LCS School Board Work Session: October 20, 2020

001[Music] do [Music] do [Music] our tuesday october the 20th a 2020 school board work session for lynchburg city school board and as we have called our meeting to order uh we will now ask that an item b that the agenda approval would be considered and each of you have had the opportunity to see the agenda and it is fairly straightforward for tonight the chair would entertain a motion to approve the agenda move to approve the agenda dr nils has moved for the approval of the agenda seconded by ms morrison any questions or discussion hearing none will call for the vote all those in favor indicate by saying i i those opposed the motion carries and will now stand for our pledge of i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and

002to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all i want to thank everyone for coming out tonight uh viewing us and we will move through our agenda uh accordingly our first uh item of business for tonight uh under our school board committee reports and board members we do try to juggle some of the committed reports within the context of a work session where it may be appropriate and tonight we have the legislative advocacy and community relations committee which just met and the chair of that committee bill evans is not with us tonight dealing with personal dynamics and the meeting was uh very successful and the chair uh evans would like us to know that you will very soon be receiving uh your packets concerning the november

003the 13th legislative breakfast and she and the committee have worked it out so that everyone will be involved in some way uh doing that experience as we share our legislative positions to the invited guests and larger community also please be advised that in terms of the school board member to school partner list of the committee has left that list as it was last year so whomever you were with last year you will remain with with that school in terms of your partnering for this particular uh school year and we are grateful for that i do want to also let the board know that bill and bob are working on the finer details of all of the partnerships that we have with beacon of hope the education foundation partners in education and we'll be bringing further

004information to you at a later point our final item as it relates to the legislative advocacy and community relations committee is that the chair would like to acknowledge that dr michael nellis has requested to be removed from the committee in light of being on the finance committee and a sundry of work that he does here with the school board and school board member kim sinha has agreed to take dr nils's place on that committee leaving us uh to determine an alternate for that committee and so uh the chair would first like to acknowledge that kim sinha would desire to take the place of dr nellis and so let's let's uh and the chair of the committee bill evans says that she is in favor of kim sinha to move on to the committee so i'm

005just reporting that out is there a motion from anyone in regards to dr center emotion so there's a motion for dr senate to replace dr nils on the legislative advocacy committee committee i would like to do it that way and then discuss the alternate second unless we would like to do it differently i'd like to make that motion okay so dr brennan is making a motion for kim sinha to replace dr nillis who has asked to be uh removed from that committee are you second in that miss morrison ms morrison is seconded is there any discussion or question on that hearing none all those in favor indicate by saying aye aye those opposed motion carries and so now we simply need an alternate is there a all of us are involved in so much is

006there anyone who would like to serve as the alternate for the legislative advocacy and community relations committee which is doing such a great work here amongst us all right very good all right is there anyone else then uh let's let's do that formally i suspect we have a motion for dr mrs morrison to be the alternate so as the sole member of the latest average committee can be raised here tonight i'd like to accept ms morrison's request or volunteering to be on the committee as an alternate okay thank you so much uh the move by dr brennan seconded by ms carter that ms morrison would serve as the alternate to the legislative advocacy and community relations committee and a discussion a question hearing none all those in favor indicate by saying aye all right i

007was opposed to motion carries and we appreciate that and thank you uh dr nilas for your ongoing support uh and work uh regarding that and uh that works well okay all right we will now move on to the next item of our agenda which is uh d1 and uh the board has asked that we would have opportunities at our work sessions to hear from various departments of our school division and so i'm going to ask now that dr edwards would appropriately frame the office of equity and community relations report absolutely so what we wanted to do starting at each work session was bring the director and possibly members of those departments who you may or may not have seen or know and as i was told we got like three to five minutes of a

008quick update of here's who we are here's what we do and here's how we're here to serve so the first office is the office of equity and community relations which is newly named this year and newly formed so i will let our director miss ethel reeves talk to you a little bit about the department who's in it and some of the wonderful things that they do good evening everyone as she stated i'm ethel reeves director of equity and community relations um i'm excited about not just the name but my team and we are that the team consists of cindy babb who is coordinator of communications xavier christian who's here with me tonight she serves as the division family and engagement liaison austin journey who you've seen i'm sure in this room helping set up things

009is our television media specialist someone you may not see is scott kirkwood who's our webmaster who does all things great with our web our website um and then barbara saunders provides some clerical support i do share her with other directors in the superintendent's office so that's our team we are responsible for communicating both our internal communications and any external communications we aim to do that accurately and effectively and of course in a timely fashion in zebea's role she is engaging the community through our partnerships and the partners in education the partners in education program as well as that board we also do that along with the lynchburg regional business alliance our team works with our school employees to meet the needs of our students and families so we're often out in the community helping make

010sure that whatever the schools are needing or they're telling us that they need with regard to our students that we are also using our resources if we're not ourselves going and making things happen that we're using our resources to make those things happen the equity side of our team you'll get to experience some of that tonight it is very exciting to have the conversations to create the safe spaces to engage especially in the times that we're living in about those things that will allow us to educate all of our students and to provide opportunities for all of our students and our families any questions first of all ethel we want to just thank you for your work and and your members of your team and your office for what you do on an ongoing basis

011we were in a meeting earlier today where the persons persons were speaking very positively about your work and engagement but what you've heard the report coming from uh ethel reese she's asking for any particular questions we know that we have an opportunity a little later for an equity chat and so uh if it's appropriate let's just give her a thanks to a clapping of our hand for her all right thank you uh ethel very good all right that now moves us to um our agenda item e1 and that will bring us to our relearn to turn updates and i will turn this portion of the meeting over to dr edwards absolutely so thank you and again just for the viewing public every work session and every school board meeting we'd like to give a quick

012short update of our return to learn initiatives and efforts we did just recently return back our sixth grade and i will just share my little happy story and then i will turn it over to miss pugh and dr jordan for a few other updates but i did get to go to the middle school to see the sixth graders on day one of two or the thursday for cohort b um and just witnessed the excitement and enthusiasm as one of our principals had a karaoke machine singing celebrate to the kids the students the staff as they were in the hallway six feet apart walking down the right direction through all of the hallways and just seeing the students faces of being excited to be back but having staff excited to welcome them back it felt like

013a school again with having the children there and i just want to say thank you to the staff and everybody for everything that they are doing to make this return to learn special for our kids and our families and with that for i will turn it over to miss pugh and dr jordan for a quick update thank you oh and miss daniels foster i didn't see you over there too all right we're all here we are all here and i'm going to actually let dr jordan share some stories and then i'm just here to answer any questions if there are any i thought you were going to tell one of the same stories that i was going to tell and then i was going to have to pivot [Laughter] i do want to share first

014that remote instruction is working for some of our families and they are continuing to intentionally make the choice for remote instruction we were on a meeting this afternoon talking about grading i'm not getting into that yet we're not we're not quite ready for that but one of the itrts shared that a parent reached out and said my child is flourishing in the remote environment so i don't want to forget that remaining remote is still a choice that many of our families are intentionally making for instructional choices but also health and safety of their family as well but a lot of our families are choosing to come back to the hybrid environment and i want to tell you a couple of stories tonight about that and the same principle the other day in a meeting that

015had the karaoke machine almost made me cry and i think that this was said in a middle school principal's conversation so i don't know which one of them it originated from but they said our heartbeats are back in the hallways and i that really resonated with me our heartbeats are back in the hallways so we worked really closely with a few families i have lots and lots of emails and phone calls back and forth with families in the beginning because it was a struggle to figure out remote learning especially for our youngest learners and one family really struggled to find the balance between technology and more traditional paper pencil and one of the first conversations we had she said our family typically did not allow screen time so this is very different to have our

016children on seesaw and they were always very positive conversations but i could understand she was really torn about the amount of screen time we worked with schools to provide learning kits stem kits manipulatives things that kids could use over and over again in many environments so we worked really hard to get resources into the home we worked with teachers to provide some more traditional paper pencil resources librarians were offering curbside pickup we were doing lots of things but it didn't replace coming to school so parents were still wanting their children in the buildings so i have to share a bit of the story from the same family so we really worked over weeks and weeks for especially the first grader and the second grader and how to support them in this new remote environment she

017sent a video and they're in the car they've just gotten into their seats and she turns around and she's interviewing them and she says how was your day and the first grader says it was the best day ever and she's yelling in the video just like that and the second grader she said okay now your turn how was your day and he says something and it's uh it's hard to understand what he says he says it's brilliant he said the word brilliant and she said on a scale of one to ten how was your first day at school and he said better and she said better than what and he said better than one to ten so that was that was their story about their first day of school and i would be remiss if

018i didn't tell you she really wants them to be able to come back many more days in the week another middle school parent we worked with and i would just say it was the transition to sixth grade is huge having seven classes managing seven different google classrooms that's really challenging when we're not dealing with the global pandemic so we heard a lot from parents about the workload how to balance the time the screen time transitioning to the sixth grade environment and i want to share a little bit of an email from this parent because our sixth graders have been back for a short time and she said i just want to tell you the tremendous job that lcs teachers are doing in the hybrid model we are thrilled to be back in a middle school

019she talks about the small classes her son's interest in school is back up she said i can't imagine how hard the teachers are working on this effort and we are so grateful allowing the new sixth graders two weeks to come back to the middle school to get acclimated was brilliant and so very much appreciated so parents are working with us we really are having partnerships with parents and they're reaching out sometimes the emails are not pretty and sometimes the phone calls are not easy to hear because they're overwhelmed and sometimes there are things that we could do so much better but i just want to thank you all for working with us i want to thank the parents for working with us and we really are hearing lots of success stories even in trying times

020i want to make sure that parents understand we are approaching the end of the first quarter which is crazy you know we keep saying okay we're in week nine so we're approaching the end of the first quarter lcs is here for you if you don't know how to reach out just reach out if you get anybody we got something from the help desk today tell anybody what you need and we will do our best to help you so reach out reach out to teachers reach out via technology and we'll do our best to help one thing we need people to understand is school is required right now attendance count grades count missing work will negatively impact grades so unlike the spring when we had choice board work if students are not completing work we really

021need to make sure for mastery for skills that build upon each other foundational skills we really need to make sure that students are completing the assignments as students come back to hybrid you get two days in the buildings right now but you still have three days of remote instruction that's very important we have teachers who are still offering zoom opportunities checking in via phone calls please engage with those type of opportunities they're optional but they're definitely recommended any questions for me about the stories or the information that i just shared with you we just want to tell you thank you dr jordan and the entire team for what is going on behind the scenes a lot of times people are not aware of the great length that persons are going to engage students and families

022dr gupta i just wanted to echo what you're saying because i'm seeing a lot of buzz i live right across from heritage so it's good to see cars coming it was very exciting to see cars lined up to pick kids up at heritage elementary they were lined up from front of the building going to the back of the parking lot means families are getting re-involved in the school system so that's that's what was very heartwarming to see thank you thank you dr gupta any other member of the board like to comment on this portion all right dr jordan thank you that was easy okay thank all of you thank you amy everybody oh all right uh dr edwards do you have anything else before dr sinha uh no i just i echo your sentiments and

023thanking them there is so much behind the scenes work that goes on um with all the various teams and and you see that they come even though they don't always speak but they're always here to support one another because they are working together as a team and i will say as far as some of the things that parents have shared i do think that you guys also may have received an email where a parent gave a suggestion can you push the workout on friday instead of monday and i took that to the team and they're like okay we could do that um there was a lot of conversation about sixth grade because originally remember our plan was just three to five and then we took it to the team and they said okay we can

024figure out how to make this work for sixth grade so i really do want to thank them i applaud them for their flexibility and leadership because they are listening to families and they are trying to make adjustments and make the best decisions possible i will say to my families as we move into more hybrid instruction that that too is new for us too it's a learning curve and as dr jordan said we are here we're listening we're ready to pivot and adapt as we need to to make sure that we're still providing excellent services for our families and those who choose to to remain remote we also want to make sure that they're getting an excellent service too so thank you to my team thank you to the families who have reached out and worked

025with us collaboratively and always thank you to the board for the support and that's the educational side of covet and of course now there's the health side of covet and i love that we have dr sinha who provides us with um wonderful updates so i am going to turn it over and just before dr center i think dr brennan then dr nellis would like to i don't know if they wanted to comment on the first part of the second part but go right ahead it's okay i'm sorry the ladies left so quickly because i just wanted to also comment dr coleman and i had the opportunity to meet with some of the middle school principals today which i think was really a great opportunity at sandusky middle school where the sixth graders are back and

026it was what was interesting to hear was that there is the segment of students that we all know who were challenged when they were in the schools are having trouble out of the schools as far as getting the work done and having support and the things that they need but what was so amazing was to listen to what the staff is doing to reach out to those students i mean they are making home visits they are calling over and over again if they think that maybe their teacher is not the right person to talk to the student they'll have the coach go talk to the student but the effort that they're making to address the students at whatever level they are whether it's in school or hybrid or not being engaged was just really amazing

027and so encouraging and i just want to applaud and recognize what an effort they're making to make all levels be uh reach out to them thank you dr brandon dr nils yeah i want to acknowledge the efforts of staff instructional staff is not visible you really have to be in the schools but this kind of instruction ad-libbing it and it's it's it's a challenge and it's good to see the kids back in school and they're excited and the staff's excited which leads to the next question the elephant in the room which is what about opening what are the further opening up plans i know at the end of the first grading period the high school will be back but then at some point there needs to be a transition for bringing everybody back and i

028don't think we've heard anything about that so i'm just approaching the subject and we are one of our biggest challenges with that obviously is space in the classrooms as well so um while we are at i would say the the pre-k to 5 is is fully back in terms of the hybrid plan so we have an idea of how many little bodies are occupying each space in the building and what our options are we still haven't had the full transition back of the secondary school so that we can kind of take a look at space space being one of the things to make sure that we can keep the kids um and staff six feet apart during the instructional time of course when they go outside it's it's ten feet apart if they're running around

029and recess and things like that the other thing is staffing making sure that we have enough staff so right now again bringing everybody back i think we're into a a sweet spot right now with elementary although i will say it is tough with elementary you do have some staff who are doing both in-person learning and hybrid learning i'm sorry hybrid learning and completely remote learning as well you have some creative solutions but making sure if we do have space to bring more kids back we have staff certified staff that can work with them without compromising the services that some are already receiving so we don't want to go to a right now we have the full day model we don't want to have to split days to try to accommodate some more kids and break

030up time the third thing obviously is transportation is the other thing to make sure that not only do we have enough space and enough staff but we also have the means to pick the kids up and and get there so there is a lot on that think tank plate that is going on that um will be coming forward but right now our efforts are on the get them in next week and see where we are with that how that goes and this is not a kovit cough but coming you all right uh dr nellis i don't want to move away from your point until you feel uh no i think the the they left so i think i did have one other question but that they can i can okay i can follow with that

031follow that okay very good uh ms morrison we had a chance to meet with the two high school principals last week and they gave us a report out on uh how many high school students are returning i think uh miss floor at said glass it was over 600 and mr beatty said it heritage is over 400. a large number of them are choosing to stay with remote that but they are going to get a good number of them and i know from glass that they have set up ninth grade tours starting this week in groups of ten six feet apart to get the kids into the building to get them acclimated ninth grade is a big jump for middle school students too and that buildings are large so i was very thankful that they made

032those preparations and staff have been reaching out to the high school kids and encouraging them and so i'll be interested and see how that next step goes it's a big step thank you miss morrison all right uh dr sinha this is very important what you're going to share with us on the case side well uh you know we things were looking pretty bad there last time we met but trends are turning around i think we're just going to see waves of up and down um the projections show you know an increase in cases um which is to be expected as you've probably been hearing if you're following the news as the northern hemisphere gets into late fall and and winter and temperatures get colder people are turning indoors activities are moving indoors and so that

033really facilitates the uh spread of this virus and um you know i do think it's true that that people are getting tired of all these things that we have to do to keep ourselves safe but we have to do them because the virus isn't ready to stop um so that said you know there's nothing really alarming in the numbers right now that could change um you know i would just remind people that were coming up into halloween and thanksgiving and the holidays just to be very careful the extent to which you socialize be sure to practice all the mitigating practices that are necessary so we can limit community spread which is so important in keeping our students safe dr center before dr brennan i would um you know we we really are living with covet

034and i've heard the superintendent say that several times but i'm you know hearing of people that are um you know contracting this sometimes they're false positive tests etc um just any any any thoughts about you you're so you're saying that the trends are stabilizing and and not going up you know unless we would see a real steep surge i don't think that there's anything happening right now that would prevent us from moving forward with our plan to to go with hybrid um and then you know again i'm not an expert on any of this but i have tried to keep up on studies and there was one that came out and i actually i should have copied it for distribution that looked at um in-school transmission and those places that follow six feet in masking

035and other mitigation practices have avoided outbreaks at their at their schools um to a large extent um one or two or some are bound to happen here and there but i think with everything that we're doing we can contain the extent that to which that then would negatively impact our students who are in class and just want to remind the public that those who are really concerned and not ready to live with covid sending their kids to school they do have that option to stay virtual so i think now we have the best available best of both worlds that we are able to offer given our facilities and capacity and and um you know the requirements of uh conducting instruction safely thank you dr brenner i just want to agree with dr senya as far

036as i think she's exactly right as far as the mitigation plan that's in place for the schools is really excellent i think if you look at the cdc's we looked at last time we're still in that moderate group i think the other thing that's interesting on her data is that the number of tests the number of tests has gone up dramatically over the last couple of months you've probably doubled testing since the middle of the summer and our percent positive rate has actually stayed fairly low so the more tests we have the more accurate that number is even with more tests we're still staying pretty low and then the last thing as i saw a breakdown of these numbers which unfortunately are increasing as you said and some of the increases unfortunately are in the

037surrounding counties that actually bedford county has had a significant increase in number and campbell county which has a very small number is that increasing numbers so as you have said it really is a community problem you know within the city and the surrounding area and all of us need to keep doing the right thing to keep under control but i think within the schools the mitigation plan has done well and has been shown at other schools that it does control outbreaks so we will have a case we have had some cases according to our website but i think that as far as transition within the schools we're doing a great job with that and i'll just add it goes without saying but needs to be said i guess that do not send your kids to

038school if they're sick right if they're showing any symptoms even if you're not sure it's allergy or you think it's just a common flu do not send your kids to school sick because all this effort everything that's been done the tremendous amount of resources this the uh you know all the work that from facilities and maintenance to teachers everything will be or not if kids are sent to school sick so please don't send them to school sick there have been cases wisconsin was having some issues with that in their school district so we don't want to go down that road well said well thank you to dr cena for your report and thank dr jordan and others earlier dr edwards and i suspect from listening to the board that a part of what you will

039do anyway each time is to give us any further details about the potential of moving forward i i like the pace that we're moving and of course we'll see what happens uh next week with uh the coming of our next crowd and and kind of go from there but thank you dr nillas and around the table for all of your questions in which we seek to uh answer to the best of our ability all right and that's appropriate appropriate music to move us to the next item of our agenda which will be e2 the school board goals norms and and protocols and so board members please pull up or out you should have a hard copy as well as on board docs you see a copy of the school board norms and protocols and this

040is before us today for discussion and it will be on our agenda uh for the november the fourth meeting for action and these norms and protocols in a sense help establish the governance culture for the board and we'll be talking more and more about that and continuing as past chairs have done to make us aware of what those norms and protocols are and to make sure that they become a part of the culture of how we operate and so during our september the 18th governance session with our vsba staff we were able to look through the document and ms day has prepared as i just stated the copy for you you should see in in i like to call it yellow it's highlighted uh whatever the color is you'll see some of the insertions that

041were made as a result of our collaborative discussion on that day and so you will notice where that occurs everything else is the same that we have had in the previous year so we wanted to have some discussion on that uh today in terms of uh what you have before you and so if i could uh before we go into the 20 items the cover sheet is there any concern or discussion around the six planks of how we interact with each other notice the last one we inserted from the superintendent so that it would be clear that ms morrison wouldn't necessarily even though i'd be delighted to hear her tell me everything that she has learned from anybody she talks to throughout the whole week share that with the whole boy this kind of hones

042it in that information from the superintendent shared with one board member will be shared with all members dr miller is there another hard copy my uh my version i don't have one and it's showing up in my uh okay eyes here you can have mine because hello yeah we don't have the yellow highlights mine mine shows up the jelly okay yours does that right yeah i'm gonna not go down i will give you my cup all right thank you this isn't sure what the change is he can you go grab these off my printer in my office so then until we can have some additional copies i was having difficulty with mine with the yellow on this sheet as well but i have hard copies anybody any statements on those first six statements on the

043front page all right and if you want to come back to it you can now under one we agree to the following protocols for one is developing the board agenda and i do want to think it seems like to me things are just moving along i know under share morrison's leadership and chair nellis we are moving in a direction of helping engage more of the board in the development of the agenda and dr has taken us to another level because now we have agenda prep and then after that meeting uh the chair and the vice chair meet but we just wanted to make sure everybody inclusive conversation feels good about how the board agenda is developed we've discovered that with our work sessions that from time to time during work sessions we have voted on

044some very important matters return to learn etc so the work session agenda needs to be able to be properly vetted and thought through as well so the current language doesn't necessarily speak to the work session and so um all we did in the september the 18th piece was add all board members are able to see the agenda as it is drafted so that is what you have before us now um you all just have to count it to my computer because this day printed out something that i took a stab at some language you probably would not be able to read it because it is very very small but um what i have done this is just a suggestion and so i i really will only read it when someone would say they would want

045to hear it but it's a suggestion that could maybe give us some language to think through how item one addresses both the school board meeting and the work session within the context of the month and how our agenda prep meeting in which the chair and the vice chair sit in will then be an opportunity to discuss not only the school board meeting but the school board work session so that all of that would have been properly discussed and inputted prior to dr gupta no what's happening now is very impressive when i give credit to ms day she's on top of communication she sends email or the draft agenda so maybe previously that's where the bottleneck was okay so kudos to you means she one sends emails on sunday nights if i could steal you from

046this place to work at our place [Laughter] she sends regular emails now for the draft agenda is posted i'll make active this day but if nobody's applying that's their fault but she has done her work yeah so what i'm seeing now is is impressive and dr gupta speaking to what you just stated i don't know if dr edwards and miss day would like just to make sure that the board is aware of the great benefit we have with board docs now and how that becomes a very friendly tool to always be aware of what's developing with agendas for school board meetings or work sessions so um thank you these are extra copies um so uh miss day and i worked we worked hand in hand and we we i think it's helpful for you to

047understand the timing and the the process and then um the things that dr um coleman is suggesting might make sense so the first thing we did was we shifted everything to be on tuesdays right so our work session is tuesday our board meetings are tuesday our legislative advocacies are tuesday our finance committee meetings are tuesday and our agenda preps are on tuesday as well so it makes a little bit more sense that we can combine some things to to go together but i want you to think of tuesday as the day the work day and then back that up two fridays before that so two fridays before a board meeting on a tuesday is when we the administration start building the agenda and we make sure that items are in there the old system was

048we would have to send them through paper and pdf and all of that and it would take forever the new system is each director has access to board docs and can log in and put the items and miss day can monitor that rearrange them ask questions check with us so that happens two fridays before the board meeting you all can see that occurring at any time if you were to log in you'd say oh crystal edwards just popped something in there or oh um ethel reeves just put something in there and then the tuesday before the board meeting when we have our agenda agenda prep meeting is when we sit down um the chair and vice chair come and we have all the directors who have something on the agenda and what i've been trying

049to do is rather than make everybody come to everything it's relevant to them so if you don't have anything on the agenda generally you are not at the agenda prep meeting and plus space becomes an issue as well so on that tuesday we go over the agenda and each director will speak to his or her section um board members ask questions board members ask to add things to the agenda clarify things that you've told them that's on that tuesday and again all board members can see it live as it's happening all right so that was agenda prep which would have been last tuesday then thursday at about four o'clock is when we the administrative side we should be done save that one little thing which is usually the hr report because we still hire but

050most of our work should be done by thursday which is when miss day probably sends out the email to you all saying the draft agenda is pretty much finalized it's not public but it's finalized and you all can go in and see all the different area sections ask questions and things like that so that's on that thursday then she checks it if their questions she usually emails me i'll get in there fix things or whatever if there was anything that needed to be adjusted so by friday afternoon when miss day comes in she's reviewed it one more time and then she features it that's what boradox calls it a featured meeting and now it's live to the public and at that point when it's live to the public i do believe there's only three people

051who can edit the document from that point forward would be miss day myself and and miss saunders who is the um deputy clerk we can still make changes to it and add things to it but it's pretty much locked down um by by that friday and then by that following tuesday we have our meeting so that's how we've been doing the regular board what dr coleman and i and and mistake we talked about is because our work sessions now have a nice structure to them that when we do agenda prep we'll prep for the regular meeting and the work session as well so that if you all have questions comments things that we want to add to it we can talk about that at that meeting and that way i can invite the regular people

052who need to be there for the agenda and then if you're doing a work session you can also be at that meeting so that we can talk about that and again thank you miss day because all of those dates are already in there the draft agenda is in there i was in there today about to populate something in there for the november work session so board members will be able to see that in in real time and in lifetime um at the same time so so that's the process um that we have so with that being the case certainly far better wordsmanship might be helpful for us to be looking at around item one but what i uh took a stab at is under developing the board agenda superintendent develops the draft agenda for school

053board meetings and work sessions all board members are able to see the agendas as each drafted via board docs as each is drafted via board docs time and consideration step one the working drafts for school board meetings and work sessions minus supporting documents provided to the chair one week prior to the agenda prep meeting for initial feedback step two the draft agenda with supporting documents provided to the chair for continued review at the agenda prep meeting and then step three the final agenda with supporting documents will be available to the board on the thursday prior to the school board meeting or work session and that is in one instance changing anywhere we see the word distributed to available since we're really not distributing anything we're making it available and each board member needs to recognize

054now in your free time in which you probably have none you can always interest yourself by going on board talks and looking at the agenda and see how the agenda is developing and shoot emails about things that you would like to see or further comments and thoughts about how that agenda is developing dr uh gupta i don't have questions about agenda i'm fine with that i just wanted to take a step back if you are i can ask that question later on okay let's finish one but we definitely that's why we're here we want to entertain anything that we want to entertain but as far as item one is concerned again this is just discussion dr brennan i think this sounds great and clearly it brings us up to date where we stand now is

055is but is step number one is that is that still accurate that the work and drafts of school board meetings and work sessions minus part will be a private one week prior to the agenda prep meeting because dr edwards was sort of saying probably friday before the tuesday yeah it may not because in essence what this reads is two weeks prior you'll have it and really that's when we start it okay and it starts to be available so so how would step one be worded i would i would take out one week and i would just say prior to and because it okay it's different like for me i try to get my stuff in there okay so it would then read possibly the working drafts for school board meetings and work sessions minus supporting

056documents provided to the chair prior to the agenda prep meeting for initials um feedback so note that mr dave please so you'll have all of the rest of the time between now and november the 4th for us to finalize language on that or any of these for that matter all right so having stated that with item one uh let's just do it this way because i don't wouldn't want us to just have to go through each dr gupta you had a concern not concerned a question okay very first page last bullet point yep information from superintendent shared by one board member will be shared with all board members number one we'll share that information and if considerable work or time is required to generate data the full board must endorse the request i can um

057good question you you want a further explanation of of this uh in terms of who will share that information with all board members and then the second question is uh chair and vice chair are one of the nine board members so if you share something with the chair does that rule apply that he or she has to share that with every board please okay so um from my end anything that i am sending it's usually coming from me or authorized from me by me to from another um central office staff member that would be sharing information with you all so you'll see i'll sometimes give you an update on things i'll you know send you an email information obviously my weekly newsletter is going to all the board members on occasion a board member will

058ask a question then i will reframe it back that says a board member asked i thought all of you might want to know that that kind of information so information that's coming from me is being shared with all of the board members even with regard to um and and i thought about that too dr gupta when i was reading those bullet points even as the agenda is shared with dr coleman let's just say it's a week earlier it's in bordox right so it's any of you can get in there and see what's in the agenda there's nothing that's being shared with him or or the vice chair that's separate from that the data piece um if it's something that again sometimes you've requested like data on on certain things and i'm like oh we got

059that we can just put that together if it's exhaustive data that we may not have or it might take us some time that is worth a conversation with the chair i might say like we don't have this data in this format and i may or may not have the personnel right now to be able to do that so but most of that we usually have a group discussion about and i know one of i was one of the guys who asked for data and i was told it requires too much time but what is the board protocol in terms of a board member doing a foia because any information is under freedom of information act means you pay the money for it right you know retrieving the information if if an employer we just we

060just met all that it's a great job first of all the information has to exist so we are not obligated to create a record for you so like if you said i want and i'm going to make something up that makes no sense i want data on everybody who wears blue shoes in this office that information does not exist nor do i am i obligated to take the time to put it together that way sometimes information does exist but not in the way that you as an individual foia requesting person may want it formatted if it does exist i can say this information is available on vdoe website here's the log you can click here so that's typically how we handle any foia request and then if it really is something that it does exist

061and i'll give an example of but we have to read every email and redact every kid's name and that's time intensive and here's the cost associated generally when that information comes to us the team that's it the team figures out that there are 1300 emails that have to be read and there's this many pages and it's going to cost and we let the person know before we proceed this is the cost of what that do you want us to perceive because it would cost so again i'm going back to i understand what you're saying because when i do four i put a cost that if it exceeds that let me know and then you know before processing the query but what is the what will be the board protocol in doing a foia in case

062the information requires time and they are willing to pay for it no i had to ask hope about that yeah i think that yeah you said i'm saying from a board yeah i got you but but let me just state oh that's this is one of the reasons why i did not want this to be an action item for tonight dr brennan you raised a very interesting question dr gupta excuse me dr gupta you raised a very uh interesting and powerful question and we just had a part of the legislative training dealing with foia material and we need to contemplate that that is that's very real dr gupta so um i just want to make sure that team we have that down and we will we will look into that and bring something a regard

063to for your request from board members and the appropriate protocol thank you dr gupta mr harvey i mean i guess my understanding about this would be if let's say a school board member asks a question and dr edwards says that's a good question but you know it's going to require a lot of time a single board member wants some information or is it the entire board so in that case i would understand that you know maybe dr edwards would contact the board chair the board chair would then pull the board there's enough members of the board that are interested in it then that would be an assignment that we would ask to have that information compiled but if if it's not the board is told we're not interested in it then there's nothing to prohibit

064any member of the board to request him a foia the way i understand it so you could do it as a citizen that's what i was thinking yeah and at that point the rules before you would apply whatever etc so i think that i think we just might want to be a little bit more clear about the considerable work or times required and spell out how that will be done if that's going to be because what happens is the word is significant so right now you tell me it requires significant work and go away i go away but when i do a four request then you got to give me the breakout of the cost right break up of the cost so then it becomes a legal matter and then if you meet those thresholds

065of cost then you got to provide the information you know so what's significant is this five dollar significant is 20 significant is 2 000 so what is that significant you know amount of time and money required and that threshold is not clear here and i know it's very difficult to put it down here that's why i said if somebody wants to do a foia will they be allowed they'll turn into a private citizen at that point and just just so that we the for the viewing public yes you can say if it's significant and it takes time but those records must exist so sometimes we get foia requests for records that don't exist we don't have and people like but i'm willing to pay you to create it and do it and that's not a

066public record that we have created so and that's for the public not for you dr gupta i know you understand that i can give you the example but or later on but what i'm talking about where i was told that you require significant time and effort dr gupta thank you for bringing that up we will certainly i think our protocols will be enhanced with detailed information thank you mr harvey for your insights as well anyone else all right um thank you i do want to acknowledge that under item 7 where it says regular updates it is suggested that we would change that to weekly updates since that is the language that dr edwards is using and that was done because it was still stating language that the previous superintendent was using in regards to communication

067and i do want to also acknowledge that dr edwards has indicated for item 20 that she is working on that and it's already done now so that's how fast she moves all right anyone have any numbers yes dr brennan doctor number 11 item number 11 you want to comment on that is also highlighted very good um if in fact either the chair since this is speaking to the chair specifically if there is a request for an interview or any interfacing with the media or any type of public interfacing of that nature with the media it is the chair's responsibility to share that information with the members of the board prior to uh uh engaging in that activity that's what that is suggesting and you have done that so yes yes but i think it's very

068good thank you dr gupta but i think it's very very good i think at the beginning of this year maybe we were part of a town and gown discussion and board members were not aware of that so i think it's very important that this be done and i will i will first of all i've learned very well from the previous chairs chair morrison and nillas did an excellent job interfacing with the media and i'm i'm not necessarily running to try to do that as such but dr edwards and her team but when when i am or vice chair because it's very important that you see there where it says designate now i do want the board to appreciate the language the chair or board designee if i decide that i don't want to do it

069and i want mr harvard to do it because mr harvey may have particular expertise around that the board should embrace and appreciate that because it does say the chair or board designee everybody clear on that i'm not making it up you everybody see it okay all right can i just make it go write all agenda items um instead of all items in the board docs because as i look at this like call to order and approve of the agenda aren't going to be linked to the strategic plan but if you go to if you're open on board docs right now if you go to return to learn and you click on that and you look in the center where you see agenda item details you'll see the date agenda items return to learn public information

070and then it says goal one if you click on that it's going to ask you do you want to go to that goal but it has our goal listed which is the student growth and development student growth development and success goal it also has the rationale for the goal and and a lead-in for what we're going to do next because we're going to have an equity check is it has the equity habits and that we should be practicing in order to achieve that goal cool dr gupta i like it and i hope we can tie the budget to it too as we move forward you know you do zero-based budgeting yeah the budget the fiscal goals are on there too no but if i'm spending ten dollars which strategic plan goal is going to help

071us no i'm saying just you know fiscal is one but is it helping to reduce the achievement gap you know the other thing so yeah and and i and there's another reason for bringing it up because a rationale could be made that every goal for every every goal might be appropriate and what we were talking about today when we were working on this is trying to choose like the essence of return to learn the essence of return to learn is is more about students so we chose that but if you go to the next one where we're starting the equity chat in the equity chat is equity across all levels so you will see all four goals linked to that agenda item so and this is where this is going to be great because you

072guys can see it in live time so as you're as we're developing it if you have a question about hey i noticed that you're working on a draft agenda i see the fund balance or whatever as an agenda item i see it's linked to this goal is it also appropriate to have it linked to that goal as well and this is dr sina's bread and butter so forgive me if i'm wrong assessment yeah but closing the loop so as you're linking the goals with the items you know and the assessment later on to see if we have achieved that target is the loop close so that'll be the next stage but i think i like it personally what i see i'm very pleased to hear that thank you dr gupta for that sharing all right

073dr brennan can i make one other suggestion sure i really love that term that board designee term that we've used one time before you think in item number four responding to staff or community complaints at board meetings the board does not respond to public comments the chair or board designee will send a written response acknowledgement i think we found that it's a nice role for the vice chair to help with those letters so the chair is doing so many other things we do that i think it's an excellent and just like we're using chair versus chairman i think it might be universal to have that throughout the document because it could be a designee for any number of reasons so um ms dave please note that if you will we'll go back and try to

074put or designate where appropriate throughout the document when it refers to chair dr gupta after dr brandt said something came in my mind on bullet 1 or bullet 2 on the first page it says chair parenthesis or designing here it says chair or board designee i'm assuming the meaning is same so it's the designee appointed by the chair not by the board right so should the wording be chair parenthesis designee so it's the designing of the chair not the design where you take a vote from the board members sure very good dr gupta i know english is my second language but you're doing great man so noted so noted thank you mr day has that okay all right well i am thankful that we have had a robust discussion around the norms and protocols once

075we approve them if it is the pledge of the board at our november the fourth meeting then we will have further discussions about how do we make these norms and protocols a part of our culture and within the very fabric of what we do as a board thank you very much these last two items under uh e for agenda items are kind of go together and so we're going to engage in an equity chat followed by a discussion on culture and climate survey data 2019 2020 and dr edwards will introduce our presenter for these items absolutely so we've been doing a lot of work lynchburg city schools has been doing a lot of work with the vdoe and a lot of their equity initiatives and we think it's best that we experience equity by just

076learning and engaging in some of the learning that we've engaged in so i have invited a guest speaker here to join us and take us through an equity chat with the board so welcome welcome how are you wow good evening [Music] wow [Applause] [Music] since march [Music] um [Music] and i just wonder [Music] tell me about me um what do you know about me i just walked into your classroom you have a colorful dress on yeah you are a steeler fan i'm a fan of the right footbed i know how to pick a one intake that's good this year i have a very colorful dress on it's a special dress special especially if you bring it into school you wear it to school representing diversity of colors or inclusion of colors and represent diversity is

077it a ceremonial type dress is it a ceremonial type dress your i'm a spiritual person based on my t-shirt or you could be not so spiritual and god is the opiate of the masses or it could be thinking the god of the opioid masses you're female and african-american female african american maybe you didn't wash your hair today and that's why you're wearing a hat lady i didn't wash my hair and i'm wearing a hat you appear to be very neat and organized and well prepared in your presentation you're breaking school rules yes ma'am you have on a hat you have on sunglasses you have got on your shirt i've heard that before are eye watches allowed in the school system yeah yeah and you have cell phone i work with the lab we have a

078cell phone policy in the interest of time we'll keep this moving along but you all did exactly what educators did when we went over this insulting leadership i thought you'd recognize the mass later that just goes uh i thought that would be the last thing so thank you thank you for saying that um but you all hit some of the same things that our educators did you did some of the same things that our educators did yet we had to have a conversation and we did this with our principals and of course our leaders in the division i pointed out that i may not have electricity my skirt's really wrinkled i pointed out and someone said before i was really colorful i am colorful that might be indicative of my personality i say me the

079student i might have some issues with my hair it could be undone it could be dirty no one noticed that my or maybe you didn't even say it on red black and green sunglasses which are violations full rules the sunglasses apart but they could represent in the area that we're living in five the red representing the struggle of american community lacking strength and grain being the land fertility broke same thing with the skirt i didn't buy the skirt for that reason i wear the skirt quite a bit because it's long and it has pockets in the lake pockets pockets matter the hat interestingly enough no one said anything about the lgbtqia plus community how many were thinking it though and that speaks to something that when we talk about everything sometimes people don't want to

080mention interestingly enough those in the trainings who did say something about that i said wow is it possible though that i just like bright colors the reality is it's a hat that was given to my mother when she was diagnosed with cancer hmm she never wore she didn't but it was given to her she didn't go through chemo and as i was going through things i thought don't keep this and throw it away and it's just a hat that i like and many times children aren't representing anything they just have on things that they like uh sometimes we make a judgment call based on what we see people wearing or caring some will say she doesn't have any issues she has an expensive bag what a bad could be a replica it could be a

081could have been a gift any of those things what you did was actually go through with me and exercise on our biases our thought process i appreciate you so you're violating school foreign policy i appreciate that because we need people to put things into you know create some structure as we've been going through this though we have been leading with care we haven't so how much does this my sunglasses interfere with the child who's been through and i want to say living through living through as we talked about this pandemic we have no idea what some of our children are bringing in the other thing that it's got a little cooler since i did this initially but i did this enough in july and of july and i had this hat on mental illness came

082into the play it goes 90 degrees outside why do we have a hat on sometimes children will come in and they'll they'll have on a hat in the summertime and sometimes we have to understand that they're hiding my sunglasses could have been a method of me hiding behind something i had an opportunity to talk in the community with a representative who works with sexual assault and she shared with me that in july that the number of children who have been sexually abused had increased in an alarming rate so here we are with open school and we've got other things that children are going through and maybe bringing to the table some people would say when you're over generalizing there are children who life has been great mom and dad have been home they haven't missed

083a beat everything's gone and i don't wanna i don't wanna um in any way neglect or in front of those those people don't exist but i also don't want people to think that everybody has been this life is normal one of the things that's troubled me is the um you know when people die they've been deaths of parents grandparents and people have not been able to get the closure because of colon and we have to wonder is educating what does that do what does that mean for as i reflect on my mother's hat what are our children facing what are they thinking we don't know we don't always know with all that being said and i will tell you that we um we had a very rich discussion before we got here about the individual

084emotions and the things that we faced as adults i carried them through an activity uh we called it a vowel activity where i ask give me an adjective that describes uh what he learned since march give me an aggregate we went through that activity i am sorry was the emotion how did it make you feel and we have people talking about how how anxious they are i don't want to say where are how anxious they are with regard to the eye what was interesting well what was interesting is that some people came together we saw different groups of people coming together and saying wait a minute we're better than this one of the things that really warmed my heart was to see students students got involved that's why we have lunch where students rise they're

085trying to drive they met with us they talk with us about the different things that we want to do or need to do to make change they became stronger their voices became louder in a very respectful way the oh what did you find surprising well there are a number of things that we found surprised and one of the things you all will tell you we talk about how educators relate to children but we also talk about how educators relate to each other and so unfortunately some people begin to express themselves on social media and we have people coming back going whoa hello i've worked with them for years they've been in my room they've been in this place i didn't know they felt that way and so all of a sudden people began to become

086closed and so when we did this chat uh or this particular activity at the uh during summer leadership i asked them and by the way the u is the um what questions do we have what do we need to do to move forward well i asked him to do this for me and i'm going to ask you to do the same thing would you cross your arms for me how does that feel i feel confident comfortable comfortable yeah i like that word too i feel uncomfortable uncomfortable uncomfortable closed anyone else some of my colleagues said it's a great resting spot this is a good little place to hold my arms and rest i saw this morrison inhale when she crossed her arms like finally i get to pause for a minute and some people do

087that i'm going to ask now that if your right arm is crossed over your left or vice versa that you switch it you ask me to do this i don't know what i've done [Music] [Laughter] notice that when i say cross your arms you just did it when i asked you to switch things up it was like wait a minute and those who felt uncomfortable initially did you feel more comfortable when you switched on now what i'll tell you is that the longer you stay in this uncomfortable position there are many times that we become comfortable and so if in this activity we become uncomfortable crossing our arms something as simple as crossing our arms would you agree with me that having equity conversations are also a little uncomfortable i want to ask about them

088ahead of i want to ask if you know and i've gone through this somewhere quickly but if you know that students could be in the shape that i'm in today and let me just pause for a second because let's talk about the shirt um there will be students who wear the shirt what does policy say nothing disruptive nothing disrupted nothing so a student may be very in tune with his or her faith we have to make sure that we don't make it a disruption and i don't say that's what you want to start you know as educators want you to feel included you are not alone and honestly in one of our sessions that was a big deal and one of one of the leaders said i can already see the teacher who's coming to

089me to ask me to go investigate that and i said what would you say talk me through what you would say to a student who has on the shot like this and how uncomfortable that child wants to feel so it's important that we know and understand our own policies and how we operate in those in those situations so here we are schools now opening what do our students need just from this activity what are students going to need what do they need empathy empathy understanding they need to be welcomed they need to be welcome in a safe place where they can communicate or to talk about what's going on they need to have a connection what do you say susan they need to have a connection connection acceptance tell a little bit more about that

090dr cena uh well i was trying to do a one-word opposite of judge being judged judge not being judged or non-judgmental you need to be engaged too more than ever and relationships will be very important yes yes yes in in terms of us assess assessing their needs and and making sure that whatever those needs are that we seek to meet now our students need role models in schools people they can look up to anything else yes protection i would say cautious intervention because i can see the glasses and the hats and the hat if someone said anything because i can't see you that far but if someone has said something to me you just you have a hat on and you may not know it's what it stands for you you're just wearing a hat

091and you're just getting back in the glasses they just look black to me before someone just come and say you know you're violating the school policies before you say hello or good morning good yes respect respect yes i think trust not not only to be able to feel that they can trust others some may need resources or access to those for them anything else i have one from the peanut gallery they need someone to believe in that kind of them into role models especially in the school system i know trust privacy you know all these things are important if i need resources that should not be for public display that you're providing me some extra resources because of my economic situation respect and privacy confidentiality expectations expectations and love love not unconditional love anything else

092something to think about definitely something to think about i want you to know that these are some of the things that our leaders said what do students need relationship building relationships need to be able to relate share safe place to talk role models someone to believe in them need to be acknowledged respected trust trusted that acknowledgement even with cautious intervention you need to educate and explain make mistakes of teachable moments so that when they do something that is against policy or they make a mistake then we use it as a teachable moment and lift them up access to resources internet access devices technology food mental wellness transportation all of those things but with some privacy and respect there support that we as educators pick and choose our battles empathetic creative very honest we're gonna write

093it trust it all those things so we have school board members recognizing this we have our leaders recognizing this another [Applause] couple of topics here creating a safe space to have authentic conversations we need resources but we need to decrease the silo effect who's out there who has what where do we get it trust and honesty intentionality being intentional about meeting the needs of our students relationships student to adult adult to student and also adult to adult creating a bridge between elementary middle and high school and you all need to work to eliminate the isms what do you mean one of the things that we didn't talk about or i didn't mention in this particular setting many times when we walk in the classroom all the chairs are exactly alike much like this room but

094what happens to the child is overweight or who's exceptionally tall have we thought about that inequities growth you all this is a time when we grow the opportunity to grow and that comes from taking risks and having authentic engagement this is what our leaders indicated that we need this is what we need we want to work towards running all over the place here we want to work towards [Applause] undoing and this is [Applause] and again in in light of just what we've been dealing with in our nation the only way to undo racism and i'm going to say any ism whether it's biases against gender sexual orientation weight age any of those things the only way to undo it is to consistently identify and describe it what happened what is it how is it manifesting

095and then dismantle it we have to be courageous enough to have the conversations we have to be able to talk with our students even our teachers you all who are facing some challenges right now and work towards dismantling any of the isms that they could be enduring or facing and that's where we're ahead with regard to equity in lynchburg city schools um any questions or comments about the activities i want to thank you i just i just think the activity is just awesome and eye-opening and obviously we won't deal with it in depth today but i like your word dismantling now dismantling is a very threatening type of word it um it evokes all types of emotions i think but at the end of the day if you dismantle correctly and are left with whatever

096it is that we just said all kids ought to have then we would really have something i appreciate that word how you dismantle is what i'm very interested in discussing at some point and i want to make sure thank you i have to give credit what credit is due author ivram kindi who wrote the book how to be an anti-racist uh uses this is his quote and what has happened is many people would say i'm not a racist i'm not a racist i'm not a racist and the shift has to now go towards but are you anti-racist are you willing to be not a bystander but an upstander are you willing to see something and then say something not not necessarily um in a way that you're creating any kind of i don't say anger

097tension that kind of thing but are you willing to call someone in an equity office and say hey can we talk are you willing to have a conversation share with dr evans i'm concerned about this are you willing to look at policy and from a different angle say you know what what about those students who but what about those families that are we willing to do that and that's the level of work that we are that's where we're headed that's where we're ahead challenging yes necessary indeed we must do it we must do it uh i'm very glad that we have some support and the support comes from the virginia department of education i'm going to share with you this presentation the virginia department of education has provided us with a document navigating eda virginia's

098roadmap to equity in order to navigate education equity we must first understand what it is education equity is achieved when we eliminate the predictability of student outcomes based on race gender zip code ability socioeconomic status or languages spoken at home to operationalize systemic equity it is important to note the difference between equality and equity in a system where equality is present equal inputs are provided in this case the plants are exposed to the same amount of sun and water this results in having plants that survive when systemic equity is present the system differentiates the inputs the appropriate amounts of sunlight and water are provided and the plants begin to thrive our desire to operationalize systemic equity is heard in our lcs mission statement every child by name and by need to graduation we advance equity

099when students are at the center student voices are empowered and affirmed when school environments are connected culturally affirming and restorative when curriculum is reflective of students and inclusive of the true histories of genocide enslavement and resistance when student and family voice are centered and valued in decision making when schools attract and retain educators of color and require culturally competent teachers and staff when funding and resource allocations are equitable on a statewide level and within districts when there is a clear and continuous process to identify and address inequities and when administrators educators and other school staff are racially and socially competent the five c's of ed equity include one compassionate student and family engagement two continuous reflection three culturally responsive four courageous leadership five curriculum reframing compassionate student engagement requires us to include social emotional learning

100student supports restorative practices asset-based interventions and trauma-informed care for families compassionate engagement must include family engagement strategies and initiatives that are developed and implemented through a cultural and economic competency lens intentional strategies must be utilized to engage non-english speaking families and acknowledge that the acquisition of language is a difficult process respect for families cultural and linguistic practices and customs must be present we must ensure that students families and caregivers have access to information and understand expectations of students and we must advance instructional practices that sustain the languages literacies and cultural practices of multilingual students and students of color our second c continuous reflection requires us to use data-driven decision-making and create an equity dashboard for data that is published on our website we want to ensure accountability mechanisms examine implicit biases engage our students families

101and stakeholders all while requiring self-awareness through self-assessment continuous reflection also requires accepting that cultural responsiveness is endemic to effectiveness in all areas of learning for students from all ethnic groups it requires performance measures aligned to equity goals that are established monitored and communicated we must also identify and communicate equity gaps and disparate impacts using relevant data implementation of equity informed assessments of school climate with the data being used in our decision making is also required and we must review and allocate accordingly the human and financial resources required to advance equity and inclusion in school communities culturally responsive educators is our third c here we see that culture is centered as a vehicle for learning instruction is tailored to meet student needs school climate fosters affirmation of all students power imbalances based on race culture ethnicity

102and class are mitigated teacher evaluation educator licensing and teacher preparation are examined staff communicates high expectations for all students also culturally responsive educators see cultural differences as assets we validate the inequities impacting students lives cultivate relationships beyond the classroom anchored in affirmation mutual respect and validation we believe that all students can succeed and communicate high expectations for all students we engage in reflection of their beliefs behaviors and practices and utilize students cultures as vehicles for learning we challenge racial and cultural stereotypes prejudices racism and other forms of intolerance injustice and oppression and we mediate power imbalances in classrooms based on race culture ethnicity and class courageous leadership is the fourth c anti-racism and equity policy is explicitly stated and published to the broader community an equity audit is conducted annually and results are published school

103division leaders promote diversity and cultivate responsibility for equity and equity goals and strategic planning are explicitly stated resource allocation advances equity goals courageous leadership also requires leaders to make inequities visible to disrupt discourse practices and policies that perpetuate inequities we must reimagine new ways to engage and co-design with communities so that each child and adult learns thrives and experiences a sense of belonging we must encourage programs that support multilingual language and literacy development we must normalize conversations about race racism and inequity and we must support teachers and building level administrators in efforts to address equity and racism the fifth c is curriculum reframing our curriculum must be audited for cultural and ethnic inclusivity it must contain culturally relevant content and pedagogy and be aligned to deeper learning we must use high quality instructional resources and

104embed student voice curriculum reframing requires us to ask these questions are diverse groups from all rings of culture represented validated and affirmed are diverse ethnicities and nationalities authentically portrayed are there diverse family structures are differently abled characters or characters with disabilities represented are stereotypes and perceived deficiencies of historically marginalized or oppressed cultures avoided in the narrative are female characters shown in a variety of roles are problems faced by historically marginalized and oppressed cultures resolved through the benevolent intervention of the dominant culture virginia's equity 5cs will be used to center our equity compass the virginia board of education reminds us that virginia's leaders have a shared responsibility to deliver on the promise of a high quality education for every child and together with intentional action to dismantle racism and eliminate achievement gaps we can fulfill that

105promise for every learner centering equity means equity is at the heart of everything we do we want to see all students succeed and to do this opportunity gaps must be eliminated and cultural proficiency must increase to close opportunity gaps all of the vehicles academic rigor targeted student supports differentiated and scaled instruction infrastructure accelerated academic programs teacher assignments resource distribution and social emotional learning must be on the road and headed in the same direction the same is true as we journey to increase the cultural competence of our educator workforce each of these teacher diversity culturally relevant teaching professional learning an educator evaluation educator preparation licensure requirements courageous leadership and school climate must exist as we navigate education equity our vehicles will require fuel and constant refiels as we travel this road to fuel the work policies

106must be created and published audit tools must be in place and used effectively research resources and assistance will keep us moving this is work it's meaningful work it's necessary work it's continuous work let's work together to keep equity at the center of all we do thank you and all credit goes to the virginia department of education particularly our state superintendent dr james lane and leah walker who have been working on that meeting with the equity officers throughout the state and getting our input until this document of course could be presented what most excites me is that not only did they give us a framework a plan but they also gave us a measurement tool an accountability tool and that tool is the navigating ed equity equity audit tool that i believe you've seen if you've

107had a chance to flip through it you'll see that it involves everybody every department uh interval school board and everybody and this is a tool that we will use along with our comprehensive plan that already includes our equity uh instruments we will use this to continue the work that we do any questions all right board members dr carter i just want to say um congratulations on you being one of the nationally acclaimed keynote speakers for the national family engagement summit we're proud of that thank you for lynchburg on that and also like you said the equity audit tool is awesome because it gives you a just blah blah um really just taking in it step by step and you are able to check off whether or not you achieve that and we need to check

108off some more things yes and i know we worked really hard a while back to update the school school dress code under with i know jenny poor was one of the ones that really looked at that to make sure it was more equitable equitable for the young man as well as young women and i think we brought it more into compliance but now i'm thinking about sunglasses and hats that was just an example of glasses so i think in you know so it's we need to be constantly looking at this continuing looking at things like the mou that we're going to look at in november and not just let it sit there on the shelf but really look into it are we doing all we can to address some of these and whether or not

109our policies really back up what we're doing and do they need different titles so that you can you don't have to try to figure out does this go to this that you'll know right off the wording of it awesome but this is awesome awesome other board members and awesome presentations dr brenner i just wanted to thank you so much that was a terrific presentation and looking at the audit tool and also at your presentation i'm just overwhelmed with the amount of work and effort that's going to go into this i mean i know that it can be done but i think it's going to be a long process and i think that going back to your original discussion i feel about your dress and things you know some in there was listed ourselves implicit biases

110which you know are reflected on on all that we do and we need to you know each of us individually need to recognize them i certainly feel like i need to because it's such a so built into my my genes but thank you so much and it's gonna be a big job ahead but i know you're up to it and certainly i think this board wants to support you in it thank you so much and that's the key the support i know that i can't do it alone i'm grateful for of course dr edwards leadership because even down to the sunglasses and hats she's encouraged us to lead with care lead with care and you all pointed out you know the cautious intervention everything that that's been said and i will i will say to

111you during summer leadership every cohort pointed out similar if not the same things and now they just want permission to do so right and that's what we have so thank you dr carter has to follow up and just not keep talking about the glasses and hats but sometimes they're small things that a child just comes in that they may have we don't know what they've gone through or even that day and i was looking at the video that rich and brian had done regarding the antecedent and the behavior and the consequences and we don't know what the child has gone through we just harp on the hat and the glass and the glasses and i was somewhere in the one of the quietest children he had a hoodie on and all the others were just

112doing all kinds and the teacher spoke to him and said take the hoodie off i was thinking of all the students that speak to you're going to talk to the child with a hoodie on and he just had his hood up on this the hoodie hood up on his head and but he was quiet and i was thinking what are we doing but um so but sometimes my point is these are the things that we hear sometimes when disciplinary actions come some small minor things that we could have if we level caution if we could have maybe that child could be in school and learning versus blowing up and escalating into something that we could have really stopped at the beginning yes or just taking more caution to look at well if there are no

113other comments i believe ethel will now respond to us around the notion of the culture and climate survey data and interestingly enough and if i could just do the segue from dr carter's statement about how things are handled you all received the just a summary because this survey was done the fall 2019 so a little bit less than a year ago it was december 6 through january 15th of of um again the previous school year and what you see are highlights from each of the different groups the different survey groups elementary school students middle school students high school students and parent and caregiver responses if we were to look at so what you see uh if i were to start with that first sentence 97 and then you see 95 97 are those or the

114percentage of those who strongly agreed or agreed to that statement and dr center you helped us a few years back take out the neutrals take out those who didn't say it that's a definite yes or a definite no and what you see there is that 95. so the in the parentheses you see the percentage of those who strongly agreed or greet or agreed and then those who uh and then we subtracted those who gave our neutral response and as you look uh through this list if i could just do a quick kind of analysis here elementary school students and let's look at the sentence that it's in blue my parents care about my education 97 percent of elementary school students who responded said yep that's true i strongly agree 94 percent of middle school students

115said by all means yes i do agree parents if we look at 98 percent of those who say school is important to my child's success ninety-four percent i share responsibility with the school for what my child believes what my child learns when we start looking at especially when it comes to discipline especially when we start having conversations around family and community engagement we see here that those who participated say yes yes yes i care about my child's education and their children know that my parents care about education when it comes to respect and let's go down to the to the items in red elementary school students students treat teachers with respect at my school 17 middle school students treat teachers with respect at my school notice here that we have uh there were more neutrals

116there that's why you see that negative in parentheses there were more more those who didn't side there didn't make a decision there about student-teacher relationships with regard to respect at the high school 26 students treat teachers with respect at the school and then when you talk to parents 88 said my child respects his or her teachers so there that's why we have to have the work that's why we have to do equity have equity chats have conversations because there's a disconnect there and these are just some of the statements that that of course rolls to our attention um we will continue to look at climate and culture but through a very different lens using our equity audit tool using some of the um the tools that we have from the department of criminal justice system

117they're actually doing a survey with us we'll begin to look at that data a little more closely because things have changed as a result of the pandemic and we want to make sure that we are accurately assessing school culture and climate and doing it in a way that we can get those all of our stakeholders to participate all right all right we're going to go with dr gupta i want to see this in context to your response rate 97 looks pretty high but how many questionnaires did we send out and how many people responded back okay so you know if 10 responded 97 9.7 is pretty high so what was the response rate okay so the way that it worked for our students um we required the fifth graders only to retake to take that

118and i'm not sure i brought my number with me but i can get that response rate to you um the same thing from middle school it was seventh and eighth graders that we asked the principals to administer that survey in a closed setting so that they did it either through an english class or math class or something the same for high school we looked at uh 10th 11th and 12th graders we asked them to respond was it a 100 response right i can tell you off the bat no that's not the answer with regard to parents um we had about i want to say 365 parents responding so that's when you look at a student body of 8 000 and let's say you know 4 000 if we were to think about two parent homes

119low response rate there we had a total of three thousand one hundred six respondents for the entire for all four surveys but i can get you a breakdown by by survey so and the other thing you said was neutral after taking out is what the number you have in parenthesis yes sir so what the negative number means it means that there are more neutral responses than those that responded agree or and strongly agree so minus 99 is your net after taking out all the neutrals right meaning that in that particular instance and i'm just looking at students treat treat each other with respect to my school 31 percent agree strongly agree there would have been 40 percent that were neutral dr carter the um the questions to this are they can we add any questions

120to these or are they these are the questions that is this something we make up so if you get these questions yeah so let me let me explain how this initially started i want to say somewhere around 2012 under dr braban's leadership we wanted to get a pulse of what people were saying about lynchburg city schools we then use the state departments and this will take us back a ways their academic review and there were i want to say about 45 questions we entered into our voluntary resolution agreement and had some advice that survey got really long upwards about 85 to 90 questions we did a lot of talking negotiating and and redid the survey so yes this is an internal survey yes it can be tweaked as we continue to look at the equity

121audit tools and some of the resources that are going to be available to us it may be that this survey becomes completely different but i'll of course follow the lead of my superintendent because i would be interested in seeing what the student says about my teacher treats me with respect how those numbers how those numbers are it says i treat my mm-hmm and i see how they see you know take it from their point of view to see whether that has any impact on their numbers or and i'm happy to share that there was a statement there and i'm happy to share that yes okay we do i can share that with you i don't have it tonight but i will share it mr harvey i find it very interesting how they see themselves and

122their classmates treating teachers yes the low amounts you know obviously parents think their students respect their teachers a lot more yes i would be interested to see how the teachers felt you know if they were being respected by the students i mean the numbers are pretty low amongst the students how they see themselves or their classmates treating their teachers i'd be interested to see how the teachers in addition yes and what i'll do is i will pull any of those um any of those statements and share that information don't quote me but i want to say we did we did have a pulse there but let me let me let me make sure i get that accurate for you it's morris and then dr gupta then dr carter and i think that something to consider

123when we're talking about respect is your definition of respect i might say you're showing respect you show respect by doing these things and the student might think i show respect but i'm not you think i'm being disrespectful but i'm not because i'm loud and i'm using my hands and you're telling me so it really is a matter of how we define and there are many different definitions so that is critical yes we're not all looking at it from the same point of view yes i also found that the comments for years i would come in and read every single comment that the students wrote on there and some of those comments were far more insightful than any of the statistics wow because they were relating their own um feelings about this teacher doesn't like me

124because or i really like this teacher because and so those comments gave me more of a sense i also wrote a comment if i have to do this survey one more time i'm not they wanted to see some action or something happening as a result of the survey they were frustrated that they didn't think it i'm glad that you spoke up and uh regarding that because even as we started this this school year um the student services department and my department work when we got with regard to social emotional learning and we talked about spending time at the beginning and even on those zooms gauging how our students are doing talking about expectations what is respect what is disrespect making sure that everyone is on the same page i think when we talk about expectations

125and having expectations those are the kinds of things that still have to be discussed and have to be shared you know just as an example if you know i've been in homes where they say you know you have to take off your shoes but you have to tell me i have to take off my shoes i don't want to be disrespectful if i come to your house and the rule is i need to take off my shoes please tell me so that i'm not walking into your home with my shoes on you have to tell me so there has to be conversation and a safe space to have those conversations at the copter no you have the employees respond to the survey yes and i was wondering uh since we're talking about equity and inclusion

126how do the employees feel a treatment from their colleagues and from their peers as well as the people who are administering them you know from the administrators because from a teacher-student relationship that is captured you know in your respect thing yes how will that be captured or will it be interesting to capture that to look at it the system is completely equitable they feel comfortable where they're working and they're treated with respect and that's something we'll take into consideration yes there are questions regarding that dr gupta and just to tie it full circle because one of the things you talked about was just how this all connects and i and you know as i think through some of our um evaluations it's what do we do with the data and how do we use the

127data in a constructive way so i know from a principal's perspective there is teacher principal data in there because we discussed that during um some of their evaluations and how how they use that data for that so would you be able to share that information is that private is that was it part of the survey the the questions that the teachers asked it's part of the survey there's some there's questions okay we can look into that dr carter well i'm just happy now that you have some clear guidance with this um the tool and that's it's an awesome tool and it'll just be and you can use that as your guiding document to really we can really make some movement i'm happy for you for that because i know you've been really wanting something like

128that yes thank you well ethel you have been uh used a lot tonight to to further reveal a lot that you and your team under our superintendent we're grateful thank you uh miss morrison for helping us to appreciate as we use these mixed methodologies that the qualitative information is so insightful in terms of being able to sense what we need to do i would like to ask the board at this time is there anyone else who would like to make a comment or statement before we wrap up i think this has been a great start to the format of a department and i think we will never forget the presentation that you share with us tonight and all are eager to get involved where we can in helping to make this happen in our school

129division and it already is and we're thankful to you and your team for your great work anyone all right let's give ethel reeves and her team a great big hand that was powerful powerful ethel the presentation that you had a board member is able to gain access to that yeah i have it thank you put that in the next that was tremendous thank you so much all right uh with that in mind uh board members we've done very well tonight we are now at f for informational items as you can see uh we're thankful that mr harvey's finance committee members and team will be meeting on tuesday the 27th at 3 30 and there may be some other things going on with vsba at the same time but there's also an equity in the equity

130going on but hey finance committee 3 30. the board agenda prep meeting is the 27th please govern yourselves accordingly board members with giving us insights for that that's at 9 30. our next school board meeting don't come tuesday night now because we're going to all be looking to see what is going on with the election that's going to be wednesday november the 4th uh at five o'clock and then our legislative advocacy and community relations committee will be meeting on the 10th and then uh chair evans and the uh local committee will be uh leading us in that wonderful breakfast that we going to have on november the 13th will actually will be a virtual experience from 9 to 10 and so we're thankful for that those are informational items as we have at this time

131of course all of you are sharing information with miss day regarding pertinent material that you need to know mr harvey well thank you for that uh mr evans uh dr brennan do you want to speak to that there's not because we're having the meeting on the 13th for the state legislature so no november meeting all right statement is correct that is correct and then this is correct and i might have said there was so it will not be that is correct because we're going to be on the 13th thank you for that mr harvey in the other dynamics for informational items then we will now move um i have no additional items or comments at this time dr edwards do you yep i just want to it's not in our agenda but just remind the

132public that on thursday night at 5 30 um we'll be having a live meeting here to discuss the sros and the mous it'll be myself director brown chief zutima will also be here and i believe elsa ramirez will also join us and what we're going to do is we've going to post the mou on our website for public comment any questions that the public has the board has also had access to it in november we're going to during our november work session the board will discuss in detail the mou and the our relationship with our sros so we wanted an opportunity to just share with the public what we do what our current program looks like what our mou looks like um and have that discussion and um i don't think it's going to be

133zoom i do believe it's probably going to be a correct me at the youtube live or a um not youtube what is that um um oh gosh now i can't think of the social it's a the event on on thursday it's youtube okay youtube live event not a zoom event honestly it's not people will be here it'll be broadcast out live that people can watch it um but we are taking any kind of questions or anything we're going to post after but not to show up here to ask no don't show up here don't do it just wanted social distancing we just felt like it we couldn't accommodate folks but we do want to put out as much information and then have people i think there's going to be a form that they can fill

134out to ask questions or make comments about the mou which we will use in part of our discussion when we have it in november but we wanted to get the public input ahead of time right so on this thursday at 5 30 5 30 yes it's coming thursday this coming yeah all right thank you dr edwards for that uh and again uh miss reese thank thank everybody and uh at this point we are at item h1 which is a motion for adjournment which will get us at two hours and six minutes which will be our shortest meeting and quite some time is there a motion to adjourn oh it started i moved all right it's been moved and we would have journeyed properly seconded by dr carter no on and no objection meeting is adjourned

135you