LCS School Board Meeting: June 1, 2021

001consideration the chair does recognize the absence of school board member susan morrison who contacted me in advance due to family matters and she regrets not being here but will be with us for our work session and so that our meeting is now uh called to order i would now like to move to item b which is our approval of the agenda and our board members each of you have received the agenda in advance and uh items are there and we do want to thank our superintendent and agenda prep participants for making sure that everything that board members needed to be included here for our meeting tonight is there a motion now to approve the agenda as presented dr gupta making a motion to approve dr brennan ii are no further questions or discussion with uh

002madam clerk would you please close the role school board member evans yes school board member and dr carter yes google member dr brennan yes school board member dr coleman yes school board member dr nellis yes school board member dr senhai yes school board member dr gupta yes school board member mr harvey yes thank you we will now stand for our pledge of allegiance and they flag this great auditorium pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you members of the board and with so much going on in our nation what a wonderful way to this great country that we live at this time we will now move into a section c of

003our agenda which is pertaining to public comments and we do want to again allow all persons in the audience to know that we are continuing our board protocols around covet and mask inside of the buildings on school properties of course required and we thank you for cooperation as it relates to that we also further acknowledge that our meetings are provided for via our youtube channel that you can watch and later on channel 17. at this time we do want to acknowledge that we have public comments and i believe we have a public comment in writing uh madam clerk do we have any voice messages no sir and then we have three persons who have signed up to make public comments for us tonight and so i would like to acknowledge that persons appearing before the

004school board will not be allowed to campaign for public office or promote private business ventures and should not use profanity or vulgar language or gestures make comments about a public official an employee that are not related to his or her official duties engage in behavior that disrupts the meeting or intimidates others or address the school board on issues that do not concern the services policies role and or responsibilities of the school board individual speakers shall limit their comments to three minutes a speaker representing a group shall limit his comments to five minutes the representative shall identify the group at the beginning of his or her presentation a group may have no more than one spokesperson the total allotted time for public comments at school board meetings is 30 minutes public comments are reserved for the

005public to provide input the board does not respond to comments answer questions or otherwise engage in discussion at this time before we have our public comments i am going to ask that our vice chair would read our written uh public comment at this time this mr chairman we have one a written statement which is from philip stump and mr stump states i would like to thank latonya brown for her informative presentation at the recent school board work session re concerning sros and school discipline policies i urge the board to place these matters on the agenda for the next possible regular school board meeting there are significant problems with the use of sros in our schools i would also urge the board to present accurate data concerning the use of suspensions and expulsions disaggregated by race

006and gender thank you phillip stump thank you mr stump thank you dr brennan at this time our first public comment will be given by aaron reed who as an individual will address return to learn mr reed good evening good evening my name is aaron reed and i am a teacher in lynchburg city schools i am a graduate of lcs and ec glass this week marks the end of my 22nd year as a teacher the challenges of this past year have brought some stark truths to light about education in central virginia our community has had a glimmer of the challenges that we face in the classroom challenges including children without enough to eat children who need social and emotional support children who struggle with basic motivation but too quickly have some forgotten the lessons of this

007pandemic some who considered the safety of children and adults in these buildings as acceptable collateral if it meant that their child could go to an open school you have been vilified by those with ulterior motives who seek to remove the public part of public education and make no mistake educators like me have watched every board meeting and every work session that you have had as you have struggled through tough problems and arrived at sometimes unpopular compromises so in the face of that criticism that can seem like a constant barrage i wish to offer a reminder of what we accomplished this year faculty taught in some of the most creative and original ways imaginable to kids on the other side of a computer screen as well as the ones right in front of them they created

008online games impromptu songs and original forms of assessment that sought to meet the child where he or she was they welcomed the student who maybe didn't turn their camera on for zoom until march they called home and spoke frankly with parents about the real challenges that students faced trying to complete tasks in a less than optimal environment now make no mistake there are some changes on the horizon that teachers in your system are concerned about moving all of grades 6 through 12 to an a b block next year and then switching to a 4x4 block again the next year has some serious consequences and we hope that there is a more robust discussion about that in the future alterations to the phonics program at our elementary schools is similarly concerning there are places for you

009to ask important pressing questions and to listen to all relevant parties but when you air on the side of children and adults in this system when you acknowledge the tremendous efforts of your staff including bus drivers custodians and cafeteria staff who are the true unsung heroes of any school system you do right not only by your school but by the community that you serve i urge you to resist the voices that would sacrifice the needs of the many to empower the needs of the few i urge you to defend the public part of our public education thank you thank you mr reed for your comments reason chandler tonight is before us representing virginia organizers and his subject is sros thank you mr chandler good afternoon mr chairman dr edwards members of the school board my

010name is reason chandler i'm the pastor of jackson street united methodist church and i'm also a leader in the lynchburg chapter of virginia organizing i want to commend you for the work that you've done through this pandemic i want to commend you on the work that you've done to to assure that that the greatest amount of equity for our students and our families and our community are reached and upheld and yet again i i want to bring to our memory that like maybe four years ago we had a a forum at the lynchburg library where where we were addressing the school to prison pipeline and that's where we learned that there was just so many moving parts in addressing this this issue uh that that that we needed to find a place to start but

011from that forum we learned so much from our community and from the members of our student body and our students that that that attend our schools we were we were asking um is there a plan uh as as it pertains to the sros for for the board uh to engage in student voices yet again uh and to ask parents and and school resources and members um how they they felt about and and what um is their involvement if any in the relationship with the sros being present in the schools um we also wanted to bring to your memory and ask and challenge you to to to answer yet again the question of the resources that are being used for having law enforcement within our schools is is this the best use of resources of our

012public schools when we have so many other needs for students and and again we we hope to be able to collaborate as we have uh in the past as we work on being sure again and again and again that our children have the greatest advantage that they have every advantage and every opportunity not just our smartest but but even those who are the most challenged uh to to survive and and or be successful in in our public school system and so we asked the school board if they would be willing to to implement a survey among the students to investigate students attitudes towards the school resource officers i for one have had very pleasant experiences with the resource officers officer johnson in particular at dunbar really impressed me one day when when my my daughter

013and her friend decided to leave school like maybe one minute before the bell rung uh and and he followed them all the way to my house uh and when i came outside to see what was going on he got out of his car and he addressed me as mr chandler he introduced himself he shook my hand and he said i just wanted to make sure that your daughters made it home safely so so i do understand the importance of sros uh the importance of our staff and and our administrators that work in our schools and and how it helps us rest and be able to to be supportive parents and and and workers in our community to have this security i i do understand and yet at the same time i'm asking um if we

014could maybe find then more resources that we could use to implement in in conditions of some of our students who are struggling mentally struggling emotionally struggling financially uh struggling relationally uh so so that that we could still yet again improve even more uh the equity uh that that we're placing in our education system and in our children who is our future and who will grow up to be productive citizens in lynchburg city and all over the world thank you for your time today god bless you thank you pastor chandler our last public comment will be given by mr andrew glover who is coming to us tonight on behalf of the conservative parents of lynchburg and he wants to share with us matters of his own consideration good evening lynchburg city school board my name is

015andrew glover i'm an lcs parent and represent the conservative parents of lynchburg a group of over 220 lynchburg parents and teachers i come before you tonight with two very critical concerns the first is regarding the use of any teaching material that perpetuates critical race theory begins from the assumption that racism occurs in all interactions to see how this works let's look at a thought experiment imagine you own a shop and two customers enter at the same time one is white and one is black who do you help first if you help the black first black person first critical race theory would say that you did so because you don't trust the black person to be left in your store alone that's racist however if you help the white person first instead of the black you

016would say that the black person is a second class citizen that's racist too this is the essence of critical race theory that you can find racism in anything even if you have to they have to read your mind to do it critical race theory proponents assume racism is present everywhere and always and they look critically for it until they find it there are many examples of this but let me read you one quote from a leading proponent of critical race theory it states capitalism and racism are interlinked which is why i call them conjoined twins this insinuates that even the participation in one of our core pillars as a free society is by definition racist that the simple act of eating mcdonald's cheeseburger can now be considered racist that quote and that thought process and

017many others concerning the ones i don't have time to highlight came from ibrahim kindy a self-proclaimed anti-racist and as it relates to lcs he is a cited resource in the virginia commission of african-american history education in the commonwealth report that is a commission that lcs superintendent edwards served on and contributed to it's also one that forms the basis of a curriculum coming soon if it's not here already ibram kindy along with many other cited resources in this curriculum like the 1619 project rob and the elijah's white fragility promote this uniquely un-american concept of critical race theory not since the iranian aryan obsession in germany in the 1930s and 40s or the south and african apartheid in the second century the 20th century has a social movement been so obsessed with race and it has no

018place in our community and our schools can curriculums so i call on every school board member not to be intimidated by this heads i win tails you lose logic of the self-destructive american hating anti-reality ideas don't be bullied into thinking that you're racist when you know you're not or that you're a victim when you know you're not i urge you to start an investigation into critical race theory within lcs and gut it out before it destroys our next generation the second item that i need to speak to you tonight i honestly honestly cannot believe that i have to be asking this but tonight the school board is considering a recommendation by vsba to remove policy number kna which prohibits registered sex offenders including child sex offenders on lcs campuses you're getting ready to remove that

019policy furthermore the board will be voting to update policy kn which removes the dissemination of certain information to school personnel such as bus drivers recording and progress who would typically be alerted to watch out for these suspect individuals the policy kn does attempt to address the removal of policy kna however it only outright bans tier 3 offenders but stills allows a path for tier 1 and tier 2 sex offenders to enter school buildings under a yet to be defined procedure examples of a tier 1 and tier 2 offender which under the current wording would potentially be allowed on school campuses include those individuals who produce child porn commercial sex traffickers and pimps prostitutes and those convicted of sexually battery and more i cannot honestly tell you how disturbing it is the idea that somebody who

020produces child porn would ever have a path to ending up on an lcs campus it makes me sick so i would ask the school board to delay taking any action on these two policies until their contents can be adequately explained to the community allowing you time to collect feedback from the community and for the community to understand what these two policies represent thank you thank you mr glover and thank you pastor chandler and thank you mr reed for your public comments uh so noted by the board we will now move to our next section of our agenda which is pertaining to section d student representative comments and this is what is all about school board members and community watching the development of our uh young people and so we're going to hear for this year

021school year for the last time from grayson arnold a student representative from heritage high school and then jayden scott from ec glass high school as our student rep and then after they have finished our vice chair is going to read a resolution of recognition to the student school board representatives for 2020 2021 and if you want to do some exercise let's clap for them as they come forward [Applause] so can you can y'all hear me yeah i just want to say thank you all so much for the opportunity to be able to speak to you all this entire school year it's opened up so many doors and opportunities and i really just appreciate appreciate it i want to thank each and every school board member for everything they've done this year we've been throwing a

022curveball lcs and all the other schools in the nation have been thrown one of the craziest curveballs i think imaginable and we've made it we're here at the end um and it's just amazing so i just want to thank all of y'all and yeah it's great hi all on behalf of all of ec glass and just the remainder of the lunch break we just want to say thank you we know students have gone through so much this year but class of 2021 has officially graduated from heritage and ec class grayson is a 2021 graduate that is amazing and with all that we've been going through i just want to say thank you so much to each and every one of you because i know on different occasions i've spoken with each and every one of

023you and it has been nothing but pleasant conversation everyone has been so extremely nice so helpful for any and everything that was needed during the times that we were speaking and so i want to say thank you all so much for making all these decisions for our school for being there no matter what and i just want to say thank you all so much wow thank you both let's give them another hand and you all just stay right there for just a moment and as we now move into section e oh please please how about we give y'all a round of applause yes all right fellow board members you deserve it yes indeed thank you you all have been remarkable and dr edwards wants you both to know that something very special will be coming

024to your respective homes in the very near future and at this time our vice chair is going to read a resolution from the board thank you dr coleman it is a pleasure to read a resolution of commendation and appreciation to jaden scott and grayson arnold presented by lynchburg city school board jaden scott and grayson arnold were selected by their peers to represent ec glass and heritage high school on the lynchburg city school board during the 2020-2021 school year the lynchburg city school board views this desire to serve in public life as the worthiest of ambitions with this resolution the lynchburg state school board seeks to pay tribute to jaden scott and grace and arnold students who have conscientiously worked to keep their student body's viewpoint before lynchburg city school board in doing so they have

025fulfilled their responsibility and made a valuable contribution to public education in this community therefore whereas jaden scott and grayson arnold serve lynchburg city schools as the ec glass and heritage high school student representatives to the lynchburg city school board from november 2020 until june 2021 and whereas jaden scott and grace and arnold served as the role models for their peers excelling as leaders and voices for their schools by participating in important school board discussions that directly affect their peers whereas jaden scott and grayson arnold's attendance at lynchburg city school board meetings demonstrated their commitment to their roles as champions for the best possible educational experience for all students now therefore be it resolved that the lynchburg city school board of lynchburg virginia commends jaden scott and grayson arnold for their many valuable contributions in providing

026the school board with yet another viewpoint for their consideration and guidance furthermore the school board of the city of lynchburg takes pride in these superior individuals who so early in their lives have have already begun to make their marks by taking such an active part in public life in lynchburg city in lynchburg virginia thank you jayden and grayson would you like to make a closing comment absolutely so you two have been an absolute joy to work with i am so very proud of everything that you managed to accomplish during this school year doing a pandemic winning championships studying getting good grades showing up here staying at board meetings pretty late sometimes but always giving your best and always having a positive can-do spirit and even when it got really really rough sometimes the two of

027you were immaculate role models for us adults and if we've learned anything hopefully we've learned something from from the two of you on how to handle conflict because you have made it to the other side of conflict in a way that we all need to celebrate you so we do have our version of lcs doordash which will be coming to your homes this week with a special gift i just want to let you know that so you don't not answer the door just to celebrate you and once again say thank you thank you thank you and congratulations on all of your accomplishments this year and we know you're going to continue to make us proud thank you job wow that that makes it all the all the worse in the world for what we do

028thank you both look forward to working with you continuously in the future uh this now brings us to e2 and uh dr edwards special presentation to beth morris director of school nutrition yes uh and she is here so i'm going to ask her to come up to the podium and beth is so shy she's probably like oh no [Laughter] so while miss morris is coming up she is our director of school nutrition and i think mr reed said school nutrition is one of our unsung heroes if you remember when the pandemic first happened it was our transportation department nutrition department that really took the lead in terms of making sure that all of our kids were fed that they had meals and they were out there tirelessly delivering food sometimes going back to re-deliver some

029food and they fed everybody everybody that they could anybody who needed a meal any child who needed a meal and we were so grateful and that energy did not stop they continued throughout the summer throughout the school year just being creative in their work and then sometime in the fall there was an opportunity for some grant writing and to possibly get a nice little van and miss morris got a beautiful van so that she could continue to deliver foods and personalize service to students who were in our remote who were remote only who could not come out to any of our sites to get food she also this summer in case you don't know because she does not stop we're going to have food service at miller park thanks to miss morris and making sure

030that kids have food there she has written numerous grants we have a two-door refrigerator two-door freezer a hot holding cabinet in addition to this lovely van and all of this has been done quietly behind the scenes and many of you might not know all of the things that miss morrison's school nutrition department has done so sometime in march there was this award and no kid hungry and she does a lot of work for that and unfortunately our award for our director was delivered to a different address so it never made it here and then when it did it was at the time that our building was closed so we had this box that was sitting there and we wondered what was in that box well we found out what was in that box and we

031may have missed the no kid hungry celebration but we just gonna have our own celebration miss morris so i would like to present to you on behalf of no kid hungry lynchburg city schools lynchburg city and probably a few folks who don't even live in lynchburg and got a meal too when you are out there delivering our sincere thanks and appreciation for the tireless efforts and everything that you and your staff do and have done and will continue to do all summer long to make sure that the basic need because kids aren't going to learn if they're hungry y'all we have to meet that basic need first and you are always always a champion for kids so we celebrate you and we may be late with no kid hungry but better late than never so

032we have a special award for you as well as a photo op which we have to send on and i know you love pictures which we have to send on to celebrate you so i'm gonna ask dr coleman to come down with me as we present you with this gift and miss pugh is going to take our picture while you all are coming down i have to say thank you so much for this recognition um but i feel somewhat as though my entire staff should be here i might be the individual that organizes motivates but wow do you all and the city of lynchburg have the most incredible group of dedicated professionals that work very much behind the scenes but love those children this i'll just be finishing my 20th year as a school nutrition

033professional it certainly has been one of the most challenging times in my career but it's also been the most exceptional it's it's truly been an honor to really reach out to partner and to be a part of a team that only wants to be what is best for our children so thank you all very much [Applause] we promised that we would take a picture and pass it on with the sign that says i am powered by breakfast because one thing she makes sure is that our kids get breakfast lunch dinner and snack and just to show how inclusive we are it's also in spanish on the back so we're going to ask you to hold that and then in here and i am going to ask you to open this there is a small box

034along with a few other gifts in here um and there's a little award in that small box if you would this yes yes take that oh wow is that not the coolest thing i'm telling you the pillsbury doughboy has nothing on me thank you all so so much thank you thank you for everything you do we would be remiss if we did not take a moment to just celebrate you and i just want to end with saying that um you know we are we are a team and we're in the basement and we kind of do our little thing from behind the scenes but it really is such a rewarding experience to be a part of the lcs team and and knowing that our contribution is part of the puzzle that leads to and contributes

035to the success of our children and so again thank you thank you what a wonderful opportunity to have these special presentations and again thank you so much uh beth for everything that you do we will now move to section f our finance report uh april the uh 2021 financial report from our very capable and able kimberly leconnage good evening tonight i'm presenting the april 30th financial report our operating budget remains the same as the previous month at 101 million 886 769.97 the revenue received the date we have received 70.3 percent expenditures to date are showing at 72.45 and the expenditures including encumbrances which is your contracted salaries and benefits as long as well as open purchase orders is currently at 94.15 percent we have present i have attached the revenue report in detail the expenditures

036by the major categories those were also presented at the may 25th finance committee for any questions but if you have any questions tonight dr gupta please dr brennan please mr congress thank you very much for your report just two quick questions and again mostly for me my education but as far as the sale tax receipts go i see we're about 78 percent we've received about 78 do you predict and hope that those will be on target as far as our budget goes and the second question is that it looks like the revenue from dual enrollment is pretty low like 225 dollars i'm hoping that's just a timing issue as far as when we receive those so the second question yes it's a timing issue we actually received that payment um we will receive that in

037june the first question was sales tax our sales tax receipt is actually very strong the way we have to record it because there's a two-month delay in receiving we actually will be getting july receipts it'll get be pushed back so when you look at your april report you have may receipts you also have june receipts and then the july will get pushed back to the current year so you have three more months where with the other state you would just have may in june so it's actually been very strong this year great thank you dr gupta i have a question about this function 2200 i see a variance of 17 to 19 on the on the wrong side so could you please explain why we're spending so much on function 2200. so that was coming

038from so that was the category that we had we had stated beginning of the year that when we were doing the annual school report that function with the call center was not a viable account code structure for the annual school report so we have fixed it going forward but in doing so we had to move now this it's under the administrative section but it's really administrative in health but we had some positions that were coded and this has been done historically and an instructional support function that really we felt should be an administrative function so we've made that correction in this year and then going forward and if you recall when we were doing the budget presentations you would see that it looked like the administrative budget was going up significantly from the prior year

039and we had stated that was part of that increase was that correction this is a one-time variance yes sir any further thoughts questions concerns from the members of the board all right thank you so much mr carnage for the finance report we'll now move to section g our consent agenda and it is comprised of three items school board meeting minutes from may the 4th our school board work session minutes from may the 18th and the human uh resources report uh what is the pleasure of the board concerning the consent agenda is there a motion a move then we passed the consent agenda dr uh carter has made a motion is there a second oh second second by dr brennan any further questions or discussion here none madam clerk would you please close call the role

040school board member evans yes school board member carter yes scoop up member dr brennan yes scoop up mom and dr coleman yes school book moment dr nellis yes scoop up boomer dr senhai yes school board member dr gupta yes scoop up my mr harvey yes eight to zero thank you so much all right section h is going to be our school board member reports and if you have no reports you can indicate that as such and if there is any need for discussion the chair will certainly guide us in that process h1 finance committee mr harvey the finance and facilities committee met on tuesday may 25th at 3 30. we began our meeting with a review of the finance report by ms laconic following that we discussed implementation of the school board stipend and the

041insurance health insurance for school board members following that we had a presentation by mr gatzke regarding the facility's report on the admin building which i believe will be covered in further detail uh later in this this meeting um and finally we had a discussion on the budget development uh for next year and uh that will be something that i recommend that the board address so that there's a complete understanding of all members of the board on the preparation of the budget just beyond calendar and that's the conclusion of my report thank you mr harvick of concerns or questions dr gupta i've asked several times before could the agenda items the material which is distributed to the committee is made public and i see some items there others not there and that keeps me if i'm

042not at the meeting out of the loop unless the topic is discussed in full board i'm assuming finance committee is a subcommittee so where the discussions happen doesn't percolate up to the full board that's my question number one but i have a second one all right before you go to the second you still have the floor madam clerk please so note that i've heard that two or three times and we do need to make sure that that happens as it relates to our standing committees and i think it does in some instances and so so noted uh your second you want to respond mr harvey yes um after the minutes of the meeting are approved at the following meeting they are then posted to board documents thank you sir it's our standard protocol i believe

043that's with all committees okay thank you so know that madam clerk and we'll review and make sure that all is done as it should be thank you mr harvey for that dr gupta the other thing is i heard during the meeting i was quoted that i didn't like the budget process so for record i didn't tell directly or indirectly any finance committee member that i don't like the budget process i have expressed opinions about micro level macro level need based things like that but i have never expressed concerns about the budget calendar so if there's any issues they need to talk to me before they bring my name up because so i was i can say i was misquoted because i have no conversation with any member of the finance committee about my like or

044dislike for the calendar thank you dr gupta so noted any other statements that need to be made at this time all right thank you um madam clerk and we'll work on it where necessary any of those matters thank you mr harvey for your report governor's school committee chair again mr harvey um no report at this time we have a meeting this coming wednesday thank you so much and there will be sufficient prep for our work session with dr smith's visit for us in our work session thank you so much uh h3 law regional school committee uh dr sharon carter there's no reporter this time but the laurel did have a whole day graduation ceremony that was wonderful and the venue was outside of the law school and that was beautifully decorated and all the parents

045were happy as well as the graduates and we had a graduate yes we had two grades two very good um if you would let's just pause and clap for that thank you dr carter for being president representing us with the law group we appreciate that h4 uh the stem academy dr nellis oh the stem academy did meet um this past i guess may 24th uh reviewed the year in general had 28 graduates seniors that graduated at 100 percent graduation um held their graduation ceremony i don't know last week okay it was following the cvcc but and they expect there was some shuffling around open slots for next year but they expect those to be fully filled and i think lynchburg had a few openings that they were candidates so absolutely that's full fundraising suffered a

046little bit just due to the fact that they weren't able to go out but they did get some funds and the intent is to reinvigorate that that effort so overall it was a successful year students are going to college or one's going in the military so very good thank you dr knowledge for your work with that group year all year and likewise let's give those persons a hand that's wonderful this is what it's all about all right h5 uh legislative advocacy committee of ms bell evans we we already went over from our past meeting and we are not going to have a june meeting we will pick up in july okay on a new um agenda for the year okay thank you mrs evans one other thing please send an email so in the next

047month start thinking about areas that you think are important to push for so we can come together and come up with an agenda so i'll send an email out just asking for ideas thank you miss evans for your leadership on that and that's that's going to be exciting thank you so much all right h6 task force um again ms morrison is not here uh dr gupta any updates the task force is on a pause right now so there's no other updates thank you so much dr gupta and of course that matter is being handled at another level so i don't want the board to think that there's nothing being done but dr gupta and ms morrison will report out when it's when it's time for us uh regarding that and i do thank you for

048that uh dr gupta and miss morrison uh the last item is h7 and uh this is partners in education and i do have a comment uh from miss morrison uh that i will read uh but mr harvey would you please i'll defer to morrisons and she is actually the school board representative i'll be more than happy to comment all right thank you at the may meeting of the partners in education board meeting the board decided that it wanted to remain an independent board and not to become an advisory board to lcs this means that they will continue its alliance with the business alliance and a partner to lcs the pi board will need to contact the leadership of both organizations to detail what this means moving forward and that is in terms of role clarification

049and other forms of definition as it relates to availability of our staff and not dealing with staff beyond what that availability can be and so we'll work all of that out and dr brennan and myself and the superintendent will meet appropriately with those bodies to make sure that we can smoothly move forward and let pop be what what it can be and needs to be any further statements on that no i appreciate it right thank you report from ms morrison thank you so much all right we are now into uh section i uh unfinished business and we will start with item one return to learn updates dr edwards certainly and this being the last board meeting before the last day of school which is tomorrow our official last day of school and we will return

050to as close to normal procedures in the summer with our summer programs being in person and for the fall being as close to normal with our five days a week we still await any other discussion about masks and and so on and so forth with that um but the return to learn updates as they have been focused on hybrid and whether or not we were having in-person learning they're going to shift we're seeing less numbers in terms of the positivity rate going down so one of the things that we did want to recommend is that we do not continue to have return to learn updates we talk about programs and things that we need to talk about but there's we're back to learn right now so it's not not return to learn it's learning is

051going on moving forward so but for today i do have dr jordan here to talk a little bit about summer programs and some other things as well and i'm sure dr sinha will give us the covet update as what dr jordan good evening board it was the latonya brown show last time so i don't know what you'll call it after tonight but you'll see me quite a few times i'm here to report to you about return to learn and summer programming we are focusing on face-to-face summer school programming that will start in just a few weeks i am happy to report and a tiny bit nervous to tell you that more than 1600 students are currently registered for summer programming i printed out a chart for you to reference we have so many face-to-face summer

052programming options and we have a couple of new credit online options that we've had in the past for students as well we have partnered with the local ymca to offer power scholars we have a robust pedal program with almost 200 students registered in grades 2 through 10 in our pedal program so we are very very excited it has been such a collaborative effort between departments between working groups with current administrators we've got some amazing aspiring administrators who are working with us on summer so we're really excited about that in just a little bit you will have the opportunity to look at high school program of studies updates middle school program of studies is coming to you for the first time tonight we are looking forward to having students back with us for five days a

053week in the fall we're also excited to offer a virtual academy for families who want to remain virtual i did want to mention one of my appearances here tonight will be to talk about title grants we are going to see phasing out of some of our 21st century grants this spring and in the summer and we will use our some of our cares funds to offer similar after school programming opportunities to address learning loss provide more inclusive and expansive 21st century like experiences for all students and we will work closely with the city of lynchburg procurement department we'll put out a request for proposals for after-school programming options like we did for summer programming we look forward to continuing our work with many organizations throughout the city to reach more students in the upcoming years

054even though the funding and or the grant title may be different our need to work with organization in the city is still there and we look forward to partnering with some of the same organizations and even more organizations as we work to serve as many students through after-school programs as possible when you see our title grant applications i hope that you noticed that our priorities are reflected in those grant applications we're talking a lot about tier one instruction tier one instruction is classroom instruction the magic happens in the classroom i got a little teary-eyed when i heard aaron reed talk about what he and his colleagues have done this year and i've gotten my eyes have leaked a little bit every time i've seen videos and every time we've walked in buildings this year our

055teachers have gone above and beyond for our students and often times they talk to blank screens for a little while and then the pictures would come up on the other end of a zoom and we want to make sure that we always recognize that the magic happens in that tier one classroom so we're focusing on classroom instruction as much as possible next year we will continue to rely on pals and ixl diagnostic assessments next year to measure student growth we've really had to focus on local assessments in the absence of sols in 2020 and it's given us so much more leverage to measure student growth by the week the month and not just the year c and i will continue to work collaboratively i see latonya brown's name up on zoom right now we have

056worked so so tirelessly on grants like title four where multiple departments work together to serve our students and we are really really trying to talk about departmental priorities and make sure that we are recognizing what we need to do to move our students forward we're going to focus on literacy and numeracy definitely focus on middle school school improvement writing on-time graduation making sure that we're looking at current data and that we are addressing underrepresented populations through the pedal program we are consistently looking at ways to support current programming so when you see the grant applications we are making sure that we have layers of support embedded in the school layered in administration positions we want to make sure that we are living out the vision and mission of every student by name and by need

057we are wrapping up the gifted review process i wanted to let you know that the gifted review process will be a little bit later this year students will find out about gifted selection during the month of june we will continue to offer some gifted opportunities in the summer we're going to embed some instructional coaching opportunities some stem activities we're going to look for student potential we're looking for student growth we're going to constantly look for ways to give students opportunities when we're meeting students where they are that doesn't necessarily mean go back to students who are below grade level we want to make sure we're responding to students who are above grade level as well so we are busy and we are excited about a lot of the summer opportunities and opportunities in the fall

058how was that for a flyover thank you dr jordan thoughts of the board dr carter thank you for the presentation i have one question regarding the lcs why mca power scholars and it says students served i've heard from a lot of parents several that is this just for is the students needing additional support in reading and math what about students who don't will they have an opportunity to participate in this type of programming at the ymca power scholars locations we invited students but we still have a little bit of wiggle room um not for transportation until so don't let mr gatzke get me but if parents reach out to the cni department or to the school we have a few open spaces in power scholars typically power scholars would be for students who need remediation

059in english or math but if students if parents have a need or a want we'll do our best to accommodate in spaces where we still have a few openings not just for them but any of these any of these openings because i know some people that they want their children in school but they don't need any remedial type of learning but they want to have them in a program and that the pedal program is probably a better fit for students who are not looking for remediation but need more enrichment opportunities and i would urge any families who are still in need of summer programming to reach out either to the schools or to the cni department and just one more now the dates are they able to come any weeks or do they are there

060or is it intended that they come each week each of these weeks each week as many days as possible if parents have family vacations that they've already scheduled them the programs will work with them but we would like to have students as many days as possible and some say cost one says there's no cost what about the others the only cost this year is for the online courses on the very last page thank you thank you dr carter any further dr gupta so dr jordan my if i hear the number right 1600 students have signed up for the summer program yes sir so what happened to others uh 7 000 plus students is it was a volunteer they sign up or you ask them to sign up means because we were worried about students falling

061behind due to remote learning all year long so how come the population is so small of students who are signing up for summer this is a very robust a robust summer school program in contrast to what we've offered in the past we still have some openings and we will continue to add as we are able but we we definitely invited students that we felt had the greatest need um and there will still be students who have have needs and we will have to address those as we are aware of them but this is this is big if i could just pick it back on dr gupta's uh question and my two daughters are going to be a part of this and i'm very appreciative just want to make sure as we continue to get this

062out will there be bus transportation available for those who need it if they have not already registered but can register and i understand from last time that you do what you can but i'm just for the public's benefit we will do our absolute best to make sure that transportation is provided to all families who need it i don't know if i won't mr gratzky would you add anything that is correct we will do our best to provide transportation to anybody that wants to attend these programs i have to admit that it is tight we have our routes all set up and ready to go and adding people at this point is it's an inconvenience quite frankly and and buses are full and drivers are sparse uh but we will get them on a bus wow

063and thank you for articulating in the manner that you did and that's just another way of showing how lcs is really trying and i would agree that this handout is reflective of a robust activity and i just want to make sure that every kid that can possibly be involved would be involved and if there are other ways that the community can get involved and i don't know all the protocols on that but if if i don't know faith-based community other organizations that may have ways to help get kids in the way that that might be acceptable we want to get as many kids as possible participating in this process that may need it dr gupta you had a follow-up i understand the constraint in busing but if i'm a parent who i think i think

064my child needs to attend this summer school but i'm hearing is right now that was not the choice so we picked the students who will be attending the summer school so if the parent wanted to express their choice that was not interested we've invited students to attend programs but we've also left registration open for weeks and weeks and taken as many parent requests as possible so i think we've done a good balance of both it wasn't just selection only i mean we targeted some students purposefully but parents could register what was the response rate for students you invited versus who signed up i'm sorry i'm going into statistics but that gives me an idea what the total percentage acceptance rate i don't have that in front of me we can send that to you all

065right thank you so noted uh come right to your doctor carter anyone who has not spoken would like to make any comment on this matter all right miss evans something quickly to dr gupta um as a having a student in lynchburg city we got information over and over again we have about the summer programs through emails and phone calls and messages in the parent portal so parents have gotten the information so i just want to put that out there that y'all did a really great job of getting it to parents who wanted if you weren't selected you did have the ability to sign up i just want to make that clear thank you miss evans anyone else dr carter well okay because i heard that some kids especially younger students weren't able to get in

066or they were told that their schools probably wouldn't be able to take them because of the number of students that were already selected to go so that's not the case if you have names or if we have those families i would really really like for folks to reach out because we have some available spaces at a lot of our programs right now so even though some of our programming may be full we have some availability at other locations and we are running many many of many different opportunities here so we have two non-21st century summer programs that we may have some availability thank you dr carter for noting that and and and getting those names to dr jordan that's very important anyone else on this matter well thank you dr edwards thank you dr jordan

067for updating us uh on this very important matter and let us do all we can to get everybody that we can get involved in uh robust summer school program offerings all right thank you so much uh dr sinha would you unless there's something yeah dr sinha no um everything's looking really good [Music] cases are down the numbers are a little bit wonky this week because it looks like they vdh made some data corrections but they just allocated them all in this week so it looks like we had negative number of cases so that's why the dashboard looks a little weird but all in all things are looking good vaccinations are on track and i realized looking at this i didn't paste the new i have two pie charts now because now we have children 12

068to 17 getting vaccinated yes but the adults 18 plus that's still the chart from last week i apologize for that i will change that and update it and send that out but we do have a small fraction of children who are starting to come in and get vaccinated and when you consider especially with the pfizer moderna vaccines it's about a six week process until you're fully fully immune i guess four week just for the two shots so that's quite a time span so the fact that we're already at those levels is pretty encouraging i would think so keep it up lynchburg it's looking good any questions for dr sinha dr sinha thank you for providing this information for us throughout this process uh dr brennan as well uh this has really been a wonderful journey

069of watching people who leave with care to get us through this in a magnificent way and i know you're going to get tired of me asking you to clap if you don't want to clap that's fine but i'm just thankful let's give all of our staff for getting us through this in the manner in which we have our schools have been open and now they will be open five days a week on the unfinished business there are now some action items uh board that we do need to take care of and so please let us govern these matters accordingly uh item uh three i3 updates to the high school program of studies uh dr edwards if you could bring on our presenter and dr jordan is back up at the podium to just give us

070a quick summary good evening we brought the high school program of studies to you earlier this spring we have some updates updates include some new dual enrollment courses we've got an addition of virtual academy some cte changes that are related to our title to monitoring visit and a report called the ipal report which talks about teacher licensure we've got the proposed african-american history course and here lynchburg city schools has always had an african-american studies elective this is the proposed vdoe virtual virginia partnership which would be a blended learning course taught by an lcs teacher using some of the virtual virginia modules the second page the communication system course that's a completer sequence or cte and cyber security just has an updated title do you have any questions about these updates all right members of the

071board any questions dr gupta all right maybe mr carnegie you can answer this dual degree program do we cover their tuition or the students pay their tuition and how much it is we pay the dollar we pay the fees for the dorm room so the lcs covers the tuition and they all go to cvcc or their other associate degree programs these are separate courses two of these courses replace the teachers for tomorrow sequence so that's through the university of lynchburg we typically do dual enrollment through cvcc dr brennan dr jordan thank you so much for this nice summary to to tune us into the different important aspects just two two questions one is that um under under the central virginia governor school it looks like grades and s.a.t requirements were deleted or modified from that

072area is that uh is that a change in philosophy or direction there or what do you know the background for that on the course offerings or in the selection application for application of the to central virginia governor's school let me check on that okay and i will get back with you right it was the area on page 67 related to that and then also on on 1771 they had changes in the ncaa nia athletic eligibility standards and i think that is because it changed so often that our program of studies was not always reflective of those changes so we are now going to link to the most current ncaa thank you thanks very much any other questions or discussion from the board concerning agenda item i3 dr nellis you have a question on the on

073dual enrollment that replaced the future teachers seems odd for juniors and seniors to go through a course where they're being they call it training that strikes me as more of indoctrination when you start talking about implicit explicit bias and then a final section on candidate self-reflection strikes me as being a semester-long struggle session i think this is pushing a particular point of view i a little disappointed to see us as a public school system this is being offered frankly i would propose uh make a motion to delete this particular course from the high school program studies uh there's a motion uh and i'll restate your motion so that we can get a second for it dr to delete course 6339 a.d human diversity in american schools it's a semester-long course second to the motion right

074second been seconded by dr guter now we will move into discussion on the motion if the make of the motion would like to have further statements at this time in in uh regards to the motion that is now on the floor for action you know the course descriptions talks about intersectionality and identity equality equity inequity implicit bias explicit bias acceptance tolerance advocacy social justice and this is supposed to be an introductory i guess survey level course for future teachers it's through the university of lynchburg i support their um they're offering the course if they feel that's important but i think it's incompatible with a public school system because of the particular uh take on social and uh social issues i mean we're anyway so thank you dr nillas and the second of the motion uh

075dr gupta would you like to give in the reflections and i've said it before too we have several schools in town and we need to involve everybody when you talk equity in these courses we need to be equitable in our using their expertise so hopefully we'll expand our wings and go to different schools and colleges to see what how we can collaborate in terms of courses thank you dr gupta is there any further discussion i don't know if administration would like to make any comments in relationship to the course offering 6339 a.d doctor all right dr carter would like to speak not that i'm speaking for the university of lynchburg but i think one of these one of the things that the university of most colleges now and universities are looking at for their teachers

076because they're going into city school systems with a lot of diversities and with somehow majority african-americans some may even have other students and so they try to give them a global view of everything that they may encounter so that when they come then they'll be more knowledgeable regarding different cultures different ethnicities different backgrounds and that's just an exploration i don't think they're trying to indoctrinate anyone or to get anyone but just this awareness that we have various individuals out there and everyone's not like you and many different races different religions and just to bring an awareness i don't think it's a doctrination course all right coming back to you dr gupta anyone who has not spoken on this matter would like to speak dr brennan i agree with dr carter i think there was a

077reference to the fact that the uh afrin amer african-american history studies was sort of a i think it needed to be an introductory course to that and i think that course is also very important and a jump off point where we're looking at what the history of the african-american impact is on our society and our culture and how important that is and i think that this extension into the education course at lynchburg college is also as dr carter pointed out really trying to make people more aware of the fact that there is diversity within the schools and it's important to recognize that all right miss evans i agree with both of these statements i do think it's a very introductory level class that is trying to show different different views of what you do face

078when you're in education and it's i don't think it's saying you have to agree or disagree it's explaining this is what you're going to face and i think it's appropriate i would like to go on record and i do support the fact that we need to look at all of our universities locally when we're preparing these opportunities dr gupta i agree with dr carter cultural immersion is important but the best place for cultural immersion is a local hpcu or regional hpcus where you know you learn about the history because they have experienced it firsthand so if there's no further discussion what we're voting on is not the program of studies in its entirety we are voting now to remove human diversity in american schools and if you vote yes this course offering will be removed

079from the high school program of studies if you vote no then that would mean you want it to remain and then we would go back to a discussion on the program of studies in its entirety if all are clear we're going to ask now for the clerk to call the role school board member evans so no no school but mccarter no scoop up remember brennan no it's good for my dr coleman yes let's give up dr nellis yes scoob up my doctor's sennhei no good morning dr gupta yes scoob up my mr harvey oh final count madam clerk five node three yes all right so the motion fails the course will remain and now we are back on the discussion on the program of studies in its entirety as their motion to approve the high

080school program of i've moved that we approved the high school program of studies all right is there a second motion by dr carter the second a second thank you that was a not a fast second thank you dr brennan uh for that any further questions or discussion on uh the high school program of studies hearing none uh actually i have a question on the african american head doctor program there's a substantial basically total rewrite of the course description is a syllabus for the course available this is going to be obviously a lot of public interest i think it would be beneficial for the division to be completely open about reference materials what's being taught what what modules from [Music] virtual virginia are being used i don't doubt that there's some worthwhile stuff but i don't

081doubt that there's some pretty controversial stuff i think we need to be completely open about it we have a draft course outline that we can share it's visible on the vdoe website we are currently in the preliminary stages of reviewing resources to go along with the course as i said lynchburg city schools has had an african-american studies elective for a number of years understood but that was also essentially a homegrown course correct so this is the first time that we are using guidance from the vdoe so again we have draft course outline but those are vdoe draft course outlines and we would follow that as our model as we would other sols and core courses is this an sol no no it's just this is an elective so we can follow a hundred percent or

082one percent of the vdoe guidelines is that fair statement we have some say when you get into the guidance and guidelines it's like all right what yes to some degree yes we are limited in some aspects of curriculum course materials supplemental materials um but certainly so some of this is mandatory in terms of the course in terms of what's presented in the course it's mandated by the state to the group yes yes okay i'm not just saying something okay all right uh dr nilla says did you get all of your answers that you needed yeah yeah yeah i'd um i'm more comfortable knowing what the exact plans were um at this point so all right uh dr carter i am assuming that the school will take the same stance regarding the curriculum and the books

083and all and like we do with the other books math and science and that those will be for people to look at and are doing or is that the way we're going about this for the african-american core study are you talking about the textbook the text it's the same review process as we would use for any other text that's what i said all right and you know we're discussing high school program of studies i want to remind board members it is okay for you to share your thoughts i mean this is why we are here and that's our responsibility we do know today is a historic day social dynamic and what we teach what we don't teach all of those things are critical to our students being able to be all that they can be

084and so um you know it's just very important and and i'm grateful that we are offering and we'll be offering more opportunities to get the full story uh shared to all of our students in every way we can concerning all of our various groups ms evans i just had a quick thing you know everything i read from the department of education from this course if you go to their website and read everything it does have a long list of suggested material to use within the classroom so you can any person can go to that and look at every every um suggestion it's not that lynchburg has to use them all and i'm assuming we could add some of our own as well but there is a list there that you can go in and read

085exactly um what their suggestions are so it's it's a really great resource if you if you really want to sit down and learn exactly what the suggestions are for this course it's all there on their website thank you miss evans dr nils yeah i just want to be clear i want to make sure that students are being instructed in history and in the real history you know not a narrative not some you know take on history which i mean frankly we've all had that experience i think is elementary students and um but you know a frank objective and honest history and i think that's why i'm asking well not i think that's why i'm asking what are the resources we're using and what's the course uh what's the course going to be look like so

086you know everybody everybody can see thank you dr nellis dr carter well i had the privilege of being on a webinar regarding this the course of studies and it didn't seem controversial to me it was just going to talk about history as we do with any other history and we all we haven't always been given a complete picture so hopefully this will help and it always it hasn't always been um a a two-sided view sometimes it was just a one-sided view so this hopefully will help to make it all equitable and we'll be able to see all contributions to history which is the beauty of it all so i don't see where i was just surprised to see some of the some of the um the the opposition to this and our own superintendent and

087also some other teachers and other prominent figures in the state set on that and when listening to it i didn't become upset or think that we're going to try to indoctrinate anyone or be biased in that presentation it's going to be presented as history which is great thank you dr carter ms evans i have one last thing to say and it goes along with this that you know we we have taught history the same way in lynchburg city in the same courses and for this to be an elective course to me in african-american history and if you look at the key points and i wrote them down of this class to learn about contributions to learn in depth history about african americans and it's an elective and we've done history the same way i struggle

088too to see where where the fear of this class is coming from that it could be teaching people to believe one thing over another i think it's very much a much needed class for people and to me it's about time thank you miss evans uh mr harvey i agree with a lot of the comments that have been made tonight i think what's what's critical here is we have to understand that this is a controversial subject in our nation just discussing this and so i think it would behoove lcs to communicate with their community as much as we can we have been shared points of access to go to the doe website to to look at these to understand that these classes can be beneficial to our students and i just would hope that that we

089can take every opportunity to be as proactive with sharing the information to the community and fielding the community's questions because i believe that open sharing of ideas and information will help to keep these programs from being vilified because i think we all agree when we've had the opportunity to look at these programs we see the benefits from them but that's because we have had access to a lot of literature and a lot of information and a lot of opposing sides for us to gather our own perspective on this and be able to make our own decisions so i think if we can be proactive in helping the community to be able to find where they can get the same information that we that's been shared with us i think that that will will help and

090help everyone have a comfortable sense of this moving forward thank you mr harvey if there's no further discussion on the matter at hand is there a motion to approve the studies we already have who second did dr vernon right good there's no further questions or discussion we will now be voting on the high school program of studies if you vote yes then that would be an action item to support the program of studies and no would be against the program of studies and we would have to have further discussion and so madam clerk would you please call the role school board member evans yes school remember dr carter yes let's go back when dr brennan yes scoop up mom and dr coleman yes scoop up my dr no school book moment dr senha yes scoop

091up mom dr gupta yes scoop up my mr harvey yes 721 motion cares all right thank you thank you dr jordan and lynchburg city schools as we continue to move forward in this very important way of providing the best possible public education we can for our kids and utilizing the whole community to help get it done i'm excited about this i would like to ask the board at this time if it's your pleasure to take a five minute break or should we press on i see at least one head nodding so we are going to take a five minute break and then when we come back we'll go right into another action item and should be able to move nicely to completion we will reconvene in five minutes all right [Music] again thank you board

092members for the man in which we are conducting business tonight and we will now move to section i4 which is our operation policy update and this is coming to us for action tonight and it is around family and community engagement and we are going to ask that our superintendent would lead us in bringing on the presenter and any further clarifications to what we're doing uh in this area dr edwards yep absolutely and i think miss reeves may be on zoom but i'm gonna confirm that i'm here okay so these policies were brought to the board last time and um they are coming back and miss reeves is there anything that you want to add or share no additional information from before i just will comment on kn and this is sometimes what vsba does when

093they strike language it doesn't mean that they're necessarily saying that folks such as school bus drivers or people who are in charge of visiting or security staff are not able to have this information it's just that calling them out by name leaves out others by name and especially during a time where we have different um people and positions and titles it just makes sense to take out the titles and talk more about the process so all right uh boy this is before us tonight for action the chair recognizes dr nils i mean i went over this and i pretty much had the same reactions regarding kn and kna it's unusual that the sba deletes the policy and i don't really recall the basis for that and typically it's covered elsewhere but you know not being

094part of the policy group discussion and i mean i think that was missed so i mean i'd like to like to hear what that here that you know and i don't know if attorney towns is available i don't i am i am available and board member nilis uh the deleted section of kna has been included in section kn uh there is a new section in kn that speaks to that level sex offender a violent sex offender which is now categorized as a tier 3 offense that information is now in kn so that is what has caused the deletion of the kna policy [Music] so they've essentially been combined yes and the rewording is due to changes in state code or yes the the term violent sex offender uh has been removed and now that a

095person who would have been categorized in a violent sex offender has now been categorized as committing a tier 3 offense and someone who has committed a tier 3 offense uh just as a sexual a violent sexual offender is not allowed on school ground so it's just a change in name and state code however the intention and the type of time is the same and the type of uh offender is still barred from school property the the additions in k a speak to uh the tier one and two sex offenders uh if you see there is a section for parents who are tier one and tier two sex offenders a process by which they could be considered to um come to a school event or on school property and then there is a section for uh

096non-parents uh everyone else who fits into that tier one tier two sex offender registration and that is a person who is a non-violent sex offender on tier one and tier two thank you attorney towns for that clarification dr nils any further concerned i mean to i guess summarize this is really a reorganization and realignment with with the state code and there's not any loosening of protections for children is the same and now as uh dr edwards mentioned i believe the vsba they use some language that we don't use in lynchburg city schools and i imagine they've decided for each school division to decide to use the language that's appropriate however lynchburg city schools will have a procedure and a procedure in place on how to handle uh the tier one and tier two sex offenders

097and the policy calls for that it's just not outlined with the names of uh positions okay thank you thank you attorney towns and i hope that the community was so note those appropriate clarifications now included in kn dr carter i have one question regarding this policy under visitors of school parent is monitored and my question is what and i know we have a monitoring process is it a consistent process across school divisions divisions and are we using the matrix yeah it was set up so we have not put the matrix in play yet because we have not had visitors and volunteers in our schools due to due to covet and we've also shifted personnel from when the matrix was approved way back when we also need to go back and shore up the language because

098it does reflect k in a in our matrix so that is on our next steps to do that and talk about how we're going to do that the other thing was if you remember part of the matrix was training all of the folks who would be at that level of scrutiny in terms of making those decisions and again because our focus has been more in return to learn and and not on visitors and volunteers we have not done that yet either so that is on our next steps and understandably so dr edwards yeah all right um i certainly will be supporting this with the clarifications that have been made uh is there a motion at this time to approve the operation policy updates in uh i or i've moved to approve the operational policies right

099there's a motion on the floor about dr carter it's just second second by dr gupta any further questions of discussion hear none madam clerk what you call the role scoop up evans yes scoop up moment dr carter yes scoop up member dr brennan yes scoop up mom and dr coleman yes school board member dr nellis yes scoop up moment dr sinha yes scoop up moment dr gupta yes scoop up mr harvey yes eight to zero motion carriers thank you uh section i item 5 governor's policy updates for discussion dr edwards yes our policy group met on may 17 to discuss the two policies uh bbb uh student rep mrs morrison did give us a lot of information for consideration for how we move forward with our student rep policy as well as information from staff

100member who wanted to share which we will meet again to discuss that so at this point we do not have that policy bbb bbb to bring forward um bcez school board committees last meeting we have proposed adding a student achievement committee i brought to you a proposal a with schedules and explanation and at that time there were different questions and different concerns so again at this point we the group the work group recommends postponing doing anything with adding another school board committee at this time thank you doctor that was well said that reflects our discussion dr gupta are you looking at all the committees or just only the new committee for the the proposal was to adjust by that policy by adding a new committee so since we did not make any changes to that

101policy we did not review the previous the other committees in that policy could i request is it possible to review because i have certain suggestions for the other committees in that policy you're referring to our finance committee our legislative advocacy community relations committee and our student discipline committee madam clerk uh so note those and we certainly will hear them can you send those suggestions to me thank you yeah thank you all right um then that is of course just for discussion and of course uh the members of that work group and the entire board we need to understand that it's very important that the board be unified and we don't want to do anything that would not uh be unified and so we'll come back later thank you doctor i want you to explain that

102beautifully all right uh i sex human resource policy updates doctor i wish you can bring on the presenter yep uh miss carl is actually on vacation um attorney towns is here as well but this is something that we brought to you last week and it really it last month and it is a combination of the two forms that we use to report discrimination and harassment anything with a j is for students anything with a g is for staff and we have combined it to one form so that it is not confusing for the end user they can just pick pick that one form fill it out and we can separate it to send it to either student services or hr all right so this item is uh for action what is the pledge of the

103board the move that we are proving second all right then move by dr gupta second about dr carter any further questions discussion hearing none we are now voting to approve the human resource uh policy updates uh madam clerk please call the roll scoop up evans yes let's go vote for my doctor carter yes scoop up my my dr brennan yes scoop up my doctor coleman yes scoop up mama dr nellis yes school board member dr sinha yes scoop up remember dr gupta yes scoop up remember mr harvey yes motion curve is eight to zero all right i7 is instruction and program policy um and this is for action tonight somewhat could have been on the consent but we brought it here dr edwards if you could help us with that in uh absolutely uh so

104again these are policies that were on the agenda for first read last month and i know i saw director brown on zoom uh are you still there director brown yes ma'am okay i don't think there were any questions or any follow-up to these policies was there anything else that you wanted to add director brown no ma'am all right then we have before us of the action items and the vsda updates and all listed before you uh what is the pleasure of the board is there a motion i moved i moved that we approve all right the motions are made by dr gupta is there second second all right dr carter seconded by dr carter and further questions for discussion hearing none no no no wait don't you gotta give me a chance i'm soon sorry

105go right ahead dr nellis the material or the scope covered by jgd j-g-e-r-z where did that move to i know i should know but did you say that one time would you ask the student suspension policy and i know with the state changes and discipline guidance and all that that all of that has changed i just am curious as to where where that where in the policy manual that's moved to i should have known that gosh okay thank you all all of his help for dr nellis any further questions or discussion on the motion if there's no other board member please madam clerk please call the roll scoop up evans yes school board member dr carter yes scoop up mom and dr brennan yes scoop up mom and dr coleman yes scoop up on my

106doctor nellis yes school but my doctor said hi yes school board member dr gupta yes scoop up my mr harvey yes motion carries eight to zero thank you board i will now move into section j which is our new business section in our initial readings and reports uh item one uh fiscal management policy updates and uh dr edwards you can bring on kim mccartney okay and i would like to turn it over to miss laconic to give a brief overview this is for first reading correct so on may 10th the fiscal management policy work group met we went over several policies and at the conclusion of that meeting it was decided to bring three to the full board two of them are new it is the dia reporting per pupil cost the second new one

107to lcs is policy dl which is a payroll procedures and the third is just a vsba update to a paragraph heading and that was djf again it is for first reading if you have any questions all right i know this was a lot before you dr brennan mr can you just explain a little further the new reporting per pupil costs exactly what that is what that will require and what the timing of that will be so we have actually been working on that in preparation of when this get if it gets approved but a lot of school divisions are doing this anyway and we actually have this um on our website but it's it's sort of within the budget book but it would just be on the website it would say what your your current

108year actual per pupil expenditure was what's your current the prior year actual your current year um proposed and then the proposed for the following year uh if it would show your local in your state and you have the option of putting federal in there as well so is that a calculation of what we receive from the state total funding from the city total funding and then federal correct just divided by the number here we would probably we would use the march 31st atm to calculate the per pupil expenditure thank you all right mr harvey i assume that this policy is something that that since we're adding this that we feel is is beneficial for some reason i mean i struggle with this because simply stated you can take how many students we have enrolled divide

109that into the number of our budget and get the average cost per pupil i don't see that that information is necessarily helpful i do feel like that if we had more of a detailed breakdown exemplifying what types based on our student population for instance we had the question earlier today about what the cost added cost for dual enrollment in addition to gov school some of these other costs per student i think that the average cost per student is somewhat of an arbitrary number but having a more detailed breakdown of examples of types of students it would provide a better insight into what our overall costs are than just using an average someone like to respond oh one of them miss evans i was just gonna say i i had the same kind of question of

110it it doesn't show any you know you could have a student with special needs and as a public school we we have to provide for those needs which totally changes what the cost is so i didn't know if this came out like did somebody ask us to look at this and add this was this like where'd this come from it comes from vsba when they send us policy updates and new policies and they try to stay current with code some remember our original policies were the numerical ones so we spent considerable time over the last three years shifting from the old numbered policies to the vsba policies and then we didn't some policies we didn't have a matching policy for some of them are just now coming back around so every time we get a

111new one we do bring it to the group for consideration and discussion and and i understand that i just do think it can be somewhat you know you look at that number i think as a outsider just reading it this is the average cost for lynchburg but you're right it doesn't take into account everything um that goes into that so i do worry about that too so noted mr harvey for further further review anyone else on this matter dr brennan i i think those are great points on one time in the past we'd actually and i think there is data that we we've seen several years ago that compared different school districts by their adm different categories and the cost how much they received from their city how much they received from the state and

112comparing all this all the different divisions in this in the state i found to be very helpful as far as what people were getting on different just overall and it was apples to apples it was comparing equally so i understand how this information is helpful and i also understand what you all are saying as far as the cost per student will clearly vary i'm not sure from a logistical point of view how you would how do you get that other cost you know how you can try to to break that out to make it be uh complete to be able to say what is the cost across the spectrum so but i'm all in favor of but i also am in favor of doing this because i think if nothing else it gives us a

113comparison to other school districts in the state that we can look at mr harvey i just feel like if we are we are adding a policy this is our opportunity to expand that policy to be more inclusive of more justifiable data again i feel like this number you take this number divided by this number and it gives you this and that i think can be misleading if if i were looking at the lynchburg community and i simply go to the website and i go okay this is their cost per student and this is what somebody else spends per student i mean that that's that's a arbitrary comparison i think that you could exemplify certain student types that you could utilize an average cost and i'm not saying you have to get into um you know

114an extreme amount of detail per student but you could you could have student types that you could provide an average cost for which i think would be more beneficial because this this is something that members of the community have asked about members of council have asked about and if we're just taking this this average number it's it's somewhat arbitrary and can be misleading so noted mr harvey for further review oh every comment from the board we're documenting them yes dr sinha i agree that it would be instructive to have that kind of breakdown i'm just thinking from a data perspective exactly how you would arrive at that and you'd almost in some ways have to tie it to services received so for example we put in our budget to hire school psychologists so let's say

115we have 10 school psychologists they cost this in terms of salary benefits equipment blah blah blah how many students do they serve is there a you know and then you you you spread those costs but certainly some students probably use more of those resources than others so i get the instructiveness of it but i also can appreciate that trying to break those costs down could be difficult and not quite so i mean it'd be a real challenge i think there are ways to approximate it and get closer but you know unless you have a cost code for every student of what they use almost like a medical billing if you will of the various services do you count students who participate in performing arts as costing more than those who don't those in sports i

116mean i can just see how it's in defense of the people who run the budget and all this stuff how you might find it challenging there are probably ways to do it it would take a lot of thinking and programming to get it done and so i just want y'all to appreciate if i'm understanding the information and how it might be generated um that it's not as straightforward as it as it may seem thank you dr sinha yeah so yeah so so record it dr carter um and i'm thinking um that we already have this information this just needs to be linked or that some of this information we're looking for that we already have and that it's already on our sites the number of students in different things and needing different services but to

117ask to put it included in this policy when it really doesn't have to be there it's a lot to ask right and we certainly are going to observe the proper words myth of policies so thank you dr carter any further thoughts of course you can contact individuals pertaining to this for the next meeting mr harvey then then i asked why we would create a policy for this specific issue and what's the purpose of that just we create a policy to operate by that takes two arbitrary numbers and creates another arbitrary number i shouldn't say two arbitrary numbers but takes two numbers and creates an arbitrary number that really doesn't doesn't provide any significant data at all it's a vsba policy update provided and looks like it's trying to meet some state requirement to advertise your

118average student cost i think that's is that's it that's the major part of it all right so that uh speaks to the spirit of why mr harvey and thank you for bringing that point up and and with that uh insertion dr nellis any further discussion on this matter this is coming for discussion tonight we use our normal protocol and we will work that through and i'll come before you for a second reading all right thank you so much j2 this matter was uh presented at a finance meeting and uh board members uh recognized its need to be presented at the board level and so the facilities update concerning the administration building dr edwards if you could lead us in on this one absolutely as you are aware we have been experiencing some challenges at the

119admin building particularly in the rear sections of the first and second floor seems to be the predominant area and mr gatski and a whole host of internal and external consultants have been doing multitudes of tests to determine what the cause is so we just had the latest round of tests which um are included for the board to review on board docs so i'll ask mr gaske to give a quick summary of what's in those reports okay good evening good evening um as dr edwards mentioned in your on the agenda is the attachments that are the results of all the testing that we've done over the last four or five months the problem first arose back in middle of january right after we returned from the winter break it started in one office area or at

120least that's where our first complaints came from in the special ed office it quickly moved upstairs to the cni office space we did an internal inspection right away most of the time when you start getting these complaints you're looking for mold and mildew we did not see anything as far as our internal inspections we decided that we would best call in some experts in the field and so we did we called in an environmental service company they came in did some testing again looking for mold and mildew initially and their testing showed that that we had low humidity and also low levels of mold and mildew now molten mildew will be found in any space at any time what you hope to find is that in a space that it those levels are lower than

121what they are outside so if your mold and mildew spore levels are lower inside than they are outside your heating and air conditioning system is doing what it's supposed to do it's filting out filtering out those uh those spores so as a consequence they they said really don't have a problem with mold and mildew we did some testing for chemicals that was our next thought we tested for chemicals we removed all the chemicals that we possibly could just leaving basic cleaning supplies we removed all the disinfectants that we had in there for the pandemic to treat coca-19 um we removed anything that we thought could have been an irritant to to anybody the symptoms people were were complaining of were not only things like trouble breathing and whatever but also burning eyes rashes on their

122skin which normally you would look at would be a chemical a reaction to a chemical in the environment and we could find nothing we after the first round of testing we had all of the duct work and the air con air conditioning air handlers cleaned we had a second round of testing come in and this time i asked them to focus on vocs chemicals that could possibly be irritants and then again that report came up as basically nothing there or nothing that would point them to say this is your problem as far as these health reactions people are having the company we were using was a local company and i asked them i said well is there any where else can we turn and they gave me the name of a industrial hygienist out of

123north carolina we contacted him he reviewed all of the test reports and also the investigative reports that the company the first company had done and he came up with uh no conclusions on that also he developed a questionnaire that we distributed to all the staff in the building and we got a we had a good response back we asked for what kind of symptoms if they were having symptoms what kind of symptoms they were having how often they occurred where in the building they worked all of that kind of stuff the consultant in north carolina took a look at all that and said there was really nothing here either there's no patterns uh or anything like that we requested that he come up and go through the building and take a look for himself which

124he did he came back and um after that um visit he also did some testing he took some of his own air samples and whatever and he called back and he said i can't find anything the test results came back basically clean he did suggest he said you've tried everything else we've replaced some carpet we've washed the walls we've you know scrubbed everything he said but you haven't done anything above the ceiling he said i would just recommend that you remove the ceiling and clean above the ceiling very you know real well so we started that about two weeks ago on the second floor the top floor there is fiberglass insulation that has been there since the building was built it is quite dusty but other than that we it doesn't seem to be the

125problem um but we are having it removed by a mitigation company so that we're not trying not to contaminate the rest of the building what we're doing there then is once we get it all removed from the second floor we will then [Music] test again and hopefully the our levels will be remain low on everything that we test for and then went downstairs on the first level we ourselves because there is no insulation above there we think we can go ahead and remove that insulin excuse me that ceiling tile and replace those ceilings ourselves do it in-house and save a little money the bottom line is we've done all this work and we still don't know what's causing and we still have people having reactions we had two reported last week so in a way

126we're kind of back to square one the only thing we have not done is remove the drywall from the exterior walls and i think that's probably going to have to be our next step to to date we have spent [Music] somewhere around 65 70 000 on all this and as i said i don't know that we're any closer than we were back in january that's the report thank you mr gasket and thank you that the full board has heard this what comments the board members have after all of this what you have done is at least brought us to a place where we know the various areas that we've looked at in the next step and i want to thank dr edwards and the others for caring about our employees and we've been doing everything

127that we know to do and so but you've heard this report now what is your thoughts and reflections at this time dr nilas so we we don't really know what's going on is that no sure i mean kind of trying to i'm pretty confident of what's not going on exactly we took the obvious sources and sort of ticking those off and unfortunately it's taken a lot of time and is there any intent is there are people working in the admin building now or at least some of it some people are working by choice in the admin building particularly in the front area front downstairs finance and front upstairs hr cni student services special education most of my office are graciously being hosted throughout the division by schools at other locations right now while they commence

128the work okay thank you dr gupta thank you for the report my concern is that we are still finding people who are getting sick so and we have people working in that building so for the health and safety and i know if i'm an employee working there i have to be a team player and work otherwise i'll get in trouble so have we explored an alternate location till we figure out what is going on and mitigate all those things and nobody is sick yeah so first let me address the get in trouble because there's no getting in trouble as a matter of fact we originally were trying to keep everyone out of the building and they employ some employees have just chosen because of the nature of their work and everything that's in that building

129to work there and have not been experiencing symptoms so for the record any employees who says and you know many of them are here um i don't i don't feel comfortable coming in the building we have found alternate locations for them to work no one has to work in that building and no one will get in trouble or any other consequence for not um choosing to work in that building while we mitigate um and look for the cause of the the symptoms thank you for stating that dr edwards and and that is very true mrs evans i just have a question is this like a large group of people like different people or is it the same in a certain part of the building that it seems to be in it's a significant number um

130you know i mean it's not just one or two we're talking um maybe a dozen that are throughout the buildings throughout the building that are having and and there are other people that work in those same offices that aren't having anything at all so and then parts of the building the finance and human resources offices were over top of each other but we've had very few complaints from those areas so and the two complaints that we had last week were from staff who just came in for a short term just pick up some items and and left the building they weren't working there they were just there for um a short period and and they had started experiencing some symptoms so um it it's been very frustrating and and you know i mean we're we

131looked at all medically at the symptoms and i mean they're definitely a reaction to something in the environment do you know we know yes without violating staff medical information but yes and some staff have been gracious in sharing right additional in an effort to really help expedite uh resolve to this and the questionnaire was very helpful as far as that went and as far as it didn't point to any one thing but it did eliminate some some some possible causes and and what the questionnaire showed us was that the the people that were having reactions were dispersed throughout the building but also that the reactions were so varied that you couldn't just point to one thing so mold and mildew you're generally going to have some respiratory problems and whatever chemicals you're going to have

132the the maybe some of the skin reactions and whatever the burning eyes and whatever what's been reported is everything you know some people have problems with uh breathing or others with burning eyes and some are getting rashes uh so it's the whole thing so that's every time we think we oh well this is this let's look at this this is probably it it hasn't okay thank you mr gaskin and i i believe that since this was first identified that we have been working very diligently to to do what it was necessary number one to keep our employees safe and i want to thank dr edwards and the team for that and then we have obviously made steps there's a next step to this and i guess my my question would be mr gaster when do

133you anticipate this next step to take place and then after that is over at some point of course we are enjoying our time at dunbar and now here at glass but i know that this board would love to return to our home in the school board chambers do you have any idea about timeline well i learned of the the reactions the stuff that had last week just this morning so we will start like i said the next thing we need to do is remove some of the drywall on the exterior walls and we'll start that tomorrow so it's just a matter of process of elimination and so all right thank you mr harvey anyone else have anything to say all right thank you mr gasket and uh this matter did need to be presented to

134the full board and thank you for coming tonight and sharing and if you have further questions or thoughts please share those with dr edwards are paterning this matter we will now move to section j3 which is federal programs and this is discussion uh dr edwards for dr jordan i am going to invite dr jordan and miss compton who is our grants coordinator to come up and talk about the federal title one two three and four grants good evening you have applications for all federal grants in board docs and you also have a presentation outlining the grants would you like us to present the powerpoint for your review i cannot speak for the board but if you would just give us the pertinent pieces that we need for discussion tonight i've got a lot of stuff

135right here dr brennan in front of me and uh no i can't look at all that right now but go right ahead dr jordan for title 1 we can go and order title 1 is our grant that we fund our lead instructional coaches we fund 70 positions out of title 1 we anticipate that our title one app allocation for next year will go down so we are conservatively funding things with our grants because our grants are based on adm and some of our grants are based on private school numbers and so part of what mrs compton does during the year is we manage grants for our local private schools as well title 1d is managed mainly out of director brown's department that is do you want to describe that one christy or latonya i'm here

136as well title 1d is neglected and delinquent it's housed under the division case manager with those funds we provide support to our students that's at the juvenile detention center as well as some other out places that grant is funded funding an academic tutor and also a family excuse me a family person support person that we work with the group home with um to provide support for the students while they're there and also working with us to keep them on track in terms of their um academics and re integrating them back into their base school um upon release at that time this grant is um level funding um for on this upcoming school year and this is a reoccurring grant that we've had for several years we'll say it's only the top localities in the state

137that have a high neglect that have a high neglected and delinquent portion but we anticipate we'll have another grant next year but this is one that doesn't go to all localities unlike all the other ones but based on our numbers we anticipate that as well and all the allocations are leveled funding with the exception of title one and that was because video e reached out to us and kind of gave us preliminary allocations and they are anticipating it's going to be a reduction but the other ones we're using leveled funding and then in the fall we'll get the actual allocations and we'll amend as we needed to title two is to prepare train and recruit teachers and principals we went through title ii monitoring recently and i want to tell you a success from title

138ii we really focused on the ipal report which is a yearly report of teacher licensure and endorsement we created a professional library for our staff and lcs and it's actually run through the library cataloging system we have a number of praxis study guides praxis are the tests that teachers take to become licensed endorsed in certain content areas we formed peer study groups and i am so proud of these efforts i can't remember exactly what the vdoe representative said but when we watched our numbers of licensed and endorsed teachers climb to 96 percent in the middle of a pandemic he commended us on those efforts so we are committed to offering praxis study groups for our teachers we have an english as a second language group running right now so we encourage our staff if you

139have a need if you have imagine if you have test anxiety and you've been teaching in a certain area for a decade or two decades and someone says man we really would like to see you endorsed in i'll use science as an example dr edwards knows this one you may just be endorsed in a certain content area whereas if you're endorsed in social studies or mathematics you may be able to teach all the content areas so we have asked staff members to in some ways go outside of their comfort zone and i am so proud of those title ii efforts we split fund some of our coaching positions out of title ii because the idea is those folks are helping to mentor they're working with our teachers and they're helping us to prepare and train

140high quality teachers 24 of that grade goes to local private schools is that correct yes okay each of the grants has a enrollment figure so it's based on it's based on the private school enrollment is where as well as our enrollment and then it's a calculation for that so some grants all the private schools may not participate some may have all of them participate that's why you see the different percentages title three is our grant for language instruction for english learners this grant in total is about 25 000 a year it's based on english learner data from the previous year we use this for a supplemental software that keeps our english learner data we're also going to offer stipends this year for lead esl teachers one at the elementary level and one at the secondary

141level we also use some of this for supplies and parent in student outreach title four is a very collaborative grant title iv is a relatively new grant in comparison to some of the other grants we went through title iv monitoring this year as well cni student services the technology department we've worked very collaboratively on our approach to title iv this year there is a portion of title iv that is for well-rounded instruction there's a portion for safe and healthy students and there's also a portion for technology so they encourage that multiple areas in a school division work together in title iv we are looking very differently at title four this year we are going to focus on some secondary interventions in title iv we have two middle schools that are in federal school improvement status

142title one is only for elementary school use so title four we have turned to more of a secondary approach director brown and i worked very collaboratively with ms compton to talk about and plan for some supports that we need in our secondary school environments we also wrote in some stipends for folks at each building to help support the pedal program because we think it's very very important that we have people in each building who know the students by name and by need to help support potential programming for all of our students so we're excited about the direction of the title four grant anything else about title 4 that you want to add i think that was great we heard you when you said you wanted to make sure we were advocating and letting families know

143about these opportunities so we're really excited about those pedal advocates i think that's going to be a good addition and again we gave you the full application for each of these um and then we gave you just the powerpoint just to really give you the flyover version here's how much we get here's the percentage where it goes to and we're here to answer any questions you may have we would love to have you bring this back to the june work session if possible or if not to the july meeting we do have to submit these to the virginia department of ed once we are once the board has approved yes and the chair's going to recognize dr gupta but in terms of the time sensitivity if you want to make sure i'm clear are you

144saying that the work session uh would be appropriate or we could wait until the july meeting i would feel a lot better if we could get them approved at the work session and submit them by the july 1st deadline yes would you all right thank you i don't like i don't like to be late yeah thank you very much dr gupta that was my question because i see in applications the deadline is july 1st and our board meeting calendar worked against it so i don't know what the pleasure of the board is maybe could we make it an action item tonight and move it on dr gupta typically we would like to let people have an opportunity i think i'm hearing that we'd be okay for june the 15th yes we would be okay yeah

145but your point is taken if there's someone that would like to entertain you your thought but i'm of the opinion that give people an opportunity to further review and have this on the work session for june the 15th and that will satisfy their time sensitivity needs and make sure that each board member has had a chance to have any further thoughts about it any other discussion on this matter all right well thank you so much all right now that moves us and our agenda okay to uh j iv i believe our middle school program of studies dr edwards and it's the dr jordan show us she stated at the beginning of the meeting dr jordan go ahead you probably wish you had a remote and you could change the channel the middle school program of

146studies is coming to you for a first reading and we ask that you approve this in july we have limited changes here we are going to an a b block schedule for the next school year instead of a seven period day so we took out language having to do with seven periods through course assessment is a pretty big change that's happening at the state level so any time a course description talked about an end of the year assessment we changed it to through course assessments are you aware of that proposed change in grades three through eight math and reading there will be a pre-test post-test model so changes were made throughout the document there thank you we added the same blurb to describe the virtual academy we added a description of the pedal program that

147had been in the high school program of studies but was not in the middle school program of study so we added that in there was an error for a u.s history course part two was in there but that was incorrect math placement charts we have expanded math placement options so the chart wasn't accurate anymore so we removed the chart career tech has been changed to career and technical education and then we've got an updated kind of more general explanation of cte disciplines because sometimes our offerings vary by school to school depending on the licensure or the endorsement of the staff you have any questions that i can answer now all right thank you dr gupta then dr nellis i just had an editorial suggestion uh in your document dr sinha's district is not mentioned it

148just says district but doesn't have a number for the district and some of those board members will need a spacing there many of them are i think somebody forgot to put the end enter button as they were typing up other than that no question thank you dr gupta dr nellis and then mr harley yeah i don't feel like i quite caught the emphasis on through test assessment versus end of the year assessment it sounds like there's can you explain it and pretend you know like i'm a layperson sure and i can share a superintendent's memo this is a pretty big announcement at the state level and it is one of the reasons why at the middle school we did not go towards a traditional block and we're thinking the a b block for next year

149so we can see what the through course assessment is going to be like this does not impact high school it impacts grades three through eight math and reading next year there will be a pre-assessment at the beginning of the year and a post assessment like a traditional sol so there will be a fall in the spring course the year after there will be a pre a mid and a post assessment and the sol is given through a pearson program where we are going to see a partnership between pearson and a company called nwea that has marketed map testing so if you've ever heard of map testing the sol is moving towards a map like sol test that's the best way that i can describe it to you it will be focused more on student growth

150but it means a lot more state testing in grades three through eight in math and reading so instead of comparing third grade scores from this year with third grade scores from last year you'll have almost like looking at that cohort throughout that one year so the amount of testing for that grade instead of just having one test at the end of the year they'll take three tests during the school year to give more of a growth assessment there are many benefits to it there are ways that you can talk about the the benefits but in the drawbacks of the model but right now we are going into kind of a gradual change and they're calling it the through course assessments but we needed to change the language in the program of studies we anticipate the

151first through course assessment being ready sometime in the month of august so that's more longitudinal correct very good all right uh mr harvey yeah i have a question regarding the career tech uh technical education overview changes you know when i look at this this this program of study document i would assume that this is something that we would encourage parents to also look at in selecting courses for their students i have a concern being that i have a specific interest in career technical education that by eliminating some of the descriptive notes i understand the the the issue with not being able to offer each of those courses at every single school but i do have some concern that we eliminate some of the more descriptive terms that help students understand what the course might be

152about for instance we now have career investigations we have business and information technology we have family and consumer sciences we have technology education so at this rate at this age i was interested in architecture so how would i know where that falls under technology education career investigations business information technology so i just have a little bit of concern that we would eliminate these more descriptive class titles that might encourage students to to to see these offerings um i just wonder if it would be possible that we could maybe put a little number beside each one of them to show which schools that these are these classes are offered at in lieu of just simply eliminating the descriptive titles i will make a note of that and i will reach out to the board with the

153response i'll rely on dr bryant for that we've been working collaboratively with student services with course offerings and course selection so i think there we would have to rely heavily on the counseling department to make sure that they're making parents aware of what's included under this umbrella and i think that we have been really specific to a fault and we've also we're going we're kind of swinging the other way so i don't know if there is a middle ground but i will certainly ask dr bryant if we have any wiggle room for more description okay thank you further further questions or discussion dr brennan dr jordan first of all thanks so much for all of your work for the meeting tonight you've obviously done a lot on your staff has so thank you for the

154presentations all the ones you've given they've been very thorough and very complete so i have just one simple question just as sure i read the material you sent us so you'll know i did my homework which was under the examples of options for reme remediation may include a list of different areas like rise courses in math after school tutoring in class differentiation 21st century saturday school and summer school do we do we have those all those different items such as saturday school and will the 21st century impact on that we will have at least one school who still has 20 21st century programming sandusky middle school is still under 21st century programming through next year and yes a middle school has done saturday school since i've been here in lcs so it is still an

155option great good well thank you so much and thank you for all your work today thank you for reading it and quizzing me dr carter regarding the blocks a b block what would that look like is every course on that block or just certain courses that would be every course in a block and they would be alternating i shouldn't i shouldn't say every course there may be a couple of skinny blocks let me say most all and i will report back to you if there are some options for skinny blocks because we could have some for performing arts or fine arts and skinny blocks so i don't want to i don't want to say that so in actuality if i'm in so i will have the same students in my class the entire day no

156you would have four four blocks a day four blocks a day okay and at the june 15th work session there will be that's correct a a discussion about the different bloc types of block scheduling including the a b block for next year i'll wait for that yeah thank you mr few i was just getting ready to state that and very good dr carter all right any further uh uh dr jordan did you all have anything additional that uh you wanted to say my trusty grant coordinator just said by the way so you said the rf the request for proposals that we're doing with the city of lynchburg for all part as part of our stimulus funds that's the kind of thing we're looking at we're looking for innovative programs to help meet the students where

157they are so if saturday school is something we identify that's something that we could definitely pursue with that and it wouldn't have to be just the schools that had 21st century like in the past that was the one we love 21st century but we were limited to just those schools that applied or were eligible so this could be potentially summer schools at multiple sites or potentially saturday schools or after school all those kind of things great thank you very much i'm so glad to hear that i do recall earlier maybe this year dr brennan and i as each board member has the opportunity we met with the middle school principals and i indicated that uh post covert that there's just a lot of dynamics out here that we can look at to kind of help

158at the middle school level uh and so i'm happy to hear about the creativity which is one of our seas and whatever we can do and whatever needs to be done differently to get people going graduations yesterday really helped me to see how important pre-k elementary middle school right to high school is and so they ought to all connect and i do want to finally say i am proud of dr edwards and her work on the african-american commission and of course even in the middle school program of studies as we go forward we need to find ways to make sure that all of our classes are introducing students to all of the various uh groupings within our citizenry and so thank you for that are there any further questions or thoughts on this matter this

159was the discussion tonight and so it'll come back for us at uh at our next meeting all right we are now at uh superintendent comments certainly um i just want to give a huge huge thank you to everyone who helped set up chairs and sound and programs and organizing children and everything that went into the outstanding graduation outdoor ceremonies that we had including laurel school we had three of them over the past week and they were each phenomenal and kudos to the staff for all of their hard work and really thinking through a whole bunch of new challenges because we have not graduated outdoors we have not graduated in city stadium we weren't sure how the sound was going to work and i think it worked out very very well and i'm just so proud

160of the staff for doing everything they can to make that culminating activity special for all of our children we had five over 500 children cross the stage and get a diploma so let me say that again in the midst of folks who want to talk about how many kids fail i hope they give as much attention to how many kids walked across that stage and got their diploma this past weekend and last week including my students at laurel some of them had to be carried across the stage but they earned a diploma some of them could not speak and sign but they earned a diploma some were visually challenged and had help but they earned a diploma and that speaks volumes to what our kids accomplished during this year in the middle of a pandemic

161that affected the entire world that we have 500 young people who chose to say i'm going to do it and they did and those 500 young people had staff who cared who made tons of home visits and tons of phone calls and just really worked with kids and i don't know if board members when you were there if you could see some of the teary eyes of some of the staff members even some of the administrators the well-felt hugs the feeling of success and just yes you did it if you were close enough to hear our children to see their smiles as they earned their diplomas it was something to see and it is a very memorable graduation because it has been a hard year so despite all the naysayers there was a lot of

162success in lynchburg city schools and there are a lot of children who are off to their necks we saw two of them tonight or at least one of them who graduated who are off to their next adventure thanks to the care and concern of all of our staff which i so appreciate because this could have been very wrong for us this could have been a lost generation of kids and it was not they had fortitude they persevered and it was absolutely wonderful and what a great feeling to celebrate with families outdoors we didn't have the limited ticket space pictures were taken and most of all the rain held off that's right well we did it somebody was looking out for us as we had a wonderful celebration i think we need to stay focused on

163those faces of our children as we the adults make decisions sometimes we forget who we're making decisions for and we need to remember those little faces that are our children here at lynchburg city schools they don't all look like us they don't all talk like us some of them can't talk at all they all can't walk but that's okay they're still lynchburg city school students and every lynchburg city schools student deserves a high quality education and to be able to walk away and say i matter the contributions of people like me matter and that's what we're trying to do here in lynchburg city schools we want to make sure that we tell our children you matter we show our children you matter we provide experiences for our children that say you matter and by you

164i mean everybody not just a select few but all of our students and all of our students deserve that excellent education so i just want to say thank you to every single lcs staff member family member community member who walked along that journey with us to tell our kids you matter because they do and we will not stop creating experiences for our children and making sure that we continue to tell our children from a very young age you are special and you matter and you can be anything that you want to be and we here support you thanks well said madam superintendent now move to our board comments and we will start with school board member harvey thank you uh i'll try to touch on a few items that i'd like to share um i

165first want to piggyback off off of what dr edwards said i was lucky enough to attend both the heritage and ec glass graduations and was all inspired by our students and their resilience the speakers were just incredible really inspiring the students amazing when they walked across the the podium um as as dr edwards mentioned uh one student had certain challenges and you know just surpassed those challenges and was it was just very much an inspirational moment um i wanted to to say thank you to the administration from both schools and and you guys did an awesome job i think we've started a new tradition in lcs i i just i loved the venue i thought it was impressive and it was sort of our own turf you know where our football players and our football

166teams and our soccer teams participate we had we had graduation there i want to send a specific shout out to the administration team at dc glass for their um pre-graduation um information we even had a tutorial video that helped us to understand where to be and how to get there and and so forth and that was that was just awesome um i wanted to send a shout out to my poet friends at dunbar as they're celebrating their eighth grade career days they they have lots of fun activities and i understand dr edwards is going to be attending tomorrow so it's it's a great opportunity to get to to interact with the students and i challenged them it was part of the splash tower so i challenged them you know as you mock them through the

167splash tower i said if you can't hit the the bullseye and drop the water on me we're gonna vote to have school all summer long so that that motivated a couple students to take a better shot i also want to send a shout out to my friends at tc miller the soaring eagles for their program that they presented moving to a different beat it was it was quite a program with a wide variety of musicians theatrical presentations drum teams and even dr guerin presented student jokes jokes that have been written by the students and shared throughout the year so it was an excellent evening very enjoyable and and i thought they did an awesome job thank you mr chairman thank you mr harvey dr gupta uh what i wanted to say dr edwards i said

168all everything so i share all your sentiments so that's all i am thank you thank you dr gupta dr sinha just want to congratulate all the girls this year you've overcome quite a lot to achieve this milestone so i wish you the best for the coming years i also want to shout out to a heritage high school performing arts and their rendition of cinderella which was just wonderful thoroughly enjoyed it so appreciative of that thank you dr sinha dr nellis yes congratulations to all the students thank you to all the staff congratulations to the students families it's a success for them too it was the heritage graduation it was cold sitting out there but it was it was great to see the smiles on the kids and they they were all excited and um you

169know that's what the that's what this is all about so congratulations to everyone thank you dr notice dr brennan yes just briefly i want to thank the lcf administration for doing such a great job with staff appreciation weeks i guess over the two weeks going to each of the schools and celebrating the staff that was such a nice thing to do and i'm sure the staff appreciate it i also wanted to echo the comments of my other board members and dr edwards about graduation it was really amazing what a great job heritage faculty and staff did at both the programs they ran so smoothly as the board members i thought that there was also well coordinated and so efficient and as a attendee i really appreciated the the speeches by the students who i thought

170were just so heartwarming and also brought i think tears to the eyes of some board members and then as a family member of a 2021 graduate it was so great to have that venue of being able to have family members there and so open it was terrific and last i just want to thank whichever staff members were in charge of the weather they keep the rain off for both graduations they get an extra star but thank you all very much for that great event celebration thank you dr brennan dr carter i was just so happy and i just prayed that we didn't have any types of drama or children dying or being shot or in car accidents and i don't think we did this year so i was just so happy for that and the

171graduation ceremonies were awesome both heritage and glass and the fact that we sat here one meeting and talked about this for about an hour and a half and this it went along well it was very well so sometimes the very things we talk about we need to cut those out but that was a very wonderful venue and you didn't have to stress out about tickets or it was plenty of space so that was excellent the other thing is the staff appreciation they were so appreciative for for us appreciating them and this that was wonderful and just go back to the graduation again if you have any doubt about what the employees are doing for the students go to a graduation you'll see and how appreciative they are and just a personal note that's on the

172empowerment academy they had 19 students to graduate and it's amazing how this the schools are doing but then also to have the alt alternative schools to do what they do to make sure they stay engaged with students during this time that was amazing and the la another thing is the a special announcement to for a fifth grader he won first place in the 2021 young writers contest his name was luke morrison so just want to give him a shout out and that name sounds familiar susan's grandson that's all thank you dr carter miss evans um i'll say as well i graduated from ec class and i loved graduation being at city stadium i thought it just was fantastic i loved everybody there and i think what i i recognize most during graduation you know we

173sit in here in every meeting and we hear a lot of adults and their complaints that's what we're you know to listen to different points of view but you sat in that graduation and watched teachers and students and they were successful they were happy they were grateful for the year they had with their teachers they formed bonds that they never would have formed and they did it well and you could if you were at one of the graduations you could just feel that it was such a special year for this group of students and they did it beautifully and the teacher so thank you thank you miss evans i am so excited tonight i don't think i've ever been as excited as i am about lynchburg city schools and what we are doing and i

174just wanted to say in one minute less or less time how thankful i am to this board and this superintendent and this staff for helping me to get through one of the greatest challenges that i've ever had on the planet and that is the homegoing of my father james edward coleman senior a lifelong educator of over 40 years in the richmond public school system having majored in mathematics and chemistry i can't even spell chemistry but dr nellis neighbor that'll pull on to me in the next lifetime but i i just want to thank you all the flowers uh in richmond it was just beautiful of the cards the text the phone call the presents i can't thank you enough and so i just wanted to tell you thank you for all that you have done

175uh for me and my family also i am so thankful for paramount and the gym over there and uh time will tell whether we'll have any further changes but maybe the next gym will be at heritage or wherever it's going to be to support those kids and let us keep on doing what we're doing uh for our young people all right at this time we will now have our informational items and all of us can read and so one two three and four are before you and if there are no questions on that uh the chair would entertain at this time a notice for our closed meeting pursuant to the code of virginia section 2.2-3711a1 school board needs to convene a closed meeting for the purpose of discussing the following specific matters and that is

176the superintendent's evaluation is there a motion for us to move into a closed meeting the move the move by the of dr brennan seconded by dr carter and further questions or discussion uh hearing none madam click just call the roll for us please scoop up evans yes let's go about my mccarter yes let's go with me with dr brennan yes scoop up mom and dr coleman yes who put mom and doctor notice yes scoop up mom and dr sinha yes scoop up my doctor gupta yes scoop up my doc mr harvey yes all right and our clerk will let us know where we're going to go to the room and then when we're finished uh we will close out in the appropriate way we want to thank the public for coming and let's continue to

177do great things in lynchburg city schools you