LCS School Board Meeting: November 6, 2019

001[Music] the November 6 meeting at Village Brick City school board is now called to order please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance the first order of business is the approval of tonight's agenda the school board chair recommend I recommend that the school board approved the agenda for the November 6 2009 team meeting is her motion to approve any discussion all in favor any opposed next order of business is to amend the agenda that we just prepared approved the additional item is that was in addition for the personnel report so I recommend that the school board approved the amended agenda to include the personnel report dr. Gupta is there a second any discussion that now Texas his special presentation part of our meeting and the first item is the Virginia School Board Association Academy Awards and

002I think we have a few people getting but we do we do so I got Nate Smith thank you right here hold on I'm gonna get catch up to myself when I'm losing my voice so I apologize up front but on behalf of Virginia School Boards Association we like to thank them for supporting our strategic plan goal number two specifically objective 2.5 1 which talks about board members implementing high performing school board practices that support positive student outcomes and part of that includes the board members attending training and becoming knowledgeable about things that are important for school systems for students and we have board members who have participated in lots of training the SBA recognizes board members for their service in various ways and they have a recognition program that includes certificate and pens so

003I have the awards here I first award for certificate of recognition goes to mr. dr. Mike Billis congratulations the second one goes to dr. Brennan all right and this one which actually has a pen attached to it which is the I think it's a chi award of achievement because you get pens goes to mr. Carter and next with pen nice pen attached to it that's Morrison and then we have with a pen dr. Sen huh and of course our last but not least never Lise dr. Coleman no oh you have more for your commitment to effective school board governance through your participation so as I said one of our goals for personnel growth development and success is for all of our staff to be trained and we consider our board members to be part of

004our staff because they have an important role in the lives of children so just like our teachers go through professional development we are so happy that you do - and glad to have this on or something thank you thank you all for participating in that training I think we've come better board members because of it the second part of the special presentation voluntary OCR monitoring and school accreditation results dr. Edwards and dr. Coleman yes so we're gonna tag-team this one I'm going to start and then I'm going to invite dr. Coleman up towards the end of this presentation so a couple meetings ago we talked about the 2014 voluntary resolution agreement that Lynchburg City Schools entered with the US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights and at that time there have been some studies

005done between 2009 through 2011 regarding the access and participation of African American students in advanced AP and honors coursework as well as look a look at the disproportionality in exclusionary practices and suspension for African American students since 2014 so the first item that the board has in their packet and I color-coded them for you is a copy of the original letter that the former superintendent received in 2014 which states that the division is entering into this voluntary resolution agreement it's a pretty lengthy letter but it also gives all of the data that was collected over the 2009 to 2011 period from students and staff showing some of the stats in terms of students participation in advanced classes students suspension by school and this was just for African Americans and white students so this is not

006a complete study of special education at yellow just for African American white students and I mean they the white sheet is pretty detailed in the information that it showcases which really set the foundation for we needed to do some more work in lynchburg city schools to increase the number of students who had access and participate in programs as well as reduce the disparities between students who were part of exclusionary practices and suspensions so historically I wanted to just give you that so that you have the information regarding regarding that it is a complete pack so I'm looking at the clerk the whole thing goes together it's complete I get the second page is the letter that I received which is almost five years later in August two thousand nineteen from the Office of Civil Rights

007Department of Education that basically says that they are releasing us from the voluntary resolution that we have done our due diligence and our efforts to increase enrollment look and review assessments examine our exclusionary practices put some policies in place do some training there were a number of things that we were required to do and that the OCR will no longer be monitoring our progress as they have been over the last couple of years so let me be clear that's a great letter that we've been released for monitoring but that does not mean that we have solved all the problems for achievement gap and disparity so I really want to be clear about the difference between what the letter does but we still have work to do in lynchburg City Schools in terms of some of

008the things that we need to do for our students so I wanted to just share that with you so that you also have that information and then I thought it would be important for you to see some of the things that were done and what I'll do is take us back in time to 2013 14 15 16 when some of the study work was done and then when dr. Coleman comes up he'll talk a little bit about current year's accreditation status and some things of where we are in some practices that we have right now so you have a couple different sheets the blue sheet is actually from Idra which is the intercultural Development Research Association one of the first things that we entered into our voluntary agreement was we had to hire a consultant

009to work with Lynchburg City Schools to evaluate our data our practices and help us as we move towards having a better equity and this is one of the agencies there's another agency which we'll get to that did some research the research that they did focused on two area as they describe it one is rigor so that's the academic excellence part of it and the second part is disciplined with rigor rigor was focusing only on the advanced and AP courses and the dual enrollment gov school at the high school advanced courses at the middle school and at our elementary school the go center courses so that was the only area that they focused their study on and again looking at the differences between black students and white students and no other populations or subgroups so what

010I have for you is a the summary and the highlights and I'll go through some of the highlights of what the Idra found and some recommendations that they had for us I will make note that there are references to charts and data and tables and one of the reasons why I did not include all of that is in some cases some of these charts and data and tables talk about one or two students and given the time the break down the school the class it's possible that you could actually identify who the kids are so to protect some of the kids identities I did not photocopy all the charts and data but where we could give large information we did and I thought the summary did a good job of talking about some of that

011which I will go through first on the third page of the blue sheet we're go right to the highlights it talks about high school highlights but I will also point out somewhere in here they talked about the Gulf school but they don't have a section called element or nook of school the Ghost Center but they don't have a section called Elementary so I just wanted to make sure that you're aware of that one of the things that we looked at was ap enrollment in a black student enrollment and AP classes as well as the gap between the number of white students enrolled and the number of black students enrolled so they looked at the data two ways they looked at did the number of black students increase over time and courses and even if that

012increase did the gap between white students and black students decrease so in some cases you have a positive result for both some cases you have an the result for both in some cases you may see one go up and one go down in terms of that but some of the things that are in this highlighted report is there were 53 at the time that they did the study from 2013 to 1753 events and AP courses that they looked at at the high schools both high schools and of those courses more than half 27 of them showed an increase in the number of black students enrolled in those courses so there was a positive trend to having more and more black students enrolled and these AP and advanced courses if you look at the Gulf school

013at the same time from 2013 to 2017 there were no black students enrolled for the first three years of the study and then there was an increase by fourteen percent I guess as you say a few students said so that was another one where we see an increase on the contrary under high school here it is the second bullet from the bottom the enrollment of black students in the Ghost Center over that same time decreased so even though we saw some positive results we did see some results where the enrollment did decrease over time second page or behind that it talks a little bit about the middle school and we do offer some advanced classes in math in the middle school and at this time we had them in reading in the middle school and

014the middle school was quite interesting because you could see trends from the different middle schools Sandusky probably had the smallest gap between black and white students in terms of participation whereas link horn had larger gaps between the white and black students in participation there were some things in which some areas in which we saw the percentages climb significantly and that's that's not the positive part of this when we're talking about the gaps between white student participation and black student participation what's not in here is any of the discussion points that might say why and if you know anything about high school scheduling sometimes a course will decrease enrollment because a new course is offered at the same period and students want to go to that so I'm just giving you raw data without the benefit

015of the conversations to look back in time to see if there were other factors that plead into any of that but I did want to kind of go a little bit more in detail that's not in here and give you a little perspective of what I saw over that three year period from 2013 to 2017 when I look just at the high school both high schools during that time and we looked at all of the advanced courses what I saw was lower enrollments in ninth grade and then as the study continued with tenth grade you see more black students enroll and then an 11th grade particularly at both high schools actually you'll see all of the courses have an increase in black student enrollment and that continues over over 12 grade which really says when

016students entered the school at that point they may not have been taking advanced coursework but as they travel from tenth grade to 11th grade or at least in those grade levels more and more students had access to that that particular coursework and there were different trends I couldn't even identify whether or not it was math or always history it varied from course grade level and building so I can't say for sure that black students had a tendency that loved the history courses more than a math courses it really was all over the place in terms of where you saw the increases and decreases in student enrollment and again anybody who's worked in a high school some of that has to do with also the instructor of the course and the culture and climate that's created

017at that time and that information I don't have here the Ghost Center again just talking a little bit about that one that we're seeing that the number of black students has declined over time at least during this time period and I do recall that we actually saw a decrease last year to this year and part of the reason I do know that when we talked with some of the families is the kids were enjoying the programs at their base school that they didn't want to leave their base school to go to the to the ghost center I don't know what that data is for this time period back here so that's a little bit on the rigor part of it the second part was discipline and suspensions and exclusionary practices and reportable and non-reportable offenses

018so reportable offenses would be those that we have to report to the police department and not reportable would be a disrespect just being disorderly in the classroom those kinds of things so on the next sheet which is orange take you to the orange sheet and this one was done by mid-atlantic equity consortium who worked with the division and they looked at the number of referrals for across schools across grade levels to see what kinds of trends particularly there was a lot of work done in the elementary schools where the populations are different and what they were looking for is if you know the populations of black students is 49% in a school does a population of suspensions or exclusionary practices represent 49 percent or is it more or higher and in most of the schools

019with the exception of I think bass elementary school there was a disparity in the number of practices number of exclusionary practices in both the reportable and the non-reportable offenses that you would see and that's even higher at the middle and high school level so over that period for that three-year period what we saw are still disparities between now you saw some decreases and again it's all over the place we're in some grade levels you'll see there's a decrease over over time and some of the offenses and what's not in here is the data that maps to what are these actual offenses I have a conglomerate list but not specifically saying that kids are committing this offense more than other offenses so that was the suspension data along with that on the yellow sheet whenever you

020have exclusionary practices one of the things that the consultants recommended is a lot of training for staff administrators and everybody involved and this is an area again where I think we've shown over this time period and continue the most amount of progress it was at this time that we had some of those strategies you may remember PBIS you know positive behavior in schools we have VT s s which is Virginia tiered system of supports now put in place annually we do a training administrators with the SROs in the building so this one really focused on cultural competency and all of the skill sets where you have both administrators and both staff being trained this also was the introduction to instructional coaches who worked in the classrooms with teachers there was some work done on courageous

021leadership so there is a lot that occurred over that time period when the Mac was actually doing their evaluation and much of that work still continues today one of the biggest challenges that we face as a division is even when you train folks if you have turnover you have to Train folks again so some of these practices that might have been put in place if they had not been sustained with training year after year you might look around and say wow the people who are here now aren't the people who were here in 2013-14 and we may need to train again and that's something that my staff has talked about in terms of how do we have ongoing regular training of things that we feel like are important each and every year for all staff

022so that's something that we looked at as well so again this is a lot of information very detailed information that I wanted to kind of set the stage for where we are now because remember this is from 2013 to 2017 I arrived in actually this was they gave me this report a month after I arrived in 2018 in May of 2018 and since then we've done some things at the time when this was first started I think we had three schools accredited and now we're up to 13 schools accredited so there's been some significant dress that's made but there's also still some room for some continued growth and some additional strategies that we need to make in terms of moving the needle forward so I'm going to go through all the documents first and before

023I get dr. Coleman up to see if there's any questions about anything I guess I could wait for dr. Coleman to present some of the information that I would be sharing this evening of course this has been out on the website and been public for a little while but we really haven't had an opportunity to present it to the board and and to be able to have an opportunity to discuss it and wanted to try to you know as we move forward I know that the board has been receiving some kind of communications and other pieces of information we're we're tying things jars our improvement plan and really looking at our strategic plan and kind of how that ties into the planes that we're doing with the schools to get the the assistant stores children

024and that's kind of how I'm gonna approach this a little bit so I have some general overview and then gave everyone a handout where we will kind of walk that through how that gets to a school and gets to kids so to start with our strategic planner our goal is for all schools to be basically in a nutshell to be accredited and then for us to be close our achievement gaps so that's where our number-one priority is with the strategic plan if you look at as we move forward this year we've moved up to 13 schools out of the 16 so that's you can see the trend is for us to to keep improving in that situation so we're quite happy with that with moving forward the listing of the schools that have made that

025full accreditation mark is there and we've noticed some some changes this year with with heritage making it and then also with the Lincoln Elementary I believe I've switched over so that's that's wonderful and a lot of great improvement there keep in mind also with thereby making accreditation you're not only meeting it with the just the overall score and all of your content areas you're also making significant progress with your gap groups as well so that's a that's a very positive sign of course we do have three schools that were working with and meeting with with those folks and and looking at school improvement plans and in making our plans for moving forward with Mrs Payne with Linc horn and with Sandusky was that one of the schools with the team day working on things so

026a lot of great work going on there and and very very confident with the strategies that they're putting in place if we're looking at specifically with scores I gave you just the overalls and then with the rating that goes with them I did indicate that they always report the highest score possible so if it doesn't have an asterisk I did want to note that that's a three-year average it doesn't mean that that average is very much higher than then then the current year it could be a point you know and they would report it that way but but they do take that into consideration that they always look at that and and understand that that test scores do fluctuate year to year that and that's very normal you know for schools to have that but

027um you know we've got some some great strides with with our schools you know in moving forward but are considering what we need to do with that and then we also have the the scores for the middle schools are there and we see the areas where we need to work we're considered concerned obviously with the the overall and with schools with scores with some of our gap groups and some of our subgroups in those places so that's some a large part of our work right now that we're doing to address those needs with our high schools they consider the same scores that we're looking at for the lower schools but also we have to consider with the graduation completion index and also the dropout rate so those things also need to be in place for

028schools to be accredited and we do have those with them with both schools so we're quite quite pleased with that and you know in in these also you do have to consider we do have the writing test factored in as well as the reading test scores in those one thing that does give us concern and that we're working with um you know VPSs and with our coaches that are in place also is the chronic absenteeism you know and we all know it's in education it's difficult to work with children and help them improve if absenteeism is an issue because if they're not at school it's difficult to do that so really you know to address that we're having things in place now to encourage kids to come to school but also working with the different

029groups that we have with BTSs and with the coaching to look at identifying kids early that may be you're having an issue and what supports do we need to put in place to help them be more successful coming to school or whether there's things that are hindering them from doing that so that's that's always important and we have to factor that in I'll save questions for the very end but the in front of you you also have a packet I'd like to kind of take you through you know now we have all this information we've gotten it back and in lots of reports what do we do with it so I kind of gave you the cover sheets the summary of what I just did that has everything kind of in a nutshell but in

030looking at that you know we've got the the initial goal one which is under the strategic plan and then I I followed it through with the second page with what does that look like when we're going into a school improvement plan so they're looking at closing the achievement gap in reading by reducing the failure rate of black students by 10% one of the things that we look at is if we're always trying to close our achievement gap every year and we're taking that in increments if you continue to do that you're close to the achievement gap rather than looking at an overall score let's take it in bytes so if if you meet that goal each year not only will you close the achievement gap to the school be fully accredited so that's always where

031we want to go that that makes that category green with some practices that are in place working with some consultants on the literacy plan Ward walls some leveled instruction that's happening core content areas and then participating with the lab schools which are working with the consultants on trying to address how we teach reading in the division some of the things that I'll that we're concerned with really is getting into the heads of how kids think about reading what do you think about why you're reading the things that affect comprehension working with those who you also follow through there will be essential actions not only for you know just did the areas of the most concern but things that that Bobby they bother you that you think maybe or maybe we're okay at the moment but

032we're starting to slide a little bit so we want to keep an eye on those and we're really looking at the reading in the math for the weekly and the PLC meetings our teachers are meeting in this building on a weekly basis looking at where kids are what do we teach and how are we teaching it what strategies are we using and you know they've got data walls up in the building with with the kids up and how are we moving and what do they need and what do we do next and having very rich conversations about that and then finally to the teachers to apply the strategies from book studies and then other PD that's being presented some of the things I've worked with with my team is really to help them to develop

033those strategies and we're also working on ways that we can monitor so that we've got things where we've adjusted like say maybe a principals walkthrough form so that it captures how often we're seeing things what we're seeing in the room do we need to go back and help people train more when we find that we've got an area that's not what we're hoping there's a couple of samples in here also the data wall this is one that's just beginning a lot of our data walls and our going digital I took the kids names off of it so you just kind of got the scores reported but they've got the basic reading levels that follows through to kind of where we think students fall all the X's that are on the the red yellow and green

034chart where students and where they fell with that particular assessment it gets even deeper where we go into the next chart that's red yellow and green that has a particular skill that they were learning in this case it happened to be a math class and who has it who doesn't and then following that they you know you go into a lesson plan where you've got small groups and where the teachers looked at those skills and looked at the things and and levelled that so really trying to figure out exactly what students need and then following that all the way through and making the changes in the classroom to ensure that kids have what they need to be successful so anyway that's really what I wanted to show was kind of how we take data really

035from even the division level and then bring it down to the point that it makes the difference in the lives of children some libraries daily visits it's based on when a student is deemed chronically absent if they miss 10% or more of the school year so that's 18 days of school and it doesn't take into account excused absences or not you know whether a child's ill or if they're absent from school for any reason you're deemed chronically absent so it's the number of kids that go above the 18 day mark so the percent reflects the percent of the school right now on the accreditation report the sciences were for the lack of world marginal 73 72 percent right the plan I see is mostly related to English right so do you have a similar plan

036to uplift because that's where we can fall off the cliff while good possibly so what is the plan for Sciences well enforce that area certainly the the plan for doing that is we're currently conducting academic reviews we've just done one at one of the schools and theirs was related to science so we're really looking at that looking at how we're planning our lessons what's being included is that at the proper level of rigor what do our assessments look like and how are we analyzing our data from that we've also had a group of folks working over the summer and then moving forward as well we teach our elementary schools and science really out of kits that are kind of hands-on type experiences all those have been updated and we've looked at our areas where were

037weak and you know refurbished those and and done we've got one of my staff that's doing training with teachers right now on how things have changed and the things we need to do for improvement so we're really looking at you know the changes that we need to make to make that happen as well all the school improvement plans that they're dipping will have or being added to to add science to those areas if it's required remember when we talked about the academic reviews that we did last year at the Leif Perry Mountain link horn we talked about the science specialist that we have we have it and Barry who is a science specialist who works directly with teachers and one of the things that we noticed in the science classroom at the elementary level is

038while they have the kits in the inquiry if the teacher is setting it up as a demonstration lesson it has a different effect than if kids are experiencing it at an inquiry level and shifting that practice to let the kids actually experiment with the hands-on material make predictions experience a little bit of failure make more predictions so and does a great job of working with staff to try to transition that at the elementary level as well what I was getting to was using technology have you talked about in finance committee meeting incorporating like cadabra's you know they have interactive cadaverous now so more hands-on sciences are we heading in that direction for our kids yeah we definitely are and we're definitely taking advantage of the online variety that's there I see that often and lesson

039plans where we're looking at their experiments and things you can do when you can't always have access to the other things there's ways of doing that that's still using the same thought process you're still using inquiry and you know you're being able to participate in a setting that's more digital for that so that's that's one of the things that I see I'm seeing more and more often now when I'm examining lesson plans the fact thank you madam chair I'm very appreciative of the way in which this has been presented to us and the resolution agreement voluntary agreement I can see that my concern is as has already been able to stated dr. Harris and dr. Coleman that we realize that our work continues and so what I am trying to get a hold of through

040all of these documents is what is our specific action plan I see on one document get reading or something down about 10% but as the teachers and the staff I knew since we started you all anew some of us have been around for a while and what what is this specific plan and what is it going to look like to make all of these factors work the accountability now that the agreement is lifted what does that look like in terms and how does the boy tour how does the community really begin to tackle this because we've established that this is as much a community dilemma as it is in our schools and so compliments are the fine work of all of the documents then sitting around this table now for six years almost what is

041the action plan of accountability to address these weaknesses and to actually move us forward and you have so many moving pieces that's real you've trained a staff they're not here now how do you keep that going and then how do you deal with every student so that they can have any excellent educational experience to the degree that they need it whether they're black white Asian Latino Native American Pacific Islander whomever they may be what is that plan look like you can do that you can fill in the details of it so um thank you for acknowledging the ban has been lifted but the work didn't go away so I just need to be clear that yes you know the the Office of Civil Rights will no longer require us to send them paper will no

042longer monitor us but we are in self monitoring and I think one of the things that we did do in putting together our own strategic plan that focuses on student growth development and success for all and it actually calls out marginalized populations and subgroups that have not been performing is to make sure that the work continues so the first step is setting the tone and the expectation that comes from me I set the tone and expectation that that is what we want for all kids that we want to make sure that kids have access and I've said this before access is not good enough if you don't have a support system for for success access and success are two different things so I can let you take all of the courses and I think in

043some of these reports we'll see where there was access but we still saw where there was a decrease so how do I have that access but also provide that support either on the front and or while students are experiencing it is a plan that you need to be purposeful about doing that that comes from the staff working with the kids staff has to be consistent because like you said if I mean if I'm trained in this and then I'm no longer here and someone else takes my place so one of the things that we talked about in our professional development plan is what are those and you'll see it in this in this strategic plan is what are the must-haves what are the things that no matter when you started working at LCS this is

044something that you absolutely have to have not just oh you missed it in August and we didn't do it or two years ago we did that you know we are developing a list of must must have one of them is the equity habits um in terms of that along with some good practical strategies that are age-appropriate for kids and setting the expectation that their must-haves they're not optional they're not you know you know they they don't just the veterans it's everybody the new folks and so on and so forth and also a plan of support in terms of what we do with that one of my favorite scenes is you can't fix what you don't first acknowledge so putting this out here in the very color-coded documents is a first step of hey this is

045what we look like you know this is a reflection in the past of what we look like and now also looking how how different are we now you know in 2019 what does our Gulf school enrollment look like what which is something that we're gonna work on what does our ghosts in our enrollment look like have we closed the gaps and the gaps are kind of difficult and this is a hard one because if I want more kids to take AP psych I want more kids to take AP psych if more black kids take AP psych great but if more white kids also take AP psych I haven't closed the gap but I have more children taking AP psych or AP History so I have to be careful about how I look at data and

046report that data yes what he's heading is I know you have the steps lined out is there a timeline step two three four so and that would incorporate that plan that's what you're asking so so the the the so called promise plan which was the language I believe at that time has collapsed itself into the comprehensive strategic plan and that is going to have an opportunity for full accountability around these particular matters that we've been monitoring on an ongoing basis yes so the for those of you don't know the promise plan was the action plan that was put in place after the first letter in 2014 of the work and role but again that was limited to black students white students just in advanced coursework and then the discipline data as well so this comprehensive

047strategic plan incorporates some of that and more and the time I'm pieces and metal chair will not against the timeline piece it's in the strategic plan and and that'll be pulled out from time to time for our review yeah yes you will you'll see thank you quick question first of all I think doctor thank you so much for presenting this information and reviewing all that data that was a lot to put together and I think rehearing what you have said other people have said the gist of the OCR lifting their ban is the fact that they felt that Lynchburg City Schools was doing what they needed to do to address the issue and we need to continue to do that and they mentioned in there a number of items bringing in consultants doing different programs

048which they really highlighted is that's what they want does he happen so number one Lynchburg C schools has done a lot over the last five years to addressed these issues and that's one of the reasons that the ban has been lifted because they know we're on the right track and I'm sure just have you said that's going to continue as far as the the school accreditation results I know that dr. Coleman said as much when I say this again that Lynchburg City Schools has gone from having three schools accredited to 13 schools accredited in five years and for the community and for our other it supporters and literacy schools we wonder whether to know that because that's a huge accomplishment by our staff and by our teachers it's a huge thing to have done and

049a special shout out on this occasion to mrs. Leah gray and at Lincoln Middle School who had been accredited in five years and they were the one that got created this year so it's been a huge help huge amount of work usually in the past we've sat around this table gnashing our teeth and wring your hand but this is really great results I don't think we're on the right track so having said those things that have one question dr. Cohen which is that when we look at the chart for elementary schools when you look at our s pain which was accredited with conditions their numbers as far as their their results were pretty good 80% 83% 79% right I know it's a more complicated definition now but can you help us with that as far

050as why were they not accredited and what with the where we go from there with RSP why they missed accreditation because of the performance of their subgroups so they missed because of performance of if you have more than two subgroups in the red category then you miss accreditation because of that and I believe there's was because the black can economic and economically disadvantaged I'd have to double check that but I remember there was a there read in English okay so we're doing that's what working with them and have an academic review plan coming up in less than a week right there to work on those areas so even though you pass with the overall scores as you look into the different groups that's where you can get right have to be doing as hard your

051accreditation goes right you have to have it and that's that's one of the things we talked about what they're considering considering that now with all the subgroups that to make it you have to make it across the board great thank you very much thank you their presentation can I just add one thing to that when you said it I thought about it when you said the ban has been lifted by the OCR and I see some folks out here and actually on the agenda tonight you're approving the 20 members of the equity task force we have our own internal accountability system so those of you have been to an equity task force meeting you know that they are probably tougher on us then the OCR is but also doing the great work to make sure

052that we don't slip and that we do keep the focus on all children as our primary focus equity task force I believe is meeting next week and one of the things that we'd like to do with them because this is the probably the first time that they're actually hearing anything on closure regarding some of the things that many of them have been around for a while so they know this stuff better than I do is to share this information them in a little bit more detail and to work with them as we continue to try to close those gaps and also increase the number of students participating in programs and reduce exclusionary practice of disparities I did want to say that I misspoke it was the subgroup for RS Payne was black students and students

053with disabilities they can pull the report and look the slide that had accredited schools they're worse s dot F dot I besides some of the schools and what does that stand for both for innovation okay um the other thing is also with making some of the changes that the OCR talks about that we want to do is sometimes it's also changing the teachers perspective on some of the students that come to the class these counselors can refer and the students can try but a child knows whether or not they're wanted and some teachers are bold enough to say what are you doing here or why were you here and even to the point of you know talking with the counselors as to well we don't know why you're here anyway so hopefully that's being addressed

054and the other one is I've always had concerns with the non-reportable referrals and what are the key explain what those are so so those are things that would be like in a classroom that the things that wouldn't go to the police so I'm disrespectful you know and and I won't listen I won't sit down and you have to actually send me to the principal's office or write a referral for me but it's not a referral that's being reported it's not a fight it's not any it's not drugs or weapons or anything like that those kinds of things are the things that were safe those are the kind that I see are so subjective and I always wanted to know we need to what is or like you're being the disrespectful one it's the one that

055really I have some concerns with sometimes the other one is the absenteeism how much does that weigh now in this new configuration of accreditation cuts it's high and it seems like now what I hear this with some of the students with that have major health problems and what I'm hearing you say is the absence as an absence whether it's excused or not right so well what we're trying to do we're working with our students so there's absenteeism for the purpose of the reporting the accreditation and what we have to do and that's where accident is absent then there's absenteeism but we don't want you to fall behind we still want to make sure kids have access to the work that they miss the support that they may need in that part is in our control

056so numerically we may not be able to do too much in terms of fitting in the state formula but our ultimate goal a student success so if I have a student let's say I have a student with Lyme disease in and out my ultimate goal is to make sure that that student is successful Wow in and out which we definitely can do you saw our campaign on don't sleep on school the other thing is trying to discourage you know vacations and just missing school during the school year as much as possible because the more kids are here and the more that they're engaged the higher the probability that they will be successful thank you excuse me so that I would not have lied a couple of seconds ago saying I wasn't gonna say anything else

057but I just want to say this briefly I'm very proud of the staff we have now in the admin level and I just want to say this is hard stuff and it's very delicate and it's very sensitive I just want to encourage all of us in the LCS family to not I would take anything personal in relationship to taking it personal but that we're doing this for the kids and all of us are giving our very best that we can and if we remember that always that we're doing it for the kids and just take a deep breath if something that's been asked and may appear to be challenging your area that it's gonna be alright because we're doing this for the kids that will make our future what we want it to be I

058know that after we spent some time looking at it there may be some additional questions submit those to Crystal and she will do it she did with the other questions which it's a good system thank you this now moves us to public comment section of a meeting and we have quite a few in accordance with policy be DDH public participation the school board welcomes requests and comments as established in 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 centers and should not use profanity or vulgar language gestures make comments about a public official or an employee that are not related to

059his or her official duties engage in behavior that disrupts the meeting or intimidates others or address the school board on issues that do not concern the services policy role in our responsibility of the school board individual speakers shall limit their comments to three minutes a speaker representing group shall limit his comments to 5-minutes the representative shall identify the group at the beginning of his or her presentation a group may have no more than one spokesperson the total allotted time for public comments at school board meetings it's 30 minutes public comments are reserved for the public to provide import input excuse me the board does not respond to comments answer questions or otherwise engage in discussion at this time the first speaker is Ken Berger mrs. Morrison chair dr. Coleman vice chair members of the school

060board dr. Edwards superintendent I thank you for your service your dedication to the children of this community and I thank you for allowing me to speak to you this evening I am Ken Berger I'm an ordained minister with the Christian Church disciples of Christ and retired as the executive director of independent living at the summit a few years ago you may already know that I do not reside in the city of Lynchburg but I worked in the city of Lynchburg until my retirement and I continue to worship I continue to shop I continue to dine I continue to volunteer I continue to socialize in Lynchburg and call Lynchburg my circle I wish to encourage you to continue what I've been observing so far this evening you have exhibited a dedication to continuous improvement always taking

061the next step holding each other accountable and moving yourselves forward for the good of your students this evening my focus is on the safety of those who identify themselves as members of the lgbtq+ community I understand that your written policies regarding discrimination based on gender identification and sexual orientation may not completely include protection for these students we already know that LGBTQ youth are twice as likely as their peers to have been physically assaulted and according to the results of a survey of the Human Rights Campaign 92% of LGBTQ students say they hear negative messages about being LGBTQ their top source for those comments includes their school my parents enrolled me when I in first grade when I was five and a half I never have figured out if that's because they've wanted me out of

062the house or they thought I was smart enough or maybe some balance in there but that made me the youngest in my class and often the smallest and thank God only occasionally the result of some bullying I remember one day after school when my friends followed me and they surrounded me when the older and larger student came to me and they said you'll have to take us all on if he wants to get to Ken they protected me and the bullying stopped I do not know what it is like to be a member of the LGBTQ community but I do know what it is like to be physically mentally and emotionally assaulted it falls I believe upon your responsibility to do everything in your power to protect the safety of all of the members of

063the Lynchburg City School community especially the students at such vulnerable ages it's my understanding that the Virginia school board currently has an anti-bullying campaign I trust you support that I also trust that you will take every operative provision to protect the safety of every student I thank you for your time I thank you for your attention and I thank you for your dedication [Applause] our next speaker is BB shavers speaking for the group down to dust program estoppel nation chaplain a stood on the dust program is a for an after-school program in James crossing realizing that in this first poverty level 24.8% that's higher than the national average thirteen point nine percent and that James cross inherits an even higher concentration of poverty Dodger dust provides the people skills and resources to change the mindset

064and so change that lifestyle to move out of poverty the program runs east each school day from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. 55 to 70 children a day now infected impacted before and after school along with outreach to adults during the school time the program provides food and hygiene training so children have the foundation to go with confidence and without shame into the school day kurta and poplin character and positive living habits are taught and modeled daily by staff volunteers and two women involving the children and team sports which was able to raise $1,800 for 12 kids to be cheerleaders and football players are our eyes paint dawn-to-dusk seeks to instill the mindset of a lifelong learner to homework help their activities to engage and inspire interest in math reading science and history current events

065are discussed and education provided on how to engage in the community in positive ways because no more dr. : realizing that lasting impact and the child's life in duels only if reinforced at home dawn to dusk models and teaches adults the same character and positive living habits the children learn through gt2 BDD and job skill related sources life skills and certifications since the program has been running a level of respect for self and others in developing children can go to school without the field being bully due to clothes or housing they are less likely to act out they go to school have a head west the Lynchburg City Police Department has also noticed that 18% decreased and the crime rate in James cross community that really makes a difference we would like to continue this

066impactful program are seeking support for suppliers equipment and overhead but you consider partnering with us to change the mindset that's a change of lifestyle you have any questions or would like to know specifically these projects feel free to call me mr. Beatty save 202 8 9 3 1950 sublimation Darla Duff program and after-school program is part of the all people's ministry which is an exempt organization described under Section 501 C 3 one of the things we have been able to do with our program is he was talking about - and seeing kids being like your Sandusky middle school just so having this more than one things we do with this program any kid that's in James Cross all throughout the city for that matter if you and James crossing if you missed the bus you

067can call mr. beebe I'll come pick you up if you just open up and have four five different kids inside your home just you got to get ready to go to school and just so happen one day like this morning one day and had a fence so I had to make sure two other kids get to school and come back and get the third because we made sure each one of these kids just Syngenta's cross training school is a better chance that they have our opportunity to be more successful therefore we had an opportunity Department with central health mr. Tim skubick school mr. Tim school makers it's a great guy he gave us the opportunity with the dog Duff program to go to him and say hey listen what I noticed in the last several

068years of working inside the mess we're sitting with these kids is that most of the challenges you have to the kids in school it's lack of food most of the kids did you go to school of date the ones that did we eat properly if you go to school they're normally monsters ain't class their first and already ready to say hey that's fun the ones that don't for the last few years before we start this program was the wasps that normally show up at her knees elementary at Sandusky at these schools just like mine instead of these kids being first in class and say hey I want to learn today they're still in the cafeteria so now when they come to class late guess what Manning lack now the teachers king's teachers can't do their

069job and they are interrupting class for one thing this program had a chance to do the last three years it's curved that we have been all the way down to building positive relationship with bus drops because we understand it's not sick dr. elves always say the first contact with any kid at Mashburn city schools through the bus routes we are interested over this community there whether yeah - two or three bus drivers that all most fierceful a life coming into these communities why because they didn't have a respect that occurs do this program engagement of us working together now we got these same bus drivers coming to the same clients are the ones giving the bus drivers of the snacks so you got the same price that was fight in two years ago now coming

070back giving hey we love you mister brush around whacker you're getting our kids to schools in the father's way now this program is offered to everybody you're working with Danville you're working with Pittsburgh until severe in other places but I'm an EC glass crash this works it is my home this is the most important thing these kids out here like you stairs think about the kids these here kids are more important to me anywhere else in the nation and I will greatly appreciate if we can sit there have a positive cops conversation to make this continue to work inside our school system thank you guys katelyn Lloyd good evening my name is Caitlin Lloyd and I am a second year student at the University of Lynchburg I'm currently working towards my bachelor's degree in sociology

071with a minor in gender studies and I am also a member of the LGBTQ community I am here today to propose adding sexual orientation and gender identity to your non-discrimination policies to begin I think it is necessary to revise the Lynchburg City Schools website so that policies are consistent across the board when searching for pre-existing non-discrimination policies it was difficult to navigate the site and find the information I needed for this presentation so I think fixing this issue will not only help faculty staff and parents but also the students to whom the policies apply what I did find however was that policy AC states that the Lynchburg City School Board is committed to non-discrimination with regard to sex gender or any other characteristic protected by law similar statements are found in policy jbz but in

072the state of Virginia there are no explicit laws protecting against discrimination upon based upon sexual orientation or gender identity I am here to assure you that there is a great need for such protections studies have shown that students perform better academically if they feel comfortable at school this means arriving everyday without the fear of being harassed or bullied because of who they are they must know that their schools will protect them from harm middle and high school students in the LGBTQ community especially are at a greater risk than their header heterosexual and cisgender peers for suicidal ideation and suicide attempts as well as higher absences from school if they face discrimination based upon being LGBTQ all students no matter what their background maybe have a right to a dignified and safe educational experience they have

073a right to not be afraid to go to school and to have policies in place that can help prevent them feeling that way after all for many students school may be the only place they feel they have value or safety having policies in place to prevent discrimination based upon sexual orientation and gender identity directly tell students that their schools care about their well-being and their education which can lead to better mental health and higher academic performance overall adolescents is an awkward and difficult enough time without discrimination standing in the way I know you care about your students or you wouldn't be here trying to help them in any way you could all I ask is that you consider this consistency in policy and addition of sexual orientation and gender identity for the betterment of your

074school's your students and your community thank you [Applause] Andrew Montgomery thank you very much evening my name is Andrew Montgomery I'm a graduate of Heritage High School I'm a local artist I have a daughter in third grade at Bedford Hills Elementary School I've been active as a school reader and a participant in the watchdog's program since she's been there in the last year and a half this year I'd made some more plans before schools started participating more programs really enjoy it school needs dads now however I'm no longer allowed to participate in any of these volunteer programs I have a 20 year old nonviolent felony that had I've been told been missed in the past by background checks apparently I was never allowed to volunteer in the school system and a new background check company

075has been a more thorough job of finding which was in the past supposed to have been found I am not alone I know this I've spoken to the deputy superintendent enough to know there are other parents in my position how many I don't know the school system is in need of active male role models in the past year and a half I have been in the school over 40 times in a volunteer position there are constant emails and letters that come home begging for more parents especially fathers to be involved not only are you keeping a number of capable and willing parents out of the schools now you have removed parents that have been active and made an impact already parents that now have to explain to their children and their school administrators why they

076are no longer allowed to participate in these volunteer programs my children and my teachers do not need to know about my criminal history it is in the past I don't have an answer as to what should change it is necessary to draw a line as to who we allow in our schools let's gather all felons under the same umbrella of treatment it seems unnecessary something needs to change to allow us to either participate for the first time in our schools or to return to our schools thanks very much and I appreciate your time [Applause] Carl Potter did I say that right first I want thank you all for having opportunities come before the board my name is a car part of my employee the Lynchburg City School to dr. L within school board I said

077good evening Mike I got three concerns for the board members today tonight is for me personally I'm a delivery driver for food from school that don't prepare food and so my concern there for the summer program that they have were from around the city I'm a 12-month employee but when I went to school in at the physical year I have to get off my delivery truck and go on the grounds crew to prepare you know the grounds and everything and the people that's on 10-month contract they take my job I think and they do they are they do that job for ten weeks before I'll be off the truck and base my concern is that when they take me off the truck and they put that team month employee on the truck they pay them

078on top of the scale what a delivery driver and groundsman located so I asked the question why can't I continue to drive delivery truck because basically I'm doing the same job but the truck that I have it's like you know I take care of it wash it do everything you can to keep it nice and neat appearance for the school but when they get in all they do a drive don't check the oil do anything but the main concern is why can't I continue to drive the truck but this had been addressed with dr. Edwards and some old school board member but I'm not satisfied with the answer that's why I'm here tonight to a vocal my personal opinion on that because if I'm a twelve money Pro II and they're ten my employee and

079I mean they got the same right to become a toilet where money employee also so why should they take my job away from me and created for someone else because their own team and pay them a higher salary than what I make and I go to all the schools in the city of Lynchburg and I'm a professional a driver I got my license EDL the guy that took my place this past summer I had to show him how to operate the truck that I Drive for the entire school year and so that's my that's that's the first concern it's the pay scale why they take me off my truck and get something paid they're more in the second arm concern I work for the ground crew I'm representing them all so tonight I'm thinking and

080I'm up here because those ground crew guys they're on the same pace scale that the delivery driver phone and y'all can look around the community for the Lynchburg City Schools you see if what we have to do you remember that storm that came through here real bad we had to come in chill cut wood I'm so grass I do everything you imagine you can do but uh but they want me to tell it to tonight that the responsibility given to them we had to work in our heat a 90 degree plus weather then the cold condition coming up pushes snow shoveling snow then living tree fall down if one at school called us we have to be there to cut the tree up move it you know you know you know expedite minor in the

081last one concern is I put in a job I shared it with dr. Evans I put in for a job a transfer of where you want okay if we want to call it the job was posted and they get the guy they left gave his two-week notice and the job was taken off that well and the guy came back to the same job without anybody to feel like you know there are the resumes to take that job and I don't think that's right because I know how things work in politics but it's a proper way to do everything because that was not a proper way they done that job cause I put in for the job I should should went at least in 22 processor interviewing if we didn't qualify then brought that guy back

082into that job but last but not least I thank you all for listening to me but the guys from the ground crew none of them could be here tonight but didn't want me to speak for them because y'all you all look at their classification of the pace schedule on there and see what we follow we follow not at the high tier with the experience and knowledge that we do have to operate all these type of equipment in the Lynchburg since school maintenance partment y'all haven't seen many people come down here to this build we have moved furniture move all kitchen appliances we have do it all but I think we should be compensated for a wage adjustment because if you look at that tier we should be if we qualified it can do the job

083we should be able to be at the top of that tier with no problem nor question acts but right now I turn them back over to the board and board y'all take real consideration of looking at their job adjustment again because so we have fine qualified guys out on the ground crew delivery drivers and so with my personal thought I think y'all should you know give us a a wager adjustment accordingly to our job responsibilities and I thank you for your time [Applause] so good evening once again to each of you and let me start as always by thanking you for your service to the students and the staff of Lynchburg City Schools as well as the Greater Lynchburg community I am Lynchburg education president Carl Luce and when I addressed this group in September

084about student discipline in Lynchburg city schools it seemed to have surprised a few people some people heard me more than others some people quite frankly believed me more than others and then a highly publicized incident took place at EC glass there are those who have stated publicly that these events were vastly overblown and those people may well be right maybe it was overblown but it wasn't surprising how could it be when a month earlier I a teacher with more than 25 years of experience in this division working with this staff working with these kids my kids working in this community stood right here and told you what was going on maybe some data will help let's talk about those tier 1 and tier 2 interventions we hear so much about I have a pack of

085information with me today 17 pages of data it discusses the behaviors teachers have had to deal with defiance aggression throwing objects taunting peers destroying property hitting a teacher multiple times hitting another student multiple times throwing objects at a teacher standing on desks flipping over chairs attempting to run out of the building telling staff to shut up telling staff they're stupid and refusal to go to class that talks about the behavior support plan behavior statements planning support sheets functions of behaviors logs tracking behavior by 15-minute blocks of time quiet time interventions chill zone interventions multiple parent meetings and five referrals to the office does it surprise you that your students behave this way would it surprise you that all of this occurred in the first 20 days of the school year would it surprise you that

086all of this the data came from just one teacher would it surprise you that all of this data is about one student would it surprise you that that one student is in kindergarten how many interventions and how much paperwork as this teacher had to compile on her class as a whole how many hours as she had to devote to behavior that she could use to plan to grade or to rest how many times has this teacher been hit punched or scratched this year would it surprise you that she's not alone there are stories like this in every building at every site across the division that's happening in pre-k is happening in high school that's happening on the buses and it's happening in the cafeterias that's happening in the gyms and it's happening in the hallways

087would it surprise you to know that nearly all of the teachers in one department at one of your high schools have already begun looking for other jobs imagine that losing an entire department what it surprise you to know that your employees are frightened for their own safety imagine how your students feel the problem of poor student behavior is there and quite honestly there are a wide range of factors responsible for it but for our purposes the only question we need to answer is what do we do now right now your employees are exhausted they are scared they are frustrated they are angry but they are determined they are resourceful they are patient they are knowledgeable they are invested in the success of their students but they need your support we need to give alternative education

088director Latonya brown the support she needs we need to reinvigorate the successful middle school Learning Center which not only held students accountable for their actions but taught them how to be successful when they return to a regular school setting we need to invest in an elementary program where we can utilize an alternative setting that would allow students to develop good social emotional and academic skills so that we don't need alternative placements at the secondary level we need to make better use of our empowerment atomies space with morning and afternoon programs that could double the capacity of the Academy we need all of our alternative programs not only to understand the needs of our most challenging students and to prepare them for success in a traditional learning environment but also hold them accountable for those behaviors

089we need in school alternative programs not only to be punitive but also to be effective in helping students learn the proper ways to handle regular school situations we need every one of you and everyone who works in this building to come into the schools I don't mean for a program I don't mean for a launch I mean you need to shadow a school employee for a day you need to see these behaviors you need to see the expectations and the programs handed down to your staff how they actually work in the classroom and the cafeteria and on the buses we have creative principals and on site supervisors who are doing all they can with tier 1 and tier 2 interventions but they need a viable tier 3 plan they have a lot of great ideas

090listen to them implement them let them create a culture of success for LCS otherwise we won't remember the incident at EC glass as this big event will remember it as the tip of the iceberg thank you finance report but I will take you through the finance report on the agenda sheet you can see for the first three months we have about 25 percent of our revenue and I think Kim did a great job of explaining how the revenue comes in all of it doesn't come in at the beginning of the year so we have a better understanding about that she also noted the health insurance payable balance for September so of leveling' a little bit it was tip taking up a little bit but looks to be a little bit better than that there was

091nothing on the revenue or the expenditure report that I noted worth commenting on unless you have some question specific to that have questions they can always solve yep this was for information only it now moves us to the consent agenda and I recommend the approval of the consent amended consent agenda which includes the school board meeting minutes October 1st 2019 the work session minute September 17 2019 student discipline committee meeting October the 8th 2019 and the amended personnel report is there a motion to approve miss Carter is there a second dr. Brennan any discussion or questions all in favor oh good good part of the evening student representative comments we're gonna start tonight with Murata from EC glass high school hello how are you guys sure I just have this here's a cheat sheet so

092I had to stay back the wall the entire time alright so I'm back again um this time I guess it's the November sort of October edition it's mostly stuff from October but um yeah so I'm a 12th grade student as EC glasses you guys already know there's my email and if anybody wants it let me know I'd be more than happy to give it to you so do you guys want me to leave it there for saying all right oh that's an option too I mean whatever way you guys want to contact me I'd love to talk so anyway there are a few things that's similar to last night I tried to put it into different categories so we have the sports the arts EC glass in the community and also just like in general

093what's going on with the school so first off we have the sports stuff actually literally just today the cross-country players were leaving to go to Pulaski County to go run and the regional meet there I have a few friends that are in cross-country one of them I think actually last night they were doing a carb loading event or something's going you know make sure they're at their best for this event so they're very excited about this today and if they do well they'll actually get to go on the state so I hope the best for them I've not heard back but I'll probably figure out something by tomorrow so also on our field hockey and volleyball season's just like missed the fall sports are kind of come to an end now as we're getting to

094the end of the fall season field hockey team has been I feel like they've been getting better each year which is something nice to see they have a really good coach and the volleyball team has also done pretty well they've been eleven and eight and they actually last night they won their the first day the first game of the playoffs oh you Salem I believe so that was pretty cool to see and I wish them the best of luck against j-f football so that's the big thing right now last Friday we had a pretty big game for glass it was also a pretty big disappointment so yeah but this is up beyond the Heritage game glass has been doing really good all season and I think they're looking forward to playoffs seeing where that'll take

095them also the guy from ABC 13 I thought that was really cool you know heritage and glass both came together and you know give him a shirt which was really neat there are some other pictures from the season since my last presentation so you can see everybody is in the ec last spirit as we go on with our football season so now we move on to the arts glass is drama club recently went to VTA which is pretty much I'd say the biggest um theatre conference in Virginia and they took their show there I'm called the elephant's graveyard which actually if you want to see it it will be that along with I've heard another act so we can dance which yes is a dance showcase on that'll be the 14th through the 16th of

096November at the EC glass Alumni Theatre so um get to be nice up close and personal and see the show that they did well in so they took it they want a few Awards on the gun honorable mention and costuming which I've seen the costumes for this show and they look really cool third place in the technical Olympics so that's really awesome to see as well um you know there's a lot of work behind the scenes to make these shows come on so the tech people definitely brought together with the tech Olympics Wyatt Moore was the VTA all-star and Claire Harvey um I know she's been writing plays herself over the last few years she won third place the one-act play writing contest which is really cool too so I'm not sure if you guys

097have seen the storm drains at glass but they look a little bit different now of the ms/ms Gibson MacDonald has been working with her class actually I'm with a partnership with the Lynchburg Water Resources Department to actually raise awareness over you know the fact when we throw water down or storm or sorry when we third track and our storm drains that goes somewhere and so this is kind of trying to raise awareness for that and I think it's a really cool way to do it you know and kind of make glass seem like a more lively place which is really awesome to actually today when I was walking into school they were cleaning off these and I'm guessing they were getting ready to put some stuff on it to make a little bit more permanent

098but they're definitely keeping taking care of it um but yeah and I think it's also important to note that mrs. Gibson McNabb asically let her class take charge in this she just kind of let them go with what they wanted to do and she supported him through the way and I think they made some really awesome creations here so EC glass and the community ez glass there was an election yesterday um we didn't have school but that also gave a lot of people opportunity to vote I voted for the first time yesterday which was really cool gave me a little bit of a I guess PTSD pin to the scantrons but you know it was really cool um and you know you got to walk in I got to cast my ballot and that was

099a really cool experience and a lot of my friends too have also been doing the same so it's really nice to see that a lot of people Glasser going out to vote and care about that so also mr. Mack uses the government teacher DC glassed he's been working really hard I'm leading up to this election he's done a lot of really cool stuff and there is some pictures from when Bing client actually came to visit and talk to the students he's been working really hard to get the kizmate candidates as he can come in and he did a pretty good job at that he got Ben Klein like I said David's illa swindle Walker Jennifer woofster there's a lot of people coming in and it's really cool to have the experience to actually talk with

100these people that are either already in office or running again and you know get a better idea of what they represent beyond just the website that they put out to campaign each year so I thought that that's really awesome he's put a lot of hard work into that so I just kind of wanted to I guess say thanks for that also reading to the elementary schoolers um found out some of our football players actually went to artist Paine and read to elementary schoolers there - Tyler Paige and Jaden Merriman I know them okay I've seen them a few times they're both really awesome dudes though and I think it's really cool to see that you know there time to go read the kids and I guess make a better connection with our community also evening

101for Africa that's coming up I also want to point out glasses actually collecting books for the book sale that we do today we counted the books I think there's over 2,000 books collected for that which is really awesome two of the seventh period class has gotten a pretty big competition over that so it's awesome to see that you know glasses working towards good causes and eating for Africa is a pretty event with pretty big event we put on each year and it's really cool that you know we're working for that if you guys want to come check it out it's November 7th it takes place from 6 to 8 p.m. and you can go check it out there's a lot of different places um sorry eating less culinary arts is actually going to be making

102some food for and we'll have music and stuff and it'll be a really cool event in the past I think they made the pretty decent amount of money for the Boys and Girls Club and their sister school in Nairobi so yeah if you have time I definitely recommend you check it out so what's going on senior bonfire was Monday night i bleeped yes sorry this week is just things are coming together um anyway it's part of senior do so as long as you pay those you get in enter government classes we got our wristbands to get into that and it was a pretty big fire I don't I think it was actually quite a bit bigger than the one we have in the picture there but also another big part of this event is that

103we get to pie teacher in the face so a little bit earlier this year we voted on that and mr. Matthews mr. Imboden MS Eubank and coach or noski we're the lucky ones chosen to be pied and actually it was mr. Matthews birthday too so you know got a nice little present there also another really cool thing glass has been helping out with I don't know if you guys saw the hair did the jug bowl livestream and there was actually a lustrum before that but that's actually mostly run by the students I don't know if Austin journey's here but he has been really awesome about kind of leading us in helping us through there aren't a lot of people who would be willing to give up a Friday night to kind of help run a

104livestream for the local school district so he's been really awesome and um if you guys have not seen a video there will be a little clip but those are some statistics for the jug will stream it was really cool as we saw those numbers rise because those are some pretty big numbers so it was neat and also 40% of the views came from outside of Virginia so likely we're guessing that this is an alumni but it's really cool to see that you know people actually want to see the game and this was a way they got to see it so um those are some of the stats they're you know big one is four thousand two hundred views during the stream that's pretty significant but overall you know it's a pretty successful stream and actually

105on the next slide here I believe I have a small clip from it [Applause] [Music] and so actually I was running the camera for the second part of that video um but as you can tell he actually faked me out to there um so she's a really good player but yeah it was a lot of fun and also another thing that I'm taking part of with seven other EC glass students is combat robots project at vector space you know what's cooler than fighting robots um so we've been having a lot of fun with that it's been a challenge throughout you know but I've definitely learned a lot and if you guys have time it will the actual competition will be this Saturday from one to 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at ves so definitely feel

106free to check that out and see our hard work and this is the video from last time that I could not get to work so [Music] my favorite but I guess the probably the people and the things that you can do with the events [Music] I do [Music] all right and that is all I have thank you welcome Taylor McClure tonight it's her first meeting thank you for being here and we're looking forward to hearing what's going on at Heritage my name is Taylor McClure and I am a senior at Heritage and this is a recap of everything that went on in October so all of October we were stressing of preventing bullying and on October 23rd we all were orange to show like we care about preventing bullying as a unity of the school

107we had fast the night as well as glass head that's the night on October 7th and 8th in order to help the senior class fill out their FAFSA forms and help with financial aid our student athletes Elijah and Victoria were invited to talk on the radio about volleyball track and their academics I was pretty cool varsity volleyball had a quite a few seniors for their senior night we didn't win but it was it was a good game and their JV team was doing good Katie Baker is a new counselor at Heritage and she got to present about the power of post it is the vs CA conference Luke Richards set a new school record at the mill STATCOM Invitational 5k our AP environmental science group got a field trip to go on the James River

108to test the water call quality and I went on that trip last year and it was it was a fun trip we can do it all around the James River and then we stopped tested the water and then foods a fun experience our culinary art program won for the second time and at the Top Chef challenge we beat quite a few organizations we had a meeting hosted by coach Meadows our in our library and he talked about the fun little things we have in our media center like the doodle pen the Cricut the 3d printer it rained on the day we were supposed to do the big feet meet so instead of just canceling it we did it on gym and that was pretty cool we did a clap out on our hallway as we

109cheered them on before they went into the gym yeah the jug bowl it was both teams did really good but it came down and we got the victory and it's it was really cool how got the custom Jersey for Dennis we're undefeated except for the very first game against Vance but we're doing really well and it's good season our JROTC got first place for the fastest team time at the junior Tucker by Pius lon and Ian garland got third for the fastest in a visual time our pioneer theater harris erickson won one the acting scholarship from VTA the tech team placed first in the tech Olympics and the improv team made it to the top and that is it it's great to hear so many things are going on and give it gave us a

110few activities to look at about hope we can get to some of them thank you that now takes us to our school board committee report is very port from the Finance Committee there was no governor school meeting you did meet meaning we did have a gov school review and one thing that without a would share was with the group is there were a lot of positive comments about our grad school from many of the superintendent's I was I was really really proud of that effort that the gov school zones thank you miss Carter anything from Laurel anything from the STEM Academy thank you Dr Brennan legislative ectasy committee dr. brennan items we'll talk about that later but this is reminder this Friday November the 8th at 9 a.m. we're gonna have it we've invited state

111legislators to come for a take your legislature out to breakfast gathering we've had a very good turnout we're gonna have a number of state legislators or representative there offices as well as City Council there Christy has handed out to you a set up of the of the itinerary it's been nine to eleven really probably 9 to 10:30 with the program and then 10:30 11 little of stairs you can visit the school like to visit the school so we hope everyone will come and and be friendly to all our state legislators and we're all looking forward to that and then we also briefly talked about adoptive school which is now in place and everyone has their representative we thank you very much everybody sending emails and keep us updated on those schools activities Advisory Committee to

112the school board I don't think we have a report from CTE do we Brett oh there is okay coming up okay then see you there sorry sir cousin in board members and dr. Edwards the Career and Technical Education Advisory Committee met on October 22nd 12 members were present at the meeting as with most meetings there were of course an abundance of reports we had a STEM Academy report a CVC CVCC reported on their g3 initiative and their title three grant I got to report that there are six News career technical teachers in the division and also reported on the federal program monitoring that will take place for CTE in February we'll have visitors here on February now here's the good part I'm really excited about a committee that is formed for internships we haven't committed

113this forum it consists of two teachers one at each high school and three local professionals and the local professionals are I'll just name them mat pillow from Wylie Wilson Jackie Stevens from free Macomb and Jason who's Jason's last name Gilbert of central Jason Gilbert from centra is not a health care professional he's an IT professional now not to say that one internship is better than the next but this committee is going to focus on the stem area so if you have your you taking a cybersecurity class or an architectural drawing class or an engineering class they're going to focus on trying to find you an internship or job chop shadowing opportunity career in technical education is all about transitioning and Lynchburg has some great places to work and some great career opportunities you want to

114give our students the tools that they had the tools that they need to transition into those great careers here locally so if you have any questions about Korean Technical Education give me a call and thank you very much meeting next week health advisory Ben 9 committee members were present they started the evening with an activity to kind of focus in and have them think about the areas that they wanted to cover throughout the year and the rest of their meetings they just went into another discussion about prevention options specifically related to tobacco prevention and targeting jeweling to see if we can knock some of that out a Health Department gave an update on FluMist there was an update on elementary family life education and then they started talking about a project that was really interesting

115to research called the pillowcase project it's a Red Cross project that originated out of the Katrina hurricane tragedy in New Orleans about how to prepare young children for disasters and how they're going to do that so their next meeting is November 13th and they will be getting a full presentation on the pillowcase project to evaluate whether that is something that they will recommend to the board at a future meeting and special ed Advisory mr. Vanda worker is not here but he did give me an update on the October 22nd disabilities awareness night that was held at Heritage High School they had over 25 participants in the event their focus was understanding students with mental health needs strategies and supports for educators and families and throughout the night they had table sessions some of the sessions

116included strategies to support students with anxiety twice exceptional if you're gifted with a disability the an overview of orton-gillingham reading strategies which is a reading strategy that we use in the division the eligibility criteria some assistive technology used by students as they access the curriculum the video a graduation and credit requirements building a quality transition plan through parent-teacher collaboration IEP development and a parent panel on negotiating the referral child study evaluation LGB eligibility and IEP yes it was thank you all that now leads us to a comprehensive strategic plan discussion after this we're going to take a ten minute break as a part of our comprehensive strategic plan which I keep losing over here which is in a working draft form and we hope to have this nice and cleaned up and pretty by the

117end of December but part of our plan goal number one student growth and development and success we do have objectives under each section of the plan so tonight I'm going to invite Allison up to join me one of our objectives is one point six point five and it is to review revise and enhance the English language learner ll programs and services and I asked Allison dr. Jordan to give us a preview of what's to come with elo good evening yellow seems to be one of the minor parts of my job description but it has consumed a lot of my time just to give you some numbers we have 221 current English learners who qualify for special instruction 97 of them are considered newcomers so almost half of our English learners are new to the country

118and/or have very limited skills in listening speaking reading and writing so one of the things in this program evaluation of our English learner program is to set up a Welcome Center so I am happy to announce and a little bit nervous to announce that it will go live before second semester and it's one of those things where we've talked about it we've planned for it we have a space for it it's going to be on the second floor of Heritage High School there's a bus stop near there so it's very accessible as far as transportation is concerned we have a newcomer program at Heritage High School so it seemed to make the most sense that it be located there every single meeting we have about this we come up with one more thing that we

119should think of we should involve this entity or we should involve this entity it's going live and I've said it live on camera so it has to go live so we have a lead English Learner teacher that's working in this she's going to be there two days a week and it's going to involve multiple departments it's going to involve every single school working together to help these families and it's to help families who have limited English proficiency the students may have more proficiency than their parents so it's to help all the families that have limited English proficiency it will be to help them get the documents necessary for enrollment understand the American schooling process we even have lots of school supplies and things to send home with parents because if they don't understand what flashcards

120are or they don't even understand American school supplies so we have bought things we have set up a room we have gotten documents translated and there will be something that we have forgotten about so I hope that the community will treat us with grace when we screw up a little bit in the beginning but I'm so excited to think about this group because I think often times when we think of when we think of achievement gap or when we think of different categories we typically think race we typically think white and black but there are many groups in lynchburg city schools that need extra services or need extra - attention we're gonna try to work together with Johnson health and a lot of our community partners in this welcome center to make sure that Lynchburg

121City Schools is wrapping our arms around these new families to our community and obviously our newcomer population is growing our number of English learners is staying pretty pretty much the same but the amount of newcomers are really changing so the the dynamic shows us that we need something like a welcome center question the reason I'm asking is we get a lot of exchange students at the University of Lynchburg who come here only for the semester that'll be a big asset with our students and when we get really good at the services we offer we will break really appreciate your passion it's gonna be successful I hope so it'll be better than what we currently have thank you thank you forward to seeing it in action so part two of that and thank you dr. Jordan

122for presenting I do want to give the board like a little bit of here's here's to come here's what we've done as we do this strategic plan and I agree the enthusiasm behind this we all it's gonna take all of us to make it successful but I'm looking forward to it as well also under student growth and development we have two other objectives 1.2 - and 1.3 - which talk about reducing the achievement gap which is something that we started with with the presentation from OCR for targeted subgroups whether it's black economically disadvantaged students with disabilities or ëall students in both math and reading using the SOL also with this as we mentioned and has also mentioned in the OCR data is that bath school has a different calendar and one of the things that

123the principal Monica Hendrix was looking at is trying to tie the calendar that year-round calendar the intercessions with success at her school so going to the accountability piece I'm like all right let's see what the data says and kudos to miss Hendricks and her team for putting together what you have in front of you which is very similar to what we had from Lincoln elementary school as well as some of the things that have been done so what again we tied it to here's our district goal you can see the school improvement plan from September of last year so we're looking back at you know what did you do last year what did you put in place and how did those efforts work so miss Hendricks has identified her goals for reading math science Virginia

124Studies she's also listed some strategies that she uses in her school with her staff how she ties her 21st century learning program and she also offers an intersession program which if you turn to the back of that you'll see a little bit more information about that because of their year-round calendar she also broke down for us the performance of students who participated in at least one intersession and whether or not they passed the SOL test and if if they showed growth over time and she was very happy with the results for her school like I said earlier she's always striving to get better and better and better but this is one of the areas that she is most pleased with if you look down at the bottom you can see the bass scores both federal

125which are just straight scores and then also the video e scores which shows students who have shown growth over time and you can see where her school has landed I'm gonna go down the video a column and she separated it into her subgroups with black students getting seventy seventy-five percent on English and eighty-five percent on that so there is definitely as we saw in the OCR report from the early 2009 to ten all the way through up until today the progress that bass has made there is an area that she is still working on and is making progress with and she has a wonderful relationship with team members in the back from the special ed department working with students with disabilities but the one thing at the bike all of the bass family has its

126high standards and high expectations for all students so you can see a little bit of that and again the last page talks about the accreditation a little more detail in terms of level 1 level 2 level 3 level 1 is where you want to be so as you look at the data for subgroups and you look at the data across English and math for achievement gap you can see the only gap that exists is with students with disabilities and I've also given you or Monica's also put on here the chronic absenteeism over a three-year period and you can see that that has also decreased significantly mrs. Hendricks is not here tonight but I think I can speak for her when she will say see my calendar works would be the conversation that she would have

127with me and would like me to pass along to you so again kudos to miss Hendricks the staff at bass the students and families for the wonderful work that they are doing about where are we seeing the progress in terms of the outcome are we working at 10% are we working and that's and that's where this information is and I think we'll see more of it from other schools as well any other questions or comments yes dr. progress intentionality and the level of detail that all the staff gets to see then hopefully the the the families going there to I know that bass a few years ago was struggling and this is really good good to see so congratulations concentric understand okay before we have a ten minute break I'd like to welcome our legal

128counsel here tonight which I've meant to at the beginning hope thank you for coming them for being here with us appreciate it alright we're going to take it's almost 10:00 to 7:00 we're going to take a ten-minute break [Music] you [Music] you [Music] I'm ready stock right we are back in session and the unfinished business is the first will be the one truck city school board policy section for finance we had a couple policies that were presented last month that are up for approval there were also some questions regarding some of the policies and I sent emails regarding regarding that I hope I answered all of them I know there is a request which I think this Carter will talk about for the suicide policy okay it's not open for questions and comments we did

129receive some questions that dr. Edwards sent out to the board and one of them deals with the on page 173 the vsba equivalent and I think you said that should be e FZ so that would be a change that we would need to make the other was regarding the the annual budget calendar and the requests that may be we look at adding some kind of flexible language in there so that if there is a need to be changed that there is a way that that could happen I I thought that was a good suggestion that it might else have any other thoughts on it and I it's not I think it's proposed from the superintendent yearly or designee I don't I didn't know if the board had to approve it or is it just something

130that comes to the board for I think really we approved it I thought we did too it didn't it's an attachment to that policy or exhibit I guess okay so if this is done yearly do we need to have at the flexibility language I guess is the question it may be delays or whatever but some people really hold to that that's true you say it's gonna happen in November and it gets pushed back to December and then the question is are you abide by your policies so do you just want to date subject to change yes I'd like to go through all the proposals and then we can amend the language at one time if that's okay okay the next one is on page 165 the board member suggested that to amend the policy to

131change the language to 116 [Applause] yes to add the language that for proper accounting and safety all monies would be deposited daily to the principal's office or school financial officer that was 164 right now it's it's as soon as possible no later than the end of school day personnel in possession of cash I'll turn it over for safekeeping improper County and in this way it just says it's it's the reason it is going to be deposited is for proper County accountability and safety accounting and safety accounting and safety all monies will be deposited daily to the principal's office or school finance officer finance school finance if they have a school finance officer we don't have money in this building so but the policy says school finance officer so do you want to change it to

132bookkeepers is that what your record officer I think when we did the fire it's been a while since we discussed it we discussed it whether or not because elementary schools have bookkeepers that they share and if they're not there that day if the principal took the money so it's the person who whoever could be like a principal or the bookkeeper who is responsible for the school finance I don't think it's an official title as in CFO I don't we could put bookkeeper slash principal if that makes it we already have principal so we should replace that with bookkeeper does that make sense good catch all right so do I have a motion to amend the language in that policy as we described that the dates on the annual budget the dates are subject to change

133on okay I wanted to do all of all three of them and the one about the yeah the bookkeeper and also the adding the yazi is the correct on the table of contents on page 173 it should be EFC so we were to change EFC the dates of the calendar could change and then the one about depositing money and to the principal's office of the bookkeeper day dr. Gupta made a motion to a prison dr. newest any further discussion so we're voting on amending the language in these policies all in favor and this is up for action tonight so is there a motion to approve Lynchburg city school board policy section for finance dr. Coleman make the motion this Carter a second any further discussion all in favor the second unfinished business deals with the

134school work goals norms and protocols this is for formal vote tonight we discussed this at other board meetings as well as our annual retreat are there any questions or discussion related to this we went over it rather thoroughly I think okay is there a motion to approve dr. Brennan thank you sir second miss Carter any further discussion all in favor any opposed we will have these laminated and lizard to new business high school program of studies a copy of good evening everyone I think everyone has a copy of the program of study the committee of course is met on numerous times to discuss what we wanted to do with that you know made up with the principles and guidance and folks from my staff I guess I'll just walk you through a couple of them

135or walk you through the highlights of the changes the building trades and precision machining is still being offered but just not as dual enrollment that's a licensure issue with that if the part it's with CVCC so if we can get that rectified and that could be changed but at this point we need to be able to just offer the course here there's no longer up to $75.00 I'm withdrawal fee from virtual Virginia so that's page five we can remove that I guess also saying on page 15 we're clarifying some language that's one of the things we worked on and felt strongly about as a group that we wanted to make sure the language was as clear as possible for for students and for parents so that you know when they're using that as a reference

136it made sense and that and that if anything we could put in to help make the decisions or help folks in making decisions easier when they were reading it they could do that page 16 they're there things that are highlighted because we're waiting on a couple of course codes for these courses and changes to the art are also explained on this page once the course codes are created we can add those there's a course of our our course codes the we were changing let's see the course name for auto service technology - automotive technology to match the state course names we're also looking at the state requirements in the state how the state names courses and trying to bring ours into a line that it's basically the same course we just want the name to

137be the same that of course makes it much easier when we're try Machoke transcripts consider transferring from different places so things are the same those are also waiting new course codes we added a heading on page 49 for a cultural arts we kind of went through the program of studies looking for things that for consistency so the way it's organized we tried to have each one of the sections organized in the same manner so that was that heading was missing there was a change requested with the the art courses to convert some semester courses that were typically taken together into a year-long course one of the things that can cause confusion for students are we're trying to earn the sequential elective credits and if things are in pieces sometimes that gets lost in translation so

138the kids were taking them that way so we wanted to list it that way that we also they felt strongly about adding an advanced portfolio art course on the past they've done that more as an independent study but when you have kids that are applying for to go to an art school they oftentimes request a portfolio it's a substantial amount of work it's more than enough to make up a course weird we're doing that independently so I felt like it needs just being in the program of studies we included on page 59 courses that were also dual enrollment that weren't reflected in the past program of study so we wanted to make sure that if we were offering at that that it was in the program of study age 61 we did add College chemistry

1391 & 2 that was a request from STEM Academy that's based on interest of students wanting to take those courses and stem the STEM Academy makes that decision so add that to the program of study and then page 68 there were some changes in the language and sequential electives that just reflects the change in how we kind of restructured how we were doing the art classes so just to make that match up with that all in all we don't have no real major changes with that just basically trying to clarify and make sure we were consistent in the way we did it we've also kind of also look forward to having a different format with this it's more of a digital format it'll look really good on the website and I think it turned out

140very professional particularly when you pull it up to look at it and it's also very accessible so be able to if you're looking for things to be able to search and be able to skip from one section to another rather than having to scroll through the whole thing you'll be able to click on the table of contents and jump right to the section you're looking for so if you have any questions I would be happy to try to answer them you know my first time through there I thought some of these courses were being eliminated you know and you really just sort of recasting them right oh it matches I didn't know if you might want to consider like a well just a little intro you know course changes that you know we're really just

141sort of getting a better match with the state state requirements or whatever and that right these courses still exist it's just you know so certainly cut these out for automotive technology they're not gonna especially the art looked like it was more mm-hmm you know just just to help the initial shock okay just just a suggestions or questions just after you have the time to spend some time looking through it again just send them in okay thank you alright next let's fix a school board instruction and program policies we do have up for information tonight in action next month the instruction and program committee met on September 27th and reviewed a couple policies which are here as well as we're continuing the conversion from the old number numerical policies to the SBA policies and I know

142there is now I have a question regarding the first one JH HR z which is the regulation for the suicide prevention and I do believe we have a recommendation for the second paragraph okay leap the last sentence in the second paragraph it says administrator or contact the school resource officers for consultation this is regarding you know suicide prevention it just seems like this is the last step or the person that's going to make this decision and this is not a discipline problem as a behavioral problem and I just don't see what the resource officer the consultation is doing here and according to what God learned us that is not to initiate a ECOT do and I don't know what the whether or not the resource officer is skilled in Mental Health First Aid or CIT

143so and I checked with some of the other policies and different school boards and around this area and Fairfax in Roanoke County and their policy does not specify or spell out the resource officers for consultation so I suggest that we delete that you don't want to criminalize this so the concern really more is a stigma associated with heaviness in here as opposed to yeah any rope there's not really any practical impact how the school does the assessment or responds to the situation offices part of the threat assessment team anyway right so they're going to be right in part of that process but no other school has it elevated to this level Kubik artists research beyond our school division I would support her recommendation in whichever way is unnecessary other board members okay so we're not

144taking a vote on this so all we have to do is say that we want the Senate's so when you receive it the next number it'll have that okay good point did someone involved with such as that we've got the principal or yes most of them for their lives that's my experience look at the different levels of risk the high level of grip is someone who is threatening and seems to be an act of concern about hurting himself hurting someone else I just wonder whether there should be you know we go on to say that the stand at the end of that page if the student is deemed at risk a recommendation made to a parent to obtain mental health evaluation counseling and then prior to entering school the parent requested suppliers go with a

145letter but is that third category one we should say that person needs to be referred from counseling immediately given to refer to it through a source for that does require so it's it is the practice that we are expected to adhere to its we can spell it out in the policy but then you end up with a policy that will forever chase what the department of criminal justice services might put out and their updates or their publications to be cumbersome to try to keep them all up-to-date together has three levels pretty much policy the low medium and high it doesn't have their highest level is the high level of risk okay pardon me that's the self-harm risk assessment I was referring to the actual threat assessment here if you go to the last paragraph it

146talks about the formalized threat assessment form in addition to the self-harm assessment yeah so I just wondered if that's in the discussion whoever looking at these policies where there should be a suggestion that I had a high level that that student needs to be referred for mental health counseling and not just let go and may or may not get it that's true and that's up that's an even more specific than that you want because we don't actually hold anybody to it there's a need for immediate but then we go on to say that but to come back don't they have to have a letter saying that they were evaluated I'm just concerned that they may themselves you know that day they can actually get help and that's a legit concern I think we really just

147need to look at this policy according to some of the other policies these risk are not spelled out it's a it's just different I think we really just need to look at this one again right but the well we need to the school board but we need the discussion and we need to make determination as to what the language wants to be so if we want to make the language more defined in the high level of risk to add that a student is to be referred to discuss the parent policy along with us with the regulation and so everybody has a context for how this fits in because right now we're just considering right isolation we wouldn't be voting on jhh principle right right understand what my Cosette suggested was that that answer administration actually

148presents kind of a broader discussion of the policy JH h and then we go into those sort of regulations so now we have a context to attach that to so I mean cuz I'm like just I'm hanging here with I understand the comments but I need I need some perspective which I don't have just just the regulation here everyone that would will you bring this back we will have JH h policy to look at at the same time it's a twerk action on that in December or will we be still discussing it in December and taking action on it in January we will be discussing it and taking action and the action could be that we delay it until January but I think we need to leave it on the table that we if it

149will get it ahead of time and so that if we have specific questions we could ask them and get information back but if there's no reason to delay it then we have we can go ahead and vote on it okay that's it agreeable I don't think there were any questions regarding the field trip policy the superintendent will make an annual report to the school board on field trips taken just asking have not done that - I've not ever heard it do we need a report thank you good call that will be changed when you see it again in December all right keep going okay the school admission policy the substantial changes are in the middle under the foreign exchange students we originally had language about foreign students who have an f1 immigration status but we

150didn't have any language about j-1 immigration status so what you see included here is obviously our support for foreign exchange program and then the fact that we are going to establish an MoU or MOA with the foreign exchange organizations there are several but I think they're about five that are in and about Lynchburg two that really work with us over the last couple years there will be a processing fee that the organization will play pay students who are placed in homes in Lynchburg city schools will be treated as Lynchburg city school students so there was there's no tuition or additional charge for those students if an organization wants to place students in homes outside of Lynchburg city schools and in the county and the organization wants the students to attend at Lynchburg city schools so

151they're placed in that further Caramoan or Amherst and the organization says but we want them to come to Lynchburg City Schools the organization would be responsible for paying the tuition for that if they're making a decision to send them someplace other than their home to school with that and that will be spelled out in our agreement with that's the that's the new language as to why we would require someone placed outside of the city exchange student and yet not required an exchange student placed inside the city we're still talking about students who are not you know citizens of the city of Lynchburg that we are covering their tuition the organization we're the organization's covering it for someone who is outside of the city limits I guess I'm I personally don't see a difference between an

152exchange student just because their their place with a family in Lynchburg versus being placed with a family outside of the city city and then having to pay tuition mm-hmm and we all agreed that that's what we wanted to do I think that one of the comments that I sent to you was I felt like that that those students even if they are placed inside the city should also pay tuition as well but the majority of the group I think we went with the language if you're placed in Lynchburg city schools you're treated as I mean within Lynchburg city limits you're treated it's a Lynchburg City school student yeah I think and that just always was that if you're looking with family in Lynchburg city schools then that family will be paying they're supporting their school

153system right through taxes and things like that and that's that was my justification for it because the family is they do reside in Lynchburg but to the copyright policy so the vsba policy EG AAA which is the copyright material and then you'll see it's kind of yeah I'm looking at page 43 which is the old field trip policy you'll see some old policies that are covered by the new vsba policy so after that on page 43 to 46 is the old field trip policy then followed by the old copyright materials policy all right which we are eliminating thank you it's the one that your record yes page 42 any questions regarding this as you read through this we've come up with additional questions as always if you send them to dr. Edwards then she can

154respond dr. Gupta policy is being vetted out by a committee this is the policy group what group so good instead of going page by page could we look at all of them like we have done for finance and others together if there are any questions the suicide prevention was part of this and we've already decided that we're gonna look at that with the the JH h policy so that we've already said we're going to look at but if there are no other questions about that and then that would be the only one that we would discuss does that make sense next let's fork city school board personnel policies miss G back in September so the top tier of those you see this still have the alpha code zone were those that were existing adopted policies

155that had the SBA updates the last three in the top section policy 5-30 4.1 regulation five - fifty one point three and regulation in five - fifty five point one are just out and out deletions they are no longer needed for Lynchburg City Schools and the part that we really need your brainpower and your review on is the last group which would be or what are our recommended new policies for reduction in force last time the reduction of force policies were updated worse 2011-2012 which was actually coincides with the last time there was a reduction in force in the school division so BSBA has their versions they have been reviewed and scrutinized and actually discussed within personnel and finance and with previous legal counsel for about two years now and so it's time for you

156to take a look at them and give us your feedback there's really not a lot of significance I guess the one I do want to draw your attention to deals with acceptable computer use so the legal wording and things have changed and that basically if you use a computer that we give you on our network you are agreeing to all of those things so we no longer have to have you personally sign an acceptable computer use agreement just the nature of having a Lynchburg City Schools device you agree to those things and then the next one that we discussed a lot dealt with tobacco products and nicotine vapor and you can see those edits that begin on page 71 and 72 really focused on an effort of trying to capture all of those things that

157students might be using at school that we don't want them to use at school and ensuring that any adults that come on our property know that they shouldn't be using those things either so those were the significant points of discussion dr. Sinha or miss Morrison chime young just not at school that it's at school events off-site school events that this policy covers that I don't know if any of you all read the article today about jeweling and vaping and that the number of users have gone up from 3.6 last year to 5.3 this year it's a significant concern and that was a reason we really went after this language to try to make it as specific as we could issue I heard was he say it's based on seniority now all the senior teachers of

158faculty are in high school so and you have a clause about reassignment so that reassignment could happen within from high school to middle school to elementary school or reassignment within the same school in your eligible for you qualified to be in that area so if all special education team teachers have senior well so what happens then how do you feel other places well that's why it's not just seniority that's why since sometimes it's based on your license your what the high need like if it's a math teacher with five years experience they may bump somebody who it just depends on the high need the seniority you would look for an area like if this person is if they're reduced at this building and I have an opening at another building and something that they are

159qualified for they would be one of the first people we looked at or that position it's it's the policy that we had was very cumbersome I came in on the tail right when that was being used and it was unbelievable the amount of time that it took to even figure out what your list was going to be so this kind of streamlined it into hopefully we'll never have to use it that's kind of but we need something in place that's that's user-friendly if we ever get there when I was getting seniority in need of the division is there a bit too you know gnashed him let me back up a step too in that superintendent after if we were to ever encounter this and I was in a division where I encountered this two years

160in a row so you can identify specific you have to identify the specific areas where your reduction is needed so it's not it could be teachers in high schools they could be math teachers it could be elementary education certified teachers so you identify that area and then that within that area your seniority and all your other measures of where somebody falls in the order to determine who are the ones that get reduced if after reviewing this if you have any questions this is our action policy versus regulations but the new editorial piece in red about Beijing on page 72 the superintendent responds we are developing a regulation which contains provisions with enforcement policy among students employees and business including the enumeration of possible sanctions or disciplinary actions so those come at a later time they

161come as part of the regulation I thought that if someone applying for a job that's where the schools had any time any felonies they were not allowed to apply I think that this is saying that let's pursue schools shall require on its application for publication that the applicant has not been convicted of a felony or any offense involving the sexual molestation physical or sexual abuse and rape of a child and point to whether the Apple has been convicted of a crime of moral turpitude so if someone has a felony that is not as those categories can they apply to being employed let's foresee schools they can apply what it is the Code of Virginia is very clear about any felony or any crime against the tile so and then the the one with the moral

162turpitude used to be in parentheses lying cheating and stealing so if you've also been convicted of a misdemeanor for a moral turpitude which is lying cheating and stealing that's also something that would keep you from being with on short a school's occasion that you have to physically check those yes/no boxes before you can proceed through the application they won't even it stops you if you don't answer those questions we city schools must have a system when ocular is our application system that requires the applicant to answer those questions these questions those questions are specifically location but what happens when they answer yes - there's a series of questions have you ever been convicted of a felony or oh this this piece right here for the code if you answer yes to that it automatically sets

163it as a need to review so for I have to go in and clear it for somebody to be so somebody may say yes I've been convicted of this so we go in and clear it if it's not one of these things that would prohibit them from being eligible to be hire questions or comments [Applause] now moves us to operations policies and regulations printout of the operations policy conversion packet there are several meetings that occurred really over the past year to review these they are now in a state that they are ready to come forward to you for review and hopeful approval in December it's really just some straight out conversions there weren't a lot of things that were contentious or discussed in detail it's kind of all over the place and that you've got

164a lot of old chapter four stuff you've got some chapter six stuff dealing with emergencies and you've got some old chapter seven stuff and a fair amount of Transportation related items towards the back end dr. Brennan or mr. Harvey if there's anything you'd like to add to it please let us know if you have comments as you review things there wasn't anything that I was specifically desiring to highlight in this in the finance policy group too and every board meeting we get a personal report we get a finance report is there a way to get the operations report to the board every month so we get information about buses how they're working you know the meals I know you're know working smoothly but then the board will have an automatic feedback information loop I don't

165know what's the thinking of the other members if that is something that the board wants to have that we can request that but it doesn't have anything to do with this policy this not operations will report every month personnel report that you get it's a very specific to hiring as usually it's in the personnel report and the finance report you get is narrow to the revenues and the large-scale revenues and expenditures in an Operations report what are those big things that you're trying to isolate the bus comes to my mind transportation number one okay what about transportation how the status of transportation how many buses were pickups or missed or you know late so average delay on a weekly basis I'll give you just one variable to look at if there are any of the

166zero delay and you know so those are do you can pick up operational parameters right which is stuff that as I look at on Hill and and and then things that we do in our practice and in our work but again I'm going back to the larger scheme of the of the board in terms of the governance piece with having a monthly report on how many buses were late how many times we had to go back and pick kids up yes but it is causing if it's causing uneasiness in the community or if it's causing pain there then it's board responsibilities as an oversight body yeah you have the reporting and I think your next agenda item is going to address the uneasiness and trying to manage the board because a lot of the challenge

167that we have with late pickups is due to lack of bus drivers and we're having to do some double runs or combine runs and things like that so there are efforts that are being made to increase bus driver pay recruit more bus drivers so that these aren't missed some of the communication pieces that we missed often our mechanics and our dispatch staff are out driving so parents feel frustrated if they can't reach anybody by phone but that might be part of that Wow yeah one of the things that mr. Harvey you're not heard when we did a board training was an excellent report about the number of drives that they made runs that they made how many drivers that they had how many average and that was a general information but it was very helpful

168I thought it was mr. Harvey did you think I think so too and I think if that's something that you have a specific interest in I think it could be maybe he is allowed to speak with transportation I agree I don't think that that's something that the board needs to be concerned with dr. Brennan our attorney here tonight I love this ask her for discussions over the next meeting which is our page 102 of the policy where the Hutton with hitting is possible exposure to viral infections it says that if so if someone is exposed to body fluids in general usually ask permission you have to get permission of the person who was exposed to do the blood test and we use the term in this policy that we that such person shall also be

169deemed to have consented to the release of such test results or to be tested and I just be interesting for next meeting or maybe in between this and that he was looking into that I'm not sure we to have a permission slip or we just when someone signed an application to be employed here we say we will do testing it's necessary yeah the legal requirement for testing somebody says we there being to be given consent I wonder what that page 102 and it's on the one two three fourth paragraph we're in the military I'll also be deemed to have consented to the release of such tasks and then farther down we also say that they're deemed to be tested so again it's just a minor point but to have our journey with us and two

170points that I just wanted to ask on page 25 I wanted to know if maybe in lieu of placing a date under each of the regulations we just simply want to say you know current version or something like that so we don't have to coordinate that to be updated 125 because it's it's dated April 1st 1986 okay okay perfect that's what I wanted to make sure of that we didn't include a date there and then the second item that I had was on page 80 and this deals with the change and and this might be for discussion but it says in addition to the drills mentioned above the school board provides training I didn't know if that's more of the superintendent as an administrative piece or do we a section that came out of the

171last updates to the Code of Virginia summer legislative session and that's one of those that they're waiting to determine what the training needs to be okay sorry so they're just holding us accountable to make sure that we ensure that that's being done okay that's one of those that started with the State Board of Education will determine what the training that needs to be is done and the training hasn't they're working on that okay all right that makes sense it's as we go through this again if you have other questions if you send them like I said to dr. Edwards and she will beside the responses [Applause] the next substitute bus driver pay rate works with the folks every day I'm here requesting that the school board looks at what we pay our sub drivers some

172drivers are drivers who are not a contractor so there's no benefits allow right now we are space K schedule dates from 925 an hour and since I've been here not even a year yeah even though it feels a lot longer I had five people come in three from the LTC two from literally asked him to be a sub driver we went through the whole process we sent it to Murray G and once they find out 925 said thanks but not thanks since the start of the school year of this school year I have lost two drivers because they'd gone to work one for a beer distributor and one for a trucking company because of pay I have also lost one mechanic and on his resignation letter says I came here to fix bosses not to

173drive bosses so I'm asking you to consider to increase the rate to eleven dollars even though on I'm here only for the drivers also want you to consider to do something for the boss eight the bad sides start at eight twenty five an hour yes this went to the Finance Committee this came from the Finance Committee dr. Gupta just to support when we discussed in the Finance Committee I think it's a good step for step forward but the concern I had there was that we're still lagging behind the county yes sir $13 or so for our humble County starts everybody at 1345 it Bedford County starts at thirteen thirty five an hour and once you become contractor Bedford County goes to 15 and I have dollars an hour once your contract so we're behind we

174are the lowest paid I did not get a response from Amherst or other counties just so that I could have all that data dr. copelan will shoot me but this is a band-aid step towards where we want to be short step 11 right this is just for the sub bus drivers and that as we're discussing and developing our budget our next budget this will be part of what we talk about in terms of our salaries and our scales but this is not about all of that tonight though we acknowledge that we need their great work to be done this is a short-term fix to something so that we have subs so that mechanics doesn't have to drop the buses and the starters all myself yes they can do the job that we've hired them to

175do and this but get put us toward that step dr. Coleman I'm in agreement I'm just wanting to hear where's the money coming from the amount of money was I can't remember the exact what is that right now we have no on-call sub drivers well you're spending zero dollars out of our budget because we have no phone call sub drivers what we're having to do is when we have to put them a can they're driving a bus who has a significantly higher pay rate I'm then a bus driver would that and that we still need the mechanic to do his mechanic work when he gets done driving so we end up paying a mechanic time and a half so there's that there's a savings offset by not having somebody driving overtime hours and even across

176our entire sub driver pool make sure I get the number right if we it just that move for 7075 hours of work would only impact our budget by twelve thousand three hundred and eighty one dollars so I feel that the offset of overtime savings more than covers what the increased pain would be for substitute drivers thank you and that's the reason why we brought it as action because I feel it is a critical need especially as we move into the winter months and we know that cold and flu season is coming and you might recall a few days last year where we struggled for coverage on Fridays because of scheduled absences on top of sick absences so building a pool of true substitute drivers that can come in when we call them 5:30 or when

177we call them at 1:30 and can cover a shift helps us in those challenging days Arthur question stuck Nellis this is a this is one of these this is what the flavor markets tell signaling and you know I think we clearly need to respond then it's dr. copelan indicated you know there's a cost avoidance which is it's not a it's not a paper paper cost it's a real cost and so that's a nice support anyway made motion motion for dr. Millis is there a second second doctor open any other discussion call for a vote all in favor this is just an interim step right this we know that we've got a lot of work to do but this is a interim step what we need right now thank you all right call for a vote

178all in favor any opposed thank you all right from balanced recommendations you have before you a summary on the agenda of the fund balance which does total a little over five million dollars you also have a detailed fund balance request list that breaks down that summary which is also aligned to our strategic plan goals for that so first let me just start with the amount because I'm sure there are questions regarding how you know the power from where does that fund balance come from so all last year we talked a little bit about the budget for health insurance claims which is very different than the reserve so these are two separate accounts the health insurance reserve and the money budgeted and allocated for claims at the end of last year I think the last two

179months maybe we saw an uptick in claims and got a little bit of concern at the August and September meeting Kim talked a little bit about what she called the true up which is we were waiting to actually pay all the claims so that we could see how much money was left in that allocated fund there was a question about what happens to it and we explained at that point that that goes to fund balance at that point it's after the the fiscal school year so that amount is about 1.3 million dollars that was allocated for claims that ended up even with the claims that we had and we paid I think it was somewhere over five hundred thousand dollars the last couple we had a hundred 1.3 million dollars left so so that is

180part of what goes into our fund balance always what we have as a concern is anything that's a salary lapse and I don't know mr. a are all of your budgeted regular driver positions filled no so when we have a case like that and I don't know how many you actually budgeted for 119 open positions so just on a driver side and that's currently so if we roll back to last year I don't know what that number was last year but those open position had a salary associated with them because we were hoping to get the people and pay the people but when that doesn't happen that's considered an unfilled position or if we get people six months later there's a lapse so there are salaries that are sitting there for these positions that that

181we desperately want to fill and have money available including the sub budget as well that was about 1.1 million dollars worth of salaries and gaps and unfilled positions with that 1.6 million that's just a really rough estimate and I actually made a note of looking at I looked at the August 6th financial report where there is a very detailed outline of everything up till June 30 June 30th and you can see in some of the on your report they're called other so you have a personnel line and then you'll have other other other other other and in those other categories there is unspent funds there was funds budgeted but then money wasn't spent so one of the I try to put some examples like a vehicle operation and maintenance service we have to budget for

182what we think the service is going to be we hope that all of our vehicles stay in top-notch care that we don't have to replace I don't know transmission or something big and when we don't the money that we budgeted is still there so that's an example of some of the purchase services and materials account and those are throughout various departments we saw them in instruction we saw them in transportation and tech and maintenance as well so there are some funds that are in there and again I just roughly round it real quickly I also wanted you to remember that at the end of last year right about the time that we presented you with the 1.2 million dollars for reallocation requests to get buses included in the original request was a million dollars worth

183of other stuff including teacher laptops there were some switches and SONET all things that we needed to do as well and at that point we were late May and June the Board agreed to fund the to do the reallocation request for the buses but not the additional million dollars so what happened to that million dollars I rolled over into fund balance which is something that you see which is part of that also if you go back to the September board agenda and you look at the revenues and you look at the percentages you'll see something like in Medicaid where we actually got more money than we budgeted for we anticipate this is what we're going to get for Medicaid revenue and we actually had I think it's somewhere upwards to $380,000 more that came in

184and the Medicaid comes in at the end of June so again it's not money that we can utilize immediately in the current school year what happens to that money rolls over into fund balance there was also there are a couple other areas bus transportation some other areas where what we budgeted as revenue what we would receive we actually received more so again that run rolls into fund balance and then there was and I think we mentioned this at the Finance Committee meeting there was a correction to the prior year 2017-18 which the only way to make that correction is to have the money roll into fund balance again so that was about 117 thousand dollars so those totals don't add up exactly to five million dollars because again I round it and I just put

185some information and left things like five thousand dollars here twelve thousand dollars here off but I wanted to get the board at an understanding of where some of these funds are coming from now what do we anticipate to be different going forward salary lapses are gonna happen we're always going to budget for the bus drivers we need we hope that we get them and spend them spend the money on the actual people but if we don't we still have the budget for those bus drivers we I talked a little bit about turnover any time you have turnover there's possibility for salary lapses if somebody leaves and January and the next person doesn't start until May there's some salary that happens there so you're still going to see that what we were trying to be intentional

186about this year this current you're going into this budget build is putting money upfront and maintenance tech transportation so that we were breaking that cycle of what I called we can get last last time I did this I think was in the spring we're in the spring we have these reallocation requests so that we could fund some of the things that are desperately needed in those departments so it's going to take us some time to retool that cycle which you might see a decrease in the amount of a reallocation request and hopefully fund balance as well so as for some of the projects that we have there are 18 things listed that is not by priority that is just grouped by category we also did a subtotal so the first three that are on the

187list that the Elementary Jim EC glass practice fail and then another six hundred thirty-six thousand dollars for CIP projects which are most likely going to be allocated to CIP projects at Dunbar that's about two million dollars of our requests that would go back into capital improvement programs that the city would be funding that are on they're a list there's some textbook reserves we do have a new textbook adoption coming up in addition to budgeting for the reserve so you'll see some money there and the board wanted to put some funds in the healthcare reserve which is the separate 2.2 million dollars to get that up to about 2.5 million dollars so you can see some subtotals there we have what we call school revitalization projects those are things that you know things that are just

188old and that need to be replaced updated upgraded in some cases and you'll see a list of those things as well as some other items on here some items for the board getting board Docs so that we have a seamless way with our meeting and agendas and some other things so we've accounted for all of the five million dollars questions dr. Gupta I'm glad to see this source of money but what troubles me is we went to City asking for one hundred eight hundred thousand dollars for salary and some would say well these projections there at that point somehow I can understand Medicare doesn't come till June but your salary the positions were not being filled that leftover money was rolling over month after month correct so let's go back in time so one we

189went to the city to ask for a hundred sixty-two thousand dollars which represented the additional two percent that the governor had when he changed from three to two so when we had crafted our an into our initial budget it was based on level funding in the level funding we had accounted for the three percent increase for salaries and then we asked for the additional two at that point in December I believe it's not a way for us to accurately predict fund balance is going to be 1 million or five in December even though you know at that point I'm sure we had bus driver positions that were unfilled with the hope that yes we will fill them there are some and Murray will tell you this some unanticipated leaves and changes that happen in personnel

190we did have some requests for like I said there were some reallocation requested I'm sure we could have done more for things that were needed that we did not do in the prior year which would have reduced that fund balance so they were there I want to separate the two things of why we asked for the additional funds in projecting it the other thing that we had discussed initially when we were developing our budget as we were looking at potential for fund balance because remember in the beginning I do think we were seeing thinking it was going to be somewhere about one to two million maybe is what we were guessing and we had projected that we would need somewhere around 1.4 million dollars just to step on our salary scales that if everybody who's

191still here stays here and gets the raise that that is projected on the scales we need 1.4 million dollars that's a high that's the top out number and we wanted to put that money in a salary reserve that was a request that I had presented to the board some time last year as possibility for planning for salaries last year it's almost 5 percent of our annual budget 100 million dollars of annual budget 5 million dollars in new money which we found and I'm assuming that's not a trend going forward this is one time and it's not new money because I would like to say that I would desperately like to fill all of my positions so it's not new money that's just sitting there because if if for some reason if you're out there at

192Elizabeth City and you want to come work for us and you do that's existing money to pay people who we desperately need them here so it's not like I have a salary for them and this is additional new money that's hanging out there it's not this is some of this is money that's committed to bringing the staff that we need to here to come work with us and stay with us here so I just don't want the public to be deceived that we have enough money to pay for the additional bus drivers and we would have extra money in this money to do some other things that's not not quite accurate don't you - I appreciate the transparency and I'm prepared to make a motion to approve the fund balance request just just an aside

193but we had a great meeting a couple weeks ago about a public hearing about the budget for this year and just as we're talking about these things I hope that somehow we can in light of the funds that we have here which I know are not available to use for other issues but we talked about trying to have extra spots of the governor school which we've got $26,000 of the first year and 56,000 after that and I hope that somewhere the budget will find that as we discuss the budget in the future I thought that might be your question and we've been receiving a number of letters from parents that are very supportive of it miss Carter remember I was holding off on that one point - and that doesn't help anything so if we

194hold off we need to remember these things to try to go back but going back with the the budget meeting was very beneficial I know it's not the time but I saw a major concern that the public wants more and more positions and jobs and City Council was saying you already are top-heavy so that's something we're going to have to look at made let's see more more for safety for special needs to mental health which is needed okay but we're looking at this but for tonight on dealing with these and we have a motion I agree as we get into budget discussions that we need to have those conversations they're not easy ones that's to be decided on before that's how we're classifying number four number four we have a motion from dr. Koh and

195a second any further discussion all in favor aye any opposed thank you very much for that providing that information the next comes to the equity task force Advisory Committee we've been given a list of names for the board to approve for membership on this committee good evening just as mrs. Morrison stated you've been given a list of names of those recommended to serve on the equity task force advisory committee for this school year as you see the equity task force Advisory Committee is a purpose was assisted assisting with the evaluation of equitable practices in six key areas those includes staff students training engagement and involvement cultural diversity and access and barriers and so I would ask tonight that you would approve the list of names submitted dr. Coleman incredible work the whole team that was

196and so I'm just asking a simple question about all of these names that are being said submitted their attendance and prior meetings would reflect their names being brought forward for continuance so those who served in the past we did look at attendance and service to the Advisory Committee yes additional questions attempt to kind of recruit some new members going so the process is that the the community could submit their letters of interest in this particular cycle because of the momentum that we had going forward with this group we did have a large number of those who served last year wanting to continue the work and so that of course decreased the number of slots that we had open to new new people as we go forward it will be evaluated every year and the one

197thing that and we experienced this last year where we had our meetings or public meetings they're open we had our task force members at the table but we also have visitors so we often had community members who would just come and share thoughts and ideas so we never turned anybody away where it became important for actual task force members is when we started to vote on things like what's going to be the agenda for the work session then we only let the actual task force members but it was a very open and friendly and welcoming environment for anyone from LGBT community as part of this equity task force we have those who express interest in advocating for all I have unless they just share their yeah they are so I don't answer your question do

198we have advocates for the answers yes because the actual the policy that was mentioned JB and jay-z or whatever those those two ones the student ones a staff policy that was mentioned actually came up at equity task force and I suspect we'll be back on the table after since they've done their large work with the volunteer policy so the answer is yes we do have average okay any other questions dr. Coleman recognizing a huge responsibility ahead of us outlined by the superintendent earlier in the meeting I moved to approve the name submitted for the 1920 school year it's Carter any further discussion discussion all in favor aye any opposed all right moving on to the legislative agenda priority list dr. Brennan you're gonna take this one sure I know this is the item everyone's been

199looking forward to this evening so it'll take probably take less than an hour concerned about it so I want to give credit to my fellow committee members including dr. nihlus and dr. Coleman and dr. Edwards isn't part of this conversation we did what you all asked us to do or actually you helped us do this so we discussed it the retreat we had about 22 different items broken down by goals of legislative agenda items and then we asked you to select the ones that you thought were most important which you're all were nice enough to do we tallied those and we list we have here in front of you the ones that came to the surface they got the most number of votes so we came up with eight under goal one I'm not going

200to read each one but we have one about early childhood education we have one on student mental wellness we have one on student success and we have one on african-american history education under goal two we have teacher recruitment and retention under goal three we have state testing and standards of quality and state education and funding as well as funding formula and then on goal four we have one item which doesn't have a name to it but you can read it for yourselves yeah I think I made up a name remember what it was I can't it was a it was family engagement for the for the for the bullet but I will I will send it out to you with that piece I think I did that someplace because we're doing yeah perfect great thanks

201Gary so this was discussed at our legislative agenda committee meeting I think all members were in support of this we thought we'd bring it to you since we would like to discuss this at the meeting on Friday like to see Brassica good emotion in a vote on this to confirm it for this evening and at that point I will stop and ask if any other committee members have any comments or there's any questions incredible job I'm very very excited about this opportunity that we've created taking advantage of the Virginia School Board take a legislator to breakfast in school and lunch so we're gonna do it right so this is for action tonight information and action since we're having a breakfast Friday it's their motion thank you miss Carter is there a second miss Evans any

202further discussion all in favor opposed Hey well ten minutes good job superintendent's comments certainly and both parent advisory and personnel buggery met last month we used a similar format that we used at the board public hearing which was interactive and engaging both groups gave me feedback and strategies for two areas one area was the budget we talked about the budget so I did get some input from my parents who attended and personnel who attended as well and the second area we talked about just after school activities given there the incident that happened a couple weeks ago where we locked down EC glass at night and then what does that look like for community members and people inside the mixture of having adults and kids fans visitors it's very different than the controlled situation that we

203had during the day so sort of problem-solving talked a little bit about that and some things that we might be able to do to help with the communication and keeping our kids and families safe so I was glad to be able to do that in a very interactive way the past month has been real busy I'm looking at the hour so I will kind of shorten some of the things that I have to say one I just want to give a shout out for the University of Lynchburg and helping us with their personal finance workshop that they're having on Tuesdays yes Tuesday's which kind of complements what we're teaching kids in our schools and they are also working with adults and Families kudos I didn't get a chance to go to the poetry competition that

204was at the Academy but I heard I missed something special I was done dealing with some other issues but kudos to tisha and Gabriel and I think it's I don't know how to pronounce the name if it's Donette then that Triana I think is it Danette Rihanna okay who are our third grade in middle school middle grades and high school winners and Dixie was there as was dr. dr. Coleman was my sub so he got to have all the fun but I think this is a wonderful opportunity for kids and we got some great suggestions on things that we can do to increase that spend some time in school buildings talk to kids at EC class recently read to kindergarteners at desi I spoke to the AP capstone class they they got me good with

205a whole bunch of questions about education so kudos to those because they're doing some awesome research and you know top-notch things I went to a couple community headstart grant program discussions participated on the V CIC board looking forward to going on Saturday November 16th to visit with the kids who are going to attend project inclusion we have 20 students from glass and 20 students from heritage that are going away for this week weekend week starts in a week training for students and there's some staff that go along with them but the experience that they have is life-changing and in terms of creating an inclusive environment so I'm going to go in the last let the kids talk to me about hey what's next you've had this experience I had the best time ever at Lincoln

206Elementary School at my Polar Bear hat and doing my first hour of ready and willing service it was the best job I had being ordered around just take this order do that working with families that happen to be donuts with dad and caregivers day so we had a lot of families there it was the Book Fair it was just fun to be in a school and to hang out with the kids and families for that as gary said participated on state evaluation for the gov school another you know wonderful experience in terms of the service that they provide and opportunities for our kids I had my little milk thing and you all some of you attended the the paramount presentation on the milk best chocolate milk ever at that school I love that and probably

207one of the biggest things I did was have our first meeting for the african-american history commission we met last week I guess it was and we have two main areas that we're looking at one is the actual standards for the history standards in Virginia as well as just the studies in general and the other is the professional development for how do we help staff teach the standards how to have tough conversations we had to select what groups we wanted to be on I am on the professional development group on me how do we have those tough conversations there are a lot of talented eager and just great people on that committee so I am looking forward to the work that we're going to do together the ideas were just flowing so I'm looking forward to

208our next meeting before traveling I had met with some of our staff our history teachers just to see what we do in Lynchburg city schools from their perspective and I believe next week I am going to meet with some students to talk to them about the experience are really trying to to get the whole picture there we had a regional meeting in Harrisonburg for vas there is a lot that is going on legislatively with some proposals that are coming forward and we just have to see where all the money's coming from for all of these different things there's a lot of good stuff out there but there are things just like we face that of competing interests as well as that and I think that was a quick summary I feel like I'm missing something

209I was that jug bowl and I stayed for the first half we sat on the the heritage side then we moved to the glass side so I did that and then tag-team with the Brennan's on our way out but thank you cuz in the car we were driving to North Carolina guess what I could do on my phone finish watching the game because it was streaming on the phone so if you heard me shouting in the middle of the night because it was a very exciting game I do appreciate the fact that we were able to do that so that was just wonderful and just to end on a fun note I have some really good pancake skills because I did get to go to the exchange club and serve pancakes and I will say

210if pancakes were an Sol test I rocked it I approve I showed growth last year pi threw away about 10 pancakes this year only had one that didn't make it so I'm real proud of that and again just spending time with families and being able to help and be of service was one that's a fun time yeah thank you all right for comments miss Evans do you have anything dr. Gupta thanks to miss Evans for teaching me how to make pancakes [Laughter] mr. hobby is my big brother now you can tell me the do's and don'ts I shouldn't be doing that's very helpful mr. Harvey shoutout to bass elementary school I got to go and visit with Miss Hendricks and I think as we saw earlier they are definitely showing some improvement but one of

211the things I really noticed was a lot of school pride and some citizenship it was very very very strong within the school I got to go into almost every single class both teachers and students were very friendly and what I was really amazed is when went into the classroom it wasn't as as miss Hendricks took me in it wasn't disturbing to the to the students they just simply looked and they paid attention to their teacher and they kept on rolling so hats off to them they're doing an excellent job they're also got to attend Sandusky's under the sea one of my bookmarks from from there that was a wonderful time we dr. nihlus miss Carter and dr. Coleman all kind of had a chance to go around under the sea and participate in a lot

212of the different activities and I tell you the the music and art room was just that was incredible we had some swashbuckling pirates that we got to watch that was that was really neat we mentioned about the the Gov school and I shared with you some of the positive comments from from superintendents and I think I'll just share this that within the discussions from the superintendent's it was how can we also look to the gov school to possibly help us in our base goals and I think that was something that was very really interesting to me and how we might look at ways that that not only just you know facilities and an infrastructure that they have but also the student body themselves because all of the students that go to the gov school they

213do come back to their base schools and so what can they take from their experiences and bring back and share with us and also to other things just wanted to say to dr. Edwards I think you did an excellent job at the community information meeting at glass and also hosting the board public dialogue meeting I think that was a very positive experience that we all had so my second year I'm still not very good at get miss Evans to help me with that but to two things one is that for those who've been around for a while you remember this organization called embrace our schools which is a group of families they're involved in especially schools that are trying to contact families who have children gonna go into kindergarten next year and have a informal

214social event to help introduce into schools in the fall that was held recently about two weekends ago we cordoned it was coordinated with the PTO presidents and members of different elementary schools in district 1 which we were looking primarily also TC Miller we were lucky we were fortunate to have mrs. bear from Paul Monroe mrs. gray from Lincoln Elementary and mrs. Steele from Lincoln Elementary from Bedford Hills to be there and it was I think it went very well there were about 30 individuals there there about 6 families that were have rising kindergartens and they were all pointed at the end ago the open houses in November the different schools so I think that was very hopeful would think thank you very much to dr. Edwards and to her staff for how long that to

215happen and as part of my adaptive school activities I participated I participated I observed the Jag run on Friday at Lake Borgne middle school I was not going to participate but it was a great event that their fundraiser for the year that raised 14 thousand dollars and they were students and and faculty involved it was just a great event and then tomorrow night for Hutchinson Early Learning I'm going to her family fun and then I did the program at Darrington which is walk to school where you go out to the end of the community and walk back to the school so that's been a great experience and I enjoyed it thank you my toddler goes to preschool where half the students are Head Start students and half or not it's really nice and they had

216a parent meeting where they did a really nice presentation on how to read to your children and you know I read to Norah all the time but I really hard to wanted this thing and it occurred to me and I'm really glad that we have early childhood education on our legislative agenda because these kids that are going in there two three and four years old they are so advantaged now they'll be so ready for kindergarten when the time comes that I really do hope that we can mix place where every child can go to preschool at least part time before kindergarten it's just wonderful but it was a really nice and it was good turnout very engaged parents and they had little handouts for us and just the additional things you can do while you're

217reading to your children so really thank you miss Carter wow so attended literacy night us and dusk elementary under the sea and it was just the theme just continued all throughout and the teachers look like they had just gotten there and I know it's a long day everyone was just so motivated and they took the opportunity to include the bookseller so that was a whatever mr. Womack is doing to get the number of people to come we need to find out what his what his secret is because that was awesome and one of the segments was reading to your children and that was just a grade the other one I went to lights on lights on after school at Heritage and is seen off Heritage Elementary seeing all their wonderful innovative things that they're doing

218one was photography with mrs. Spain Spain and the crafts with mrs. speck I believe they're doing crafts that are that you can design them on the computer and then it prints out or shows you how to do it and so it's elevators not your crafts of old and for the adoptive school I did Rob Robert uh Spain the bike giveaway and just to see the smiles on the kids faces and all of the if law enforcement people that were there it was just awesome they were a cool bikes one was Green and it was pretty cool and also participated in the in Spencer poetry contest and whatever whoever is with ours pain they really understand and know it and they have a lot of competition competitors and I wish more schools will participate and I

219was able to that morning I was at the empowerment Academy and I said and said right behind the one of the students than one that night that night for that and the empowerment Academy - they had a motivational speaker Walter Virgil and he talked about our your liability on an asset and he really brought it down to the classroom level when you go into a classroom are you taking or you giving and I think they're really when he said that you know I think the light bulb went on that was just awesome and again I've talked about the budget meeting how people are really asking for more staff for different things and we'll have to look at that heritage win and I heard from the soup regarding the public meetings - parents came to me

220and just talked about some of the people that presented were rather rude but that you did an amazing job and that people need to look at this how they're how they're modeling role modeling things when they're presenting we can present and we can have discussion but you really need to be respectful but they just applauded you and say there's how wonderful you download that situation so kudos work to you dr. Noah's math night good Sheffield so I thought our crew had a pretty good turnout I had pizza which always helps draw people in and so the you need to go and look at the math problems that they had up on them on the wall they're not they're challenging they're challenging so it's math is different than when I went to elementary school so and

221I did enjoy the literacy night it seemed dusky element Elementary I got a couple of I don't have any kids at home but I need to read too but I do have grandkids that come and visit and or we go visit so I have a couple of new books for them that was all great thank you I'm really proud of the Finance Committee the chair and all of you for the great work that is happening in that area as I said at the retreat I really had a tremendous opportunity of growing being a part of the Virginia Teacher of the Year selection panel and I report to each of you but there's some really incredible pieces one of which I shared dr. Gupta and I attended a luncheon I believe it was today citizenship and

222building a better safer world and trying to get people connected so there are a lot of ideas that folk around the Commonwealth half that could help in the teaching profession that I hope we would take a good solid look at I did get an opportunity Thank You Ethel and dr. kam and all of those focus as Sharon just mentioned about the bike giveaways I attended that at parrot Perry Mont and heritage and actually rode in on a bike far too small for me I do want to mention the Sandusky elementary piece what I enjoy most about the night was the shrimp that they serve for the food so in a way at six o'clock in the morning that's what you do with the pancake Jamboree I told dr. Koopman I would be there and I

223was there six o'clock and didn't leave it to 7:15 and I assisted the individuals that were cooking the pancakes all right and then I want to conclude by stating that I did attend a jug bowl that was awesome shout out to Andre Kendrick and his son I mean it's just an amazing father-son story and I'm very proud of that my daughter attends her did you not leave that alone and tomorrow I will be speaking at Desi for an SGA assembly in the morning talking about elections and so I won't give a two-minute presentation to encourage the children to participate in the electoral process of the SGA thank you well briefly I just need to say thank you to all of this board for my three-week medical leave and that the support you gave me and

224it was just it was very nice thank you but I want to give a special thank you to dr. Coleman who attended the meetings on my behalf represented the board and an outstanding job so thank you and I felt really comfortable not being here I missed it and my three adopted schools I promise that I'll get back in the swing of things out of it but thank you very much and with that Oh information oh thank you I'm just tired all right an honor the vsba take your legislator to school month the Lynchburg City School Board is sponsoring a legislative breakfast on November 8th 2019 the vsba annual convention is scheduled for November 20th to 22nd 2019 in Williamsburg Virginia and I think we have seven school board members and our superintendent attending the next

225school board meeting will be held on Tuesday December 3rd at 5 p.m. in the boardroom at the administration building the next school board work session is scheduled for December 17th the focus of the discussion will be the LCA volunteer policy and regulations and I will electronically sent all of you the delicate handbook I was supposed to be the delegate and Sharon was the alternate since I am unable to attend Sharon will be the delegate we we will decide an alternate and please review that handbook but I think he sent it out in July or August like September it says and and she needs to know if you have any objections to any of their legislative positions did you hear that she means ok all right did that forget anything we're adjourned [Music]