001kyla o'connell in the pledge and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all even now have a moment of silence okay thank you very much first item second i'm on our agenda thank you under recognitions our section of recognitions we have the virginia thespian middle school theater director of the year recognition mr frank wheeler good evening school board dr nichols it is my honor and pleasure to announce a couple spotlights this evening and we also have some students as well so the first individual that i would like to spotlight has made a significant impact on our students at new king middle school as it relates to the performing arts whether it be her advanced theater arts students or sixth graders who are taking introduction to
002theater arts her instruction and passion for uh performance and teaching students all the skills and fun activities that go along with theater arts is unprecedented the individual that nominated her i would like to read exactly what she said for this award against all odds april continues to provide enriched theater opportunities to her students and community it is a joy and a pleasure to have april as a colleague in nkcps and we are incredibly lucky to have her bringing theater to our community the 2122 virginia thespian's middle school teacher of the year has been awarded to miss april salvation just to put this in perspective there are over 133 school divisions in the state of virginia many more middle schools and our very own is the virginia thespians middle school director of the year students there's
003no surprise in that is there you're not this quiet during the theater and so we're also in for a very special treat i'll let miss alvin have the floor but as you probably know this is perfect timing because the middle school has partnered up with the high school and they are about to begin their lion king junior performances starting tomorrow night at seven it's gonna run on friday excuse me we're not we're not in wednesday just yet um it's on thursday friday and saturday and so um so we have a special treat for you but i'll let ms salvin speak on that thank you mr wheeler it's a my honor to be able to teach these amazing students in this school district so i appreciate everything that you do to support the performing arts in
004our schools and so we want to give you a little taste of what's going to be happening this weekend i have my i just can't wait to be king ensemble for our matata cast we have two casts so if depending on which night you come you will see a different show so if you guys could come and line up right here and i will this is your opportunity to be youtube famous this is streamed live this could be your big break you're so embarrassing [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh i just can't wait to begin do this [Music] all day [Music] [Applause] everybody looks like [Music] is [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] and so if you want to see more of that please buy a ticket and come see us this weekend thursday at 7 friday at seven
005saturday at two and at seven thank you for allowing us to be here thank you thank you great job guys all right i know i'm excited to see those performances uh later on in the week all right so the second part of our nickname middle school spotlight uh goes to a teacher who has mastered the art of encouraging students to read and to read a lot this teacher has partnered with former former nfl player malcolm mitchell to participate in a rebuild competition this is our second year with malcolm and the ray bowl competition and this year is quite the honor we are the official virginia state champs for the bowl and this happened in this class at this time i would like to recognize this teacher as well as some students who participated in marie
006bowles [Applause] okay kids we're about to break into song playing that is an awesome act to follow with miss albin i'm so excited about lion king um these are amazing amazing group of readers um the rebuild competition again this is our second year participating last year we were the global champions it was huge but it was also doing a pandemic it was a lot easier to keep the kids at home reading and accumulating those minutes this year we won the state championship these students averaged reading a week um seven to eight hours and to show to just put that in perspective they read both of these novels in under four weeks and they did that in addition to their nonfiction reading the writing that we support here at the middle school they did a variety
007of activities um prior to us doing the re-bowl malcolm mitchell is a former nfl player these are his two books we have my favorite book in the world and the magician's hat he started this for primary and elementary school kids but understood the importance of getting kids to continue reading to expose them to vocabulary which will open up their worlds and many more opportunities um he wasn't an even patriot sadly we're kind of hoping for a dallas cowboy um but he did promise us that if we won we were going to be able to meet tom brady we did a virtual conference with him last year as the global champions and only and only in new camp will you find students bold enough to ask do you know tom brady and can we meet him
008sadly we did not win globally so we didn't get to meet tom brady this year however he is sending more books to our classroom he has spotlighted new kent nationally we have been featured on his instagram page we are featured on his share the foundation page he has taken recommendations from these students because they are articulate and they're awesome readers and they're unapologetic and how they feel so i'm going to get out of the way just in case you have any questions whatsoever um they are panicked so because they're like wait we gotta do what but just feel free to ask them anything and here you go i'd like to know a little bit about the two what the two books are about can somebody give us a brief description okay okay so the iron
009trial is about a 13 year old boy named colin hunt whose family is magic which is magic he's about magic and uh his mother was killed during the cold massacre of um okay okay uh and so alistair hunt calms dad hates magic so when they have to go to the iron trial the trial to see who can get into the magic school who can't alister tells column to throw the thing so he'll lose because he hates magic but his teacher uh rufus saw something in him even though he got the lowest score he got negative points had a record for negative points the first time uh so rufus brought him in for some reason because he saw something in him so call him a column started uh the the the the iron trial with his
010two friends tamara and hey right aaron no anyway it is aaron it is aaron okay and aaron um [Music] so in the first in the iron trial which is the first book there's four other books following the series the first book is about just talk uh just teaching column about magic and uh for the first thing they do all they're doing is learning how to move sand with their mind one learning how to say they're learning how to move sand with their mind from one place to another that's it that's for like the first few months um no don't give it all away [Music] um in the book the magic school called the magisterium is underground and caverns so we got to learn about some caverns along with the book that's great we did an
011escape room and it was like there was a bunch of like clues that we had to find and you had to click on them and it's like um digital and it would like pop up with like a question and a clue and then it would give you hints and stuff and you have to figure it out from what you know from the book and then you can escape and tour the tavern see what it's like is it like a new choose your own adventure book from my past i remember doing those when we were when i was a kid they had this very specific task when only speaking on the fact you have to learn the sort saying um but the whole thing is the setting of the book does anybody remember where the school
012was you know where what states oh yeah um yeah virginia but did we take out we think we know where it is [Music] um [Music] the great green heist i liked it because it was about children like our age so it was about like the same middle school drama all of us go through so we could like relate to it and i thought it was really funny because they were like i don't really know how to describe it but i could relate to a lot of the stuff they were doing and it was just funny um there were uh three main characters like the main main characters but the like the one that the book's basically about was jackson green um the great green heist and it's basically about him and his friends coming up
013together to rig an election against their one mortal enemy who i don't know why but some of the school likes and a lot doesn't i can kind of see why but there's always another half of the story but um it i love how it's kind of like legit and there's like a whole code of conduct like 15 i think was it 15 15 codes of conduct conducts and like they have like actual rules to it there's it's not just like i feel like breaking into the principal's office for a phone just to do it there's like actually a reason [Laughter] i mean like it's a good skill to have um and the great green heist there is one character that i certainly don't like is keith because he um is he's running for president with
014gabby and um sorry i'm very nervous uh and he tried to get dr kelsey which is like the principal or the superintendent of the school to rig the election so he could win um and so he was just being very selfish about it and i don't really like that so yeah so they had to steal the election back so that's what that's good so they're doing they're breaking in for a good reason he's dead he's that page he had paid mr mr dr kelsey to let him win [Music] yeah we don't know where they got the money in this particular middle school that was nominated yeah his dad bribed dr kelsey to let keith win so those are two books you would highly recommend okay especially the part about breaking into this yeah i need
015to stay a couple steps ahead of you guys but congratulations state champs that's a big honor so proud thank you and isla i mispronounced your last name isle o'connor so thanks for doing the pledge of allegiance thank you [Music] no worries thank you so much all right next on our agenda under recognition so recognition of march as youth art and music in our schools month dr nichols absolutely it is march is youth arts and music in our schools and i think you've seen a little bit of all of that already this this evening um i do highly recommend lion king jr i will be there for opening night on thursday now that i know it's gonna be a different show each night i may have to come back again i wanted to highlight a couple
016of our artists uh our elementary artists that put in some submissions the virginia school board association has a spring arts contest and we have two regional participants slash winners uh so the first is from new kent elementary and that's leah by now i believe she's with us tonight this is for you thank you and then i'll do my best well it's a bear and i really love lots of colors like i didn't really want all the same colors because i feel like it's more beautiful with different colors because it just seems more i don't know beautiful and strong how it is and yeah it i feel like it's me for this year i love it very nice and her art teacher susan vick is here with us tonight and then the principal dr amy stam
017is here as well so we want to congratulate you thank you congratulations so we also have an elementary finalist from george watkins and that is ava robertson ava is here all right oh that's beautiful ava can you tell us about your drawing a little bit about your art um miss countess told us to do like a like a silhouette of like a tree and some a fence and bring some color into it with a sunset and make it reflect on the snow my main thing was about the reflection because i really like how the colors are like blended together with the sunset and reflected on the snout it's gorgeous how long did it take you to create that um i can't really remember it's gorgeous thank you pretty thank you and all right teacher miss
018countess is here thank you miss counters so ava this is what i will say about that um picture is that if i can get a framed copy of that i will pay you 50 for that picture miss countess that's your job you got your first commission piece [Applause] thank you congratulations again okay next item recognition of school social worker week dr katina clark good evening madam chairperson vice chair members of the school board and dr nichols um it is my pleasure this evening to recognize our school social workers for national school social work week so there's a lot of w's in there the theme this year is time to shine our school social workers are involved in quite a variety of activities for our staff our students and our families and some of those include
019conducting social history evaluations they are responsible for attendance and truancy issues coordinating home school working with students and families who may be homeless they're also a member of various teams throughout the school division to include the eligibility team school crisis and safety teams threat assessment teams and they're also valuable members of our mental health professionals so again it is my honor to recognize our two school social workers latisha hill and pamela brooks for national school social work week thank you thank you [Applause] hey i got so ahead of myself and excited we've got to do the certification of the closed session so mr mead would you please read the certification of closed session whereas the new kent county school board has convened a closed meeting on the state pursuant to an affirmative record recorded vote
020in accordance with the provisions of the virginia freedom of information act and whereas section 2.2-3711 of the code of virginia requires a certification by new kent county school board that such close meeting was conducted in conformity with virginia law now therefore be a resolve that the new king county school board hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meetings requirement by virginia law were discussed in closed meeting to which this certification this certification resolution applies and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the new kent county school board thank you mr mead do i hear a motion to approve the certification of the closed session the motion that we approved the
021certification for closed session thank you mr askil do i hear a second second thank you miss mcbeath and a vote bye all right the motion carries thank you next item on the agenda 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 recommendations regarding personnel matters do i hear a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented i make a motion we approve the consent agenda as um as presented okay thank you mr mead do i hear a second second thank you miss barber any discussion board members okay if there's no discussion a vote please all right all right next item on the agenda is the citizen comment proceed citizen comment
022period as a reminder before we begin i'd like to thank everyone for coming out tonight to speak 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 thank you again for coming so we have 12 speakers signed up this evening i'll go ahead and read the first three so you can um be ready for the on deck line our first speaker is victoria braim second is mr peter londing and third is keith hartman so miss braim hello i am an english professor
023current a former middle school teacher and i currently have two teenage daughters one of which attends school here in new kent i wanted to take this opportunity to thank school officials for doing a lot of work the last few months to keep diverse books in the middle school collection from implementing new checkout procedures to creating review committees i recognize a lot of time has been spent to protect parent choices these policies are so important because they represent what it means to live in a democracy where one parent doesn't get to decide what another parent's child reads over the last few months i have heard citizens comment on how they do not want their children to have access to books that are sexually explicit i don't either however the problem with this argument is that people
024are using their own subjective definition of sexually explicit and applying it incorrectly to books like the poet x a book is not labeled sexually and explicit or pornographic unless it is written with the attempt intent to arouse the reader that is not the case with the poet x and that is why parent choice is crucial we must decide for ourselves what we want our children to read at the february 22nd work session representative mead said he wanted parents to know that the school board would have the final say and i'm really looking forward to hearing what each of you thought about the poet x i recognize you might not all love the book as much as i do and i can even appreciate that there might be words or phrases that you might not feel
025comfortable letting your child read but as the supreme court ruled that is not grounds to remove the poet x from the middle school library the verdict in the school board case against pico in 1982 was that books must be reviewed as a whole not by sentences and on the entirety of their literary merit when it comes to the poet x it has won numerous accolades which is why i trust when the district committee meets soon hopefully it will rule that it should be returned to the nuquette middle school collection this means as elected public officials you will be tasked with putting aside your personal choices in order to ensure that the choices of all parents in new kent county are protected because in the land of the free the government and in this case the
026school board does not have the right to limit what parents permit their children to read new kent middle school is a public institution and as a result its library needs to be filled with books as diverse as its community parents do not want these choices they are free to select private schools i hope you act quickly to return the book to its shelves thank you okay our next speaker mr lending evening school board members dr nichols uh and staff good evening um i'm here representing uh mr ron vaught who was unable to be here tonight i wish to address a couple of issues and hopefully clarify the position of some of the citizens in new kent county i want to talk about crt i want to talk about books um first allow me to help
027you understand what is at stake as far as it is crt critical race theory with all its many disguises such as sel harmony etcetera they so negatively affect the outcomes of education such programs or i shall say propaganda create mass confusion and misrepresentations of specific cultures and how these cultures can properly interact with each other in a school setting crt and affiliated propaganda promote separation and division by falsely creating categories of victims and and oppressors they intentionally highlight race differences rather than taking all students coming together for a proper education irrespective of their skin color in itself it promotes racism and has no place in our schools skin color or differences are not a natural concern of children they are only an issue when racist adults decide to accept accentuate the propaganda through such programs
028as crt i note a quote that you have on your hallway it says intelligence plus character that is the goal of true education that's a quote from dr martin luther king jr i'll repeat that intelligence plus character that's the goal of the of the education system we needed to sit down and talk about basics we need to talk about intelligence we need to talk about character we don't need to be talking about division as far as the books utilized and available for our students let me say this as a nation formed by the judeo-christian values and foundations formed on morality we are asking the wrong question when it comes to illicit materials contained in some books in our system there is a scripture found in proverbs which states there is a way that seems right
029unto man but in the end leads to death the overall question should not be if the book is right for proper education of our students but is it righteous for the future of our students if we give way to immorality and simply turn our back on absolute foundations on which our nation's was formed then we become a ship on an open sea without a rudder this is not necessarily censorship or an attempt to score a victory it is far more important than that it's about stopping progressive movements uh to the top of a slippery slope of total immorality and loss of values in our school systems i urge you when you when you deal with these books we need to we need to have uh an open forum and we need to have transparency thank
030you thank you very much and next up is mr keith hartman after mr hartman is fran kennedy then thomas miller and then susan mcfeeney good evening folks how are you all my name is keith hartman and i am in district 3. we appreciate the process that you all have put in implemented to review the books such as poetics but what we find difficult to accept is that educators in in our school system would think that poetics would be appropriate for young students uh this isn't la dune county uh we're thankful for a vigilant and engaged parent that uh had this parent not uh examined this book uh it would have been in the hands of an 11 year old but the bigger question in our minds is how did the book get into the middle
031school in the first place and what other books of questionable con of questionable content are in our libraries poet x promotes premarital sex celebrates homosexuality it is anti-catholic anti-christian anti-bible it is extremely non-traditional and undermines the values the majestic the vast majority of new kent citizens me included but what other books like poetics are in our schools i think we need to take a closer look at the recommended books that come from virginia department of education under the previous leftist woke administration we need to make sure that parent involvement and input in the selection of the books we need to adopt a much higher moral and ethical standard for our precious children let's not sacrifice our children's innocence and our parental rights at the order of so-called diversity and inclusion there are other more positive
032books that can accomplish what poetics actually fails to accomplish thank you fran kennedy good evening and thank you again for your service um so my question last time about new ken elementary i think you misunderstood it and so i've said brookshire is growing in leaps and bounds and then are there any building improvements or any aesthetics improvements planned for new camp elementary i just was curious because it is old and you're building this beautiful new school so that was my question i i can type that up for you or email it to you i got it this time okay thanks and then i just was curious i was talking to my niece who teaches english in utah and she said the books they get complaints about the most are john steinbeck of mice and men
033and then i know to kill a mockingbird has recently received a lot of attention and dr seuss so i was just simply curious if those books are in our schools or not dr seuss books john steinbeck of mice and man and tequila mockingbird thank you thank you ms kennedy and next mr thomas miller well i wasn't going to comment about the book because i i think we've beat that horse sufficiently but i operate on the basis that no horse is too dead not to continue to beat what happened with this book issue is uh is interesting i think it was handled very poorly by the superintendent and by this board the issue was a book was given to an 11 year old put in his book bag and the mother saw it and the mother
034took issue with a page in the book that was the issue the mother didn't say remove the book from the library she had an issue with the fact that the book was given to her 11 year old son and that's understandable i think uh allowing parents to opt in or opt out on some of these books which i think you're doing with your new policy is an excellent way uh to approach it but uh i think the the whole poet x book issue got kicked off for for that one reason i want to shift to sel and i have a couple questions for dr nichols did the school board approve stanford harmony and second step seo programs and if they did when did they approve it and when did they vote on it one of
035the concerns that parents and citizens have with these two programs is they're copyrighted and the only way for us to look at them is to go to the school and get on an open computer and look at we do have reports from parents that there is some sexually explicit material quote unquote that mixed class i don't know what grade was asked what you would you do if sexually explicit pictures were sent to your phone the child came home it was very uncomfortable in answering that question i don't know if it was a verbal written response uh so the presentation that was given by dr nichols and i believe [Music] mr ross at the last work session was interesting but that just touches the surface there's a lot of folks that think sel walks uh walks
036into uh crt and i don't know how any of you could have looked at the program because you don't have any more right to look at it than i do you'd have to go to the school to look at i think you need to take a look at putting programs in these schools that parents and citizens have to go to the school and sit down for hours to review the next item is the budget process which was presented at the last meeting and i'm going to make a suggestion i participated in these the chestfield county citizens advisory committee associated with the chesapeake county school budget you do have parent involvement but i think you need to involve citizens as well as parents thank you mr miller up next is susan mcfeeney and then after miss
037matheny robert cuddly and then wanda espayette i'm susan mchenie and i'm a retired educator for my neighboring school district where i taught for 37 years 35 in a middle school i retired in 2016. we moved to new camp from newport news when our oldest son was three years old and we wanted because we wanted a more rural and conservative community we found that in new kent i started attending school board meetings in the fall this year because of my grandchildren i was concerned about issues reported in the news such as crt which was often disguised as inclusion diversity and equity that were prevalent in many schools across the country and i wanted to know if this was if this more radical agenda had infiltrated new kent schools when my sons attended new kent schools i
038knew their teachers and knew those teachers shared similar values practiced in our family attending church being patriotic a strong family unit that believed in right and wrong i trusted them with today's climate citizens have lost faith and trust in teachers and school boards across the country school boards should expect closer scrutiny by parents grandparents and the community i do thank you for your service on the board and you should know that people do pray for you and the decisions that you make and we want what you want which is the best for students in new kent county regarding the book poet x i read it to understand what parents were concerned about i don't just jump on the bandwagon because that's what everybody else is doing and i read it did i like the book
039was i impressed by the numerous awards it has received no the poetics depicts hispanic culture in a stereotypical way it disrespects christianity church and catholicism it normalizes homosexual lifestyles normalizes blind parents normalizes drug use normalizes use of profanity normalizes teenage sexual experimentation if i had normalized those issues in my classroom i would have lost my job schools must set a better example do today's students hear profanity on the bus in school on tv on social media are they aware of alternate lifestyles drug use consequences of teenage sex that people lie to one another sure sad but true however the schools need to set a higher standard just because students have access to these situations or information out of school does not mean they are appropriate in school and we should not have students believing that
040we condone them right is right wrong is wrong truth is truth regardless of how society may view these issues would i want my granddaughter reading this book she's in middle school this year no um he was rated for 13 plus and i disagree with that thank you next robert robert cuddly good evening my name's robert cudley and i've been a member for a lifetime of the silent majority which could be looked at as the minority now events going on today in the world in our country and life in general as it is in the united states today um i have has caused me to awaken and not to be woke through education at kent state university with a bs degree in conservation starting right after the shootings at kent state and having talked to in
041a child and a student being in one of my classes who was shot and paralyzed in that incident i have learned a lot on my own and not being taught the through education i have learned the relent silent majority is all races of colors creeds and it's broken down now by media business leaders educators scholars you name it into individual groups separating us separate but we are together we are one people who have uh a voice now and people who have loud voices tend to be more unknowledgeable of what they speak of they get there by their loud voice and not through moral or morality and i'm sorry here i'm getting ahead of myself um they look for fame and fortune out of what they speak of and to have a book declared by their
042accolades is like our actors today being awarded by other actors who are they to judge they hand themselves out gifts all the time but not the real people great leaders are remembered for their actions and character not just by spouting off empty words and immoral thoughts please act in a positive way [Music] to us and to the morals and future of our children thank you very much thank you mr cuddly next miss wanda espeon and after wanda is ken gilman good evening um i'm juan de espana from district three i will thank you for your service and even though we're beating this dead horse i'll beat it again we realized that the book point x is under review and that it was chosen for hispanic heritage month last october my father was dominican from the
043dominican republic and all his family were catholic and what's really disturbing to me as a hispanic and as a christian is the book's misinterpretation of catholicism which reinforces negative stereotypes and misconceptions the main character in poetics has a negative distorted and irregular irreverent attitude towards jesus the bible and christianity in general yet the vast majority of hispanics are catholic or protestant why pick a book that is so offensive to the majority of latinos why pick a book that undermines and ridicules the value system of the majority of hispanics and nuclear citizens here's just one example in the book it's in page 66 and when this is from the book when communion time comes i stand in line with everyone else and when father sean places the eucharist onto my tongue i walk away kneeling my
044pew and spit the wafer into my palm when i'm pretending to pray i can feel the high eyes of the jesus statue watching me hide the wafer beneath the bench where his holy body will now feed the mice and although i will want to stay seated during communion i get up every time put the wafer in my mouth then slip in beneath the pew my hands shaking less and less every time i do it's really not appropriate that's all thank you there should be better books in the public libraries this is education not public libraries are available all over this is the school thank you thank you mr gilman good evening dr nichols members of the school board my name is ken gilman i'm from district 3. um i guess i'm going to flog this
045pony just a little bit more maybe with a little bit different different take i'm not going to read from the book poet x i'm going to assume that you've probably all taken a look at it we've we've heard a lot about people's concerns about that that book in particular i'm going to see if i can make a couple of other a couple of useful points here okay and by the way i did my own research uh consulted with my sister as a librarian in in san diego county and learned quite a bit about uh age-appropriateness for various books and access to books for for various ages and so forth and um i've come to my i have i've read big parts of this book i don't think i need to read the whole thing to
046get to get the point that um allowing that to get to young people where it probably is not age-appropriate which ought to be determined by their parents in this sort of case um is is a big concern uh now there may be there may be um certain books or educational material that um that deals with religion or deals with sensitive subjects uh that is appropriate um in some context that's that's for you to determine uh i'll just make a couple of uh well i've got a couple of perhaps rhetorical questions for you and then see if i can close with a just a couple of uh useful points okay so here's the question i asked myself i also spent some years in education in the army chief of school does does the reference material support
047a particular learning objective do you look at look at that in that context um what is the learning objective in that sort of a context where you're where you're teaching things that that are quite obviously uh offensive to many christians okay um there has to be if you're going to have material that's questionable like that there ought to be a real useful point to presenting it to a child all right not just under the guise of well it's a free country and everybody can have access to it or whatever again the um so i recommend i recommend the school board i think you've probably already read that book or read enough of it to get the point right um but please understand that many parents want to reserve to themselves any religious teaching that rightfully
048belongs in their domain within their home within their church so a central issue again is determining what is age appropriate for any any reading material or any other lessons that may be presented to students and the poet x is just in my view it's just a current example we've all heard is that my time i beg your pardon okay mr gilman all right well thank you very much thank you thank you for your time uh wilma english and after miss english mark daniel and then leslie trivett thank you so much for this opportunity thank you for all the work that you have put in and i am going to beat this horse just one more time because of the limitation of three minutes we have had to deviate it out for so long wanda is
049my sister so i am dominican as well i spent my summers in dominican republic that's how i finally got fluent because i was the last one that wanted to learn in spanish and it was a wonderful experience and again the objective was right to expose students to the hispanic culture it fell miserably there was nothing actually she identifies with her black race and the black subculture rather than the hispanic culture so there goes that objective that he was talking about out the door but i do want to refer to the religious aspect because it's fascinating that i had the privilege of having i didn't grow up as a christian in a christian home but my father were my father's side were all catholic and my mother's side were all protestant so i come with that
050uh viewpoint and this book bashes both of them and that manages to offend both of them but again as my sister said most hispanics are either protestant or catholic and this book would be very offensive to them because by the way the eucharist is not a d wafer to be eaten by mice it is a holy sacred thing for any christian okay whether you're protestant or catholic the communion service is a highly uh sacred thing so to for her to dismiss it and we're dealing with young people that are impressionable that right now they don't know um their faith value system their parents are the ones that are supposed to be speaking about these issues i have no problems for example in a theology class in a certain like when i taught multicultural studies we
051did address the religion of each culture but we did so in a very respectful way we talked about judaism and islam in christianity and the differences between the denominations and we had an open discussion however it was an elective for germans or seniors so they were a little bit more equipped to handle this this this whole the thread the thing that really affects me frankly about this politics is that the thread and i as a writer okay i've i've written books with my husband we always have a thread the thread the underlying current of this book is not the sexual it's this anti-god anti-christian everything thank you for your time please remove it period mark daniel thank you madam chairman my name is mark daniels ladies and gentlemen i'm not a vaunted english instructor to
052school i'm not a lawyer i'm just a simple father and a parent but if you've heard an explanation earlier and if you found this explanation that we don't have the right to even say what goes in our school that means we couldn't stop anything why don't we have hard times magazine in your library why don't you have cannabis magazine or nude magazines in your library or old issues of hustler or penthouse you know why because they're not appropriate i like boxing right i don't incite people go ahead and beat each other up and get hurt because there's limits to how far that our society and our culture lets us go right i like fast cars i don't raise something down the road because i let my 12 year old friends get in the car and
053raise something why because it's appropriate things for appropriate times and so when you go back to this book you know these people stand and say well i think it should be allowed you should well then i propose at the next school board meeting that you take poet x out and have the superintendent of this school read to you page 326 which is a graphic description of a sex act and if you don't do it i don't believe that you think it's appropriate either and then let's talk about one more thing this was brought up to the school board shake your head if you want to it's my time to talk this was brought up a month ago and you did the right thing you wouldn't take this to your sunday school class you wouldn't take
054your friends with their 11 year old or girl children and read this this page to them or maybe you would maybe you would but it's not appropriate so the community spoke their mind and the right thing is done now you've come up with the process at the last meeting right the only reason there wasn't an outcry is because you didn't let them speak something about we're going to create this great committee over here we'll pick three of these three of those we don't know who's being picked we don't know what they're um what the subject is we don't know any of that oh but when they when they're finished you may get a chance to get to the superintendent he may look at it finally someone who is electing this board literally wrote something say
055well you know what this is not in our purview anymore so we can be made part of that you're wrong you're a leader you're elected why does you get the great reports from the fellows that are doing the construction on your schools they're doing a wonderful job by the way that's not within your individual purview you but you are responsible because these people did not elect the superintendent they didn't elect the principal they elected you don't think that this is not within your purview is absolutely your responsibility finally people will know i'm almost done superintendent people will know what you do and i hope that everyone educates this entire community if you don't do it the book has no business and i look forward to hearing you reading next month our next meeting thank you
056thank you mr daniel leslie trivitt our final speaker for this evening thank you for your service to our community i want to reassure everyone here and at home that no actual horse was harmed during the course of this meeting okay i charge the school board to post the criteria number one and the selection process number two and the employees number three who are involved in selecting instructional materials curriculum and library books i would like this posted on the school board website so that we can print this and review it i'm still not clear on what are the selection criteria for new kent schools and who is in the chain of command and who makes the decisions at each step and who has the final say if there's if it's not clear to me i'm sure
057there are other people who are confused about it so please i charge you put it put this out there if it's not in writing if there's no policy it's time to craft one it's obviously needed since the audio was not operational at the last board meeting i would like to briefly restate some of my remarks i never said that classical literature is the only literature that should be in our schools contemporary books are great everyone's life does matter but every choice and every action doesn't have to be respected or given equal respect when there are materials that are given to our young children without parental choice that includes smut pornography explicit sex acts drug use disrespecting parents child sexual abuse sex trafficking gang rape and others these must not be foisted upon our children if
058parents think this is appropriate for their children they have other avenues for securing these materials i do support diverse voices in our school and library one they present age appropriate materials i suggested a rating system for the school library with books rated g p g r and x with labels like sexually explicit or you you know you know the categories i also suggest an opt-in form given to each parent at the beginning of each school year along with all of our paperwork that lets parents opt in for these questionable materials not an opt-out form the american library association and others are extremist political social organizations with those agendas and cannot be used to to qualify a book for selection into our school system thank you for your attention to this matter okay that's the end
059of our citizen comment period uh next on the agenda under new business is our k through 12 curriculum overview miss jamie hutchinson and miss dana gum good evening madam chair school board dr nichols and all guests both here in person and online for those of you who don't know me i'm jamie hutchinson supervisor of secondary curriculum and instruction and i'm dana gunn the elementary supervisor of curriculum instruction this evening we are going to take you on a road trip to show how the curriculum developed by the virginia department of education goes from their offices to our classrooms so vdoe provides a lot of resources so many resources to us and their website is very cumbersome and hard to navigate um so we wanted to give you a sample of some of the things that they
060provide so the first thing that they provided that everybody has heard of is the standards of learning or the sols so they provide a document that lists everything that students that the students are required to learn everything that the teachers are required to teach and that's listed in a document called the standards of learning a lot of people mix that up and think that that the test is the sol the test is just an assessment of these standards they also provide a curriculum framework which is a more thorough explanation of those standards of learning breaks it down into essential skills and knowledge of those standards and understanding behind it and just like a really more thorough like breakdown another thing they also provide is a blueprint of the sol test tells you exactly what standards
061are tested uh how many questions are going to be on the test and what is tested and how much of that is going to be tested in each area in each reporting category they also provide things like word wall cards in certain subject areas and these are just like vocabulary words that kids need to know in order to be able to interpret the questions that are going to be on the test so they give you a lot of things they have sol tracking logs the teachers can use as they're going throughout the year to make sure that they've covered all of the material the four core subjects have progression charts this is the one for math we have one we'll look at a little bit closer to for reading but all four core subject areas
062have progression charts so that teachers can see which skills are brand new to students versus which ones they've had previous experience with several of the contents have pre-assessments [Music] they also have uh sample lesson plans practice release tests and things like that for teachers to be able to use we could show you more examples but these were just some of them so there's and there's lots of they give you uh you know professional development resources the specialists in the videoe provide instructional videos there there's writing prompts they give you safety guidelines there's so much stuff on there which is a lot to navigate for teachers so we try to put it all together for them getting back to vertical alignment this year we have looked closely at the progression charts so that rather than looking
063at education one year at a time we're really looking at our students total educational experience so this is the sample chart from english this one in particular is focused on the reading standards the light orange indicates skills that are being taught the dark orange indicates skills that the students should already know by a certain grade level but that could be reinforced reinforced and this chart just shows for teachers how all of those different standards fit together and then this is just a picture of the elementary teachers um some you can't some watkins they've been working really hard with their principles with the instructional coaches and specialists to start unpacking their standards more deeply to make sure they understand and then using those progression charts to see where the students are coming from and then where
064they're going next year so they can have a make sure that the students fill in any gaps and have any knowledge and so and they meet weekly with their with the specialists they meet weekly with the coaches and principal and they all sit down and they really on they unpack those standards and make sure that they understand every single thing that they have the kids have to know plc's yeah professional learning community and then so one of the things we do is uh we work with the teams and we build these pacing guides and these just map out everything the teachers have to teach and kids have to know by quarter uh and so this is just an example of one of the pacing guides that we use for the teachers and linked into the
065pacing guides are curriculum guides that we create and so this takes all those video e documents and kind of puts it into one guide for our teachers so we've got this sol on there a suggested pacing like this standard should take this long what's the big idea behind it where are they coming from where are they going in this related standards so we take that progression chart break it down what are some essential questions that kids should be able to answer what are some common misconceptions that these kids might have when they're learning this uh this guide also will have you know water understand the understanding the standard section i put in there things like these are some things that you know you need to know as the teacher these are things that the kids
066need to know in order to understand this and then essential knowledge and skills each bullet that is a statement or something that the kids have to be able to do it usually starts with a verb that's something that says they have to be able to apply they have to be able to i can't read that far away but they have to be able to apply or represent or recall so it's really specific um we put in i put in their vocabulary words uh and then well also we also put in their literature connections uh so books that are relevant to this topic so not it might not be a english or uh reading standard like this is a math curriculum guide but i have books in there that teachers have in their classroom that they
067can read do a read aloud that is relevant to this math topic so they can do a lesson and integrate the topics of english and reading and in the math classroom and then on the right these are instructional activities that we we link in that are relative to um the lesson so there's i also have in their release test items these are questions the vdoe has released that are former test questions that they give to us as samples so they give us so that we know what the test questions might could look like um and then linkedin are activities gains lesson plans uh and then what what you see next to the colored blocks those are i can statements so those are things that the we call them i can statements those are things that
068kids should be able to say i can do this when they're done uh learning this standard or learning this sol and then each color represents a different skill in the bloom's taxon triangle so just as they get progressively more difficult so that's what those links are are all the lessons and activities and resources and most of those are homegrown things that i've made things that teachers have made things uh you know we partner with other divisions especially in math we partner with other divisions to share resources so those are all regional region one resources and there's there's just more uh and then these are some of the assessments we use in elementary school uh some of them are formal like from the state like the voe growth assessments and the pals tests we give them
069in the fall to diagnose student needs and see who needs to support and then some of them are ones we've made like the number the number sense screeners we give them in the fall we give them a mid-year we give them the spring so we can see where students stay are and how they're progressing and we can monitor to see their growth and make changes in our instruction if we need to and then we also um make changes in interventions if we need to that way contrary to popular belief assessments are not just for grades we give them to decide you know who needs more support what changes need to be made in instruction and where to shift any support like with our specialists and our coaches we do mid-year we just finished mid-year assessments
070with uh in literacy and math so we could see where any kind of new intervention needs to go our k2 students are constantly being assessed and but it's not like a test it's it's performance-based so if they have to be they have to um say count money that we put coins down in front of them and they count it it's not a test like paper pencil um or draw a triangle or you know that's the kind of way we assess them secondary continues with many of those best practice assessments like common assessments and then also performance-based project-based assessments as a division we're working towards implementing mastery connect next year which really harkens back to something that miss gum just mentioned a moment ago and looking at assessment as a tool to help inform instruction rather
071than simply a grade so mastery connect is something that we'll be able to use that's a platform that will help us analyze data focused on true student growth and understanding rather than simply a grade and so all that comes together and then we have our daily classroom instruction and these are just some pictures that we've taken take pictures every day we're in classrooms and these are just some pictures we took in the classrooms recently this year and as an instructional department we aim to support teachers and to keep all of the instructional staff abreast of updates two ways that we do that are through targeted professional development based upon student and teacher needs and our instructional newsletter you can see here that our instructional newsletter includes links to vdoe updates by department as well as
072other pieces of information just to help staff in the fall we offer professional development on collaborative teaching and discourse strategies which are the slides that you can just see the title page or the title slide up for both of those and the reason that we offered professional development on these two things was because teachers were interested in the topics but more so we knew that our students needed them we really wanted to re-establish collaboration in the classroom since coming off of the pandemic and some disjointed learning so we decided to focus our efforts there this needs focus style of assistance is what we plan to continue and the discourse in the classroom was just really to get them to start talking to each other again in the classroom having the kids talk and then we
073also started this year if you're if you're on social media if you're on twitter or instagram we started a page we encourage you to follow us on nkcps learns on instagram and on twitter we post things that we see in the classroom that we are happening things the teachers are doing things the kids are doing uh just all kinds of stuff it's it's jamie and i and the two instructional coaches i'm better under me the sarah barry and um kim lawler they post things under there that they're doing sometimes you'll see teachers doing professional development sometimes you'll see things that happen in the classroom um so anytime you see a post up there it's either either one of us or my two coaches um definitely check that out follow us on there i'd love to
074show you what we're doing any questions board members questions comments this um the nkcps learns that's available for all parents correct to observe so i asked that question because when i look at you only have 64 followers yeah i know we just started it this year but yeah but i mean i guess that's my point you know we have 33 100 students which would equate to probably almost um you know probably 5 500 parents and i think it's amazing that you only have 64 followers i know we got more on instagram though i'm one of them yes i know you you do like me and my point to that is i think you guys are trying to do an incredible job of getting information out there to the community and information to the parents and
075i think this is one of those platforms that can be very very helpful for parents to see what is happening daily or weekly in in a classroom setting for them to understand how important it is for them to be engaged in learning because of the efforts that your team puts forth and the efforts that go forth in the classroom so that as these students are getting more acclimated to understanding assessments and sol testing and what is required of them at the same time it's it's just as much required of the parents to help them through that process so they are better prepared to do that and and really that's the end game that you're trying to communicate it's the preparation so they are so we do have better assessments and better standards so that they
076are more prepared to take these tests so that we so in the continuum they're just better off academically and we really want to just showcase all the really good stuff that's happening there is really a lot of good stuff happening i was going to say um we would love for all parents to follow us because students of any age be kindergarten kids that dana's working with or high school kids that i end up seeing if you say hey i'd like to take a picture so that i can put you on twitter i mean they get yeah they want their picture taken so yeah i mean we would love to have more followers on both of those platforms yeah the instagram is definitely more popular than the twitter but uh they they really like it and
077the teachers the teachers like when their class is featured too i've also shared with the teachers you know if you get if i'm not even there take a picture and you email it to me and i'll put it up i get emails all the time so good for you so i have uh somewhat of a general question i'm curious about our so our local curriculum how much do we customize um what were given you know how much do we make it local and that's sort of the challenge a lot of it is local uh right now the mat like math is different because math was um done regionally the regional curriculum uh math math specialists from all over region one got together when the standards were changed in 2016 and developed an entire curriculum because
078we're not a common core state we don't do common core standards so publishing companies do not cater to us so when you go to a publishing company and look for curriculum if sometimes it matches most the time it doesn't and then you can spend a whole lot of money on something that doesn't line up and won't be what you need so we developed in region one there's about 50 math specialists that developed curriculum that is 100 aligned so that one is very robust right now i have put together a committee for science and social studies i have materials in science social studies elementary folders that i've put together myself but i also have a committee that i just started where we're going to start building up more and then we have right now a committee
079of literacy literacy committee where we're working together to build up more for reading right now too so but we are looking at more materials for reading as well reading's more difficult there's just a lot more more elements to put at play thank you right thank you don't go anywhere you're almost there um i had a couple questions that i missed last time that i should have read answers to um related to curriculum so if it's okay i can weave it in with jamie and dana because they are the experts uh the first one i'm not asking you to answer so i'll give my answer and then you can kind of elaborate to it or jump in does the board regard as well as the best indication of scholastic achievement is there a better measure of
080student achievement one of the reasons we did this presentation tonight is just so you can see how complex our curriculum is and that it comes from the state and those pieces so as well tests are just one measure but not every test every grade every everything tests so there are multiple measures including unit tests performance assessments classroom assessments the dreaded exam we all hated is still alive and well um as a summative assessment for some courses so it is is that is one piece of the puzzle how the student does every day in their daily assignments as well as is part of that so that was one the where does new camp public schools as well achievement scores rank with respect to other state school districts i know i shared a slide earlier in the
081year about where we rank versus the state i can pull together a more in-depth ranking sheet for that so that's i'll work on that one in reviewing the video he did on s wells and we got this question a couple times we have results for math english and science but there are no results for history so one why is that well i believe that this is this a trick question it's not a trick question i just want to answer i'm just making sure our answers uh so that was a state decision yeah that was yeah that was a state decision for the record for to the trick question that was a state decision so the state took away that piece that's one part of the puzzle so when you don't see history people i've heard
082people say well you know that must have benefited you absolutely not we did the best in history than any other you want to take something away that we're not doing as well in it's not history um we do history in the other ways we have the performance assessments and we have to verify this with the state department that we are providing this assessment and and the students are performing and that but that was the state went on a on a push to reduce the number of s wall assessments that kids had to take because the federal number is much lower than the state of virginia's number um and history was the one that they kind of took out of that it's still taught my son just finished government as a senior but it's just there's
083no sol assessment attached to it not a trick question i apologize well and i think that part of the reason for that was because the state has recognized that our more traditional sol tests are not always the best indicator of student achievement and student ability that if you can give kids the opportunity to showcase their abilities in other methods then you're having you have a better opportunity to see what the child actually knows and in history which sometimes can come back come down to simple a b or c multiple choice tests that was an easy one for them to choose to to move away from um so that instead more emphasis could be put on other subject matters fourth graders have a virginia studies test but last year we did a performance-based assessment with that
084so they did projects and things like that and submitted it and then third grade our third grade does a science science performance based and history performance based assessments so they only take an actual sol test in math in reading and those performance-based assessments that third grade does are project based and both schools collaborate on that so that they are doing the same projects together so all third graders in new kent do the same science projects and they do the same history projects thank you guys ladies one more question sorry before i let you go you mentioned navigating the doe website which is challenging it's cumbersome what do you recommend for a parent or a guardian who has a question about their child's curriculum what should they do depending upon the question but it depends on
085the question yeah i was going to say if if it's navigating the website by all means reach out to one of us yeah it's like a first level of hey i'm just trying to find this i mean you could always reach out to your child's teacher they'd be able to help out as well but um we would also be more than more than happy to help i can translate anything on that video do you field a lot of questions from parents no i do i feel like at the elementary level more so okay i get a lot um i feel like they i i don't know i just feel like i get a lot sure about reading and absolutely okay thank you thank you very much thank you next on the agenda graduation requirements and
086update mr ross miller [Music] well mr miller is doing double duty getting the presentation up we wanted to bring you a graduation requirements presentation because graduation requirements are still pretty rigorous and some things have been added to it that weren't there uh before um so i asked mr miller as he leads that world for us to kind of bring us an update on graduation requirements and updates and we track all of our students especially at the high school each day but each course each semester so we always know where a kid is what a kid needs to do and whether they're in danger of not graduating or not our graduation rate last year was at an all-time high um and we want to continue to push that forward so there you go bunch of enough
087time mr miller thank you madam chair members of the board dr nichols members of the public both here as well as at home pleasure to come before you today and talk about graduation requirements they do change periodically and oddly enough there have been years where we have had a different set of graduation requirements for every class in high school uh where like your ninth grade had one set your 10th grade and another set 11th and 12th each one had their own set of requirements they changed four years in a row so glad to give this and just go over where we're at today because there are a lot of citizens a lot of parents who don't understand this world and don't understand sort of how their what all their child has to go through to
088get to graduation it is a long journey so just go through the two basic types of diplomas and what's required for them and a couple definitions along with each so if you look here we have the traditional subject areas we have english math science history health and pe and then we jump into sort of electives and they're broke out into several categories now that they didn't used to be so you have this one group that is world language fine arts and cte then you have epf which is economics and personal finance and then general electives so in the next column with credits required these a standard credit is the student taking the class and passing it that is to rna standard credit the next column is a verified credit a verified credit means you took
089the class you passed it and you passed an associated sol test that went along with it so the this is one change that has happened over the last few years the reduction in number of verified credits that is required used to be that it's for and we'll get into a minute in the advanced diploma that you had to earn more verified credits meaning you had to pass more math as well as more science more history that has since been normalized to where each subject area you need one and the two in english really refer to a reading as well and a writing sol and those are both taken traditionally in the 10th or 11th grade year so as we move down when you get into the world language fine arts cte they do pull those
090apart and say you know within these electives you do need two years of something um that's that's sequential in there so it could be two years of a world language two years of a specific fine art that's sequential or two years within a single cte area that's sequential so there's specific especially within the world of cte there's specific courses that title one wanted one to the other that make them a sequence and that's what we look for economics and personal finance oddly enough is like the only required course that is specifically called out here that most other requirements can be met through a variety of courses the economics and personal finance course is specifically called out in code in virginia that must be taunt so student there learns about in the economics portion all things
091economics macroeconomics micro economics world economics just all sorts of economics then the personal finance is how do you manage your finances and so good skills that they've pulled out and said every student in virginia is going to have if they're going to graduate and then they finish off with four electives so a total of 22 credits required to graduate and five of those must be verified with an sol test so then when you jump to an advanced diploma the verified credits as i said earlier stayed the same however some of the subject area requirements change so i'm going to jump back and forth a little bit here so with the standard remember you're four for english and then three three three for your four core subject areas that people typically associate with when you jump
092to an advance you need four so you have to take one every year the then health and peace stays the same so notice that world language now stands alone you have to have at least three years of a world language has to be the same one you can do this also with two of two the minimum though is the three years but if you do two two languages for two years each you're going to go to four credits so you can meet it either way you still have to have the economics and personal finance course and now with an advanced diploma you have to have one credit coming from either a fine art or a cte class and then your electives break down come down to three but your total number of credits still stands
093at 26. so it's four more credits to get an advanced diploma that it is a standard diploma so that's what most people typically look at and say well there's my requirements to graduate here's some additional ones that have been put in place over the last couple years so one and this is for either standard or advanced diploma you have to complete an ap course an honors course an international baccalaureate course or a dual enrollment course or if you're not going to do one of those you need to take part in a high quality work based learning experience and so that there's a variety of different options for work-based learning experiences but basically you have to spend time learning in basically a work environment and we're working on actually increasing the number of opportunities we provide
094to students um it with work-based learning that's a big push for us that we've been working at the high school level then the last piece is you have to earn a cte credential um so this is you have completed a sequence within a specific area of cte and then taken this the certification test that would then earn you your credential so you have to do one of those three on top of the previous requirements you also every student in virginia must complete a virtual course it doesn't have to be fully virtual there's several options there that we can put in place like there could be parts of course that could be virtual but you have to have virtual components fit into your curriculum so we do that it's been pretty easy the last two years
095to be able to certify that the other one is first aid cpr and aed training every student to graduate must have training in cpr and how to use an aed so we do that through our 10th grade pe classes and they take a day and um or a couple days they bring out cpr dummies and everybody uses those and they bring out an aed trainer machine and go over how to use that also you have to be able to demonstrate the five c's so critical thinking creativity collaboration communication citizenship we do that in pretty much all of our classes students have to demonstrate those in order to show that they are proficient the our teachers also as part of their goal setting every year set goals on how they incorporate those into their classroom and
096and how do they incorporate the use of the profile of virginia graduate and our own local new kent graduate into their course some of the barriers that that students face that typically give problems are these two and really the first one is the one that causes students the most problems are the verified credits those five sol tests that they must pass the usually history is an easy one to get taken out of the way in ninth grade math is the same way students do struggle with with some of the math tests but you can usually complete it early in your career with algebra one as soon as you take that and pass it then you've earned that verified credit the in science with there's a sol test in just about every science course you start
097with your first high school science course you take an sl test as soon as you pass when you're done the one that really pushes students is the reading and the writing because they don't come until the 11th grade and so that's the one that it's some kind sometimes can be scrambled to get students passed and it's not necessarily um anything with the instruction it's more of students it's the first time a lot of students will have been assessed this way in writing their entire career and at this point there's no longer a fifth grade writing test and for the last couple years there hasn't even been an eighth grade writing test and so for our students going through right now that this is the first time that they have hit an sol test for writing
098and so um that is somewhat of a bare barrier for them um but those the verified credits are the ones that students struggle with because up until high school you take the sol test and we use that data for to help us to plan instruction for our students to select materials that will better equip our students and we do provide remediation but a student can still move on to the next grade if they pass all their classes in high school that's where if you don't pass that sol then you start to limit your opportunities throughout pathways towards graduation so it's a little bit different once you get to high school the other one is that ct ap dual enrollment work based learning experience we have a lot of opportunities for our students to meet this
099so it's i put it there as a barrier but we don't have very many students who struggle with that every now and then it does pop up but we can we don't have anyone not graduate because of it it's just one thing that can come up right towards the end that we scramble a little bit to get a student's credentialed or something along those lines but it's one that we can usually get taken care of pretty easily happy to answer any questions can you explain the difference or what is the advantage in having an advanced diploma versus a standard diploma certainly the big advantage of it is basically what are you looking to do outside after high school is usually and it is not a lock-in but usually students who are looking to go on
100to college would pursue an advanced diploma um for a variety of reasons um one um one reason is to get if you're going there then you're going to want to get the foreign language out of the way and that automatically is is the big kicker for getting the advanced diploma but the biggest difference is yeah what are you looking to pursue out after high school um again if you're looking to go to college we're encouraging you to get your advanced diploma not that that you can't go to college with a standard diploma because you can so mr miller the verified credits for in particular middle school students that are taking they it's different so can you explain that is it so they have to take the sol correct so all right so the federal law
101so there's a the balance between state graduation requirements and federal law requirements so with state graduation requirements when you take an end of course or a high school credit class you must take the end of course test that associates with it until you've met your graduation requirements so if you're at the middle school and you're taking algebra 1 geometry or any um high school credit class that has an sol associate you will take the sol there and it will count towards your verified credits for high school graduation where things start to become a little confusing is federal requirements say that at every level you must be tested in reading or math reading and science and i'll get back to one of your earlier statements in a little bit as to why we don't see the
102history on this on the state's website but um the so this federal government says read it reading math and his science must be tested at every level so even if you've met your graduation requirements at the middle school when you come to high school we still are required to give you the science science and math and a reading sol the only ones that you can take care of over there are the is the math but when you get here you're still going to have to take them out sol um don't tell the kids but you don't you'll have to pass to graduate um we want everybody to give their best and but it is a requirement that we're going to give you that test anyway so it still counts towards your high school requirement the
103reason why you don't see a lot of history on the state's report cards report card meets a federal requirement federal requirement does not require you to you give a history test at every level okay are the sols given at the semester and at the end of the year the so it depends on which where you which level you're at so this year for the first time our third through eighth grade were required to take a start of year reading and math test and they were called the growth assessments state wanted to take a look at basically in legislation they put forth that we wanted a test at the beginning a test of the middle and test at the end to be able to measure growth throughout the year the last couple years we've used growth
104by looking at end of course of at one year to end of course of the other year however you're looking at different content and so be testing students on different material so instead what they came up with was they wanted okay we want to give you a beginning of your tests and in a mid and an end-of-year test however they're phasing it in so this year all three through eight took a beginning of the year growth assessment they didn't call it as well but it's pretty much is very similar and then they're gonna take their sol at the end and measure growth across the board next year they'll do all three assessments so three through eight they'll do a fall growth assessment a winter mid-year check and then an end-of-year sll test here at the
105high school because we are on a four by four and we have so we have classes that end first semester we do give this sol as a test test at the end of the first semester for any fall classes that students took part in so one of the things that we do to help combat that early the verified credits is students have three opportunities every year to take an ssl test so you can take take it in the fall you can take it in the spring you can take it over the summer so when students when we see that they're struggling and they do not pass their sol test the first time for a high school credit class we do provide remediation the next semester and immediately they go back into that test as well
106as if they've taken the follow-up course they'll be tested on that as well then over the summer we have opportunities we use project graduation funds to provide remediation classes over the summer for these students and then so then we can test them again over the summer so student struggles their first in ninth grade to pass algebra one they've got like three three opportunities per year every year to complete that and we provide remediation along the way back to the types of diplomas on average can you give us a percentage of how many you might not have the exact data but an idea of how many uh standard versus advanced like from a percentage perspective i can provide that i'll stop in the head all right any other any other questions okay all right thank you
107yeah excuse me i've never asked that before i never thought about it but i thought yeah we do report it to the state and it is on our state report card yeah so okay yeah thank you thanks to the power of our state report card which is on our website um 53 of our students are and this is uh 20 class of 2021 i've advanced diploma 41 is um standard um and then there's a percentage of other certificates um gd etc that's at five percent so there are certain students in certain programs that aren't eligible and cte is part of the advanced isn't it ct is a part of both okay yeah yeah there's more of a requirement at the standard to get a cte sequence whereas at the height at the on advanced diploma
108you have to have a cte course but it doesn't have to be sequenced okay so one of the things we really work with students on either way is taking a look at how could they sequence courses that fit sort of their post graduation goals okay thank you very much thank you thank you mr miller next item on the agenda we're moving to old business so fiscal year 2223 budget update um dr nichols and miss haney morheim all right good evening again board members at our last work session uh we discussed some of the big pieces of the budget which you'll see before you tonight is the superintendent's recommended budget for fy23 so this next slide is just a review about our budget process and i did hear the the comment about an additional advisory committee
109and i think that's worth pursuing um uncertainty continues to be the largest variable of the 23 budget process um i just want to thank miss morheim and her budget team for doing a phenomenal job of balancing those uncertainties related to funding related to enrollment it's just been an incredibly difficult process when you don't have all the variables you need we have met with division directors and principals we have reviewed current needs and position requests we've looked at a broader lens so we're forecasting a couple years down the road a parent and teacher advisory which i have again this week wednesday i believe we're also in this budget maintaining the capability to pivot as needed due to that uncertainty we're also utilizing um our strategic strategic grant utilization which i'll talk about in a minute to
110move next new camp forward so as we see needs it's where is this neat where does this need best fit is it operating is it capital is it grant revenue outlook so additional state revenues right now this could change as well between house and senate but we're looking at 959 000 roughly in additional state revenue our budgeted adm and this is a forecast for us too so adm is the average daily membership we're doing this on 3 300 students so we have seen a rebound in the past year in student population some of that is due to students coming back some of that is due to the extreme growth in the county i just got today's housing report for january and february and we're setting a record pace on a record pace that was last
111year um so it also includes quentin elementary so when you see the increase in revenue that is planned revenue and partnership with the county so there's a 1.4 million dollar increase for operating quentin elementary and that comes in the in the form of positions and then paying electricity and different things like that but i'll dive into that slide we do have an additional operating request from the county of two million dollars for additional expenditure needs which we'll talk about when we get into the next slide school nutrition has increased due to participation it has been free breakfast and lunch this year for all students and we have set record numbers in school nutrition that is a federal grant at no cost to us we do not know for sure that will continue next year but
112keep in mind school nutrition is self-sustaining they create their own budget they manage their own budget they create their own funds um and then continue utilization of grant funding to meet mostly one-time needs that's what we're really trying to do with our grants is if there's a one-time need or something that counts as a one-time need to utilize our grant funding there and being very hesitant to put operating expenses into grants because these grants will go away so this is our revenue outlook and you can see the adopted fy2122 recommended for this year and then the change associated with it and i kind of went through some of those changes already this is just the superintendent's recommended budget at some point this will come before you for approval but this is your first time seeing
113the budget in its entirety then it goes to the county and once they adopt then we will come back and adopt as well so there are a lot of steps left in this process so school general fund would be an increase of 4.3 million that includes clinton new state revenue and additional county revenue combined a school textbook fund you see is a slight increase of 47 000 that is because we have additional students so that's directly connected to our enrollment you can see school nutrition which has additional revenue in there of 611 000 that is those are funds that they have been generating due to the additional students eating breakfast and lunch um and then school grants you can see is a slight increase there so um it brings the recommended fy 2223 budget to
11443.6 million dollars so that is all proposed clinton elementary so what we'll do is we'll dive in and board members feel free to stop at any point and ask anything um this uh more time is on deck for expert questions so this is quinton elementary school we do plan to open fall of 22 it'll be at a cost of additional 1.4 million dollars most of that is in new positions so you need an assistant principal you need a secretary most of the teaching force is coming from within the school division same number of kids we're just moving it across buildings and spacing out to a degree which will actually make way for potential renovation in new canaan elementary now that we'll have some space but you can see the additional pieces teachers that are there
115are music gifted reading remediation math remediation so forth does require school nurse we do forecast it requiring three additional bus drivers and then stipends associated with it in addition to the new position expenses there are operating expenses which you can see there um utilities general school maintenance and other associated costs so this is the proposal for salary and benefit adjustments and if you've been following the house and senate they have various dueling proposals around this so in this budget is a proposed five percent salary adjustment for employees and the cost associated with that is 1.3 million 1.337 we have state revenue of six hundred forty six thousand four hundred thirty dollars to support that so in that nine hundred plus thousand dollars most of that is to go towards a five percent salary adjustment so
116the additional would have to come uh from local support so and that is connected to the local composite index which i'll share in just a minute uh anytime we do a salary adjustment we we realign our stipends so our stipends for athletics our stipends for activities you saw our incredible uh music director of the year from the virginia thespian society so as we adjust salaries we have a very smart plan that adjusts stipends associated with it the big thing that we've talked about several times is we're anticipating some pretty significant health care increases um of over 17 17.8 percent so that would be an increase of 580 323 we are having additional discussion and we are putting it back out for renewal we do hope to get a lower price associated with that but that's
117the forecast working with our experts on that and that's due to some high cost claimants um and due to everything uh going up at this point so um yes yes the health care increases do we combine that with the county's employees or at least totally separate we do not the county is we are self-funded the county is in a pool so pros and cons to both in the county and i talk about this quite often um if you are self-funded and things are going well you're able to have greater flexibility and drive down some of those costs with your health care fund balance when it's not you have you know pieces like this with the health care increase the other piece that we've been able to do with our employees is provide a healthcare premium
118holiday in december we've been able to do that because we are self-funded and we control that variable there as well um so local choice there we go i knew it was coming to me at some point the the difference between two self-funded and local choice school divisions across the commonwealth are in different groups some go into that pool piece and then some stand alone i will tell you some groups are very hesitant to bring educators into their group because we do traditionally have high costs associated with education the vrs non-professional group rate adjustment that is a vrs increase um so there's the associated cost with that as well one more question i thought you had to yeah um healthy lifestyles and behaviors are people's deductibles and their what they pay lower you know versus somebody
119who you know they smoke so we we do have a tiered wellness plan for employees that allows them to drive down their premiums um and it's based on a number of different factors including wellness points and wellness logs and and health screenings and all the different components that would go into that so yes we we absolutely do and we can i can have our hr department do it i think it would be worthy of a bigger presentation along with healthcare like what we're doing about it and kind of share those pieces but yeah recruitment and retention so beyond the five percent we really would like to adjust our paraprofessional wages that would be additional 4.93 which the total for that adjustment would be 69 i've said at this table many times during the height of
120the pandemic we stayed open based on our paraprofessionals and our support staff and when you look at the work we trust them to do with their compensation we really have to make an adjustment here when we look at our openings in the school division this year it's mainly around the paraprofessional piece because it's hard to have somebody take that job when they can go somewhere else and make more and have less certifications so our para professionals have to have two-year degrees or equivalents connected with it and oftentimes the starting wage is just above what minimum wage would be um so definitely advocating for um additional wages there and also really the same story with our clerical and technical skills yes is the 4.93 is that on top of 5 percent yes ma'am okay yeah yes
121ma'am um and that would be an average because depending on where you were on the scale associated with that um transportation uh some of our neighbors came out with some new starting scales for bus drivers and we don't believe i mean we would love to be at the very top of it but we believe we can be competitive with our total package that we offer but we'd like to make some transportation market rate adjustments and you can see the total price there sixty seven thousand two hundred and twenty two dollars uh that allows us to do two things one increase starting wage to remain competitive uh which is what one of our neighboring school divisions do uh what they didn't do was the second bullet and that is to take care of the steps after
122that so our neighboring school division somewhat neighboring in the region raised starting bus driver paid to 21 and did not adjust anybody else and you can tell you can imagine what that made the 20-year bus driver feel when a starting person was making more than them so we benefited from that and we gained a couple drivers in the process what we'd like to do is increase the starting wage and then run that through so that all drivers are taken care of while we do plan to we do recommend increasing uh pay by five percent that would allow us to increase our starting teachers salary by four percent so you can see the starting bachelor's at 47 750 and the master is at 51093 and it looks like it's hard to see on this grid on
123this table over here but it looks like we're mostly competitive with the master's degree but we're really not so competitive with the bachelor's degree which i think is what we want yeah we've made a conscious decision in the past three years to focus on that master's degree scale one we're finding most of the applicants coming out are receiving a master's degree many education universities or universities that have education programs have switched to a five-year master's so that is the market and then when we're getting employees from other school divisions they're also coming with a master's so we've made a conscious effort to be most attractive in the area where they're the most candidates thank you also on recruitment and retention this is something that we added during the pandemic and that's the use of school-based
124substitutes so that's a person that comes to your school every day and they fill in wherever you need them but you are guaranteed to have them every day of sub-fill rates using external companies right now at all-time low around 35 yes so so by having school-based subs another key factor in us staying open besides just having incredible employees is um school-based substitutes by having at least one but in most of our schools right now using using uh alternative funds we have two and three and it's allowed us to fill those holes and give teachers the planning that they need and it's really gotten a lot better in the past few weeks but it's been a key strategy in normal times what would a typical average number of substitutes you'd have in a building a day
125what would that number be it depends and it's seasonal so mondays and fridays you would imagine are your worst as in most organizations um and then in february march with the flu and those those different pieces it wouldn't be uncommon at a high school to have 10 people out um you know high school that has almost 1100 um students but it it really just depends um but if you have a school-based sub and you can get a fill rate that's higher than 35 you you can you can do pretty well so that's good so they're always they're going to always be busy and we're not looking to keep the pandemic number that we've had before like at the middle school right now we have three we're not planning to keep that level because we're not
126planning for that level of outage so we're scaling that back but have seen that as as a key strategy we've also used that school-based sub and are working to convert at least one into our residency program that will then become a teacher for us with costs going up it's no surprise that our regional programs addition are having costs going up to most of these if not all are tied to an additional five percent increase in salary so code rva our total increase would be six thousand we're not changing any seat requirements at this time i do think it's something we need to continue to look at uh code rba the increase is six thousand maggie walker governor school is three thousand eighty four dollars bridging community has the largest increase of twenty one thousand eight
127hundred four but we send 75 students there versus twelve other places so student by student it's it's it's a reasonable increase and no that's yes yes i'm sorry that is total that is the total increase not the per student increase um i wouldn't have been so so uh accepted of that but yes great question and then chesapeake bay governor school that the total increase on that is 3696. um so across those schools um [Music] 35 36 000 but really associated with that additional pay increase operationally we do have additional costs operationally as well so custodial services will be going up and we have a total of 426 thousand associated with that the biggest driver of that is quentin elementary school by adding a fifth school your custodial costs are going to go up so you
128can see the price tag associated with quentin alone one of the things that we're working on now to try to drive down some of these costs is building utilization so there are parts of the building at george watkins for example we will not be utilizing nearly as much or full time like some of the trailers that we have or cottages that we have out back so we're working with our company that we outsource custodial to see if we can't drive down that cost as much if you're not got 25 fifth graders in there every day then it doesn't need the same level of cleaning that it would otherwise also wage adjustments and those are connected to minimum wage as well and we're looking at the consideration of additional contracted days we are now running full
129summer programs so the summer of more which you'll hear about in a future board meeting we are we have more kids in the summer than we've ever had before hundreds more so there's a need to have custodians on site where we didn't before transportation i got gas today it's no shock there that our fuel costs are going up so about 40 000 related to transportation athletics grounds maintenance keeping that work up and then we have a new executive director of technology has been doing some baseline checks and assessments so we do have some additional cost there for additional computer hardware expenses and malware protection additional planning consideration trying to build a bridge from 22 to 24 shifting to some more cloud-based services automating some of our systems some of our systems are still a little
130more archaic we're looking at a k-12 k2 pilot program to use a lenovo tablet based instead of the chromebook of replacement cycle planning so all of these uh wonderful devices that we have have to be replaced so looking at all those pieces laptops staff devices network equipment so forth uh position requests so we have recommended position requests and modifications totaling 530 000 and all these are not additions so there's to eliminate the part-time clerical at george watkins nobody is eliminated in the process that's the position that is currently vacant but by going from 750 students to about 500 students we don't need to have that same level of staffing in addition we can eliminate a vacant paraprofessional position we are looking at three additional elementary teachers for growth i mentioned the housing numbers that i
131received today we believe that we're going to need three additional teachers connected to that growth that will also help us with class size and give greater flexibility at those three schools one of the things i'm really excited about is the addition of a new program here at the high school we've talked about rotc long before i got here but definitely ever since i've gotten here ever since i've been here and and that is a navy corps of cadets instructor so that's a full-time position that would be here at the high school which would allow us to jump start that part of our career program now that is awaiting final approval from the navy in april or may so but our budget has to be done before that so we have it in there if they
132put us in a planning year and it's the following year we'll make that modification additional high school teaching position in career and technical education an additional mechanic we have additional buses and additional county vehicles working through those pieces um a technical position connected to technology um a trainer and driver transportation we're working to set up our own cdl training site this would be critical to make that happen right now we have to rely on third parties and dnbs there is a way and translation is working on doing that we would be able to do cdls on site for our folks it would just streamline the process additional transportation adjustments moving a employee from part-time to full-time and then to have a full-time clinic attendant um really that's going to be at george watkins it says
133high school but high school is where it was open um so you have that associated cost with that dr nichols for these positions uh i'll just use the uh the navy corps cadet instructor is that that's an all-inclusive position meaning you budget that amount of money that includes benefits um vrs all of those things as well correct yes sir that is salary and benefits all in correct um okay yes so and and all of those are connected to this uh when we're hiring assume they're going to take benefits with new county public schools and we budget accordingly and we budget around the step that they would come in at either step 5 or step 10 because you're not always going to get a brand new person so we make those adjustments budgeting yes continue careful
134planning of grant funding positions to support immediate needs so working through flexibility i mentioned school-based substitutes that is something you could potentially put in a grant one of the s or grants however it's going to be something that you want for the next several years you're going to have to find a way to have it in the operating budget at some point so anytime we have a grant conversation it's does this ultimately need up need to be in the operating budget how do you build a bridge to make that happen school nutrition plans there once again is to increase revenues to the current reimbursement level additional staffing for quentin elementary school they are hiring in the current year matter of fact i just hired the clinton elementary school cafeteria manager and got the tour of
135that space last week uh potential wage adjustments in fy 22 once again making sure they're staying ahead of the minimum wage increases uh just a look at february meal averages so we're serving uh 1400 breakfasts a day and nearly 2 000 lunches a day our coven 19 pandemic grant funding our elementary and secondary school emergency relief that's sr2 so if you ever hear me say esther's the federal funds um we have 428 thousand 990 conducted in that that right now has been planned for summer more for the next two summers furniture to assist with spacing the additional custodial services during the pandemic we had to do an increased levels of cleaning and also technology initiatives with the devices we had to purchase sr3 that is the big grant we have an upcoming presentation on shifting
136usage of funds and we'll have a public hearing and plan amendment required uh with that so we kind of separated that to a degree tonight and really just focused on the superintendent's recommended budget the goals on these funds are really to underst understand and address learning loss provide our buildings and departments and schools what they need to be successful move new camp for beyond the pandemic and remain flexible within each additional funding source so as we have new grant opportunities and new grants we shift initiatives and we ship things into other funds and free up so that we have additional flexibility in in the future sr3 is our longest running grant so we have a significant amount of time to spend that so we're working in the other grants right now to make sure those
137are spent out and providing additional flexibility in this sr3 grant our next steps so we are here tonight this is the superintendent's recommended budget uh we do have a proposed budget prese oh mr hathaway at the county has a proposed budget presentation to the board of supervisors his presentation is march 14th we have a joint retreat board of supervisors and school board where we'll go through a lot of this similar information we will have a public hearing on the superintendent's recommended budget right now we're trying to target whether that is the march work session or the april board meeting really our urgency in this budget is once we have the salary component down we can then go ahead and initiate contracts and have our folks sign for next year and get new employees on board
138school board budget approval on final adoption pending final adoption by the board of supervisors so because this hinges on local funding the board of supervisors has to adopt it and then we adopt it so a number of steps in the process but we're at the point where you have um superintendent's recommended budget what what's the likelihood that the state budget is um known by march 14th it's right now we've got the house and the senate not likely not likely we have we have dueling numbers in between those and we've seen that one of the bodies we could see a small increase and the other one we could see a significant increase up to 300 000 so we're just looking at those components and kind of waiting to see what we get a lot could change
139but we feel comfortable with the numbers we're presenting to you and then there are a number of requests that did not make the cut including an additional step for teachers so teachers when the pandemic first started almost two years ago to the date we did not do an increase for teachers so they did not move up a step on their salary scale i hear that at every meeting i attend about that step that they did not get and i'm sure i'll hear it about a teacher advisory on wednesday so one of the things that we could do if we received additional revenue would be to give additional money to our teachers and i would support that and i would i would put that forward so any additional revenue that we have would be towards those
140factors and not towards new initiatives or new things shouldn't we include that in our ask great question i mean i would like to include that in or ask i can cross that out for you more we've talked about it it's [Music] about i'm afraid of losing good teachers well that's why when i look at the what other school divisions are doing in virginia five percent keeps you flat so if there's a way that we can do five percent and find a step it does give us a little bit of a little bit of an advantage i mean you see where we're located on the chart um but we can we can go back to the table with that so and we have some conversations this week that we can we can kind of talk through
141those pieces i think that's a good a good move to make and it would just be that piece we what we've tried to do in this budget is differentiate salaries we have the five percent increase but we're trying to do more for different groups um to make us more competitive that would be another strategy to make us more competitive and in the scheme of a 40 million budget it is it's it's not a lot thank you other questions comments on the superintendent's recommended budget so we will have a more comprehensive budget book that goes along with the superintendent's recommended budget if you go online to the budget department you can see last year's version of it that will be coming out in the next week as well so this presentation the full detail budget book
142in the next week or so will be publicly available as well okay thank you dr nichols okay last item on our agenda um superintendent and school board member comments dr nichols i'll give you a break for a minute since you just had a long presentation so we can start um with our school board member comments and i'll go to my right i'll start at my right uh miss barber comments this evening uh i think it's very valuable for us to have the opportunity to see our students and highlighting the middle school in great detail i think was very illustrative of the talent and enthusiasm that we have in our schools i'd also like to just underscore again the importance in our budget of recognize recognizing the value of our teachers and our staff to the
143greatest extent possible i echo those comments i was thrilled to be able to listen to our students uh sing tonight and have them with us that was wonderful i'm very thankful for all the hard work that you all have that your team everybody's put into our our budget planning i know there's still a lot more to go but very thankful for all the hard work and appreciate it okay thank you miss mcbeath yes i echo the comments as well regarding the performance by our middle school students it was wonderful to uh see them and hear them this evening so i appreciate that opportunity and certainly as always appreciate the uh the spirited dialogue surrounding books and uh you know the difference um perspectives that people bring and uh do appreciate that from from our community
144as well look forward to being part of the uh process with the upcoming budget and um so thank you for that opportunity thank you and mr mead it was it was a great it was a great evening to do that i honestly i had no anticipation i would spend 50 on a picture when i got here tonight but um but i can tell you though i say that kind of sarcastically but honestly that'll be the best 50 i spend all year because what it does for me it it really highlights a student's um passion to live out whereas two years ago that was not even possible and to me it's just a small investment to to give back to these students to appreciate all the hard work that they put into uh to everything they
145do every single day and with their teachers partnering with them to encourage that passion each and every day whether it's through the arts or through music or through those things and and now that spring has sprung we do know this that it will change but i am excited to see how we ended up this winter for all of our athletic teams with our girls um going to the states and basketball wrestling winning another state championship it has just been a great run for our athletic teams and now today all of our teams had scrimmages and so i look forward to this to the next season that we're having and mr miller talking about graduation so i look forward to the prom i look forward to in-person graduation as well i think it's just going to
146be a great end of the year celebration now that we are somewhat as normal as we can possibly be for a school division over the last two years so thank you constituents and thank you teachers and administrators for doing your part and thank you god for bringing the rain hallelujah who brought an umbrella that's exactly what i was thinking okay nobody um yes we're getting uh torrential rains right now but i just want to echo what's been said by my fellow board members every week dr nichols sends us his friday follow-up where he talks about uh activities he's conducted in the schools during the week and what he said last week was it was probably work is beginning to look more and more like it did pre-pandemic so i think we're seeing that every week
147we're seeing it at our board meetings and that's very helpful i too want to echo a lot of you talk about volunteering in schools i do want to remind you that our schools are open for in-person volunteers so i look forward to seeing some of you there i know i've emailed a lot of you about participating in our schools and helping in that way when you see it you understand it and finally we look forward to the continuation of the budget process and full transparency we are meeting with our board of super counter board of supervisor counterparts so we have a good partnership there so we're committed to working through this budget in the upcoming weeks so those are my comments this evening dr nichols your final thoughts thank you miss winford um i read
148something this morning that uh two years ago this was the last normal week before everything changed and we've been through a lot together in the past two years but i couldn't be prouder of where we sit today because we went through all of this together and i am feeling more more like a superintendent not a medical health expert or a quarantine contact tracing expert you saw why i love what i get to do every day when you get to see these kids come in like i get to do that every day i do board meetings twice a month but i get to do that every day and we have some of the most talented amazing committed teachers staff and students i was helping out at elementary school friday and was listening to bus radio if
149you ever want to hear something interesting listen to bus radio and i heard this bus driver and this i'll end with this because it just embodies why new kent is amazing the bus driver got on the radio and said i just dropped off ex-family somebody's always there to pick them up i just don't feel good about it the kids were old enough to go by themselves so that's our responsibility you're beyond first grade i could drop you off bus driver said i i just don't feel good about it i'm gonna take the rest of my run is it okay if i go back transportation nobody knows i'm listening to this radio and treasure supervisor says absolutely you go back and make sure those kids are okay that's what we do we're not perfect we make
150mistakes but we take care of kids and uh we have great graduation rates and we have a great in-person graduation rate and we do it all together so that's just one story about how amazing our staff is but there are many many more and i can talk about all of them until the rain stops if you'd like but no swim for that does conclude my comments thank you okay thank you and our next meeting is monday march 21st that is our