001[Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign like to call to order foreign the very first meeting of the Lynchburg City School Board for the year of 2023 and I would like to say happy New Year to everyone and this is an extraordinary opportunity for us to deliver public education in 2023 we've never had the opportunity to do that until we started this quarter to third quarter and I'm thankful to Dr Edwards and the entire governance team for your support of Metropark City Schools with that in mind I do want to report to the board tonight that Dr Sharon Carter will not be with us tonight for personal uh reasons uh but will be briefed on all
002of our deliberations tonight with that having been said section g b of our agenda is for the approval of the agenda and uh the agenda has been featured on board docs for all of our board members what is the Pledge of the board to approve the agenda tonight as presented today has made the motion seconded by Mr Andrews any further questions or discussion on the approval of the agenda hearing non-maddam clerk please call the roll School remember Miss Preston yes school but member Mr Charles yes School Board member Dr Sinha yes Vice chair Dr Brennan yes jail Dr Coleman yes Dr Gupta yes scuba Mama Dr day yes school but remember Mr Andrews yes motion carries we will now stand for our Pledge of Allegiance pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of
003America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank each of you and just for a few seconds if you will I would like us to Paul suggest a moment of silence and reflection as we send our encouragement to the Newport News uh Public School uh division uh to superintendent Parker and chairman Lisa uh fuels law as they navigate through a very delicate matter in their school division would we please just take a moment in reflection in silence thank you we now move to section c which is an exciting time for us tonight and we will have special presentations and I'm going to ask the Dr Edwards will lead us through item one okay so it is always great to see a packed house
004at our school board which is a good thing that we have so much community support and some special guests here tonight but tonight we're going to start off with some new faces to Lynchburg City Schools as you all know we have a new executive director for the Ed Foundation Miss Dawn wise and we just like Donna come up and just say hello so that everybody can put a face thank you for not let me follow the kids that I think I was very excited to not have to do so and I'm so excited of you um there's so many familiar faces here I have been doing this work in different arenas for over 20 years and um I wake up with joy every day that I get to do this work here with all of
005you you've all such champions for our Educators and our students our parents our caregivers and I walk around with a smile every day so I just want to quickly just give an overview of a couple of things that the foundation is going to be up to in the few months and also a little bit about myself as well the first of all the Lynchburg City Schools Education Foundation was created in 1985. its sole purpose was to provide funding above and beyond public revenues and that's still our mission and our existence the reason why we're in existence today um and we have many programs I will not go over all of the wonderful things that we do but once again that is our mission and we're going to become more strategic in that mission as well
006particularly focusing on the gaps and the needs and the services that the School Division its Administration its teachers staff really needs and trying to do that in a more immediate time as well a little bit about myself I've was born in Virginia Baptist I started I told my selection committee they told said tell me a little bit about yourself I was like born in Virginia Baptist so I've been here all of my life I actually graduated from Amherst County high school so I'm not a Lynchburg City grad but my husband is he graduated from Heritage High School and we are champions of the school division I've been working with the school division in various areas for over 20 years education quite literally changed my life I was a product degenerational poverty I was actually a
007coal miner's granddaughter my parents my grandparents came from Grundy here to Lynchburg for a better life and my parents actually deserted me when I was in high school and I ended up living with grandparents and friends and barely graduated from high school and ended up going to Community College barely survived that actually flunked out my first year and then after several years of handling three jobs and bartending and start waiting tables I realized that education was the only way I was going to make a difference in my life and then I was going to get out of poverty was living it literally every day and went back to Community College and really like got serious about it ended up getting really good grades and all the F's became uh A's went to the University of
008Virginia and realized that education was not only changing my life but I want to be a teacher I truly thought these teachers were going to change my life and they did change my life so I ended up going to Mary Baldwin and getting my going through the entire masters of teaching Trek did my first uh week of student teaching at Linkhorn middle and realized I did not want to be a teacher forty thousand dollars in student loans and thank goodness I knew that I did not have the heart for it because it takes a special person to be a teacher and I still had such a love and a passion for the profession itself for making a difference in the kids lives so I knew I needed to devote my life to it in a
009different way so uh continue to do that work in different non-profits throughout the years and have landed here and I truly am a champion of the education community so with that we are about to enter into strategic planning at the foundation and really are going to focus on how we can meet your needs how we can meet the Lynchburg City Schools needs and I've had many conversations for the administration already knowing that your needs are great and they're changing every day so we're going to make sure our strategic funding our strategic planning reflects that our funding reflects that we're going to make funding easier for you as well we also are really going to concentrate on the teacher lifting them up teacher retention teacher recruitment we're trying again finding funding for that we have funding
010for that as well so we're working with human resources to really kind of make that easy to give and to work with making Human Resources packages that are available to teachers and also the fabulous day of Wellness we'll be back as well I heard that was a lot of work and that was the first thing I was like we're not going to do that and that's what everybody wants so we're gonna do it again we're working with the administration to make sure that it happens because we want to nurture our teachers because when the teachers are nurtured the administration is Happy the school board is happy and our students are happy and our parents too so thank you for everything that you do you're absolute Champions and I did cry Anthony Andrews you know I
011cry like crazy I've cried many times with you so thank you so much I'm excited and Overjoyed to be a part of this community and um we'll great things ahead exactly the director-wise first of all let me tell you on behalf of the board thank you for sharing that and it lets us know the power of a story and the narratives that we can share to engage people in this meaningful work of Education that was absolutely powerful and thank you for sharing I do want to pause for just a moment to see if Mr Troost or Dr Sinha have anything they'd like to say your reps from the board to the education I'm not supposed to oh so we have a meeting set up on the beach so uh I'll have a report next one
012helping with us Miss Wise um I know the selection committee went through a nice process and I'm sure they found the perfect person for their job and we're happy to have you and look forward to working with you thank you yeah thank you let's give her ahead all right welcome Partners in education co-chairs Dr Edwards yes so hopefully you're getting a sense of it takes a village to really run an excellent School Division and we can't do it without Community Without Partners without students which we'll also hear from in a bit but also in a new leadership role although somewhat familiar but in a new leadership role in our partners in education which is another one of our tremendous supporters of our School Division so they have a new co-chair a new co-chairs I should
013say and I'm going to invite them up Mr net Marshall and Miss Brittany agard wow thank you all very much I've had the opportunity to meet and work with many of you so thank you all for this opportunity first of all let me take off my pie hat and put on my United Way hat you stole the onions but we are really excited she's a great person and I've actually learned a few things I didn't know about it so but she will do a great job to look forward to that second thing is that I appreciate even though having to come behind on the great things that she said I am very appreciative of the fact that I'm not following these cute kids and I'm going before your audit so you guys are still here
014so thank you all for that um really over the course of the last year and a half or two years in fact several you all have been working with us in regards to trying to re-establish the pie you know way back uh early 90s you know I said one I've been around a while two that I'm old but uh been working with pie since the Bob um Bob days you know and and so we've done a lot of things and it was a there's a top-notch organization pie was and over the course of years it's changed and mutated and all and of course the last five or seven years I guess the attention was elsewhere but we really have over the course the last three years really brought it back together we really have looked
015at it in essence three phases the first phase has just been to reconnect you know reconnect with the board reconnect with the community reconnect reconnect with those Partners who are out there the second part that we're going to work towards now is awareness making people aware that Partners is back and that we are available to to ensure that the businesses can help the community and the schools any way they can you know sometimes you think that we're only you're only looking for money or you're only looking for people but there's so many other things that the the school systems can use and we want to be that conduit that allows all those those resources to be available to them and then finally phase three would be ultimately the collaboration the growth and the celebration of
016all the things we did have have the breakfast back in November which was great and hopefully many of you were able to be a part of that and we just see this is a great opportunity for this community to really be at the top at the very Forefront of Partners in that real right now even though uh bwxc is the company I work for and we're engaged with all the school systems but as far as partners in that I was concerned we'll be already at the Forefront you're doing better than unfortunately unfortunately in the other school systems but we can do so much more and that's what we're looking forward to do you want to say anything sure I'm fairly new to the pi board my name is Brittany agard I represent Centra I work
017there in our student affairs department so I felt like when I had the opportunity to join the pi board this was so fitting because our main goal at Sentra is to you know have educational opportunities for students and one of our big goals is more Community involvement from a just a big strategic plan but also our office as well and so I'm really excited about that we're actually offering some summer camps to students this year so we're trying to get that out into the community about health careers so this just gives me a great opportunity to be a part of this board to just see what the needs of the community are and then also build our Workforce because that's what we all need and what our student students need I remember being a student
018not long ago and just wanting the opportunity to to know what was out there and what existed and so I want to be that liaison our board wants to be that liaison for the students so I just thank you for allowing us the opportunity to come here tonight and share a little bit about it I'm excited I'm still fairly new but I'm excited for for what's to come well first of all before you leave Nat and Brittany I just am pumped up because of the excitement and the enthusiasm that you bring in reporting to us today and I'm thankful to the board the superintendent for putting this section in our school board agenda at the beginning of the year we are all clear on this one fact that we're doing this for the kids and
019who can help kids better than those of you in the community who have the skill sets uh to and the time to help and so it's just amazing and thank you uh director Reeves for all of your staff and workers with this and I would like to yield to Dr Cena and Mrs Preston who uh reps I believe if you have anything you'd like to say at this time to them well only that we're excited about the opportunity of working with Partners in education whenever I think of Partners in education I always think of that expression that we're all part of the path and and we are whether we're talking about students whether we're talking about parents and that means all of us have the ability um to contribute something my something is different than
020yours something is but it takes all of those pieces to make up the pie and so we invite all of you as members of the school board and as members of the pi board to to get involved to find out what it is that you can do because we all want to do the things that are going to help our children so thank you both she said it all right let's give our time thank you very much I hope all of you who are with us tonight as a distinguished guests can see how determined this board is to work with those who know best and can help us to achieve a successful delivery of Education in Lynchburg so thank you both of you very very much and if you don't mind I think they both
021deserve another hand attention well as Matt said we now move on to C3 and the financial audit report Dr Edwards yes and we have representatives from Brown Edwards here who are going to come and share with us the documents are available on the board docs for the public to follow along they're going to give a quick summary and am I turning it over to you all to introduce Aaron or miss cabazi or straight to Our Guest I can handle it go straight to Chris okay going straight to Chris well I could say that this might not be quite as exciting but I'll do my best I'll be brief ever positive news from us and our firm so good evening I'm Chris Murray I'm a director with brown Evers and Company uh I'm the director on
022the audit for both the schools and the City's piece I like to start by thanking Karen and her team for another successful and timely audit this year this process begins all the way back in May June time frame with their preliminary testing and it doesn't end until November or December when we issue the completion of the audit so I'll give you a brief overview of the documents that were mentioned at the completion of audit first being your financial statements which are part of the overall overall financial statements of the city do y'all's relationship as a component unit of course last month we presented city council and part of that the city and the schools received a clean unmodified opinion which is the highest opinion you can receive another significant portion of the audit is your
023single audit of your federal funds so that's looking at the the federal money you're spending so the city and schools combined with about 44 million dollars spent in fiscal year 22. so as part of the audit we'll get three grants major they or major programs for the schools we looked at uh title one special education and also the American Rescue plan emergency relief funds so total about 14 million of funds were tested for the schools and we're happy to say there was no findings or recommendations from that part of the audit as well finally on your financials there was a minor immaterial budget overage for one line item as the order of Public Accounts establishes tests that we have to do and required to look at them one being the budget there was one line
024item that was over by about one percent but according to the APA we have to bring it up in their written report it's very very minor budget nothing material related to it and as management provider response it was related to a few large unbudgeted transactions related to health insurance claims and whatnot push it over push it over budget but overall the entire expenditures was under budget it was just one light item and we're required to by the APA to put that in their report Switching gears we issued two letters the first being to require communication it's a standard letter to let you know what air responsibility as Auditors are what Management's responsibilities are finally there was a new accounting standard um I don't know if you've heard of it this Gatsby 87 related to leases
025um that's been coming down for several years we Quantified it worked with management decided it was not material to the financial statements of the schools so we passed on recording that impact final issue a comments on internal controls it's a value-added letter where we try to make recommendations but we did not have any comments Rose to a level of significant deficiency or a material weakness so overall very strong audit and I'll take any questions you might have members of the board I'm so thankful for the strong audit report there's other Silence in the room because they want to hear everything you had to say and you have done a great job members of the board any questions for our auditor no Dr Gupta so you mentioned you had suggestions you discussed with the administration what
026will be your tops number one two I think uh recommendation we made there was a few adjustments we need we need to work in collaboration with management so pulling together everything the financials and closing out a year is I mean it's it's a daunting task and as you know there was turnover in different positions and whatnot and getting acclimated with the people new people in their roles in turnover so making recommendations on you know following that learning from what we worked with this year and applying it for next year is with the main the main area that we were we had this year but there's different levels there's significant deficiencies where we think you're significantly that could definitely be an error there's material weaknesses where things can rely rise to a material weakness level where
027we think your financials can be materially misstated and that's it did not rise to any of that any of that level but we imagine a letter people think it's tried to take it as we're trying to take shots at people or some people think it's their report card but they really we're trying to add value to the audit outside of just coming in ordinary numbers and we try to make recommendations of things we see as from the outside with all the clients we work with so it's more of a value-added tool and that's what we want people to do take it as thank you Dr gutan I'm sure the clerk has so noted uh the auditor's comments anyone else all right then we want to thank you for reporting out Dr Edwards anything else concerning
028this no I just appreciate that you're able to come and share publicly you guys know transparency and accountability those are our words and we want to make sure that we share the outcome of our audit even the small and material finding as it would be but it is something that we're working on and it does have to do with health insurance and you guys know our yeah how we're always trying to cover for that and we have more plans for that but we do appreciate the work that you do and I just want to say kudos to the staff because we did have turnover and they they did a great job of pulling together and getting everything that you needed for the audit so thank you Miss capazzi for your leadership in that area as
029well as Dr water cups thank you madam Super Nintendo ditto that from from the boy thank you sir and strong audit report uh Boyd and thank you very much all right we will now move to section D of our school board meeting which is pertaining to public comments and I do want to acknowledge that persons appearing before the school board would not be allowed to campaign for a 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 employee that are not related to their official duties engage in behavior that disrupts the meeting or intimidates others or addresses school board on issues that do not concern the services policies role and or responsibilities of the school board individual speakers should limit
030their comments to three minutes a speaker representing a group shall limit their comments to five minutes the representative shall identify the group at the beginning of their presentation a group may have no more than one spokesperson that total allotted time for public comments at school board meetings is 30 minutes and public comments are served or 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 to my knowledge from the clerk we have one person that would like to speak to us Jeffrey wooders who would like to talk about the future of LCS uh welcome sir as a graduate here thank you thank you uh well I'm back for those of you who don't know me and also for those of
031you who do let me reintroduce myself my name is Jeffrey wooters I'm a first year at the University of Virginia and a graduate of EC glass and Central Virginia Governor's School uh being away from Lynchburg for the last semester has given me the chance to reflect on my years here and the importance of existing in a strong accepting and diverse community of Learners I've been blessed to live in one of uva's residential colleges a space where each voice is uplifted where different perspectives and experiences are valued and where there are ample resources to ensure that each student can pursue their interests at UVA we support each other we can come together both in celebration and in tragedy as one and as the months went by I came to realize this was not an altogether unfamiliar
032feeling for the 13 years I was a student of LCS we made so much progress on getting the fundamentals right even as school districts around us have regressed in the past year and a half we kept mask mandates in place to protect our most vulnerable students we haven't banned books from our libraries or attacked the right of lgbtq students to exist it is because we believe in that fundamental tenet every child by name and by need to graduation that myself and others can stand here and fight for LCS to be made even better not just acceptable not just good but excellent so I've been standing here in solidarity with faculty and staff as they fight for a fair wage and the right to collectively bargain because I don't have to worry about the other things
033I can trust in the capability of this aboard to make them happen but that might be changing a lot has shifted since I last spoke here the state government is divided and Lynchburg has elected a new Republican majority on the city council so I just want to remind you of a few things people are going to stand before you at this Podium on the streets and in meetings to urge you to support parental choice in schools and you know that really sounds great who doesn't want parents to have more of a say in their child's education but unfortunately the guise of Parental choice is just a way to speak an anti-education ideology into Lynchburg City Schools they'll tell you they want to protect biological sex in schools what they really want is to declare Open
034Season of the peaceful existence of trans and non-binary students they will tell you they want to protect their children from explicit content what they really want is to prevent the teaching of queer acceptance and Alternate viewpoints in schools and most insidiously of all they will tell you they want parents to have a choice of where to send their students to school what they really want is to funnel taxpayer money out of public schools to line the pockets of private schools and individual donors leaving public schooling a shadow of its former self so if you have any investment in seeing LCS continue as a place where every child regardless of race gender expression class or orientation has a right to good education works that we can demand you pay staff more not that you protect our
035most vulnerable students from institutional harassment works that we can continue to debate the best choice of scheduling the best methods of teaching and the best way to mold LCS into the greatest school system in the Commonwealth if you believe in any of this you had better work to codify it now because you might not get a second chance thank you thank you Mr wooders for your comments uh tonight Madam clerk do we have any voicemails or any other no sir thank you this concludes our public comment section and uh we will now move to the next item on our agenda which is uh section e student representative comments and we look so forward to this as well and uh Dr Edwards we have uh uh some very special people with us tonight we do we
036are continuing Our Guest uh student reps where we're inviting students from other schools in a division elementary schools middle schools as well as our two High School reps who always represent us well and tonight we have the Linkhorn campus visiting us so we are going to start with Linkhorn elementary school and I see uh principal doctor foreign and we have some student reps the principal and vice president and assistant principal are back there Dr G wave your hand and Mr Hoffman who is the assistant principal and we have four students here and please help me say your name correctly if I do not so it's Elliott weave is that correct no say it uh Elliot Elliott weeby okay all right Ivy and I'm I'm not even going to try the part before Castro so ivy
037I have the odiambo Castro Ivy odiambo Castro okay I got that one thank you Andrew Hubbard there you go is that positive even teachers need positive reinforcement yeah and Mariah Harris okay these are our Linkhorn Elementary School students who are going to share with us um some things that are happening in their school and I'm gonna turn it over to you all good evening Lynchburg City school board members my name is Elliot wiebe and I'm here with my friends Andrew Ivy and Mariah We are from Lincoln Elementary School and are excited to tell you about some of the fun things that have happened so far this year at our school thank you this past October our school introduced the book vending machine students are recognized as lion Learners and lion leaders each week get opportunity
038to earn a special bookmark for doing something good helping others for or for working hard in class students who earn this special bookmark go into drawing for a token that allows us to pick a book from the vending machine each week each week 22 students get a token to choose a book the thing I like most about it is that there's so many books to choose from and that you get to keep your book the book Walk was a new activity that everyone in Lincoln Elementary was able to participate in students were able to read a book with book pages placed on signs along the Blackwater Creek Trail with their families students also had an opportunity to participate in the book walk with their classroom around the outside of the school building there were fun
039activities about well about the book after we finished the book walk in the multi-purpose room and our classroom kindergarten through second grade read I went walking by Sue by Sue Williams wow third well third through fifth grade read The Giving Tree by shell Silverstein with their family and friends I hope we do this again next year Miss Byrne our librarian read a book called pumpkin jack to many grades during Library time this fall it's about carved pumpkin that rots until the Seas from a grill into a new pumpkin plant that following year the book taught us about plant life cycle of a pumpkin we have our own pumpkin jacket school but someone's call it pumpkin Splat is an ongoing experiment in the library that we get to see each week pumpkin Splat is rotting in
040its container this spring will move it outside to our Courtyard and hopefully next fall we will have grown another pumpkin the Les sing-along is an activity that we do before winter break it's been a tradition at Linkhorn but due to covid we were not able to have it last year students get to watch and participate and sing in different songs during the 12 Days of Christmas teacher participate by dancing out the song on stage I'm glad we were able to bring this activity back to the school this year first graders took a field trip to Amazement Square this past fall and kindergarten will be going to Amazement Square later this year fourth and fifth grade students were able to take a walking field trip to Lincoln Middle in December to watch to watch the play
041A Christmas Carol fifth graders had the opportunity to go to Seaquest and mayor art museum at Randolph College one of our favorite days was the wit day in November this is what has been the movement education teacher at Lincoln Elementary School for the past 10 years Elizabeth taught us fun movement games like gold rush he retired this fall and on to what day he dressed up like Mr DeWitt to celebrate his retirement we would like to thank the LCS Administration in the Lynchburg City School Board for giving us a chance to come tell you about some of this of some of the fun and exciting things that we have taken place out of school so far this year wow outstanding all right Dr Edwards we've got another yes we do so Linkhorn please stay we're
042gonna take a picture of both groups at the end and have a special group for my student presenters but I hope you see the power in the young voice we heard a lot of adults talk about how they support our schools but isn't it wonderful just to hear from our students and they also mentioned some Partnerships that we have with Community groups again going with our theme of community involvement but on the other side of the parking lot we have the other part of our Lincoln campus Dr Dills is here with Linkhorn middle school so we are excited to have our Middle School [Applause] and I believe all right ladies you're on the same roll I have to say it correctly so is it Giselle Holloway yes okay and then Shea carthins yes ma'am okay
043see I learned Lincoln I'm excited to have you here Dr Dill okay so we are here tonight now I'm standing in between them because they're super nervous they said can you just at least introduce us first of all I would like to thank you again Lynchburg City Schools board um for the opportunity to have um the mentorship program into our schools I cannot thank you enough there is not words and also for um funding the intervention position um because as you can see on their shirts it says thank you for being awesome um because the program that we have developed throughout the school year is to work to build leaders um these two young ladies are going to tell you um how the mentorship program has impacted them are you first okay hello my name
044is Lashay carthins I'm in seventh grade why is link corn special to me link corn is special to me because I have a favorite person that works here her name is Miss Hubbard yes oh she is like a mother to me she makes sure I'm doing good in school when I'm down she picks me up she when she when I'm down she picks me up she also tells me to be strong and stay focused she is a great woman and motivate kids to do good in school she is very caring and I'm grateful for having her she needs to be nominated for the best employee for LMS when it comes to her job she puts the pride to the side and makes sure everyone gets treated fair when it comes to rights or wrong without
045Miss Hubbard I don't know if kids including me would be successful Miss Hubbard and her job are important to link corn and the kids I I am also part of P or I'm awesome mentoring group I have thank I I am thankful for Miss kg for Community leaders to meet with us thank you for this opportunity to speak great things are happening to LMS and I am proud to be a jaguar [Applause] hi my name is Gisele Holloway and today I'm representing my school Lincoln Middle School some things about me is that I'm I had a few hiccups through the years but Lincoln changed my life a lot I'm very wise athletic and hardworking and and independent I hope so as I thought of letting go take your time talk to somebody don't let it
046be free but let it be known because at the same time you don't need to be feeling this way because why do you feel this way let them know how you are feeling because you don't need to go back and forth or stay quiet because everybody don't need anybody but you might need that one person that will be there for you every little second every little step see what you want to achieve and let people go it's mighty hard but let people go people might not stay with you for the rest of your life but you need to know you're the one that's there for yourself and know you know what no one is always there one thing you need to know when I'm by myself I just let it be free at the same
047time I'll let myself know that I'm there for myself I'm the only one that that knows what's going on and how I'm feeling inside they don't see what you are going through but they they don't care because she's like a little kid she's she's quiet she sit by herself but I know family is family talk to him about it sit down be real don't let it stay inside because it seems like you're depressing letting it stay inside it's gonna hurt and hurt and hurt but but just know they're going to they're going to be like let me go with her she knows everything she knows how to calm me down she knows how to stay in touch with me you just be the realest person that know that they can come that they that they
048can calm down but it's not about how you comfort it's how you show them who's the most who's the bigger person the real thing is staying to yourself and staying out of trouble but the most important thing is being a leader you might not see someone else doing something but be the bigger person and ask them why are they doing it what's making them do it it's okay if they don't want to tell you but break it down to them let them know the consequences most important word is letting them know because it's never too late to be what you might have been wow I joined Mentor group with Miss Raj and Miss kg because I wanted to be a leader or as a leader now but Mentor taught me to believe in myself and
049push myself to where I want to be because no one else will do it for you learn about yourself and care for yourself because nobody else really cares because you came for them Dr Dills always asks or tell me so what did you do I know you did the right thing did you and my response is well I did this or that but no you're the leader so why didn't you just do the right thing understand this everybody wants a reaction no don't give them it give them a reaction they never seen before because they'll realize that you're smart intelligent and it's powerful in every which ways push yourself because no one else will do it for you failure is not the opposite of success it is a part of success today is an opportunity
050to build tomorrow the tomorrow you want calm is a superpower don't let it stress your don't let it stress Don't let stress kill your happiness life is a gift not a privilege keep up with yourself don't let people let you down because they're going to say I got to her or him so I can do it anytime no be the right person and let someone know or just ignore it because you will finally come out of your shell and be real with yourself that's the only thing you need to know and trying something new is the realest thing to do listen I see so much potential in you all and I want it to stay that way believe in yourself set goals I'm done here but just remember it's not about having the right opportunity
051it's about handling the right opportunities and I'm going to speak my name again Giselle Holloway is is it might be raining outside but it's always Sunshine here in Jaguar country also before I leave tonight I would like to do one thing I heard it was was Dr Edward's birthday tomorrow so I would like to thank you happy birthday to you happy birthday Dr Edwards happy birthday to you [Applause] well I know we want all of you to come back up for a picture but Dr Edwards I'll be impressed with this they got me yeah birthday party oh my goodness uh there are no words Giselle you just really spoke to the heart of all of us all of us um adults kids you're a walking commercial for why you know we support and best men
052in youth mental health I brought my book today um just to remind me that we're here for the young people and we as the adults need to keep our eyes open our ears open and our arms open just to be ready to embrace them and let them be them let them be the realest person they can be um and boy did that just speak to me so that was just great advice from your mouth to the rest of us here and it is something that we need more of today and we have been talking about the mentorship program and and there's nothing like bringing the kids who are actually being mentored and affected by the program here for you all to see the work that is being done so I'm so proud of you all
053and so very proud of the program and great things are happening in Lynchburg City schools and it's because of the people that are here we talked about our Community Partners Dawn wise gave us permission she talked about her hiccups so hiccups are okay it's what we learned but you say it's how we handle the opportunity um so it's okay to fail fail failure is a part of success and that's what we want but we the investment in our children is real it comes from our Community Partners it comes from our teachers you heard them talk about teachers you heard our former student Jeremy talk about investment in teachers and our staff it comes from caring adults who want to be mentors who are involved in children's lives and that's what the Lynchburg Community is all
054about so I thank you all for coming here today and sharing your story I do have a gift for each one of you that I like to share with you and then ask you to come up in the Horseshoe so that we can take a group picture together wow while all that is happening I don't I looked at the building principles and the assistant principals and the staff all of you are so proud and we are proud as well I don't know what we would have to do to get a copy of those speeches and I certainly would be enriched if I had powerfully said thank you go in the middle all right boys take a picture with these superstars you did a great job uh and can we have our principals and assistant principals
055and kg see you over there good job like I don't know yeah come on come on the adult side of the table congratulations okay so parents we will hold still so you can get a photo after our community photo thank you Andrew yeah you just said did you get my shirt that's right you speak about that insurance if you see me I can see you here we go okay all right the rest of cheese cut.com all right I want more cheese 20. do we need to stay still okay okay stay in place we have some parents and supporters right that's right it's good to see you got it all right thank you thank you okay [Music] great job before we move on WE again want to just thank uh you all for coming and powerfully
056said and thank you for appreciating our superintendent in advance of her birthday that's very special when the students understand and value all the pressure's off now I'll Stand all right everybody well uh two superstars from our two high schools are ready now to give us their uh reports and uh we'll start with Cameron and then go to Caitlyn good evening we've had a very busy week sorry month at glass for having two weeks off attendance we know matters at LCS and glass is happy to say that our seniors maintained a 93 attendance rate in December and they were treated with a movie day where they watched home alone before winter break to celebrate this all five Latin classes had a Roman Feast the day before break to celebrate and prepare for the holidays our EC
057glass theater is putting on almost Maine and the play dates are from January 26th until 28th and you can buy tickets at the website shown our student council held their annual food and clothing drive this was a school-wide event and each grade competed thank you and congratulations to our wonderful freshmen who donated the most food and clothing our forensics team was runner-up overall at the University of lynchburg's snowball tournament on December 10th we would like to shout out Kate vintov who was first place extemporary Sophie hopped Sophia hopped who was first place poetry and Rhea Seifert who is first place froze we have a new club in the Easter glass building our new club Flair is dedicated to empowering and encouraging females and they will have their first meeting this month on the 18th also
058a shout out to our great Athletics our Varsity Boys Basketball are 10-2 and our varsity girls basketball are seven and five and good luck to all four of our basketball teams as they face LCA this Thursday thank you great thank you [Applause] good evening good evening we are very excited to be back after our winter break things are already back in full swing and a lot of our teams and clubs have been working very hard even over break so our wrestling team won the Wildcat Invitational at Warren County High School this past weekend all 14 of the rest wrestlers placed this is the third term tournament that the Pioneers have won this season wow Pioneer theater has begun rehearsals for their winter musical Cabaret performances will be the last two weekends of February this is
059our biggest musical of the year and we're very excited some student recognition congratulations to Jasir Bateman who won the ABC 13 football Friday Player of the Year very exciting I believe he's our quarterback on our team and our football team really did excellent this uh this season some more academic based stuff our AP Psychology class is currently doing a sock baby project in which they must care for a baby for two weeks and then write a paper on their experience experiences this is part of the unit on childhood development we have a lot of you can see the pictures of babies I'm in baby psychology class so I had to bring my baby uh yeah this is really exciting in an engaging way I think to teach students and have them learn you know from
060experiences it's really important to me to get input from students and teachers at Heritage I don't know if they'll show this slide but I asked some students and teachers what they were most excited for going back to school after winter break these are Anonymous the first one is not because it's from the AP psychology teacher he said he's looking forward to doing the sock baby project with AP Psychology students and then the last two are students one who was excited to see their teachers and friends again after break and one who's looking forward to new experiences in their classes this semester the support from our teachers and staff and just overall Administration and Heritage has been really great I know a lot of people kind of get burnt out towards the third quarter but from
061I know the people that I have talked to we all feel very supported by our staff and our teachers and we know that should we need one like our teachers are a safe space to us to go to so I think that Heritage really does prioritize the mental health and well-being of their students and I'm very grateful for that I know that we have a really awesome staff of counselors and the people specifically for seniors and juniors at Beacon of Hope who are really helping guide us through the the college process which kind of you know gets crazy this time of year so I'm really grateful for that and I know that a lot of other students at Heritage are as well so I wanted to highlight that and I think that's all thank you
062guys uh the on behalf of the board uh Cameron and Kailyn we we just want to thank you both for what you bring to us um I know you would have to agree to see the elementary students and the middle school students and now you have progressed through all of that and now you're in high school and and doing well and one day you'll sit where we're sitting on school boards and other positions of authority and leadership in the community but what you bring to the table is so powerful we hear everything you say and uh let's give our two uh High School Representatives thank you very much all right we'll now move to section F our finance report and as we have that Dr Edwards will bring this informational item on to us yes
063so I am going to turn it over to Dr wodica and Miss capazzi to go over the November 2022 Revenue expenditure and health insurance summary okay good evening um so at the top of our uh spreadsheets here you'll see we have been bypassing this because we were waiting on the audit to get complete but we have the 2023 operating budget showing our adopted budget at 106.3 million then we have that prior year encumbrance as a result of the audit now we know that number and that's 1.6 million um the fund balance return I have not put a number in there yet because of course we're hopeful to get every penny back but I don't know what that is so rather than be incorrect we're just going to leave it until we know for sure which
064brings our adjusted budget to a 107.9 million as of right now so the revenue and expenditure summer expenditure summary from 22 um or 21 to 22 you see is just about on track with the same as in 21. um I I can say that I know I've looked at it recently and we have spent no more so that's a good thing so when we get to December's and then januaries um that that looks even better health insurance Reserve over with the city is still a 2.066 million the health insurance summary from October to November the balance has increased more uh 1.7 million um Dr Gupta you had asked before where is that money coming from at this point it is not coming from anywhere we are in the red in those lines it'll be closer
065to this is where we have to start you know talking about where are we going to move money from in order to cover that will we be tapping into the health insurance Reserve so those discussions will be happening soon starting with the finance committee um the health insurance summary overall from 21 to 22 um looking at the bottom spreadsheet we are a little better off um this year than last year as far as uh by 2.76 percent as you can see 1.8 million last year 1.7 million this year at this same time is there any questions about that all right any questions Dr day so the the fund balance return number you're just waiting on city council to approve what they're going to let us have back again is that right yes okay I mean
066we know the number that we sent then Dr today Dr Gupta did you have a question Dr Brennan was there any adjustment in the numbers that we were given as far as the agenda I think there was a a change for the under health insurance summary for 2021 were those adjusted the the year-to-date total yes or the the photo that I had initially sent to Dr wodica for upload was the one previous two uh correcting it so when that was brought to my attention I sent him the correct one and said this is the correct one thank you Dr Brennan Dr Gupta so I'm assuming in finance committee you'll bring some sort of a plan to mitigate this bleeding an ongoing bleeding we know there's a problem right yeah and we're just waiting for a
067solution which is sustainable and a long-term solution not just Band-Aid Solutions right my assumption right when you said well it's twofold because one we need to talk about what are we doing with this year's deficit and then we need to talk about what are we doing long term so this is going year to year that loss is there right so that's that's the long term what are we going to do and and there's a there's a couple of different options um you know each with its own uh benefits and downfall so that's what will be brought to the table okay sufficient Dr good time okay any other questions uh for the informational item coming from this direct to composite um all right thank you so much and we will now move to section g our
068consent agenda and uh the items on the consent agenda for tonight are minutes from the December the 6th 2022 um meeting uh minutes from our public hearing uh on um School operation budget 2324 minutes from the December the 13th 2022 work session and then uh with the appropriate documentation religious exemption one religious exemption 2. the human resources board report and an addendum that was added uh item seven uh what is the pleasure of the board to approve the consent agenda I mean go ahead we've ever approved it's an agenda Mr Charles has made a motion seconded by Dr Gupta any further questions or concerns you uh yes sir uh Dr Gupta you know when resignations were larger in number compared to appointments we have people coming and talking but now you can see it has
069flipped either way around and uh where is Miss Scott she's up there nobody is telling you good job done you're turning the tide in the right direction so thank you yes well done thank you but I always tell us good times to clap sometimes [Applause] and that lightly said and uh things are moving in the right direction we often do not talk about that so very well said any further questions discussion uh ma'am clerk please call the roll on the consent agenda approval School Board member Miss Preston yes let's go about my boat Mr Charles yes let's scoop up mama Dr Sinha yes Vice chair Dr Brennan yes chair Dr Coleman yes today yes school but remember Mr Andrews yes ocean carries thank you madam clerk we'll now move to section H which is our
070school board member reports if you do not have a report you can kind of let us know and we'll move to the next uh item on this section the finance and Facilities committed chair Dr Sinha uh we have a meeting for next week so we haven't met all right thank you for your leadership and for the finance committee and we certainly want to make sure that that committee is well supported in the work that they're called to do Dr Gupta so I'm assuming the the process we follow is any information and when it comes to finance has to go through the share of the finance committee so not all of us are running to the staff and consuming their precious time in asking for this document and this report and that report well we have
071norms and protocols uh members of the board and I certainly am not going to stand in the way of what makes things more effective and efficient uh to Dr gupta's point is there in the comments or thoughts on that um so that's the understanding all right Okay so I just want to be clear on what I am hearing that's my job are we saying that matters pertaining to finances should go to the chair of the finance committee for um interaction with appropriate staff persons in relationship to approve from the superintendent from other board members yeah from other board members not on the finance committee or anybody anybody on the board so that mean the eight others would come to you about a financially related matter and then you would take it from there yes I
072am nothing to say about it against it so you know it doesn't do much to say things in meetings and then we walk away and act like we don't understand what we just said so that's all I'm trying to do is to clarify that so all right well we will proceed in that manner um thank you Dr Sinha all right we will now move to the governor's school committee Dr Gupta you don't have a meeting till February first week so thank you thank you very much the law Regional school committee Dr Carter we will regress uh digress go back whatever to the item two Dr Gupta I mean Dr day well I attended and Dr gupta's place in the December 7th Governor's School meeting all right you want to tell us about it well yeah
073okay uh so uh Steve Smith the director went through the budget and uh addressed line by line things that were slightly over budget and explained how those things are normally handled they do have one of their main Math teachers retiring and they're looking for replacement for him so that needs to be the right kind of person to be at the Governor's School um they are conducting promotional vids or maybe they have at this point since it's been more than a month now promotional visits to individual schools throughout November December and January to kind of give overviews of their programs to students um uh and students who are eligible are going to get letters uh telling them about these promotional events so maybe a student who might not think that they're a candidate for the Governor's
074School will get something in the mail to help them say oh maybe maybe that would work for me um and then they gave us a tour of their research project lab and showed us a lot of the student projects that were going on and the equipment that they purchased and um uh pretty pretty impressive I thought so uh that's what happened at the meeting very good and Dr day I know you brought all of your expertise in those subject matters to that and so that's thank you for reporting that uh for uh Dr Gupta any questions concerning the report coming from Dr Day all right now we can move on to uh H3 the law Regional committee and I've indicated Dr Carter will report to us at our next meeting regarding activities of Laurel uh
075the STEM academy uh as well for Dr Carter and the legislative advocacy and Community Relations Committee according to Dr Carter I will take the Liberty if you do not mind uh to remind you that the clerk has done an excellent job of sending out information to you regarding the capital conference I think that is January the 30th and the 31st maybe and Dr Edwards is registered and those of you who would like to go there's space that needs to be in um regarding uh getting things and when is the uh date for that uh Dr Mrs day regarding uh registering for the capital conference still open so that's going to be pretty neat and we'll be able to go and see all of the people who visited us for our breakfast in Richmond and so
076just want to make sure I put that out there all right if I could just chime in I I went to it last year it's a very good conference and an opportunity to go see our delegation in their own habitat if you will um and see all the buzz that goes around in that building and how busy they are so I highly recommend it if you can go thank you Dr sinhardo all right so that's gonna be a great time for us now Partners in education Dr Sinha and Mrs Preston I think there's a Partners in Education meeting later on this weekend we obviously had the opportunity of of meeting Mr Marshall and Ms agar today so things are moving along smoothly very good all right thank you both all right the Education Foundation Mr
077trost and Dr Sinha we have our meeting this Thursday yeah we had a meeting scheduled for December but then it didn't work out so we're meeting next week I believe or no it's this week Thursday yes Thursday looking forward to that thank you very much and h8 the Beacon of Hope Mr Andrews and Mrs president nothing terrific thing to report yeah all right I know there's one item Dr Gupta brought this up in 2022 in relationship to the accreditation issue and I would like to work with both of you all in terms of being able to get a chance to just make sure that that's clear with uh Beacon of Hope as they do the excellent work that they're doing I think that uh Miss Hamilton has already reached out to us in that regard
078and so I'm excited about that and I want the public to understand is each of our board members have a resolve that these groups that are in the community that are seeking to help us handle all of these issues mental health issues uh tutoring whatever they may be they are hugely important and we over these next six months let's do everything we can to engage everyone who legitimately can help us do what we need to do for kids and I want to thank each board member for all that you're doing in the community to help make some of these things happen as we partner with these groups and those are you who are giving of your volunteer time to be on these different um boards and committees if you will to make the work happen
079so thank you very much and we'll continue to move forward all right section I comprehensive strategic plan uh strategic plan goal 2.5.1 and I am so proud of the work of Mr Coleman but I see a designation here that I want to be able to applaud but I'm going to let the superintendent do that no this is you Dr Coleman Mr Coleman I was getting ready to talk about you yes indeed well that I did request for this to be on the agenda it's close very close wow our board members uh this first meeting of the brand new year is a centering opportunity for us and in the past we have not always been clear on what board goes we have and so I do want us to be intentional everybody that gives a report
080everything that we do every time we engage a staff member through the appropriate person as we've learned tonight financial pieces go through Dr Center let it relate to the accomplishment of one of these four goals and the sub points within each of them I wouldn't dare read them to you but they're here along with our norms and protocols let's do what we need to do to get the work done and let this governing body be an example to our community and Commonwealth of what it means to align everything to that which is going to be best for kids and so can you say we don't have goals now and you cannot say that what we ought to be doing ought to be working towards the Fulfillment of these goals any questions from every member of
081the board on that time on that matter all right and thank those of you on the board that pushed us to make sure we had these goals all right man we're gonna move to uh two strategic oh wait a minute something else on that yeah I just because we did get notice that we have been accepted as the governance team for Via vsba's fiscal governance cohort yeah um which will be myself Dr waterka Miss Capozzi um Mrs Pugh and Dr Sinha so our five-person uh Finance governance team will be participating in professional development starting in March so we'll be reporting back to the board um but that's the board doing their version of 2.5.1 which is Implement High performing School Board practices that support positive outcomes for students thank you Dr Edwards for reminding us
082of that and you know no one wants to be accused of patting your own cell phone in the back but this boy does need to be given credit for taking advantage of opportunities that are coming our way to get better in the work that we do and that's another example of it and so uh I'm thankful to those who are going to work with that and and grateful to get the information that you all will learn from being a part of that process thank you Dr Edwards and now uh item two under Section I uh with Dr waterka yes so uh goal 3.3.2 is about our facility study and we have that here so that we can give you a regular update um regarding the progress of the facility study as well as since we
083had some interesting times of the holiday break we thought we'd just talk about facilities in general so I am going to turn it over to Dr wodica to give a quick update well thank you Dr Edwards and good evening everyone it's always so good to see you um so I want to start off with um what has been a challenge but I think has been an incredible opportunity and win for our School Division over the last couple of several weeks you all are aware that uh during during winter break we had some power outages and some very cold weather and so in some of our older buildings uh particularly RS pain TC Miller Dunbar Middle School and also at pollen row we had some pretty significant water damage as a result of some broken pipes
084right so no no surprises or old buildings these things happened unfortunately and that was a really big challenge but I do just want to say that um the work that our staff did over the last several weeks has been nothing short of miraculous uh a few you know a week ago when we were in RS pain um very difficult shape right uh and in the the building now they went back to school yesterday um after a week of virtual learning uh the building is shining more probably than it has in 25 years the floors are shining it's like um as as Mrs Pugh says you can't even tell what happened so we still have some some significant challenges throughout the division the other really big win I think is that even though TC Miller is
085not back in their own School the long-term partnership that school has had with West Lynchburg Baptist Church has allowed us to seamlessly move into that building uh yesterday and really have basically no challenges um no major challenges anyway is just a testament to the relationships that that school has built the the number of church members that were out to help on the first day was absolutely remarkable we were so thankful for those opportunities I mean again just incredible amount of work that's gone into making sure the buildings are in good shape and so if you'll just um you know allow me a little bit a little bit of uh of leeway here I want to mention some of the LCS employees that have put an incredible amount of work just to get our buildings back
086open Dunbar um and Paul Monroe were back open before school started um and still addressing some smaller issues there but um so an incredible amount of work was done there so the first several I want to mention um Boyce Hamlet who's our assistant director facilities Brian Greene who's our supervisor of the grounds Shirley Rucker who's our environmental services manager Mark Robertson and Gordon Clements who are in our maintenance department each one of those folks have put in individually more than 100 hours of work in the last couple of weeks in these buildings making sure they're back up to where they need to be I also want to mention uh Bruce Rick's Rob James Larry Lowry Allen Foster John Monroe Bobby hurt Mark Johnson who is the Paul Monroe head custodian Lamont Robertson Akeem Brown Don
087Clegg Raymond Smith Greta Ford and Robinson Tyrone Robinson Brian King Lester Green Danelle Rucker Cade Napier arnithia Hudson and Chris for Kelly all of these are LCS employees who spent time outside of their working hours on their winter break on the weekends when I'm pushing as hard as I can to make sure the buildings are open that are actually getting the work done just incredible amount of work and a credible amount of dedication so we will do more for them than just mentioning their name but we do we do want to make sure that we we mention their names and others in our community that have just done an incredible job of making sure that our learning spaces are backed in order and and ready for our students and we talk about the most important
088thing that we can do as a school division is put incredible teachers in front of our our of our students but the second most important thing is to make sure that they have learning environments that are that are healthy happy and safe and that's the work that these folks did over the last couple of weeks so I just want to express my thanks for that um and all the work that's been done and also I didn't mention Don Floyd our director of facilities I should have mentioned him uh he also put in a few hours here and there uh many many hours on Thanksgiving but I'm so thankful for him and thank you for all the work that's been done so I'd appreciate a round of applause for them [Applause] said it but I just
089want to underscore that we were willing to make our buildings available when it was so cold outside I mean and that was so well appreciated by so many that we were willing to do that and to me that's incredible and I don't take my words for granted when I say something I deeply mean it from my heart and it is just that's rich and doesn't need to be overlooked all right Dr Gupta wants to say something well I was just going to Applause can I ask a question though Miss president already my question was simply the the names that you gave is it possible for us to have a list of those names because some of us know some of these people or encounter them in other environments or whatever and it's an opportunity for
090us to personally say thanks for whatever or Absolutely I'll send that out yeah that'd be great thank you yeah go ahead Dr Brennan Dr Roger I know that you and the staff been involved with many things over the holidays but as far as the facilities plan go where are we with that as far as glad you asked that's my next signal yes so um over the last two school board meetings I mentioned that we were in the process of negotiating terms with the educational consultant for the work um so we are proud to announce that we have selected MGT of America um LSC which is a national firm that does consult educational Consulting work throughout the country um and so when you evaluate these teams that provide proposals there's a couple of ways to do
091that the first thing is you take a look at the team that is going to be serving you and then you're going to take a look you take a look at the very similar work that they've done in other jurisdictions and other school divisions um and so we we felt this is a very impressive team the project executive on the on the program is a former deputy superintendent for operations for a large School Division so it's done this work quite a bit the project manager is an architect but was previously a school teacher for the team that makes up the rest of the team are made up of certainly former School teachers and administrators large and small school districts all over the country as well as data analysis experts and others who can really more
092fully evaluate our programmatic efforts and so we think the team is really strong we're really excited about that they've also done a huge number of excuse me similar projects throughout the country that have set similar goals first assessing a programmatic work that we do as a School Division but then also figuring out how they Place those in our school buildings either existing or future or whatever the case may be and so we were most impressed I think with the project they did recently actually in Kansas City that pretty much did exactly what we're looking for so you're looking at what our programs look like and then what do we do with the schools we have and what do we what buildings do we need in the future through consolidation or closing or new schools or
093Renovations or repurposing schools so we felt that that was really a very very consistent with the project that we want to go through and we we need to do so to scope other work I won't read the whole thing to you but it's several components they start with an environmental scan that's what this we call it environmental scan which is really evaluating all the data that is related to our school division so performance data certainly but also understanding you know the wide variety of quantitative data that we can produce in helping us to get a good understanding of where we are that's sort of a quantitative perspective on a qualitative perspective the engagement process that they've defined including stakeholder groups certainly LCS officials including school board members City Council Members all of us as key
094leaders faculty staff and students potentially alumni non-profit organizations and certainly feedback will come in terms of both phone conversations a community survey and both virtual and Community on-site forums so there's lots of opportunities I think for people to engage on where we're going and we'll use the information from those that environmental scan as well as the the community engagement to develop three major options for where we're going for the school board to consider um so that we can actually also receive feedback from the community as well um and so that's and the uh the scope and then finally they'll develop final report and then work with us on an implementation plan over the next six or so months so that's where we are so we're excited to be working with them we'll be moving forward
095with them very soon and um I think it's going to be a great project all right uh thank you Dr waterco Dr day I just want to clarify the name of the firm is it n GT or M MGT like Marty [Laughter] thank you Dr Day Dr Brennan thank you thanks for that that update I know that one of the things we've talked about is trying to keep the community involved with what's going on with this project and you know we go back to community conversations which I guess we're in the spring when this was last discussed what what's your thoughts about when do we sort of make the community aware of what's going on besides what we're doing here to really so we don't sneak up on people yeah saying that now here we
096are with three options we're going to other schools that's a great point so so first in in the scope there is uh there's you know there's lots of opportunities for engagement so we'll definitely get that information out early we can also do um you know information about what we're talking about tonight um I think in press release so we can we can share with where we are in the project um and we I think we'll be meeting with our Media Partners um in the next couple of weeks and so we'll share that as well um and then certainly when we have these meetings and have the opportunities for surveys and have you know so forth we'll publicize that as much as we possible at one other Edition I know that you said that there's a
097committee that's made up of City staff as well as LCS staff and we the board has talked about doing reports to the city council sort of on a regular basis to keep up to date is that something that this board should do or is that something that the city staff is doing with the city council to keep them up because obviously they're going to be a key partner in this whole process let me confirm with the city staff on that um which I assume that they're keeping them up to date but I'm okay thank you very much thanks for all your work thank you Dr Brennan any further questions for Dr waterka all right we're pressing our way this is so great work that has to be done regarding the future of Lynchburg and education
098in Lynchburg so thank you Dr water cook any other matter pertaining to item two if not we'll move on to I3 we find strategic plan goal 1.1 and 1 and 1.7.2 update Dr Edwards bring on Dr brass or I'm going to ask everyone to come up 1.7 um one and two talk about our response for student services trauma alternatives to suspension and really dealing with behavior management support for kids so Dr Brown has shared with you some things at the retreat he's done quite a bit of work since our board retreat and has some additional information that he is going to share about how we're going to continue to support our students here in Lynchburg City school so I am going to let him here's the good news this has been a night before diligently
099upstairs so members of the board good evening Dr Coleman Vice chair thank you for the opportunity to speak before you tonight I always enjoyed this setting more so than our Thursday night meetings [Laughter] but at the retreat I did mention like we had set the vision for our department and it's our vision to be a national model that provides world-class behavioral and mental health supports and educational settings so we have been auditly working towards that Vision in a short amount of time and really aggressively pursuing some things that would help have some immediate impacts here in Lynchburg cities for our students because we know that's what they deserve and so um some just let me I'll frame out the need for the grant that we applied for we have seen an increase in mental health
100and behaviors this year we are currently on track to double in some case triple the number of self-harm Assessments that we have conducted so that's always very concerning we also have our social workers at a ratio of 11 to 1200 per students per social worker so that's just not a sustainable level and if you look at the packet that just turned out I also gave you a chart that explains and has a lot of details on what our social workers are doing and you can see just how exponentially their their needs have increased in the requirements of their job have increased over the last four years and so that's just not sustainable we want to make sure that we get to a place where we have the support and staff need it to take care
101of these growing needs and so we found my supervisor Miss Wickham Stokes Zoe Stokes has found a um a school a school based mental health Grant and I said did we want to apply for I said absolutely want to apply for it so it was a very competitive Grant it was a federal Grant through the Department of Education and and a lot it was a it was a beast of a grant just to say to say the least so we spent a lot of time working on that in October put it together to the best of our abilities they they received hundreds of applications Nationwide today we learned that 240 applications made it to the screening process and they accepted 102. in Lynchburg City Schools is one of the 102. but wait there's more so
102the great part is the amount and this will supply us with 8.4 million dollars over the next five years foreign is to increase the number of credentialed Mental Health Service Providers and the ability to provide mental health support for our students and so we're really really excited about this grant is going to allow us to do a lot of different things over the next five years and really take it to the next level to serve our students and meet these needs and so I'll briefly go through some of the things that because I know we're short on time tonight but I want to hit some of the highlights of what we're doing with this Grant and so as I stated with our social workers we we have an amazing social working team I mean just
103phenomenal and we don't want to lose them they are currently after we did some research with the grant they were about 20 in some cases thirty thousand dollars um below what they could make in in other school divisions in our state and so we wanted to get that up to a place where it's decent and then we wanted to celebrate those who and appreciate those who are doing uh the work above and beyond that are doing supervisory work and Lead work so we're able to provide 10 salary retention stipend for all of our social workers which I believe I don't believe I know they were really excited about that when we told them that new everybody felt appreciated which was the main thing and then we're able to provide a five thousand dollar stipend for
104our lead social worker because she's currently been doing all that work as a lead without any compensation we're able to provide a stipend for our social worker who's providing licensure experience and so in two years all of our social workers will be licensed clinical School social workers which is a a huge resource which will actually allow us to help make this sustainable and I'll talk about that a little bit later in in my presentation and then once they become licensed it's just as much as my much as like when a teacher gets a master's degree there will be a stipend of about thirty two hundred dollars for their license and adding that credentialing to them so we also have a board certified behavior analysis A bcba and as Rich Ferguson and he is literally doing
105the work of four people we used to have four about five or six years ago and then we weren't able to hire anymore again it's extremely below market value he is a wealth of knowledge and he gets offers monthly from private firms to to trying to solicit him away from Lynchburg City Schools but he has a heart for our kids in our city and does a tremendous work and so I also provided some definitions for those who may not be familiar on the on the very back page of what some of these positions are and what they do and so our just a brief overview of the bcba is someone who studies behavior and then provides recommendations and all of our principals just speak so highly of Rich Ferguson and the only thing that they
106say is negative about them is that it's just one of him so we want to keep him around so we're able to increase his salary as well and provide a five thousand dollar stipend as well to keep him aboard then we want to expand some of our support and services through the grant as well and so we're able to make another Rich Ferguson and we're able to hire another bcba which will double our capacity there we're able to hire four registered Behavior techs and those will be folks the hands and feet of those bcbas that were able to actually go and help Implement those plans and work with our students one-on-one when we're having behavioral challenges and report that data back to the bcbas to help our support our teachers and our principals and we're
107able to cut down on that ratio as well so we're going to be able to hire two new social workers to join our six-person teams that brings us up to eight for our division and I think that was it got more cheers than the paid did for a social worker team when we announced that and then we're really excited about this we propose to create a new position we're calling them restorative counselors which will be qmh PCS and that's what stands for qualified mental health professionals for the child endorsement and so these are folks that will in the mental health field that will be able to help support our counselors and support our principals and sometimes there are peer conflict and there needs to be mediation there also can be some group counseling sessions but
108that will help our schools tremendously and our principals be more proactive than reactive we don't want to always get in the habit of after an issue happen then going in trying to fix things we want to get ahead of those and try to help students mediate through that as well and then really excited about our last section which is contracted services and so as we mentioned during the retreat therapeutic day treatment because it changes in Medicaid and dmas have been taken out of the schools and not really sustainable for our mental health providers so we didn't have any real Mental Health uh immediate Mental Health Services minus outpatient in school outpatient counseling so we're excited to announce that we have um a pot of funding starting at 700 000 and then graduate graduating downwards to
109500 000 towards the end of the grant for therapeutic day Treatment Services contracted through our Mental Health Providers as well as social emotional Behavior Support programs and or for both of those programs and we can also provide some professional development for our Mental Health Providers all through this grant so I'm really excited about those things we always want to think about sustainability and so it's a five-year Grant what happens at the end of that five years I anticipate being around if you all will have me for a couple of a little while longer so I want to make sure that we're able to sustain this so in the grant we actually proposed a way to keep this sustainable and one we want to leverage Our Community Partners in a mental health-based partners and had some
110conversations really good conversations this week and some of those partners are really committed to helping solicit funds and go after grants on their end to help subsidize some of the cost as these funds dwindle down and we prepare for the grant ending in five years we also can budget and set aside funds 250 000 300 000 is what we recommend don't worry about that right now but we can have those conversations discussion is not a deal breaker but that that would be helpful later on down the road as well insurance billing and so I talked to you about when our social workers become licensed so working with our finance department and looking at Medicaid billing and some changes that are coming down the pipeline we would be able to potentially bill for some of the
111services that our social workers are providing though the restorative counselors the important part of having them as qmhps is because they would be able to bill for Medicaid as well and then some of our therapeutic day treatment services and and social emotional Behavior Support would be able to build as well to all bring those costs down and then we're going to continue to aggressively pursue other grants and funding opportunities in the meanwhile to help subsidize the cost so that we can make sure that we don't have to ask for more money than we need and then implementation we're already started so we got noticed uh notif notification of this on December 27th and the the federal government said you need to start this on January 1st and so we had a real quick turnaround and
112a little bit of work over Christmas breaks uh winter break so we've already started and we've um our job descriptions and we're starting to post those now working with our human resource department and working with our financial department to make sure that logistically all those things are taking place we attended a webinar today and then we plan to expand our services so we've already talked to our mental health professionals and ask them could they take on a couple extra schools or provide extra counselors in in these services so these are a quick turnaround which will be happening in the next couple of weeks we hope to have folks hired in the next several weeks and then procurement process so we do need to put out a RFP so we've been working with net mile Stellar
113in the city and I'm already moving full steam ahead with that so that's about a three four month process if you know procurement so it's going to take a while but in the meantime we can already have these Services set up and be ready to go once we're ready and then we can expand our services with newly contracted organizations that we're really excited about maybe even some mentoring organizations as well so I'm excited to um bring that news to you and if you have any questions Dr day I this has been an amazing meeting a lot of times people will say well we just find good things to talk about uh to cover up other stuff but this is just naturally happening with Richland richneck Elementary School and all the concerns I've heard to come
114to this meeting this weekend to hear you say staff people talented put together a grant proposal and have been awarded 8.4 million dollars and you thought through how it should work uh that's just that's incredible I think it's Dr Day um this is really exciting and you know I have been trying to understand what things we can do to help uh those of our students who are not performing up to their academic potential and although I'm not an educational psychologist the one of the things I keep hearing over and over again is that behavior problems not only for the students who were having the behavior problem but it affects everyone else in the classroom so this is really important it's my understanding that this is something a lot of the classroom teachers struggle with because
115they don't have enough support for that so this is really great I'm really encouraged to hear about this and I wanted to mention one thing in in particular I think I've said before that a few weeks ago I went and visited the Fort Hill Academy and talked with Kathy veyer the director and I asked her you know what are one or two things that are the most important things that you need and she said I need a dedicated well she wanted a psychiatrist um she said maybe I'll take a psychologist um but one of the things she said is she needs to have someone who would so when a student sees someone it's the same person they see because those students in particular the the counselor or advisor working with them needs to build a
116relationship with those young people before they can make any progress now you're probably very well aware that I see you nodding your head I just felt it was my duty to Kathy to make sure that message is heard they needed they need a person who's really dedicated to their particular and sees the same kids over and over and over yes sir one step ahead of you we've already uh met with Miss veyer and one of our Mental Health Providers and so we're all from rolling on that front yes sir definitely glad to hear that thank you Dr Dave Dr Gupta so it's a great news no doubt but as I look in the horizon four years out and you brought up the issue of backfilling some of their money my concern is the two things
117are we looking at this monies will be will be needing to because the coronavirus money will be sunsetting so could we backfill some of that through the grant that's my question number one um that is a good question if I understand it correctly you want to use some of the cares funding from covet to no no we had some like we have we hired a behavioral therapist we hired restorative justice we had positions approved using temporary coronavirus money right and since this grant is tailoring to have mental health that money otherwise will go into the regular budget and we need to come up with that money right so this two million dollars a year you're getting will that help I think in some aspects it could and some of those positions could apply for these
118new positions and shift over so for example the the rbts restored a bit excuse me restorative they registered Behavior text and the restorative counselors if folks have those qualifications then they could apply for those positions and we could um shift the positions if you will until the newer roles which could still fulfill some of the older worlds I'm thinking in particular like the behavioral interventionist position that Dr Dill spoke to earlier and has done really really great things I'm not sure of her qualifications but that's something that we could look at not having that still still that same position but keeping that same person in the role doing similar things how much would the indirect costs you asked for in this grant I'm sorry indirect costs were there allocated indirect costs twenty percent thirty percent
119so the reason I'm asking is that that's sort of a pot of money which gives the superintendent some leeway to I'm worried about that Sun's Sunset of coronavirus and then other things kicking in because this will be a two million dollar expenditure four years out right because ten percent stipend you give is excellent thing no doubt but when that 10 stipend sunsets that person will be feeling the pain right and where do we come up with that you know what I'm saying yes sir the money going forward and um and again with that um the sustainability plan with those four steps of you know trying to look to see if we can budget work with Dr wodick work with composi making sure that we we're being smart with our budget I've also redesigned my budget
120as well to try to find some ways that we can provide supplemental and um supplemental budgeting allocations to help with these stipends and things later on down the road after we run out of the grant funding cycle so it's going to be on the radar and something that we'll think about frequently and often and again we'll be pursuing other grants as well there's another opportunity that we have coming up and so we're already looking at pursuing some other funding as well so we're committed to keeping that in it's definitely on we're not celebrating that we have it just yet and we will definitely know we need to sustain this beyond the five years thank you yes sir all right thank you Dr Gupta Dr Ed was anything you wanted to add to that point no
121I I we we knew that question was coming back to Gupta um but I think one of the things that we also talked about when we looked at supporting the Grant's office is getting extra bodies in here to to be aggressive and go after grants and get more funding um right you know we get our discretionary grants from the federal government title one the things that we normally get but what is the other money that we can use to kind of subsidize some of this and then I don't want to miss Dr Brown's point that he talked about the importance of having folks licensed and certified so they can build so we can be reimbursed for the services which will offset some of the salary costs and things like that and that's a huge part
122of it as well and Too Deep the other thing is the two million dollar goes into therapists and they'll go up into the administrative line so the people think your Administration has gone up by two billion dollars so so that you don't talking about that disclosure needs to be there to make sure that it's not superintendents and superintendents and superintendents we are hiring and these are not to Gupta that kind of drives me to Matt's point and I know that uh Dr Edward was Dr director Reeves will handle this but just managing the message is what I'd like to say on all of those kind of things we manage the message um and as we talk about this grant unfolding I'm wondering how we can help the community really deeply understand the mental health issues
123that we are dealing with in Lynchburg City schools and more specifically Lynchburg City itself and I don't know what kind of campaign we're going to wage to that end Dr Edwards but I I think it's critical um particularly when we started talking about uh the budget cycle has has been mentioned and people really understanding why we need these things and if you're not directly in place to see why you need it you probably don't understand why we don't why you would need it but I hope that we'll hear more about that but this is just huge doctor and another member of the board not Mr trust I just want to command Dr Brown not only for going after this grant aggressively but also having a forethought to say what about sustainability and I'm glad you're
124doing that at the front side because there's plenty of time to develop a plan you're obviously thinking about that well done um I'm also very excited that our city school system under a treaders leadership and you Dr Brown um the nation is having all of these uh mental health crises so we are actually taking a proactive approach by looking for these types of things and putting the people in place to take care of this thing so kudos to the administration Dr Brown I'm the first to say I want to get uh out of the business but unfortunately that's part of this this place we're in that we are going to be in the parenting business for the foreseeable future and your forethought um your administration's forethought Dr Edwards is really a well well um well
125appreciated thank you Mr trolls well said Dr Sinha well I think you know the fact that you we were awarded this grant one is a testament to your ability to apply for it and make a convincing case but the fact that we made a convincing case just illustrates how how serious our situation is here in city of Lynchburg and I also want to commend you because in October you what two two months in the job well done I mean that's a that's a big undertaking um and I know you're familiar with the division you've been with us in the past but still not in this role um in your previous employment here so that's just really outstanding so I I really give kudos to you for uh jumping right in and and taking advantage of
126that and and uh and rallying your staff to do what was needed and they stats I'll tell you I'm a numbers person but they really tell a story they tell a story and certainly you know it's not so much that we're parenting these kids we're providing services that they're just not getting anywhere else because they're not available anywhere else or waiting lists or bad or their health insurance for whatever I don't know why Psychological Services are separate from health medical services are you know but it's very expensive to get these things if your health insurance doesn't cover them or if you can't wait for services so it does fall on the schools unfortunately that's that's a burden we have to bear because it's not being taken care of anywhere else um but these these numbers
127are just really um something to see that you know the increase in what we've been doing and the need um so certainly this will be part of our communication when we talk to city council about how much we have to come up with that's not soq funded cause we have all of these needs as a city school district with High poverty and the issues that go with that and now we know with the increased cost in housing inflation with um food everything it just compounds the issue you know the thing I've heard about poverty if there's unemployment that's much easier to deal with because people can rally around that person or family that's experiencing unemployment but inflation housing costs that affects everybody um and so even people who who you wouldn't consider in poverty now
128are struggling uh if they've been renting all along to find housing so and that just creates stress and all kinds of uncertainty or whatever so um definitely um this comes at the right time for us so thank you and welcome absolutely thank you Dr Sinha and no other comments need to be made at this time uh I thought there was just something else yeah I just wanted to add for the public that is watching I did upload the document that um Dr Brown shared with the school board so that the public would be able to excellent there you go wow so if you're if you're in board docs and you refresh you should be able to see that under um the public content for this section I3 the other thing that I want us as
129school board and Community to just publicly state that um in no way does our investment in any of this constitute our thought of a lack of parenting and I think that's important to just pause right now to say that many of our parents are doing an excellent job they're doing the best job that they know how and they're struggling with the changes that they see in community in their children they're struggling with the presence of social media in the poll that it has on kids um so so that we don't I don't want to give the appearance that we're saying that this is not being addressed at home I believe there are many parents who are probably watching right now saying please help me help my kids so this is a partnership that we have
130with our parents because many and I know Dr Brown gets the phone calls I get them and I'm talking to parents who are telling us here are 10 things that I'm doing that would normally work and their frustration is probably similar to classroom teachers here are some things that I've done that would normally work and now these things are not working with the children who are sitting in front of us so I think all of us adults the Educators the parents the community we all need to Rally around each other and provide this support for our students and and just really be purposeful and intentional about the support and the outcome and leave the blame or the pointing fingers elsewhere we don't have time for that our kids are in crisis right now and they
131need all of us to to Rally forward so to the degree that we have to Advocate with city council or anyone else to say you know our young people need our help that is our mission to do that and it's not just the young people it's the young people and the families that are also trying to support the young people at home that also need our help perfectly safe Dr Edwards and I just want to take this opportunity before I sit down just to thank my team again I'm really fortunate to work with some really talented individuals and Ms Stokes carried a heavy load on this grant grant writing as well so we make a good team and um I always like to leave people wanting just a little bit more so I'm just going
132to throw out a trailer if you will for my presentation at the end of this month when we'll be talking about behavioral supports because today was focused on Mental Health but we are looking forward to opening some new centers and interventions for our students here and we'll be talking with our principal secondary principals on Friday and looking at Opening Our restorative suspension Center so students receiving short-term suspensions of 10 days or less instead of going home or just hanging out in around the community they'll actually be with adults who are working on their behavior working on skill building making sure they're being reflective and creating plans for when they go back to school after that suspension is over and doing their work so that academically they're not falling farther behind so it's more to come
133on that more details I will take no questions on that [Laughter] thank you director Brown and all that you have just heard ladies and gentlemen and the entire Community is real talk and we appreciate it I'm going to ask that we would take a five minute recession when we come back we'll be able to move through the four items of Unfinished Business to two items and new business and then be prepared for comments and we do have a closed meeting ever so briefly at the end of tonight's meeting five minute recess foreign [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] thank you foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] to section J unfinished business and what is the coming before you in this section
134these are action items and so uh J-1 student services policy updates Dr Edwards yes so these are the follow-up a second reading for the policies that were presented in December so I am going to let Miss Pugh kind of briefly go over the student services policies thank you and I'd like to thank Dr Edwards for going over these at the December work session in my absence the you had before you the student services policies that are up for a three-year review um we Dr Edwards addressed the changes most of these are minor changes with wording or pronoun changes and I don't believe there's anything of significance in any of them so you've had an opportunity to look at them now and review them are there any questions all right thank you uh Deputy uh superintendent
135uh Pew uh you've heard uh what is being presented to us for our second reading just to remind at the beginning of the year these policies are so critical to those goals that we talked about to our comprehensive plan because it is our task to make sure that our policies are aligned to the vision and the goals that have been established mission for the for the school division so we don't take this process lightly and thank you for the great work that each of you uh are doing to make sure that you're on top of what these policies are calling for and so is there any uh questions to Mrs Pugh regarding what she's presented before we entertain a motion I can make a motion all right I've been moved by Dr Gupta seconded by
136Dr Brennan that we will approve the student services policies that are presented to us tonight in the further questions or discussion hearing none Madam clerk please call the roll School Board member Miss Preston yes School Board member Mr Charles yes let's go but remember Dr Sinha yes Vice chair Dr Brennan yes chair Dr Coleman yes Google remember Dr Gupta yes let's go but remember Dr day yes school but remember Mr Andrews yes motion carries thank you madam clerk uh J2 curriculum and instruction policy updates Dr Edwards and we will continue with you with the December work session um there most of them had um minor changes um or even no changes at all the one that was of significance is IIA instructional materials and that was these changes are a result from Senate Bill 656
137as well as iiab which is the supplementary materials selection and adoption process and then was presented to you a new regulation iia-r-z and this is the identification and notification regarding sexually explicit instructional materials and this is the process and procedure for evaluating and communicating these to our families and community so again you've had these to review are there any questions I do have a question go right ahead Dr Dave this is not regarding the appropriateness of the policies it's just that the um IIA and iarz both refer to um information being posted on the district website about listing of sexually explicit materials and I would presume some explanation of a procedure that a parent would be to follow I looked and I didn't find that on the website so I'm just asking is that still
138being prepared to be posted on the website yes yes it they are working on it and unfortunately it is sometimes going to be a very daunting task um and so we will get that information up as quickly as possible okay we always encourage our parents um to reach out to the classroom teacher if they have concerns about materials and or the school principal and if they've gone that route then they can certainly reach out to Mr Coleman Chief academic officer or myself and we can certainly walk them through that but we are working as quickly as possible to get that information on the website that's what I expected but I just wanted to hear it from you thank you thank you Dr today is there a motion to approve that motion too Dr Gupta has
139made the motion seconded by Dr Dave that we approve the curriculum instruction policy updates that are before you tonight with Clarity of understanding of the dauntingness of the test and getting things closer where they need to be uh any further questions or discussion and none Madam clerk please call the roll School Board member Miss Preston yes school but remember Mr Charles yes scoop up remember Dr Sinha yes Vice chair Dr Brennan yes chair Dr Coleman yes let's go about remember Dr Gupta yes a little bit remember Dr day yes Mr Andrews yes motion carries thank you madam Clique we'll now go to J-3 Governors policy updates Dr Edwards um and there are three policies educational philosophy in the type gotta change that typo uh BBB which is a student board rep a student rep um
140that we did not make changes to in kmz which is up for review the uh big change on ad is we added and Beyond we say it a lot but it's not written so if we write in and codify the and Beyond part of our mission statement which is which is one word or two words and it's huge so that's that's so so powerful and then as it relates to BBB uh our at least one of our student reps did attend uh the workshop in Williamsburg in my immacula no I'm sorry yes I want to make sure that we commend her for that because that's important so even though it doesn't appear that there's any changes in BBB after a few years of discussing this it it's just wonderful the quality of our young people
141and what they're doing and what they offer and so enough said on that any uh further comments or we entertain a motion on the governor's products we approve these three policies the motion has been made by DR day second about Dr ghoutar any further questions or discussion hearing nun ma'am clerk please call the roll school but remember Miss Preston yes school but remember Mr trost yes school but Mama Dr Sinha yes Vice chair Dr Brennan yes chair Dr Coleman yes scoop up mama Dr Gupta yes school but remember Mr today yes school but remember Mr Andrews yes motion carries thank you madam Clerk and now we move to j4 uh and uh this is for discussion regarding our operating budget for fy24 ETC go ahead I'm going to Tee It Up and then I'll turn
142it over to miss Capozzi and Dr wodica um first uh just a fun balance there is Miss Capozzi will go over fund balance just for the general public as well as the board so that we all have an understanding of what the return of fund balance where how that money is calculated but what I listed in the board agenda is what you approved on December 6th just so that we continue with our transparency this is what we approved this is what was sent over to city council I did get an email from uh city manager Bender Who said that it will probably be on their January 24th work session and their February board council meeting for approval that is the fund balance the return Turner fund balance that is the number that Ms capazzi was
143talking about waiting for for city council also in this section are the documents that we shared with you during the work session on the budget we put them again listed them again just for the general public in case they did not open them from the December meeting they're in the January meeting and we will be having conversations about this as well we are working on a tentative calendar with the city manager so that we can get a timeline for when our budget presentation will happen at city council that has not been finalized yet so that should be coming forth soon so that we have that as well but we did want to cycle back to just any questions about the operating budget and some clarifications so I am going to turn it over to Ms
144capazzi and Dr Walker Mr capacity before you go forward Dr date is your question potentially just a minor thing I think when we saw these uh numbers before under structural analysis and repair there was a correction that was link or middle not Lincoln Elementary is that correct that's right yes sir so we need to just make that adjustment on this one okay yeah dude thank you Dr day all right Mrs composite go right ahead okay so the what what Dr Edwards listed listed here is uh that return of fund balance said that why I'm not putting it don't have an answer on that but that's exactly what Dr wodica presented um or requested to this city and I guess uh hopefully that January 24th the meeting will know something more on that um so I
145put together this presentation for mainly for myself because I'm new and as I'm learning and understanding how and why we do things here the most interesting thing to me was the fact that the return of fund balance to the city that calculation is nowhere in our financial reports so it's not like made clear how we came up with that number so I'm just briefly going to go through this in the interest of time um but the fun balance formula being assets minus liabilities um liabilities is your total fund balance next slide um so that whole operating Surplus is next episode that's that's the the you know meat potatoes of the definition that we need to understand that for our current budget our revenues minus our expenditures give us our gives us our operating Surplus and
146deficit or deficit that's a part of fund balance that is not fund balance alone next so fund balance um obviously Gatsby 54 such as Chris had said about Gatsby 87 but back in 2010 they separated fund balance into these five different categories so non-spendable if you think of that like your school food food service there's uh inventory or such as we have that book donation it's non-spendable it's inventories it's endowment trust things like that restricted Grant programs your reserves they have a specific purpose committed committed is not something that's typical that is based on board action and in order to do anything else with that you have to have formal action again so that's just not very common next assigned that is our annual budget that's the part of fund balance we say we are
147assigning it for this purpose unassigned is what we are not allowed um because that all goes back to the city so how is that uh return of fund balance calculated so this is the past five years if you just want to look at this year you see that operating fund balance of July 1. that number is the same number of total reserves from the previous year because that is the only a money amount of money that we are allowed to carry forward is the money that technically is already spent that the the reserve for encumbrances is the goods and services that we purchased in that previous year but we have not yet paid for them either we haven't received them or already ordered those things so that's why that's carried forward into the following year
148the weather Reserve I have to get a little more uh background on that um I don't know its specific purpose I would guess weather related but I don't have anything in black and white this is just the conversation that you know having with the auditor where she said it was enacted you know several years back so that also gets carried forward um because it's it's funds that are then accessible within the year but notice it's a reserve so it is restricted so then that under total reserves the revenues and expenditures that's our annual budget where we come up with that operating Surplus or deficit so if you take your opening fund balance then you subtract out your total reserves then you add back in hopefully you know Surplus you're operating Surplus that's the amount of
149money get that gets returned to the city so that 1.099 that you know Dr Edwards and Dr voted send over to the city to to claim some of that back that's the balance into the city if you look at this and you have any question about it please ask because yes I'm sorry it interrupted you in mid-center no that's okay I would say because it's it's not you know just as simple as oh yeah sure that makes sense that's good so um just a technical correction I think no I think you're going to tell me from December or from the 2020 to the 21 is not the same number well read in an email sometime back sent me those bottom line numbers as a history and the one for fiscal year 2020 is different from
150the number that was in your email yes the these are the audited numbers oh right so so there was a is like from 20 to 21 there was an audited an auditing change so what what Dr Wilko probably sent you was the year-end numbers but then with with auditing and several uh adjusted journal entries and things like that this these numbers are what are from the uh uh annual comprehensive Financial reports am I am I wrong either but that would be my guess is that you know almost on the level of a typographical correction so I'm not making a big deal so so but you can see how I said that the uh the total reserves from the previous year is your operating your opening fund balance come July one it is not that from
15120 to 21 and that's because there was an adjustment made uh in 21. okay so when we got to the audit in 21 they said oh okay you should have had opening fund balance of this versus this I can't tell you off the top of my head okay why that was though okay next oh I'm sorry we did a question the opening fund balance adds up to your Revenue Revenue line because I'm just trying to add a fiscal year 20. you're opening fund balance is always going to be the same as the total reserves from the previous year unless of course like I said an auditing adjustment has been made but typically it's going to be just that reserve for encompasses because again that's money that's already spent we just haven't paid it yet so
152we need to carry it over into the new year in order to pay those bills and the weather Reserve is a reserve being held in our pot of money versus the city's pot of money so that we have immediate access to it so you got 3.1 million dollars of surplus in 21. yes and your reserves were 2.4 million dollars yes so that means well you have to take that first opening I'll add that one point exactly so that basically gives you about seven hundred thousand dollars no you have to take the 1.6 from the beginning and the 3.1 of the operating Surplus and then subtract out the 2.4 yeah that's what I'm saying I was going backwards to add 1.6 later on so it's it's about uh 3.7 and 2. so 1.3 million so are
153we that's where you came up with again I'd have to look at the auditing on that because let me get back to you on that one and I'll find out exactly why any any changes you know such as that other has to do with the auditing these are the same with this yeah are you good doctor day for now okay and felt free to shoot me an email and also I can explain it better or or maybe something I don't know because again I'm I'm new to to here also next so the fund balance limits why do we return that money that is because the code of Virginia says that we have to that any of the sums derived from local funds unexpected in any year shall remain a part of the funds of the
154governing body appropriating the funds the city appropriates the funds from the Commonwealth so that's why they go back to the study next so here I'm just saying um that we need to look at a surplus budget if we want to be able to afford things so I'm just giving and when I say Surplus budget that's not to say that it's not a balanced budget they're always going to be a balanced budget next so a balanced budget is revenues equals expenditures I I don't want to read this to you it's you can read it next deficit budget means our revenues are under our expenditures our expenditures exceed we cannot do this because otherwise we will just run in the red because we do not have a pot of fund balance that we can tap into other
155than that weather Reserve because and again that has specific purposes so if we're going over on Transportation costs we don't have other money to dip into so we cannot run a deficit budget next so the Surplus budget is where we need to um start gearing ourselves and and and start talking to the city about this that we have to plan for those One-Shot expenses or shortfalls in uh revenues next so excessively High fun I'm sorry you're saying we we need to plan for a surplus to cover those unanticipated yes and and will that end up in a return of fund balance to the city yes but there's no harm no fell if we say as you know as a just in case we need to have ten dollars and we say oh there was no
156just in case we can give you back ten dollars there's no harm no foul but it's a different way of thinking than what I think the communication has been between the school and the City previously I think that whole return of thumbnails is like you don't know how to spend the money and that that's not it that's that's not the situation what's the what's the norm for that kind of uh return fund balance is there like a one percent budget five percent budget I mean other school systems obviously must do this as far as how much you would would budget for over Genesis typically across the school system school districts in Virginia I cannot say that I don't know but I can I can start well I mean I wouldn't I'm just if if we're
157going to go to City Council it'd be nice to say listen you know it's kind of typical for school systems to have a surplus budget of well one percent or three percent whatever the number is I I session because I feel as though as the counties and [Music] um for from most of the people that and I just came from a concert a concert concert a conference um yesterday and today and that relationship has is almost the same you know a little more contested in other places you know um that they're all gonna say oh no no I'm putting in for as much revenue as I need just to cover my expenses or at least that's what they're telling their city or their County or whatever be because the city or the county doesn't want
158to hear we have to plan for just in case so I don't know that anyone is going to necessarily but we can you know do a little research and look at their books see what they ended up with at the end in that video thing that we looked at they may have somebody may have asked that question I think we did and so let's go right ahead this is the vsba budget doctor and they said they said 1.5 percent okay of your budget is usually what you should have for your fund balance somewhere in that range the other point they made was that you really get that fund balance from those unfilled a Physicians which you which always everybody tends to have so that's kind of your your slush fund and then you kind of
159know it there and you keep track of it so I certainly agree with you that a lot of the conversation with city council but I think that the fact of the matter probably is they're going to say that they'll pay us what we need and then we will continue to use that that section as were the where that slush money is and I hope we have some so so sorry so the 1.5 figure is not persuasive I mean it accounts an iPhone right here hey it's typical to have 1.5 percent budget surplus they don't care about that well I think they I think that they understand that there's going to there should be some excess because we do not want to spend all the money because we can't end up in the rest all right
160in addition to what what Miss Cambodia said we're all going to be in jail too I think it's against the law for us to overspend our budget so I think I think but we're back when you saw that Grandpa was five million dollars right that's got very strong right but I think I think what we're doing now currently so you know submitted I would I would assume and we'll see what city council says that that's probably reasonable you want to have well when you take into consideration the 285 000 that we had remaining at the end of this budget season included the fact that we did 800 000 in uh that health insurance you know money that we were in the red so technically we did kind of at least we were able to if
161it wasn't intentional budgeting that way we were able to cover that right so but I know like right now this year uh we have legal expenses that are more than we anticipated we have transportation expenses that were more than we anticipated um it's another big one that I'm it's not coming to mind right now but we have several expenses that were just more than we anticipated so rather than if we create the budget knowing where there's a little excess to work with we don't have to try and find it within the budget we know where it's at okay Dr Gupta I just wanted to make sure that the underutil uh fulfilling of positions is not a a designed model so it's not a slush one slush fund is designed you know you know that you
162can dip into that so that's because you're not able to fill those positions even working hard and harder and harder each year right I I would agree I mean I mean soq tells us we only need this many positions and then of course we definitely exceed that as far as you know support positions and everything else um and and yes if we're saying these are the positions that we need then these are positions that we need we're unable to fill them so we know we can tap into that a little bit but hopefully if we fill all positions we don't have that however I will say health insurance is one because we do have to plan for if Dr wodka gets married tomorrow and goes on a family plan [Laughter] his facial expressions tell us
163all right everybody that was that was a great piece Dr blue picture I'll ask you later all right and what I would like his medicine has taken my mind if the board members if the chair would be allowed Mr capacity can you go ahead and complete the report a question or comment that is just critical for tonight I know some of you all have other things and I do want us to move right along go right ahead Mr capazzi okay so excessively high high fund balance normally caused by the number one is poor budget practices we need to take a look at it so we don't end up with the 5 million return we you know if we're shooting for 1.5 then that's what we're shooting for next excessively low ending up in that deficit
164again is poor budget practices is the number one um and and the thing with that low fund balance such as Dr Brennan was saying we we cannot do that it is against Virginia code for not to appropriate the amount of money that we need and because we're tied into the city if we can't cover our bills I could put the city in a bad spot as far as short-term borrowing um and whatever and it's just not a place that we want to be or subjected on the city next how to manage excessively High fund malice and this is just how to manage uh Surplus revenues really those One-Shot expenditures uh reducing debt principal financing Reserve funds are offsetting under my underestimated expenses or Revenue shortfalls which is our number one thing right now next just
165the definition of the One-Shot expenditures equipment Capital outlay flooding repairs that that was the other big thing next oh reducing debt principle this is definitely something we would have to talk to the city about not all because everything relative to this goes through the city and not a lot of your debt can be paid ahead of time so it's something that we would have to confirm with the city next financing Reserve funds as you've seen you know the capital Improvement uh reserve the health insurance reserve and that weather Reserve um I do intest you know going to look up more as far as the contingent reserves that we actually keep for ourselves you know what that difference is and what we're allowed to do next um as I just said this is definitely uh you
166know our our one shot or underestimated expenses right now next so um a fund balance policy so such as you just brought up from vsba if we um can start the conversation to come up with a fund balance policy that you know tells us what do we want to do is it 1.5 percent is it and you know it's it's not something that we'll do overnight but it's definitely something I think we should start the discussion on next so this is just what they should be and it's exactly how you uh you know conduct and approve your policy making now so there's no change to that next any questions all right thank you Mr composite any other questions from members of the board Dr Brennan Sinha because this topic I think sort of came up
167because in our pre-agenda prep we talked about the fund balance and other things and I think this was that and I did not want the board to be tortured by this question that I'd raised so I appreciate you all doing it Dr they just said he thought this was made for him I think we had a conversation yesterday which you said that which I appreciate and I I think that that's very helpful actually I think I just want to point out too which we also mentioned yesterday that in the documents that we received in the work session part of that and it's actually when you get a chance to look as like page 22. is one of the other things that we've talked about that we I'm not familiar seen before which is our proposed
168budget for last year on our actual budget for last year it actually shows us what we what we said the budget was going to be but the first time we're actually seeing how the expenditures worked and out of that when you look at that you can see that the fund balance ends up being that bottom line or is that number is part of that so I just want to thank Ms Capozzi and and Dr Orca for presenting all this information including budget from last year with comparisons which we never since I've run the war for six years we've never seen before but thank you all very much and I apologize all right Dr Gupta maybe the auditor mentioned only one line was one percent over rest were under you know which line um it was
169the maintenance benefits if you look at the end of that um letter it has the adjusting journal entries it was one of the maintenance benefits ones and it was a um was it forty thousand dollars one percent over yeah and the thing is when that expense was taken out they looked at the entire um account code you know not just that one line and then within that entire account code because Capital gets pulled out that's what made it go negative all right okay well thank you Miss capoze for that information Dr Edwards anything else yeah just that I think tonight at city council um the city managers presenting the fund balance sure fund balance oh my goodness formula funding formula um which we received a copy of earlier this week I also put that on
170the agenda for the finance committee that's going to meet next week so that they can review that and talk about this one all right thank you uh Dr Edwards and uh thank you Mrs capazzi we'll now move into K new business uh first item is the middle school program of studies and we've dispatched of the high school program now it's middle school and if you could call on uh our distinguished presenter okay so uh middle school program of studies we have Mr Coleman coming up to present um for Middle School uh thank you Dr Edwards good evening to the board are you happy for you the middle school program of studies you've had an opportunity to review I did not receive any questions prior to the meeting but if there are questions I'm willing to
171take those now if I cannot answer those at this time uh be sure to follow up with um responses to your inquiries the program studies document that you have before you has very minimal changes uh pertaining to compared to what the program studies document looked like that you approved last year so at this time through our questions or remarks I'll take those thank you Mr Coleman Mr Charles Mr Charles again Dr Day thank you uh Mr Coleman the mascot block I saw that it's a new ad is that a could you just give me a little bit of an understanding of what that is yep so it's uh essentially an enrichment opportunity in short term and is that it's a um is it a specific class like such as like a study hall or I'm
172just trying to get understanding yeah and we put the name so it was called different things at at different schools it was also to a live what we call it and so essentially it is an opportunity for students to get enrichment um I hesitate to use the term study hall because that has less structure in it this has more structure in it right than what a typical study hall would and I'm assuming we can utilize that maybe to help capture um some of the learning laws that we've experienced that's that's absolutely excellent great ad thank you thank you Mr trolls Dr Dave that was my question too all right very good thank you uh Dr Brennan so just just one brief comment and I'm looking maybe Dr Edwards for this is that since our educational
173philosophy is now every child by name and by needed to graduation and Beyond should we add that to this title of this little look probably we're going to have to be redoing a whole bunch of things there you go yes um since that day could approve we can update this so I have no other questions or comments as uh you said it's a daunting task to update all of this would certainly going to get to it and um thank you Mr Coleman for the presentation I do know that I had Dr Carter's not here but Dr Edwards these uh lab school pieces are going to at some point be coming alongside of us to equal out what we do with the elementary school for our Middle School uh uh program of studies and effort yeah
174yeah the lab schools are now we've done a lot of work on our end they're in the hands of the colleges and universities so cvcc has one and University of Lynchburg has the elementary version of it so we are waiting very good Dr Gupta I'm going to make a motion to make it an action item all right go on Dr Gupta all right but is there a second to that motion the motion if I get a second it fails if they're second to the motion thank you Dr day all right Dr Penny did you have something all right same thing all right any further questions or discussion that tonight we will approve the middle school program of studies presented to us by Mr Coleman uh any further questions or discussion on the motion hearing nine
175uh Madam clerk please call the road to approve the middle school program of studies tonight yes yes excuse me Vice chair I'm running yes chair Dr Coleman yes let's go back Mama Dr Gupta yes I'm assuming I'm making a motion to make it an action item and then that's why wait hold it hold it I always like to be clear I thought we were doing everything at one time typically if there's no objection to us moving quickly to to dispatch or something tonight we don't necessarily do two things so I just want to make it clear as we continue to vote we're actually voting because there was no objection to make this an action item to to tonight to prove it tonight that's what I want to say thank you Dr Davis all right thank
176you Dr Gupta yes doctor today do we get the people who voted before your clarification the opportunity to um I have no problem with that with that point of clarification is anybody wanting to do two different uh vote go right here Dr day I vote yes let's go about Mr Andrews oh yes motion carries very good thank you Dr Gupta for that motion Mr Coleman thank you for your work thank you all have a good night thank you sir uh K2 hiring updates for the school year 2024 Dr Edwards uh yes so we wanted to take the opportunity to bring members of our HR team we have director Scott and and um thank you Miss Watts um our senior Talent acquisition specialist here to talk a little bit about um some upcoming hiring things that
177we are going to do as we get out there and nap all the qualified staff to join LCS are we excited to share an update with you all with our hiring Initiative for school year 23 24. we actually started early this year with the launch of our 2023-2024 application that took um live it went live um right before I won a break um new this year we will have our internal career fair which will Aid in our retention of our current employees who wish um to consider other positions within the School Division so that's new we also have teacher interview days the purpose of the teacher interview days is to hire as many top candidates as soon as possible to help serve our our students also we will continue our annual education career fair which
178will take place on Saturday February the 25th at Heritage High School similar to what we did last year we also I'm doing our Fair we had interviews we also hired some people that day as well the career fair is open to the public and it's for instructional positions and non-instructional positions as well okay you also should have before you a flyer so please share um this flyer um and now I'm going to turn it over to Victoria and she will share an update on our college and university campus recruitment all right so um before you what you see is a highlight of the college oh thank you college and university campuses that will be visiting this spring I mean we also want to highlight that this ties into the Strategic plan goal 2.2 which is
179I'm talking about our Recruitment and Retention initiatives and what I'd just like to highlight here is that we're continuing to re-energize our Partnerships with cbcc and the University of Lynchburg as you can see that they are on this list as well so with this Initiative for our college campuses and universities we have also scheduled to attend our hbcus we currently have four in the state of Virginia we're registered for two wait listed for one and the last does not currently have an event so this is just a high level overview of some of the places that not only our human resources team will be visiting but also we're encouraging our administrative team and our Direct directors across Lynchburg City Schools to join us because they also bring a unique perspective to this effort so we're
180excited to continue expanding that recruiting effort also important to note here the Virginia universities and colleges reflected they all have video we approved teacher education preparation programs and I like this this is a reflection of a lot of good work over the years to get into this point the diversity of recruiting efforts is clearly there Etc so thank you all thank you very very much any questions from the board for director Scott or all right thank you thank you thank you for doing the work all right we're now at our section A L the superintendent comments so um first let me just say thank you Middle School who surprised me with the birthday gift of a wonderful sweatshirt which I will be wearing um and also a beautiful um puppy mug as well so coffee
181mug yeah yeah it's very very sweet I appreciate it so thanks thank you Linkhorn for doing that for my birthday tomorrow it's a nice start um quick update to some things uh just in December since we've last met um we did have another kindergarten Kickstart event at um the of vul um so that was a nice one again I think we had some more kids that were registered that evening for kindergarten so if you're haven't gotten your kindergarten or registered please do so we had our winter luncheon here for our admin staff we had an awesome legislative breakfast so thank you to um Dr Carter's not here but thank you to her and her team and our Clerk and the rest of you for um making that happen as well as our students and staff
182Who provided excellent music and food for us the bacon was delicious a couple bike presentations that we I got to attend um one at Bass elementary school right before break and again that's one Community one voice that is partnering with us to celebrate our staff I kicked off the new year you all know what happened over break we don't have to rehash all that fun I kicked off the new year with just welcoming our new city council Representatives leaders as well as having lunch with council member missions and I have breakfast scheduled with the mayor coming up and some time with delegate Walker he is also on my calendar as well as reaching out to others still to be scheduled so that we can continue our partnership with the city and our delegates as we
183move forward as you said Dr Coleman I am going to attend the um conference at the end of the month um I do want to just one more time give another shout out to Dr Jordan who is the pastor at um West Lynchburg Baptist Church I happen to be on their website today and I noticed that he had a sign up actually printed it and it says welcome and serve TC Miller and what he was asking his congregation to do which I thought was wonderful and I don't know if anybody knew about it but you could sign up to bring snacks to the teacher break room or lunch or service security and crossing guards for the park with our kids they were there in the morning helping get kids out of cars in a car
184rider line just a wonderful partnership and just small things like this that mean a lot to our staff so I just wanted to publicly one more time just say thank you to a pastor and his church for their amazing partnership with us in just the quick turnaround time and we know the importance of in-person learning and they were so accommodating and allowing us to set up the place so that it was a learning environment that was non-religious in the rooms where our kids are so they were very accommodating for any of our families that um wondered about that and I also today met the new executive director Deborah Smith from the Jones Memorial Library and we're looking to do some great work with them as well so it's been a wonderful week back with partners
185and Partnerships and we're going to continue to do that good work thank you Dr Edwards and again happy birthday to you I um before we go into the board comments I really appreciate you lifting up the pastor of West Lynchburg Baptist Church they previously enjoyed a rich relationship with us in so many ways and when the new pastor came on board he really wanted to find ways to get connected and I mean really wanted to and there are a lot of people out there that really want to and it may not happen right away but now to see that he is engaged at this level in providing this type of meaningful uh robust impact on our kids it's huge and so the more that happens the more our kids win Dr Gupta what is pastor's
186name nobody is uh Chris Jordan Chris Jordan wonderful man he and his wife yeah all right thank you Dr Gupta we're going to do board comments now and start with Mr Andrews uh kudos to the kid to present it tonight that takes a lot of courage to be in this room um so they did an amazing job and then of course thank you uh your staff for all the work they did over the holiday weekend holiday weekend holiday break uh repairing the schools and busted pipes and that sort of stuff that's actually pretty amazing so so thank you for that thank you Mr Andrews Dr day um how are we doing for time I have several things I wanted to say but I could postpone them if you feel we're pressed for time Dr day
187we want to hear what you have to say and I know you know how to give it to us as quickly as you can okay it means postpone summons all right so three things at our last work session we were given a folder with lots of documents with data and stuff pertinent to the budget process that we're beginning in that folder there were two of the documents that tried to forecast enrollment levels through the end of this decade one was from Cropper GIS which was or is part of the facilities study and the other was from the Weldon Cooper Center at UVA and just in my effort to digest all that information I've been sort of chewing on those numbers and I noticed I wrote to Dr Edwards about this that the Cooper GIS numbers
188forecast a very regular annual increase of about 50 to 60 Elementary School students per year starting in 2026 if you graph their numbers they just start climbing almost a straight line and the estimates from UVA do not do that so Dr Edwards referred me to a work session last April where those numbers were presented to last year's board there was some discussion about it then and I read through that the full document that contained those numbers looking for an explanation and I didn't find one all the verbal discussion all the written discussion in that document kept saying about enrollment decline enrollment decline enrollment Decline and yet the numbers do something completely different so what I want to communicate to you without going into further details is that I think we have to be pretty careful
189in interpreting those numbers it's not real clear to me what we really can expect over the next decade but for what it's worth those Cropper GIS numbers seem to indicate that most of the decline at the elementary level has already happened but is going to continue to hit us at the middle and high school levels over the years ahead now again that's based on these numbers that I have some questions about and the other thing I'd note that as we chew on those numbers that both of those studies were done with using historical data only through the 2019 school year so some time has passed and an epidemic has passed which so I'm just giving us lots of grains of salt to throw on those numbers when we think about them second we were all
190given copies of this book which I have been slowly working my way through I'm you can see where my bookmark is I'm not quite done yet regular um and what I wanted to say about that is that that book describes lots of different non-traditional approaches that schools across the country have tried the point I want to make here is that if we want to try any of the ideas we see in there or maybe other non-traditional approaches to things I think we have an opportunity because we are changing principles at EC glass uh so a sort of Pie in the Sky idea that I'd like to throw out for you to think about is what if we took one of our two high schools and with the Advent of a new principle tried to use
191some kind of a non-traditional model and left the other High School in the traditional mode right now our two high schools are pretty much offering the same things at the same level there's some differences but we could if we wanted to pursue this use the opportunity of bringing in a new principle to bring in someone who would be committed to trying something a little bit new and different I'm not saying we should I'm not saying what it should consist of I'm just saying the hiring of a new principal is a convenient time to do that if we wanted to so I'm just throwing that thought out to you um I do not mean to imply any criticism of principal flower who's leaving or suggest that um she's done anything less than a great job I'm
192just saying a change that we are going to encounter that's the that would be an opportune time to to try something different if we wanted to and then the last thing um and I think this connects to um the uh the mental health grant that Dr Brown was telling us about as we think about our physical facilities particularly excess capacity at some of the elementary schools that the facilities study kind of pointed out a little bit we might contemplate the possibility of converting one of the elementary schools to a second Fort hill-like alternative facility because Fort Hill is maxed out and as the numbers in Derek's chart here show we have a tremendous need to serve the students that don't fit in in the standard facility so that's just another thing to think about maybe
193maybe that's something that we can do as we think about what are we going to do with our facilities down the road maybe that's something to talk about with that team of folks who's going to be here and I've said before I think getting a handle on the students who are having behavior problems is important to all the students and it will affect the Sol numbers the performance across the board so it's just one idea to think about as we move forward that's the end of my comments thank you Dr Dave very pertinent thoughts and reflection thank you for sharing them Dr Gupta I'll postpone mine for the next if you change your mind we'll come back to your Doctor Gupta Dr Bruno I'll do I'd like to do two comments hopefully briefly one is
194that time flies quickly and uh which is back in December we were cheering on our high school football teams and I just want to comment as I think we all know that uh Heritage High School made for the final estate championship in the EC glass made it to the semifinals I think both coaches were actually awarded coach of the year for their divisions which is pretty phenomenal we had multiple players on both teams that got first team all the first team recognition by the state Dr Coleman and I had talked to Dr Edwards about maybe trying to have an event in some way for those teams that the that the school board could show their appreciation for them and a little beyond that we talked about maybe actually not just doing it for athletics but
195doing for academics doing foreign quarterly on some basis we say this is important to recognize these kids but I think those two teams really should be recognized I know the board feels the same way on a more somber note um I think we all saw the fact that the city council is going to discuss their resolution to make Lynchburg a second amendment sanctuary and it just reminded me that back in October the American College of Pediatrics released a policy statement and in that statement they pointed out that currently each day in the United States each day 28 children and teens were equivalent of a high school class die from gun violence make it the number one killer of Youth in the United States and then 2022 there were 55 school shootings which the most which
196was the most school students we've had in five years and we all know what happened last week in Newport News was just so tragic so I just we all know that the answer to gun violence is is multi-layered difficult a lot of different aspects of it but I just hope as our city council looks at the fact of bearing guns that they'll also look at ways we can keep our children safer in our community and our schools because I think it's just so important that we all work together to do that thank you Dr Coleman thank you Dr Brennan for your insights thank you very much Dr Sinha comments before you work with trolls I like Dr day's ideas I think there's I mean it's a shake up it's worth looking at outstanding um I
197too want to recognize the West uh Lynchburg Baptist Church wow talk about I mean we have other organizations other churches are will step up and do the same thing and I I personally I want to thank Wes Lynchburg Baptist Church Dr Jordan and then the other opportunities uh that may present themselves other other organizations willing to step up and finally um this past December we lost a uh a very good teacher one of my former teachers Miss Peggy Myers from EC glass I just want to recognize um her for her family think her family She's Always a dedicated teacher she taught me and was there and um we're gonna miss her and wish her family the best thank you Mr trost all right Miss Preston um just thank you for all that that you do
198to to serve our our children I think some of the comments that we've heard indicate that we don't all necessarily agree on how to do things or what things we need to do but as long as we can remain civil and at least listen to each other and and each other's opinions we can arrive at a place that will work for most of us and will benefit our children well said Mrs Preston I do want to uh just acknowledge that uh men to school January the 17th of starting with the high schools and moving right along will be uh uh encouraging kids in honor of King not mentioning King but just to get the work done to encourage kids to go back and do well in the third quarter and we're encouraging any of you
199that would like to participate to please do so it's always been meaningful and then at the Jubilee Center once that's over uh we will go over for a little repast and hear from whomever doctor with Dr Reeves uh directories give permission to come and help us to appreciate how we can volunteer and get involved in making a difference in the lives of our students throughout the third and fourth quarter of the year all right you happy for you in section in all of the informational items one through five and of course you can govern yourselves accordingly uh with each of those pertaining to the work of this board uh over those uh days reference and that moves us to section o and uh that suggests that according to the code of Virginia pursuant thereof section
2002.2-37118 School Board needs to convene a closed meeting for the purpose of discussing the following specific matter superintendent's evaluation is there a motion for us to go into a brief closed meeting for this purpose that's a move been moved by Dr Brennan is there a second I said thinking about Mr trolls uh any further questions or discussion on the motion hearing none Madam clerk please call the roll Google Miss Preston yeah let's go but remember Mr Charles yes school about Mama Dr son hi yes Vice chair Dr Brennan yes chair Dr Coleman yes Google remember Dr Gupta yes let's go about my doc today yes let's go back to my room Mr Andrews yes question Paris all right thank you all of you thank you everyone thanks staff thank you for the great work you're
201doing we'll just take a minute or so to move and then this won't take long at all uh Happy Birthday again Dr