having an impact on the students's ability to self-manage and I'd like to add I said this that the lcer meeting this afternoon and this is what the um ad hoc academic policy committee is thinking about now too is I I think that in the interest of supporting our teachers you we talk a
131lot about the financial aspect of that but helping them manage the disruptive students in their class is important too you know almost every meeting when we get an HR report we see some some new teachers who've been with us less than one year who've resigned and my impression is based on all the information I have is that dealing with the difficult to be deal with students is a big part of that so making this kind of progress is really important as important as the dollar amounts on the paycheck absolutely it is important as I said earlier it's important for instruction um not only for our students but also for our teachers it's benefiting everyone involved yeah thank you and it needs any other question I got a few questions well are are these positions soq
132positions at all these positions are not s soq positions so I'm not undermining the benefit of this but it's 87 students out of 7800 qu 1% of our student population so when we're stretching for every dollar on our budget you see what I'm saying what is the ROI for the school district to you know how do you stretch that dollar I make a point go ahead yeah so so I think one thing to remember is that I think that's that second line there that says that teachers because they're not focusing on these 87 students and their behavior issues they're able to focus on every single other student that's there and the other students that are there are able to focus on learning during that time so I would say that it impacts every single student
133not just the 87 um who are and and this is just 87 students who are at the restorative suspension Center you have to remember that we also have students at the restorative cies who are there for longer amounts of time but we've also seen success with them transitioning back at the end of a six week nwe period and being able to stay in their base School where before many times when they are in an alternative setting they're they're there and and they don't have an opportunity to go back to their base school with their peers um so I I understand but I I think it's hard to put a dollar figure on the return on investment for all of our students and all of our teachers what's the operating budget for LC restore right now
134about 1.2 million 1.2 million personally I think there's a huge Roi on it because those particular students don't hold their beh behavior for special classes they go from one class to the other and they have that behavior and it affects the teachers attention and the students around them in every single class so they multiply that behavior and if you take them to the suspension Center and work on them there give them the tools to go back to the class they're going to multiple classes better behaved so I see the Roa is huge exactly and from an element point of view if you have a kid mess messing up in class it just disrupts everything for an elementary teacher everything and impacts teaching and learning MH teachers and students and life in general because they learn
135behaviors and they repeat those behaviors for the rest of their lives unless there's a a different way of doing things and they get some reward from doing it that way and it's hard to get parent support in those situations sometimes and that too that will generate some support is this uh funding right now cares or is it through General Opera through carees funding yeah we'll get to that that Roi conversation just hold thats you asked about the questions on these groupings for this part of the subject there's so there's Lorn B Bedford Hills and Paul Monroe is R1 then bass p and darington R2 two and perrymont Sheffield and Heritage are three are these combinations not going to create a demographic separation we had that conversation at academic success committee earlier um today we understand
136this is our plan um and that's how we've grouped these schools we also understand that we have you know a rezoning close to home resoning plan that we're working with with MGT and we need to make sure that that works out um obviously if it creates that that's we're going to have to switch them off just a little bit but this those three groupings support the closer to home zoning so we hope that that that's going to work out are we adding three administrators adding three administrators no administrative positions up there no no each each school already has a principal and it would remain the same principle no just said one more question one of the emails I'm getting is the school of Innovations are going away so you're assuring this board that's not the
137case correct and if as you see in our plan we're hoping to increase with a school for inovation in each of those clusters or regions so there's no intentional Elementary to three and we didn't talk a lot about middle school but we were hoping to go from one Middle School of innovation 2 three and my last question was you know we talk about lot these inputs wonderful that we have high quality instruction are we targeting to be back into top 100 high schools in the United States so you know it's the that's the output you understand I'm saying so is that one of the goals and part of this bigger picture yes sir it is for me we love being in magazines I'm gonna talk about that too okay yeah ready for the next section
138okay keep keep that positive energy that high quality plan oh here we go okay so section three is uh some division priorities and some um considerations uh and we had shared some of this with you uh during December when we had the public Hearing in a work session and then um as uh Dr Loa said we were eagerly waiting after the governor's announcement and in January I think we got the Cal tool so and let me apologize up front one of the reasons why you didn't get this in advance is because we just got the C tool so um the folks are have been staying up pretty late working thank you thank you um but we it is in the boox now uh so on the next slide uh this you'll start to see some
139things that are not in the line of as we just shared with you that high quality programming and everything but more like looking at the fiscal impact so one of our priorities obviously is we had car's position we had um positions that were in operating they were in operating for forever and we moved them to cares this year so that has to be a priority to get those positions back into the operating budget um and as um uh Amy talked about we have some cares funded positions that we started like lccs restore and other services like um the Virtual Academy that we were hoping um to get some funding in the operating budget to continue the services for kids so we have to look at that that's where that return on investment um starts to
140come into play and then um not to leave Dr WKA out but we were super excited when we were working on the coaching plan and the extracurricular plan and um all the things that we we could do because we we we already have phenomenal teams and clubs I mean our kids are amazing and this would just assist in that um and part of that and then uh we got the Cal tool so that sort of uh slowed that plan down but that was the thinking prior to getting that um some other things that we're going to share with you in a second that also are like you know we were hoping that didn't happen where we took a real serious look at utility costs and our favorite topic health insurance and just looking at that
141and that's still um something for us to talk about that impacts us financially um and then as we're moving next slide please are the things that we think we captured um things that you all shared and for the public I want to say while these are Schoolboard member requested considerations they're individual Schoolboard member um considerations and that the board did not vote and take anything but we wanted to capture the total picture so you can see up there um there was a a 1750 plan um that we wanted to investigate as well as look looking at when you saw those pay schedules that uh Dr Waka had put together uh we're looking okay in the beginning a little bit better on the on the veteran side but that middle year 15year teacher when we compare
142ourselves um looked a little different uh training OG training Orton Gillingham training uh was something else that we heard uh we had proposed this in Prior budgets to increase the the uh sick day payout for our retirees um you know health insurance is and providing that for retirees looking at steps over the top going back to the previous board uh previous seed board they had made some progress on that I do think we increase to step 34 which is mathematically beneficial you always have a way of explaining why yeah so so um when people like me or who are me and younger right you you have to have uh what we call a rule of 90 right so you have between for your retirement your age has to your age plus your experience has to
143equal 90 and so when you do the math when if you start teaching when you're 22 and you do 34 years if you add those years together with your teaching experience and your age it gets to 90 so that's why the number is 34 we think it's the appropriate number and that's where we are in terms I know that probably doesn't make any sense but it's makesense me it makes sense to me understand like why we I totally understand it um so these are the things that um schoolb members had um requested we started looking at some of the um cost for what this would cost and then we we we got the C tool number um so we hit paused and put them here and just really um wanted to come back to uh
144the board and and make sure that if this is something that you still want us to really dig in in deep and what the implications for those things are I think really here we want to make sure we didn't miss anything when we were capturing um some of the things that you all were looking at okay any questions any questions yeah I'm this is SE so to get these things and I know it's not popular because I'm a taxpayer as well but what if we ask for a 0.5 tax increase that's not even a one would it cover a majority of this we could look into what what uh that help tax increase would do what and I know I have an expert over there who can tell me what a 1% pennies and all
145that would would give us for that I just thought maybe that would help and we'll we'll talk about we'll talk about ask when when we get yeah okay getting there go back to the happy place when we were at the high quality class okay so now let's look at numbers so section four those revenues um and expenditures but before we get there so just for for the public cuz it took me a while to understand really the budgeting process in Virginia having been from New Jersey where we start with the budget and how much we're going to get and do the planning here we plan everything and then we're cross our fingers and hope that we get the revenue so the revenue is like there's a request from the superintendent right we're going to get
146that one tonight then the school board can come in and request right and then the city manager puts in his this is what I think I want to give you and then city council says well no this is where we are with it uh the governor's already come out with here's what we want to give you as school divisions for revenue and the house and a general assembly right so as we think through just get the money there are seven different um Cooks chefs I don't know that are in this Revenue pot it is not as simple as folks think when they come to the school board meeting and say um you should just fund this or fund that and and those things so we really have to strategize on how to maximize um the
147revenue that we do get as well as um supplement with grants so that being said next slide let's talk about the governor's recommended budget what he came out with on December 20th so Dr Wood yes ma'am so uh on December 20th the governor propos his bial budget so the the state uh adopts a two-year budget and then sort of in his off years they'll do some adjustments but this happens to be a time when we're doing a biannual budget you remember a couple weeks ago we talked about the rebenchmarking process and that's a two-year thing so this is what the governor has proposed uh the impacts to LCS in particular related to Personnel uh provides a 1% bonus to K12 state funded instructional and support positions this means uh that the there's no sort of
148raise that's that's contemplated here just a simply a bonus um and of course we'll have to find the match uh for the non what we call S soq positions so the non-state funded uh positions there's additional funds and we can't really tell you what that number is because because of the rebenchmarking process and because those numbers are sort of put together uh but there are supposedly funds to fulfill the full year of the 2% increase that was received during this fiscal year that of course the school board accomplished with the 1547 plan already so there wasn't an adjustment so there was an additional 2% that started in January of this year that we're that we have available for us uh again zero additional pay increase for fiscal year 25 and it does contemplate a 2%
149pay increase for teacher salaries in fiscal year 26 again that's not this coming year but the year after that um what is notably absent from this and has affected LCS in this budget proposal quite significantly is there is not the grocery tax hold harmless funds that were promised to States and excuse me localities in school divisions after the grocery tax was eliminated last year that is about a $2 million hit to from compared to last year and so that is an issue that Statewide that's a conversation that's going on at the general assembly and it does need to be addressed and does impact us a couple of other potential K12 uh LCS impacts um the the governor is proposing to provide $60 million in support for lab schools um operating here in Virginia uh we
150have one that we're working towards as well as another uh two so potentially two two lab schools in Lynchburg right now with some other organizations uh $40 million to establish the diploma plus program that's a credentialing program for high demand High made fields and then 61 million in support uh for reading Specialists over the bium so that's that's the outline of what is provided um and uh if it changes then we'll we'll make that change can ask you a question just quick one how much is the 1% increase cost to The District 300 and something thousand well the state gave us about 365 it cost us over $700,000 so it's 365 700 minus 365 is our 300 something okay 335 all right find your happy place slide okay so we took a get real approach
151like just give us all the numbers um so what you see on this slide is total projected Revenue assuming City uh level funding at 39 that we can use the entire 39 not 37 right 39 we can use it to retire 39 and the governor's um Revenue together so we just added what the go what's in the calc tool for us what the governor is proposing don't forget there there's the general there's a Senate and House that also have to weigh in and then considering what level funding which is excuse me never a guarantee on level funding is that would be the revenue that we're looking at as possible um uh budget Revenue then we said what are all of our expenditures right now between the operating budget and the car's budget so we put
152in there if everything cares were to have to be funded um next year what would that cost now I want to pause there and say that was never our intent to say everything in cares has to come to Opera and actually it was kind of the opposite we were hoping we wouldn't um need many of the things that are in cares or we didn't PR predict that things like the success of the Virtual Academy would happen um those types of things but for Budget numbers we like to I like to look at the the big picture so that's what it looks like and then what's the difference between those two it is about 17.7 million um so I have to sit right there because when they first showed that to me I was just sitting
153right there with that and trying to get an understanding of what does that mean in terms of our process now all of this or that 17 million it's or 17.6 17.7 million um is not just due to you know uh our revenue or our expenditures there's some things in there so I'm going to ask Dr wo to kind of explain where's that 17699 coming from absolutely so this comes from a couple different places as you can see um so first is as I mentioned before is about a million dollars in reduce State funding according to the governor's budget that's sort of the net of rebenchmarking and all the other things that have occurred it's about uh we we got the Cal tool we were really hoping for uh based on what we were hearing from
154the state uh about changes to the to re Benchmark we were hoping we would have actually maybe a couple million more dollars potentially uh in in state revenue based on that proposal uh in fact we can anticipate based on the governor's proposal actually a million dollars Less in next fiscal year compared to this fiscal year so that's troubling uh there's also about $7 million in cares Personnel you'll note there's about a $500,000 differential between what we showed before in this we also just have not included nine of those FTE there would be a reduction of those n for one for positions we knew we were not going to recommend in this budget uh going forward so we had that going forward uh there is about a 4.7 million increase in health care uh insurance cost
155that is a budget number budget to budget uh so not necessarily actual costs but what we budgeted last year this present year versus next year I'll talk more about that in just a few minutes uh again about a million six uh more in actual cost uh uh utility costs uh have increased as well about $2 million a million and a half of that is from electricity there is a million dollars in cares funding uh for mental health contracted Services as well as 775,000 in software costs previously covered by cares and $600,000 that was used to cover summer school costs as well that doesn't quite get you to 17.6 million but it's it's about 17 million there's other ancillary costs here and there but that gives you the vast majority of uh what drives that projected
156def it going forward um so if you go to the next slide I think we have so we'll have uh just want to go through some detail on a couple of these items um so the cost of utilities have really just increased over time the rates we've we've been uh paying are increasing particularly related to um electric um we also have a challenge where in this present fiscal year simply the budgeted amount was didn't make sense uh frankly uh wouldn't have covered last year's costs or the year before that um I don't have an explanation of why that was done but we know it's wrong and again it's that same conversation about making sure that every single line item is accurate and logical and makes sense and we bring you information that it's accurate so
157we want to True up these line items we want to make sure that they are being reflective of the costs that we actually have in the past what's happened is that the School Division has been able to sort of cover costs where there have been deficits with vacancies and other things and that is just not the case anymore and so we want to make sure first it should just be right just because it should be right uh but second um we we just want to make sure that we're budgeting accurately same goes for uh gas and water too although those numbers are uh are less dramatic and and largely I just want to show on the next slide uh just the way the rates have changed for electricity uh from November 2021 to present uh
158if all the way to the left of the slide we're you know sort of sub uh 9 cents per kilowatt hour and we're pushing upwards to 14 CS per kilowatt hour so it's it's quite considerable and and has impacted that rate history um one member when we were just talking about it the other day um asked about the impact of the electric school buses so I had a conversation with the uh the power our representative from the power company we have a special tariff rate for those for the electric school buses that will continue in perpetuity so the rate we pay on electricity for the buses are as much lower than what we would pay on uh like a regular school building so I did that was my first thought when when when that occurred
159because I was very concerned about the impact that would have so that made me feel a lot better um on the next slide we just talk about health insurance costs again this is the same thing here um Health cost of health insurance our health care has has increased substantially we've had some pretty high uh claims from a number of employees that have hit their stop loss um as you can see the fiscal year 24 budget uh simply would not have even covered the 23 costs and it would have cost covered 2 too um and we're we're trying to be very accurate in the way that we're doing projections uh for this year as well as for next year as well in reflecting a 15% increase uh which is sort of an industrywide number so again
160we we need to really make sure that we're being accurate with these budget projections and making sure that we're we're having our eyes on them and and paying attention to them as we go go forward so next slide all right so how do we address this so always be in planning mode is where we are um we've just shared with you all the wonderful things that we're doing things that are working um projections for the future where we want to go and we're sitting here looking at but we still have a responsibility to plan for this so if we have to balance this budget as is what are some of those things um that we may have to do so first and foremost we always look at the division level which is what we did
161this current year if you remember this current year we cut positions here um in finance Communications um equity and Communications um HR I think we maybe a secretary and cni or some a position here or there um we always start with the division first uh so looking at the division um we've identified about 9.5 million of potential cuts and um that includes about 50 to 100 positions including division level administrators and this is the the the um hard part for us even some of those key cares funded um positions because when you think logically uh as to what what what grew your budget it was the things that we put and supported in care so those would be things that you would first start to look at while we also look at what are the
162return on investments here or there um we are also proposing we have been you know we have that $2 million in um health insurance based on trying to rightsize it um not exactly a a solution but this would be a stop Gap if we used a million of that to rightsize it and then over subsequent years build it back up because we're well you weren't here but we had built it up to get it up to um the 2 million um we looked at billing um the component units or um their their part of their uh claims that go over that those employees do pay into the health insurance um just that if there's an A A discrepancy between um the collections of the the revenue and what the employees pay and what the employer
163contributes and the actual claims that falls on us to pay that difference so we're looking at that we do have um information regarding each one of those um component units and what that cost would be and then um again going back to the boards for the last five years one of the things that echoed in my head was we do not want to give our staff a raise a 2% raise and then turn around and take it back by increasing their health insurance costs which is one of the reasons why we had not increased health insurance cost until the current year so this January actually they go up in on the calendar year this is the first time that we'll see some difference in contribution and health insurance costs over the last our employee contribution
164over the last couple years so looking at that on a very um tight and narrow uh tighten your belt it's my little dollar thing um we can we can cut about 9.5 million but that doesn't get us to where we need to be if if we need to do a full 17 million so we'll have have to start looking at possible uh possible 5.2 million of cuts at the school level um and we've talk to um just principles about the possibility remember we this is just based on this level of Revenue and and funding at this point um but I will say and and and Mrs Pew is probably going to jump in and just give me the stink eye and say like we just got finished saying how effective some of these things are
165but from a fiscal standpoint we may have to cut them um to balance budget there's two things that happen reduce expenditures or increase Revenue um and if you notice that if you did the math you'll probably be like well that doesn't add up Dr Edwards you did 9.5 at the division level and 5.2 at the school level it does not add up so if you go to the next slide you will see my recommendation um to request from the city um 425 which gets us back up to FY 2018 funding that we had um six years ago uh and that additional 3 million in Revenue along with the cuts that we make could balance the budget um I we did put a line in there that if if the board want and this is for
166examp example if the board wants to um continue the LCS restore uh that would increase the ask if you want to continue to Virtual Academy obviously that would increase the ass and that is going to be the fun stuff that we're going to be doing over the next couple weeks playing with like what are the things that we want to um include in the budget and again if you look at that second part on here uh we have to be careful how we frame level funding because we did get um what is it I put it on here 39 um 360 um from the city but 1.9 of that is in a concy plan so what is actually available to us is 37 um right now but we really wouldn't would need more if we're
167operating on level funding without the additional request of the 42.5 um you're looking at dependent upon how the categorical funding um formula uh the city may use we would have to make an additional $3.3 Million worth of cuts or $5.1 Million worth of cuts which if you look at it from a people standpoint is about 50 to 80 people um over the last five years if you ask yourself how have you been able to give raises and increase and do that without the increase from the city side it's that belt tightening so we took away contingencies where we used to have like nine positions that just in case we have to hire another we got rid of that we were using all of our vacancy savings to kind of backfill um things you guys know
168we collapsed um um bus driver positions we made some eight hour positions but the ones that were just sitting their vacant for years we use that to kind of backfill so when you look and say can you find all of that without touching people actual positions it becomes more and more diff difficult to say we we can't we just can't find it we have we have squeezed as much as much as we can so we wanted to present the picture we wanted you to see that we were at least problem solving trying to uh chop away we wanted to frame for you all what um what that's going to look like uh as we do our work over the next couple months and it'll impact obviously if we get more funding from the state that's
169a great thing um that would help out um but that's that so I don't know I don't think you guys have anything that oh one question um would how would retirements help people for people retirement so um we looked at that um uh if a a teacher retires obviously they're veteran they're up or a little bit higher on the on on the pay scale um and that's not to say that every retiring teacher should be replaced with a novice teacher so that is not good practice ractice you still want to get teachers um with experience it helps a little bit in the in the breakage and having that um differential all right but we love all of our teachers and the quality of the education and things like that so it's it's a slippery slope
170um we had a a slide here showing the increase of our electric rates what about the our usage right so consumption over the last several years years has largely remained flat um and so one of the things that we are working on is number one we're going to start uh sort of a a quicker kind of competition to say let's let's save some electricity here let's turn the lights off and those sorts of things the other thing we have um and this will take a number of years to really fully develop uh is that we are uh we've just advertised for an Energy Services Company to help us with uh Energy Efficiency that helps us float the capital to do change LED light bulbs out and improvements to back and those sorts of things that
171will ultimately help us with our our our power bills as well as potentially some Solar Development and that sort of thing I know we've talked about that a little bit before so that that request for qualifications went out on the street last week uh we'll we'll start to work on that as well and that again that'll be some infrastructure work that will take some time to to develop but uh will allow us to use that that cash flow to to help pay for that thank you um so I think some of us agree that the LC s restore is a high quality part or aspect that we should probably keep so I would support that 43.7 million request but my question is does that include or either one of those requests include the 1.9 million
172that they would probably keep well if they then we would have we're we're asking for the 1.9 when we when we were saying level funding because I think the original attent of 1.9 was if the grocery tax or whatever if you're not sure and then we'll give it back to you but we we haven't we haven't received it back we we do have a request um like like we said finance committee is going to meet um because we need the funds we we absolutely need the funds all right so it will be 43.7 if we ask for it or will be it will be 43.7 and no contingency hold and if they want to do a contingency hold give us 50 right yes you ready to ask for that 50 okay they want a contingency
173strous are we getting into a budget discussion tonight um I'm going to do next steps but and that will be up to up to I just want to take five good yep so we can you want to take five before we go withar yeah I can wait I can wait yeah it's up to you you want to break now use a restroom I don't want to miss it let's take a 5 minute break s this bottle you empty [Music] um to sort of wrap this up uh just a little summary and some next steps so that we frame for you all as well as the public what what we're going to be doing over the next um couple weeks so next slide um speaking about being in the top 100 high schools and just getting
174recognized and you see that little picture there that is us as of December uh business view magazine and um highlighting the wonderful things that we are doing here The Innovation if you had not had a chance to look at this and I like to look at the one that flips and folds because it's just it has a nicer feel to it um but so proud and so impressed with all of the things um that we do do here to make LCS special and even in listening to public comment tonight and just hearing even more things that we do um but but our reality is you know we've used our car's funds and our Sr funds over the past couple years um to do things that support our classrooms to sort of um try to be
175that team player reduce our ask of City we've invested both that and our fund balance in capital Improvement really trying to offset some costs but we just don't have those funds anymore so this is the reality of where we are um this team has been amazing and spent so much time trying to put this together uh and I I appreciate them and I applaud them uh but we we still want to be optimistic and hopeful we have to be because we lead a School Division and we we're um moving the children forward so while this is a very challenging uh budget and a very challenging process we do see it as sort of a benchmark for that high quality plan and keep our eyes on the ball right keep our eyes on moving forward and
176the things that we want to do even in the turbulence cons so what are we going to do next next up um tonight and at our January work session um we're going to deliberate and we really need to give City a number because if you remember that chart that Dr wus showed you while we're doing theirs the city is doing um theirs as well the city manager does make a recommendation um for uh support for the schools uh and we we're going to reach out and try to have some conversations with them and I know in in the past uh he made a recommendation that was a little bit higher than what we were actually funded at um so that just goes to show a little bit of that Dynamic uh but I do want
177to just recognize one the time it takes for City staff to do that but they're also um dealing with complicated revenues um one of which is the the decrease of the um the um tax rate from a111 to 89 which is going to come into play so for the school board by the end of this month January 31st uh we need to I need to write that formal letter that lets the city know that I am requesting X number of dollars for a sort of a generic or general um use and they'll begin that and we'll begin that over the months of February and March is where we sort of do our back and forth and saying things like if we we really want to support the LCS restore are there other things that we
178could do or is that an additional Revenue ass and for all of those things so that we get to our public hearing um in March and then the board has to adopt a budget at the end of March we also have a um joint work session I think on March 26 so that is our window um for the board to deliberate uh back and forth we want to assist you as much as we possibly can and provide you with uh data that you necessarily need to make good decisions but we really want to spend time today giving you enough um and also giving you accurate numbers so that you can move forward with the discussion and at that I will turn it over to Dr Gupta for you want to take it next if we
179you want to deliberate or board members but I just wanted to say that it should not put a cloud of pessimism around there you mentioned 70 to 80 positions that doesn't mean they firing everybody around town and they're looking for jobs right now this is a first step in the long process there a beginning step and city is one but we will figure out internally we will all work it together as a team your staff school board and the community and at large to get through that so that 17 whatever projection you showed should not say the Doomsday is come that's what I want to say open up for discussion any comments yeah otherwise we'll have a detailed discussion right on in the work session work session is purely will be devoted only to budget
180discussion um so in preparation for the work session um we should be of the various um things that you've identified as um ways that we might try to work at that 17.6 million doll deficit we should be trying to for one thing prioritize those well we've sort of prioritize them but we want were they listed in the order of your priorities I don't think so we we didn't list them um for me personally that would be helpful to know what you view is the higher and well they're all low priorities really right but what's the ordering that you would put on them if you had to go through one by one um that would I think that would be meaningful green yellow red and last year we had a pyramid right I'm looking at Amy
181everything's green over there it is because it supports instruction it does yeah it it it it's a very tough um difficult conversation they to do yeah I understand that so you're looking for us to come up with ways to help you save uh well uh it's our budget and um ultimately we have to go and advocate for funds from the city um on that side while we wait for what the state does and what our ask is and just you know for history that we've this board the C board has gone and ask and Advocate then we come back and we've had to change and reduce and um do some things there but that is the process that typically Bo deliberates I think one starting point point is we did not want to say to
182you all we're not doing whatever it is on that board list but now that you've kind of seen um some of the things that that we've showed you with the numbers the question is does it make sense to push forward with some of those items and sometimes it's easier to just erase some things off the list and say we're not going to pursue that right now we were faced with that so to give you an example we we were all all excited about coaching and stiens and really fixing all that and then the C tool sort of said we had to shift that to be a future priority we need the board to look at some of those items individual that individual board members made as well because those aren't factored in at all I
183would say m um 16th is a finance and Facilities committee meeting that's where we should be doing the nuts and balls discussion okay so if you got saving ideas I come to the Mee yeah come come to the meeting or share with Dr day and the committee members so that we have you know discussed them in detail instead of just throwing the out in the board the 16th is the date right 16th January next Tuesday janary anybody in the public it's a public meeting any would like body would like to come that will be the first meeting after this right so it's appropriate place and a time to look at things uh question other questions I may if you if you have suggestions if you can get those to us early that we we'll do
184our best to get numbers to them so that we'll know what they look like my gut says that the emphasis has got to be how these funds are going to impact our city overall not that the city doesn't care about our children but their priority has got to be the city and the funds and what's it's going to do for the city over the the Long Haul and and I think our emphasis needs to be that these were not just arbitrary things we came up with but they're things that we really believe are going to impact positively our city through our children and I think that's just got to be our emphasis I think it's a good opportunity for us as a district to do an introspection to see how we are doing things is
185there some things we need to reset you know so and and other ways we have to look for the additional sources of funding if need be but that's a discussion which is semi-political and um we'll have it but as as I said this is the first step in the whole process um and finance and Facilities will be the right place the next step yeah so in advance of that I mean it it always helps if we have a specific question to try to answer I mean right now we've got tremendous amount of information here um what is what are the questions finance and facil need to answer just what do we do with all this or is there something more specific that you really want us to focus on that's why I ask about priorities
186is setting priorities an issue is it are there uh any of those uh potential reductions which we feel are sacred and we just can't contemplate ever giving up those things are there other things that we would add to that that might be another thing I'm looking for something tangible so that the finance and Facilities committee can focus on something concrete rather than just staring at each other for an hour you're looking at administra priorities but the board could have their own priorities too and line them together right to see where the common ground is where the priorities match and where there's a mismatch then we come back to the biggest so I'm just inviting anyone who who thinks they have a specific question to pose to the financial facilities committee that would be helpful to
187us I think how about doing a I'm just throwing the idea out a a sort of a six-part questions of all these priorities from the board members how do they rank them one two three yeah so that's before the finance in oh yeah if you want to do that that's that way we'll have an idea before you're talking about the priority the prioritization ruction things for what we what we put on there as the administrative one or yeah administrative you had reductions yes suggested so that PID page 33 yeah 33 that's the one you're talking about page 33 page 33 so one thing is prioritize those but that way you know when you say some things are we cannot have like restorative is one we we cannot live without then you know that goes off
188you know what I'm saying go so so you going in there you'll have an idea of the sense of the board of the direction it'll be a more productive meeting if we know have some concrete questions to answer I think I I'm just one of the nine board members I've looked at these numbers this is a we we we can get through this so and I have bigger Financial heads like that mul who knows a lot more Finance than any one of us anything else Dr from budget no no just being mindful of of timelines just it it we you know having done this couple years those couple weeks go by we find ourselves at at the public hearing so January 30th is what you need yeah yes and and I guess for the public
189too if they have specific questions they want to address that to us valuable for us as well question yeah can anyone tell me um how many children how many students are in the uh virtual Academy um want to say roughly 150 to 165 but I can get you the exact number please and could you tell me what the B can you tell me what the budget is approximately 1.6 yeah 1.6 million Personnel in Personnel costs and they have a very small um operating budget that's also you know for things like that that's in some it's an operating some is in cares but we can get you that information we should we should also have that because we got a unit byun budget so we somewhere on here information one more go ahead and I would
190suggest not only on page 33 of the slide but there's some other slides that do have some uh tasks or or positions or programs we have with dollar figures assigned to them so I think if we just look at slide 33 that may not be enough to prioritize because of course uh the um restorative justice program is not necessarily on there but there's some other things I think we need to make sure we capture if it's important to a board member or the public they should make sure we're aware of that if these are must haves 1750 is very important to me but we cannot capture that that's right that's itan other point is I just want to reiterate one more time our health insurance is self-funded health insurance whatever we capture in premiums is
191what we are able to pay but what's happening in last few few years is our payouts are more than what we are capturing in premiums am I correct in saying that Mr senson yes sir you are so the Gap is about 1 Point $160,000 or more month after month or more or more or more yeah we capturing about $130,000 in premiums or payouts so although it's an enm policy but it's anthm is not paying that money Lynchburg City Schools is writing the check is is is writing the check so that imbalance is what's causing uh the overall health insurance picture to be in another way to say it is the the school district is subsidizing the health care costs of our employees I'm not going that far yes but yeah all right you want me
192to go back home okay yes that's but you know so that that Revenue collection and spending Gap has gone up over the years and that's what where we have seen we had the uh balance um health insurance balance but that has been taken away or correct consumed in this that is correct yes sir sir would you say that the increase might be related to co expenses or do you think it's age related have you run a correlation let me uh answer it a little different way we so we we we have met with our consultant we do have a number of employees that receiving um oncology treatment we've had was it three or four that hit the our stop loss so it's just large number of claims I can't attribute to any one thing it's
193just a number of large claims com in I know there's some there's some agencies not necessarily schools that have catastrophic coverage and I didn't know where what the breakouts were right I think our stop loss is 400,000 350 and so we've had some right against that limit recently thank you our stop loss is about 350 and in the beginning years of my on board we looked at reducing that threshold to about 150 but the way the amount of Premium was going up it was not worth at that time cuz we had in the 2016 2017 2018 only two were crossing the threshold of stop loss okay stop- loss means if somebody's charges are more than 350 the insurance company will pay you the money back mhm anything less than 350 we have to cover from
194our pocket well I understand that I just wondered since just went through covid and uh they made mention about oncology so if it's age related or if it just happens to be I don't know what the threshold what what the number usage for stop loss is now has that number gone up or 400 comes to mind but we can certainly we can certainly verify that for you and what is the number of uh people who meet that or exceed that threshold oh uh three three four thank thank you all right Dr Edward we move on to the next topic right this is yes Allin tutoring update all in and I'm going to turn it over to Mrs Pew all right I'm just going to give you a brief update um around the Allin um Virginia
195initiative so if you'll recall um uh part of the um Governor's uh press release back in September was about achievement Gap as well as attendance and some Virginia literacy um initiatives and so there we did receive um about $3.7 million of par pupil funding that is specific in the operating budget to the all-in Virginia initiative um there are three components to that and the first is the all-in tutoring um so it's those students that are identified um and the the state um set the threshold for the students as they would qualify um in grades 3 through five and six through eight um for based on either results of the the so um assessment and it's either literacy reading and math um there's grade level instruction with a review of focus on content um so the
196many times when we think of tutoring we think of going back and starting you know if I'm in second grade um but I maybe need to go back and I'm only going to focus on first grade content um but this is is high intensity um and accelerated tutoring so we're really focusing on moving students forward in their grade level content as well as circling back to some things in their achievement gaps or those skills that they need to to move forward um so there's um grade level instruction as I mentioned with a review on some um and focus on some content that the and skills the students are missing um we are using a variety of platforms and instructional delivery methods um to to individualize the opportunity for students um we have about a 10:
197one ratio in terms of face-to-face tutoring so a a tutor might have 20 students in their tutoring group but they're only working face Toof face with 10 of them at a time while the other 10 students are working on a platform um or small group um and we have exact path which is one of the uh tools that the division already had um I Exel we already had in the division and zern is one of the free resources um that VOE has offered to support instruction um we are taking monthly attendance uh to monitor the impact of time on task with the all tutoring initiative so we can see if students aren't making progress the first thing we go and look at is have they been attending are they missing school are they missing their
198tutoring for one reason or the other so then we can focus on the attendance issue and then move get them attending rily and then we can move on to the academic piece um there is ongoing monitoring of tutoring in each school to determine um the effectiveness so um Miss Pew might have five students in her second grade class or third grade classroom who are receiving tutoring but you might not be the tutor so it's really critical that we have a communication between the tutor and the classroom teacher which is taking uh place as well um so that we can make adjustments as needed for individualized instruction for students um we are also doing some observations um at the division level we are supporting each school um each school has a division um support person at
199least one if in some cases more and we're going in and watching just to see how what they need um in terms of uh success for for students um of the 3.7 million um there's about 1.3 million over two years so um as I mentioned earlier um this 3.7 million is over for FY 24 and fy2 so 70% of that is focused on the all-in tutoring piece so for Lynchberg um it's about 1.3 million each year we have about 265 staff who are um tutors they've been trained in in this um high-intensity tutoring model um they are receiving stiping um there's also retiens for um support and staff and some coordinator uh program support and then we also have some funds reserved for um 100 outside tutors so we've been working with um local universities
200and colleges and other um organizations that want to um assist us with tutoring and so we provide um the training in the devel professional development for those tutors and so they would receive um a small stipend as well if they so choose um so that's just a little bit of the update on the all-in tutoring piece uh 20% of the funding um is allocated for um work with the Virginia literacy act and for Lynchburg City Schools that's about $400,000 each year um and we are focusing on um literacy Specialists that can work um developing some priorities across the K12 platform we have a lot of support now um currently in our elementary level with reading Specialists and literacy Specialists but we don't have that support in secondary so we're really focusing on you using those
201funds um for some uh literacy Specialists who can can help with that the last 10% of the funding is allocated for chronic absenteeism um is about $200,000 this first year and about $160,000 in um the second year fy2 um we are looking at an attendance specialist who can really work um to identify patterns work with um families um we are looking at um some stiens for transportation um some driver stiens to work with our families who need to attend um if they have chronic absenteeism and they need to attend a meeting or they um have have to come to court um for that that attendance hearing we're using a little bit of the funds for some um public Serv service announcements and some you know an attendance campaign in the division so those are the
202things that we are uh focusing on in in the uh Virginia the all-in Virginia um initiative across the and it it's every every division across the Commonwealth um received funds it's based on a par pupil allocation um this is how lunch BG city is using those funds are there any questions thank you you're welcome on item L1 Financial contribution uh yes so um let see attached to the um agenda were the opinion we got back from the Commonwealth Attorney you may remember when we were uh looking for alternative uh sources of funding for the safe safe room at EC glass we were contemplating whether board members in particular could contribute to that and the concern was raised um about um are there some legal aspects of that that and um here we go I need
203to open my file so um you have the letter from the Commonwealth Attorney and a form that was prepared by um our Schoolboard attorney hope towns um and so what I'm going to do is just summarize for you what my understanding is of the meaning of the Commonwealth Attorney attorney's opinion um because board members May realize the tax benefit from a contribution to LCS regardless of whether they actually receive a benefit or not a contribution to LCS by a board member would potentially constitute a conflict of interest act violation unless they formerly disqualify themselves from quote participating in the transaction of course that would in if if somehow a board member to were to receive a personal benefit um which I don't see how that would um occur in the particular case that we were
204contemplating but in another circumstances I suppose it might um um but that but um to avoid a conflict of interest act violation we uh someone making such a contribution would also need to um disqualify themselves from participating in any decision making about the contribution and there is a section of Virginia code which is uh referenced in the Commonwealth attorney's letter that talks about how those uh disqual personal disqualifications occur uh hope towns has presided a form and uh to that form if used would need to be kept on file by both our board Clerk and the city clerk so that's where this stands um um if you have more detailed questions about it and are contemplating making such a contribution and want to understand I would suggest you talk to the attorney um not me
205because I'm at the limits of my legal understanding here questions for Dr D do you have any clarification Mr TR do you think I got anything definitely wrong I would think you're a spot on WOW that's a resounding yes and I support you questions for Mr D Dr D no right thank you item L2 uh 2024 legislative priority Mr TR yes uh these this is a uh a first review or reading at this point of our legislative priorities I had read this document to the board in November of 2023 um this document and our priorities is as identical to that with the exception or the addition of um Senate bill 14 in the 2024 General Assembly session and that we've added that and our support or we' like to have support behind that Senate bill
206which basically allows for um it authorizes the local M municipalities to be a voter referendum to ask the voters to uh authorize a 1% tax sales and use tax and that 1% sales and use tax could be specifically earmarked for the construction of renovation of school facilities of course um it doesn't mean it's going to happen automatically um it would have to be passed by voter referendum and the municipality currently um that type of uh legislation exists under current law for Charlotte Glouster Halifax Henry mecklinburg Northampton Patrick and Pennsylvania counties in the city of Danville this Senate bill will basically open up that type of legislation to all the municipalities across the CATE at come withth of Virginia um so we've just put our uh support behind that I think um my office submitted or
207forwarded this document to everybody on the school board earlier it's on the board dos and and it's also on the board docs but I think they also sent it out to everybody I think Carrie did so I asked for feedback I didn't see any feed back um but any I'm happy to entertain any questions at this point yeah I had a question she said she would forward it to you I'm sorry I had a question and she said she would forward it to you so you didn't get it well well the question was how are the state funding when I was reading it and the S soq cap related when it comes to money like not understanding it completely clearly okay this um so you're talking one's a financial thing and one's just people so
208I'm just like sa funing misunderstanding funding based on standards of quality are inadequate to meet the state so standards that what you're talking about yes so how are the state funding and the soq cap related when it comes to just money and Dr yeah I if you don't mind speak a little bit about that so um the if you notice um through the Cal tool the way that Virginia is funded is based on teachers and people and they'll say so this you get this amount of funding for every 100 or 1,000 student students and things like that and many other um states do not fund that way they fund based on student needs um so the funding formula looks a little different um one of the impacts of funding by the number of teachers is
209we end up having conversations that say s soq funded teachers get a raise but nons soq funded teachers aren't funded by and we have that that split funding and then when you start to look at student needs particularly in an urban District like us may be very different than in a rural District um so funding formulas can be different so that we we really adequately fund what we're asking um thank you okay and and and our School Division ends up having to fund those find ways to fund those positions just because the way it's developed at the uh I guess the state level okay gota all right question and what sb14 is saying is let the let's put it in a a vote for the citizens to decide right right if they want to do
210it or not and I think U if I remember it right 1% increase for city of Lynchburg comes out about $15 million a year $15 million a year for um defford maintenance you know renovation construction so you in three years you can build a brand new school right or four years and it's totally left up to the voters it's it's a voter question at that point although as we were TR reading the legislation this afternoon it it it appears that city council has to approve the voter referendum yeah they do so and what from what we understand it's written that way in the statute I guess they could modify the statute so that wouldn't be the case but the statute specifically says that the local municipality governing body is the ones that decide if it
211gets put on a voter referendum mandate or not that's how you so it's it's got a lot of stop gaps in there if there's a concern about it um this just merely makes it a possibility if a local municipality wanted to entertain that type of idea to help fund the school construction renovation because uh for Lynchburg City Schools our defered maintenance is about 100 million dollar right on the low side yes so it'll be 10 years we'll have a complete catch up this would make a difference oh this this is what we should do this is this is the right thing the I'm going to vote for it right here but the other thing we we lamented over at the um lacer meeting is that there's multiple stages before this can become a reality it
212has to pass the State House it has to pass the St Senate the governor has to sign it city council has to say okay and then the voters have to approve it so um it's about a two-year timeline yeah yeah lots of hurdles along the way but uh it's it's worth pursuing and we're just merely saying this is something we think is important to us as a school system would you like to take a vote on these priorities if someone would entertain a motion to make this an action item for tonight obviously uh are you making a motion it consist coming from the committee is need a motion no it requires it doesn't require a second right so it's con if it's a committee report it constitutes a motion there you go so yes it's
213committee report our committee approved these we felt this was the right thing for our city system um and I'd like to uh have it under undertaken as it for a vote to make this finalized discussion ready to vote yeah all right Madam CL would you call the RO Please Mr julo yes Mr Andrews yes Mr Charles yes Dr day yes Dr gter yes Mrs Preston yes Mr depal yes Mrs laor yes motion cares 8 to zero thank you Dr Edward stop School violence School base stop it now that's what it says says stop school and school basement there two two grants I'm asking Dr Brown to come up and just talk about um One Federal one state grant that uhp and student services have applied for um in support of our uh mental health supports
214I just wanted to clarify I read what was in the heading here right stop School violence so it sounded like Dr Edwards sto I didn't yeah Dr Edwards can't stop School Violence by himself take all of us um but good evening members of the board I thank you for the privilege being able to speak with you today I'm very pleased to announce that we have been awarded um two more grants based around mental health and behavior um huge thanks I'd be remissed if I didn't thank my team Annie Terry and Zoe Stokes who helped me write the grants who both of which will give me a lot of grief tomorrow for giving them um shout outs because they're very much behind the scenes people um as well as our finance team and Barbara and um
215Christy and Tabitha and Thomas for doing all the work when I come in last minute and they have to actually figure out how to get the money and uh disperse the money and things like that so just really grateful for that I did want to just briefly let you know um the stop School violence Grant is awarded by the Bureau of Justice assistance it's a Federal grant um it's all just shy of a million doll Grant um this phased out over three years and this will allow us we wrote it for three restorative Specialists to work within our LCS restore system at the acmy um and Fort Hill and so those will be specialist trained and restorative practices we've already have one person in that position working at Fort Hill intervening and working with students
216um pulling groups and um trying to stop School violence and uh Community violence as well it also Dr de heard you mention earlier that it's really important for the teachers to have skills and looking at the uh HR reports and teachers need those um training and tools on how to intervene and um modify student behavior and so that this grant also allows us to do that we wrote it for $100,000 per year over the next 3 years to provide restorative practices training so all of our teachers um and IAS principals and counselors will be able to um have the uh restorative um training as well so that we think that that's going to be a huge impact and it does complete that whole cycle so while we take while we're taking students out of their
217base schools uh intervening when they go back to the base schools they have to have uh folks and and teachers professionals that understand the restorative mindset and are able to welcome them back in and so those students have the the same experience at the restorative Academy that they do in the base school so we're really excited about that opportunity um and then we have the school basemental health grant that is a state level Grant from the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and departmental Science um that is a $400,000 Grant just shy of $400,000 um that will allow us to increase even further our Mental Health Services that is a grant just for this school year um and so that Grant is from now until June 30th now the good thing about both of these grants
218as we're going to the budget season these are not intended to be sustained grants and so they do have expiration date um but they are designed to allow us to get contracted Services which could expire and we've been really upfront with the um the providers that we're working with that this is a limited amount of money um and these are not services that we're looking at sustaining they're designed to come in and intervene as we've been discussing I've heard a lot of discussion about students behavior and students mental health we're still trying to turn the corner um so we want to provide as much support as possible to intervene to decrease those behaviors give students the skills and support that they need and then pull back those services without having uh any budgetary impact long
219term for you all to to consider um I do think that our team has cracked a code and we found a formula that works well for securing these grants um and one of the things that when the grant reviewers are looking they look to see that are you re requesting the funds to be a part of a larger system and something that works and we do believe that LCS restore is something that does catch the eye of these folks that are reviewing the grants and they can see the bigger picture they can see how it all works together and it's not just um one one intervention or one strategy it's part of a larger system that takes care of kids holistically um and does something a little bit different and more Innovative that's not being
220done in other schools systems around the country so um those are our federal and those are our state grants and I'm just asking the board for um the acceptance of these grants so that we can begin implementing services and um providing interventions for students I'll entertain any questions if there are any so how do you go ahead you have a contracted services with a number of people already organizations are you going to supply them with more funding or add vendors yes sir great question um that's exactly what we're trying to do um the benefit of the 8.4 $ million school-based mental health Grant we got last year as we went through the RFP request for proposal process through the procurement office through the city with Matt mellar um so we've already have a list of
221nine mental health agencies that we're able to contract with um some are here in in Virginia most of them are local we do have one agency in Maryland that we contract with as well that allows us to um easily in increase Services um is the only thing that will hinder us is the availability of Mental Health providers for those agencies because just like we have a teacher shortage there is a mental health um shortage of providers on their end too okay please send us a list once you pick who you're going to use my other thing is you have approximately 983 th000 or so that I saw that you acquired and you're going to take away 300,000 from that for three years and so then you're going to divide the what's remainder amongst three people
222for three years and I calculated that to be around $75,000 a person so is that accurate yes sir all right and whatever you do with the funds um designated for the the three years in training the 300,000 money is that money going to disappear if you are using let's say $90,000 a year or 80 versus the full hundred or is it going to yes sir so this is a really competitive and stringent Grant um and we just I've gone through probably three webinars already on how to spend the funds and how to draw down the funds and how the the reporting um the outcome reporting as well is really really strict and so they are monitoring on a monthly basis on this grant how much money we're drawing down to ensure that we are meeting
223the budget that we proposed um and they are not in favor of amending the B these grants because um the Review Committee did accept that Grant based off of The Proposal that we submitted and so to change it after the fact doesn't necessarily allow them a fair opportunity to review it with that same committee so they're asking us to to stick to the budget that we have um asked for and this is the Justice organization that is the um this is BU yep the Bureau of Justice assistance y That's the Federal grant the stop Grant sounds good thank you no problem m l so when the three years are up can you reapply for the grant to keep it going if it's available um some of of these grants do renew themselves but there's no
224guarantee or promise um and so that's just something that we have to take our take a take a look at and a lot of times we don't know until a month or so before the grants are announced um and that's one of the hard Parts with these grants sometimes when we find out about them they're announced and then a week later the window opens and sometimes the the window is only three or four weeks and so on top of everything else we have to um go ahead and and start working on the grants and and get them submit it all right okay is there a motion to approve I make a motion to approve the grant Mr Andrews Mr laal any more discussions let's call the RO Mr jilo yes Mr Andrews yes Mr tro
225yes Dr day yes Dr Gupta yes Mrs Preston yes Mr depar yes Mr Lori yes motion Cur is 8 to zero thank you thank you all thank you very much thank you Dr Brown absolutely next item is date change uh for April work session Dr D you want to take mental on that yeah um we're changing the date of the April work session my brain's numb at this point um I don't remember what was the reason help me remember what happens is the your budget session will be picking up at that time and we have the same day school board meeting as a city council meeting so making it a week earlier that frees up that Tuesday you all need to be across the the date the new date is what the 16th 16 so
226we're moving the work session from the April 23rd to April okay we need to what on it is yes so just one one point is that is the city's public a budget public hearing that night so the 16th yeah so we would I mean if we finished up quickly we could get there but we've done that before so they have hearing on 16th and then 26th they have a meeting again 23 23rd sorry 23rd sorry 23rd they have they have a work session on 23rd I saw their calendar and they had a full meeting on 23rd yeah they have meeting on the work session on the 9th public hearing on the 16th 23rd work session and 30th work session well if we want to be free for both of them we could put our work
227session on the 23rd oh no no that's where we just moved it away from missing it yeah maybe we should set a goal to be out by 7 7:00 on that 16th or move our work session to the 30th let just get out by seven yeah I vote for that 16th so now we're doing it at 16th and we're g to try to be done by 7 o'clock 65 that's that's our set the timer work session yeah 65 work session see on 23rd city has a work session at 4 and regular session at 7:30 so both are important do we need a vote on this or I no no we don't we don't we've never voted on the meeting schedule before M the calendar 16th for the work session brings down to superintendent comments go
228ahead Dr yes I just want to thank everybody for their patience and understanding tonight as we went through a very long um but detailed um budget process and looking forward to um working with everyone um as we move forward doing it uh I will suggest that as we go through this please take time to visit student programs and stay focused on the why um and we have a lot of great things happening uh our theater program is performing there's always Athletics as well um or just a random kindergarten first grade class you want to read to but it's important to stay grounded in the children and the reason why we do what we do because we're awesome and we support public education thank you we'll start with board comments with Miss Lowry um I was
229because I was sick and then I forget got the one for I wanted to bring up that pme was on the news and World um world news world news yeah World Us world news and World whatever it's called on November 14th they they placed 40th in Virginia among the best elementary schools in the state of Virginia so that was pretty cool and I also finished today reading at RS pain so I've hit every single elementary school so me second semester hit to continue to follow up on middle and high school dividing my year up so so yeah enjoying it very much thank you mrul just again I'm proud of this board I'm learning a lot and I appreciate that we all have a common purpose and a common goal Preston thanks everybody for all the
230hard work that you do it is challenging but um you rise to the occasion and usually have a smile on your face Dr D uh we've been through a lot of hard stuff and we have more hard stuff to go so and Trust again congratulations to Dr Brown and their St Academy I think that's a great success and also I'm really proud of the strides that Dr Edwards and her team have made with respect to the CTE I mean we've heard that loud and cleared and I really think we're seeing um some great gains in that area so really proud of that and good job you guys Fantastic Mr Andrew uh just happy New Year looking forward to working over these next couple months on this budget trying to get this thing finalized yes yeah
231I'd like to encourage the uh discipline committee to keep thinking about uh how they're going to work on cell phones because that's a big issue and I was going to make a board recommendation to add a little budget line item for maybe cell phone storage pouches and uh different things like that because they're getting more and more popular and they're working keeping cell phones away from students is huge to increasing their academic um test scores and all that so uh please keep that in mind um one word that came up a couple times was capture recapture one of the most important things that we can do or that the administration can do as you're doing these numbers is to capture the stories of the budget numbers affecting people's lives because that is what's going to
232make the difference when you're giving numbers and numbers and numbers out to for instance the city council they get numbers all the time all day long they need to be attached to the stories that's impacting these children's lives so when a mother or a family or a father comes up and starts telling us about something illustratively that affected their kid let's capture that and bring that before the city council because they're going to need to hear those things specifically that will just kind of make the numbers come alive otherwise it's just going to be another dead pan type thing and and just go in one ear out the other and they'll make decisions based on other things rather than the impact it's really having so um please do that as you go through these these
233numbers um I really think we can accomplish the goal of getting through this $ 17.7 million deficit and uh you know your eye affects your heart so let's get let's get these things tangible for people to see how we can accomplish uh the best for our students and my last comment is you know we just started the discussion today there's a long road ahead and uh don't let these numbers create a fear in your mind goals are achievable and we'll achieve it together and having said that U informational item discipline committee data review committee meeting on January 11th at 4 finance and Facilities January 16th at 3:30 ad hoc discipline on January 24th at 3:30 state of the LCS event Wednesday January 24th at 6:00 p.m. at EC glass and uh the next school board
234work session is January 30th at 5:00 p.m. right here is there a motion to adjourn oh one one we have also have a five o'clock meeting on the 11th don't we yes okay that wasn't supposed to be on this no okay thank you all right motion to adjourn move weour weour thank you