LCS School Board Work Session: July 26, 2022

001[Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] we would like to now call to order the july the 26 2022 board work section of the lynchburg city schools and as we call our meeting to order uh on tonight it's so good to see everybody and i trust that we will have a good meeting tonight it has been featured on board docs our agenda for tonight and this is an action item for us at this time in our agenda to approve the agenda for tonight's work session is there such a motion to approve the agenda thank you moved by dr day seconded by dr carter any further questions or discussion on approving the agenda as you have it before you um madam clerk if you could please call the role mrs preston yes mr trost yes dr

002sinha yes dr brennan yes dr coleman yes dr carter yes dr day yes uh mr andrews yes okay all right at this time the school board recommends that we approve a motion to convene a closed meeting to discuss the following as permitted by the virginia code section 2.2-371188 in consultation with legal counsel and so is there a motion to go into closed meeting i moved they're going to close me all right then motion by the second second mr trust seconded by mr andrews and i asked a question you may certainly do what happened to the board policy discussion we're going to still have the board the uh policy discussion but that's uh now d oh oh today we must have an old version of the yeah okay and that's all right sometimes this happens all

003right so it's now d well tonight oh but we we're doing c closed meeting first okay all right any further questions on the motion that has been made and seconded all right madam clerk please call the roll uh mrs president yes mr trost yes dr sinha yes dr brennan dr coleman yes dr carter yeah that's okay dr day yes uh mr andrews yes all right then we will now to all of our viewing audience and to the public we're going to take a moment to go into our closed meeting in room 206 i believe and we will be back as soon as we have completed our [Applause] [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do so [Music] so moved i second

004we moved by mr president seconded mr andrews that we've come out a closed meeting further questions of discussion hearing none madam clerk please call the roll mrs preston yes mr trost yes dr cena yes dr brennan dr coleman yes dr carter yes dr dave yes mr andrews yes now in accordance to the code of virginia section 2.23712 d i want to certify that in the closed meeting all that was discussed was in accordance to which was indicated in our initial meeting to go into the closed meeting and um i don't clerk just have everyone to certify by saying yes mrs preston yes mr trose yes dr sinha yes dr brennan yes dr coleman yes dr carter yes dr day yes mr andrews yes thank you madam clerk we'll now move to section d of our

005work session which is going to be a robust politics policy discussion tonight and we have two items the first is governor's policy review these are all for discussion tonight and may well come up at our october august the second meeting for action uh dr edwards uh yep and i am going to go over um i think it's about 27 governance policies um i will not go over each in detail just give you an overview but please stop me on a policy or regulation if you have questions about that particular one my feelings will not be hurt but i'll try to take you through just a reminder we do bring all policies to a work session for first read and then they'll be back on the board agenda the regular business meeting for second read and

006for approval and we like to make sure that our policies are within three to five years having had laid eyes on them so you'll see some lcs reviews that are up for three years you'll also see some vsba updates because they will often change them send them to us and then we will bring them back to you so we try to distinguish which ones are coming from the sba and which ones are coming from us and with that i'm going to take you through the governance policies which most start with the letter b you'll start to get to understand the nomenclature around policies as we go through them um your first one is bbfa which is the conflict of interest this is coming from the sba and what they have done is updated the pronoun

007changes you know they are moving to they them they are there and they have also updated the definition of a gift um so on the policy on i believe it is page two there is a whole definition about what a gift means and what a gift does not include so just make sure that you review that section of the update but the rest of it is pretty much the same questions okay moving on to the next one which is bda regular school board meetings this was updated from vsba to cross-reference the updated policy of notifications of meetings and they took out the word school board so that was the only change in that particular policy next one bdd which is the electronic participation in meetings policy we had talked a little bit about this last

008time because we did have someone who did participate electronically you do now know that you can participate in regular and closed session meetings electronically but there is something that we added in our policy on page two and it talks about the number of times a member can participate in an electronic meeting due to personal reasons we have had the practice of twice so we added the word twice in there just to be clear that that is still to put in our practice um but vspa left that blank up to us we also have to disclose what the personal reason is and i talked about that last time so if it's due to travel or employment or you don't have to get too personal with the personal reason but just so that it is included in

009the minute so that is the change to electronics i would like to have discussion on that for just a moment absolutely and uh ma'am superintendent i'm i'm not absolutely uh sure after how we would do this but i'm i'm somewhat taken aback at the two is there any way that that that can be reworded i don't i don't think we need to be punitive to board members who for whatever reason uh have to do certain types of things and we have this elect electronic that someone can tell me why it needs stead too we need to find a way to take the two out and say i don't know i'm gonna leave it at that for right now uh mr truth thank you and i bring this up only because it occurred um you know

010our schedules fortunately we had our schedules set up in advance and my schedule gets set up and i'm sure many viewers fall in advance and it happened to me with the last meeting we had to be flexible and the board had to modify the schedule and i had already had a a a business trip set so unfortunately i had to um attend electronically and along your lines i didn't want to be i didn't want to incur the punitive effect of this type of policy on something that you know we want to be flexible as a board and schedules change um so i didn't know if that was some way we could as you say dr coleman address that issue there's not a it's not a punitive nature balancing the fact that people need to come

011and i think everybody wants to be at the meeting that's all i just want to address that if it was possible in the policy dr carter and i think that when you make that commitment when you um join the school board you know when you know that there you have 10 75 of just the board and the school board meetings the workshops and school board meetings but there are a lot others but i really think that this too this is too stringent that we need to we don't need to penalize ourselves because you never know what comes up and my question is do we have to set a a a number and i don't think anybody just misses to miss or doesn't come just to not come and the fact that you're going to come

012in electronically let you know that you really want to participate because you can just not show up all right uh dr dan did dr brennan so um as the new text reads the the limitation to two is only when the reason is quote personal matters if it's a medical condition i think uh it says temporary or permanent disability or other medical condition is a reason that doesn't count as one of the twos as part of the two so maybe we just need another cut out for work related obligations um person i would would have in turn interpreted personal matters to mean you know i choose to go to a high school union or something or another like that that that that i could have avoided by choice but when it's a professional obligation because of

013someone's employment i would think that that should not be counted as one of the two so another approach would be make it a little more narrow what those personal matters mean and you could have at a clause to let the board allow it exceptions beyond the two limited to two unless given special permission by the board thank you dr david i appreciate that uh dr brennan i think these are all really good comments that make a lot of sense i was wondering whether we should ask the uh superintendent and chair maybe even the vice chair to review this and come back to our next meeting when we're going to act on this to come up with a suggestion for different wording that might be acceptable to the board with the pleasure of the board i

014think the superintendent is hearing us i think some valid ways to handle this this board has always been eager to be here and we and and so i just i i have difficulty with the wrestling that we had to go through with that necessarily so i have no problem with that if you are okay with that and of course it'll come back for you um next tuesday i suspect anyway yeah ryan this is our first read yes this is the first first time we're discussing thank you dr brennan all right may continue to dr edwards okay uh the next policy uh bddg is the minutes and um the this was a vsb vsba update which just talks about that the minutes need to be posted within seven days after they are approved um which all

015of our stuff has done on board doc so that's not a challenge for us but just that you note that that is um what the policy states uh the next one on my list is cm which is the school division annual report and this is coming from vsba which is a change in the wording which used to say that the annual report the school board with the assistant of the superintendent would do it on before september 15th but now it is stating that it will be according to a timeline and on form supplied by the superintendent of public instruction which we do not have yet but we left the wording for that we typically try to do an update on the school division once we get the sol scores in the fall and then annually

016we're going to try to make october our annual update sort of the state of the division meeting going forward which will also cover our strategic plan which we do ongoing but we'll make a point of doing this um in our in october before november 1st which was our other uh date that we had okay all right the next one is um af which talks about our comprehensive strategic plan and these are now the ones that are up for review um this was a june 2019 since we're in 2022. uh we are up for review with that we did not have any recommended changes except just want to point your attention to letter x which really talks about parent involvement and then there's a sentence after that that talks about our school board will present before

017november 1st on the odd number years which is this is the year um for an odd number year so that will be in our october either our october meeting or work session that we will go over you referred to letter x there's a or no number 10 or whatever that is down there on the on the policy on the comprehensive plan it's labeled i i2 you're looking at af i thought you said you'd gone on to afa go ahead i'm sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry yeah my dad um so underneath there it says the school board presents a report to the public by november 1 of each odd numbered year which will be which would fall in our november november in our october board meeting so we will be doing all of that as part

018of our state of the division where we go over the final test scores how did we do in by june 30 of the previous year for that um madam superintendent as it relates to the comprehensive plan there's so much work goes into that right yes oh is it some way so often i don't think people in the community know that we have a comprehensive plan is it um is it something that we can do in the language here that would um force us to make sure that that comprehensive plan gets wherever it needs to go in the community where people will know that we have this comprehensive plan is it available on the web page yeah we just need to tell people that they can find it on the web page i wish it were

019that easy it's not that easy yeah it's not easy to find i found it difficult to find it's on the board page and i do believe it has its own link if you just search strategic plan you would be able to pull it up with all of the information but it is definitely under your section since we talk about it all the time and we actually have a new deputy superintendent of operations and strategic planning so we will definitely make sure that it is much more publicized and verbal um as we move forward so that we can make sure it gets to where it needs to get to okay all right well and any of these that the child recognized dr carter we go ahead don't we regularly cite which strategic plan we are addressing

020in our minutes and put that out there yes and dr carter you're right we do all of that stuff yet there are people who are not aware of something so precious and powerful is that so i was just wondering whether if the regulation or the policy something could be said that ensures that this document is you know you know has some name recognition and understanding about it is what i'm trying to say all right we can move on okay all right moving on to afa which is the evaluation of school board operation procedures and again this one's up for a three-year review we are not recommending any changes to the policy but just a reminder that this is one of those things which we're circulating the dates for so that we can do our school

021board self-evaluation which will be done in the fall and i believe dr dr coleman will speak to the dates of that but it is in our policy under afa and there's no date for this one no but it's usually in the fall you said um that is what we're going to do this school year okay the next couple are probably would be would it be um more um advantageous for us to set a date by a date that's what we're trying to oh you mean in the policy right that's up to them so that because we have the other one was november the 1st and who does that comprehensive why do we select that date that's the day of videoing okay but for this one there is no code governing when the school board has

022to have their self-evaluation it's really up to school board scheduling very good ideas all righty uh moving on to bbbc which is the um board member of oath of office uh and you can see that that is a requirement we're not recommending any changes but just want to make sure that all board members put eyes on that and you've all done that so that's a good one um bbd is another one um talks about removal from office and this is governed by the provisions in section 24.2-230-38 talks about how a school board member may be removed from office and we really won't have any of that so move on just note that there is a process oh i'm just getting started uh we've actually experienced the next one bb ez which is the unexpired term

023fulfillment and some of you actually joined the board because you were appointed to fulfill a term um and since you are appointed board city council also helps with that process and determines that but that is a board policy for that so that you know what we do there bcc school board clerk both barbara and tina are both bonded and as you know tina's on vacation and barbara is here as a deputy clerk taking care of us and we appointed both of them or reappointed them at the reorg meeting but that is under that policy bca bcea which is the disciplinary committee is one of the committees that uh dr coleman reached out to you and and every board member participates on that committee as along with the board chair and vice chair who facilitate that

024committee with my administrative team here is a school board policy regulating that committee bcg which is our school attorney and attorney towns is here so we're doing well with that policy as well another just a one-liner to talk about it uh bdca which is the calling and certification of closed meetings something that we have done quite regularly and you have participated in that but these are the rules and regulations for calling and certifying closed meetings and i highlight it just for your notice and but more for the public that the to call a closed meeting there are only certain topics and certain things that are allowed by virginia code 2.2-3711.a and if you google that you can find all the legitimate and it's not a lot for which the school board meeting a school board

025can call a closed meeting uh bddd which is the quorum just says that at any meeting if we have the majority of the board that constitutes a quorum for our board bddd-rz the r stands for the regulation not the policy so it's a little bit more detail on a quorum and what should happen if our chair is not here then it is our vice chair that takes over dr carter if dr carter isn't here then you guys can vote to see who could run the meeting according to this policy dr brennan sorry dr brennan all right dr brennan is our vice chair lord will dr carter thank you uh moving on b d d e z which are our rules of order which talks about us adopting bylaws policies regulations and we also have our

026own norms and policies that we follow as a board and we will also be going to governance training which is one of the things where we solidify those norms and our procedures that is another one of those dates that we are working on solidifying for early fall i have a question um i was exploring a little bit about robert's rules of order and as far as i can tell the term robert's rules of order revised refers to simultaneously to several different versions of all of them dated the early part of the last century there have been more recent revisions since then there's now a roberts rule of order newly revised and it's in several editions too so my question is just is this specific enough probably the differences are pretty esoteric and we would never

027encounter them but i'm just wondering does it need to be a little bit more specific than that like particularly you know what year's edition this may be coming from the virginia code so this so it may not actually be up to us to change anything here and always remember for the two the two governing bodies council does not use robert rules of order am i correct dr water concert they they chose they chose not to technically speaking we don't have to either but we have chosen to and it's it's so fluid i don't know if we would want to i'm not trying to stir the pot here suggest anything radical i just drained it up that's fine just uh it conceivably there could come a point where somebody disputes which version are you talking anybody

028else want us to look into that more or less i mean you never get hurt with specificity if there's a really an issue that comes up okay you go to the book and that's what it says you do but i mean you know it's a it's a french thing but i it wouldn't be a big deal to change i imagine if we just be specific maybe the obvious again give it a specific this is the 2021 edition yeah we got it i will look it up and see okay really note it thank you uh next one is uh b f r z um which is our did i skip one uh our yeah i don't think i lost my order hold on let me just make sure i'm going up nope policy formation okay e-f-r-z

029and this one um we weren't recommending any changes to the policy formation um it's pretty straightforward i think it's the next one that we recommend some changes or on policy the entire text is struck out that's what i use yeah oh is this the one where we have already yes i'm just going to delete this is this the one where we're actually doing the vsba oh see tina's not here so i got marburg this is the one we changed where we added the vsba language on on the bottom of it all right so let me make sure i have the updated version hold on this doesn't have anything yeah this was totally stricken this is totally stricken then it is the next one could you pull up bff the next one i think we did

030a combo act on the next one all right let me let me get the one that's on the website so i just have the right one the b f c and while we're looking this all of this is so important this is one of our major responsibilities is looking at policies okay bfc yes all right so here's where we made the changes between b f r z and b f c z there was a lot of overlap and by the way if you're wondering the z in the policies means that we at lynchburg city schools added change revised modified it from what it used to say from vsba so that we made it our own and this is one of the ones when we went back to read both of these policies um one being

031a reg one being the policy we we felt like the vsba version of bfc covered it all so that's why we were recommending that we delete bf rz so that's completely crossed out and then use the green language under policy adoption which is the b f c and take out the z because this is what vsba talks about in terms of how we adopt policies and create policies okay all right so i have a question about this um one i guess it's the next to the second to the last uh section of this reads when a proposed action of the school board initiated either by board member or administration affects existing school board policies the existing policy and regulation if any shall be re referenced so that the effect of the new action will be

032clear i'm not sure what effects means here what does it mean for a proposed action to affect existence so we actually have that and one of ours that's coming up where we have a policy and now we're going to add specificity about an amount that wasn't in the policy so it's going to change that existing policy so but we're adding the language to the existing policy so you can see here's the existing here's the new language and you can see the effect of that change and how that might change the wording of the policy i don't know if that answers your i'm still i'm still unclear it's color-coded so you can see what the original was and then the green is what the yeah so i'm just worried in the first line of that at

033the very end of the sentence the word effects what does it does it mean when we initiate a new policy that contradicts an existing policy is that what effects mean or it means constrains an existing policies application i think it might change so the one previously where we crossed out the date of june 30th and put in the new language that said dates as outlined by the superintendent of public instruction so that has changed the policy the new language has an effect because the old june 30th is no longer applicable and i think what we were what we have tried to do here is so we don't confuse people and give you a brand new paper and then you're looking at it going what's new on here and what was existing we keep them together

034so that you can see how that change or how this green language might change a policy can we turn change the word effects we can change whatever we want would that help it's it's just as it reads it's not clear to me at least if it's clear to everyone else that i'm okay but to me it's not clear i don't know what any other comments on dr dave's concern so my understanding is that if it creates ripples for other policies then yeah that's kind of what i was thinking and a lot of times you'll see in the footnotes other policies that are related to it so that you can trace that um family tree if you will of the policies and how they're tied together so does this mean you change one policy and that

035ripples through to another in that other policy statement you put like a little note at the bottom that says this was altered by action of the former policy it's possible more more than it is sometimes it doesn't policy reference at the bottom so it's a reference so you can refer to it yeah yeah like this one has some references at the bottom right exactly so this is just referring to that kind of information being clarified okay now i understand take a change in one you referenced it so we followed to another so we're we're good on that i'm which is also chd um so sometimes we have a policy that is in two different categories so it's in the governance as well as in c which is the administrative section and we have to make

036sure when we change it in bfe that we also change it in chc because they are identical part policies and we did not recommend any changes to this policy just that we put eyes on it again for everyone with that all right uh the next one is bg which is board staff communications also gbd which is in um the staff section of the policy and again we do not recommend any changes to this policy just that we put it in front of school board members so that they understand board staff communications most of that goes through me back to them through to me back to you and so on and so forth but we do recognize that staff email um school board independently and and not always with us i will say never assume that

037if you received it i received it because often i don't always get all the emails that are written to you um so if there is a concern please just let me know so that i can address it or assign one of my staff members to address it okay uh next one is bgr which is the regulations for staff uh board staff communications also dbd r um and in here again it just reiterates the communication from staff to board board to staff and then also that much of the concerns which is going to be covered in the next policy we do have a personnel advisory committee which is made up of lots of folks lots of different positions you'll see in the next policy that meet with me and my staff to address any issues um

038in this division and we did not recommend any changes in that policy next one bgz-r which is the superintendent's personnel advisory committee and again you see a list of members um on that committee the only change that we are recommending is crossing out the meetings will occur in this board room at 3 45 we are still currently doing them via zoom and may if we can get back to in person rotate them so that it is at locations that are convenient for staff not always here at 3 45 trying to find parking for all the folks who have to come down so we did not want to be limited to having to having to have them in the boardroom all right here we go okay still moving all right bh e is the liability insurance

039that we have again not recommending any changes but just outlines that uh school board provides liability and self-insurance for its members which we do you already did bhdc e8 did i skip phds i don't think so that's here because that's that's that's interesting nope i didn't get there yet no i didn't get there yet sorry i'm just i got them in order that i was that's all right that's all right all right bhe which is the school board member liability insurance that's the one i just talked about i don't think you guys have any questions on that i'm getting there dr coleman take your time um cma is the school quality profiles much of the language in this one is governed by vdoe and those bullet items that you see listed under school quality are

040listed on the video video e site if you were to google the school quality reports um so that's pretty much just a verbatim for from what we actually have on the website and now but i'm going to take a pause i'm at bhdz which is school board member compensation and benefits so here is a policy that is being affected by a change in the law fowler's hb 18 which talks about school board stipends and we had as provided by law but the law has now changed where it used to tell you what the value is or the amount was now you can have an amount up to what governing bodies can have so whatever it is for that governing body um the catch is you cannot change that amount in the current year so if

041we made a change to this policy in our amount so the 2400 was what we agreed on last year um or actually the year before last into this year but by default is what we're starting this year with so if the board wants to entertain discussions whatever amount we settle on will be effective july of 2023 does that make sense okay all right so the amount of 2400 that was set based on the previous law which talked about what it could be and i'm glad hope is still here just in case we have to reference it but i also have it um that amount can be changed so that's why we want to take pause and i'm going to turn it over to dr coleman thank you madam superintendent and i know we have a

042lot of thoughts on this particular matter and so uh if we want it i don't want to start it maybe we started with dr carter to give some thoughts on this uh please understand please understand that individual board members reserve the right to not take a stipend of any dollar amount right and also i want to make sure that we're clear as dr edwards stated this uh adjustment in the state law they had figured it out for appointed boards and the highest we could go was dollars and we opted to select the twenty four hundred two thousand dollars additional for the chair if you wanted to go higher you were going to have to petition the general assembly with a request from the board to the general assembly sounds like the people in richmond are

043saying that's a whole lot of stuff that we just don't feel needs to happen but we can utilize our team time better so now whatever a council member gets this is saying the school board member could get to that amount no more so just speak your mind on what you think this won't impact any of us this year this would be for next year and if you want a year to you want to hear the document a point of clarification yes so at first you said uh and i'm not suggesting that we do this i just want to clarify your statement um that if if we were seeking more than 2 400 per year we'd have to petition general assembly or we could increase it up to the amount that city council gets before we

044would have to yeah and anything beyond that would have to go to general assembly kim you're going to do a good job of helping me to clarify i don't know what impact the change in the law has on what was previously in place because if it's not until next year what i was trying to say is that if this board wanted to and maybe hope can give further clarification if this board if things were still the same could make a recommendation and whether it goes to council i don't know you take it and the general assembly could say that we will agree with you we'll up it from 2 400 to 4 400 it still had to be no more than whatever council was now this allows us to go there without all of that

045is what i'm i'm thinking and and dr senna uh the previous procedure if you all as a school board wanted more than the 2 400 you had to go before the general assembly and petition now you have the same rights as a local government uh like city council or another counseling board so now the amount of salary permitted is based on the size and population of the locality now even though lynchburg city council i think that their salary is ten thousand dollars a year based on the way the new change in the law for a locality that's between 70 000 to 999 population they are allowed to increase their annual salary up to 23 so that's the change in the way of now appointed school boards have the power they are not limited by what

046was in the code each appointed school board had an amount in the code of virginia now you have the same uh set up as appointed i'm sorry elected school boards and elected school boards follow the procedure of their local governing bodies and so where you all are as far as this year it would have to the amount cannot be above the 2400 that you all originally received any increases would have to be determined before december 31st to go into effect of july 1st of the next year so that's the procedure now for you all as an appointed board and that's also based on how you all are appointed so each year uh it had to be a consideration on december 31st then july 1st whatever will go into effect if there's a change and did

047i understand you to say that the top amount would be 23 000 that's what the virginia code allows for local governments wow but most do not take right level exactly but that is what is allowed yeah right but i mean previously you couldn't get 23 000 unless you were north i mean you know right but this is this changes the whole game dr cena it's all i'm trying to say and i'm going to hold my comments on it uh at this time dr carter well just it's amazing um that it was considered when there aren't that many appointed school boards in the state of virginia but at the same time i guess they see how much the school boards do and how involved it is and intensive the work is and the pressure that the

048school boards were under for continue now but all i can all i want to say is that when i started on the school board i had just left a job that i had numerous too many hours too many leave time sick time and everything then i started a new job and every minute i was going to a new boss saying i needed to take off we used to start board meetings at 4 and if we had a closed meeting sometimes we would start at four so imagine being new and constantly asking to leave at a certain time and and then also we were um and then you had to make up those hours but to make a long story short i never accumulated any league because it was always and that was money that i

049was using to not even get receive any any funds and then when you looked into when we looked for a superintendent then that was saturday hour sunday and even leaving sometimes early during the weekend how do you keep telling an employer that you need time off they probably should have said well you need to decide what job you're going to do the voluntary job of the school board or school but but um i think we should look at the increase in salaries now how much we have according to attorney towns until december and i don't think we need to make it tonight but i um would be interested in increasing that all right thank you dr carter we could just kind of uh dr david you want to comment on that no i have no

050comments uh mr andrews um so i've been fortunate enough over the years to just be conservative with my funds so for me obviously i'm not speaking on everybody's own personal financial status right but i declined a stipend um for two reasons a because i want to be able to make decisions based on merit and based on what the school division needed to have based on issues that came before us uh and then of course i declined because i mean i'm being a city employee so there's the perception of conflict of interest right and so for me to eliminate myself from any of that perception that i decline a stipend so but if we're being honest with the financial constraints of staff teachers bus drivers the whole nine yards i'm not in favor of a raise

051for school board members so that's just my my take on things um if you want to keep it at twenty four hundred dollars i mean obviously you know yeah you can keep it at twenty four hundred dollars but i'm not in favor of you increasing the pay for school board members knowing that there are staff members that are still struggling for money as well so that's just my take thank you mr andrews i'm all right mr president i kind of see both directions when i recognize the amount of time effort labor that school board members put in i think that they probably should be greater compensated for the amount of work that they do however the fact that we are given the flexibility to decline that excitement stipend allows those people who are in a

052different either financial position or time in their lives they have the option of saying i i declined that amount and that amount can be used to benefit people that that school employees or people that perhaps are in in a different need situation thank you mr president uh personally um you know i declined the stipend i mean i'd see this as a volunteer program for myself from a personal perspective with that said i see the enormous amount of time that the chairperson has to devote to this i mean it's not you know i put in a fair amount of time a member spent a fair amount of time i think the chairperson and to the extent a vice chairperson it must be at least double if not more i mean i just it's always something going

053on so i see um i almost see it as a full-time job for the chairperson so uh maybe i fall in the in the in the realm of splitting the baby here that the higher the higher level of responsibility the chairperson maybe does deserve a little bit more recognition than the recognition that we give them today i mean now we get an extra two thousand dollars a potential stipend if you wish it i know that's in no way reflectively amount of time that the chairperson to extend the vice chair have to devote to to this to this organization the children in the school system so for me personally it's it's a volunteer program i love for the children but i also recognize the enormous sacrifices that are made on a personal and professional level for

054many people on the school board and specifically uh the chairperson and the vice chairperson thank you mr truth dr sinha um well i i uh i feel strongly that the stipend should be there you have the option to take it or not i think we do a considerable amount of work um and uh even at twenty four hundred dollars it doesn't rise to the level of professionalism and depth of research we undertake week in and week out and as dr carter mentioned many of us sacrifice paid vacation or unpaid time off to meet our school board obligations and requirements and so that comes at a considerable price for some people and i would say that as a matter of equity now i haven't looked at the tables for a long time but when we were

055first discussing this i was surprised that some of the municipal city public schools of similar size had greater compensation in some of the counties so as a matter of equity i also think that compensation should be on parity with comparable divisions and that as a guideline thank you dr sinha dr brennan just as a little background for the new board members this this topic to i think most people know school board members were not compensated in any manner up until last year and this discussion was part of our budget discussion because it does impact our budget you know this money is not coming as extra money from any many places money that we have in our pool to use and so we had to balance do we do salaries from a school board or do

056we do other things for these kids and i think we decided that it was worth doing this but one of the reasons we did it was to try to attract people to apply to the school board who that financial piece would be helpful and to try to increase the pool of people who were applying and you know time will tell whether that will work or not but i think those of us who've been on the board for a while before the stipe was there came on because we're volunteering our time and we know what the sacrifice was and how much time it is and clearly for people with different positions it's more difficult but i'm still the mind that i went into this as a volunteer i did not take the stipend unfortunately i don't

057need to um but i think we should keep doing that and i also am a little bit surprised that we're discussing this tonight i understand there's a time limit as far as december goes but i think this is something if the board feels it's important to bring up a discussion we should decide we're going to do this as a separate topic and that is a topic part of this policy discussion yep that's a good very point great thank you dr brennan and um certainly we you all did right well on that i mean this is a great board and nobody what's in the argument about anything i i like that not yet so [Laughter] i i would i would in light of what dr brennan just said i would encourage us to number one though

058i am grateful that dr edwards brought it first of all to dr carter and myself attention at the time she was vice chair now dr brennan is vice chair because i was oblivious i didn't even know and i don't know if i should be saying that but i called some people at the state level and they weren't aware of this either so one good thing that has happened tonight is you have an education about something that has happened that you wouldn't even have known exists and so i will refrain from making any further comments tonight in light of what dr brennan just said i want to encourage each of us to do some research on this i think dr sinha that was strong to look at what others are doing in our in our area

059because at the end of the day this becomes a discussion for me not about the compensation itself whoever gets it but my thoughts are at a deeper level in terms of appreciating the virginia constitution and the virginia code about the school board as a governing body of equivalent value to the community and as long as the school board is perceived erroneously as some second-class citizen when the constitution in code gives a great value hurts kids and i would like to have that conversation with you all at some other time so we're going to move on start that we'll go ahead to the next the last two actually go together um they are uh non-resident student um tuition waiver both the policy and the reg and unlike the others this one is more of a result

060of having conversation with employees which is why it's coming back to the board for some discussion so i will take you through both the policy and the reg and what the changes are um please note that we have employees who do not live in lynchburg city schools who bring their children here um and in some cases they have done so for several years um that their children have been going to our schools um so for purposes of this policy we just renamed them nre kids or nre students so that we could have common language um about them um in paragraph two of the of the policy is a provision to and you'll see in green that these fees because there is a whole fee chart on our website may be reduced or waived upon the

061authorization of either me or my designee this is something that we've had conversations with our employee this is just non-resident employees that there's be a procedure for which they can at least request can you look at this reduce it or waive it um so we were adding that language because it previously was not in our policy if you go down to the sixth paragraph this is something else that has come up in discussion so we have several programs such as the school of innovation the go center central virginia gov school early college and stem academy for which there is an application an approval process a selection process and what we found is that you know our children apply for this and are selected and awarded based on the merits of the work of the student

062then if the student is it happens to be a child of one of our employees who does not live here in lynchburg they may be subject to a fee for that so one of the things as we consider one of our themes is really taking care of our employees things that we can do obviously we worked a lot on increasing salaries we proposed some perks from for employees but one of the things that we wanted to change in this section and paragraph six of the policy is to be very clear that if children our children of our employees apply for take the testing or whatever other application rules there are and are selected for any of these programs that those children of our employees who live in a different don't live in lynchburg be allowed

063to be admitted in those programs similar to the children in their classes whose parents may live in lynchburg this is just for our employees and it's one small way that we say to our employees we value the talent work service you give to everybody's children here in lynchburg city schools because you show up every day and this is a little small perk that we're going to give to your children who have demonstrated not just because you work here but they've actually demonstrated the merits of any of those programs that are listed there so that is the one of the proposed changes um that we have and in some cases you may have children who have been with us since kindergarten who may apply to a school of innovation or may apply to the stem academy

064and get it on the merits of their scholarship which has all been with us right um and then the parents would our employees would have to pay a fee so we're we're requesting that they don't have to pay that fee in that particular paragraph um that is the change in the policy i also want to note in the and then i'll come back for questions in the regs which sort of spell it out the other um the other thing that was brought to our attention is that in some cases the fees may be high um and they actually if you are a employee who is in our classified employee maybe you're making 26 27 000 a year that the fees may be exorbitant if you cannot afford them for in-division service so is there a

065mechanism where they can apply for financial hardship or at least have someone consider it and we did not have anything in our policy or in our reg that gave us that ability to look at that so those that in essence is the change that is before you between the policy and the reg and now i remember looking at this policy some years ago and it was we wanted to make sure at that time and still do that the students that are part of lynchburg city are not being that they have also access in the amount of position slots because they're limited space in all of these programs so just to make sure that the students that really are part of lynchburg not that their parents work there and now they're nres so that was one

066of the considerations and also that that's one thing then the next the last one one exception what does that mean yes the school innovation right so this has been in the existing policy i did not take it out so one thing that we do allow parents to do if you live outside of the city and you work at ec glass and you want to bring your children here and you want your children to go to ec glass okay if you work at heritage elementary or high school okay but if you worked at the school of innovation for which we had applications it was different and the only exception was you actually had to be in that school you couldn't just be in lynchburg city school employee and say i work here and now i'd like

067my kid to go to this school so that was the exception to allow only the employees who worked at lynchburg who worked at the schools of innovation if they wanted their children to come to school here and they wanted their children to come to the school that they worked at they had to be employees at the school of innovation they could not just select that school that was the exception that's without application so these aren't kids who apply and so how many are we talking about do we know a number or for the some of these nre students that are going to some of these programs do we have a number like that have been accepted into the program right that have been uh assigned a fee actually kids who made it we've been assigned

068a fee right now i have one okay so we're not talking about lauren no no no no this has been a topic of discussion across the years and so any further comments on it and do we have a process for the well we're going to get to that next oh yeah i forgot there is one more there is one more um sheet so along with dr carter's question how many general non-resident students do we have in the system i have to get that exact number um we had you know we just had some that we made sure were filling out the application we have a lot of employees who bring their kids in and educate their so you want the number of non-resident students as in in that number you want the number that are

069also non-resident students that are of children of employees i think we're just talking about the children so you just want that number yeah yeah just a number of just for general information not to make any major decisions i agree with the policy thank you dr brennan dr carter and we also talked at one time about students that are here and they are they're being hosted and yeah yeah and so how does that work with that population that this is just a policy on our employees not on um there's a whole nother policy about foreign exchange students is the possibility is there ever a time when we have teachers that are host parents that i don't know that i've had and the two will cross but i can look into that another further discussion on this

070matter just just some clarity what i'm understanding is that a teacher that works for lynchburg city schools has the option of allowing their child to attend lynchburg city schools but if it's a program like the gifted center for example where a student has to meet certain qualifications regardless of whether they're a lynchburg city school resident or not would that child be allowed or would they still have to pass whatever the landmarks are in order to to be enrolled so they would have to pass the landmarks to get into the program so if it was the gifted program they'd be like every other student and a plot the difference is once the list came out if you qualified then you'd have to pay a fee because your parents don't live here in lynchburg city schools but

071they are they are our employees so that is the fee that we want to so they would pay a fee if if their child was admitted to one of the specialty schools or programs or whatever it's set up okay but if i just wanted my child to attend a regular school if you will there would not be a fee okay i just wanted to be clear on what you were saying thank you mr president very good so this policy is not changing the fee it's just what is this policy this policy is not the fees are still posted on our website and they're still available it is changing it is waiving the fee or non-resident employees i got to be real clear because we're talking about our employees whose children legitimately qualify fill out applications

072scholarly merit tests and everything for the programs that are listed in paragraph six so that they if they do get accepted based on the child's merit not based on the fact that oh your parent works here you accept it but it really is based on scholarship um and their academic record then that fee would be waived for them that is the piece that is in paragraph six that would be different and that would be an employee but that it has that change i mean wouldn't they have to qualify anyway yeah they qualify but then after they get accepted but i don't see where it changes in here what do you mean eligible to attend the same at the same cost as resident students right residents don't you don't bill them oh the same cost so

073zero okay well that's almost true because if you go to early college though and you're a resident student you do pay part of that so if they're accepted into that they would still be subject to whatever the resident student would get that's why it's worded that way because we don't pay the full course call cost for early college so this go right here dr cotter so this is do we ever hear this when we hear from teachers that they're not perks and so this is a good perk if this is a perk in our conversations when we meet with staff and we say what can we do to help besides you know obviously we want to increase salaries these little things come up and since they're governed by policy we always say well let us

074take a look at what we can do bring it to the school board for consideration we value our talented staff and if this is something that will um make them want to continue to stay with us and teach our children that's one of the reasons why we propose all right let's move on but i do hope we are cataloging the narrative of the ways in which we try to support and help our staff because that's important a lot of times we forget about these things when it's time to to acknowledge it so the last thing that went with this is there is a chart that we use um for early college tuition waivers based on financial hardship so in talking with my staff and there is already a procedure for when students apply to early

075college and they may want to be considered a financial hardship how do we do that based on family income of free and reduced lunch so we were proposing if if one of our employees said that they had a financial hardship what guidelines would we use we would use these and they change this is the current 22 23 guidelines they change each year that was the only other piece that went along with this well dr edwards you did very well with all of those um with the uh and then uh uh we've got miss pugh's coming with her group do you all want to keep pressing your way or you would like to take a five-minute break let's take a five-minute break and we will reconvene in five minutes thank you boy for handling all of

076those policies [Music] so [Music] do [Music] reconvene and uh we're going to go to our next set of policies and uh dr edwards can bring on miss few that's right and this pew is going to be a lot faster than i was through her 600 paw i mean take it away miss pugh all right thank you i don't have quite as many as dr edwards did but it is quite a long list and these are all vsba updates i'm going to start with cla which is um reporting acts of violence and substance abuse it looks like there are a lot of changes because there's a lot of red and green but really um there are very minor edits if you will notice that um there were one through ten that were listed the green section

077a now is one through nine and then number ten has just been called out the principle of each school collects and maintains information there's some information that has been taken at the bottom but it is very minor edits and there are no changes to the context of the policy at all the next one ebbz that's threat assessment teams and the only thing here that has changed is the wording regarding law enforcement excuse me school resource officers in a threat assessment team we've always had to have law enforcement representation but now where we have sros and our schools where they are employed one of those sros must sit on a threat assessment team that's the only change here ic slash id this is the lengthening of the it's this length of the school day the school

078year and the changes that are made here are in line with the code that you see as represented in the first the second sentence really nothing major there but it is is representative of the changes in the code moment of silence which is ie again this is um just a little bit this is a vsba update and one minute of silence is observed in each classroom in the division every day in in the code of virginia it is once a day there is a moment of silence so this has not changed it's just rewarding um questions there what is the point what's the purpose of the one moment of silence moment of silence the the purpose is for the students to reflect and they just start to remain seated and be silent no distractions for

079them and they are just being silent it's an individual choice of what they want to do with that minute of silence during the day so we cannot mandate you know it's it's not a time for um you know we can't say it's a time for prayer we can't say it's a time for meditation but it is for students to do what they would like to reflect on in that one minute of silence and again that is code of virginia yes go ahead just going back to cla to be i mean right above b letter alphabet b the sentence in above that the principle of each school collects and maintains information what do they it's just stored and what do they ever when do they is there is there a time when they destroy this information

080or well there is a time limit for pupil records and i believe that is seven years so they are to store that information if it's in written form electronic form if it's an infinite campus our student information system that's not destroyed at any point in time but yes they are just to maintain and keep the information that's listed above on school property um you know for them there are certain times which is designated below that they need to report that um and you know but but it is just kept on school property mr andrews did you have anything you wanted yes i just want to bring the attention to the board that we forgot to do pledge of allegiance wow we did let's correct that right policy actually let's correct that right now let's stand

081and do that thank you for acknowledging that i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you so much mr andrew yes sir all right a few you can continue thank you um after i e is iec and the only change there is a wording from shall be to is the next is if and again it's wording from shall state to states and shall meet to meets or exceed so those are all wording changes i g a e i g a f that is the addition of physical education class offered to students in grades seven and eight must include at least one hour of personal safety training per school year in each

082such grade level and that is developed and delivered in partnership with a local law enforcement agency it consists of situational awareness training and social media education we are aware of these updates um and it this is a new requirement that's in the code and uh dr brad bryant who is is over cte and the um movement education he is aware of this and has been they have been working on this piece so that that will take effect this school year all right very good ig ag the only thing here this is about teaching about drugs alcohol and tobacco changing alternative nicotine products to products and gambling in the addiction potential thereof so we are to provide instruction now on gambling and it's the addiction potential with gambling all right igah family life education again there

083are some a few wording changes um and there are new additions um that are being addressed currently we have teams of both elementary and secondary movement education teachers being led by dr bryant who are working on revising the curriculum for family life education they will send that to the health advisory committee for review but the changes here you'll note that the first is and again remember that this is age-appropriate elements so this doesn't mean explicit content for kindergarten where it's not appropriate or for fifth grade or tenth grade where it's not appropriate but they are now including child sexual abuse and in any such curriculum offered in high school we now have to provide instruction covering elements of human trafficking of children so that that is the addition here again which is we do this

084but a complete copy of printed materials need to be made available on our website and and kept in the school as well so that's the other edition all right ig ag driver's education the only thing here there are a few wording changes um you'll note the what's in red has just now been a bulleted list that's in green the addition uh the second paragraph that you see there this is new and again dr bryant and the high school staff are working on this we have to include a minimum 90 minute parent student driver education component which is part of the class portion of the driver education curriculum so and then there are some exceptions for um for that but we are making sure that that will be covered this year dr bryant is aware of

085it and is working to make sure that that will be available to our students who are in the classroom portion of driver education all right i j d there is just some information at the bottom of this the last paragraph has been added just information that assists high school students in making informed decisions about their future after graduation from high school and ensures that such students are aware of the costs and benefits of different educational and certificate programs we just need to make sure that we are making students aware of this and giving them different opportunities to learn about that j e d student absences excuses and dismissals this is a change in not the policy but the regulation so you have jed which there are no changes there but we did want to have

086this in here j e d r z is the regulation and the changes here are in sections i and h they have added excused absences a maximum of two school days per academic year for participation in a 4-h program and we need to make sure that students who are member of a state or federally recognized tribal nation shall be granted one excused absence per academic year to attend the nation's powwow gathering and so those two have been added by state code jbf is strictly awarding change from will be to r jhcb again is strictly awarding change from shall be to is a few others in the document and then jhce uh again is adding this is a recommendation of medication by school personnel it is adding that school health staff classroom teachers or other school

087professionals may recommend that a student be evaluated by an appropriate medical practitioner with written consent of the student's parent so they have added a portion for parental consent in this policy and the last one uh jrc a is strictly awarding change from solely to primarily that was easy any questions any questions getting dr carter going back to iga aj with the parental involvement is that is it ever encounter where a parent isn't or how is what does parental involvement look like if i cannot come out to the school parental involvement they don't specify what the parental involvement component is so i would imagine that there will be opportunities for very different components there may be some in-person components it may be all virtually so we will need to make take and we talked about this

088we'll need to take into consideration the different needs of the families but we'll have to make sure that they have that component so that the students can then pass the class and get and eventually get their their driver's license but because it's not spelled out in policy of how it is to be offered we will make sure that we have different options for parents um to meet their needs what about emancipating minors that would care they're exempt all right any other questions i think ms few had done an excellent job helping us to understand the salient value of each of these policies and try to hear dr edwards i thought we were going to be here for two hours on that moved us right along and i'm very thankful for that all right uh if

089the board is ready then we will now move to our next item in the next section which is pertaining to uh the 2223 election of school board representatives for committees governing boards and community groups and this is coming to us for action tonight and i do want to thank our vice chair dr uh brennan for uh being an excellent team player as we were an excellent team together in reaching out to each of you regarding uh assignments and so uh what we would like to do is uh to bring this for you in a full motion i'll read the names but if you choose to pull something we certainly can do that and vote on any part of this individual if you so choose i'm going to say a word about board committees and i

090will say a little bit about uh uh liaison and i'm going to ask dr brennan to just speak to the lcs uh board assignments and mentors all right so uh we're thankful that this board has uh three standing committees uh the finance and facilities committee legislative advocacy and community relations committee in our discipline committee and the chair would like to have the board consider the appointment of dr kimberly sinha mr anthony andrews and dr tu gupta to the finance and facilities committee with dr martin day as the alternate for our legislative advocacy and community relations committee the chair would like to recommend dr martin day mr randy trolls dr sharon carter and dr atul gupta as the alternate and of course we know that on our discipline committee either the chair or the vice chair

091will serve an alternating manner as the chair and then there will be two other members as scheduled as relates to our board liaison opportunities we are going to recommend uh for the beacon of hope the two members mr anthony andrews and mrs gloria preston to our education foundation mr randy trois dr kimberly sinha and then to our partners in education dr kimberly sinha and mrs gloria preston dr brennan and then for our board assignments to other uh boards that we participate in uh we've invited dr atul gupta to continue to be the representative for the board to central virginia governor school with dr martin day as the alternate dr sharon carter to continue her role as board representative for the laurel school and with ms gloria preston as the alternate for that and then for

092the stem academy dr sharon carter to be the representative with myself dr brennan as the alternate we also like to put in place this year which we've not done officially before but do a little more officials have some mentors for our new members of the board to help them this is not a official or paid position you might add but what we like to ask is that these members of the board who have been on for a while be available to new members to ask questions have any comments just to help clarify things and obviously other board members are always available but so we've asked if if mr toast would help with dr andrews we've kind of assigned people by districts that dr carter would work with mrs preston and that dr signia would work

093with dr day for the in those roles thank you all very much for agreeing to do that thank you vice chair brennan all right is there a motion uh in total to approve these uh committee uh uh or board assignments for 2022-2023 the move that we approve the lynchburg city school board assignments and committees and liaisons as stated i'll second the motion by dr carter seconded by dr sinha that we would approve the board assignments for 22-23 further questions or discussion hearing none madam clerk please call the roll mrs preston i guess i mean yes mr trust yes dr sinha yes dr brennan yes dr coleman yes dr carter yes dr day yes mr andrews yes dr andrews is fine [Laughter] thank you boyd uh and and let's let's have a great year doing doing

094the work together all right thank you very much e 2 culture and climate survey and dr edwards is going to bring on our distinguished director for that that is right um one of our thing themes looking into the future we are looking to reset and refresh and we can't do that until we look and see how we did in last year so we did a culture and climate survey where we surveyed students teachers and staff and buildings in schools as well as employees in transportation administration and other buildings to sort of gauge the how are we doing data and ms reeves is here to talk about that uh and she will share with us the findings and next steps awesome good evening to dr coleman school board chair dr brennan our vice chair and all

095school board members assembled thank you for the opportunity to share the results of our spring 2022 culture and climate survey i'd like to thank all of our students families our employees who participated in the survey to provide valuable feedback for us i also want to thank the equity and community relations team and the information technology team who helped with the administration of the surveys mr chuck yarber is here with me tonight serving as our educational data analyst and he um yes i'm so grateful for him [Applause] and his leadership and using this new survey tool to administer and compile the data why a school culture and climate survey and why now the purpose of the survey is to gather information from our students parents guardians and employees about our school climate and culture on the

096next slide there we go this survey was conducted annually pre-covet as you can imagine during the pandemic we were concerned about a number of other things and our priorities shifted greatly as we come out of the pandemic we hope we know that we have opportunities to continue to do things that work while improving upon areas that require more attention so that we're all on the same page i want to take a second to talk about school culture and climate these terms are often used together but they are not synonymous culture speaks to the shared values our mission statement those things that exist in our school like the beliefs and the norms school climate however refers to the social and educational environment that reflects directly on the students and their relationships with teachers staff and their

097peers it is the setting established for learning academics and overall productivity mr yarber is going to share some information about the qualtric survey tool and the survey administration hi everybody all right hi good to finally see everybody again feels like it's been a while since we've been in here um we've been very busy this spring um this is a position that had a lot of demands on it in terms of things that we wanted to be more i guess on top of in terms of data and so one of the first parts of that was switching to qualtrics when the survey was last done i believe they use surveymonkey which is not bad but doesn't have the depth of the tools that qualtrics does and we really kind of skim the surface with this um

098so qualtrics uh this particular survey was the first really big project we got into and so we're still taking baby steps it's a very uh big robust product but it has a lot of options dr sinha is fully aware of what i mean there and so we kept this pretty simple 10 questions we had six different surveys so that we could hopefully avoid you know people filling out surveys that shouldn't have access to those we do have other tools in qualtrics we can use down the road to further limit some of those things but you can see how we broke it down so we looked at just the fifth grade at the elementary level and then middle school and high school parents and guardians employees school-based and then non-school based and that's how we broke

099some of the survey information down for you can we go to the next one yeah so we used a likert scale five uh pretty straightforward the main reason for sticking with a five likert scale is that uh in several surveys we've done the last two years a lot of people use their phones to respond to this as parents and so while we could have used a likert scale that was broader what happens on the phone is that becomes very difficult to interact with and especially for people that feel technologically challenged there's a point where they say this is harder than i cared for and then we don't get that data and so qualtrics actually lets you see everything in real time how it's going to look on a phone so that we can work on

100the presentability one of the other things that qualtrics does for us is it lets you see what this is going to look like for people with varying challenges it addresses spelling it translates into other languages this is something we used to have to do by hand and so i was able to translate this into several languages in one afternoon which was kind of nice so if you skip to the next one i'm not going to get into explaining what these mean but basically i took every area for every test and then gave it an overall average you got some more data presented to you in the last couple of days that showed you the broader breakdown of those questions and i do apologize there was one graph on that in the third grade i think

101it's the third question that you found where in doing some copying and pasting i think i grabbed the wrong one we fixed that we'll get that to you but the lighter the color the lower the score and so the goal here is really just to allow us to focus on where we were scoring our strongest and where we have the most work to do but as far as that type of interpretation i'm going to leave that to dr reeves does anybody have any questions about qualtrics or how we use that before we anybody dr dave yep so the responses are all done electronically correct nobody's filling out a piece of paper and we did have a few people who um work over in transportation and maintenance who had very limited access to technology and so

102we were providing some computers to do that but i think they just felt more comfortable doing it on paper it's a very small percentage i mean it's less than one percent of our responses so we did have one person the staff that did offer to let them do that and honestly and then they just keyed them in and they even noted who was doing the responding um and um at least in one case like i'm looking in particular maybe you'll come to this in a little bit the high school uh part of the day it looked like the the response rate was actually pretty low we did have the lowest response rate from the high school students one of the challenges we ran into is trying to get this done at a time when we

103were also doing sol testing and a number of other things and so it's a you know what do you give priority to and so we would like to have seen um higher responses from that there's um but it's entirely voluntary if if a parent or student that's correct isn't interested in this they can just blow it off no way of tracking who did or did it it's completely anonymous okay all right thank you and i'll just add especially now because of the way that we were able to use qualtrics we were used we used our school messenger system to send the survey the survey link specifically to the students in their you know their grade level group so in the past we had let's just use an example english teachers um sit with all ninth

104grade english and make sure that they are allotted time to do this particular survey that was not the case this time we sent the survey link to them and asked them to be sure that they were you know spending some time completing that and as chuck said we there's no way to really monitor that so that's a lesson learned for us now i as um chuck indicated you know what the actual colors mean i'm not going to go through every one of these questions with you however again what we want to do is make sure that we are paying attention to those things that are working for us and making sure that we also note those areas that and where you know where we need to grow as we look at each of the slides

105we're going to celebrate those things of course that are going well in this particular at the elementary school level and these are our fifth grade students it's important to note that they believe their parents and guardians care about their education i think that's amazing okay also note one of the higher averages my teachers at the school expect me to be successful and i think that's to be applauded when we look at our areas of growth the school rules and academic programs are clear and fair not so much to our fifth graders we want to make sure that we do a better job of providing clarity we also want to unders we understand and i'll talk about this towards the end that that could mean different things for different students we also note that question number

106nine i feel comfortable telling my teachers and staff about discrimination or harassment at my school is something that we also need to be mindful of that they have at that plate that person or those people that they can talk with at the school interestingly enough at the middle school with the middle school survey we see the same you see the same thing and i think again it needs to be noted that 6th 7th and 8th graders believe their parents care about their education they know this they also understand that teachers expect them to be successful excuse me we do again want to pay attention to how it is that we communicate our rules making sure that our expectations are clear and then we also note that our students need to have that person or those

107significant people in the building that they can share information with and that they feel comfortable talking to i also want to note questions three and eight i feel safe inside outside and around the school i feel that i'm a part of the school all of these things when we talk about climate how are children feeling in our schools some might say that you know what that's a pretty good score think about those children who don't feel comfortable in their school we want to make sure that we improve that improve upon that for all of our students at the high school level some would say the old as the children get older the parents kind of dwindle away or maybe don't care as much that's not the case for our high school students they have indicated

108listen my parent or guardian cares about my education and i thought that should be noted again my teachers at the school expect me to be successful and to see that from elementary through high school sends us a different message i think that we have to be mindful that our parents care about our about their children students know that their parents care about them and that we also continue to hold our highest our high expectations for all students when we look at true areas of of concern here students want their opinions heard they want to be a part remember elementary and middle we said i feel like i belong i feel like i feel like i am a part of my school a different statement here students ideas and opinions are sought in the development of

109rules and regulations and so they don't feel so much included there so we can do a better job of making sure that we increase student voice also school staff members our school staff communicates good news to my parents guardians about my progress they want to hear more so we can do a better job of helping our faculty and staff members communicate that good news our school employees school employees believe that there is an adult in the school that our students can talk with isn't that interesting yes well before you um the going back to the i feel comfortable caring about the discrimination and harassment sometimes you may not feel comfortable but you do it anyway right so how can we distinguish that because sometimes you don't feel comfortable sharing that but you do it anyway

110but they do it anyway and and i'm going to go ahead and answer that the the wonderful thing um about this year and and i know that we're you know it's only been a few days since july 1st um i've had an opportunity to talk with our new team members and in talking to mr coleman regarding curriculum and expectations i know already that we'll be doing some collaborative efforts and making sure our teachers understand one the importance of building relationships with students the other thing that we'll um talk through and that we've had a discussion about is um making sure that our children understand that they can report these things and how to report them so that like you said they may not be comfortable doing it but that we we want them safe so

111that they have they need to do it it would be encouraged to do it i have a question um i noticed that on all of the surveys for the students there most students did not feel like the rules and regulations were as clear as as as they could be i see some real um connections between that and some other things that take place with them because if i don't know the rules then i how do i condemn this person for doing calling me names or yes being a bully or or whatever or whatever it is and that seems to be something that's ongoing now i know at one point we did things like positive behavioral things is that something that's still employed or not it is still employed i'm seeing you shake your head over

112there is is there a reason why i mean is it done consistently is that the missing piece is it mr yarbrough wants to say something having looked through a lot of the comments a lot of that when you look at the why the kids wrote about it had to do with a lot of covet stuff okay why can't i sit with my friends that rule doesn't make sense to me so not saying that that debt it doesn't matter but that wouldn't have appeared on the last survey we did kids were complaining about things that as adults we'd say this is why we're having you eat here and not there but especially at the elementary middle a lot of the feedback had to do with some of the what they felt like was arbitrary coded stuff

113so not to just miss it all but i just know that with the positive behavior intervention strategies that there's some consistency between rules in elementary middle and high school which consequently means that parents are going to know what the rules are in elementary middle and high school and there's some carryover between those things that's why i asked that question so and i'm glad that you asked the question and i mentioned sam coleman's name i'm going to also mention dr derrick brown who's our new director of student services who also understands that we have to really peel back the layers and look at what has taken place um what's consistent from you know from not just the levels but from school to school and to make sure that our that our students understand better one of

114the things that i would like to revisit is just having the student cabinets and making sure that we have conversations with our students to make sure particularly in the academic setting and the discipline area that we're hearing from them and i think that that's another way for us to get better okay mr east can you go back to the elementary go back to the elementary survey so the concern that i have is uh 3.48 i feel comfortable telling my teachers and staff about discrimination and or harassment at my school so i coached boys basketball nine and 10 year old boys for 13 years and to me discrimination harassment is such big words right not to downgrade our students by any means whatsoever but discrimination harassment sounds different than being picked on right and harassment even

115in a work setting can be so vague right there's sexual harassment there is harassment just for the way my hair looks or i don't have any hair right so is there moving forward lesson learned is there any way that we can try to change some of the wording to fit the demographic that's taking the survey yes okay yes yes and yes and also um as mr yarber was saying the word bullying and you'll hear me say later on that bullying kept you know coming to the top children need to understand children parents need to understand what bullying is and is not um you mentioned the word picking on right me and the only reason why i made a mention of that is because i want to make sure that the score actually reflects the what

116we're trying to get across right and so i don't want the kid to um put a certain score because it's just it's a hard question for them so they just wanted something else right yes but anyway thank you thank you and i'm just i was surprised that 446 out of 605 fifth graders and you said that the survey was just delivered to the to the students right and i would expect that the um that the elementary students would be less likely to just do that on their own versus the high schoolers and the middle schoolers that's interesting so we different we you know of course worked with our principals to encourage participation and i think we saw that without looking at numbers at each school we saw varying degrees of that is there a certain

117way that moving forward the survey could be a part of them logging into their chromebook and they have to complete the survey before they do an assignment that way you can getting full participation and i know what you're saying as far as the challenge there becomes how that impacts instruction yeah so if a kid says i'm not interested in doing that right now i want to do the quiz we are talking about ways to uh create a wider time frame and to talk more initially about um talking to kids about why this is valuable and i think part of why fifth grade got excited about this is how often do we ask them these big questions or absolutely i think that gets said in a class where and again i think fifth grade teachers hold

118kids attention maybe a little bit better and they thought yeah these people want to know what i think whereas you know in high school we're all so jaded right everything's ridiculous and so uh but there are some things that we are looking at to try and continue i mean i would like to see those numbers up around 80 percent you know we were at 95 accuracy five percent error rate on everything except for high school it's like six point three or four um so we're close but yeah i mean the goal next year would be 75 80 next year what two years whenever we do it again yeah i certainly don't want to create more work for you um but i also know that if we're trying to get 100 participation that's just an option

119yeah so just thought food for thought and i'll say that the beauty of reducing the survey to 10 questions is so that we can do it more often we want to get a you know keep our hand on the pulse of what's going on in our schools do students who did not complete the survey get like a reminder to hey you haven't completed your survey please please get it done anything like that so it wasn't individualized but we did send out reminders to our to our different groups of participants just there's just an anecdote but at virginia tech every class every year there was a required evaluation to the instructor and often students just blow it off or wrote humorous things on it but then they instituted the policy as they would not release final

120grades until the students completed all those surveys that changed things a little bit i'm not sure that's applicable here but it's interesting that's right i do believe we're going to see um increased participation once our participants start seeing us moving in the direction of change we have to make sure that they see us valuing their survey data and that's what that's what i'm excited about doing going forward well that's you know i'm looking at the high school page here and you know one of the low numbers on there the 262 students ideas and opinions are sought here we are seeking their opinion only 220 out of 1900 but they're complaining that their opinions weren't sought it sort of seems incongruous to me here we are seeking their [Laughter] do agree with her i opinion it's

121based on experience right in past things that has transpired they feel like they they haven't been heard so why tried now right well maybe maybe a constructive aspect of what i'm saying is can we make the point to them that this is one of the ways you can communicate your opinion yes definitely all right ah let's see what i was sharing i believe the school employees is that they see themselves as being open to hear from our students so there's an adult excuse me there's an adult that students and employees can talk to about bullying discrimination etc and so forth and to the points that you've already made how can we connect the dots there how can we make sure that that perfect marriage of student to adult is happening in each one of our

122buildings we want to definitely look at that and consider that we also recognize that employees see themselves as holding high expectations for our students and there is a match there that's a positive correlation there and we're excited about that they also understand that parents are encouraged to be involved in their students education and the fact that some would say that you know parents aren't as involved the fact that we are doing our very best to include our parents is a bonus for us we want to make sure that we continue to do that um all of the averages here for the school employees is above the three so if we look at the lowest one and atmosphere of safety and respect exist in our school something that we can always work on in every every

123area for non-school-based employees um chuck and i talked and i said we're just going to own this that one area of growth for us as we move forward is to develop questions and statements that are more appropriate for our non-school-based employees um they um commented that some of these just were not pertinent and we want to make sure that we want to that we do a better job of assessing what it is that they um want to share with us and um dr reese who is the nun school base who are these employees it's a great question so non-school-based would be anyone who's working let's say transportation maintenance school nutrition administration that's okay anyone who's not actually working in a school yet not previously surveyed them okay i was just dr brennan okay yes dr

124reason on the previous slide i think you may have mentioned this but it is interesting is that it seems like the staff feel that there is availability for an adult to talk to people about issues where really the students do not feel there's really quite a discrepancy there as far as the staff feeling that they are providing that services generally are seeing that so i guess that's one of the points out of this that we need to make sure that really is in reality true that's what they're hoping and making sure that it's communicated you know i may feel some way as an adult but i haven't shared that with the student or for whatever reasons the student feels like you know what i'm not sure i can talk about that or talk about that

125subject or to that person so yes making sure i agree wholeheartedly we've got to do better there i am happy to see that of the school employees number four my administrator supervisors accessible discuss to discuss job-related concerns yes but on the flip side for the non-school base i guess you all are the people that discuss so that's why that score is lower number four right the actual average the 3.83 noting that it's the highest average though among the statements there as is a 4.04 in the school employee survey lastly our parent survey um excuse me um parents indicate that teachers and staff in our schools or on at our sites have high expectations for for our children for their children and i think that that needs to be noted i do see the average at

1263.81 so of course that means that we can we can do better there in that area school staff they're willing to listen to parents and guardians i think that's great and i'm glad that it's noted there communicating good news something we need to continue and have heard this over the years of how do we share that good news and some of this is school-based so how is my child doing how can we communicate that more effectively and not not just the negatives the good news about how children are doing we want to do better there and i know that we'll provide some opportunities and some professional development for teachers to to really make it easier to do that i i will stand knowing that it's difficult sometimes reaching parents after hours means i have to

127i have to work after hours i have to call at six at night i have to call during my lunch or what have you so we want to make sure that we're creating some opportunities for our for our families to get the information that they need because it's it's important that we do that dr ruiz a question i thought it's encouraging to see the positive response from parents i was a little disappointed by the demographics of the of the parents who responded and that it was a fairly large number of white uh caucasian parents as compared to black african-american or bi-racial parents with a very small percentage and that surely could have tipped things in in different directions as far as not having an equal view of the share thing is there something we can

128do to help with that do you think i do dr brennan um and i think it's going to be much like we did for non-school-based employees it's going to be really going to where they are and possibly having the hard copy to enter later but finding out where our parents are using a wider window so that if there are parent activities going on at schools then we can reach those parents there but i do believe that we're going to we definitely want to put the efforts there to reach all of our families right thank you and thank you for noting that yes and also on the parents survey number 10 that was it doesn't seem like they are aware of how to report yes reporting that reporting bullying discrimination harassment as we talked about earlier

129we want to make sure everybody has the correct definitions and just how to do that and what the process is once they report that all has to be very clear as we move forward themes um at the elementary student level on appreciation for caring teachers and lunch staff i must note okay they definitely appreciate their school nutrition servers um food good and bad you know some is great some you know needs improvement they would say that but definitely appreciative for their caring teachers and lunch staff concerns about bullying being picked on um that of course rose to um you know higher heights than others and then what was interesting to me they they as students and these are fifth graders want to be sure that there's a welcoming environment for all students and some of

130them mention their um el or english learners they want to make sure that they have opportunities to participate and to join in as they work together as fifth graders and that really did what just warmed my heart secondary students noted appreciation and concern for the well-being of their teachers and students and some of that is that mental health that we talk about is everyone okay is everyone doing all right they were concerned about that also bullying and clarity of school rules and consequences parents and guardians many of the comments were demonstrated in appreciation for all employees just grateful for the hard work that everyone is doing to really teach our children more communication is needed and again much of that it was widespread you know i didn't look at that as you know the community

131relations department but more so how do we communicate from school to home from home to school what does that look like and then overall concerns about safety and bullying some of that is because of the of what we're seeing in our nation the questions are how safe are we is my child safe and those are very valid concerns employees know the positive environment for students and teachers a great place to work more communication and at their level what central office doing how is it being communicated to me how do i communicate to central office how do i communicate within my building or in my at my site they need support for increased and more severe student behaviors and i think that's a that's something we've been talking about even pre um pandemic fair wages for

132all was noted and then more professional development opportunities and i think for a group of employees to ask you know how can i grow i think that's a win for us and we need to figure out how to of course make that happen for them what i'm excited about are our next steps communication this information of course is now shared with you all we are sharing this with our principals we've shared it with directors and and we're going to collaborate we have meetings with um not just me saying hey look at this data it's on you but how do we get better looking at these themes working and to see and it's if i could just put a personal note in here this is 30 years of education for me i've reached two children through

133our school system my grandson will start in the fall and i i just continue to smile bigger because i'm excited about the work that we're going to do this year i'm excited about already the energy that's being put into just how it is that we can work together and that it's it's it's more unified it's a joint effort of just how do we do this for our students how do we do this for our community and then change you all changes and change until we change and so we're excited about taking those first steps to make the necessary changes i am open to hearing from you all much like you've shared tonight but it's going to take all of us working together to of course call out those things that are going to help our

134school that will help school culture and climate if our beliefs aren't right if our norms are off then let's talk to each other about that what are we believing all students should be able we said every child every child by name and by need to graduation and beyond that's our belief we have to make sure that we're that's oozing out of us as we communicate and then um as we collaborate you know it's it's a team effort a joint effort and for that i'm very excited questions any any additional questions dr brennan so first of all dr reeves and mr yarborough thank you so much for doing the survey it looks like the the platform is me so much better both from your point of view and from students and i know that dr sinha

135has been very supportive of this and i think it's as you said so encouraging that the children students feel like their parents are interested in their education which is just huge to have that support so i think that's great having said that when we looked at this several years ago there was a similar trend where elementary school children students feel like they are just in such a great environment and then as they go to middle school and the high school it gets less and less so to the point where in the high school um 58 of the children regarding safety in the school was neutral or negative so we we clearly have some ways to go i guess my specific question is are there some parameters in here that the administration wants to take and

136say we are going to actually set a goal to change these parameters over the next year or two years which the ones that you all think are most important that wants you to change in and put in a way that has it done and then come back to us with a similar thing to show it so if we've identified the problems can we actually show an outcome that's going to be beneficial and that's the collaboration step we are going to meet next week to talk through okay what does this say and which departments does it cross and and what can we focus on some of this and um some of this is and i call it the beauty of having new employees is they have to figure out what's what's been done and what was

137not working and what needs where we need to go and i believe once we solidify where we need to go we're going to see some what i like to call quick wins um i appreciate you noting that we're not going to be able to do all of it at once so we have to collaborate and really think through what can we address first and foremost great thank you you're welcome dr dave um so this is the first year you've used qualtrics to to do this yes um and i'm assuming then you'll continue to use it this coming year oh yes is that correct yes the plan is um in as much as it is effective we would use qualtrics for most surveys there are some small things we do um at the building level where

138the google form is great because we're looking at two or three questions but most everything else we'll be using so since you've changed the tool that you use that makes it hard to compare previous numbers to current numbers but between what we've seen tonight and what will be available a year from now we would be in a better position to compare where did we improve where have things gone down we hope that doesn't happen but it might so um i guess i'm just saying i'm looking forward to next year being able to see last year this year to to look at improvement and then a second thought i don't know if you've thought about this particularly and i keep looking at this page for the high school survey and those low numbers for staff communication

139good news and students ideas are not sought you know it seems like there's a something's not healthy there have you considered trying to sit down with a representative group of students and have a face-to-face conversation with them and say hey folks some of you are not happy tell us what you're not happy about and you know where can we you understand what i'm proposing yes yes yes and yes um i look forward to getting back to doing that um i worked when we were under our voluntary resolution agreement work with different directors to make that happen and we want to jump right back into making that happen i also want to note that our principals i believe still have principals cabinets that where they meet with students as well okay and then also we have

140um our supervisor for student mentoring and engagement who's already this summer been working with students at lincoln middle school to develop their voice and to also get feedback from them so yes good dr carter and i'm really concerned regarding i know we have several things in place and interventions regarding bullying concerns and just trying to get that message across to each student so they are aware of that and i know there's the stigma about snitching but that um you have to look at your education and you don't want anybody to infringe on that so just to clarify that snitching is not always negative if someone is interfering with your education and you being able to learn then that's a problem that needs to be addressed or somebody's constantly hitting you in the back and the

141teacher can't see you and then you react and you're in trouble when that other person never has but the one thing i really do i believe in consistency so the collec clarity of school rules and consequences that really concerns me and i just and i know i don't know what we can do but um i would like to hear more about how we're gonna just to make sure it's consistent because i've heard that before the kids we do have a lot of children that go to different schools within the year and in one school they don't have a problem with it and they get to another school and immediately they're going to the principal's office and here's the family and the children said well it wasn't a problem at the other school so i know

142there's a different culture and climate but some things we need to make sure that we're consistent about can i point out one thing that we didn't really share with you here but she's got data at the school level so one of the things we want to do is if we see six elementary schools that are getting so-so scores in one area and we talked about this today there are a couple scores schools where the score is dramatically different somebody's already solved the problem so this is really good while we can't always compare it perfectly to last year's date or two years ago it's great at looking at school to school and saying they're killing it we don't need to reinvent the wheel what are they doing now that we either need to borrow or is

143there a problem here that isn't there that we need to plan for so there's going to be a lot of that kind of stuff as well mr andrews i just want to say thank you to the both of you and your team for the amazing work that you're doing um i agree with dr brennan i think we need to definitely make some benchmarks when it comes to culture i think we need to make this as important as the budget because culture is what keeps people here right and i think that if we could create an amazing culture that will help with enrollment that will help with teacher retention or staff retention doesn't have to be just teacher retention right and so culture to me is almost everything right it's the it's the feel good stuff

144that it allows you to enjoy coming to work and staying there all day and and putting in the extra work because you you enjoy being there right and you enjoy the mission um so i i i'm agreeing with with dr brennan i think we definitely need to make sure that we're putting some some some effort into into this so yeah well thank you appreciate you thank you all right well said um mr andrews dr sinha well congratulations on your baptism and qualtrics i hope you find it i hope you find it fairly easy to learn i mean there's a lot to it so it'll take you a while till you get you know really into the weeds with it but um and of course my door's open anytime you'd like advice or help or anything

145i'm happy to assist it's very generous um that said um so good job and i think it's really good that you made a decision to go with fewer questions focus on the big rocks as they say in my planner here the big things so that you can prioritize and i think you've captured the important things and to the extent that items are the 10 items that you did use are written comparably and scaled comparably to how they were asked in the past you can do comparisons with the past what still makes these days unusual is the ongoing influence of covid on things so for this survey but hopefully not futures we'll still need an asterisk on some of these things and then finally for better participation rates um certainly there's a way that we could

146get volunteers or something to go around with tablets to churches social agencies whatever to outreach to parents because they can do that survey very easily right on a tablet quickly because it's only 10 items so you can capture more that way i also have found that when you offer some kind of incentive through this survey and you're immediately entered in to a drawing for one of 10 dollar amazon gift cards oh you would not believe what that little bit investment of a hundred dollars does to your response rates and then finally um and you're probably aware of this but haven't had a chance to really deploy it is you have all the students email addresses you can put that in a distribution list and the nice thing about that is you can automatically set up

147follow-up emails to non-respondents to remind them do this get it in and change your message about why it helps and works and they that might drive up your response rates but timing is very important you definitely don't want to do it during sobels and stuff and i realized you came in at you know not much before that and had to learn all these new things so it's a wonder you were able to do this at all quite frankly i'm impressed so um kudos to you but uh i think it's a very good first effort and i look forward to future efforts like this and and i hope you're pleased with my recommendation of qualtrics well done i certainly like it because i could understand what was being presented so that that was very helpful all

148right well thank you so much directories and uh keep on going at it all right we're going to now move to our next section which we're going to be dealing with for leadership uh survey here dr edwards yes so just following the lead of director reeves and and mr yarbrough there one thing i do want to add with the student voice is when we start school starts we'll have our two student reps from easy glass high school and heritage high school along with two alternates from the high schools but we are adding a new addition in october we'll have some guest student reps that are from middle schools and elementary schools who will be rotating and joining us and sharing things that are occurring in their schools and in their world and and have their

149opportunity for a leadership role here at the school board meeting so principals have been wonderful in signing up their schools i do believe dr dills and the mentoring program that she talked about having some of those children come and share some of the experiences that they have so just trying to get more kid voice here where it matters and getting them involved and of course it's an opportunity for leadership um and to see themselves you know on tv and and with us and everything for students who want to participate either by zoom or or in person uh the second part of what we did so after we we kind of took a deep dive with the culture and climate survey and i mentioned that we made some changes in the past we had not surveyed

150the admin building and transportation and the non-school based buildings so we we we gave that a shot just to baseline where we are the other thing that we talked about is there are 11 departments within the division starting with my office and things like curriculum instruction student services special education i.t facilities transportation finance human resources school nutrition and the equity and community relations department none of which on a daily basis do we have kids so those are our departments and employees who are all here to serve schools so one of the things we wanted to do was also baseline how well are we in our function in our roles and functions in our departments serving our building leadership our building principles at the school level because as i often say if there were no schools

151and there were no children would we need curriculum instruction student services superintendent or any of that we would not so we exist because they exist and we wanted to get some feedback from them regarding the service now unlike my friends here who use new technology and sent out email surveys i did a whole captive captive captive approach so we had our building principals and assistant principals as well as supervisors and directors at a training full day training or actually was two hours for them but it was full day for for us um on june 15th and at the end of that training like a good teacher i gave them an exit survey that was on paper so they actually had to complete it before they left um the training and what we did was ask

152our building leaders and we broke it down into the 11 separate departments what you have is the average across departments is how well are we serving you and we made the answers very easy and we took away the middle ground so yes we're definitely doing that or we're mostly doing that but this department or this office could use a few changes sometimes but we're inconsistent in our delivery of our service and then no we're not meeting a mark and some significant changes are are needed where the rating scales and we ask them everything from how well do we communicate how our departments are organized and we recognize that this was over a year in firms for some departments they have changed leadership quite several times over this the course of just the school year um

153we asked them if our our procedures were easy to follow these are our building our school building leaders um and some of the trends that we did see that were very very positive we asked building leaders if they felt like central office downtown all of these 11 offices trust them as a building leader and that was highly rated that they do feel like that we as central leaders do trust them as building leaders and respect them as building leaders do we listen to their concerns and assist them in addressing them not as high but definitely on the positive side while we come to their buildings when invited that was pretty high help them with student and parent concerns after they've exhausted their resources at the school level was also rated high support them when they

154implement something new in their buildings and will provide pd or training for them or their staff on topics that they asked for so from a service perspective we as the 11 departments were doing pretty well in that area and much like the kids particularly the high school kids so i don't know who mentioned the trend as they get older and older they feel less and less involved areas where we definitely are making goals and benchmarking ourselves are our building leaders we asked them about soliciting input before we made major changes related to our particular departments that was an area that's a growth for us and again similar to the schools each department received their individual department sheet so that they could sit down and evaluate the data make set some goals for next year because

155we will ask this again to benchmark it recognize the progress and success they've made related to that department so are we telling good news to our building principals that you know you did a great job with your budget this year or doing pbis or doing you know the implementing the new reading program are we celebrating them and there's another area that we found that we could improve and then of course soliciting feedback from them as to how we are doing is another area that when we ask them do we ever ask you to tell us hey how well did we how well did we meet the mark for you are we serving you well and this was the survey that we gave to our building leaders and we had um 29 building leaders respond to

156our survey and give us back some feedback that was either yes definitely mostly there were some questions that they had to answer in a such as does this department or office answer my emergency phone calls at night or on the weekends which since i was making the questions that question made sense to me but when you think about school nutrition there's very little emergency questions on sunday night about school nutrition i don't think they have to call our nutrition director but that being said for the departments that they do contact um it was it was high in some areas and some areas needed to be improved so we had the building leaders and we asked them how well are we serving you and then we had the service leaders we had the directors and the

157supervisors who provide this service and we asked how well do you think you are serving them and the the comparison is quite interesting when you look at the averages again you have the averages across all 11 departments and in most cases the buildings rated us higher than we rated ourselves in our service delivery which speaks to our folks really being especially with our new leadership team being open to setting goals and really working on customer service this is our internal customer service and we know if buildings have well supported good building leadership then kids teachers will have well supported leadership and students can do their best so we just took this as an opportunity because it was a piece that was not included in our culture and climate survey and it also gives us as

158if you want to just call us downtown employees another avenue for us to look at you know our primary services to the building leadership into the school buildings and how are we doing with that so there are many opportunities for goals so we did take this data and dissect it by department and gave it to each of the building leaders and as we begin in the next couple weeks our goal setting process which every department and every leader is going through the goal setting process this will be something that we can benchmark and report on we can actually do it mid-year and see how we're doing um with our building leaders going forward but i wanted to share that in light of sharing um our culture and climate survey but i also wanted to know

159the board and our community to know that we're real serious about customer service and we value our external customers our families our students their feedback and we want to provide good service for them but we also recognize if we are not treating our employees and our colleagues with a high level of good customer service that's just going to trickle down to what our kids receive so we wanted to collect this data to also measure benchmark where we are and set some goals for us enhancing and again much like um what chuck said there were some areas where wow you know with that department they're they're knocking it out of the park let's find out what they're doing in that area that's working well and maybe we can use that information to help another department so

160and i'll take questions on this as well yeah i'm i don't understand what you mean by building leader is that the same as department head a building a school building leader would be a principal or associate principal or an assistant principal so for school nutrition department that's a department so that that is a department that does not have they don't have physical so building means a physical building or school buildings are the building leaders okay okay and in each of these uh each of the rows in the chart that was distributed that's uh aggregated across all the departments put together yes so they answered that first question for my department separately for student services separately so that it was pretty intense for building leaders and then the difference so the the two columns receive service

161or provide service tell me the difference there so you would be answering if you were a school building principal you would answer um how well does uh crystal edward's office provide fair and consistent service and you would give me a score and then i as crystal edwards would say how well do i provide um the building principles or dr day fair and consistent show so those two columns are separating every respondent by which of those two categories they fall into for that criteria yes so the first the whole first column is all building principles and as assistant principles okay the second column is all directors and supervisors coordinators and a couple other and then lastly how many respondents are there okay so we had 29 respondents from the principals and assistant principals now we're not

162going to have a lot because we only have 22 principals and and several assistant principals and then i believe we had i want to say 17 of the division of directors and supervisors that responded so it's a smaller sample size but it's a smaller sample of folks all right thank you dr dave any further questions uh for the superintendent and this new survey here that really helps us get a handle on our summer leadership services and that we are doing everything we can to be customer friendly at all levels so what is your takeaway from this about where the focus needs to be on customer service so i was fortunate in that when and by the way this data was collected they filled it out turned it in in a box where we could not

163identify who said what so we wanted it to be anonymous but we wanted principals and supervisors and directors to feel comfortable being honest um and then compiled by my secretary so i i was able to see each department separately so my take away and i will say i will talk about my department so from my department the the input feedback talking to building principles first those were areas when i looked at my department and the superintendent deputy superintendent which is all three of us that were areas that building principles said that we can improve on now our scores weren't low but in terms of our scores across the board they were the lower ones so one of the things that we are being mindful of is asking them now and making sure like we've solicited

164your input but is this the right input is this the right question to ask so working with our building leaders um in terms of making sure that before we make major decisions are we consulting them are we asking them are we getting their feedback are we considering the whole gamut of once we make this change how are we going to communicate it is it going to fall back on them and and when should we do it because sometimes we make all these changes and this was an interesting survey because this was done on june 15th so i want you to think about what is the principal doing on june 15th they're all busy trying to hire interview and they really don't want to sit and do this but this is really important for us and

165then different departments had different scores so as i look at the departments and amy and reid and i work with all of the directors we're personalizing it for departments to kind of look at your department does this really really really well but here is an area where we can provide some help and assistance and some guidance and also some monitoring and accountability going forward thank you all right great question uh dr day and uh dr edwards uh thank you so much for providing us that information well this is the second meeting for our three new school board members and i think you all are doing right well and i'm very appreciative of to meeting tonight and um i think this is moving us now to uh informational items item f and i first also want

166to thank you all for your quick response to a lot of information that you've been receiving around dates and so i would like to just do a little clarifying if i can before we leave i think we can do this very quickly first of all the chair acknowledges that dr gupta is not here tonight a very valuable part of our team and so as it relates to trying to get somewhat of a handle on two additional dates as you heard the superintendent mentioned earlier via a policy concerning our self-evaluation i would like to see if there is any availability for the board i'm going to start with the board governance we have two vsba requirements that we don't have dates confirmed yet um and so there appears to be a possibility for a wednesday september

167the 21st is this the governance training is that what you're referring to yes sir and so that's a wins dr sinha sorry um will that be in person in charlottesville or will we be able to do it as we've done during covet i'm of the opinion that it's supposed to be in charlottesville um hey i've been going to bed for everything you know so um what's the time frame all right oh it's supposed to be four to five hours and uh the executive said that we can do four hours if that's what we want so if we can come up with the time we can do nine to one nine to one ten to two eleven to three we can't do an evening which they are open that day because the next day uh is

168the legislative uh conference and so they have to be on their way to richmond on the evening of the 21st so with any of those hours during the daytime i can try to see if it's virtual but i think that everybody's been going to charlottesville but november 21st yes ma'am 21st or 28th 21st and so just speak up i mean if you uh i would prefer the nine-to-one only because i got kids in school so it would be advantageous for me yeah we could start at 8 30 also mr andrews oh i'm not but 8 30 is available as well i think the real question is the date if there's anybody who has a conflict with the 21st i think that's really i think time wasn't as easy after that so we just i'm good

169right now so we got to figure out what a tube which is very important so that's that one doctor carter you okay yeah go ahead yes but i thought she had an alternative day no no i don't have any alternative the 21st now the second and final and i promise unless dr edwards comes up with something i won't be bothering you about any more dates this particular calendar year in this regard dr edward's got one unless you're gonna tell them oh yeah yeah we know about that one already okay dr day you're not just continue all right so the final one is the self-evaluation okay did we decide on the 21st yeah do we lock in that date oh not yet because dr gupta will okay okay uh but okay that's putting a hole in

170it yeah for sure right you know you can i but it's not official you're gonna put it on i'm gonna do it it's strong on that we're nine member boards so hopefully but we have to see all right now the last one and then we're going to give you the dates we have all of them is october the 17th which is a monday and this would be our self-evaluation i thought okay i'm confused go right ahead dr sinha i thought the 21st is our self-involved that's the board governance oh okay sorry thank you that's board governance so that's norms and protocols right all of that and then the self-eval is going to be uh and we we have to do this before november and this is basically about the last opportunity and is that you

171know will that take place here at the charleston that's also charlottesville and how much time is typically involved uh four hours and we can do anything that day even if you wanted to do an evening i do have a conflict on the 21st yes sir 17th september 21st it's not it's not on my calendar but i know i have a mediation set that day um but let me just text somebody real quickly all right i don't know why it's not on my calendar because i thought i heard that that second date was worth the second date october the 17th of monday and we if if if you all can squeeze that in then that would take care of ourselves with that self-evaluation which we must do and we must do it before november october the

17217th and we could be anytime nine to one ten to two eleven two three two to six three to seven okay and i have a conflict on the the 17th of october all right you don't come you get nominated to be chair next year that's exactly right is that a hold the whole day no it's just four hours four hours the whole time yeah well yeah you got 10 days but four hours whatever time works for us it can that one can be a morning or evening so okay all right and so i i got it so hopefully that'll work and mr trust is gonna do some magic over there and make that i'm working on right now to find out what's going on we have to wait on dr gupta we still have to

173wait another week and rightfully so so we'll find that out tomorrow yeah um and and go from there so now just to run down on the dates and then we're out of here yeah we'll go yesterday you got it you got it okay so now here we go august the 20th is our first uh session it's the retreat and that retreat is going to be where dr edwards i believe we're going to be at the itc building we're confirming okay yeah the itc building we're confirming that location okay so tell me where is the itc building i'll give you an address okay okay after i confirm and and the time on that um eight to two is what we have booked and between the vice chair and myself we're going to lock down that agenda

174so that on august the second meeting we can all be clear on what priorities the book yeah i think we've asked for people's suggestions for that one for those yeah we'll talk a second meeting for topics for that okay so that'll take care of that one and the next date outside of our regular meetings is september the 13th and you all did an excellent job of responding to that and that is going to be a joint meeting between school board and city council anything you want to add to that four o'clock four o'clock it's going to be where uh tentatively at the business alliance although i'm waiting for the city manager to confirm all those details okay so let's everybody have those dates down dr is there any idea how long that will be usually

175four to six similar to what we did before when we were at the business now that um that's fixed at this point that's fixed so there was an alternate date for that that we're now not going to use right now august 20th 8 20. yeah so the 13th is is fixed okay now that will that will require a little adjustment so let me just say these things and then we're really almost finished so we've got august the second will be uh next tuesday i believe will be our board meeting and then uh we have august the uh 16th it's going to be our next board work session that's going to be the beginning of school so you'll have men in school going on that day right etc so we clear on that and then we're

176going to ask uh uh two standing committees when you meet first please elect a chair within those meetings but since we have the 13th scheduled for the joint meeting with council the three individuals on the finance committee will need to come up with an alternate date for that meeting and go ahead and determine your chair and so i mean i'm looking at the right yeah finance committee so if you all could get those three persons and kind of organize themselves to accomplish a make-up date and do that and then legislative advocacy will stay as it is all right i was asked and if i'll get uh either or tina to send this out this is just optional as you may or may not know um the sba is no longer a member of nsba but

177any school board in virginia can still be a member of nsba if you wanted to but we are now part of casper consortium or state school boards association which has uh 29 states involved already and uh texas is on the way but there is an urban alliance symposium for schools with challenging environments and students for challenging environments september 8th and 9th in atlanta and um because i'm going to pass it around i would have to check but we may be able to send one person if someone wanted to go nobody goes that's fine i'm going but vsda is paying for it so we don't have to worry about that the local division so i put that out there and there's nothing else to be said 21st works for me get up and do a dance

178yeah so we're working out all right everybody's tired but we've done a great job you