LCS School Board Work Session: June 15, 2021

001foreign we will now call to order our june the 15th 2021 school board works session of the lynchburg city school board and time certainly moves fast when you are doing a great work and so for our june work session tonight as we call our meeting to order we would appreciate that the public would recognize that your viewing and listening is very important to us and we will seek to move through our business tonight in the most thoughtful and productive way possible having said that i would like to move us to section b one which is our agenda approval and board members as is our usual custom the agenda has been featured for your review and it contains the pertinent items for us to share as we have agreed for tonight's meeting what is the pleasure

002of the board around approving the agenda for tonight's work session is there a motion move that we approve the agenda for tonight in the move by dr carter seconded by ms morrison any further questions or discussion we're not asking our clerk would please call the role school board member evans yes school board ms morrison yes school board member dr carter yes school what member dr brennan yes school board member dr coleman yes school board member dr nellis yes school board member doctor sennhai yes scoob up mama dr gupta yes scoop up my mr javi yes motion carries eight to zero thank you madam clerk we will now stand for our pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation

003under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you all for that very important moment and tonight's work session we have carved out a special section c and we would like to indulge the board now for a few moments for a very special presentation and after the presentations have concluded we will then ask any board member at this time if they would like to make any further comments and then we will move into section d of our meeting and the remaining items that need to be discussed tonight uh being mindful to the board that we do have a closed meeting at the end of our this upon her retirement as a member of the lynchburg city school board presented by the lynchburg city school board mrs bell h evans a champion crusader for public

004education in the city of lynchburg has worked diligently as a member of the lynchburg city school board for a total of three years her professional manner in dealing with people and issues earned her favor as a caring and compassionate individual who devoted herself to the service of lynchburg city schools mrs bell evans has been an able spokesperson and supporter of educational causes she has been encouraging to students and their families mrs evans a parent and an educator herself was knowledgeable of the challenges that many students parents teachers and staff members encounter throughout her service she was sensitive to the educational needs of all students and championed new and creative approaches to education her questions and comments demonstrated a keen understanding of the topics being discussed with this resolution the lynchburg city school board pays tribute

005to mrs bell evans a person of excellence and integrity who by effort and by example made valuable and far-reaching contributions to public education in lynchburg virginia whereas mrs bill evans served with distinction as a member of the lynchburg city school board for three years including chair of the legislative advocacy and community relations committee as well as the board representative to the educational foundation and ec glass high school whereas mrs evans keen insight and foresight were qualities of leadership that were appropriate to the needs of the lynchburg city schools during this period of change challenge and growth and whereas mrs evans consistently attended school events and programs she participated on boards and committees as a representative of the school board and she volunteered her time to help in all capacities throughout the school division demonstrating her

006true support of lcs and all students and whereas mrs evans while on the school board played a major role in the development of the lynchburg city schools budget review of the school board policies and the appointment of lcs senior staff and school whereas mrs evans dedication to the duty during the covet 19 pandemic contributed to the implementation of the return to learn initiative as well as mitigation policies to ensure the safety of all lynchburg city schools students and staff be it resolved that the lynchburg city school board of lynchburg virginia takes pride in the excellent service that mrs bell evans rendered to the operation and successes of the public schools of this community and be it resolved that the lynchburg city school board of lynchburg virginia hereby affirms its appreciation to mrs bell h evans

007for her three years of devoted service to public education during which she demonstrated carriage and tenacity in the pursuit of educational excellence her numerous contributions will affect generations to come the lynchburg city school board wishes to commend mrs bill h evans for the quality of leadership on behalf of the school division and its youth and for the quality of her stewardship on behalf of the city of lynchburg virginia done this day by order of the lynchburg city school board chair james e coleman superintendent dr crystal edwards dr brennan our vice chair the ms evans mind is much shorter than that but very sincere this is a certificate of service for mrs bell h evans the lynchburg city school board thanks you for putting the education of students first and for making a difference in their

008lives signed dr james e coleman jr and crystal m edwards superintendent and we have a few little gifts from the board for you also thank you very much thank you thank you all i'll say something really fast now we're going to allow uh school board member evans to say whatever she would like to say and then at this time any board members before we move on to our next item on the agenda i will be fast you know it was a very hard decision trying to decide whether to seek reappointment for three years and three more years and i've got a student who's going to be a senior and my parents have moved to a nursing home this year so it's just been a lot going on it it was time for me to step

009back but i think the most interesting and best thing i learned you know i went to lynchburg city schools i taught lynchburg city schools i have children in lynchburg city schools and to now be able to have spent three years behind the scenes and understand lynchburg city schools i could not be more happy or pleased or proud that my older son graduated from lynchburg city schools and i have a senior in lynchburg city schools so i think seeing every aspect of it the fact that i still believe they are in the best place they could be should tell the community something and i thank all of y'all it is not easy work and i think the pandemic year should count for about 10. volunteer service so thank each one of you you know a lot

010of y'all i would not probably have come across in my everyday life and i'm thankful that i did so thank you thank you miss evans is there any member of the board or our superintendent that would like to make a comment at this time certainly i just want to thank you for your service and commitment um the smiles that you brought at times when it was really tough and just the way that you helped us grow and develop as a board as an administrative team we couldn't ask for a better partner on the school board i'm going to miss you you already know that um but we wish you well and we know you're not going far absolutely absolutely so i'm not going to say goodbye i'm going to say we just look forward to

011a continued journey and work with you thank you thank you uh doctor and why don't we just do this starting with mrs morrison and just go around if you want to say something mrs morrison i am just so appreciative to have another hilltopper on the board i truly enjoy getting to know you better these last three years and i'm so appreciative of the voice that you gave us during tough conversations and tough decisions and you were firm consistent and kind so thank you so much thank you ms morris and dr carter and bill and i worked together on the um no i just forgot that the workhorse the work group work policy group and i think we were just a good compliment and just always look for you for the what's relevant right now with

012your student with your son in school and you knowing just how much engagement and other things that are going on and exactly how things are going and also you just report the facts and that you've always been upfront and that you speak clearly and you speak positively to what's going on and i just appreciate that from you and i'll miss you on the policy group and you're always willing to send out those helpful hints on thank you yes thank you so much thank you dr carter but i also want to thank mrs evans for being a fellow district one representative uh that's been a great great uh partnership and you've done such a great job bill representing all schools and as a parent you've been such a great supporter of ec glass high school as

013well as all the schools for in lynchburg city schools and as a board member and as an educator you've been such a great support for the staff particularly for the teachers which i think has meant so much to everyone you did a great job as the chair of the of the legislative advocacy and community relations committee with developing our legislative agenda or breakfast with the school with the city council going to the meetings thank you so much for doing all that i think the main thing i'm going to miss though is just your enthusiasm and your willingness to state your opinion i think as they said in the resolution you have courage and tenacity some people would say you tell it like it is which i think is awesome and i'm going to miss you

014very much i look forward to continuing our friendship in the future thank you dr brennan dr nils yes miss evans and i had a very interesting start to our relationship anybody that knows bell knows she is very upfront and will let you know how she feels and we had nowhere to go but up after that and it actually was it actually turned out to be pretty funny um but i do appreciate her your honesty and forthrightness and candor and if anything in the nation today we need some honest open discussion and uh i appreciate that thank you thank you dr nellis dr sinha yeah bill i'm sorry to see you go but i do understand how difficult a decision it is having faced it last year myself i too appreciate that you showed courage in

015some of your opinions and statements and provided us with valuable perspectives that may not have been brought to our attention were it not for you so that was extremely valuable input i've appreciated that you are a practicing teacher with a lot of experience and that you have children in the public schools we need more parents of currently enrolled students on this board in my opinion and so i i really think that was a a valuable contribution that you made [Music] i always appreciated your summaries of the policy changes that you made that you went above and beyond in providing that test and that was quite a service to us as a board we're all busy and you were aware of that and made good use of our time and finally i really appreciate all the

016work that you poured into our legislative advocacy i think you brought it up a whole notch this year with your leadership i know it was very frustrating for you at times it probably felt like you were hurting cats or speaking into a empty canyon at times but you stuck with it and you pulled us forward and left us with a very good workable plan moving forward on our legislative advocacy which will be so important to the success of the division so i thank you for all of those contributions and i'm sorry to see you go thank you dr sinha dr gupta i'm sorry for you that you're leaving but as everybody said one word stands out for you is your your straight shooter you don't mince words you're you're honest and you're a hard worker

017and the legislative and advocacy committee shows that you were consistent and putting those policies together and getting it through these nine members is not an easy task and you handled it well with a lot of grace so thank you and you'll be missed and you're welcome to come anytime as long as the chair allows thank you dr gupta mr harvey i want to thank you for first and foremost being a like-minded colleague um others have mentioned your tenacity your honesty your straight shooting style and i for one know that that's always because you have the students and the staff at heart and that's what matters and i very much appreciate the opportunity that i've had this past two years to become your friend and i look forward to many more conversations with you in the

018future and we'll always seek your wise advice thank you for your service thank you mr harvey and so bill that's the love from your boy to you didn't want to see my father go and i don't want to see you go we'll miss you deeply but we'll call upon you often let's give her another great big emphasis all right kind of feel like going home after that we there would want us to continue with our work and so we will now move into section d item one our finance committee and dr edwards if you could see us up for that uh this is actually mr harvey we on a board oh excuse me that's right but i could tee up mr harvey go ahead go right ahead mr harvey um there is no report um

019our next scheduled finance committee meeting uh is this month but we have no additional items to add to the to the agenda i've spoken with dr nilas i have not yet had the opportunity to speak with with dr carter the the suggestion is that we cancel the meeting for this month since there are no additional items to add to the agenda and so with your approval of that i would recommend that we cancel the meeting this month okay if the committed members have so been advised and thank you mr harvey and for the work of the finance committee regarding that information d2 governor school committee once again mr harvey no additional report although we do have a called meeting on june 30th at 1 pm to adjust our schedule to match the adjustments that lynchburg

020city schools have made thank you mr harvey of the governor's regional stem academy dr nils there's no report thank you dr nillas law regional school board dr carter there's no report at this time thank you dr carter legislative advocacy and community relations committee ms evans um the next meeting is in july okay thank you very much all right and as it relates to our task force our school board member susan morrison or dr gupta i have nothing new to report thank you ms morrison likewise dr gupta thank you and as it relates to partners in education i did read at the last meeting a statement from mrs morrison and so i would assume that that was suffice for tonight as well mr harvey okay thank you all all right that moves us right on through

021section d and now we're going to go into uh section e uh agenda items and we have eight of them tonight um board and again we would love your thoughts and let us continue to be clear concise and coherent in those thoughts and the first item tonight is our governor's school and there will be an opportunity now for dr steve smith to relate to us around diversity uh dr edwards if you could kind of bring him on please absolutely so we welcome dr smith who is the director of our gov school as we talk about diversity equity and inclusion not only at the gov school but throughout lynchburg city schools and even in our community as we look forward to uniting some of our efforts to do so so from a student's perspective you all

022know that we have an equity task force we have been working diligently to increase the diversity of students in rigorous high level programs throughout the division as well as the gov school not to single out the gov school they are one of our programs but when you look at our ghost center programs and our honors and ap and advanced and early college and stem there are lots of programs for which our students have opportunities to participate and if you remember a couple meetings ago with dr jordan and the new dr fowler had come and spoke about perceptions that kids have about participating in high level rigor rigorous programs particularly these were high school students so we have been in lots of conversations and worked behind the scenes to increase the interest interest access and support

023because we know you can't just open a door and allow children to go in you have to support them once they're once they're there in addition to students we're also talking about staff and part of our equity task force and even the city task force looks at the diversity of our staff and the training of our staff in terms of creating an inclusive environment and again i would say we have combined efforts and combined challenges when it comes to looking at diversity of getting staff here qualified staff but the work still has to be done and go on research does show that children need to look up and see representation of themselves in all aspects of an educational institution and we're working hard to do that and then finally curriculum which is so timely seeing

024how the vdoe had a full day workshop on the african american history curriculum today but also just looking at the contributions of all people in our curriculum in lcs and i'm sure in the gov school as well with the with the focus on stem so we have asked dr smith to just join us as he is a one of the programs for which we feed into it should be noted that we are one of the schools that the gov school serves right here we're happy to have him in lynchburg but i would like to turn it over to dr smith to talk a little bit about the gov school and the work that you're doing with diversity thank you dr edwards dr edwards dr coleman members of the board and administration i appreciate the opportunity

025to speak with you those of you who know me know i got a little excited when i got invited and i did a powerpoint and i invited some students and yeah and then i realized i had an appropriate redirection i realized you have a long list of very important things to work on and i was assuming too much about the time that you might have for this topic but i would like to share with you that the governor's school does serve five school divisions and we do see the importance and understand the importance of diversity and equity of access and inclusion and i love to hear superintendents and board members talk about challenge and support both you must do both and i know that there's been considerable work in the region and in lynchburg related

026to the development encouragement enhancement of student potential i want to share a couple of things just briefly and then be available for questions what i want to share first is good for you lcs school board and specifically when you increased your slots you invited two more students of color to the governor's school and both those students have accepted now i will share with you that one of them declined at first and it was only after i spoke with parents and invited the student and the parents in for a personal tour and talked about the program that that he accepted and that's something to think about so i mentioned that i had invited students i think it was it was dr carter who mentioned in an earlier meeting we should talk to our students prospective students

027and current students absolutely right dr carter absolutely right so i hope the board will have time to do that at some point to hear from students about their perspectives again we see the importance at the governor's school of of the work that needs to be done and we want to be partners in it so having said that i would be glad to answer any questions from any board members and i'll just sort of open it up to dr coleman or dr edwards to provide structure dr smith thank you so much for being with us tonight and the floor is now open for any of our board members to ask dr smith any question that you would like to ask and he will answer to the best of his ability all right ms morrison thank you

028dr smith i am interested in knowing what we can do to get students better prepared to be accepted into the governor's school we know that we need to start earlier and we need to do it as soon as we can do you have any insights that would be helpful for us thank you so much for the question first i'd like to say you prepare your students as a group very well the students who are selected through your process for the governor's school are well prepared and are incredibly successful at the governor's school that being said and i know mrs morrison that you have a long history of working with the lynchburg city schools and the students and you understand some of the initiatives that have been in place in the past i think continuing to

029identify students of color students from underrepresented groups as at promise rather than at risk and then encouraging them and supporting them and giving them access to programs earlier that will allow them to be successful in the specifically the math course that is prerequisite to coming to the governor's school so the lowest i'll use that term the lowest math course we are able to offer with our limited staff is pre-calculus so i believe it's still true in your math curriculum that you need to have students in geotrig advanced geotrig and doing well to be qualified applicants for the governor's school so then the question is how do you get a more diverse population of students into that prerequisite course um but yes there are a number of things i won't um talk at length about them

030but i'd certainly be glad to talk about some ideas that i know your cni folks are already working on thank you dr carter i just want to say thank you for taking the time for that parent and the student because a lot of times that's the major thing or that's very impactful and also will just provide some clarity as to what's expected and also to ease people's minds and the other thing is i know you were saying that mrs morrison may understand some of the things but for the people that don't know what are some of the interventions or some of the just things that you all are doing at the gov school to try to have more access or to provide more just clarity or just to let people come visit to see what's

031going on there thank you for the question dr carter uh as mrs evans said pandemic years should count for 10 right so so it's been difficult to reach out to students and families in the last about a year and a half we have a number of outreach programs that start with students who participate in the middle school science challenge and so we support that and of course the regional science fair but we also have middle school visits and middle school days and then when there isn't a pandemic i go out to each of our 11 high schools personally and i speak to any student that your guidance counselor has put in front of me and i'm delighted to do it so i try to provide information that way then we also have program overview nights

032so your division advocate who is maria jaeger mrs yeager will send me a list of students and i will send them a personalized letter that i will sign inviting them to come to hear more about the program so we have a number of outreach efforts and i'd like to talk about more that that we could do together to try and get the information about the program and excitement about the program to a more diverse population at a younger age thank you thank you so much other questions dr gupta and dr smith thank you for coming and we appreciate you being here and presenting my question is what can lynchburg city school do to collaborate with government school to increase diversity of the student body as well as the faculty side so we can work as

033a team to help lift that goal we have thank you dr gupta for the question and it's a two-part question the first part with the students i'd be glad i have met with dr jordan and mrs yeager now i met with them via zoom like all the meetings were happening but we've talked about you're promoting excellence through accelerated learning your pedal program and what that looks like now all my information about the pedal program would be from at least a decade ago so we've they've brought me up to speed on how that program is working and there may be some ways that we at the governor's school can help with younger students we certainly don't have a right to have access to any prospective students educational records that's part of the challenge but if they

034had a presentation they'd like me to do if they had a group of students they'd like us to provide some additional programming for we could definitely talk about how that could work so that would be my first answer in terms of collaboration for students as you look at the pipeline and you look at identifying talented students at promise and then challenging and supporting them to get them ready to be able to be successful applicants the other part relates to the staffing the faculty and that's more challenging now i teach statistics and so there's something called the small n principle right which says if you have a number that's less than 10 you need to be really cautious about drawing conclusions there are seven teachers at the governor's school including myself the last time i posted

035a position was before that it was 2014 and so so it's a challenge to find qualified applicants and specifically qualified applicants from underrepresented groups that being said all challenges can be addressed and what the lynchburg city schools has been a wonderful host division and it very generously has done the postings for me when we have a posting we don't have an hr department so they've done the posting and i'm excited to talk about how we could reach a wider audience for a position that we might have on the faculty so perhaps we could identify someone who would would apply and would be willing to come to the governor's school who would come from an underrepresented group dr smith you are answering our questions very well sir i appreciate that thank you dr coleman dr brenner

036dr smith thank you so much for coming tonight and for helping us to address the issue of diversity in the governor's school and our advanced programs for those in the public who are listening who don't know you've had a long history of lynchburg city schools and you've done a wonderful job i think for probably more than 10 years at the governor's school making it just a wonderful program and you've handled the challenge of cobit so well this year by continuing to be able to educate the students from all different school districts so thanks for doing that and then a personal note i'm serving the unique situation where you have i've had children at the governor's school and i now have my next generation of nieces at the governor's school and you've worked so well with

037all of them even those who have challenges and need some extra help so thank you for all you've done for all our students at lynchburg city schools you're welcome it's a pleasure and a blessing to work there anyone else on the board like to raise a question to dr smith while we have him here all right then it appears that you have adequately handled all of the questions i do thank you dr smith for coming tonight uh as you shared with me in a prep meeting there are 19 gulf schools in the commonwealth is that correct that is correct and some of the gulf schools are really struggling around diversity and we are doing better than some of those that are really really struggling and as has been mentioned as we continue to go forward

038it does take courage to address some of these uncomfortable conversations but i appreciate the way in which you have addressed us tonight and i look forward as dr gupta stated with collaborative efforts to work on all of these i also would like it to be known that this board values the contributions verbally and in writing of any of our students and the board would like to take the time out to applaud the three students that are here tonight if in fact there are three and would like them to stand if they would like to so that we can appropriately thank them for coming and appreciate all that you're doing there in the school if they are here i mean misunderstood they are not with me though okay very good but we're going to clap for

039them anyhow even though they're not here and we want you to know that all right thank you so much dr smith and i think that concludes uh discussion on this matter thank you very much you are welcome sir thank you all right thank you so much all right we will now move to e2 secondary block scheduling dr edwards leaders in that absolutely so one of the things that the board has asked is that we have a group of committed professionals who are all here tonight to come and just talk a little bit more in detail about block scheduling and i'm going to turn it over to miss pugh to introduce and tee us up absolutely thank you board members and we do have some staff from the secondary level as well as central office staff

040the the school staff that are here of our principals tim beady and rose flora from our high schools as well as the counseling directors from each of the high schools tracy miller good sirota hester and matthew mason is also here to represent principals at the secondary level for the middle schools dominique foster is here from central office and she's a student services supervisor who oversees the counseling department and they're here just to provide a little bit more information in board docs uh there was um a document for you to to read in some articles that give some highlights and overview on uh the different aspects of block scheduling so i'm going to turn it over to rose and tim and they will introduce their staff and before we get started mrs evans i just want

041to on behalf of myself in ec class high school thank you for your service and i can also attest to the tenacity and there will be a volunteer forum coming your way thank you and good evening everyone on behalf of mr beatty and mr mason we would like to thank you for having us here and our team here this evening to further discuss our transition to block schedule scheduling supports the mission and the vision of the school and this is only possible through the efforts and expertise of our school counseling directors and their amazing teams so we want to give our school counseling directors the bulk of the time to talk about our move to an a b block style format next year and at the high school level a four by four block in

042the 2022-2023 school year so i would like to introduce mrs tracy miller good counseling director at ec glass high school and ms sarada hester counseling director at heritage high school good evening it is great pleasure and we want to say on behalf of both of our schools thank you thank you dr edwards and your leadership thank you board for your advocacy and from school counselors ms evans we want to say thank you it gives us great pleasure um when you talk about the work of school counseling and so tonight um after my gratitude let's talk about black scheduling and so at the secondary level we didn't take lightly in regards to what what's next what are our needs and it wasn't it's pre pandemic that we were talking about how do we best support students

043how do we support students and what their post-secondary needs are and also how do we make them more workplace ready and also how do we help them look at more what is their fit and so therefore when they leave lynchburg city schools that we're not just saying that we have suited you with the diploma but we're saying that we've made you a citizen that is well ready to serve our community and give back to our community and so with that with our traditional seven period day did that afford all students to dev into career tech courses did it allow students to take electives that they might not necessarily have did it allow students to not have to do summer courses such as personal finance or health to be able to do more rigorous courses such

044as ap dual enrollment courses and our seven period traditional style does not afford students all the opportunities that i do talk about so pandemic comes and now we're dealing with where students are not as engaged and we're dealing with of course as you guys have talked about in your school board meetings what are we going to do with our students in regards to retentions and promotion and getting them back engaged but also on fire and so we talked about what kind of scheduling structures would do that for us but also do that with teachers and making that connection and that engagement which is so valuable and so that's where we landed when we came to the 4x4 block scheduling why it's because it's a 90-minute period of time where a student can't we're a teacher

045and student can engage do more project-based learning delve into a content and be able to have not such a traditional teacher direct approach but students can be engaged in their learning and they can see how it fits into the real world we also looked at we're going to have students who have to do now this is pandemic i'm speaking of we have to have students who have to have credit recovery and we need to get our students back on track how do you do that in a seven period traditional structure well quite honestly we had to look outside the box and look at more of a structure such as a four by four where we can have credit recovery and then this year i'll speak specifically to the alternating block so when we look at

046the alternating block it is 90 minutes for a class four classes a day you're going to have some type of transition so it could be a little bit under 90 we're still working out the logistics because we're just fresh off of graduation but students will attend four classes a day and they will have a days and b days so what does that mean essentially what takes place is that a student can have eight classes this year a student who that eighth class is more of an advisory class and that advisory class for those students who did get off track some of our brightest and our greatest and those who just became just disengaged they'll be able to find credit recovery so for those students who weren't able to do summer school who weren't able to

047be able to recover some courses our schools both at the high school level will be able to work that in but what about the students who didn't fail classes what does that look like for them that looks like some really great opportunities for our staff to do more mentoring more coaching why do i bring that up because we did a model pilot program at heritage doing modeling and coaching and mentoring and we saw very high valuable results you guys from the board had a presentation by dr fowler and dr jordan and they talked more about how each student need that touch and how each student needs someone to connect with them well our model and what we are proposing does give that touch it does allow faculty to do what they love to do which

048is to connect and engage with students and to help students see that glimmer of hope and help them see what they can be and then help them actualize that and realize it so that's our little snippet of our advisory program so each faculty member would have an advisory class period in that alternating schedule and some of that will be focused on credit recovery and others will be focused more on the mentoring and coaching aspect now the pros is that a kid can earn up to eight credits not all students the eighth credit is more focused on that student who failed that student who fell behind are off track and desperately needs that credit to make sure that we can get them back to diploma attainment it's fewer class changes in a single day for students

049it's more i talked about it more in-depth instructional time with their teacher more engagement more connection and after this year of we're still pandemic but after this year of not having students in the building i need more of that myself so i'm looking forward to having an advisory period myself if that is even allowable mr beatty but anyway so more elective opportunities in an eight course uh in in a course of a year and more opportunities for credit recovery for us and it allows our students and staff to have a year of professional development because they need to be transitioned they need to make sure that they understand what that instructional style can look like they need to be able to meet with other divisions in order to have conversations whether that is by zoom

050and in person to talk about what that professional develop should be and what it can be because right now in our area we have most of our area division high schools who took that on this year and will continue and then we have some other divisions that are pretty similar to lynchburg city schools who have done very well with block scheduling there are cons there's challenges and there are cons to everything because number one there's fear that is attached to change because oftentimes as people we cling to what we know because it's all that we know but one thing that i do know is community communication community awareness also making sure that we have our professionals as teachers and as principals and as counselors at the forefront to talk people through to what it looks

051like having our students engaged in the process and making sure that we do continual instructional strategies and planning and be very transparent with our public also we want to make sure that we create a very responsive monitoring and evaluation system to see how we're doing data data data as counseling directors we love data because data speaks to the success to the glows to the grows to the challenges and to also the things that we've done well so the wonderful part about this is i get to speak about what this year looks like but my wonderful partner my partner in crime uh tracy miller good gets to talk to you about the 4x4 block in the 2022-23 year thank you miss hester for that so we are looking at transitioning to the 4x4 block system for

052the 2022-2023 school year as ms hester has articulated the pros as well as the cons and the ab a lot of that applies to the 4x4 block schedule as well there are more opportunities as what we've seen with this pandemic and then moving forward with the learning loss there will be more opportunities for students for the credit recovery but not only the students who need credit recovery but also those students who need more of the social and emotional support and teachers are able to be more creative with their project-based learning it would also be a decrease in teacher and student fatigue with the management of classes so instead of trying to navigate seven classes then students will have court four classes each semester and our teachers would have three classes and then a planning period

053each semester there would be smaller smaller testing groups for sols and more opportunity for students to test if they need to retake an sol that's required for graduation we also have to look at the transferability alignment as ms hester had mentioned some of our neighboring divisions in which students transfer or our students transfer to them or on a four by four so for students who are on a different system it puts them at a disadvantage they either cannot get all of their courses in or we have to be very strategic in scheduling their classes and with that it could be that our students are spending time in our graduation labs through online programs such as edgenuity and there is an increased opportunity for students to take advanced levels of courses there's also opportunities for students

054to take the world languages as it is now if a student does not take their first year of a world language in eighth grade they cannot take up to the level five which is our ap level classes in 12th grade because we only offer the opportunity for one language per school year also in regards to that the virginia department of education now requires a sequential elective for all students regardless if they're pursuing the standard or advanced studies diploma so with that with the 4x4 block schedule that provides the opportunity for students to complete their graduation requirements there will be more opportunity for relationship building because the students and teachers will be spending more time together and there will be less opportunities for campus disruptions during class changes so instead of having seven class changes a

055day there will be about four class changes in between for students to get to and from classes and with the cons it's the same is that just the creation creation of responsive monitoring and evaluation and then as ms hester had also mentioned to provide our teachers our staff administrators counselors community with more information and provide those professional development opportunities for our community in addition to different types of focus groups and making sure that we're communicating that information so that is all i have are there any questions all right well this is a great board that we have here not all of us professionals in the relationship to block scheduling and so there may be more specific questions that board members want to raise but if you all are completed we would open the floor now

056this is for discussion uh board members to raise questions or concerns that you may have mrs evans i i have a couple of questions and concerns and positive the sequential electives huge help that just having a child navigate all of a sudden that being part of their graduation requirement was hard so i love that having that extra time for that because that is a hard one i have two major concerns or two just questions have we done any kind of survey with our teachers on going no i'm not talking about this coming up school year but the permanent four by four that's really what these questions are directed to not next year just to see you know are we all on board with this because it is a huge change in how you're teaching so

057that would be my first concern for the teachers and my second would be say you had a student in the fall take spanish one and what if the way the schedule happened to work out they didn't get spanish two until the spring of the next year that is a long time between spanish one and two or algebra one and two or whatever class you're taking so is there a way to guarantee that these classes would go back to back i think that would be hard to do with the schedule but i i would greatly worry for student to have a year in between those classes so those are my two biggest errors the teacher one's huge because i i just wouldn't think it's a smart thing to do would be just to get the feedback

058from the teachers since they're gonna be the ones doing this but then you know the how we schedule it i worry about so those are my two biggest areas of concern i'll address the scheduling of the classes and we would have to be strategic in scheduling those classes and that's one of our priorities is to start the master schedule collection with course registrations and things like that a lot earlier because this will be new to the division but with the teachers usually take some time at the beginning of each class when a student goes from spanish one to spanish two even if it's in the year-long course they still do some type of review um when students go in there however but also with looking at um you know these opportunities we can take that

059into advisement and like i said we just we could just try to be very strategic and intentional when we're scheduling students in these classes and then in regards to the survey we did not survey i don't know what the what the plans are for the upcoming school year because we were just trying to get through this school year and we were going to be discussing the the block schedule and having our focus groups and involving our faculty and staff in regards to going to block scheduling but i do think that in regards to that is that when we did survey because we surveyed regarding the a b and then we surveyed regarding the block and then we had different information sessions at each school to address the concerns and possibly to try to dispel some

060of the myths that were associated with going to block scheduling you get a sufficient response i still would worry about that year in between languages and math i can see it in english or history but i do i very much would worry about the foreign language and math i think we'd have to be very careful to make sure that that would be planned accordingly so students weren't missing that much time in between and matt asked just one more thing in regards to that and that's one of the reasons why we were going to reach out to other schools and have teachers in our world languages and our cultural fine arts career technical education as well as teachers in our core classes is to either have zoom information sessions or visit those schools to discuss those

061types of things with the teachers who are experiencing it there so that would be part of the professional development that's a great um that we were looking at madam clerk so note all of these things and they're passed on so they can remember what we shared who's next dr carter well mrs evans talked about one of the concerns i had was with the [Music] if a student just didn't wasn't able to complete it how would they you know go back into the the next sequence or the next level without being able to do it in the same year but my question is so how does this work with cet ct cte courses and other types of courses of that type with the block schedule so when do they take these other courses the other courses

062such as the career technical education and so for the cultural and fine arts and the career and technical education so we have career tech and technical education courses at both programs whether that are at heritage and ec glass so in regards to having that is that our supervisor of career and technical education is also looking at and have provided us with information on how the scheduling of those classes would be so instead of possibly having a class that would go all year it would be double blocked so that we would be meeting the state hour requirement as well as providing students with that instructional support and i know some of these courses have a transportation time also associated with them and we're able to do all of that and the students can still participate in

063this block schedules without a lot of problems yes ma'am actually that's one of the things that was great to see dr smith here this year it did afford our students the ability to be with him in the morning and to be with us in the afternoon and also be able to take an elective where they normally wouldn't have been able to do so and so that that block schedule does afford itself for our dual enrollment students our gov school our stem students and our early college students to be able to come back to the high school and participate a little bit more as opposed to being so locked in to spending most the majority of their day at this at those programs the other thing that you asked i think about the cte programs when

064they're having to transfer from ec glass to heritage it's the same concept that pretty much a student would if they are cosmetology in their ec glass what we have been doing if a student needs to take a particular course a core course at that high school they would do that and then they would do their career tech program at heritage per se but the nice thing about the alternating block is the next day they would be totally at their at their high school where some where the seven period day they didn't get that necessarily there are some kids who totally have to take classes at heritage in order to do a three period block of cosmetology because of the travel period that's included so that is a unique um piece that the four by four

065block does afford us as a division as well and i thank you for the reading material that's great though didn't have to look it up so wonderful for that and i was in some type of experimental block program years ago and i the thing that saved it is that the teachers were awesome they were really awesome but as other students were going in the hallway i just looked like i was lost or lonely because we were still there in the same room just moved within the room but the the reading most of the readings tell us that there are pros and cons but that the chaos is greatly reduced the behavior problems are reduced and the calm is increased for the teachers and the students and right now with the students coming back in and

066just trying to get back to some semblance of normalcy i think that's very important and also it talks about the amount engagement because you are with those teachers for a longer period of time it's just that the teachers have to be really doing their job and exceptional and really engaging the students now and the other thing is so what if a student just does not like the other students in their block what can they do i mean to the point that it's really impacting them educationally is what can happen what what is the option for the student there because that may happen yeah so i i smile because we have that now uh where and we're with students and they've decided that the personality between them and other students or teachers does not mesh and

067it's conflict resolution it is where pretty much we're able as counselors and as administrators but as counselors to really work with teachers to give them strategies in order to and also students but it's along with giving teachers strategies on how to engage students how to get them back a part of the process um the other thing that did talk about in the reading um in which we will also note is that there will be smaller classroom sizes it won't be drastic but there will be smaller classroom sizes due to your going from uh from seven to eight and the nice part about that when i say conflict resolution it gives us the opportunity as counselors in order to really work with students because this is a part of getting them ready for the workplace and

068that they will have conflict and how do you work through that conflict and how do you keep your goals and aspirations at the forefront and so at this point um our ability to be able to do what we typically do in regards to that conflict resolution in regards to engagement of students and also getting families actively involved with us in the process and making sure that they keep the main thing the main thing which is their academic excellence and success post high school all right thank you and we're moving right along with time on this issue but this is very important what other board members would like to dr nellis i'm a little skeptical surprised looking at some of the materials that were provided it recommends a two-year process and we're not anywhere close to

069that um you know i think there's some important questions that have been brought up regarding foreign language classes and how they schedule ap classes you know the tests are in in may you know and someone's taking a and i guess the four by four block in the in the first first semester you know they're so i don't know if you're looking at ways to blend um i guess it might be important to consider that as well as you know band and theater those really go throughout the whole year so i understand some of the uh attraction to the 4x4 and a b block i also wonder why we're just not going ahead with the 4x4 i mean i've heard reasons for that it's just like well let's just go all in if we're going to

070do this um it's not really this this discussion to me is i guess this is directed to to the board overall it seems like this is just a advisory thing we're not really being asked to make a decision at this point it seems like administration is committed that way and i just want to make sure that we all have that understanding because i'm not i think that's what's going on but i'm not quite sure so and i think you're thinking correctly uh dr nils at this point dr edwards that you want to say anything to that no i'm just confirming that dr nellis is correct they're sharing information at the request of the board to bring back to bring back more information so you are correct dr gupta thank you for uh presenting and uh

071we should acknowledge the three great principles yes we should [Applause] see mr bd every morning waving so i hope you'll speak but you know this is just professor in me certain classes i like to teach in 15-minute slots some in 90 and some in three hours so as ms evans i think i'm understanding right was bringing it one size fit all not all classes are suitable for that 90-minute block because some classes i like to have open discussion and two and a half hours three hours is the ideal time so that was my concern or suggestion is we're putting them all in these blocks and will all classes be suitable or candidates for that that long of a slot and the second thing is hoping that we have involved faculty and students in that discussion

072as we're moving forward there's a consensus from our major stakeholders because faculty fatigue is one of the cons you brought up in those yeah and that i'll just say a few things first i just want to commend our school counselors for just the the work that they do behind the scenes they often um do things that aren't seen on camera and um you know visiting homes going into jobs to make sure their kids are getting the credit recovery and so really appreciate the work they've done especially during this pandemic to get us through a very challenging and difficult school year um as far as the the uh a b hybrid schedule and the 4x4 we felt that this was a better transition instead of going to the 4x4 because our students were so used to

073a seven period day and this sort of eases them into the four by four by doing a an alternating block where they you know they have seven classes but they don't have them all in one day and that gets them ready mentally and and you know prepared for um the four by four when you're talking about a 90-minute block you know you're doing four classes one day four classes another day but you're seeing all your teachers every day uh that's what we do on the seventh period day except it's a hybrid block and so that was sort of the rationale behind doing that and that was teacher input um was given towards that we felt that it was a it would be easier transition instead of going just straight to the four by four so

074that was where the teachers were involved in in regards to that um i'm not sure what was the other concern or question that was good structure yeah the structure of classes is it suitable for all classes right and that's part of the the pd in regards to maybe visiting other schools there's something called a skinny block um where some school divisions are do that um in regards to the cultural arts program some of the cte programs to give students more flexibility to get those classes in that's something that we'll learn more about going into the 4x4 block but we do know that some of the other school divisions campbell and others do a skinny block for the cultural arts programs and the cte programs all right i'll go to mr harvey now i can see

075the advantages specifically for for cte with a with a block program you know many of the programs that i'm involved with building trades and and robotics and some of those classes having having an extended time period is a huge benefit um but but i also appreciate the concerns that are being expressed here as well you know the concern that i have is is yes this is change we are you know as humans um many times opposed to change but change that would happen um right after uh what we've gone through with covet and in in i'm kind of cautious because the question was raised you know have we talked with our with our teachers and we have we got you know them to buy into this and we haven't yet done that but yet in

076in less than two months or right around two months we're going to be going into this type of schedule um i i do share that concern that's that's that's all i would say from about an advisory standpoint harvey we have talked to teachers and we have solicited feedback that in fact that is why we did not move front immediately to a four by four block we intentionally our committee scheduled meetings with all of our department chairs they were from both high schools they received feedback from their departments and it was very clear that they were very concerned about moving to a four by four block for this upcoming year although that's what had been recommended so we said no we're not going to do that let's take this one step at a time so we

077did listen to what their feedback was and you're exactly right that we have got to be intentional about talking about instruction it's going to look different it may look different it's definitely going to look different from a choral class into an algebra 2 class and it's important as as the instructional leaders that we are in the classroom supporting them and relying on curriculum instruction to help us out with that too we're working on professional development opportunities for them potentially over the summer if they want to come give feedback have discussions about what are our look fors in classrooms we're committed we're all in there together with them but we we did get feedback from our teachers and many teachers were upset that we didn't go straight to four by four so and i i think

078that actually to go back to seven periods after being on an a b schedule now where our classes were 80 70 75 minutes this this actually to me is going to be an easier transition than going back to 48 minutes and then looking at transitioning back now that's not going to please everybody and and i know that i'll get some feedback on that but i am very confident that our teachers and our staff are up to the challenge and i know that we're all up to the challenge to support them and i'm going to have people come in and watch and see what's going on in the classrooms i i appreciate that clarification thank you so rose please doctor yes all of you not just rose if i can expand on that since the previous

079school year since we had graduation successfully um the students were on a sort of a modified a b block for the two days a week that they were coming to school so in a sense they were coming a and b two days a week for 75 minutes now we're gonna go a b a b a b five days a week for a longer period of time so basically what you're talking about is stamina increasing the existing schedule that we just came off the pandemic increasing the time not only in the classroom by about 15 minutes or so but also increasing the stamina of getting back to the five days a week doing what you just did for two days a week um is is i think that's the transition and the the next step that

080they wanted to take rather than just going straight to the four by four block for um a semester and then another semester so thank you doctor that was the chair we'll recognize miss evans but before she speaks is there any board member who has not spoken on this issue since it would be a parent that was winding down and that was different than first dr brennan i'm fine to follow mr seven thank you dr coleman oh you will okay all right ms albert i just have a quick question um because somebody did ask me this the dual enrollment classes um that already require there are some of them that are two periods a day like the dual enrollment biology um you have the regular class in a lab every day so the plant is the

081plan to get that so they will be with that teacher for three hours a day it's for for next year what we're going to do is that because so that they would have the hours is that they would be with the teacher one block on a day and one block on b day so that teacher would have them for every day so that they can meet the instructional hours that the communication that the community college requires for the completion of that course so it would just be one period on monday and one on tuesday they wouldn't have okay that's so much better okay thank you thank you mr evans dr brennan thank you all for being here and for providing all this information it's very helpful for those who do not have an education background

082so thanks for all this information i'm going to reiterate a couple of things that my my fellow board members said and i just have two quick questions one is that you know the input that we've gotten from teachers one was from mr camden several months ago who's been teaching for a long time and then from uh mr reid came last month to our board meeting concerned about this so i understand that there is a change and there is concern but we certainly have some experienced teachers who are and i know that as you've talked about you will support them because obviously it's that development of helping them to get through that 90-minute period that's going to be such a challenge for them but i know you'll help them and want them to know that we've

083heard their their comments i also have a question we talked about cte but for other courses like drama and like orchestra things that are a year long apparently on the 4x4 schedule it's much more difficult to maintain those how will you how will that happen for a program that traditionally have been a year long and my other question on the same way is how do you address the ap question where someone may take an ap course in the fall but they're not going to take the exam until the spring or they're taking an ap course in the spring but the exam is done before they've actually gotten through the material how does that those get addressed so good evening and so thank you for having all of us the entourage here to help go through

084some of this so that's why we would be looking at skinny blocks um which is kind of like year long so for those courses and specifically that you just talked about to ensure that there is not learning loss from one semester to another i mean that includes ap and that includes your orchestra your course any of those arts fine art courses you would have that built in so that there is not a learning loss from one semester to another and so that's some of the conversations that we were starting to have and looking at it and being intentional with our planning and that is one reason why we did not jump into a 4x4 say august per se because we want to make sure we have looked at all kinks and addressed any concerns such

085as this and make sure that we've had planning and ample time to plan to make sure that we roll it out successfully thank you all right i think dr carter had one more comment and then we'll i have read the information and heard this but i really need to see it like what does it look like for someone that doesn't like how would how would this look on a schedule i think that would clear up a lot if i saw like a a presentation or just the powerpoint that says this course john doe would take this this this a and next day this this with like the ctes or if they're in some other or dual enrollment like how would it look versus what it looks like now i i can't i don't know how

086it looks from the 4x4 to what it looks like now are you asking for the for this coming year for the a b or for the the traditional block the one that we're thinking about looking at the we're focused on the four by four i guess okay or we can probably do i don't know absolutely looks either we can do a mock schedule or what it would look like um for for both of them and we can send those out yes we do have dr drafts um that we've already started to work on that our school counseling directors and schools have already started to visualize and plan out thank you deputy superintendent pugh that that would be exactly what we would like uh dr edwards around dr carter's statement and i think that that would

087help us i i have been informed and educated uh beautifully tonight around this subject i think that you all hit the spirit of what we wanted tonight as we continue this ongoing discussion and my final conclusion is we have a sharp group of administrators and people in our high schools and our middle school and thank you all for coming tonight uh let's give them a hand also this is a great question thank you for all that you do all right e3 budget development process now i want the board to know that there is a micro and there's a macro to this and our level of environment obviously would be in the macro uh dr edwards if you could help us as we have a brief discussion around budget development absolutely so you have and and

088have had a budget development calendar which outlines uh timelines the events that take place at the administrative level also at the board level and let me just reiterate that part of that budget development is looking at revenues and often we don't know our final revenues from the state until december january-ish and often we don't know our final revenues from the city until later than that depending upon city deliberations we we can put in an ask but as far as the final is concerned so that's one wrinkle that makes budget development a little harder you can imagine if someone said dr edwards you have x amount of dollars go for it this would be a lot easier process because revenues would be guaranteed but part of that is built into the budget calendar much of the

089budget work at the micro level begins with us the administrative teams the school teams as you see here one of the things that they did not mention when they talked about block scheduling is the effect of staffing moving next year it's pretty simple in terms of we've already been on an a b block but many times when you want to offer lots of flexibility and you want to offer multiple skinny blocks and you want to offer multiple classes at the same time so that students may be able to shift you're looking at staffing those are critical conversations that we would need to have early fall with the administrative team that's when we start our work we sit down and we look at the building the building needs we look at resources we look at last

090year's budget and we say how are funds allocated how are funds spent and the why behind if there are any discrepancies between hey we thought we were going to use this money to do that but we did not sometimes it's we got a grant fund to do it or we had cares funding in the case of of this past year or it may just be the cost for that was not what we thought or we no longer need that those are the conversations at the building levels and the department levels that we have as we build the budget going forward we do vet all the requests you can imagine i love my building principles because they come ready to ask for everything that they want everything that they need and we spend time trying to

091make the best decisions across the division so what ends up coming to the board is not necessarily everything that was requested and i just want the board to understand that there is a lot of at the micro level chipping away and sort of reimagining rethinking you can think of just something as simple as my class size is going up in my building i might need another fourth grade teacher and in another building class size is going down and i'm collapsing a teacher well if we don't have someone connecting the dots we could have someone losing a job on london and someone adding a staff member on another end unless we say how about we repurpose a staff member from one building to the next those are the things that we do at the division level

092when we're working with the administrative staff to make budgetary decisions projections looking at costs of course health insurance is always a wild card that uh kim and team do a great job of trying to predict and just the cost of energy and things like that are all at the micro level so on the budget calendar you can see that prior to us bringing that first round of budget information to you in january we spend the better part of the beginning of the year working with the administrative team and you might think that's a simple thing to do but trying to ask a building principal in october what do you need for august in terms of staffing and resources and supplies is a difficult conversation sometimes but they make it work and they work with us

093and we're trying to get more efficient at not having so many requests after the budget is developed so i do have the calendar i wanted to explain excuse me what we do um at the micro level and then there's a macro piece of what the board does and i think that part of it will be the bulk of the topic of conversation tonight excuse me so dr coleman i'm going to turn it back to you for the board mac macro part all right the floor is open uh we are prayerful that this conversation will give us some level of clarity in one of the most important roles that we have as a board and that is the approval of a budget that will move the division forward so at the macro level what are the

094thoughts and reflections about process we have a process we're just bringing it before you because uh there may be someone who wants us to to look at this deeper yes ma'am i don't know if this is the time to ask this but as we started the process last year and got into it as a board member you know you see we went through that list that you gave us which was great being able to go through everything but that's just one little piece of it so being able to see an old one i think i asked at one time to be able to see a comparison of the rest of it does that make sense like i felt like i was i was looking at these requests with not the whole piece of the puzzle

095there and i think it would have been nice to have both i don't know if that fits into this discussion or not but well to your point bill i guess what the superintendent the micro they're going to do all of that part what we want to know is what do we want what do we need to be able to make our decisions when it comes to us ultimately and the calendar has been before us uh for some time now and i guess uh what i think i'm hearing you say is that a previous budget to look at well i i just think gary can jump in because i don't think i'm saying it really the way i mean to say it but we did it would you like to comment i i think i think

096uh board member evans is correct i mean if i could summarize my experience this past year with looking at our school board budget we spent two months talking about this matrix with all of these items on it and all we simply did was take everything that we approved on this matrix and we added it from last year that's what we did and i think what the question is is do we look at last year's budget which is the base budget side by side with the proposed budget for this year as that comparison and i for one did not feel like we did that and i might be incorrect in that but i remember our i attended every school board meeting and every work session and we focused in january and february on this document and

097we really did not look at our base budget again so where this causes me to have on pause is that we've had the luxury this year and i might not phrase this correctly so i do apologize but we've had the luxury this year of cares funding and dr edwards has warned us we got cares funding this year we got cares funding next year but there will be a time of wrecking them when we have to go before city council to be able to support this budget and we'll have to be able to replace what we have in cairo's funding for this year and next year with what we get from city council so my thinking all along had been the only way that we would really be able to tackle that would be to be

098re-examining our base budget from what we had before that we added these items to and so i appreciate the fact that we're talking about this calendar but when i look at this calendar i'm thinking to myself okay in february a lot of this reconciliation that we will ultimately have to do in the third year needed to take place at that time for us to meet this calendar and i could have missed it i might have misunderstood but i didn't see that really happening i've said a couple times that i apologize to two school board members because in january and february when we were going through this my understanding was each individual item we were saying whether or not we felt was a legitimate item for further discussion to be included in our budget not that

099we were just constantly adding each one of these items to our budget but that's ultimately what we did air based budget to my understanding did not change but we added these items to it and if i'm wrong in that please please please correct me because i'm trying to grow in my understanding of this process i understand the calendar but i'm just trying to understand the process of the budget before the chair recognizes dr gupto i wanted to make sure i'm trying to get clear uh school board members evans and harvey suggesting that we should have looked at the 2020 2021 budget in preparation for the 2122 budget that we are about to approve our trust later in this meeting is that what you're saying i think we're saying you should be able to compare the

100two to compare the two dr gupta if you look at the lynchburg city school budget eighty-nine percent correctly mr carnage if i'm wrong is human resources so that's a fixed cost that's not going to change from 17 18 18 19 19 20 other than you're giving any raises to the employees so that's a constant what is could be and on top of that you got fixed costs for departments like transportation maintenance i.t so if you take all those things out there's not much movement in the budget other than some strategic allocations which may happen if there's an additional dollar from state so going forward from year to year there's not much float out there in the business term or free money in a layman's sense in the budget so i don't know what utility will

101it bring to see ear to ear very micro level discussion which knowing that none of those factors are going to change unless we decide that we're going to lay off and make the slate complete clean you know take out the human resource costs it's a labor intensive industry so i don't know what value will it bring and i understand i used to ask the same question in the beginning i used to hear that don't go into the weeds and now i've understood i'm going too much micro level you know they said don't micromanage me macro level going at a higher level and looking at it and but when i look at higher level there's not much flexibility in this budget cares money this time yes there was some but it's not sustainable as we said

102so we got to find ways out of that so those are the strategic issues which this board decides so if we get a cares money we know it's not sustainable how could we sustain it going forward to me that's a macro level discussion all right so before us tonight it's a it's a simple discussion it is that we have a process the calendar even though it doesn't say takes us from the planning at the micro level in september it brings us to the january piece and ultimately uh by july we june july we adopt the 22 23 budget for next year obviously tonight the 2021-2022 budget so we could go on and on tonight i just think that the board should find a resting place are we satisfied with this is there anything else we

103want to say to administration that we want from them so that we can adequately approve a budget or participate in the process of approval that's what i think we need to hear and right now here two school board members talking about a comparison of the previous budget with the budget under review is one thing and i don't know if we're in agreement with that or not or whatever else we want to say ms morrison thank you dr coleman i think that we get i may be wrong mrs laconic don't we get on our financial summary last year's expenditures in revenue and receipts compared to this year every month you do on one of the reports that does have the prior year when we did the budget presentation we did do the expenditures that does show

104the previous year adopted and it shows the comparison of its but i'm not sure what level of detail you are asking for because that that part at the higher level at the summary by a major category was provided in the presentation um so i guess i was i would if i could have asked for a point of clarity of what um how much detail are you are you requesting for that i could say and i see other board members but i want to stay with ms morris and see if we can clarify uh mr carnage is wanting to know what details are you talking about even if we want that mr morrison that you want to say i do i think that we as board members need to be pay attention to what's in the

105budget and i think any time that there is a question we have the right to ask that question and i am okay with the bigger picture but i acknowledge that others in their attempt to understand might have more detailed questions that would help all of us for example if someone notices a major cost increase in a certain department what would cause that increase i think those are legitimate questions and i think we should ask them every month i think that that as board members we're not trying to micromanage the um the accounts or the expenditures but we're working for understanding and i think that that is something that could be ongoing um and and i think we have the right to ask those questions all right very good all right um dr carter did you

106have your hand up yes um then we'll go to dr sinha and then dr gupta i was going to say that i appreciated the budget process and i really think we've gotten more details and more information in the last couple of years than we've ever had ever again and i try to and i know that um mrs leconig and dr edwards are very good at looking at the budget from a month-to-month basis and also making sure that we don't have as before we just have these large large ask to move us move something to another place or to use a surplus right now we're doing it more on a regular basis so that we don't have all of this um last minute crunch to move a certain amount of funds to get buses or whatever

107we're really looking at that on a month-to-month basis and i'm pleased with the way it's going now okay got the car to dr sinha yeah i would propose especially this year because there are a lot of additions and staffing and other resources the virtual academy changes to the structure of the hr department that when we approach budget time that we get some sense of did we get a return on the investment did we see the outcomes that we that that we felt justified adding these positions did it result in greater retention or better candidates or more efficient processes we're learning outcomes enhanced um did we save money by having our own psychologists as opposed to contracting out some some indicator so that you know we can assess whether or not as we go into next

108year and we prepare for transitioning away from cares funding to shifting the burden onto the city that that we can still justify those kind of positions or if shifts and resources need to be made because we've identified areas that have emerged as issues to be addressed and i i'm hoping that what i'm saying in this is capturing sort of the essence of what you're talking about because you're right um ms morrison we do get sort of on an um itemized level what expenditures are year to year and we can see how they've changed from time to time and we can see and we've gotten explanations for changes like it appeared that we were underfunding instruction but really what it was was a proper reclassification of non-instructional positions to a more appropriate place well when you

109shift all those personnel and the money that they earn in salaries and benefits it looks like we're cutting on instruction our primary function so we have gotten that level of detail but i think moving forward because this year's kind of unique with the at least in my memory of the years that we've gone over this in terms of the number and type of positions and the things that we realize we need to do as we recover from pandemic and all that that we'll have some sense of of how that worked out and the extent to which we can continue justifying um having those resources or those expenditures thank you dr sender dr gupta this was reflecting back on our conversation last week so my disagreement about the process was not about the calendar it's about

110like zero based budgeting needs paid budgeting you know when we talk about that this year's budget will be need based budget are we truly going into need based so that may require some reallocation of resources when we say we are doing a zero based budgeting means everybody starts you know so you take everybody's needs at that time and then develop your budget upwards so that's the process conversation i was pointing out before but not about this calendar all right um the chair would like to know if there's any board member that hasn't spoken yet that would like to speak on this issue all right mr harvey yeah and i appreciate this discussion because this is this is very helpful to me um i had no question about the calendar the calendars is not the question

111it's more of the process of what occurs during the calendar that that is that is the reason why i brought up this concern um dr edwards if i believe i'm correct what we received this year from the city i believe in one of your comments you you said we're actually 2 million is it 2 million less yes yeah okay so we're 2 million less than what we got last year correct correct and and and and last year we were several million less than we got the year before yes well they gave us flat but then they cut us in the cuts so so we've had the previous two budget years both of which have been during my tenure on here our budget has been cut from city council and so what my concern is this

112year we are looking at adding a substantial amount of monies and i apologize i did not i should have done my homework and added all these figures up but we have added that to the same budget that budget number that we had last year we've received basically flat funding minus two million dollars we're able to have this covered by cares funding which will run out in two years so in three years we will have to go back to city council and request the additional millions that we've had cut from our budget each year in addition to the monies the the the amount of cares funding that is now paying for some of these additional programs so if if if we understand that as an ass that we have to go back to council on we

113all understand that we're going to have to do our due diligence about we can't go ask for that whole amount so where are we going to get that from is it is it going to come from some items in our base budget or are we going to eliminate all of these items that we just added and i guess that's what i'm saying about the process i feel like as we're developing that budget we need to as a board understand that process and thankfully because of cares funding we've got another year to kind of work this out before we get into d-day when we have to present a budget to to our city council which will clearly be a raised ask that's that's what i'm saying so i just want to clarify to the chair my

114questions are not regarding the calendar i completely under understand the calendar and the timeline in which things happen but it's the process of how we as a board develop our budget that we present to city council and being able to develop that budget and being able to compete competently stand behind that budget is critical for me based on the obligation that i've been bestowed upon by council thank you mr harvey i think that we can move on having heard the board share it would appear to me that miss morrison has made it clear that this is an ongoing process where questions can be raised along the way that our administration has been more responsive in answering questions and giving us information and that from dr sinha's statements a budget analysis or helping us to understand

115outcomes as a part of that introductory part of when we begin to discuss the budget will be very helpful this bullet has not approved even though i think very shortly we will we have not approved the 2122 budget yet and we do not know maybe i'm an optimism we don't know whether or not everything is going to work so well with our virtual academy and everything else that we're going to be okay but realizing all of the options if we were to include what i've heard tonight i think that that will strengthen what we are doing going forward dr what's your thoughts yes i'm going to go back to what miss laconic said because i think i have the same question and you guys know i'm i'm an educator at heart but more importantly i'm

116a learner and i love for learners to be successful and if this were a classroom and you were my teachers i would say what am i going to give you in january so that you say yes that is exactly what i need so i'm looking at the regular monthly financial report it's broken down by certain expenditures do we start this budget process with here is the financial report for the previous school year broken down by the same exact expenditures that you see on the monthly report except it's a summary of let's just say this is the 20 20 21 school year before we start the next budget process and then you would have that and by the time we get through the next budget process you will have an identical financial report broken down by

117those same major categories so that you would have them side by side because what i keep hearing this i need to see what it was and what it looks like in the base budget is that the is that would that help is that what you're asking for about the group time you know if i'm looking at previous budget dr edwards what i'm personally looking for is the variances the variance is positive and negative here we had savings where we spend more money so that gives me an idea going forward where the resource allocation possibilities are there and are they being exploited is not a good word being utilized you know so to me personally that will be the reason to look at the old budget is to see the variances in those line items or

118buildings or whichever way you want divided up so it gives me again going back to the macro level saying are we looking back to the zero base you know need based budgeting when you call so are we reallocating resources based on the need because if you have a a negative variance it means you're not using it let somebody else use that money okay so you're helping me dr groupter and kim state help me too because this falls on the shoulders of you and i so prior to us doing fun balance for the next year because we have to shore up all all of those major categories to see what we budgeted for what we actually spent what's left over what rolled in from medicaid or any other places that end up in our fund balance

119is that the time when you now can see side by side you know here's what we budgeted for here's what we actually spent here's the variance because the variance for what was unspent i will say will roll over into fund balance in most cases unless it's already in a reserve account like the textbook account but you would also see changes in if something was transferred out because we do make transfers throughout the year so you would see that variance and at that point we would say well this account was you know whatever hundred thousand dollars it ended up being fifty thousand dollars and you will recall on the blah blah blah board meeting we transferred fifty thousand from here to there so that explains that or this was um many times um you know 21

120positions that were not filled that's what this resource is from is is that what so it's a consolidated variance you're saying what i'm hearing is give you an idea we have about a million and a half dollars of unfilled vacancies each year which are rolled over you know for certain reasons one reason or the other so if i can live without a person is it can i live without them forever if yes then give that position to somebody else who is desperately needed maybe a counselor you know so i'm just giving an example so that's the reallocation but in a consolidated move it may be difficult for c to see if for the finance committee where that movement is happening in terms of variance so similar to what we did with school bus drivers when

121we we had all those open positions we're never going to get that many but maybe we'll get that many we took that money increased it to eight hours we also added a vrs and that's how we that's how we paid for bus drivers by consolidating and that's what we did as an administrative team and shared with you all as a strategy that we use to increase you know the bus driver hours and the number of eight hour positions so that's the kind of stuff that you're talking about yes because it's not going into micro management just looking at making sure that everybody has a fair share of their money in terms of when they are not using it give it if i have 50 bucks in my pocket and i'm not using it my sibling

122can use it let them use it all right what's the point in having that money very good so doc that was is that helpful it does it i think we try to do that but what's probably um confusing you all is that we're telling you when we're doing it these things are happening we've consolidated this so it may not be in one period in time so i know you all remember us having a conversation about we're going to take some bus driver positions we're going to increase in the eight hours but it wasn't at a let's look at the budget in totality these were things that we were doing as we were working with the administrative team and planning going forward and we didn't call them out when we got to march to say let's

123go back and say how did we do this kind of thing where did this these funds come from we can try to consolidate that at a period in time so that we can roll that back in front of you um but some of that we do so i will say some of it's going to get missed because like i said particularly if you're looking at you know 11 elementary schools and just think of the vast number of teachers we're going to miss the fact that we should have added a staff member what we switched and we moved some folks to cover some positions we may not catch every single one of those in time but we can give you sort of a summary if that helps does anyone have anything jermaine to say to the

124point in hand because we're trying to make sure that dr edwards has clarity now that we've had our broader discussion dr carter then dr sinha and i think also we need to remember that dr edwards did a presentation about a budget story and in that included a lot of information we're now saying that we didn't get but we did receive and it was in a powerpoint presentation talking about just all of the things that our budget was going to address and what we needed very good dr cena yeah i would agree with that um i i think back to your first year here when you restructured your administration and went to a deputy superintendent and walked us through those shifts and how you were shifting positions consolidating responsibilities and streamlining streamlining some things to free

125up some money one to just keep funding level um and other things and you really walked us through that in a nice way so perhaps yeah a similar summary because i certainly wouldn't want us to get in the business of saying oh you've had this position you've been searching for all this time do you really need it you need to make those decisions and present them to us of why and then it's up to us to ask but not not necessarily to to choose for you you're the expert and we entrust in you um that you're more than capable of making those kinds of shifts and changes and you have come to us you came up to us with the hr plan changes in personnel so so i do think it's all there we just

126have to be mindful and sort of maybe curate it in a annual summary perhaps i don't know what would satisfy the group you know in terms of those of you that have these questions because we do get the year-to-year comparisons and keep in mind everybody we do have master board and other opportunities for further clarification we wanted to have a simple discussion tonight mr harvey yeah i will specifically answer your your question for me if this were a normal budget year non-covet non-cares and you came to me and said okay board i would like to add 10 more behavioral counselors five more math teachers buy a new bus etc i would first want to know where at in our budget have we gone back and looked at and where could there have been savings or

127monies that we could re reallocate to to handle this before i go to council and ask for those additional monies that would be the most clear example i could share of of kind of what i'm looking for it seems like when i ask for information or ask for clarity it's always being accused that i'm trying to get into the weeds but from the business standpoint in me these are some of the things that that help me understand why i'm voting on something or why i'm going to go to council and defend something i think i've been pretty vocal each time with this board that i've been here i will go to council and i will fight the good fight for things that i can believe in but i also want to make sure that every

128time i go and fight the good fight for these things that i believe in that we have been thrifty with what we have already received and we have maximized that to the best of its ability and if we need to as dr goop a perfect example dr gupta gave maybe we have 10 positions that we haven't filled for five years well if we haven't had them for five years and the wheels haven't fallen off maybe we don't need those positions so then that allowance of monies could be used for some of these other things that we want our school system is going to mature and evolve over time and some of the things that we had that were critical that we needed 10 years ago might not be needed next year and so that's all

129i'm bringing forward i'm trying to understand i've been charged with being the chair of the finance committee and i take this obligation seriously and i want to be able to defend the budget and understand the budget completely if i can respond to that because you just gave me a point of clarity that i had an aha moment as you were speaking because you said if i want to add this position are there things that i should be looking at that maybe i could swap out this and then i can bring that to you and say that's what i want to do. and i think where the aha moment i just had is i do that and i don't bring this position to you because i've already done that and it doesn't require an additional budget

130item so if i'm looking at like when we got the extra social worker and those kinds of things before some of those swap outs we are doing and we're like that's budget neutral and we we just got another request to do something if we can't fill this can we swap it for that it's budget neutral that's not something that i would bring to you and say hey i need to add another position of blah blah blah if we can work it out at the administrative level to be budget neutral but what i'm hearing you say is when i do ask for that you want to make sure that i've already done that process and what i'm saying to you in most instances what i'm asking for is things that we've exhausted that process you did

131ask us for a list of unfilled positions and we did provide the board with a list of unfilled positions so that you could see and and i don't remember any board members saying absolutely take these people off the list we we don't need them from the list but we wanted you to see that we've skinnied that list it really is like a math teacher it's not that we don't need the math teacher there's a sub in there there's a body in there we can't keep us we can't get rid of the position and say we're just going to stick with status quo and keep the the substitute in there we still have to find that math teacher with that with the bus drivers we did kind of skinny the list a little bit and trade

132that up but many of those positions if you go back to that list are positions that are they're unfilled but they're in most cases are substitute teachers who are sitting in those positions whether they're a 90-day sub or a daily sub or in some cases a teacher who said i'll take the sixth class and i'll be the sub sitting in there and that's not a sustainable thing either you don't want to say to your existing staff we're going to cut that position so that all of you can continue to teach multiple periods so that work does go on i don't want anyone to think that we don't look at the existing budget and do as many budget neutral swaps and my favorite are the ones that are budget savings swaps where we're like great now

133we got a little bit of extra money from that change here and there but if i'm hearing you correctly you want to know when we do that i'm not saying i want to know when we do that but when you come to the to the board with a list like this how are we going to fund it in three years i mean there are questions that we're going to cover tonight you know my understanding is we've got cares funding to cover some things that if they're successful which boy i really hope that they are how do we fund those in the future especially when we have to go to city council and ask for sizeable amount of money and we if what happens if we get a no what are we going to do we're

134going to have to really roll up our sleeves but based on the calendar that's not going to happen until april or may oh all right if if the board overrules me i will gladly accept that i think we've discussed this sufficiently for tonight and i think that at least dr edwards has more understanding that total of what we need to do in relationship to our process and i think that she's articulated some concerns very nicely i do want dr gupta to make a final statement on this matter since i did see his hand before i made that into the board overrules me will continue to discuss this but this is an ongoing piece dr gupta continuing on the same thing you know if you look back to those 3.2 million dollars in new positions which

135were coming from cares funding this board voted eight to one to approve them the question was not that those positions are not needed the question for that vote against those positions was the sustainability of them going forward and that but until we try we don't know whether they are needed or not so i thought in the end this is a we need the mental health counselors you know we need all the support so let's try and then we'll figure out how the resource allocations will happen in the future thank you dr gupta unless there is someone otherwise if we could take a five minute break i think we can come back and deal with items four five six seven and eight very nicely and and move into closed meeting a five minute recess [Laughter] uh

136give everybody a chance to reassemble and as we're moving forward in our agenda you're welcome to join us e4 is coming before us for action tonight and if you remember dr jordan presented this to us last time and so if she's available or however dr edwards wants to handle uh e4 on federal programs absolutely as dr coleman said dr jordan presented the federal programs we do have a july 1 deadline which is why this is coming back up at the work session for approval and if there are any other questions both dr jordan and miss christie compton are here to answer or follow up on anything all right this is an action item tonight and so board members govern yourself accordingly are there any further questions dr gupta i make a motion that we approve

137this second all right then moved by dr gupta seconded by dr carter that we will approve our federal programs 2021-22 is any further questions or discussion all right madam click if you please call the roll scoop up mr evans yes scoop up member morrison yes scoob up movement dr carter yes good book mama dr brennan yes but woman dr coleman yes school board member dr nellis yes let's go back mom doctor senhai yes school board member dr gilbert yes let's go back my mouse to harvey yes motion care is eight to zero thank you madam clerk thank you board e5 is now dealing with facilities rental and each of you've had an opportunity to have discussions with this in various ways and we're going to ask dr edwards to lead us in this discussion absolutely

138um so this is regarding the rental of the rci complex for the relocation of our jackson street staff the virtual academy staff and potentially the empowerment academy staff and we presented to you all some options we talked about the process of looking at various properties all over lynchburg so thank you to all the people who helped us with that but we did come up with the best proposal being the rci complex which we formally inhabited as when we had family insight and our kids were there for two years so this would require that we have both relocating some offices for office staff but also children from the empowerment academy there we provided you with some information regarding cost and square footage and and tried to summarize any outstanding questions but i have the team here

139tonight just in case there was anything else that we missed or did not answer or any additional questions that may have been raised about the facility thank you dr edward so i am of the assumption that this would be on our agenda uh at our regularly scheduled meeting for of uh approval it actually does not require a vote as one of our policies you do give kim and i the authority to enter in however we would never want to do anything like that without full transparency and board support so that's why we're just opening up and making sure that we've answered any questions and considered any concerns and did due diligence so then i interpret that to mean unless there's any stop light tonight then this matter would continue to move forward into its process

140dr brennan dr edwards a member of your team the you all you sent an email today that has a sheet on it's called rci complex proposed funding could someone walk that through uh for those of us that not seen that before to make sure we understand how the costs um are handled for the next several years certainly miss laconic you want to kind of go over the costs again um sure on the the first column for your fiscal year 20 20 21 that is currently what we pay for out of our through our operating budget um when you go to the following year the we would still have a portion that is not eligible for cares at the rci complex as well as there's a six months because the current rental is from january through

141december there is a six-month period that we have already paid for um so that for 2021-22 that is budget neutral off by 600 and some dollars in the operating budget and then you would have the 146 000 that was funded in cares the following year you would not have that dual rental and the next the next the following two years you would have the operating at the thirty six thousand six sixty five twenty eight and the remainder of the rental funded through cares and we do have three different pots of cares funds then the the oldest one the cares three does take you through september 30th of 2024. so in fiscal year 2024-25 that would be where we would have to decide and you know reassess the programs we will have had the facility study

142we would really have to do an overhaul to see what are we going to do in that year because if there is no additional funds and the cares funds have expired we would have to look at that coming back into our operating budget and that would be the full 188 000. the first columns are just showing what the current estimated square footage is and what it would be for at the new location and the number of employees and the number of students is that sufficient dr brennan so yes i think so to clarify we're currently paying 61 000 for the units in our current budget that is correct and uh without cares funding in 2024 2025 we'd be paying 188 000 or almost 190 000. that would be that's correct so that would be the

143difference for three years from now correct any further questions and thoughts we've all had an opportunity to to look into this and want to thank administration for your efforts to find a way to make things happen for us and i certainly am thankful for it in agreement with it if there's no further discussion at this time about it then dr edwards we would like you to proceed and move forward with the facilities rental okay i will keep you posted thank you so much now e6 in my mind is for adoption tonight and so this is for action and this is our fiscal year 20 21 22 school operating budget uh dr edwards and mr connage okay so this you know city council approved their budget we we did a pr preliminary approval at the end

144of march and then we give our budget to city council now that they have approved funding for us that solidifies our revenues so what you have before you are the budget that we presented to city council also when we had our public budget hearing so those documents are the original documents that we had from those dates and it is up for final approval from this school board all right uh the floor is open for discussion have we not received what we asked for from council this might be a different meeting but it still has the opportunity for discussion anyone would like to have any discussion on this matter or is there a motion uh dr gupta is this an action item i am considering it to be yes i make a motion too all right

145we have a motion from dr gupta is seconded by dr carter that we would adopt officially the fy 2021-2222 school operating budget is there any further discussion on the matter mr harvey regarding the current budgeting of lcs funding to provide health insurance for board members a proposed budget allows for six thousand nine hundred and seventy five dollars for each board member for family premiums that total number is sixty two thousand seven hundred seventy five dollars that will be need to be budgeted annually and increasing with premium increases but this is not the true cost to lcs since lcs is self-insured lcs will incur costs for the health care of all family members of board members who accept the health insurance ultimately that cost is unknown many members of this very board have questioned the sustainability

146of the current lcs health insurance fund year each year and if questions amounts that needed to be added to the fund to keep it solvent they have asked if and when premiums for staff might need to increase to meet the growing costs of health care lcs's already has budgeted to incur the rising costs of premiums for our staff for the 2021-2022 school year each additional board member or their family members receiving care from lcs self-insurance will add additional burden to the system already under strain ultimately this increased strain could cause premiums to rise even further for lcs staff and cause premiums to increase many school board members have stated they will not be taking their insurance so why is there the need for this in the first place the only rationale given to support this

147measure was to provide an incentive for members of the community to seek to serve on the school board if a candidate for this position needs incentives beyond doing what is right for our students and our staff in the form of full family health care for what would only classify as a part-time position in most community businesses then i ask why should that candidate be considered for this position every constituent that i have spoken with is against this budget item and has caused concerns with the very actions of this board in the eyes of our community as an individual board member i cannot in good conscience support this budget item so therefore i make a friendly amendment to motion that this line item for providing family health care coverage for members of the lcf school board

148be removed from this budget if they are second to mr harvest motion i'll second it seconded by dr nillas now uh we the board will go into discussion but i want to make sure we've got the specifics uh can you state the line item you're talking about and if that's being taken out then what else does that mean it would simply mean that we would no longer have the ability for health care premiums for school board members all right on the income side that means what in terms of the balance if this were to be removed i'm just asking if it were to be removed we would have a positive 62 seventy five dollars if i am correct in my calculations based on the matrix that we received all right well with that level of

149understanding there is a motion on the floor to remove the health insurance item which would reduce our total budget by around sixty two thousand seven hundred and twenty five dollars uh we will now entertain discussion ms evans i'm just going to say i agree with that the feedback that i've heard also has been very similar and i'm going to agree that we are not employees of lynchburg city schools i still wish that the stipend and the insurance were allowed to go in as two different pieces but the board decided not to do that so i feel like if i'm accurate this is not just the insurance piece because the whole thing was together i believe as one they didn't let us vote on two things you put it as one on the um budget so

150i think it would take everything out not just this um but i'm also in support of that i don't think it's the right thing to do either well the maker of the motion helped the board to appreciate are you asking for the health insurance line item to be removed only are you asking for that in light of ms evans statement that would also remove the stipend for the board and the possible stipend for the chair i as an individual board member will not be accept accepting the stipend but i am not requesting that that be removed i am only requesting that removal of the premiums the family premiums for school board members and i would add that although this number of 62 775 dollars in our annual budget that is only a fraction of what

151the potential cost could be to lcs because we are self-insured and so the cost of every single medical procedure doctor's appointment etc would be actually covered by lcs thank you mr harvey and dr nillas just for clarification when you second it that you seconded with that understanding yes that was just for the health insurance yes sir all right further discussion by the board ms morrison i too have had a lot of thought and feedback about this one and understand better now the implication for having this and i will be voting to remove it remove the health insurance from the budget further discussion you know i know when we had the discussion there was some discussion you know about equity and considerations and all that but it's like do we offer part-time employees health insurance that

152that work 10 hours a week i mean where's where's the equity in that i mean so my personal reaction was this is pretty self-serving for us to vote ourselves health and health insurance it's a it's a pretty big fringe benefit normally reserved for full-time or mostly full-time employees all right i certainly will be acknowledging the fact that i would not be accepting the health insurance but i will continue to support this as an option for persons who may well need it for reasons that i will not lengthen the meeting to share but i will continue to support the health insurance option for board members and so i will not be supporting the motion that is before us and that's just my one thought any further questions of discussion tonight on this before we move to

153a vote yes dr brenner i just want to say that i think that i think that the budget that we voted on and agreed upon which does a lot more than just give health insurance to board members is a great budget and i don't want this budget that we will vote on tonight be to be uh to miss the fact that we've given raises to stay after we've done a lot of other things i think this is a very small part of the budget having said that i i did not understand when we had this original discussion that a large sum of money which is perhaps 62 000 or some amount is putting aside regardless of whether a board member takes this insurance or not and my simple understanding was that if a board member

154took it then that cost would be there but they're actually putting a lump sum of that money if only one person does it or no one does it that lump sun still goes into the pot which i'm very uncomfortable with that so i'm going to say that i that i'm going to vote in favor of this motion also i think that's not what i originally intended or understood i'd like to have clarification from dr edwards or mr carnage i was under the impression that once once this matter was determined by the board that those monies could be re-appropriated so it's similar to what we do now whenever we have a new staff member we put a posting out for a teacher we assume they're going to take health insurance we budget for it so that

155we have the money there and if you recall sometime in january february march is when we'll say you know we have excess funds and salary and benefits sometimes it's the benefits line um where we may have to make a request for a transfer if it's that or use those benefits monies to cover claims but we do have to budget because if you think through our budget approval process and not knowing what school board members will do or select we have to budget for all nine of you in our school board thank you dr edwards if there's no further discussion we're going to ask that the clerk would call the roll if you vote yes you are in support of the motion which would remove the health insurance package item only that would be around 62

156775 000 that would not be in the budget on the expense side if you vote no that means that you are against the motion and in favor of the health package remaining everyone clear on how you're voting madam clerk if you please close the rule scoop what remember evans yes scoop up member morrison yes scoop up movement dr carter yes scoop up my doctor brennan yes scoop up mom and dr coleman no scoop up mama dr nellis yes scoop up mom and dr sinha yes scoop up mommy dr gupta yes scoop up mr harvey yes motion carries all right now we have removed from the budget the line item on health insurance package and now we are still on a discussion around the approval of the budget itself and there was a motion so we

157include that so we have a motion and a second for the approval of the budget minus the health insurance package is any further questions or discussion to approve the 2021-22 school operating budget minus the health insurance like title all right if you vote yes you are approving the 2021-22 school operating budget as amended by our previous decision if you vote no that means that you are not in support of the budget ma'am click if you please crawl the road school board member evans yes scoop up emma morrison yes school board member dr carter yes good morning dr brennan yes let's go about mummy dr coleman yes dr nellis yes school but mom and doctor sinha yes mama dr gupta yes scoop up my mr harvey yes motion carries nine to zero all right thank you

158very much outstanding we will now move to item seven which will be modified in some way which is discussing school board members stipend at this time uh dr edwards yep so the forms that are in our agenda will be modified to reflect the decision that was made tonight but i did want to just cycle back about the process of accepting we'll say the stipend right now one thing that has to happen is our school board policy bhd needs to be modified it is on the agenda for july 6th and i'm going to go back and change that up so it matches to the conversation tonight and in effect that's just going to strike out that school board members do not receive compensation and add language about the stipend so you will see that on july

1596th and on the work session thereafter therefore it is officially approved by policy to award you a stipend by policy but we wanted to show you in advance just the forms and talk a little bit about the collection process so the first thing it's real simple and tina will help with this school board clerk will help with school board members just simply acknowledging i accept or i don't want the i decline the salary and then whoever the chair is once we have the reorg meeting on july 6 can also accept or decline and we will remove the reference to the health insurance we're asking that all nine board members fill it out so we have a record of what your choice in selection is and that information will go to hr and then the second

160sheet which is actually the first sheet on this is the confidential information sheet hr will set you up as a an employee which is why they need that information which again once tina collects that back you do not have to fill that out if you are not um accepting the stipend that is only if you are choosing to accept the stipend um and then you would fill that out so that we can set you up in the system and then award the stipend on a on a monthly basis we also had a brief discussion with the attorney regarding the best way should a board member say well i don't personally want to keep the money i want to set it up for a scholarship you always have the option as do our employees to donate

161to any scholarship that you would want to any charity that you would want to but certainly we were in preliminary conversations with the ed foundation should board members say i want to donate to a scholarship for let's just say the school board reps you would accept it and turn around and donate it personally it works best for auditing purposes if you accept it also in the policy and in discussion there is some language that says please talk with your um your accountant or whoever manages your money regarding your choice to accept or deny because there may be some tax consequences either way so in full disclosure just want everybody to know that i'm going forward but we'll talk more about this but we wanted to put it in front of you so that you could

162just see what the process would would be like and then we're asking that because when employees start that well no we don't have to worry about health insurance anymore never mind we're asking that they come back by august 1st so that we can set up the system appropriately i think dr gupta has a question thank you doctor is there any need for discussion on this matter dr gupta for record i'm not going to take the stipend so i'm assuming it's a completely out like if i say i'm out so what happens with that money just like health insurance will that money roll back to your general fudge budget or it stays in that part for it would it would be the same as like an unfilled employee type thing and then we would make a

163decision mid-year like we do whether or not to transfer it to something else or use it to cover something else but if you wanted it to donate to a scholarship then you would accept it and then donate so if i'm not accepting it the money stays there till mid-year and then you'll transfer that then we'll look at you mr harvey my question thank you for that clarification and the explanation speaking with attorney and so forth because i also will likely decline this i did have a question about okay if if a group of the board declines it that money stays in the personnel account then is that a decision it just grows goes into the general personnel account and then gets moved or is that in a personal account that is earmarked for the school

164board and then the school board makes the decision how that money could be spent in terms of a scholarship or something well if it's going to be for scholarship for auditing purposes except to accept the money then donate it because then if you don't then we're directly contributing to the student scholarship so that's why it's just the cleanest way if if that's what you would like to do um with your funds if you choose i don't even want anything to do with this money i'm gonna let miss lacontage talk about where it sits and then what we can do with it or how it what happens to it after that so the it is sitting in a board um compensation line so it's in that salary line whoever takes it it'll reduce the amount that's

165available it would sit there by policy if it's within the same major category the superintendent can approve for it to go elsewhere if if it was being moved to in a different category it would require the board approval any further discussion on the matter and this is before us for information on tonight and you will govern yourselves accordingly with your school board member confidential information sheet that moves us to item e8 discussion on date change of july the 6th school board meeting one board member brought to my attention that in the past we have had an opportunity around the 4th of july to make an adjustment uh to our july the sixth school board meeting the state board member it's okay if it stays as it is but the is chair wanted to bring it

166before this embodied because when we have our reorganizing meeting it has always been my will wherever i am in the process that all nine board members be there i have consulted administration and we do have one matter that we have to take care of prior to july the 17th and july the 13th would be in advance of that and all other directors and so forth would be available what is the pleasure of the board to move our july the 6th meeting to july the 13th if i'm giving you the right dates or you can leave it as it is floor is open for discussion yeah i'll start off i was the one that requested the change i'm not going to be here that week so um you know the board wants to meet july 6th

167i'm i'm i'm okay with that but have a good meeting i'm going to be out of town so as chair i'm i'm having no problem with moving it to the 13th dr brenner i was just and i'm fine with either date also i'm just thinking that we are going to have a new board member for that meeting who would probably like to meet with before the meeting occurs for an introductory sort of orientation brief meeting and if they're appointed june 30th or sometimes it's not gonna be a lot of time to meet with them it might be nicer to have a little time for the share advice here to meet with that person okay so so you're in favor of the 13th i i'd be if the board yeah okay board members keep in mind

168that we are scheduled on july the 15th for the uh genesis meeting of the master board training which again is no problem for me so we don't need to spend a lot of time on this so far doesn't appear that anybody is voicing any unreadiness but please is there anyone then can we entertain a motion to move our meeting from july the 6th to july the 13th for our reorg meeting i'll make a motion to change the organizational meeting from july 6 through july 13th motion made by dr nils is their second second second by dr sinha any further questions or discussion hearing none madam clerk if you call the role yes to change to know to keep it as it is school school board member evans yes school but morrison yes school board member

169dr carter yes scoob up mom and doctor brennan yes school board member dr coleman yes let's go about movement dr nellis yes school but my doctor nee senhai yes goodbye mama dr gupta yes let's go but my mom mr javi yes motion carries nine to zero thank you madam clerk f informational items the next finance committee has been uh cancelled as we heard previously and the next school board meeting will now be tuesday july the 13th here at ec glass thank the glass staff for allowing us to be here the next legislative advocacy and community relations committee meeting is scheduled for july the 13th on the same day that we are to have our five o'clock meeting so we probably would need to make an adjustment on that and we'll figure out how we would

170go about doing that master board training will be on friday july the 16th if that is the correct day it is and uh the next school board meeting work session will be july the 20th all right mr harvey um regarding the the virginia school board association master board training yes 16. do we have a location for that will that be here mr harvard that is an outstanding question that you raised we do not have an answer tonight but we will work on that and the board will be notified as quickly as possible okay thank you we have an answer of course we do we have an answer yes we will be here we need to be together in one room so we will be in the marie waller center which allow us to spread out

171but also have a screen so that we can you can have a table and a screen for the presenters ms morrison um dr coleman when we set this these dates for the master um yes ma'am we were doing it with the yes it's here and that may change basically it could conceivably and miss morrison again raises an outstanding point and uh again one of my favorite statements we shall see we will see what the new board member has to say uh and govern ourselves according but thank you dr edwards dude we do have a venue in place for the master boy trainings here at dc glass all right everybody we will now go into item section g 1 which is a notice for closed meeting pursuant to the code of virginia section 2.2-3711a1 the school

172board needs to convene a closed meeting for the purpose of discussing the following specific matter the superintendent's evaluation is there a motion to go into closed meeting a move that we're going to close meeting moved by dr carter seconded by dr brennan any further questions or discussion hearing none mr madam clerk if you called the roll group of member evans yes goober member morrison yes goodbye carter yes school board member dr brennan yes school but mom and doctor coleman yes obama abducted notice yes billboard member dr senhai yes school but mama dr gupta yes let's go but my mr harvey yes motion carry nine to zero all right thank the public for coming and watching and we will go back into the room that we were in last time right behind us and uh go

173right into our closed meeting thank you everybody for your diligence tonight you