001item 2.2 declaration and roll call vote of subjects discussed in closed meeting. May I have a motion? >> I make a motion to adopt the certificate of closed meeting. >> Thank you, Mrs. Hodes. Thank you, Mr. Morgan. Any discussion? There being none, may we have a roll call vote? >> Yes. Item 2.3, approval of personnel action. May have a motion. >> Yes. I will make a motion to approve the personnel action as listed. >> Thank you, Mr. Morgan. You have a second. >> Thank you, Miss Digs. Discussion. All those in favor say I. >> I. Opposed. Motion passes. Item 2.4, approval of student action number two. >> I make a motion to approve the long-term suspension of student number two. >> Thank you, Mrs. Hodes. Do we have a second? >> Second. >> Thank you,
002Miss Digs. Any discussion? >> All those in favor say I. >> I. Opposed. Motion passes. Item 2.5, approval of student action number three. >> I make a motion to approve the placement of student number three in a long-term alternative education program. >> Thank you, Mrs. Hodes. Do we have a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Mr. Morgan. Any discussion? There being none, all those in favor say I. >> I. Opposed. Motion passes. Item 2.6, Six. Approval of student action number four. >> I make a motion to approve the placement of student number four in a long-term alternative education program. >> Thank you, Mrs. Hodgees. Do we have a second? >> I second that. >> Thank you, Miss Diggs. Any discussion? >> All those in favor say I. >> I. Opposed. Motion passes. Item 2.7, approval
003of student action number five. I make a motion to approve the placement of student number five and long-term alternative education program. >> Thank you, Miss Digs. Do we have a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Mrs. Hodes. Any discussion? >> All those in favor say I. I. Opposed. Motion passes. >> Item 2.8, approval of student action number six. I make a motion to approve the expulsion of student number six and place in a long-term alternative education program for the remainder of the 2025 2026 school year. >> Thank you, Mrs. Hodes. Do we have a second? >> I second that. >> Thank you, Miss Digs. Is there any discussion? >> All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Opposed? Motion passes. Any more comments, questions? There being none, the close meeting is adjourned. I'd like
004to welcome everybody to the December 16th, 2025 Matthews County School Board regular monthly meeting. Would you please all rise to state the pledge of allegiance with me? I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Item 1.3, Miss Laauo, may we have the roll call, please? >> Present. present. Thank you. We have quorum. Item 1.4, approval of the agenda, additions and deletions. May I have a motion? >> I make a motion to approve the agenda as listed. >> Thank you, Mrs. Hodes. Do we have a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Mr. Morgan. Is there are there any um any discussion? There being none, all those in favor say I. >> I.
005Opposed? Motion passes. Item 1.5, consent agenda. May I have a motion? >> Yes. I'll make a motion to approve the minutes of November 18th, 2025 closed and regular monthly meetings, November 13, 2025 legislative tour minutes and monthly claims as presented on the consent agenda. >> Thank you, Mr. Morgan. Do we have a second? >> I second that. >> Thank you, Miss Digs. Discussion. I just wanted to uh make a note that on December 15th uh that I reviewed the claims and we will need to establish January 16th because we are closed on the 19th due to the holiday. We need to establish the bills being reviewed on the 16th. That is a Friday. Is anyone available to do that? If not, I'll be happy to do it. >> I think I'm available. >> Okay. What
006date is? >> It's going to be January 16th, >> Friday. >> I'll put that down. >> Okay. Thank you, Miss Digs. Miss Digs will take January 16th. Any more discussion? >> All those in favor say I. >> I. Opposed. Motion passes. Item 1.6, Matthews County School Board Governance, Norms and Protocols. As you know, we read a couple of these each time, Mr. Morgan, I believe. Um, do you have that pulled up? >> I'm sorry. >> We are That's okay. We will go ahead. I will read the There are two highlighted. >> I do not have it pulled up. >> Okay. All right. For committee reporting expectations, board members will report on committee work when applicable and responding to media inquiries. The chair is the official spokesperson of the board. The superintendent will respond to day-to-day
007inquiries. Now we get to the fun stuff, recognitions. Item two, fall sports. This is Amy O'Neal. You are up first. Can't wait. Yeah, that's okay. I don't need it. There you go. Perfect. Thank you. Good evening, Dr. Gibbs, member of the board, Dr. Daniel, Miss Hunley. Thank you for putting me uh close to the top of the agenda. I have a games I have two games going on, so it's really great that I can do this and be back over there. Um, I'd like to get started on our fall sports. They, um, we had a tremendous fall. Um, but I think I can make it. Um, I want to start off with But it was really great that that we had that um that input. Um first of all, fall cheer started off very strong.
008The squad trained hard throughout August. The cheerleaders supported the football football team early in the season. Um team shifted to their focus to support fall other fall sports because of our unfortunate um end with football. Um, the volleyball games were well attended and they cheered from the stands. And the homecoming events were successful and well attended. You just going to click for me? All right. Okay. All right. So, and we have our cross country team. We always have phenomenal results with our cross country teams. Um, thank you to Coach Griev. Um, we have the girls cross country team. They were region A regular. I'm sorry. Let's see. Okay. Yes. Um, region A 1A regular season record is 16 and four. We had an individual um, honors were Elizabeth Moore, Alen Row, Kylie Swanson. They were
009all district. Um, Elizabeth Moore was all region and all state was also Elizabeth Moore. So that was that was very great. Uh, great thing. Elizabeth is a sophomore, so we have a lot of good years still left with her. Um, she's over playing basketball now. Um, team highlights, they placed fifth at a uh, Nights Crossing Invitational. Um, they were 17 teams. We had, uh, placed 27 in the Virginia cross country showcase, which was 34 teams. Uh, they, let's see, I don't think I'm saying this right. Okay. I'm sorry. Okay. And um they competed at the VHSL state championship. Boys cross country. Their regular season they were 20 and 0. That was fantastic. Um individual honors all district. Chase Higin Bothotham, Blake Hunley, John Jenkins, Salvador Cardinus, Ivra Golden, Dominic Winters, and Adam Griev. All region
010we had Chance Higin Bothotham again, John Jenkins, Ivor Golden, Adam Griev, Blake Hunley, S. Cardinis, and Dominic Wyinners. All state was Chance Higinbotham. They placed second out of 27 teams at the cross uh the nights crossing invitational, 10th at the Virginia uh cross country showcase of 43 teams, tidewater district champions, region 1A champions, and finished fifth at the VHSL state championship. So I think that deserves a a round of applause. >> Absolutely. My very favorite thing to do for uh as far as achieving um anything out of sports is all academic. And I'm I'd like to say that these were the kids that got all academic and that's top priority to me that there's no bigger honor. A state championship is a great thing, but all academic is what we're here for, right? So, Ivar
011Golden, Adam Griev, Zack Salvadori, Llaya Duff, Rayanne Hellbig, Elizabeth Moore, Jordan Sedg, and Morgan Sterns. See if this works. Yay. Okay, there's some kids at the cross country meets. Okay. Um, this was a letter that I sent on Facebook and I sent out. Um, I'm not going to read that to you either. is basically that after much thought and consideration, we made the difficult decision to end the football season. We had in two games that we had, we had four players carried off by stretcher. Um, we had the rest of the kids were afraid they were going to get hurt. We had very minimal staff. Um, we gota I have to say I'm very proud that these boys tried it. They tried hard. They worked hard. Um, it's kind of I'm not going to say
012impossible, but when you put players that haven't played before out on a field starting front line against players that have played all of their life, it's a big task to ask. So, um, there were a lot of other players who wanted to quit. So, we had a meeting together. I'm like, look, are you trying do you want to quit because you're afraid you're going to get hurt or are you afraid because we're getting beat? What what is it? And it came down to they were afraid of getting hurt. And I' I'd never want to put a player in a position where they're going to get injured. So, we made the decision. I mean, it's two years trying to do this. Um, you have to have experienced players. You have to have people who want to
013play. Um, you can't just want it for kids sometimes. And after seeing those injuries, I can understand why some of them may not want may not have wanted to go back out. But every year, I'm going to try again. Uh I'd like to try again with JV possibly next year. The only problem with JV is there's not a lot of teams that have a JV team. So even if we had one, it'd be kind of hard to find a team to play. I'm not saying that we won't. I'm just saying that's a possibility. But I will try hard to do it again. Okay. Golf. All right. Our golf program um began really strong this uh at the beginning of the season. We had 16 athletes on our golf team, which is unheard of. Um I
014think coach realized uh it was great to recruit and have the the kids interested in the sport. Um however, 16 might have been a little too many to have on the team. Um, so he said he's going to scale back a little bit next year, but um, our top six competitors posted some really good scores um, in the program's history. Um, in the season they did had two wins and eight losses, but again, we're a young team. We're starting somewhere. Um, I told my a bunch of the the students about when they get upset that they lose or whatnot. I'm like, when you have a new program, and I took a program when I was a coach that was a program that had struggled for a while, you can't turn that program around in a
015year. It's going to take four or five years to be able to turn that program around. And um I I really feel like we have a a really good coach in place. I feel like we're going to sky the limit. We have a wonderful freshman who went to state this year um that I think that he says it was his most awful uh score ever. So, I I think if we give him time, get experience, I think he's going to be wonderful. Um, we placed uh third in the district tournament. So, that that's awesome. Um, we competed in the region 1A tournament at the Golden Eagle Golf Golf Club. Uh, Brandon Hubard is who I'm speaking of, who went to state. He wed sixth in region. Um, and he qualified for the state tournament. Like
016I said, he finished 30 out of 60 competitors at the state tournament. U and that's that's pretty that's pretty good feat. And apparently if he had done as well as he's done in the past, he would have been a lot closer to the top. Um so all academic Chase Ambrose, Elton Hudgens, Brandon Webb, Michael Wyatt, and Corey Jen. Our volleyball our volleyball team was n uh 13 and nine. Uh all district team we had Nora Southern uh first team all district. We had Hannah Davis who was second team all district and Haley Love who was second team all district. All region was Nora Southern. Um the team won the first round of the region match which put them at the top four of the region tournament. This was their girls goal in the very beginning
017of the season without knowing what kind of team we were going to have. So it was really neat that they achieved that goal. Um they moved furniture at Thomas Hunter which uh a lot of the athletes did and I really appreciate their effort with that. It was amazing to me walking into Tom Thomas Hunter and seeing all the furniture and with what after I don't know few hours it was gone. They they worked really really well together. I can say that if you ask our students to do pretty much anything their game and they'll they'll be willing to do whatever you ask. Um they did I didn't write this so I'm not trying to call attention on myself but they did an AD appreciation night for me which was so super sweet. um embarrassed me
018to death, but I don't like to be center of attention. Um we did a breast cancer night that Pat Mowen does every year. We raised $850 um that Taran Thomas took to her um making strides breast cancer walk the very next day. So that was really neat. We've been giving to uh giving our funds to the giving garden, but we thought since we had a personal connection with this that it would be mean mean more. Um, all academic Bentley Lawrence, Emily Ward, Caitlyn Ball, Addison Griffith, Harmony Smith, Hannah Davis, Abigail Ramsey, Nora Suard, and Ella A Ward. And I would like to say, like I always do, I couldn't do what I do without my athletic boosters. They're amazing. They're uh they work religiously like they're on paid staff. I couldn't couldn't ask for anything
019more. But thank you so much for everything and looking forward to winner. >> Thank you, coach. You're amazing. Thank you for your leadership. >> We have some special recognitions now on item 3.1, retirement plaque presentation. So, special people require um kind of a a special change of plans. Um when I um first came to Matthews, the um first voice that I heard um and and had conversation with um was Miss Sharon Morgan. Uh, Miss Morgan has worked diligently for Matthews County Public Schools, especially in the schoolboard office, um, organizing, um, the numerous superintendent, um, but the work of the school board and the work of the school board office. Um so when um I was curious and interested about coming to Matthews um she was that voice um that communicated what Matthews is about um
020what Matthews should should be about and a warmth and a welcomeness um that came from Herd let me know that this was a place where I wanted to be. So, as individuals and families um for many decades have called the Matthews County School Board office with questions or concerns or information, um they have been able to speak with Miss Morgan on on multiple levels. And so she's been able to do um the things to reassure families, reassure our community, um lend lend an ear, but also a welcoming voice um while also providing just so much guidance to folks who have come come and gone through our school division. So it is with um great pleasure that I welcome um we call her um Sheran. Um, but if Miss uh Miss Sharon Morgan uh would uh
021join us up here for um her retirement after 28 years with Matthews County Public Schools. She's finding Amazing speech. or she >> and you get this recording that tells you >> she's And I just want to say a couple of things. Um, in addition to the 28 years, you have assisted 23 school board members, six assistant superintendent, and four superintendent over those years. So, that's quite a feat. Thank you, Miss Morgan. Thank you, We have a member, Mr. Robert Dobson, who's not here tonight at the meeting, who this would have been his last meeting, and I just want to take a second to recognize him, to thank him for his service, for his dedication to students. While we have had many robust interactions in open meeting and on the side, I respect that man for
022the dedication to students that he has always shown, specifically his interest in the JOTC program. He brought that to our division, brought it back to our division, and just has such a heart for, of course, the military, but our students who are following that that path. And if there's anyone else who would like to make a mention, I believe Mr. Dobson is listening to us at this time. Thank you, Miss Diggs. >> See, push it again. Push it again. There you go. >> Okay. Um, Mr. Dobson, if you're if you're out there listening, we miss you tonight. And I want on once I came on the board, I saw a different side of you. I saw your dedication to the students of Matthews and I saw your dedication in preparation to come to these meetings.
023Um, and I learned from that and I appreciate you and I pray for you that you will do well in the days to come. Merry Christmas. >> Thank you, mistakes. That's nice. >> U, Mr. Dobson and I didn't always um agree. Um, uh, however, in my mind, there was never any doubt about his commitment to the students. um and wanting this division to move forward. Um I think as Dr. Gibbs mentioned his passion for the um ROC program um and being able to bring it to Matthews High School um will be certainly um his signature um uh signature uh I guess responsibility uh the gift he's given us and the students. Um and and again um I'm sorry you're not here this evening, Mr. Dobson. Um, I wish you well and um, and I've always
024appreciated that um, regardless of the political climate, you spoke um, what you believe to be the truth and you never backed down from that um, regarding regardless of what political pressures might be out there and I um, have high regard for your ability to do that. So, thank you so much. I just want to say, Mr. Dobson, that uh we're going to miss having you here with us, but I do thank you for all you did for the board and for the school division, and hope you enjoy your retirement days. Thank you, sir. >> Thank you, Mr. Morgan. Dr. Dan, >> thank you, Dr. Gibbs. Um, in my time here in Matthews, um, one of the things that has rung true um, for me in working with Mr. Doson, he would frequently frequently talks about
025how members of this board can disagree on topics and our votes aren't always 50 that sometimes they're they're 32 votes or 41 votes. Um, but there was never a hostility. There was a commitment to each board member's perspective that he would always talk about and continues to talk about how this board remains very collaborative even though there are differences among um the the elected officials on the board. Um so I think that's that's a hallmark for his time being on the board. One other piece that I've um it's still not really okay. How's that better? Am I better now? I thought maybe it was just okay well just it's just not going my way. Um no, but I Mr. Dobson um I think Miss Hodgees sort of alluded to it too though um is a
026staunch advocate especially for underdog kids. And so in the meetings kind of behind closed doors in the phone calls with me um whether that's making sure we have opportunities for ROTC um but in other meetings making sure that we were paying we are paying attention to the kids who may get overlooked at times and so that I think is would would also be a hallmark for um his time on the board. So Mr. Dobson I hope you're hope you're feeling better and hope hope you're feeling better soon. Wish you were here, Mr. Dobson. >> Yep. >> Take care. >> All right. Now, we're moving on to item four. Exciting. Another exciting item, the 2026 teachers of the year presentation. Dr. Daniel. Well, actually, it's item 4.1 with Mrs. Bray. >> Miss Bray is up first.
027>> All right. I'm gonna give you the instructions first. So, I know it's this is how we're going to do this. Okay. There's There is a plan. Okay. >> Sorry. So, you're going to say all the great things and then you guys are just going to step just over to the side and then Miss Simpson's going to come up and then she's going to go to that side and then Dr. Griev's going to come up and then we're going to do some more fun stuff. So, everybody's going to stay up. I know you get to stand up for a while. I am so excited to introduce to you the Matthews Elementary School teacher of the year, Miss Christina Tomy. Miss Tom Kenny makes learning fun. She convinces kids that they can do hard things. And
028I don't know if she's really world famous, but I'm pretty sure her pep talks to students are world famous. You know, when you spend time in a school building, you can walk down the hall and you can tell what's going on in the classroom. Quiet. I bet they're taking a test. Laughter. Maybe they're reading a story. Miss Tom Cany's room. You walk past, you stop, you back up, and you think, "What is happening in there?" And so, more often than not, I'll just pop in and say, "What are you doing?" And they're celebrating something always. Just this week, I walked in and said, "What is happening?" Because I could hear this um deep kind of growly And I said, "What is going on?" They were practicing their spelling words like Santa. G I R L
029ho ho ho. So much fun. But I want to tell you what her colleagues had to say about her because I think that this speaks volumes. She inspires a love of learning and sparks enthusiasm and curiosity in both high achievers and those needing additional support. And she celebrates each child's success. Students don't just belong to Miss Tom Kenny for one year. They admire her and love her long after their year in her class. Every day you can see former students stopping by for conversation and a quick hug. She brings joy to our days. Plus, if you've ever heard her laugh, it's contagious. And we all need that laugh in our building and in our hearts. Miss Christina Tom Kenny. >> Great. Wonderful. Congratulations. Fantastic. Mrs. Simpson for Thomas Hunter Middle School. Well, good evening board.
030Dr. Gibbs, Dr. Daniel, Miss Hunley. It is a pleasure to recognize a truly exceptional educator who exemplifies Thomas Hunter Middle School. This year, teacher, this year's teacher of the year consistently inspires students through dedication, creativity, and a genuine commitment to helping every learner grow. Her positive influence extends beyond the classroom, making a lasting impact on students, colleagues, and the entire school community. Congratulations to Mary Beth Burrough. We love having her on our team. Congratulations. So through the nomination process, um I did receive some comments and I wanted to share with you some of the things that were said about Miss Burroughs. Miss Burroughs is caring, thoughtful, and helpful to students and staff alike. She is dedicated and gives her all in teaching her students. Another person wrote, "She is a passionate educator who is meticulously
031organized. And if you have ever gone into her classroom and seen the agenda and the PowerPoint presentations that she puts together for her English seven students, it's pretty comprehensive. Students take her assignments seriously, so Miss Burroughs sets the bar high." A colleague also wrote that Miss Burroughs takes the time to build meaningful connections with her students. She fosters trust and open communication that enhances each child's learning experience. She embodies the heart of education, empowering young children to lead, learn, and thrive. >> Congratulations. >> Fantastic. Great job, >> Dr. for the high school. >> Good evening, members of the board. It is my great great pleasure to introduce Mr. John Corrian as the Matthews High School teacher of the year. Um, I did something a little differently this year. Uh, so what I did was I
032pieced together uh the words of his colleagues in their nomination forms. So, so bear with me. Um much like Miss Miss Simpson just wrote uh read the uh the comments of of Miss Burroughs's colleagues. Um his peers said that he is an exceptional educator who has dedicated years to Matthews High School and continues to inspire our students with his love of literature, music, and culture. His teaching style has had a measurable impact on our student success. And I I want to say I was in there last week or the week before and and it's amazing. He goes over the headlines of the day um just aside and and uh and asks students to to uh share their opinions on on what's going on in the world. And then uh he always says, "Okay, support that."
033Like let's let's develop that argument. Support support what you know how do you truly feel about that? So he's giving he's teaching students to to use their own voice and and think critically. Um he's also seen a tremendous achievement as the coach of our scholastic bowl team. He takes his role as teacher and coach very seriously and our students continue to benefit. He has been named the Blue Devil's Impact Club to the Blue Devil's Impact Club numerous times, often multiple times during one senior night recognition. And again, so the Blue Devil Impact Club is something that Miss O'Neal started that every senior should choose a faculty member who has made a significant impact in their lives. And it's been a it's a really been a great program and some of our students choose uh elementary
034school teachers way back from from you know from the elementary school days and how they've shaped their lives. Uh it's amazing. I think Mr. Corgan's name has come up more than any other as the most impactful teacher and often uh several several teammates on the same team, same senior night uh will will basically recognize uh Mr. Corgan that same time. So the the students have spoken loudly in in his impact as well. Um he's an exemplary uh professional and respected by his colleagues. He's compassionate and tough all at the same time. He's a leader and always there for students and staff when needed. He's passionate about his role and our school and we are very fortunate to have him as a teacher, mentor, and leader, department chair, coach, and exceptionally passionate teacher at Matthews High
035School. Mr. John Corki, >> congratulations. Oh my gosh. Fantastic. >> So, I'm gonna um I'm gonna pass out some plaques here in a second. I just want to also take a and then we'll get to the division teacher of the year. Um I just want to also thank ESS. Uh Miss um Tasha Hill and Jquet Barnes are here from ESS. So, I want to thank them for they are sponsoring our teacher of the year um program and and plaques and just ASS supports us in our substitute teacher services um and they've been just a valuable partner um for Matthews County um this school year. So, I'm going to get some plaques and then we're going to get to some more fun stuff. Okay. There was a much better plan. and Mr. Great. Can you do
036them all together? Want a picture of them all together? >> Yeah. Maybe in front so the people could see them. >> Could do it. Do it. >> Do you want them for for for our for our citizens at home. I think if we have them we want them standing in front of this camera facing out. Okay. >> Okay. Like people at home see And then >> okay, they're actually gonna they're gonna actually but do it the if if you turn the camera's actually that way, Mr. Anthony. Did we get it? Okay, we got Yay. Okay, we did it. We did something. Yay. All right, great. Okay, good. Excellent. >> Congratulations, Miss Tom Kenny, Miss Burroughs, Mr. Corgan. Congratulations. Great job. Well done. >> Yes. Yes. >> But wait, there's more. So, we go through a
037process for selecting the division teacher of the year. That division teacher of the year has the opportunity to put their name for the state of the year. Process state. We had a really difficult time this year. Three extremely talented educators who've done a tremendous amount for the kids and our community. Ultimately, we decided Thank you very much. That's very nice. Very nice. >> Oh, that's right. That's right. >> It's great. It's great. It's great. Congratulations. Thank you so much for all you do. >> That's wonderful. >> Great. Wonderful. Okay, back to the agenda. On item five, we have questions or comments from the uh school board student representative. Miss Ward, you are up. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. Here is a report for Matthews Elementary School. On November 24th, our teachers celebrated Friendsgiving with
038the giant covered dish lunch. November 25th, the Rotary Club and Rackets for Reading sponsored our prek friends for a scholastic book distribution. Each preK friend got to pick two books to take home because of their generosity. Our fabulous PTO prepared a breakfast for teachers and staff before Thanksgiving. It was delicious and very much appreciated. We are celebrating the 12 days of Christmas with a fun theme every day. Jingle bells, festive attire, reindeer antlers, and Santa hats are everywhere. Our prek and kindergarten friends had an adorable performance on December 11th and ended with all of the families singing together. The kids were so excited and we were all in the holiday spirit when we left that evening. The week before Christmas break always brings great joy to me. Our classrooms are filled with laughter, excitement, singing,
039and crafts. One day, the halls echoed with the class practicing their spelling words the way Santa talks and ending each word with a belly laugh. Ho ho ho. The Matthews High School band will perform a Christmas concert for MEES Thursday at 1:50. And we will end our week together singing fun Christmas songs before the students leave for the winter break. The Thomas Hunter Middle School Seahawks have also had a great month at school. Our students have completed the STAR reading and math test for the midyear assessment. Students reports will be coming out after the holidays so parents can see how their child did. THMS has a schoolwide goal of no zeros in Power School for quarter 2. Students have been checking their grades and making sure that all work has been turned in. If anyone
040needs help getting into the program, please let the school know and someone will assist. Seventh grade students had a trip to Richmond to see the Nutcracker. Thank you to Miss Burroughs for organizing the trip. Our sixth grade students had the opportunity to go to Machakamako State Park for a science field trip. They learned about systems and had a great time. Thank you, Miss Sour, for arranging this trip. Many students participated in the Matthews Christmas parade last Saturday. We appreciate those who walked in the parade. On Wednesday, December 17th, our students will be presenting the sights, sounds, and tastes of the season. Join the Thomas Hunter Middle School band and exploratory classes for an evening celebrating the season. Doors open at 6:00, and the concert will begin at 7:00. THMS would like to say a huge
041congratulations to Mary Beth Burroughs for being selected teacher of the year for our school. We appreciate your dedication to our students. Thomas Hunter Middle School staff would like to wish all our Seahawks a very happy holiday and a merry Christmas. And for Matthews High School, we've enjoyed a very busy month of December as the students eagerly prepare for winter vacation. Our art students participated in the annual Maiden Matthews student art contest. And we'd like to congratulate our top three finishers. Nolan Swan placed third, Ellie Conro placed second, and Savannah Bass placed first. We really appreciate the students and our FCS classes for preparing soups for our faculty and staff on November 21st. We all appreciate the work of our FCCLA members in their effort to lead a food drive to benefit Hands Across Matthews. The
042FCCLA is currently collecting coats for kids and teens until January 16th. We appreciate everyone who has already made donations to the kids of Matthews. We also appreciate everyone who has supported our junior class and prom by purchasing gift certificates to the title wave car wash for their annual fundraiser. We also appreciate the work of our music department who has been very busy during the month of December performing for the public at many events, most notably their annual holiday concert on December 3rd and the annual Matthews Christmas parade on December 13th. Last week, our Beta Club concluded its annual Toys for Tots drive, working with the United States Marine Corps to provide toys for students in need. This week, all of our students, faculty, and staff are welcoming the holiday season with our holiday spirit week,
043and we're having fun dressing each day to different themes. We are all definitely ready for winter vacation. >> Great job. Thanks, Miss Ward. >> Good. On to item six, student achievement 6.1, our school performance and support framework. long performance. This new accountability system was supposed to be out in early October. um it was delayed until I think December 10th, I think, is when it when it finally came out. Um so this I'm going to try to walk through um both our scores while also explaining this accountability system because it is very different um than what we've been used to for the previous 25 years and talking about standards of learning testing and then No Child Left Behind and AYP and and various other things. So um this accountability system brings into it a lot of
044other variables and metrics um and measurements. All right. So the first piece to um think about is with this framework. We've historically talked about accreditation and um school divisions being fully accredited or schools being fully accredited. Accountability is now a separate entity from accreditation. And there's a slide that's coming up on this, but accountability from the state's perspective is now about output. So how are what is student performance? What are the results from students in school? And then they are trying to distill multiple variables and metrics into kind of a zero to 100 scale and then grouping um having I guess categories or an easy way to say it or grades kind of grading schools in that 0 to 100 scale for the output of um student performance in in multiple kinds of areas. So
045those state performance categories or grades are really distinguished on track offtrack and needs intensive support. So those are the state performance categories. So to be distinguished to be distinguished um or recognized as the distinguished schools it's a score of 90 or above. On track is 80 to 89. Um off excuse me on track is 80 to 89. Off track is 65 to 79. And then needs intensive support is any school that's below um a summitative score of 65 points. Then at the federal level there are federal identification categories comprehensive school excuse me comp comprehensive support and improvement additional targeted support and improvement and then just simple targeted support and improvement. So we can talk a little bit about those as we go forward AC again. So that's about accountability. Accreditation is really about compliance. So
046now the account the accreditation piece has to do with are we following state code? Are we following the number of instructional hours teacher lensure? There's I think it's it's about 120 um questions on a survey um that we fill out double check on compliance to make sure that we are accredited. So accredited is following um you know following mandates is basically what it is. It has nothing to do with student performance going forward. Okay. So again different diagram kind of showing the what they would say is the bifurcation of accountability and accreditation. All right. So going back to the accountability piece and that um school school performance and support framework. So there is a waiting that goes into um each school's summitive score. So elementary schools are going to vary a little different from middle
047schools who vary a little bit from high schools. The three general categories for each school though are mastery, growth, and readiness. the elements that go into mastery, growth, and readiness are going to vary slightly again by each school. So you see in the table below each sort of um circle graph. So for elementary schools, mastery is 65%, growth it constitutes 25, readiness is 10. That changes at middle schools where mastery then becomes 60, growth is 20, readiness is 20. um high schools um mastery is 50. You have graduation that floats in because growth is not a factor in the high school calculation. So you have mastery, graduation and readiness. Readiness becomes a much larger component at the high school level. The next piece that ends up happening is because not every school is constructed um
048in terms of grade level the same way. You have multiple variations. So some elementary schools may be K4, some are K3, some are K7. Um, so depending on how your school is organized, the metric changes yet again. Okay. So in Matthews, wait for it, we have two elementary schools and one combo school because of our grade configuration. Basically because where 8th grade is located in our school structure. So grade configuration for elementary school whether it's K4, K7 is on that far left. So reading mastery constitutes again 22 and a half and reading, math, science, um English learner progress and then growth. I'll I'll take a moment at at this time to if you remember probably back in your schooling days thinking about a a Rube Goldberg machine um over overgineering some solution. Um part of
049this is it's a great idea and it's bringing in lots of variables to measure schools. It's just a complex way of going about doing it. So the ele So again, elementary school is is in front because our eighth grade is at the high school. We don't have based on this chart a middle school or a high school. We have two elementary schools and a middle high combo. So the waiting and the percentages and the metrics um kind of change from a traditional high school or a traditional middle school or what we would think of as a traditional elementary school. So the middle high combo is that sort of section in the middle and those those are the waitings for mastering. Okay. All right. The thing to keep in mind as we're going forward. So, at
050the elementary and middle school levels, mastery and growth are based on that year's testing. So, the students who tested in the spring, their mastery, their overall performance on that test and then their growth, their growth from previous year's test to current year's test is all based on their performance in May of 2025. Mastery at the high school level or the combo, middle, high, combo level. Mastery for the high school students is based on a cohort. So, how that cohort did, last year's graduating class, how they did on their English, math, science, so tests, not how the high school did in 2025 except for eighth grade because they also took tests. So the eighth grade has one piece, but then grades 9 through 12 is a cohort model and it's based on the graduating seniors performance
051when they took their English 11 so test or their algebra 1 so test several years ago. Okay. All right. So division performance. So I'm going to in terms of we'll go through mastery growth um some of the attendance some of the other metrics. So for reading performance and again like what is on the screen is points. Those aren't pass rates. It's they're based on points because depending on how students score on the so test they then qualify for different point values going into this framework index. So at I I I would say probably the easiest way to look at to gauge their performance is looking at the percent of possible points. So how many possible points in that category did the school score and I'm intentionally like points is part of it but score is
052also part of it because it's not going to say it. It it becomes a different way of evaluating schools. So, at Matthews Elementary School in terms of reading, um, they a were able to get 96.42% of the possible points. At Thomas Hunter, that was 91.6% of the possible points. Matthews High School, 99% of the possible points. For mathematics, it's 93.8, 89.5, and 90.32 in terms of points um, possible points earned. Okay, science. Matthews Elementary School doesn't test in science. That's a fifth grade test. And last year, fifth grade was at the middle school. Okay. So, Thomas Hunter had um in science 94.8% of the possible points. and then Matthews High School for that cohort of kids. Well, you had eighth grade science, but then also the cohort of students who took it biology several years
053ago, their performance, the total is 93.44% of the possible points. Okay, growth. So growth is only available in grades four through eight because you have to have a previous year's test in reading or math in in order to earn growth. Okay, growth for this year because it is going to change but growth for this year was based on how students who scored in the same band as a student on the previous test did on this year's test. So in there was a predictive some statistical analysis that was done to determine what the expected growth would be for students at each sort of score band on the previous. So if you were within the st the same standard error as the kids who did the same as you did last year, you were worth some amount
054of points. If you performed less than that group of students um then you were a fewer number of points. If you exceeded the standard error of those students then you got a different level of points. There's no way for a division to predict growth with this model because it's all done offsite and we don't have access to how every other student did at those individual bands. Okay. So we in terms of trying to gauge where we are on this framework was nearly impossible with regards to growth. Also the contract with the company that performed all the statistical analysis is not renewed. So we will have a completely different model for growth next year anyway. Okay. All right. So reading growth again probably the way to think about like success probably the easiest way to think
055about it is looking at the percent of possible points. So for growth at the elementary school 75.9 at the middle school 72.08 at the high school 80.2 and so growth is again at the high school is only eighth grade. It's not going to include 11th grade. Um, math growth, elementary school 59.3, Thomas Hunter, uh, 71.58, and then the high school 70.4. Again, that's only 8th grade. All right, chronic absenteeism. This is probably the easier metric because regardless of where you are, absenteeism is still an annual metric. So it's not even for the high school, it's not based on the graduating cohort. So chronic absenteeism is how each school did with regards to chronic absenteeism last year. So at the elementary school that rate was 13.72, Thomas Hunter was 13.21. The high school is 18.82. If
056you think back in terms and again we've talked about it a little bit before with attendance but several years ago the division overall I think was around 27 or 28% I think the high school was at like 33% um and I think 22 or 23 something along those lines. So we've worked um to improve the absenteeism or attendance rates. So we're down to um to 13 13 and 18 3E um in terms of um the number of it shouldn't be three that's a typo. So it should just be 3E rate. So it's not um just the graduation rate. So 3E is employment enlistment and enrollment. That's a metric for the high school that's factored into readiness. Um, what that looks at is enrollment is the number of students who are in dual enrollment or AP
057classes. It looks at their performance in those classes, whether or not they earn associates degrees. Um, enlistment is not whether or not you enlist in the military, it's how you did on the ASVAP test. Um, and then, um, employment is looking at CTE completer courses and earning credentials. So of the third 63 students in the cohort um there were 25 points for enrollment 19 points for employment um 19.75 points earned for enlistment um so we earned 102.38 pos out of 100% we earned 102 we overex basically overindexed in 3e which talking with other superintendents and principles. A lot of high schools overindex in 3E. Um six-year graduation rate. Um looking at kind of the number of diplomas, standard diplomas, advanced diplomas. Um and then the six-year federal graduation index at 92.85. Um four-year graduation rate,
058the indicator score was 8.83. Um but basically it's 88.31% of the possible points for four-year graduation rate. All right. So where we are um so Matthews High School misdued by a half a point. So Matthews High School in terms of their sumitive score, summitive index finished at 89.5. Um they don't round up. Um, so, uh, Matthews High School is at 89.5 listed in the on-track category. Thomas Hunter Middle School's summitative framework score is 84. And I'll explain why it's off track in a second. Matthews, excuse me, Matthews Elementary School had a summitive score of 84.6 and so falls in the ontrack category. So, if I go back to So if I go back to this slide. So the state performance categories and the federal identification categories. So targeted support and improvement. So this area at
059the very bottom targeted support as and improvement looks at subgroup um student subgroup categories and looks at performance of subgroups. So while Thomas Hunter Middle School overall summitive score is smack dab in the middle of on track. There is one subgroup at Thomas Hunter that performed below expectation because of that they're in the federal identification of targeted support. Okay. So there's some improvement plans that we'll be working on for Thomas Hunter to look at that subgroup. It's in math and reading. So we're working on kind of action plans. A lot of that stuff we've already put into place with regards to multi-tered systems of support, looking at um various service models, intervention programs, and making sure we've got a better master schedule for interventions and things. So, a lot of the things um we knew
060weren't what they needed to be and so we had already put those pieces in in place. Um but so but overall score 84 for the middle school elementary school is 84.6 and listed as on track. questions >> regarding the three E when you talked about um taking dual enrollment classes uh receiving an associates degree. I'm not sure I understood. Is it just the associates degree that counts? Okay. >> No. So there's My goal for this presentation was trying to make it digestible. >> Um so within each of the categories there's typically um 1.25 points for kind of exceeding a benchmark one point 75 or 0.5 based on performance levels whether that's with mastery whether that's with growth or within the three E. So for the enrollment piece, um the 1.5 earning for a student, if
061I remember correctly, is earning an associates degree in high school. Um and then below one point for um enrollment had to do with taking a certain number of dual enrollment credits and having I believe above a C in those classes. So, I think it was I think it was having nine nine nine credits and a B average or better in those um nine credit hours and then it would sort of go down from there. And so you could I think substitute AP with dual enrollment and back and forth. Um and then it would sort of go down from there to where you just had a C in a certain number of earned classes. um that in terms of enlistment it um based on how you scored on the ASVAB test if you were at the
062highest level on the ASVAB it was 1.25 25 I think and then the next band performance band down was one the next band below that was 75 and then 0.5 and for 3e a student could score in all three areas. So if a student had um an associates degree, did really well in the ASVAB and also was a CTE completer with a industry highly recognized or high in demand credential, they could earn a max number of I think it was like three and a half points or something something along those lines. >> So how many of our um completers are highly credential or demand? I'm not sure which which term I should use. >> I don't I'm not Yeah, I >> there's a lot of Yeah, I can find it. I don't know it on
063my fingertips. >> Okay. And finally, um with such drastic changes that that we've this is this is a drastic change over the last 25 years as you said 30 years. Um, is this associated with our present governor? And I ask that to say with a new governor coming in, is there this sense that it's going to change again in the next two to three years? >> I I think it will be tweaked. I don't um going to various conferences and meetings and getting um I guess some insight. I don't anticipate a complete overhaul of this. I think some of the as we've talked about before some of the business rules um of where the bands may fall or who gets 1.25 25 um that sort of stuff whether it's based on a cohort or based
064on that year's um data. I think some of those things will be tweaked. I do believe that um the multiaceted approach leading to an overall index score is probably going to stay. Um, I think, um, what little bit I've read so far, um, I think there may be some waiting differences between growth and mastery. Um, I think they'll establish predictable growth models or tables, growth tables for us to be able to better predict when a student is going to be a 1.25 in growth or a one or a 0.5, etc., etc. um so we can do kind of have a better idea of of um what our um index is um because we've we've been working on draft um scores since probably late September um and the numbers changed every time we got a print
065out. Um so and and I think they've tweaked the numbers. I think initial the initial estimates based on this back in the summer were that twothirds of our schools were going to be listed as off track or needs intensive support and that sort of is kind of the other way around. I think my last it's it's a comment um and I probably shared this in some fashion before these new new ways of measuring our schools for the general public even for schoolboard members to some extent are so obscure and tedious it's just we've lost we've lo I mean it's no way community members can understand um what what goes into this >> the story behind the numbers >> and it it has nothing to do with intelligence. It just it's just so much and so
066tedious and drills down so far. Um it it just it's it's our our community is at a disadvantage in trying to understand what teachers and administrators are up against to um to be considered um a competent a um a robust school. >> I think it's it's one of the observations I've seen they're supposed to be putting out um an overall sort of statewide every school and every school's index. Um there was a foyer request to pull that out and so it was shared with us in the region but when I looked at ours the numbers were all wrong and so what whatever was sent as part of that foyer request by some other entity um I think somebody filtered some of the columns wrong on the Excel spreadsheet and so it skewed all all the
067all the data so none of it really lined up accurately. Um, but I I think the goal is to be able to distill all of these things down into kind of like a a gradebook average or this is the grade you're you know, my kid got an A this year or a B this year. Um, my school got, you know, they were I'm at a 92 or 88 or whatever. Um, but there just a lot of variables that that go into that. I think my biggest concern is at the high school level this we're the high school is being measured or a traditional high school is being measured on data that's two or three or four years old already that if the goal is to develop an improvement plan or a mistake was made um
068or a school needs to do better like they should have already done that two, three or four years ago to to grow in the process. So like they've already been evaluated. There's already been some accountability applied to to those tests from years ago. And in a very small school, like our cohorts, our graduating classes are are very different from year to year. Um so it's what we have to be thoughtful about is okay, are we providing adequate and appropriate supports as we have a class that has more needs whether it's to get up to the level or needs in terms of acceleration to exceed. So it you know it's you know it's our norm is going to vary from year to year just because of the sm small size of our of our independent grade
069levels >> and I think to your point the information that's out there that's incorrect it's out there >> and people are already know probably reviewing it and judging it and it's incorrect and I suspect we're not the only school that has incorrect information out there and that's just >> what's up here is correct. So like what's up here what I'm presenting to you all um is correct. What just just to clarify for anybody at home, um what what I'm referring to in terms of was a spreadsheet that had all the all the schools in in the state in the Commonwealth and sort of their um scores like a lot of the it was a kind of relatively dense um spreadsheet. But as I just kind of being familiar with Matthews's scores, I just went to
070Matthews's to I wanted to see how our elementary school compared to other elementary schools. Um but in looking at it, what's what's interesting is um there are more high schools um who earn distinguished than there are elementary schools in terms of percentages and I think even in raw numbers. So the way this metric and the calculation um played out um I think it's I think we're going to see that it was because of the 3E piece. It's a lot easier for a high school to earn distinguished than it is for an elementary school to do that because the elementary school is going to like on on one particular day or one set of days over two weeks during a testing that is really the measurement of your school. And so whereas the the categories broaden,
071the metric broadens when you get to um middle school and and high school. And then it all again all the the formula completely changes if you're a combo. So if you're 812 or a 712 or so depending on where your eighth grade is, that determines whether or not you're a middle school. ASBA results. >> I have I don't have them in a presentation. I have them um on a file. >> Do you think we can uh maybe look at those in January and see it seems like that's an important >> and just to that piece we started then giving ASVAB like >> historically ASVAB was given to students who um had an interest in going into the military. So we would only test maybe five to 10 kids a year who said, "Hey, I'm thinking
072about doing this as a career option or hey, this is a really good vocational battery and so it'll give us some some interest um inventory." Um, but out of the blue, it became a part of this framework and metric. So, us along with a lot most other high schools then said, "Okay, well, if this is a metric, then we're just going to test. we we're going to test everybody >> because you're measured on how each student does on the test out of everybody in the cohort. The denominator is the number of kids in the cohort, not the number of kids who took the test. So you're getting so basically like, okay, we're going to test everybody >> whether you want to or not. So then there's a lot of kids who are like, I don't
073want to be here. It doesn't matter. It doesn't have any bearing for me in any way, shape, or form. But because it's now part of the state metric, >> you're you're sitting for the test. >> Okay. >> So, my my I guess what I'm trying to get my brain around here is the the macro approach, which I don't disagree with increasing the rigor uh from the state's perspective and and all of that. I do agree with Mrs. Hodes. It seems if anything a tedious um exercise. Uh I'm sure the hours involved in in dealing with this are countless and we won't we won't go into that. But on the day-to-day as we're looking at student achievement daily because that's that's what our leaders in our schools are doing. That's what they're they're there for. Is
074this a is this is this another piece of the puzzle? Um it's a it's a macro observation and and set of outcomes, but the ex the student by student um digging in and developing those individual students, keeping that first and foremost on the mind through all of the other um interventions, assessments, all of the tools at your disposal to to assist individual students students. Our goal is that our students are proficient, that they are prepared, that they are able to be functional in the in the uh in the world as a citizen when they leave us. And I don't want to lose sight of that. It seems like it's very easy to get lost in the weeds of all of this and which which I am interested in and I think we need to know.
075But I I I believe that the focus remains in our individual buildings on building individual students and moving them along um at the very micro level. >> Well, I'll bring you back to our strategic plan. So, we in the strategic plan, we talk about a 90% performance in reading, 90% performance in mathematics. >> We talk about CTE and expanding CTE and completers and credentials. So all of those pieces like looking at the daytoday the day-to-day pieces are going as we stack better days um in a row then that's going to help our performance on on this metric anyway. So I don't want staff getting wrapped up in this metric or this framework. It's e I I think our focus needs to be on, you know, developing the reading skills or the math skills or the
076the content acquisition for um for some of the upper grades. And so if we we do that stuff, the day-to-day stuff well, like I guess you look after your pennies, the dollars take care of themselves. So if we do the the individual lessons well, then these these broader things um begin to fall in line. >> Exactly. Thank you. >> More comments. Thank you, Dr. You're welcome. >> Item seven, citizens questions, comments, or requests. Comments not pertaining to personnel or student matters. Protocol for public comment. Period. Matthews County residents and school employees wishing to speak should sign up with their name and address on the sheet provided. Each individual will have three minutes to speak. Comment period will end after 90 minutes. All comments should be directed to the school board. Speakers shall not address matters
077involving students or personnel as these topics may violate confidentiality and are not appropriate in a public forum. Public comment is the school board's opportunity to listen to the speaker. Since our purpose is to hear from you, the board will not engage in dialogue with the audience or whomever is at the podium. Matters requiring of response will be directed to the superintendent for research and response. The superintendent may report back on such matters at a subsequent business meeting session as appropriate. The school board carefully considers your comments when deciding on matters brought before us. We appreciate your attendance and your input. Our first speaker tonight is Mrs. Kelly Lockerby. Um, good evening. I am here tonight to express publicly my disappointment and concern that we are once again going to be without a licensed qualified special
078education teacher at the elementary school for the students with disabilities for the second year in a row. To be fair though, years prior to 2023, the employee that held the position was not a licensed teacher, even though parents were led to believe that they were. It was only after I presented the law, ESSA, that actually the facts were admitted. This population of students is being consistently failed by the school division. IEPs are not being followed. Curriculum is being delivered by unqualified staff. Inequitable division of resources, for example, underst staffing, ESY hours compared to gened students summer school hours, denial of FAPE due to classroom disruptions. Have any of you gone to the classroom to observe? Have any of you reached out to the teacher or pair professionals to get an idea of the issues and
079possible solutions? When a teacher is not valued, when they are demeaned, when they are encouraged to withhold information from parents, and even worse, encouraged to give false positive reports to parents, when pair professionals are told not to communicate with parents about their children. These are all red flags. The lack of transparency is alarming and should be alarming to everyone in this room. If you want to know what the issues are, all you need to do is ask. But my guess the reason is you do not ask is because then you would have to do something about it. There is absolutely a lack of accountability. I know more about special education than most people. I serve on a state committee where I work to advocate for students with disabilities and improve the outcomes and achievements. I
080actually chair a state subcommittee focused on just that. I serve on bipartisan committees with senators and house delegates to develop bills that change state laws to improve educational opportunities for students with disabilities. Yet, my own son is being failed year after year by our LEA. I have reached out to each and every one of you and not one of you has taken any action or followed up with me. After I spoke at the last meeting, citizens reached out to me to ask me what was the board's response. And that answer was easy. It was none. No response at all. Not one of you sitting there reached out to me or the teacher to offer any assistance. I expect no outcome here tonight. I am just stating this for the record. >> Thank you, Mrs. Lockerby.
081>> Mrs. Cassandra Mathen. Um, I have a daughter with Down syndrome. I'm sure that you all know this. There is a violent child that hits kicks the teachers, the paras daily in the sped class. Due to this continued violence, a paraprofessional and a highly highly qualified special education teacher have given their notice. The violence is occurring to the point to where the children in the classroom have to be removed multiple times a day. Usually my child that is non-verbal and cannot tell me what scares her, what hurts her if she's being hurt, she has been mentally and emotionally damaged regardless. Would you want your child in that environment? Would you want your grandchild in that environment? The day my daughter was assaulted, we had a meeting with the principles. I I was asked specifically what
082would make me feel better. And I said, I do not want that child around my child because it is not about if he is going to hurt her. It is about when he is going to hurt her. Two hours later, she was on the floor playing and he kicked her until the teacher stepped in between them. And then he kicked her again until the vice principal stepped in between them. She is nonverbal. She has Down syndrome. And this happened at 12:00. Keep in mind it happened at 12 o'clock and I did not receive a call until 4 o'clock in the afternoon that this had occurred. They sent my daughter to the nurse to be checked out, but I don't know how they could have known that she was okay since she's nonverbal and she has
083a birth mark halfway around her body that looks like a bruise. It's a Port Weinstein. Um the school said that it was not an assault because it did not have intent. Um the next morning we took my daughter to CHKD to get pictures and get the the assault documented. It was assault. The child daily is violent toward the teacher teachers, the paras and the children with special needs that cannot defend themsel. Um I have now my doctor uh my daughter's doctor has now issued a note to the school stating that she cannot defend herself and should not be in an environment that is violent causing her mental and emotional damage. The exact words from the doctor's email to the school a week ago is due to her Down syndrome, she potentially she potentially has limited
084or impaired ability to assess danger and may struggle with self-p protection as compared to a child who does not have Down syndrome or a disability. I would recommend that the school accommodate and modify things as seen fit that will help Mabella stay safe during school and riding the bus. I have been sending emails since the very end of August about this specific child harming my child and the child after even after the doctor sent this letter out was in the school the next day. Um, >> thank you Mrs. Smithson. >> Lawyer up. >> Miss Rebecca Mullins. I am here about the same issue. Uh last time I was here at the school board meeting, I did not speak. Miss Lockerby spoke and told you all of the issues at the school. Um she wasn't met
085with a followup. Um fast forward to this meeting, we now have a teacher, one of the best teachers for sped that probably Matthews County has ever seen in our class has put in her resignation. Miss >> Miss Mullins, can you reframe your your comments to not include specific >> confidential information? >> I'll try. All right. And second, we have Paris that uh have put in the resignation as well that uh I can say publicly because they told me I could. And now we have instead of the child being removed, we have our children were sent recently an email saying school policy has changed and we can no longer observe them like we would like to observe them. In fact, we've never had a school policy that we couldn't observe them because it's a state federal
086law that we can and now we're being limited on how much we reserve observe them in the classroom and we have to put in a day notice and that we cannot visit them in the classroom um more than a certain amount of time which I'm not even sure is legal. Um I am here to speak for Edward McGomery so I hope I have enough time to do that. My son has changed drastically since this child has come in school. Edward has never hit he's never hit anyone. He's now documented for hitting the Sparrow. He lays on the floor and doesn't want to do his work. Never done that. That's new. I went to his doctor and she recently put him on Mirillax because it's upsetting his gut so much that he now has to be
087Mirax every day just so he can go to the bathroom. So, it's affecting his health as well. He's been the sickest this year that he's ever been. And I do believe it's due to not feeling safe. He's nonverbal. He's scared. He's terrified. He fights me physically to not go to school. He's never done that. That's new. I'm scared for my son. I'm scared for the other students. I feel it is unjust for this student because the violent student isn't getting educated as well. He's being left out. And our students are being evacuated. So, they're not getting their classroom hours. They're being left out. The teachers and the paras are quitting because they're being violently assaulted. They're getting mistreated. We have to treat people right. We have to do right by our teachers and our staff.
088and our students. And I ask that you please call the teachers personally, our one from this year who's resigned and our one from last year. And don't take my word for it. Talk to them personally and ask them personally, not not anybody else. You individually do it, please. I'm asking you to and and hear what they have to say about it. Don't take our word for it. >> Thank you, Miss Mullins. Miss Amy Bohan Stewart. >> Good evening. Um I'm going to enjoy one of my my last opportunities to speak as just a taxpayer tonight. Um thank you Dr. Gibbs for um defending our free speech and realizing that people want to be heard. I remember at least one of our board members was complaining about the tone of how people were speaking and questioning
089things at a work session back in October. And I remember Dr. Gibbs standing up for our free speech of the citizens that come to these meetings and I commend you for that. So, um, a leader that has the ability to make you feel heard and understood can be magical and we should want our administrators to do this as well. So, I appreciate you modeling that for us, Dr. Gibbs. Now, I need to share my concerns on an upcoming situation that I hope can be fixed quickly. Um, it seems as though um and some others have spoke about this tonight already. We are back in the same situation with a teaching position at the elementary school that we had. I mean, we had the situation last year. Same same position. And I'm sure you know exactly
090which one I'm talking about. Um, the fact that this is happening in the same position two years in a row should sound alarm bells that the teacher in this position is probably not getting the proper amount of support. Okay. Um, this is, you know, lack of support was one of the reasons I wanted administrators to sub once a month. I've shared recently that most teachers here are leaving due to lack of support. And I've asked that administrators sub at least once a month. So, what I would ask to to help fix this as soon as possible, that several administrators, not just the principal, but several administrators each, spend as much time as they can in this class to try and figure out the best way to support this elementary school teacher. I'm hoping that you
091can get her to change her mind about leaving. Even if we're lucky enough to find a replacement um midyear next year, we won't keep a replacement for any position if we don't support our teachers better. We must fix the things that are causing our staff to leave and this will benefit student achievement. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Is there anyone else who'd like to approach the podium? There's there's one there's only one opportunity. I'm sorry. Thank you for your comments. We'll move on to item eight, school consolidation with a consolidation up update from Dr. Daniel. All right. Turn this. All right. So, consolidation. So this is um part of the kind of this summary um and guidance as where we are going with consolidation of really the reorganization of um Thomas Hunter Matthews Elementary
092School and moving it into one prek7 elementary school. So, um to back up, um we part of the strategic plan and I'll kind of go through some of the steps that we've taken, but um the goal of the consolidation committee um was to provide recommendations to the superintendent on how to um respond to declining enrollment within Matthews and how to best move this building, this footprint into a um prek7 operating school. So for reference, in the 2003 2004 school year, Matthews County had about 1,300 students. Since that time, there's been approximately a 40% reduction in student enrollment. So over 22 years, Matthews County student enrollment has declined by about 40%. Even if we put in the homeschool students um because that trend um has has definitely grown within the last five to seven years um
093we would still be at about a 33 um% reduction over that time frame. Um so in recent years we've reduced faculty and staff. I'll show some diagrams on that. Um we've shifted shifted some grade levels around to better fit staffing availability and needs. Um so really this group was to look at okay what do we what more information do we need to have um how do we need to go about doing this and just again like examine have more eyes um looking at the consolidation of the building. So, a little bit of demographic overview because um we kept I I kept getting questions about well what if the enrollment changes? What happens when all the kids come back? What what happens you know if we if we do something with Thomas Hunter then what are
094we going to do about like classroom space? So these are some um some charts from Virginia Department of Health. Um so on the left is Matthews County in 2010. Um the light blue I believe is are um a depiction of males. The darker blue or black is um females. And then from left to right is age bands. So for folks whether it's difficult to see at home or folks um here in attendance. So they're in 10year basically age bands. So in you can see there's a kind of a bubble of students um or children in Matthews not just students but children in Matthews from 10 to 19 but you see sort of a bubble that begins to expand in the 40 to 49 and is at its peak in the 60 to 69. So, fast
095forward 13 years. Um there's um there's no longer this um bubble um that's not going to stay. Okay. Um this bubble in the younger or the the school age population within Matthews. Um but what you do see is a pretty um significant shift to where it is a 60 to 69 sort of um age band is the highest age band within Matthews. So you see just an an aging or an older um older community within Matthews. I would say of note too is at the far left of that 2023 is it in that zero to9 you have a tapering um of of students or again sorry children. So, I compare Matthews 2023 and Virginia um just to give you an idea of um the demographic differences for our little hamlet here um and how the
096distribution of of ages within Matthews. and also to say that um we're not there's not a a surge in young children in Matthews that are coming um that are in the pipeline getting ready to flow into our school division. Nor are there really um young adults in child rearing ages um who are populating Matthews. So the other thing one of the other things I wanted to look at in terms of demographics is so if we look at just the overall population in Matthews so from 2014 to 2023 the population itself is pretty flat um who the age of the people living here has changed but the overall number of people is relatively stable. Um, Miss Miss Morgan's already left for the day, but as she was cleaning out, um, she shared with me the, um,
097Matthews County strategic plan from, I believe, 1982. Um, and in that 1982, um, typed on a typewriter strategic plan. Um, it laid out the population back to, I believe it was 1950 and the the low water mark at that time was 7,900. So in 1950 it was about I believe about 7,900 citizens in Matthews to a high water mark of 8,800. So in about 75 years there's only been about a thousand people fluctuation within within Matthews. Okay. All right. So, this is this is relatively difficult to see from the back, but it's basically the same um age band depiction just rotated 90 degrees. So, um top left is all of Virginia. Again, males on one side, females on the other side and 10year age increments. So, you can look at the general shape of counties
098around us. So you have Virginia, Essex, then Gloucester County in the top right, the US overall, King and Queen, and then King William County. On this slide, it's Lancaster, Matthews in the top center, Middle Sex, uh, North umberland, Richmond County, and then West Morland County. So, in terms of the shape, we are much more similar to some of our Northern Neck friends um in terms of kind of the the age demographics and not having um young families and small children in our in our locality. So, why well one more population trend um so this is from the Weldon Cooper Center. So if you notice, Gloucester is projected through 2050 to trend upward. King William again projected to trend upward. Matthews, however, um is expected to trend down in terms of overall population. Middle Sex being
099relatively flat, Richmond County being relatively flat, and West Morland again trending up. All right. Lot of numbers on on this slide. So, I'm gonna So, part of the question about why why aren't um why don't we have young families and and why why isn't anybody coming here? Um so, I'm highlighting sort of circling Matthews there and then we'll take a look at the column that that is Matthews and then we'll highlight some other areas. So, basically this is looking at housing statistics in Matthews. Um and this again is from 2023. So rel relatively new um data. So looking at the median age of the structures. So the median age of the homes within Matthews and comparing that to um some of our other localities. So the median age in Matthews of a home is 1977.
100Um that is the second oldest. Um, Richmond County is at 1975. So, what that's saying is that there's not new development, new construction, home construction really happening in Matthews to um have that median age uh median year built um move move more recent. The other thing to look at, and there's quite a bit of of numbers here, um, but when you look at especially this year where it says percent at the top, percent of units occupied and kind of scroll across. So for Matthews of the housing units, what percent of those are actually occupied? So, Matthews only has a 68.7% occupancy rate of homes or residential structures um in in in in town. Um that's relatively low. There are two lower middle sex and North umberland um are slightly lower at 66 and 60%. Um,
101what then becomes interesting is when you um kind of scroll down here to the bottom, the bottom unit where it looks at total vacant units. I don't know if I've highlighted. No, I didn't. All right. So, when you um go down to that bottom section, vacant housing units, um the total vacant units is like 1,700. Um but 0% of those 1,700 are for rent. Um only 2% are for sale. But what jumps out is that 72.8% of the vacant units are seasonal and recreational use. So kind of what you're seeing is you have a relatively you have tight housing. There's not new development. There's not a lot of housing for sale. And then we know some of the water and sewage challenges that go into then that home building and and development whether it's higher
102density or stick homes or whatever. So you're like there's a challenge then to bring in um young families with housing. You have a job market challenge things along those lines. So all of this to then talk about okay there's on the in the short term there doesn't seem to be a um a surge of students coming. Can we gather and gain some more enrollment? Absolutely. But that's probably going to be um towards um tuition students, non-resident students, things along those lines and keeping kids coming um returning from home school or not going to home school. um enrollment trends shown you this already. Um but basically um since 20 since 2003 we've experienced about 25 students per year. The enrollment has declined about 25 students per year for about 22 years. Looking at our average class
103size. Um, so if we look at this building and the footprint of this building and operating as a prek7 school, we're looking at a school of about 450 kids, which is not a not a large school in terms of population of students. Um, looking at average class sizes um and um students in grade levels. Um and then you've got two years worth of data there to take a look at okay where are we in terms of number of teachers per grade level the size of the students in those those classrooms. So even if um unless we get 50 kids who move into who are all the same age like we can spread absorb um a number of students within the school division so long as it's you know not all in in the same grade
104level or at the same grade. So there's still um space for um expansion as need be. division staffing levels. So, we looked at um so what else what else have we done over the years to um respond to the declining enrollment? So, I went back and looked at the this year in the previous two years in terms of our staffing levels. So, and we broke it down by division, transportation, food services, the high school, the middle school, elementary school, and then at the bottom is the total number of full-time and part-time um employees. So, in 2324, we employed 224 either full-time or part-time employees. Um that number for 2526 is 183. Um for clarification when you look at MHS, TMHS, Thomas Hunter and then the elementary school where you see um the numbers in parentheses
105those refer to lensure positions. So those are like teaching positions basically um teacher counselor, library media um those those kinds of positions. It does not include um admin positions even though those are licensed positions. So those are looking at kind of like teaching um FTE lensure positions. So over the span of time there is a there's been a reduction in um positions of all kinds and at all the levels. I will say um that part of this overall number is so in 2324 we had 12 custodians in the division. though they were assigned to the the three different schools. So we still have custodians in the building. They're just not Matthews County employees. So those again, so that's that's part of that number. Also, maintenance merger. There's still maintenance going on. Um but those positions
106are county positions at this point. Um so that's that's part of that overall reduction in staff. Um but there's um there have been reductions across the board. All right. So, what all have we done to adjust to declining enrollment? Um, in the 2425 school year, 8th grade was moved to the high school um to move kids to where teachers were. Um, this year, fifth grade moved across the cafeteria to the elementary school. Um, currently the elementary school and the middle school share several positions, nurse, registar, media specialist. um the middle school and the high school share several positions. A band teacher, um art teacher, so our art teacher from the middle school um picks up a a section at the high school. Two of our CTE teachers um kind of go back and forth or
107we're um moving kids back and forth um for those CTE classes. Our middle school students taking high school credit math um take a bus and go to the high school for those high school credits um classes. Um, what else have we done? So, we started the consolidation and reorganization conversation really before the strategic plan, but in earnest and putting it down on paper. Um, it was the strategic plan that the board approved in November of 24. Um, we had a board work session in 2025 where the board worked on laying out concerns and um, benefits and pros and cons um, and construction needs. A community survey was sent out in March of 2025 to gather information. And then we've had consolidation committee meetings in October, November, and December of 2025. All right. one of the
108slides from that um community survey. So, what factors should be prioritized? Sorry, I'm trying to hold on to my voice. So, it looks like financial impact, instructional, again going across the bottom, financial um instructional school climate, cultural impact, student safety impact, and transportation impact. And so, it's rating those as from most important to not as important. Um so really the biggest or the ones that come back as most important um student safety impact and the instructional impact. Um financial was you know had some significance as well um really in looking at the comments um for student safety. It was related to older students being around younger students. And so how do you in terms of like shared bathrooms and hallway spaces, common areas and and things along those lines. So, how do you um provide
109um some separation um for for some of the older students from younger students? Many of the same concerns we heard with eighth grade going to the high school. Okay. So, the next couple slides are um consolidations or kind of um bringing this the the topics from the board work session. and we did a similar activity with the committee. So looking at the instructional considerations, the the positives about making this this move. So there would be a we could develop a uniform master schedule for prek through 7. Um there can be it's easier to develop a shared instructional language. Um vertical alignment of curriculum but vertical alignment of just vocabulary. So, what kids are learning in third grade English is the same sort of instructional vocabulary strategy or pedagogical vocabulary that they're going to get in
110some of those older grades. Um, opportunities for differentiated instruction and acceleration. So under the same umbrella and same administration um it makes it a little bit easier to um accelerate students in younger grades um to have access to advanced coursework. Opportunities for cross-grade level grouping um opportunities for crosscurricular teaching um just again a more collaborative structure when you're under the kind of the same umbrella. Opportunities for enrichment um again you're using some teacher resources. You're having a larger faculty to collaborate and pull from their talents, maximizing the resource and exploratory talents within the building. Again, teachers and staff to collaborate, expanded use of title one and grant funding. So, currently um the elementary school is a title one school. Um, so that funding right now will stop at fifth grade, but if it the elementary
111school is prek7, that title one funding can then be expanded up to seventh grade. So you get a broader use of federal title one funds. Um, a single state accountability system. So again, we spent a lot of time talking about that support framework. And so when we talked about small class sizes or small cohort sizes, so now you've got more grade levels involved in the growth metric, the mastery metric for school accountability and frameworks. Um Virginia Literacy Act, building blocks, easing of transition. So you've got um you've got the full collaboration of reading specialists and as we're working through VA and your Primary grade teachers tend to know the science of reading a little bit better than upper grade teachers. You start getting into literature as opposed to teaching reading. Um but have we still
112have students who are struggling with reading even at those upper grades. So having easy access to those skills and um instructional materials is important. Efficient use of teachers and their endorsements kind of along those same lines. So, we've got more flexibility to um move down grade levels or upgrade levels. Consolidation of staff duties. Um some of the thoughts that concerns that were brought up were how do we you know making sure that we're ensuring teachers with large course loads are proper or appropriately supported multiple preps and things like that. Um the piece with proper lensure and endorsements because a lot of um elementary licenses are K5 or K6 um and versus middle or secondary tends to be 612. There can be some overlap where um upper grade teacher may not always be licensed for some
113lower grades. So having to you're not going to have because of parameters with staff licensing, you're not going to have the everybody's not going to be able to teach everybody. So just being very thoughtful about who can teach what, when, and where based on what endorsements and what licenses staff members have. Okay. In terms of school climate and culture considerations, um seen as a pro operating as one school, there are several years to really build within students school pride. Um an opportunity for some new middle school branding. So in terms of um I think there was a belief um especially within the the committee that there's sort of a a concern about you know when kids go to middle school and oh no I don't want my you know I'm really worried about middle school
114for my kid. So some of that goes away when you know you're just going to sixth grade or going to seventh grade. you're not going off to the the big scary um middle school and sort of re um as we've done with the physical plant at the middle school, working on kind of rebranding um the perception um of the building, developing a cohesiveness of the staff prek through seven. We talked about vertical alignment of curriculum, but this is about behavioral expectations and procedures, um fire drills and lockdown drills, etc. Um by doing this early, this consolidation early, we can communicate um well in advance of the summer and schedules and master schedule building and such. carrying over some of the positive climate from the elementary school over to um the current middle school, having one
115parent organization. Instead of trying to get two PTOs running and up and off the ground and stable, you're only really focusing on one PTO. um school quality events um having school sponsored events rather making again you've got one group of people who can work on um like school like a family reading night that encompass several grades and not having to have two reading nights and two music nights and that kind of stuff. Um opportunity for mentorships um and bonds between younger and older students. So instead of being concerned about, oh, the the young kids are going to get bullied by the older kids, there's an opportunity for um doing a positive mentorship program with um older students and younger students. So a need to um preserve the history of Thomas Hunter Middle School. Um what
116are we doing about naming of facilities? What are we doing about mascots? Um creating a culture of safety and security for all students. Um being able to figure out a way to um grade level separation that we talked about. Um building responsibility for older students is part of um growing that culture. Um and then it's a major change for teachers and students. We talked a little bit about our current sixth grade students. So um they would be a group who um left elementary school, went to middle school and then went back to elementary school in a way. Um so thinking about like that that cohort of of students um and so how do we um help them through that name change and you know they're okay. So, I'm going back to elementary school in a
117way. Some considerations for the physical plant. Um, so the footprint of this building, um, a need to have a cohesive outside appearance, updated front facades, improvements in the bus loop, the parents loop, parking areas, um, hardening of the building and safety and security upgrades, maintaining current layout. Um, could endure separation. So right now where the main office is, where the library is that it's very sort of um partitioned because it was designed to be two different schools. Um so how do you um how do you kind of morph that so that it operates and feels like one actual school? Looking at centralized spaces again main office with a waiting area for vis visitors, need for um like a more centralized clinic etc. um having still having a dedicated auditorium space, wanting to maintain the multi-purpose
118room. I guess currently one of the things that came up was just the need for more adult bathrooms, especially on the elementary side of the cafeteria. I guess there's just two adult bathrooms um in that whole um that whole school, which yeah, um having kind of a lounge or a workspace like a common area for teachers to collaborate that doesn't currently exist. While we have spaces, there are none that are really dedicated to that. I'm trying to figure out a common corridor or some way that can connect kind of one end of the elementary school to another end of the um middle school. So, for example, I give if I'm if I'm in kindergarten, I've got to walk all the way down the red hallway, turn right, go all the way up the blue hallway,
119turn right, go across the cafeteria, turn right, go down the middle school CTE hallway to hang a left to then get to the library. So, and when you're four and five years old, that's at a minimum it's a five minute travel time. Um, and if you want to keep all 22 of them together, that's probably a seven to eight minute travel time, especially if depending on when your resource time is and if anybody else is in lunch. So, you got to walk them through the cafeteria and make sure you're um you got all of them when you get to your destination. So, finding a way to either moving relocating the library or can we down the road think about is there another hallway that we can build a bypass route if you will. Um and
120then also looking at down the road um locating all the division offices um into one space and utilizing um the front of Thomas Hunter. Um one of the pieces that came up was the kitchen um here and having a loading dock in the a true loading dock in the back of the kitchen. And overall, some physical plant things ADA compliant kitchen re renovations. And some of these things, again, they're on here from when we talked about them in February at the board work session and have come up maybe in the strategic plan or other places. So, a lot of these things we've we've worked on or those projects are in progress. So, we've done a lot with um not so much with ADA compliance, but we've done a lot with kitchen renovations and kitchen equipment.
121So, the county CIP addressed a lot of the kitchen pieces. Um, we've spent a ton of time working on and Tim Tillage and the maintenance team have done a ton of work on HVAC and the thousand little issues with HVAC systems on both campuses. Um, the leaking pipes at the elementary school. We've done some work on the playgrounds. In terms of fencing, um, we're looking at adding some additional playground equipment. Um they've overhauled the kind of the softball area, baseball area behind the middle school and just have done a just a ton of work. Um there's a lot of stuff that still needs to happen, but a lot of stuff is has happened and continues to be ongoing. So some more information needed developing a timeline what the leadership structure um would look like, budget,
122scope of the renovations if that happens. um plan for future growth space. Who's deciding the name? Are we demolishing things? Can this happen while school is in session? So, these were all um questions and concerns that came up. Um the board especially was worried about air quality evaluation. So, we conducted air quality analysis last spring. Asbestous evaluation. Um we did evaluation that mitigations in progress. Mold evaluation was done. um drinking water. That's an ongoing process. Um utility and energy needs. So they've done some analysis of the water system, trying to find solutions to improve the the quality of water flowing through. They've got HVAC evaluations and cost assessments. They're up, you know, we're working on upgrading lighting. Um, one of the things we've talked about is having a professional um, facilities study conducted term contract
123and just having some professional oversight and evaluation of how do we make some of these changes happen. Um, having an eye towards growth, towards renovation, towards um, things we need to do to operate as as a single school and then what that actual cost analysis is. Um there are a lot of a lot of people speculate on what the actual cost is but having a professional um estimate as to what those costs would be. Okay. So um the committee so I I threw out um recommendations to the committee at the at the third meeting and said okay this is the opportunity to adjust to like tweak to um figure out kind of what we need to do. So, the committee was in agreement with a two-phase plan to reorganize the elementary school into, excuse me,
124a preK7 elementary school. So phase one starting with the 2627 school year is to open the elementary school under one administrative team as a prek through seven school. Administrative and office staffing would remain the same as the current MEES levels. So that's two administrators, three office staff. So that three office staff is one attendance clerk, one finance clerk, one registar. um instructional and counseling staff positions would remain the same as the current middle school and elementary levels. So meaning like resource teachers, grade level teachers, counselors, those things remaining the same. Um the assignments may be adjusted in terms of um for example I think our art the two art teachers have talked about having flexibility to provide other elective classes. So they have skills and talents in licensing that is different than just art seven.
125So they could do a graphic design or some STEM activities based on their their talents and their lensure. So that that brings out some flexibility for other classes to be offered. Um parts of Thomas Hunter are still going to have to remain in use for classrooms. Like there is not there's no additional classroom space at the elementary school to move sixth grade, seventh grade, um all the PE classes, everything over to that side of the cafeteria. So, like we're still going to need the gym, the multi-purpose room, that grade seven hallway, the band room, a room for health, a room for sixth grade and seventh grade. Does sixth grade stay on this hallway behind us or does it find a way to move to that that current seventh grade hallway? Maybe. But I think as
126because we're making this decision early um that allows enough time for planning because again we still are talking about asbestous abatement on this side of the building. So folks there's going to be moving out of classrooms anyway. So can we go ahead and move them into other spaces rather than moving all their stuff into the gym and then trying to find a space afterwards? Um the name would remain Matthews Elementary School. It's just going to be a prek through seven elementary school. Um, by doing this now and committing to doing this now, we're able to communicate with families. Um, we can develop plans, staffing plans in advance of budget development. Master schedule building because that's building the master schedule is really going to start in February. Um, teacher contracts, we've already put out intent forms,
127but um, we'll start developing a plan for contracts and assignments. So, we'll be able to even with these variables, um, be able to tell teachers, this is your assignment for next year in advance of receiving their contracts. Phase two would start with um parts of this would start again with the 26 27th school year, but contracting with an a an ENA firm, architectural and engineering firm um to do an assessment to look at a way to improve the functionality of this footprint to operate as a single school um with the goal of finding a way to have a centrallylo main office ideally to front Church Street because right now Matthews Elementary School fronts Putin Creek Drive or Road or whatever it is. So it fronts a dirt road. Um so you really don't see the
128front of the elementary school when you drive by the school. You see the basically the kindergarten rooms. Um looking at a way to centrally locate or easily access the library media center. looking at some way to improve the internal traffic flow across the building. Um, looking to improve the external traffic flow. If you don't know like where you're going when you pull onto this campus, it's pretty easy to pick the wrong road and you find you're in the bus loop and that's not the front of the school after all. So, you've got to go around the bus route, bus loop, go back out, turn on Church Street, come back, find, go down this almost driveway, and then you're in this really tiny parking lot that doesn't really fit all the teachers who need to park
129there. Um, so it's having a a more sensible layout for um for the bus loop um and parking. Um signage would be a big thing, too. Adding some faculty and staff restrooms and workrooms. um looking to improve the outdoor athletic and then playground spaces develop then so second on that is to develop a plan to convert the unused space at Thomas Hunter into the schoolboard offices. Um then naming of the building would be the Thomas Hunter Education Building, Thomas Hunter Education Center, something along those lines. But the Thomas Hunter Education Building would be the home of the schoolboard office. That's really that front hallway, that current front hallway at Thomas Hunter. We can move the special ed office from this back corner up to the front. Um be on the same hallway with all the
130other division offices, return the current schoolboard office back to the county. That's a county owned building. Um they have space needs, office needs that they can then um utilize that building for. Um locate division level apartments, change former classrooms. So again, working with that engineering firm, that architectural firm, building out those old classrooms into office spaces with an eye towards flexibility that should this boom of enrollment, should something change, um, and we do start seeing a surge in enrollment, the easiest way, the easiest people to move out is the schoolboard office staff. So you can find an office building, convert a building into office space relatively easily, and then convert those back to classrooms to utilize. But it's using the space that we have available right now um to uh better efficiency. Um then the
131third piece is going to be looking at again with that engineering and architectural firm to look at as we're looking at footprint and how do we improve our facilities um how do we um getting some a good mockup um and estimates for an athletic complex at the high school. Um, again, I think we've heard pretty routinely about the athletic facilities, the exterior facilities at Matthews High School just um not being in in great shape and in need for a pretty significant upgrade. >> Questions from the board? >> A lot of information there. >> I had a quick clarifying question. >> Yes, ma'am. regarding the title one funding. That's uh the expanded use. Is that the expanded use of the same funding or could we expect additional funding? >> Um I'm not an expert on title
132one funding. I'd have to figure that out. >> Yeah, it's probably the same, but we can spread it. That that was my guess, but I'm not um I don't think it brings in upper grades if they're under the same roof. I think it's still students within a certain age band or grade band >> but there's benefit nonetheless to because so that's a little helpful >> right those staff members can then like go anywhere in that school >> to benefit kids because a lot of times that that funding um is allocated towards salaries >> okay good members questions comments >> very comprehensive be very comprehensive we've been going this through this for a long time I really appreciate the restructuring committee meetings attending two or three of those. Um I thought that was a great opportunity
133for collaboration with the community and all types of uh members from the uh from the county coming in and making comments. Very productive. And then the assimilation of all the information between you and Miss Hunley is just is incredible. Um we expect to have a very busy year next year with the with the big So, um it's going to be a dynamic time, but I it appears that just everything has been uh we've looked at everything and yet surprises will occur. >> Sure. I mean, we're not going to have everything planned out. There are going to be um things that are going to pop up, but having enough time to >> lay out a framework as opposed to when we moved eighth grade, I think that I think the board decided in March or we
134>> I wasn't a vote. It was we talked about it. There was consensus that this needs to happen. So I moved 8th grade to the high school in in March and so we provided sort of updates and so having a a threemonth head start of that and then we've had just more conversations. I mean we've been talking about it for a year and a half. So >> yes. Excellent. So we will continue to discuss this at upcoming meetings. This will be a regular maybe not to this extent but um updates so that we're keeping the community informed keeping the school personnel. >> We can develop timeline and and put out some frequently asked questions and like what does this look like? What is this happening? >> But we'll start moving towards um making plans and
135moving towards that um each each really each week each month. We we'll start building the budget around that model of it being a preK7 and such. >> Terrific. Before we proceed, if it pleases the board, may we please take a 10-minute break? >> Thank you, Dr. Daniel. Just lost my screen. >> All right, we'll thank you for that pause. We'll resume the meeting with item 9.1, attendance update. >> Mr. Ren, can you put it on the screen for me, my friend? Um, I'm hoping we're just going to do Whoa. I don't That's I don't know what that was about. All right. So, I'll I'll click I think. Yes, I will. All right. So, November um attendance and tardy data. Um so, again, I think we're looking at improved um yearoveryear looking at November um this
136year compared to this time last year. Um for the most part we're seeing declines. There are a couple bubbles here and there um with regards to like one sort of increases at the elementary school um where it's 19 students who already have five um excused absences at this point versus 15 last year. But most of the other sort of um metrics um we still look to be improving in terms of our overall attendance. um tardies. I mean, we're kind of tracking tardies. We don't have great data in terms of where we were last year versus um this year because we're just starting to really um collect that month-to-month um data. Um but all all in all um the attendance um continues to be going in the in the right direction. >> Excellent. >> Sorry, there
137was a challenge to see if I could do it in um five minutes or less. And who requested that? >> Um, they will remain anonymous. They will remain anonymous. >> Members, do you have any questions or uh ideas, thoughts about the attendance report? That's great. We're continuing to trend in the right direction. That's good. Excellent. >> And hats off to Taran Thomas. >> Yeah, Taran Taran is the the collector of the the data and um is the one um leading those attendance uh meetings and developing those attendance plans. um some information for the board. Um I'm going to hop down to 9.4. Um but just because the expenditure report for November is down there. Um so I'll then skip back up to 9.2 with Miss Hunley um if she can um provide a little oversight,
138provide some clarification or um just kind of give some summary to the expenditure report. >> Thank you. Good evening. >> Um, for the month of November, I'm going to break it down in categories like I um did last month. For classroom instruction, we expended 27.7% of our um budget. Um, for administration, attendance and health services, 38.1% for pupil transportation, 34.2% 2% for operations um in maintenance 39.7% technology 44.7% but overall for the operating budget um we had expended 32 30% of our um operating budget through the month of November. Are there any questions about the expenditure report? >> Where do you see any areas of concern? Any hot spots? Anything we need to be looking for? No, right now um most of it's personnel and benefits because we are like in the first half of
139the school um school year, but as far as it's trending right on track as far as um through the month of November. >> Excellent. >> I mean my to me um by the end of December we should be 50% right >> or close to it. And so we're in November, I mean we're well under it sounds to me like >> well you have to take in consideration too like the teacher salaries didn't actually come up until um um October September October as far because July and August they don't the teacher salaries they get >> acrewed back to the previous school year. So you're looking at two months where we didn't account for teacher salaries. So we're right where we're supposed to be. >> Thank you. >> Excellent. Thank you, Mrs. Humbley. >> Thank you. >>
140Um, so 9.3, um, again, I'll skip back up and then I'll come back to 9.4. So, in terms of procurement protocol update, so Miss Hunley, um, who you just heard from, is leading the charge in terms of, um, procurement, especially for our governance platform. So, she's um doing her due diligence um making sure that we're aligned to procurement policies and getting estimates and specking out um all the process. She's um continuing on that work. She's going to then make recommendations to us, to me, and then keeping board chair and vice chair sort of informed with how that process is um is going on. And so, she's working on kind of evaluating the different platforms. So, um so she's she's rolling with it. she's taking the ball and um running with it. So >> certainly timing
141>> um I don't I mean in terms of a timeline I mean I think what we had talked about in terms of a timeline is having a decision I think March April so we have enough time for integration of um old minutes um being ready for kind of a July one launch with whatever platform um we land on. So I think that was kind of the having a recommendation having a plan in for kind of that March April window. >> Excellent. >> Okay. Um so again going back to 9.4 and some of the um other items. So policy I I-GAB the acceptable computer use um there aren't revisions to that policy. Um what has to happen on a regular basis um is for the board to review that policy. >> Um part of that has
142to be when we submit for -ate funding and other sort of um similar contracts. We have to demonstrate that we've reviewed the acceptable use policy. So, this is part of that process um that we've um Mike Anthony and his his group have gone through, reviewed it. Um this policy is from the May 2025 VSBA. Um but we just basically have to um review that acknowledge um that policy is in place as part of our minutes, but there's no real action for the board to take on it. It's just it's here. We've we've discussed, you know, it's Not much is if anything has really Yeah, it's current. I guess that's the best way to talk about it. >> Okay. KK-R and KK-F and then F2. So those are classroom observations and procedures. So um starting about
143last year we um principles had some requests to look at observation procedures and um when when's appropriate time um how often how frequently um concerns about confidentiality um from visits and things along those lines. So we sought guidance from our schoolboard attorney. We looked at um model polic policies from several other school divisions. Our school board attorney sent us some policies from or really regulations from other divisions to see how other folks sort of handled that with an eye towards wanting to have partnership with families but also trying to maintain um the ability to um maintain confidentiality for students um but also for instructional practices happening in in the buildings. So when it's - R, that's a regulation. So it's not, again, we talked a little bit about regulations before. So um this isn't a
144board vote for a policy, but it's informing the board of regulations attached to policy KK. Um F is a form, so it's the request for an observation um for scheduling um that classroom observation. And then F2 is a confidentiality agreement um for um observations when they take place to um for for signing that confidentiality um for folks. Um if the board does after you review it some more, if you do have questions and concerns, um please reach out. Um we can again take a look at those regulations. Um we can look at tweaking if need be. Um but these are slated to go into effect in January. Um you have November financial reports um for the elementary school, the middle school, and the high school. Um also want to reiterate their um the support from
145ESS and helping us um by sponsoring our teacher of the year program and plaques and gifts um for our teachers. um they they really have been quite responsive to our concerns or challenges with integrating um their um their program and their services to our school division. Um they but they've answer they pick up the phone, they answer phone calls, they've um provided us um some pretty pretty good substitute teachers in terms of training and we've been a they've been very flexible with us when we've needed some just some temporary staffing, long-term staffing, and being able to cast a wider net um to get folks to um into our school division. Have you heard that from front office staff that not having to seek out substitutes has has helped has reduced the stress of their jobs?
146>> Um I think it's been a a bit mixed bag. So, I think there is um >> there have been concerns about not knowing who is is coming. I think there's um they frequently liked being able to um direct jobs to certain people who they always knew were reliable and dependable. Um so, I think that was a little concerning. And so they're still like, I don't know who this person is and how do we um if this person hasn't been a great sub, how do we handle that? So before it was, well, I'm just not going to call them. Um so now there's a process in place and so you can you can do some things. Um I do think there is I have heard that appreciation for not having to get up at 4
147in the morning and check messages and start calling people at 4 and 5 and 6 in the morning >> trying to find somebody fill the last minute um the last minute sub. Um and I I think we've worked through a lot of the the kinks with who's coming and who's getting notified and how do we get people notified? Um we worked through a couple things with like the snow days and who's doing the notifications. If you're scheduled as a sub, if you were scheduled to come in on the snow day but school's canceled, who does that >> notification and how does that work? So, we um some of these novel situations have um we've worked through and um again like um Miss Hill um has been phenomenal in terms of like being responsive and answering
148questions. >> I think that's all from 9.4. >> Any any more questions or thoughts? All right. Item 10. Schoolformational reports. Uh 10.1 schoolboard conferences and webinars. We may have a we have um some input from Mr. Morgan. >> Oh yes. As you all know, I was um selected to represent Matthews at the VSBA conference in November as a delegate and was several very good breakout sessions, I guess you'd call them. We had u the first one that I attended was a legal update and just a couple of things if you'll pardon me for looking at my phone but I have it on here. Um, one of the things that, um, I felt noteworthy to pass along to the board and anyone else who wants to listen is that the US Supreme Court has agreed to
149hear an appeal by the state to determine one, whether Title N prevents a state from designating girls and boys sports team based on biological sex determined at birth. and two, whether the equal protection clause prevents a state from designating boys and girls sports teams based on biological sex determined at birth. This is just FYI to let you know what is going to occur. Uh, another thing along that line would be um we can probably expect a change in the model policies that relate to transgender students. We've already been through a couple of changes and they're telling us we can probably expect more changes to those model policies. Uh moving along to another session which was the Virginia General Assembly U update or what is expected in there. Um these bear in mind this is not
150law as of yet. These are just bills that either have already been filed or will be filed in the general assembly. Um This one gets my attention. Mandatory public sector collective bargaining, repeal of the right to work law, uh other related topics would be paid time off for union leaders, teachers uh planning time, duty-free lunches, and building air quality standards. Here again, this is just a bill that either has been or will be filed. Um, another one is a local 1% sales and use tax, which the money would supposedly go directly to the schools. Um, school board policies and parental notification regarding safe storage of prescription drugs and firearms. Uh, an increase in the minimum wage and increase in teacher salary to the national average. Um, schoolbased health care would be more focused on diabetes
151care and management and RN in every school. um mental health awareness training for teachers and staff and some proposed changes to the way student discipline is done. This one lists restorative discipline defi, excuse me, defining bullying and alternative education programs should be provided for suspended students. Here again, this is not law as of yet. These are just proposed or there will be bills that will be filed in the general assembly. Uh back to the VSBA conference. Like I said, I did go as a delegate and we had three legislative proposals and the board discussed each one of those in depth, I believe, at the uh November meeting, and we had agreed that we would support the first of it, be opposed to the first two and support the third one. Uh just to refresh your
152memory, the the first one was the assessment and accountability reform. The second one was the chronic absenteeism being removed as an indicator in accountability and accreditation models for the schools. Uh the third enrollment cap for virtual Virginia would be raise. you could enroll more students in virtual Virginia. The way that came out was immediately before just very shortly before the vote was taken, a motion was made to vote on the three proposals as a package and not individually. Put us in a terrible spot because we had agreed to support two or support one but not the other two. The motion carried. The vote was taken and all three passed 96-2. Just for your information >> with with our division voting nay. >> Right. Correct. That's all I have. Um, it was my first time as
153a delegate, so I had a little bit of a learning curve there, but I just wanted to pass on some of these things to the board so you can kind of keep it in the back of your mind. >> Very helpful, Mr. Morgan. Thank you. Miss Diggs, Miss Hodgeges, do you have any to report? >> Is this time for the >> This could be 250 time. Um, as I reported last month, uh, briefly, I have been working with, um, the people at WHRO, one one lady in particular, her name is Paula Cook, uh, with the sail 250 where the tall ships coming into our country. Um, a lot are American, but a lot are foreign as well. and they're still um as of this past week, they're still taking ships and plan on it. Uh
154they got one from Portugal that said they would come this June. Anyway, the bottom line is that the deadline for us adopting a ship or ships on December 15th, which was yesterday. Um, that was a suggested date because some of us were myself in at the top of the list was in panic mode over that one because we had not gotten everything in order anyway and it's not all in order yet. But we do have interest at all three school levels uh for projects to be done. The the one difficulty with having the tall ships come to Norphick in June, mid June, is schools are out and the children and students at each grade level have an opport many opportunities to do different projects if they so choose. and we can do them throughout this
155the rest of this school year and either do videos or pictures or what have you and send them to the captain of the ship andor the crew. Um, and there are people at all three levels interested in participating. So, I feel very good about this. I had a meeting yesterday with folks from the outdoor club and the Virginia 250 and they are ready to help our students in a big way financially to help us. And Dr. Daniels has also said that he would do a stipen for a teacher who would like to be the point person um to take this on in whichever school um kind of stood up. I contacted all three principles and they sent out the material with an application, a very easy application that is no cost to the school district
156at all to adopt a ship and with all of the activities that are or a lot of the activities that are there for our kids to do um from the little ones right on through high school. So, the opportunities are there and I We're very excited about this. Coming from Matthews County and having lived here and, you know, knowing the fishing and the boat building and all the rest of it in this county, I think we would literally miss the boat if we didn't take advantage of this. And I'm so glad we have good support uh not only in this in the schools, it looks like, but in the community to support us. So, I'm I feel positive about this. >> Excellent. Thank you. >> Excellent. >> Along the lines uh moving to 10.2 with
157board and committee reports by members and the superintendent, I wanted to bring up the policy services. I believe we we will have a a policy committee beginning in earnest in uh early next year in January. We absolutely must do that. And I have passed out a document that was sent by SBMA regarding their policy services. Um please note at the bottom the pricing on that is uh has been reduced for small small uh divisions such as ours. Uh so at a cost of 2100 which happens to be the same price as the VSBA policy services. So the two entities from which we could select policy services are VSBA or SBMA. I think it's critical that we do have this support um coming from an entity and the fact that the policy services associated with BSBA,
158we would in order to take the policy services from VSBA, we would need to maintain membership with VSBA. But I think the timing is critical that we make a decision on this and I wanted to bring it up now so that we can possibly have an action item uh next month regarding uh procuring uh policy services entity. So as this time goes as we pass through the holidays, please feel free to um ask individual questions. And I I guess I just would ask um if I'm I'm making an assumption that uh you're in agreement that we would need a policy services that we would need policy services support. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Any questions right now or comments about that? It's just information at this point. Okay. Dr. Daniel, do you have anything? Okay. any
159any other comments from the board members at this time regarding committees, board reports or anything like that? >> Um I'm um presently as you know serve on the um governor school board and I um beginning next year I think it's time for me to to withdraw from that. I've been on it for many many years. Um so I just say that that I think we need to select something else. I I um I'll probably attend the January meeting unless my replacement is eager to do that. It's in person and I've committed to taking Judy Row who's another member on behalf of RCC to that meeting which is in Essex. But I think it's time to find someone else that's willing to to serve on that board. >> Fresh eyes, fresh ears. >> Is that a
160quarterly? Does that mean quarterly? >> Um it it varies right now. every other month. It's mostly um uh virtual um but they are trying to and it's been virtual since co but there's but last year they resurrected having one meeting face to face um so most of it is virtual but during the school year it's >> okay >> Thursday night at o >> Thursday night at six o'clock once we have um our full board established in January perhaps it'd be good to open that opportunity to all members >> full board >> and thank you for your service on that on that board. Moving on to item 11 then citizens. Sorry, pardon. >> Oh, thank you. Um I'm going to Yes. And that is the January 15th. We are going to need um the member to
161go to the board of supervisors meeting. um in January on the 15th. Does anyone have >> That's actually that's the governor's school. >> That is the same. That's your inerson meeting. In person meeting. Okay. >> Um >> and that's on Thursday. >> Yes. >> Third Thursday, I believe. third Thursday which is our fourth 15th January 15th and M right we don't meet until the following week the way the month rolls um Mr. Morgan, I thank you for taking the December meeting, although I believe many of us will. >> Yes, I can do it in December. And if if need be, if if January is a conflict for a lot of people, um I can take that probably. I don't see any reason that I can't if I need to. >> Well, I was going to
162say I would I'd be glad to take it um as well. Mr. Morgan, since you're so generously doing December, I'll take January. Okay. At this point, >> thank you, Miss Laauo. Thank you for that reminder, Dr. Daniel. >> I believe we're now ready to move to number item 11, citizens comments on items discussed during the meeting. Do we have anybody who would like to approach the podium? Please approach and state your name and address. Once again, Mrs. Labby. Thank you. My name is Kelly Lockerby. I live at um Irving Irvingville Lane Matthews. Um I wanted to speak about the policy as far as observation. Um it just kind of got announced tonight like it was just a matter of fact and it's going to start in January. But my my knowledge of school boards is
163school boards decide policy and I have not heard it be voted on that that is going to be polic. you never had a policy on observation before and now it just gets announced that it's going to start in January. Um my feeling on observation is nothing should be discussed around my child that is confidential to another student. If it is being said in open class where my child is, anybody should be privy to that information. If my child can hear it, I should be able to hear it. My child's non-verbal. He cannot come home and tell me like everybody else's child what's happening in class. I depend on teachers and pair professionals to be able to tell me what is going on with my student. And I think it is a violation of transparency for
164you guys to try to now say that we cannot go into the classroom because I have gone in there and seen things that I guess the administration doesn't want me to see. If it's happening around my child, I should be able to see it. Period. >> Thank you, Mrs. Lockerby. Is there anyone else who would like to approach the podium? >> 538 Main Street. I agree with Miss Lockerby. Five days so you can clean up your classroom and then I can sign a note and come in and observe it. No. No. I'm a house cleaner. If I have a day off and I want to sit in a class and observe my child, I have that right. And if my teacher looks at me and says, "Hey, you're disrupting it. I need you to get
165out." I'm the first one. God, I obey those teachers. I love those teachers. They mean everything to me. And I've never had one say that I've disrupted the classroom. In fact, I've had them put me to work and I love it. I need to know how my child is doing. I also need to know how my child is doing in that school room and the teacher showing me what they're doing so I can bring it home and I can have my child better educated at home as well. These children, like Miss Locker said, they're not verbal. So, they can't come home and tell me what they're learning. I rely on that teacher to tell me that. I have to see that so I can implement it in my home. I have to be able to
166observe that. It's very important to us as parents. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Another speaker to the podium. All right. There being none, uh, do we have school board member comments? >> Question. >> Yes. >> More so than a comment. Um, I'm a little confused myself. Have we not had observation policy all along? >> This is a regulation. >> So, we have a school visitor policy. Um, so we've had that that policy. KK has been um at last was adopted in I guess reviewed in 2021. Um what these are are regulations associated to that policy. And so based on um our practices, it's not it's a policy what's um the KK-R and then the forms are regulations related to that policy. So it's not an adoption of of a new policy. It's clarifying and
167putting into practice um guidelines related to that policy. >> Okay. So KKR for for example >> KK is the school visitor policy >> where it says - R that means it's a regulation has been added >> right. So what I'm adding is a regulation. This I'm notifying um the board about a regulation um associated to an approved policy. So what we've done um is regulations um don't require board approval. >> Board is informed but regulations have not required board approval. >> I wasn't aware of that. Okay, >> that answers my question and thank you. You're welcome. Um, let me just say as always, and I know so many people have left, I always uh I thank each of you who who've always who's taken time tonight and at previous meetings um to speak to us,
168to come out and speak to us. Um I do want to address um Miss Lockerby that um the and all three parents um regarding what you raised in the first u public comment um Um, and you referenced last month's meeting, um, that you raised some concerns and that no school board member had gotten back with you. Um, as far as my, um, the way I I handle such things, um, and I'm not speaking for the other members here. Um, when something's brought to the school board in this public forum, I don't think I've ever gotten back personally with a parent from this public comment. I work through the superintendent. So, please don't assume that we haven't heard your concerns and had conversations about that because you've not heard from us. I think it's fair to
169say um that all of us take and think about things that are said publicly and many of us um have conversations with the superintendent um asking questions about it, offering thoughts about it or opinions about it or things that we believe need to happen. So um I just don't want people to think that because you don't hear from us personally in a telephone call that we don't take it seriously or not concerned about that. So, thank you. I just had a quick question also about the system of communication um in the specific classroom that is being um discussed tonight. if there uh exists um daily communication between teacher and parent and um a system for that because Miss Mullins said there there is she does not have any communication with the teacher uh like a
170daily we would we would have information sheets that would go home that would I'll just say that I'm I'm meeting with the teacher tomorrow. Like I have a schedule meeting with teacher. >> I want to make sure there is communication um that that that flows >> on a daily basis between between parents and teachers in these in these specific um What did you say? >> And you're having a meeting tomorrow >> with I'm sorry the teacher. >> Okay. All right. Great. I do also I want to uh say I appreciate you being here tonight communicating your concerns. We are listening. Uh, I do want to agree with Mrs. Hodes because you don't hear us respond directly does not mean that we are not involved and following up and um trying to understand and assist in
171the situation and I really appreciate you being here and staying through this long meeting tonight. Thank you. Do members have any more specific reports or anything? Okay. Well, moving on to finally to item 13, other business uh school board members or superintendent. Uh, we have a budget work session that's scheduled for Tuesday, January 20th at 4 pm in this building, the J Murray Books Auditorium at Thomas Hunter Middle School. That will be followed at 5:00 by our closed meeting, same location and that is followed at six o'clock with the regular um business monthly meeting in this location. There are no more cons questions or comments. I would would like to wish everyone a very merry Christmas and happy new year and be safe, stay well and this meeting is adjourned. >> Thank you.