001mhm and we're ready okay we are back thank you and apologies for for the adjustments necessary back to our agenda so we were on the second item on the agenda the school budget public hearing there are no speakers signed up for the budget public hearing so we will move forward to the next item on our agenda which is the pledge of allegiance all right i pledge allegiance of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay thank you very much next item on the agenda we're in number four under recognitions our first recognition this evening is our school spotlight and our spotlight this month is new kent high school mr chris valdrigi and miss swinkler while they're coming to the podium um each
002month at our school board meeting regular session we do highlight one of our schools and there are a million things to highlight at new kent high school so i know we're in for a treat so i'll turn it over to mr valdrigi and the team yep madam chair members of the board dr nichols i have the very real pleasure tonight of introducing you to our school spotlight group which is mr john ogenbaugh one of our cte teachers and some students he has brought with some really really cool things that they do in class this is one of the classes that whenever you're visiting our school you should just stick your head in the door and see what's going on because it's always pretty amazing so at this time mr a i'll turn it over hi
003folks members of the board thank you for having us uh it's such a pleasure to be here it's my third year here with new kent and i couldn't be happier and it's been a couple of really weird years but you didn't come here to see me or you didn't invite mr v to invite me he wanted to see what the kids are doing so i have some fantastic students that were that were kind enough to come with me and they brought some things that they've made and uh even though we can't bring everybody it's kind of hard to talk your class into all coming out to board meeting on the evening but we brought a lot of pictures along we'd like to show you a little bit of what's going on and through the generosity
004and support of school division we're able to do some really fantastic work so i hope that you'll see some uh some of the things that these guys and gals have made um would you please advance the so um i'm primarily teaching uh engineering and electronics classes uh so two levels of each and then we're bringing on architecture which hadn't run in a long time for next year so we're excited to kind of reach three big program areas for students as they work through engineering and design challenges you know we're doing a lot of real hands-on stuff some of the things that you'll see might remind you of maybe like what people thought old school would shop look like uh we're going a little further than that though we're going past that and we're getting into
005real original design i don't know about you but when i was in school that shop teacher handed us plans and we just sort of followed along and did what he told us these these guys and gals are developing original plans learning cad 3d modeling and problem solving so if we go from paper or a small sketch to an actual design that's the goal real hands-on learning and problem solving when you get to try things you really get to understand them so at this point i think you might see some people you recognize up here oh wow i'm gonna i'm gonna give it up to these folks who actually do what they're doing zeke tell us a little bit about what you've been up to hi i'm zeke um i don't know if you can tell
006but that's me i actually have the sunglasses right over there um so yeah um i'm in his i took his intro to design class during covid like during the pandemic the yeah and um i'm taking his in like main engineering course now and uh that is me i'm also on our in our school's theater program um specifically on like the design team for our shows and so that right there is a sword for a show that we were doing called chico's monsters blah blah blah blah we needed a sword and i wanted to actually be able to incorporate like hit and show people in theater like hey we can use the engineering stuff school and we can do all that stuff with feeder and so that sword is actually this sword right here and um
007yeah it's a foam sword because we can't hit people with real swords in a small building i don't even know if we can have skulls in our swords in this country so yeah this is a fake sword and i i love to trick valdrigi and be like i'm running with a sword in school um but uh so that's what this is and yeah um everything in here was made in the woodshop um including this handle which was turned um by him not me i wasn't trained in that yet um and this uh finger card i think that's what it's called uh was 3d printed so yeah all of it was made in the shop and this was actually the first ever cut that the cnc went through so yeah that was really cool and it
008was a fun experience and then the next thing that i have for you am i allowed to can i pass this to you guys okay sure show and tell so this page like he said we take one initial drive and and um we built something from it and so um that is a basic design of this box of this box here um which is full of my crap because it's a toolbox i'm so sorry um it's a toolbox and for like basic sketching tools and devices alike so um i had a basic drawing and i drew it on that paper there and then i took it to the autocad software that we use fusion 360. and yeah um i then made a basic mock-up of it it was designed specifically to be able to be
009made very quickly and cheaply and so like that's what it is i could throw this and break it and i i'd be somewhat upset but like i wouldn't really care because it was designed so that it could be made easily again and yeah that's fantastic that is such a light years away from when i was in high school in at lafayette and took mechanical drawing and we drew widgets for two years uh we don't want to run too long but uh i'll ask mr miller if if you just every few seconds if you would advance the slides certainly terrific and paige i'd like to welcome you up um we didn't have any electronic students who wanted to come along out tonight we did bring some things to pass around to show you uh paige would
010you like to talk about your design process for this piece of furniture you brought us okay uh hello my name is paige baldwin um so about a year ago uh i had some extra time on my hands so i decided to spend my time in the engineering department uh creating furniture and this is of my own design i started out from a drawing and i researched a bunch of different um you know furniture designs and i kind of came up with my own and then i put it into cad i modeled it um and then i used those plans to build something so it's like you can go from paper to building i have a set of these by the way i have another one at my house um but you can go from paper
011to creating something that is like extremely nice and like expensive actually this set is worth like eight hundred dollars um and i would like to thank mr ogenbach for donating the wood that i used to make this because what is surprisingly very expensive um but yeah uh and i'm extremely proud of what i've done and i wouldn't have been able to do that without you know with his guidance you know all right thank you thank you i don't know what i could say that they haven't shown you but if you have any questions for any of us please we'd love to show you more we'd love to answer your questions if we have the time i'm curious about their plans going forward will will uh will they be pursuing a career that this will feed
012directly into i have many students that are in pursuit of a korean have already made plans for further study or even jobs but i'll let these two answer for themselves tell us a little bit about your next steps guys uh hi again um so i'm a junior right now and i'm currently in my college application process and i'm planning on going to college for aerospace engineering i want to design airplanes and spaceships and you know all sorts of stuff i'm currently in classes for nasa like through their programs um and i'm planning to apply for you know those high schools like um you know caltech uh mit georgia tech uh yeah i'm really excited and i really think that i have a shot of achieving my dreams because of my experiences here thank you that's
013phenomenal thank you [Applause] um so i have the lucky privilege slash unlucky privilege of being a senior so i can't take another class with them which sucks but um i'm i'm a senior and so i've already applied to schools and um i'm going to be going to vcu where uh i'm planning on getting a bfa in light design and set design as well as minoring in sound design and i i i had my interview with them they were like hey we really like your stuff but we're going to be honest the main reason why we like you is because you know autocad and no one else starts off straight without a cad and that i would have only learned it from him so yeah that's awesome like that was excellent what made it awesome also
014i have wood for you guys we have um we have a little a little gift thank you for all of your support thank you for having us um whip these out for you guys i'm sure we'll get an invoice for these but that's okay yeah thank you i appreciate that charge it to dr nichols and i i will tell you that mr agab there are a lot of great places to go into camp but if you want to see from from the brain to fruition i mean you get to see all phases it's like a lab in there and it's a lot of fun he's always innovating and um you know we have you'll hear about the budget tonight we're very committed to the career part of our budget uh mr agab is building a
015great program here and we're so he and i came in at the same time and uh really excited uh about the work he's doing you're also going to hear about the perkins grant tonight uh for our first read mr again helps us lead that perkins grant which brings in tools and materials and and all of those different things so uh he's an incredible asset uh and kids are better because they spend time with them thank you so much thank you dr nichols on behalf of uh cte and new ken high school thank you very much yeah thank you thank you thank you everybody for coming for that piece all right next item on our agenda still under recognitions we have the gold medal recipient national russian essay contest anna polaski class of 22 from maggie
016walker governor school sponsored by the american council of teachers of russian mr ross miller okay uh and i don't think miss pulaski is here um today but um a student of ours she's a senior this year and um and just won this award so we want to recognize her maggie walker one of our four regional programs um she won the gold medal in a russian essay writing contest yeah um so just incredible opportunities and you're seeing just a couple highlights of those um here tonight so we wanted to honor her we'll make sure she gets her certificate yeah so thank you all right mr miller you're staying up here recognition of april as the month of the military child all right so yeah so april is um is nationally recognized monthly military child and so
017some of the record or one of the recognitions that's coming up is purple up for military kids day and so everybody's wearing um asked to wear purple on april 20th and so our in our schools that announcement's gone out to um to staff and students as well we do have a good number of military families in our community and so i want to recognize the service that they provide to our to our community to our country thank you and next is the recognition of april as autism awareness month yes this is also as you said autism awareness month the months set aside to recognize just people with autism and those who support them and the actual day of recognition was actually over spring break nationally april 2nd was lighted up blue day and but there
018are also just different communities around and around the country doing different activities to celebrate autism awareness month this theme for this month is celebrate differences and just recognize the different differences that people have great thank you thank you and finally for you mr miller recognition of april as school library month yeah so the our school media specialists play an extremely important role in our schools and they more than just checking out books and making sure that books are in the students hands they also provide lessons they work with teachers to build lessons and pull together digital resources as well as different print and media resources that they can then engage the students with they are also very proficient in technology and so they do a lot of lessons that involve technology get students collaboratively working
019together to produce products if you come in any of our libraries on a regular basis you'll notice that they're quite occupied and have a lot of students interacting in them and um in a variety of ways so um i did have a slide up there that had that recognized the names of our media specialists but i'll just get through them so over at nuke elementary school we have kim holloway and george watkins we have robin eno and then mary mordeca at the middle school and tracy mckinney here at the high school it's four ladies do an amazing job promoting literacy within their buildings and providing services students thank you thank you and next on up for recognition of wrestling state champions dr nichols yes miss winford and we're gonna have to call an audible on
020this one i believe we got the wrong date in the communication with our wrestlers um our wrestlers have quite a presence so i promise you if they were here you wouldn't know it um but they are the four-time state champions um and it's i gotta tell you it's an incredible group of young men um and even better coaches that have supported these kids we have a couple seniors um these kids and we'll recognize them at a former meeting but i'd be remiss if i did or at a future meeting i'd be remiss to say that not only the great kids they're great athletes but they're also fantastic students uh we have one that was admitted to the naval academy one that's going to campbell one that's going to virginia tech they're just all around just
021fantastic kids so um and the future's bright we have an opportunity for a fifth straight state title next year won't be as outright as this this year uh but we'll we'll recognize them in full at our next meeting so i apologize for that thank you thank you for that okay next up um item number five is the consent agenda board members by now you've had the opportunity to review the items listed on the consent agenda including minutes from previous meetings bills and payroll monthly financials and the superintendent's recommendation regarding personnel matters do i hear a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented the motion that we approve the consent agenda document as presented okay thank you ms stascil do i hear a second second okay thank you miss barber is there any discussion board
022members on the consent agenda okay hearing none we'll move forward with a vote all in favor say aye all right okay motion curious all right next up is item six our citizen comment period all right we have eight speakers signed up this evening so i will go through and give the instructions quickly before we begin i'd like to thank everyone again for coming out to speak tonight please note that your comments are limited to three minutes once the timer sounds please promptly finish your comment and return to your seat it is customary for the school board not to make comment during the citizen comment period please make sure that your contact information is provided on the sign up sheet if you would like someone to follow up with you and thank you again for coming
023this evening so again we have eight speakers signed up tonight our first speaker is dave smith yeah my name is dave smith and i have been ronnie's pastor for about 20 years now and you know one of the things that um you know i've discovered about ronnie and over 20 years you find out a lot one of the things that uh i know about ronnie is that when it comes to his job the only thing that he wanted to do was to create and to maintain an environment for learning and he did that very well his track record proves that and it was it was just an incredibly wrong decision made for him to either resign or retire and and in doing so what that does is it it just it adds another layer of
024fear to our teachers prevents them from really fully doing what they were trained and what they were hired to do because they're handcuffed and you know i don't i don't know if ronnie would even come back but i think he should be given that option thank you mr smith our next speaker this evening is keith hartman good evening everyone uh just like to say thank you for serving our community my name is keith hartman and i'm in district three um as a group we are not satisfied with the book selection process that has been uh brought about or the conclusion reached regarding the book poet x books like poetics and similar books which we have discovered are a backdoor to critical race theory i read the book and did not see how the main character
025leaned into her faith as dr nichols previously stated i had to look up that definition of faith and the the dictionary says the ascent of the mind the truth of a proposition or statement without complete evidence the key word of course being truth and may i remind you there's only one source but let's talk about standards sexually explicit material and content undermining traditional values which this book contains are very low standards attacking and ridiculing biblical christianity its most sacred and its most sacred sacrament communion are very low standards bringing confusion to young impressionable minds regarding faith religion and the bible is a low standard misrep misrepresenting catholicism and reinforcing negative stereotypes about hispanics are low standards we need higher standards not lower ones but your decision demonstrates it's okay to have low standards as long
026as we put a morning a warning label on them warning this material may not be suitable for your children however it speaks volumes about the school's very low standards this issue is not settled i would like to read something from a book that i do endorse it's from psalm 9 verse 15. the nations are sunk down in the pit that they made in the net which they hid in the net which they hid is their own foot taken jehovah has made himself known and have executed judgment the wicked or snared in the works of of his own hands that's all i have thank you thank you mr hartman our next speaker this evening is miss fran kennedy good evening everybody it's it's so exciting to see these kids and all their great accomplishments and you
027just see these amazing teachers and uh their hard work um and how it affects the students and i i just find that really heartwarming and exciting and just makes it says good things about new kent um somebody asked me the other day why do we come to the meetings when we don't have kids in the school so many of my friends out here we're smaller in number today we've been involved in our community for years in so many areas because we care about new can't we care about values we care about standards we care about the morals we care about the children in our community even if they're not our children we care and those are the kind of citizens that we are and we care about how our taxpayer money is being used we
028care that there is not critical race theory or awoke agenda promoted in the new kent schools that's important we care about the type of books that are taught and and what kind of moral standards they're teaching our children it seems like more and more i interact with people they're homeschooling and there's a reason so many people are homeschooling because i don't like what's happening in the schools and and i find that kind of sad my project manager we're finishing our basement i was talking to him today and he said they took their kids out of school because of the culture wars they're real the things that are going on in the schools and they've decided to homeschool so i was just good at answering my friend in this format that we're here because we're citizens
029that care we we care we go to board of supervisor meetings we just try to do whatever we can to make our community better um we have an article of faith in our church that we say and i'm just going to read part of it if there is anything virtuous lovely or of good report or praiseworthy we seek after these things and i hope that we can promote good standards in our schools i i think people made the false statement that actually somebody shockingly said we were against this book because of the race of the author which is so ridiculous we care about our community and we care about standards thank you thank you miss kennedy our next speaker is mr jb benson madam chair distinguished board members dr nichols and hardworking staff as always
030thank you for your service community and and to add on to what frank just said building good citizens is everyone's responsibility it's a community effort we'll talk about civics a little bit surprise surprise so i'm in the grocery store walking down the aisle probably a food lion right and a gentleman comes up the aisle toward me and speaks i say how are you doing and as he passes he said living the dream and i thought he gets it either that was a throwaway that he uses all the time [Music] or he actually gets it maybe he realizes what happened in philadelphia in 1787 when 55 representatives from all over the east coast representing 12 colonies not 13 rhode island didn't show up they didn't want to give up any power to the federal government which
031in fact why they were there for four months four months they dropped everything they were going left their livelihood [Music] got to fill it off definitely the best way they could and i'm not even sure how that happens south carolina georgia all over quite a sacrifice out of the four nodes they met 89 times to iron out the constitution and what was the big disagreement how much power are the states willing to give up to the federal government that's what it was all about they did a heck of a job well my concern is how much do our students and you can't know about all this and believe um national polling repeatedly says says that a lot of the younger people think socialism is it's not bad pretty good but equal with capitalism obviously they
032haven't gotten the message so my concern is that we make sure that we're doing what we can to let them appreciate the fact they're living in the most secure most free most prosperous most generous country in the world one thing you are familiar with this book anybody who's teaching history government civics needs to read this book it's an easy read but it'll it'll make a big difference for those who read it [Music] april 24th i think work session i'd like to ask that someone make a presentation on what's being taught in the area of civics ross miller and i have talked about it so i appreciate that thank you thank you our next speaker is miss wilma english thank you for your service we continue to pray for you i'm wilma espelato english of district
0333 and we are a concern about the whole poet x issue we are not satisfied with the review process how it took place and even your solution so now we ask that the school board members or someone else gets involved because mr mead explained that there is a process we've been patient and we will continue to be patient for me and our colleagues here poet x is the canary in the coal mine it exposed the fact that there are books that are pushing the crt agenda in a very subtle way which is very uh destructive and as we know crt is a subtle way in some way ways it's blatant but in other ways it's very subtle this book is um one of those very subtle ways and it's very disturbing that mr nick dr
034nichols he mentioned that he read it and he uh i'm gonna quote you you said there are some tough or challenging parts there are some faith but then you concluded as she leans into her faith totally disagree she never embraces the faith of her parents and she walks away from the faith but we don't have time to discuss that but it's a very clever way of sprinkling scriptures out of context and that is very very deceiving and dangerous especially for young minds that don't have the foresight in the depth to understand faith in religious matters just from a book and it reminds me of a scripture in uh ii corinthians 11 14. it says that satan will masquerade as an angel of light and that is the new uh weapon of the left using spiritual
035language and bible verses that are taken out of context to make a point so apparently it's okay to lower standards moral and ethical standards as long as we label it young adult that to me is unacceptable it's like the old cigarette warning you know immediate cause cancer and in this case these books cause mental and spiritual cancer but yet we've labeled it and we say caution reading this book may be hazardous to your young impressionable mind it exposes you to sexually expressive material and you do confusion about catholicism and even doubt about christianity and the bible but it's okay we've labeled it i think that's unacceptable we can do better thank you thank you miss english our next speaker is um miss wanda espayette good evening my name is wanda espala i'm from district 3
036and again we do thank you for your service i know it's not easy and you give a lot of your precious time and we appreciate it um and uh and just because we bring this criticism when the creative states in everything we do just this particular issue so we continue to pray for all of you because obviously we all need prayer so we are again i follow up on my sister's comments that we're not satisfied with this resolution regarding that poetics issue and again with dr nichols the main character in poetics does not lean into her face she actually walks away from her faith is very clear in the book that she walks away completely from her face she doesn't even understand scriptures she takes it out of context doesn't understand her own faith um
037so she does not go back to confirmation class so she does not embrace catholicism she means misinterprets psalm 119 as being about words in general um but psalm 119 is only about god's word the bible when she dismisses has been just a book of metaphors wrote books like poetics and this is just one of the many books obviously that are in the system that i cleverly disguise tools for crt indoctrination sprinkle with spiritual sounding language but we are not fooled unfortunately educators are sacrificing high morals ethical and educational standards at the altar of diversity and inclusion yet as stated previously this book manages to exclude the values of the very group it was supposed to include traditional bible-believing hispanics like myself and my sister who represent the majority of the hispanics books in our school
038libraries should reflect the values of the majority of new kent citizens not crt or worthless thank you for your time thank you mr speaker our next speaker is the reverend milton hathaway chairman excuse me let me assure you i don't have code i'm generally members of the school board dr nichols uh i'm reverend milton hathaway and i live in district 3. over the last six or seven months there's been a parade of citizens myself included who've come before you to address a number of issues uh crt has been at the head of it i i think i've used that term maybe four times i really don't like it i pastor a diverse group of young people and i'm against anything that hurts them but let me tell you what i am in favor of dei
039diversity equity and inclusion it's been suggested that that's a code word for crt so let me just share personal experience uh the summer before my fifth birthday my parents were middle class my father was a pastor civil rights leader my mother was an educator the summer before my fifth birthday i was walking with my mother through the center of our town and there was a city park where kids were playing or swings running around there was a train going through the track i ran away from my mom's hand and ran to the entrance of the gate and she screamed one of those screams that every child knows that means stop right now she grabbed me and pulled me close to her and with tears in her eyes she said don't ever do that again and
040i said why i just want to play the kids are having fun she said you cannot go to the city park i said why she said because the city part is for white children at the age of four and a half i said well what am i and my mother said your color that's the first time that i felt excluded my mother spent the rest of her life making sure no child was ever excluded because of something that they could not control i spent 45 years doing the same thing here so i don't want you to assume that diversity equity and inclusion are anything more than core components of the beloved new kent community that i love thank you thank you thank you reverend hathaway [Applause] our final speaker this evening is mr j daniel
041moore i address you guys mr hathaway i played football with randy i did uh we we had i had fond memories um dr nichols school board i wasn't quite sure if i was going to come and and deliver this but i figured what the heck thank you for your service and i'm a father of three and a product of the sith of the system i think you guys are doing a fantastic job regarding the incident involving ronnie cox a tenured high school history government teacher and my football coach serving the folks of new kent for 30 years i would like to address what seems to be most disturbing it's not the way mr cox spoke to the student or the interpretation of what he meant and it's not the fact that the kid doesn't seem
042to have the moral compass to listen and to respect his elders and it's not the climate which that kids are raised in today what i find most disturbing is that a teacher was was recorded without the consent by a student does this not establish a precedent which allows kids to record teacher student interaction would it make sense that the school board review this particular policy and specifically enforce strict rules regarding their use of audio and video through their phones reason being the protection of teachers extends to the safety and security of all the students kids are using their phones to leverage their own self-interests and are undermining instruction we are living in an age which is indeed different in the effectiveness of chromebooks over actual textbooks also play a certain role in the distraction kids
043are facing today i went to new kent schools and back in 1995 we read one particular book called 1984 by the great author george orwell the theme of the book is essentially that in 1984 cameras are everywhere recording you every move and it's monitored by one of the branches of government mr cox was well reversed in the fragile fragile nature of the government in orwell's book masterfully foretells the future this may not be 1984 but in 2022 it might be time to take notes and revisit basic policy regarding surveillance and the use of cell phones in schools i'm not sure what time of day it was in mr cox's class but in the book the main character has to perform morning jerks exercises monitored but monitored by the government to make sure he was in
044shape so he's working out doing sit-ups and stuff like that and while mr cox may have not been required to perform them he certainly dealt with them in closing virginia is a single-party consent state meaning that the public can record whatever they want at any time it can be held against them whomever was recorded thank you and i was almost done but we should just support the teachers with it thanks mr [Applause] okay thank you to all of our speakers this evening our next item on the agenda we are now under new business item number seven um the next agenda item is the summer of more meaningful opportunities for real world engagement mr ross miller welcome back thank you good evening members of the board dr nichols and wanted to this is more of a
045sort of a save the date almost for the community last summer we had a group of teachers came together designed some meaningful experiences for the students and provide them real world opportunities to explore the content they've been learning and through a variety of problem solving activities and so we have the ability this summer to bring that back again we're excited about that there were some adjustments that we took from feedback we got from students as well as from teachers at the end last year so i wanted to go over a little bit about what the summer might look like or it's going to look like so last summer we had two two-week sessions and when we reflected back on that at the end teachers and students like felt like that two weeks was not quite
046enough to really dig into the content as much as they wanted as they could so this year we'll be doing a one three week session and during the month of july at the elementary and middle school levels and their last year another one of the things that came up is each student picked a class that they attended um sort of an interest area and at the end when we allowed students to sort of see what other classes have been doing they're like you know i really like to do more than one class and so this year they'll be signing up sort of as a grade level and then they'll be moving between different classes and not like a full school day but gives them exposure to a variety of some of the wonderful activities that
047our teachers put together at the high school level we are extending that to a four week that is because for um for recovery courses we do have to have a certain number of hours in the classroom and so they'll have a four-week session we are currently working on an opportunity to provide a pe credit for students over the summer which we had not done previously and um looking at sort of some creative ways of getting around that design including intramurals and stuff like that so i'm looking forward to exciting summer the working with the assistant principal is to get out notification by the end of this month for sign up for for families as we get the courses all solidified and look forward to coming back to you later once the courses are together give
048you a little bit of preview and then hopefully after the fact brings back some pictures and show you what the students experienced okay board members any questions or comments at this time i just want to add this is uh funded through our essa grant funds so this is part of the learning loss uh focus for new kent this was piloted last year and it's being expanded this year and the pe credit is just another example of that um you met uh zeke he's one of the coolest kids we have here we have a lot of cool kids you know he's a theater kid and an engineer kid and he's taking a bit you can only fit so many of those courses in a schedule and we find it with our maggie walker kids and chesapeake
049bay if you're able to do a pe in the summer it does provide a little more flexibility so that's where we're heading is some of that advancement opportunities beyond pe but this is sort of our our entry point into that so i just want to thank uh mr miller and his team um and our incredible teachers that uh have pulled this off some of which are here yeah so we have we have miss hodges and miss hathaway from the middle school both took part last year and i'm excited i'm getting there i'm getting there middle school and uh but did an awesome job with different um experiences for students and then monica our esl teacher um serves all four schools she also did um some courses last year as well they did an awesome job
050so looking forward to this summer again absolutely thank you looking forward to that all right i'd just like to comment i think this is just a fantastic opportunity for us to be offering you know when when my kids were in school i craved and see seeked out special opportu opportunities like this what is the likelihood that we'll be able to continue beyond our esser funding so we have it uh we've been very smart with pacing these grants so we have it funded for the next several years and we're getting a gauge on what the actual cost would be and some of those expansion opportunities so you will see that begin to fold into our budget uh what this does allow us to do these two years and and the two ahead of it is we'll
051be able to apply for some extended school year grants so we'll be eligible we'll have a proof of concept and we'll be able to do that but we're committed to it we've just bought us some time on these grants to kind of figure out how big this will be a different version and we'll come back to you next year and go okay we learned this in this version we'll do this piece as well but we're very much committed to that summer experience for kids uh for a number of reasons uh what percent of our student body takes advantage of this so we we would love to see more we had two about two to three hundred last year so which boils down to about ten percent um but we would love to see more come
052out and all right any other questions or comments all right thank you next item is the perkins grant first read this is under our essential goal number one to implement the college career and life readiness comprehensive plan to meet the portrait of a new kent graduate mr miller and miss jamie hutchinson yeah ms hutchinson could be here tonight but um the we have had a team working on the perkins grant and this is grant that funds a lot of our cte efforts which you saw some of tonight and it is a just a well-developed program that brings career opportunities into the classroom and so the grant funds about 33 000 and it we use it for equipment and professional development for our teachers to continue to extend our programming one of the highlights that we're
053looking to include this past year is one of the things that we noticed when our team came together is we offer one uh one level of culinary courses however if you offer a second you get a basically a cte completer status and it was the only area that we did not have a completer sequence in and in order to complete you had to go to bridging communities and so it's a limited scope for our students and we had about 120 students who were taking culinary the intro to culinary and we only have like literally three to four that can go to bridging and take that same q the second course so we're hoping to open that up this coming year to offer the next step and be able to offer serve more students that way
054so that's one of the things that's in the grant this year is an expansion of our hospitality and horrors of management in the area of culinary right so this is a first read so this will come back to the board for a second finally okay thank you any other questions sorry okay thank you mr miller next item on the agenda item eight old business old business our budget update i was gonna invite mr miller back to the podium since he's been handling most of the heavy work that i missed all right miss haney madam chair board members we're just bringing you an update tonight with regards to the budget um we do have a quick presentation but basically just an overview of kind of where we are at this time we presented on february 22nd
055a preliminary overview and on march 7th presented you with our recommended budget on march 24th we had a board of supervisors joint board retreat and we were told at that meeting that we would need to have a revenue adjustment requested of a minus 200 000 from our county transfer um we're also being told and just kind of being talked about potential tax rate changes we're just catching up to your hand sorry currently the equalized rate is set at 66 cents and the advertised rate currently is set at well is advertised at 69 we did have a public hearing the the board of supervisors did have a public hearing yesterday and there weren't any comments made at that meeting and we are hopeful that we'll have some type of uh understanding of where that rate might
056land um towards the end of april into early may so yes so just for the the public and for the board so every penny on the tax rate is just under 400 000 of revenue um so it's a big deal to be between 69 and 66 cents it's about 1.2 million dollars uh which schools and county would share either that revenue or to have to cut that uh which was um at our joint meeting uh one of the board of supervisors did propose to keep it at 66 and have us share the cut which would be an additional five to six hundred thousand um in cuts for us which we'll talk to you a little bit about but just to give you a frame of reference on a penny in new cap right now it's
057uh just under four hundred thousand thank you dr nichols um also one other comment from last night's meeting they're also looking at potentially reducing the rates for the ppg for rv and votes and also it was discussed just to look at also the rate for cars as well so all of that would be impacting our county revenue and of course then what the county transfer is to the schools we had a meeting on march 30 with mcgriff a pre-renewal meeting and we should be hearing back i hope to hear something mid april by next week with our renewal with anthem and then also we should be receiving bids from outside vendors back towards the end of the month so again late april early may hopefully we'll have a little bit more information on our health
058care rates and of course we do not have any updates with the state um i hate to say it but i don't think that those are coming for a while so we will probably be talking about approving the budget most likely without updates to our state revenues the only thing about that that makes me a little bit nervous is the pay increases for our employees we will have to make sure that we line that up with whatever's approved by the state um and if they make changes to that we just need to be prepared with what our recommendation is two big differences between those a lot of differences between house and senate one is a five percent raise the other's a four percent raise in a one percent bonus now that does equate to five
059percent but the funding we get is significantly different under the four percent and one percent bonus model um so it is unfortunately what i've learned in my regional meeting today is that likely will not be decided until june um so we'll continue to kind of work through it and but i think you'll see us continue to come before you with the state revenues you've seen we're hopeful there'll be more um but i learned in the call today that it could be less depending on on what's happening um between the the two groups so so really this slide is just an overview just to refresh your memory with our revenue and the only thing that we're requesting or that we're looking at changing currently before our approval um is a need to reduce the 200 000
060from our county transfer at this time um so next slide please ross just a reminder that our budget is 85 percent salary and benefit so obviously when we're having to cut large amounts that's typically where we're going to lean into these were the original position requests just wanted you to kind of have an overview of what we had originally asked for in our request and then ross on the next slide please our recommended adjustments to get to the two hundred thousand dollar reduction is the navy core cadet teacher the new mechanic one elementary school teacher for growth and then a potential reduction of a part-time clerical position at new can elementary school and we're not necessarily we're not deciding that this evening but we wanted to bring to you was a menu of opportunities to
061balance that um you know we've been fighting for this navy corps of cadet it is an expansion of our career pathway it does provide the enrollment i mean the enlistment opportunity for young folks we don't currently have that at the high school so if we had to push it a year we could push it a year we could work on recruiting next year we were trying to look at things it's really hard to make these cuts um and not impact positions so we're trying to find opportunities initially where we don't have it now and that maybe we could we can move through another year and expand at that point so that's what you see with the navy corp cadets the mechanic um the elementary teacher does worry me because we continue to grow 84 new
062houses built between january march this year yesterday clarification on this equals 530 if we end up having to cut 200 000 you're gonna have to pick between some of these correct that's just to be our recommendation very clear yeah our recommendation for the 200 000 would be that initial list that's a little over 200 000 um those first four bullets if the tax rate is state funding and tax rate shifts we're already looking at that next set of cuts but it's not reductions it's really eliminations we would be eliminating this position correct yeah and there's nobody currently in these positions correct there is um there is currently a part-time clerical position miss barber at new can elementary school but with the new school opening we have shifted and we have um already reduced the george
063watkins part-time position so our goal would be to try to keep temporary hours to offer them more support during peak times during the year but you'll see that again down in the in the bottom list if we are get to a position where we're not seeing a tax rate approved at 69 cent there will probably be 300 to 400 000 additional dollars that we'll have to reduce so this is just a start on the potential further reductions of what we might have to bring back to you for review and that would be then eliminating that position altogether but people who currently it will not eliminate people currently okay in positions it would make recruitment harder correct because we'd have to i'm sorry i said it would make recruitment harder correct because you're then trying to
064add it back later yes the time to hire is now so that's it's none of this lines up beautifully and and in this year it's even worse because we can't get a state budget um so we'll have to line this up without a state number and then if we get additional state revenue the good news is we could add something back and we we would have that conversation the bad news is at that point it'll be june we can't get anybody in the region because we have a regional agreement by that time and the pool gets very shallow very quick so it's it's tough i would think these positions are hard to come by special education is extremely hard um they're all they're all hard to fill areas i mean it's just it's very low
065it's not hard to fill right now thank you and the next slide is just a reminder of our salary and benefit adjustments that we had recommended in our recommended budget and our goal is to hold these items harmless so to speak so these are really adjustment for wages for our teaching staff and this is also a lot of adjustments with regards to the minimum wage requirements um and so to to not do these would be very detrimental and we would hope that we were able to hold all of these um regardless of what the state does this is our goal our last resort is to come to this slide we're going to try to do everything possible we can to take care of our current employees so our next steps really are just just unfortunately
066wait wait on the state wait on the board of supervisors and the tax rate approval our presentation of our health care renewal to you will be on may 23rd and then we will adopt our approve our budget somewhere in between there depending on timing of some of these things and then once the board of supervisors approves their budget on may 25th we hope to adopt ours right right after members any comments or questions [Music] what is for and i don't you probably don't know this but and i haven't paid close enough attention what is the drop dead date do they have to have a budget by july one that's a great question i'll find that out we have i remember one year where um we were in a very similar situation and it was pretty
067scary especially for school divisions that depend on their um reimbursements from the state and payments for for education um it's that can be problematic for for school divisions that need that money to pay their salaries but i've never seen it go um to that point so we're hopeful it's been in june before it has and we'll work through it and and i think um i think we'll know more i think we'll start to hear things i think we'll start to get a feel for what might happen and but i think our goal should be to try to do five percent regardless and if it's four and a one percent bonus i think it would still be beneficial to try to do five in salaries for vrs and things of that nature so i think that
068that's just going to be something that we're going to have to watch very closely and bring back to you probably an update each meeting up until the time that we have to get that budget approved and we're not going to be able to bring you things that are like oh that's a great thing to cut i mean it's just it's there are no good things to cut at this point um and it's it'll come down to when 80 almost 86 of your budget is people you don't have a lot of room um other places we're very careful about using grant funding to offset any operating costs that is a strategy but like you asked about summer school at some point we have to put that summer school budget into the operating budget so we're very
069careful about positions and very careful about initiatives with one-time funding because it runs out and we are doing that um and and i will say we had a very frank conversation with the county and they're doing that as well and i will just say that's very scary um when you start to do those things and you're you're not budgeting as conservative as you have in the past you know there are things that we could do to push on it a little bit more um but that that gets to be very um risky especially when when there are a lot of unknowns already with um you know supply chains and things of that nature so well it's certainly the um the situation where decisions have consequences so a lot of the decisions that have been made
070this is this is where we see it happening you know and i think it's a great observation and that's why i appreciate when you ask those questions because and this goes back to each school division just not hours but that's why it's that much more critical that as parents and as citizens are involved in the process it is it is that much more critical that we contact our our local legislators and tell them is that and and that to me is the most discussed personally is that it's hard for me to believe that in the political climate that we're in that our legislators don't know that they are holding all these school divisions in the state hostage at this point and we are at their mercy and they're using that platform of going back and
071forth and in the process it seems like that especially the size that we are that it is so critical that we can make plans for the future for employees and for capital improvements and things of that nature and that's why i just i encourage everybody to contact their legislators and let them know that you need to settle this thing one way or the other we just we have to know so we can move forward so but i appreciate you staying on top of that and keeping us informed and i know it's very very challenging to move forward but thank you for all your hard work and getting this done as best you possibly can with the resources that you have thank you okay our next item on the agenda item number nine is comments school
072board members and superintendent dr nichols did you want to go first or did you want to go at the end i can go wherever you would like okay we'll turn the floor over to you first perfect dr nichols thank you again everybody for attending and want to say a special thank you to the high school for spotlighting one of the many things that they could spotlight a lot of opportunities in new camp for kids to be ready to enroll post-secondary to be employed and to enlist we continue to expand those efforts and we'll continue to do that work very excited about the summer program and moving forward we have entered the fourth nine weeks or we are entering technically um so it has been as mr ogenbach said that um it's been an interesting couple
073years and [Music] i'm very proud of our staff i'm very proud of our students for what the way they've come together uh throughout the pandemic and continue to put their best foot forward hadn't always been easy it's actually rarely been easy but they show up every day and they do incredible things so just honored to be a part of that team and to be a part of the work moving forward we'll continue to provide updates moving forward on the budget we'll continue to provide curriculum updates um and continue to work in partnership i've made it my mission uh on the other side of this budget to increase the amount of time i'm spending in classrooms and having conversations with our staff and community so always open to a conversation always open to a meeting um
074and you know talk about the work that we're doing so thank you dr nichols i'll go to my right ms barber do you have any comments uh yes um i'd just like to emphasize the uh that we continue to um support the uh hard work of our teachers administration and staff and i think it's it's really tough because such a large portion of our budget is people and people are the most important part of our school division and when we have to cut we're we're we're we're hurting we're hurting them this year this past year the rate of inflation was eight percent so if we give them five percent there's we're still not keeping pace with um putting food on the table and gas in the car so we just need to continue to fight
075the fight to um provide them what is the least we can do uh you know we watching the high school students this evening was very thrilling especially for me being from a stem background you know to see that happening here it's just it was very you know very impactful and we do that with teachers and we do that with teachers that are committed to our children and we they need our support both financially and in the classroom and i'm glad uh dr nichols that you uh emphasized going into the classrooms more and helping support our teachers um at the in the classroom so um thank you and um i appreciate it thank you miss barber ms stascio yes i'm thankful for all the work that's been going on in the classrooms and uh clearly our
076students continue to amaze me every time we see one of these spotlights it's always it's blows my mind so i'm very thankful for the teachers their hard work i do hope that we can get this this budget passed as it is of course um if we can't i'm sure we will figure it out and move forward um i would like to request if if we made just an update on the way that our processes work in terms of looking at and investigating something that comes through regarding teachers or students and what that is if we can get a presentation together on that i'd appreciate it i know we we cannot comment on personnel matters that is the rule um but i would like for us to be educated um about what that process looks like
077in its entirety absolutely we can make that happen thank you okay thank you miss taskill miss mcfeet yes um i hope our families teachers and staff and administration had a wonderful spring break it seems like uh ian since our last meeting um i would also like to thank the ct students for the uh wonderful name plate certainly appreciate that um one ask of mine is um i would like a presentation on our uh cell phone policy videotaping i'd like to better understand that i certainly realize i'm not naive enough that cell phones are here to stay and they're part of you know our our life our students life but i i really think we need to have some some guardrails around that and you know i know from my standpoint you know i work from
078home and you know i look at my phone i mean i i get a ping i get a text i get an email and i see it come up and that distracts me from what i'm i'm doing so i can only imagine what these kids are being faced with in in the classroom you know i probably venture would be an interesting exercise to see how many times these kids are pinged each period um it would just be interesting so i'd like to to learn a little bit more about that and look forward to that um additionally i'd like to put out there the new kent educational foundation will hold its annual strides for school um on saturday may 7th at the track of colonial downs so if you're a runner walker certainly would love to
079have you the event starts at 8 a.m with a one mile fun run and a 5k starting at 8 30. and proceeds will benefit various projects that new kent educational fund foundation supports including scholarships teacher grants as well as prom homecoming etc and one final thing in in the spirit of transparency um it was brought to my attention by uh several of constituents from district five that the board did not address a situation in early march regarding the incident where a student brought a weapon to the high school and i want to make it very clear that the board was fully aware of the situation dr nichols had updated us minute by minute what was occurring um the communication plan to families employees and community as well and fortunately it was handled without incident with
080the support of the new kent uh sheriff's department a big thank you to to to them um and that's it thank you mr mead yeah get out you know echo miss uh miss mcphee's comments uh we have um continually look at the the code of conduct for for students as we had a presentation a few weeks ago about vaping and i think this the code of conduct for the use and abuse of of of cell phones and things of that nature is will be an evaluation for us as we move forward as a board to look at that from a code of conduct as as well because we know and talking to the sheriff's department and incidences that we have had over the last few years they are much more of a distraction than any
081of us would like to comment on or even have a conversation about so i i look forward to that to that robust uh discussion about that and i do want to say with the with the in regards to what ms barber said about the teachers and and seeing mr a here uh and about the budget i can tell you as as a citizen as a taxpayer outside being the school board when i hear a teacher like that passionately talk about how much he enjoys what he does it's amazing to me that and i just say this very bluntly from a public citizen i'd be willing to give that man whatever he wants i don't care how much is your budget how much do you need what do you need what does it take because when
082i see that type of investment in that type of student and the results that those students produce is that we invest in people and that's a person in my opinion that that is worth as all of our teachers are to a large degree are worth investing in it's the same way with our coaches you know ninety percent of the coaches today in in the vhsl are outside people they give of their time effort and energy in a way that you could never repay them with a paycheck and when it talks about why we get hung up on on these budgets it's because we invest in people and when you invest in people legislators seem to to neglect that in a way that they don't understand the long-term impact of that because it's going to be
083a cold day in public school when teachers decide to leave because they feel like that their positions are no longer funded and and that's why we have to aggressively go after this in a way to stop the rhetoric and start putting action to their words and so i am i am so grateful for for our staff and dr nichols and haney and and all the support people and and that they do to get us to this point and our teachers investing in our students because if we if we continue to have rhetoric about things that have no long-term value we'll never get this thing done and and to get it done in a way that that that exalts our students and exalts our teachers we need to do whatever it takes and so that's why
084i i charge the board of supervisors to to consider you know the tax rate increase for 66 cents everybody hates to raise taxes well guess what get over it you can't have the best services you can't have the fastest growing county in the state of virginia and thinking it comes for free because it doesn't and there's a cost to be paid for it and so the cost is to have the best county to have the best community to have the best schools we've got to be willing to pay the price for it and so i would encourage you to encourage the board of supervisors to do what it takes to pass this budget so that all of our divisions in the county are funded in a way that each individual organization whether it's school fire
085police are funded in a way that those organizations feel healthy as well so thank you mr made um agreed you know we start our budget process haney i don't think you feel as if the budget process ever ends but um each year as a board we say we need to get after this early we need to start early we need to get ahead of this and we do we haney's always working on it she works with um the state and uh as board members we work with our partners on the board of supervisors and we talk and we converse and and then we wait and we wait some more and we wait still more and it is frustrating it's frustrating to see the presentation with the the projections potential reductions and then we you know
086we have the county on one hand we have the state on the other hand and and we're stuck in the middle um you know our our budget is is labor focused it's uh in alignment with our strategic plan we said this at our retreat with the board of supervisors and the subsequent meeting we have with them it's fiscally responsible and it's it's linked to student success and we want to provide these programs for our students we want to have the best teachers in the classroom and it takes resources to provide that and so um you know i don't want to beat a dead horse but i agree with all my colleagues and and we look forward to to the updates coming i do want to thank the the students and mr a that showed up
087tonight um my son was in mr a's class two years ago and so i appreciate all the work that he does he's a great teacher he has uh great programs for his students and uh it translates into jobs i think miss barber as our resident architect can can relate to all of that and uh as a parent i was one of those um people walking around college campuses last week with with my son who's a senior trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life and there's a lot of work in that area industrial design i saw it firsthand on the campus of virginia tech and and in a studio that looked very similar to what mr a was uh was presenting for us tonight so i'm grateful and i'm thankful and
088um i want to end this meeting so we can enjoy the rest of this beautiful evening so with that said i think the the next item is to say our next meeting is a work session on april 25th correct okay and tonight's meeting is adjourned 7 20