001two minutes and we want all board members to please govern themselves accordingly as we prepare for the meeting for mike checks and or any other pertinent needs you may have dissemination of information and to the audience as well we will commence in two minutes we would like to call to order our board works session may 18 2021 for the lynchburg city school board and as we call our meeting to order with our quorum being established we do want to at this time share with the board that via conversation with our board clerk and elizabeth ewing from vsba are regarding utilization of board docks for boating that at whatever point we get to that uh we can utilize it but it cannot be used as a vote to interact with the public to be able to
002hear and see our votes in the proper way and with that being said without it having to be announced again if it is the pleasure of the board i would like us then realizing that it would be redundant to do that and then announce it again that we would simply consistently throughout our board meetings use a clerk calling of the role for all votes which would then not determine whether one vote is important over the other vote that they were all votes even approving the agenda would call for a very quick roll call of the clerk yes or no or whatever the appropriate way that the particular motion would call for you to affirm your voting and so i just want to establish that that would mean that every time we vote whether it's the
003approval of the agenda or any item on the agenda it would be the clerk calling the role and not having one thing done that way and something else done another way if there's no feedback on that i would like at this time to entertain a motion from the board to approve the agenda that you have before you are tonight for our work session say a motion ms morrison is making the motion is there second by dr gupta any further questions or discussion madam clerk if you could please call the role school board member evans yes school board member morrison school board member dr carter yes school board 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
004school board member mr harvey yes vote curry's thank you madam clerk at this time we uh will stand for our pledge of allegiance 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 to our public as usual this being a work session there will be no public comments tonight but we do want the public to know that via comcast cable channel 17 you can view meetings later and uh lcs youtube channel is available now and all matters pertaining to our meeting tonight are featured on board docs thank you for that at this time the chair would like to entertain a motion uh for our consent agenda and i
005do want to acknowledge that in our last meeting we did request for this matter to be placed on the consent agenda for tonight's meeting so i'm seeking board approval to change the dates for spring break from april the 18th through the 22nd to april 11-15 2022 to allow additional instructional time to review and prepare for state and national testing as discussed at the may 4th 2021 meeting of the school board is there a motion to approve the consent agenda a move that we approve the consent agenda the move by dr carter is their second second by ms morrison any further questions or discussion hear none madam click what you call the role school board member evans yes school board member morrison yes school board member dr carter yes school board member dr brennan yes school
006book mama dr coleman yes school book mama dr nellis yes school board member dr senhai yes school board member dr gupta yes school board member mr harvey yes the vote carries nine to zero thank you madam clerk at this time we will now move to section d of our work session agenda and we do have our school board member report standard whether you report or not and we'll just swiftly move through those first um item one finance committee no sorry no report but we do have our meeting on tuesday may 25th at 3 30. thank you mr harvey we will be hearing from mrs bale evans and the legislative advocacy and community relations committee uh doing our agenda items uh and so i would presume ms evans that we'll wait very good all right item
007three governor school committee mr harvey yes the central virginia governor school board met on wednesday may the 5th we had three of our members present so we had a quorum the the main item of business that we discussed at the meeting was the addition of six additional slots for lynchburg city schools with the provision that lynchburg city would send students it was confirmed that if we do not send a full roster of students we would not be obligated to pay for any of those specific slots also dr smith acknowledged that he would be attending our one of our upcoming meetings thank you mr harvey and i know there was robust discussion at the last meeting and we will be looking forward to mr smith coming at a later point in any questions or discussion for
008mr harvey at this time thank you mr harvey our law regional school board mr dr carter the laurel regional school board which the acronym stands for lynchburg area unit for regional exceptional learners we met may the 5th at 10 o'clock via zoom and the action items we approved were the budget for this year coming year and also the calendar and we also thank the interim superintendent for the bedford county for being there on our board and we're looking forward to having the new superintendent of effort school to run our school board the regional board another announcement is the loyal graduation will be held at the laurel regional school four one month monte cello avenue may the 27th at 6 o'clock and we do have lynchburg city school students there that are graduating wonderful wonderful that's
009that's what we all wanted to know thank you dr carter for your report any questions discussion thank you so much at this time the stem academy dr nillas no report thank you dr nillas and our task force uh susan morrison and atul gupta notable thank you and we know that that uh will be presented to us uh when there's pertinent information to share to us thank you we will now move to uh section e of our agenda where we have um seven items tonight and we certainly want to be clear concise and as concerned as we can be succinctly as we go through each of these items and we will now ask dr edwards to bring forward our discussion on return to learn okay absolutely so thank you and we have the short version the
010work session version of return to learn and i'm going to turn it over to miss pugh to just go over return to learn update absolutely um i'm going to ask josh boyd who is the new principal of the lcs virtual academy to share just an overview of what's happening so far with the academy um and i believe he's with us on zoom although the dashboard has pulled up so do we want to do that first we can do the dashboard first if dr senha wants to go over the dashboard since it's up oh okay well not much to say vaccinations are moving along we have about just under 40 percent who are not vaccinated that's consistent with national trends hopefully that percentage will come down the um case weekly cases is fluctuating up and down
011but it's still quite low compared to its peak back in january testing is down positivity rate is down age distribution has shifted a little bit increase in cases among 20 to 29 year olds which i guess you'd expect there's far fewer cases but the distribution by age has shifted with vaccinations other than that everything looks pretty good relatively speaking hopefully numbers can can you can continue to go down uh following national trends we're sort of up and down so we don't really have a trend any questions for doctor send her send her on the dashboard portion of return to learn thank you dr cena for your diligence dr edwards all right so now we're going to ask josh boyd who's joining us via zoom and as i mentioned he is the new principal of lcs
012virtual academy and he's going to give us a brief overview of what's happening thank you miss peter first let me say i'm excited and honored to be the principal of the virtual academy virtual academy i want to share a quick update with you regarding where we currently stand as far as student enrollment and hiring staff for the virtual academy so currently we have 330 or over 330 students who have applied to attend the virtual academy for the 21-22 school year these students represent all of our school zones within lcs which is really exciting as was shared in my video last week we're currently working through our application review process which is focused on assessing where each student currently stands in the areas of attendance academic achievement and engagement we're collaborating with teachers and school counselors
013to provide this vital information on each student's progress in remote learning this school year my goal is for families to be informed of their application status by friday june 4th and we're currently on target to hit that date simultaneously we're reviewing teacher applications interviewing and recommending candidates to human resources i'm really excited about the team that we're forming at the virtual academy we will teach the whole student we'll be forward thinking and we'll go above and beyond to help all of our students learn thank you for putting your trust in me i know the next few months will be very busy getting our academy up and running but we are up for the challenge [Music] thank you do does anyone have any questions about virtual academy yes dr brennan first of all congratulations on your
014appointment as principal for the virtual academy i saw the video that you all did last week and it's great and i'm sure it's gonna be a successful project dr coleman i had a conversation with a concerned parent today about the aspect of the students who are in the virtual academy being removed from the community of lynchburg city schools as far as not being physically present in the schools and therefore separated and not having the experience other students do either extracurricular or drama or other areas do you have any any plans or feelings about how those students will continue to be part of the lynchburg city school community yes absolutely so our goal is for each of our students who are accepted into the program to participate in extracurricular activities at their base school so at
015the high school level extracurricular sports athletics and other extracurricular activities so that's that's that was our that's our goal moving forward great thank you further questions all right mr you can move to the next piece yeah certainly thank you i just wanted to go over some of the things that we sent out a few days ago yesterday i believe it was regarding some of the updates that came through at the state level and so i just wanted to remind all of us that are are listening that executive order 72 which is effective may 16th this is guidance that's being given you know from the state as well as from dr lane the state superintendent mass must still be worn by all staff and students indoors on school property for the remainder of the school year
016so we will continue with that masks are still to be worn by students and staff on the school bus for the remainder of the year so we will continue with that expectation outdoors activities do not require mass for vaccinated people but we are still practicing social distancing so we will continue to follow the the mass policy that we have in place at lcs and then there are some additional changes that are taking place um with executive order 79 and i just want to remind that those begin on may 28th i believe our email said may 29th but it is may 28th that those take in effect so i just wanted to remind all of our family members and all of our staff to refer back to that communication that went out if you have questions
017please reach out to us and we'll be able to to help you with that and i also have with me to give a brief update of our vaccine excuse me vaccination efforts as well as quarantine information we have director brown good afternoon good afternoon afternoon lcs has approximately 1576 employees the school year has been unparalleled to any other school year as a department we have worked diligently to align guidance documents and to support the centers for disease control and prevention and the virginia department of health initiatives to maintain a safe and healthy lcs work and school environment one of the biggest undertakings of lcs this year has been the vaccination of staff and students during the first week of january lcs surveyed the 1576 employees to see who will be interested in receiving a vaccination
018based upon this information our lcs team was tasked with collaborating with the city of lynchburg and the virginia department of health to implement a plan as a result we were able to get the regional vaccination pallet clinic up and running within three days the clinic started at ec glass high school with the support of mrs rose flora the principal mr jason jabrone the assistant principal and greta ford the head custodian most importantly we began to vaccinate our lcs employees in the city of lynchburg staff the final vaccination numbers and surveys are as follows we had 1 408 employees who completed the survey that's leaving 346 who did not respond 92 employees were undecided or wanted the johnson and johnson vaccination those who wanted the johnson and johnson vaccination were notified were notified when it became
019available last week 913 lcns employees are fully vaccinated there may be additional employees that received their vaccinations that did not notify our office there are 57 staff that's partially vaccinated meaning that they received their first dose and due to various reasons they have to receive their second dose and our office is still trying to work with those 57 employees to get those vaccinations completed regards to student vaccinations our lcs staff supported the city of lynchburg and the health department when they held a clinic on april the 21st for 16 to 18 year old students in addition we will provide support again tomorrow wednesday may 19th and assist with the vaccinations of 12 to 15 year olds in our community based upon the parent and garden survey survey that was conducted conducted last week we had
020616 parents and guardians respond to the survey 256 of those did not want their child to be vaccinated 360 would like for their child to be vaccinated as the cdc gallops continue to evolve on a daily basis in regards to vaccinations we will continue to work collaboratively with the virginia department of health and the city of lynchburg to meet the needs of our staff students families and community lastly for vas vaccination clarification the individual is considered fully vaccinated two weeks after one dose of johnson and johnson vaccination or two weeks after the second dose of either the moderner or phaser vaccination once an individual is fully vaccinated or if they have covet 19 in the past 90 days they do not need to quarantine for exposure reviewing our data for the last two months we
021went back and we revised our quarantine and isolation guidelines and for the last two weeks we have implemented the quarantine or isolation may end after day 10 without testing or after day with the pot with a negative pcr or attention test performed on or after day five and so moving forward we will keep that in our guidance until we receive further information from the cdc or other guidelines for us to follow as well and just a reminder our guidance evolved just like our guidance from cdc evolves but we also look at our internal data our community data to make sure that we're doing our best to maintain a safe environment for our students and staff and community stakeholders thank you i believe that's it unless there are questions yes uh dr gupta i want to
022applaud miss brown i cannot see you from here but all the hard work you have done i've seen you from our own eyes and i think every board member has seen she was standing on her feet for eight to ten hours a day non-stop and you are the woman responsible for moving people out in what one minute and 32 seconds could you give the exact time yes sir he had to nail down and that was remarkable so thank you very much i have a follow-up question how many surveys were sent you received 616 responses we sent them to the entire lcs community and so all families within lcs was sent the survey and all staff as well were sent the survey thank you dr gupta in it great miss evans i know that doesn't sound
023like a lot i want people to keep in mind too though the like there was a vaccine clinic for 17 year olds before lynchburg so i think a lot of people got their children vaccinated before the schools offered it so i do think we probably have more than that vaccinated but that really wasn't my question for mrs pugh will when we look at the practices we have in place for the summer and we have summer school and we have sports over the summer the when they come in and use the weight room and all that stuff will all of those be re-looked at according to the new guidelines because i know last summer the weight room for football was such a issue because it was so active then that it had to be very diligent
024about how we're doing it i'm just wondering if those are going to be looked at again for this summer so that maybe perhaps it would be easier to get kids in there absolutely we will certainly look at those i'm i'm positive that they have already begun to make plans for that and they are looking at the new considerations and new guidelines and and that will be updated we will not stay with you know what is is currently there just as we've updated the you know our instructional plan as well as our health mitigation plan they will continue to update that as well okay perfect thank you thank you ms evans ms morrison that you have a okay dr carter and dr brown as dr gupta and mrs france dr gupta stated yes i wanted to
025thank you and your team for a wonderful job with continuing with contact tracing and everything when other departments or places stopped because it was so so overwhelming but you all kept on doing that my question is but you gave a number of those teachers or the employees that were vaccinated fully vascular vaccinated how what percentage of that is is that of our total employees do you know are we confident with the number of employees that we have fully vaccinated right and i can get the exact percentage for you i think we're around 74 or 74.6 in terms of vaccinations um we encourage all employees to get vaccinated of course we cannot mandate it our greatest tool are each other for example i had a custodian at one of the school to get vaccinated and in
026response that person's whole team ended up being vaccinated and so it's kind of you know decreasing the fear and debunking some of the myths and making sure that we are educating our staff and it is a personal choice at this time whether or not the individual participates in the vaccination process at this point so we will continue to encourage our staff to partake in the vaccinations and efforts to keep our schools open and not having to close classrooms or schools due to contact tracing because of exposures or positive tests thank you thank you dr carter dr brennan i just also want to reiterate my thanks along with dr gupta and dr carter for all the work that you've done over the months this has been a long haul and you and your department have really
027shouldered the weight of all the burdens so thank you so much for doing that um i have to say on a personal note i'm sort of disappointed the cdc kind of didn't do better and i hope that with their new regulations for the to come out in the summer they'll do better as far as outdoor activities you know now they're saying as you stated that uh you can only not have a mask outside if you're not if you're vaccinated so it leaves the children still having wearing masks but probably from a science point of view is not hold up very well but the good news is that under order 79 i know that a lot of us will be at the graduation on may the 30th but those of us have children graduating it'd be
028great not to have mass for those who are vaccinated so that's really good news i'm glad the public will hear about that and then my only question is i i sort of couldn't hear the last part about quarantine were you saying that now we are using the guidelines that if someone's exposed they can be tested in five days with a pcr test if it's negative they can come out of quarantine in seven days yes sir okay great thank you very much thank you all your work and for all your care and mr you thank you for your help thank you dr brennan dr nillas yeah i'm real interested in what the plans are for sports over the summer given where we are as well as where you anticipate what school is going to look like
029are we going to go back to all the kids back to school every day is there plans in place for that what absolutely you know where are we going with with things and you know i'm interested in hearing some specifics i don't have specifics for summer but we can certainly get that to you as far as athletics and and extracurriculars for the fall we will have the the two instructional options the lcs virtual academy as mr boyd just discussed we also will have in-person learning five days a week and right now it we will continue with mass i believe we'll continue with mass in the fall but the we will social distancing is recommended and it's a guideline but first and foremost we want to get as many students back in school five days a
030week as possible so we are looking at classrooms and the space that we have and how we can get as many students back as possible and if we need to be closer than three feet we will do that um if we are if we can get students back in classrooms at two feet we would certainly do that because the guidance for social distancing is just guidance um with executive order and 79 to follow up on that we you know with our superintendent calls and as uh director brown says this changes rapidly all the time um our planning for what will happen in august since it's may is probably going to change we're probably going to see some changes coming from the governor we'll see some changes coming from vdh cdc so if nothing else we've
031learned to just be flexible plan what you can but plan to plan again is how we're moving with it but we are we are committed to the five days a week for all kids and offering the virtual academy uh program uh just like before with the sports we kind of work in partnership with vhsl to sort of see what their guidelines might be in line with cdc and vdh and we did we do not have any updated information on that as of now yeah and i appreciate that um the reality is there's a lot of frustration out there you know it's clear the guidance then this isn't really a criticism of administration it's but it's the bureaucrats and the government the cdc is notoriously um conservative as being generous in terms of masking and was
032clear that that wasn't needed for vaccinated people and they they admit it now and certainly the governor is not ever going to admit that oh yeah we can your students are in school and you can take your mask off um and i just there's a lot of frustration i think with that and i think the us being well obviously being flexible but i think um taking that into account i mean sports athletics it's voluntary people choose you know it's a little different than some mandatory activity um and for folks that are uh do have serious concerns we have the virtual academy so i think we need to take that into consideration too that there are our options and and people are making choices so thank you thank you dr nellis and i'm coming to you
033doctor uh dr cena did you have anything you needed to say to mr harvey i just want to ask a point of clarification because i heard dr brennan say at graduation that adults who have been vaccinated since they're outside would not be required to be to wear a mask but i believe i heard ms pugh say that lcs policy is that we will continue to wear masks through the rest of the school year so i just would like a clarification on what our position is going to be for graduation so they're in all of my soup calls although not clearly stated in the executive order so again i have to take the guidance that i get from video e it is a distinction between indoors and outdoors so as ms pugh said for the remainder
034of the school year we were indoors and on the bus where the first two items that she discussed we will continue to wear the mask for graduation which is on may 30th so after the may 28th executive order 79 and it is outdoors at city stadium so it is an outdoor event so um we the vaccinated folks do not have to wear masks okay thank you thank you for that mr harvey miss evans i just want to quickly say too i i'm so happy that we will be back five days a week next year and i recognize that it may be with masks and i just want people to keep in mind kids have done fantastic with mask being in school five days a week is way more important than whether we have a mask
035on and i think as adults we tend to forget that kids have risen to the challenge and are able to wear masks throughout the day all day um so i think our focus needs to be having them in five days a week and if it's with the mask on that's okay [Music] well said ms evans anyone else on return to learn uh that has been inclusive of the vaccination update well thank you so much director brown we could go on and on about the work that you have done and thank you miss few for helping us to understand where we are and where we're going and i hope the public will continue to stay with us as we are excited about our students returning i did have one question that you may have stated and
036sometimes my ears are not as they should be but did was there any comment on when students 12 and younger would be vaccinated i apologize if i didn't clearly hear that if you already stated it the director brown did state tomorrow there is a clinic i believe florida there is a clinic for yes there will be a clinic tomorrow at the regional vaccination clinic at candler station at the old tj maxx building from 4 pm to 7 pm you can just show up and we can schedule you there or you can go online and register your child between the ages of 12 and 18 years old and if a parent or whoever needs a vaccination that comes with them we will vaccinate that adult as well so yes it will be tomorrow from 12 years
037old and up and it will be through lynchburg city schools nurses working with the city of lynchburg to vaccinate our students thank you director brown i'm glad i brought that back up because that's i'm excited in my chair to hear that and i know that the public is as well thank you all very much and we will now uh continue to move forward uh with uh item three student services department introductions and overview and dr edwards if you could set that up as well yeah well do that for me please certainly um as has been our tradition at our work sessions we like the public to get an overview of the various departments that we have we've been doing this all year long and i am proud to bring up again director brown who will
038introduce members of the student services department as well as give a brief overview of what happens in the student services department director brown well we're waiting on technicality um director brandt is not able to share her screen so i don't know if um if they're going to bring it up on the zoom or if they're going to give her permission to share her screen here we go which one is it all right i would like to welcome the board to the office of student services i call this office the office with the big golf umbrella who encompasses many roles and responsibilities my internal staff i like to begin with the faces so that when you make those phone calls in you know who you're talking to so first up is my administrative secretary ms thomas
039and she is new to the team this is her second year on the lcs team for student services next up we have miss danielle penn danielle penn has been on about a month and a half and so we gave her a hard welcome in by having her start at a vaccination clinic on i think day two so we welcomed her with warm arms and she jumped right on in providing support okay next up we have miss dasha womack and she is one of our supervisors in the office of student services we also have miss dominique foster and she's another supervisor for our office in our last edition we have miss sheri brown who's another supervisor for the office of student services under the office of student services we offer counseling services because we are over
040the counseling department also anything in regards to behavior behavior supports referral data any type of student discipline is within our office as well we also have the school social workers and they also work with our mental health division case manager also we have our homeless liaison person we assist all the homeless families within the community also we have truancy officers so when students are missing from school we work directly with the court services if needed and we go out into the field and do home visits and trying to find our students whether it's a runaway student whether it's a child that has a chin's position i mean petition in our need and services or just this child that have dropped out for whatever reason we try to go to the home and encourage our students
041and our families to come back to lcs also under this big umbrella thank you we have our jackson street staff and those are our truancy staff that i just talked about and i got ahead of myself so i apologize my homeless liaison um in my division caseworker and andrea bryant who's our north nurse coordinator so this office is also over top of all of the nurses within the division that are located at each of our 19 schools in regards to additional services we offer services to students that are seeking alternatives rocks to graduation we offer the ged and so we have a rodeo program that's housed at the amelia pride center for students that are ages 16 through 18. they can pursue they can pursue their ged as an alternative way to get their high
042school diploma anyone that's enrolled into that program have to complete a asset program which is inclusive of a transition plan we want to know where that student will be going or enrolling to upon receiving their ged we highly encourage a two-year program a four-year program military job corps cvcc world of work so we work with all of our students to make sure that after they receive their ged that they're looking at that next phase of life also in that center we have our adult basic education staff so if a student turns 18 and want to go to the adult side to pursue their ged they can do that as well but we also house that staff there so any community member that is seeking to get their ged they can enroll in the adult basic
043air program as well lastly i already covered behavior support in social workers so lastly our umbrella is inclusive of alternative ed programs meaning empowerment academy turning point fort hill community school and transition programs we work collaboratively with these principals and directors to provide support and resources for their students there to recover credits prevent drop out or help them move on to that next phase of their educational life that they choose at that point so when you say office of student services we carry a big umbrella because we offer a lot of support and resources to not only students but families and also staff within our division and i just gave you a little bit of the umbrella that we carry for our office so student services thank you yeah and and these are real people
044behind these names some of them we met today over at paramount and other places and so really incredible people all right then that moves us to our uh gender item four under section e uh s bar presentation so as you can see it's the director brown show tonight with several different presentations that all fall within her purview and supervision tonight's sbar presentation is going to be on behavior that will be followed by a short presentation from sros from mr gatsky and miss brown and also the school health advisory for miss sherry brown also falls under director brown's leadership so again while she gets her powerpoint together i just want to let the community know that we spend time each work session uh introducing you to a different department and what they do what uh areas
045they supervise how they engage and interact with not only our schools but also our community and you'll get to see that tonight director brown all right aboard i would like to introduce you to miss dominique foster and she will be giving you an overview of the s bar system and process i'm a little short good evening good evening good evening i'm dominique foster and i'm going to give you an overview of espar and esbar stands for student behavior and administrative response and all of this falls under the virginia model guidance for positive and preventive code of student conduct and alternative to suspension so the virginia department of education has set out goals the goals of the model guidance for the new student code of conduct include creating a safe supporting supportive effective learning environment addressing
046the data and equities and outcomes for students of color and students with disabilities reducing the approaches to discipline developing behavior interventions and supports improving school culture and climate reducing referrals to law enforcement and the juvenile justice system and overall improving our community this guidance from vdoe is including is including and directly connected to the virginia tier system of support which is vtss and positive behavior interventions and supports which is pbis our behavior descriptors which we know as discipline crime and violence or dcv codes will now be replaced with the s bar codes so the student behavior and administrative response codes starting this upcoming school year 21-22 can you go back starting this upcoming school year the 21-22 school year all school divisions in the state of virginia will be using the behavior descriptors from the
047model guidance or s bar codes this model guidance describes student behavior without bias or criminalization but the biggest thing would it what it does it acts as what harm was caused and what caused the behavior so that's the biggest difference now from dcv codes to our s-bar codes again what harm was caused and what caused the behavior this is just again kind of what i briefly discussed the esbar focus areas and what the state of virginia and department of education was thinking when they went back to revise the model code of conduct [Music] so what home was caused are behavior categories behaviors that impede academic progress behaviors related to school operations behaviors that create a negative relationship behaviors that create a safety concern or cause a safety concern that make things unsafe for students staff
048and or visitors who may come to the school and behaviors that endanger themselves or others safety or welfare of either the students or others in school so here are the behavior categories that we're going to be looking at when we say what harm was caused how do we respond we have leveled responses now how do we respond to that behavior that was caused level one let's kind of figure out what's going on what caused this student to be hacked to behave in the way that they may have behaved level two let's dig deep let's get social workers school counselors behavior coaches parents everyone at the table at this point at level two to see what is really going on level three again let's use every intervention possible or resource that we may have to find
049out what is going on to cause a level three behavior or our response and this may include at level three short-term removal from school level four some level four responses will require a report to the superintendent or the superintendent desert knee and that's an outlined in our code of virginia and level five these responses are reserved for those behaviors that require a referral to the superintendent or designee and which may also lead to expulsion alternative placement school reassignment or long-term suspension so responding to behaviors the model guidance outlines three types of responses to student behavior discipline sanctions instructional supports and behavior interventions what are we doing to keep our students engaged how are we intervening and what discipline sanctions are we giving our students these responses will be collected in the state collection report that
050goes to the state every year as we do dcv codes so these responses will be collected but they are collected now under esbar so the model guidance overall just recommends that we look at what harmless caused and how we respond as administrators and the last slide is a crosswalk and some resources that kind of outline the levels and the behavior categories thank you [Applause] any questions ms foster you did an excellent job in presenting that to the board uh questions discussion mr harvey um we'll i assume level four and level five responses will be addressed still through our student discipline will we receive an update more on on the sbar codes and and the uh cause effect information that you presented yes the so the process and procedure is still the same except we now
051the codes have changed so as far as having a discipline committee all of those processes will still be the same it's just internally our codes are changing of how we code discipline and how we respond to them okay so miss brown will yes gotta continue to guide us we started training um and dr coleman and dr gupta evidence today when we were at one of the schools with one of our behavior coaches so at first we trained our administrations um our administrators now we're working on our behavior coaches and so we're flowing that information down um to train and make sure that all of our staff fully understand what s bar stands for and so we will also be working collaboratively with the office of curriculum instruction to make sure that the instruction is engaging
052but also making sure that at tier one meaning universal services and supports for all students that the instruction there in the classroom management are all aligned in lynchburg city schools and so that we're being prevented preventative so that level two services tier two we're doing more of that specific intervention geared towards specific students so being more intentional in regards to instruction in regards to intervention and supports that we are providing to our students but also documenting it so that we can look at our data and refine our processes and our systems as we move throughout the school year thank you so it's new so just know that so we might have some hiccups um but we're diving straight in head first and so we're excited and we're eager to get it up enrolling this school
053year thank you mr hobby dr carter as i was reading through the levels i was a little discouraged because it didn't include some interventions but then i got to the uh responding to behaviors but what i don't see here is the intervention of making referrals to maybe if they need special education classes or other services is that included in one of these the disciplinary or the instructional behavioral yes that should be included in the s bar level responses and crosswalk that is actually a link and that should be included in there because that does follow the state the state has also made those recommendations as well and would it be looked at for level one i mean when can we the earlier we can identify any needs the easier or the less frustrated the student
054is and the teacher if the student needs other services yes so it should be listed by the levels i'm if i'm not mistaken i know for certain it is there for level two um but it should be listed there by the levels of where that recommendation could take place thank you thank you dr carter dr brennan miss forester thank you for that presentation that was a great overview and very helpful very instructive we've talked in the past about the concept of restorative justice which sounds like we're sort of inching towards particularly this the idea of asking what harm was caused what caused the behavior the involvement of families and the discussion can you just from my own education could you or director brown help me with what the difference between this and restorative justice is
055it's very similar and it's coming back around the state of virginia has now recognized that this is something that does need to be included when we're talking about alternatives to suspension because at the end of the day this this is what esbar is we're talking about alternatives to suspending a student for a certain type of behavior so this is very similar if not inclusive of restorative justice and so we use restorative justice practices as strategies when we're doing interventions and preventions and so even if it's small groups for circles if it's mediation that's needed we can pull and use certain pieces of the restorative practices that's embedded within our interventions that we have that's great well thank you very much for moving us in the right direction thank you dr brennan any other board member
056have any further i'm so sorry go right here dr nillas yeah um i guess um i guess in general i felt like our approach to student discipline was uh pretty very conservative in terms of we went to a lot a lot of effort to make sure kids got the support and intervention and then we were looking at the behaviors in the classroom and this their my time on the on student discipline committees it's didn't strike me as being uh just kind of running through the the routine pipeline and and give them an automatic suspension the behaviors were pretty pretty significant when i look at say a couple of the categories like des 012 which is striking an administrator without harm and that's i guess you're not allowed at that point in that particular incident to
057refer that to law enforcement and i wonder if you know if i went out on the street and struck somebody without harm you know would i be held to the same standard um so there and there's another one in the same same category beso 10. it talks about gang-related behavior which is not doesn't rise to a level five and you know i have some personal concerns about that i don't know if if you are comfortable with all these with all the uh categories or not yeah so these categories are via the state so this is doe guidance we are as school divisions are just mod you know following the guidance and implementing the interventions and preventions that we have at our capacity in each school division so what you're seeing is what every school division
058all 132 school divisions will be following effective this upcoming school year there are some that are currently following it now um henrico county is one who i have been in quite a bit conversation with because they are doing it this school year and learning as they go um so what you're seeing is vdoe guidance well there's guidance and there's guidance i don't know what our interpretation of guidance is and dr nellis i would go back at every school board meeting i mean excuse me discipline committee meeting we always look at each incident case by case and i always ask what is the intent was it malicious was it to maine hurt harm and if so to what severity and then also we look at the child as a whole we look at the family as
059a whole we also look at the victim if there is a victim as a whole and we use all those things to make the best recommendation for any of our students that we have and i would hope that the disciplinary committee will still hold that same philosophy of having all information academic behavior attendance if they have an iep having that information as well and make a decision based upon all information that we present at that time and we do it on a case-by-case scenario and i appreciate that and and that was one of the things i was i was very impressed and frankly proud of when uh this cases came before us for the for the committee hearings um my concern is that we may not be able to fully take into account the personal
060circumstances with these categories and that there's there's an automatic i don't know it's automatic in some cases and what you can and can't do you're automatically limited there might be a need to go further and you know that's where my concern and then at that point we will have the conversation with the superintendent if we need to bring it to the board at that time we will bring it up to the board dr nellis well i guess my quest my concern is you won't be able to do that in some of these cases i think we still want to do our due diligence every child by name and by need and i hear what you're saying it's guidance and i'm not going rogue here and not following suggesting that we are not following vdoe guidance
061and other information that we get as a school division because we are obligated to take all of that in and plan accordingly but i think what director brown is saying is that you know first and foremost we are a child friendly institution we look at children first and we try to our best to understand the circumstances surrounding any situation we will continue to do that all right thank you very much and um i want to make sure that all board members can hear and so we may need to renegotiate the mike uh director brown yes sir but thank you very clear responses uh dr sinha well yeah thank you for your presentation i appreciate that you had it available on board docs so that we could follow along um one thing i'd like to see
062at some point we've we've talked about this plenty of times before is just patterns of behavior predictors of behavior patterns in teacher reporting for example do you look at teachers who seem to be struggling with classes i know when i was in school there were teachers who could command a class and not necessarily because they were strict or frightening or whatever they just had a presence and they were able to control a classroom and then others for whatever reason couldn't so so so you know i'd like to hear a little bit about what you do in terms of training teachers initially and then ongoing review and training and practice and then what kind of i know you capture all this data because we get a wealth of information when we review cases during our discipline
063committee hearings but i think it would be i would like to see some analysis of patterns or predictors or things that might provide some insight into early early indicators of potential problems down the road and and how we might go about intervening in those cases or or bringing circumstances to bear and i'm really grateful that we do take the time and it's and it's you ms brown who really um deserves kudos for this to really um look at the student examine their ex their experiences look at the mitigating factors look at what they're up against in their home environment school environment whatever it may be and to show compassion toward our students i think that's a very important thing we need to remember with children they may be 18 for our oldest students but impulse
064control is still a problem because they're not fully formed adults until mid-20s so i would i wouldn't want um you know one bad move or bad impulse to to to chart a course for a person's future but just the same so you know what kind of training do you do mid-course for teachers and staff and then what type of analysis do you do with the information you collect i am more than willing to come back to another workshop and have my team present on that at the beginning of the year for new teachers all new teachers our board certified behavior analysts conduct training for all new teachers in regards to classroom management 101 that i love to call it but mr ferguson gets me every time that i say that because it's way more than
065that we do engaging instructional practices to deter inappropriate behaviors during that training and as a follow-up throughout the year he checks in with those teachers to see what additional supports that they might need do we need to do more of that yes we do and that's why we're trying to grow the staff that we have so we have more feet on the ground for check-ins with our staff but also trying to build the capacity at each school to have teams to be able to train each other using the train the trainer model on behavior techniques also this year we have our google classroom that was created in which principals and teachers correct me from wrong has access to it and they can watch videos in regards to strategies effective strategies to deter different levels of
066behaviors or different classroom inappropriate behaviors at that time so in regards to professional development it's ongoing activities whether it's videos we haven't had that many live in-person professional development just due to covet but we are working to build some professional development training that's ongoing throughout the year in regards to data each of the schools refer review their office referral data and they can desegregate that by teacher by class by location by grade in that information we recommend that it's reviewed at the end of each month and we need to do a better job and i'm going to be honest with working with our principals and administrators with disaggregating that data and going through that data and making sure that they are making data-driven decisions that's best in that's in the best interest of the school
067as a whole based upon that discipline information so that would definitely be a growth for our office for this coming school year and dr in one of my weekly updates i think i shared one of the videos that ms brown is talking about we looked at antecedent behavior just so that you would get a snapshot of what she the the training that goes on via video just to comment i also concerned a little bit about inherent bias and my example there is i'm a northerner i don't it took me a long time to get used to calling women ma'am and i'm sure i seem cold and rude uh in my northern ways and it's just i didn't mean to be that way i'm just not used to a southern way of doing things now i
068am but those kinds of things cultural differences subcultural communication styles can lead to so i hope there are things in place to help our teachers and staff with that we have a very white workforce that's quite different from our student body so that i think there is a lot of potential there for those kinds of misunderstandings to happen thank you dr sinha well said and of course we can have further discussions on this but i think you all have adequately helped us to appreciate esvar and his pending implications and uh thank you very much uh director brown and uh foster for your sharing on that matter thank you if there's no further discussion from the board we will now move to the next item and this is another ongoing piece but uh sro presentation now
069that would set us up for that yes and uh mr gatzke is going to join uh director brown along with officer ramirez one of our sro officers and i tried to give you a preview this past weekend of just a few of the things small that our sros do in terms of them being part of the family and the network of our schools but i will turn it over to director brown and mr gatzke and officer ramirez to share more with you well good evening good evening i would like to start off by uh making sure that nobody's misled even though i was listed first on that slide the work is done by ms brown and and the sros i actually just joined the group in november and i'm still kind of learning my way
070um but um how do i go okay um so the despite the pandemic the sro committee team has been working throughout the pandemic we've met almost monthly through through the year you can see there the different meeting dates and and the topics i would like to point out that in march we did have an overview that we was presented to the police leadership and the school leadership dr edwards and her team and then also the police department participated in that and that is an annual requirement of our mou along with the actually the monthly meetings and whatever in april um we started discussing what we're going to do for the summer and that's what you see under the topics for april one thing we are excited about is that the police department is working on
071a video training on school safety and topics of that nature that that they are interested in in educating us about we're also looking at the school safety uh walk-throughs and and all of that kind of stuff that's it's all um annual um walkthroughs and inspections and all that and they also help us with our internal school school safety audits and that will be coming up this summer also this next slide is uh just what uh our recent data the sros uh do a monthly report um and what you can what you see here is the different categories of incidents from 2017 to the present i will note that on the last column the that is the data that has been reported since january because of the pandemic we did have a gap in data reporting
072um so that those numbers there are for uh from january to present day that's all miss ramirez and i are over here fighting over this slide here but i have officer takas online to kind of help me out the sros and lynchburg city schools work collaboratively when we're doing projects and just meeting the needs of the students and this slide right here we have ms hanson a teacher at ec glass who worked collaboratively with miss ramirez we needed to find a solution to notify the fire department where our students were in buildings that were two floors or more so the solution that we came up with was to have a sticker for the fire department to recognize to know that in case they had to break that window or bust it out in the case
073of emergency they would know the location of our students so thanks to ms ramirez and ms hanson we were able to create this emblem working with the fire department and ms ramirez has been placing those emblems throughout the schools for lynchburg city schools to ensure the safety of all of our students and staff in case of emergency in buildings that have more than one floor in that building officer takis he is one of our sros and right now i like to applaud him because he's actually at andrews air force base on deployment and i would like for him to just talk a little bit about how you know he's done some collaboration and some of the other sros in the unit with lcs hi everyone can you hear me yes sir all right thank you
074very much for having me i'm sorry i'm not there a person i'll be back in just a few weeks um yeah other things we do as usual to collaborate with community conditions that's a window sticker that they're working on with the fire department um all the doors of all lcs buildings are numbered um for you know for identification purposes we have just finished a project where now all those door numbers and uh schematics are uploaded to every mobile computer all of their lynchburg police department patrol vehicles so when if if they need to respond to a school and a certain door number is identified they don't have to run around the building counting doors um they can actually go directly to the door so we were able to collaborate with the sros world all together
075to get all that information gis downtown i.t i believe i reached out to mr gatzke as well to get some information other things that we do in the community uh we've done the uh i believe it was uh recently i think dr brennan was there with us uh for the dunbar we went out and did the uh the 20 book challenge uh where students were nominated by their teachers and they got a like a prized backpack like a swag bag with things stuffed in there uh we reach out and do things like that we do the bike drive uh with one community one voice the fire department the sheriff's office where we distribute brand new bicycles uh to uh students that are identified i believe by their teachers as well um some other projects i
076do takis talks that was actually brought up put on the news just before i left for qatar in 2019 where i do interviews with different people around the police department different professions kind of giving uh some information to students that may be interested in law enforcement or different aspect of law enforcement we recently interviewed katie the fraud lady she works at the front desk at the police department in a civilian capacity other things in the community we work with our cat team the community action team they coordinate with parks and recreation in the past we do barbecues they do like pop-up cookouts things like that [Music] where they go out to community centers with parks and rec uh they recently went over to uh james crossing and had an event over there um we're we're
077a little all over the place um doing what we can thank you officer takas all right next steps moving forward um for this group we're going to continue to seek principal student and community parent import before determine determining the status of that sro program we want to make sure that we're providing quality service so what does that mean we'll continue to survey our parents our students and community to get feedback to see how we're doing we'll continue to work with lpd to learn terminology jargons and also making sure that we're staying abreast of the gang language so reviewing civil versus criminal arrest codes as well making sure that we are separating a school incident versus what's a criminal or civil incident within the state codes being mindful also that we are honoring the mou making
078sure that we are reviewing the mou frequently and making sure that we are collecting data analysing that data but also being specific and create creating some strategic goals for that next school year one thing that i like about working with the sro unit is that we are able to track our students that are runaways we're having immediate notification to assist to try to find our students and even working with our gaggle management system when we're having some alerts that comes across it it's our own sros that's going out to our students to do that wellness check or that first line of intervention it's usually a face that they have seen or are familiar with and that decreases the anxiety and that leads way for real conversations in which we're able to get the students intervention
079and the supports that they need and that's just some of the next steps in regards to community policing officer attack has talked a little bit about that and some of the collaborative things that um the cat team does within the community officer fink leads the tech team and right now he's away on vacation but i would like to just emphasize that that cat team works with lynchburg city schools one community one voice the sheriff's office and other community agencies to provide positive supports for the community it takes a team to do this and so in regards to public safety they're coming out and saying hey even though we're police officers we want to let you know that we're human too we want to build positive relationships with you and guess what if we have to
080involve your school employees the faith-based community or whatever resources we need to come into your community to say hey we're here for you we're going to do that and so that's what the cat team's been doing this year to sum it all up this year the sro mou was revised and as of january lcs has been implementing that mou alongside with the lynchburg police department especially the sros we are making more of an effort to work hand in hand to be proactive and to provide interventions and diversion programs for our students all while maintaining public safety and school safety for our students so moving forward you will get more detailed reports and more data from this committee as we focus on school safety which will include some mental health some social emotional and also looking
081at behavior supports that we are doing with our students so do you have any questions thank you director brown and they comment dr gupta thank you very much for your presentation officer ramirez could you come in between between so i can see you yeah she's been hiding she didn't want to talk how you doing sir you know i wanted to thank all the sros working in our school system but especially your enthusiasm and your passion is contagious so a professor in me will ask you a quiz question and maybe you can tell the school board the answer so what to do when the pa system goes out in the senior night announcements again you know it's just one of those things man we talk about community partnerships and you know just being proactive you know
082sros aren't all about arrest it is we're there to build partnerships and build those relationships and make memorable moments with our students it was one of those things you know power went out everything would have to there was panic and i drove my patrol car up on the field and said miss mason cup my athletic director have at it here's my uh here's my mic make announcements and let's announce our senior students and give them the love and the the praise that they deserve to end their school year for their senior night in the band program and as far as the football team as well but it's just one of those things man it's i've been so grateful and honored to be a part of this unit it's been such a humbling experience but i
083really thank you guys and again i want to thank officer takas because again whether you guys think it or not we're on the clock almost 24 7 and we take our own time to come in even after hours to support our students or help ms brown with all calls and just you know we're really really working hard just to continue to give you guys the support that you guys need to follow up with students and make sure that they're nice and safe and they're doing their schoolwork and showing up to school so but i thank you guys and thank you sir so you improvised and you came to the rescue that night yeah so we applaud yeah dr coleman yes if i could share um one last thing and dr edwards i don't know if
084you want to share what happened today you can you can share today at one of our schools one of our students stood up abruptly and they had a panic looked on their face and they were choking and the closest staff member to them notice i said staff because they're part of us what's the sro and the sro did the hamlet maneuver today during lunch for that student and just look on that sro's face in that student's face when it was finished and he let that student know it's okay i got you was priceless and for me sros is not just about patrolling and being creating that safe environment in school it's about that relationship and that bond that they're building day to day with our students and letting them know that i am here for
085you and that's what stood out today and that's the why while we have our sros here for lynchburg city schools wow what an amazing story and i'm so thankful that you would share that and um that's that's that's amazing thank you so much for that all right um i i would just like going forward with the sro detail monthly reports mr gasket or whoever that somehow we would be able to disaggregate this information around subgroups that we could have that type of information going forward we thank you so much for the report there's no other questions or discussion from the board and if the stamina of the board would endure we can go on to item six and maybe even seven without a break item six school health advisory board and at this time i'd
086like to introduce miss sheri brown she is now leading our school health advisory board and she will give the report out good evening board hey in the spirit of what you just heard i would like to say that i'm the newest member of the student services department and i too am grateful to be a part of this department the health advisory committee met on january 27th of this year and also on april 14th of this year during the january meeting the following was discussed covet vaccinations and implementation by lynchburg city schools office of student services and the nursing team was discussed at that time they had vaccinated over 300 lcs and lynchburg city employees and were planning additional clinics mrs morris the director of nutrition discussed meal distribution for hybrid and remote students meals were
087being served in school taken home by students and curbside service was offered three times a week grant money was utilized to purchase a delivery van to assist with home deliveries for families who lack transportation and those deliveries began on february 2nd of 2021 in addition mrs morris reported that food for thought would be handing out 20 pound boxes of fresh produce and essential items once per month sivar which is central virginia addiction and recovery resources we received a grant update januar davis provided that update and she is with horizon behavioral health 914 out of 1800 8th 10th and 12th grade students participated in the youth risk behavior survey electronically in december of 2020. we are currently waiting on the results to return during the april meeting we discussed the following nurse coordinator andrea bryant reported
088that all lcs employees who had answered the survey to request to be vaccinated had had their first vaccines the second doses were due to be given three days later on april 17th only those who wanted to wait for the johnson and johnson vaccine at that time were left to vaccinate lcs employees and many members of the office of student services continued to volunteer at the vaccination clinics mrs morris again the director of school nutrition reported that they were adjusting to students returning to the buildings and were working on a summer food program with lynchburg parks and rec the ymca and boys and girls club curbside service is expected to continue this summer on mondays wednesdays and fridays at lincoln middle school and both high schools instead of assisting with after prom parties this year due
089to covet the sivar group purchased every upcoming lcs high school graduate a yard signed with their school name logo and graduation year some of the students have already started putting those signs out in their in their yards a subcommittee was formed from the health advisory committee a subcommittee was formed and we're meeting to look at the preliminary results from the december 2020 youth risk behavior survey once those final results are end we will be back to present to you what those findings were and then lastly in april 27th dr bradley bryant of lcs reported on the family life curriculum the professional development that was being completed during this school year 27 elementary teachers receive professional development and then during the 21-22 school year middle and high school students excuse me middle and high school teachers
090will be offered the same professional development we have our last meeting for this school year which is set for may 26th and that is the end of my report short and sweet eric thank you mr brown uh the floor is open for thoughts from the board or questions all right thank you thank you so much mrs brown and uh mike the good work continued thank you for everything all right um miss evans the show is yours at this time okay um we met i don't even remember last week um with the committee and we we've tried to look at this committee on how we can go about getting everybody on the board involved in it if we want to make change in education we've got to know what's going on in richmond and be active
091in that part and so we were trying to think how we could get everybody involved and when we had to do the breakfast via zoom this time because we had to we kind of split up our agenda and everybody took a section and kind of spoke to that section of the agenda so what we were thinking is everybody sticking again to one section that they're interested in and kind of being responsible for that throughout the year so if legislation comes up involving as kim did early childhood education if something came up for that that's really her area and she would let us know hey there's a bill being introduced we really need to support this you need to email your legislator we need to do this this and this so everybody would have a piece
092of it and that would be your area to focus on and report back to us and it would wouldn't have to be at every meeting and it wouldn't have to be at a meeting it could be an email to the board saying this is going on but we thought maybe that would be the best way to get everyone involved in doing this because it's critical that we give our voice to what's being passed for our students in education we have to be i think more involved than we have been and let them know yes we like this no we don't it's important to do that so what i'm hoping from here and dr brennan i think you said this summer we re-look at this agenda so once that piece is done my thought is you
093know let everybody look at the agenda after we've kind of decided what it is once we all agree that this is going to be the agenda then we can split it up and you can take the part you like like i gave you the just this past year's agenda but we're not i mean we're going to change that this summer so once we get the new one everybody would get this and really pick an area that you feel passionate about and that you want to follow up with so that as a committee is kind of what we came up with of being the best way now the chair would still go to the capitol conference send out things like that and do all that you wouldn't be asked to do anything but really the one
094area that way we can all keep updated in every area so i'd love to hear anybody's thoughts on what you all think about that all right miss morrison i really like that idea it's hard to do at all right so if we kind of pick the area that we really want to focus on i think that they keep up with what's current from the sva and from richmond and washington right i think it's i think it's a great idea and i look forward to it great thank you ms morrison dr brenner just as a committee member i want to just uh thank ms evans for for bringing this up i think two years ago we designed this agenda for the first time it was a step in the right direction but i think this is
095taking us to another level of really trying to have more ongoing evaluation of the different items and the board to be more involved in it so thank you for doing that i think it's a great idea also thank you dr brennan real quick everybody knows this was really kim's idea of how to kind of split it up and i think it was a fabulous idea i'm just explaining it but you didn't have to idea just a messenger thank you for your input dr sinha thank you miss evans any board member would like to speak to this matter before we move on i i sense an agreement uh miss evans for us to proceed in the manner in which you have uh put before us and we will govern ourselves accordingly as the summer unfolds and
096you'll bring something back to us exactly and give everyone an opportunity to participate in advocacy around your particular area of interest or passion all right well excellent my my dr edwards it is 6 31 and we are at the informational items and all of our board members can read and so you see all of those particulars i do want to pause for just a moment while we're there and thank dr danny rule and the entire staff here at dunbar middle school and i think board members can clap for them and we've had a wonderful wonderful time here but please recognize that the next time we meet as a full board finance committee is the venue established for your meeting um mr harvey not yet okay well as far as the school board meeting we'll be
097moving to ec glass so so please help each other don't come back here you might have kept a little i'll text somebody yeah go to glass all right and that will be in the auditorium the staging area and uh bale's group has um identified here and then the next work session will be of course a glass and so that takes care of that um we do want to acknowledge that these appreciations are going on and the paramount and glass piece was wonderful today and all of the efforts of the board thank you so much uh the paramount gem dedication is tomorrow at 10 a.m is that correct dr edwards yes yeah so anybody would like to get over to that and we know that there are always more discussions about other gems and heritage and
098etc and uh please make sure that if you have not already turn in your summative evaluation to our board clerk and uh unless there's anything else before the book these materials that we have before us yes concerning the law regional program i think this is information items the annual financial report comprehensive annual report uh please make sure you take those things and make it for interesting reading tonight since uh we're getting ready to leave all right if there's nothing else to be reported tonight uh this meeting is adjourned and govern yourselves are calling it thank you everybody meeting adjourned you