001[Music] school board meeting is called to order please stand for the pledge allegiance okay the first item of business is the agenda approval I recommend that the School Board approved the agenda for the December 3rd 2019 meeting is there a motion for dr. Seitz miss Carter any discussion all in favor any opposed the next thing that we have to do is now to amend the agenda we have added an additional personnel report is there a recommendation a motion to amend the agenda to include the personnel added personnel report thank you miss Carter doctor any any discussion all in favor thank you that moves us to the fun part of this meeting the special presentation dr. Edwards sure I'm heard for this okay and I'm gonna read this to you then at the my own comments
002to it but miss Lonnie's Harris who is an LCS school social worker Virginia has more than 650 school social workers who serve our students and families and we are very excited that our very own Lemmy's Harris was selected as this year's school state school sole social worker of the year and yes without a 650 annually each region of Virginia association of school social workers nominates a representative for their region and candidates presented from each region are voted on by the Vass W Executive Board Miss Harris is in her fifth year as a school social worker for Lynchburg City Schools she's part of a team of five social workers who are the link between home school and community in providing services to students families and school personnel and for Miss Harris one of her favorite roles
003in her job is being an advocate for students and their families so that's the official what I had to read but I just want to say there are no words to describe Lonnie's except awesome she is just an outstanding awesome individual I love working with her she has a positive attitude a can-do spirit and she is all in for the kids and families here in Lynchburg City Schools so we have a special award for her and I don't know okay I see you're back there I was like a hunting so why don't you come on up honey so everybody [Applause] oh all right the next special presentation is LCS aspiring administrators recognition I think this is dr. Copelan I'm gonna read a little bit and I'll get up and introduce the folks that are here
004so you can recognize them for the hard work that they went through six years ago we decided to restart a program that had been in lynchburg city schools sometime before and it was focused on growing our own administrators and finding our internal talent getting them together and taking them through an experience of six different seminars to learn more about central administration what the division does and they also had to do some internship hours and other things like that fun things like attending school board meetings and city council meetings and walkthrough observations with building principals and shadowing principals outside of their level so middle school go into high school or elementary spending some time with the folks down here in central office and documenting all of that reflecting on it they learned about the LCS structure
005we had things like assistant principals panels and principals panels that were opportunities for open dialogue had personnel come in and talk and finance and curriculum instruction and student services and special education so that they got a feel for all of the things that we do as administrators here and around our different buildings for Lynchburg City Schools since we started this program this is now our third cohort to complete there have been 44 completers will recognize a few of those tonight and of those 44 folks that have completed the program 17 of them which is really 39 percent have progressed on to higher positions than they were at so many of them right now our principals assistant principals not only in Lynchburg City Schools but in other divisions they've have taken administration jobs so the program
006has done what we hoped it would do is has identified those with potential inside our division helped grow them and develop them so I wanted to take this opportunity to explain the program to you and then get the up here so you can recognize them and you can see their faces and you can congratulate them for their commitment to things here in Lynchburg city schools Jamie a desk is the first one come on up everybody's gonna come up and you can warm up over here like Kathy brag congratulations why the burns also mother of the heritage high school quarterback Karen Camden the tisha Elliot sneak in the back Karen he pee Justin Henderson Melissa Hester couldn't join us tonight and Laura the vicar and Christine Gus keep all enjoin us tonight unless she snuck in
007somewhere I didn't see her and that's our group that completed for this year it took a lot of time and effort because they have full-time jobs and I can pay them to normally 3:30 to 4:00 o'clock in the afternoon and we just happened to start our seminars at 4 o'clock in the afternoon and went till 6:30 one day a month so we kind of went over a full school year and then they had some things to do over the summer so it took a definite dedication in them to learn more about us and we learned a lot more about them so I congratulate you all for taking this this was the first opportunity that we had to get them all together somebody's got a camera I'd like to get in there welcome somebody take a
008picture while they're setting up the picture I would like to thank you all for embarking on that and certainly hope that you'll consider saying in lynchburg 28 and then we've had some groups 10 or 12 so we started out really big what we kind of stabilized doing it every two years at 10 to 15 folks thanks for the opportunity thank you the third presentation is all right so it is time for our annual audit reporting we have Julie Moore here from Bremen Edwards and I sent you all via email okay so everybody has that Julie's gonna give us a quick summary of the audit report Thank You Julie good evening my name is Julie Moore I'm from brown networks first we'd like to thank you for allowing us to do your audit again this year
009um we love Kim and her staff they're great we start like in May and we literally do not finish into November and even though we're not in the field the whole time we are emailing and calling him all the time bugging her and she's always like very accommodating getting us the information we need super fast and so we really want to say thank you to Kim and her staff because they make our audit great um if you take nothing else away you should know that the schools and the city both had an unmodified opinion which is a clean opinion and that is what every audit wants to be as a clean opinion and believe it or not there are some audience are not clean opinions but you guys got one so you should you know
010give yourselves a pat on the back for that um last year in the compliance section of the kafir' there was a material weakness related to the schools you guys implement a new payroll system and with that there were some segregation of duties issues it was corrected when I came last year presented you know it had already been corrected we noted that so this year if you looked at the compliance section of the city's cafe you would notice that that is not listed anymore however if you look in the management letter under the prior year on comments you'll see it listed but you'll see that it's been fixed so next year that'll go away this year because the schools implement a new payroll system and a financial system we had an IT order to come in
011and do a full evaluation of the school's IT function so on the management letter you'll see some IT comments they are purely suggestions from us they're not something that you absolutely have to fix we just suggest to make your IT structure stronger that you you know consider implement in these comments the schools did not have any significant deficiencies or material weaknesses this year that's a positive that's that you have an audit committee letter in the audit committee letter that kind of gives you an overview of the audit if you've had if there were new Gatsby standards issued this year that significantly impacted the financials that would be listed in there however there were none the next thing in that letter is estimates and we point estimates out because they're not true real numbers they're based
012on assumptions from the past and you know future expectations and your biggest estimates are relate to your pension in your OPA you also have your self-insured and then that asset lives of your fixed assets after that we have footnotes that we think you should read those are in there because we say if there's no other footnotes that you should read you should read these and most of them relate to your again your pension and your OPA plan and then I think we have we also note your commitments capital leases and fixed assets if we would have had a disagreement with management it would have been noted in that letter and as you can tell in the letter that we didn't have any that's all do y'all have any questions thank you for coming in being
013with us today and sharing the report and so just for one more opportunity to reiterate everything is wonderful and fine board questions mr. Darvey he recommended IT review is that something that will take under advisement thank you any further questions thank you very much thank you now we go to public comment in accordance with policy be DDH public participation the school board welcomes requesting comments as established and the guidelines within that policy individuals who wish to speak before the school board shall have an opportunity to do so at this time persons appearing before the school board will not be allowed to campaign for public office or promote private business ventures and should not use profanity or vulgar language or gestures make comments about a public official or an employee that are not related to his
014or her official duties engage in behavior that disrupts the meeting or intimidates others or address the school board on issues that do not concern the services policies role end or responsibility of the school board individual speakers shall limit their comments to three minutes a speaker representing group shall limit his/her comments to five minutes the representative shall identify the group at the beginning of the presentation a group may have no more than one spokesperson the total allotted time for public comments at school board meetings is 30 minutes public comments are reserved for the public to provide input the board does not respond to comments answer questions otherwise engaged in discussion at this time our first speaker Breanna Patillo good evening I'm Brianna furtillo and I'm here tonight to ask you to release the data on school
015suspensions every month so that everyone can see if we're making progress in your proposed goal of reducing suspensions that's mentioned in your strategic plan during the 2017 to 2018 school year 14 percent of the students who were suspended in the Lynchburg school school system there is a clear distortion ality when we look at the race way more black students had been suspended than there were white we don't know how many students were suspended during the 2018 to 2019 school year because the State Department of Education has not released those figures yet we can't tell what has happened within the last school year so we can't really tell how we're doing and at least the public is unaware local school local school officials have the data of the school suspensions because that is the source of
016information where the Virginia Department of Education will eventually release it so I'm asking tonight if we can move to more transparency and please release the data on suspensions monthly so that way we can see the progress that we're making to reduce suspensions and to reduce racism in the Lynchburg City Schools thank you the next speaker is speaking on behalf of Virginia organizer and it's I'm going to not say it correctly chest this have to apologize right off the bat I'm pleased to speak to you folks tonight on behalf of Virginia organization organizing and we want to thank you for the time and effort that you've put in to improve our schools here in Lynchburg you know I don't know if everybody has seen this document you've seen too much of it I'm sure I was
017blown away when I saw that there are so many different issues that need to be addressed and they all have an urgency and I just don't know how you're keeping your heads together but anyway thank you for incorporating into this draft plan many concerns that of Virginia organizing and the dozens of other individuals that have come to speak to this group I speak especially about plans to address the achievement gap school suspensions sexual identity you folks are taking them all on and we certainly appreciate that tonight I wanted to just focus a bit on the harmful implications of the excessive number of school suspensions as Brianna just said it's really hard to find current information about the rate of suspensions in Lynchburg schools and how many students are actually affected I looked all over online
018and what I could find though it was hard to find state information except for the 2016-17 school years so using that I learned some startling things I'll mention just three the first was that nearly 10 sent of Virginia's schoolchildren were suspended in 2016-17 nearly one in 10 which is just way way too high number secondly as as Brianna mentioned african-american students were suspended more than four times as often it was 4.5 as so-called white kids now what does that mean for a school district like ours who are nearly 50% of our students are african-american and third in Virginia in 1916 3,000 children in grades kindergarten first second and third were suspended that just is mind-boggling I couldn't believe it when a child at that age is put out of school it is not the child
019that has failed it's our society that study went on to see there was a distinct correlation between high suspension rates and economically disadvantaged areas so the children who are most needy are also the most vulnerable what does this suspension do to a child's self-esteem they are proudly already living with embarrassment and shame what does it do to their relationship to persons of authority I suggest create anger and fear it may confirm their feeling that the teacher their teacher does not really care for them and we need to stop expecting teachers to do everything coming from a family of teachers I know how unfair that is it's clear that Lynchburg schools need more counselors more social workers more teaching assist as well as more teachers and we need these people to be as diverse as our
020schools are quickly to suggestions the first is that I hope you folks will demand help from us the parents the grandparents the friends as you struggle with all these challenges for example some of us are prepared to help you convince state legislators that more state funding is needed and enlist our support when budget talks come up with the City Council we need you to get feed us the information secondly and this touches on something I've talked about here before we need more volunteers in the classroom we need friendly people sitting at the back of the room who could take a child who would be able to take a child that's disturbed or unhappy and interrupting take them out and and read to them or draw with them or walk them around the school and explore
021something to take the pressure off the teacher Thank You mr. Potter I want to say good evening to everyone dr. Ellis dr. Copelan in our school board and that butter here I wanna say good evening I'm just going on really I heard too concerned at the last school board meeting but I just want to address that the board when I pleaded to y'all did y'all check on that weight adjustment for the delivery drivers and groundsman you know I hope y'all had a discussion about that because of the wage that's low and try to bring it up to the duties that we do for the Lynchburg City School and so therefore it likes album deliver driving I'm speaking on behalf of the grand groundsmen people too but one thing I can tell you all tonight that
022you have a good grounds crew a good delivery driver system and I'm not standing here just for myself I'm standing for the guys to represent because I asked them to come tonight just for moral support but some of them don't have that ability to be in open forum so I'm standing here not by myself I'm standing here with goodness on your side and mercy on this side let me support and love so therefore I'm coming for you that if you could real consider just looking I mean y'all man I look but look again at the difference of the wage that the delivery driver and the grounds we make and bring it up to sufficient status because I'm retired from another company like I told dr. Edwards and dr. Copelan I said I'm here as extra
023income gel like anybody else but I'm fighting for those guys gonna have a remaining time here for longevity my longevity is not gonna be long because I'm already retired but anything to help those can help me also so please like I talked to doc dr. Elvis and dr. copelan they took it to the finance they denied it I understand denial when you sitting around this table here and I think it's five doctors here and rest is not of your form very educated so sit down it and look at the wage that we are making for delivered drivers and custodian and this is the paper right here we will weigh up here that's the load that's the high down here so now cold weather come y'all seen them today that you know they've gone up you
024good Lee's got both snow gonna fall so compensate us of what we need to become a safety forward because we're doing a fabulous job I think because uh most people want stay out there in that type of element like that but I'm telling you you're Lynchburg Cisco you're a fine organization so keep the good work up and I thank you mr. Gonzales a group I can't say it though okay um hi my name is Bea senticles Alice this is the most nervous I've ever been talking here today so first I want to say congratulations and I really want to come in Allison Jordan and mrs. Womack and dr. Edwards on the work that has been done in the school system to support undocumented youth it's absolutely incredible to have all these resources available to the
025public now I just think it's time to go out into the community and share those resources right but today I actually wanted to talk about the conversations regarding including sexual orientation and gender identity in the anti-discrimination policy right I am a graduate of East eClass high school I graduated 2009 and I'm also a member of the LGBTQ community and I could definitely say that although I have like amazing memories from glass I had an extremely difficult time right and when it comes to queer people and queer students what we see right now is a lot of uncertainty we don't really know what is happening in the schools with queer students because it's not really being measured yet right but in my experience at EC glass a lot of the conversations around bullying and I wrecked
026I actually want to sort of step away from the language of bullying and really try to frame it around harassment right that queer students are being harassed in the school system and most of the bullying that I experienced was actually witnessed by teachers right there was one time that a teacher intervened in four years right and that's something that I explicitly remember I remember more of the teachers that were there than the actual bullies so we need to take into account that like queer students have a much higher rate of depression suicide and substance abuse right also queer people need to have a place at the table in the conversations because Virginia is one of 28 states that doesn't have statewide worker protections it's really unclear how many faculty and staff are part of the
027queer community right how many people on the equity task parts force are in the queer community even in this group it's unclear right because statistically one or two of you should be clear to but in reality Lynchburg simply isn't a safe place for queer people to be as out and open as they would like so we need to have the queer community be a part of these conversations I'm secondly like what does this actually mean for the overall curriculum right because when I was at UC glass marriage equality had passed yet so homophobia was embedded into the curriculum the teachers would facilitate conversations really putting queer students on the line where we faced immense disrespect and a mess immense deep like inhumanity as these day as I said it's uncertain how much of that is
028still happening because it's not being measured we know that there are GSA's we know that there are queer affirming teachers but we really don't know how many there are and that's not really being enforced I also wanted to say oh well also what types of trainings our faculty and staff gonna abide are y'all just gonna pass this measure hopefully I assume it's gonna pass I recommend it passes but is it gonna come along with some type of training right how is this gonna be enforced um secondly we can't talk about the LGBT community as if it's separate from other communities you know it doesn't matter what your color is your racial identity your ethnic group your religion people in your community are queer right so we're everywhere so it's impossible to talk about queer people
029without talking about you know poverty homelessness suspensions the achievement gap right racism immigration and especially the kids who were in foster care right we don't talk a lot about foster care students enough so I really just want to close out with saying I don't want y'all to think that passing this resolution is gonna be a part of ending discrimination it simply can't be the solution it's really the beginning right all these other little things need to change because homophobia has been such a part of westburg city school system all of that needs to be dismantled I really recommend the creation of an LGBT task force because the bottom line is that the equity task force is so has so much on his plate already dealing with issues of racism in the schools you know because
030racism is such a huge issue in the schools the issues regarding queer students really aren't being talked about in the way we need them to you know so my recommendation as a way to bring queer people in our community at the table is to create an independent LGBT task force thank you thank you finance report mrs. connage I am presenting the finance report for October 31st this is your standard report the one thing that has changed is you'll notice that the status that the budget has gone up and that is due to the prior year since the audit is completed there's open POS that were kept from prior year has been moved over and that the money is received in the prior year but it will be actually paid in this year so you will
031see that as a rep your revenue going up and also as your expenditures going up at this point the budget received is nineteen point five nine percent of your revenue and your expenditures as twenty seven point two five again some of that is your prior year expenditures that were pushed over and some of your revenues are not yet being received because of they were lottery funded we also have an update on the health insurance at the bottom it looks high there's five payments in the month that always makes it on paper look like a you know a bad month they are they were a couple of weeks that we were because they were higher but they are starting to go back down so we're we don't just do this one thing every week we are
032waiting for that bill and we are closely monitoring it we have attached the updated revenue reports and the expenditure reports on the tie-in to this agenda report do y'all have any questions page two on the statement for the statement of revenue under the e-rate reimbursement I know that that was a program that that ended this previous year and we still have some income coming in this year that is just leftover from the previous year and that will eventually stop or yeah we didn't budget anything for that as far as income goes that is correct there was no budget put in there it has been the cellphone portion has been tapering off as they did disband that portion that we still do get some great revenue I cannot because this was a prior year the budget
033that was passed I can't say why it was put down to zero it is a decrease and it's been a significant decrease every year and I don't know if it is because the cell phones had been phased out but we still get some for the hardware and the some of the other IT things so I yeah I would I would anticipate we would look at this and adjust it for next year that you would see the e-rate revenue great and just went on the same page just a clarification and I'm sure there's a straightforward but under at the bottom we have designation encumbrances for this year 850,000 budgeted and then we have 800 2000 the same amount as far as budget balance is that just a accounting piece that we just make those two numbers
034the same or those are those open purchase orders right when you're saying I'm not sure I understand yeah so the budgeted amount of inter 50000 is the same as the budget balance so that money is never gonna be recorded as being received and this year because it was money that the was allowed through the audit to say that that was a prior year expense so those month of money was act we've actually received the money already and it's already been calculated in the true up with that fund balance doses so you will never see the revenue actually coming in for that because we've already received it it's accounted for in the prior year so that will just stay the same for this year on this year's budget good thank you very much to the consent
035part of the agenda recommend the approval of the amended consent agenda which includes school board meeting minutes November six regular board meeting school board retreat October 11th public budget hearing October 29th student discipline committee meetings October 24th October 30th and November 7th the amended personnel report and religious exemptions any discussion this list as far as retiring as of the end of this year and I'm assure that well this is here tonight different seat they're exactly right exactly right but I just want to comment that as we all know this is better work than just a phenomenal job for Lucia schools for almost 25 years and the surprised anyone go for that one more year to make it an even number an odd number but just to recognize what a great job you've done I know
036the board wants to do that so I just wanted to point that out any other comments I have a motion and a second any further discussion all in favor any opposed school board representative comments we have tonight we're going to start with Heritage High School mr. Gurley so good evening I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving I know everyone at LCS enjoy the short little break we got and I would just like to talk a little bit about some of the things that happened within heritage during November so our deca team got the opportunity to volunteer at Miller Park to help clean up the park they helped by spreading mulch and picking up trash and even a few students hugged a few trees another thing that's been going on within heritage is Sol remediation they've
037been helping students so they can pass their Sol and receive the credits that they need to graduate and that is going to continue for the rest of the year gear up had two trips throughout November one was to the Shenandoah University and the other one was to ODU and an aquarium both of these trips allowed students to see if they wanted to attend either of these universities in the aquarium was just a nice little break Virginia college application week was a huge success at Heritage a lot of all of the seniors took advantage of this opportunity and they applied to all the colleges that they wanted to for free and a lot of students also seized the opportunity for the on-site admissions and the majority of our students did get accepted to the colleges that
038they wanted to go to another thing that happened was four people got inducted into the Heritage High School Hall of Fame and they were Alvin right I think it's great Achilles latrice Morris and Cameron Carter and they were just recognized for their amazing achievements the girls track team got recognized again for their amazing achievement by winning States last season and this time they got recognized by City Hall I think Taylor talked about Luke Richards beating the school record last time he beat the record last time with a time of six 14 in a 5k and this time he beat his own record again with a time of 1612 in a 5k in the 3a state championship he also got a fool offered a full ride to drag fir'd University that I'm pretty sure he's taking
039advantage of just keeps skipping the slides KJ Vaughn was the recognized as the week 11 Player of the Week and there's a lot of great things happen with heritage football we won the three C champion regional competition and now we're moving on to States so hopefully we'll seize that state championship title for the second year in a row thank you for your time all right hi I'm Christopher Mirada and I'm the representative for EC glass so this is a little bit about what's going on in December so first off in sports um cross country team the girls team actually did qualify for the state meet and for the boys also qualified for that it was in Great Meadow the Plains which I also learned that the Plains is a place in Virginia that confused me
040a little bit black found that out but I thought that was kind of cool um anyway also Jett Davidson she is a really fast person and she got tenth and the state meet which is really cool there's actually a picture of her up there holding the mellah belief she got from that it's also basketball season last night the girls had their first game against Gretna they 169 to 54 and they're gonna be going over to Gretna next Friday to challenge them again the boys are playing jf on Friday this Friday so that'll be exciting and yeah so as you know we're finishing up with the fall sports we're moving into winter wrestling starting up cheer swim indoor track there's a lot going on with athletics a glass and also I want to point out that
041you can actually check the schedule in the Seminole District website which that's really cool and nice to see if you don't follow us on social media that's another place so you can find it oh there you go okay sorry so our football season came to an unfortunate end it was sailing was a really good team unfortunately I couldn't see the game I was up in DC but I was definitely listening to on the radio and you know up until up at halftime I was feeling really good and then unfortunately still pulled a few plays that definitely disappointed me um but it was really from what I could tell is a really close game I didn't see it happen but I could hear it and you know a lot of my friends were there and it
042looks like there's a lot of excitement going on but so glass and it's season with a 11 wins and 2 losses which I considered to be pretty good so those are some more recent pictures all right and so we actually had a Holocaust survivor come and speak at glass earlier or I guess later last month but anyway towards the end of November and she came in during the morning and taught to the students and they had a big assembly and she got to tell her story but leading up to this a lot of English teachers at glass actually held discussions so like in my class we spent I believe two days just kind of talking about it what led up to it learning about her story and I'm just the venn in general so you
043know there was kind of a cross between history and English there and I think it opened up a lot of good discussions so she led a school-wide assembly in the morning and then later on she met with a smaller group of students and they did some you know they had refreshments and they talked and they got to ask some questions so as you guys know we had the legislative breakfast at glass their culinary arts department did a really awesome job catering it it was really good and it's cool to see a lot of our legislators there listening to what we had to say okay so we also had a pep rally you can see Ramy over there with MS Ligon brandies our mascot it's starting to make a comeback this year he's been to a
044few the football games and he was also at the assembly those are some pictures from it and it had representatives from marching band football team cheerleaders all of them were out there and earth I guess in the auditorium you know peppering us up getting us ready for the pawlowski game and also tonight in about 15 minutes so if you run you can probably make it the glass can be having its first PTO meeting for this year and it's gonna be in the Morea wall or lecture hall it's gonna kind of get the PTO starting I believe it's open to everybody anybody that wants to come and it's co-chaired by Julie salmon and Jenna ha ski and that is the email for it there if you have any questions I'm sure that they would be able
045to answer them and we also had Virginia college application week um it was from the 18th to the 22nd of November all the applications are free that's really cool so not just the applications in Virginia but actually like everywhere I believe so you know it saves a lot of money because as I've learned applying to colleges can be expensive so it was really cool to have that opportunity and may the colleges just like it heritage came and offered on-site admission opportunities for a lot of our students and also as we're kind of getting to the winter season we have basically what they're calling the 12 days of winter spirit so those are what they are it's kind of small there but it's gonna go through the month and there are a few cool ones I'm
046kind of excited about I have a very cool Christmas suit coming in the mail hopefully tomorrow so yeah and that's all I have thank you that leads us to school board committee reports the only one that I think we had was the STEM Academy on November the 12th and was just an update as to the number of new students there were 28 new students 24 returning students they're studying engineering biotech Health Sciences and cybersecurity and they're playing on a good year for this year at the STEM Academy at Basra committees equity task force meet last month and we went over the OCR report and was it more in detail and also talked a little bit about priorities and I'll let miss Reese just give a quick summary reset and go back through our foundational structure
047we did go over our equity concept map which explains just what it is we're doing with regard to student success and how it is that all of our we don't use the word lenses all of our habits are related to equity we also went through the working document of the comprehensive strategic plan healthy equity task force to understand how the equity habits equity habits are embedded in that plan the OCR data that you saw I want to say the week before was explained to them and really gave them something to to tangible to see to review part of their homework is to review that and send us back some comments this group I believe is going to be very intentional about doing what the Advisory Committee is charged to do and that's me to make
048recommendations to the school board they're very excited and are grateful for their opportunities to serve on that task force so thank you vizor 'i also met on the same day in the afternoon and i'll give a quick report on that they are pleased to participate in our we're pleased to participate in the pillowcase project give you a little bit about that last month but I'll give you a little more detail this is a project from the American Red Cross disaster preparedness information for a third grade students so the committee originally thought we were going to conduct it in May but we're actually going to do it I believe in January the project is a one-time presentation 30 to 40 minutes for each third grade class and it's going to really teach the students about how
049to be prepared at home so we're real excited about that and excited about the work that Antoine's entry has done with our school health advisory committee thank you we now are going to comprehensive strategic plan discussion yes I'm going to invite dr. Coleman up to join me in this I will say that our working document will hopefully be transmitted into the document by December 13th I think is the date that I gave everybody for all the edits and updates to the working comprehensive strategic plan we have tried to share that with as many groups as possible to get as much feedback as possible and are pleased that people are mentioning it and actually using it to guide the work forward and with that in mind I will say and I was going to save this
050for my comments but I'll do it right now one of the things as we talk about the equity work and as I just follow up on what one of our public comments mr. Gonzalez had mentioned you know a couple weeks ago I went to project conclusion with the glass 20 glass students 20 heritage students plus staff and I will say both groups came away and I don't want to steal their thunder they each had a problem that they had to define and they had to come up with a theme and an activity that they're going to do during a school year but what I was most impressed with is one of the things that both groups of kids pointed out was this sense verbal dehumanization whether that's race whether it's gender or anything and not
051only you know just in their classrooms but hallways locker rooms between classes it was very important for both groups to point that out as being one of the things that both groups felt very strongly as their number one mission to look at so to answer the question how seriously we're taking some of the work I know the kids are and they're ready and engaged to do some of that work so I'm real proud about that and it'll be more to come with that it's also one of the priorities of the equity task force as they talked about priorities as well and yes to the question of will we be doing training training training yes yes yes okay with that I want to shift to a different part of our strategic plan which is closing the
052achievement gap and this month we are focusing on Heritage High School and I'm gonna turn it over to dr. Koon Coleman who has provided us with the wonderful handout to take a good evening everyone happy to share with you it's kind of the next phase of our Lincoln the strategic plan to kind of the school improvement efforts we're making in the division Heritage High School had been working on achievement gap and they were working on that gap in the math area and that was based on the the school improvement plan is from 2018 because that's when the that gap would have been identified so we're kind of looking at the kind of the results of that based on the last year's testing you know at the end of the school year so with that with
053the division strategic plan of course is focusing on one in in goal one to student growth and development and success the things that tied of that from heritages plan is during the 2018-19 school year which was the past school your heritage will improve the past rate in math by 10% and our goal is to also reduce the failure rate for our black students exceptional IDI students and the economically disadvantaged students by 10% some of the strategies that they had in place for for doing that really were to conduct observations and for the the principals and assistants to be in the classrooms and offer feedback to teachers and and to offer suggestions with that and and to make sure that the the written Taunton and assessed curriculum was aligned and then also for the the groups
054that we were most concerned with also identifying I'm groups of kids that maybe were having difficulty and creating a cohort and working with those groups of kids to track them through their performance so really what they're working towards is really creating that culture in place where we're not letting anyone fall through the cracks we're identifying who the kids are and we're monitoring that closely in groups the teachers talk about I'm strategies that we could do to change things and make sure the the groups are successful listed below is the performance so the 1718 performance was what identified those gaps is being lower than they should have been and then you have also to the right or the 1819 results and the during the dramatic increase in performance of all those groups at Heritage High School
055it's just a you know a remarkable improvement and with that on the second page that puts those indicators all at level one which would be in green so all those those areas are there I'm having a couple of specifics that I asked for in talking with the principal in that building was just really the the math department was really zero focused in zeroed in on providing providing that targeted remediation for specifically what students needed and really using a lot of data analysis and and being very targeted and what they were doing to address needs with kids they also were working very collaboratively to remediate and enlisted some additional staff we always try to have a bit of funds available for some extra folks to come in to provide us some assistance where we need to
056and we have a good group of retired folks that were teachers that will come in and assist so we always keep that in reserve and then additional planning focused on the students that require math testing or we needed a math test in order to meet the requirements for graduation so really zeroing in on exactly what the students needed and to make sure that they can meet the requirement to be able to graduate on time were their top priorities the was noted that the chronic absenteeism and the dropout rate are level two which is will certainly make you fully accredited but it's an area that the principal is concerned with we actually met last week and we're talking about some of the strategies that they used to address the deficits in the gap groups he's using
057the same kind of thought process with the chronic absenteeism and drop out which is creating cohorts of kids that you're watching and monitoring I figured out what's going on and putting strategies in place and working with them with those kids to you know ensure that they move forward yes going back to the chart on the front page and for those people who are watching and can't see this chart on the front page I do want to note that this is one years worth of growth in many cases you see double-digit growth and since dr. Brennan you pointed out mr. van de worker I'm going to go down to students with disabilities and just make a public note that our kids have increased their performance from 23% of the children passing or showing demonstrating growth to
05873% of the children demonstrating growth that significant that does not happen without the significant dedication of the Heritage High School staff the math department the special ed department the assistants probably custodians cafeteria workers everybody was all in at Heritage High School when it really came down to the goal of we want to improve our math performance so it just goes to show the tremendous amount of good work that can be done when the school community unites and really focuses on their goals so I just wanted to say that I am extremely proud of the work that they've done and kudos to them and you know keep going and I guess as a final point did want to include some of the enrollment information in some of our advanced courses at Heritage High School and just
059looking at the percentages and that's that's certainly something that we are monitoring and we are looking at and and working on strategies to always make sure that our that were equitable and that our proportions are appropriate and and seeing that we have a pretty good spread of students in the classes and one thing that I did want to note that we are seeing as a trend moving forward is a number of students who are identifying as multiple races that's a category that doesn't show and wouldn't have shown back a few years previously in many of the classes it's between 5 and 10 percent or identifying as themselves as with multiple races so but even we did want to share that that information with you and also there is is a trend to with increasing numbers
060in some of the early college and with the courses that would on be dual enrollment so I think you have students that are making a conscious choice to frankly take courses that would get them some college credit so it's you know just it's their choice and and they're seeing the value in that and in taking advantage of that so you know as we open more options for students then some of the they move away from other areas because they you know see the value and some of the options that we're offering dr. Coleman OS dr. Edwards just stated it's remarkable improvement my question would be across the years sometimes we will see schools that need to improve go up and then they go back down right and we have that kind of fluctuation of course
061you can have different students what is the plan to create sustainability around those numbers sustaining themselves and continuing to grow over time or do we just kind of how do we deal with that well I think the plan for this is really it's creating that culture where you're you're looking at data continuously and you're looking for students that need that extra assistance so that that students don't fall through the crack that's how you you end up with the kind of growth we have here and that's also how you sustain it you just can't ever take your eye off of what you need to be aware of and and making sure that students do get the the extra assistance that they need and in you know in a lot of cases just the support to be
062able to do that so it's it's certainly part of their their plan for school improvement moving forward you know just because we've got this much growth we're not done yet we want more so that was certainly a part of the conversation we had just last week last page percentages is that the percentage dudes in that class or is that the percentage of that population taking that class that's just the students in the class okay and then I guess the other question I had in terms of ties into sustainability you were talking about using the SOL prediction sheets to track performance and do you track how well the prediction sheets actually match the actual student performance right we do look and I asked that cousin that's been used in the past and it seemed like it
063didn't for didn't track very well right we've almost that's what we were looking at now really is thinking about the information we get it's more diagnostic rather than it being just a straight predictor of whether or not a child will pass or not passed we're really analyzing that and looking for strengths and weaknesses and then working on the areas that are weak and and we've also really a teachers have worked with having you know smaller assessments and things that take place in between the bigger assessments so you know making sure that our daily practice is doing the same thing the but it's it's largely moving kind of from that mindset to that it's providing us information moving to a mindset where it's providing me the information I need as a teacher to address the problem
064and help a child move forward some of our software support programs and I'll just mention like I Excel being one of them that that we use it allows for the right now what I call the right now action so I can see where that child is performing where those deficiencies might be and I can address it right now rather than just using it as a predictor of this is what's going to happen later and these programs also give the child the opportunity to practice to bring that skill up so I can see improvement right now and I you know last last week I think it was I happen to actually go to a class a class and sit with a couple of kids while they practice on their I excel so that I could see
065this in action and see those kinds of things so that goes to your sustainability question too to really keep monitoring the kids but the one of the big pieces here at least when I was talking to children is how do we also trance transfer that to them self-monitoring and how do they monitor there right now and recognizing here's my deficiency Eunice's an area where I need to improve as well and own it and that's the kind of the work that I was doing with some of the kids that I was working so the last page that has the statistics Harwich high school advanced courses 2019 2019 2020 so this year advanced American history 55 percent of the class is black and 24 percent is white right an AP American history 45 percent is black and
06636 percent are white right okay because it just seems like that compared to other courses we looked at is a switch there clearly are usually more white students in advanced class I mean obviously one of the issue that we talk about frequently but that's that's quite a significant difference right and and that's that's exactly what it means don't know great and one of the reasons why I asked dr. Coleman to break this data down for Heritage High School is when you combine the two schools it looks a little different and you may not think that there is progress in certain areas but when you separate the schools you'll see things like this yeah it looks very different yeah many classrooms thank you two schools together the skew becomes way different depends on the course you
067know and of course and remember these are percentages so when you actually find one section and the other school has two sections it might skew it a lot more than we're not because of the number of children that are in the course but again if going back to our data focus if we're not doing due diligence pulling that data apart saying you know what what does it look like when I walk into classes at Heritage High School and that's the that was the focus that we took and I think that's one of the things that we heard you all say that we always get this big data big picture data but not the specifics and this will help us with our work in targeting so we need to find the areas of you know where
068do we need to improve the balance so to speak and ask some of the good questions you know if you look at some of the courses you'll see high enrollment then you'll see something like what is that advanced algebra - that's a little bit lower and why is that is that a function of math subject or preference or old what so it just gives us more data so we can go in and really look at some of the differences so will we see this for heritage or EC glass we're working on yeah each month we give you a different school so that to get a lens through that school percentage of students are white are they a minority at Heritage it's the school the last I looked was running around seventy percent african-american comment about
06970 percent 70 percent we're gonna be okay okay yeah because up eating that - bad context - yes but it's still like so yeah still looking pretty good unfinished business high school program of studies hope everybody had great time reading all this this is for action tonight you have any questions comments dr. Cohen I just never stated this previously and it I take confidence and what's being presented to us but I've just been taken by and I think I mentioned this to dr. it was his no deep revelation it's just that one of the superintendent's in Virginia stated that if there's going to be any effort of achieving a narrowing of the achievement gap it's all centered around the curriculum and and really having a process and I guess so I'm asking as I continue
070to go forward to have a greater understanding Oh what if our process of really making sure our curriculum in this instance is high school and other instances will be middle school to make sure that our curriculum is really aligned in such a way that it is meeting the needs of the students so that they can learn and so I'm I'm just curious about that going forward and I'm relying on our experts to help guide us in that process heading of that table students entering for the first time in 2002 the school setting took a Virginia school at that time or Jo Lynchburg city schools yes I'm confused because this is uh this is an updated Oh crying still applies to okay so this is kind of a grandfather clause okay gotcha but that's what I
071thought I wasn't clear thank you any additional questions okay like I said this is for action it's our motion to approve the high school program of studies thank you dr. Nellas dr. Sanaa any further questions or discussion all in favor aye any opposed next we go to the Lynchburg City School Board instruction and program policies the first one jhh has a star by it it's just there you're not taking action on that but we thought since you're reviewing the Reg sometimes it's helpful to have the policy so you can see what the policy says as you review the regs the suicide prevention reg we did make the amendment with the SRO consultation as noted from the last board meeting as well as the field trip amendment that was discussed at the last board meeting so
072you'll see those two items strike that as a strikeout in the policies school admission again there's language in there regarding the foreign exchange student policy or discussions that we had and then the copyright there's just the language regarding print and non-print materials and the remaining policies are up for a deletion this is for action thank you news Carter's our second miss Evans any further discussion all in favor any opposed Lynchburg City School Board personnel policies and these were also presented last month and I don't know that anything changed on these because there were no amendments or no additional discussion so they are the same as they were last month unless you have questions all in favor lunch fork city school board operations policies and regulations dr. Copelan this policy packet which was a fairly thick
073one was presented last month there was one question that dr. Brennan tabled that ms towns looked into I believe that question was answered sufficiently to dr. Brennan satisfaction so we didn't receive any other questions so entertain any you might have tonight questions thank you mr. towns for clarifying that point this is of our action tonight is there a motion from the board thank you so second dr. Brennan thank you any more discussion all in favor any opposed how we're at new business all right middle school program of studies dr. Coleman before you the the updated middle school program of studies up for first reading tonight the changes in the in the program of study studies was a were minimal mainly clarifying language and moving some things around for the academic support heading for the rise
074courses because the they fall more under academic support rather than core so it was we the committee felt like it was more reasonable to have it in that section other changes with it there was just an error really in the code for one of the courses for algebra foundations of algebra it's it's not an academic course that didn't TV a and they in the didn't need the a and in the code four world languages we just wanted to know for clarity for parents sake that that in taking certain world languages that may require transportation to be able to to go to another school to get the language so on the case that it's not offered as a particular school it may be necessary for a student to to go to a high school to be
075able to take the course the basically the math course placement we just updated the language to indicate the testing that's being used currently which is the the student growth assessment which is the the SGA and the changing that took quarterly assessments which is the the new assessment that's being used and finally the advanced earth science just changing the prerequisite the way it's written to the advanced physical science that that's the the course that leads into that one that's the the one that's in the sequence to get there and it was it wasn't clear the way it was written it should be that course you mentioned committee who's on the committee it's for the the group that gets together to look at this so the the people from my department which of the the specialists the
076principal from the school the guidance counselor account counselors at the school and they solicit input from all the teachers in the building so they bring all that to that and did we go through all those the suggestions and make the appropriate changes and obviously this is not a perfunctory task as you are bringing some changes right but I'm trying to understand later how both of these processes work out to really help with them there oh there and all of the gaps as it relates to and I know that once we have the courses is another issue about how students gets placed in courses but I am running into parents who have students who end up in one class then that challenge and they really need to be in another class and I'm just trying to
077make sense out of that but I thank you dr. Coleman for what you're doing on page four there they talk about depth in determining the right level of a course for a student there are three ways in which they can access about achievement score teacher recommendation or parental request so a parent has the right to request that and then the school puts together it does but that's what dr. Coleman is saying but I think we need to let parents know that this is a request and that gets back to Ethel's family engagement piece and all this stuff from dr. Kostin you know I'm just excited about the future thank you Bill thank you for bringing that to my attention but well we start talking about programs of study that's huge it is and with dr.
078Coleman so if someone for parent requests that they want their child changed or another class or a more challenging class what's the process of what's the turnaround time what do they need to do to request so if I want my child I said my child is not being challenged I want my child to move to it so what do I need to do the first thing you do we contact the school and speak with the guidance Department and then make the request of them and then that percent or higher it lists on page 18 kind of what you need to have I mean the parent can request it but then the school will get this information together and then look at it alright so okay but I do think what your what do parents actually
079need to do and we need to make sure the parents know that process and what if they already know some of that but they still feel that the child can do it it's really nurturing and they don't meet the criteria but they feel that they still need to be challenged parents talk to well first up talk to the actual teacher it depends on the grade too in a subject area and many times teachers have the flexibility I know with if I just look at the elementary program in the gold math program itself they have on great level above grade level activities and resources so if I have mastered whatever it is that we're doing maybe there is within that curriculum a more expansive and challenging thing that I can get in place of in lieu
080of so that you're not doing the well yep you have to finish this worksheet before you get to the one that's at your level so a lot of times that does occur as you get up into the upper level courses where kids try to you know I want to double up the math and skip courses that does require a much larger conversation with guidance Department and usually a supervisor and that but my recommendation to parents every time when they're like my kid is not being challenged that first conversation should be with the child's teacher because it may not the teacher may not be aware that a child is feeling like I'm not being challenged or I'd like to do something else or the work is easy for me and sometimes kids get creative where they're
081like this is easy for me and it takes me 10 minutes but I make it look like 30 seconds there anything else and you don't we don't want that either we want it we want to find those kids didn't make sure that we're appropriately challenging them so the minute that you feel like you know if you have a young child and he or she is not bringing home work that you feel like they're just acing us at home that first call should always be to the classroom teacher because if anybody's gonna know what's going on on the day to day it'll be the classroom teacher first and then work your way up if you feel like we've exhausted everything that you know there is to offer for this kid and we've had that where you
082know yes we need to either promote them to another another advanced level if that's available or some other means what this ends up looking like is a kid that's not being challenged it turns into behavior problems and then it speaks to some of the earlier discussion when you're having kids being put out simply because they are not able to process what to do with themselves and who they are around in a class in which they could be doing more challenging worked or the curriculum itself applicable to their realities and the toxicity of their environments on which they come and the other thing is I will say we do have people who are in it and looking and particularly looking at grades and wondering why why aren't you performing that at a certain level we have
083numerous staff that have for lack of a better word adopted some kids myself included that are just we go in there and they're not it's not that they're not being challenged they're not working at their potential and sometimes you don't have a parent that advocates for that and that those kids could be caught in the what I call the CDF spiral you know that's what I'm doing even though I'm more of an a/b potential kids and they need somebody just to give them a little push and we do have some staff that are looking at children and work with them I call it case managing I don't know what other word to use to do those kinds of things just to make sure that they are applying themselves and not selling themselves short and underperforming
084as well as children who are you know maxing out things that we have it's a work in progress but it is a lot of good work to me to be done the course says transportations from transportation may be necessary does the school provide education and the other one where are we with elevating or trying to enhance with the gifted program for middle school I know this has been a topic since I've been on the board yeah so where are we in that process we're not anywhere yet no we haven't started that committee that actually looks at that I mean we're and it's in our plan I don't know what I don't have the plan set in front of me right now the actual start date it is on our to-do list but it was we
085just couldn't do it all that at one time right now going back to the criteria one of the criterias just parents request the achievement score it lists orderly assignments there are quarterly assessments excuse me are they the grade reports that the parents are receiving or is there a separate assessment that parents could request to see I'll let you write the we do a quarterly assessment you know each quarter obviously for to see where students are performing and those are the things that we look at for the the formative information from that we look at that and of course we consider grades as well on the just deliver for parts but do we share that with with the parents the quarterly assessments yes okay while you're looking through this if you do have some just send
086a man okay thank you let's see now we're going to LCS board instruction and program policies and regulations okay this is a curriculum and instruction so again dr. Coleman and I and these are your first time seeing these policies and I will say the curriculum policies are probably the last large batch conversion that we have that are still we're going from numbered policies to the SBA policy so you'll probably see a lot more of these coming forward up but we tried to group them as best as possible so in that first section and you either have a printed copy or the link to it the first couple policies instructional goals and objectives learning objectives retaking Sol testing and accreditation those are the vsba policies that actually have the correct language aligned to what we do
087and what the current standards are so those policies are up for your first review and then later adoption the middle group ad is a policy that the Governance Committee had brought forth I think in May the educational philosophy so it was previously adopted but what we did was add the mission statement to that policy and then I Casey is a new policy for grading student evaluation we still have to work on the regulation for that but we add it to the vsba language the process of appealing a grade there's always been a process for parents to do that but we wanted to include it in the pot in the policy you'll see that and then J and Zr we had to make a change because there was a fee that was listed that is no
088longer a fee but in doing that we thought wow every time a fee changes we have to bring this whole policy back so then we made a bigger change to say why don't we reference that the fee chart is on the website and that way we can just update the fee chart without having to constantly bring the policy back so you will see both the removal of a specific the specific fee that's no longer applicable and tamp but you'll also see we'll post this on our website so the policy will remain consistent but as fees change they'll be updated on our website and communicate it to families accordingly and then in light of some of the work of the equity task force that they had started this last year it didn't make it to its
089priority to their priority when they presented to you in August but was still on their list and we also had additional board people come for public comment we pulled all of our discrimination non-discrimination policies Equal Employment equal opportunity for educational access for kids everywhere we could find it and we wanted to make the language consistent across those policies when we laid them all out we found that the language was not consistent across the policies and then we also added included in those five policies gender identity and sexual orientation as well and the mindset that we had behind that was you know in our schools and either as a student or as an employee or even as a visitor we're just not going to tolerate any kind of harassment period we just want a very cohesive
090collaborative welcoming inclusive community so while we're changing the policy language to match just recognize that the practice that we have is that of inclusivity and a positive spirit that we want to definitely have so our training will reflect that adding the kids voice into that is important to us to make sure that they're heard and that that we do do some things so you'll see those changes in those four I'm sorry five policies and then on a next page page 102 you'll see a list of numbered policies which we matched up to all of these vs a policy so we're recommending that they be deleted we reviewed them and made sure that they were included in the VSB a letter policy it is myself Belle Sharon Tommy Willis glorious left Latonya you all should be
091commended for all of this great work of looking at it what's right about the policies dealing with protected classes and so forth the table makes a lot of sense to changes so it's in a website those fees are staying the same and if they do change does that come back to the board as it yeah we would definitely have to communicate that and make sure we're not slipping something in there but yes we will definitely bring that up or make you know it's some of it might just be a state change but some of it might be our change that might come from our Finance Committee to the boy regulate thank you in January meeting 14 so if you have any questions just send them in thank you all right that moves us to the
092central Virginia Governor's School for science technology 2019-20 budget we are just being asked to be the physical agent and programs and once a year we will bring to you their board's budget provide a copy of the minutes to show that they've proved it and we present that to you and then we asked for you to improve so be that fiscal agent and to implement their budgets so the first one we'll bring it tonight is the governor school and their Board approved their 2019-20 operating budget in the amount of 1 million one hundred and sixty eight thousand two hundred dollars Lynchburg currently has the forty two slots of students that attend to that school and what we're asking for that tonight is for you to take action to approve that we serve as their fiscal agent
093and implement that budget any questions just a minute let's get a second and then I'll call for questions is there a second thank you we have motion a second dr. Brennan for the comments so for example in governor's school the salary instructional salaries increased by sixteen thousand dollars are the are these are the government schools and other programs are they based on Lynchburg city school salaries can you help us and also the question about fair share of some of the things that there had done regionally like the Governor's School in the STEM Academy so I think health care as my dishes we were worried about are all the different areas paying their equal amounts I think number one is are the salaries Lynchburg city school salaries try to follow our salary scale and they were
094happy that we actually increased salaries so they continue but they don't have to so they can set their boards can set their own salaries they just happen to adopt hours out their answers the first question the second question with regard to their health insurance yes they are did we do the confetti for the seminar health plan but they pay their fee part of it we weren't we backed off of the other the differential between the claims right right thank you okay any further questions we have a motion to approve in a second all in favor all right now go to the STEM Academy budget okay so we are presenting their budget for the 2019 20 it was for three hundred twenty thousand seven hundred fifty dollars which was an increase of ten thousand six hundred
095from their prior year and we were just presenting that budget in their minutes and asking for you to take action to again approve for us to do that fiscal agent and to administer their budget okay questions between the representative on this board that this does include a $500 increase in tuition that we've talked about before so you twitch them up 259 under it per student in this budget this is an FYI not to make a motion to second thank you Miss Carter any further discussion or questions please Carter do these agents the different organizations have a certain budget template that they follow or do we give them guidance or since we're the fiscal agent do we try to give value to guidance that they request some do need have requests more of our assistance and
096others have been in place and they have their own template and we we don't you know dictate that they have to use our template but some programs we do provide more assistance than others I think I had a motion in a second okay thank you any more discussion on favor any opposed thank you now we go with a step links program their budget yes their budget that was a pretty either bored of the 2019 twenty year is forty one thousand and eleven dollars is a decrease from the prior year budget their program is solely funded through donations how much Burk City Schools does make a donation annually to this program again we have their copy of their budget in their minutes and we're asking for you to approve that as well for us to be
097that fiscal agent thankful the sustainability of your a second thank you miss Carter any discussion all in favor any opposed Laurel regional school budget okay so the final budget we're bringing to you is as Laurel and there's Laurel is a little more complex cos if they have two separate programs within the school so they have a center base and they have center based budget and then they have a non Center base so we have included both of those and what we're asking is for you to you're recommending that you authorize that may be fiscal agent and implement their budget to combine two programs is 5 million thirty three thousand two hundred dollars and 26 cents any questions dr. Nellis decreases this reason for that is you think I've had an enrollment decreases so they've had
098to make adjustments for the non center base I'm not sure because there's two different budgets the non center base some of the regional localities have pulled out of the Knox and her base program so you'll see a significant decrease in that for the center base it's solely that the student enrollment has gone down and they've had to adjust accordingly with me may not be pertinent but do we have any students in the graduation cycle for this year thank you any further discussion is there a motion to approve second dr. Brennan all in favor aye can you posed yeah we're through the budgets the next one is came about because we realized that when we get requests for special presentations that we probably need a process to follow so that we know how to do that
099and so I would like to have a brief conversation brief conversation about how you would like to proceed with this whether you want to send suggestions in to me or you want to send it to a committee whether you want to get a work group together we want to make sure that whatever we do we're fair to everyone that wants to come before the board whether we want us on suggestions have been that we assign one school per month or two schools per quarter or that suggestions have requests need to go through the principal to the superintendent to keep a list of things I just found that we want the suggestions from board members when I spoke with individual board members so we really want to have a process in place prior to doing anything
100so that we can be fair about how we do it miss Carter we haven't recognized the girls track team the winners from the hand Spencer contest poetry contest and there really does need to be some process because I know there are a lot of times where we have programs that teachers do but a lot of them are recognized doing the partners in education gala that we go to in the springtime and then there's so many creative things that are going on 21st century just some of the things you see they're just so just the there's so many if we recognized everyone I had everyone come we'll have longer longer board nails so I don't know what the process would be but I think some of the really amazing well they're all amazing but I don't
101know you have so many good things would be nice to share that we did it just seemed to stop so I kind of miss some of those highlights and you're right there are a lot of great things going on and we don't have time for all of them but it would be nice to have something to showcase exceptional yeah I yeah dr. Coleman whatever we're gonna do I fortunately have a recommendation to solve we'll be looking for but it needs to be linked to Family and Community Engagement in my mind and then in some bodies and of course that speaking beyond my thinking cuz that's all this deepest I've got right now for somebody's you've got nine member seven members of five members it may be that board members just will have the weight of
102recommending somebody and if a board member recommends it then it would be considered everybody would have the opportunity from every school Oh in some school divisions they have their school board rep talk to their other schools like Lincoln middle and Lincoln Elementary and they gain bring information from those schools about special things that are going on in feeder schools that was one way that some things do it others set up a monthly schedule some do what I did on this one that I got a request and I sent it out for board input that gets quite time-consuming so I really just want to make sure that whatever we do from the beginning we are able to sustain it we don't want to get to a meeting where we say this meeting is going to go
103till 10:00 or 10:30 at night and but so we're not going to do a special presentation I want us to be fair and I'm I'm more than happy it takes suggestions and come up with a present a proposal or like I said send it to a committee or what group since we now each of us as school board members are associated with particular schools that those schools through their principal couldn't possibly contact us as board members and that we could bring that to the chair for processing for the agenda and then I think that that we would you know respect wise counsel of the the chair is time allotments would be available based on the overall agenda and if it need be that one particular school or we only have maybe say two presentations we
104can handle those two presentations but if we have six requests then you to come back and say okay you know can you go back to your school and ask would they be willing to make their presentation at the following board meeting brought up the point pass past history and that really was like it's organized by administration not trying to dump on you but in terms of then they took into account you know which schools and you know how much time we go through the principal - dude I don't know how it came through that it was pretty much administration was this was but and that was in response to requests from us hey you know we want to get there's a lot of good stuff going on you know going on so we want to
105tell it there's three months later recognizing a track team or something like that so put more on saying here you go do this - if we could do it all right so what do how about if I take all these suggestions and once Barbara gives them to me and we'll send it out and we can kind of you can give me feedback and let's try to get we'll talk about this in December and our work session briefly we've got one agenda item that we're talking about the volunteer policy but I think we could certainly this is a priority in terms of telling there's a story and the good news and the good work that our faculty and students are are you comfortable with that yes you did have two schools I believe represent every board
106meeting and I think the concern was time that they were taking up too much time so I went in your discussion or whatever you send to Susan include your time factor right and whether or not your preference is we'd love to have folks come and present at a regular meeting where we have business or is it a work session meeting where you can be more engaging and have less and what's your expectation of the presenters are because I will tell you my staff get real excited and I will say to them alright Eppley said it's all time you just get like five to ten minutes which is really thirty when they do it so just consider that when you whenever you send in your responses to it what your preference is and that will help
107us better and I do think we went from two formal meetings to one and the work session we turned it to really use it topics that we want it to really so if we do go to two schools presenting and we'll have to also think about that time I also do not want to add anything more to principals and teachers it takes time to do those things and so I don't I think think about it's a requirement or it's an opportunity right but I don't want I feel like if we say you have to present this month that might not suit right yeah yes miss Bobby and and I you know I kind of see this sort of following our public comment outline that there's a as you mentioned there's a time limit per speaker
108and there's a maximum that per meeting that we would allocate for this and that's where we all have to work together to figure out the best way to accommodate all of that all of the requests to come before the board but I do think if we are the ones it gives us the opportunity to engage with their schools other than you know just attending events and so forth but we can actually brag on the schools that we each get to represent which to me is exciting I'll put this into a format and send it out and wait for you to get back with me except work great superintendents comments sure both personnel Parent Advisory are meeting December 12th so nothing to report there just a quick couple quick updates huge thank you to the IDI
109foundation I believe they put their press release out today that they supported thirty-eight classroom innovation grants I think one of them was a TC Miller was a classroom innovation grant for eighty nine thousand dollars in a grant cycle so definitely huge thank you to the foundation for supporting our staff but also huge thank you to our staff because this is something they do above and beyond what is required of them as educators classroom teachers and so on in the heritage presentation they mentioned the celebration for the growth track team track and field team from last year that the City Council did so I had the opportunity to go to that which was really great and we did have some students come back because I remember meant some of these young ladies have graduated and that's
110part of this challenge but having a season that ends into the end of the school year so we have to get a little bit better about catching them quicker before before they're off to college but I was happy to celebrate with them and on the flip side of that a couple weeks ago I actually was a superstar volunteer at the girls on a Run 5k for little ones who ran and yeah that was very impressive the number of children we had probably close to 160 girls that participated in that 5k run and you know dr. Brenda and I did a 5k run we both looked at Lucques time in 16 minutes I think if you doubled that I still wasn't there yet but you know this good goal is set for us I think some
111of the young ladies that the girls on the run could do that but again thank you to all of our volunteers who were there not only coaching our girls we had adults who were running with the young ladies there were a lot of volunteers who helped hand out medals just a huge effort to put it on but it was worth all the faces just to see the young ladies complete and everybody completed it which was wonderful to do that I had the opportunity a couple weeks ago also to go to the Legacy Museum and celebrate in the aka memorial dedication to Marjorie Hill very well attended for the aka is one of the oldest sororities that was started here and just the opportunities for women that have resulted from that was great if you haven't
112had an opportunity to go see the bench the bench is beautiful and they have a very nice pathway that leads up to the Brett bench with bricks for people who have donated and have been a part of that sorority so is a great celebration I was happy to be part of that thank you to everybody who helped serve on Thanksgiving at our schools some of us were at the vsba so we couldn't get here to do that but I heard that was a lot of fun and wonderful to do that and thanks to our nutrition department they always come up with some great things for our students at desi we had the opportunity during American ed week to go over and read to students and be characters which was really great to do that I
113was made Jemison who is a astronauts ballerina teacher the kids didn't know all that about her so it's great to share that kudos to fo and team for the PI visioning meeting that we had which was pretty powerful and again looking forward to the work and lots lots more not to do that we have with PI very well attended and great ideas so thank you for putting putting that together had a couple other meetings with just community folks I met we went with a kumbaya to talk about some of their programs really interesting things that that we have going on I got to go to the University of Lynchburg to sit in on a discussion about their mentor a teacher new teacher mentor program and how that aligns with the work that we're doing in
114our strategic plan so we're real excited about that and some of the initiatives that are coming from that congratulations to all of our fall sports teams I mean our kids are just doing phenomenal things they just really blow my mind and they study and have high GPAs on top of it too so just real proud of them and you know sometimes I just feel like there's so much I can't get to everything but if you live in Lynchburg you can't say there's nothing to do in Lynchburg because there's plenty for us to do if we just go celebrate our kids and I know dr. Coleman had to get off Copeland had to get off real quick there's we have Scrooge coming up as one of the presentation are today's that are coming up too so
115if you have nothing else to do you can definitely go see that that's coming up but lastly and I save this one for last I'm so proud of this particular student who will be not only attending the Virginia Society for technology in education this weekend but also will be presenting at the conference our stateís is better mr. Kris Parata and that's huge think about how many conventions you've gone to and how we would all love to have a student presenter as one of our presenters so I just want to compliment you and say kudos and of course you got text me let me know how all that goes this is the Sunday that you're gonna presenting and you're doing work on fishing I believe is your topic so you want to give us a quick
116two-minute summary of what you do which research is about the threat of fishing on k-12 education so like as a whole kind of looking at the numbers and seeing where the risk is and looking at I guess we used to combat that and we look forward to getting all the wonderful emails from everybody that's jealous that you are a student and that you're doing this presentation so good luck and again text us and let us know how that goes but we wish you the best thank you all right board comments miss Evans I just really quick to the policy that Sharon and I had the meeting on because we went over it pretty quickly but I just you know we have the comments every week about the community and I just wanted to say how
117happy I was to sit in that meeting and have every person in that meeting say of course we're gonna add the language that covers every person in lynchburg City Schools and I just was very happy about that and just wanted to say that again Thank You mr. Harvey the PI conference and was really excited there was a lot of really good comments and a lot of good feedback from the business community so I was really excited about that and looking forward to the possibilities ahead for partners in education I also wanted to I brought two examples of the products that have come from TC Miller's art class one is a lighthouse which will which also ties in with their STEM program the lighthouse will actually light up and one of the other grades was doing
118a birdhouse so this is an example very creative you'll notice the rooftop garden there's also little cat who resides in this birdhouse so I guess it's guarding to keep keep keep the birds out but really proud of the students and their creativity and I wanted to take the opportunity to showcase that and give a shout out to Miz Lipscomb because she's done an excellent job with with both of these two projects in their art classes also had the opportunity to Tennant to attend a YMCA program that showcase the power Scholars Academy we got some really positive feedback one of the things that's really exciting to me is that they have started to really track that and they have shown three plus months gain in reading and two-and-a-half plus months gain in math and that is
119substantial that is that is really exciting to hear that so each of the students are getting up to 40 additional hours of reading and math during the summer program so that's that's incredible also had the opportunity to attend the Virginia School Board Association conference in Williamsburg with some of my colleagues we had a awesome time there was a lot of great classes that were presented including their very own dr. Edwards probably one of the best attended classes and and we heard lots of positive comments about the class at the end and so we were all really excited and we started get a little protective of air superintendent know as all the other school systems were around but we you know I just wanted to say excellent job and commend you for the work that you
120did the big takeaway that I heard from that conference was we really need to tell the LCS story and all of our success that our students and teachers are having so many times we can hear the the struggles that we might sometimes have the small bumps in the road but we miss telling about those mountaintop experiences and so we really need to do that and lastly I wanted to send a shout out to our school nutrition department as I undertook my school board training I was just totally amazed and I really think that our community needs to know a little bit more about some of the things that our departments do so a couple notes on that the school nutrition department provides breakfast lunch and snack under the federal school lunch program throughout the school
121year at each of our schools they have an operating budget of over five million dollars and most of that is federally funded so there's only about 10% that are local dollars but 90 percent of that comes from federal but they also provide a summer feeding program which many times we can overlook that when we just think about school lunch but there are a lot of different community groups that come into play there we have 20 feeding sites so our staff does such an incredible job in the summer time they serve over twenty to twenty three thousand breakfasts and 35,000 lunch and a typical summer so again hats off to them interesting comment or figure to share you know 62 percent of our students receive free lunch so you know that that that is something that
122our community really needs to work on addressing and that was one of the figures that we shared during our meeting with our area legislators one of the things that Ms Morris mentions is that no student is denied a meal and I think that is just a powerful statement so I wanted to thank her and and her colleagues for the great job that they do next meeting that I have is tomorrow with dr. Edwards at the governor school I just wanted to also had an opportunity to stay for that part of the vsba meeting which was great the high point clearly was doing the 5k with dr. Edwards manraja : was there in spirit next year it'll be this brief idea the opportunity to see that the elephant's graveyard ec glance which was really great and
123Annie junior Dunbar who once again Morgan Cooke was another star in that program but they do our theater program is doing so great at EC glass and Dunbar I'm sure the other schools too I also went to Darrington to participate in Education Week which was great with dr. Edwards and represented Trevor Noah and my own little White Way but it was fun and I got asked back on doing it again this week so I think it was successful was fun to do I want to join miss Evans in congratulating the committee and administration for addressing issues and brought to us so frequently about gender identification and sexual orientation that does great that we passed those and thank you all for your work on that and then lastly one of my nieces of the class was
124able to participate in the project inclusion that dr. Evers has referred to and it was a life-changing event for her she was a very shy quiet young woman who came back saying that was just really an awesome group and the relationship she has with the other students and with the faculty is really sound like was it was phenomenal so think that the staff and the group that worked on that thank you say thanks for sending me to the conference in addition to everything other people said a big takeaway from the earlybird session was how to promote your district by personalizing things you know too often we get boiled down to salaries and steps and scores and numbers and you know and we're talking about actual children kids and so I'm happy that we're revisiting the
125idea of showcasing what our students do and how exceptional they are because they're the reason for all the numbers and they're more than just a test score and it's unfortunate that we get graded on those things because there's all these wonderful other things that okay miss Carter I think it's a great thing that we have a problem a good problem that we have so many things to highlight they were concerned about how to prioritize them that's an awesome thing to have and as people have already talked about dr. Drake Draper's presentation about how public schools are getting such a bad name and rapa when they're really are doing well and they're really progressive and providing excellent education I'm a product of public schools and I've done well I think and also I was able to
126leave there with my conflict of interest completed by the you know by the time allotted and then also just want to but another thing is just say I'd really want to hear more about a gifted program to see that get off and really get going for the middle school doctor knows I would like to acknowledge the Pyrmont had a event at McDonald's and I supported that and purchased some items there to eat to support the school I thought that was very nice I'm mr. Ford here Thanksgiving then a piece because we were in Williamsburg and I do want to thank everyone for the legislative breakfast and thank you madam chair and committee chair and everyone how you saw that that it was a good step in the right direction and I did submit the report
127in writing so I wouldn't I dare read that to you I am thankful to school board member Gary Harvey for helping me to get there and school board member Sharon Carter for having me to get back and we we had a really great time in between and everybody to share and as you read through this I stumbled upon the under item three under learning points the Commonwealth Institute for fiscal analysis and dr. Gupta's not here tonight but for finance for and all of us that's a really good place to look at some comparative pieces around how monies are being spent in and proportionalities of that and what can be done to support and so that's a good thing and I do want to echo once again how outstanding dr. at was was and all of
128that is in writing and then lastly madam chair Debbie Wilde as some of you may or may not be familiar with her but she is a marvelous example of an individual EC glass graduate who loved both high schools who would go in and out of schools for kids and helping people in marvelous ways and she recently died and I certainly honor her memory excellent job on her presentation I figure what's the name of it what was the name of the presentation yes the Unspeakables to make it speakable it was awesome that to put the participation and the insight gained was just wonderful and as mr. Harvey said we really needed to watch it to make sure though she was impeached yes while you all were in Williamsburg having fun I had the privilege of working
129lunch at Bedford Hills it started at 10:30 in the morning and I left at 1:30 and they were still working and I was exhausted I think I cut about 50 pumpkin pies and that was the first thing the kids ate they had dessert first turkey laughs but I really gave me an appreciation for the amount of work and how hard it is and how pleasant the nutrition workers were and with the kids it was it was I would do it again in a heartbeat and I hope to do it at other schools as well I also attended the PI work group and thank you it was it was really a great effort and I felt like some great things are going to come out of it with that I want to remind you that our
130next school board work session is scheduled for December 17th the focus of the discussion will be the LCS volunteer policy and regulations winter break is December 23rd through January the third the next school board meeting will be held on Tuesday January the 14th at 5 p.m. and the board room and the administration building with that we are adjourned [Music]