LCS School Board Meeting: January 11, 2022

001[Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] it is now five o'clock and we thank everyone for uh being present tonight and we will now uh begin our first school board meeting of the brand new year tuesday january the 11th 2022 here in the school administration board room at this time i would like us to move to section b of our agenda with the approval of the agenda and members of the board you have had the board agenda featured on board docs is there a motion to approve the agenda as presented tonight moved that we approve the agenda as presented tonight is there a second been moved by dr carter seconded by ms morrison that we would approve the agenda as uh featured for our january 11th meeting if there's no further questions or discussion i'm going to

002ask that the clerk would call the role scoop up mr truth yes google member dr brennan yes school board member miss morrison yes google member dr carter yes google member dr coleman yes yes yes motion career is nine to zero all right we're going to stand now for our pledge of allegiance [Music] i pledge allegiance of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all we certainly as we prepare for uh all that we will be able to do in the next uh six months we do want to acknowledge at this board meeting that today is our superintendent's birthday and we certainly thank you thank you i also very quickly which is just normative for us we obviously have bored norms and protocols in

003place and it is my duty as chair just to remind each of us that we have those norms and protocols to govern us over the next six months as we so choose and if we make any adjustments so be it and all of the materials before you and so i wanted the clerk just to have us uh that before us as we get started for the year and i know that we will govern ourselves accordingly and i'm excited about uh i believe we can do some of our best work that we've ever done in these next six months with that in mind we will now move to section c of our agenda which is our public comments and we are champions of public comments and communication and of course one of our protocols is reflective

004of the importance of communication and i'm delighted about the new initiatives that i see that the division is putting forward as it relates to communication and so we want that and we're seeking to use as many vehicles as we can to interface with the public one of the things that we enjoy is our public comments and so uh tonight madam clerk do we have any written comments or phone recorded comments no sorry so we do have two persons who have signed up to give us public comments tonight persons appearing before the school board will not be allowed to campaign for public office or promote private business ventures and should not use profanity or vocal language or gestures make comments about a public official or an employee that are not related to their official duties engage

005in behavior that disrupts the meetings or intimidates others or address the school board on issues that concern the services policies role and or responsibilities of the school board individual speakers shall limit their comments to three minutes a speaker representing a group should limit their comments to five minutes the representative shall identify the group at the beginning of their presentation a group may have no more than one spokesperson a total allotted time for public comments at the school board meetings is 30 minutes and those comments are reserved for the public to provide input the board does not respond to comments answer questions or otherwise engage in discussion at this time and so we are thankful for two speakers tonight happy new year to you and welcome uh to the public comment section for this year first

006off will be jeffrey wuters who is going to talk to us about cove welcome good evening members of the school board my name is jeffrey wuters i'm a senior at uc glass high school and central virginia governor's school um happy new year to you all and happy birthday dr edwards i'm grateful that you all keep giving us the opportunity to come and speak to you about things that concern us um i'm gonna keep it real with you i usually prepare something in advance i read off of my phone or i have facts and figures put in front of me but i don't have anything prepared today i'm just gonna speak from the heart um as actually as i stepped out of the car when i got here i got an email and a call from

007ec glass that we have gone virtual remote learning for the next three days until friday and i will be honest i don't like virtual learning i don't like zooms i'm a very extroverted person i like to talk to people and i like to interact with people but even i can see with as much hatred as i have in my heart for virtual learning that it is by far the safer and more effective option right now um i don't know if you've seen inside of our classrooms at glass past couple of days but i've got classes where half the students are out the number of substitute teachers that we have we had to move basketball games because we literally did not have enough people to safely staff and when we have rates from omicron so high

008in the community when we have half of classes quarantined or actively sick when i have two friends who are vaccinated and boosted and they've worn their masks the entire time they have done everything they're supposed to and still gotten infected i can see that it is the only safe option is to move to virtual learning um and i get that there will be sacrifices there may be learning loss there may be mental health difficulties but i would argue that those disadvantages are worth it in the face of a disease that has infected more people than ever and despite some people saying that it is less dangerous to the immune system still causes long-term effects it's still so virulent that if it infects someone who is immunocompromised or has not been vaccinated or an elderly person

009it can still be incredibly dangerous so as much as i don't want to move online and as much as i would much rather finish out this year fully in person i'm urging you and i'm speaking before you today to please consider moving all of lynchburg city schools online at least until this wave of omicron peaks and perhaps four weeks after that until we can make sure that we are past the stage of the pandemic it is the only safe way to get kids in our schools and learning and i would much rather take my health than anything else thank you and happy new year to you all thank you mr woodis thank you very much our next speaker tonight is mr andrew glover who will talk to us about mask and he is representing conservative

010parents of lynchburg welcome mr glover thank you cloth masks are no longer considered high quality enough for protection now i've been sharing this fact that cloth max don't work but these words were not just spoken by me but rather they were shared by the central health center system today at 12 30 during their news conference this proclamation comes on the heels of several other high-profile health networks including george washington university boston medical saint jude coming to the same conclusion even the former fda commissioner stated on cbs's face the nation quote cloth masks are not going to provide a lot of protection that's the bottom line the commissioner went on to clarify this by stating a cloth mask is not going to protect you from a virus that spreads through airborne transmission it could better protect

011you if it was spread through droplet transmission something like the flu but some for but not for something like this coronavirus in fact we heard just testimony that students who are wearing masks vaccinated boosted are still getting the vaccine masks don't work so if a masks can't stop an airborne virus what do masks stop they stop the critical and foundational non-verbal communication that is instrumental in the learning process masks also shield our students faces from their peers hindering social connection and interaction and leading to the reduction of students self-esteem now these assertions aren't made in a vacuum sixty percent of the school last year failed at least one class on top of that your own studies and reports show that within the lcs school system suicide attempts were up 50 percent depression was up 15

012non-school related screen time is up 61 percent and there's an overall increase in negative body image perception enough on your agenda item i2 you'll be reviewing a proposal to strike and remove the school policy 7-33.3 otherwise known as the school uniform assuming that you go ahead and strike the policy from your records lynchburg city will essentially be saying that the students can show up but naked as long as they wear their masks teaching children to comply and that masks make them safe is at this point reckless and it's abusive it's time to end the school mass policy and let our students return to learn truly and i'm sorry we are we need to learn to live with this i also just got the notification about 10 minutes ago about the school's closing we should be

013well beyond this we need to open our schools and get back to work the whole community has and it's time to learn that lynchburg city schools does too thank you thank you mr glover for your comments that concludes our public comment section for tonight once again thank both of you and we do want the public to know that we're here to listen all right we will now move to section d which is our student representative comments and we always are grateful for these uh presentations and so at this time our first presentation will be from jaden scott from ec glass high school [Music] great break um that's actually where i'm going to be starting my presentation today with a welcome back so um yes welcome back um we actually had a little delay in our

014start to the school year which we're happy to be back now so we'll take that and keep on moving and we also want to give a special thank you to the group men to school for coming out and showing up and supporting us on our transition back into the building and next up i do want to give a special recognition for the ec glass rocker cup this is one of glass's oldest awards and it's given to a deserving and dedicated football player and the description on the award reads as follows the charles thomas rucker the second memorial cup is presented annually by dr c e rucker to the ec glass high school athlete excelling in football scholarship and citizenship so this year the winner was mr eli wood so i do want to say congratulations

015to you and also at the banquet when they were doing the announcement this is actually one of the first times that we've had um brothers on the rucker cup so eli won this year and then a couple years ago his brother sackett won so we now have brothers winning the rucker cup award along the same lines of just awards and giving out and showing our accolades for everyone i do want to take a second to recognize miss hannah ness and mr luke payless each year our athletic boosters organization presents an award to a student athlete that they feel has met certain criterias in the area of scholarship athletic ability leadership and integrity and so yes these two won this year these are our most recent recipients and they are from our cross country team all

016right and so normally i like to come on here and keep everything super positive but i do like to reach out to the school and see what's going on and so far with the scheduling change the possibility of the scheduler change there has been a lot of pushback on it i just wanted to be honest about it i've been getting a lot of feedback a lot of emails reaching out from students saying that they really don't want this block scheduling change i'm not sure what the update on that is but um i did want to come back and just reiterate that i know last meeting we had there was a lot of talk about it so i did just want to go over the main reasons as to why a lot of students aren't so

017happy with this and it would just be the concern for learning loss and then the conflict with cte classes as well as traveling or competitions with music classes like orchestra or band anything like that and so then jumping back on to a more positive note i do want to take a minute to recognize mr landon collins he was a 2019 graduate from ec glass and while he was at glass he was enrolled in the criminal justice program at our school and he even went on to compete in the skills usa contest for criminal justice at the state level not only did he study at ec glass but he also went on to cvcc and he pursued an education of administration of justice so now speeding up the present day throughout kovit he's went through a

018lot of obstacles but still made many strides in his education and his work and because of this we are now able to refer to mr collins as officer l r collins so i just wanted to extend a huge congratulations from the hilltopper community um past and present students this is an amazing accomplishment and we're so happy to see such amazing things happening in our own community from our own small schools you know that came from lcs the public schools then he went to the community college and now he is where he is so we are 100 so excited and happy about that thank you for all of your hard work and thank you for your dedication to our community and then also sca um last december well last year in december ecg sca hosted a

019food and clothing drive and this was a huge success and so i do want to take the time to thank any and everyone who participated whether it was teachers students the family friends anybody and so i do want to give a shout out to miss weeks her eighth period advisory they brought in the most items and so for their award they were given a chick-fil-a lunch so once again thank you all so much for all of your hard work and your time and your donations and then i do want to wrap it up here but i do want to give out one more thank you to our permanent building substitutes this year has been a whirlwind last year was a whirlwind we're just kind of picking up and seeing where we can make improvements and

020seeing how else we can better our school and so these substitutes these people have been literally amazing um they're in the building every day they're so dedicated to making our school a better place to give an ecg our community feeling and so they are so valuable to our school um and so i do want to say thank you to all of them um i don't know where we'd be right now without these people so thank you all so much i have listed their names on here so um just a special shout out and a thank you to them and just thank you and i normally do end it on a thank you note so once again thank you all so much for your time and just remember together we keep coming all right wow i'm

021gonna reserve my comments until after the second presentation uh from heritage high school is using with us tonight tina or someone else all right go right ahead julian kept hello everyone i'm so excited to be back i did miss you all and happy new years to everybody and i wanted to start off this new year by reiterating our pioneer motto at heritage we are welcoming encouraging achieving responsible and engaged first of all before winter break our national honor society was hard at work with two end of the semester service projects the first one was candy grams and students at heritage had the opportunity to buy a candy cane and a message for one dollar and have it delivered all in the holiday spirit and the next project was a coin drive and this project was

022a home room competition and we raised money and the winning home room will be getting donuts and thank you to all our students and all our nhs members for raising money for a good cause next up is the heritage high school literary magazine they are still accepting submissions on the grand topic of culture and this week's topic is the weather and season so if any heritage student wants to submit a an entry of photography or literature please email it to the email address on your screen the lynchburg beacon of hope will be hosting a virtual meeting with business professionals tomorrow from a.m to 12 30 p.m this meeting is open to lcs alumni from the classes 2013 through 2021 and it will be a wonderful chance to look at future opportunities in the business side

023and we hope to see our alumni there last but not least we have some upcoming events in our heritage high school athletics department the heritage high school swim team will be host will be having a meet this friday at the jamerson y the track team will be having a meet at virginia beach this friday as well and the heritage high school wrestling team will be will be participating in the seminole quad at liberty high school on wednesday that's all from me thank you all so much for your attention can we give these uh two representatives a hand uh would like to say anything but the quality of the presentations and the communication skills of these two students is amazing i mean literally it's amazing and so we are very proud of both of you and

024you were able to share with us what we needed to know about pertinent issues and things going on in your schools and so thank you so very much for the outstanding work both of you are doing uh as our student representatives we'll now move to section e our finance report and uh we'll yield now to dr edwards thank you and i echo your sentiments for the student voice and mr wuters is leaving but i also am glad that he shares his uh voice with us as well representing what our students think it's always a pleasure just to sit back and listen to them um we're going to move on to the nove november financial report and that is actually going to be presented this time by the interim cfo who has stepped up um in

025our in in the absence of a full-time cfo monet davis who works in the finance department who is doing a wonderful job of helping us keep the ball rolling and keeping on top of our finances so you have the financial report in front of you and i invite ms davis who is on the screen to just kind of give a quick summary of the report um well um good evening fork i just want to say that i've hit the ground running and i'm trying to keep us all together and i think we're doing a great job i just got back from the vast fasbo conference and i just received a tremendous amount of information concerning the governor's budget and curtin current financial situations and issues that each school district is facing and i'm looking forward

026to discussing that with our leadership team but tonight i'm going to present the financial reports through november 30th 2021. so our current adjusted budget remains the same um still showing those donations and the um the fund balance amount at 102 487 94301 the revenue received to date is at 34.83 percent which we did provide you with a detailed um revenue report and then our expenditure to date was um 34.98 um with our encumbrances totaling 87.77 and our encumbrances again are our open pos and all our obligated contracted payroll does anybody have any questions there's also detailed uh reports on board docs and also we wanted to talk to let you know that we heard you and want in wanting a more detailed report so we're working on that hopefully we'll have that for you um

027next month well first of all ms davis we want to thank you this is your first report to us and we thank you for that and the way in which you have shared uh with us today are they members of the board that with uh dr gupta okay when do you think the health benefits for month of december will be available i see a balance of 364. and we are about 700 000 less what what we started the fiscal year i do think that that is going to be a concern um we've already talked to dr edwards and the senior leadership and we're looking at that um it'll be something that we'll probably discuss more next month on um solutions any other questions for miss davis dr nillas yeah a couple of the personnel expense

028accounts are a little high for this time of year is there can you or dr edwards talk to those um i didn't notice anything abnormally but answer uh specifically that's what i'm guessing but if i look at uh say pupil transportation function the other expense is 140 roughly i'm catching up to you hold on yeah sure i will have to get back to you on that one um that does seem extremely high so i will look at that and let you know yeah okay yeah i think other board members have so noted that also dr nellis and so uh about that with the we'll get back with us yeah we have a finance committee coming up too so we can dig into the details a little bit so that we can make sure we send

029something out to the board all right any other questions for ms davis i just want to say thank you for stepping up and doing so well for us thank you my pleasure all right thank you miss davis for sharing uh today and we're looking forward to working with you as we go through this very important part of board governance and the preparation of our budget et cetera so thank you so much all right we'll now move to section f um which is our consent agenda and tonight on the consent agenda minute from the december the seventh meeting our school board work session december the 14th the human resources report and the human resources policy review is there any discussion around the consent agenda and if not is there a motion to approve the consent agenda

030move to approve the consent agenda second second second about a motion made by dr nilla seconded by dr carter any further discussion hearing none will ask the clerk to please call the role let's go vote for trust yes school but remember dr brennan yes school board member ms morrison yes school but movement dr carter yes school book remember dr coleman yes school book mama dr nellis yes yes school what movement doctor yes who remember mr harvey yes motion curse 9-0 all right we will continue on if there's no need for other comments in that section and we will go to our school board member report section g and our first report with the finance and facilities dr nillas uh no report we're meeting next week thank you sir persons govern themselves accordingly governor's school committee

031dr guta no meeting in january you'll meet in february thank you dr gupta law regional dr carter no report our next meeting is february thank you so much stem academy dr nils no report remaining in a couple of weeks thank you sir looking forward to it all right and legislative advocacy and community relations dr sinha well we met today in fact um reviewed a game plan for those of us attending the capitol conference january 24th and 25th that's dr carter dr coleman and myself and then we took some time to discuss some of the challenges we're facing as a division uh relating to parents students in the community some of the pertinent issues happening and how difficult it is to reach different audiences strike the right tone get the information out in a timely manner

032not overwhelm but provide enough and in many ways it's a it's a no-win situation but i applaud the central office for trying new ways of outreach i continue to have hope that the community conversations will gain traction i think they're a good thing and again i encourage families to reach out to me or any other school board member with suggestions or concerns over communication issues um a lot of us are overwhelmed understaffed and it is a real challenge um to meet the information needs of the community but we are working on it we're aware of problems we're trying to address them as best we can it's just a difficult landscape right now any questions for dr sinha all right and of course um the clerk has fully alerted everyone concerning the uh capitol conference and

033so she indicated those who are planning to attend but if anyone uh needs to reconsider you certainly can do so thank you so much dr cena all right that will now move us to our education task force and i do want to make it clear that the members of council will know that the school board is hoping that they will have a great year as well over at city hall they approved our broadband initiative tonight and we're thankful for that and yet the schedule has not permitted them to discuss the education task force i do want to acknowledge that on this thursday from 8 45 a.m to 10 a.m that dr carter myself dr edwards and whomever else will be meeting with the mayor vice masses and manager etc and at that time i am

034of the assumption there will be some discussion about the task force and other dynamics on their side that is all that i have to report at this time any questions all right thank you so kindly number seven item seven here uh partners in education it is clear that our administration is working to make sure that our community is vested in partners in education and to our knowledge that group is beginning to make efforts to create energy in the community for partners in education to help lynchburg city schools to do what we can to help student performance in the classroom in all of the ways that there may be needs and so needs are being identified and in the appropriate time we'll be able to hear greater clarity on how partners in education will be fully

035rolling out and achieving something very important and that is bringing partners together to help us with our kids uh dr gupta have they talked about helping us and reducing the achievement gap that they could be a key partner in that goal of lcs madam clerk if that could be so noted i i think that there will be a dr gupta an obvious need to tie all of it that everything that we do we need our entire community and so there was there figures around floating around about in the region some six to seven thousand potential partners many of them have employees that are less than 15 and so about 150 maybe uh have real big operations but we want to get people working where they're needed to reduce achievement gaps and other types of things

036and as that is put out there i think it's going to be really meaningful for us going forward and so that is the extent of what i can share tonight relative to partners in education dr brennan anything you would like to share yeah thank you dr coleman all right thank you so kindly all right at the education foundation dr sinha and mr trost i had a informal meeting with jody gillette to talk about a relationship with the board things are going well the education foundation it continues to be a very robust organization with robust resources and community re support does a lot of good work for the schools for our teachers she expressed some concern about you know the toll this the disruptions caused by covid and other matters are taking on everybody particularly our

037teachers and so that that was a a concern that that was expressed and the folks of the educational foundation board and associates continue to be available to support the schools offer guidance and advice when possible in support of the schools during this difficult time and we have arranged to lock in a more regular set of meetings so that i'm not always coming here saying no report which is on me and so we'll be setting that up soon thank you oh one other thing she also expressed concern about partners in education so i'm sure she'd be glad to hear what you reported because she feels it's a good partner organization for them that although there may be some overlap they have cross-purposes can support each other in their aims and she feels it's very impart important

038that partners for education get up and rolling and be more active and involved than it has been in recent years thank you dr sinha i appreciate that mr trust anything you would like to add nothing fairly thin all right any questions for them thank you so much we will now go to the last item beacon of hope dr nillis and dr cena i don't have a report all right so thank each of you for the work that you're doing i love how we've laid this out and persons can be involved in the ways in which they can so thank you for that uh section h is our comprehensive strategic plan we have no report tonight but i do want to emphasize to the community that we have a comprehensive strategic plan and everything we do

039in relationship to our agenda is tied to the comprehensive strategic plan and of course part of our board governance uh is uh making sure that that happens and so that's very critical that everyone knows that and we would certainly be delighted that you would take the time out to look at it on our web page etc having said that we will now move into section i unfinished business and the first matter will be the lcs community update in which there are three particular matters that will be discussed under the leadership of our superintendent dr edwards yes so thank you and again happy new year to everyone and um we do have the members of the high school team with us virtually on zoom to discuss block scheduling if you recall in june of last year

040the high school teams both schools came to discuss the current schedule at that time which was the ab block schedule and the potential for shifting to a four by four black schedule just a little history originally when we were in the um covet pandemic when it first started one of our major goals with our schedule was to reduce the amount of movement kids had in the building and interaction so that's what one of the first things that shifted us from a seventh period day where kids were transitioning through seven different periods to a block schedule where children were moving throughout the hallways a little bit less each day at that time in june the team brought to the board and is also included in our board docs some information some factual information about the pros

041and cons for the a b block and the four by four block schedule and over the last six months up until the december board meeting the team has worked and come back in december to discuss where they wanted to go for the upcoming school year at the december meeting there were still lots of questions including those from parents staff members and students i think one of the things the students are like just tell us what we need to know short and sweet so we hope that that information got out but we are staying with the a b block so for some folks who don't even understand if you have a student who is not in high school you might not even understand what a a b block versus a four by four versus a seventh

042period uh day looks like but i wanted to provide some background information before we get to questions and the team just about the thought behind scheduling and what a good schedule does and why schools consider different schedules so if you just look in the life of a student and figuring that they're done and be what happens between 3 and 11 pm well many of our students participate in after school activities sports clubs some of them work they go home they have dinner they have family time and then they also have review what happened during the day and homework with a traditional seventh period day your students are going our students are going home and they're reviewing what happened in all seven classes and could potentially have homework in all seven classes in preparation for the

043next day this happens on monday tuesday wednesday thursday and then of course friday they have the weekend in between with the ab schedule the schedule that we currently have again between those hours of 3 and 11 assuming that they go to bed at 11 and we know many teenagers are staying up past that but they still go home and do those activities except with the a b schedule students have four classes that they are reviewing that they have to go back and for an opportunity for four different sets of homework from the classes of the day the next day they have a different set of classes probably three classes and an enrichment or a remedial class or an advisement and then it alternates every other day throughout the whole year that is the current schedule

044with the 4x4 block what makes that different is the students still only have four classes each day but they have the same four classes for the first two marking periods or the first semester so instead of having seven or eight classes throughout the year that they are concentrating on they would have four classes in the first semester that they would focus on and four classes in the second semester that they would focus on now why is this important why do why do educators think about this we think about the life in of a student and when you think about a student one of the most important things that you need to do to be successful in school is time management and when you think about time management and that frontal cortex and the development of

045it and all of those behavior things for our children that begins in adolescence and it matures by the age of 25. so some of the things when we're looking at schedules that we're asking our students to do is multitask and manage their time and make good decisions and be on time and manage projects for seven classes a day four classes a day or four classes in a semester so it's one of the reasons why educators look at schedules and say how do young people learn and how can we set them up for success and positive outcomes so that they can not only learn the material but dig deep in the things that they do so if anybody had a question why were you even considering different schedules it's because as educators we look at outcomes

046from the student perspective now there is no one schedule that works for every student and you have a school of over a thousand kids a seven day sched seven period schedule works for some an ab schedule works for some a four by four schedule works for some but there is no one perfect schedule so the challenge we have is trying to figure out what would maximize outcomes for all students during the december meeting you heard lots of questions about cte and thank you jaden for bringing it up we do ask that the students ask students we want feedback from everyone particularly the ones that are most affected by the schedule that would be the students and the teachers the students are in the classrooms learning and the teachers are planning and prepping for the material

047and delivering it and that information has been solicited over the break um and our staff has weighed in to give the feedback that the a b block is the best block for moving forward now your next question will be well is that just for next year dr edwards will we be here again no we're going to stay with the a b black for several years can't promise you that how long that will be but we will not be making any changes in the upcoming school year and as one of my staff members said we need to get very good at that a b block but we did make some changes because along that with the a b block there were also some questions about well can kids take an extra class do they have to

048have an advisory or an enrichment but there's also questions about learning loss because when our counselors presented they discussed the need to have some extra time during the day because not everybody can come to a before school or an after-school program or tutoring to address learning loss and having that opening up to an eighth period during the ab day to allow kids to take on another elective or be in an enrichment course that will help them with learning loss is what we're going to do in the upcoming school year so we're offering opportunities for that there'll be some more discussion about that when deputy superintendent pugh talks about the program of studies because you'll learn about opportunities that students will have for other courses in addition to the ones that are already in our schools

049that they can take so i've kind of talked about it a little bit from the standpoint of what a student's life is like but even our teachers because if we want to maximize outcomes for our students they have to have excellent teachers so you go back to the same seventh period day i may be teaching five or six different classes and multiple preps each day i go home the next day i come back i have to prep for that our teachers also although some of them coach and and advise after school activities they have families themselves they go home and and i hope no one believes that a prep period during the school day is the only time a teacher is prepping as a matter of fact many of ours right now aren't even using

050that time to prep for school there is a lot of work that happens at home at night on the weekends so when you look at the schedule again looking going from seven classes to four classes to four classes that are every other day or just four classes in a short amount of period you reduce the amount of content that both teachers and students need to focus on in a given period but that doesn't come without sacrifice right and one of the things that we heard is what about the music program we don't want our students to have music in the fall in that opportunity for music in the spring and competitions and those types of things so after listening to all of the comments and concerns and really talking with the staff the students and

051weighing in that led to the decision of us staying with the a b block but not only just staying with the a b block but offering other opportunities for students who if they are in good credit standing and and i know we talk a lot about learning loss but we also need to provide opportunities for learning gain and learning expand because we have students who aren't experiencing learning loss and our school division is for them as well so that for those reasons we are going to stick with the a b block another difference between the seven period day and either the four by four or the a b is the time how much time is an individual class so you can have anything when you have a seven or eight period day from a 40

05245 50 minute period and then you change and go to another 45 50 minute period or the 90 minute periods now pros and cons 90 minutes as a former science teacher speaks inquiry to me it allows me to do laboratory experiences and constructive activities with my students and get that thinking going so that i access that higher level of bloom's technology taxonomy where students are creating evaluating judging and doing the higher level thinking sometimes a 40-minute period particularly if you're in a performing arts you just get started and then the bell rings think about trying to get a student to create some artwork you just get started then the bell rings and they have to put it away and the next class comes in so again even time has pros and cons for different things

053different folks different periods so for that reason um in discussing with the staff again the vote was to to stay with the a b block the 90 minute periods which when done in a very um constructive way gives teachers the opportunity to use all of the effective teaching skills you get formative feedback assessment you can do large group instruction small group instruction you can have students work on independent projects within a 90-minute period and that way we can meet the needs of our students so i wanted to provide some context behind the what the how what does it mean and the when because there was a lot of concern about whether or not this decision would be for next year and what would happen next year i also have members from the high school team

054both principals i do believe uh are up there can see miss floor um on there who i'm going to just ask them to say a few words just to add to anything that i've said so ladies first i'm going to start with you principal for ec glass miss floor well thank you dr edwards and you've done a great job summarizing that i don't have a whole lot to add i will say i'm very thankful for the feedback from our faculty and staff we began discussing this back in october and just the input and informal conversations i've had with students uh conversations that i had with parents and so i appreciate um how passionate people are and their feedback too um and i this was an easy decision for for i think for tim and i

055don't want to make that speak for him but we've had so much change going on that the any informa the concerns other people had we had those concerns and we just were busy working and keeping our buildings open and so we had quality instruction and experiences going on and we just did not have the time to answer some of those questions and so we appreciate the feedback that our faculty and staff has given us and i think this is the right decision to make tim thank you rose uh good evening everyone i agree i appreciate the feedback from faculty and staff and community members um ultimately we want to do what's best for for students and also want to do what's best for our staff um you know we often refer to our staff here

056just as the commodity and we want to do what's best for them oftentimes and with this year and last year being challenging with covet a lot of what they've done from a lesson planning standpoint has been geared towards what they're doing right now and i think to um to undo that at this point with the uncertainty of uh next year and the years years beyond certainly comfortable very comfortable with what we're doing with the ab block scheduling and look forward to having an opportunity to make this work even better next year as opposed to this year i think we sort of know what to expect going into next school year with our scheduling and i think we have an opportunity to get better at our craft from a scheduling standpoint for meeting the needs of

057our students and i think our faculty will be better equipped with it as well okay any questions that we can answer regarding the block scheduling dr brennan i just like to thank the administration and the principals and high schools for doing such a great job of reaching out to people to get information students staff and the community as a as a someone who does not live the schedule the way you all do i had my my niece who's a 12th grader glass walked me through it and she thought it was very appropriate particularly the electives that are added and as a senior although will not affect her she liked that early dismissal in the afternoon for the 12th graders too so both those things were were given high grades but thank you all very much

058for the work and i'm sure this is going to be a good plan for the future thank you dr brennan and of course the board obviously knows that quite a bit of work has gone into all of this since we met last and so is there any pertinent uh comments that need to be made at this time dr gupta you know dr edwards i agree with you uh because we're preparing them for the future and when they go to college they'll have 90-minute classes and they'll be on monday wednesday friday or tuesday thursday so we are doing a surface service and managing it and when you join as a freshman you don't have a choice of schedule seniors get the first junior second then sophomore and you get the leftovers so here you know lcs

059has done a wonderful job so thank you for keeping the future in mind three two three years out when they go to college they'll be facing exact same thing all right dr brennan just and i i will uh put i ask this question and understand that if i'm out of order i'll be corrected but since we have principal flower on the line with us and since the closing of easy glass was just announced before this meeting as an individual board member and as a guardian for a student at glass i'd be interested if she could explain to us in the public if it's appropriate what the plans are for teaching for these couple of days of in-person instruction that will occur at glass we're actually going to get to that when we get to the

060next subject on a new cdc guidelines and do the covet part of that thank you so we'll we'll yield into that time thank you thank you dr brennan all right very good well thank you uh everyone um a lack of communication around this is not because we're not interested it's because the work has been done it's clear and we are now moving forward to the next matter dr edwards okay all right so the next matter is the new cdc guidance which we did send out communications to our staff to our families alerting them that over the winter break that the cdc guidance has changed the quarantine and isolation time in short has been reduced to five days with a mandatory mass requirement for the next five days if you are asymptomatic to return to work

061and school we did send that information it is also included in the board docs agenda for folks who want to actually read the vdh guidance and i also need to remind our board and our community that schools are still under senate bill 1303 which is in essence keeps our schools open five days a week except for if we need to address a covet related issue as we do at one of our schools we'll talk a little bit about that once we go through this but it also says that we have to follow cdc guidance and again since cdc guidance was just recently updated we updated our guidance as well as the conversation regarding cloth mass and i do know we have part of our maintenance department on tonight that we are ordering and i am

062wearing a kn-95 mass following the guidance to say you need the the better mass not just the cloth mass as mr glover also talked about so we are ordering those and making sure that we're going to have those available for our staff going forward since we are still aligned to cdc guidance but i wanted to just turn it over to deputy superintendent pugh and director brown who has been managing our covet response to talk a little bit about those guidelines we'll talk about what the team does and then we'll talk about glass and the temporary shift to remote learning deputy superintendent thank you dr edwards and school board um as dr edwards mentioned uh the updated guidelines from cdc were sent out last week to our staff and our families they are also linked on

063tonight's board agenda so you can read those if you uh need to refer back to those um specifically for symptomatic and asymptomatic um if there is a positive case again the the first five days is in isolation if you're then symptom-free and feeling well enough you can certainly come back on day six but that would be with strict mask wearing the same would be true for those that are unvaccinated and or fully vaccinated but it's been greater than six months so i think that's something that we need to to draw attention to so if you um are a close contact and are unvaccinated or a close contact and you have been fully vaccinated which is two doses of the um pfizer and modarna or one dose of johnson and johnson and it's been greater than

064six months from the last shot then the quarantine for the first five days also applies to those close contacts if you are close contact and you've been fully vaccinated and uh which is less than six months from your last vaccine and or you've been uh had a booster uh we you will not need to be in quarantine and so the guidelines there the guidance there is just strict masquerading for 10 days while monitoring your symptoms so i encourage everyone to look back at that refer to that please call your school nurse families if if you have questions staff reach out to your school administrator if you have questions about the time for quarantine or and or isolation i also just want to remind everybody that the pandemic has presented many challenges for us for our

065staff our students as well as our families and that receiving the coveted vaccine really is very important in protecting our students our staff our families and our community and in allowing us to keep our schools open five days a week so booster doses of the vaccine are now available for our students who are 12 through 15 years old and they may lessen the risk of infection from the virus so we will continue to work with the city of lynchburg and the health department to provide access to vaccines and boosters for our students and our staffs as much as possible um i also want to remind the board as well as the community that we are lynchburg city schools is uh has a free covet 19 testing program for students and staff and it's a partnership

066with the department of health we encourage staff and parents to complete the consent and registration process and i do believe that that the link to that the materials of how to complete the the registration uh process in the consent form were also resent last week to our staff and our families but once you complete that registration and consent process you will be able to participate in a random weekly screenings those are asymptomatic screenings and that will also allow you to gain access to the free binax now testing kits if a staff or a student begins to show symptoms we can provide them with a binax now testing kit to take home and do a self-test there director brown do you have anything to add regarding the covet update and the protocols good afternoon board i

067would just like to reiterate vaccination is one of our best mitigation strategies um against this pandemic and encourage families and individuals to go out and get vaccinated and receive the booster but also to mask up and if you have any questions about how to wear your mask or the type of mask um just to reach out to us and we can help advise you um in that as well lastly i would ask if you have a sick child and if you are sick and you're our employee um to please stay at home reach out to your medical provider and let them make the recommendation in terms of you know whether or not you are sick whether you need to be tested for covet and work with us as a school division because we are a

068community as one we're doing our best to keep our doors open all of our staff let me say it again all of our staff are working diligently to ensure the safety of everyone on campus and i just encourage our families to continue to work with us as we implement these new guidelines well thank you as you heard from both deputy superintendent pew and director brown although it may not stop you from getting covet being vaccinated getting both fully vaccinated both doses and boosted may lessen the effects also get you back to school and back to work sooner and that's what we want we want to try to keep our doors open as as a five days a week giving excellent instruction we want our staff healthy we want our students healthy if you have to

069miss due to sickness by all means we are not encouraging people who are not feeling well who are sick to come to work come to school what we are saying is that we want to keep schools open so that you can come to work come to school during this pandemic and not have to shift into being fully remote as we were at the start of this pandemic in march 2020. so anything that we can do that will lessen the effects of this such as getting vaccinated getting boosted wearing a mask limiting social distancing and just being safe is going to be a great thing you are seeing part of our covet response team at the division level which is deputy superintendent pugh director brown andrea bryant is our nurse coordinator she also helps out betsy

070baloo is our contact tracer at the division level but a lot of the work is also done at the school level and the school's covet response team are the administrators the school nurses and almost everybody else right because at some point they're making a lot of phone calls on following up checking in on students it really is a full-blown team effort in terms of doing it it even extends into our athletic program where our athletic directors and our coaches also have a covet monitoring response as well so all of us are vested and involved and that brings me to well how do you make a decision like you did tonight with regard to whether or not a class a school will shift to remote throughout this school year we have been shifting classes or parts

071of classes you are the students say some of his classes is is out for quarantine we've quarantined first grade classes when when we absolutely have to it is not what we want to do but at some times we get to the point where we become staff critical and i've done a video about this probably need to redo it because it's about two years old now talking about staff and safety jaden praised our substitutes that are there every day they're there every day working very hard alongside the staff who are giving up their prep time in any other free time to help out it is very difficult when we have high absenteeism some of the absenteeism is due to quarantine positive covet tests some of the absenteeism is due to life some of it may be

072due to the fact that daycares are closed and our staff our families have families themselves that they have to stay home and care for some of it may be if we quarantine a class within lynchburg city schools a lot of our staff have students in our very school our very own schools and they have to take care of their children so there are multiple reasons we typically start looking at when we approach about 30 percent of our staff being out and you know at ec glass it's been since the start of coming back in the new year we've been keeping an eye on it they hit staff critical today and we're really looking at the safety of bringing everybody in and for that reason um we've decided that we will go remote learning for just

073a couple days not until the end of the year that was the rumor yesterday that we were shutting down until the end of the year but that's not true just for a couple days so we have a combination of critical staff as well as we still have a lot of covet calls that have come into the school that we are still contact tracing and finding out information for so we have some unknowns out there in terms of folks particularly if they report it today we probably didn't get a chance to get a call back find out everybody who they might have been in close contact with to follow through um and and i'm looking at dr brennan but it's my understanding that this is much more contagious which would explain the higher call volume from

074folks particularly coming back from the holiday break so it is for three days until friday the staff covert response team along with the school staff so right before the board meeting in addition to the division staff and the school administrative staff we also had our transportation staff on our food school nutrition staff on because when we shift to remote it is a full service as to what we're going to do so we will be providing meals for pickup and i'll let them talk a little bit more about that but i just wanted to reassure the community that we don't make those decisions we don't take them lightly and it's a very difficult decision to make but we do have to balance out the safety of the students the staffing our ability to safely monitor kids

075all day long and just to get through it our hope is to get back to school so on friday we will reconvene covert response team both district and school to look at the weekend because we recognize that there are activities and events that are occurring over the weekend as well as what does tuesday look like since we have monday the martin luther king holiday so again i will turn it over to deputy superintendent pugh and director brown to fill in some details about that and then we can have miss flora close it out with anything specific for the school ec class again dr edwards again as dr edwards said we met today with the staff administrative staff at ec glass to discuss the number of of staff and students that have been impacted by covid

076again we have to look at this the staff that we have in the building do we have enough staff to cover is it staff critical we are looking again at the number of positive cases and quarantines that we have in terms of the spread in the building and so uh together we made the decision that it really was in the best interest of our students and our staff and our families as well as our community uh to to shift ec laws high school to remote learning for the next three days that does include athletics and activities starting tomorrow as dr edwards mentioned the staff will we will reconvene on friday to reassess and look at some of the numbers of the calls that have been coming in to the school nurse and to the school

077administration over the next three days and reassess the possibility of resuming activities in athletics over the weekend and we'll communicate that decision with our families on friday by the end of the day uh probably by no later than 6 p.m on friday whether athletics and activities will resume for the weekend that information will be coming from school personnel as dr edwards said we'll we'll communicate through throughout the weekend and then we'll reconvene on monday and look at our staff numbers and see if we have enough staff to to cover to safely cover and provide instruction and supervision for our students to return on tuesday as monday is a holiday for students and staff so i will let dr latonya brown and miss flora speak and add anything else that you need to you feel is

078critical for your families in the community to know now yield to miss flora um because we had a staff meeting with her staff and her team answered questions that they had so miss flora do you have anything else to follow up just a couple of points i do want to thank publicly my faculty and staff um they have been amazing and jumped in and helped out whenever they could of course jill wood our nurse and everyone that has helped with things and i also want to thank you all our coveted response team division coveted response team i do want to stress that a very detailed email and communication came from me and and students we do expect you to zoom there is a schedule that's included in that this is only for three days so

079when i walk around to teachers classrooms tomorrow i expect to see people on zooms in involved in instruction tomorrow is a technically an early dismissal day so we're going to follow that schedule so that our students who have gov school stem anything like that can follow along with that schedule but we in we want students and expect students to be involved in instruction and we will be taking attendance and this is only we hope through friday and that is what i wanted to stress so all information that anyone should need is in that communication and certainly reach out to your teachers if you have any questions as well i do want to also stress that in that communication that principal flora just referenced a breakfast and lunch will be available to students through the curbside

080pickup which we've done in the past at the auditorium entrance at easyglass from 11 to 1 on wednesday and again on friday some students may have left their chromebooks and their technology at the school today when they went home hopefully they all took them home with them but if you are a student and you don't have your chromebook you may go to the auditorium side entrance again and check in with an ec glass staff member and they will give you further instructions as how to access your chromebook we also recognize that some of our families and students don't have access to the internet at home and so the it department will be available tomorrow between the hours of 11 and 1 the same time that the meal distribution is taking place um outside the auditorium

081to check out mifi hot spots to those students who who may need them so i just wanted to reiterate that again all of this information is in the communication that came uh from miss flora and her team as well as that went to the community from the communications team okay are there i think you guys have some questions or all right revolt before we uh entertain the questions again thank you staff uh for getting right to the point on this matter uh the board is aware that previously board governance that the board would only intervene with a division-wide matter and so this is certainly within the peer view of our staff and we appreciate what they've done and i think we can be most helpful with pertinent direct questions at this time dr gupta i

082have a couple of uh concerns you know last time when we went for wednesday off you know we decided on a tuesday school board meeting remember and when we went on allowing wednesday hour now we are closing the school tomorrow and the announcement comes this afternoon to the parents so was there no telltale signs earlier to make an eleventh hour decision i have few questions if i you can you want me to go through all of this well let me let me just steal the telltale signs of that covet numbers come in each day substitutes also sign up each day call outs happen each day so i will tell you our principals start today thinking okay i'm going to be covered and then maybe not so much because something else has happened so we do

083monitor it to look at are we getting close to those numbers and today we actually that was today was the day that we really did get close to this is staff critical um as far as saying hey on monday let's predict that friday we might be closed we try not to do that uh and and that is the school of thought we could just say it looks bad it's going it's trending bad so let's go ahead and make the call but now and then if friday it's not that we've we've already put in place that we're gonna go remote our goal is to try to keep schools open so we do apologize to families for the late call it really is what's happening before we do the call is we're calling every sub checking with

084every person trying to return as many of those coveted calls as possible to see who is going to be available in the building as well as deploying staff from the central office and other locations the problem is i received an email from administration about covet dashboard this afternoon and there was no indication of easy glass being about to go remote in that email that was something triggered between that email no no no the covet dashboard that you received is the one that i send to you every single week from the vdh i send it to the school board it is the one that they do for schools it comes out on monday afternoon and generally i either send it on monday or tuesday so those are two separate things you would have received that covet

085dashboard anyhow that is community spread um that's not school so that's what's going on in the lynchburg city community what we do to what we did today was we talked about what's happening in our schools and with our staff and how does it align with the senate bill which requires five days of instruction how does does it do we violate that bill or the law so the bill says the the default is five days of instruction that's what we have default to five days in instruction and you may shift to remote learning to mitigate the effects of covit and i think originally it was if you had a lot of positive cases or quarantine cases but now we're seeing that the between the worker shortage and the the call outs and having not have people

086in the building and being understaffed that that is causing a supervision issue we before we had this this concern with heritage elementary school last december 2020 i think we had to to shift heritage elementary school we shifted lincoln elementary school earlier this year we shifted sheffield earlier this year those schools were shifted for two days for remote learning and even last year we ended up shifting the entire division because the transportation department was so significantly impacted so the default is to go for the least amount of shift possible you have another question dr gupta thank you for those questions anyone else with a dr brennan i want to thank the administration and the staff and the principals of the schools for the for dealing with this amazing situation which i'm sure is so challenging that

087the hospital is not allowed to say that they're in a crisis state because there's implications about closing the hospital that occurs but they clearly are in a crisis state i think as of monday they had so many patients in the emergency room they had three beds of their 53 beds that they could actually see patients who are not covered patients and we all know the numbers in the hospitals have gone up although this is this is an infectious virus and theoretically not as serious as other variants we know that because of the numbers there are a lot of people infected so i'd say the hospital is in crisis and the schools are in crisis and those who are dealing with it every day we really appreciate it and thank you for this excellent presentation of

088where things stand um i also want to thank the staff who have gotten vaccinated you know unfortunately we still end up with a very low percentage of individuals in the community who are vaccinated by our staff i think last time we heard was in the 70 to 80 percent range of being vaccinated so thank you all for doing that that clearly is helping us a lot there are other mitigation areas that have been commented on in massacre one which dr edwards has commented on i think that maybe someone's going to tell us about mass supply i'd also be interested in hearing maybe as part of that about ventilation because that also is a very important piece in what we have done proactively or do we still need to do regarding ventilation um and then i

089have a few questions that i have and that families have raised to me about the new policy that i like to state and perhaps that the cove and response team can get back in some type of a message to the community not necessarily answer these tonight but but one of the ones that people have concerned about is the lunchtime guidelines in the policy because it states that if an individual who has had covetous we know can come back in five days wearing a mask but obviously at lunchtime they're not wearing the mask and if someone's within six feet of that person at lunchtime and that person turns positive then all the individuals around them are considered to be contacts also and that seems to be somewhat of a risky situation and i appreciate hearing how

090that can be addressed but i'll go down my list if that's okay and see which ones you want to answer and some of you might want to postpone the other thing is that the vdh guidelines which we have seen suggests that a student who has been exposed should be tested on day five that not only should they come out of they can come out of a quarantine at day five and remain mass thereafter but they suggest that they should be tested this again is for exposure not for someone who's infected we do not need to test someone who's been infected but for exposure and i don't know where that can tie into our vista program as far as a way to use those tests for those students if it felt to be appropriate the other

091one this comes from providers in the towns because obviously the hospital is overwhelmed and providers are overwhelmed and the section for athletes has said there needs to be a signed return to play form to get back from the medical provider to get back into athletics the providers are concerned because they are overwhelmed with this situation also and not only is that a concern but their other concern is that and and perhaps someone can clarify for this me for this also that some uh some schools will state that if you do a home test which is positive you need a confirmatory pcr done in a physician's office to document that and that in this day and age is also terrible for providers offices i think at this stage of cobit we can say that if you

092have a rapid test which is positive you have rapid tests you don't need to go and have another test done also we know that the testing is so difficult to find so those are my main questions i would also say that as has been said about how important the vaccine is that i hope that the lynchburg city schools will think about partnering with the health department perhaps to do some vaccine clinics maybe at a site maybe once a week for staff students families to be vaccinated and i hope will help that as far as the rapid response team that the health department is part of that in some way by communication i think in our original return to learn we said that the health department was going to be our our partner who we look

093to to how to deal with this and i particularly think you know the the 64 000 question is this is going to continue for several more weeks at least do we get to the point in the view of the health department that we need to close the schools likely close to schools for terrible flu epidemics where we've got to close it to stop it so that issue is hopefully one that'll be way down the line but i certainly would appreciate their input so once again thank you to the staff thank you to the teachers thank you to the students who are working so hard to keep everyone safe the schools are in crisis but i really think that as we've done in the past we're doing the best we can to keep everyone safe and

094i as one board member certainly appreciate it i'll respond to what i can dr brennan in terms of the vbh being part of our rapid response team that was not mentioned but we absolutely are in communication with them on a daily basis director brown and her team are communicating with them when we have questions about contact tracing or close contact or exposure or quarantine or isolation we are in communication with them and they provide guidance to us on a daily basis so we did admit that they may not be formally sitting on that team as we have those conversations but we do consult with them for guidance and input on a daily basis director brown i am not sure on the rapid test followed by an additional test i don't know that we have recommended

095that no we have not um at this time we have allowed the students to come back after day five showing um no symptoms or waning of symptoms um as per the cdc guidelines in terms of mandating testing we as a school division at this time due to the shortage of the test have not done that and was not advised to do that as we consulted with vdh but as we're going through these new guidelines this is something that we can come back and look at we've also looked at the test to stay program um and i've vetted that out with the principals to get their information i mean excuse me their feedback in regards to that in their input in regards to that because the implications of that would be based upon school board's recommendations

096and creating policies as well um coming back from the break our focus has been to create a safe environment for our schools and to keep our doors open so we do collaborate almost daily with vdh and they do review our correspondences that we do send out and give us input as well and they also work with us on flyers and communications that we do send out and participate in our meetings as we meet with our testing agency um aegis who does our vista testing um as well so when we talk about collaboration with bdh it's very um heavy um and we've also invited in a board member as well to give input and members of the health advisory committee to see some of our meetings as needed as well so the home tests we have

097been accepting um especially right now due to the staff excuse me the shortages of tests and the school nurses have been doing that on a case by case scenario in regards to athletes at the school level and i would check back with the athletic directors it was across the board in order for the athletes to come back at that time and covet on set due to some of the respiratory and cardiac issues um at one point that they had to have a return to play signed off on and when we talked to the athletic directors and teams they recommended that they return to play after 10 days that's a conversation that we can take back to the team and have a a conversation again for the safety of our students so we can take that

098back again and have discussion and bring that information back to the board in regards to lunch time um the cdc policy uses the word ideally um when we're talking about the six feet social distancing within that that being said we have highly encouraged and recommended to all of our administrative staff um to separate the students that have come back off a quarantine on or isolation on day six and to seat them separately from everyone else we are working with the schools to help implement that as we know and reached out to vdh no one really considered the lunchroom um or cafeteria when having some conversations in that that is a stretch for us as a division and we will work with each school individually to assist and help with that to separate the students so

099we mitigate the spread or the exposure of new students as we facilitate the lunches in the cafeteria so they might have a designated room designated area in which those students will be asked to sit we communicated that in a news um letter email last week to the parents um as well all right thank you both dr gupta dr brennan you had a follow-up dr bruno so just one file thank you all very much for the for the answers and thank you for being so thorough and this is not need to respond to now but also the question about testing at day five for someone who's coming back who has been exposed if you could just look at that at some point and then lastly can can the administration look into some way to communicate these

100points to families and the communities i mean i think this this whole topic is obviously very important and i think requires some type of a mechanism whether it's the new video message that was done yesterday or a town hall meeting some way that people can be reassured that we really are doing the best we can which i know you are doing the best you can but for them to understand and have their questions answered i think would help with a lot of the concerns that are out there for parents and for their children thank you so much so noted so noted dr brennan uh clearcast that as well uh dr carla my concern is we're talking about the lunchroom but what about the buses when the student gets on a bus look how crowded those

101those yeah the mask but it's yeah but it's been that way all year yeah it has been that way all year and the concern with lunch is that the student can't eat with a mask on so that if you're sitting close they have to take the mask down and so uh the the bus certainly is a concern and it's been a concern all year but the the lunch is more so the concern because the student has to to pull down the mask and in the past they've returned after day 10 uh sometimes after day 14 and so this is just a shorter period of time and they're recommending that the mass be worn very strictly and so we're working the as with us with our uh principals and and school administrators to to make sure

102that we have plans in place to as much as possible make sure that our students that are returning um are as far away as possible during the lunch period so are we discouraging reiterating um this is new yeah so coming in um trying to implement some of these things without specific cdc or bdh guidance we are watching our numbers we are watching for inner spread whether it's the bus the classroom the cafeterias and we are watching that daily as a school as a team to see if we have specific patterns that we're looking at and foddering to also give that information to vdh to assist us in making the best decision and recommendations in regards to health mitigations i would just ask the board to give us a little time because we had very few

103guidance to work with and we're trying to work this out as a school division working it out through our principles and we're doing it day by day all right thank you thank you director brown all right uh dr gupta what you wanted to say i just wanted to say that vdh i got my booster shot on heritage high school parking lot the vdh had a van parked there all the young men of lcs students were getting vaccines so i saw the collaboration and so we do have dates and i apologize we've been working diligently um every single elementary school will have a booster date in which we're vaccinating any school provide i mean excuse me any employee on that site and the students as well for the vaccination or for the booster and i'm going

104to have to work with the administration and leadership team to give get out other dates we do have three community dates that are coming up and one of them is monday um and i apologize i haven't been able to get that to miss reeves yet we will be running a vaccination from um 12 o'clock to 2 o'clock at the ec glass high school on the auditorium side for boosters or vaccinations from anyone 5 and up as well so we will be getting that information out to the community we have a lot of clinics going and opportunities for students and staff to get vaccinated along with their loved ones because we've opened it up to community members as well well two things one is i know dr edwards in the past we had to work with

105vdh to whenever we had to close the school so we're still doing that okay because it seems like we're not work i don't know what the conversation is but i know we are working with vdh and have been continually and i just heard about the communication but i heard the administrators say that they're communicating these issues and these concerns and how have they communicate communicated this to families well each school has a newsletter so some of you are on the various newsletters for individual schools but if you're not connected to that school you might not get that newsletter or and i do have to say different folks like different modalities of communication some people like the printed very detailed read some people won't read that they want a short and sweet so in our division

106in our schools we have everything from you know the the the newsletters that go home some of them are class dojos that um i know heritage elementary uses that and it's very informative uh sandusky middle school does a sunday night message um to families that comes across through you know you can get a phone call a text message various ways of doing it and what we're starting to learn is that same message multiple ways and that might not be your flavor you may not want to be the one to say send me the eight page document with all the details we're trying not to just limit it to one way of communicating so you may have noticed that when we did the message it's um some folks are saying just give it to me short

107and sweet tell us what we need to know why aren't you talking about what we talk about and just give us the direction and that's what that's intended for while others actually want to read every line in the vdh document and we're trying to be respectful of folks and say what do you need to know and then how much of that do you need to know and just pick your flavor in terms of what you want so and again the clinics that are happening and i was going to mention the mlk day and please don't park on the auditorium side the langhorne side of glass because we are doing a clinic that's coming up um so it's coming out multiple multiple ways of doing it so what's the best way for someone that doesn't have

108a child in the school system to hear to go on the lcs website or that's what we're starting to do because um some of the things we're just coming home to again if you're at glass you've got the glass notification but not necessarily if if you don't have a child that glass so we're trying to do more communications that are available on our website we also recognize that people don't go to our website there's some research on website traffic we have things on youtube because we have folks that like to look at video messages versus text messages versus different different things so right now the latest messages will be posted on our website if you don't have if you're not connected to a school right now and just one more question since the uh we're

109talking about mask on the school buses are we discouraging students from eating and drinking while they're riding on the bus for the most part yeah we've been doing that keep your mask on because that was originally the first round of three feet or less all right i am very i am very impressed with the way board members are uh getting right into it with well thought through uh questions and thoughts but we don't want to leave anybody out who have had a chance to to raise any questions or concerns around this matter and we certainly want to thank staff for getting us there we can clearly see that we are all working as hard as we can to deal with these matters and taking in all of the suggestions so that we can give this

110same message multiple ways and i'm very proud of that all right um dr edwards i think that we have reached the end of that and we can now deal with the early release time okay so early release time that is the two hour early release that students have and the goal of that was to provide just a small amount of time for staff to catch up do some prep time since they are covering classes helping with contact tracing and dealing with even some some shortages that aren't related to covid and we put that in place for about a six week period and we said that we would revisit it in january and i feel like this is deja vu when we were in june being hopeful that life would look different when school started and

111then we had delta we worked our way through delta came up with some things and thinking life would look different now we have omicron so where we were hopeful that hey we are probably going to get attendance under control because we're expecting this to go down now we're seeing a more contagious version of it which is still impacting our our attendance so the thing that i would like the school board to consider tonight is to continue the early release which is on wednesday it's a two-hour early dismissal for students staff stay for another six week period which would take us through tomorrow's already an early release date january 12th but it will take us through the two wednesdays in january the 19th and the 25th and the four wednesdays in february and why february well

112from what i'm hearing and dr brennan you can weigh in on february seems to be the time that we think this thing is going to peak is allowed a little bit in february so i'm hopeful that we'll have the attendance absenteeism under control a little bit better so that we are not utilizing our staff as much as we are currently in terms to cover class as well as utilizing non-school staff division staff to also go over and cover class so my recommendation is for the board to consider extending the early release of the wednesday early release from january 19th up until february 22nd all right governor's team you've heard a consideration from the superintendent that has reflected some thought around why we're doing this and the continuing it for this period of time is there

113any discussion or if someone would like to entertain a motion at this time or how would people to entertain a motion around the recommendation i have a question question by ms morrison have we had any feedback from staff for principals or families about has just been helpful has it been how has it impacted their ability to prepare for classes and i know losing your prep time it's it's really hard when you're covering classes from early in the morning to the end of the day and you're exactly right so much more work is done outside of school but that little bit of prep time really helps and um so have we had any kind of feedback the feedback has been positive to the to the point where this is why i'm sitting here recommending because it

114really is coming from the staff and we just continue this for a little bit longer and see where we are the extra time does help and i want you to think you know while we're talking preparation for class there's a lot that you can do at home but there is also some stuff that you can do in your room where all your resources are right there and the thing that they probably don't have at home is a copy machine if they needed it or things like that so having that time that's guaranteed on a wednesday something to look forward to you know you're not going to have to cover class has been helpful it's a small amount of time for staff but it but it is being used properly what is the pleasure of the

115board dr brennan i'd like to make a motion that we extend the early release time for an additional six weeks for staff to have time to prepare for their curriculur their classes thank you dr brendan mr troll so you guys said i seconded it the motion has been made by dr brennan seconded by mr trust that we would uh continue our early release time to end on february the 22nd at that time to be further consideration if necessary any questions dr gupta i will not support this motion because to me we are going virtual you know on top of that when they're meeting face-to-face we're reducing it by another two hours of an opportunity for them to interact with their teachers and interact with their peers it doesn't make sense to extend it this time

116thank you dr gupta mr harvey i too will be voting against this motion um in my talking with different teachers talked a total of 14 three of which said that it was somewhat helpful and the remaining 11 said not helpful at all so thank you mr harvey any further discussion on this motion i'm mr trolls with respect to mr harvey the people that have reached out to me concerning the early release have been overwhelmingly in fact i think all positive of course i'm uh very mindful of the health of the child care issues but i think we're in a crisis mode here and i've heard overwhelming positive response from not only the staff but also the children it's just they recognize the teachers need a break and planning and it's been a positive response thank

117you mr trust if there are no further questions or discussion on the motion we'll ask the clerk to please call the role if you say yes you're voting in favor of extending the release to february 22nd if you say no that the early release time will expire and there will be no more early release time now i'm clear let's go about my trust yes scoop up my doctor running yes scoop up miss morrison yes scoop up mama dr carter yes scoop up my dr coleman thank you so much madam clerk how bored you've been doing so well and we only have the instruction and program piece and then our new business but it might be a good idea to take a two or three minute breather after what we've just discussed and then be fresh

118and and move on so if it okay with the board we'll take a five minute break [Music] do [Music] thank you all uh for that necessary time for this board and now we will uh continue in section i uh with i2 instruction and program policy review and uh boy this is uh before us tonight uh for action dr edwards absolutely so these were discussed um at the december work session there are some questions and i know that deputy superintendent pugh and director brown are going to address some of the questions some of the things we sent home but we'll kind of go over it but it is up for action tonight so i'm going to turn it over to deputy superintendent pew thank you so much dr edwards so as we talked about last time

119we are recommending that some policies that were not vsba policies that were the lettered policies student uniforms the accident and dental insurance the fee schedule and the school attendance area policy we recommend deletion for those particular attention to student uniforms in our discussion i believe at the school board meeting and then after that bass elementary school does is the only school in the division that does have school uniforms in speaking with dr edwards as well as the principal principal um monica hendricks we still recommend that we delete the policy and the regulation as monica includes this in her student and parent handbook and she can send this information home to inform them of the practice of student uniforms at bass so we will continue to recommend the deletion of that policy as well there was

120some question around the school attendance areas and the recommended um regulation that we are the regulation that we're recommending to delete our 7-12 specifically lists the streets in those school attendance areas and there was some question and concern about the board being the only governing body being able to determine the school attendance areas and zones so i want to thank barbara saunders for uh looking for these and we currently have a policy as well as a regulation that speak to school attendance areas um and in that it it discusses if you'll note that the school board is the only governing body that has the authority to change school zones so again we're still recommending the deletion of our 7-1-2 the updates again we sent some updates to the student and evalu student evaluation and grading

121procedures before the winter break there were a lot of questions that director brown nor i could answer at the time we spent some time before the break working with the school counseling directors both at uh heritage high school and unc glass high school getting a better understanding and we changed some additional wording in this policy so that we hope it's better more understandable to the board as well as to our staff and students and our community in terms of what we're asking students to do in terms of student evaluation grading procedures as well as participation in exams so again we're we're asking that you um approve these those two for update and the other five for deletion and yeah i'll take questions all right no standing like understanding that we understand mr harvey yeah uh

122the only question that i had was regarding um uh the student course load um and just the clarification on a it's especially with the announcement that we've just had that we're going to go to the block schedule does a still apply or does that require any modification uh that still applies and i don't believe it requires any modification um they are are you talking about being able to take an additional course during the eighth period yeah it just i see that it says six credit bearing courses and must elect to carry another approved course or a repeat course in the seventh period and i understand that we have eight periods correct right that well we currently have eighth period in the a b block now and that eighth period um and even though it's called

123eighth period it might fall in a student's schedule in period two or on an a day or in period um six on a b day um but during that eighth period the student is participating either in some enrichment or um some credit recovery classes those types of things so that is uh the course that that um they have the opportunity they have they take six courses and then they have the opportunity they must take that seventh quarter as the elective the eighth period then is that enrichment or um the other activities that are at heritage high school in ec glass what we're proposing for next year is that during that what we're calling either enrichment and i believe i'm not sure what it's called at ec glass um that students would be able to take

124an additional elective it's not required but they would be able to if they choose so and are in good standing and it's recommended by the guidance counselor so this policy would be okay as it stands if i could just follow up so so let's say that i have a student who is in ninth grade who is we have eight periods they could conceivably take six credit courses and one elective and could they leave early for that eighth period no no they may not where i'm kind of confused how how do we address that they are in school specifically in ninth and tenth grade that they are in school for eight courses because it says seven here i'll have to go [Music] here this year i'll have to go back and talk to the counselors to

125see if we specifically need to change the language but as i understand it students it's students seniors are the only ones if they have enough credits um and are on track to graduate seniors are the only ones that have a dismissal before the eighth period of the day so i will certainly follow up with with both the high school counseling directors to see if this needs to be changed so if we'd like to table this and not approve this one i can certainly bring it back thank you and of course that would be the pleasure of the board but i i would not want us to vote on anything that the language is not correct i agree okay we can we can remove this one and i'll bring it back next time so we will

126we're removing that if it is the sentiment of the board and we will be voting tonight only on the others that remain any further questions mr trolls i have a question i just need maybe a little clarification concerning policy ikc dash rz now and it's specifically the senior exam exemptions [Music] we would discuss this and i'll give everybody a moment to get to that so e senior exam exemptions clause number seven um it's concerning a student in the ap placement course i want to make sure i understand this so with respect to it says a student who students who do not take the ap exam must sit for the corresponding course final exam as noted in the program of study students who do not take the ap exam for their corresponding course will only receive

127a 4.5 rather than 5-0 quality point i just want to make sure that so they must sit for the ap exam or they must sit for their final exam if they don't take the ap class but they i guess they don't have to and that's implicit in this description if they sit for the ap exam they are exempt from the final exam if they want and is that a teacher call that they if they s if they take the ap exam they don't have to sit for the final course exam and it's stated so the ap exam itself that's given in may sits for and stands for the course the final course exam which the teacher would create and give so if i take the ap exam i don't have to take the end of

128course exam that's given by the teacher if i want to receive and there was a question and this has been we took the wording from the program of studies in in an attempt to make it more clear when reading the policy versus having to go to the program of studies to refer to this this has been the practice for many years students who participate in advanced placement courses and take the ap exam if they would like to receive the quality point of 5.0 so if i'm in an ap course and i want the weighted 5.0 quality point is to count in my gpa i must sit and participate in the formal and official ap exam if i choose not to sit in the ap exam they have to sit for the corresponding course final exam

129which is given by the teacher but it that final course exam is not a 5.0 quality point it is a 4.5 quality point so we that has always been in the program of studies and we wanted to make that clear in the policy mr trust if you go down to f right and it says on the next page a student advanced placement course will take the ap exam in order to receive a quality point of five right i just want to make sure it's it's somewhere it's understood that if you take the ap exam you don't have to take the course final exam and i understand that to be the pro the policy and just to make sure this is that's communicated here and if it's communicated elsewhere i'm good with it i just thought

130i want to make sure it's all uh is mr charles consideration accurate with what we have yeah i think going back to what he said the way it's written is if you don't sit for the ap exam you have to take the final exam what you're saying is if you sit for the ap exam you don't have to take the final exam it's almost like a geometry question is the correlation right is there a correlation there and i don't see the parallel the correlation and i mean if it's somewhere else whatever i just i'm very explicit because if it's not explicit is open to interpretation and when you start opening things in interpretation it gets the appropriate chair recognizes dr nils you can take the ap exam and take the final exam yes and so

131i i appreciate what he's saying and just you know you're trying to make it clear but it's leaving this yeah you can still take the final exam i guess if you want to bring your grade up and just make that explicit as opposed to just understood and i think to make it explicit we could leave in the red stricken words and have the option of being exempt from the final exam regardless of the grade in the course um or have the option of taking the exam we can certainly work on the wording there to make it clear that you have the option if you choose not to take the ap exam you must take the final course exam that's given by the teacher but if you choose to take the ap exam you certainly could

132take the final course exam so we can work on changing the language for that harvey took this as d basically says thou shall take an exam and e is an exemption which therefore then says if you take the ap exam you're not required to take the exam i think for me the way the rewording is is is placed is what's in green simply says if you don't take the ap exam you're you don't get the exemption you have to take the regular exam and it's only weighted at 4.5 in lieu of five so i think the the wording that that mr trost might be looking for is i think you have to to look at both d and e together because e is an exemption to d and the only reason i say that is

133because this is written like the building code right and i agree with you except for the fact that it says there will be one exam at the end of the course but you can take two right i mean you can take the ap and the final i would understand if i'm beating a dead horse stop me i'm good with that but i just i like things exactly explicit because then there's no room for interpretation and if you tell them hey if you include what as mrs pugh said and have the option being exempt from the final exam that's to me it's clear mr troshu one member of this board and each board member has equal value so this is a concern to all of us are we ready to approve these policies tonight this is

134the second concern that i've seen with the language uh tonight i'm good with the others i just i just this one i think is some of these two we can take that yeah i'm gonna suggest that those two that are listed under the lcs update we don't take a vote on tonight we'll go back and look at those in particular i see slash id dash rz look at number a in the implications of the eighth period um in an av block schedule and then looking at the ap and end of course exam and rewarding that and working on a better explanation of what you are required to do and what you have the option to do thank you uh deputy superintendent pugh is there any other considerations that you all would like to be removed

135uh from tonight's vote on these said policies is there anything else that needs to be removed uh and if we do it that way then we won't have to laboriously deal with the non-debatable motion to lay on the table as such is there anything else well i had a question on the school attendance zones uh surprised um i see that that policy jc defines that the school board sets the attendance zones and can change the school zones we don't have a policy or regulation that says this is what the school board decided there's a what a map on the website you know if that represented a document that we had approved but you know that's where my heartburn is about this policy you know the the previous the original letter policy at least it's defined

136it's written like a property property zone definition which okay that's kind of what it needs to be and i'm very uncomfortable with having our attendance zones defined which is what they are right now or would be defined by the website without a specific approval document that we that the school board has approved did the map be the document or you want like i i i don't know it's it i i like the existing policy because it's i mean it's pretty terrible to try to drill through but i mean at least it's i think it stands legally um and i just don't know what the status of having the website saying this is what the attendance zones are and maybe our attorney can weigh in but i just would like to have something formal this is

137hotel speaking i was going to say perhaps you can have your clerk look through past minutes and determine when the boundaries were established they may be within the past minutes of the school board thank you attorney towns before we get to mr harvey this is a master board in action so i i don't think we're ready for that either we need to uh deal with that um at a later point mr harvey i guess i hear exactly what dr nils is saying i guess my under my question would be specifically we are deleting this because my understanding was that this document specifically spelled out the areas but those areas might have changed is that correct because if if not i don't understand the rationale of why we need to delete this policy and that that

138i believe is what mr what dr nils is saying it's a regulation um and we're recommending deletion because we would have to make sure that these are which we certainly can do that we look at these uh school attendance areas that are in this regulation um at least once a year if not more often if things are changed so i think that was the reason is that it just defines those and it certainly can be useful i think if someone's looking for that but it's not really a policy around the ability to change the attendance zones and some of the other regulations that are listed in the other two policies and regulations so um whatever the pleasure of the board is we certainly can leave our 7-12 if that's the pleasure of the board as

139an act of regulation and we'll just need to make note that we need to check those on a yearly basis and make look at especially this year to see when they were last updated did dr nellis follow up well i was going to say you could just take our 7-12 and turn it into jcr omicron and just to have just basically map that all the way you know just copy that that policy into a into a new regulation and i why would that need to be reviewed every year because we don't do we don't do that now potentially this year um really this year with a fine tooth comb because we need to see when it was last updated but you're right once it's updated unless the board makes a change in school attendance areas

140we would not need to review that every year okay dr google and i'm willing to take what's currently there in r 7-12 and add it to the regulation of jc-rz as um you know additional information that's on that regulation let's stay together and again if we're doing things like that it has been in the po in the past board members have liked to see it and look at it and again if you don't want to do that tonight i'm fine with it i know dr gupta wants to speak and then out there i thought there was a motion on the floor to approve this now i've taken seen so many passengers being taken off the bus move here and there so i'm confused i'm not comfortable voting on it very good doctor gupta but at

141present that i don't know what's taken out what's taken in i got a lawyer i understand that's what i was just saying i understand but i do want you to know as of right now there is no motion on the floor we have just uh been entertaining the realities of a potential action item for tonight but we haven't moved to a motion yet and i would concur i like to look at what i'm dealing with and we're making considerable adjustments here dr edwards um i just and knowing that we have new board members um within the last couple of years since i've been um sitting superintendent but prior to my arrival about five years ago i think the board started a conversion so remember all of our policies were p followed by numbers are followed

142by numbers and since then and there were sections we have taken all of those to convert them to vsba policies so the first and foremost our practice of reading an old numbered policy and then trying to find the identical vsba version either the sba version covers it or we modify it to include pieces but our goal is to get rid of the numbered policies so to dr nillis's point if we're going to make or keep parts of the attendance zone attendance area i do recommend that we retool the vsba policy put it it's already got an rz which the z is meaning we modified it so that when you look at our policy table of contents you have a b c d and everything is lined up correctly so um i'm willing to go back

143and do that but i don't know that all the board members understood that that was a thing that we were doing and these are the last of the numbered policies which is why they're coming up for review this year thank you for that clarification dr edwards that's very very helpful so what is the pleasure of the board of concerns obviously fine work has gone into this on behalf of um dr uh director brown and uh deputy um what is your thought on this for tonight dr nellis i move to delete policies 7-33.3 r7-33.3 p 7-56 r 7-56 all right and the essentially what would happen is the rest of these would come back for another go around all right now dr nellis has that down very nicely in his head and uh i'm not sure

144if the rest of us have it uh but the motion is on the floor is there a second mr harvey a second all right there's been a motion and a second and uh we're going to now have questions and discussion of course we'll revisit the particulars of the motion dr brenner just i'd like clarification of which policies we're going to vote on tonight so we would delete vote on deleting the first four that are listed that says under conversion or deletion i see it so 33.3 56. yeah the 233.35 and the 256. 7-56's that we are deleting that we would guess that we would vote on just voting on that we would vote to delete them to delete them okay and then we would come back and deal with the others all right i think

145that has clarified see how you can clarify things very nice of dr gupta you you straight on that i understand just to delete these first four that's the motion just a dilemma nothing else right yes that's what i understand the motion the only thing left is r712 right we're not deleting that for now plus lcs update the two below that that's not part of your motion right say that again your motion is your motion just on the deletion yes it's just to delete anything else remains to delete the first come back at the moment and vote on to approve yeah the first four items and then what will come back is the school attendance zone regulation would come back as a as a re-titled vsba style regulation and then the two lcs update policies those

146will all come back again for some additional consideration all right any further questions or discussion on the motion to delete the for a vote to delete the first four uh to come back any further questions then we're going to ask the clerk to please call the roll if you vote yes you are voting to delete at this time the first four listed policies from consideration from tonight all right let's go back to my trust yes scoop up moment dr brennan yes school remember miss morrison yes school but remember dr carter yes school bought mama dr coleman yes school but momma dr nellis yes dr sinha yes good mama dr gupta yes scoop up member mr harvey yes now is there a motion in regards to the remaining policies they're going to bring those backgrounds back

147i moved you know just yeah we need a motion to bring him back all right i think i'm just trying to avoid the tabling process so so what we'll do is just next yeah we'll move the move that the uh two lcs update policies and the school attendance zone um regulation uh be brought back to us for additional consideration second second seconded by uh mr harvey uh and uh motioned by dr nellis any further questions or discussions these will come back uh i presume at our next meeting uh with those further questions or discussion madam clerk if you please call the roll scoop up yes group of mama dr brennan yes super member miss morrison yes scoop up member dr carter yes group of mama dr coleman yes super mother dr nellis [Music] thank you

148boyd and i think some really good decisions have been made tonight but now section j new business high school program of studies dr erwin yep so tonight we have before you just for discussion and probably a few more edits because we we're still adding pertinent information in the high school program of studies and i will note that also we are changing the address for the empowerment academy in the high school program of studies it's not reflected here but i do know that they made note to change the address for that and i'm going to turn it over to deputy pugh to discuss the changes some of the changes that are in there thank you again dr edwards and school board before you as mentioned we have the revisions for the program high school program of

149studies for the 2022-23 school year first i'd like to thank the staff at the division level as well as the school level who spent many hours working on these revisions and giving it consideration and thought we had some supervisors from student services department as well as curriculum and instruction and both high school counseling departments who spent many hours working on these edits and revisions so i want to thank them for their time their consideration and their thought there are some changes we are not going to go over them all i hope you've had the opportunity to look at what those proposed changes are with the additions and deletions that have that are in the draft document i've asked dr bryant to be here to highlight and cover some of the major changes that you might

150see and then give you an opportunity to ask questions we also have high school ec glass high school english teacher aaron reed with us at this time to answer any questions that may come up about the new ap course in african-american studies so i will turn it over to dr bryant um to to go over just some of the major changes um for this year's program of studies uh good evening board members and dr edwards um first i'd like to go over the career and technical education edits uh since that's my area the uh the main updates are to match the vdoe description so we change the the course descriptions some of the sequences prerequisites and even some of the course titles to match the vdoe descriptions um additions to the cte include an opportunity

151to take economics of personal finance in the summer and an entrepreneurship course that could be that sequences with both business and marketing courses so that would be beneficial to students especially at the alternative setting that may not have an opportunity to to have a sequenced course they could take the entrepreneurship course one thing i'm very excited about is the cvcc career technical education academy and that is for seniors who may be allowed to take cte courses at cvcc for programs that are not offered by lynchburg city schools uh the academy is shared with other school divisions and enrollment is limited uh the courses include the course uh subject matters include electrical technology fundamentals emergency medical technician health sciences heating ventilation and air conditioning industrial maintenance mechatronics and welding so we're very excited about students taking

152those programs and they can get to cvcc because it's on the same schedule as the stem academy some of the other changes are the early college program has been a change in the literature courses offered and this is a cvcc change there's also a proposed change in dual enrollment math offered at the two high schools and this is also in conjunction with cvcc the stem academy looks like there are plenty of changes but it's just a change in the formatting and how the information is shared so the stem academy looks different but it's the same courses we are also proposing that all dual enrollment courses have a 5.0 course weight the only exceptions are college success skills and internships which would remain a 4.5 course weight this would change would match what our neighboring divisions

153do also an addition would be the ap african-american studies course and this is a new college board ap offering and i believe aaron reed is on the line and he can speak about it thank you good evening yeah yeah um thank you dr bryant and out uh erin if you'll just wait just a second and and school board members if you have any questions um in particular or if you'd like um aaron reed to go over the information about the ap african-american studies we can do that first um and then entertain questions later what is your what would you prefer yeah sorry to jump the gun there earlier um thank you so much for having me this evening real quick brief background for where this comes from last summer summer of 2021 the college board

154reached out to me to be a part of a group of teachers around the country to create the standards for one of several new classes that they uh are offering this coming year and so the course that i worked on with educators across the country creating standards and just kind of talking about the overall scope of the course was this ap african-american studies course and the most important thing to understand about it is that it is an elective force that is not inherently a history course and it is not inherently an english course it is kind of as the title designates a studies course in the same way that a college or university might offer it at the end of this summer we were polled those of us who were on that committee were pulled

155about whether our schools might be interested in being part of a kind of elite pilot group this coming year to to pilot this course um and so i indicated that i was interested and that was kind of the end of it there was then some communication between the college board and the school system that ec glass had been selected as one of only 30 schools in the entire nation to go ahead with this pilot program if we were interested so i i am very excited about what this course could mean um not just for the school but for the students um who i think have an interest a kind of inherent interest in in the topics that this course would cover i'm particularly interested in what this course can mean for our non-traditional ap students

156i think in a big way this can reach a lot of our students who otherwise maybe would not have ever considered an ap course and so along those lines i think it has a lot to to uh offer again i was a part of the group that put it together so i'm here tonight if you have questions about the course uh i am i am happy to answer those thank you very much so thank you mr reed my question is does this course crosses what the discussion has been before and we said we don't do is a critical race theory so there's no is there a crossover there are completely two separate sets the purpose of the course is to expose our young people to the writers and the thinkers from the history of african-american

157uh thought and philosophy and writing throughout the history of this country and so again as a studies course as a survey course the concept is for kids to encounter what those writers and thinkers um we're doing and for the kids to kind of critically assess some of that that's i think that's that's kind of the clearest answer that i can give you mr reed you answered that very well so you know the question comes down to who are the writers and the thinkers you know are you is it going to be a broad cross section or is it going to be from one side of the aisle the other or you know what i mean i mean that's where the issue comes down to it's like right so um as an english teacher one of

158the things that happens uh at ec glass as the chair of the english department when we are adding new authors to our courses in 9th grade or 10th grade for example there's a process that we have to go to when we are looking at text like that just because this course isn't designated an english course doesn't mean that it doesn't go through that process there would have to be uh teachers and and a committee the same way that when we adopt a book in an english class we have to go through those things um so i don't i don't see this course operating outside of the boundaries of anything that we haven't already done in the past dr carter you stated that there would be topics do you have any examples to show what type

159of topics the students will be will be taught or i don't have a list of topics um one of the things that they're looking at for courses like this so the other ap course one of the other ap courses um that i teach is called um ap capstone um mr trust's children went through that with me and that is a course in which students actually have a great deal of control over the topics and the subjects that they're interested in so i i don't have a list of topics for this new course partially because this coming summer like every ap course there's a week-long training that i would go to um i suspect that what the college board is interested in doing as we move forward is empowering students to find voices that interest them

160so that they can study them and study sort of the skills that some of those authors and thinkers worked under again some of that is is just my what i kind of gleaned from the work that i did this summer when i when i go to training this coming summer obviously i'll know quite a bit more dr carter i know that there may be parents that are concerned that this is going to be an indoctrination course of trying to get more uh african americans on black lives matter or some other type of but this is will be taken will be taught just like any other course regarding the subject matter and student input not in this heading primitive any further questions on this particular matter dr brennan then then mr trolls so mr rita i'm

161very in support of this program and i think the description is is very appropriate and i'm thrilled that you're in charge of it too says one of the really outstanding teachers at ec glass i know it will go well one question i just for clarification is that there was a curriculum that we saw several months ago that was sort of a state curriculum that was also talking about afro-american history i think this is a whole separate project than that project so the state initiative that we've talked about before this is different from that that's my understanding and actually i'm glad you asked that because i do want to clarify of course you all already know because you've seen the program of studies we in fact have an african american history class um at ec glass

162and i don't know if heritage offers it but it's possible that they do as well this in no way replaces that force in fact part of my conversations in my school with my principal um and with some others see this as almost a partnership with that kind of a course again this is not a history course but i think that there is a benefit now for kids to take let's say african-american history and become interested in those writers and those thinkers and then to find out that well there's now something that that they can kind of move to there's almost a sort of a phase two as it were with an ap class that is going to you know have some college level thinking and writing going on with it where maybe the student can

163self-direct for themselves towards some of these writers um that they are interested in and so we see it we see these two courses really kind of working in concert with each other but that's a long-winded way of answering your question it's not uh it's it's not related to what you've read from the state or that that very specific little like history course thank you very much mr good to see you yeah i want to tell you you're an outstanding instructor and my children learn very very important life skills and writing skills for me i appreciate that my issue is i think i'd want to know a little bit more about it and i appreciate your initiative to get to join this this uh i call it kind of a test bed if you will um

164number one i don't like to be on the bleeding edge of anything and especially given the environment and this the crises that we are in as a school system just for dealing with cove and what have you i'm a little concerned about being on and i call it the bleeding edge because as soon as we start saying something along these lines we're going to get a lot of flak on it because people will interpret it is this a crt movement and things of that nature is there any way that we can get a little more information about the curriculum the class itself to kind of uh head those concerns off at the pass so to speak that's that's probably my my biggest concern is i don't want to set us up to be a target

165when if that's a perception that people have many times perception becomes reality in other people's minds and i just want to be very uh aware that we have enough crises going on just dealing with coba the stress level on our staff and our teachers i don't want to interject any more stress or crises if you will if we can avoid it through it through education or what have you in terms of educating the people this is what this class is about and it's an ap class and it's meant to uh you know allow students to do x y and z that that's all i ask for but again i appreciate you and uh you're an outstanding instructor and i think that it's well uh well received thank you well mr rita i must admit you

166you explained it to me very very well and i think mr trust and everyone have given some things this is for information for tonight anyway and we'll be able to get pertinent things but what i'm most impressed with is that of 30 high schools not just in the commonwealth of virginia but in the united states of america i'm assuming something that you put together whomever was selected i think that is commendable figure out all the pertinent pieces that we have learned that need to be addressed so that people can be comfortable with the content all right doc what else do we have on this now if there if there are no other questions on the program of studies or things that you would like us to just go back and review it will be coming

167back for approval and i will say it'll probably be modified as particularly with the cte courses and things that are coming on board so let's doctor dr carter and mr patrol i see the marine corps junior rotc and air force junior rotc is that now the reserve officer training program okay so will it be often in both schools or still heritage will have their own reserve officer training and then easy glass or how does that work now how would that work now yes yeah um jrotc and ec glass has one as well the change in there is the the the state does not offer them as a semester course anymore so they and and we've been using them as two semesters so the change in the program of studies it makes them a year-long course

168that's the change they're available at both high schools marine and air force yes thank you i've gone through quickly here um i have not gone through in detail this document however i just i want to understand i noticed um you had the introduction and then the deletion of the standard diploma requirements advanced studies diploma requirements i haven't looked to see what the what the issues are the modifications can you address those quickly can you address that i'm not sure i'm not sure specifically what your what the question is uh mr trust and i'd i'd have to have more detail and then probably get back to you okay where are you i'm starting at page nine which is standard diploma course requirements for students and then it looks like and then page 10 goes on to

16911 which is the advanced diploma requirements and then is redlined partition 13 14 is red line and it's we're pulling out one section requirements and replacing with the other i just want and i did not go to see what the differences are sorry this is coming from the changes that i believe have been made by the state in terms of these cohort groups uh is what's required for the different diplomas so i believe this is where the change is coming from but i will verify that and have more detail at the next in between our next meeting i can send that information out via email that is accurate um deputy superintendent pugh that these are the the way they're listed is first time ninth graders entering during this time so we had them in our

170book but now as we move past ninth graders who may have entered in 2017-18 you'll see them being removed and then on the earlier pages as you mentioned it's students who entered as of 2018 so that's the current kids that we have okay so those are vdoe changes we just had both because the program of studies for quite some time was serving both sets of kids and so the students on page 14 for instance the students um who entered in in ninth grade in 2011-12 are no longer our students in lcs so that this information doesn't pertain to them then on page 28 the flow chart mathematics instructional sequence options is read i guess that's redlined and i just want is it replaced somewhere so we know the mathematics sequence and maybe it just went

171from a flow chart to uh to verbiage but again that's page 28. okay it may have gone into the verbage in the next um description uh the courses may have changed there but i will follow up on that and send clarification as well yeah i believe that was true um i believe that flowchart may have been confusing and it went into the verbiage instead okay just like that as one board member i'm so glad to see that thing go away [Laughter] i love flowcharts never been able to make sense do believe if you continue to read the information is in in the verbiage that's below i'll i'll say i've been around here long enough that that flowchart was put in there because the verbiage was found confusing good luck oh boy all right well uh

172dr brennan one of the one question is that the uh time period for uh canceling or changing classes which change from 10 days to five days i just wondered if if there was what the reason was for that change of withdrawal from class from 10 days to five days when someone could get back to me or back to the board with the next session just a little surprise you had 10 days before to make the change and now it's five days dr bryant do you recall that being part of the discussion i i um i will have to admit i was not part of the group that worked on this as i i mentioned earlier i thank them for their their time and their commitment and their consideration um i imagine it's it's that um

173by 10 day 10 you're sort of far into content and it's it's more difficult to change a course to drop a course and to add a course without the student being uh very far behind but i will certainly reach out to the uh school counseling directors and verify that it's difficult to start a new class after you you're behind five days for right thank you all right anyone else so boy this will come back for us at our next regular meeting i would suspect uh concerning the high school program of studies and all of the things that you mentioned tonight will certainly be looked into by staff and vetted out in between now and the meeting all right thank you all very much thank you so much we've now moved to section k superintendent's comments

174absolutely so again wishing everybody a happy new year and um we're off to an interesting start with a snowstorm and now uh this but we are still excited to have our students um back with us and listening to some of the wonderful things you know as aaron reed said some of the selections and recognition of the hard work of our staff and and students i do appreciate the board extending the work time for staff i think it is needed even though it is a small amount of time they there is just a lot going on in being asked of staff and i want to just kind of limit my comments right now to this being and it keeps changing each time during the year but virginia department of education has selected this week as principal

175appreciation week so i just want to take time to acknowledge and celebrate the hard work that our principals assistant principals are doing in our schools and i'm sure if we all look back about five years at the job description of a principal almost everything that they've they're doing in a given day was not in that job description right now it has truly truly changed and our principles are just top-notch they have morphed with the changes they are doing everything that they can to be all things for our students there being the the medical support the social emotional support for our students and our families and i couldn't ask for a better group of individuals to lead the building during such trying times where we are seeing struggles we're seeing family struggles we're seeing students struggle

176and it has been difficult but they have been rock solid about keeping our buildings open and keeping their arms open to support not only their students i mean we've always known that that's been a big role that they've done but i have to tell you that they have extremely advocated particularly over the last two years for the adults in the building as well they have gone hard for the people in the building um to they have done some things to support them they're covering classes themselves and and i'm sure if they could drive a bus and cover class at the same time they would so i would just like to take take a moment and just absolutely thank our principals and our assistant principals during this week for their hard work and dedication to our

177schools and just say kudos to them and when we get to the other side of whatever the other side of this is and focus so much more time on instruction and academics you are really going to see them shine in the way that they were meant groomed and trained to shine but you're getting to see them shine in things that they're learning on the fly and for that i'm very very grateful to the to the group of principals excellent we do a round of applause for this yeah [Applause] all right that's it for me thank you and again happy birthday to you madam superintendent all right we're going to start board comments with mr harvey i'd like to give a shout out to mr hank hubbard and mr nat marshall both are been members of

178the the advisory board for partners in education and their dedication commitment and persistence has been what i believe has helped to somewhat navigate partners in education through a through a a a short spell where we're trying to get that program reestablished and brought back to life so i just wanted to to thank them for their service and their dedication and their persistence thank you mr harvey dr gupta i wanted to wish dr edwards happy birthday i wish you had told us before we could have dr coleman buy you a cake i wanted to uh share this thing it's i don't want to share as advertising so i want to make sure i'm not promoting a business but you look at this sign it says drivers earn 16 to 23 dollars per hour and this is

179a pisa delivery service and they are paying 16 to 23 dollars an hour to deliver pizza now we are paying our drivers 12 an hour no for delivering our precious assets from home to school and back to home and if you don't know why we have bus problems every year i've been hearing it's because of the wages we pay and i told you last time we have the lowest hourly wages around in surrounding counties i know surrounding counties don't matter but they do matter in terms of human resources and if you hire you compete that wages so maybe this board could consider attacking one item it's not possible to raise everybody's wages maybe we can this year's budget look at just driver's pages look at it the pisa they can deliver pizza why would they

180drive a school bus they can make twice the money doing the same thing so i don't want to just say when you see the proof the proof is in the pudding and the pudding is for that edward's birthday thank you dr gupta dr sinha i just want to um thank dr edwards for her participation in the earlier meeting today with legislative advocacy and community relations and she patiently listened to some of the issues and concerns and suggestions for how we improve community relations and communications it's a it's a really complicated constellation of issues and problems and time constraints and differing needs and she's really in a no-win situation so i really appreciate the community having patience with us as we really try hard to provide everybody with the information they need in a timely manner

181sometimes timeliness is just impossible i mean things are move rapidly and quickly and it's often difficult to know um when to inform how to inform why to inform so um they're doing the best they can everybody is stressed to the max some issues we can change and correct and we will do that where we can but everybody just needs to we all just need to be kind with each other and have patience and try to work together as best we can so thank you to you and your team for trying different approaches multiple ways to reach people keep trying keep doing that and we're bound to succeed at some point thank you dr center dr nils yeah i just want to thank all the staff administration superintendent happy birthday by the way down to custodial

182folks bus drivers it's this is a tough time every day is different every day brings up new challenges and people have to adapt and it's um it's we keep thinking it's gonna get better and it just keeps going on and on and i just want to say thanks to everybody thank you sirs thank you doctor dr carter i said happy birthday to dr edwards and also just want to say today i had an experience trying to buy a product and i asked for help and the person just stood there and i said well can you help me buy a product and he they just stood there and i said well can you you know i need some help and so what i'm saying now i know that we all short staff but if you're here

183and if you're working go ahead and work and talk to the people or your customers to help them with whatever you have don't just stand there and just like you're just here you know sell we can still sell our product we're still lcs so regardless of where we are or how many are there we can stand around and we can complain that we're overloaded and we aren't busy or we can help and ease frustrations but that's so frustrating to stand there and you don't know anything about a product and you're supposed to find out all the specs yourself so if any way we can help to get the message out or to make sure that we the message is out just to have people how they connect with it and that'll be helpful and just

184to make sure that we're doing all we can to make sure we're communicating and because that really lessens frustrations instead of complaining we can and no one's complaining that i've heard but just saying you know if someone comes up to you and they need assistance just let them know all the options that are available what they can do and i do want to thank everyone everyone is doing just amazing work from the if you look at how many students that our employees come in contact with it's amazing that they are coming and still have an energetic mind and energetic and able to help all the students and continue to want the best for lcs thank you dr carter mr morrison well my thoughts and sentiments reflect what everyone has said i am so appreciative for

185all the board members and the work that we are doing but especially the staff they're there on the front lines with our students and i just i am so grateful to have my grandchildren getting a great education so i am grateful and i want to say to dr edwards i just don't know how you accomplished everything you're only 29. i want your secret i like that very good dr brennan i just want to say briefly that i made the analogy before between between the hospital and the schools and i think that there's another analogy there which is that the health care providers are doing what they're doing because it's a vocation and they're so dedicated to helping people and i just think it's the same situation for all of our staff whether they're custodians or

186teachers or bus drivers or substitute i think they're there because they want to help our children they want them to be educated they want them to be safe and i just want to also thank with the other board members them for what they have done it's way beyond what they signed up for and thank you so much for what you're doing thank you dr brennan mr trolls i want to echo those sentiments i also want to just ask the parents to bear with us bear with the school system it's a difficult situation and you know adults take an interest in your children ask them what they did today get involved even if you can't be there doing a tutorial whether you take an interest ask them what their day was and that will go a

187long way and maybe making sure they stay focused and if they're doing the in-home school or wants to get back to classes ask them what they're doing make sure they're doing the homework make sure they got the nose to the grindstone and set them up to succeed thank you thank you so much mr trolls i did ask the clerk to provide a copy to each of you it's entitled continuing your master board designation and again congratulations to this board on being a master board and good things are being said about us around the commonwealth and this is just a sheet dr carter and i'll get with you uh we have to choose one of these three options they're very simple uh as we continue that designation um and you can just look at that and

188i won't label that point tonight but uh we just need to decide they're all one day sessions we do an annual self-evaluation supposedly anyway every year uh etc so um we'll look into that just want you to have that for your information and we'll get that straight uh at this time uh in section m the informational items are before you various committees acknowledge when they will be meeting next uh please regard the fact that on january the 25th we will have our school board work session and we'll be back from richmond dr cena be here in appleton for that five o'clock meeting and then the school board uh meeting on february the february the first at this time uh section n the notice of closed meeting pursuant to the code of virginia section 2.2-3711a1 the

189school board needs to convene a brief closed meeting for the purpose of discussing the following specific matters the superintendent's evaluation uh is there a motion to go into closed meeting a move that we go into closed meeting second been moved by dr carter seconded by miss morrison any further questions or discussion randall clerk please call the roll host yes goodbye dr brennan yes dr mrs morrison yes good morning dr carter yes cooper mumma dr coleman yes school but mama dr nellis yes yes doctor gupta yes let's go but yes all right uh public thank you and again shout out to the staff on that uh message that went out i thought it was tremendous and we're getting the word out uh we'll go into our brief uh closed meeting take a couple of minutes to

190get into that and then we'll be out of here as fast as we go in i think enjoy [Music] you